I've poked at it on Twitt, but I also want to mention it here... But That Face Bluth's villains often make is one of my absolute favs, the absolute unhinged chaotic energy

The secret of Nimh was Don Bluth's debut as an independent animator, fresh out of working at Disney and disappointed with how Disney storytelling was going.

"We haven't been telling better stories than Snow White, and we should be. We're doing the same thing over and over again, but we're not doing it any better. Yet we know enough now so that we should be preparing the films in which the color and the music and the layouts and the backgrounds all change to fit the moods of a story in which everything combines to touch you. The pictures now are entertaining, they're fast-paced, and they're clear. Walt had all those things, and he touched you besides."

-interview with Don Bluth

So does the movie hold up to these ideals? Well after watching it, I'd say yes and no. First of all, the art is fantastic, it's absolutely beautiful and there were many moments that made me go "wow". Nimh absolutely holds up in terms of art and animation, with little details in the background that would catch my eye that made the world feel really "alive". The soundtrack also added to the feel of the movie, with orchestral scores that added to many of the beautiful visuals. But I am not here for just the animation and the music, I also watched for the story, and the story simply does not hold up. The first half of the movie has poor pacing, and the characters don't hold much appeal. Specific ones that caught my attention were Jeremy the crow and Mrs. Brisby, the main character. Jeremy might be one of the most insufferable characters in all of animation, if you haven't watched Nimh, picture Genie from Aladdin with all his charm removed. Every scene Jeremy appeared in, I immediately wanted to dart away from the movie. He is just insufferable as a character, not charming, nor funny, nor entertaining. Mrs. Brisby is the opposite, where the problem is for the majority of the movie, her character is pretty blank, and I consider her one of the blandest main characters of all time. Most of her character is being concerned about her son Timmy and being the wife of Mr. Brisby. The Bechdel test is a meme these days, but watching this movie made me understand why it was made. The rest of characters range from unlikable to bland, there isn't much of a reason for you to feel for any of them, root for the heroes, or feel anger towards the villain. Even if you don't mind the characters, the story as a whole doesn't really get interesting until halfway through, when Mrs. Brisby finally gets into the Rats of Nimh's hideout and learns the backstory of them. I remember watching this movie once as a kid as a Blockbuster rental and the backstory scene was the one that stuck with me and still is striking to me as an adult. If there's one specific scene from this movie to seek out, it's that. Sadly even after the backstory, there's still a lot of empty holes in the movie's story that aren't patched out and a lot of questions left about the world that are never answered. I like a good mystery, but NIMH has too many and the audience will go in and out of the experience with as much information as Mrs. Brisby does. Which is next-to-nothing.

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TLDR;

✅ What I liked:

Great animation

Great score

Fantastic backstory scene

❌ What I didn't like:

Left too many questions

Characters range from outright insufferable to bland

Doesn't pick up until halfway through

Overall ranking:

At the end of these I like to ask: "is it a good replacement for Disney movie?" For those who want to live a hypothetical Disney-free life for themselves and their children.

For The Secret of Nimh, I think it solely depends on which era of Disney you are referring to. It's a good replacement for a 70s Disney movie, back when they were releasing stuff like "The Rescuers" and "Robin Hood". Not so much for any other Disney eras. The fantastic animation is the highlight of Nimh, but everything else, sadly, has aged poorly and no longer holds up in the modern era of animation storytelling.

Tagged by @im-overstimulated-and-im-sad

Thanks for thinking of me!

In no particular order, 7(ish) confort movies:

1) Anastasia. I was obsessed with this movie as a kid and I still love it. It's a deliciously uchronic tale of the times post-Russian Revolution, filled with magic, songs, and animated by Don Bluth. Fantastic! It feels just like childhood whenever I watch it.

2) Pacific Rim. I can quote entire parts of this movie (Spanish dub, though). I really love the design of both the jaggers and the kaijus, the cast is amazing, the soundtrack gets me super pumped, and the friendship between Raleigh and Mako is super refreshing to see.

3) The Little Vampire. My first vampire movie, with first vampire crush included. My parents opened a blockbuster as a side hustle and whenever I spend the afternoon there I requested they played this movie in the ginormous TV they had. Also, the costumes of this movie are awesome. It reigns supreme over the animated version they made more recently. Or maybe it's just the nostalgia, Idk.

