Catch more dog eat dog on her YouTube channel.
Nobody calls them out on that.
Found a new use for Herodude until I come up with another storyline for him.
I’m hoping to resume The Clutter Reports some time in October. After I get this kidney stone removal done this week (hopefully that won’t take a long recovery time) I want to finally get to the doctor and get clearance to start lifting something heavier than a gallon of milk. Around that time the comic reviews should resume here even if I have to go to digital comics for everything. I’m sure you’re all wondering if Captain Janeway found the relic yet.
Meanwhile I can continue the Chapter By Chapter review of Star Trek: Prime Directive and we’ll see what else comes down the pike this week. I’m sure Hollywood will do something stupid and if not there’s still more fun topics to be had. Have a good week!
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What happens when you take bad writing, actors clearly chosen for looks over any acting skills, heavy-handed environmental commentary out of nowhere, and poorly animated pictures of birds that take until over half the movie before they start demicing? You get Birdemic: Shock And Horror, a movie that takes forever to reach the title and the only shock and horror you get is in the performances. It’s a movie you can only watch with three guys making fun of it the whole time. So tonight we have the Rifftrax thanks to the official YouTube channel starting to post old episodes and shorts.
Directed by James Nguyen (that’s what they call it anyway), the movie-by-legal-definition-only tells the tale of Rod, who is having everything going his way, if the viewer hasn’t even so much as taken a general business class in high school because clearly the writer didn’t. He made a big sale, the company’s stock has gone through the roof, and he’s retiring early to start selling solar panels, if he ever learns to say the words “solar panels” with any kind of annunciation. He also runs into a former high school classmate whose smoking hot and by the rules of this universe into him. Oh, and their friends were already sleeping together because. Nathalie is hoping that her new gig as a Victoria’s Secret model will someday lead to a big modeling career and if you understand why that statement makes no sense you’re one up on the creators. Yep, everything’s going his way for two-thirds of the movie. Then the poorly animated eagles attack, sending our heroes on a road trip in a movie obsessed with driving and parking. It only gets dumber from there if you can believe it.
The Live version of this Rifftrax is the only one I’ve been able to see in theaters so I thought I’d share the non-live version with the rest of you. (No struggles of put-upon traveling salesmen with a streak of bad luck that Charlie Brown would pity him for.) Note that includes a sex scene so tame I don’t mind showing you, and some swearing, mostly by the audience trying to make sense of any of this. My suggestion is don’t bother. Just let the soothing tones of Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy sooth your funny bone as you suffer through Birdemic: Shock And Terror…then wonder why this movie has sequels. SEQUELS! Yes, they’re working on a third one, which means there was a second one. Enjoy–ish.
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I’ve mentioned before that a pecking order has developed in entertainment and sadly everyone in the industry seems to be agreeing to it even if you’re the low man on the ladder. And lowest on the ladder are anything requiring drawings or animation, despite so much computer graphics being used even in non-science fiction or fantasy productions. This includes comics, video games, and animation. Hollywood seems to hate animated productions unless they get a celebrity in there who may or may not be able to voice act just to get someone famous into the talk shows. Never mind that there may be a show already with regular stars or the voice actors do this every day, they aren’t live actors so they get snubbed. That is unless they are and transition between the two like Mark Hamill, Roddy McDowell, or the recently past Ed Asner.
Beauty And The Beast gets nominated for Best Picture and the “real” actors throw a fit. So now the Oscars have a “best animated picture” category they can use to segregate it from the “real movies”. On television cartoons fall into two categories: stuff for kids, and stuff for adults, with most of the latter being subversive comedies rather than serious action shows. The Castlevania series on Netflix is kind of a fluke.
Well, not as much of a fluke if you check out Japan. While plenty of Japanese still aren’t animation fans, you can find anime for every genre, every age group, and every taste…good and bad really. Anime has become a big hit in America to the point where anime has lost its description of “animation from Japan” (anime is short for animation actually) and anything that seem similar, like Avatar: The Last Airbender or the aforementioned Castlevania get lumped into it despite being made for a Western audience. So what are they doing right? What do Japanese animation studios understand about animation that Western studios and the general public in the West don’t seem to?
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Find a local theater and time in your area here.
I missed this movie in theaters when it first came out. I missed previous anniversaries. I’m going to do my best to go this year if I have to wear a hazmat suit! I own the movie on VHS and DVD but this may be my last chance to see it in theaters and I’m curious what the bonus footage will be.
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Catch more Professor Geek on his YouTube channel
I want to build off of this video to make a stronger point. When a production releases promotional material, they’re saying “this is the show, this is what it’s about, this is the tone we’re going for, this is how we’re approaching these characters”, et cetera. The point is to you get you interested in a work. If you don’t like what you see, with the untold numbers of entertainment options across numerous media, it’s not wrong to judge it. This is especially true if what they’re doing is an adaptation, remake, or re-imagining of a previously popular work and you see little to nothing beyond some surface trappings of the show, movie, comic, game, or book that you love.
For example with last night’s look at Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop. I’m judging what they’re telling us they’re going to do with the shows and trying to convince us that these actors are going to properly represent the characters in the show. If I don’t see that in the promotional material, what evidence do I have that they’re going to do it when it finally comes out? I’m better off watching, reading, or playing the source material and get the REAL experience rather than setting myself up for disappointment that something I love was poorly mismanaged. If I’m reviewing the promotional information that’s not the same as judging the show, and I may end up hating the show or movie even more when it finally comes out based on the lead-up by the actors and defenders or because all of the fears I had going in were confirmed rather than placated. I hope for the latter but as a reviewer setting myself up for the potential of the former is not a bad thing. In fact if it turns out they fixed the mistakes by airtime (for example the Sonic model in his recent movie) I may enjoy it more. It’s not wrong to judge the promotion, since that’s the whole purpose of the press release, to get you interested and prepare you for what’s coming.
When The Real World Alters The Reel World
Before I begin I feel compelled to put the following warning up:
BW Media Spotlight is a storytelling discussion blog, not a political blog. While by necessity we will be discussing real world events, many of whom are the source of heated debates (and that’s being generous with my description), those debates have nothing to do with this topic and are not welcomed no matter who you’re supporting or bashing! I will delete stuff or straight up turn off comments if I have to. This is your only warning!
Now that’s out of the way the recent fallout in Afghanistan is indeed responsible for this topic. Why? The United States Of Al. One of storytelling’s problems lately hasn’t been that real world events are impacting the fake worlds of television, movies, comics, video games, and even novels but how they’ve been doing so. That’s a discussion for another time, but my point is on some level life does imitate art and at times can also influence art as much as art influences life. The United States Of Al and it’s unique position in 2021 is only the latest example. From war to plague it almost seems like the 21st century has decided to make fictional worlds into harsh realities, and we don’t even get a superhero to come save us.
This article is not going to give you any solutions. There are no solutions to be found. Case by case, example by example what’s happening now influences things in different ways, and it’s changing by necessity what stories writers tell or can tell, even when their story isn’t “ripped from the headlines”.
Continue reading →
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 9, 2021 in Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, current events, M*A*S*H, Power Rangers Time Force, Spider-Man (Peter Parker), Transformers, United States Of Al, writing.
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