Editorial: About the Academy Awards

 

Well, this month has been rather quiet in the face of animated releases, other than a few trailers and announcements, so let's do another editorial. This time, I wanted to talk about something that I felt very strongly about, had a deep passion for and could talk about for hours, but instead I figured it would be more pertinent to talk about the Oscars.

What are the Oscars? Not in the literal sense, in the sense of "What do they mean"? Like the question "What is Love?" or "What is the meaning of life?" we aren't asking those questions in the literal sense of the question, I mean we know that love is a feeling and life has a dictionary definition, but in the more meta sense of it all, what really IS love, and does life have a true purpose? In the literal sense, the Oscars, or the Academy Awards are film industry awards given for artistic and technical merit given out every year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and are widely perceived as a very prestigious award. These awards are given by category including "Best Picture", "Best Costume Design", "Best Film Editing", "Best Actor", "Best Documentary Feature" and so on and so forth. These awards have been given out since the late 20s and are still a highly discussed and anticipated event to this day. That is what the Oscars are in the literal sense of the question, but what are they beyond the literal meaning?

Are the Oscars really a prestigious award? Is it all just a marketing gimmick? Is it just a bunch of film people patting themselves on the back? In my opinion, the Oscars are nothing, not even a joke. Jokes mean something, I don't think that the Oscars mean anything.

Like, let's be real here, do any of us actually watch a movie because the Oscars nominated it? Is our enjoyment of a movie lessened because it didn't win an award? Let's be real here, most of us only care about the awards because we want to advertise our favourite movies, it's award season where everybody says "Hey X Movie is an academy award nominee, go check it out" or it's after award season where everybody goes "hey, X Movie won the Academy Award for Y, go check it out!" and I'm fine with that, I really am, I mean a large part of why I am doing this blog is essentially to tell people to watch the movies that I like, or at the very least it is a nice bonus. However, I do think we need to stop pretending like the awards actually do mean anything.

Let's take the "Best Picture" award for example. Tell me, have you ever heard of "Cavalcade" from 1933? How about "The Great Ziegfeld" from 1936? "Marty" from 1955? "Tom Jones" from 1963? "Ordinary People" from 1980? I mean, you might have if you're a serious film buff, or you're a serious watcher of every Oscar winning movie, because all of those movies not only got nominated, but won the award. You know what movie was not nominated for the "Best Picture" award? "Back to the Future", one of the most iconic and beloved movies of the 1980s, but apparently "Hannah and Her Sisters", "Prizzi's Honor" and "Tender Mercies" are the movies that are going to be remembered forever. Yes, I know that it is tough to predict what will be remembered and what will not, but it really does surprise me that "Out of Africa" was the best movie of 1985, when that year gave us "Brazil", "Weird Science", "The Goonies", "Clue" and "Back to the Future".

Sometimes absolutely awful movies also get nominated, screw "Dead Poets Society", I hate that movie, and I refuse to watch "Rain Man" on principle. Also, "The Godfather Part III"? To be fair, the "Best Picture" winner of 1990 was "Dances with Wolves", which is hilarious to me as a fan of "The Red Green Show". Does anybody even care about "Shakespeare in Love" anymore? Granted my favourite movie of all time is an Academy Award Best Picture Winner, 2010's "The King's Speech", but it isn't my favourite movie because of its award status, honestly I'm surprised it won at all considering 2010 also saw "Black Swan", "Inception" and "True Grit" nominated. Really, that point is moot when you take into consideration that only two of my favourite movies were even nominated for "Best Picture", and only one of them won. "The Shawshank Redemption" lost to "Forrest Gump".

Oh, but you really, REALLY want to talk about pointless, let's talk about the Oscars and animated movies. So far, only three animated movies have been nominated for "Best Picture", "Beauty and the Beast", "Up" and "Toy Story 3", all deserving movies definitely, but that's it? Not "The Lion King"? or "Spirted Away"? or "Waltz with Bashir"? No, these movies, if they get nominated at all, get to be nominated for "Best Animated Feature". Since 2001, the Academy Awards have included a "Best Animated" Feature category, and granted this one generally has less to gripe about, however, the amount of animated features released that could be nominated for the award is not that much compared to live-action movies. This can and has lead to films like "Puss in Boots", "Shark Tale" and "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" being nominated for the award, because... why? No really, why? Like, why "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius"? Was 2001 really lacking in animated releases? Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (A god awful movie but it could have easily fit in with the typical Oscar selections), Waking Life, but nope, Jimmy Neutron was the one that needed to be nominated.

