Category: Medias

I’ve fallen behind, so let’s declare amnesty and just power through the past half year in reverse chronological order.

Bambi, Algar, Armstrong, Hand, 1942
OMG the animation is mind-blowingly gorgeous. The oil painted backgrounds are luscious and the hand animation holds up against anything you see today. It’s a natural outgrowth of the work the studio did in Fantasia. We watched it on Saturday and I could watch it again tomorrow.

The Muppet Christmas Carol, Brian Henson, 1992
Another classic on Disney+. This one’s status is dependent on the original story and time of the year. I gotta wonder what Michael Caine was thinking about his career as a A-list actor playing with dolls. Did he take in good fun?

Zootopia, Howard, Moore, Bush, 2016
Was fun when we watched it a few years ago, and fun again. The kids really enjoyed it too. Not a masterpiece like Bambi, but certainly in the top third of Disney’s esteemed catalog.

Luck, Holmes, Abad, 2022
The only reason I watched it was because Lasseter was involved. He might have been good in his heyday, but it’s obvious he needed the Pixar team more than they needed him. The story was drawn out and the animation awkward. Absolute mediocrity at best.

Wolfwalkers, Moore & Stewart, 2020
Lovely film to round out the trilogy with Secret of the Kells and Song of the Seas. A welcome respite from the Pixar-Disney-Dreamworks 3D hegemony.

Home Alone, Chris Columbus, 1990
Fun. I didn’t watch it until just a few years ago. I’ve always had something against rambunctious brats (I didn’t get into Calvin and Hobbes until I realized the peerless quality of the Watterson’s drawings). I could see this movie becoming a holiday staple until the kids are old enough to watch Tokyo Godfathers.

Toy Story 4, Josh Cooley, 2019
Pixar knows what their doing, even if I’m not totally sold on Bo Peep becoming an action hero.

Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich, 2010
A fun caper. Slightly better than Toy Story 2, but the original still holds the crown in my heart, in spite of the dated graphics.

Frankenweenie, Tim Burton, 2012.
It’s OK as a stop motion full length movie. Maybe I didn’t enjoy it as much because we weren’t expecting a black and white film. I should watch the original half-hour show. I wonder if brevity might have shaped a better story.

Encanto, Bush, Howard, Smith, 2021
It was such a big deal the year before. After getting a Disney+ account we had to watch it. It’s fine. I enjoyed the wacky song and dance numbers but the movie just ran too darn long. Then again, they all drag out nowadays.

Kung Fu Panda (1-3), Osborne & Stevenson, 2008, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, 2011, Carloni & Nelson, 2016
Fun popcorn series. I can’t remember a ton from any given movie but I’ve watched each of these films at least twice and wouldn’t argue against watching them again. My wife isn’t fond of the chop suey orientalism, but I’m inured to it.

Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, season 1, 2022
Awful TV show, but the kids liked it. My wife didn’t even bother to watch this.

Lucifer (ep 1 and 2), Tom Kapinos, 2016
The first couple episodes were fun, but I wasn’t going to invest hours of my life on this show.

Love Death + Robots (seasons 1-3), Tim Miller, 2019-2022
I love animation. This series fulfilled every bit of it’s promise. Each short is a banger so it’s hard to pick favorites. But to name four: “Sonnie’s Edge”, “Zima Blue”, “The Very Pulse of the Machine”, and “Jibaro”. I may have to re-up with Netflix when season 4 comes out.

Arcane, Pascal Charrue & Arnaud Delord, 2021
I finally got around to watching it long after the buzz from it’s release. It’s great. Didn’t realize that a video game company could produce such a good story. The fight at the end of Episode 7 of is one of the best fight scenes I’ve ever watched. Even though the nine episode series kind of runs out of steam at the end, I still spent the week after watching Arcane commentary on YouTube to process the journey.

I’m ripping a CD that I burned in my first year in grad school. Most of it is the excellent Psychograss album Now Hear This.

I had thrown in a few extra tracks in the leftover space at the end, which is now a snapshot of my mental state of that tumultuous time in my early twenties.

The opening bars of each of these tracks triggers a flood of dormant feelings.

I have mixed feelings of Architecture school. It’s inherently traumatic but created memories I wouldn’t want to give up.

If I was in power, I would develop a less vicious pedagogy…but I can’t muster any sympathy for students today, even if Studio hasn’t changed in two decades.

Humans are weird. Maybe I’m more cruel than I dare to admit.

What’s not to love?!

• Zany alien (adorable badass!)
• Bulbous spaceships
• Luscious watercolor backgrounds.
• Hawaii
• Idealized tropical agrarian paradise
• Harmless antagonists
• Charming protagonists
• Undemanding absurdity
• Family
• O’hana (ok, that’s cringe)
• Surfing
• Elvis!

What’s a better Disney film?
As I grow up, my tastes regress.
Continue the trend and this will become my favorite movie!
(Though I can’t envision how it could dislodge Pom Poko.)

