#Detective Nicky Flippers

[marmiama-a-a]

[unabashedlycheesy]

I just listened to the Hoodwinked episode of Moviestruck and wanted to share a tidbit that I discovered a few years ago. The character Nicky Flippers (and the movie structure) is based on a 1930s movie series called "The Thin Man", specifically the character Nick Charles. The Thin Man movies are one of my favorites and I've watched many, many times. When I rewatched Hoodwinked a few years ago, I couldn't figure out why the frog and the movie ending seemed so damn familiar! Took me a few days to figure it out. I was not expecting to see a 1930s detective movie referenced in my early 2000s animated childrens movie. 😄

[spentimental]

D is for Dendrobates Auratus, the green and black poison dart frog

I put a frog in a turtleneck sweater and that’s as far as I got with this idea, to be honest.

This is our second ace, the Ace of Clubs (or as I like to call it in my brain but not out loud, Clovers).  I didn’t want to be too repetitive with my designs, so I tried a semi-transparent plastic look. I’m really proud of the circuit pattern in his face and the camera lens eye. I made it following tutorials by Ardent Designs and Logos By Nick.

Off canvas is a whole arm with froggy fingers that I didn’t finish in time. I imagine him as some sort of super spy or detective. He’s subconsciously inspired by Nicky Flippers from Hoodwinked.

This is the fourth week of working consistently on the Alphabet Superset challenge and it was a struggle. The hardest part wasn't using Inkscape or learning new techniques, but just working on it at all. The first day or two was fine. But after that, opening the file made me want to close it immediately. When I work on creative projects, I tend to jump into new ones quickly, pursue them with a burning passion, and then burn out really hard and swap to something different as soon as I lose interest. Sticking to one project for six months is almost unthinkable. This week and last, I kept swapping to other projects to avoid working on this one. I wonder how many people doing this challenge are feeling the same way right now.

No, this frog is not as finished as I would like. But I still like him and I’m proud of what I’ve done so far. I genuinely love seeing each card when I go to share them. I look forward to coming back to all of these designs when I have more experience. Luckily for me, this next week is a break in the challenge. I’m going to take this opportunity to sketch the next few characters and make a plan to curb my avoidance. I’m determined to get through this and prove that I can see a project through from beginning to end.

[petz5]

could the frog detective solve the kira murders?

my man nicky flippers of hoodwinked fame did in fact successfully solve the kira murders in my dream WITHOUT getting killed himself

[imnotviciousreally]

Absolutely losing my mind over the fact that David Ogden Stiers plays Detective Nicky Flippers in the 2005 computer animated musical comedy mystery film Hoodwinked

[adamwatchesmovies]

Hoodwinked! (2005)

The best way to view Hoodwinked! isn’t in theatres, on 4K, Blu-ray, or even DVD. My recommendation? Find it on VHS tape. With any luck, you won’t be able to tell how awful the graphics look after all that picture degradation. I can’t overemphasize their shoddiness. Think commercial for a grocery store chain - a local grocery store chain - from 1999, when people realized CG animation could be a thing but way overestimated what the technology could do. It’s a shame because the script is terrific. There are loads of original songs and they’ll make you bust a gut. This is the kind of movie that’s begging for a big-budget remake but in the meantime, what we have has a chance of becoming a favorite despite its shortcomings.

Red Riding Hood (voiced by Anne Hathaway) arrives at her grandmother’s house to find Granny (Glenn Close) tied up and the Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton) in her bed. Disaster is averted when a woodsman (Jim Belushi), barges in through the window. After the police arrive, they’re certain the Wolf was not only caught red-handed, but that he’s responsible for the string of robberies in the valley. Detective Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) isn’t so sure.

Did I mention how aaaaaawful the movie looks? The human characters (there are a few) look like CG nightmares, or - at best - something a competent first-year college student would generate… on a coffee binge the night before the assignment is due. In its defense, the budget was mega, ultra-small and director Cory Edwards used the limited funds well. In this Rashomon-style story, there are few locations and characters but the assets being re-used multiple times doesn’t make the movie “feel” cheap. Most importantly, a lot of time and effort was put into the screenplay.

It’s a mystery astute viewers will be able to deduce probably about halfway through but will still find amusing to follow. Younger kids? They probably won’t figure any of it out ahead of time. Does knowing the culprit spoil some of the movie’s fun? A bit, but that's where the songs come in. There are several good, memorable ones whose tunes will play in a loop in your head because of the melody, the rhymes or simply because of how much they made you laugh. This is a clever, memorable subversion of the fairy tales we all know.

The longer you wait, the more the picture will be compared to the works of Pixar and Dreamworks and even their worst-looking movies look a thousand times better than this. Ultimately, however, it isn’t how good a movie looks that makes or breaks it. In terms of writing and voice work, Hoodwinked! fares extremely well. If I've been harsh on the movie it's so I can prepare you for it. I'm almost certain you'll come back and say "Come on Adam! Give this movie a break! It was great!" because in many ways, it is great. (On Blu-ray, August 9, 2019)

[theowlhousewlw]

top 5 frogs

Well now this is awkward because amphibians and I just don’t vibe but here we go:

5. Poison dart frogs — they just look dangerous and you Know this aren’t bitches to mess with. But they’d be the hot bitches in a club where you’re like “ohhhh let me get your numberrrr” and then they’d look at you like ‘why tf you talking to me’ and you’d be humbled Real quick

