Review: Planes: Fire & Rescue starring Dane Cook, Ed Harris and Julie Bowen

You know what the Planes franchise reminds me of? It reminds me of Disney in the 90s when they’d make something really successful, then would make a direct to home video sequel followed by a whole syndicated animated series spinning out of that. So that gives us Planes the spinoff from Cars with no Cars characters in it. Much like those 90s things this feels like a way to extend a brand, but unlike say the two extra Aladdin movies or the many Liloand Stitch ones, Planes and even more so Planes: Fire & Rescue lacks the heart.  There is an attempt in this one to seriously  honor real-life wildfire fighters but what we get is a seriously weak offering.

Planes: Fire and Rescue is a pretty lacking movie in many regards. It’s not like it’s lazy but I do question if it was so smart to continue with how they wrote the story. Taking place after last summer's film, Dusty (Dane Cook) now a world famous racing plane and is on top of the world. A major event is coming to his hometown but right then Dusty finds out he can’t race anymore or he’ll crash. In a state of rejection he flies off and ends up starting a fire that alerts the town fire engine, Mayday. Due to his age, Mayday doesn't have the ability to cover the town by himself, so Dusty decides to make up for his error by becoming a fire and rescue plane and saving the town in time for the big event. 

Many of the same problems that affected the first film have been amplified in the sequel.  A ton of the setup felt rushed even for a kid’s movie, and many of the sight gags overpower the story and the characters. For a lot of the movie Dusty has what is in effect a major health issue but he doesn’t tell any of the new folks he is working with. He’s essentially endangering his co-workers for more than half the movie. Now a lot of the sight gags are pretty good, there is this one joke based on a pretty classic television show that had everyone over 30 dying from laughter.

The main thing that is undeniably great about this movie is the care in which they take in flying scenes. Those are breathtaking and also the flying sequences in which the characters are fighting fires are really phenomenal. The textures and rendering were also really good and improved from the first one. DisneyToon studios also seems to have a handle on the Cars world and character style now. They seemed more willing to exaggerate certain traits than in earlier films. I truly wish a lot of the care that went into all those scenes and visuals were spent on the script.

I hope that if they continue with Planes as a theatrical franchise they at least improve their stories and characters along with how they look. I know a lot of people worked really hard on this but it never stopped feeling like a direct to video movie. Both movies didn't, actually.  It would be nice if Planes could feel a bit like it had some more of the Disney magic and not just an extended excuse to sell more little toys and Legos.

 Rating: 2.5 out of 5

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Guillermo Del Toro Reveals Details on 'Pacific Rim' Animated Series

Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim wasn't quite the hit  here as it was globally, but there were still a ton of fans excited when a sequel was officially announced for April 7th 2017. That enthusiasm went beyond just news of a proper follow-up because Del Toro also revealed an animated series was on the way. Few details were available at the time but in a conversation with Collider about his FX series, The Strain, he talked about his plans to explore the world of Pacific Rim cartoon-style.

Not that Del Toro seemed too limited in what he could do in Pacific Rim but he says animation allows for even greater possibilities. He also says the series will serve as a bridge to the sequel, introducing some new characters while leaving room for familiar faces to appear....

Del Toro:  “We are right now in the middle of talking and negotiating with a few Japanese companies for the animation.  We are talking to a couple of showrunners that have a strong animation background, [we’re] casting the writers room.  What’s great is it’s a great set-up and a link between the first movie and the second movie.  It really enhances the mythology of the characters; we have cameos of characters from the first movie, but mostly it’s a new set of characters.  New jaegers, except for one or two, [and] new kaijus.  It’s really fun.”

He envisions it as a 13-episode season that will be one long arc following a specific group of characters and exploring different ideas, including the effects of "drifting"....

Del Toro: “We’re going for a long arc, so the idea is to show a group of characters—we have pilots, functional jaegers, but we have all these younger characters.  I really want to explore things that are complimentary to the things that I want to explore in the second movie: drift, what drifting does to you, what is needed to drift, a lot of stuff that I think is important, but also the jaeger technology, the kaijus being evolved, ideas about the precursors—the guys that control the kaijus.  We have a lot of leeway in 13 episodes and I wanna make it sort of in the same spirit of Pacific Rim, which is the ideal audience for Pacific Rim was young—very young, 11-year-olds and so forth—but with really beautiful design and stories that make these characters interesting in a way that I found them interesting in, for example, Year Zero, the graphic novel that we did.  And I think that’s the basic thrust of the thing.”

A network to carry the series hasn't been found yet, and Del Toro may not commit to an additional season until the first one lives up this expectations. 

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Review: 'Axel: The Biggest Little Hero' with Ed Asner, Matthew Lillard, and George Takei

I’m a big cartoon guy, I still watch cartoons on Saturday morning and have my TiVo record all the current series on Cartoon Network. I’m pretty open to watching animated films also. Even though I’m open I’m also pretty critical of them. Now when this new one came to me I was a bit surprised. I’ve never heard of the studio or the movie at all. I was sitting here thinking just who or what is Axel The Biggest Little Hero standing on top of robot bird with sunglasses on. Well I just popped it in and gave it a watch.

