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Post by Trey_Vore on May 29, 2020 13:02:04 GMT -5
And... that accursed virus claims another innocent victim.
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 28, 2020 17:19:23 GMT -5
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 25, 2020 11:18:13 GMT -5
Well... glad I didn't see it. I know the WB has to move on from Lego movies and Scooby-Doo is certainly bankable but they need better QA. True, though they had the best voice actors in town when it came to the original cast, I don't quite understand why they had to replace Frank Welker as Freddy, Grey as Daphne, so on and so forth. They were fine, they didn't need to be replaced at all. Still at least Frank was still able to voice Scooby. Totally, it made about as much sense as it did back in 1990 when they released Jetsons: the Movie, I understand the logic behind casting Patric Zimmerman as Elroy (Daws Butler died in 1988), but even though Janet Waldo could very well have come back to voice Judy, they instead cast pop starlet Tiffany because popularity? As of this typing it's critical RT score is 52% (Rotten) and it has a decent audience score of 65%. Here's the RT consensus: Scoob! is fun enough for youthful viewers and some hardcore fans, but never quite solves the mystery of why audiences shouldn't watch old episodes instead.However it doesn't look like the movie was a total waste; it kinda looks like the animation quality saved it from AniMat's Seal of Garbage.
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 24, 2020 8:34:31 GMT -5
AniMatt’s review of Scoob! is up! The verdict? Eh...it’s not too pretty. Story: 3/10 Animation: 9/10 Characters: 4/10 Overall: 5/10 = 53% Well... glad I didn't see it. I know the WB has to move on from Lego movies and Scooby-Doo is certainly bankable but they need better QA.
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 22, 2020 23:17:56 GMT -5
That's some badass finds my man.
I need to do some searching so I can share them.
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 20, 2020 10:33:56 GMT -5
In honor of what would have been his 61st birthday, I am listening to:
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 19, 2020 11:05:50 GMT -5
Comedic actor, Fred Willard, has died at the age of 86 from natural causes. Best known for his roles in Christopher Guest films like “Best in Show”, TV sitcoms like “Modern Family” and animated films like “WALL-E” and “Planes: Fire and Rescue”. At least he wasn’t a Corona Virus victim. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/comic-actor-fred-willard-dies-86-n1208696At least the virus had nothing to do with it.
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 16, 2020 8:01:48 GMT -5
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 16, 2020 7:58:46 GMT -5
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 14, 2020 13:44:55 GMT -5
I saw a Facebook post about it it's honestly really cool. Maybe for the Australians, but what good does it do us here in the US? Maybe it's a sign of things to come?
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 12, 2020 7:42:42 GMT -5
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 11, 2020 6:04:55 GMT -5
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 10, 2020 23:09:45 GMT -5
Okay, now that the movie reached its one year anniversary, I typed up a review for my Facebook account:
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Director: Rob Letterman Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Detective Pikachu), Justice Smith (Tim Goodman), Kathryn Netwon (Lucy Stevens), Bill Nighy (Howard Clifford), Omar Chaparro (Sebastian), Ken Wantanabe (Detective Hideo Yoshida) Runtime: 104 min. MPAA rating: PG (action/peril, some rude and suggestive humor, and thematic elements)
Do you remember one year ago what it was like going to see a movie at the multiplex before anyone first said anything about a virus? I do, as I remember seeing an eagerly anticipated movie about a wildly popular video game series featuring a character that is iconic enough to be seen on a yearly basis in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Set in a world where humans live alongside Pokémon, when ace detective Harry Goodman goes missing, his son Tim goes back to Ryme City to find some answers. Back inside the apartment, he must pair up with a talking, wisecracking Pikachu to find some answers and unravel the mystery of what happened to his father. Pairing up with reporter Lucy Stevens and her Psyduck, they start chasing the clues and discover a plot that could very much threaten the existence of the Pokémon universe. Can Tim and Detective Pikachu save everyone?
We’ve seen movie ideas come from the darnedest places. We have had movies based on literary novels, historical events, comic books, Sunday funnies, sporting events, cartoons, TV shows, toys, novelty songs, you name it chances are there’s a movie based on something. While there is definitely money to be made on them, there is a vast assortment of movies about video games. Thus far, they have not been too successful. A part of the reason, as I once said, is you kinda need to build some type of world that may not translate to real life. Then there is also the cultural aspect: what may mean something in Japan may be something very different in the United States. A video game is great fun when you are actively playing it, but there is the aspect of a pinata involved: it’s fun to hit and whack around, but it’s no fun by itself. You’d probably rather play the game than just watch it. Guess what you do with a movie?
