I know I’m a little late in mentioning this, but if you haven’t seen it already, drop everything you’re doing and watch the Nostalgia Critic’s fantastic three-part tribute to Animaniacs
Archive for the ‘tv’ Category
Great Sites – The Nostalgia Critic’s Animaniacs Tribute
Saturday, August 14th, 2010Upcoming Animation – Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010I just finished and very much enjoyed Brian Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. I’m excited for the movie, but
there’s still a part of me that wishes it had been animated. With a few rare exceptions, I think animation is the ideal format for translating comics into film or television, especially when the original artwork is as distinctive and iconic as O’Malley’s. So I’m overjoyed to see that an animated Scott Pilgrim short is going to be airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block. Entitled Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation, the short cartoon will air in two parts at 12:00 and 12:30 AM on Thursday, August 12. If you don’t have cable, don’t panic! The short will be made available on the Adult Swim website and Facebook page as well as the Scott Pilgrim movie Facebook page. I’ll be very surprised if the short doesn’t end up as a bonus feature on the DVD release, since it’s designed to help promote the movie and even features some of the movie cast doing voice work. But if you want to see it now or don’t want to risk missing it, you’ve got plenty of options.
Sight Beyond Sight – Thoughts on the New “ThunderCats”
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
I’m sure you know by now that there is a new ThunderCats TV series in production. What’s surprising about this news is not that a new ThunderCats series is being made, but that it took this long for the show to be revisited. Nostalgia for all things 80s has been in full swing for at least the past decade. While ThunderCats may not have been the biggest phenomenon of its time, people still remember it, it does have a following, and the original series has been released on DVD. A new ThunderCats series could be really fun, if the creators understand what worked about the original.
TV Time: TaleSpin – “Stormy Weather”
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
By all rights, TaleSpin should not work.
Don’t get me wrong, TaleSpin does work. But on paper, it sounds like one of the worst ideas ever. It takes a few of the characters from an existing Disney movie and transplants them to a completely different setting, one that is totally incompatible with their lives in the original film. Let’s say you were an executive at Disney Television Animation and I came with you with a pitch for a show featuring characters from Lady and the Tramp. Except Tramp is now a truck driver, Lady runs the local trucker’s diner, the beaver is Tramp’s wacky mechanic, and Si and Am run a rival trucking company. Oh, and the story is vaguely set in the 1970s. How long would it take for you to politely escort me to the door with the parting words “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”?
And yet TaleSpin, which does pretty much the same thing to characters from The Jungle Book, is actually a good show. The familiar characters may have helped to convince audience to give the series a first look and to convince Disney decision makers to greenlight the show. (The idea that pre-established Disney characters could help a show find its audience also played a role in the development of a show about team of crimefighting animals. Then-CEO Michael Eisner suggested that the main character be replaced with Disney’s famous chipmunk duo and the series evolved into Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers.) But what kept the show going and fans tuning in was the adventure filled plots and engaging character relationships. Using the Jungle Book characters as a starting point may have helped, but they were not the key element that made the show work. Anyone remember Jungle Cubs? Didn’t think so.
Where The Air Is Sweet – Sesame Street Animation
Sunday, May 30th, 2010Before I get started with this week’s regular (and early) article, I have an announcement: I’m on a podcast! The MuppetCast is a podcast devoted to the appreciation of Jim Henson, the Muppets, and everything related to them. MuppetCast host Steve Swanson kindly allowed me to come on his show and talk with him about the very best animation from acclaimed granddaddy of all educational children’s shows, Sesame Street.
To hear the show, you can either go to the MuppetCast website and listen to it there, or you can search the iTunes store for “MuppetCast” and download your 100% free copy of Show #164 for playback on your listening device of choice. You can also find links to help you subscribe to The MuppetCast with either iTunes or Zune at the MuppetCast website. (Just scroll down a little.)
Huge thanks to Steve Swanson for letting me crash his podcast and for being such a gracious host. I had a great time recording the segment and I hope all of you will have just as much fun listening to it.
In honor of my podcast debut, I’m keeping with the Sesame Street theme for this week’s article. We’ll be looking at a recent contest that offered animators the chance to see their work air on Sesame Street/
Can you tell me how to get, how to get to the rest of the article?
Why I Love Animation: Avatar The Last Airbender – The Blind Bandit
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
First impressions aren’t always right. Any time I need to remind myself of this, I think of my initial reactions to Avatar: The Last Airbender. If I had never given the show a second chance (or, more accurately, if I hadn’t been visiting friends while they were watching a couple of episodes), I would have continued to believe that the show was merely “okay” and might have missed out on what is now one of my favorite TV shows of the past decade.