Granted the Academy does nominate some lesser known animated movies, like in 2003 they nominated "The Triplets of Belleville", 2007 they nominated "Persepolis" and 2016 they nominated both "My Life as a Zucchini" and "The Red Turtle", so that does give these movies some good exposure to people who would otherwise pass them over, but a lot of people often feel like this category is just lip-service to the medium.

Really, I don't see why anyone should care about the Academy Awards. A lot of the movies that won the biggest award, "Best Picture", are not movies we remember, and the movies that weren't even nominated are movies that everyone remembers and usually loves. It's like that joke about Pitchfork, you can tell an album is good when Pitchfork gives it a 6/10, but you can tell an album is great when Pitchfork gives it a 2/10. It's like that, because so many of the movies that have become pop culture staples, they usually did not get nominated for "Best Picture", seriously, go through the list and see which award winners you've even heard of. Really, that is the big thing about the Academy Awards, they don't mean anything because they're not meant to mean anything. The Academy does not make a movie a timeless classic, time does, and what movies are considered "timeless classics" can change with time, people were saying "Avatar" was going to be one of the most beloved movies of all time, and yeah, it's still somewhat iconic, but the rate it's hype just died down, and "Avatar" didn't even win the 2009 "Best Picture" award, "The Hurt Locker" did. It just goes to show, fad truly is one letter away from fade.

Oh, and to all of you who are like "Oh, I don't care about the Oscars anyway", yeah, keep telling yourself that as you check to see if "Encanto" beat "Raya and the Last Dragon", or as you rant on Twitter if it looses, or celebrate if it wins. Yeah, you do care on some level, and on some level even I do, because I wrote this damn blog, but if you want an editorial about "Academy Award Nominees" or "Why X movie should have won the award instead of Y", sorry, you're not gonna get it out of me, because from this point on, I make zero plans to care about the Academy Awards.

DuckTales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990) - A fun, if basic, movie based on a fun TV Series.

Last year I posted an editorial about the 2017 DuckTales reboot. Originally I wanted it to build up to this review, however, because I wanted to review Into The Spider-verse in December, and I normally take January off, the actual reveal that I was going to review this movie would have been really clunky. Still, DuckTales 2017 is one of my favourite TV Shows of all time, and the original 1987 series remains a fun, iconic, and significant piece of Animation History, being one of the kickstarts to the Disney Renaissance, which a lot of people forget was also a huge television thing as Disney was producing hit series after hit series around the same time in the Disney Afternoon. While DuckTales has aged, its impact cannot be overlooked, being one of the most beloved Disney cartoons, and having one of the most beloved licensed video games. Which makes it curious that not a lot of people really talk about the movie. Does that mean that the movie is the weakest entry in the DuckTales franchise?

Our favourite treasure hunting ducks find the lost treasure of Collie Baba, but an evil sorcerer steals the treasure and sends them to their supposed doom. However, because this is the Duck family, they survive and escape with a single oil lamp. Unfortunately, this is what the sorcerer, Merlock (Yes that did make me think of World of Warcraft a lot), was after, for this oil lamp contained a genie. So, Merlock and his henchman, Dijon, hunt down the lamp as Scrooge, the Nephews and Webby all make their own wishes. Plot wise, I don't think movie has a lot of surprises, you can probably guess that the henchman is gonna turn on the villain for his own selfish wishes, and the villain will get his hands on the McGuffin somehow, and do I even need to spoil what the Genie's arc is? Still, the plot wasn't sloppy, and it flowed very well. Much like Klaus, the plot is not bad, just predictable.