4) Promoción Fantasma (Ghost Graduation). This is a Spanish comedy movie, so I don't expect anyone to know it outside of Spain. The story is about a teacher who can see ghosts and a group of dead teenagers trapped inside a high-school. The teacher's goal is to help them get into the afterlife by "passing" all their "pending subjects", ie graduate. Things don't go as planned.

(Couldn't find a GIF I liked, sorry, tough surprisingly, there are a few on Tumblr)

5) John Wick. I really like the whole saga, but the first one was something special, and I love Keanu Reeves.

In the "father, I crave violence" moments, I watch John Wick.

6) Speed Racer. I think this masterpiece by the Wachowsky sisters is very underrated. Some people doesn't seem to be able to keep the pace with the flashbacks, but I never thought it was a problem. The aesthetic of the movie is on point, the casting was amazing, and I kid you not, I still listening to that credits song.

7) Peter Pan (2003). I love every incarnation of the boy who didn't grow up, but this one holds a special place in my heart.

8) Stardust. I can't resist putting a bonus entry every time I do these things, sorry.

Neil Gaiman wrote the book this movie is based on. Do I need to say more? Yeah? Well, the story is great, it features Charlie Cox and Claire Danes as the protagonist, and has Robert DeNiro playing a gay pirate! #CaptainShakespeareForTheWin

I don't want to tag anyone, but if you see this and want to do it, feel free to tag me so I know you come from my post, and I can get to know you.

seven characters you relate to?

 Okay, no problem. Let me think.

Michael Bluth (Arrested Development)

Al Swearengen (Deadwood)

William "the Bloody" Pratt (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Hank Hill (King of the Hill)

John Dorian (Scrubs)

Ted Lasso (seriously?)

Rachel Goldberg (UnReal)

Okay, so maybe a bonus seven.

Jude (Across the Universe)

Fred Rogers (as depicted in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood)

Jeffrey Beaumont (Blue Velvet)

Ralphie Parker (A Christmas Story)

Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane)

Officer Daniels (Compliance)

Laurence Jamieson (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels)

I feel like a third seven is in order:

some days A.Burr, some days A.Ham (Hamilton)

Charlie Fox (The Mosquito Coast)

Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing)

Christian (Moulin Rouge!)

William of Baskerville (The Name of the Rose)

Dave (Nomadland)

Lloyd Dobler (Say Anything)

You've already got me going through my movie library, so fuck you if you only wanted seven.

Barry Champlain (Talk Radio)

Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks)

Willy Wonka (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

Bruno (Encanto)

Phillip Jennings (The Americans)

Gaius Baltar (Battlestar Galactica)

Butt-head (Beavis & Butt-head)

I just realized I had the library filtered. Now I'm going through it again. Oh, and why are we playing your little "seven" game at all? This isn't your show. We do this my way.

Walter White (Breaking Bad)

Tyrion Lannister (the show that shall not be named)

Gordon Clark (Halt and Catch Fire)

David Haller (Legion)

Quentin Coldwater (The Magicians)

Elliot Alderson (Mr. Robot)

Jimmy McNulty (The Wire)

every single fucking thing James Spader has ever done

Random post-list thoughts: There. Behold an array of villains, heroes, and mediocre speedbumps on someone else's road to greatness.

Two or three girls slipped in; I don't know if that's low or high. (Damn it, I forgot to include Ripley from Aliens!) Many of these selections are unflattering for various reasons. And check out those daddy issues... virtually none of those characters have functional paternal relationships. I'm trying to decide who's the worst human being among them... I'm leaning toward Baltar, but maybe Walter.

Just as a "let the old person tell you about aging" thing, it's worth noting that once you get old enough, you start to segment your life. You break it down into little epochs... I doubt we all do it the same, but for me, it's childhood to my mid-twenties, my mid-twenties to my mid-forties, and finally... now. And you can kind of see why by looking at these picks... I'm recognizably different people at different ages. There's only just a fragment of Lloyd Dobler left in me today, but we had much in common, once upon a time. The me of a former epoch would be a bit confused by my combined adoration of Al Swearengen and Ted Lasso... but that's okay, he has much to learn about being me.

The point being, don't ever lose track of the fact that your fucking life can swivel at any moment. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, your mind will mark it as a fundamental shift in your direction. You will be new, even if you don't notice it for a long, long time. That's okay, you have much to learn about being you.

Just remember —whenever things are going well or worse— that by the time you're my age, there will have been three or four versions of your stupid ass running around. And thus know that all things shall pass.

