#Toon Nathan Lore | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

galacticbugman · 5 years

Text

What are My top ten favorite Movies and TV shows ???

Hi everyone you for a while now you may have caught on by reading my nature blog that I am kind of a nerd for more than just nature. I am now opening my blog to more than just nature but at about all my interests as a whole. You may think of me as more of a naturalist but there is a whole side of me that I would like to talk about.

It is convention season for all of us Nerds. The Dallas Fan Expo will be starting in Dallas pretty soon which I will not be able to attend this year but I am going to a con this year with my brother. I thought it would cool to talk about my top 10 favorite TV and Movie franchises to kind of give you a window into the other part of my life that I hold most near and dear. Note that these franchises are not necessarily in the correct order because I can’t really decide which ones are my true favortie as a whole. (Hint I go over this in earlier posts.) So lets get started.

Cartoons! are one of my favorite things to watch when I am in need of a good laugh so I nearly always turn to a few like Talespin, Darkwing Duck, Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers, Pokemon (only up to seasons 1-8) or a whole load of others. One has earned its place really near and dear to my heart and that would be this fan favorite

Who doesn’t love a good runabout with the Warner Brothers Yakko, Wakko, and the Warner Sister Dot on the 90s classic Animaniacs. I grew up in the 90s and absolutly loved Animaniacs from the start. Ever since I was little I was obsessed with the WB kids block and this show had me laughing the whole time. It makes fun out of pop culture as a whole, has catchy songs, goofy wit, classic slapstick, and tons of references and entertaining songs. I love this show and have gone back and watched many of the episodes and the truth is they still have me nearly laughing till I am on my butt doubled over. I love their jabs at Star Trek, Disney films, and many of the other things I watched as a kid. That is not all they make fun of they make fun of artists and many other icons from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I didn’t realize just how much stuff they make fun of but every time I watch it I am always finding something new to laugh out loud with. I enjoy watching the others to the series like Pinky and the Brain, Tiny Toon Adventures, Histeria, and Freakazoid. I have always been a fan of the whole line up of the spin offs but I don’t always revisit them as much as I do as this one.

When I was a little boy I always wanted to grow up and be a Paleontologist. I loved dinosaurs with a passion. I was about four years old when I first said Paleontologist the correct way and that is what I told people I wanted to be. I was a big fan of Land Before Time growing up and I also liked the Disney Sitcom Dinosaurs, as well as Disney’s movie about Dinosaurs called Dinosaur. It was back in about 2005 or 2006 and I was finally allowed to watch Jurassic Park and it’s sequel The Lost World Jurassic Park. My aunt had both on VHS and I popped the first one in to the VCR player and didn’t quite know what to expect but this film had me at the moment Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant saw that Brachiosaur. I loved the story, the characters, and most of all the dinosaurs. It is a classic for any science fiction nerd or dinosaur nerd. I am a big fan of Steven Spielberg works and Jurassic Park and all of its sequels including Jurassic World and its sequel have always been a big part of my movie watching experience. If I had to rank them from best to worst The Lost World would always come first. For some reason I loved that one as a movie better than any of the others for some reason. I didn’t necessarily like the book that was called the Lost World that I read in high school but I did love the book called Jurassic Park both written by the late Michael Crichton. Next would be the original, then Jurassic World would be next, followed by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and then Jurassic Park ///. I have always been a big fan of them but Jurassic Park /// was kind of awkward but don’t get me wrong it is starting to grow with me the more I watch it even with the hidden Lore that the latest two movie sites have put out. I was a little befuddled with the last entry in the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom but I thought it was an okay movie and I have a feeling that it will lead up to a better follow up story. I tend not to really be overly critical when it comes to the franchise as a whole because most of what we get comes from the pages of the two novels as a whole. So Jurassic Park is and always shall be one of my favorites. If I feel like I am in the mood to have a movie in the dark night. I will most likely watch a Jurassic movie or the first Jaws film which I also love but I only like the first Jaws movie and somewhat like the second one but the last two are just downright terrible and I am not a huge fan of those unless I just want to watch them to get a good cheesy laugh out of them. I have a lot of Jurassic park themed stuff. I have two egg toys one featuring the injured T-rex baby from lost world and a raptor from JP///, I have Pop! figure of Blue, and have the Jurassic Park: Danger Board game, the a few shirts and a a hoodie and a few other things from earlier films as well as all of the movies on DVD.

