I was going to talk about other stuff, I swear, lol.
The problem is this intractable illness / flareup. It’s awful, just awful. Swollen ankles, headaches, hearing problems, vision problems, elbow stiffness and swelling, pain in the knees, lethargy, insomnia, etc. It’s a fucking nightmare.
I’m working through it, but Jeebus Christ.
So here I am again, binging more stuff on Disney+.
Finished season 2 of Gargoyles. Holy shit, what an incredible show! Mind blowing. Started strong and finished strong. I hated to watch the last ep of season 2. Not that it was bad, but… you know.
Many, many properties took/copied key ideas straight out of Gargoyles episodes. God knows how many anime properties were inspired by this show, at least in part. The Matrix, Dark City, Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and DC properties, dozens of future Disney properties, holy moly. Gargoyles is without a doubt one of the key Sci-Fi shows, although I’ve never heard it referred to as such. I mean, holy shit, they have an episode about “The Matrix”, a nanotech AI who threatens to consume the world, who eventually merges with a martial artist type character!
This show may have inspired cop shows and crime shows and movies as well, IDK. Not too familiar with those.
Hugely underrated show. 10/10.
I also saw Home on the Range and liked it. Not a great movie, but it was fun, and the cast did well in their roles. I can see the kids loving it. I liked the corn-pone, redneck type comedy bits. Those were really enjoyable, since I know that mentality and even indulge in it myself sometimes. Likeable flick that was short enough to not overstay it’s welcome. 3.5/5. Will watch again, someday.
I saw Isle of Dogs. For awhile I was confused by it since it just didn’t look… uhm, “Disney”. I thought…. well, maybe they branched out, lol.
It turns out it was a Wes Anderson movie!
Wut?
And it was stop-fucking-motion!
Holy shitfuck! Ok, stop motion automatically means 3 out of 5, literally. Has there ever been a bad stop-motion movie? Sure, there have been a few formulaic holiday specials and such, but are those truly bad? No, they are just average-ish, at worst.
This is was a well made, interesting, challenging, refreshing movie. It wasn’t perhaps a crowd-pleaser type flick but I’m defo glad I watched it. 4.5/5.
Stop motion is awesome, and I wish we saw more of it.
There are lots of pulpy sci-fi flicks that used stop motion effects back in the 20’s and 30’s and TBH they look pretty nice when viewed today. Maybe that’s just because of the low resolution of the cameras or something but… IDK. I think the effects in a lot of these films look fine.
Maybe it’s because stop motion is real, and CGI just… isn’t. The promise of CGI has not as of yet been fulfilled. It still just looks too cartoonish. Maybe that’s on purpose, IDK. But it still looks like a 2D superimposition on a 3D world. It looks, too often, like it’s… missing something.
Another flick I saw was Melody Time, one of uncle Walt’s pre-Fantasia attempts to blend pure audio and vision together.
This… is an absolutely outstanding movie, easily the best of the three. It’s old Disney, and it has that old Disney magic, which I’m becoming convinced was a real thing. Not one part of this movie is less than stellar.
The reason this film gets a perfect 5/5 and Isle of Dogs doesn’t is because this movie had every quality that made Isle of Dogs great, plus it was highly enjoyable from start to finish.
Also, it’s got the Disney magic. Meaning, the movie is simultaneously super-efficient and whimsical, which is a very difficult trick to pull off.
It’s not quite as potent here as it is in something like Dumbo, which is probably like a 6/5 movie, but Melody Time traverses so much space in it’s 1 hour 17 minute runtime that it feels like it does more than most movies that last two hours or more.
I can see by RT reviews that this is an unpopular opinion, but I sincerely think that old Disney is underrated. People dock a star off of everything old Disney because it’s “kid’s stuff” in their minds, and they do it without noticing.
The animation in Melody Time is absolutely beautiful. Not one frame of this movie looks bad. The music is outstanding and flows well with the visuals, and there is real heart on display. This is art, not product.
It’s from movies like this and Fantasia that we get music videos as an art form. Seriously- Disney invented the music video as we know it today. Does he get credit? Nope.
This is a 5/5 movie for sure.
I noticed that nu-Disney slapped one of their dumb “advisories” on this movie. I have never not cringed when seeing these. Not at the movie, but at the poor numbskull who put it there.
