"Six" Rocks

It's been roughly a decade since the last time I wrote about a musical on this blog, but this feels like a special occasion.  Seeing the touring version of "Six" was my first time back in a live theater space since before the pandemic.  I purposely didn't listen to any of the songs and didn't look up any information about the show beforehand so I could go in fresh.  All I knew was that "Six" was about the six wives of Henry VIII, and the rock star-inspired costuming was gorgeous.

Catherine of Aragon (Khaila Wilcoxon), Anne Boleyn (Storm Lever), Jane Seymor (Jasmine Forsberg), Anna of Cleves (Olivia Donalson), Katherine Howard (Didi Romero), and Catherine Parr (Gabrielle Carillo) relay their sad histories through song, arguing over who had it worst.  Was it Catherine of Aragon, the rudely divorced first wife, who was married to Henry far longer than any of the others?  Was it the famous Anne Boleyn, unable to produce an heir and beheaded on trumped up charges of infidelity?  Was it Anne of Cleves, who was chosen based on her portrait, and dumped when Henry thought she didn't match the profile pic?    

What immediately struck me about "Six" was its simplicity.  The rock concert reimagining of history - or "histo-remix" - takes place on a minimalist set with six performers playing the queens, and four musicians, dubbed the "ladies in waiting."  After a high energy opening number, each queen gets a biographical solo, there's a brief comic interlude, and then a grand finale.  Nine songs and an intermission add up to roughly eighty minutes.  I could definitely see the origins of "Six" as a student production, put together by creators Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss when they were attending Cambridge University.  "Six" follows the lead of "Hamilton," using modern musical influences to invigorate its portrayals of the six queens.  Each of them is patterned off of the personas of specific pop stars.   Jane Seymour belts her power ballad like Adele, while Katherine Howard, the youngest queen, is reminiscent of teen sensations Britney Spears and Ariana Grande.

By giving the queens the larger-than-life personalities and modern quirks of contemporary singers, they're immediately very easy to root for and sympathize with.  My favorites were Donalson as a vivacious Anne of Cleves, gleefully showing off her wealth and other assets, and Didi Romero as the flirty Katherine Howard, whose rumored promiscuity points to a much darker truth.  As a group, the six queens behave like a pack of rivals - constantly sniping at each other and undercutting each other.  They're quick with witty barbs, full of winking historical references for the academics in the audience, and online dating terminology and chatspeak for the youngsters.  The contest for the worst sob story that serves as the loose framework for the show is probably the weakest part of "Six."  It's inevitable that the queens will find empowerment and support through each other, and join forces to become a rock supergroup in the finale.  Then again, this is the kind of show that demands a happy ending, and the only happy ending these ladies are going to get is through a contrived fantasy scenario.  

"Six" has an admirable revisionist impulse, keen to rewrite the popular image of Henry's exes.  It definitely succeeds in bringing more attention to the less famous wives like Howard and Parr, but there's so little time for each character that some of the queens get seriously shortchanged.  Good luck following what happens to Anne Boleyn if you aren't already familiar with the events of her life.  However, the songs are so catchy and the performers are so personable that I suspect it's inevitable that viewers will want to know more, and seek out more information on their own.  

I'm not the best person to comment much about the music, but the rhyme schemes for the lyrics are clever, and several of the tunes are serious earworms.  The density of the wordplay demands multiple replays - it's not nearly at the level of Lin Manuel Miranda's work, but the creators learned the right lessons from him.  Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, full of death, infidelity, and bad marriages, "Six" is very light on its feet, very funny at times, and ferociously entertaining.  I'm glad I braved the theater for it, and would absolutely go again, the next time it's in town.  

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Episode Titles: A Space Odyssey

It took me a while to realize that the individual episodes of television shows had titles when I was a kid.  This isn't as nutty as it sounds, because when I was young, my only television listings came from newspapers, and they would print episode synopses, but rarely episode titles.  If the title of an episode didn't appear onscreen at the start, I didn't know that it existed.  I knew cartoons mostly had titles, because they would run with a title card.  I knew that "The Twilight Zone" episodes had titles - Rod Serling would sometimes use them in the introductions.  But all the episodes of "Mr. Belvedere" had titles?  And "The Golden Girls"?  And "Murder She Wrote"?  

Onscreen episode titles were actually more prevalent in the past, but started to disappear in the '80s and '90s, especially when networks started shaving time off of shows to make more time for commercials.  Eventually I got my hands on TV Guides and entertainment publications that would list all of those unknown episode titles, and they were pretty accessible if you knew where to look for them.  Once the internet came around, the information became common knowledge.  For a few years, though, I was making up my own titles for episodes of shows like "The Simpsons."  I would put together my own episode guides for cartoons back then, before the official ones were really a thing.  I remember many official titles for comedies and sitcoms being very pun-based, and I didn't get most of them.     

In the streaming era, it's hard to imagine a time when the episode titles weren't available.  They're part of the way we navigate our viewing choices and talk about our shows.  However, it doesn't feel like most people actually use them casually.  You talk about the episode of "The X-files" with the leech man instead of "The Host."  Or, you talk about the episode where Lucy Ricardo sold Vitameatavegamin instead of "Lucy Does a TV Commercial."  There's still kind of an inside baseball quality to knowing the episode titles for certain shows, and many are rife with in-jokes and references.  Most episode titles of "Friends" start with "The One With…" or "The One Where…"  The first two seasons of "Hannibal" named its episodes after French and Japanese cuisine. "3rd Rock From the Sun" is all about the Dicks.  "Mr. Robot" used programming syntax and computer status codes.  However, it's "Person of Interest" that has an episode that's literally titled "/," also known as "Root Path."

I still feel like the only people who really use episode titles are either critics or committed fans - the type who are going to make Top Ten lists, or speculate about who's getting the Emmy.  In some cases the titles are so unwieldy, they're clearly not meant for casual use.  "Orphan Black" took its titles from phrases out of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" and other texts, resulting in installments like "Nature Under Constraint and Vexed," "Transgressive Border Crossing," and "Variable and Full of Perturbation."  Then there's "Rick and Morty," which seems committed to cramming the main characters' names into the titles as awkwardly as possible.  The last Christmas episode was called "Ricktional Mortpoon's Rickmas Mortcation."  I feel like the only time we ever discussed episode titles as a culture was that time "Breaking Bad" snuck a spoilery secret message into the episode titles of the second season.  That was fun.

As a viewer, I don't think episode titles are necessary for many scripted shows.  I admit there are a couple where I remember episodes by season and episode number, or even airdate, before I'll think of the actual title.  Older shows like "Full House" and "Dallas" put almost no thought into episode titles because no one except those involved with the productions would ever see them.  Most were very basic and descriptive, like "Anniversary" or "Summer Vacation."  Even now, "Law & Order: SVU" episodes have very simple titles like "Intersection" and "Bad Things," because hardly anyone uses them as identifiers.  The few remaining daytime soap operas don't even bother with titles - episodes are only numbered.            

