Sydney. In a dentist's office. Evil girl there, but some fun tank mates.

I bought my copy of Igor for a couple of bucks at a closing Blockbuster. I made them let me go through about 10 copies before I found one that wasn't scratched up. Worth the time to get a decent copy. Definitely worth the couple bucks. I really like that Eva starts singing Annie songs. I think this is one of those kids movies that was written more with adults in mind, though.

Nicely turned.

As for me, I just watched 9. Here's my Letterboxd review:

Anyway, I'm off to the J.B. Speed Art Museum. They're closing next month for three years(!) for some massive renovations. They've got a portrait there of Daniel Boone by Chester Harding, which is important because Harding was the only artist to ever work from Boone in person. I've seen it before, but I want to spend a few minutes with it again before they close. Then I'm meeting some friends for a showing of Roman Holiday at The Louisville Palace. I know absolutely nothing about it, but I love going to the Palace and it's only $5.

I hope you enjoy Roman Holiday. I enjoy that one a fair amount. You can't really go wrong with Audrey Hepburn and this one is no different. I like it a lot more than Breakfast at Tiffany's. It's more of a straight love story than anything else. I will always remember being introduced to it by a professor who left me write a paper on watching movies.

Oh, I was going to mention, too, that I enjoyed 9. It's been a while since I've watched it, but I remember enjoying it. I see by my records that I gave it a 4/5 stars. I would agree with it being dark, but I think that was the point of it and they managed to do it in a way that was not off putting.

And earlier, Cartman was mentioned...I watch a fair amount of South Park and he is my least favorite character but agree that he is written to be polarizing. I think they use him as the focal point to be able to bring up the worst of people and put it in one person. I think you're meant to hate him though I almost sympathize with him as well because he is so hated by everyone other than his mother...but he doesn't want sympathy; he likes making people hate him. Yeah, I'm probably making to much of this cartoon, but I think South Park is a lot...more in depth than some people give it credit for.

I didn't like American Pop. It felt overly long with many sections really dragging. A sad comment for a 96 minute film. But understand that I don't much like anything from Bakshi. The only thing of his I've seen that I'd consider purchasing is Fire and Ice and I didn't think it was all that good. Storywise it's a pretty standard and cliché Sword & Sorcery tale but the visuals are the inticement as Frank Frazetta worked on the film and inspired the design. It's the less "typical" Bakshi film.

I've never seen Hey Good Lookin' and had never heard of it until you asked. I looked it up. Here's one review I found:

Sounds like the typical Bakshi film to me.

I hope you enjoy it. It's one of my favorite Hepburn films. Definitely worth a $5 theater admission.

Just got back from Paranorman. It's good, not Coraline good, but it is good. Bit of a love letter to creature features of yore.

Decided on some stop motion animation tonight, so watching Puppet Master II.

Not only was Roman Holiday a lot of fun, but I also got quite a bit of uninterrupted time at the art museum with the portrait of Boone that I went there to see! It was a bit deflating, not having anyone with me to whom I could babble about the guy but it was still a very rewarding experience for me.

There was a great documentary on Crumb called, conveniently enough, CRUMB (1994), directed by Terry Zwigoff, who followed up, 7 years later, with GHOST WORLD (2001).

BTW, yesterday, I reached the two-day mark in my viewing for this challenge with PHOENIX: YAMATO (1987), an unsubtitled Japanese adaptation of a manga by Osamu Tezuka, and passed it with BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT.

I'm glad you enjoyed the film!

Your enthusiasm for the portrait caused me to look it up. If this is it, it's quite good. To me, one thing that stood out is that his eyes look very tired and sad.

Back on topic:

I don't know if it was mentioned here or I stumbled across it looking for sci-fi stuff but I picked up a copy of Battle for Terra. It sounded quite good and not your typical animated sci-fi film. I plan to watch it sometime today and will post my thoughts once that's been done.

I've heard that was good and the trailer also made it seem good.

Yes, a good flick. I did a blind buy last year and enjoyed it.

I knew about both of Zwigoff's films (Ghost World is a personal favorite of mine; I've got the DVD, the graphic novel, the soundtrack on CD and even the published screenplay). Crumb is on my ridiculously long To See list. I may try to get hold of Crumb next month for the Criterion Challenge. It's not presently available in their HuluPlus library, but I should still be able to get my grubby paws on it somehow.

That's one of the three portraits Harding did from his in-person sketches. There are some subtle (and inevitable) differences. Here's the one I saw yesterday:



BTW, for anyone even remotely interested, Robert Morgan wrote an amazing bio about him published under the elaborate title, Boone: A Biography. I learned about it from our own Lateralus in the Book Talk sub-forum a couple years ago. It's the best work of non-fiction I've read so far, my pro-Boone bias notwithstanding, and one of the top 5 books I've ever read, period.