4. Frog (from Frog and Toad) — because he has that Bert and Ernie type of love with Toad. I wish them all the happiness in the world

3. Red-eyed tree frog — takes me back to visiting the Rainforest Cafe at my local mall and being accosted by Cha! Cha! every time I stepped inside. Also, he reminds me of those lanky athletes in high school who are still growing into their bodies and so all their limbs are like super stretched out and the red-eyed tree frog’s stare is what a hs boy looks like when the female teachers finally snaps at them

2. Detective Nicky Flippers (from Hoodwinked) — the dude used to get down to disco music. In general, I’m all for acab, but Nicky is the only one I would risk my neck for. This frog did his best to get to the bottom of the case and to get all sides of the story. Clearly the example that we need to fill the force with frogs and flush out the pigs

1. Kermit the Frog

[dylanrbrien]

i thought this was the frog detective from hoodwinked but it’s meet the robinsons and now i’m sad.. i’ll never forget about you detective nicky flippers

I’m just gonna post this everywhere and hope he sees this one day.

[tparadox]

Revisiting Eoin Colfer’s H2G2 continuation

I didn’t remember very much of what happened in And Another Thing, just a lot of Thor and how much I didn’t like Random, and some of the details of how it got out of the Final End.

When I read it the first time, in college, I came away with the impression that Random and Mown got so much representation in the plot because Colfer mainly writes YA and so teen angst was an attractive topic for him. I thought that the reason I didn’t like his handling of Random was that she was too foregrounded, to the point that the book wasn’t for me. I was too old for it.

Reading it now (that is, having Simon Jones read it for me at work), almost ten years later, I’m pretty sure Random is just an insult to young adults and I’m surprised he did that with her. Sure, she’s not that pleasant in Mostly Harmless either, but her unpleasantness is mostly from Arthur’s point of view, having had an angsty teenager dumped on him without warning.

Adams is actually pretty sensitive with Random’s motivations, and she comes across as a confused and uprooted kid who may at times be intentionally unpleasant to adults, but she uses that as a coping mechanism for getting by in a world where all the adults tell her she doesn’t fit in.

Colfer’s Random is petty, spiteful, and nasty because she’s built an entire identity around being petty, spiteful, and nasty. She gets new emotional impetus from having a dream of accomplishment snatched away from her, but the one scene we saw of that is built around her using the position she’s made for herself for an act of revenge against her mother.

I don’t really have any complaints about Mown. He’s kind of tangential until the one scene he’s needed for, but that’s a problem with a lot of characters. Ford is just there, except for the scene where Random steals his hacked Dyn-O-Charge card. Arthur is just there until he summons up enough maturity to be a father to Random. Trillian is pretty much entirely defined by her relationships with Random, Bowerick, and Arthur.

As much as on this go-round I’ve been disappointed in how Zaphod drops out of the books after Life, The Universe, and Everything (though the radio adaptation shoehorns him in) and Trillian is absent from So Long and Thanks for All The Fish (though the Quandary Phase seeds the alternate Tricia in), there’s entirely too much of Zaphod Beeblebrox in And Another Thing. There are parts of the book where he feels like the main protagonist, and I spent them thinking, “I don’t care, can we get on with this and get back to Arthur, or at least Trillian and Bowerick?” (The voice Simon Jones uses to perform him in the audiobook doesn’t help. It reaches levels of insufferability one might not think humanly possible.) Also Zaphod’s second head turning out to be an egghead once separated from his dominating personality is a bit of a strain, but it makes some interesting new dynamics.

It’s entirely possible Colfer’s Bowerick Wowbagger is compatible with Adams’s descriptions of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, but I always pictured him as a small, balding, withered man. He looks his years, basically. Like Tithonus, don’t assume immortality comes with eternal youth. Even aside from that, his personality isn’t someone I’d have ever imagined making a romantic lead. It is however rather amusing that the combination of Colfer describing him as very tall, very handsome, very green, and impeccably dressed, and Jones choosing a voice for him that reminds me of David Ogden Stiers, had me imagining Detective Nicky Flippers from Hoodwinked, so Trillian was romancing a seven-foot tall mustachioed frog in suit and tie.

Basically, the main characters are Zaphod, Random, Bowerick, Thor, and Hillman Hunter. Zaphod is insufferable, Random is nasty, Bowerick is a rebooted asshole who was never meant to be likeable but now is, Thor is the center of a major fixation on Norse mythology I respect more now having read The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, and Hillman Hunter is, well also unlikeable, but the main problem I have with him is that his only connection to anyone else is from doing business with Zaphod. Arthur’s likeable, but he spends a lot of the book letting the computer indulge his longing for Fenchurch, Ford’s likeable, but also irrelevant, and Trillian is the focus point of a whole lot of interpersonal relationships, but doesn’t do much except worry about if marrying Bowerick is mutually exclusive with getting around to being a good mother to Random.

Perhaps in keeping with the “every version of the series contradicts every other version” tradition, this often feels more like a sequel to the radio series than the novels. It’s one thing to wink at the Babelfish solution, but not only does it seem to be more consistent with The Quintessential Phase’s version of that plot than with Mostly Harmless (including the conflation of Zarniwhoop and Van Haarl), there’s also a major reference to the part of the Secondary Series that Life, The Universe and Everything jettisoned.

At least the humor and voice are fairly consistent with Adams. The main stylistic deviation is marking digressions as Guide Notes and highlighting Related Reading, which I’m fine with because the preface describes the first five books as volumes of the Guide and this one being an appendix.