Archive for the ‘Cartoons and Shit’ Category

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

(working title: BORING: THE MOVIE)

All right, you computer nerds have fucking done it. You’ve spent millions of dollars and years of research and god knows how many man hours of animation, and you’ve created the closest thing yet to photorealistic, computer generated, human-type individuals. And then you’ve put them in the most boring sci-fi movie since the extended director’s cut of Wing Commander.

And both of these are based on fucking video games, come to think of it. I’m starting to notice a pattern here.

What this is about is a bunch of people, who are trying to find eight “spirits”. This will save the world from something, I believe. When it ended, I wasn’t sure if they had done it or not. I may have missed whatever happened because I was so busy praying. Please oh lord, I know I haven’t been the most moral person ever, but I swear I will straighten up if you just give me this one break, and let this action part here be the climax so this god damn movie will end and we can all go home. If there is one more part where they talk about spirits or have that same boring dream about aliens or if there is another spirit they have to find inside a bird or a tree or something I’m gonna turn my red vines into an improvised noose.

It’s not like it’s really that dumb. There’s not too much bad comic relief or moronic plot twists. Well, there is this whole thing about the “phantoms.” These are these ghostly, transparent alien bug things that inhabit the cities. They look like ghosts and the people call them “phantoms” and the movie is called “The Spirits Within”, so I figured they were ghosts, right? But then the characters also refer to them as alien invaders, so I started thinking that they were actually aliens, but since they looked like ghosts the humans had nicknamed them “phantoms” and “spirits.” (more…)

3 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags:
Posted in Action, Cartoons and Shit, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »

Fantasia 2000

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

In 1940 the Walt Disney animation company unleashed a bold new experiment, Fantasia, a collection of animated pieces inspired by classical music. Unlike say a Bambi or a Pinocchio this is a movie with no dialogue or traditional feature length narrative story. In a stunning display of craftsmanship and artistic achievement the animators listened to the music and created stories, sometimes retelling a fairy tale like The Sorceror’s apprentice or riffing on some goofball premise like dancing hippoes or mushrooms. At fantasia’s best moments it triumphs in bold flourishes, splashing abstract type shapes across the screen or depicting evolution and the rise and fall of the dinosaurs. My favorite is the night of the bald mountain king sequence in which a demonic demon comes out of the mountain and all the ghosts fly up, and then afterwards a whole bunch of people are marching along with candles I believe.

This film fantasia was Mr. Disney’s attempt at respectability for the Artform of the funny cartoons however everyone pretty much told him to go fuck himself on that one. The movie received poor reviews, was cut down to 81 minutes and used as a b-movie on double bills, and even 22 years later Igor Stravinsky described it as “unresisting imbecility.” But I mean the dude’s name is Igor how do you expect him to behave, go get me a dead body Igor you piece of shit.

Anyway it wasn’t until the 1960s that LSD hit the market and people were more willing to sit through the movie. Today many film academics and grown adults who watch cartoons everyday believe that Fantasia is the best of the Disney cartoons. They recognize the uniqueness of the concept, the way it respects the cartooning as an Artform and seeks to elevate its craft, as well as the fine work done by the animationists and the musicians on the many great sequences. However I think the whole idea of this being the disney movie they most enjoy to watch is a HUGE load of shit, i mean tell me do you have more fun watching the pinocchio movie or watching this fantasia. And how many times have you watched it all the way through without falling asleep, pal, seriously I’m asking. (more…)

Unlike

Tags:
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Family, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | No Comments »

The Polar Express

Wednesday, November 10th, 2004

THE POLAR EXPRESS 3-D IMAX SPOOKARAMA

A few years back I wrote a piece called FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (working title: BORING: THE MOVIE). It is available on this web sight as well as in my collection 5 On the Outside. In the piece I talked about the wrongness of computer animators trying to create photorealistic human characters. I argued that no matter how real they looked they would never look completely real, because they wouldn’t be able to walk quite right, or have a human soul, etc. I guess I didn’t mention it in that piece but there was a scene in the movie where two realistic human characters kissed, and it was like watching mannequins go at it.

