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Post by Jeremy on Nov 22, 2020 14:27:50 GMT -8
The positives of the show are largely aesthetic - the animation and the voice cast, plus the score and a few of the songs (like "Reboot It" in the premiere, a catchy tune written by original series lyricist Randy Rogel). I'll also add that the Pinky and the Brain segments are generally decent; it's the Warner shorts that really miss the mark. (Though they have their highlights as well - I particularly enjoyed the episode where they harass a sewer-dwelling clown named Nickelwise.)
By the way, the earlier estimate about non-returning characters was lowballing; the only returning segments are those two! No Goodfeathers, no Hip Hippos, no Katie Ka-Boom. There are a couple of brand-new segments - Starbox and Cindy, and The Incredible Gnome in People's Mouths (yep) - but they don't get much screentime.
I think most of the '90s cartoons got political fairly regularly (especially Pinky and the Brain), but the old shows were smart enough to mock all sides and not come off as preachy. The new version primarily targets one side, and comes off as very preachy. (The gun control episode especially... oof.)
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 27, 2020 11:50:58 GMT -8
Decided to write some detailed thoughts about the Animaniacs reboot, since I ended up having a lot of thoughts! Oh, and a belated happy Thanksgiving to all. "Turkey Jerky" is a classic episode. ("Give me the bird!" "We'd love to, really, but the Fox censors won't let us.")
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 4, 2021 7:43:36 GMT -8
My theory (and as with all my theories, it's only a theory) is that Netflix - like every other cash-filled network/streaming service - wants to make the next Game of Thrones, and they feel that Avatar, with its built-in fanbase and potent mythology, fits the bill. But I don't want to see Avatar become Game of Thrones. I kinda like it just being Avatar. So apparently Netflix is still moving forward with its dark, sexy, violent live-action Avatar show - they've hired a new showrunner and have revealed a few new tidbits (apparently, Katara will now be older than Sokka). The show has taken some criticism from the original series cast and crew; presumably they still have scars from seeing the Shyamalan film. But in related news, Nickelodeon has announced the development of Avatar Studios, a production wing that will be devoted to creating new Avatar movies and TV shows (many of which will likely end up on the new Paramount Plus streaming service). And Konietzko and DeMartino will be running the shows. (I mean, unless they decide not to again.) Encouraging news for fans, although the words "brand oversaturation" have been periodically flashing in my mind.
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Post by Jeremy on May 2, 2021 18:32:50 GMT -8
Time for another animation roundup:
Invincible: The latest in a quickly-growing crop of adult animated superhero shows, this is a sharply produced series with likable characters and impressively staged (though extremely violent) action sequences, not to mention an all-star cast. The storyline is well-structured and quite faithful to Robert Kirkman's original comic book series, but the excessive gore tends to clash with the show's upbeat tone, and the 45-minute episodes can feel bloated at times. Still one of the better superhero shows to debut recently, one that takes narrative leaps and risks and isn't afraid to Go There.
Solar Opposites: Narratively, this isn't too different from the first season, but it is consistently funnier, and the sitcom skewerings remain on target. I'm impressed by the way this show is able to balance its goofy and ludicrous A-plots with a surprisingly dark and moody running B-plot. Once again, the penultimate episode of the season - "The Unlikely Demise of Terry's Favorite Shot Glass" - aims high, and mostly succeeds, even if its spontaneity isn't quite as novel as it was in Season One. This continues to be an irreverently amusing series, and I daresay I'm more excited to see more of it than I am for the next season of the good-but-growing-stale Rick and Morty.
Infinity Train: An impressively complex and imaginative series that deals with a lot of sensitive topics (identity, loss, depression) without feeling forced or heavy-handed. The series is structured like an anthology, with each season given its own cast of characters and storyline, but a running thread keeps it all together. The show gets surprisingly dark at times (notably in the third season), but earns its harsher moments just as well as its lighter ones. Seems like the series has wrapped prematurely after four seasons, unless the fans can convince some network or streamer to give it another shot.
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Post by Jay on May 27, 2021 10:17:36 GMT -8
I wrapped Castlevania over my morning coffee and it's something that will stick with me for a while. It's a challenge unto itself to talk about because the "Warren Ellis is a sex pest" thing-- not really surprising if you've read his stuff?-- came up during and it left me with those questions of whether I wanted to continue to engage with media made by a guy who abused his position of power. I also wonder how much that shaped, directly or indirectly, the conclusion of his run, some of which I enjoyed, some of which I was on the fence on, and some of which left me questioning where to go from there if they do indeed continue on as a franchise. As an adaptation though, albeit of a game without a whole lot of dialogue, I'd say it was a good one, and the trick for whoever takes the helm next will be to try to preserve what's worked without too closely imitating the Ellis conception of the series.
