Round 1, Bout 3: TEAM VIDEO GAMES vs. THE MEN FROM HONG KONG
MORTAL KOMBAT: THE ANIMATED VIDEO, aka MORTAL KOMBAT: THE JOURNEY BEGINS was a straight-to-VHS-and-Laserdisc release made as a tie-in with Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 live action theatrical MORTAL KOMBAT movie. The cover boasts that it allows you to “GO ONE STEP BEYOND VIRTUAL REALITY WITH 3D ANIMATION LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE!”
It is true that I’ve never seen animation like this before, but only because most people who would make it would know it was not good enough to release on a video. This video alternates between substandard Saturday morning cartoon type drawn animation and extremely crude animatic type computer animation. More on that in a minute. (read the rest of this shit…)
It’s hard out there in Neo-Tokyo. I don’t have to tell you guys. I’m sure shit was even worse right after the old Tokyo got nuked, but it’s still no picnic. You got a police state trying to crack down on all the protesters, not just the terrorists setting off bombs everywhere. You got cultists carrying on about the end times and the second coming, and it doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it used to. All you can really do is go to bars, buy capsules, steal motorcycles, customize ’em, then get out there with your friends and attack some other gang, chase ’em through the streets, hit ’em in the head with pipes, try to murder them. That’s what childhood pals Kaneda and Tetsuo do, fighting some clowns. And I don’t mean that like jokers or bozos, but an actual gang of guys who wear clown makeup. I don’t see any juggalo type symbols on them, so I’m not sure if it’s that type of deal or not.
Anyway, it’s the only fun a young man has these days and the cops even interfere with that. Ruin everything. (read the rest of this shit…)
I am an individual who thirsts for knowledge and understanding, so I figured I should find out more about where these GI JOE movies come from. In my review of GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA I explained how the Ain’t It Cool Newsies put a nerd fatwah on me for saying GI JOE was based on a toy commercial, and made me read some comic books and admit that i could see how somebody good could turn the GI Joe saga into a colorful action movie with fun gimmicks and larger than life characters.
But since them I’ve talked to other dudes who never knew of the comics but have a nostalgic attachment to the toys and cartoons they grew up on, even if they know they’re dumb. And these cartoon-faction Joeists insisted I watch GI JOE: THE MOVIE, a 90 minute cartoon extravaganza intended for theatrical release IN 1987 but then it went DTV because, let’s face it, it was more of a TV cartoon than a motion picture. A reverse TOY STORY 2. It’s really something though. (read the rest of this shit…)
For some reason I am reviewing THE ARISTOCATS. You gotta fuck around and try out different shit sometimes, as my dear grandmother used to say.
THE ARISTOCATS is not one of the better Walt Disney pictures in my opinion. It was the first one they made after Disney’s death, although he’d approved it before he died. It seems to rehash parts of LADY AND THE TRAMP and 101 DALMATIONS without being as good as either. At the beginning a nice old rich lady in Paris is drawing up her will and since she has no living relatives she wants to leave it all to her cat Duchess (Eva Gabor, the same voice as Miss Bianca in THE RESCUERS) and her three kittens. This is upsetting to her human butler, who responds by giving the cats date rape drugs and abandoning them out in the country.
For a second I was thinking I’d already seen this, it was so familiar, but then I realized I was thinking of GARFIELD: A TALE OF TWO KITTIES, which had almost the same plot. But great minds think alike, you know. (read the rest of this shit…)
Remember how they made two DTV sequels to STARSHIP TROOPERS? Now there’s a new one, but I think the world will be sharply divided over whether we consider this part 4 or not. It does continue the futuristic bug war star trooping of Captain Carmen Ibanez (originally Denise Richards, now Luci Christian), master psychic Carl “It’s afraid!” Jenkins (originally Neil Patrick Harris, now Justin Doran) and Johnny Rico (now promoted to General). But one thing they did different, they gave it to the Japanese animation director Shinji Aramaki (APPLESEED) to computer it up. Now instead of deliberately white bread humans it’s creepy Real Doll type animated characters sort of along the lines of FINAL FANTASY and those types of computer animated pictures. (read the rest of this shit…)
After seeing WAR HORSE I wanted to see something about a civilian horse, so I watched this 2002 animated cartoon movie about a horse running wild in the old west. I guess his name is Spirit. I guess he is a stallion. I guess he lives in one of the places that is called Cimarron. I’m not sure which one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Word of warning: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is really only about 1 (one) specific adventure that this guy Tintin has, it’s not about all of his adventures. I don’t know if that was a typo or a mistranslation or what but it’s fucking bullshit.