Man, I've seen many Hepburn films multiple times but still don't think I've seen Roman Holiday, and of course I own a copy

I reviewed it on Letterboxd. I made some allusions to the end that may or may not constitute spoilers depending on your reading comprehension attentiveness. I tagged the review as containing spoilers on that basis, but you're welcome to read about my viewing experience or bookmark it and come back to it when you get around to seeing the movie.

Back on topic, I checked out Mulan and Bolt yesterday (along with 9). I've never seen either. Gonna try to get to at least one of them this afternoon. I'm particularly interested in Bolt because it was written by Dan Fogelman, who also wrote Tangled and, more importantly, crazy, stupid, love. The annoying part is, we had that on DVD and it was one that my wife took. C'est la vie.

I actually thought Bolt was

I'll second that. It seems more like a Pixar film and not Disney.

I'm continuing a small and inconsistent doll theme. Last weekend I watched Demonic Toys. Last night I watched Dollman vs Demonic Toys. Now I'm getting ready to watch Dolls and I may throw in Puppet Master: Legacy and Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys. I know Legacy is basically a clip film and PM vs DT is a SyFy special but they've been sitting unwatched too long.

Dollman vs Demonic Toys wasn't as great as when I was in high school. It's an hour long and about 20 minutes is spent in flashbacks of Bad Channels, Dollman, and Demonic Toys. Pretty sure some of the kills of the toys were pulled from Demonic Toys as well.

Watched Green Lantern Emerald Knights, which I thought worked fine as an anthology. Oddly, I'm a big Nathan Fillion fan but didn't think his voice quite worked--too distracting, maybe. Disclaimer that I'm a GL Corps nerd from years past.

Just watched Mulan myself last night. It held up quite well from the last time I saw it. I have always enjoyed the music and the big action scene in the mountains still looks pretty cool. They could have really made some bad moves making the movie, but I think they did pretty good. Love the cricket!

Bolt isn't too bad. I enjoyed it. I don't think it's the best, but I love the concept and there were a few cute scenes.

unfortunately when I saw it in the theater, the 3D projector lighting setting was set too dark - so all the 3D 'pop' was ruined.

I'm going to be pretty generic talking about Battle for Terra and put significant plot devices in spoilers so as to not give anything away. Overall I felt it was a very good film. Quite possibly the best animated film I've seen in a long time. It's an alien invasion story told in the perspective of those being invaded. But there's a difference.



That difference changes the entire paradigm of the film.

It's well animated *except* for

I like the world design. It's cleverly done. Finding out what's below the cloud layer is fascinating. One part has an almost horror sense to it because of that "underworld" portion.

If there's anything I didn't care for it was They could have gone a different direction. At one point the events that lead up to that finale began to become "standard" sci-fi invasion type fare which was somewhat of a let down. But they go and redeem themselves when You don't see that often in current films, especially animated films.

Overall: Highly recommended.

Then all this talk about Bakshi caused me to remember that I purchased Mighty Mouse, the New Adventures sometime during/after last year's animation challenge. I'd not yet watched it and have never seen the series so I dug it out. I found it interesting and actually mostly good. Following the first disk I watched the documentary about the series and was surprised to find that Bakshi had worked for TerryToons early in his career. He'd worked on Deputy Dawg, which is a favorite. The thing I disliked the most about the series is they "cloned" Bill Scott's voice of Dudley Do-Right for Might Mouse. A huge pet peeve. MM talked, I saw Dudley. I know the show is more a parody type show but almost everyone else had a unique voice (they used a bad Paul Lynd impersonator for one - fortunately it was only in a single episode). Why not the "star"? I also disliked most shows with "Scrappy Mouse" and *hated* the all musical ones. I'd grown up watching the original and didn't care for it much simply because, with the exception of the narrator, the entire dialog portions were sung. It could well be that's where I developed my general dislike of musicals and opera. But overall, it's not too bad. I'd watch most episodes again which speaks volumes.

Just got a new anime boxset in the mail today, Witchblade. Seeing the eps on Youtube and Netflix piqued my interest so I decided to break down and buy the series.

I agree, I thought 'Battle for Terra' was a surprise.

question: I'm thinking of watching Jaws but that it'd be counted as a wild card - right?

Watched a couple episodes of Bubblegum Crisis. Don't think I'll watch anymore. I just couldn't get into it. I'm not sure why-if it was too dark for me or what but just didn't like it. Watching the Girl Who Leapt Through Time right now. I liked it the first time I watched it and am enjoying it now. It's cute with a bit of seriousness thrown in. Not sure why, maybe because it has more of a "story" rather than a "theme." Has romance without being sexy.

I enjoyed it. The Mogo story alone made it worthwhile!