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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 29, 2018 0:08:43 GMT -8
Well, I guess I'll have to check out that new animated Spidey flick.
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 29, 2018 6:24:13 GMT -8
I'm reading the reviews. Holy cow. Did Sony finally get it right?
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Post by Zarnium on Nov 29, 2018 10:31:02 GMT -8
Geez, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes? That's some high praise.
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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 29, 2018 10:52:43 GMT -8
Jer - "...finally get it right"? Didn't you give an A- to Spider-Man 2, produced by Sony?
Zarnium - I'm less impressed by the 100% Tomatometer (which isn't all that uncommon with films when just around 50 reviews are out) than the average grade, which was 8.8-out-of-10 last night.
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 29, 2018 11:17:02 GMT -8
The Tomatometer score will likely go down as more reviews pile up (unless the film has a Paddington 2-level of charm). But I'm hearing plenty of individual critics call Into the Spider-Verse the best Spidey film ever. That's pretty impressive, especially given that I expected franchise fatigue to settle in by now. Jer - "...finally get it right"? Didn't you give an A- to Spider-Man 2, produced by Sony? I did. I do enjoy most of the Spider-Man films to some extent. But given the canyon of quality between Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Homecoming, I lost a lot of goodwill towards Sony's wall-crawler productions. Thankfully, it appears my fears were premature.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 4, 2019 12:32:08 GMT -8
Apparently the new Carmen Sandiego series is going to be more complex and serialized than earlier ones. And the animation style, as per the new trailer, looks pretty slick. And of course, it's got Gina Rodriguez (plus the kid from Stranger Things and It). I might actually have to check this out.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jan 5, 2019 12:11:04 GMT -8
I wonder to what extent the series will function as edutainment - not as explicitly as the game show, but will it have, e.g., subtitled foreign languages, real historical figures/places?
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 5, 2019 15:40:55 GMT -8
I'm told that each episode (excepting the pilot, which is a Carmen origin story) will focus on a different country or set of countries, and will weave a certain level of edutainment into the story. But it looks like the writers are placing greater emphasis on Carmen's character than in previous shows, which is a promising sign.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jan 5, 2019 21:48:36 GMT -8
Is that a promising sign though? Does Carmen Sandiego need character development? She's an iconic villain - she doesn't really need depth or backstory, does she? For me, anyway, part of the appeal of Carmen Sandiego is all the contradictory backstories that people have invented for her over the years.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 6, 2019 6:16:47 GMT -8
Well, the new show makes her the focal character (as opposed to a couple of kids who are chasing her). And since parents probably won't approve of a kids' show which supports a villain, she's being reinterpreted as a semi-reformed anti-hero - still a thief, but mostly steals from other villains.
It's been about 20 years since her last TV series, and perceptions of pop-culture villains have changed since then. I think folks just expect villains to have moral grey areas and complex backstories nowadays.
(I never really thought much about her backstory either way. Mostly because I could never even make it halfway through any of her games. Geography was not my strong suit.)
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 20, 2019 21:24:28 GMT -8
Netflix dropped the first nine episodes of Carmen Sandiego on Friday. Some ups and downs:
The Good: The show is quite serialized, neatly balancing Country of the Week stories with a longer arc. It has some well-drawn characters, led by Carmen herself, who, as stated earlier, is less villain than antihero (which is intriguingly rare for the protagonist of a kid-oriented series). The showrunner is Duane Capizzi, and like his earlier animated work (Jackie Chan Adventures, The Batman), this show features some sharp and evocative action scenes, embellished by slick cutout-style animation.
The Bad: Zack and Ivy are reimagined as Carmen's lackeys, a brother-sister duo with thick Boston accents that quickly grow irritating. Doesn't help that they're introduced in the third episode (following the two-part, origin-story premiere) in an utterly contrived fashion. The show also features a lot of cornball one-liners which even Gina Rodriguez's delivery can't salvage.
The Mixed: The show features some history/geography talk, usually by interrupting each episode for 30-60 seconds so Carmen and Player can rattle off some cool facts about the country she's visiting. There's not much of it, and I always applaud educational kids' shows (Magic School Bus was one of my childhood favorites), but... it really doesn't fit tonally with the rest of the series. You could edit it out and miss nothing.
On the scale of recent animated TV adaptations, it's somewhere between DuckTales and Rocky and Bullwinkle. Of course, that's like a Grand Canyon of difference in quality, but they're the first two that came to mind.
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Post by Jeremy on Feb 6, 2019 15:46:07 GMT -8
I remember reading this article back in 2005, when The Simpsons was on Season 16 and had hit 350 episodes. Matt Groening was quoted as saying that the show has reached its "halfway point." At the time, I thought it was ridiculous. But guess what? The Simpsons was just renewed for a 31st and 32nd season (which will put it at over 700 episodes total). And... there's still no sign of it stopping.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Feb 6, 2019 17:07:08 GMT -8
I remember reading this article back in 2005, when The Simpsons was on Season 16 and had hit 350 episodes. Matt Groening was quoted as saying that the show has reached its "halfway point." At the time, I thought it was ridiculous. But guess what? The Simpsons was just renewed for a 31st and 32nd season (which will put it at over 700 episodes total). And... there's still no sign of it stopping. They're fighting it out for which show gets to run longer. I think Supernatural will run until Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki go gray. Speaking of which.....good lord, Supernatural is one of the longest binges you can possibly do. At the end of this season, it'll have 310 episodes, each roughly 45 minutes. That's over 230 hours of tv. Probably about as long as The Simpsons.
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Post by Jeremy on Feb 6, 2019 17:38:55 GMT -8
And Supernatural was just renewed for a 15th season, which (assuming the episode count per season holds) will bring the total to 333 episodes. And will officially make it one of the 10 longest-running TV dramas ever made.
The big milestone this year, though, is Law & Order: SVU, which is likely to be renewed for a 21st season - something no other TV drama has ever achieved.
Still, I doubt The Simpsons will ever be topped in terms of sheer longevity.
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Post by Jeremy on Feb 11, 2019 19:35:57 GMT -8
Anybody been watching these new Pixar "SparkShorts" on YouTube? Purl was an interesting idea, if a bit heavy-handed in its messages about workplace sexism. Smash and Grab was better, though it clearly owes a debt to Wall-E. (Which raised a question - can Pixar sue itself?) Neither film is on the level of the studio's best shorts, either in story or animation, but it's interesting to see Pixar open its doors to more independent and experimental (and not quite as kid-friendly) ideas.
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