Reading these “helpful messages” in akin to watching some pink haired sociology undergrad scrawl some incoherent screed decrying racial “microaggressions” on a post-it note affixed to the door of the Sistine Chapel. It makes me feel sorry- for the undergrad.
Messages like this made me think that the people running the show over there now aren’t really, IDK, worthy, of their jobs. It’s an odd feeling, but there you go.
Man, I really need to get over this sickness, lol.
But srsly.
In a way these… I don’t know, advisories? Are a good way to understand how Disney has so horribly lost it’s way as a company.
Look at box office receipts, I mean. True, Disney had financial successes lately- notably, Avatar II, and GOTG III. But neither of these was “Disney” and neither was representative of the kind of product Disney makes today. Avatar II is a James Cameron film, not a Disney flick. People saw it because of Aliens, True Lies, Terminator 2, Titanic, The Abyss, and Avatar, not because of Mickey Mouse. And GOTG is the “non-woke” Marvel property.
Disney stuff these days is way way too strongly identified with woke-ism. This was a massive problem 6 years ago, but now it’s gotten so out of control even the MSM has been forced to talk about it.
The canary in the coal mine here definitely was the race-swapped Little Mermaid adaptation. And I know what Disney was thinking with that one- they wanted to “spark a conversation”. Well, boy oh boy, did they ever, lol. I liken it myself as the Last Jedi moment to the Disney brand. It was the moment in which the common man took a look around himself and actually started to think about what they were consuming for the first time. And nu-Disney hasn’t recovered since.
I’ve already dissected wokeness ad nauseum on here, so I won’t say too much more about it, but I will say that it’s overstayed it’s welcome for sure. I remember those news articles about the completely empty theaters in China showing The Little Mermaid. The movie did negative business in China, I think taking home some odd millions in hatewatch revenue for tens of millions spent in advertising. This stuff is never ever going to fly in the Chinese market, ever. Not in our lifetimes at least.
It’s an impossible problem to solve. Hollywood needs Asian dollars, but Asia doesn’t like “woke”, and really doesn’t like race-swapping, ever. It’s like they have an in-built allergy to it. Their markets are much much more resistant to race-swapping characters than Western ones.
The new Captain America movie with the black Captain America is going to bomb, nuclear style, in the Asian market. It will not go over at all. I’m calling it now. The Chinese are not going to show up. And, possibly, nobody else will, either.
Disney could lose a LOT of money with this movie. Like epic, historical amounts. Company destroying amounts, perhaps.
Found that article…
I’ll put the first five paragraphs here…
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The Little Mermaid is getting doused in select foreign markets amid a racist backlash over the casting of Black actress Halle Bailey in the role of Ariel.
The movie has grossed a mere $3.6 million in its first 10 days of release in China, by far the worst showing among Disney’s live-action adaptations. It is also struggling badly in South Korea, where it has earned $4.4 million through June 4. Sources close to the movie, as well as box office analysts, say Disney knew Little Mermaid could face challenges, but is surprised by the extent of the backlash and its impact.
The social media outcry over Bailey’s casting has been particularly vociferous in both markets. Sources believe this has resulted in unverified audience reviews bashing the movie. In South Korea, such reviews have even made headlines.
Negative audience reviews have also populated social media in China. And just before the film opened in that country, the government-affiliated The Global Times ran an editorial lambasting Disney’s motives.
“The controversy surrounding Disney’s forced inclusion of minorities in classic films is not about racism, but its lazy and irresponsible storytelling strategy,” stated the op-ed. “Many Chinese netizens said that like Snow White, the image of the mermaid princess in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales has long been rooted in their hearts and it takes a leap of imagination to accept the new cast.”
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Yeah, they’re going to be in trouble, lol. I can see the Disney execs now, sweating in their sleep, praying to God, Vishnu, Satan, The Flying Spaghetti Monster and maybe even J. R. “Bob” Dobbs from the Church of the SubGenius to help them break even with the new Captain America movie, lmao.
The risks they’ve been taking with the wokeisms and the race swapping were much greater than they understood, that’s for sure. And that probably goes for all studios, not just Disney.
Well, this was fun, but I need to turn in.
In my case, I’m not watching anything made post 2016, excepting in very rare circumstances. That way I avoid much of this foolishness, lol.