#good thing we have such amazing sequels from modern disney including

[oomles]

This headline is so funny to me like... imagine any producer of anything ever outright saying to the press "I don't think the sequel we're making is as good at the first, sorry :("

[being-worthy]

Saturday Home Cinema: Mulan (2020) - A very honest review!

I just had to write this review because Mulan is one of my heroes and I’m a huge fan of the original Disney Mulan (1998). I saw the movie for the first time as a kid when I had trouble feeling integrated and was daily bullied at school. I re-watched it again and again and again until I was able to learn by heart the script and all the songs in German (and later on, even in English). I just saw so much of myself in Mulan (maybe except for the fact that I’m not as beautiful or witty as she is). I too always felt out of place and I couldn’t be my true self and I was never very ladylike either. I also looked up at her and saw her as a role model. Sometimes I thought that if I stared long enough at my reflection in the mirror, it’d show me my true self - and I’m still waiting to this day… Disney’s 1998 version of Mulan was and still is my favourite Disney movie.

> SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!! <

The best thing about this movie is the soundtrack, especially at the end. Christina Aguilera was the right choice to sing Reflection and Loyal Brave True. The goosebumps her voice gives, I can’t even describe how extraordinary her voice is. In the end credits, you can listen to the English version of Reflection as well as the Chinese version (sadly sung by Liu Yifei  ¬¬). It’s worth to watch the end credits and listen to the songs.

*My suggestion: Stop whatever you’re doing. Put on some headphones (even better if they’re noise-cancelling), close your eyes, play the song Reflection song (and Loyal Brave True if you feel like it) by Christina Aguilera, no distractions no interruptions, forget about everything and everyone, let the song flow through your ears, mind, heart, body, and soul, and you will feel like you’re Mulan, especially when the drumming gets louder, it’s epically epic! (Sorry for the redundancy but it IS a remarkable song!)

I welcome the idea of wanting to take a classic and do something new, something fresh with it but humanity could’ve gone without this movie and they shouldn’t ask for $35 to watch it on Disney+ and sometimes a classical doesn’t need to be redone. Additionally, I can’t entirely understand what’s going on these past years not only with Disney but Hollywood and all other big movie production companies. It’s either remake of this classic or a 2nd/3rd sequel of a movie that doesn’t actually require a sequel but it’s still done anyway. Why even bother wasting big amounts of money to create a disaster? You’re better of donating that money to charity (or to me lol). The main thing that Disney has been doing lately are remakes of many of our childhood movies Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, The Jungle Book, The Lion King, among others, and now Mulan. Some have a few good parts in them but they still can’t and never will compare to the original. Why is there no originality and innovation anymore? Have they run out of ideas? Furthermore, let’s be honest people will always compare the remake (either consciously or unconsciously) with the original because there are less than a dozen movies where the remake either was (almost) as good as the original much less better than the original. The movie Mulan (2020) had a massive budget and is the most expensive film made by a female director (Niki Caro), yet how they made it, the battle sequences and CGI effects, etc. they’re all crappy.

Budgets of all Mulan interpretations:

Mulan (1998) - $90 million > Directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. Made $304.3 million in the box office

Hua Mulan (2009) - $12 million > Directed by Jingle Ma. Sadly, made only $1.8 million in the box office. It deserved more love!

Mulan (2020) - $200 million(!!) > All that budget was a waste!

I’ve seen all three versions. The 1998 version is for everybody and it’s funny and you feel with the characters and the film. Let’s be honest, the granny is one of the best characters, most of us have or had a granny like that in our lives. The 2nd one is a 2-hour long movie, a more mature adaption which illustrates the ugly harsh truth about war and the loss and death it brings with it and that there’s nothing funny or cool about it. This one is not suitable for children. You feel with the characters and their sacrifices and they also develop along the movie. I can only recommend to watch this version if you haven’t. And the latest one is a disgrace.

I’m a bit confused as to what the message of the movie is. On one hand, it tells you shouldn’t hide your inner beauty, you shouldn’t hide who you are, you shouldn’t hide your abilities, you shouldn’t try to hide who you truly are in order to conform to what the world/society wants you to be or who you should be, let your true self shine and be yourself and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re inferior just because they think/say you are. This is something powerful and admirable but, on the other hand, at the same time, it tells you that you can only do that if you are the chosen one. Let me explain... In the beginning, we see Mulan as a little girl chasing a chicken up to the roofs of the houses at the village where she lives. Basically, she’s born as a one-woman army (almost deus ex machina) and doesn’t require any further training which is total and utter rubbish. She has all the skills because of her powerful chi (vital life force energy) but has to underplay them because it’s not very ladylike to behave like she wants to and she still underplays them when she trains with the soldiers so as to keep a low profile. Her being so powerful from the beginning makes me feel alienated from her and I can’t empathise with her. It’s also not very realistic, nobody is born with their abilities fully developed. For example, even Bruce Lee had to train hard to get where he got and he wasn’t the only one.

The original version shows us a regular girl, at times clumsy (which is a cliché but we still liked it) and when she’s confronted with new situations, she analyses them and finds a quick canny solution to them. She also has to train her body and mind to get to the peak of her potential and accomplish what nobody else could in her time, and here the character is done from the start of the movie and the only thing she has to do is choose not to hide her chi anymore. This tells us that you don’t have to work hard to achieve your dreams whereas in reality you actually do have to work your butt off!

I’m not a fan of the leading actress they chose for Mulan, aka Liu Yifei, not only because she’s a police brutality supporter according to her controversial tweets a while back - this already makes her unworthy to portray Mulan who is the complete opposite - but also because she didn’t do a good job at depicting this great role. Mulan is a role model for every girl and woman and it’s a massive contradiction if a woman who agrees to the atrocious police methods impersonates her role. What message do we send out to every girl out in the world? In her acting she’s this blank and hollow person through the movie and transmits no emotion whatsoever - not even when she cries. This also makes it difficult for me to identify myself with her. She’s this wooden plank, she is and stays a blank canvas through the whole movie with no growth in her character and it’s frustrating having to see this because the character of Mulan isn’t at all like this. Mulan experiences many emotions from the moment where she makes the decision to enlist so her father doesn’t have to or when she experiences the loss of her comrades or has to kill someone for the first time, etc. she suffers along her journey and all this changes her but you see nothing of it in Liu Yifei’s Mulan.

In the Disney version, there are some crucial moments that are missing in the new one. For instance, the most crucial one is the moment where Mulan decides to go to war. If you remember the animation one, she’s sitting in the rain by the dragon statue and at that moment makes a decision that could kill her or worse bring dishonour to herself and her entire family (including ancestors) which was far worse than death during that time! She gets up, marches to the altar of her ancestors, takes her father’s sword and cuts her hair (I know men had long hair back then too but still), puts on the armour and goes to war. All this while being accompanied by an epic song written by Jerry Goldsmith called Haircut. This is one of the most intense and dramatic moments in the movie and in all Disney movies! You can understand and feel the importance of this decision for the character and you feel the weight of it! In the 2020 one, she takes the sword and the next shot presents her already with the armour on - there’s zero dramatic impact here. That was a great missed opportunity!! By omitting important scenes and their dramatic impacts like this one that are essential to the story and to the characters, to their development and their journey throughout the story and you really need to rely on the original from 1998 to have this context.

The battle scenes are like many modern movies: lots of action, lots of moving (too fast-moving), a few amazing fighting moves and fights but not showed entirely. I at least expected some similar quality, like we’ve seen in films such as Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Tiger & Dragon (2020) to name a few. Sadly, these movies had better fight scenes quality than Mulan which were filmed in high frame rate but over-edited with action that is negatively frenetic and have artificial CGI effects (even the CGI effects in Independence Day were better - I’m watching the movie while writing this). We’re in the 21st century with great advances in technology and movies are given big budgets (particularly Hollywood films), yet despite all this, most movies end up with CGI effects from another era. How come this happens over and over? In this one, we see people running too fast, horses running too fast, and they’re all like a big mass of headless chickens and you don’t know exactly what is happening where. All this fast running, the constant cut and paste of scenes looks all too modern and doesn’t fit the current time period of the movie and it surely doesn’t transmit the way of fighting of that period. 

Moreover, we get lots of flashback-lesson learning scenes throughout the movie. This is another fashion in movies lately, playing the film in the present time while at the same time jumping back and forth between flashbacks. It spends a good portion of the movie with these flashbacks. This is not a big issue and admirable per se but when these scenes are insignificant because they’re glossed over and transmitted without zilch emotion, then why even bother to include them in the first instance?

As a last comment, I like the fact that they hired Chinese actors and actresses for the movie (although I don’t know why it had to be in English, I’d have preferred it to be in Chinese, it’s not like we’re allergic to subtitles - unless they’re not done properly), some of them of renewed name, like Gong Li, Rosalind Chao (I loved her in The Joy Luck Club), Jet Li, Donnie Yen (legendary Ip Man), Jason Scott Lee (saw him in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story), Tzi Ma but they won’t be able to save the movie even with a great cast like this one. 

[dascarecrow]

So I do not know about the rest of you but I am actually excited for the live action Powerpuff Girls show, now titled Powerpuff. I know live action takes on cartoons can be hit or miss, leaning strongly into the latter, but I like what I’m seeing so far. The casting is looking good (Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Dove Cameron as Bubbles, Turk from Scrubs actor as Professor Utonium, etc.) The series is going to take a deconstructionist direction and that’s always fun. They’re bringing Tom Kenney back to be the Narrator again. There are even rumors that it could crossover with the Arrowverse shows which would blow people’s minds. And it’s being headed up by Mr. Greg Berlanti, who seems to be the CW’s golden boy and definitely knows how to handle superhero material. 

With all of that I have some theories about the show.  

The first is that the show is described as a sequel to the original cartoon (the one in the late 90′s not the reboot one for any nitpickers). My idea is that the original cartoon that grown fans would be familiar with will in fact be an actual show within the show. It could be a more sanitized version of what actually happened instead of really happened, which would keep in line with the deconstruction route the show is taking. 

The second and biggest one for me is that the show could do with the Cartoon Cartoons of the 90′s and early 2000′s what the Ducktales reboot did with the Disney Afternoon, only in live action. Yes I theorize that Powerpuff could give us an entire Cartoon Cartoon universe... in live action. It would be amazing to see this! And of course it would also be highly unique with the shows deconstruction approach. 

Just imagine catching up with a now grown up Dexter. How would a scientific prodigy handle the adult world now that he’s grown up? And what became of Dee Dee? 

Maybe we could visit Peach Creek and see how the Eds are doing in their adult lives. Did the happy ending in their movie stay with them or have they reverted to their scamming form in adulthood? 

Maybe we could finally see the arrival of Galactic Kids Next Door in some form. After all we know the kids do eventually grow up so we could definitely get some mileage out having them grow up and see how they handle adulthood. Or we could possibly make the Galactic Kids Next Door stuff an ongoing seasonal plot. 

And that’s just the beginning of everything they could with this concept. Did Grim find a way to finally escape Billy and Mandy or is he still their best friend for life? Did Jack stay ageless and is now walking the modern era? Does Johnny Bravo still think he’s the best thing since sliced bread? Is Courage still defending his home in the middle of nowhere? There is just so much that could be done with this idea. 

Now I will say that if this does happen I don’t expect any Cartoon Network properties from Adventure Time on to appear. I feel that these would be too recent to include, especially given how well the most praised ones ended. Steven Universe, Ok K.O., Regular Show, these all ended in such well done ways that bringing them back, in a live action format to boot, may not be the best idea. I love me my crossovers but I still feel that these need a little more time before reappearing in televised media. I’m perfectly fine with a movie or comic book returns but this would be a lot more difficult to pull off for the creators I think. 

By contrast I would love it if this idea went so far as to include Hanna-Barbera characters. That studio was still swinging up to the mid-90′s, it gave us Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo and of course the Powerpuff Girls; and all of those properties are owned by Warner Bros. so no problems including them. Just imagine it. Live action takes on Space Ghost, Birdman, Jonny Quest, the Blue Falcon, the list just goes on and on. Especially with the deconstruction route applied to them. Just look at what Venture Bros. did with that for Jonny Quest staples. 

I’m probably getting way ahead of myself but there has always been a rivalry between Disney and Warner and the best way to one up a cohesive interconnected universe based on the Disney Afternoon would be to craft one based on the Cartoon Cartoon lineup, only in live action.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #490

Top Ten Female Superheroes in the Movies

I feel like female superheroes – and I'm stretching the definition to include those who aren't consistently out-and-out heroic – are finally, belatedly, starting to get something approaching their due. Already this year we've had two Disney+ shows that had very prominent leading roles for female supers (I'd argue very strongly that Sylvie becomes a co-lead), and on the DC side there's still Supergirl and Batwoman. At the pictures, however, women in capes have historically suffered; if a film had a female lead, any poor performance at the box office was seemingly blamed on gender rather than, y’know, the film being crap. Fortunately the last few years have seen this trend starting to be reversed; Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Birds of Prey, and the recently-released Black Widow have all showcased super-powered female leads and been (for the most part) big successes too.

So, anyway, inspired in large part by the fact I’ve watched both Wonder Woman and Black Widow this week – and with an eye on future female-focused flicks too – this week is dedicated to my favourite filmic femmes (hmmm, there might be such a thing as too much alliteration. I need an avalanche of Advil…). I’ve tried to be pretty strict here and only use movie superheroes – although I’ve stretched that to its limit, as you’ll see. And, like I said before, I’m allowing “anti-heroes” – hey, I had a whole list about them last week, might as well double down! And I know what you’re thinking – surely, in over nine years of making stupid lists on a weekend, I’d have done this before. But no, I checked, and apparently I haven’t. Really I should have scraped the bottom of this particular barrel by now, but fortunately not!

There’s not much more to say at the moment really. Here are my ten favourite female superhero-type characters from the movies. I’m tempted to make some kind of terrible, cheesy reference to “girl power”, or end with a “you go, girl”, or something like that – but let’s face it, that’s a really, really bad, hackneyed idea. Let’s just get on with the list instead.

Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot, DCEU, from 2016): there can be only one! Yeah, still the best female superhero on the silver screen in my book. Gadot gives her the perfect blend of steely determinism and wide-eyed naivete; full of faith and righteousness, but also a fierce fighter. It’s clear from the moment she blasts, fully-formed, into Batman Versus Superman Colon Dawn of Justice that Gadot was born for this role, encompassing every aspect of Diana – the princess, the warrior, the ambassador, the goddess. Like Superman all those years ago, her solo film is equal parts optimism and pragmatism, and (despite the dodgy finale) it remains a wonder. Sorry.

Raven (Tara Strong, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, 2018): here I go, cheating already. Yes, Raven is mostly from a TV show and I’ve decided this is a list of movie characters. But she is in a movie! And she’s the main character and focus of the straight-to-DVD sequel, Teen Titans Go! vs. Teen Titans. So yes, whilst her sole cinematic outing doesn’t really show her off to the greatest degree, she’s still amazing. A deadpan, dark-tinged comedic tour-de-force from voice veteran Strong, Raven is profoundly hilarious, one of the all-time great sarcastic pieces of comic relief. And, whilst we’re talking about the DVD sequel, Strong does a terrific job differentiating between the sillier, looser Go! version of the character, and the more sombre and serious OTT animated Titan.

Laura (Dafne Keen, Logan, 2017): otherwise known, in the comics at least, as both X-23 and, latterly, Wolverine. Laura is a frankly outstanding performance by a child actor. Steely, determined, pissed-off, wounded, proud, but still coming across as a child and not at all precocious or precious. And then there’s her physicality; she storms through the screen, a whirling dervish, leaping around and, frankly, slashing the shit out of everybody. She holds her own against the nuclear charisma explosion that is Hugh Jackman, and against the titanic chops of Sir Patrick of Stewart, and brings a huge amount of heart and pathos to one of the best superhero films of all time.

Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer, Batman Returns, 1992): yeah, okay, she’s not really a superhero. But Pfeiffer’s performance is phenomenal; one part sheer unadulterated sex appeal, one part wronged woman seeking revenge, one part utter batshit craziness (no pun intended). She created interesting layers of manic craziness to a character already a good fifty years old at that point, informing the portrayal of the character in comics and cartoons, and her chemistry with Keaton’s Batman lights up the screen. And, frankly, she was so damn sexy that she gave puberty to an entire generation.

Rogue (Anna Paquin, X-Men movies, 2000-2014): presenting Rogue in the first X-Men as a younger character, without her stolen Captain Marvel powers, was a masterstroke; making her the audience surrogate as a way to introduce the X-Men themselves and Logan in particular, giving the latter character one of his comic-book trademark young female proteges. Paquin does a tremendous job giving her an inner strength despite her heartbreaking power, and although she fades from prominence as the (increasingly bonkers) series progresses, she continues to give it everything she’s got, even if the films don’t do her sufficient justice. An excellent portrayal, sadly cut short.

Elastigirl (Holly Hunter, Incredibles movies, 2004-2018): ah, our first non-comic book character! Hunter is brilliant in this role, presenting Elastigirl as a feminist icon even as she’s forced into an increasingly domestic role. Despite the risk of her being portrayed as a shrill nagging housewife, stomping on Mr. Incredible’s fun, Hunter (and the script, to be fair) walks a fine line, and we as viewers are actually on her side as her husband takes foolish risks. And then, when the action kicks in, she’s amazing – full credit to director Brad Bird and the animators and Pixar. The sequel, which is mostly more of the same but still pretty great, gives her even more lovely character beats.

Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, MCU, 2010-2021): I’ve given it an end date but let’s face it, none of us will be surprised if she turns out not be dead. The first real female superhero we see in the MCU is still the most important and effective. Johansson does a great job fleshing out Natasha, overcoming the cheesy nature of her debut in Iron Man 2 and some of the problematic wrinkles given to her in Age of Ultron. Over the series of films, she is a consistent action superstar, but also gives us interesting layers and wrinkles and depth, evolving from the badass assassin we first see to the hard-bitten leader in Endgame. Her belated solo film gives her some great opportunities to correct those early missteps, as well as deepening the character even further, and showcasing her action chops. A great character, but it would be nice if we knew there was even more to come.