That being said, sometimes it is fun to watch characters you love going through a familiar plot, probably why so many of these movies based on TV shows are road trip movies... Anyway, these are the same characters we know and love from the original TV show, Scrooge and The Nephews and Webby and Launchpad and Mrs. Beakley. I do wish we got some cameos from other favourite characters, like Gizmoduck, Gyro Gearloose, and hey, the villain was an evil sorcerer, why couldn't we have Magica DeSpell here as well? To be fair, they do add the new characters of Genie, Dijon and Merlock. Dijon, who would in the reboot become Faris Djinn, is not the greatest character. In a post "Trouble with Apu" world I can see this character not sitting well with some viewers, as for me, he wasn't too bad, but I am not in much of a position to make a fair call. I think it might have been that he was not as bad as I thought he'd be, but when you imagine the worst, anything is an improvement. As for the other two, they were pretty fun. Genie is voiced by Rip Taylor, and that is as fun as it sounds. Merlock is voiced by Christopher Lloyd, and it is a Christopher Lloyd performance. He's one of those voices that immediately makes a great villain, up there with Vincent Price and Tim Curry. I will say that Merlock does have his dumb moments, like trying to press an elevator button as a cockroach, when he was alone. Still, he was a fun villain, but maybe not as good as Magica DeSpell or the Reboot's Flintheart Glomgold.

The technicals of the movie are really good, although Disney obviously handed this movie off to a smaller studio, DisneyMovie Toons to be exact, and it does not look as good as Disney's more cinematic movies. Honestly, it is kind of a shame, I would have loved to see this movie be given the same budget and time as something like The Little Mermaid or Rescuers Down Under, but looking at what we got, this movie still looks great. It was released theatrically, which does mean that the animation does have to look cleaner and of a higher quality, but I think it works well enough here, the characters don't look too clean or too well animated to throw anyone off. The music was done by David Newman, who worked with Disney before on Tim Burton's short film Frankenweenie, and also did the scores for The War of the Roses, The Brave Little Toaster and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It was a pretty solid score done here, well enough that I might pick up the soundtrack if I happen to find a copy.

So with all that you may think the movie is fine, if a little generic, and yeah, it can be. However, the key to any adventure story is the adventure, and I think this movie was a fun and often somewhat intense adventure. The scene where Merlock is transforming Scrooge's money bin to an admittedly absurd evil fortress (seriously Bowser is not that extra) is a scene I actually have a vague memory of one moment from that sequence as a kid, and it being oddly terrifying to me, maybe it was the harsh reds and dark greys. Even then, when the movie is having a thrilling scene, it can be rather thrilling, I can imagine young children would really get into the more intense moments. Even when the movie is not having a thrilling moment and is just having a more mundane and slice-of-life moment, it's still a charming watch. I enjoyed watching the Nephews and Webby interact with Genie, I enjoyed watching Scrooge interact with Genie, I enjoyed these characters in this scenario.

DuckTales The Movie can be a bit of a predictable watch. I will not hide the fact, however, if you can look past that you will find an exciting adventure, charming characters and some wonderful animation and music. I can definitely say that I enjoyed this movie, so if you love DuckTales, love fun adventures, or just want a fun movie to kill an hour and a bit, I can say check this movie out. It's fun, charming and enjoyable, if a little bit predictable. A definite Recommendation from me!

First Impressions: The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022)

Disney... We need to talk.

Look, I get it, movies get scrapped for a variety of reasons, it sucks but I can overlook the canning of Nimona if something super spectacular comes along to take its place. In Nimona's place, you gave us Raya and the Last Dragon, a movie that is just fine, and nothing else. You gave us Cruella, which did not need to exist. You gave us Encanto, which almost makes up for Nimona, but then you bring a Blue Sky property back to life for... why? Why are you bringing back Ice Age? Nobody is clamoring for the return of this franchise, because the franchise started going downhill with the second movie.

On principle I don't want to watch this, because let's look at the facts. Fact number one, Disney acquired Blue Sky during the Fox acquisition. Fact two, Disney closed down Blue Sky in 2021. Fact three; Blue Sky was working on an adaptation of the graphic novel "Nimona", which a lot of people were anticipating. Fact four; Disney decided to scrap the Nimona project, along with a bunch of other promising projects that Blue Sky was working on. Fact Five; The next thing we see from a Blue Sky property is a sequel to an Ice Age movie that goes directly to Disney+ in January. The facts show that Disney cut a movie that a lot of people were anticipating and gave us a movie for a franchise a lot of people wanted to stay dead. If I wasn't giving the benefit of the doubt, I would assume that Disney only greenlit this movie as a show, to say "See, we do care about this studio and their franchises", despite giving us a garbage movie and saying "well clearly you guys don't care about the franchises, I mean look at the viewer results".