So here we have Axel The Biggest Little Hero as a pretty simple hero adventure story. What’s interesting with this is that it has a very '80s feel in terms of howcompletely all over the place the world and characters look, yet it is never explained. The story is about a young boy named Axel who considers himself a hero while the rest of his little town just see a rambunctious nuisance. To be completely honest the whole set up of this story felt very much like the early parts of Naruto (a long running Japanese anime). One day while Axel was “saving” a small bug on a branch he has a vision of a mystical far away grove of Cacti that could save his people from ever worrying about hunger. He’s told this by the voice of their great hero, Bunta, that he must complete this quest to become a true hero. Being that he fell from that branch and got hurt he then spends the time as he heals up telling everyone what he saw and they all just roll their eyes at his claims. Axel then decides to pack up and go off on this journey into the unknown to find this grove. Following him on this journey is his best friend, Jono.

Honestly, the main thing that's surprising to me is just how good it looks. There have been some CG films in the last year, some even released in theaters with modeling, character design, lighting, textures and such that are just so bland and subpar, almost like cut-scenes for Playstation 2-era games.  This movie though is quite interesting to look at with what I see as a keen eye for detail, characters, and settings.  The one thing that really holds this back is that the story doesn’t seem to bemade for a movie at all. There are parts of the story that are very slow and drags, and feels more suited to an animated series.  Another thing lacking is the big bad villain of the story. While it’s a great visual there isn't a true foe that is going to try and stop Axel from getting his ultimate prize. Instead it's more of a situation Axel falls into while on the journey, and that lacking hurts the story.

In the end , while I think the story will be really interesting for younger kids to watch I feel it’s going to leave everyone wanting. The story in all felt like watching that Clone Wars movie that was just the first three episode of the show. You’ll get to end and feel like "That's it? But where’s my ending"? Who knows if we’ll ever get it? It might just end up being something you can put on to keep the kids quiet for an hour.

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Review: “Rio 2,” starring Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, and Andy Garcia

In the three years since Rio, was anyone really clamoring for a follow-up? Yes, the movie made a bunch of money, but so did The Smurfs, and then that got a sequel that turned out to be terrible. So maybe it was within Rio’s destiny as an already-meh children’s movie that it would get a further-meh children’s movie sequel. Those are the laws of Hollywood, I guess.

So there it is: Rio 2 is not very good, and I say that as an adult who knows about being in love and being in a relationship, concepts that Rio 2 is surprisingly obsessed with given that it’s supposed to be a children’s movie, you know, for children. Not for parents with trust issues or identity crises, but kids. But we have a movie that focuses predominantly on the marriage of our main bird characters, Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) and Jewel (voiced by Anne Hathaway), and very little on their children, or on any other younger protagonists. It’s kind of strange, but the plot overall is a recycled save-the-forests thing, so maybe it’s not that surprising that nothing about this movie feels remarkable.

Here’s the gist: Some years ago, blue macaws Blu and Jewel, supposedly the last birds of their kind, fell in love, even though Blu used to be a pet and Jewel was once a wild animal. Despite their differences, they decide to start a new life together, and their former owners, Linda (voiced by Leslie Mann) and Tulio (voiced by Rodrigo Santoro), start a nature sanctuary together. Fast-forward to where Rio 2 picks up, with Blu and Jewel the parents of three tween birds; you won’t really catch their names, but there’s a chubby older girl attached to her music device, a nerdy younger girl with her beak in a book, and a mischievous boy who likes to blow things up. Blu and Jewel live on the nature sanctuary created by Linda and Tulio, who are married and still exploring the Amazon, trying to find more blue macaws in the jungle. Instead, they stumble upon illegal loggers, cutting down the rainforest for their own personal gain. Oh no!

Simultaneously, Blu and Jewel are also being stalked by the evil bird Nigel (voiced by Jemaine Clement), who Blu seriously injured during the first film; now unable to fly, Nigel wants his revenge. Along with a poisonous frog who is in love with him but can’t touch him because she’d kill him and a goofy anteater that serves as his main transportation, Nigel wants to inflict revenge on Blu, and if his family gets in the way, so be it.

While those plots are going on—loggers vs. Linda and Tulio, Nigel and Co. vs. Blu and Family—there’s also a third plot involving the appearance of hundreds of other blue macaws, who have been hiding in the rainforest from humans all this time. Among them are Jewel’s father Eduardo (Andy Garcia) and an old crush, Roberto (voiced by Bruno Mars), who are shocked at Blu’s human-like qualities, like needing a GPS to get around the jungle and a fondness for breath mints. Why wouldn’t Jewel and her children move to the jungle to be with their family? And if Blu doesn’t want to come along—well, Roberto could raise his children, and Eduardo doesn’t really want this pansy city bird as a son-in-law, anyway.