So when I was a kid my greatest obsession was Star Wars that was the main thing that I would watch and collect memorabilia and action figures from. However after the release of Revenge of the Sith it began to run kind of thin with me and I was not much as a devoted fan anymore. I mean I read the Expanded Universe stories which I love better than this Disney stuff that they have been spewing out for the last few years. However back in 2009 the new Star Trek reboots were just coming out. I went down the cereal aisle and found ads for Star Trek with limited edition Beam Up badges so I decided to see what it was about. I had never really been a big fan of Star Trek. I would only watch it occasionally when my parents would watch it but I hardly understood it. They watch the later series with Jean Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko, and Katherine Janeway as the captains. I decided to watch my first full Star Trek episode called the “Corbinite Maneuver” In an instant I was hooked. I started with the the Original with William Shatner and it instantly became a big time obsession. I bought some more cereal and collected cut out tokens so I could send away for a Star Trek uniform Tee shirt which I still have to this day. I went on to watch the first six Star Trek movies, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, (sorry folks was not a big fan of enterprise) but I was totally hooked. In high school I even learned how to speak a little bit of Klingon. Mostly if I speak Klingon now I am singing Klingon opera like the “victory song”, the “battle anthem”, or “Klingon Drinking song”, or the song that they sing on the night before one’s wedding sung on the Deep Space Nine Episode “You are cordially invited” which is one of my top picks for that series. I am a huge fan of Deep Space Nine more than anything for its dark under tones and more serious manner. It tends to be the darkest series of the first five series. Don’t get me wrong Voyager had some pretty crazy and dark twisted episodes but my goodness is it good. I also got to meet a few Star Trek cast memebers along the way as I became more into wanting to go to more nerd conventions.

Here I am with Captain Kirk himself at my first ever Dallas Fan Expo in Dallas TX. I was so excited to meet William Shatner and get this photo taken with the second Captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. It was a truly awesome experience. I also got to meet Brent Spiner who played my favorite TNG character Data. I also got to meet Nichelle Nicholes. I got both her’s and Brent’s autograph. It was quite fun to go to those cons. I went three years in a row to the Dallas expo. My last time was in 2016. It was so cool to meet the rest of the people I met like Veronica Taylor from Pokemon, Christopher Lloyd from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Back to the Future, Cyber Chase when he played the Hacker, I also Met Nathan Fillion from Firefly and Castle I am now watching his current show on ABC called the Rookie which me and my aunt are both obsessed over right now. I also met Dean Cain from the Superman series Louis and Clark, I also met Bill Farmer who plays Goofy on most of the modern Disney stuff, Jim Cummings who played Darkwing Duck, Winnie-the-pooh, Ed the Hyena on Lion King, and many other characters from most of our childhoods. I also met a few others but my goodness I have met a lot. So Star Trek to say has become one of my favorites surpassing Star Wars even though I have not been too sure about the new Discovery show. I am more of purist when it comes to Star Trek but that is just me. That doesn’t mean that the Reboots and Discovery have a few redeeming qualities I am just saying I like the way it intended to be. I since have collected books, a few models of a couple of the USS Enterprises like the original, D, and my personal favorite E, along with a model of Spock, I also made myself a do it yourself tribble because I am a huge fan of that episode Trouble with Tribbles as most of us Trekkies do. I still like Star Wars so don’t get me wrong I still have all my old Star Wars toys and things so that will never truly go away but I am still more toward the pre-Disney era and think that the legends are the only canon in my book. I still like both and each one brings something to the table so there is no reason to totally be at odds with each other when it comes to our two respective fandoms.

