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Archive for the ‘Cartoons and Shit’ Category

Robots

Friday, March 11th, 2005

What this one is about is robots. It’s a movie about robots, so they called it ROBOTS. You see how that works? Movie is about robots = title is ROBOTS. That is the level of imagination and innovation we are working with here in America circa 2005. Ain’t life beautiful.

Before I go on, I gotta warn everybody, just because a movie is in IMAX doesn’t mean it’s in 3-D. I saw GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS and POLAR EXPRESS there and the 3-D made those worthwhile, and I swear on THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST: RENAILED that is the one and only reason why I went to see this ROBOTS. Now obviously I would prefer if a 3-D movie was a horror or a part 3, something where either a shark or an eyeball is gonna pop out of the screen at some time. But I have accepted that now 3-D is for kids movies only so a man’s gotta settle. I didn’t mind payin my ten bucks but then when I walked into the theater and there was no goggles, I realized that I was finally suffering the consequences of my ignorance about Imax. I knew this day would come. ROBOTS is not in 3-D. Sheeit. (read the rest of this shit…)

Lil’ Pimp

Monday, November 15th, 2004

Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…

No, seriously. The one and only Vern has returned with a new review of the seemingly in-limbo animated film, LI’L PIMP. Dig in:

Howdy boys,

Dark days have descended upon the Vern compound here in the bright blue upper left corner of the American map, and they hit me like a basketball to the nose. Just sitting here naively preparing for one of them ewok celebrations they used to have. Fireworks shootin off everywhere, a bunch of little dudes dancing around playing drums on Homeland Security helmets. I was high off publishing my first book and was feeling real optimistic. I felt the world was gonna change for the better and I looked fondly forward to the future, to a day when my fellow countrymen and women could hold their heads high and swell their chests with pride. Also to BLADE 3 next month.

Then, not sure what happened, somewhere around November 2nd or 3rd I just plunged into a bottomless funk. Not the good Clyde Stubblefield kind. The bad kind, where you’re sad and crap. The kind where you stumble around aimlessly and start behaving strangely. Maybe you watch GARFIELD and write a bizarre, rambling essay about it, to name one example. Who knows what could happen while you are in this state of the blues. (read the rest of this shit…)

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.) (read the rest of this shit…)

That Trailer Trash Bastard VERN reviews some scribbly cartoon called SPIRITED AWAY by Miyazaki!

Friday, August 2nd, 2002

Hey folks, Harry here… I finally met Vern when I went to Seattle recently. Just so you know, Vern is actually a Paul Bunyon looking muther. He’s literally like 6’11” 310lbs – solid as a granite dildo slammed home! He has most of his original teeth, and a few he’s knocked out of others’ heads that he keeps in a ju-ju medicine bag that hangs around his neck – “Nobody fucks with the Vern!” – He reminds me of a redneck John Sayles. Without further thumb twiddling, here’s Vern…

Dear Harry,

Usually I address my stories to you AND moriarty, but now that you’ve been to seattle, it’s like we have some kind of bond, you know. who needs that old “professor” joker anyway. all he does is drone on and on. “this is a great little piece of character acting” blah blah blah. Isn’t he still on 1986 in the best of the ’90s list? GET IT THE FUCK TOGETHER, moriarty. jesus. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Powerpuff Girls

Thursday, July 4th, 2002

What this is about is hard to explain. It’s a cartoon about a professor who creates these three little girls. They have super powers to fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes and basically anything that pussy Superman can do. Only they have big round heads, giant eyes, and no fingers. And the professor is all made out of squares. At the same time he creates them in a laboratory accident he doesn’t know he also gives his pet monkey a giant brain. The monkey goes off to live in exile, plotting his revenge which involves monkeys and robots. Then there is fighting. (read the rest of this shit…)

SIFF: OUTLAW VERN Sees PISTOL OPERA and MISSING PERSONS!!

Tuesday, June 11th, 2002

Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

I’m giddy. I get to publish reviews by Outlaw Vern and Clarence Beaks, two of my favorite AICN contributors, in the same day. Vern’s in Seattle, checking out the scene at the Seattle International Film Festival, and has the following report to file:

Dear Harry and Moriarty,

Vern here. I saw two more movies at SIFF and here is what they are.

MISSING PERSONS

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. (read the rest of this shit…)

Waking Life

Wednesday, May 8th, 2002

It took me a while to get to this one because 1) cartoons are only for children and 2) it wasn’t nominated for the best animated feature oscar so it must not have been any good. so I watched Jimmy Neutron instead.

Actually that is all bullshit. I know this movie was beloved by critics and people alike. I even talked to one dude who hates all Richard Linklaters other movies but liked this one. As you probaly already know this is a movie that Linklater shot on digital video, then had computer animators paint over the video in their computer programs and turn it into surreal computer art type business. What the plot is about is this kid is dreaming, but he can’t wake up, and everywhere he goes people talk to him about free will or lucid dreaming or show off that they have some wacky quirk like they pretend their car is a boat. (read the rest of this shit…)

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. (read the rest of this shit…)

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Wednesday, July 11th, 2001

(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. (read the rest of this shit…)

Walking with Dinosaurs

Tuesday, September 26th, 2000

This was my final destination for VERN’S DOCUMENTARY WEEK, the BBC series that got so much attention a few months back when it played on the discovery channel. But who the fuck watches discovery channel, how was I supposed to know.

Anyway you may be thinking, “This is not a documentary you asswipe,” in which case you’d be right. But it IS stylistically based on the documentary type form and “thus” is appropriate to discuss in context with other fine discovery channel type works such as American Pimp and Hated: GG Allin Wiping Shit On Himself.

Now I know there’s gonna be some tightass out there yanking his hair out at the very thought of me lumping this in with documentaries. There are some people who are very sensitive about the line between documentary and fiction being blurred. If we can’t trust the movies to reflect life exactly as it is without interjecting a point of view or entertainment factor, who CAN we trust? Obviously not the news! I guess there are many ethics involved in the documentarian code of honor, so some morons were even trying to make it a controversy when they found out that the Hughes brothers had paid money to be able to film the Player’s Ball Pimp Awards for their fine aforementioned pimpumentary.

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THINK, asshole. They’re pimps! That’s what they do, they pimp. Jesus fucking christ you fucking backseat documentarians.  (read the rest of this shit…)