Oh, and at the same time, there’s ANOTHER side plot about the Carnival, as Blu’s other bird friends, Toucan Rafael (voiced by George Lopez), cardinal Pedro (voiced by will.i.am), and canary Nico (voiced by Jamie Foxx), try to find a bird or animal act that could suitably perform at the festival. So they come along to the jungle, too, thinking they could find a good “native” option that will add some local flair to the proceedings.

That’s a lot, right? That’s an overwhelming amount of sideplots for an animated movie that lasts only 101 minutes, and because the movie is so crammed and jumps so often from thing to thing, the characters don’t really move past what they already were in Rio. Blu is still too complacent, still too awkward; after years of marriage, why are he and Jewel still sparring over the most simple things? And Jewel seems incredibly selfish, forcing Blu to meet her demands regarding her family without ever acknowledging that for him, the human Linda is the closest thing he has to a mother. Bad-guy Nigel remains one-dimensional; the only good part of his storyline is evil frog Gabi (voiced by Kristin Chenoweth), whose operatic rendition of their tragic love story is one of the only humorous parts of this otherwise boring movie. And Blu and Jewel’s children, or his friends Rafael, Pedro, and Nico—they remain vehicles for one liners, nothing more.

The strength of Rio 2 should be its music and visuals, really, because its characters are so lackluster. But while Rio 2 is pretty enough visually—the colors of the various birds pop, the detail given to the rainforest is nice, and the Carnival scenes are very exciting—it doesn’t need its 3D effects, and there are no songs—aside from the one sung by Gabi, in which she laments that touching her love Nigel would kill him—that are memorable. Not one. Competition for “Let It Go,” this isn’t.

Perhaps the fact that Rio 2 is set in South America and voiced by a multicultural cast is in itself an accomplishment for a children’s film. But the ho-hum songs, the weirdly mature plot, the expected nature-is-good messaging—children’s movies are defined by their attention to detail and creation of relatable characters, and the lack of both in Rio 2 make it thoroughly mediocre.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Guttenbergs

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Review: 'Mr. Peabody & Sherman', Starring Ty Burrell and Max Charles

Talking dogs have been a staple of Hollywood for years. Most of these dogs usually show up in awful movies that try to make a live-action dog film endearing. Guess what? They're usually not. So it's nice to know that the movie uses the talking dog aspect to its humorous advantage and not to be a pet who's only role is to be man's best friend and all. After all, if the dog is going to speak, he might as well be intelligent. Mr. Peabody & Sherman is lighthearted, funny, and a fun adventure the entire family can enjoy. 

Mr. Peabody (voice of Ty Burrell) is nothing short of a genius.... and a dog. Having been semi-shunned and never adopted when he was a genius puppy, Mr. Peabody put in all his work and energy into learning, creating, and being useful to society. He's an adviser to

heads of government, knows how to play every instrument imaginable, can speak a plethora of different languages, and is pretty much the smartest dog. Ever. 


His biggest invention comes after he finds and adopts Sherman (voice of Max Charles), to which the judge declares that "if a boy can adopt a dog then a dog can adopt a boy!" The invention, a time machine Mr. Peabody calls the WABAC, the two take trips to the past for historical learning and for bonding time. Though they make sure never to travel back to a time in which they exist for fear of messing with the space-time continuum. A lot of Back to the Future references might come to mind when hearing that terminology, but this film has its own flair when it comes to time travel. 

Things get a bit complicated, however, when Penny (voice of Ariel Winter) bullies Sherman at school because he unintentionally shows her up in class. Child Protection Services gets involved and an annoying social worker Ms. Grunion (voice of Allison Janney) who is the main antagonist of the film. Sherman and Penny use th WABAC and through a series of events warm the timeline. And all throughout this crazy adventure, Mr. Peabody has to face the challenges of being a parent, a dog, and coming to terms with both. 

The film, based on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, is full of warm-hearted, fun adventures that maintain its light humor and bad (in a good way) puns and jokes throughout. Mr. Peabody will remind several people of the too-smart-for-his-own-good Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, though Peabody's not as much of an annoying know-it-all. 

It balances the adventure and humor, and is still able to infuse a lesson to kids to be proud of who they are no matter what they are and other typical cliches. Because underneath the fluffy layering of the film, there's still a lesson to be learned. And the film succeeds in its general attempt to teach its lead characters about who they are, while still being highly entertaining to its audience. Some of the puns are even so bad they're chuckle-worthy. 

The film gets creative with its usage of history, including historical figures like King Tut of Ancient Egypt, Agamemnon, George Washington, Marie Antoinette, Leonardo da Vinci, and Mona Lisa herself, just to name a few. Is it historically accurate? No. But it does make

it a lot more fun and endearing way to learn for those kids who have trouble finding history at all interesting. 