And, finally, since she's exactly the right age for it, and because she absolutely did not deserve what happened to her in the wake of the originala, may I suggest for Dani:ot familiar, is a movie from 1980 in which a disillusioned artist meets a muse, "Kira" (implied to be Terpsechore), who leads him to a club owner from the 1940s, and they open a roller disco together. The muse similarly inspired the elderly club owner way back in the day, holding romances with both but truly falling in love with the younger one. The plot is a hot mess and the movie actually inspired the Razzie Awards and killed Olivia Newton-John's career, but it's got a cult following these days and it's. Actually not bad? Like if you accept that it was released about five years after its time and that it's absolutely a fever dream of camp and acid, it's a very good time. Also, you get to see Gene Kelly killing it in roller skates and a tuxedo, and tell me that isn't worth it. I feel like I should add that if you're not familiar with dancing on roller skates, it's fucking hard, and the "simple" choreography here is actually pretty technically difficult. Walking in place in skates is a whole different experience.

And yes, yes, this is the movie with that one inexplicable animated scene, I don't know what the fuck it's doing there either, but Don Bluth used the money from this scene to fund The Secret of NIMH which means that without it we also wouldn't have All Dogs Go To Heaven, The Land Before Time, An American Tail, or Anastasia, so shut the fuck up and show it some respect.

So anyway. Zeo suggested a remake should go the Good Omens route, and do a short miniseries rather than a movie, with which I wholeheartedly agree, and that a timeline update would put Danny (the elderly club owner) in the 1980s, which has some intriguing possibilities. It was a relatively short conversation, but it caught my imagination, so I kept on thinking about it and if you've ever seen the movie, I just. I love the idea of updating it from Danny-the-big-band-club-owner to Dani-the-lesbian-queer-disco-owner (in which the themes of intertwined joy and loss come not from WWII but living through the AIDS crisis), and since Sonny's job literally no longer exists in 2022, just making him a generic industrial painter (which is the job 1980!Sonny was trying to do before he went back to Simpson's), and quitting to try to get a start as an EDM musician but finding that Bandcamp doesn't pay the bills.

Actually spend some time with Dani in the 1980s. Give the other muses some screentime not in the weird way the musical did, but like. Maybe the musician who plays during the finale is seen with one of the muses and it's implied they were inspired and guided to this project. The murals in the clubs both old and new are painted by a painter and one of the muses. That kind of thing. Expand the love story from "boy meets girl and it's all very formulaic" to something where we actually see Kira struggling with the concept of goddess versus humanity and Sonny dealing with the realization that Something Isn't Right About Kira. Give us actual time in Olympus with Zeus and Hera having actual legitimate concerns about what's happening, instead of just "oh well, there are rules, which we are then going to break because plot I guess."

And let's be clear. I do not want whatever the fuck the musical did with "let's make fun of the movie because it was SO BAD LOL." I want to see them play the story straight. Lean into the camp, make it silly and poignant and heartfelt, basically tell the story from 1980 but updated and more coherent.

Things I want specifically as nods to the original:

--EDM remixes of the ELO songs. I refuse a world where "The Fall" isn't in Xanadu. And let's be real, "Strange Magic" would be a great new addition to the lineup, and if the timeline is going from 1945/1980 to 1985/2022, having ELO in the 1980s scenes would make perfect sense. The EDM remixes can take the place of "Dancin'."

--Instead of the superfluous animated scene, replace "Suddenly" (originally set in a practical effects studio) with a plot-relevant animated scene where Kira asks Sonny if she can hear his music, asks if he's ever thought of doing a music video, and the animation we see is what that would look like. Don Bluth restarted a new independent hand-drawn animation studio in 2020, so 100% we are getting him to animate this sequence, too.

--There will still be roller-skates. I don't care how the fuck they're explained, there will be roller-skates. And one pair of them will be gold. I also don't care how or why. I was in love with those gold skates as a kid.

--Gene Kelly's filmography should be in a background shot somewhere. I don't care how. Maybe someone's a film buff with a DVD collection. Doesn't matter. It needs to be in there.

--Instead of the "All Over The World" scene where they wreck the department store, they should wreck Dani's attic (because vintage is in, y'know), but all of the outfits from the 1980 sequence should be in there. They're just going through all her old club shit and like yep, there's the red overalls, there's the godawful orange shirt and slacks, somebody pulls out the Kiss of the Spider-Woman costume and she's just like "benefit night." (Dani, of course, has long since been established as a butch lesbian.) The line "it's like 1945 all over again/it is 1945 all over again" is updated to "1985," but it's said over the frilly turquoise dress 1980!Kira wore in that scene, and as it's said Dani hands the dress to remake!modern!Kira and says "you should take it. It'd suit you." This would be particularly great if we see remake!Kira in it in 1985; since the implication in the 1980 scene is that Danny has finally recognized and accepted that yes, somehow, this is his Kira from 1945, it'd be a way of acknowledging that Dani has realized the same.