This becomes especially true when it comes to movies that come from the big N. I remember back in 1993, the oldest example of a video game movie was the movie based on their flagship franchise, Super Mario Bros.. At a glance you just play as a guy who walks around catching some mushrooms while jumping on turtles and other, sentient mushrooms. Sure it serves a plot where you are trying to save a princess from an evil turtle/dragon hybrid monster but there’s not a lot of plot to go on. So how does that translate to a movie? They would try to give an evolution plot and a cyberpunk universe set where you have two plumbers that try to save a girl who’s actually a princess from another dimension and save both worlds from the mayor who is actually an evolved version of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and he wants to merge both and de-evolve the humans. Beyond some names and occasional references, there was not a lot of connections to the Mario universe. Some people also blame the weakness of the Mario franchise: Mario may work great as a video game character, but you don’t play the Mario games for things like plot or character development so Mario just doesn’t work quite as well when translated to cartoons or cinema. Ultimately it worked about as well as you expect. Do I need to remind you it came out the same weekend as Jurassic Park?
With that in mind, the suits at Nintendo had very strong doubts their video game franchises would really work in film. A long wait would occur before we would see another film adaptation based on a first party Nintendo game. That next adaptation would be about their second-most profitable game series with multiple game iterations and a long-running anime series with several movies that was running since 1998. And being that I am no stranger to this type of movie, who better to review it? After all I typed a nearly 40-page article on Street Fighter: the Movie explaining why I liked it (well I had help from the fact I did use plenty of pictures), so here we go.
First off, I will say I think it may have been a smart move to make a movie based on a spin-off game rather than the main game series or a live-action adaptation of the long-running anime; it contains more of a narrative than the primary game where going around to different towns training to beat Gym Leaders was the objective. It makes for a fun game, but it seems rather listless and repetitive if you were to see it as a movie. I am also glad they decided not to provide an elaborate explanation on why the humans are living side-by-side with these Pokémon characters; they just set it up as that is just the way it’s supposed to be in a Pokémon world and that’s it. Best not to try to overthink it.
As the main hero of the story, Tim Goodman is supposed to be the everyman: he originally was a child with great ambitions but unfortunately, real life got in the way and now he has to live a more conventional life with a 9-to-5 job. His friends may have tried to get him to try to find a Pokémon partner to be a friend especially in the news his father has mysteriously vanished but it doesn’t seem to work. But when he discovers Detective Pikachu it helps him remember his original ambitions and to remind him that just because you are no longer a child does not mean you must give up on what you love.
I do remember how back before we got to see the movie one of the trailers had the song “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler play. I felt it was appropriate, being that Tim’s last name is “Goodman” and the last time outside of Footloose where that song was playing was back when I saw Shrek 2. Pokémon may have been introduced in the end of the 90s, but oddly enough, 1980s values seem to work perfectly for it.
Because Pokémon don’t exist in real life, this is going to be a very CGI-heavy movie. There are a number of Pokémon that appear in the movie and they would of course need to make the jump from a video game sprite to flesh-and-blood characters that would interact with real people. Admittedly they do a very good job, with many Pokémon characters being based on real-life animals they don’t appear they maintain enough of their original essence. Another factor is because the Pokémon have an integral role in the story they don’t seem like they are just there for decoration. It doesn’t feel like you could just cut the Pokémon out of the movie and you don’t lose anything. Save for maybe a rather freaky looking Aipom (the little purple monkey like Pokémon), they don’t look too uncanny.
As Detective Pikachu, one may have thought it was an odd choice to throw millions of dollars at the idea of having Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu, but it works because he knows how to balance taking something seriously and be a goofball at the same time. This is the actor who plays Deadpool after all. Best of all, the humor is actually pretty funny; it’s not overly limited to meta-humor and there’s plenty of wit to give a non-gamer a good laugh.
Probably the biggest flaw the movie has might just be shortcoming that comes with making a mystery: the story can be a little predictable. You can see some twists coming but that is likely just a fault of the genre of film rather than one of the movie itself. It doesn’t take the premise quite as far as you might have hoped but that is why we have sequels and Pokémon is one big, immersive world, after all the Marvel Cinematic Universe wasn’t built in a day.
In the end, I will say that Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is a fun family movie that you should consider seeing. It works nice as a love letter to fans who grew up playing Pokémon on their Game Boys all the way back in 1998 and not restricted to them as a non-gamer can enjoy it too. Due to its success they have sequels coming and I look forward to the next movie.
So what else can we expect to see? No matter what I’m sure it will leave us saying just what Detective Pikachu says: “That’s very twisty”.
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 10, 2020 22:32:54 GMT -5
He was more than cool with appearing on TV too, one notable part he had was playing himself on the Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special.
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Post by Trey_Vore on May 10, 2020 22:31:25 GMT -5
Ooooooooh, I just got word that "101 Dalmatians The Series" is now avaliable on Disney Plus, at least, in Australia! I am not sure if that is the case on Disney Plus in the U S yet, but it is a start! It should, at least, show that "101 Dalmatians The Series" is most likely going to be coming to Disney Plus, else where in the World! What you think of this information, Pups!? I saw a Facebook post about it it's honestly really cool.
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