The voice cast is spot on, the only really grating character in the film being Penny, the mean girl. She's cruel and snooty and there's a very privileged and spoiled atmosphere surrounding her attitude that make her a little aggravating until the last twenty minutes or so. However, regardless of this, it doesn't deter from the overall enjoyment of the film for both kids and their parents, and anyone else looking for a family-friendly bit of adventurous fun at the movies. 

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DVD Review: 'Justice League: War'

So here we go, since I watch a ton of cartoons and am a known OG comic reader I thought I’d hold the Punch Drunk Critics readers down and watch this Justice League War. Now see it was kind of hard for me to watch this without any bias since I pretty much think the New 52 and the new Origin of Justice League in which this movie is based is full of wacktacularness. That being said I’ve liked most of the DC movies a lot even Flashpoint Paradox so I thought I could be surprised, but sadly I am surprised in the worst way.  Justice League War is so full of wack that I was shocked by the amount as it grew when watching it and then continuing to think about it.

Justice League War is about the first time the major superheroes in the DC universe come together and forms the Justice League.  The story starts us off in Gotham with Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) giving chase to a shadowy figure that just kidnapped a woman of the street. The public and GL included think it’s The Batman since at this point in time Batman is just an urban legend.  GL is proven wrong when Batman comes out and saves the woman; Batman kicks the baddie, plus sons GL in the process. What we get from here in the first half is a buddy-cop relationship like K and J from Men in Black. Please note Hal Jordan is a complete and utter idiot in this version along with being overly arrogant. Batman is basically just Batman here. Their investigation in Gotham leads them to having to meet Superman for the first time in a not so peaceful way. 

What we get next is some vignettes of the other characters like Victor Stone playing football while his dad is off studying a device at S.T.A.R. Labs delivered by the Flash; Wonder Woman’s first trip to Washington with Steve Trevor; and the bonus of annoyingly bad Billy Batson being a fan of Stone.  Now here’s the thing: the production on this animated home release is pretty good. The animation is very solid along with pacing and staging of all the scenes. The real problem here is the story and the characterization of the main characters and the antagonist. Bear with even though I’m pretty public with my dislike of the whole post New 52 versions of DC Comics’ characters.

Here’s the thing it’s very hard to like any of the heroes in this story. Wonder Woman’s characterization is pretty sad, she’s mostly like let me smash this and stab that with my sword while screaming. She doesn’t seem heroic, honorable, a messenger of peace or a princess at all. Superman is just a meat-head jock type of guy. He doesn’t seem that inspiring or really threatening other than he can lift stuff and fly. Then we have poor Billy Batson and alter ego that is SHAZAM. He’s like every bad kid in a movie but in the end they never have you like the kid he’s just a little asshole who becomes that little asshole in a grownup body. There are no real arcs for many of these characters.

That being said there are a few good things in this. Barry Allen Flash is pretty likeable; he is just a very true classic interpretation of the character that you can root for in this story.  Another thing that was good is Victor Stone's arc to becoming Cyborg. We get the whole dynamic with his father and motivations for being in the situation he is in and how he becomes a hero. All of this was in comic version of the story but for me it is handling way better than it was in the original version.  One more thing that I didn’t like is how Darkseid us used and also how violently sensationalistic they are with showing all these battles. I don’t really think it helps anything in telling the story at all but you might just think I’m a fanboy prude.

Now the one thing that really stands out on this release is all the special features. The documentary on the career of Jim Lee (the modern comics GOAT in penciling) was really well done at covering his career and his impact on comics. For serious comic readers a lot of nice tidbits of history of Wildstorm is all through this. The Deconstructing Justice League feature with the director and Jim Lee discussing the comic version and the movie along with what was changed was quite enlightening and interesting. It might not be that fun to watch for those that don’t really care about the making of a cartoon or comic but if you are though man this is the real movie.  Now the last one that is the storyboard comparison to final animation is just pure creative nerd stuff. I loved it but I kind of draw for a living so it’s right up my alley.

So here it is, I don’t just  think Justice League War is not only the worst of these Warner bros animation DC comics home releases to date it’s the worst animated story they’ve done since modern DC superhero cartoon era started with Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. Even though it looks nice everything else is so mishandled that it's quite confusing. It has you questioning who else is getting involved in their creative process from picking the material to adapt to just constructing the story. Like let’s be honest here, Warner Bros. Animation has been dropping pure hit after hit since 1992 and now this. I hope this is just a minor blip on the timeline and not a foreshadowing of things to come from this continuing partnership. 

Oh and Aquaman got played out he didn't get a shot in the movie. 

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Julian’s Best TV Shows of 2013, from Live-Action to Animation

Hey trill believers, I’m here to sit back and give you my top television shows of 2013. Now see, I’m not going to give you guys an ordered list—just my 10 shows I think were the best in two categories: live action and animation. Now you might be asking why and you’ll get no answer, at least not this early—just enjoy the ride here.