I'm giving Disney the benefit of the doubt here, despite the fact that I highly doubt they've actually earned it. Companies operate on how much money a product could make, but I have doubts that Ice Age would make more money than a movie that a lot of people were vocally excited about. I can only assume Disney either did not know about the hype surrounding Nimona, or they were aware of the hype but were afraid of pissing off some bigoted market, and let's just say, Disney is no stranger to editing movies for said bigoted countries.

Oh and let's talk about other movies that Disney is planning on releasing, like that Snow White remake that Peter Dinklage has called out for dwarfism, and also could be a movie with the Snow White tag on it. Disney's also releasing another Rio movie, that'll be fun to talk about. Oh yeah, and Turning Red is gonna be Pixar's next movie to go directly to streaming. Which leaves me wondering if Pixar is gonna be the next Blue Sky and we're gonna get a Toy Story 5 out of it, but let's not dwell on that topic anymore. Disney has been making a lot of bad decisions, and the new Ice Age and Rio movies might just be the worst of them. Well, of their recent decisions, I mean their messing up of Copyright Law and the hiring of Eisner and Katzenburg might have been worse than this one, but that is talking with the added benefit of hindsight.

Why was all of that important? Because, screw Disney!

As a huge Disney fan, I can say without any hesitation, screw Disney, and I'm keeping it there because I do want to keep my swearing to a minimum with this blog. Disney represents the very worst of the entertainment industry, at least the entertainment industry that doesn't include video games, but we'll see which company they end up acquiring. Disney is devoid of creativity, almost discouraging creativity, does not listen to their audiences, and aren't even very good at pandering or virtue signaling. Disney makes great products, on occasion. I wasn't kidding when I said Encanto was Disney's best film in years, and it sadly might be Disney's best film for another few years. Disney has and can give us a lot of the best stuff, while representing the worst of it all. That is why I can say, screw Disney.

And screw this movie too, it's dull and boring and unfunny. No disrespect to the people who worked on it, but it really does feel like a TV show that was retooled into a movie, something Disney has a shocking amount of knowledge about. Did Michael Eisner really leave Disney? Because this seems like something he would suggest. It has all the failings of a movie that was meant to be a TV series, because this movie was meant to be a TV series. Quite frankly, I'd say don't watch this movie on principle, but it's not even worth breaking those principles for, and quite frankly, I think I should be paid to watch movies like this. Screw Disney, don't watch this movie.

First Impressions: The House (2022)

 

Netflix, Netflix, Netflix. I have made my thoughts on Netflix quite clear in the past, they peddle a lot of crap under the "Netflix Original" brand and if they don't shape up they are going to go down the same tube as Steam, with really the key difference being that Steam is a store-front, having Steam is free and buying your games is what costs you. Netflix is a service, you pay for the service of watching movies and TV "for free", which is a whole argument in and of itself but that is irrelevant. Netflix has released some good movies in the past, Klaus and Arlo the Alligator Boy were good movies and could have really meant something for Netflix, if they didn't share the same spotlight as trash like Pets United, Duck Duck Goose and Vanguard's dumpster fires of animated movies. It really does say something that a lot of the big animation reviewers I follow like Cellspex and Animated Antic, rarely even talk about these movies with a few exceptions. Netflix has gone from the king of the hill to desperately sticking its name to anything to stay on top.

So I consider myself obligated to look at The House, a brand new anthology film brought to us by Netflix and Nexus Studios, a studio that is most likely known for music videos and a couple short films under their belt. I can't really find a full list of their work, not even on their official website, but it does look like they aren't strangers in the industry. The House caught my eye from Cellspex, who tweeted about it and said she was glad to see another animated horror entry. On top of that, it was a stop-motion feature and an anthology film, both of which I am eager to talk more about on this blog. So we have another entry where I'll be asking the question, does this sink Netflix's reputation even lower? Or can it help save them?