Next is one of my favorite British TV Shows that I have grown to like since the year 2014 when I went to my first Dallas Fan Expo.

Doctor Who will always be one of my all time favorite Time Travel shows. I have to admit when my mother watched this on TV when I was younger on PBS. It scared the pants off me. I hated the show at first. I was born with autism and some of the weird off set and loud noises from the original run episodes really bothered me with my audio issues with my ears. It took me a long while to develop a taste for this classic bit of BBC programming. I have watched PBS shows all my life from Keeping up Appearances, Are You Being Served, and many of the other British Sitcoms but I never really got into their science fiction stuff I was more into their comedies like Monty Python’s Flying Circus and what not but I gave it another go and instantly got into it. You may think that I started with what we call the NuWho but I began to watch the Third and Forth Doctor series from the 1970s working my way to number 5, 6, 7, and then I watched the movie with the eighth Doctor, and then got into the new stuff. Tom Baker, David Tenant, Matt Smith, John Pertwee, and Peter Capaldi were among my absolute favorite Doctors. The stories are insane and and very fun. They deal with a lot os issues saw into day’s world. It almost reminds me of Twilight Zone and Outer limits some of the time with a few of the stories but has its own vibes and style to it. I love the show and have a few Tee shirts, a 11th Doctor fez, a replica of 10′s sonic screwdriver, the Lego Tardis set along with the Lego Dimensions add on packs with the 12th Doctor, K-9 (who is by far my favorite side character of the series), I also have the Dalek and Cyberman add ons. I have a couple of other things like a 4th Doctor pop figure too, as well as a Doctor Who 4th Doctor scarf and blanker which I often wear and have when I am watching a marathon or when I am down with a cold or sick with something else. So yeah I am a huge fan of this but was not too impressed with the writing from the last Doctor’s run it wasn’t the Doctor being a woman or the acting which I though the change was very interesting and I had no problem with it but I just feel the writing could have been done a little differently. However I was sad we didn’t get a Christmas special last year so that broke tradition with the Doctor Who show. Still I don’t mind travailing with the good Doctor when I watch the show. It is an emotional roller coaster and a thrilling story of a mad man in a blue box.

One of my other favorites and one of my regular go to movies and Cartoons is the Men In Back franchise. I am a fan of both the live action and the series they used to play on the WB kids block. Men In Black has always been one to get me laughing my head off. My favorite character is Jay because for me I kind of find his antics way off point for what Kay is trying to teach him to be. Jay is never low key about trying to keep things about global destruction low key like the MIB do. Jay always has the best lines and is kind of a good ball compared to his partner Kay. I first saw Men In Black movies in the early 2000s but I watched the series when I was a kid. I often revisit the series because I like how it was done. Dark a little bit, sarcastic absolutely, and full of action you bet. The cartoon doesn’t have a lot of deep seeded issues or things to reflect on like the movies do. The movies always get me to thinking and always having me laugh my head off till I nearly puke. Seriously every time the Worm Guys come on the screen I am on my butt nearly double over. They are my favorite aliens of the series in both the cartoon and live action universes. These films are just my kind of weird. I like Ghostbusters too for the same reasons there is a lot of fun characters, crazy villains, tons of gross out moments that either make you gag or laugh, and there is a lot of action involved. Seriously this film has it all space cops, evil human challenged aliens, and tons of shiny things. This series is a must for any science fiction fan. It is just simply put a fun series. I don’t know how the next one is going to go seeming that Agent K and J are not going to be in this film so far as I know but I will go see it just to see what they do to the franchise as we explore another branch of the MIB. I have all three on DVD and have some old wendy’s toys back when the cartoon series was out. I love this series too because in a few episodes in the cartoon and in the first movie they had to deal with Space Bugs so that kind of made me into it more. I love the whole fight scene with Edgar and Jay’s antics it was kind of a funny fight scene with an awesome gross out with the slime at the end when the space roach gets blown to bits. I find the episodes in the cartoon featuring the bugs funny. All of that has a great blend with sci-fi and comedy. Some of the cartoon stuff is pretty dark but heck man I still love it for what it is worth.

