Animation Draft Final: Ballz vs. Onyx

Ballz
1. Oogie Boogie(The Nightmare Before Christmas)
2. Rocko(Rocko's Modern Life)
3. Sideshow Bob (The Simpsons)
4. Inspector Gadget (Inspector Gadget (1983))
5. Dick Dastardly (Wacky Races (1968))
6. Dale Gribble (King of the Hill)
7. The Creep (Creepshow)
8. Jill Valentine (Resident Evil video game)
9. Krang (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987))
10. Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal video game series)
11. Chun-Li (Street Fighter video game series)
12. Ganondorf Dragmire (Legend of Zelda video game series)



OnyxHades
1. Mok (Rock & Rule 1983)
2. Pizzazz (Leader of The Misfits from Jem and the Holograms)
3. Hexxus (Ferngully: The Last Rainforest 1992)
4. Hades (Hercules 1997)
5. Claude Frollo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996)
6. Ursula ( The Little Mermaid 1989)
7. Mad Jack (Donkey Kong 64)
8. Bowser (Mario Bros game series)
9. Scar (The Lion King 1994)
10. Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty 1959)
11. Sinistar (Sinistar arcade game 1983)
12. Mileena (Mortal Kombat)

SF2: Troma vs. Onyx

Tromafreak
1. Rudy(Fat Albert)
2. The Tootsie Roll Pop Owl.
3. Little Rosey. (Very short-lived Roseanne-inspired Saturday morning cartoon.)
4. Shang Tsung (Mortal Kombat)
5. The Quik Rabbit
6. Hair Bear (Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch!)
7. Q•bert
8. Gaia (Captain Planet)
9. Boo Berry
10. Gilligan (Gilligan's Planet)
11. Wendy (Wendy's)
12. Jesus(Flying House)



OnyxHades
1. Mok (Rock & Rule 1983)
2. Pizzazz (Leader of The Misfits from Jem and the Holograms)
3. Hexxus (Ferngully: The Last Rainforest 1992)
4. Hades (Hercules 1997)
5. Claude Frollo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996)
6. Ursula ( The Little Mermaid 1989)
7. Mad Jack (Donkey Kong 64)
8. Bowser (Mario Bros game series)
9. Scar (The Lion King 1994)
10. Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty 1959)
11. Sinistar (Sinistar arcade game 1983)
12. Mileena (Mortal Kombat)

2:2

SF 1: Ballz vs. Snowy

Ballz
1. Oogie Boogie(The Nightmare Before Christmas)
2. Rocko(Rocko's Modern Life)
3. Sideshow Bob (The Simpsons)
4. Inspector Gadget (Inspector Gadget (1983))
5. Dick Dastardly (Wacky Races (1968))
6. Dale Gribble (King of the Hill)
7. The Creep (Creepshow)
8. Jill Valentine (Resident Evil video game)
9. Krang (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987))
10. Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal video game series)
11. Chun-Li (Street Fighter video game series)
12. Ganondorf Dragmire (Legend of Zelda video game series)



Snowy_Owl
1. Scooby Doo
2. Coraline
3. Roger Rabbit(Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
4. The Cheshire Cat(Alice in Wonderland)
5. Lumière(Beauty and The Beast)
6. Sully(monsters inc)
7. Courage the Cowardly Dog
8. Bubbles(The Powerpuff Girls)
9. Nigel Thornberry(The Wild Thornberry's)
10. Casper
11. Jerry Mouse (Tom and Jerry)
12. Mr. Krabs(Spongebob Squarepants)

3:3

Animation Challenge 2020

Let's kick off the new year (and new decade) by bringing back the Animation Challenge. We skipped it entirely in 2019 and that's too bad because there's a shitload of a good animation out there to be watched.

You get one point per minute watched. All forms of animation count, including live action mixed with animation such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Cool World. The challenge will run from 12:00 AM January 1st to 11:59 PM January 31st. Make your SPOT below!