(For your information, there’s a porno called REAL DOLL: THE MOVIE where pornographic professionals like Ron Jeremy stick their penises inside ten thousand dollar silicone sex dummies. That movie is disturbing in a different way from FINAL FANTASY because the dolls are not moving and their faces don’t look alive. So it looks like these guys are having their way with dead bodies. But picture two of the dolls going at it with no animate objects involved. Then picture a rated PG version of that. That’s the scene in FINAL FANTASY, I guess. It’s not natural.)

Well nobody seemed to care back then but now many of the ideas I presented in that piece have worked their way into the mainstream, as reviewers of the new computerfied Robert Zemeckis Christmas fantasy THE POLAR EXPRESS have criticized the creepy, dead eyed look of its overly realistic computerized cartoon characters. Japanese roboticists have even expanded on my theories, calling it “the uncanny valley” where your ability to relate to a robot or cartoon character suddenly plunges as it gets closer to humanity. So Mickey Mouse is our buddy but final fantasies give us the willies. (more…)

4 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Family, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | No Comments »

Missing Persons

Tuesday, June 11th, 2002

First of all I saw MISSING PERSONS which is a low budget computer animated feature done by two twin brothers named Matt and Dan O’Donnell. At least I think there are two of them, they are twins. And no these are not the creepy american twin animators who speak with british accents, you’re thinking of the Quay brothers. This is a completely different set of twin animators, as far as I can tell.

The credits only list these two guys, and then the songs, so apparently they did the entire thing themselves (all the animation, all the voices, even apparently designed the software, etc.) so it’s pretty impressive. On the other hand, for this reason it is not always up to the technical standards expected by most grown adults who watch cartoons.

But that didn’t bother me too much, because underneath it you got real good characters and story and a completely original use of the cartoon type medium. The story is about two sets of characters who are connected by events but are not really related – there are no good guys and bad guys, or people opposing each other. You just got two relationships – an older cop who maybe sees too much in his eccentric/stupid young partner “Snookie”, and an ex-con drug dealer and his robot partner Computo. The drug dealers interested me more because early on Crazy Legs gets shot in half by cops (yes, SHOT in half – always worse than a mere CHOPPING in half) but is man enough to stick it out for a while. So he’s crawling around on his hands, dragging what’s left of his spine and intestines out the ass end, trying to accept his lot in life and get by just like you or me, but instead of discussing the films of the Cinema on the internet like us he just has a robot who sells shrooms for him. (more…)

Unlike

Tags:
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Reviews | No Comments »

Osmosis Jones

Friday, August 10th, 2001

This here is one of these live action/cartoon action combos. The live action portion is a story about Bill Murray gets sick from eating a dirty egg. The cartoons is represented by a story about a white blood cell cop (with the voice of Chris Rock) who teams up with Buzz Lightyear to fight off a virus in a city inside Bill Murray.

This is one of those clever ideas where it woulda took a normal person about five minutes to realize that wait a minute, this ain’t clever enough for hundreds of people to spend a year of their lives working on it. And it DEFINITELY ain’t clever enough for millions of innocents to sit through for 90 minutes. But the people of Warner Brothers Studio, Hollywood USA, they are not normal people. So they spent millions on this loser of an idea.

Okay, so the stomach is an airport, and the mouth is kind of like the docks, and viruses are criminals, and a flu shot is an informant, etc. They put some good thought into figuring out all this cleverness but then how are we supposed to invest ourselves in the characters of a cell and a pill? You have to because there’s not much humor in the cartoon parts except for puns like on the flinstones, except instead of having to do with rocks they have to do with bodily functions. Like the mayor is named Mayor Phlegming, etc.

I got an idea for you fellas, how about a movie called Laundry Matt. It’s about a sock named Matt who is looking for his lost twin brother. And all the different articles of clothing are people. And also the lint balls. There could be jokes about bras and panties too. Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Ha ha ha. What a charming and clever idea for a movie! (more…)

Unlike

Tags: ,
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 1 Comment »

The Prince of Egypt

Friday, December 17th, 1999

Subject: Re: Whats the *smallest* crowd you’ve seen a movie with?
Date: 12/17/1999
Author: Vern

Well I gotta admit when I was still drinking i went to see a cartoon about the bible. This was an american cartoon i believe not japanese so there was mostly kids in the audience, possibly christian. Maybe eight or ten kids plus parents which is a small audience in my opinion although not the smallest.