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie, DCEU, from 2016): another DC not-quite-hero, Robbie does a phenomenal job as Harley Quinn, one of those lightning-in-a-bottle perfect pieces of casting (and, I’ll be honest, the only other actor/character match-up that’s quite as perfect on this list is Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman). Harley is a character who can be so easily misused: the abused moll, the bit of eye candy, an objectivised woman denied agency who’s only seen through the lenses of the men. And, true enough, there’s a bit of that in her debut in Suicide Squad, but Robbie is smart enough and her performance strong enough that she transcends the muck that surrounds her. She nails the accent and the demeanour, and in what we shall choose to call her solo film, she gives us a raucous, hilarious performance as an emancipated Quinn, blasting through police stations with glitterball shotguns and snapping limbs left right and centre. It’s the anarchic anti-hero of modern comics turned up to 11 and with the pottiest of mouths, but she’s also smart enough and skilled enough to give us embers of a conscience beneath the crazy, and offers up some great character beats and a believable relationship with Cassandra Cain. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen, MCU, from 2015): Here we have another performance that matures and develops over the course of a franchise – surely one of the greatest aspects of Marvel’s multi-film narrative arc. Coming in as a minor villain in Age of Ultron, Wanda is powerful enough to temporarily get the better of the Avengers just by being “weird”; subsequent films see her attempting to be a hero, suffering a series of tragedies, falling in love, and coming together to save the world in Endgame. In what amounts to a series of snapshots – a photo montage of ongoing character development – Olsen is able to flesh out Wanda, giving her depth, showcasing different facets of her character, and making her consistently believable. Yes, I know I said this was a list of movie characters, but it’s stupid not to own up to the fact that this all comes to a head in the frankly phenomenal WandaVision, which – despite having two Avengers’ names in the title – is really all about her. The series leaves Wanda in a totally different place, and as we see her next in The Multiverse of Madness, I feel like her story is only just beginning.

Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, X-Men films, 2000-2017): I mulled over whether to include Jean Grey here or Valkyrie from Thor, but despite Tessa Thompson’s terrific performance, I’ve gotta go with the Phoenix. Back when superhero films weren’t a cinematic religion, Janssen gave a terrific performance as a resolute, thoroughly sensible Jean Grey; a telepathic Girl Friday to the officious know-it-all that was Professor X, she shows intriguing cracks in her façade when confronted with the gruff and unutterably sexy Logan. Clearly a powerhouse without needing to show off, she gets more development and some great hero moments in the phenomenal sequel, before being giving an epic sacrificial send-off that sets up a rise from the flames that never really comes. Yes, despite being brought back in The Last Stand, it’s a storyline that’s fudged from the start, and the Phoenix as a mopey emo version of Jean just doesn’t cut it. It’s a storyline that’s handled better, but only just, in Dark Phoenix, but that film sadly doesn’t have the weight of character behind it; despite the excellent work of Sophie Turner, we’re barely introduced to the character in Apocalypse before hints of the Phoenix are coming forth, and next thing we know she’s going all crackly and accidentally killing dudes. So yeah: I prefer the OG Jean, and Janssen’s great chemistry not just with James Marsden’s Scott but Jackman’s Logan really does justice to that element of the comic book character too. Still, two timelines, two actors, two versions of the Phoenix Saga, and it still ends in disappointment. Hopefully we’ll get a better version eventually in the MCU.

[guymaito]

For the ask thing :3:

Top 5 animals? Top 5 fav/comfort movies? Top 5 fav cartoons/shows?

I’m honestly glad to know theres other people including you who actually like Pakku and his character :3 Yes he was a completely asshole at the start but he did change, it’s just that it was so subtle that not everyone saw it

Also random song associations with characters:

Fighter by Jack Stauber reminds me very well of Piandao, Pakku, and Jeong Jeong as their younger selves during the war.

Why do I associate Grace by Lewis Capaldi with Bumi? (the music video tho would give more context to why it might make sense)

Oh Klahoma by Jack Stauber reminds me of Piandao and his overall anxieties for his partners.

Consider some of these songs as sorta song recs? Idk but still :3

1. Giraffes!! the reason why their tongues look like That is cause of extra melanin and to prevent sunburn!!

2. Seals!! there are 33 different kinds of pinnipeds and there over 50 extinct pinnipeds

3. Dogs!! they can only see in shades of blue and yellow, so bright red roses look yellowish brown and lively green grass look dehydrated and dead

4. Crows!! a group of them are called a murder

5. Cows!! they’re actually colorblind, they can’t see red specifically, so male cows, bulls aren’t getting mad at the color, they’re getting angry at the movement

1. The Losers movie from 2010, it’s a action mystery movie about Clay and his team that are a part of an elite US Special Forces Unit and are approached by a mysterious woman to exact revenge on their handler, Max, who betrayed them and just,,,the characters, CHRIS EVANS, jake jensen and all of his kinda weird glory, THE ELEVATOR SCENE, also cougar!!

2. Captain America and The Winter Soldier movie, it’s a action movie, which makes me realize that a lot of my faves are prolly gonna be action something, but anyways, it’s about Steve Rogers, who now lives in the nation's capital as he tries to adjust to modern times. An attack on a S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague throws Rogers into a web of intrigue that places the whole world at risk. Joining forces with the Black Widow, Natasha Romanov, and a new ally, Sam Wilson, Steve struggles to expose an ever-widening conspiracy, but he and his team soon come up against an unexpected enemy. oh my god,,,just,,,the fight scenes, the running scene at the beginning of the movie, steve meeting sam that way, just everything!! this was also my introduction to marvel so in my mind no other marvel movie can live up to this (other than spiderman away from home)

3. Spiderman Far from Home, again, it’s a action movie, i’m not gonna explain this cause the post is getting long, but!! mj and peter!! just,,,all of their scenes!! also jake gyllenhaal!! the fight scenes!! the soundtrack!! everything about it is amazing!!

4. Thunderforce, again, i’m not gonna explain, it’s an action adventure and comedy movie (ofc it is look at the other 3 🙄 /s), the relationship between lydia and emily!! the relationship between lydia and emily’s daughter!! the humor!! the fight scenes!! the soundtrack!!,,,,just everything about is good despite the bad ratings

that’s more like a top 4 than a top 5 but that’s like,,,,all the movies i genuinely like and will rewatch if given the chance and for that where’s a honorable mention: Hamilton (the movie version on disney+ that came out i think nearly a year ago), the soundtrack is amazing, the characters are better, got some funny moments and is mostly historically accurate, like yeah angelica did forget her name cause at the time of her meeting alex ham, she was married to a man named john church (or something church idk) so her last name was church but she introduced herself to alexander as angelica schuyler, not angelica church, so in satisfied she was telling the truth about forgetting her own name, but in the same song she said that her father had no sons even though the real angelica had 3 brothers.

1. Avatar the last Airbender, ofc or else i would have a blog (mostly) centered around it and it’s sequel /s but fr though?? it’s such a good show!! zuko’s redemption arc, iroh’s redemption arc (even though his more subtle than zuko’s) , aang!! love him and his character so much, especially when he gets to be a sassy little shit, sokka and his shit humor and brains, katara, toph, hakoda and HIS shit humor, the fight scene with hakoda (he fights kinda like a waterbender, using his opponent’s momentum against them), bato and his lovely, lovely voice, piandao, aang going ‘how about he get on YOUR back and you can fly us to the south pole’ or something like that to sokka after he complained about appa not flying higher, the boiling rock episodes, hakoda apparently being a good dad but a shitty prison riot starter (love that for him), just!! atla is such a good ass show, im not changing my mind. also!! i like the way they introduced ozai, not showing his face but still presenting him as not only a shit dad, but a shit person as well, like up until book three, we only saw him like, the neck down and in like, a flashback or two (i don’t really remember how many flashbacks ozai was in actually cause it’s nearly been a full year since i last watched it) and that’s it, so it made seeing his face for the first time all the more better cause you was already like ‘what the hell does this shitbag look like’ and then you see him and now ur like ‘oh!! THATS what he looks like!!’

2. The Legend of Korra, again, ofc or else i wouldn’t have a blog (mostly) centered around it and it’s prequel, just,,,,korra’s arc from being hot headed to calm is fantastic but also sad considering the way she went from that to this, korra’s book 1 character!! for whatever reason i really like b1 korra, just,,her design, her hair style (even though she had it for nearly the entire series) just!!! book 1 korra <3, also the entirety of book 1!! just amon posing as a anti bender nonbender despite being a waterbender himself, the scene where tenzin and his kids nearly lost their bending, which would’ve meant that, if tenzin did lose his bending but his kids didn’t, that would’ve meant the strongest airbender would’ve been his 11 year old daughter, the gruesome way to end the season finale episode by doing a murder suicide which was dark as fuck for what?? a kids show??, also the villains in this show!! their good as hell!! the backstory of the red lotus and how and why they were created?? amon and his anti bending?? kuvira and her plan to basically rule the earth kingdom (idk i haven’t finished book 4), unalaq and his spiritual stuff and wanting to become a dark avatar and fusing with vaatu?? also!! the other disturbing scene of korra basically getting tortured near the end of book 3, i mean?? it deadass left her hella traumatized and unable to walk, again hella dark for a fucking kids show

3. The Walking Dead, even though i haven’t finished it or watched in like, 4-5 months, i just,,,the way the presented negan!! practically foreshadowing him the entirety of season 6!! him appearing at the very end of the season 6 finale and pretty much having an entire episode dedicated to him in the very beginning of season 7 (which is why some fans argue he was introduced in s7 not s6 cause of the fact that he didn’t show up until the very end of the s6 finale but had an entire episode with him in it in s7, while others say vice versa cause the very the first time we see him was in s6 not s7), the fact that the walking dead logo was getting progressively more and more decayed as the series go on?? the fact that the WALKERS (the zombies) are getting more and more decayed as the series go on?? dale’s death scene?? shane’s death scene?? negan’s relationship with rick’s daughter?? the fact that this show also has what?? 11, 12 seasons?? which reminds me that i’m still on season 9 of twd

4. Sabrina the Teenage Witch, just,,,salem and his sarcasm?? sabrina’s aunts?? sabrina herself?? just!! everyone is just so fucking funny in this show it’s unreal, specially salem!! a lot of my favorite scenes have salem in them, the ‘are you on a women’s chat room again?’ (or something like that) and salem saying ‘i like the attention’ in response, that one harvey and salem scene that i don’t know how to describe without turning this into a giant paragraph like the ones before this one

5. blue’s clues, it was my favorite childhood show and i love the reboot of it so much!! especially p for pride moment in that song i don’t remember the name of, blue themself!! steve leaving which was sad but getting an equally amazing host in the process?? amazing!! the scene where salt and pepper introduced their baby, paprika?? just,,,it’s such good show and i loved it when i was younger and i still love it now!!

[liskantope]

Some brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) reactions to major Disney films 1937-1967

Around a month ago I made a temporary switch from Netflix to Disney+ with the goal of watching all major Disney movies in order, roughly paced so that one year of Disney film-making equals one day of real life. I should clarify here that by “major Disney movies” I mean mostly just all the animated ones plus a few hybrid live-action/animated ones, and a few of the most popular live-action ones (at least the ones I remember having a song considered good enough to feature on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos, a staple of my video-watching as a kid growing up in the 90′s). I would have been interested to see Song of the South, which I’ve never seen in its entirety, but it’s not included on Disney+ for fairly obvious reasons. As I get further into modern Disney, I’ll probably skip over most of the sequels and other features I strongly expect not to like (with the exception of Belle’s Magical World, which is said to be so legendarily bad that I just have to see what the fuss is about).

This time range of three decades happens to include more or less exactly those Disney productions that Walt Disney himself took a major role in (he died shortly before the final version of Jungle Book was finished). I’d like to do this again in another month, when I will have gotten up through the late 90′s, but honestly this post wound up way longer than I was imagining and took several more hours than I expected (or could really afford), so I’m not promising myself or anyone else that.

Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Disney productions, I’m a little taken aback at what a low percentage of these are animated features, which to me form the backbone of that company’s legacy; visually scanning the list makes the line of animated films look shorter than I had always imagined, but really what this is showing is that Disney produced far more live-action movies than I ever knew about, including (and perhaps especially!) in its early days. Right now I’m continuing on through the 70′s films, but this set of mini-reviews represents the first month of watching and three decades of Disney magic.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

This is the full-length feature that began them all and which had the burden of defying contemporary skepticism that a full-length animated feature could be taken seriously at all. We are already far beyond the earliest days of animation and have progressed lightyears beyond the quality of “Steamboat Willie”; throughout the film I marveled at the sophistication of the animation with a newfound appreciation of how groundbreaking a lot of the sequences must have been.

I know I watched this at least a couple of times in childhood and I think once when I was a bit older, but even that was long ago.

Snow White is based on one of the simpler classic fairy tales, and the writers had to come up with ways to flesh out this very short story enough to occupy well over an hour. This was done not by exploring the character of Snow White or the Queen or even filling in extra plot details (the fate of the hunter is never addressed) but by spending a lot of time on the dwarfs. The detail spent on individuating them took a lot of work from the animators, but I think their efforts paid off. I can’t say the same about the attention paid to Snow White or the Queen (pretty much the only remaining characters). Snow White has an almost entirely flat personality, with no sense of curiosity or concern whatsoever about the Queen’s designs to have her killed, just having literally only one goal in mind: to marry this Prince who she’d only seen for about two minutes and run away from out of shyness. (This is of course a trend we’ll see with Disney princesses for a long time.) The Queen similarly only has the goal of being “the fairest in the land”. Something about the particular harshness of her voice strikes me as The Quintessential 1930′s Female Villain Voice (“I’ll crush their bones!”), whatever that means -- maybe I got my idea of what this should be from the movie Snow White in the first place.

I still think “Heigh Ho” (which I’ve known well since early childhood) is an excellent song in its utter simplicity, especially when complimented with the “Dig Dig Dig” song (which I did not remember at all until a few years ago when a Tumblr mutual posted the excerpt containing it!). I’m not enormously fond of “One Day My Prince Will Come”, although I did enjoy playing it on the violin at a couple of gigs with one of my musician friends back during grad school -- I was convinced then, and up until watching Snow White just now, that it belonged to Cinderella.

Pinocchio, 1940

This was a favorite movie of mine in earlier childhood; we owned the VHS and I watched it a lot. As a child, I had no sense of one Disney movie coming from a much earlier time than another one; it was only much more recently in life that I understood that Pinocchio really comes from all the way back eight decades ago. Pinocchio taught me the meaning of “conscience” (both in the dictionary sense and in a deeper sense), and it shaped my notion of what fairies may look like -- for instance, my mental picture of the Tooth Fairy, back when I believed in her, was inspired by the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.

It’s amazing just how much the quality of Disney animated features improved from the first one to this one, the second. It helps that both the story and the characters are far more complex than those of Snow White. The plot from the original book (which I’ve read in Italian and English) was more complex still, of course. There is one gaping hole where it’s never explained how Gepetto somehow found himself in the belly of a whale (I don’t remember whether or how this is explained in the book), but I’ll forgive that.

It’s interesting to see the 1940′s caricature of “bad (early teenage?) boy” shown in the animation and voice of Lampwick. Phantom Strider talks about the turning-into-donkeys scene as a notoriously dark scene for adults who didn’t find it as terrifying when they were children -- count me in as one of those adults! It’s especially terrifying to see the whole mass of boys-turned-donkeys being treated as slaves in the hellhole known as Pleasure Island and realizing that this is never going to be resolved in the movie -- it’s rather unusual in Disney stories for some great evil to be left unresolved with no recompense even for the chief villain. In fact, Pinocchio is pretty much the only Disney story I can think of where the worst villain doesn’t meet some kind of dire fate. Really, the range of Pinocchio’s view is much narrower: it’s just the coming-of-age story of one puppet in his quest for Real Boyhood. (And yes, I still giggle at how intricutely Jordan Peterson analyzes particular scenes from the movie to support his beliefs about neo-Marxism or whatever.)

Disney+ heads many of the descriptions of the older movies with “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” I’m a little surprised they don’t do this with Pinocchio, given what appears to me a rather derogatory depiction of Gypsies.

“When You Wish Upon a Star” has become a timeless hit, for good reason. And I still find “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” extremely catchy.

Fantasia, 1940

I saw this one multiple times growing up (for earlier viewings, I was not allowed to see the final number “Night on Bald Mountain”). My mom, for her part, saw this in theaters at the age of around 4 (even though it originally came out long before she was born) and thought for years afterwards that there was no such film in real life and her memory of seeing it had been just a pleasant dream.

I have nothing much more to say about this one except that, representing a very different approach from most animated films, Disney or otherwise, 1940′s or otherwise, it succeeded exquisitely. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” number was particularly perfection; it was as though the composer originally had every motion of the story in mind when writing the music. At the same time, having the main character appear in the form of Mickey Mouse in some way seems to cheapen the effect.

The Reluctant Dragon, 1941

I watched this for the first time, not having known it existed. There isn’t really much to say. All that stuck in my mind was one of the shorts, “Baby Weem” (amusing in a disturbing way), and the longer segment which gives the movie its title (also amusing, in a different kind of disturbing way). It was especially interesting to see a 1940′s cartoon portrayal of a very effeminate man, or should I say, male dragon.

Dumbo, 1941

I saw this maybe two or three times growing up, and not in very early childhood. It was never one of my favorites. Later on, I learned that it was done very low-budget to make up for major financial losses in the Disney franchise. This definitely shows in the animation. However, if there’s one thing I can say in praise of Dumbo, it’s that it’s incredibly daring in its simplicity, not only to have such elegantly simple animation but in having a mute title character (instead the main “talker” in the film is the title character’s best friend, who had much more of a New York accent than I’d remembered).

In some ways I find this film incredibly cold and dark by Disney standards, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, and I remember feeling this way even on earlier watchings when I was much younger. The stark cruelty of the humans running the circus, as well as the elephants other than Dumbo and his mother, just really gets to me. (I vividly mis-remembered one of the lines I found most memorable in childhood as “From now on, Dumbo is no longer one of us.” The actual line is, “From now on, [Dumbo] is no longer an elephant”, which in a way, is even more chilling.) In this regard, there was no need to make a modern, woker remake of Dumbo containing an explicit anti-animal-exploitation message -- the 1941 version conveys this message loud and clear. Now that I’m writing this, I suppose it could be argued that this is another instance of what I described under “Pinocchio” of leaving a major evil unresolved in a Disney film. And apart from that, while the ending for Dumbo is meant to be a very happy one, as an adult I find it incredibly naive: Dumbo is now super internationally famous for his extraordinary gift and is entering the life of a child celebrity, and it’s just going to be smooth sailing from now on? I hate to say it, Dumbo, but your troubles are only just beginning. (I was glad to see Dumbo reunited with his mother in the last scene, however, which I hadn’t remembered happening at all.)

