I am not a huge fan of animation.  I like it in theory, I like classic animators like Tex Avery (as well as homages like Ralph Bakshi's Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and I thought Cowboy Bebop was super awesome back in the day, but for the most part, modern animation makes me angry.  Partially because I feel that computer animation is too rounded and flawless to have any real "life" to it, and partially because so much of it is not used to tell a meaningful story, but rather, to sell toys.

But these two animated trailers made my day:
   



It was too awesome, that's what happened



There's a sequel to American McGee's Alice coming out in a few weeks and the part of me that is still twenty and listening to Coldplay's "Clocks" is thinking "Awesome!  I've been waiting forever for this!" and the part of me that has a job and a boyfriend and a life is thinking "Ugh, enough Alice--and hey, whatever happened to American McGee's Oz?"



And I'm not going to
give you the satisfaction
of a screen shot.



I'm not going to talk about how much of a stupid, pandering retread Madness Returns is probably going to be except to say that okay, so her parents didn't die in an accidental fire the way they did in the first game, which is why she was in a mental hospital and got out at the end to live free and happily.  So now she's still in therapy, and goes back to Wonderland in repressed memories, and in the end we're going to find out that . . . what, they were murdered by someone she imagines as the Queen of Hearts/Jabberwock/Mad Hatter?  Gruesome--so will there be a third part where she avenges their murder?  Were they murdered by her?  Then why would I want to play a murderous pseudo-goth teenager, that doesn't sound fun

I don't know.  And I don't care.

I am really sick and tired of people telling me that I have to play a game because it has a "good story."  Frankly, I hate being told that I "have" to do anything but eat, breathe and sleep, but with as little time as I have now, the last thing I "have" to do is sit on my butt.

I like games with Rabbits in them

If I wanted a good story, I'd see a movie or watch TV or, I don't know, read a book.  And some games DO have good stories--like Sam and Max, which is all story, told in puzzles and dialogue.  Or Epic Mickey, but Epic Mickey would have been a lot more awesome as a movie or a comic than as a game, because in order to get to the awesome story parts with Oswald, you have to wander through a bunch of mind-numbing gameplay.  The story of Bioshock is very neat (and supposedly, Atlas Shrugged taken to it's logical and extremely bizarre conclusion) but again, hours of wandering around collecting items and shooting a series of identical bad guys.  And I've got serious mad old-skool love to Chrono Trigger, but again, I'd rather watch it as an anime or read it as a comic than have to fight my way through the Black Omen one. more. time.

But by contrast, games like Katamari Damacy and Rabbids Go Home and the old-skool Mario Bros games have only the most basic of storylines--Fix the universe.  Pile stuff up to the moon.  Save the Princess.  And the gameplay is simple, and it's not pretending to be something that it's not.  It's just a game, and it's fun, and I have wasted more hours than I can count trying to roll up the right sized cow.  They're cute and they're simple and I don't ever feel like I have to try and justify it to anyone because it's just a game. 

Besides, most modern video games seem to take far more effort and frustration that the story is even worth.  Like Epic Mickey.  It's easier and less involved to just read Alice Through the Looking Glass, plus you can take it outside and maybe follow a white rabbit someplace on your own adventure.

This isn't even, of course, touching on how stupid and tiresome "dark" fairy tale retreads are.  That's for another day.

Bunnies, Pandas, and the Joy of Judging Movies I Refuse to See

Easter is my favorite time of year.  Bunnies are pretty much my favorite thing.  It's one of my favorite words (say "Bunny" and try not to smile) and they're nice pets (I had one named Sally growing up and she was a firecracker).  Last year Ian's mom found a nest of baby bunnies, less than 10 days old with their little eyes still shut, and I got to hold one and it was so teeny tiny that it fit in the palm of my hand.  I could have died from cuteness.

This Blog Takes Stuffed Bunny Donations

Stuffed bunnies are also awesome (I have a whole menagerie, including Pinko, my Peeps bunny, Nubbins, the clucking Cadbury Bunny I torture Ian with, Mr. Bunn, a skeleton bunny in a pink suit, Pwang, who is crocheted and a the big felt Max than Ian made me for Christmas a few years ago).  I had to actually remind myself that I was an adult and couldn't justify spending 30 bucks on a plush Oswald, no matter how cute he is.

