That Duckfan's Eponymous Animation Review Series

[bats]

Dec 31, 2022 19:34:09 GMT Matilda said:

Dec 31, 2022 18:54:29 GMT That Duckfan said:

Meanwhile, Previously (7): Happy Holidays Special

I happen to have a Disney-produced VHS tape with an uncensored Santa's Workshop. (Interestingly, another short that's supposed to be on this Christmas collection *isn't* on this tape...and I have another version of the same Christmas video which does have all the listed shorts and where Santa's Workshop is censored.) But here's my question: should I do something special with this VHS tape, because there are fans/scholars seriously looking for the uncensored version?

I found the uncensored version as the very first hit in a Youtube search for "santa's workshop silly symphonies", so I don't think anyone's really looking all that seriously for it.
Pretty sure it's on the Disney Treasures DVD too.

[Mesterius]

Dec 31, 2022 19:34:09 GMT Matilda said:

Dec 31, 2022 18:54:29 GMT That Duckfan said:

Meanwhile, Previously (7): Happy Holidays Special

I happen to have a Disney-produced VHS tape with an uncensored Santa's Workshop. (Interestingly, another short that's supposed to be on this Christmas collection *isn't* on this tape...and I have another version of the same Christmas video which does have all the listed shorts and where Santa's Workshop is censored.) But here's my question: should I do something special with this VHS tape, because there are fans/scholars seriously looking for the uncensored version?

No need, I think. The uncensored version IS of course on the Treasures DVD edition from the 2000s.  

Steve Stanchfield also shared a nice 35mm transfer in this Cartoon Research post.

[That Duckfan]

Dec 31, 2022 19:52:14 GMT Mesterius said:

Dec 31, 2022 19:34:09 GMT Matilda said:

I happen to have a Disney-produced VHS tape with an uncensored Santa's Workshop. (Interestingly, another short that's supposed to be on this Christmas collection *isn't* on this tape...and I have another version of the same Christmas video which does have all the listed shorts and where Santa's Workshop is censored.) But here's my question: should I do something special with this VHS tape, because there are fans/scholars seriously looking for the uncensored version?

No need, I think. The uncensored version IS of course on the Treasures DVD edition from the 2000s.  

Steve Stanchfield also shared a nice 35mm transfer in this Cartoon Research post.

Blocked in my country for copyright reasons. Typical.

[Mesterius]

Dec 31, 2022 20:12:15 GMT That Duckfan said:

Dec 31, 2022 19:52:14 GMT Mesterius said:

No need, I think. The uncensored version IS of course on the Treasures DVD edition from the 2000s.  

Steve Stanchfield also shared a nice 35mm transfer in this Cartoon Research post.

Blocked in my country for copyright reasons. Typical.

I see it's blocked in quite a lot of countries. Interesting that it's viewable here in Norway.

[That Duckfan]

Strange World (2022)

Directed by Don Hall
Co-Directed by Qui Nguyen
Screenplay by Qui Nguyen
Heads of Story Lissa Treiman, David G. Derrick Jr.

Cast Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, Gabrielle Union, Lucy Liu
Cast Karan Soni, Alan Tudyk, Adelina Anthony, Abraham Benrubi, Jonathan Melo, Nik Dodani, Fransesca Reale, Emily Kuroda, Reed Buck
Cast Katie Lowes, LaNisa Frederick, Dave Kohut, Alice Kina Diehl

---

They've truly outdone themselves this time. In all my years of watching Disney movies, I don't think I've ever heard as bland and forgettable a title as Strange World. If you want to know why this movie bombed so hard at the box office, there's your first clue. It's the most non-descriptive, uninspiring movie title in Disney animation history. Oh boy, I can't wait to watch Music World, Savannah World, or Internet World. Even the Disneyland areas have more descriptive names!

All sarcasm aside, I don't think Strange World is as bad as the numbers suggest. There may be other reasons for its lackluster attendance: for one, the state of the economy in 2022, or perhaps larger trends in the movie-watching experience. Staying home may be the more affordable, and therefore the more attractive option.
I also think there's a chance this movie will receive a positive reevaluation in a few years' time. I don't think it's as bad as some of their other recent output like Big Hero 6 or Ralph Breaks the Internet.