“Look Out For Mr. Stork” is a skillfully-written song I’d completely forgotten about for two decades or so but remember knowing well when I was young. I still think “When I See an Elephant Fly” is a fantastic song, especially with all its reprises at the end -- I’d had some bits of it confused in my memory but had kept the main chorus with me over all the years. Now it’s widely decried as racist, or at least the characters who sing it are decried as racist caricatures. For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m inclined to disagree with this, in particular on the grounds that the crows seem to be the most intelligent, witty, and self-possessed characters in the movie. I’m also pretty sure I heard critical things about it over the years which are false. For one thing, not all of the crows are played by white actors -- only the lead crow is, while the rest of the voices are members of a black musical group called the Hall Johnson Choir. Also, I’m not clear that the lead crow was actually named Jim Crow by the time the movie came out (no name is given in the movie itself). Now an earlier, much more forgettable song featuring black men singing about how they like to work all day and they throw their pay away... yeah that seems awfully racist.

Bambi, 1942

I have surprisingly little to say about this one -- it’s just very distinct from other Disney films of the time, in its story’s lack of magical elements, its characters all being animals and animated in to realistically model animals’ movements, its lack of musical numbers, and its plot reaching the same level of simplicity as that of Snow White. Not to mention actually having a benevolent character die, which I don’t think had been done up to that point. I remember watching this a couple of times as a kid; I was never terribly eager to watch it again and I feel the same way now, despite having majestic beauty that I can really appreciate.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949

This is the first of Disney’s animated features that I never had seen before. What a strange movie, or should I say, two smaller, unrelated movies rolled into one. I liked Mr. Toad’s half better than Ichabod’s half, or at least I found it more entertaining. I was brought up with the book The Wind in the Willows and recall seeing a non-Disney animated rendition of it (which was better and somewhat more thorough than this half-movie-length rendition). I was kind of excited when the “The Merrily Song” started because it unlocked a song from my early-childhood memory that I’d forgotten about for more than twenty years but knew from one of the Disney Sing-Along videos. I still think it’s a not half bad song, especially with the harmony.

The Ichabod story was not at all what I expected, not being familiar with the original book version (I had always assumed that Ichabod must be the name of a villain). I found it completely boring until the final horror sequence. As a child I would have found the courtship part even more boring (at least now I can muse on how man-woman courtship dynamics were shown in the late 40′s), and I would have found the horror part at the end very scary (in fact, maybe this is the reason my parents never showed the movie to me). It is a little shocking in being the only Disney story I’ve seen so far with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Cinderella, 1950

This one I only ever saw once or twice as a child. This is not counting a very vivid memory I have from around age 6 or 7 when I was watching a part of it over at another family’s house and their child, who was almost my age and nonverbal autistic, rewound and repeated the same 2-minute sequence involving the mice for probably about an hour (I was impressed because I at the time didn’t know how to work the controls of a video player).

I suppose this could be considered the second in the main trifecta of the most conservative fairy tale princess stories that Disney did in the earlier part of its history. I think one can argue that Cinderella has the strongest and most fleshed-out character out of those three princesses. I like the spirited internal strength she reveals in her very first scene. That said, like the other earlier princesses, she seems to have one singular goal in life, and that is to find her true love, not, say, to escape her abusive stepmother and stepsisters.

My reaction to this movie is overall positive. The mice were fun (I also like how their voices seemed a lot more like how mice “should” talk than in most other Disney cartoons); the dynamic between Cinderella and her evil relatives, and the dynamic between the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, was shown in a rounded way; and the fairy godmother is a great character despite having only one scene. The character of the king is pretty odd (very selfish yet his main dream is of getting to play with his future grandchildren) while not especially memorable or well fleshed out. There are certainly some great classic songs in this one -- not the most stellar that Disney has ever produced, but solid.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

I was curious about what I would think of this one, since we owned the video of this at my home growing up and I watched it many times during childhood but as I got older I fell in love with the original Lewis Carroll books which, together, I often consider my favorite work of written fiction ever. I had not seen the Disney film Alice in Wonderland for around two decades, although I made the mistake of catching parts of more modern, live-action adaptations of the story more recently. I wondered what I would make of the old animated Disney adaptation after getting to know the books so well.

There is simply no way that any movie can recreate the true flavor of the books, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a fine job of creating the general nonsensical, sometimes bewildering dream atmosphere, and, perhaps more importantly, capturing the essence of Alice’s personality. I give a lot of credit to Katherine Beaumont for this -- she has the major girl’s role in the next movie on this list as well, but she especially shines as Alice. Two other very distinctive voices, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, also add a lot to the cast of characters.

While mixing around some of the scenes of the original book Alice in Wonderland, with some scenes of Alice Through the Looking Glass inserted, the progression of the plot is a long, dreamlike sequence of strange situations with only a few common threads, true to the original first book (Looking Glass had a little, but only a little, more structure). In the movie, everything breaks down at the end with many of the previous scenes and characters swirling together and Alice frantically trying to wake herself up. One could object that this is not how the dream ends in the book Alice in Wonderland, but there is a similar sort of breakdown at the end of the dream in Looking Glass and it feels very real somehow, as in my experience this is sometimes how vivid dreams disintegrate.

Oh, and did you know that Alice in Wonderland has a greater number of songs in it than any other Disney film? There are nearly 25 that made it into the film, even if lasting just for seconds, with a around 10 more written for the film that didn’t make it.

So, does the Disney film do a good job of conveying one of my favorite books of all time, within the confines of being a children’s animated film? I would say yes. For reasons I described above, and from the fact that it manages to avoid working in a moral lesson for Alice, or depicting Alice as a young adult, or manufacturing an affair between Alice and the Hatter (ugh), like some film adaptations, I would say that this classic Disney version is the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation that I know of.

Peter Pan, 1953

Although I never knew this one super well, this movie has a special place in my heart from the way the flying sequence enchanted me in early childhood. I have to differ with the YouTuber Phantom Strider when he dismisses the 40′s/50′s-style song “You Can Fly” as just not doing it for him, because that song along with the animation of the characters’ journey to Neverland had a major hand in shaping my early-childhood sense of magic and wonder and yearning. I distinctly remembering a time, around age 6, when I just didn’t see much point in watching other Disney movies, or movies at all, which didn’t have flying in them, because what could possibly top the sheer joy and freedom of feeling able to swim through the air? I’ve had hardly any exposure to Superman, and so the kind of bodily flight I imagined in fantasy or performed in dreams was almost entirely shaped by Peter Pan. (At the same time, the crocodile in Peter Pan influenced my nightmares at the same age.)

I only ever saw this one a few times, but I distinctly remember the most recent of them being when I was a teenager, perhaps even an older teenager, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty darn solid Disney movie. I still think the same now, while granting that some aspects of the movie seem a little antiquated and certain sequences with the Native Americans are quite cringe-worthy from the point of view of modern sensibilities. Only a couple years ago, when visiting my parents’ house, I finally took down the book Peter Pan from the shelf and decided to give it a read and found it a beautiful although slightly strange and offbeat story. In particular, I was shocked at how nasty and vengeful Tinker Bell was (particularly in trying to get Wendy killed), when I had remembered her as sweet and naive in the movie. It turns out I was wrong about the movie -- Tinker Bell tries to get Wendy killed there also! -- but somehow the tone is moderated well enough that in this version I never really feel horrified at her behavior, nor do I feel disturbed at the situation of the Lost Boys in the way the book made me view them. The song of the lone pirate who sings about how a pirate’s life is short, right before Captain Hook fires his gun and we hear a dropping sound followed by a splash, is one of the more masterful executions of dark humor that I’ve seen in Disney animation for children.

While most of the songs in Peter Pan, considered as songs on their own, are pretty good, I think the best one is the one whose lyrics didn’t make it into the film: “Never Smile at a Crocodile”.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Despite being more obscure than most of the old Disney animated classics, I used to know this one quite well since we had it in our home. I’ve always considered The Great Mouse Detective as the most underrated Disney film of all time, but I think it has serious competition here. Lady and the Tramp is an absolute gem. While not quite as Disney-fantasy-ish with its lack of magic and other fairy tale elements, in my opinion Lady and the Tramp is, in most ways, superior to everything else on this list save Mary Poppins. Beautiful animation which shows Lady and most of the other animals moving realistically in a way we haven’t seen since Bambi*. Everything visually and conceptually framed from the dogs’ points of view. Great voice acting. Consistently solid dialog without a single line too much or missing. A story evoking the dynamic between humans and pets, class inequality, and deep questions about the place of each of us in society and choices between a stable existence among loved ones and striking out to seize life by the horns. Our first female lead who stands on her own two four feet and whose sole goal isn’t to get kissed by her true love (one could argue that Alice was the earlier exception, but she is a little girl whereas Lady is actually a romantic female lead). When Lady is approached by her two best (male) friends in a very awkward (perhaps especially from a modern sensibility) but sweet scene where they offer to be her partner, Lady makes it clear that she doesn’t want or need a husband just for the sake of having a husband to make babies with -- her standing up for her own wants in this way doesn’t in the least turn into a Moral Stand that dominates the movie. Excellent music all the way through.

Oh, and this movie was my very first introduction, in early childhood, to the Italian language (”Bella Notte”), which some 25 years later sort became my second language of sorts.

Criticisms? Well, the baby was animated rather stiffly and unnaturally, but that was like half a minute of the movie at most. And there’s the whole segment with the Siamese cats, which produced a great song purely music-wise (fun fact: Peggy Lee provided the voices of the cats) but nowadays comes across as rather racist. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I will say that I’m sure in the minds of the creators this was no different than having animals of all other nationalities (Scottish, Russian, Mexican) appearing in the film with voices reflecting the respective accents.

*There may be a few exceptions, like Peggy, who seems to be modeled after the musician Peggy Lee and moves like a sexy human woman. The way that human sex appeal is conveyed through the animals’ movements in this movie is quite impressive: my mom confesses to having somewhat of a crush on Tramp growing up and not quite understanding how that could be possible when, well, he’s a dog.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, and Old Yeller, 1957

I don’t want to say about these movies, as they don’t really fall under the category of animated classics. I just want to say that, while I saw each of them once growing up, on seeing them again I recognize each as a great movie in its own adult point of view way that is not necessarily very Disney-ish.

Sleeping Beauty, 1959

I think this was the movie I was watching at the time I decided it would be fun to write a bunch of mini-reviews for Tumblr, as my reactions were changing a lot as I was watching. I went into the movie very curious, because while I only remembered enough of the fairy tale story to know that it was another of the very simple ones, and I remembered the one song as a waltz by Tchaikovsky, and I knew I had seen the movie once (and probably only once) as a kid, I couldn’t remember anywhere near enough to possibly fill a full movie time. What was actually going to happen in this hour-and-a-quarter long film?

I wasn’t watching long before I came up with the description “spectacularly forgettable”, in part to justify why I’d managed to forget practically all of my one previous viewing. The story doesn’t have much substance and feels sillier than even the other fairy tale Disney plots, like even minor twinges of critical thought, even granting the magical rules of the universe, are liable to make the plot topple. There is some filler to flesh out the movie, but (unlike with Snow White’s dwarfs) none of it is as amusing as the creators seemed to think it was. The only characters with actual personality are rather boring -- the capers between the members of royalty and the jester are a bit on the annoying side in my opinion. Maleficent seems to have no motive whatsoever. She actually calls herself something like “the mistress of evil” later in the movie. This is pretty black-and-white even by Disney standards, where the bad guys usually at least want to think that they’re on the right side of things or justified in their aggressive behavior. Aurora (the title character) has the least personality of all the Disney princesses. Literally all I can say to describe her is that she has the Disney Princess Trifecta of characteristics: she has a good singing voice; she is friends with all the “nice” animals; and her only goal in life is to be reunited with her True Love who she met once for all of a few minutes. The reason why I couldn’t remember any songs other than the Tchaikovsky one is that there aren’t any.

The one thing I consciously really enjoyed while watching was the fact that the score throughout was Tchaikovsky; the idea of having one work of classical music as the entire score seems like a bold one for a Disney film. As I was digesting the movie afterwards (and watching the short documentaries supplied on Disney+ helped here!), I came to realize that this classical music backdrop was complimented in quite an interesting way by a fairly unique animation style. I had been disappointed by the animation early in my watching, disliking how a lot of the figures in the beginning castle scene (for instance, various people’s faces), looked very “flat” somehow. But I’ve come to see this as part of a style where everything looks almost like a series of cut-outs superimposed on each other, to incredibly beautiful effect in a lot of the outdoor scenes.

My conclusion? If you watch this the same way you watch most Disney animated movies -- focusing on plot, characterization, action, and meaning of the main story -- it will just be kind of forgettable at best. But if you watch it as more of a purely visual and musical piece of art without trying to make much “sense” out of it (so, more like I would watch a ballet), you may find it uniquely beautiful among Disney classics.

One Hundred and One Dalmations, 1961

Whew -- what a complete and utter contrast from its predecessor! I can hardly imagine a film that’s still distinctively Disney while being more different from Sleeping Beauty in every aspect.

I remember seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians a handful of times in childhood (when I was around 5 and it had just come out on home video, my mom almost bought it for me but decided to go with Beauty and the Beast instead explaining that it had better music -- I grew up knowing the preview for Dalmatians that showed at the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast VHS than the dalmatians film itself). I remembered a number of scenes very distinctly, including a lot of the Horace and Jasper bickering and Cruella smashing one of their bottles of beer into the fire and knew Lucky’s line after getting stuck behind in the snow almost word for word, while I had entirely forgotten all of the country/farm characters and entire sequences involving them. I had forgotten, but soon remembered, the television scenes including the Kanine Krunchies jingle. (Some years later, I think as an older teenager, I read the original book with some interest.)

Although I wasn’t around in 1961, everything about this movie’s style strikes me as very contemporary -- the animation in particular seems like the current style for 60′s cartoons. Something about the dialog and humor feels that way as well, as though it closely represents a sort of 60′s young-people-in-London culture that I’ve never seen myself (I was struck for instance by Cruella being asked how she’s doing and cheerfully answering, “Miserable dahling as usual, perfectly wretched!”). It was a little strange and offputting to see television so prominently featured in Disney animation from so long ago, and to see such a decrepit bachelor pad (with the accompanying lifestyle and attitudes) as Horace and Jasper’s in a children’s movie. The crazy driving in snow at the end startled my adult sensibilities (as I now have some memorable experiences driving in snow) in a way that didn’t affect me as a child -- scenes like that just didn’t feel like Disney after having just watched all the previous films. All in all, these novel features made the whole movie a wild ride.

I’m bemused by the fact that, despite taking place in London (which I hadn’t remembered -- I thought it took place in America), the only accents which are fully British are those of the villains Cruella de Vil, Horace, and Jasper.

Main criticisms: I found all the stuff with Rolly being characterized by his body shape and only ever thinking about food to be in poor taste (although not surprising for the times). And while “Cruella de Vil” is a great jazz number, the movie has no other music to speak of -- my mom was quite right to choose Beauty and the Beast over it.

(I realized when finishing this review that this is the only one of all the movies in the list that I’d actually enjoy seeing again sometime soon. Not sure what to make of that. Something about it is more interesting than most of the others? Especially the human-centric parts?)

The Sword in the Stone, 1963

I never saw this movie until later childhood or maybe even early teenagerhood, when I quite liked it. On watching it again, I was overall pretty disappointed. This movie has some decent songs and some fun aspects to the story, but a lot of it is kind of weak and forgettable and it’s all just sloppily done.

The story has a clear moral message which is generally pro-education and about reaching one’s full potential, but in my eyes it comes out kind of muddled because the story shows Wart ending up as a legendary king only out of the arbitrary happenstance that that happens to be his divine destiny. Merlin’s motives seem kind of inconsistent as well, with him sometimes seeming to support Wart in his desire to become a squire, then flying off in a rage when Wart chooses squirehood over fulfilling a “greater” destiny, then joyfully returning after Wart pulls the sword from the stone and is now set on the fixed path to being king, even though this involved exactly zero change of attitude on Wart’s part. The message that actually comes across looks more like, “We have to just follow whatever fate has in store for us” than “We must strive to be the best we can be”. And, it arguably even comes across as subtly disrespectful to more mundane lifestyles and career paths.

The animation is not great by the high standard of full-length Disney features (I noted how I especially disliked how tears were shown). Wart’s voice seems to change a lot, sometimes broken and sometimes not yet broken. I found out after watching that this is because the character was played by three different actors, sometimes with more than one of those actors in the same scene! This was purportedly because the voice of the first actor cast for the role started to change, but then why does Wart sometimes sound like his voice has already changed anyway? Sloppiness all around.

Still, some parts of The Sword in the Stone are fun even if none of it is stellar, and it entertained me more when I was younger, so worth watching once, especially if you’re a kid, I guess?

Mary Poppins, 1964

I came into this one far more familiar with it than with most of the other Disney movies, including the ones I watched many times when I was young, so it feels a little strange to try to summarize a similar-length review of it. Mary Poppins is in my book without a doubt one of the top three Disney movies of all time, in some respects the very best, and certainly the masterpiece of Walt Disney himself, the culmination of literally decades of determination on his part to turn Pamela Travers’ children’s works into a movie. (I would feel sorrier for Travers about how strongly Disney twisted her arm to turn her books into a movie whose style was entirely antithetical to hers, if it weren’t for the fact that the Disney version of the story is just way better than her rather weak set of stories. I give Travers ample credit for having created an amazing character in the person of Mary Poppins, but for coming up with good stories, not so much.)

I didn’t see the full movie Mary Poppins until later childhood (although I knew many of the songs) and it quickly became a favorite of mine. I went a gap of a number of years without seeing it before I copied the soundtrack from someone when I was in college, which spurred me to go out and rent it (back when Blockbuster was a thing) and so I managed to reconnect with it at the age of 20. More recently I’ve become somewhat of a Mary Poppins enthusiast -- feeling pretty alone among my generation in this regard, with the possible exception of the theater subculture -- having seen probably most or all of the documentaries there are on its production and learned a ridiculous amount of trivia about it, not to mention knowing the whole soundtrack pretty much in my head.