A brief reminder: I’m going to be covering one episode of the series in detail. Spoilers abound and if you haven’t seen this episode or any of Avatar yet, you aren’t doing yourself any favors by reading the article instead. It’s your call, but I strongly recommend you see the episode before you read any further.
Trivia Answers – Defending You From This Show
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
The winner of last week’s trivia challenge was my good friend Jennifer. The show I was thinking of that features Flash Gordon teaming up with other comic strip heroes was Defenders of the Earth. Unfortunately, where Flash Gordon was better than i expected it to be, Defenders of the Earth is pretty disappointing. It takes what should be a fun hero team-up premise and crams it full of 80s cartoon cliches like teen sidekicks and a cute, friendly little gremlin that serves as the team’s pet.
I don’t think it’s even worth going into why the show is bad at length, so I’ll just give you one example. At the beginning of the show, Flash Gordon has a wife and a teenaged son who have been captured by Ming. His wife doesn’t look like Dale Arden as she appeared in the comic strip or the Filmation TV series. But since her name is never mentioned and she is voiced by the same actress who played Dale on the Filmation show, let’s just call her “Dale” for the sake of argument. Anyways, Ming uses his memory draining whatsit to try to extract Flash’s current location from Dale’s mind and kills her in the process. Fortunately, her “essence” – all of her memories and personality – ends up stored in a crystal which the Defenders’ pet fuzzball retrieves. Flash’s tech savvy son Rick Gordon then uses this crystal to power the Defenders’ new computer, Dynak X. Once this crystal containing all of Dale’s personality and memories in installed, the computer begins…warning the Defenders about an incoming threat in a monotone computer voice. It’s not that I expect a not very deep cartoon for kids to fully explore the potential tragedy of Dale’s situation. It’s that the show goes through the trouble of actually killing her off, makes a big deal of how this crystal contains everything that Dale was, and then just seems to wander off and lose interest, opting for a generic talking computer instead of a computer with Dale’s personality, or any personality.
I only watched a few episodes of the show before deciding that it wasn’t worth my time, but what I’ve read is that Flash only pays occasional lip service to the idea of restoring Dale to a real human body. In the meantime, he spends his days getting flirty with other women. How is this supposed to be the same guy who consistently chose Dale over scores of hot alien women who were throwing themselves at him on a regular basis?
TV Time – Flash Gordon
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
My husband and I were out shopping and decided to check out the clearanced DVDs. We weren’t finding much until my husband spotted the 1979 Filmation animated series Flash Gordon (sometimes called The New Adventures of Flash Gordon to distinguish it from other retelling of the Flash Gordon stories).
“You’re not really going to buy that, are you?” I asked. Though I’ve found one or two of them charming, Filmation’s TV shows are not among my favorites. I was also thinking of all the still unshelved DVDs we had at home. Adding another one, one that even my husband didn’t remember as being very good, didn’t seem like a good idea.
Of course he bought it.
Later on at home, we settled in to watch a couple of episodes. Though my expectations were pretty low, I was pleasantly surprised. Filmation’s Flash Gordon may not be a great TV series, but it is surprisingly fun and – for a Filmation production – well-made.
Half-Hour Commercials
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009Animated TV shows and toys have a long history together though not as long as you might think. Today, shows based on toy properties are quite plentiful. Flip through a couple of channels of kids’ programming and you’re bound to come across at least one series based on a toy line, a video game, a card game, or some other product available at your local toy store. Given how common such shows are now, it can be hard to believe that not too long ago, such shows did not exist in the U.S. In fact, they were pretty much against the law.
Why I Love Animation: Gargoyles – “The Edge”
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
I admit that I have been hesitant to start writing about animated TV shows. While there are plenty of excellent ones that I want to discuss, covering an entire animated series is a much more daunting task than analyzing a single movie or short film. I find it challenging to try to sum up an whole series without getting bogged down in individual episodes and their varying strengths and weaknesses. In order to keep myself sane, I’ve decided to limit my focus to a single episode of each show. I will be selecting episodes that I feel are particularly good examples of what the shows are all about. I intend to stay away from multiparters, at least for now. I will do my best to pick episodes that require the least possible amount of prior knowledge of the show so that those of you who haven’t seen it before don’t feel hopelessly lost and I don’t have to spend paragraphs just trying to get you up to speed. And I reserve the right to revisit the same show in the future and discuss a different episode.
Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s get started!