It's a good sign, however, when you do see them come up in conversation.  I know "The Constant" is the best episode of "Lost" even though I've never seen "Lost."  Sometimes you can bring up "Ozymandias" or "The Suitcase" or "The View From Halfway Down" without bothering to clarify which shows they came from.  I take it as a good sign that we're taking television more seriously as a medium, and it's making more of a cultural impact.  Episodes are less interchangeable, and being singled out more often.  And of course recap culture, reaction culture, and how we watch TV shows have changed immensely.  As for episode titles, they're still not important to some shows, but others like "Stranger Things" and "Doctor Who" are doing title drops as part of new season hype.

I honestly never thought I'd see the day.

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"Guardians" Finally Won Me Over

I've liked the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films less than most MCU fans, though I still find them pretty enjoyable.  I think I've figured out why that is.  Though I like the individual characters, the "Guardians" stories up until this point have always been centered around Chris Pratt's Star-Lord.  It turns out the proceedings are vastly improved if you lean more on the ensemble, and shift the focus over to Nebula or Drax or the Guardian who has been largely confined to grumpy comic relief up until this point - Rocket Raccoon.

"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" is really Rocket's movie.  He's injured early in the film and spends most of it comatose, but extended flashback sequences show us his horrible past as one of the experiments of the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a cruel scientist who likes playing God.  The High Evolutionary has created and destroyed many species and whole civilizations, including the gold Sovereign people from the last "Guardians" movie.  In a subplot, the Sovereign leader Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) has created a new superbeing, Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) to be the Guardians' newest enemy, but Adam has a lot of growing up to do.  The High Evolutionary is the real big bad, and he wants Rocket back no matter what the cost.

The Guardians roster is mostly the same from the last "Avengers" movie, but Thor left to be in his own movies again, and the alternate version of Gamora has joined up with the Ravagers, leaving Star-Lord in a funk.  Kraglin (Sean Gunn) is now a full member, and they also picked up a psychic Soviet cosmonaut dog, Cosmo (Maria Bakalova) somewhere around the "Guardians" holiday special.  In their quest to save Rocket, the Guardians travel to some new places, including the headquarters of one of the High Evolutionary's companies, Orgocorp, which is made of entirely fleshy organic matter, and Counter-Earth, which is a copy of Earth inhabited by anthropomorphized animals.  

Everything looks fantastic.  I've always appreciated that the "Guardians" movies are willing to be more weird and cartoonish, letting the designs get really outlandish.  We meet security guards dressed in armor that seems to be made of spongy flesh formations, and alien critters like the fuzzy Blurp and extremely toothy Abilisks.  The High Evolutionary's experiments get grotesque to the point of being upsetting.  In Rocket's flashbacks, there are a trio of other experiments who were Rocket's friends - an otter named Lylla (Linda Cardellini), a walrus named Teefs (Asim Chaudhry), and a rabbit named Floor (Mikaela Hoover), who have all been modified into cyborgs.  Those who are sensitive to cruelty to animals should approach this movie with caution.  All the "Guardians" have skewed more adult, but there's some serious nightmare fuel in this one.  

Maybe that's why the rest of the film is generally  more upbeat.  Since this is James Gunn's last MCU outing for the foreseeable future, things come to a definite conclusion with a round of goodbyes.  Several characters get to grow up a bit, and we get some nice resolutions to ongoing issues.  I especially like how Nebula and Gamora were handled, and Star-Lord really does seem to work better as a supporting character.  All the things you want from a summer blockbuster are here - big crazy action scenes, plenty of one-liners and banter, and spectacle that only a lot of expensive CGI could accomplish.  However, it's also rewarding on an emotional level for fans who have stuck with these characters for the better part of a decade.  Great hallway fight, but a crying Nebula just gets to me more.          

Despite everything, the Guardians have grown on me.  I'm sure that they'll be back in some form or another, but for now I'm glad that they got to go out on such a high note.  This is the best MCU film we've had in a while, not just because it's another rare good ending, but because it's so committed to doing right by each and every one of its characters, from Rocket and Star-Lord to  Adam Warlock.  I understand why James Gunn was so keen on getting this movie made, and why Disney un-fired him to make it happen.  This one was worth the wait.  

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"The Muppets Mayhem" Gets it Right

I've lost count of the number of Disney-backed Muppet projects over the last few years.  Many have been creative and energetic, but none of them quite managed to figure out how to translate the charms of the old gang into the modern era.  Now, a rock mockumentary series featuring The Electric Mayhem is having its turn, and this is easily the best Muppets project since the last two theatrical movies.  Dr. Teeth (Bill Barretta), Floyd (Matt Vogel), Janice (David Rudman), Zoot (Dave Goelz), Lips (Peter Linz), and Animal (Eric Jacobson) look and sound better than ever, and benefit from getting some time in the spotlight away from the rest of the Muppet gang. 

The band is a classic group of zany weirdos who work best as supporting characters, so most of the story actually revolves around Nora Singh (Lilly Singh), a human junior executive at a fading record label, run by the elderly Penny Waxman (Leslie Carrara-Rudolph).  One day Nora discovers that the Electric Mayhem, who famously never recorded a record, owe their label a first album.  So she tracks them down, and with help from her sister Hannah (Saara Chaudry), ex JJ (Anders Holm), and Mayhem superfan Moog (Tahj Mowry), manages to steer the band towards finding their place in the modern music industry.  Well, sort of.  Along the way there's a lot of music, a lot of cameos, and a lot of fond memories to share. 

Culturally, this feels like the right angle to approach the Muppets from in 2023.  After all, there are some musical stalwarts from the '70s who are still out there touring year after year.  The Electric Mayhem prove there's plenty of life left in the groovy felt songsters, not to mention a lot of untapped potential.  We get flashbacks to how the key members of the band got together, there's some inter-band conflict, and when Lilly introduces them to the internet and social media, it turns out to be an incredibly bad idea.  Best of all, there's no real updating of the characters.  Animal is still a walking id.  Janice is still a woo-woo earth mother.  Zoot is still oblivious.  I wasn't familiar with Lips, the unintelligible trumpet player who apparently joined the band in the last season of "The Muppet Show" and hasn't been seen much since, but he's great.  These characters still work fine in the modern day, get plenty of laughs, and even nail some poignant moments.

As a music industry spoof, "The Muppets Mayhem" is very, very mild stuff in keeping with the intended family audience.  The band is weird, but relentlessly upbeat and optimistic.  There is one episode where everyone gets high, but the bad trip is due to expired marshmallows, not any kind of illegal substances.  Nora and the other human characters are sitcom creatures - very cuddly and sympathetic - and their problems are easily solved by direct communication and lucky happenstance.  Nora is such an underdog her life is actually about as unstable as the band's, and she has a lot of life lessons to learn on the path to the music career she wants.  She acts as the Kermit stand-in on the show, a lone voice of reason trying to herd the Mayhem members toward some semblance of professionalism.  Lilly Singh gamely plays the material straight, and is able to carry the show fairly well.  This is the first thing I've seen her in, and she's perfectly lovely and watchable.  If "Muppets Mayhem" featured no muppets, but only her and Tahj Mowry trying to break into the music industry, I think it could still work.