Well like I said this was when I was still drinking and i had done a lot of bible reading while I wa sin the can, so i guess I must have been pretty belligerent. the thing is these motherfuckers in the cartoon kept singing and what not which in my opinion was a pretty liberal interpretation of the text. so i’m yelling “THIS IS NOT IN THE BOOK, THIS IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT” or whatever and i guess the tone of the voice or whatever, some of the kids started to get scared. (more…)

Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Unlike

Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Drama, Family, Reviews | 1 Comment »

Toy Story 2

Friday, November 19th, 1999

Now correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Richard Pryor ALSO have a movie by the name of toy story. This was not one of mr. Pryor’s better pictures in my opinion, its the one where a rich white kid buys richard as a toy. He says “a big train set won’t do it for me dad, I need a famous black comic to degrade.” The basic type of humor is Richard falls in the water and runs around in fast speed while the piranhas bite him in the ass. This may have paved the way for many of the Sinbad pictures I’ve seen on cable however in MY opinion it still is not one of the high points in pryors career.

Well I guess you can tell that I’ve been out of the picture for a while because i never heard of this other toy story and here i thought this was going to be the new Richard Pryor. To be honest I promised some dudes over on alt.horror I was gonna review the End of Days this week, but I’m afraid I let them down. Arnold (who by the way I strongly suspect is a kraut despite his front as an all american restaranteur type dude) probably lifts weights as much as a lot of the guys inside. However what Richard has is a quick wit and ability to transform himself into a thousand characters, even animals or inanimated objects (he could have easily played an etchasketch or yoyo in this movie, and convincing as hell too). This is a funny motherfucker with some great fucking stories and even is attempting to go clean for quite a few years. In my new positive life it is this type of intelligent talents that I must value over the muscles. Arnold unfortunately is not a funny motherfucker judging by the 15 minutes of Jingle All of the Way I watched on tv tonight. That is got to be one of the worst executed pieces of comedy i have EVER fucking seen, even if you count the web sight Rob and Marge’s Laugh Central. Sorry arnold. Read a book.

Well as you probaly know by now if you’ve seen toy story 2, richard pryor isn’t in it at all. What this is is a VERY fucking strange story where the toys such as a cowboy doll and a spaceman named Buzz Lightyear come to life when your not looking. There is a fat dude who steals the cowboy doll. This is a dude who collects cowboys and when he gets all of them he’s going to sell them to a museum. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with this motherfucker he collects all this stuff and as far as I can tell doesn’t even like cowboys. He doesn’t have any cowboy toys in his house that he plans to keep and he doesn’t even wear boots or own a horse. In my opinion this is the same type of dude who runs the movie studios today, who likes money but not movies but maybe got fired from the bank or the US mint or wherever people who have a passion for money work. So he controls the movie studio from a little different perspective than any normal person with a beating heart who loves and enjoys the Cinema artform. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags:
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Comedy/Laffs, Family, Reviews, Vern Tells It Like It Is | No Comments »

Princess Mononoke

Monday, November 8th, 1999

Well damn man this is the problem I’m having. Apathy. Lack of participation. Nobody likes me. Etc.

Now don’t get me wrong, I really really appreciate you motherfuckers who read the column. You know who you are. But it’s hard when a dude pours his heart into a thing like this and nobody fucking cares.

Now okay, I can’t make you care about an old ex-con who is currently facing a possible lawsuit due to an incident which occured on the evening of October 31st on my own fucking property. It’s up to you to show a little fucking human emotion and caring, in my opinion.

What I’m asking is this though. I know there are like two or three of you motherfuckers who CLAIM you like my Writing. IF in fact that is the case you gotta help me out man. Now if I was Writing a book, or a fucking newspaper, or god help me a fucking talk show monologue – okay, if that was the case, you motherfuckers would be perfectly appropriate just sitting there on your ass not sayin nothing.

HOWEVER, this is the medium of THE FUCKING WEB which is about INTERACTIVE Writing and etc. It is not a passive medium in my opinion and anyone who thinks a web Sight should be the same as a newspaper I would like to talk to a motherfucker who believes that I have a few choice words for the little prick. (more…)

Unlike

Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Reviews, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 4 Comments »

Page 3 of 3123