That's about the limit of what I can say without spoiling a bunch. Instead, I've found myself pondering where to go from here. The success of adapting Dracula's Curse / Curse of Darkness really came from the ensemble approach to the casting. As material goes, Simon looms quite large in Castlevania lore, but he's terribly solitary and doesn't provide good material in that sense. Working with him would be a challenge. The most obvious route through it all would be to maintain continuity via Alucard and press through with Rondo of Blood / Symphony of the Night, where you would get Richter, Maria, and Anette, before "concluding" with Aria / Dawn of Sorrow, where you could add in Yoko and Julius. They could probably get three or four seasons out of each of those combos. It seems sensible. I might stake (lol) a minority opinion in claiming that I would like to see a Bloodlines / Portrait of Ruin storyline attempted, and you can, without being too generous in technicalities, wing Alucard into that as well, and it could find a space between the two I've mentioned already. I just am not sure that Bloodlines was ever embraced to the extent PoR was.
But Simon, yeah.... Simon's kind of screwed. His stories might work for an OVA or movie but they are not conducive to a series in the same way.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 11, 2021 15:35:25 GMT -8
I just finished MODOK, a stop-motion animated Marvel series that plays like a sitcom version of Robot Chicken. (Not a coincidence, as Seth Green is among the executive producers.) The show also takes a similar route as Harley Quinn, in that it has a lot of fun parodying and mocking the Marvel universe (albeit not quite to the extent that Harley consistently desecrates the sacred ground of the DC universe). It features familiar family and workplace sitcom tropes - MODOK himself is a pathetic and self-absorbed supervillain* who can't balance his wife and kids with his own desire to dominate the world - crossed with a lot of R-rated cartoon violence and twisted plotting. Consistently funny series, with a fair amount of heart, even if the comedy feels a bit stretched at 24 minutes an episode. The cast is great (I was amused to hear Jon Hamm as the voice of Iron Man), and most of the humor clicked pretty well. I would be shocked if this gets a second season - it was produced by Marvel Television, which shut down when Marvel Studios absorbed the TV wing of the MCU - but it's an enjoyable one-and-done series. *Marvel Comics has been making fun of MODOK for years - in the summer of 2016, they introduced an alternate-universe version of him that looked like this, which I guess was amusing at the time.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 25, 2021 17:38:11 GMT -8
It would appear fanboys are all up in arms over the new He-Man/Masters of the Universe animated series. You know, I used to watch the old 80s series (and had some of the toys) when I was a kid, but whenever I've caught a few minutes of the old show channel-surfing in years since, I've been struck by how bloody godawful all of the voice-acting was. Like, really, really bad and one-dimensional performances by the voice cast.
Imagine thinking the new series has any sort of legacy of quality to live up to. At any rate, I'm sure the animation and voice-acting are of a much higher level than before. They HAVE to be.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 25, 2021 20:35:20 GMT -8
Fun fact, Sarah Michelle Gellar stars in the new series! Her first regular TV role in quite a while.
Admittedly I'm not too familiar with the original He-Man show, though what clips I've seen are pure '80s cheese. (I remember an old DC comic where He-Man teams up with Superman, because shameless cross-promotion existed even then. It was bad in a hilarious sort of way.) But I do find the controversy surrounding the revival interesting.
(SPOILERS for the new He-Man series below, if you happen to care.)
So the new show - officially titled Masters of the Universe: Revelation - is effectively a bait-and-switch, because He-Man is killed off in the first episode, and the show largely shifts focus to the female lead, Teela (voiced by SMG). This has angered a lot of fans, because Netflix heavily featured He-Man in the promos and are now discovering that the show is in fact something of a "girl power" reboot.
Admittedly, I was a little suspicious when Netflix announced the show, since in today's day and age, how the heck would they release a show with a hero whose very name is synonymous with toxic masculinity? Especially after releasing She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, one of the wokest animated shows of all time? Turns out they had a plan all along. I'm on to you, Netflix.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 26, 2021 13:43:01 GMT -8
Admittedly, I was a little suspicious when Netflix announced the show, since in today's day and age, how the heck would they release a show with a hero whose very name is synonymous with toxic masculinity? Especially after releasing She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, one of the wokest animated shows of all time? Turns out they had a plan all along. I'm on to you, Netflix. And yet, the guy who voices He-Man in the show is listed as appearing in eight of the show's ten episodes (five of which have been released thus far). I gather he appears mostly in flashback?
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 26, 2021 17:26:32 GMT -8
Yeah, he appears in flashbacks, as does Skeletor (who is killed off early as well). It seems like the show is leaving the door open for either character's resurrection, but they're not the primary focus of the series.
I should clarify my earlier comment, because I'm seeing a lot of articles attributing the online backlash to misogynistic fanboys. I'm not sure that's accurate in this case. Netflix and Kevin Smith heavily promoted the series as one thing, and then revealed it to be something else. Obviously fans are going to be upset, especially since they were teased about about the return of one of their childhood favorites. I've criticized online sexism a lot in the past, but I don't think that's the root cause here.
(Incidentally, I notice that Netflix is utilizing the "split-season" release model more often lately, with shows like this and Lupin. They'll probably never resort to the weekly episode model they've spent so many years deriding, but they seem to be learning that shows attract more buzz if they're in the news for more than one weekend a year.)