As with all Muppet media, there's a deluge of cameos and guest stars, many from the music industry.  It's an incredibly eclectic bunch, from Cheech and Chong to Charlemagne tha God, and the show consistently uses them in very silly ways.  My favorite was in the social media episode, where the Mayhem accidentally start beef with just about every other music star, angering their fandoms.  The angry convergence of the Swifties, the Beyhive, Beliebers, and Little Monsters is hilarious, and features several good blink-and-you-miss-it appearances.  Or there's the bit where Deadmau5 shows up for a quick visual gag, that involves everyone wearing versions of his famous mouse mask - which immediately goes completely wrong.  

As for the music itself, it's very nostalgic and very kid-friendly.  Probably the best new track is the show's theme song.  Not for everyone, of course, but at the very least, the new album has gotten the Mayhem properly on a Billboard chart or two for the first time in their long careers.          

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"The Mandalorian," Year Three

Mild spoilers ahead.

It's amazing how fast a show can go from something special to something exasperatingly rote and overly familiar.  The irony is, "The Mandalorian" is being more ambitious this year, putting Din Djarin and Grogu squarely in the middle of Bo-Katan's quest to retake the Mandalorian homeworld.  I'm usually all for adventure shows taking big steps like this, and abandoning the status quo, but I didn't need or want the show to get more epic and interconnected with the rest of the "Star Wars" universe.

Unfortunately, now I've got to remember all these characters from multiple seasons of the show, care about the Mandalorians and their politics, and take an interest in what's going on with the remnants of the Empire.  There's a whole episode that is mostly spent setting up a new villain, ex-Imperial Elia Kane (Katy M. O'Brien), that feels like something out of "Andor."  This is all very familiar, but very un-"Mandalorian."  I liked the show in its first season because it was simple and uncomplicated.  Unlike the rest of "Star Wars," it was small stakes and episodic, heavy on the creatures and the action scenes.  A four year-old could follow it without much trouble.  

This season, the show has a ton of ongoing plot, much of it being deployed too quickly for my tastes.  It's the most "Star Wars"  "The Mandalorian" has ever been, but I don't think this does the show any favors.  First, our hero has to travel to Mandalore to undo his apostasy.  Then there's the reuniting with the other Mandalorians, gathering forces, building Bo-Katan back up as a leader, uncovering a secret villain, and finally taking back the planet.  Many of these developments happen very quickly, and frankly aren't as well set up as I'd have liked.  There's an awful lot of convenient timing and ignoring difficult questions.  Another episode or three would have been a big help in terms of pacing and character-building.  

Keep in mind that the most important episodes about Din Djarin and Grogu's relationship were used to fill out the "Book of Boba Fett" series that aired last year.  Anyone who skipped that show will be very puzzled as to why the two characters are reunited at the beginning of this season of "The Mandalorian."  This ties into my larger issues with the story choices in season three.  I simply don't care about Bo-Katan and the Mandalore storylines that were introduced in other "Star Wars" media, notably the animated shows shepherded by Dave Filoni.  I didn't watch them and have no desire to watch them.  "The Mandalorian" is essentially being used to provide a hurried conclusion for a bunch of these older plots.  If they had been set up properly in "The Mandalorian" itself, and given compelling stakes, I wouldn't have minded so much, but they aren't.  My favorite episodes of the season wound up being the one-offs, like the episode spent saving Nevarro and Carl Weathers from alien pirates, and the guns-for-hire episode featuring Jack Black and Lizzo in minor roles.

A fourth season of "The Mandalorian," is currently being planned, but the third season actually ends in such a way that it could serve as a series finale.  And if this is the end of the adventures of Lone Mando and Cub, I have incredibly mixed feelings about the show.  "The Mandalorian" has done a lot to expand the "Star Wars" universe and move away from the Skywalker drama, but there's so much more uncharted territory I would have liked to see explored.  We still have no idea what species Grogu and Yoda are.  There are still all sorts of unanswered questions about Din Djarin.  I think I would have actually preferred the bittersweet ending of season two for a finale, because it would have left things more open ended.  The big victory of season three feels oddly hollow, maybe because it feels like a forced happy ending and doesn't seem earned.

          

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The State of the Fake Shemp

Long ago, in 1955, Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges passed away, leaving the remaining Stooges to fulfill their contracts for four more Three Stooges shorts by using stand-ins, reused footage, and clever editing to cover up the fact that they were a Stooge short.  The use of a "Fake Shemp" (a term coined by Sam Raimi)  has become commonplace in Hollywood over the years, though the techniques have become more refined over time.  In the CGI age, studios now use digital doubles to resurrect the deceased or absent stars - examples include Oliver Reed in "Gladiator," Paul Walker in "Furious 7," Harold Ramis in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," and Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in "Rogue One."  

Nobody seems to have much of a problem when Fake Shemp techniques are used to finish up projects that late actors had already agreed to do.  However, when it comes to resurrecting the dead onscreen later on, things tend to get controversial.  Back in 1997, Dirt Devil created a commercial with footage from 1951's "Royal Wedding," that made Fred Astaire appear to be dancing with a vacuum cleaner.  Many, including Astaire's daughter, were critical of the ad and its possible implications for Astaire's legacy.  Subsequently we've had Audrey Hepburn selling chocolate, Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor selling Volkswagens, and a few Beatles resurrected to promote the Beatles edition of Rock Band.  And as technology has improved, we're starting to get some full digital recreations of these celebrities acting in ways they never could have in real life.  Sometimes it looks a little odd, and sometimes it's downright creepy.  Seeing Gene Kelly's famous "Singin' in the Rain" number updated with hip-hop moves looks bizarre.

It's only very recently that the technology has improved to the point where these digital doubles can be used to create anything resembling a full performance.  In the 2000s, we had Lawrence Olivier as the villain in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and Marlon Brandon in "Superman Returns," but these appearances were achieved by manipulating existing footage, and were very, very limited.  The roles were also very minor, so no one put up much of a fuss.  Deepfakes and digital de-aging have allowed younger versions of Samuel L. Jackson and Mark Hamill to show up in "Captain Marvel" and "The Mandalorian" respectively, with the full cooperation and participation of those actors.  However, we're a long way off from the fantasies of totally simulated or recreated actors from movies like "S1m0ne," and "The Congress."  At this point, putting a different actor in makeup and prosthetics, like Robert Carlyle as John Lennon in "Yesterday," will still achieve better results.  And it's certainly cheaper.   