--Dani, of course, wears one of the suits from the 1980 scene in the finale, rather than the tux.

And, finally, since she's exactly the right age for it, and because she absolutely did not deserve what happened to her in the wake of the original and we already know she can sing, dance, and kill it in roller skates, may I suggest for Dani:

That is all.

Skwistok for the ask meme please 🦅🎸🐇

@little-murmaider a lot of these answers are going to be the same as yours, because we're both very smart and correct 🤝 I'm just going to elaborate on them differently and I'm a bit long winded so I'm also going to throw it all under a cut

[OTP ask meme]

Which one of them sexts like a straight white boy?

So I think this probably depends since I don't see either of them spending much effort on this and Toki probably devolves into knock knock jokes (knock knock, who ams dere, Toki, Toki who, *dick pic*, 6/10, 😡) but I have a smutfic rotting away in my drafts that kicks off with drunk Skwisgaar basically sending a 'u up?' text while Toki is out with Abigail:

Nothing screamed 'pay attention to me!' like a string of eggplant emoji followed by sending his location. Toki turned his phone screen side down and ignored the buzzing vibrations of incoming messages until Abigail excused herself to the restroom, finally deigning to reply once he was alone.

SS: When u coming hoommee

TW: Oh you want to hang out with me now? Sorry I having a real good time out with Abigail right now, sucks for you

SS: But I'm lonely

TW: Am you lonely or horny

SS: I can be 2 thing

Toki chuckled, that definitely meant horny.

I'll finish it one of these days. Probably.

Which one cried during a fucking Disney movie?

Ok prefacing this with the fact that we're not gonna talk about Bruno Encanto because I will cry. Toki prefers the princess movies and loves to sing along, he gets more wrapped up in the magic and the color and less into the emotional beats, not a big crier in these cases. Skwisgaar tends to get trembly lipped over the animal-centric films. Lion King hit hard, in no small part due to the score. Fox and the Hound...I feel like that's enough said. Bambi also left him in a bit of a weird headspace he couldn't quite identify but still needed to be held after.

Not Disney, but they also never made it all the way through Homeward Bound as Skwisgaar was inconsolable over Shadow in the mud pit and couldn't continue. He's an emotional guy!

Neither of them can handle Don Bluth.

Who put a goddamn fork in the microwave?

Toki thought he should stir the lunchables halfway through heating and forgot to take the fork out. Skwisgaar prefers food reheated in the oven to prevent mushiness and has ruined many a plastic storage container.

Who does the silly hands-over-the-eyes “Guess who” thing?

100% Toki. He doesn't even try to disguise his voice, it takes all his willpower not to break down into giggles. Sometimes Skwisgaar will play along and make silly guesses, other times he'll say something to tease Toki back.

Who had that embarrassing reality TV marathon?

If Wicked Tuna is on the TV they are both powerless to change the channel, and neither of them understands why, but Toki loses his mind over the core samples. Once they break free of their television hypnosis they almost always have to go for sushi. Nathan tried to convert them to Deadliest Catch but it didn't take.

Who puts their cold hands/feet on their partner?

Skwisgaar, but Toki really doesn't mind. He runs hot naturally so Skwisgaar tucking his feet under Toki's legs on the couch or slipping his icy hands under his shirt actually feels kinda nice after the initial shock. What more can you ask for in a relationship than symbiotic thermoregulation?

Who laughs more during sex?

Toki, he laughs any time there's a weird noise or a position isn't quite working because Someone has Unnaturally Gangly Limbs, plus he's fairly ticklish once he gets into a goofy mindset. It's also a 50/50 chance that if Skwisgaar starts talking dirty Toki is either Very Into It or cannot take it seriously at all.

WHO IS THE LITTLE SPOON?

Little Spoon Skwisgaar is just a fact. It makes him feel safe and cared for and wanted in a way that other types of physical contact just don't quite reach, and Toki is a hugger so he likes to wrap him up tight and feel him relax into the embrace. Bonus because from this position Toki has easy access to kiss the nape of Skwisgaar's neck, which is one of the spots that makes him completely melt.