Tag: animation

Jul112008 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
GFS home movies: Batman: Gotham Knight

GFS home movies: Batman: Gotham Knight

Movies
This is shaping up to be a banner year for Batman.  The Dark Knight comes out next week, and I can't see any way it won't kick ass.  So to whet the appetite of the hardcore Bat-fan, this week marks the release of Batman: Gotham Knight, a direct-to-DVD animated adventure. But rather than being just another animated Bat-film, Gotham Knight is actually an anthology of six short films, all presented with different styles of animation.  Those six short films, and my take on them, are: "Have I Got a Story For You" - A group of young skaters each has seen Batman at various points during the same fight with a criminal that day.  They share their accounts, and with each one Batman takes on a vastly different appearance based on the storyteller's perspective. Of all Bat's incarnations, the
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Jul92008 by Chris Holmes2 Comments

Venture Bros. Wrapup: “Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman” (S03E06)

TV & Radio
Ahhh, now that's the stuff! What's not to love about "Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman"?  There was plenty of action, mystery, and top-notch jokes.  Oh yeah, and my prayers about seeing more Hank and Dean were answered tenfold.  This was vintage Venture Bros. my friends. Save for a few brief (but extremely relevant) flashbacks into Dr. Venture's life, this was a completely self-contained episode; the first one of the season.  In it we find Rusty in the Amazon, where he has stolen a native fertility idol, for completely selfish and non-financial reasons.  He is almost overtaken by a local tribe, but is rescued at the last minute by Dr. Tara Quymn. Thanks to some great flashbacks we learn the pair knew each other as children, when a budding romance was killed by, you guessed it, Rusty's f
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Jul62008 by Chris Holmes6 Comments
GFS at the Movies: WALL-E

GFS at the Movies: WALL-E

Movies
I'll cop to not being a huge Pixar believer.  I've seen Toy Story, The Incredibles, and a few of their other features, but for some reason they've always left me a little cold.  Oh sure, they are marvels of computer animation technology, but I have always preferred the old school style.  It's hard for me to get emotionally invested in movies that look more like extended video game cut scenes. But I have to say that watching WALL-E got me about as close as I've come to getting really engaged with a computer-animated movie.  But not because of the main plot, which concerned a slowly developing romance between the title character (a trash-collecting and compacting robot) and EVE, a nominally female robot who catches WALL-E's fancy.  While it was cute, it was a tad predictable. No, w
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Jun92008 by Chris Holmes4 Comments

Venture Bros. Wrapup: “The Doctor Is Sin” (S03E02)

TV & Radio
For those who griped about the lack of Ventures in the season 3 premiere, you got what you wanted this week. In fact, we all got more Venture than we bargained for... "The Doctor Is Sin" covered a very familiar theme in the Venture universe -- failure. And of course, the biggest failure on the show is none other than Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture himself. And at first, things continue to look mighty grim for the son of Dr. Jonas Venture - he can't find any cheap Mexican labor to work in his lab and he still can't outperform his twin brother. But most dire of all: his Potemkin village-esque attempt to land a new government contract falls flat, putting the very future of Venture Industries into doubt. While all this is going on, Dr. Venture has to deal with the loss of the Monarch as hi...
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Jun22008 by Chris Holmes1 Comment

Venture Bros. Wrapup: “Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny” (S03E01)

TV & Radio
Ahhhhhhhhhh, that's better. After months and months of waiting, Season 3 of The Venture Bros. is finally upon us. And true to form, the season opener, "Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny," was full of surprises (so if you don't want to know them, stop reading now). The first surprise is that no one with the surname Venture appears for more than about 10 seconds in this episode, and even then they have no dialogue. Rather, this was all about the Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend (who will apparently not be changing her name to Dr. Wife despite her recent marriage to the Monarch). The story of their odd courtship is told through a series of flashbacks, with the framing device being another Monarch trial - this time held by the Guild of Calamitous Intent. Second surprise -- turns out th
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Apr252008 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
Please do not look away from…the nozzle.

Please do not look away from…the nozzle.

TV & Radio
Oh happy day! After what seems like years of waiting (1 year, 7 months, 17 days actually - but who's counting?), The Venture Bros. will finally return to [adult swim] on June 1st! But as the last month-plus of waiting ticks slowly by, I can at least amuse myself with the recently released teaser trailer for season 3. According to Jackson Publick himself, this trailer only draws from 3 1/2 episodes of the season, but man does it bode well for the whole shebang! It's so good to see many of my old friends - Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend, Rusty Venture, the Alchemist, Master Billy Quizboy, Brock Samson, Hank Venture (no Dean though). And how awesome is that G.I. Joe tribute??? (If the embedded trailer above doesn't respond, just follow the link in the first paragraph.)
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Jul262007 by Chris HolmesNo Comments
Time to end The Simpsons

Time to end The Simpsons

TV & Radio
I know I'm not the first person to offer this viewpoint, but it has been on my mind as the release of The Simpsons Movie is nearly upon us. On the one hand, even most diehard Simpsons fans admit that the show is not nearly as funny as it was in the Golden Age (then again, you couldn't get five Simpsons fans to even agree on when the Golden Age began or ended anyway). But then there are the Matt Groening apologists who insist that it's still better than 99% of the other shows on TV. But is that good enough? How can The Simpsons look anything other than really good compared to most of the crap on network TV? If merely being better than shows like According to Jim or The Singing Bee is good enough, it will be on forever. So in essence the people who make this argument have already con...
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Jun292007 by Chris Holmes18 Comments
Note to John Kricfalusi: Enough already

Note to John Kricfalusi: Enough already

People, Rants
There was a time when I saw the name John K. and knew I was about to witness high-quality entertainment. For those who don't know him (or have forgotten), John K. introduced the world to the world of The Ren & Stimpy Show in August 1991. The first season of R&S is still revered by many animation fans as one of the finest ever for any cartoon. When it debuted it was seen by fans (if not by critics) as imaginative, frenetic, and the perfect antidote to a world of bland, predictable animation. But that magic didn't last long. By the time the decent (albeit uneven) second season started there were already huge delays (as long as one month between new episodes) and reports of friction between John K. and his bosses at Nickelodeon. Prior to the start of the third season in 1993, Kricf...
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