However, I expect that fully digital performances are an inevitability, given enough time and money.  We're not quite there technologically, but we're getting closer.  Digital doubles have been around long enough now that we're used to seeing them in many contexts.    It's already been proven that more complex resurrections can be done, and in a few cases it's actually been planned for.  Majel Barrett was recently heard voicing the Enterprise computer again in episodes of "Picard."  She'd recorded a library of phenomes before her death in 2008, so that future "Star Trek" installments could continue to use her voice.  Actors for big blockbusters are regularly getting full body scans of themselves done so that digital artists can plug them into fight scenes and special effects sequences, and it's not so hard to imagine that image rights in perpetuity are just around the corner.  I'm sure Marvel has enough digital assets to put Chadwick Boseman back on our screens in some form, but right now nobody wants that.  

In the future, who knows?  Public sentiment, more than anything else, determines when the use of a digital double is acceptable.  Even with Harold Ramis's family supporting the venture, the extremely well rendered digital Egon in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" had plenty of detractors.  If actors themselves get fully onboard with the idea, attitudes may change.  However, there are always people who are going to find the idea of digital resurrections unappealing, no matter how good they look.  

My own feelings remain decidedly mixed.  It's exciting that the technology is improving, but like so many other things, the implications are messy and the industry is almost certainly not ready for it.  Like everything else in the digital toolbox, it's great when used respectfully and terrible when it's not.  I'd love to see Shemp Howard onscreen again, reunited with the Stooges.  But if it's for the purposes of selling car insurance or crypto?  I shudder at the thought.     

      

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Identifying With "American Born Chinese"

I never read Gene Luen Yang's "American Born Chinese" comic, but the Monkey King and I go way back.  There have been attempts to depict him in American media before, usually with pretty poor results.  In Asian media, however, he's everywhere.  I'd be worried about how Chinese viewers would react to the show's version of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, except that he's been reinterpreted and remixed into so many different versions over the years - including Goku from "Dragonball" - that I doubt this version will make much of an impact.  "American Born Chinese" isn't for a Chinese audience, after all, but seems aimed squarely at second and third generation Asian-Americans.  Like me!

Jin Wang (Ben Wang) is a Chinese-American teenager trying to fit in with his mostly white classmates when a new Taiwanese student named Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu) transfers to his high school.  The two become friends, but Jin has trouble reconciling his desire to conform with embracing his Chinese heritage, and Jin's friendship with Wei-Chen often clashes with his desire to look cool to his Caucasian friends and his crush Amelia (Sydney Taylor).  His home life is also in crisis, as his mother Christine (Yeo Yann Yann) and father Simon (Chin Han) have been arguing over work and finances.  Wei-Chen, however, won't give up on Jin.  It turns out that he's secretly the son of the legendary Monkey King (Daniel Wu), and stole his father's magic staff in order to find a missing, powerful artifact.  And he's sure that Jin can help guide him to it.

"American Born Chinese" is a very YA affair.  A big chunk of time is spent on high school drama, as Jin deals with an embarrassing social media post, winning a place on the soccer team, and juggling priorities. At times it feels very similar to the MCU series "Ms. Marvel," except that it treats Jin's identity struggles more seriously, and the underlying mythology of its fantasy characters is much, much stronger.  Several familiar Asian actors make appearances, including most of the cast of "Everything Everywhere All at Once."  Michelle Yeoh plays the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin, who looks after Wei-Chen on Earth as his self appointed Auntie.  Ke Huy Quan plays Freddy, a stereotypical Asian character from an '80s sitcom, who has become a popular internet meme.  Stephanie Hsu and James Hong show up in smaller parts, along with Ronnie Cheng, Poppy Liu, Jimmy O. Yang, and Leonard Wu as our villain, the Bull Demon King.  The tone is kept very light and very fun, and there's a big martial arts fight in nearly every episode.  

The show's Chinese bona fides are pretty good.  There's a lot of dialogue in Mandarin Chinese, and I watched these scenes without subtitles, just because I could.  I was happy to find that these parts of the series were completely comprehensible to me, though the accents of the actors vary greatly, because the cast is so international.  There's an entire episode that retells the story of the Monkey King sneaking into the Royal Banquet, but framed to emphasize his friendship and falling out with the Bull Demon King.  If you actually know how the events are supposed to play out from "Journey to the West," it's a little eyebrow raising, but doing the whole thing like an installment of a chintzy '70s television serial, with the costumes to match, mostly makes up for it.  And I'm glad they included this episode, because the rest of the time the Monkey King is acting like a stern father, instead of the naughty hellraiser he's always been in the stories.    

           

The best parts of the show, however, are about Jin's parents.  I loved seeing their dynamic and especially their mismatched mindsets about how to approach getting ahead in life.  It hits close to home for me, and is something I've rarely seen addressed in Western media.  I also liked the way Jin's issues with his identity are addressed.  There's not much direct bullying going on at school, but there is a lot of pressure not to stick out, lots of ignorant insensitivity, and constant hits to Jin's self-esteem.  In one episode Jin chooses to smooth things over rather than call out the person who made him a laughingstock online, disappointing Wei-Chen and other friends who stand up for him. The situation is complex, and while Jin can be seen as taking the easy way out, he's not wrong to want to defuse the messy situation either.        

Eight episodes doesn't feel like enough time to cover everything going on in the show, and the fantasy material feels especially shortchanged.  Unless you're already familiar with "Journey to the West" and other Chinese mythology, you'll almost certainly run into some confusion over who all these strange characters are, and how they relate to each other.  Then again, the show's target audience likely knows exactly who everyone is already.

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This Year's "Peter Pan and Wendy"

David Lowery made one of the better recent Disney remakes with "Pete's Dragon," so I had some expectations for "Peter Pan and Wendy."  We've had several takes on this story over the last few years, but mostly revisionist versions like "Pan" and "Wendy."  There hasn't been a film that's really done a straight adaptation since PJ Hogan's "Peter Pan" twenty years ago.  Lowery makes his own changes to the story and does away with some of the familiar traditions, like having Hook and Mr. Darling played by the same actor, but this is at least as faithful a retelling of the J.M. Barrie original as anything Disney ever did.

The biggest change is that Wendy (Ever Anderson) is the main character throughout, and she's much more active in the story.  There's more emphasis on Wendy dealing with her reluctance to grow up, and she's on equal narrative footing with Peter Pan (Alexander Molony), except in the action and fight sequences.  And there are plenty of those, with a very mean, nasty Captain Hook (Jude Law) and much nicer Smee (Jim Gaffigan) leading the pirates.  To modernize the story further, the Lost Boys are no longer only boys, Tiger Lily (Alyssa Wapanatâhk) is a friendly badass warrior girl, and Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi) is not jealous of Wendy - because Wendy and Peter's budding romance is mostly absent.    