Space Jam was one that I loved from the moment I saw it for the first time in the 90s. I have always been a Looney Tunes kind of guy. I love the classics, Tazmania, Loonatics Unleashed, Duck Dodgers, and I really didn’t think the Looney Tunes Show was all that bad in fact I think over all it was good but I still think they should have made a few changes to a few of their characters. I love the straight to DVD movies too. Space Jam is one of those films that is kind of off the rails but it is one that all 90s kids like to be honest. I have always been a fan of the blend with cartoon characters intermingling with humans and interacting with them. It is a fun movie and I really enjoy watching it. I have it on DVD and watch it often. I love the sport of Basket Ball I used to play it when I was young on a little league team and love to watch the Dallas Mavericks play so seeing a blend of two of my favorite things blended together is kind of fun. There are a lot of funny moments in this film and a few classic references to a few other movies. When I watch a new movie I always love to see what kind of other references I can find and laugh when I figure out what they are. Space Jam is one of those that is a fun film and sometimes fun films don’t get a lot of good press with critics but there is nothing wrong with watching a fun film. Sometimes life needs to be taken a little less serious and you need a good laugh or just need to take you mind off things and this is one of those films that is just down right ridiculous but we love it. Shoot I can watch this basket ball match between the Tune Squad and the Monstars anytime over and over again.

Another one of my absolute favorites is this Toony Mystery film. Roger Rabbit is one of the few cult classic movies that I have seen and for me I love this one. I love mysteries I read a lot of mystery books like A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and I have not been a stranger to reading a Sherlock Holmes mystery. I find this movie to be more for older kids but it has always appealed to me for its fun nature and its really interesting blend of Noir style with cartoon characters. It is one of my favorite crossovers using mainly Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal characters along with the original characters like Roger Rabbit, his wife Jessica, Baby Herman, the Weasels, and Benny the Cab. the one scene in this whole film that makes me laugh extra hard is the Droopy Bellboy scene were Eddie is entering the appartment building trying to track down Jessica but is actually following a bonkers Toon Named Leena who looks like Jessica but is not Jessica at all. The elevator scene is so funny the way that Droopy looks so emotionless and says his lines while Eddie gets flattened and then flung up to the ceiling. I am a fan of a lot of classic cartoons and Droopy is one of them so that is why I laugh so hard at that scene and I have been known to do an impression of him when I enter an elevator with my family. That"going up sir, mind you step sir, hold on sir, have a good day sir” line has always stuck with me. Now I watched this as a child and any fan of this movie knows how terrifying Judge Doom was toward the end. For me the most horrifying scene in this movie (and I am sure I speak to most of the fans of this here when I say) The most horrific scene for this movie (SPOILERS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THIS BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM TURN BACK NOW.) Is where Judge Doom and Eddie get into the epic battle and Eddie grabs a tub of glue and Judge Doom breaks it open and winds up getting stuck to the end of the steamroller and instantly flattened. That is not what makes it so freaky it is when Roger yells to Eddie to look then you see a flattened Doom start to peel himself off the ground and start to flop around trying to get his balance. His partial Toon features are only freakier to whitness the burning red eyes, the high pitched voice that could break glass, the eye daggers, the arm saw makes him a formidable foe and one of the creepiest characters in this film. However besides that it is one of my favorites because I laugh and I think it is another one of those fun and silly films. I also like that is one of those very special films that allow for other film groups to correspond with each other. I feel that we need more films like these where characters from different franchises come together. I don’t think we will get another film where Mickey and Bugs, or Daffy and Donald share the same screen time ever again on the same playing field but that is another reason why I get a kick out of this film it is not totally one sided a lot of characters are in this movie sharing the spotlight from different film industries which still amazes audiences today. And too I like the crazy wit of Roger. I have actually played the NES game for this film but have never really completed it.