Mary Poppins seems to be Disney’s longest children’s classic, at 2 hours and 19 minutes. All it lacks, really, is an animal-themed or classic fairy tale atmosphere and a proper villain. But what can you get out this movie? Stellar child acting (especially for that period) and excellent performances all around, apart from some awkward but endearing aspects of Dick Van Dyke’s acting (while his singing and physicality is superb). A complex and multi-layered story combining magic, comedy and a little tragedy, appreciable in equal measure from a child’s level and from an adult’s level. Revolutionary special effects which include the first extended hybrid live-action and animation sequence. Timeless words and phrases which have permanently entered the lexicon. One of my favorite extended musical sequence of all time in any movie (”Step In Time” takes up 8 minutes and change, and I’m glad they didn’t go with the “common sense” measure of cutting this “unnecessarily long” number). The Sherman brothers at their very best, in a musical soundtrack that easily scores in my top two out of all Disney movies (the other one being The Lion King). A beautiful message (among several big messages) about the little things being important (or at least, that’s a very crude summary), exquisitely encapsulated in the most beautiful song of the movie, “Feed the Birds” (this apparently became Walt Disney’s favorite song ever, and I’m pretty close to feeling the same way -- I’m determined that one day when I finally have a piano I’m going to learn to sing it along with the piano). I could go on and on here.

If I try really hard I can come up with the sole nitpick of feeling that maybe the parrot head on the umbrella’s handle shouldn’t only reveal itself as a talking parrot head in only one scene right at the very end -- this should have been shown at least once earlier. Even granting that, this film is still practically perfect in every way.

The Jungle Book, 1967

(Let’s get the Colonel Hath in the room out of the way first: “The Jungle Book” is a terrible title for a movie. You know, when you base a movie on a book you don’t have to give it the same title as the book...)

I saw The Jungle Book several times as a kid and, despite not considering it nearly as good as Mary Poppins, similarly reconnected with it in adulthood (particularly the soundtrack). Only several years ago I found myself thinking of getting hold of a double album of classic Disney songs that I thought I’d heard about but couldn’t seem to find online. It soon occurred to me that mostly what I really wanted was some of the songs of The Jungle Book, so I got that movie’s soundtrack instead. I soon learned for the first time that The Jungle Book’s songs were written by the Sherman Brothers*, precipitating an “Ah, that explains why I remember them as so good!” moment. (“I Wanna Be Like You” seems like the clear winner among the songs.) Of course hearing the soundtrack made me curious about the movie, which I did eventually get hold of several years ago; thus I had seen this film exactly once already since childhood.

It says a lot about the music and the overall technique behind this film that I still look back on it as one of the great classics, considering how weak the story is. In particular, I consider a story arc to be pretty flawed when characters that seem significant and/or memorable come in without really living up to their expected big role: the wolves who raised Mowgli play a crucial role in the beginning before more or less disappearing (and it doesn’t entirely make sense to me why Bagheera, rather than they, is guiding him to the man village), and King Louie (who is a well-formed character that I particularly enjoy watching) really ought to come back into the story later somehow (an alternate, and much more complex, ending had him make a reappearance). The villain Shere Khan is not especially well developed in terms of his character and motives, but I do enjoy his menacingly bass voice. Still, the voice acting, the action, the animation, and the overall setting are all very solid here.

I’ll end with some random observations about the song “That’s What Friends Are For”. I think the likeness of the vultures to the Beatles was mostly lost on me as a kid (along with the recognition that this movie came out in the Beatles’ heyday). More interestingly, even when I was old enough to understand how vultures eat, the fact that every single line of the song is a clever macabre double-entendre went completely over my head. I do think it was a very obvious mistake, by the Obvious Standards of Cinematography, to give Shere Khan the last line of the song and begin that line with the “camera” on him, rather than have his voice come in “off-camera” and Mowgli and the vultures looking thunderstruck before panning to him, but maybe I shouldn’t be pushing for overdone techniques here.

* An exception is “Bare Necessities”, which was written by Terry Gilkyson, the original songwriter Disney received submissions from, who wrote two hauntingly beautiful other numbers which were deemed not Disney-ish enough to be put in the film.

Some general stray observations:

These older Disney films love gags involving alcoholism and drunkenness, a bit of a questionable emphasis given that the audience is children. This trend continues into the 80′s at least, but I don’t think one sees it much in modern Disney movies.

Watching these animated films I often find myself flinching as characters’ heads smash into things or gigantic objects smash over their heads, feeling almost surprised when they come out of it pretty much fine. I guess this a staple element of cartoon action throughout the decades, but I can’t recall a more recent Disney animated film where we see this (guess I’ll soon find out!)

There is a certain style of vocal music, with unified rhythm and lyrics but complex harmony and a capella, which seems to have been immensely popular in the 40′s and 50′s and distinctively appears in practically every single one of the 40′s and 50′s films above (“You Can Fly” is a typical example). I recognize it also from some non-Disney-related old records my parents have that were passed down to them. I’m curious about whether this style has a name.

For years I thought the Sherman Brothers did only the soundtrack for Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, only discovering they did The Jungle Book songs rather recently as I explained above. It turns out they were involved in most of the major Disney films around that period, including The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats (although not its best-known number “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”).

There is a particularly sad instrumental passage, played by the string section starting with a minor-key violin melody going downward and joined by lower string instruments, which I knew well from my Jungle Book soundtrack (partway through “Poor Bear”) but was surprised to hear in desperately sad moments of several of the other movies around that time (including One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Robin Hood, or at least a close variant of this passage with slightly different endings). I have no idea who wrote this or how it came to be reused so many times.

I knew the name Bruce Reitherman as the voice of Mowgli in The Jungle Book, but in watching all of these other features back to back I’ve noticed that there are some other Reithermans in the front credits of quite a few of them.

[ladylillianrose]

Clarkeman Fanfiction Recommendation List (Updated 10/15/2020)

5+1

Ad Nauseam (Or Not) by Gwritesforfun:  5 times Zoey and Max attempted to talk about their feelings and were interrupted. One time they weren't. Or, the evolution of a much-needed discussion. Rated Mature, Complete

The Best Laid Plans by Ladylillianrose: 5 times Max tries to propose to Zoey and one successful proposal. Rated Teen, Complete

Crystal Clear by typicalaveragefangirl: Crystal Clear, or, five times Clarkeman planned their wedding and one time all of the planning was done. Rated Teen, Complete

The Five Times Zoey Said No (And The One Time She Said Yes) by TheAuthor44: Five significant times Zoey used the word 'NO' in her relationship with Max - some funny, some heartwarming, some heartbreaking. And then one very significant 'YES' Rated Teen, Complete

The Heat is On by Gwritesforfun: Five Times Zoey or Max felt the heat. One time they felt it together. Rated Mature, Complete

Island in the Sun by typicalaveragefangirl: Or, five times Clarkeman share an innocent physical touch on vacation and one time it isn't so innocent. Not Rated, In-Progress

Redhead with the Red Sole by Gwritesforfun: Five times the Louboutin's are "just shoes" and one time they are VERY GOOD shoes. A 5+1 fic. Rated Teen, Complete

Sink Down (And I Will Comfort You) by Gwritesforfun: Five times Zoey's bean bag chair is good for thinking. And one time it's good for something else. Rated Mature, Complete

Zoey’s Extraordinary Relationships by Gwritesforfun: “Unnecessarily complicated, exhausting for everybody, the opposite of good.” Zoey reflects on 5 complicated past relationships, and one that isn’t complicated at all. A 5+1 things. Rated Teen, Complete

One-Shots

At the Beginning by TheAuthor44: It's SPRQ Point Coder Orientation Day! My take on the day that was the start of a beautiful (and eventually *very* complicated) friendship! Rated General Audiences, Complete

Both Showing Hearts by TheAuthor44: AU 1x12 where Zoey reflects on all the events of the day ... and Max gets to finish. Rated General Audiences, Complete

Breaking Point by Jade4813: When they become temporary roommates during quarantine, how many times can Zoey and Max have sex while still pretending to themselves and to each other that it Doesn’t Mean Anything? Rated Explicit, Complete 

Car Wash by Ladylillianrose: Shenanigans ensue at the annual SPRQ Point Carwash! Rated Teen, Complete

Crashing Through Your Door by hookedoncaptainswan: Zoey is hiding out in her apartment and everyone is worried about her so Max decides to make sure she's okay. Not Rated, Complete

The Day the Music Died by Gwritesforfun: Scenes we didn’t see from episode 12, from different character’s POV. Rated Teen, Complete

A Fish Out Of Water by TheAuthor44: Disney's Little Mermaid AU: Zoey is a mermaid, Max is a human. It's the love story you know, with a few modern twists. And some people who were humans are now animals! Rated General Audiences, Complete

From A to Z by hookedoncaptainswan: After taking a trip home to see his family, Max returns acting strange and wanting to talk to Zoey about something... What could it be? Rated General Audiences, Complete

Game Night by Gwritesforfun: Zoey and her friends have a game night. Shenanigans, songs, jealousy and kisses occur. Rated Teen, Complete

The Great Defender by TheAuthor44: Max gets hurt defending Mo. As Zoey tends to his wounds, her resolve to not have feelings for her best friend starts to thaw. After all, what's hotter than a hero? Rated Teen, Complete

Hand-Picked Redux by TheAuthor44: What if Mo convinced Zoey to join Max for dinner at Hand-Picked? What if she wasn't so emotionally avoidant? What if Autumn hadn't been working at the Golden Gate Grind that day? Rated General Audiences, Complete 

The Hard Hitting Truth by TheAuthor44: Set post 1x10 - After her day of endless outbursts, Zoey has a dream that hits her with a hard truth. Rated General Audiences, Complete

In or Out? By TheAuthor44: Max and Zoey get trapped in the SPRQ Point elevator with their feelings. They both have to decide if they're in or out, and as we know - Max is all in. Rated Explicit, Complete

Just To Be The Man (Who Goes Along With You) by Gwritesforfun: Max is having an interesting night. Episode 6 from his perspective. Rated Teen, Complete

Karaoke to the Max by Ladylillianrose: What if Leif wasn't the only one doing karaoke in episode 1x11? Rated Teen, Complete

Malfunction at the Junction by TheAuthor44: An intimate moment sends Max to the ER, and you won't believe what got them there. Rated Mature, Complete

Of Self Sabotage and Epiphanies by Vilindeer: What would have happened if Zoey could find it in herself to answer Max when he confronts her about her heartsongs? Rated General Audiences, Complete

Playing With Fire by chosenandloved: (Takes place two months after 1x12.) Max invites Zoey to join him at a company retreat at his new job. Rated Teen, Complete

Pour Some On Me (Sugar) by Gwritesforfun: Zoey and Max bake bread, but the oven isn't the only thing turned on. Rated Explicit, Complete

A Promise by TheAuthor44: My take on Max's goodbye to Mitch in 1x12. Max lets Mitch know exactly how he feels about his daughter - and makes him a promise. Not Rated, Complete 

Sorry, I Was Staring At Your Coconuts by Ladylillianrose: Things heat up at the SPRQ Point Summer Luau! Rated Teen, Complete

The Sound of Silence by Jade4813: Max had never had Zoey's power, but he'd never mourned its absence. Her voice, and the sound of her laugh, had been all the music he'd ever needed for over sixty years. Rated General Audiences, Complete 

Spin Me Round (In My White Dress) by Gwritesforfun: Zoey and Max's big day is here! There is love, laughter, and shenanigans. (Sequel to You Spin Me Round (Like a Record, Baby)) Rated Teen, Complete

Tobin Ships It by TheAuthor44: In order to win the office bet of when Zoey and Max will get together, Tobin decides to take matters into his own hands. Rated General Audiences, Complete

True North by AubreyRichman: Recent events have Zoey's world spinning. Her best friend hates her and now, she is having hallucinations. Could this get any worse? Rated Teen, Complete

Trust Your Love by clarkemanship: When Max and Zoey get into a huge argument, can they figure out how to makeup in time. Rated Teen, Complete

Truth or Dare by hookedoncaptainswan: Truth or Dare can be a very revealing game…Not Rated, Complete

What He Saw (In the Moonlight) by Gwritesforfun: A remix of the scene in 1x12 when Zoey walks Max to the car, and Simon arrives. What would have happened if Zoey declared her feelings for Max-and Simon witnessed it? Rated General Audiences, Complete

ZEP One-Shots by clarkemanship: Just a bunch of one-shots! Rated Teen, In-Progress

Zoey’s Extraordinary Prom by Ladylillianrose: Max finds out that Zoey never attended her Senior Prom and he decides to remedy that. Rated Teen, Complete

Multi-Chapter

Adventures in Babysitting by TheAuthor44: Max helps babysit baby Peter when Zoey is stuck at work. Ladies, tell your ovaries I said you're welcome. Rated General Audiences, Complete

Camping, It’s In-Tents! by AubreyRichman: When the 4th floor team goes camping as a work retreat, what could go wrong? Rated Teen, In-Progress

Expect the Unexpected by Gwritesforfun: A late night at work leads to unexpected consequences for Zoey and Max. Rated Mature, Complete

Extraordinarily Star-Crossed by AubreyRichman & Ladylillianrose: “...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself....the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...”-Plato, The Symposium. Rated Mature, In-Progress

Fast Forward by Jade4813: When teenage Zoey is humiliated at a party, she makes a wish that has consequences she couldn't possibly predict. Suddenly finding herself an adult, she discovers that not all wishes should come true...and sometimes happiness is right in front of you, where you least expect to find it. Rated Teen, In-Progress

First Comes Marriage by Ladylillianrose: Max's grandmother left him a trust fund, but in order to receive it, he has to do one thing first... Rated Mature, In-Progress

From SPRQPoint With Love by reddish_umbrella: Zoey has a normal life as IT support for a boring start-up. As suddenly her whole world changes...to the better? Rated Mature, In-Progress

Ghosted: An Extraordinary Haunting by AubreyRichman: When Max’s life hangs in the balance, who else does he turn to but his best friend? But does that mean that he will be heard? Rated Teen, Complete

I See the Light by clarkemanship: Can Zoey make it through an intimate "date" with Max without one thing going wrong? Takes place a few months after the season finale. Rated Teen, In-Progress

It’s Not the Goodbye, It’s The Longing That Follows by Jade4813: Zoey told Max that she needed more time, but time, it seems, has just run out. After she realizes her feelings a little too late, can the two of them find their way back to each other? Rated General Audiences, Complete

The Lies We Tell Ourselves by Jade4813: Max would do absolutely anything for Zoey. Including posing as her fake boyfriend to give her father one last "big moment" to celebrate with her. Nothing could possibly go wrong. After all, it's only his heart that stands to be broken. Right? Takes place after "Zoey's Extraordinary Glitch." Rated Teen, Complete

Like I’m Gonna Lose You by TheAuthor44: When an unexpected illness puts Zoey and Max to the test, they have nothing but their love to see them through. Rated Teen, Complete

The Long and Winding Road by TheAuthor44: Three months after her fathers' funeral Zoey gets assigned to go to a managerial conference for SPRQ Point in Orlando, Florida. Max offers to come along after he tells her he’s been meaning to head back east to go through things from his childhood home. While Max originally offers flying together – Zoey suggests they drive and make it a road trip! Max needs to figure out his next career move, Zoey needs an escape from her grief - It's perfect! Road trip shenanigans ensue as Max and Zoey’s love story takes some unexpected twists and turns. Rated Teen, Complete 

The Marks That Life Left On Them by chosenandloved: This is a Clarkeman fic set about one month post-finale.Simon, Zoey, and Max all seek out therapy in their own ways and come to some startling realizations regarding life and love. Rated Teen, Complete

Max’s Extraordinary Project by Gwritesforfun:  Any successful project takes a well-executed plan. Max has a birthday surprise for Zoey, and he assembles a team to give her a gift. Rated Teen, Complete

Mixing Business With Girls and Thrills by reddish_umbrella: Zoey just wanted to spend the weekend with her friends Mary and Sue in L.A. as suddenly she get dragged into a story of spies and world conspiracies. Rated Mature, In-Progress

One Step at a Time by hookedoncaptainswan: A fix-it for 1x09. If Zoey hadn't asked "Was that the right answer?" would Max have made a different choice? Not Rated, Complete

Seasons of Love by Ladylillianrose: Max has always been included in the Clarke family holiday celebrations. A journey through the different holidays and celebrations they have, as their lives continue to change and grow. Rated Teen, Complete 

Singin’ A Different Tune by TheAuthor44: 1940's Noir AU - Newspaper man Max Richman, and his girl Friday Zoey Clarke, investigate the murder of a backup singer. As suspicions rise and fall with every new suspect, this story has more twists and turns than an old dirt road. Will they be able to crack the case and break their headline … before it cracks one of them? Rated General Audiences, In-Progress

Take A Chance On Me by Ladylillianrose: Max moved to the 6th floor, giving Zoey the space and time she needed to figure out her feelings. But now that she's ready to talk, what is she going to tell him? Rated Teen, Complete 

Tequila and Team Bonding by typicalaveragefangirl: Zoey and her coworkers spend a weekend away partying at Danny Michael Davis' beach house. Rated Mature, Complete

They Say Keep Your Friends Close But You’re Closer by typicalaveragefangirl: Max Richman, she wrote... Is it too early to say enemy for life? Rated Teen, Complete

Uptown (Where the Skyline Meets the Stars) by Gwritesforfun: Max and Zoey attend a fundraiser, and meet a person from Max's past. Rated Teen, Complete

Waiting in the Wings by chosenandloved: Zoey Clarke is the Stage Manager for CMU's upcoming production of RENT and she doesn't trust actors-not even Max Richman. Rated Mature, Complete

The Wedding Date by Jade4813: Zoey agrees to be Max's Plus One at his brother's wedding. They're supposed to be just friends, but the dreams Zoey's been having about him lately make things complicated. Rated Explicit, Complete

When I Think About You I… by Ladylillianrose: Zoey performs Karaoke, giving Max a show he will never forget. (Established Relationship). Rated Explicit, Complete 

Win Some or Learn Some by Jade4813: Zoey has just discovered her new powers, but they develop an inconvenient glitch that makes her start to realize her feelings for him may not be what she's always believed. The only problem is, she has no idea if he feels the same way. Rated Explicit, In-Progress

The Writing’s On The Wall by chosenandloved: Zoey is doing just fine on her own in her quaint little beach-side town-that is, until a mysterious, handsome writer comes to stay for the summer. Rated Teen, In-Progress

You’ve Got SPRQS by Ladylillianrose: A new dating app has just launched for the SPRQ Watch, called SPRQS. Joan signs Zoey up for it in order to help her meet someone. Will Zoey find someone? Can you really fall in love through an app? Inspired by You've Got Mail. Rated Teen, Complete

Zoey’s Extraordinary Nephew by Ladylillianrose: Max stops by to meet Zoey's nephew, and a much-needed conversation is had. Rated Teen, Complete 

Zoey’s Extraordinary Nightmare by AubreyRichman: An event causes Zoey to realize her worst fears. Rated Teen, Complete

Zoey’s Extraordinary Reunion by AubreyRichman: High School Reunions are synonymous with drama, stress, fear, and showing the people that attended school with you that you are different than you were when they knew you. When Max receives an invitation to his High School Reunion, he doesn't realize that the reunion itself could change EVERYTHING. Rated Teen, Complete 

Zoey’s Extraordinary Season Two by typicalaveragefangirl: This is my take on what might happen if Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist gets picked up for a second season! Rated Mature, Complete

Zoey’s Extraordinary Secrets by AubreyRichman: What could have happened with Zoey if timing had been different? What if Zoey’s dad wasn’t so sick when she developed her powers? What if she had gotten them earlier? What if...? Rated Explicit, Complete 

You Spin Me Round (Like a Record, Baby) by Gwritesforfun: Zoey and Max are DJ’s at KBCR, the Voice of Berkeley College. Follow them through 4 years of friendship, fights, running the place, and maybe even love. Rated Mature, Complete

Series

ByeByeBye Collection by TheAuthor44: What if Zoey hadn't run out the door after being confronted with Max's heart-song in 1x11. Various Ratings, Complete

Zoey’s Extraordinary Confessions Series by Jade4813: After the embarrassing incident at Simon and Jessica’s engagement party, Zoey knows she needs to clear the air with Simon, but she keeps getting distracted by memories of That Song. Rated General Audiences, Complete

Collections

ZEP Freakout for Discord: One-Shots in which various ZEP characters experience freakout moments. Various Ratings

Zoey’s Extraordinary Halloween (Coming Soon): Halloween Fics

[takaraphoenix]

Hey! What are your favorite fantasy/fairytale books, shows and movies?