I've seen plenty of complaints about these changes, mostly from existing "Peter Pan" fans who aren't happy about some of the omissions. This is understandable, because there are some scenes and familiar lines that are recreated very faithfully from the Barrie play and the animated cartoon "Peter Pan," while others are totally original.  Hook's backstory and motives have been overhauled, so that he and Peter were actually friends in the past.  There's also much less emphasis on spectacle, aside from a few major sequences.  You have the first flight with Big Ben, a single appearance by the crocodile at Skull Rock, and a big finale with the flying pirate ship.  All of these are executed wonderfully, and deliver some thrills.  

But because this is David Lowery, Neverland is a more melancholy, less inviting place.  Many scenes take place at night, and the atmosphere is frequently dark and gloomy.  It's odd that the happiest section of the film is at the beginning, before Peter takes Wendy and her brothers (Joshua Pickerint, Jacobi Jupe) to Neverland.  Once they get there, there's plenty of action, but wonder is in short supply.  The visuals certainly look impressive, but the production also feels strangely small.  Tiger Lily is apparently the only indigenous person on the island, and we only get a glimpse of mermaids.  There's plenty of pixie dust and a few songs in the mix, but this feels like a film that's doing the absolute minimum to appeal to the tastes of the usual Disney crowd.  It's doggedly its own animal, with its own aims and its own point of view, and I appreciate that immensely.      

Parents should be a little concerned about the intensity level for younger audience members.  Jude Law is a lot of fun here, but scarier than most Hooks.  The rest of the cast ranges from great to passable.  The adults, which include Alan Tudyk and Molly Parker as the Darling parents, are all fully committed.  Gaffigan as Smee works so well, I'm astounded no one's tried it before.  Ever Anderson is excellent  as Wendy, and is easily the strongest performer among the kids.  Alexander Molony is more subdued than the usual Peter, but he's also one of the few that I've seen make the thimble scene work.  The only performance I found really lacking was Tinkerbell, because Yara Shahidi simply isn't given much to do.  Tinkerbell being changed from a jealous rival doesn't bother me much, but her total lack of character otherwise is a major misstep.     

  

On the other hand, I like how Wendy was fleshed out, especially how her happy thoughts are tied into her ultimate decision to leave Neverland.  And I like how the rivalry between Peter and Hook is resolved in the end.  "Peter Pan and Wendy" is far from the best "Peter Pan" film, but it's considerably better than the bulk of Disney's live action remakes, though the more ardent Barrie and Disney fans may disagree.

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Day of the Data Hoarder

A very disturbing development happened a few weeks ago that is still being processed by the film community.  The version of "The French Connection" streaming on the Criterion Channel was found to contain a very clunky edit of about six seconds, to excise racial slurs.  Soon after, it was discovered that digital copies of the film sold on Itunes and other platforms contained the same edit, including copies that had been previously purchased.  It's not clear who is responsible for this offense (probably Disney, who owns the rights to the film through the Fox acquisition), but keep in mind that this has happened to an R-rated film that contains frequent violence and profanity, something clearly not meant for family viewing.  And keep in mind that this is also the Academy Awards Best Picture winner of 1971.  If this can happen to a fifty year old, highly lauded classic, it can happen to any film.

This comes on the heels of the great Disney content purge of 2023.  Disney has become the latest streamer to tighten their belts by removing content from Disney+ and Hulu, including several titles that are inaccessible on any other platform.  Shows like "Willow," and Danny Boyle's "Pistol" don't have physical releases, and aren't available for digital purchases either.  To the dismay of the creative community, their shows and movies are in danger of disappearing into the digital ether  permanently.  "Willow" was a high profile release that was only on Disney+ for six months, and creator Jonathan Kasdan was still gunning for some form of continuation back in March.  On the other hand, at least "Willow" was actually released, unlike other streamers' shows that were completed and then permanently shelved for tax write-offs.  I'm still stewing over the second season of AMC+ show "Pantheon" that we're never going to get to see.

Fan response has been interesting to gauge.  The physical media collectors have taken the opportunity to say "I told you so."  Their collections are beyond the reach of the censors and the wishy-washy streamers.  Their digital equivalents, the data hoarders, are also busy filling drives and backups with the best copies of their favorite media that they can find.  Piracy arguments are getting heated again, with some creators conceding that if the only way to watch something is to pirate it, it's time to sail the high seas.  All the industry watchers are nervous, as the sad mistreatment of content is just one symptom of the great streaming bubble burst and further instability in Hollywood.  Disney has announced that there will be further purges, and the worst is probably yet to come.  

As for me, I feel like I might be stuck in denial.  I seriously doubt that all the pulled content is going to stay gone, especially the better titles.  I look at this situation and I think that this feels awfully familiar.  I've watched plenty of older media fall off the face of the earth, only to be resurrected later once the demand for it rises.  As an old Muppet fan, I remember "The Storyteller" series finally being released on home media a decade after the show was canceled, first on VHS tapes and then on DVD (I bought both).  The same thing happened with "The Black Cauldron," the most notorious bomb in Disney's history.  You have to pay a hefty fee to get the Blu-ray through the Disney Movie Club, but it is available.  Disney+ was supposed to be our ticket to a permanently open Disney vault, but that's clearly not the case.  The demand isn't as strong as they thought it would be, so we're all just going to have to go back to the old mindset of tracking releases and availability, the way we did before the streaming era.  Gone right now doesn't mean permanently gone.  It never has.  

Content being removed from streaming is unfortunate, but it's also not especially surprising.  It costs money for the streamers to maintain these big libraries, and if the content isn't generating revenue, it makes no sense to keep them around - just like television.  There's so much content online right now that no one could possibly watch all of it, and we've known for a while now that there are too many shows being made and too few viewers.  Cancellations always hurt, but this kind of correction was inevitable.  The media that people actually want will come back around eventually.  It may take a decade or two, but I doubt that we've seen the last of the "Willow" series.  It did have its fans, after all.  

 

As for "The French Connection," well, I guess this has been another lesson that we can't trust the studios when it comes to the fidelity and preservation of media.  If you don't have a physical or digital copy of a piece of media without DRM, you don't have it permanently.  Any digital purchase that includes DRM is only a license, and it's been demonstrated that it's an easily revocable one.  When the Ultraviolet movie locker site shut down a few years ago, users lost movies that weren't available through other platforms, or had to jump through hoops to maintain their libraries.  I'm still happy to rent via digital platforms, but I've never bought anything that I intended to keep.         

To put it plainly, I just don't trust them. 

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Trailers! Trailers! The 2023 Holiday Season

I wasn't expecting to put out another "Trailers!" post so soon, but there's been a deluge of interesting promos I want to talk about.  All links below lead to the trailers and teasers on Youtube.

Napoleon - Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby look well matched, but the real test here is going to be for Ridley Scott.  He's the only director who is still regularly making these big historical epics, and he's still terribly hit or miss.  And when he does score a hit, the audience can't be counted on to show up for them.  Good for Apple for funding such an ambitious project, but I don't think we're going to be seeing many more like this from Scott.  