Revisiting movies part 1: Piranha (1978)

I had been pondering about a topic like this since last week. With MovieMeter members drafting pretty shitty movies for the horror draft I was really craving for some better flicks to see. After viewing Piranha 3D that gave me a good opportunity to rewatch the original from Joe Dante. Surprisingly I didn't hate the remake it was good as pop corn flick and the amount of nudity didn't harm. Nice nude underwater ballet and funny to see porn star Gianna Michaels skysurfing (or what is it called) losing her bikini exposing her big ones and later her lower body swallowed by piranha. It goes pretty overboard (pun intended) with the CGI gore though and the chaos keeps going on for too long. Pretty silly when people actually start to use guns to fend the killer fish of.

So on to the original. After watching it, I also took the opportunity to view the extras like how they didn the make-up and how they actually moved the piranha. Joe Dante does audio commentary on the movie which reveals a few things I didn't know.

Dante says it's no secret his movie rips of Jaws but the shark being replaced with a horde of smaller killer fish. Even if you look at the artwork it feels pretty much like Jaws.

























There is other similarities like a few people warning the authorities about the danger these killer fish would cause for the people wanting to go for a swim in the lake. And with children having a summer camp too one more reason to keep people out of the water. Of course the authorities and expert scientists (Barbara Steele being one of them) manage to find a solution (or at least they think they have). Even though they try to stop them, Paul Grogan (Brad Dillman) and Maggie (Heather Menzies) manage to save the day but not without having the obligatory victims.













It's all pretty predictable with the local authorities wanting to go ahead with their plans despite the lurking danger. Using let's kill the messenger tactics always ends in trouble. A lot of people get injured or completely eaten. That's where the movie differs from Jaws that there is a lot more scenes with people on or in the water. There is a lot more victims and action definitely in the last half hour. You actually do see the fish in action pretty frequently. It's quick edits, fish on a stick with a mechanism to move their jaws manually. Even if lots of scenes were filmed in a swimming pool deep respect for the people behind the practical effects and building all these rubber fish. My favorite effect is the aftermath of the piranha's attack on the old man (Keenan Wynn), his legs eaten to the bone.














Another striking thing is that the piranha do not spare anyone even children are not safe. There seems to this days still an unwritten rule that children might get harmed but pretty rarely they are killed. This movie actually has a scene where the piranha attack while the children at the summer camp are having a swim ring race. It eventually leads to the demise of one of the camp leaders Betsy (Belinda Balaski). It's really tragic as Paul's daughter Suzie (Shannon Collins) first managed to save the other female leader Laura (Melody Thomas Scott) in a rubber boat.














The director was really impressed by young Shannon, saying she really did a great job. He loves to know what actually happened to her. I would have loved to hear her memories about the movie too. She only was in 3 more movies after Piranha.











So yes it was a great trip down the memory lane. I remember having seen a few other piranha movies during childhood under the surveillance of my elder sisters in the 80s but none of them had an impact like Piranha had. I am planning to seek for those other piranha movies I have forgotten about during summer, so the idea of a shark and killer fish movie challenge is a good motivation.


Next revisit review: FleshEater (1988)

Doctor Sleep

I wanted to watch this one months ago, but they booted it from theaters before it could get a proper response from viewers, likely due to the lengthy runtime. Now, I hear there's a 3-hour cut, but we wont go into that one today. The 2.5 hour theatrical cut is plenty to talk about, so here we go...

The film begins in 1980, right after the Overlook incident. We get to see some well-recast renditions of Danny Torrance and his mother, now played by the sexy Alex Essoe, and we even get a bit of Doc Halloran in there, which is a nice touch. Clearly, there's still a bit of trauma going on and Danny is trying to find a way to deal with it.

Years later, adult Danny (Ewan McGregor) is a drunk piece of shit. He's been channeling a bit too much of his father and he's sick of it, so he goes to rehab and hopes for the best. He's dulled his shine over the years, but a young girl taps back into it, but unknowingly alerts a family of hungry vampires. Now, these aren't blood-sucking vampires mind you, but they suck the "steam"/lifeforce out of anyone who seems to have a good flavor to them, and they've grown a taste for young children who shine.


It may be a long movie that I was already fatigued going into, but damn if it wasn't interesting enough to wake me the fuck up. It's got some really good cinematography, some very cool shots, a lot of great callbacks, and somehow it even has good pacing. Without saying too much to give anything else away, you can rest easy knowing that it goes full-blown Shining at the end, and those bits made me giddy.