We watched it with her years ago.
No memories.
As I pulled up the movie, she was unimpressed by my excitement.
Then it started.
She LOL’ed throughout.

The boy watched intently.
During our dinner break, he smiled and proclaimed
That was a lot!
(But refused to elaborate.)
I’ll re-interrogate him on film criticism during breakfast.

Should we watch the sequels?
I’m a timid gambler.
I’d quit while I’m ahead.
But if the kids insist…

Practical effects!
A nostalgic reminder of life before CGI.
Movie magic still dazzles the kids.
I wanna sleep inside a blue Lego brick!

A slim, tight story.
(I’ve lost patience for protracted narratives.)
One denouement is enough.

A fun show with one blemish.

It’s a uniformly white world.
Growing up, my non-existence was status quo.
A perpetual bystander to a world of beautiful alabaster teens.

The sting lingers.
But I hope it’s not as pointed for them.
Today’s media is more diverse.
One homogenous film doesn’t feel like erasure —
Just a tart anachronism in today’s sea of color.

~

I used this trailer to convince the girl to cancel Netflix for Disney+.
We got sidetracked by everything else for a few months.
Happy we finally watched the movie.

Hoopla lets us borrow a certain amount of titles per month, and I used up my last few credits in October to try a variety of albums. Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert blew me away. A commenter on a youtube video called it “the sound of God”.

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane — two immortals. Even if Jarrett is my artist of the month John Coltrane is the “voice of God”.

Clifford Brown and Max Roach — another pairing of greats. Delilah is an awesome opening track.

Know what I Mean? — Cannonball Adderley with Bill Evans, I prefer the slow rendition of Waltz for Debby in its original incarnation.

The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings — I get the appeal of hearing everything, but give me the curated experience of an album. Maybe I’ll dig this after I become a real jazzbo.

Unity — I’d buy the album for the cover, but the organ doesn’t do it for me.

Paper Moon — Another great album cover, but Brubeck feels uninspired. It must be endlessly frustrating for musicians to pour their souls into an album only to be so casually dismissed.

Song for My Father — Horace Silver was the only (non-christmas) artist to cut through the dominance of Jarrett. This album swings.

Koln Concert — as noted in the intro, this overwhelmed everything else this month. It’s the most sold solo jazz album of all time for good reason.
Concerts Bremen / Lausanne — His first solo piano concert album. Very good, including Rick Beato’s “Most Beautiful Two Minutes in Music“.
Koln Concert — I borrowed it twice.
Facing You — His first solo piano (studio) album. Very good.
Paris Concert — It starts on a classical note and stays in that tone while being jazz. Remarkable. Not as accessible as Koln Concert but I’m intrigued.

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With the passage of Thanksgiving, and the advent of the holidays, my spare Hoopla credits in November were spent on holiday albums. Here is all the Christmas cheer you can handle — the kids insist.

A Charlie Brown Christmas — Last year, it started our jazz kick. This month I’ve found two great companions with Ella Fitzgerald Bobby Timmons.

Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas — I’m not a connoisseur of vocal music. This needs to change in 2023. She’s amazing.

Holiday Soul — Bobby Timmons plays just enough Christmas to make this a holiday album, but I could play this all year. Per the title, it’s got soul.

A Dave Brubeck Christmas — Solo piano. Unremarkable.

The Original: Gene Autry Sings Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer & Other Christmas Favorites — Fun album, starts with popular songs on side A and carols on side B.

White Christmas — Bing Crosby takes the opposite tack and serves the veggies first.

The Christmas Song — Nat King Cole sings traditional Christmas songs. I love his voice, my kids want cheery pop. In the war against Christmas they are partisans for the “Holidays”.

James Brown’s Funky Christmas — Definitely James Brown, need to listen to it again.

Elvis’s Christmas Album — Our kids’ introduction to Elvis.

A Motown Christmas — With my jazz kick, I’ve lost interest in compilations. I prefer to hear a unified voice in an album.

A Christmas Gift for you From Phil Spector — hard to enjoy this album with the spectre of its namesake.

Christmas with Sinatra and Friends — Sinatra is great but it feels disjointed as a compilation after the grave.

We’ll see which albums have staying power for repeated plays into Christmas after this initial survey.

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from the deep
peace on earth
good will to men

We didn’t get this growing up.
Asians on the big screen, speaking English!
Real characters, not ridiculous caricatures.

Awesome!

Unfortunately, the movie is just ok.
The animations are gorgeous — the tropics are luscious and OMG the water!

But the rest of it…
The story is ponderous (might have been better as a TV show.)
The dialog was a better than Shang Chi, but the plot is stale.
The ending is saccharine.

I’m spoiled, expecting too much from a Disney princess film.

Or maybe it’s a good sign, that we now expect for better than mediocre from a Hollywood film featuring people who look like us.