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes - I didn't realize how fond I'd become of the "Hunger Games" until I got another glimpse of its universe here.  I'm as happy as anyone that the YA dystopia wave is over, but it was fun in small doses.  The cast looks promising - it's good to see Rachel Zegler again, and Viola Davis is always a treat, but the best surprise was the appearance of Jason Schwartzman, who I totally mistook for Stanley Tucci.  

Wish - This is a milestone release for Disney Animation, meant to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Disney studio.  I'm tentatively excited about the use of both 2D and 3D animation in the film, though what little we see of it in the trailer could use some fine tuning.  The cast is great, though, and I like the premise that's been circulating about  this being the story of the famous Wishing Star from "Pinocchio" and "The Princess and the Frog."    

Killers of the Flower Moon - The long awaited reteaming of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio will look at the murders of native the Osage in the 1920s, and the formation of the FBI.  I'd forgotten some of the cast who had been announced, and the sheer scope of this is impressive.  This is going to be a much bigger production than I was expecting.  The final running time is reported to be over three hours, and I honestly can't wait.  

Next Goal Wins - Finally!  Disney has delayed the release yet again, but Taika Waititi's soccer comedy is on the slate at last.  And it looks like a perfectly charming underdog story in the same vein as "Cool Runnings," with a hapless Michael Fassbender as the coach.  Waititi's been so bogged down in genre projects for Disney, it's good to see him go back to one of his main strengths - pleasantly eccentric, cross-cultural comedy.

Dune: Part 2 - This is being set up as a war film, emphasizing the grand scope of the film over interesting characters and ideas.  We get glimpses of the new characters - the  Emperor, Irulan, Feyd Rautha, and others - but there's no attempt to really introduce them.  Instead, we're being primed to follow the ascent of Paul as the Messiah, and I really hope that Villeneuve and friends can pull it off.  The source novel lost me in the second half, but the film feels like it could be a different animal.

The Color Purple - I've seen the Spielberg film, but not the stage musical version that the new "Color Purple" will be based on.  I imagine that this must be a happier version of the story than the Spielberg film, heavy on the uplift.  Hopefully it'll also be closer to the original Alice Walker novel.  Oprah's got an executive producer credit, but it doesn't look like anyone from the cast of the first film will have any significant role in the second.  

Wonka - I trust Paul King to deliver something watchable, but probably not at the level of his "Paddington" movies.  I'm not too fond of needless prequels in general, but I really disliked Tim Burton's 2005 remake, and it's oddly a relief to see something that looks more like the original "Willy Wonka" movie from the 1970s.  Timothee Chalamet sounds a little off, but he looks perfect.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this one.  

Poor Things - I still have no idea what this movie is going to be, but the trailer has convinced me that Yorgos Lanthimos will deliver his trademark oddity in spades.  The makeup work alone is unnerving as anything.  The bits of story presented here don't quite seem to match the description of the plot we have, but the mad scientist material is so out there, I guess that's no surprise.

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Crashing June Tentpoles

Some are blaming streaming.  Some are blaming the ongoing WGA strike.  Some are blaming budgets.  For whatever reason, the summer of 2023 saw some of the worst tentpole bombs in ages.  We started off fine with "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3" riding a wave of good reviews to a solid $350 million domestic gross and over $800 million worldwide. "Fast X" has made nearly as much, but its budget was so high that it hasn't broken even yet.  Neither has "The Little Mermaid," though it's getting pretty close.  Early June saw the encouraging success of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," which is now the highest domestic grosser after "The Super Mario Bros. Movie."  And everything else since then has been a disaster.

"Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" is currently the lowest grossing "Transformers" movie at $400 million worldwide.  "Ruby Gillman," the Dreamworks Animation film you haven't heard of, hasn't made back half of its modest $70 million budget.  "Elemental" is at $250 million, which is at least better than "Lightyear," but not by much.   The biggest bomb of the summer so far, however, is "The Flash," which "Elemental" just passed on the domestic chart, despite making half of what "Flash" did on their shared opening weekend.  Warner's massively hyped, long delayed superhero film fell completely flat at $260 million worldwide, and is projected to lose as much as $200 million.  The latest "Indiana Jones" might be in an even worse spot, but it's too soon to tell.  It opened bigger, but reportedly had a much higher budget.   

Things are looking better in July with "Mission Impossible" and "Barbie" coming up, but Hollywood is still reeling from a disastrous June, which looks an awful lot like the realization of the ominous prediction that Steven Spielberg made ten years ago, about multiple $250 million movies flopping one after another at the box office, forcing the industry to change.  There's been all sorts of doom-and-gloom predictions, especially after "The Flash" bombing, that this might be the end, or at least the beginning of the end of several major trends that have kept the summer box office going over the past two decades.  After the underperformance of "Black Adam," "Shazam," and "Quantumania," superhero films might finally be starting to ebb.  "The Little Mermaid" is the last major Disney renaissance film to get a live action adaptation, and the goodwill toward them may have also finally run dry.  And while the top two box office earners this year are animated films, PIXAR hasn't had a hit since "Toy Story 4." 

The total box office for this year is improving on last year, and the theaters have been making money even if the studios have not.  Despite so many of the bigger disappointments coming from Disney, they still have a bigger market share than any other studio.  However, only one film this year, "Super Mario," has managed to crack a billion dollar worldwide gross so far.  In 2019, five summer films hit that mark - all of them Disney tentpoles.  Disney's only managed one since: "Avatar: The Way of Water."  Universal's "Jurassic World Dominion," Sony's "Spider-man: No Way Home," and Paramount's "Top Gun: Maverick" are the other post-pandemic billion dollar earners.  In my completely uninformed opinion, the biggest reason that so many of these films flopped is that attendance levels aren't fully back to pre-pandemic levels and this may be the new normal.

There are plenty of other contributing factors.  June was over-programmed, with too many big titles crammed into too few weekends.  Budgets for some of these films have been out of control, especially with pandemic measures and costly delays factored in.  The WGA strike has shut down many late night shows and other marketing vectors, impeding advertising campaigns.  Streaming may have changed consumer habits permanently, with many opting to wait for films to become available online.  PIXAR in particular seems to have been adversely affected by so many of their recent films being released as Disney+ exclusives, and skipping theatrical runs. 

The success "Across the Spider-verse" suggests that audiences are absolutely willing to show up for the right film - even if it's the umpteenth superhero film that takes place in a multiverse, but they're getting more discerning, which means more films are getting the cold shoulder.  It'll be interesting to see how many of these flops and bombs spell the end of their franchises.  "Indiana Jones" and the DCEU are on ice for sure.  "Transformers" may finally be done.  "The Fast & the Furious" is guaranteed at least one more film, but that could be it.  

And honestly, that may not be such a bad thing.