I catch a lot of television (including writing the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recaps for Punch Drunk Critics), not as much as I used to and I don’t see every single show, but I do watch more than the average person and probably more than the average smart person. So I’m going to start with live action, here we go (like my man Super Mario says):

LIVE-ACTION

Game of Thrones

This show, y’all, this show. No series has ever caught me be surprise as much as this show. This was the season after seeing FREAKING SNOW ZOMBIE DUDES ON SNOW ZOMBIE HORSES!! This season had everything, an odd couple with Brianne/Jaime on the road, Davos learning how to read, seeing Tywin Lannister (a.k.a. the bad guy from The Golden Child) play the best game of real-life chess ever, Jon Snow do a Donnie Brasco, poor Theon, and that one moment to rule them all—that damn Red Wedding. Each performance was great and the pacing of the season for me was stellar. No episodes felt like filler or a waste of my time, nor did any feel crammed with too many plots. It must be something that a show that is an adaptation is fun to watch for people like me who have never read any of the books, and for someone like my colleague Rocky Hadadi, who has read all of it. It’s a complete shame that it didn’t get enough love in the awards recognition. In the end, it’s all good—right now this show is still rising and far from falling off.

Treme

David Simon, for me, might be the best 21st-century TV show creator alive right now. Do his shows get a 

lot of hype like some other shows (that are even on this list)? Nope. Do his shows really ever get nominated for anything? Nope. Do his shows allow you a way to escape your boring regular life into some type of crazy world or power fantasy? Nope. This guy and his collaborators create shows about OUR lives in OUR world in the now. You can’t sum up his shows in a simple cool phrase. When people ask me what Treme is about, they start to glaze over about three words in, but what they don’t know is that’s it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever watched, let me know I need to visit New Orleans, and it by far has the best music of any drama ever period in TVdom. It’s a double-edged sword that HBO brought it back for a short 5-episode season to end it, since it’s great it’s getting an ending but it sucks because it’s ending. The only thing that makes me less mad about how overlooked this show is, is that one day way later on people will probably catch it and watch it all in one big chunk and then celebrate how awesome it was all over the Internet and during get-togethers in the near future—much like Simon’s previous masterpiece, The Wire.

House of Cards

Man, House of Cards was the jam. This is show that excels at writing and performances about portraying some pretty not good people. And what’s the kicker is that it’s about Congress at a perfect time when Congress really really sucks at their job, which just heightens all we see about what Kevin Spacey’s character Frank Underwood does to hold onto power. House of Cards has a killer pilot directed by David Fincher that grabs you instantly, and thanks to it being on Netflix, you just get sucked into the vortex of watching either the whole thing or half of it in one time. I think one of the main reasons I love this show is that it actually really looks like Washington, D.C. Not some other random city in Canada with one shot of like K Street, but the actual city and region. House of Cards for me made me believe that Netflix can be a player in original content, and seriously put AMC and HBO on watch for the crown.

Mad Men

You know a lot of people feel this past season of Mad Men wasn’t as good, and you know, they may be right in that assertion. It’s kind of hard to follow up on what is your best season of a series and it’s also very hard to watch a person hit bottom. That’s what this season is about, even more than the changing times, is watching Don Draper finally hit bottom and in a way a culture hitting a bottom in a certain way in 1968. Watching Don fall so hard into the bottle and into his infatuation with Sylvia Rosen, set against seeing essentially the origin of his issue with women in the flashbacks, for me made for a great season, a calm of sorts before the last season. Another trend that I loved about the season is seeing the arcs of Peggy as she becomes her own version of Don and Sally as she finally loses her innocence. With those things and many others, no other show had me giving each episode as much thought and analysis as Mad Men has.

Breaking Bad

So the show to rule all shows this year. It’s been a long time since a show ending has totally caught the pop culture wave that Breaking Bad had in those last eight episodes. Walt’s final fall into becoming white suburban Scarface was complete, and with each cliffhanger ratcheting up hardly anything else could get into your brain other than “Oh my gawd what’s going to happen to Jesse or Hank or Walt?” So much tension was packed into each episode that it still leaves an impression on me, even though it’s been months since I saw them. Now I’m not one of the people that are calling it the GOAT (that’s The Wire, fools, get familiar.) But it is in that top list of greatest shows on television. Cheers to that whole group of folks who made this a great piece of work.

ANIMATION

See, animation is my heart. I watch more cartoons than live action TV since a lot more goes into making 30 minutes of animation than people think. Not only do they have to do all the same stuff showrunners have to do for live action, they have to design everything from the characters to the backgrounds to the props. I wanted to do this so that these cartoons can be spotlighted to people that might not know about it and are missing some quality TV. So here are my favorite 5 of the year.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This one is a pure nostalgia pick here. I love Ninja Turtles. Ninja Turtles is the reason I draw, which led to most of my decisions in life. I’ve seen almost every Ninja Turtle show (damn you, anime Turtles, for evading my gaze!). This new show which popped up on the 25th anniversary of the 1987 show really hit a nicely perfect blend of having good characters, a nice season arc, and a way to merge all the versions of the Turtles into one great show that people of all ages can watch.