Okay so now we are getting into more down to earth comedy which I do like. A friend in college a couple of semesters back told me about this movie after I told him that I was a naturalist and a birder. This movie is about the annual Big Year that happens every year. It is a comedy of three men trying to get the most amount of birds in a calendar year. It is one of my favorite nature based hollywood films. If you get into to birding though and want to see this movie DO NOT TAKE THIS MOVIE FOR SCIENCE ACCURACY! It will drive you nuts. It is a great movie about birds and many people who watch it are bird watcher and members of birding clubs like I am but there are many birds that are out of place in this film but heck it is still a fun movie to watch and get a laugh out of. I watch it every time during the new year or before a big birding event. Sometime I will watch it before the Christmas bird count or before I go to volunteer for the Great Backyard Bird Count. I love this movie for many reasons it is heartfelt, has birds and I love birds and have over 170 on my life list so far. It is also just a good film to watch if you are a nature lover. It is funny but has a good message to it. It is one that is good for the whole family. I like it because I like all three of these actors. I watch a lot of their material often. Steve Martin has always been one of my favorite actors for his roles in Cheaper By the Dozen, Pink Panther 1&2, my personal favorite The Three Amigos, among others. I think this is another one that is really fun I know I say that a lot but this one is kind of cool because it really does show what birder do minus Owen Wilson’s character being kind of a big jerk to everybody in this film. It shows a day in the life of a birder in most cases and what we do when we are caught in certain situations in a more comedic way but it is till a reflection of ourselves when we travel and when we all get together and go birding. So this movie really hits close to home for me. It is neither a cartoon or a science fiction it is a comedy and a pretty good one too. So I give this one a spot on my list.

I mentioned this one earlier but this is one of the only horror movies I have ever gotten into. I had not seen the movie previously to 2010. I have seen bits and pieces and to be honest I was only a small kid when I saw the bits and pieces and this film creeped me out big time. In 2010 in one of my classes in high school we all got DVDs and my teacher knowing how much I loved animals gave me this one. I was not really allowed to watch it I lived a pretty sheltered life but I watched it and I was totally blown away (no pun intended to the ending). This film was truly amazing and one I watch again and again. I love sharks and I know this shark is viewed as a bad guy preying on poor beach goers who are just trying to enjoy themselves while having a swim at the beach. I really like the Matt Hooper Character portrayed by Richard Dryfuss. My grandmother said it must have been devine intervention that I saw this film because it made me study the truth behind sharks, shark attacks, and made me develop a new appreciation for sharks. This film may have scared the pants off of me when I was younger and may have scared everyone that went to go see it back in the summer of 1975 or who read the novel by Peter Benchly which I have read back in high school around the same time I read the two Jurassic Park Novels. This film is by far one of the darkest films and maybe the darkest film I will ever watch all though Star Trek: First Contact was really dark in some spots but I liked it. Jaws for me was fun and had a lot of nice dark undertones especially when you get to Captain Quint’s famous USS Indianapolis speech. The movie is good and reflect heavily on the 1916 shark attacks even though it happens on an island that doesn’t exist and the setting of the attacks was changed but it was meant to be a fictional story but it does have echos of the events that played out during the summer of 1916. I love this movie for many reasons but it was really well played out even as it turned out to be one of the toughest movies to make and was almost never made. I love the characters in the movie. I can see why they changed them from their book counterparts all of the characters were not that likable and were jerks to everyone it seemed. The movies puts heart into to some of the situations that play out and has a deep suspense theme to it. Number 2 was the one I enjoyed the second most. Number three I can’t even take seriously and number four only has that one genuinely terror scene at the beginning then it is a complete cheese fest. Don’t get me wrong I am one for cheesy movies I love a lot of the cheesy stuff from the 60s, 70s, and 80s but Jaws isn’t one that I would associate for trying to be totally cheesy then it turned out to be. I know they were just milking it for all it was worth but it was really unnecessary because the rest of the films didn’t take anything from the source material like you see in Jurassic Park. That is why I don’t criticize Jurassic Park that much because all of that stuff comes from the pages of the book. Jaws only does it justice one time then totally goes down hill from there. That is why I say that there will never be a movie with a shark half as good as Jaws one. Jaws one was tops for shark movies but no one has come even close from trying to break the cheese barrier. The Meg came a little close but not too close. So yeah Jaws still holds the record for being the best shark film.