Tintin (Jamie Bell from UNDERTOW) is a boy reporter from Belgium. I think. But I don’t remember them specifying where it was or having Belgian accents, and I didn’t notice any cameos by famous Belgians like Jean-Claude Van Damme and other famous Belgians. But I’ve read it’s based on a Belgian comic strip. (read the rest of this shit…)
The most philosophically ambitious of the 3 PG-rated movies I watched is the one that’ll probly get the least credit for it, George Motherfuckin Two Men Enter One Man Leaves Miller’s HAPPY FEET TWO. And first of all I want to give them credit for spelling out the number in their sequel title and not misspelling it for a pun. I’m sure it’s not the first spelled out non-homonym sequel title in history, but I couldn’t name you another one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Let me tell you man, I’m not trying to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this movie. There’s no celebration here at all. It’s just analysis, I swear.
I saw FINAL FANTASY in the theater when it came out, found it incredibly boring, and really didn’t want to ever watch it again. Here is my review from back then. But I thought it was important to revisit for this study because, despite being a huge financial and artistic failure this movie did break alot of new ground that has turned out to be relevant to the movies of the decade since.
Not too long ago, as you know, I reviewed the animated cartoon movie BEBE’S KIDS. Today I want to acknowledge that there could never be a BEBE’S KIDS – or God forbid even a ROVER DANGERFIELD – if it wasn’t for Walt Disney and friends breaking ground nearly 75 years ago with the first feature length animation cartoon, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS.
I want to start occasionally Expanding My Horizons by reviewing respected or historically important movies that aren’t normally the type of thing I watch or write about. I think this way we can all learn together and I can be less repetitive and also be one of those worldly renaissance type dudes. But the real reason I rented this is that I got a new set-up. The high defintion type TV prices went down this Christmas so I finally scraped together enough cash to get one of those, and a cheap off-brand blu-ray player on the side. SNOW WHITE was recommended to me as one of the more impressive blu-ray transfers, and my sources weren’t lying. The thing looks so vivid you feel like you’re standing face to face with the original watercolor paintings. And some of them are still wet.
(By the way if you didn’t know a cartoon is a series of drawings and paintings shown in quick succession to create the illusion of dwarfs and animals dancing around, etc.) (read the rest of this shit…)
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VERN on Dragon Blade: “Sorry about that Crudnasty, I have now changed it to “late-period” just to make sure nobody else gets a scare.” Feb 25, 18:24
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RBatty024 on Dragon Blade: “I watched this one a long time ago, but I agree that it’s a lot better than you’d expect. I…” Feb 25, 13:37
Round 1, Bout 3: TEAM VIDEO GAMES vs. THE MEN FROM HONG KONG
It’s hard out there in Neo-Tokyo. I don’t have to tell you guys. I’m sure shit was even worse right after the old Tokyo got nuked, but it’s still no picnic. You got a police state trying to crack down on all the protesters, not just the terrorists setting off bombs everywhere. You got cultists carrying on about the end times and the second coming, and it doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it used to. All you can really do is go to bars, buy capsules, steal motorcycles, customize ’em, then get out there with your friends and attack some other gang, chase ’em through the streets, hit ’em in the head with pipes, try to murder them. That’s what childhood pals Kaneda and Tetsuo do, fighting some clowns. And I don’t mean that like jokers or bozos, but an actual gang of guys who wear clown makeup. I don’t see any juggalo type symbols on them, so I’m not sure if it’s that type of deal or not.
I am an individual who thirsts for knowledge and understanding, so I figured I should find out more about where these GI JOE movies come from. In my review of 
For some reason I am reviewing THE ARISTOCATS. You gotta fuck around and try out different shit sometimes, as my dear grandmother used to say.
After seeing WAR HORSE I wanted to see something about a civilian horse, so I watched this 2002 animated cartoon movie about a horse running wild in the old west. I guess his name is Spirit. I guess he is a stallion. I guess he lives in one of the places that is called Cimarron. I’m not sure which one. 
Word of warning: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is really only about 1 (one) specific adventure that this guy Tintin has, it’s not about all of his adventures. I don’t know if that was a typo or a mistranslation or what but it’s fucking bullshit.
The most philosophically ambitious of the 3 PG-rated movies I watched is the one that’ll probly get the least credit for it, George Motherfuckin Two Men Enter One Man Leaves Miller’s HAPPY FEET TWO. And first of all I want to give them credit for spelling out the number in their sequel title and not misspelling it for a pun. I’m sure it’s not the first spelled out non-homonym sequel title in history, but I couldn’t name you another one.
Let me tell you man, I’m not trying to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this movie. There’s no celebration here at all. It’s just analysis, I swear.
Not too long ago, as you know, I reviewed the animated cartoon movie BEBE’S KIDS. Today I want to acknowledge that there could never be a BEBE’S KIDS – or God forbid even a ROVER DANGERFIELD – if it wasn’t for Walt Disney and friends breaking ground nearly 75 years ago with the first feature length animation cartoon, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS.