Well, that is a very broad question. So... let’s structure this and tackle it.

Phoe’s Favorite Fantasy Books!

I don’t read much, so that’s a very short list. Seeing as you’re on my blog, I assume you know I read and loved Percy Jackson and the Olympians so that. However, there are fantasy series that I love way more than that.

For one the Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire, my favorite author who I adore and worship. Takes the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz and goes “but what if she was actually a restistance fighter trying to overthrow a corrupt government under their dictator, the Wizard?”. It’s amazing, I love it. Hardest recommend for the first two books. Been not too big on the third and fourth though, but that’s what happens when these things aren’t born out of being intended as a series but rather just... sequels... happening.

Golden classic that seems silly to even mention but I love these books - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I. Love. Them. I love Alice, I love the world, I love the fantasy. One of only three books that I personally allow to classify as modern fairy tales (Peter Pan and Wizard of Oz being the other two. I just... I do think that there is a difference between “fairy tale” and just general “fantasy book(s)”, but these three I do think deserve a place in the canon of fairy tale classics). Also, fun fact: my above mentioned favorite author wrote a third installment for this series for the original book’s anniversary, it’s called After Alice. (I own a signed copy. I squealed very loudly when I opened it.)

My favorite fantasy book series though is the Bartimaeus series by Jonathan Stroud. I adore these books. Yes, if taken as a singular book, the first installment of the Wicked Years, which works as a standalone too due to the series’ nature of having sequels instead of being an intended series, takes the crown, however as a whole, coherent series, including all books in the series, no fantasy franchise beats Bartimaeus for me. It is sarcastic, snarky, fun, filled with heart, totally lacking unnecessary forced romance, has a fascinating world, the writing is a great read. I love this series to bits and pieces.

Now, since you specifically said fantasy/fairytale, I’d be a fool not to mention William Joyce’s Guardians of Childhood, the book-series that Rise of the Guardians is... let’s say a sequel to? While not necessarily fairy tales in the traditional sense, having the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Sandman and Santa as its main characters, it does go very much into fairy tale elements. It’s a really fun read, I personally think that Joyce has a delightful and enjoyable style.

So, that’d be the five book series that I’d recommend for fantasy.

Unless you meant actual literal fairy tale books - then I will have to disappoint you, unless you’re German. Because being German, my fairy tale collection is... well... German. I got this one. Mainly, I admit, for the illustrations - Tony Wolf worked on the majority of them and I love his illustrations, he was the author and illustrator of my favorite children’s book series when I was a kid. Which, talking about fantasy, fairy tales and books, I will absolutely also recommend here. Their English name is The Woodland Folk and it is very adorable and also very scaring for small children because fairies die in it. I was very traumatized as a kid but I still loved it a lot.

Phoe’s Favorite Fantasy Movies!

Now, movies are... it depends on what movies you want; live-action or animated. I do feel that those are vastly different categories that set vastly different expectations. And then there’s the overlapping between fantasy and supernatural in many such movies.

Let’s start with live-action, which is going to be a very short list because I am really not huge when it comes to movies - I barely watch any movies and if, then they are animated in 80% of the cases.

Lord of the Rings. Yes, I know, book-people would have filed that in the category above, but look... I am not a huge reader. And the movies have pretty blonde Orlando Bloom. But I do truly love these movies, I try to rewatch them regularly but consider I less see them as a trilogy and more as one 12 hour movie, it’s always quite the time-commitment.

And, with this one I am never quite sure whether to count it as a movie series or as a mini TV series, but the way they were released on TV, they were a movie series - so The 10th Kingdom, which is basically Once Upon a Time before that came out and without the Disney. It’s about the grandson of Snow White ending up in modern day New York and getting the help of a waitress and her dad to take down his evil stepmother, who is trying to take over the 9 fairy tale kingdoms. I love this series so very, very much.

Also The Librarian, which is a fun fantasy relic hunting movie series. But more on that when we get to TV shows, because the trilogy has a tie-in series.

I do realize that actually the majority of movies in my fantasy/supernatural section are... in fact... more supernatural than fantasy. So, pathetically enough, that is... kind of it.

Now, animated movies is harder because I quite literally have a list with 360 animated movies I saw and liked to various degrees of which the majority would qualify as fantasy due to the nature of most Western animated movies. So I’ll try to “best of” as narrow as possible (seeing as I once successfully managed to narrow my favorite animated movies down to 65...). So, a shorter version of that.

Now, when it comes to fairy tales and animated movies, Disney goes without saying so I’m not even going to say it because it’s very obvious, we all know the movies, seeing the tales. I love most of them, especially their princess movies, with one huge exception. So let’s only name-drop Sleeping Beauty because I adore it, and assume you’ve already seen all other Disney animated fantasy and fairy tale movies and move on from that.

I am also morally obligated to say “Barbie movies” here, because they did a ton of fairy tale adaptations too and the majority of them are fantasy - but to keep it brief, here is a link to my ultimate Barbie movie ranking for more individual recommendations from the Barbie canon and let me also only name-drop my favorite - Diamond Castle.

Don Bluth’s Thumbelina, as well as his Anastasia are two absolute must-sees when we’re talking fantasy (and fairy tale in Tumbles’ case).

DreamWorks wise I love and adore Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, The Road to El Dorado and Rise of the Guardians.

Now we’re getting into what I like to think of as “deep dive” territory because they’re not mainstream, they’re not big names. But I still love them.

Naturally have to say Swan Princess (1994) - the first three movies anyway, I ignore those 3D animated chep looking sequels. But the OG trilogy is a very perfect trilogy, I adore it so very much.

Another total classic would be The Last Unicorn (1998).

FernGully (1992) is a beautiful tale about fairies and one of my absolute favorite movies of all time.

A newer entry here would be Epic (2013), which is also about fairies and was written by William Joyce!

And, even if it may sound silly. The original Care Bears movies. The three from the 80s. I love them a lot, I think they’re great fantasy fun, who doesn’t love a Care Bear they are adorable, seriously.

Phoe’s Favorite Fantasy Shows!

And we move on to our last segment of this ask. I like a lot of TV shows, so I will try to keep this to my actual favorites.

My absolute favorite is Relic Hunter, it is and always will be my favorite TV show. Even if it’s cheesy at times and only has three seasons. I love it a lot. It’s... very much as it says on the tin; hot archeologist and her nerdy assistant search for magical relics.

If you like that genre, you have to also watch The Librarians - the tie-in sequel series to the movies. More librarians! More magic! More artifacts! More fun. I really love this and I mourn that they cancelled it.

Naturally Once Upon a Time - fairy tales and fantasy and I just love this TV show. Skip the last season though.

And all-time classic for me is the original Charmed - three witch-sisters discovering magic together. This was... the first ever show I actually... really consumed, with everything around it. I was totally obsessed with this, I love it. Which is why I won’t touch the reboot at all, because there’s “I loved this thing. Now there’s a new version of it! Fun!” but there is also “I loved this thing, as it is, there is no need to make a new one, why are you touching this?” - and this one was so very near and dear to my heart growing up that it is definitely the second category for me.

Definitely gotta mention BBC’s Merlin, even if it’s very, very, very flawed. It’s still fun, the characters are lovable. It has a scary fandom... in that it’s still alive and thriving, even so many years after the show’s end.

Also Grimm, though more supernatural than fantasy, it is a fairy tale show. In a way. It’s dumb but fun, because the Grimms were actually not just scholars, they were monster hunters and now modern day descendants of them are still out there hunting the same Big Bad Wolves (who aren’t all bad). I don’t know, I love it, despite the occasional cringe.

Now, lastly on the fantasy - Galavant. A musical comedy about a knight. Very fairy tale-y. Very hilarious and lovable. Sadly cancelled after two seasons.

There are many, many more fantasy shows I watch(ed), but those would be my favorites. Though I do have to tag on that elements such as vampires and werewolves are something I categorize as supernatural so they wouldn’t find mention here in fantasy (Grimm aside, due to the fairy tale theme).

I... hope I could provide a good recommendation or two!

[rubykgrant]

If you love high-fantasy, or are just kinda getting into it, and are looking for something to watch while you have extra time, I’d suggest the animated Ranking-Bass trio of the Hobbit (1977) as well as the sequel the Return of the King (1980), the Last Unicorn (1982), and the Flight of Dragons (1982).

I feel like the most well known is the Last unicorn, and a decent number of people are aware of the the Hobbit (but not so much the Return of the King), while the Flight of Dragons is somewhat forgotten. These animated Rankin-Bass movies were actually my first introduction to the Hobbit and anything Tolkein related, and I saw them a long time before I could even read (family friends had the VHS tape, and I’d watch it whenever my parents took me there to visit, starting when I was about 2 years old). This caused something kinda funny when I was in elementary school; I was taking a reading comprehension test, and we were allowed to go as far as we could with the test packet, which took me to high school level books. Because I’d seen the Hobbit (and other shows like Wishbone or Jim Henson’s the Storyteller), I could answer questions about the story, and my teachers thought I must have cheated somehow.

About these movies; the Hobbit/Return of the King are obviously based on the books by JRR Tolkein. Rankin-Bass had already done many animated and sto-motion movies (pretty much all the Christmas classics are them), and they wanted to get into stories with more depth in different styles, so they started making high-fantasy movies. For the Hobbit, the art style was partially inspired by the art of Arthur Rackham, who did the concept art for them. The scenery and backgrounds very beautiful with many details in the tree roots and rocks, creating lush watercolor world. Animation for it was done by Topcraft, which later became Studio Ghibli (the same studio and crew also worked on Return of the King). Many of the poems Tolkeing wrote in the book were used and made into songs, sometimes the characters singing/speaking the lines, but there was also mood-music and singing done by Glenn  Yarbrough (including an original song just for the Hobbit). The voice cast for both movies included many talented people, but some that might be known for their other work; Hans Conreid plays Thorin (who was also Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan), and Casey Kasem as Merry (who was the original Shaggy from Scooby-Doo). Both of these movies include very important scenes from the source material, and they really do them justice (Smaug’s boastful introduction, Thorin’s good-bye, Eowyn taking her stand, ect). Another animated movie, the Lord of the Rings (1978), combines The Fellowship/Two Towers, and was directed by Ralph Bakshi. It has completely different animation, and unique mood for itself, but is still rightfully impressive and worth watching as well (the live-action Lord of the Rings films were heavily influenced by Bakshi’s work)

The Last Unicorn is based on the book by Peter S Beagle, and he also worked on the screenplay for the film. Topcrfaft again worked on the animation, and while it is visually similar to the Hobbit in certain areas, it has an entirely different style and feeling, the backgrounds/scenery resembling classic tapestries. There is an especially lovely way hair and eyes are depicted in the Last Unicorn, something we can see in various anime shows/movies; the eyes are deep with shine-sparkles, and the hair flowls either elegantly or wildly. There is again a very amazing cast for this film, each person doing an amazing job. A few people that are known in other animated roles; Jeff Bridges plays Prince Lir (who has been in more recent animated movies like Surf’s Up as Zeke), and Angela Lansbury voicing Mommy Fortuna (who was Mrs Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast). Like many books-turned-movies, certain things were cut for time, but what remains are still very important parts of the story. The movie also has a beautiful collection of original songs, performed by the group America. The over-all vibe of the the Last Unicorn is a combination of bright beauty, dark themes with sad undertones, and little bits of combedy scattered through it all

The Flight of Dragons is interesting, because it actually combines two different books into one animated movie; the Flight of Dragons by Pter Dickenson was where the author explored various myths and legends about dragons, and worked out how it related to real life. In some cases, what existing things people might have mistaken for dragons, but also if it was possible for dragons to have truly existed. Another book, the Dragon and the George by Gordon R Dickson (part of the Dragon Knight series), told the fictional story of a modern day man who works as an assistant to a history professor going on a strange journey to rescue his fiance. He winds up in another world where fantasy creatures are real, and dragons refer to all humans as “George”. While in this world, the man winds up inhabiting the body of a dragon, and a quest involving a knight/a magician/evil dragons/and much more. For the animated film, elements from both stories were used, creating a new one about “Peter Dickenson” being the modern day man who winds up in the body of dragon, which he is very excited about since he can learn more about his favorite subject this way. Yet again, the voice cast was incredible, and two that are known in other media; John Ritter as Peter Dickenson (who was also in Three’s Company and the Problem Child), and James Earl Jones as the evil wizard Ommadon (known for lending his voice to Mufasa in Disney’s the Lion King and Darth Vader from Star Wars). The film follows a similar plot to the Dragon and the George, but still includes the science the works out how dragons coult hypothetically existed, explaining the fire-breath and the flight. Themes in the movie also include science VS magic, how modern ideas often seem to harm forms of fantasy, the dangers of both forms when humans take no consideration with what they create, but ultimately it is using science as a force for good that saves the magical realm. Illustrations for the book Flight of Dragons were done by Wayne Anderson, who created very stylized drawings that was also heavily detailed, many of the dragons have pebbled scales/large eyes/and powerful claws. This art was used as the inspiration for animated dragons, bringing the illustrations to life

OK, enough from me; if you can track these down and feel like it, enjoy some fantasy films~

[darksaiyangoku]

My Hope for a Live-action Dragon Ball Franchise

10 years ago, on the 10th of April, the Dragon Ball fandom was cursed with the abomination of Dragonball: Evolution.

Yeah, I hate to bring back painful memories too. Aside from just being a god awful movie, it’s a god awful adaptation of one of the most influential Shonen manga of all time. Nothing from the original series carried over into this thing aside from the Dragon Balls, and even then they fucked it up!

But........ we have had great success with Dragon Ball since then, including 2 fantastic movies, another sequel anime in the form of Dragon Ball Super and arguably their best move, Dragon Ball Super: Broly!

(Seriously if you haven’t seen this movie yet, do it!)

But now that 10 years have passed and with anime becoming more mainstream than ever, I think it’s time that we gave Dragon Ball in live action another try.

Now I know what you’re all thinking:

“There is absolutely no way in hell a live action Dragon Ball movie can work.”

Honestly, I don’t blame you guys for thinking like that. DBE has really tainted, not only Dragon Ball, but live action adaptations for anime in general. Every time a new one is made, everyone refers back to DBE as the leading example of how it can, and does fail. Not only that, but many people think that doing a live action Dragon Ball would be impossible, given how crazy the series is.

I disagree with that notion. While it wouldn’t be an easy feat to accomplish, I don’t think it’s truly impossible. I believe a live action Dragon Ball movie CAN be made, if they do some of the following:

1. Get a director with proven talent who can also capture the spirit of the source material

This one is essential as hell and I have some directors in mind who would be very good choices for a project like this.

1. James Gunn

James Gunn did the impossible when he directed Guardians of the Galaxy. Not many people outside the comics community has even heard of the team and they went from Z-list characters to top tier characters and one of Marvel’s most popular teams. Not only that, but he also has a knack for striking a perfect balance between serious and comedic, which is perfect for Dragon Ball. Speaking of comedy, his strange sense of humour is very similar to Toriyama’s, along with capturing the weird and wacky world of aliens, space magic and epic battles. James Gunn would be my top choice for a live action Dragon Ball film.

2. Taika Waititi

Thor: Raganarok was a huge hit, not just for the MCU as a whole, but for the Thor series. It gave the character and his world new life and it’s honestly the closest thing I’ve seen to a live Dragon Ball Z. Every staple of DBZ exists in this movie; strange worlds, epic fights, crude and absurd humour, crazy-ass powers and transformations. Seriously, it’s like Taikia Waititi was tailor made to direct Dragon Ball.

3. David F. Sandberg

David F Sandberg’s work on Shazam was nothing short of fantastic! A seriously heartfelt movie, it managed to portray the character seamlessly from the comics and is one of my favourite comic book movies of all time. With some funny moments and some really dark, twisted scenes, I’m sure David can bring something truly amazing to the table if he was in charge of directing Dragon Ball.

2. Do NOT adapt Dragon Ball Z first.

Dragon Ball Z may be one the most popular and iconic anime of all time, but it was the second part of an overall larger story. The first part started with Dragon Ball.

This is the series true beginning and to skip out on it would be a huge disservice. Everything that makes the franchise so beloved was built off of this and it deserves to be represented more. As for the storyline they should start with? Well they could either start with Emperor Pilaf arc or the Red Ribbon arc. I know this may might sound hypocritical given that DBE was not at all faithful to the source material, but there are some liberties that do need to be taken here. That’s just the nature of adaptations. All that said, though, if most of the source material is adapted well in the film, I wouldn’t mind a few liberties taken here and there, provided they’re done RIGHT and with RESPECT!