Okay now I am getting into some Superhero stuff. I bet you are wondering who like better DC or Marvel. Well I like both but I only like certain things from DC. DC I only like for the 1960s Batman TV show even though it was a campy series I still loved it and love to laugh at it and watch it just for fun. I also like the Michael Keaton stuff like Batman 1980 and Batman Returns; Don’t judge me on this but I also like to watch Batman & Robin and Batman Forever just for the cheap giggles and laughs. I also like the first four Superman Films, the original Wonder Woman series, and the early DC comics and things. I am not one for the darker films that much. I am just not that kind of guy. However I do love the Marvel comics and the Marvel cinematic Universe. What is a nerd without liking superheroes. This is one of my favorites. I first saw an ad for this trailer at the Dallas Fan Expo in 2014 and I instantly wanted to go see it. It looked funny and the song “Hooked on a Feeling” was played and I love that song just as much a Peter Quill so yeah I had to see it. I love things about renegades and rebels on the loose like Star Wars, Firefly, and several western flicks like Young Guns I&II and several others. Guardians of the Galaxy is one of my favorites for its sarcastic nature (I like a lot of stuff with sarcasm for my family tends to be pretty sarcastic and me I tend to be a wise guy sometimes and like to smart off so I would fit right along with the Guardians of the Galaxy crew if I was able to) The humor in this film is my kind of humor and the action is good; but what gets me with these films is the connection these outlaws have with each other and how they over come their troubles and woes. They were “losers” but they found strength with each other even if they were contemplating to kill each other at some points in the film. They still had their issues but isn’t that what happpens in a family. I love the story of the first one and love the follow up. These films have a place on the list because to me I can relate. My grandmother had cancer and died from it much like Peter’s momma at the beginning of the film and My grandmother got me hooked on a lot of the stuff that she got me into like vintage black and white comedies, old songs from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. So there was a deep connection I had with these films that really hit me hard minus the being abducted by aliens thing. So this film is one of those that makes me think about my own life in certain ways.

So these are my top movie and TV show picks. You may see that I have a lot of things that are relate-able to my sense of humor and my life and the way I work. So there is much more to me then just picking up a camera and going on a hike. No I am a pretty big nerd in the long run. I have not go into Anime that much I do like some but I don’t really like a whole bunch of it. It has always been hard for me to get into. Normally I like comedies, western cartoons mainly classic cartoons and things, I am also into a lot of science fiction. Just to name a few other things I am into (Lord of the Rings, I am somewhat of a slight Hobbit guy, Battlestar Galactica 1978, Godzilla most of the films, King Kong, Scooby Doo and many other Hanna Barbara Cartoons, the Chronicles of Narnia, a whole multitude of Disney films from the past to today. Just to name a few things)

So until next time I am Galactic Bug Man. Live Long and Prosper and I will see you on the trail. This transmission ends.

and May the Force Be With You! Good Night Everybody!

#movies #interests #who framed roger rabbit #jurassic park #star trek #space jam #guardians of the galaxy #the big year #jaws #men in black #mib #doctor who #nerd #geek #fandoms #comedy #adventure #cartoons

2 notes · View notes