As mentioned prior, The House is an anthology film, consisting of three stories that revolve around a peculiar house. I guess I'll give you my initial thoughts on each story and then give a more general overview of the movie.

Our first story follows a poor family of four as they are given the opportunity to move into this fantastic new house. However, things start to go strange as they spend their first night in the house. I do have to say that the atmosphere was delightfully unsettling, with all the little ways that we can tell the parents are getting a bit too sucked into this world. It's almost like a Twilight Zone episode in a way, I'd actually really be interested in seeing what an animated Twilight Zone series would be like, but regardless this was a good first story to the movie. I really can't go much more into it without spoiling it, so while I do have some nitpicks, those delve into the spoiler zone, and unlike Onward, my feelings about this segment do not hinge around one big reveal.

The second segment follows a developer, who is an anthropomorphic rat, as he preps the house for a showing. The atmosphere in this one is perfect, the white noise of the place is all that you will hear in the background for most of it. The hum of electronics and the sounds of the street perfectly give us the setting and the mood. Anxiety is the main mood of this segment, and it can make this a bit of an uncomfortable watch, and there is also a segment where the lighting is a rapidly flashing array of colours like a really bad rave. It also has a really strange musical dance sequence, which was actually kind of cool. The music was actually pretty good and stop-motion dancing is usually going to be a fun sight, especially for fans of this form of animation. I'll be honest, I sort of skimmed through this one, the anxiety was a bit too much for me, but still, this was a neat little segment with an end that I genuinely did not see coming.

Our final segment focuses on the house surrounded by a flood, while the landlady, who is an anthropomorphic cat, wishes to fix the place up for more tenants while the ones she has are unable to pay rent with money. Then a strange friend of one of the tenants arrives and completely upends her plans. This one is a lot more sad bleak than the other two. While the first one was more of an unsettling horror and the second one was more of an anxious one, this is more of a bleak one. Even the ending doesn't come off as a happy one. It is not really the unhappy ending of the last two, but not the happiest either.

You know, it's kind of amusing in a way that this is the first movie I see of the year. In the last bit of 2021, I was getting antsy, I wanted to move out and get a place of my own, and 2022 is the year I plan to start planning. I feel like this movie has the overall these of materialism, how the things we want can consume us. It's somewhat fitting that the final story has the happiest ending of them all, showing us there is a way, there is hope. There is hope. However, that is just my interpretation, so take that with a grain of salt.

I do have to say that the animation of the movie is excellent. I feel like Stop-Motion animation is getting more recognition now-a-days, with the popularity of Laika. That being said, stop-motion is often pigeon-holed into one of two categories; a stop motion movie is either a horror or horror adjacent movie, or falls into the realm of uncanny and unsettling visuals. I do like Laika because they did try other non-horror genres with Kubo and Missing Link. That being said, the directors of these segments definitely knew how to use the visuals to their advantage, with the first segment having a soft look to it that made the actual story a lot more unsettling.

Overall, I did enjoy The House. I can't say it is one of my favourites, and I'm not anticipating it to be one of my favourite films of the year, but it's a well made movie that I do think does deserve some recognition. I will give it the caveat that this is not a movie for kids, I hate that I have to give that caveat but it is what it is. I think my only point of contention is that every article I've looked at said this film was a dark comedy, and I really don't see it, but that may just be me. I don't think this movie will bring up Netflix's reputation for myself, but I don't think I'll be too bent out of shape over people giving it tons of praise and acclaim. It's no Klaus, but it's in the same boat as Arlo the Alligator Boy, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you want a good, unsettling movie, I give this one a recommendation.

TV Impressions: Gravity Falls

 

My first impressions of the 2017 DuckTales series seemed to do well, (At least well enough for me) so I thought I'd try talking about another show that I have just finished recently; Gravity Falls.