3. Get a good mix of unknown actors and actors with proven talent

For something like Dragon Ball, I believe the route of unknown actors is the right way to go and when it comes to casting the characters, I’d recommend that primarily Asian actors are used. The world of Dragon Ball is very diverse, filled to the brim with different kinds of species and creatures, but it also has heavy roots in Asian Mythology. For me, here’s how I would see the casting pan out:

Saiyans- Primarily Asian actors.

Humans- Mix of different actors. Characters like Roshi, Tien, Yamcha, Krillin and ChiChi would need to be Asian, while Bulma, 17 and 18 can be cast as anyone.

Aliens and other strange species- Mix of different actors. You can get anyone for these roles.

4. Get the right studio

With a project like Dragon Ball, you would expect a lot of money to be involved here. For me, I have the perfect studio in mind for this:

Before anyone yells at me, let me make it clear that I understand everyone’s grievances with Disney, especially recently.

Regardless, they have had successful hits at he box office and have made some of the best film franchises of the modern day. Their success with the MCU is pretty much why I chose them in the first place. They accomplished a very difficult task of an overarching story spanning 23 movies and revitalising comic book movies. If they can replicate that with Dragon Ball, I think we’d have, not just a good live action Dragon Ball movie, but a truly great film franchise!

Though that’s just wishful thinking. 😅

Thus concludes my reasons for wanting another live action Dragon Ball film. What do you guys think? Do you agree or disagree? Do you think it’s impossible and I’m just wishing or do you think it can happen? What are your ideas for a live action Dragon Ball and which studio do you think should take it if Disney isn’t the right choice? Let me know by commenting and reblogging.

Have a good night guys! ✌️

[ryanmeft]

MCU Phases 4 and 5 Wishlist

Last night at San Diego Comic Con, Marvel dropped their pants and coated the audience in a thick, rich layer of big-and-small screen announcements. Briefly recapped: across Phases 4 or 5 (not that that means anything), we’re getting Black Widow, The Eternals, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel 2, the Fantastic Four and Blade. On the streaming front, the previously announced series were all confirmed, and in a move most probably didn’t see coming, Marvel added a series based on their often bizarre What if? Series, which speculates on what might have happened had some element of continuity gone a different way (and which has become a bit moot in the comics in an era where continuity is gleefully mixed and nixed whenever an editor wants a sales boost).

As folks might be aware, I’m not a huge fan of Disney, skipping almost all their movies, but I have a severe weakness for the MCU. There’s a lot of wish lists going around as to what we want to happen in these movies and series, but as you know if you’ve read my blog before, the correct answers are mine. Since you can rest assured these answers are the best, I graciously share them with you now. Remember, I’m never wrong.

Mjolnir Gets Retired

I am totally down with Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster as the God of Thunder. There will be those who call to give her the same powers and weapons Thor had, but why would we want to do that? In the comics, she’s still Jane Foster while Thor is still Thor, and with Chris Hemsworth also in the film, there’s no reason to think that won’t be the case here. Instead of simply “Female Thor”, she needs her own set of traits and skills. Start with giving her a new weapon; a magical spear would be just right. Mjolnir got its greatest moment of glory in Endgame, and from a sheer story perspective, it is time to retire the venerated hammer.

Rebellion in Wakanda

I’m going to be in the minority on this, but: the Dora Milaje have gotten shafted in the MCU thus far. In the best of the comics, they are the king’s guard, but they are also a group of women with independent minds and goals who don’t always agree with the king. In fact, members have rebelled several times. In the movies to date, they exist to devote total fealty to T’Challa, never once seriously questioning anything he does. This is a terrible fate to befall an actor with Danai Gurira’s fire. Instead of existing merely to poke holes in things on behalf of a (male) ruler, it’s time these ass-kicking ladies got to play a more important, and complex, role.

Christoph Waltz as Doom

This idea isn’t mine, but was passed on by a friend who is clearly brilliant. There’s not much to say about this one: the actor who made his reputation playing two very different roles in Quenton Tarantino films is the perfect choice for the literally tin-plated dictator. As for the rest of the cast, Keanu Reeves is the favorite for Reed, but I have another idea in mind for him...

The Master of Time

That said: it’s about time to get Kang involved in this universe. When it became obvious that Endgame was going to involve time travel, I slapped together what I thought was a pretty good post-credits tease that would introduce both him and the Fantastic Four side of the universe. Obviously, nothing like that happened, and there were no Avengers movies or mass team-ups of any kind announced at SDCC. Yet with time travel established, the potential to bring in this reality-warping mega-baddie is always there.

Don’t Undo Iron Man 3

Yes, fans are shooting their shorts over the fact that the real Mandarin will be the villain of the Shang-Chi movie. But those of us who don’t rub the comics on ourselves regularly recognize the truth: Iron Man 3 had a great twist that was one of the few truly creative decisions in a modern blockbuster, and it would be a shame to overturn on the whim of a handful of hardliners. Have a “real” Mandarin, but keep Ben Kingsley’s washed-up, hedonistic actor on the books. Maybe even give him a cameo.

Unrelenting Nightmare

Director Scott Derickson has already said he wants to use Nightmare, a being who feeds off his namesake, in the Doctor Strange sequel, and given that it is apparently multiverse-focused (and that Strange has few interesting villains), this is probably a given. Marvel has been after Keanu Reeves for a long time; most people seem to want him for Reed Richards, but may I humbly suggest we go against the hype and cast him as a dimension-devouring trickster deity instead? As a side note, please, please follow up on Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Baron Mordo. He was the best part of the first film, and it’d be a shame to let him trail off into the ether.

Take Some Risks in Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel was fun. It was not the kind of movie that took risks, however, or blew anyone away, despite amazing box office numbers. CM will be an idol for little girls; it’s time to think outside the box, utilize the oddness of Marvel’s galactic properties, and make her next movie one that can rival the time-hopping chances DC has taken with Wonder Woman. Brie Larson needs more to do than pose heroically and hit things.

Where’s Spider-Man?

More of a question answered than a wish: a lot of people are freaking out because Spider-Man was not mentioned last night, despite a post-credits tease that’s impossible to ignore. Relax: the deal between Marvel and Sony likely just means Sony has to finalize plans and sign off on the next film before Marvel can announce it. Far From Home cracked 800 million at the box office, and the refurbishing of Spidey’s tarnished reputation by Marvel is one big reason Sony’s own dull, uninspired Venom series is now a viable money-maker. It would be the height of stupidity for Sony to pull out of the deal now; expect Spider-Man: Homeboy or whatever it is called to be announced for 2021 before much time passes.

Make What If? Truly Bizarre

As a series, What If? wasn’t always great, but it was always interesting. There are some obvious concepts they could include in the series, and probably on the top of most people’s lists is “What If Iron Man had survived Endgame?” Old Man Tony would be absolutely delicious, but we can get stranger than that. This series should be a chance to explore concepts that would never fly in a massive, internationally-marketed blockbuster movie. Think stuff like “What If Loki had been Thor?” or “What If Peggy Carter had been Captain America?” Get wild up in this.

Make Loki a Reverse Doctor Who

Loki became a far less evil, far more complex character by the time he was dispatched in Infinity War. The Loki that will star in the series, however, is the one from Avengers, before all that character development. Audiences didn’t truly and completely fall in love with him until he went from evil god of chaos to a more ambivalent trickster figure, so pulling off sympathy for this older Loki across an entire series will be difficult. The obvious answer is to make him a sort of reverse Doctor: instead of an eternally-helpful alien who influences everyone he meets for the better, he’s an alien out for himself who is gradually influenced by those he meets to be (a little) better.

[thecartoonuniverse]

Currently Airing Cartoons to Watch: 2019 Edition Part 1

You may remember my list of upcoming cartoons to look out for last year, but this time around I would like to do something different! I am personally recommending cartoons that are currently airing (or are confirmed to get more seasons) and give my opinions on each of them. There may be other good cartoons out there, but if they are not on the list, it means I was not a huge fan of it, it’s a super popular show like Steven Universe or Star vs. the Forces of Evil, or I have yet to watch it. If you are looking for something to watch, this is the list!

Currently Airing:

The Dragon Prince

Summary: The Dragon Prince is an epic fantasy series by the head writer and director of Avatar: the Last Airbender. In the magical land of Xadia, magic comes from six primal sources. But when human mages create a seventh kind of magic, Dark Magic — they begin capturing and harvesting the unique magical creatures they need as ingredients. This sparks a catastrophic war between Xadia and the Human Kingdoms. Three kids from opposite sides of the conflict — two human princes, and the elven assassin who was sent to kill them — discover a secret that could change everything. They decide to join forces and go on an epic journey that may be their only hope of ending the war, and restoring peace to both their worlds.

Opinion: This is probably my favorite currently airing show right now, mostly since I am a huge fan of fantasy shows. Dragons, extremely hot elves, and magic- what more could you ask for? Every one of the characters is complex and likable (well most, depending on who you ask). But even the antagonists are compelling at there are always shades of gray present. Season 2 truly blew me away with how much the stakes were raised and the number of surprises that occurred. There is even going to be a AAA cross-platform video game coming soon set in the same world! The company that creates The Dragon Prince, is doing a fantastic job on their social media (it’s hilarious, trust me), and I cannot wait to see what else they create. A quick warning, the animation from season 1 will take a little while to get used to, but for the most part, it has been improved for Season 2.

Also, there a lot of memes, so get ready for that.

gen:LOCK

Summary: In gen:LOCK, Earth’s last free society is on the losing side of a global war, and recruits a diverse team of young pilots to control the next generation of mecha—giant, weaponized robot bodies. These daring recruits will find, however, that their newfound abilities come at no small cost. As Julian Chase leaves behind his life as a fighter pilot to become the first candidate for the program, he finds his endurance, as well as his very identity, will be tested beyond anything he ever imagined.

Opinion: For any current/past fans of Voltron: Legendary Defender- WATCH THIS SHOW! If you are a fan of mechas, you will surely enjoy this. But if you were more a fan of the character interactions from VLD, this show also has you covered. It has an amazingly diverse cast and even has a canon genderfluid character. It is a show made for adults, so the stakes are real and dark subjects are treated seriously. Even the romance is done very well with the characters acting like adults instead of arguing over each other like teenagers. Even from the first episode, you can tell that the show is willing to take risks and is sure to become one of the greatest shows of the decade. The animation is also beautiful, and is definitely the best looking show Rooster Teeth has created. The fan base is super small right now since the first season just aired and is RT First exclusive. But trust me, it is worth a watch.

Carmen Sandiego

Summary: Carmen is a modern day Robin Hood traveling the globe and stealing from V.I.L.E. and giving back to its victims. Carmen is publicly perceived as a criminal by most law enforcement agencies – correction, make that a master criminal due to the sheer scale and theatricality of her heists. We will follow her escapades and get to determine not only where but WHO in the world is Carmen Sandiego?  

Opinion: This show really caught me by surprise- I was fully expecting a kiddy edutainment show, but what I got was something much more complex and intriguing. Carmen this time around, as the summary suggests, is an anti-hero, and not an antagonist or villain like she was in the past. While some may not want to watch it due to this, I think this take on her is done very well, and once you get past the two-episode backstory, you will find the show is fun with a diverse cast of characters from all over the world. This GIF doesn’t quite do it justice but trust me when I say this show has some one of the best looking art styles I have ever seen. Surprisingly the weakest aspect of the show is the educational factor, which is puzzling as it was very much promoted as a show to teach children geography. In some cases, I have seen posts/tweets pointing out factual errors the show made! Normally it wouldn’t be the biggest deal, but this is a show that prides itself for its educational value. Also, some of the characters have pretty flat personalities or are just straight up incompetent, but hopefully that will change as the show progresses further. The finale was amazing, and I am patiently waiting for the next season!

Tangled: The Series/ Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure

Summary: Set between the events of the feature film and the start of the 2012 CGI short film, Tangled Ever After, the animated series unfolds as Rapunzel acquaints herself with her parents, her kingdom and the people of Corona. Her irrepressible spirit and natural curiosity about the world drives her to the realization that there is so much more she needs to learn before she can truly accept her royal destiny. She boldly puts her crown and impending marriage on hold to seek out epic adventures, much to the dismay of the King who, after missing out on Rapunzel's childhood, must accept that his daughter is now an independent young woman. Accompanying Rapunzel on her journey will be Eugene Fitzherbert; the plucky chameleon sidekick, Pascal; the no-nonsense horse, Maximus; most of The Snuggly Duckling's pub thugs; and newcomer Cassandra, a tough-as-nails handmaiden, who becomes Rapunzel's confidant.

Opinion: This series is truly a delight, and definitely exceeded my expectations for a television series based off a Disney show (I did not expect much as most of those types of shows from my childhood weren’t the best). But I was truly wowed, and this is a must see for any Disney fan.The series does not ignore anything that happened in the movie, far from it. Events that occurred in the movie still impact Rapunzel and are treated seriously. The cartoon mixes comedy, adventure, lore, and mystery quite well. It is also very beautiful, much like Carmen Sandiego (both have similar styles but I like CS’s lighting a bit more). The show can even get quite dark, as is evident with the season 1 finale. This show deserves a much biggest fanbase, so give it a watch!

Hilda

Summary: Hilda follows the journey of a fearless blue-haired girl as she travels from her home in a vast magical wilderness full of elves and giants to the bustling city of Trolberg, where she makes new friends and discovers mysterious creatures who are stranger –and sometimes more dangerous– than she ever expected. Based on graphic novels by Luke Pearson, who storyboarded for Adventure Time.

Opinion: Hilda is definitely a comfort show, and if you liked Gravity Falls there is a good chance you will also like this show! The art style is simply adorable, and Hilda is a delight to get to know. I love the way that the show not only has magical creatures, but it goes in depth into how these creatures live and survive in a modern world. Having read all the comics, I personally enjoyed the addition of Hilda getting some human friends. I know some people did not like this, but she seemed quite lonely once she moved to the city, and I liked seeing her interact with children her age. Season 2 is coming out next year, so there is plenty of time to watch the first season! If you love a feel-good show with mystery and magic, this is the show for you!

Star Wars Resistance

Summary: The series is set between the events of Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens, in a time when the Resistance is still learning about the growing threat of the First Order. It centers on the character of Kazuda Xiono, a young pilot in General Leia Organa's Resistance who is tasked with spying on the growing threat of the First Order.

Opinion: This show was one I was not expecting anything from at all, but as the show has progressed throughout the first season I have begun to enjoy it more and more. This show, like many on this list, features a very diverse cast (including some aliens, of course). Probably the thing that surprised me the most was the fact that the main character, Kaz, is 20 years old! I feel like that is not something you see with action shows these days, as they usually make the protagonist 16 or 17 years old. I really like the animation style, as I always felt that without the big budget, the Clone Wars style just didn’t look that good in Rebels. Resistance is so... shiny! As for the plot itself, it is sad that most of my favorite aspects of Star Wars are missing, namely the Force, Jedi, and Light Sabers. But since it may eventually tie in more with the sequels, there is hope to see more of that eventually! It’s definitely not at Clone Wars level of good, but I am finding it more enjoyable than Rebels (excluding a few episodes and the season finales). It may never end up being as serious as Rebels, but I am sure it will get darker as time goes on and the stakes get higher.

Young Justice: Outsiders

Summary: Young Justice: Outsiders is the third season of Young Justice. The backdrop for the season is one that will touch on “all corners of the DC universe,” and this time the team is tasked with stopping a metahuman trafficking ring, as well as dealing with the “intergalactic arms race for control of these super-powered youths.” You can also count on new heroes Arrowette, Spoiler, Thirteen, Halo, and many more joining in the fight.

(^I can’t recall if this is the exact line from the show but this whole episode is the best)

Opinion: If you loved the first two seasons of Young Justice, it is easy to say that you should give this one a watch. But now that it is on DC’s streaming platform, DC Universe, IT IS DARK. Seriously, this is no longer a show for children. And that’s pretty great. I truly love that the show can now explore darker themes and have some adult jokes from time to time. However, unlike the first two seasons, I feel constantly confused about new characters or things that have happened to returning characters offscreen. Unless you are very knowledgable about DC characters, there is a good chance you will feel this way. So, it is sadly a bit more unwelcoming to those unfamiliar with the comics. I still love the show’s characters and superhero stuff, in general, is always a lot of fun. There’s also LGBT characters apparently already in the show (and some that were LGBT in the comics have appeared, but nothing in-show is confirmed), so hopefully, there is also that to look forward to in the second half of the season when it airs in June.

Big Hero 6 The Series

Summary: The series continues the adventures of 14-year-old tech genius Hiro and his robot pal Baymax. Joining the pair on their journey is control freak Wasabi, scientist Honey Lemon, fanboy Fred, and no-nonsense Go Go Tomago, whom together form the Big Hero 6 superhero team. As the new prodigy at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, Hiro faces daunting academic challenges, not to mention the social trials of being the little man on campus. The stakes are also raised for the high-tech heroes when they must protect their city from an array of scientifically enhanced villains.

Opinion: Another very well made series based off a Disney movie. Once again, this show stays faithful to the source material. The art style is very interesting, and while not my favorite gives the show a very cool feel. Once the main villain is introduced, I was glad to report that he became a major threat very fast. And the season 1 finale was pretty great as well. My biggest issue concerning this series so far is that is still really hasn’t developed the side characters at all, despite them being in almost every episode. These are college students, so their families should still be quite important to them. But besides Fred, we have yet to really learn about them, and with that, a potentially important part of who they are as a person is missing. After a movie and a whole season, these characters should not seem as flat as they are, so I hope we learn more about them too. But we also get flashbacks of Tadashi, so for that alone the show may be worth a watch.

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Summary: Deep in the sewers of New York City, four mutant turtle brothers lurk. Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michaelangelo are in their early teen years, and the brothers go on new and exciting adventures. They tap into their mystic ninja powers to learn to work together as a cohesive unit and become a team of heroes as they navigate the modern world and other hidden realms. The brothers get a whole new look, new weapons, and new powers as they discover the hidden city beneath New York and find time for a slice of their favorite pizza.

Opinion: Okay I will admit this is one I haven’t actually seen all of yet. But the art style is just so cool I had to include it and will likely update this entry when I catch up. This show may be a worthy successor to the 2012 series, which I know a lot of people loved.

So that’s the end of my list. If I remember any other good shows airing, I may update it. But, if I got you to watch any, let me know and tell me your thoughts!