Even my kitten Bosco agrees with this judgement, because every so often he will take one of the Bunny Menagerie and drop it on our heads if we don't get up early enough to feed him.  We call them Bunny Bombs, and it's hard not to be mad when you've got a bunny on your head.

Almost as good as bunnies is Cadbury Eggs.  I would eat Cadbury eggs every day if I could.  They're overly sweet and sticky and delicious and they make me feel like a kid again.  The fact that you can only get them a few months out of the year makes them that much more delicious.

But this Hop movie is ruining everything.

Everywhere I look is that stupid flannel-wearing rabbit.  He's all over the candy aisle.  He's on my Cadbury eggs.  And although the movie is getting awful reviews, I'm sure Nathan Rabin loved it because the titular rabbit is a slacker rabbit who's probably drawing a comic book or starting a rabbit band or something, because all slackers are really handsome geniuses at heart and never fat lazy slobs with pizza stains on their ironic teeshirts.

Aww . . . .



Here's what I don't get, and again, I didn't see the movie because I don't have children (one more reason to avoid parenthood).  So E.B (I had to look this up) is a teenage rabbit who doesn't want to take over his dad's role as the Easter Bunny . . . but if there's one thing anyone knows about rabbits, it's that they breed.  A lot.  He's not the Easter Panda--so E.B doesn't want to take over the family business, why doesn't Papa Rabbit just hand it over to one of the other 25+ children he has (those that didn't get eaten by stray cats). 

I come from a family of five girls and I can say that competition between siblings for parent's attention and affection is fierce.  And if you've ever heard a rabbit scream and fight, yeah, it's kind of like that.  So E.B wants to become a drummer, let him!  I'm sure one of his siblings, maybe one who went mostly unnoticed when they became Rabbit Class President or went to Rabbit College or got a Good Rabbit Job because E.B was the squeaky wheel who got all his parents affection despite being an utter ungrateful screw-up, would LOVE to be the Easter Bunny and deliver joy and Cadbury Eggs to all.  It's the Prodigal Son thing, I get it, but the truth is that I've always hated that story.

I *heart* Oswald

I discovered two things on St. Patrick's Day.  One, no one, no matter how drunk, messes with you if you're wearing sunglasses and carrying a jagged chunk of brick. 

Two, and more importantly, I discovered Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Because our downtown was swarmed with obnoxious drunk college students too stupid to do anything but drink and wreck a town they don't live in, we holed up inside with the Wii and picked up Rabbids Go Home and Epic Mickey.  Generally I'm not a Disney fan and even less of a Mickey Mouse fan, but the idea of a Disney wasteland and the return of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks first character (who happens to be a bunny, my very favorite) was pretty enticing. And hey, what else were we going to do?

The game was fun at first and then quickly turned to irritating and carpel tunnel inducing.  We liked Rabbids better.  But we got far enough to unlock a full-length Oswald cartoon from 1928, Oh What a Knight.

Cool!

It's Impossible to Google "Team Rocket"
and NOT see pictures of hideous cosplayers

I have a passing fascination with animation as both an art and a storytelling medium.  When we think "cartoon" our minds generally leap to either full-length animation (especially when you say "Disney") or half-hour cartoon show--GI Joe, Pokemon, etc. 

We don't really think of cartoons as being the 5-10 minutes shorts they originally were, shown before the newsreel and in between a double feature.  I've always loved Tex Avery's sexy fairy tale shorts like "Red Hot Riding Hood" and although I tried to like the Fleischer Bros, the Betty Boop stuff was a little on the weird side (and by "weird" I mean "acid-trippy").  And cooler still, the music on the cartoon was lifted right out of the video game--that's not the cool part, actually, that's a really sucky part--but the cool part is that because the short was silent, the music we would have been hearing if it was 1928 was being played on an organ, live, at the front of the theater. 

So there we were, with our Wii and our couch and our chips, watching something that for decades had been locked somewhere in a vault, forgotten by everyone but pop culture historians.  It was a weird, wonderful, sweet little moment, a glimpse at history in the all-too-plush comforts of the present.  As tenchincally beautiful as Rango was, I'll take the rounded shapes, the soft lines and black-and-white scheme of vintage animation over CG or worse, the motion-capture carnival of souls that is the homophobic, misogynistic Mars Needs Moms.

I like Oswald.  I think he'd be a good sidekick for Max if Sam ever goes rouge.