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Notes on "Quantumania"

I feel I should start with an apology, because I wrote and scheduled my "Creed III" review before the news of Jonathan Majors' arrest came out, and promptly forgot about it.  This is one of the most dizzying reversals of fortune for a rising star that I've ever seen.  Just after Majors had two different films top the box office in successive weeks in February, he was arrested for assault.  Now multiple films are potentially in limbo, including the entire current slate of the MCU, which is built around the threat of Majors' villain, Kang the Conqueror.

"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," for instance, is almost entirely built around introducing and promoting Kang as a threat.  There's not much of a plot otherwise.  Scott Lang, like Adonis Creed, is enjoying fame and fortune, and everything seems to have worked out for him.  He's written his memoirs, he's still together with Hope, and his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) is now following in his footsteps - maybe a little too closely, as she gets herself arrested for political activism (and shrinking a cop car) in the opening act.  This might be an interesting topic to explore, but instead the two of them and the Pym/Van Dynes - Hope, Hank, and Janet - are accidentally pulled down into the Quantum Realm, and spend the rest of the movie trying to get home again.

If you remember the previous Ant-Man movies, Janet van Dyne was stuck in the Quantum Realm for decades.  We learn that she briefly befriended Kang, an exiled multiverse-hopper, who she learned was an evil conqueror.  Still trapped in the Quantum Realm, Kang has been busy subjugating the folks who live there and looking for a way to escape.  The Quantum Realm is essentially like an alien planet, full of strange creatures like the sentient slime Veb (David Dastmalchian), a guy with a flashlight for a head, Xolum (James Cutler), a telepath named Quaz (William Jefferson Harper), and your garden variety badass freedom fighters like Jentorra (Katy O'Brien).  Corey Stoll's villain from the first "Ant-Man" is back, but now transformed into a crazed, mutated cyborg named MODOK.  And for some reason Bill Murray also shows up for exactly one scene.    

If this sounds like a random mess, it's because this is a random mess.  Ant-Man has been good for comic relief in the MCU crossovers, but the last "Ant-man" film was among the weakest in the entire franchise, and "Quantumania" is at about the same level.  The change of scenery is nice, but all the interesting minor characters from the previous films have been jettisoned, so that Scott Lang and friends can go have a more cartoonish sci-fi adventure, with monsters and spaceships and big fights with too much CGI.  The size-changing schtick is so much less effective here, where everyone else is doing similarly impossible things, and there's no normal, mundane, everyday environment to contrast with. Hope is still woefully short on screen time and personality, such that the "Wasp" in the title should probably refer to her mother Janet, who has far more to do.  Aging up Cassie is a good idea, and Kathryn Newton delivers good snark, but like Hope she just doesn't get enough attention.

At least Jonathan Majors as Kang feels appropriately menacing, but we may not be seeing more of him.  So much of "Quantumania" is about building Kang up as a threat, and filling in parts of his backstory, so the movie is really more of a prequel to future "Avengers" films than anything else.  I expect that he'll end up being recast, because the rules of the MCU are so fluid that hardly anything feels like it has much weight or substance anymore.  "Quantumania" is full of pretty colors, shaped into a strange realm where buildings are sentient, Bill Murray is boring, and somebody thought that a live action MODOK was a good idea.  Swapping Majors out for a different actor feels positively pedestrian.

I'm being unfair.  "Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania" is not an especially bad superhero movie.  Hundreds of people put in a lot of time and effort to make this, and occasionally there's a good joke or a clever line or an especially weird Quantum Realm creature that deserves some admiration.  However, it bothers me immensely that "Quantumania" tried to do something different, and ended up just making a clone of a "Guardians of the Galaxy" film with more tepid characters.  The MCU has been stuck idling for far too long, and had better find the gas pedal soon.    

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My Top Ten Films of 1946

This post is part of my ongoing project to create Top Ten movie lists for the years before I began this blog, working my way as far back as I can.  Below, find my Top Ten films for 1946, unranked.

Notorious - The suspense sequences in this film still work for me, even though I've seen them multiple times and I know how it will all turn out.  In the moment, Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic magic still works as well as it ever did.  And Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, at the height of their charismatic powers, playing high stakes spy games with Claude Rains and the Nazis, is still absolutely irresistible.  

It's a Wonderful Life - It's not Christmas if somewhere, Jimmy Stewart isn't learning that one man can make a difference, and isn't on the receiving end of the generosity and heart of the little town of Bedford Falls.  Skip the first, plodding hour if you must, but "It's a Wonderful Life" is one of cinema's most enduring classics, with the happiest of happy endings I will never get tired of watching every year.   

Beauty and the Beast - Easily the most popular film that Jean Cocteau ever made, full of arresting poetic images and little moments of film magic.  Jean Marais' Beast remains the best live action Beast, a masterpiece of animal magnetism and Gallic charm.  The well intentioned remake from a few years ago, despite borrowing heavily from the original's imagery, never comes close to achieving the same wonder. 

A Matter of Life and Death - A lovely fantasy romance from Powell and Pressburger, which has one of the best examples of a film using both black-and-white and Technicolor photography in the same production.  The love story between David Niven and Kim Hunters' characters is sublime, and the opening sequence of the doomed mission remains one of the most touching things I've seen in all of cinema.

Shoeshine - Vittorio de Sica's neorealist classic is full of childish joy and crushing heartache, following the brief criminal careers of a pair of shoeshine boys.  The rawness and the purity of the characters' emotions is still instantly engaging, and difficult to forget.  The film had such an impact at the time of release, it kicked off what would become the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars.  

Panic - A French crime film that deals with the subject of mob revenge and post-war tensions.  It's very insightful about the social realities of France in this era, and perhaps this is why it was also a total failure at the box office.  Michael Simon cuts an especially tragic figure as the scapegoat, Monsieur Hire, whose only real crime seems to be that he's an oddball and a loner in a deeply suspicious, unhappy society.   

Gilda - The title character is possibly the most famous and complicated film noir femme fatale, and Rita Hayworth's most famous role.  I had a hard time deciding whether to include this film or "The Postman Always Rings Twice," on this list, but "Gilda" is undeniably more memorable and entertaining.  Hayworth lights up the screen, and a young Glenn Ford doesn't do a bad job of keeping up with her.   

The Yearling - I frequently got this film confused with "Old Yeller" when I was younger, as the plots are similar - both deal with a young boy's love for a pet, and the heartache that results when that pet becomes a threat to the boy's family.  The protagonist in this story is younger, and the fight to keep the yearling is more drawn out, which made this the more emotionally fraught viewing experience for me.

The Best Years of Our Lives - A tender film about WWII veterans reintegrating into their old lives after the war.  This has such a different attitude from the more cynical takes on this kind of homecoming story after later wars that it occasionally feels very naive and old fashioned.  However, Harold Russell's performance is still terribly inspiring, and the rest of the star studded cast isn't too shabby either.  