Shows to Look Foward to: Glitch Techs, Amphibia, Owl House, Twelve Forever, Hazbin Hotel, Villainous, Infinity Train, 101 Dalmatian Street

Shows Omitted due to being super popular already: Steven Universe, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, RWBY, Bojack Horseman, OK KO, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Duck Tales

Join my Cartoon Themed Discord: https://discord.gg/cartoonuv

And give us a follow if you enjoyed the post! We talk about cartoon related stuff a lot! I will probably do a part 2 later in the year when more of the cartoons to look forward to have aired. And I might even add some shows omitted or other shows I may have forgotten!

[sol-shines]

top 5 favorite songs! or alternatively, top 5 disney movies

........do you understand how hard this was to do. anyway, i went with disney movies because tbh my favorite songs change every two days or so

#5: The Incredibles & Moana

starting off with a tie, because i genuinely cannot pick. let's cover incredibles first.

incredibles is straight-up CLASSIC in every way. why else would everyone wait an entire 14 YEARS for the sequel? (and to clarify, i'm including both movies in this.) the humor is lowkey but genuinely charming and unexpected. the concept is simple but effective, and the characters were good (or, in edna mode's case, freaking phenomenal). and though it may not seem like much now, the animation at the time of the first movie was groundbreaking. and the sequel definitely didn't disappoint. plus, it definitely earns nostalgia points in my book.

then, onto moana. first off, having an accurately-portrayed polynesian young woman as a protagonist was so cool! i know it helped a lot of people from similar ethnicities relate. the animation was beautiful, the soundtrack was iconic (love you, lin), and the humor was fantastic. possibly the only thing that took the edge off this movie was it being just a liiiiittle bit oversaturated after its release. still a beautiful movie in every way tho!

#4: WALL-E

honestly, there's nothing i can say about this movie that hasn't been said already. it's so compelling and emotional, despite most of the characters being robots. there's almost no dialogue for the majority of the movie, and yet it conveys its message and thoughts so clearly. the animation STILL holds up to this day, the characters are so so lovable, and i never thought i'd be as attached as i am to an adorable robot romance. honestly this movie is just perfectly charming and moving in every possible way it can be.

#3: Emperor's New Groove

CAN YOU SAY ICONIC!! i make references to this movie constantly. the jokes are timeless, the characters are vibrant, and i live for the under-the-radar representation with it being set in the inca empire (modern-day peru, i believe). the animation is unique, character designs are instantly recognizable anywhere, and just..... i can't possibly praise this timeless movie enough. it's just too good. i am a kronk stan for life.

#2: Beauty and the Beast

just..... gah, this movie. to start, i only have fond memories of watching this. it's a disney classic in every way. i love the music, the absolutely stunning animation, and ESPECIALLY the way belle and beast progress throughout the movie. their development is so well-written and beautiful. their romance is my everything (not to mention it birthed one of the greatest aus ever). beast is a super adorable character and i love him. just, all in all...... beautiful. that's all i can say.

AND FINALLY...

#1: Coco

THIS

FREAKING

MOVIE.

for real tho, just..... i can't think of anything negative to say about this movie. the animation? literally GORGEOUS. BREATHTAKING. the plot was integrated amazingly well and kept me on my toes. the soundtrack SLAYED. i loved all the characters more than i can express. héctor and imelda are my everything. and the rep?? PHENOMENAL. THIS is what we're looking for in rep, straight-up. i'm not hispanic/latinx, but i've only heard great things from people who are, and i could even relate to some parts (being mixed filipina). every part of this movie had me on the edge of my seat. i could watch it forever. absolutely outstanding. it deserves every award. (plus, i believe this was the first movie we went to go see together, my dude! good memories. ❤)

HONORABLE MENTIONS

- Brave (while not explicit rep, it was very relatable to watch as an aroace person. it's just great in general)

- Atlantis: The Lost Empire (one of the most underrated movies of all time, simply amazing all-around)

- Make Mine Music (THIS MOVIE IS OLD BUT IT WAS MY EVERYTHING AS A KID PLS WATCH IT)

anyway... yeah! all of these movies are my everything and i love them to death. if you haven't seen them, pls do. i promise it's worth it.

- toon

[sunnysynthsunshine]

7th Comedy Monologue

“Hey my Cheese bags I’m back from my adventure in 1985”

“No joke if you look it up

the timeframe of days for each month this year

are the exact same as they were in 1985”

So all this “80s revival stuff” with Duran Duran and Depeche Mode touring, Petshop Boys releasing a new album, a new generation falling in love with Queen and She-Ra while the world is being messed up by a tyrannical iron lady and a talking tangerine makes a bit of sense doesn’t it?”

Even though I was born in the 2000s I’ve always loved most of the media from that decade, the gothic and upbeat synthesizer music,the cheaply made but entertaining cartoons,the video games,the basic but stylish fashion,the musicals and John Hughes films,the mix of music genres in the charts,Goth,Synth,Punk,2 Tone,Post-Punk,New Wave,Glam Metal,Alternative,Shoegaze,Hip Hop,Electronica

I was watching Saved by the Bell  before Netflix even existed

Then again a lot of the shows from then were also being revived back in my day

Dal Winton was presenting game shows, Pingu replaced the scary walrus monsters with rap music, I watched or had VHS tapes of the Muppet show, Noddy, Postman Pat and Scooby Doo.

Scooby-Doo! Now that’s a show that never gets old because it never changes, anyone regardless of what generation they’re from would be able to tell you

“Oh Yeah, I remember Scooby Doo”

When you think about it Scooby Doo is quite philosophical

we are all just a gang going on our own adventures

that and the first few live-action movies are modern masterpieces

I was just browsing Twitter or Tumblr or literally anywhere on the internet only to see that screencaps were taken from the live action Scooby Doo interviews had turned into memes

*ahem*

Well,I was auditioning for the role of Velma, I could sense from the way Matthew Lillard just fully encompassed the role of Shaggy, it felt like he was Shaggy, he was our saviour as he felt his spiritual energy increase, that’s when I knew we were working with a legend

Something like that although Matthew isn’t too fond of the memes himself specifically the ones where his spiritual connections are described more like demon possession rituals

*ahem*

“Being Shaggy has led me down a path of death and destruction. I’ve killed many mortals in hope of replicating 1% of Shaggy’s being, by the end of filming I hope to become one with him”

In which Matthew responded with

*deadpan voice*

This is wrong

I mean I might also have inspirations where I feel like I can philosophically connect with them, in their performing style and personality but that’s where I draw the line

Personality?  That’s a tricky subject

You could say some people have consistent personalities

People said Freddie Mercury and David Bowie were party animals who were incredible on stage with their charisma, creativity and charm but other sources have said they were relaxed, laid back people who were shy when being interviewed.

That could just be the contrast between their onstage and offstage personas but not all of us have that, even if we are all  just actors in a play, hoping each day goes the right way

Some of us are punk, even if we don’t explicitly say that we are, or have the stereotypical style associated with it,a lot of us just try to be ourselves,some of us can enjoy reality shows and horror movies at the same time,some of us can enjoy One Direction and Gorillaz,some of us can love fashion but also love memes, Theatre, and 1980s aesthetics

I’d say I’m the same but sometimes my personality is all over the place

I can go from being cheerful, relaxed and happy to being dazed and clumsy or cynical or entranced and hyper-fixated to Pessimistic and Cold to Quiet and Timid to Mellow and Loud   what personality traits you associate with me, however, is up to your own conclusion

call me any internet subculture stereotype and I’d be able to tell you about how I either, unfortunately, was the stereotype or I hung around people who were those stereotypes

if you said I was someone who watched Cbbc and citv you’d be right

if you said I was a classic rock enthusiast years ago and now you’d be right

if you said I used to be a cringy anime enthusiast  you’d be right

if you said I was one of those theatre kids who watched Disney sitcoms you’d be right

if you said I was one of those meme posters who referenced movies like Shrek and bee movie you’d be right

Another thing punks did was and sometimes still do was creating fanzines, magazines related to their favourite band or tv show or their own opinions on what’s going in the world, nowadays you could say social media has replaced that, but publications like the Daily Mirror, The Sun and TMZ still have a presence on there,I’d say fanzines should have a revival.

The BAFTA’s also happened recently and I wasn’t impressed, then again when are awards shows anything other than beauty pageants for films anyway?

Some films deserved their awards, but some films barely got a mention, Paddington 2 wasn’t included in there or in any of the other film awards this year and Stan and Ollie got nothing…

A darn shame because that film was so well made, it felt authentic, while Stan and Ollie also have a bit of a universal following, there are still some people who probably don’t know who they are!

Before Walliams and Lucas, Before the Two Ronnies, Before Richie and Eddie

There was…Laurel and Hardy

Two moustached blokes, who in the 20s and 50s would just try to delight audiences the best way they could, through slapstick and laughter, without them, most of the world’s double acts wouldn’t exist and even Spongebob wouldn’t exist

Yep, you heard me right, all those misadventures Spongebob and Patrick would have, they were loosely based on the adventures of Laurel and Hardy, except instead of it being about a tall British man and a fat American it was about an anthropomorphic sponge and a dumb but caring starfish.

Speaking of Spongebob, there was some sad news involving Spongebob not too long ago

The creator of Spongebob, Stephen Hillenburg…had passed away from ALS

I know, it’s awful,stupid motor neuron diseases and stupid Adam Levine too,for those who don’t know there was an episode of Spongebob called Band Geeks where they ended the episode with the cast playing a song called Sweet Victory over a Superbowl type of event, for the actual super bowl Spongebob fans around the world petitioned for that song to be played in tribute for Stephen,however we got Adam Levine singing a different song instead….what a letdown

If it wasn’t for SpongeBob I and some of the rest of the new generation, wouldn’t know half the old music or old films we know now.

To let down millions of fans like that makes me sick

Honestly, I was a bit sick a few weeks ago, I’ve been sick before and hospitalized twice but this particular moment of sickness was odd

It was like any other night, I was trying to get some sleep and lucid dream, but then it happened, the shivers, the shakes the trembling aches,

Out of nowhere, I felt like an ice-cube stuck in a microwave, It was too cold but it was too warm, I eventually got to sleep but when I got up the next morning I felt sick again, sorry for disclosing those details but it was like the exorcist…

Usually, when I’m sick watching documentaries, Kitchen Nightmares or 90s films weirdly cheers me up

Speaking of films, Rocketman the Elton John movie is out and it actually looks good

It’s being directed by the guy who was the replacement director for Bo Rhap and if it ends up being brilliant I won’t be surprised, the trailer gave off Velvet Goldmine vibes, the style of composed cinematography and I’m sounding like Film Twitter, Isle of Dogs was a good film…oh wait it wasn’t acknowledged much by the award shows either.

Another amazing film I recently watched was Rocky Horror…I know I’ve mentioned it before but that was when I only knew the sequel and some of the soundtrack,

It was amazing, it was brilliant, it was fantastic, it was out of this world,

ah! Rocky Horror was splendid

I definitely now understand why it’s still going strong to this day

It’s that hybrid of rock and roll, optimistic nihilism and soft aesthetics

That just works for me, another thing I’ve remembered was that Richard O’ Brien played the dad in Phineas and Ferb, well that explains that part of me liked that cartoon for the music and some of the characters but other characters did my head in like that Isabel character

“Hey, Phineas what ya dooing?”

“How about you let me finish my invention and you mind your own business”

Oof that’s too harsh…but considering aspects of the marvel Phineas and Ferb crossover were surprisingly a bit sexist at times outdated for the show that is usually quite progressive in its representation and characters…it’s probably accurate

Another person who hasn’t changed but is also often harsh, Piers Morgan, a little tweety bird told me he had a mysterious illness, good riddance I’d say, he’s the new Noel Edmonds, the presenter who used to be ok but now is unbearable…because he never shuts up

Thankfully though he’s “taking a break” from GMB that will rest our eardrums

Russell Brand has also been in the tabloids again, even though he’s more focused on his Buddhist spiritual recovery enlightening, looking back he wasn’t as bad as people described him, yeah at times he was a bit too over the top,but he was and is quite an ok bloke, but I’d say temporarily banning tickling is a bit of a stretch,

when you think about the number of people who disrespect our literal and figurative personal space on a daily basis, it kinda makes a bit of sense,

whether your sensory sensitive or not, I’m sure you hate it, when people are too touchy at times

although years ago I would’ve been a bit of an ignorant hypocrite about that

Hating it when crowds of kids would chase me like how the paparazzi chase their next gossip target, yet often annoyingly running up to people to talk to or entertain them.

I really need to learn to enjoy loneliness more because I get some of my best ideas when alone, but emotionally I feel a lot better when around others, a bit of an Ambivert really,

I’m sorry I can be a bit all over the place, I’m trying to make my energy more manageable

as that lucid dreaming thing has been misused at times,

I shouldn’t let myself be controlled…

by anyone or anything..no overthinking, no overworking,

treat the world as your stage, start your first act, motivated and ready, take your recharging interval breaks and then move on for your second act

fancy that me an ex-drama student making that metaphor when my current course  involves digitally drawing art, editing audio and sitting at a computer for most of the day

But then again just because someone shows good charisma that doesn’t always mean their a good person.

Ted Bundy, one of America's most notorious serial killers used charisma and charm in his court cases, and with the amount of fangirls giving him fanmail it was like the Beatles fandom but for people with Stockholm syndrome,and now with Netflix’s documentary and Troy from High School Musical in an upcoming film about him, that seems to be repeating itself…

*Alien voice* Ted Bundy the 1960s called they want your fangirls back!

One show I know you probably haven’t heard of is The Boondocks, a south park esque cartoon with an anime esque art style, referencing the social commentary of African American culture and media, celebrating some aspects while critiquing others, through the lenses of a socialist boy named Huey Freeman, his rapper wannabe brother Riley and their activist grandad Robert.

This show was quite revolutionary,it referenced the issue of each episode quite well, even though it only lasted 4 seasons, however, because the show is quite American, apart from the animation which is done in Korea,The Boondocks is not well known in the UK, which is a shame because it is a really good show that still holds up…however, it does fall under one mousetrap that most other adult cartoons fall into….

Because of the references to violence,innuendo and other dark subject matter sometimes referenced in a satirically humorous way,some audiences  would just watch the show because it’s offensive thinking that the show was made just to be offensive..instead of what the show was actually made for..which was to give social commentary on the issues relevant to African American communities in America.

I had watched this show years ago, it only just came back on my radar, because the creator Aaron McGruder, who based the show off his webcomic of the same name, had recently made a new issue.

There’s a difference between being satirical and being offensive

Your either making fun of something bad that a system or people are doing to make people aware of how stupid and sad the world can be at times,subjectively making fun of a stereotype, or your an arse who thinks they’re a comedian when they waste their time on social media, thinking they’re amazing and funny when they’re holding up the line at Mcdonald’s and the only people laughing at their jokes are gammon and people who found Bernard Manning funny

“Oh Wait”

I know sometimes I have unpopular opinions such as how my views of someone dip depending on their views of Kanye West

and sometimes I can be a bit snarky, and I hate and love stuff in equal amounts, but we need a bit of that don’t we, if we bottle it all up we explode like volcanos, but if we overshare too much, we crash like out of control cars

It’s all about moderation, salt is a tasty condiment but eat too much of it and your arteries will get clogged,

A few days back it was the day Mark Ashton passed away, for those who don’t know,he was an LGBT activist in the 80s,he volunteered with organizations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,he and the other activists helped to support the miners during the miner strike, creating the LGSM Alliance,Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners,there was a film made about them too, called Pride,but what some people don’t know is that….Mark Ashton was Northern Irish…he was one of us..he was the Marsha P Johnson of our time..if we were a bit like Mark Ashton this country would be a slightly more accepting place, why don’t we give love!

Let’s move on, plant more flowers in our garden..I know I sound like a hippie but it’s true, our Celtic Summerland is being used as a cesspool for Nuclear Waste

Oi! use your own bins, not the place we’re living in, pick up your rubbish and clean up your own mess…

The 80s were telling us something with all those protect and survive adverts, yes some of us were prepared as the older generation made us alert, others couldn’t recognize that a lot of innocent people were getting hurt.

When we say we want a 1980s comeback we want the music, clothes, games and  films,

but Nope

while we have some of that the 1980s revival we get is the one that involves Nuclear Danger and the ghost of Margaret Thatcher

All these TV and Film revivals, some are cool others are just unnecessary  Do we really need a Snow White sequel? No, we don’t but we did get one even if it was unofficial

Back in 2007 a French animation company made a sequel to Snow White which was also a bit like Shrek in how it satirised the fairy tale tropes, how Prince Charming feels like he is objectified while he ends up doing the same thing to the female characters, quite a tosser but that’s the point of the parody to point out the flaws with fairy tale logic, and to put the likes of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella in more realistic scenarios.

…it’s strange, weird but brilliant too

The English dub had quite a few familiar faces doing the character voices

Stephen Fry as the narrator, Morwenna Banks, Simon Greenall and another British actor

Rik someone...

Ah! I remember his name now, he was in many successful sitcoms in the 80s and 90s,he was a legend, he knew how to keep people laughing, whether they were children, adults, teenagers,

in television, theatre, film or music

quite an eclectic range of talent

Although

I’m a new fan, I might adore his work, but I had just learnt his name 2 years ago, whereas, with other fans, they have created their own work, such as Charlie Brooker and Simon Pegg… some were able to meet him…lucky...

Some encounters were quite interesting, I had heard someone’s nan got to meet him in the 90s but she got his name wrong so she ended up saying

“‘oh hello can I have your autograph please Mr mayo?’

Well that happened, she probably still got that autograph,...

And somewhere up there, Rik Mayall is thinking of us, he, Stephen Hillenburg and David Bowie are probably chatting away

Let’s make the lord of misrule proud

[letterboxd]

Icon.

Our world was calm, well ordered, exemplary. Then we met the stars and director of the new sequel Mary Poppins Returns to discuss the legacy of the original, how to follow in Julie Andrews’ footsteps and rapping in a Disney movie.

Even in an era when seemingly every single film exploits something we cherish from childhood, it still feels brazenly sacrilegious to even attempt to sequel-ize Mary Poppins (1964), the iconic and timeless Disney movie.

One of the most universally beloved children’s films of all time, Mary Poppins is deeply imprinted on multiple generations of movie-goers, many of whom spent much of their childhood wishing (or indeed, believing) that Mary Poppins was their nanny.

