New Theme

Well, I changed the blog title to make it less cumbersome and I changed the theme. I may mess with the colors later. Thats all. (lame post)

Kung-Fu Panda

Here I go with yet another review thats waaaay late

Kung-Fu Panda is a breath of fresh air considering the general low quality of Dreamworks movies as of late. Its certainly nothing special, but its light, humorous, and, most important of all, its not another Shrek movie.The film is a decent movie and a great Dreamworks movie which shines through the thick layer of scum that has coated Dreamworks movies since the days after Shrek 2. It opens with a Samurai Jack influenced 2D sequence, which made me want more 2D feature films. The CG style almost seemed like a disappointment compared to the fun traditional animation, but the 3D animation is also high quality. Although the fat joke centered trailer made me cringe, Panda is a stellar example of how things that are generally frowned upon can still prove funny if done well. That being said, like the humor, the film is well executed but lacks depth. Its story is the typical underdog story, and a lot of the moments are incredibly cliche. The main thing that makes the film unique is the humor, which basically makes it an irreverent take on a cliche hero story rather than just a cliche hero story, which turns out to make all the difference. 

1 Year of Blog

Yep. Its been a whole year since I started this blog, with my first post being "I had mac and cheese for lunch" ah, what auspicious beginnings. It started out as a daily blog with a lot of style and opinion and a little substance, and has evolved into a review and production blog that updates a lot less often, but with better quality posts. I think things have slowed down a bit more than I wanted them too, and I'm going to try to pick up the pace a bit in the blogs second year. I think there were a lot of bad posts last year, and a lot of good posts. Some stuff was misguided, some was correct. I'm hoping to perfect my posting style, spelling and grammar, and film critique for next year. Heres what you can look forward to in year two

• A review of the complete Powerpuff Girls DVD set

• Another really late review, this time of  Kung Fu Panda which could be the last redemption for Dreamworks (and possibly the last time I use the Dreamworks label in this blog, I don't even know why they get their own label)

•The Shak Budisen Movie and more production news- the movie is currently still set for release this Summer, I just have to finish it, which I will do eventually. I've done some new animation which I need to score.

• Lots more reviews of movies I will be seeing.

• More random crap to keep the blog active.

• Me being pompous when I get 1000 hits.

• Yet another new name for the blog. I'm thinking of simplifying it to: "Stuff I'm Making and Watching"

• The premier of my new show

• Possibly a music video 

• Possible move to a private server where this will become part of an expanded site

• Stuff

Ok, thats all I got, but hopefully that will keep things interesting and keep this blog going.

~Kieran

Indy 4

So heres my very very very late thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A lot of fans were disappointed by this movie, but I am not a fan, so I set my standards even lower. I had heard it was awful, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was mildly entertaining. Yes, it follows the classic Indy formula the least, but since I didn't like the classicy Indy formula, I didn't mind. It was some fun mindless car chases, nothing special, but certainly not bad. That being said I do have a few gripes. Marion Ravenwood's appearance is pathetic and completely unnecessary. It seems like a failed bid at fan approval/nostalgia. Obviously, Indy is too old to fight Nazis, but fortunately for him, there's plenty of communists to fight. Go figure. Finally, the ending is a total anti-climax, and while the rest of the film was fairly exciting, the ending didn't live up to its promise, and the final love scene was bad as well. Overall, a pretty mediocre movie with nothing to offer besides some cheap entertainment. But thats all the series was worth to me anyways, so I don't really mind.

The Most Bested Show in the Whole Wide World.....NOT!

OK, so this is great. I was eating dinner at the local pizza restaurant and their TV was playing this show called Wrecked. Unfortunately, this show was not about things being destroyed or demolished or some other adjective that means the same thing. This show was about tow trucks. Yes, there is now a show entirely devoted to those interested in towing. Better yet, it features a guy named Trike. Yes, he was actually named Trike. So Trike and his team set out to tow a school bus, which is dragged out for about 5-10 minutes longer than it should. But of course, they have to build the excitement, which involves attaching the cables, rotating the bus, etc. But the lamest thing about this was one of the main conflicts: they lost the keys to their truck. Yes, the main excitement of this show involved them looking for the keys to one of their trucks so they could tow a school bus. Needless to say, I was on the edge of my seat. The title of the show embodies its spirit: to take something totally mundane and make it exciting, unfortunately, the show fails at this too. I get the feeling that the title "Trike and His Tow Truck" wouldn't exactly have drawn audiences in, and the title "Extreme Towing" could possibly have been even lamer. Yet here I was watching it. Its really kind of sad that today's entertainment includes a show about people towing things. But what's even sadder is that there are people who would want to watch it.

FYI, I saw Indy 4, and theres a post on that coming up