The Stranger - Orson Welles directed and starred in this suspense film, which serves as an early example of Hollywood grappling with the crimes of the Nazis, and was one of the first narrative films to use footage from the concentration camps.  Welles and Edward G. Robinson deliver strong performances, and the filmmaking serves the suspense very well - probably why this is Welles' only real box office hit.

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"Nimona" Lives

Netflix and Annapurna acquired the unfinished animated film "Nimona" from Blue Sky before they went under, and now it's a Netflix release.  And thank goodness, because this may have been a bad fit for Disney, but it's a perfect fit for Netflix.  It's a fantasy action film set in a medieval kingdom, but one that's been built for a cyberpunk era, and if you squint you could mistake it for "Arcane."  It's aimed at an older audience than the usual CGI animated media, isn't afraid to get dark and angry, and features major LGBT characters, along with a scrappy, bratty, irresistible antiheroine.

Newly knighted Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) is framed for the death of the Queen (Lorraine Toussaint), forcing him to go into hiding, and attracting the attention of a shapeshifter named Nimona (Chloe Grace Moretz).  She thinks he's a villain, and is determined to make herself his sidekick.  Her bloodthirsty plotting and eagerness for chaos initially put Ballister off, because he's trying to prove his innocence to the interim leader and head of the knights, The Director (Frances Conroy).  However, Nimona is awfully handy to have around for jailbreaks, finding and questioning suspects, and evading the guy responsible for capturing Ballister - who happens to also be his ex - Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang). 

Annapurna doesn't have the resources of the bigger animation studios, and "Nimona" is noticeably cutting some corners when it comes to its animation.  It's using a similar style to "Klaus" and "Bad Guys," with 3D mimicking 2D, which looks great when it comes to the flashy action scenes with Nimona changing into different cartoon animals in the blink of an eye.  However, there are some sequences that are noticeably a step down from the others, and the environments are especially rough looking.  "Nimona" had its original production interrupted by the Disney acquisition of Blue Sky, and subsequently much of the first creative team and pipeline was replaced.  The characters and the writing, fortunately, help to shore up the rougher patches.

Boy do I love Nimona.  She's a hilarious, rebellious, preteen punk, who has been ostracized for being a "monster" like Shrek.  But unlike Shrek, Nimona really wants to be accepted, and has a far, far harder time coping when she's not.  The film gets much darker portraying Nimona's mental and emotional state than I was expecting, though the ND Stevenson "Nimona" webcomic is reportedly even more fraught.  All but the last act is kept light and fun, though, with Nimona doing her best to win Ballister over to the side of evil and villainy.  A lot of the humor comes from contrasting her gleeful willingness to jump into trouble with Ballister's nervous caution.  Nimona enjoys thumbing her nose at authority and stirring up trouble, but when push comes to shove she still has a loving heart underneath.  

It's fascinating to watch such a  familiar story of acceptance and tolerance take place in such a diverse fantasy world.  Ballister and Ambrosius are a couple with a same sex romance that plays out exactly the way it does in every animated PG film with a straight romance.  The knights include all genders, with both the Director and the kingdom's legendary hero, Gloreth, being female.  Most of the character designs are modeled after their voice actors, a noticeably multi-ethnic bunch.  However, there's a wall around the kingdom that nobody ever ventures across for fear of monsters, and Nimona's core trauma comes from being mistreated whenever anyone figures out that she's not human.  The kingdom is pretty egalitarian and accepting, but still has its share of blind spots, and is capable of devastating cruelty.

"Nimona" is really something special.  Yet again, this is the kind of riskier animated film the bigger studios should be making, but almost never do.  Netflix and Annapurna coming to its rescue is one of the few feel-good success stories of this summer movie season, but part of me is still sad "Nimona" didn't get to be Blue Sky's swan song with a full theatrical release.  At least on Netflix, it'll find its audience quicker, and hopefully lead to more films like it.

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My Favorite Lotte Reiniger Film

The oldest surviving feature-length animated film is Lotte Reiniger's "The Adventures of Prince Achmed," technically the third ever created after Quirino Cristiani's films from the 1910s.  Instead of cel animation, Reiniger created a form of silhouette animation using backlit cutouts, filmed with stop-motion techniques one frame at a time.  This created distinctive black silhouette characters, similar to the ones used in Chinese shadow puppetry.  This style of animation is still seen today - examples include the films of Michel Ocelot, and segments of the recent "Candyman" sequel/reboot - but all of them feel like homages to Reiniger, who utterly dominated this particular form of animation for half a century.      

Reiniger's work is so visually distinctive that it's instantly recognizable.  The cutouts consist of bold black shapes and lines, forming fanciful characters and enchanting worlds against a monochromatic background.  The movements are very limited, but graceful.  The puppets are largely static, with faces that never change, yet are still wonderfully expressive.  "Achmed" was conceived of as a "One Thousand and One Nights" pastiche, combining various elements of "Aladdin," "Sinbad the Sailor," and other stories.  Prince Achmed is an original character, but he and the princess, the sorcerer, the witch, and the other characters all feel familiar.  So does the hero quest, the romance of the young lovers, and the triumph of good over evil.  Nearly all of Reiniger's films were based on fairy tales of one kind or another, full of magical creatures and storybook landscapes.    

Though rough by modern standards, "Achmed" is still impressive today for the sheer intricacy of the individual images, and Reiniger's ingenuity in creating various effects and illusions.  Transformations are common in her films, like the evil sorcerer who shapeshifts into different creatures to fight our intrepid hero.  Horses and princesses can fly, and the genie is one of the few characters who isn't a black silhouette - he's a ghostly light blue.  Reiniger used a rudimentary multiplane camera in "Achmed" ten years before Disney would develop theirs.  Even after the advent of sound and other improvements, her style largely remained the same.  She started using more complex, full color backgrounds in the 1950s, but the black silhouettes persisted.  Astonishingly, in the early years of her career, she largely worked alone on her animation - storyboarding, making puppets and backgrounds, and carrying out the painstaking animation process herself.  Her one major collaborator was her husband, Carl Koch, who served as her producer and cameraman.  The creation of "Achmed" took three years, from 1923 to 1926, and was completed when Reiniger was twenty-seven.     

"Achmed" wasn't considered revolutionary only because it was a feature length film, but because it was a true experiment in filmmaking technique and artistry.  It was considered a piece of avant garde cinema, before animated features were found to be commercially viable.  Reiniger only made one feature, but contributed to several others, and her output includes dozens of shorts and advertisements over many decades.  Sadly, her career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazi regime in her native Germany, and much of her work is considered lost.  Still, her influence has been considerable and persistent.  I'm constantly finding homages to her style in everything from "Samurai Jack" and "Steven Universe" to "Harry Potter."  And after all this time, she's still the only female animation director that most cinephiles can name.      

What I've Seen - Lotte Reiniger 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

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