To tread on such hallowed movie ground is risky indeed, but everyone involved in Mary Poppins Returns seems to realize that, and a great deal of care and attention has been applied to the new film to ensure it honors the original while captivating contemporary audiences.

The film gained a huge amount of instant goodwill from the casting of its title character. Few would argue that there’s anybody better suited to follow in Julie Andrews’ footsteps than Emily Blunt, who is an utter delight in the role. She doesn’t simply “do” Andrews, instead bringing her own flavor to the character, who returns to London to assist in the grown-up lives of her charges from the first film: Michael and Jane Banks, now played by Ben “voice of Paddington” Whishaw and Emily Mortimer, both also fantastic.

The film was directed by Rob Marshall, who in addition to helming 2003 Best Picture Oscar winner Chicago, also previously worked with Blunt on the 2014 adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods.

Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins.

Joining Blunt in Mary Poppins Returns is musical man of the moment Lin-Manuel Miranda, making his first major big-screen appearance since the phenomenal success of his Broadway smash Hamilton. Miranda is a great student and practitioner of musicals. He wrote many of the beloved songs from the Moana soundtrack, and you can check out his five favorite movie musicals here.

In Mary Poppins Returns, Miranda plays a cockney lamplighter named Jack, revealed to be an apprentice of Bert, Dick Van Dyke’s character from the first film. Well, one of them. In one of many winsome musical numbers, Miranda performs in the the rap-meets-Broadway style he popularized with Hamilton. Rapping. In a Disney movie. Try not to faint.

All the songs are pretty fantastic. They were written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, whose most famous collaboration was the hit Broadway musical Hairspray. Richard B. Sherman, the surviving half of iconic songwriting team the Sherman Brothers (who wrote the songs for Mary Poppins, among other iconic films), is a musical consultant on the film.

The result? Mary Poppins Returns won’t be destined for The Place Where Lost Things Go.

A man has dreams, and Letterboxd’s Dominic Corry had one of his come true when he got in a room in Beverly Hills with Blunt, Miranda and Marshall (and some other press) to discuss the film.

On the pressure of following up such a beloved movie: Rob Marshall: I thought to myself when this came my way, “if anybody is gonna do it, I would like to do it”. It was incredibly daunting at first of course, but I wanted to be able to, in an odd way, protect the first film and treat this film with great care and love. Musicals are very difficult to do, an original musical, there are so many layers to it, but with this one, creating an original musical from scratch was actually for me a dream, and I’ve never done it before and to be able to create it with this beautiful company was exactly what I was hoping for. The guiding message of this film about finding light in the darkness is honestly what drew me to it and kept guiding me throughout the whole process including until this very moment, when people are actually now seeing the film. And I’m just speaking for myself, but I feel people need this film now. I knew that I wanted to live in that world and be part of sending that message out into the world now of looking for hope and light in a dark time.

On how Emily Blunt came to the role: Emily Blunt: I got a voicemail from Rob, who is my dear friend and we have known each other a long time, and the voice mail certainly had a sort of charged energy to it. I was like, “Oh my God, what is it? What is this project?” And when he called me, he said, “We’ve been digging through the Disney archives and by far their most prized possession.” And I was like “What, what is that?” And when he said Mary Poppins, I thought the air changed in the room.

It was so extraordinary, such an extraordinary, rather unparalleled moment for me because I was filled with an instantaneous “yes”, but also with some trepidation, all happening simultaneously in that moment because she is so iconic. She had such a big imprint on my life and on everyone’s lives, you know? People hold this character so close to their hearts. And so how do I create my version of her? What will my version of her be? No one wants to see me do a sort of cheap impersonation of Julie Andrews because no one is Julie Andrews. And so she should be preserved and treasured in her own way for what she did. I knew this was going to be something that I wanted to take a big swing with and I knew I could do it with this man who is the most emboldening, meticulous, brilliant director in the world and I was in safe hands with him. However much I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Rob Marshall and Emily Blunt on set.

On how Blunt sought to differentiate her Mary Poppins from Julie Andrews’ take on the character in the 1964 film: EB: What I decided to do, even though I’d seen it as a child, was not watch the original so close to shooting our version, I think probably because she is so beautiful and so extraordinary, I would have maybe tried to accommodate in some way, and let that sort of bleed into what I wanted to do. So I just decided to go on my gut instinct from the book because she is rather different in all of the books [by P.L. Travers].

If I’m going to carve out new space for myself, it was gonna have to be without watching the details of what Julie did so close to shooting. I have this searing memory of Mary Poppins, but not of all of the tiny details of how she played the character. And so as soon as we wrapped I watched the original. I was just floored by it, and probably relieved that I hadn’t watched it because I was all, “My god, she’s amazing!”.

On how Lin-Manuel Miranda came to be involved in the project: Lin-Manuel Miranda: I remember going to the midnight premiere screening of Chicago at the Ziegfeld Theater [in New York], and seeing the greatest modern movie musical I’d ever seen in my life. So when I got a call from Rob Marshall, and [choreographer] John DeLuca saying, “We’d like to talk to you about something,” that became an immediate priority.

They came to buy me a drink between shows. I was still in Hamilton at the time and I had a two-show day. So I finished the matinee, rolled across the street to the Paramount Hotel and I met them for a drink and they said, “Sequel to Mary Poppins,” and I said, “Who’s playing Mary Poppins?” And they said, “Emily Blunt,” and I said “Oh, that’s good”.

I can’t give them enough credit for seeing this role in me because there is no childlike wonder in Alexander Hamilton. He has a very traumatic early life. He goes on that stage and he wants to devour the world and he wants to move so fast and he wants to do everything, whereas Jack in this movie, as they pitched him to me, has this childlike sense of wonder. He’s in touch with that imagination you all see in your kids when they can sort of play in their own imagination for hours. Jack never lost that and that was I feel so humbled that [Rob] saw that in me. From that moment, from that drink, I was in. It came along at the perfect time for my family too, you know. We had finished a year of performing Hamilton and then I chopped my hair off and left the country and jumped into Mary Poppins’ universe. It was like, beautiful. On rapping in a Disney movie: LM: I would urge you to re-watch the first film. Because everyone who is like, “Wow, there’s rapping in Mary Poppins Returns,” forgets that Bert has a 30-second rap about all the women he dated before Mary Poppins. You’ve forgotten it, but Jolly Holiday is one big flirt between Mary and Bert.

Lin-Manuel Miranda (top center) as Jack.

On balancing reverence with innovation: RM: I really felt that everyone who was a part of this needed to have the first film in their blood in some way because that’s what we were following. I use myself as a barometer because I thought well, what would I want to see? If I came to a sequel to Mary Poppins I would want to see an animation sequence with live action and I would want it to be hand drawn in a 2D world. I would want Cherry Tree Lane to have a curve to it because that’s the Cherry Tree Lane we all know. It was as simple as that, although we were finding our new way. There were sort of goal posts or sign posts throughout that we needed to hold on to because it’s in the DNA of the material.

I knew there needed to be a big huge production number with athletic dancers with Mary and Jack, Jack leading the entire piece. That needed to be in there in some way. I would feel that if it wasn’t there we’ve gone off track. It was this insane balancing act of honoring the first film, but at the same time forging our own way. Marc and Scott were incredibly careful about making sure that we didn’t abuse using [musical] themes from the first film. It’s so easy to use. We used it in very strategic places throughout the film. Most of it actually very much at the end where we feel we’d earned it by then. And that’s what Marc was very careful about doing. I did feel that we were coming from the right place and that was the key.

‘Mary Poppins Returns’ is in cinemas from December 19.

[mortalgabby]

Film Trailers & Production Logos

Here are some trailers that I took inspiration from/are similar to the trailer I plan to make for my own ‘film’. 

Infinity War

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Venom

Teen Wolf

The House With the Clock In Its Walls

The Darkest minds is a modern fantasy film that was released in 2018. The trailer I feel is a lot more satisfying and exciting to watch than the actual movie is, for several reasons. The way the montage of shots is arranged is non chronological (as many trailers are) but to the point where it is misleading - the ‘revolution’ that occurs is a scene at the end of the film. The actual revolution that appears to be the plot of the film based on the audio clips and footage used, but only starts right at the end (therefore would be the plot of the sequel). This made the film kind of disappointing in comparison to the way the trailer painted it.

I really like the song which is used, which rises in volume throughout the course of the trailer, making the film seem intense. The music gives off a motivational and uplifting vibe and suggests that the characters will triumph in the end- which inspired me to want to watch it. I think that this song was perfect as it does reflect the tone and genre of the movie really well. 

The trailer also does a great job at showcasing the amazing CGI effects such as the telekinesis and the magic. The VFX is definitely a key selling point in this movie and enhanced the trailer a lot for me as it’s not only beautiful and believable, but also awesome. 

The plot was not revealed too much in this trailer which I think is very important - just enough information was hinted at to intrigue the audience enough to want to watch, which sometimes isn’t the case as some trailers will end up summarising the film’s plot which ruins the experience for me. 

The title cards are also fitting with the film as they somewhat resemble the eyes and ability of the protagonist - fire. The titles are in a gold serif font which looks very elegant, again reflecting the tone of the film.

I chose to analyse this trailer as I feel it’s similar to mine in that the characters both have some kind of superpower which they’re learning to deal with. 

The Darkest Minds

The Last Airbender

This trailer begins with establishing shots of the different landscapes in which the film will take place, showcasing the amount of detail that was put into the world-building and special effects. I think that this is very effective. As the characters first enter the trailer, everything is very quiet which helps to build suspense. The shots are very long and start to build up to the reveal of important things - such as the ice cracking - but the shots are cut off before we are able to see what’s happened. This makes the audience curious, causing us to want to watch the movie to find out what happens.

Later on throughout the trailer, there are a lot of shots that showcase the action in the film, but these too are cut off and followed by silence for dramatic effect which works really well in my opinion, for the same reason. This trailer also does a really good job at introducing the main characters, locations and themes without spoiling too much of the plot, and contains intense instrumental action music which really helps to establish the genre. 

The special effects are also fantastic looking and add a lot of appeal to the film - I particularly like the close up shot of the main character’s eyes and forehead which glow - as well as the long shots that display the other characters’ powers. Like the previous film, this one is also related to my own work as they both explore the theme of humans having otherworldly powers. 

I would say that this trailer does a really good job of accurately portraying the film, unlike some of the others. 

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

This trailer was very surprising to see (since I watched it after watching the film) as I don’t think it reflects the film well at all - it certainly doesn’t do it justice and instead paints it as something way too serious and dark. The music choice is interesting and, in my opinion is out of place in a film about magic, it sounds more fitting for a thriller or horror movie. I think they should’ve used a more upbeat song in this trailer to reflect all of the songs that are used in the movie as well as the general lighthearted nature of it.

Another thing which I don’t they pulled off particularly well was the title cards - which also looked like something out of a horror movie due to the dark and drab colours used in them. The title cards did fit the aesthetic of the movie but at the same time the actual titles sounded like they were trying to hard to be scary ‘It is not your imagination,’ However I do admire how they have engaged the audience’s interest through the vague pronoun ‘it’ - we are left wondering what is it is and are thus more likely to watch the film. 

The dark title cards and ominous music didn’t really fit with the warm orange colour palette that both the trailer and film utilises, the two contrast so much that it seems like it wasn’t intentional which I don’t really like. The consistent colour palette does however make the trailer look quite stylised and aesthetic.

I do however really like how the Disney logo was edited to fit with the magic/electricity motif in the film. 

Another thing I liked about this trailer was how the visuals matched with the beats in the music - the appearance of the eagle was matched with the music growing louder and more intense on the beat. I feel as though this not only emphasises the importance of said aspects in the film but generally gives a really cool effect. 

I’m glad that this trailer, unlike some of the others, doesn’t spoil the plot at all  - in fact it sheds extremely little light on the story they’re trying to tell - we know that Dave is Balthazar’s apprentice but little to nothing else. I feel as though without any information on the story of Morgana meant that, from the trailer, there isn’t really enough reason to watch it. They also could’ve showcased more of the magical SFX as these were one of my favourite parts of the film. The kind of magic used in this film is a similar kind to what i’m trying to achieve in my own video. 

The Shape Of Water

Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, this film also has a custom production logo to fit the genre and theme of it. I really like this little detail they decided to include as it really makes me feel more involved in the world they’ve created. 

This trailer starts off with a montage of the main character’s every day life, which is matched with some almost upbeat, instrumental music that is very iconic and, when paired with the visuals allude well to the time period in which the film is based. A lot of the things in this trailer are also matched to the beat of the music which is one of my favourite tropes as it looks really satisfying and just generally appeals to me. 

The title cards of this film reflect the themes by being designed as if they are underwater, which I think looks really aesthetically pleasing. the serif font in which they are written alludes to the fantasy genre of the film. The font choice itself looks very elegant and calm. There are multiple music tracks in this film - two of which sound very whimsical but are also creepy, the other one a lot more dark and intense. I think that having both tracks in the trailer helps indicate the different themes and emotions that will be present in the film - on one hand it is sweet and romantic, but there is also a dangerous and threatening tone that is underlying. 

I also really like how enigma codes are created through some of the lines of dialogue in the trailer - in particular the repeated line ‘Don’t do this!’ in a desperate tone. This piques the audience’s interest and make us more determined to watch the film so that we can find out exactly what is being referred to. 

I like how the colour palette for this film is mostly blue and grey as it reflects the ocean motif present throughout. 

In general I really like how the creature isn’t portrayed as a monster in the trailer - the humans are instead. This links in with my own film that includes fantastical creatures that don’t normally exist. 

Captain Marvel

The trailer for Captain Marvel starts right in the centre of the action which really makes you feel like you’re part of the world and is really exciting. The beginning of the trailer sets the scene and establishes the time period by showing the BlockBuster store. I think that this trailer is also really successful because of the actors who are in it - Samuel L Jackson and Brie Larson are both really popular therefore will attract a lot of attention to the movie even if you haven’t seen the other films in the franchise.  

The music is easily one of the highlights of the trailer for me; it’s bold, inspirational and also sounds somewhat otherworldly (which is fitting as it’s an alien film). I think that this really reflects how powerful and impressive Carol Danvers is, and will hopefully reflect the tone of the film when it’s released. There is also a very clear colour palette of red, blue and gold throughout this trailer which adds to it’s aesthetic appeal and also matches the colours of her iconic suit. I think that this colour palette is really unique and special since it contradicts the dark and serious tones of many other superhero movies - instead looking bold and motivational. The visual effects in this movie and CGI are also extremely stunning and are presented really well through the wide variety of shot types - for example when Carol looks at the camera with magical glowing eyes (which is a similar effect to the style of thing I wanted in my own trailer)

The title cards are also in the same signature colour palette which makes them fit really well. 

There are also a lot of shots that are timed to the beat, as well as many fade ins/outs from/to black which I think adds to the dramatic suspense and tension of the film as we are curious as to what we’re missing out on during these cuts. Another really unique part of this trailer I think is the shots which depict Carol at various ages doing the same thing - for example when she stands up but it’s multiple versions of herself one after another, like they’re united. I think that this creates a really gorgeous effect and i’m excited to see what the film will bring in the future. 

The title and the way it’s animated from a blueprint/frame is also really impressive and alludes to the high production value of the film. 

Production Logos

Marvel

Marvel’s logo is easily one of my favourite logos of all time due to the complexity and artistic nature of it. It combines the 3D title animation with the gorgeous painted portraits of all the most beloved characters, as well as even including live action footage from the movies. It is also extremely colourful and bold, and is full of such intricate detail that you need to watch it multiple times to really appreciate how much work was put into its creation. I also love how it starts off really complex and beautiful and eventually forms the iconic, simple red and white logo. The music that is usually paired with the logo also really brings everything together I think and is a work of art all by itself. 

This logo is so complicated that I couldn’t begin to attempt it - it also differs from my own greatly since I had no idea how to do something like this but would love to in the future. The two do however share the similarity that they both have hand-drawn aspects to them (the wolf is drawn on mine and the character paintings in theirs)

Disney

Disney’s logo is also really pretty and visually appealing to me. I love how cinematic it looks - it could easily be a scene in a film. It has a really beautiful semi-realistic style as the landscape itself could easily be a photo, and yet the castle itself is designed in a way that really reflects Disney's signature style but is still believable. the composition of this logo is also really nice- the horizon is inkeeping with the rule of thirds and the castle is in the centre. I also especially love the colours and animation of this production logo- there is a wide variety of tones used, but the landscape is mostly dark which helps the illuminated castle really stand out among the dusk sunset. The logo itself is also very clever as it both stands out and blends into the water - it’s noticeable but also fits very naturally into the scene. Much like the marvel logo it’s quite different from mine but if I had the skills to make something like this in the future I would love to. The main difference is that this logo is 3D animated and coloured while mine is monochrome and 2D animated. 

Summit Entertainment

I chose this logo because its simplicity reflects my own. The black background helps the bold serif font stand out very clearly and creates a very sophisticated and minimalist look. I like how, despite the lack of detail, you can very easily tell that the line above is a mountain peak  - due to the name and the colouring which reminds me of a snow-covered mountain peak. The peak is also in the very centre of the logo which is very pleasing to me. I think that this logo really embodies the idea that it doesn’t have to be insanely complicated to be effective. It also shares some similarities with my own production logo - the light coloured font contrasting against the dark background, and the addition of a drawn image as part of the logo. While I prefer the more visually appealing logos such as the previous two, I can definitely see the appeal of this one, which makes me feel better about my own design. 

Universal

The Universal logo is also very cinematic and has a lot of very eye-catching features such as the Earth, stars and galaxy. The space aesthetic that’s present in this trailer is really beautiful and definitely one of my favourite features about it. I like how it isn’t straining on your eyes - the stars and illuminated earth are still very ‘soft’, and while they are definitely noticeable they don’t make your eyes hurt. I also especially like the 3D sans serif lettering and the metallic texture that’s been applied to it - as well as how it’s coloured silver and not white. 

Pixar

Pixar’s production logo is also fairly simple in comparison to most of the others. The letters are written in a very cartoonish serif font which is 3D. The logo itself has a lot of depth that’s created through the shadows which the letters cast, which I really like. I also like the creative animation in this logo, in which a lamp is personified to take the place of the ‘I’ in Pixar by jumping on it. The animation is really fluid and organic which is very much representative of Pixar’s style.

I think that this kind of 3D logo would have been very interesting and fun to make for my trailer. This logo is somewhat similar to mine due to the small animation and simple colour palettes used.