So what's this movie about? Ostensibly, it's a throwback to the classic adventure genre, with a whiff of fantasy. Of course, any exploration story nowadays involves a lot of rethinking. The genre's colonialist roots have to be discarded for something a little less exploitative. But the portrayal of Avalonia as being isolated is certainly a reasonable motivation. Just ask the Portuguese.

Strange World follows the Clade family: the long-lost explorer Jaeger Clade, his unwilling son Searcher Clade, and his excited son Ethan Clade. Searcher is a farmer growing Pando, a plant that yields some kind of electric sprouts that powers their land of Avalonia with 1930s technology and zero-gravity flight. But when the Pando crop begins to fail, Searcher and his family must go on an expedition into the heart of their world. It is here that Searcher is finally reunited with his dad. Bring on the generational trauma.

The Clades have a long-standing tradition of conflating what they want with what their children want. This becomes a problem once it becomes apparent that Ethan takes after his grandfather. The movie handles this issue competently, but not with any finesse. In fact, Searcher's neurotic tendencies, that are partly rooted in this life-long mismatch are initially played for laughs, until the plot arbitrarily demands that he overcome his incompetence. It's lazy writing, mired in bad comedy and an unwillingness to take the character seriously.

Meanwhile, Jaeger's single-minded determination to cross the mountains costs him his family and 25 years of his life, putting him in the running for Worst Disney Dad Ever. Surely he races past Buck Cluck and heads toward Mother Gothel in the bad parenting placement? Unfortunately, Jaeger and Searcher are also comedy characters, and the movie doesn't take their disagreement quite as seriously as it should, in relation to Searcher and Ethan. Jaeger is an extremely poor father. Ethan is just a teenager.

As for the other big thing, the so-called 'strange world'. Normally I would be happy to explore a more abstract environment, but this one doesn't do it for me. It looks like a cross between Pandora (the James Cameron Avatar world) and something out of Rick and Morty. It's supposed to be a dangerous ecosystem, but there's nothing dangerous about it. Nobody dies in the entire movie. I mean, even a first-time explorer can live there on his own for 25 years. This really takes the sting out of the adventure.

There is also the President of Avalonia, whose sole reason for existing is so she can serve as a villain at the eleventh hour. I called this one while watching the trailer, which speaks to just how badly this story device needs to be retired.

It doesn't help that also I pretty much predicted the big reveal, although I didn't expect the Fantastic Voyage analogy to quite be so literal. In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the protagonist interacted with the Lion Turtle in a way that affected the story, but that's asking too much here. This movie doesn't go beyond It's The Environment, Stupid.

There are a lot of very interesting questions to be asked about generation and distribution of natural resources in a society. Questions that will have to be answered in the coming decade. But in Disney movies, there are only problems of attitude, so we never address any of these questions.
Just like in Encanto, the family should be extremely powerful due to being the sole supplier of a resource that effectively runs their civilization, but nothing comes of this apart from a couple of statues in the town square. Who cares, there are no stakes in this movie. They don't even fix the inciting incident at the end: their civilization's energy supply did just vanish overnight!

Any questions about the world-building in this movie are pointless anyway, thanks to the resurrection of the storybook framing device. "It's only a comic book, it doesn't have to make sense." That pretty much undermines their whole argument, doesn't it? Never mind the environmental metaphor, it was just a comic!

Well, that's Strange World. A movie that meets all of its criteria, barely, but is too safe and superficial to inspire any sort of real wonder.

And what was the point in adding the dog? The dog is useless!

---

I suppose I should also say something about Ethan and Diazo, the "first" LGBT+ couple in Disney Studio history. I'm not sure what I can say about it, given that Disney has played a game of chicken with this issue for a decade now. And the fact that I'm discussing it down here in this section gives away how little impact it has on the movie's overall narrative.

I liked the inclusion of the Primal Outpost board game, even if I thought its use as a metaphor for Jaeger and Searcher's inability to understand the new generation was a bit on the nose. Still, it wasn't as much on the nose than some other scenes, focusing on their actual noses...

[That Duckfan]

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (2022)
Animation Director Eric Goldberg
Animators Randy Haycock, Mark Henn

Wake up, new Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short just dropped