Adventure Time

See this show, with it’s out-there character design and magical/fantastical world, is kind of off-putting at first, but once you have someone—i.e. me (I’ve done this plenty of times)—show you the just how smartly funny and deep this show is, you’ll be glad you got lost in one of the many many marathons Cartoon Network runs of this show. This past year decided to show a lot of more dark and actually creepy parts to the show (episode “All the Little People” might just be one of the most messed up things I’ve watched in a cartoon all year) to generally sad (the episode “Simon & Marcy” is the saddest damn piece of animation this year, even more than Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises). None of the other Punch Drunks gets down with this, but trust I won’t let you down on this cartoon game.

Regular Show

To me, for what it’s worth, Regular Show is the best-written comedy on television. Yeah, I said it. Does it make sense that a bluejay and a raccoon work for a gumball machine in park owned by a lollipop man? No, it doesn’t, but it’s the heart and the situations of two early 20something slackers that hold true. Also, it might have some of the best daggone ‘80s and ‘90s pop culture references that don’t feel forced (take note, Seth McFarlane) and actually help the plot and sell the punch line.

Legend of Korra

So if you haven’t watched Avatar the Last Airbender, you need to fix that (it’s on Amazon Prime instant watch), and then you need to sit down and watch The Legend of Korra, which even though it’s in the same world has a completely different feeling. The season was titled “Spirits” and focused on the source of the Avatar’s power along with more on the Water tribe. It’s pretty rare having a female action protagonist in the animation world, so it’s nice to see that along with a great and complex story that is able to pull together politics, Hong Kong crime cinema, romance, family issues, Asian folklore myth, and a Howard Hughes riff, all along with some of the best damn martial arts fight scenes I’ve seen all year. If you haven’t really watched a “cartoon” before you should really give this one a look, you might be surprised by how into you get.

Young Justice: Invasion

See, this wasn’t the whole season, only the last 11 episodes, but this is by far probably one of the best versions of superhero storytelling on TV ever done, right up there with the old DCAU (DC Animated Universe Batman TAS – Justice League Unlimited). To be honest, as I watched each episode I truly though how in the world the showrunners thought this would be interesting for young children. This show was full of intrigue, betrayal, secrets, and conspiracy along with relationship drama. It’s a damn shame what Cartoon Network did to it, first by hampering it and then canceling it. In the end the show became a celebration of a DC Universe and characters that no long exist in their new catchup to the Marvel movies phase, but what a great sendoff it was.

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Review: "Free Birds," starring Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, and Amy Poehler

It seems every single month now there is a new computer-animated film coming out so that people with children can go to the movies. They market it hard and make special 3-D glasses for the kids and sell fast food kid meals so that kids will bug their parents to take them to see this bright and colorful 90-minute adventure in safe-movie land. This time in November, we get Free Birds, which to be honest looked really flimsy and a terrible idea. What we got though is a pretty enjoyable buddy movie with great winks and nods to Back To The Future and Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  

Free Birds is a crazy movie about a nerdy turkey named Reggie (voiced by Owen Wilson), who is an outcast at the turkey farm he lives in. He ends up being the pardoned turkey by the President, who I might add for some reason sounds like Bill Clinton. So Reggie now lives at Camp David and has found out about pizza. So check this, a turkey calls and orders pizza in gobble gobble turkey speak. While Reggie is living the life of luxury, he is then kidnaped by Jake, the one and only member of the Turkey Liberation Front. Jake was told by the GRREAT TURKEY to get Reggie and find a time machine and go back to the first Thanksgiving and stop turkeys from ever being part of the menu. Yes, that’s as convoluted as it sounds.

You know, the voice acting really sells a lot of this movie. Owen Wilson is in his full Owen Wilsonness as Reggie. All his vocal tics are there, so if that bothers you in live action that might actually bother you in cartoon turkey form. Woody Harrelson is hoot as the super alpha turkey Jake and his want and need to save turkeydom from being dinners. His character is lovably jock stupid. Amy Poehler was good as Jenny the female turkey princess in the past that Reggie falls for. To be honest, the whole Reggie/Jenny thing is very much something you’d get from a romantic comedy Wilson would be in, just in cartoon form. Also George Takei is amazing as the time machine computer S.T.E.V.E.

One weird thing about this movie is that the turkeys are portrayed as Native American like against the English colonists. It’s a weird way of not dealing with the issue of how actually messed up what happened to native peoples in regards to Thanksgiving was. And then it gets really weird once you see actual Native American human characters in the movie.  The look of the movie is quite decent in terms of lighting, textures, and character design, but it’s not amazing either. The quality seems just a little bit above the direct-to-DVD computer animated sequels. The 3-D doesn’t really add much of real pop, so really you can save the money and see the 2-D version.

