“This ‘weird creature’ is a human!”
FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST is a well-meaning but not so great movie that was more successful than most of the non-Disney animated features in this very strange early ‘90s period. It didn’t make a ton of money, but it seemed to capture the imagination of some kids, and even got a DTV sequel in 1998. I would venture to guess it will be the most normal animated feature of summer ’92, but like most of the movies that were trying to compete with Disney without doing something drastically different from them, it feels kinda off and out of touch.
It reunites PUMP UP THE VOLUME couple Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis, this time with Mathis as the lead and Slater as the jealous secondary boy in her life. Mathis (before SUPER MARIO BROS.) plays a hummingbird-sized fairy named Crysta, and Slater is her shirtless male friend Pips. They fly around and can turn into blue and green (respectively) light and they live in a rainforest that’s supposed to be in Australia and has kangaroos and platypuses living in it. Also there are little goblin guys voiced by Cheech and Chong who fly around on large beetles, but I was a little distracted that they sit on top of their wings, so the beetles seem to just magically float. (read the rest of this shit…)
I was recently interviewed on a podcast and this is a little different from any I’ve done before so I wanted to say something about it.
April 3, 1992
“Just like you said, the wind’s shifting. Everyone’s gonna get it.”
It doesn’t seem like it yet in my part of the world, but summer is almost here, and that means that I will once again be starting a summer movie retrospective. This year I’ve decided to look back at the summer of 30 years ago in a series I’m calling 1992 – WEIRD SUMMER. ‘Cause it was kind of a weird summer, you know? The overall selection of films was unusual, and a bunch of the movies – even the big blockbuster sequels – were not exactly aimed at the normal people with the normal tastes. I’ll try to review most of the major movies of interest, and when applicable I plan to zero in on the theme of weirdness (both intentional and unintentional), the artists who managed to push weirdness into major movies, and how people reacted to it at the time. 
RICKY POWELL: THE INDIVIDUALIST is a 2020 documentary about the late New York City photographer/scenester who documented the golden age of hip hop and the ‘80s New York City art scene. Most of us know of him because of a line in a Beastie Boys song – he grew up with Ad Rock and went with them on their tours for around a decade, hanging out and taking photos. He also took many famous pictures of Run DMC, LL Cool J and Public Enemy.
So far I have watched all the Marvelous Cinematical Unabomber motion pictures and related Disney+ streaming television works, and I have enjoyed the majority of them. But fuck all that. What’s important here is that DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS is the first movie Sam Raimi has directed since 
RAGE AND HONOR II: HOSTILE TAKEOVER was released only a year later (1993), but it’s made by a whole new team. It’s the only narrative feature directed by Guy Norris, an Australian stunt legend who had been on the team for 
RAGE AND HONOR (1992) opens in black and white – first, grainy high contrast footage of the city, maybe 16mm, then camcorder footage with scanlines – following leather-jacketed Kris Fairfield (Cynthia Rothrock) in an empty high school class room, finishing up her day of work and heading home. I assumed this was a reference to the Michelle Pfeiffer tough-and-inspirational-inner-city-teacher movie 
TIGER CLAWS II (1996) starts with 
Chong sits and meditates, ignoring him at first, then casually taking the club from him. Unfortunately he doesn’t do anything with it.