When you say the sequel to The Shining is going to be about vampires, it might confuse you a bit. I wasn't entirely sold on the whole idea, though rather mildy curious. However, by the end of the movie, I was very satisfied. I really liked what they did this movie. Some scenes even gave me chills. Very well done, and very faithful to the original.

Round 4: Johan vs Troma

Johan_WoW
1. She-Ra(She-Ra: the Princess of Power)
2. Teegra (Fire & Ice)
3. Teela (Masters of the Universe)
4. Tyris Flare (Golden Axe videogame series)
5. Catra (She-Ra: Princess of Power)
6. Alex (Totally Spies)
7. Razor (Maniac Mansion videogame)
8. Blaze Fielding (Streets of Rage videogame series)
9. Kiki (Kiki's Delivery Service)
10. Lady Amalthea/The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn)
11. Shadow Weaver (She-ra: Princess of Power)
12. Medusa (The Rescuers)

Tromafreak
1. Rudy(Fat Albert)
2. The Tootsie Roll Pop Owl.
3. Little Rosey. (Very short-lived Roseanne-inspired Saturday morning cartoon.)
4. Shang Tsung (Mortal Kombat)
5. The Quik Rabbit
6. Hair Bear (Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch!)
7. Q•bert
8. Gaia (Captain Planet)
9. Boo Berry
10. Gilligan (Gilligan's Planet)
11. Wendy (Wendy's)
12. Jesus(Flying House)

Round 3: Box vs. Snowy

Box_a_Hair
1. Ren Hoek(Ren and Stimpy)
2. Butthead(Beavis and Butthead)
3. Rick Sanchez(Rick and Morty)
4. Fritz the Cat
5. Zorn (Son of Zorn)
6. Bender Bending Rodriguez (Futurama)
7. Salad Fingers
8. Butters Scotch (Southpark)
9. Bojack Horseman
10. Colt Luger (F is for Family)
11. The Toxic Avenger (Toxic Crusaders)
12. Nathan Explosion (Metalocalypse)





Snowy_Owl
1. Scooby Doo
2. Coraline
3. Roger Rabbit(Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
4. The Cheshire Cat(Alice in Wonderland)
5. Lumière(Beauty and The Beast)
6. Sully(monsters inc)
7. Courage the Cowardly Dog
8. Bubbles(The Powerpuff Girls)
9. Nigel Thornberry(The Wild Thornberry's)
10. Casper
11. Jerry Mouse (Tom and Jerry)
12. Mr. Krabs(Spongebob Squarepants)

1:6

Annimated Movies On Youtube

Recomenatiions for the Annimation Challenge.

This one is great but very sad.

Savage Weekend (1979): Better than I Remembered

...and better than is usually credited for.

Filmed in 1976, but not released until the post-Halloween slasher glut of the late '70s and early '80s, Savage Weekend, much like The Redeemer (1977), is a rude, crude, and wonky-as-hell early stalk n' slash prototype.

Our ragtag group of friends - adults, curiously, and not teens - spend a weekend in upstate New York to watch the construction of a boat, but also spare no expenses in a little r&r and the chance to bop each other's brains out (what's a weekend without gettin' your freak on, eh?!)

A few of the local hicks, played by William Sandersen and a pre-Re-Animator "Dr. Hill" David Gale, provide two of the strongest, scenery chewing performances, as well as your requisite red herrings that are so intrinsic to the slasher formula.

For much of Savage Weekend, the story that unfolds is more along the lines of a psychotronic soap opera, but one that is never not engrossing, and more than a little sordid, with past details of a woman's previous marriage-gone-awry, and the lust-filled thoughts she has for other men despite being newly married to a decent guy.

But as is the case for these films, someone does eventually crash their weekend, dons a scary mask, and begins systematically knocking them off one-by-one.

True, Savage Weekend is leisurely paced, talky, and when the action does get going, it's neither particularly gory or violent, but what it does offer is that sweet, sweet '70s atmosphere, interesting characters, a cool folksy music score as well as early analogue synth blurts, a great final half hour, and an air of general weirdness and freshness, no doubt benefitted by being an early film of this type, the makers not pressured into following some uniformly bland stereotype.

It's rough around the edges sure, and very low-budget, but the movies that stay with you usually are. It's classic '70s horror regional filmmaking at its near-best.