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 8, 2021 13:23:45 GMT -8
I never cared for the old "What If...?" comic books, since they were the antithesis of the old Marvel formula - there are no real consequences between issues, since every story effectively ends with its own reset button. (Occasionally one of the "What If...?" concepts would spin off into its own series - notably Spider-Girl, an alternate-universe series about Peter Parker's teenage daughter - but most of them were self-contained experiments of wildly varying quality, both in concept and execution.)
So it's probably no shock that I wasn't a big fan of the animated What If...? TV series, which applies the formula to the MCU with generally underwhelming results. Even beyond the conceptual issues, most of the episodes aren't nearly as shocking or innovative as the best of the comics, with lackluster ideas and characterizations. (What if T'Challa was Star-Lord? The Guardians wouldn't be humorous underdogs anymore. Yay?) The episodes, running between 30-35 minutes each, don't have enough time to explore the concepts fully, and the scripts are packed with cheesy and juvenile dialogue. (Which may be intentional, as the show feels much more kid-oriented than the average MCU production.)
The finale does feature a interesting subversion of the status quo (tying in to earlier episodes in a contrived but agreeable way), but I can't quite say it's worth sitting through the bulk of the IP-driven, fanfic-heavy season to get there.
In other Disney Plus news, I watched the first season of Monsters at Work, the new spinoff of Monsters Inc. Picking up immediately where the movie left off (what, no more college hijinks? What a shame), the show is something of a workplace comedy by way of Star Trek: Lower Decks, focusing on the maintenance crew in the basement of the facility. The series largely focuses on secondary characters, although Mike and Sully do recur (and are still voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman).
It's... okay? It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to deal with the fallout from the end of Monsters Inc. - most of the references to the film are kept to the background and drama-free. (Presumably Disney wants to avoid any real status quo-altering drama in case of a sequel.) There's good, fun comedy to be had, but those expecting the show to keep up the momentum and character arcs from the movie will be disappointed.
Highlight: the end credits music, which is the Monsters Inc. theme - orchestral version of "If I Didn't Have You" - but played in a different mode every episode (usually somehow tying in to that episode's story or theme).
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Nov 26, 2021 19:13:06 GMT -8
I happened to catch an episode of The Simpsons recently. Actually, I caught two episodes! For whatever reason they decided to do an hour-long non-canon episode riffing off prestige dramas and the works of the Coen Brothers. It was... wait for it... actually pretty funny! In a way that late-period Simpsons hasn't been for a while, arguably.
Or has it?? Jer, you're the guy who's seen every episode of this show. Is it possible that late-late-period Simpsons could be, if not good, interesting through exclusively doing increasingly bizarre genre pastiches that completely ignore canon?
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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 26, 2021 19:51:53 GMT -8
Yeah, Sepinwall mentioned the Coens/Fargo-inspired episodes on his Twitter a few weeks ago, so I caught both halves of that the week the second part aired. It was pretty good, and I enjoyed it, but I don't feel compelled to watch any more episodes of the show. It had its time, but it's not really for me anymore, despite it doing a few clever genre pastiches here and there.
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 27, 2021 16:03:23 GMT -8
I really liked the Coen Brothers two-parter (though it seemed to crib more from the Fargo TV series than the film), and I'm glad it generated some attention. It's a break from the show's usual form, but there's no reason for the series to confine that sort of thing to the Treehouse episodes.
I (and most others) have long accepted that The Simpsons is never going to recapture the magic of its '90s era. But it's aired some interesting and experimental episodes recently. Part of this may be attributed to Matt Selman, who assumed some of the showrunning duties last year from Al Jean (who has adhered to competent but often generic formula during his twenty-year streak on the show).
Some other interesting recent episodes:
"A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas" - Parodies the cheesy romance TV movies on Hallmark and Lifetime.
"Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars" - Satirizes online fandoms and Hollywood's obsession with reboots.
"The Man from G.R.A.M.P.A." - Parodies British spy films, including a sincere homage to The Third Man.
"The Star of the Backstage" - A lot of people hated this one, but I think it broke the record for most original songs in a single Simpsons episode. (Maybe there's a connection.)
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 30, 2021 19:25:09 GMT -8
Admittedly I'm not too familiar with the original He-Man show, though what clips I've seen are pure '80s cheese. Ok, weird addendum to the above He-Man comments. Apparently Netflix has two new He-Man shows streaming this year. One is the 2D-animated Masters of the Universe: Revelation, which is a direct sequel to the 1980s cartoon aimed at an older audience. The other cartoon is the CG-animated He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which is a reboot of the 1980s series aimed at young children. Neither of the two shows have any connection to each other, nor to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, another Netflix cartoon that's a reboot of an old He-Man spinoff in which He-Man does not appear. Oh, and She-Ra is also set to star in a live-action TV series produced by Amazon, that has no connection to the animated She-Ra series or either of the aforementioned He-Man shows. I never realized that '80s cartoon reboots could be so confusing.
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