Gravity Falls was, and kind of still is, a much different show from Disney. They've never really done a show that was part fantasy, part mystery, part comedy and part horror before. Sure they've had episodes of some shows that delved into darker aspects of the concept or characters, but nothing to the extent of Gravity Falls, at least, not to my knowledge. This show was kind of a big risk, and like a lot of risks, it seemed to not pay off very well in the initial responses, anyone else remember WatchMojo putting it on their most hated Disney shows list? However, it's become a fan favourite, and even NoMojo said to forget that list ever happened (Never!), so in the end, what do I think about the show?

Gravity Falls follows the Summer vacation of twins Dipper and Mabel Pines as they are sent to live with their Great Uncle at his tourist trap, "The Mystery Shack", in the titular town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. While their they uncover a large mystery about a strange Journal that Dipper finds in the forest, and all of the strange and peculiar goings on in the area. Being a mystery series, I don't want to spoil the reveals, but if you are invested in the plot and characters, the reveals are going to be exciting. This is a very serialized series, you can afford to miss an episode or two, but you are going to miss callbacks if you do, and you can not watch this series out of order. I brought up serialization in the DuckTales blog, and I still stand by that it is a good balance of serialized and episodic, Gravity Falls definitely leans towards the serialized in this regard, but in the end Gravity Falls has one major advantage that a lot of other serialized shows (Like anime) don't have; Length!

Gravity Falls is only two seasons long and each season is twenty episodes long, give or take an episode. This gives it a huge advantage over other shows because, if you go at a pace of five episodes per week, you can finish the series in four weeks, so the serialization is not really a deal breaker since the entire show can be binged in a decent amount of time.

On top of that, I really did enjoy the characters. Dipper and Mabel have a kind of idealized, but also sort of realistic sibling relationship, though I may be biased because my own sibling relationship was... turbulent to say the least. Still, it is nice to see that they aren't at each others throats all the time, but they do get on each others nerves. The characters around them are fun, Stan is a really slimy conman, but a bit more on the fun side than the slimy side. He'd make a fun villain if he was the antagonist. Then we have the other two employees at the Mystery Shack, Soos and Wendy. Both of them are loyal friends to our leads. Wendy is laid back and calm, but does show her emotional side, and Soos... Well, Soos is the man! He is a bit dim, but not to the point where he is unaware of what is going on around him. The rest of the townsfolk are fun, and they're used sporadically so they never wear out their welcome. This brings us to Bill Cipher, who is a good mix of entertaining and frightening, maybe leaning a bit more on the threatening side. After a while his more humourous side became a lot more unsettling.

Much like DuckTales, there are a lot of hidden secrets in this show. Unlike Ducktales, the secrets are ciphers, puzzles that lead to... something. Look, I wasn't a part of that whole Gravity Falls treasure hunt thing that happened, but it is a very interesting part of this show's history. Really, the show kind of revels in the cryptic and conspiracy, right down to the main baddie being, essentially the illuminati symbol. I can see how Alex Hirsch ended up working on Inside Job.

So, why was the initial reaction so off? Well, was it really? What you got to remember is WatchMojo is often a fan-voted list, and a lot of people might have just been put-off by it because it was a departure from the usual Disney show, and because it was, at the time, a modern cartoon. People really tend to prefer the cartoons of their generation and not the ones that come after. I think it was simply the effect that a lot of cartoons get when they're new and shiny, someone is going to dislike it simply because it's new and shiny, only in this show's case, it wasn't 1999 and someone on a message board, it was 2014 and the internet has changed a lot since the 1990s. Other than that, reception of the show has been fairly well positive, so I don't think the show's initial reception was really that negative. Yeah, I know that seems odd coming from the writer that just published a blogpost that expresses worry over how Disney is treating Pixar, but this one comes mostly from hindsight.

Overall, I really enjoyed Gravity Falls. I was really invested in the mystery angle, I enjoyed the characters and I thought the reveals were really good. Of course, the entire show was built around the mystery, so those things had to work. I think the show also hit a good balance of horror and humour, and was over an enjoyable time. If I had to pick my favourite episodes; Land Before Swine, Society of the Blind Eye, Not What He Seems and of course the Weirdmageddon finale. As for least favourites, Roadside Attraction and The Love God, were just a bit awkward for me to get into. As a whole, I definitely recommend this show, if you like mysteries and spooks, this may be the show for you.