Free Birds is a quite surprising little family movie. That concept of time-traveling turkeys to stop Thanksgiving is something you think would be deserving of a “c’mon son” greatly. Luckily the everyone involved managed to craft a nice and entertaining family movie that is actually for the thanksgiving holiday. Free Birds is a movie you can go to and not feel like you’re going to suffer. 

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs

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Review: 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2', Starring Bill Hader

Imagine an island where you’d never starve because there are gigantic food portions everywhere. No, the gigantic portions of food are not a reference to Big Macs, though there is a giant cheeseburger spider-thing, complete with fries for legs. If you thought that the first movie had a lot of food, think bigger because Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 really goes all out and gets delightfully creative with the food this time around.  

Exactly eight minutes after Flint Lockwood (voice of funnyman Bill Hader) saves the world from enormous food portions, he gets with meteorologist Sam Sparks (voice of Anna Faris) and makes his dad Tim (voice of James Caan) proud. Together with Mr. T-like cop Earl Devereaux (voice of Terry Crews) and former bully Brent (voice of Andy Samberg), the group agrees to work together.

Immediately after the pact, in swoops Chester V (voice of Will Forte), a scientist the likes of Bill Nye the Science guy, only much more sinister in nature. Flint quickly falls for his act of goodwill because he’s admired the scientist his entire life and fanboys over him while Chester takes charge and boots Flint and his friends from the island.

He convinces Flint to join his company, Live Corp, where the younger scientist spends six months attempting to please Chester. Flint is ultimately drawn back to help get rid of the food animals that now inhabit the island. But Flint and his friends begin to question whether that’s the right thing to do.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (and isn’t that a mouthful?) is a different kind of sequel. The first film has Flint seeking approval. The sequel is a quest movie. Flint is on a quest different in nature; one is to destroy, and later help the food animals, and the second is the quest to realize that he now has friends he can trust and doesn’t have to rely on himself anymore. 

The characters are actually better rounded this time and evolve in fun ways. Now that they’re all together, the dynamic of the film is much more fun and lighthearted. It’s what the first film kind of lacked and what the sequel has in spades. The voice cast is spot on and Will Forte as Chester V is especially entertaining. You’ll laugh at him and get frustrated with him in the span of five minutes.

The creative team really put in a great effort to bring to life the food animals. Flamangoes, cheese spiders, and a little strawberry named Berry bring amusing and cute touches to the film. Probably the funniest moment comes when the strawberry named Berry translates what Flint is saying to the other food animals. Classic and the highlight of the entire movie. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is better than the original on first watch and will entertain at every age.

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Food Animals Take Over 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2' in New Clip

It's been four years since we last encountered the creative world of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs with its jello houses and ice cream monstrosities. Now Flint, Sam, and the rest of the crew are back in the film's sequel and they have a new adventure ahead of them. 

Flint has supposedly put his past behind him and moved on from the fiasco that was his food machine. He's surprised to find out that his machine is still working and instead of churning out humongous amounts of food, it's now creating food animals. 

A new clip gives us a look at exactly what Flint and co. are facing. There are potato-shaped hippos, walking bananas, meat mountains, and gigantic strawberries with eyes. You can immediately understand the issue here! They've taken over the island and the gang is in awe at its beauty, bringing even Officer Earl Devereaux to almost shed one stubborn tear.  

You can check out the clip below! 

Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Benjamin Bratt, Neil Patrick Harris, Terry Crews, and Will Forte all lend their voice talents to Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2. The film is set to hit theaters September 27. 

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Pixar planning mystery project with 'Safety Not Guaranteed' writer Derek Connolly

Turns out Safety Not Guaranteed, the little sci-fi/rom-com from this past summer, has turned out to be quite the breeding ground for some of Hollywood's most sought after talent. Director Colin Trevorrow was rumored for the upcoming Star Wars gig, until it was confirmed that he and writer Derek Connolly were actually working on a Flight of the Navigator remake for Disney. Now Connolly has found himself attached to another high-profile job that puts him firmly in the Pixar camp.

Variety reports Connolly is writing a top secret mystery project for Pixar, to be directed by Teddy Newton, the guy behind the experimental and very cool short-film Day and Night. Plot details are few, but Connolly was instructed "not to dumb it down or treat animation like it's for kids. "  Sounds like Pixar is going big and ambitious again after a few years of dabbling in far too many sequels.

Connolly has yet another project brewing for Disney, a film titled Hank which we knew nothing about. Speaking of Disney and their animation wing, Wreck-It Ralph co-writer Jennifer Lee has just joined Chris Buck as co-director of Frozen, their adaptation of The Snow Queen. Frozen is expected to hit theaters on November 27th 2013.

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Fox and Blue Sky Animation bringing Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts' to the big screen

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, right? We haven't had a feature film starring Charles Schulz's Peanuts characters since 1980's Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown(the worst in my opinion), but that's about to change in a major way. Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios have announced they are teaming up for a Peanuts animated film to be released on November 25th 2015. But don't get upset just yet. It's really not that bad of an idea.

First of all, we can all take heart that Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, Lucy and the rest of the gang(Franklin FTW!!!) won't be CGI-animated or anything like that. Nor will it be a CGI/live-action hybrid like The Smurfs. The Schulz family has been closely involved in the development of this deal since the beginning, with Craig Schulz producing and co-writing the script with his own son Bryan and Cornelius Uliano. Steve Martino will direct, having done a pretty good job with the Dr. Seuss adaptation Horton Hears a Who! So there's enough talent here to make this a (hopefully) faithful interpretation. It better be, dammit. Nobody messes with Snoopy, even if he and the entire Peanuts gang have been overexposed of late. I'll pass on the Met Life insurance, if you don't mind.

The film will be released to coincide with Peanuts' 65th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

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1st poster for Dreamworks' 'Me and My Shadow'

Pixar may still be the animation king, but Dreamworks has been slowly gaining on them in recent years. The trend now it seems, based on Tangled and Disney's amazing looking Paperman, is to blend CG animation with traditional hand drawn. So far the combination has worked brilliantly, and Dreamworks is looking to capitalize with their latest film, Me and My Shadow.

The first poster for the film has been released, and it shows that Dreamworks is really catching up to Pixar in the CG department. Alessandro Carloni(How to Train Your Dragon) will make his directorial debut, with the living shadow in the film done in hand drawn style, and his human counterpart in CG. Bill Hader voices Stan, a shadow who yearns for a bit more excitement in his life, but knows that won't happen as long as he's stuck with the boring Stanley Grubb(Josh Gad). When a crime in the shadow world puts his and Stanley's lives in danger, Stan breaks the cardinal rule and takes control to investigate. 

Me and My Shadow also features the voice of Kate Hudson, and is expected to hit theaters on March 14th 2014.

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Check out the CG animated trailer for 'Starship Troopers: Invasion'!

Just last month we gave you the first look at the CG animated Starship Troopers: Invasion, officially the fourth film in the franchise begun with 1997's Paul Verhoeven flick. Based loosely on Robert Heinlein's novels, the story actually takes place as if the other terrible sequels never took place, and in part follows two teams of Roughnecks locked in a war against the alien "bugs" looking to destroy all of humankind. Now the first official trailer has been released, and while brief it appears to be more serious and less satire than we're used to from Starship Troopers.

Shinji Aramaki(Appleseed) is directing, with Casper Van Dien and Edward Neumeier as exec producers. This summer sees the film head straight-to-DVD, but I hold out hope for even a limited Fathom Events-hosted run before then. Check out the trailer below....[IGN]

More Starship Troopers: Invasion Videos

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Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Giamatti, Maya Rudolph join 'Turbo' voice cast

Dreamworks can never quite seem to get the edge on Pixar in the ongoing war for animation domination. They gained some significant ground with How to Train Your Dragon in 2010, and last year Pixar helped out by only releasing the lackluster Cars 2. This year sees Dreamworks slipping behind yet again, as their two offerings, Madagascar 3 and Rise of the Guardians, haven't caught the attention of moviegoers in the way Pixar's Brave has.

Already looking ahead to 2013, Dreamworks has assembled an impressive voice cast for Turbo, the story of a garden snail with dreams of racing in the Indianapolis 500, embued with super speed after a freak accident. Ryan Reynolds is set to voice the lead, now being joined by Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Giamatti, Michael Pena, Luis Guzmán, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Ken Jeong, Michelle Rodriguez, Maya Rudolph, Ben Schwartz, Kurtwood Smith, and Snoop Dogg.

This doesn't sound like anything I'd be interested normally, but with Robert Siegel(The Wrestler, Big Fan) co-writing the script, chances are Turbo will be far better than it appears on paper. Turbo is set to race into theaters on July 19th 2013. [THR]

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Disney Update: Pixar's upcoming dinosaur film now titled 'Frozen'; 'The Avengers' confirmed in 3D

Is Pixar going all Ice Age on us or what? Last August, the hit-making animation studio set aside a couple of release dates for two of their big projects coming our way in 2013 and 2014. One, set for May 30th 2014 appears to be the home for Peter Docter's high concept film taking place inside the mind of a young girl. But the first one, which we had been calling the Untitled Pixar Film About Dinosaurs, had locked up a date of November 27th 2013. Today Pixar announced that the film will be titled Frozen, and yes, it will still be about dinosaurs.

All we really know about it at this point is that Bob Peterson will direct it, and the story will present a world in which dinosaurs never went extinct.  

Moving on to the Marvel side of the Mouse House, one thing that we never quite got a confirmation on was whether or not Joss Whedon's The Avengers would be in 3D or not. Well, take this as a possible clue: the superhero flick is now officially titled The Avengers 3D. 

And lastly, Marvel has moved one of their mystery comic book projects up from June 27th 2014, to April 4th 2014. We still have no clue what it could be, but my fingers are crossed it's Runaways or Guardians of the Galaxy. Most likely it will just be the Captain America sequel. [Deadline]

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