maggieaggieaggie hour

Helloooo, @thewarnerbrothers (and the warner sister, dot). You may or may not (probably not) remember me, but I'm the same tumblr that asked for more russian warner siblings and I have now returned to ask you a few more questions, if that's alright. First what are your feelings about the reboot? (I personally like it, except for the fact that there are less characters and PatB seem a little out of character sometimes) Do you have any characters on the show that you don't like? Do you ship anyone? Do you have any headcannons? Do you like tiny toons/ any thoughts on the up coming reboot? (I personally love it, although it suck that Elmyra is not gonna be in it. And yes, I know this is an animaniacs related tumblr but I want to know your opinion) Also what other cartoons do you like? Sorry for the long message and for any potential spelling mistakes😅

hi there, i remember you! i have more russian animaniacs queued up for later today. 🥰 i have a lot of thoughts on the reboot and i’m not sure how to do readmores on tumblr (did they get rid of that feature???) so sorry if this is long!

overall i really like the reboot, with some slight caveats and nitpicks. going in i had mild expectations but the animation, new songs, and humor blew me away! the writers really did manage to capture some of that animaniacs essence of what made the 1993 show fun. the callbacks to the old series made me smile too.

i also miss the variety show format. i could live without certain segments coming back (like katie kaboom) however the reboot feels very empty in comparison? i still had a blast watching it though.

as far as the reboot goes, i didn’t necessarily dislike any characters but i wasn’t crazy about many of the new characters either. i don’t ship much outside of pinky/brain but i do think the crossover ship of yakko and max goof is cute! i also lowkey ship the mime/mr skullhead. combined their possibility for hijinks is endless. i briefly covered some of my headcanons in this post.

i do like tiny toons!!! 🥺 i remember watching it as a kid but ironically not the actual content of many episodes. the themesong is engraved in my memory though. i’m rewatching tiny toon adventures right now and the animation is so high quality? very few cartoons had such consistently beautiful animation. the character designs are adorable! i want to make SO many gifs of it. i’m cautiously optimistic about the tiny toons reboot. even if it sucks i hope that it brings new fans to the old series!

as for other cartoons, i like a lot of old cartoon network & nickelodeon shows as well as popular modern cartoons! i also love classics like tom & jerry and scooby doo. honestly i love anything animated, incluing movies and obscure shows and foreign animation too.

July 2020

Machine Head - Civil Unrest

On this two-song EP, Robb Flynn once again leans into spur-of-the-moment inspiration in an effort to jolt Machine Head out of the creative fatigue that plagued the polarizing Catharsis, but unfortunately the approach that didn’t really work for “Volatile” doesn’t really work for “Stop the Bleeding” or “Bulletproof”, and it all adds up upon the revelation that these songs are constructed from scraps off the Catharsis kitchen floor. Robb’s finger is on the pulse of the tension underlying American politics and his heart is in the right place (which I commend him for his steadfastness to in the face of the apparently sizable chud subset of Machine Head’s fanbase), he just needs to take his delivery a little off the nose. Of the two songs, “Bulletproof” is definitely the stronger and more hard-hitting, while the goofy 2000′s metalcore melodicism of “Stop the Bleeding” meshes poorly with the grim subject matter Robb attaches to the track. In the grand scheme of Machine Head’s career, this EP (and the two non-album singles that preceded it last year) is disappointing filler that does nothing to lift the band out of the dry creative well they’ve found themselves in.

5/10

Khemmis - More Songs About Death, Vol. 1

A much more solid two-track EP, Khemmis’ More Songs About Death, Vol. 1 is comprised of a groovy cover of Misfits’ “Skulls” and an acoustic rendition of the folk song, “A Conversation with Death”, that the band had covered electrically for a split they did with Spirit Adrift. The band adapt well to the more original acoustic style of the latter song, as soulful as ever even with acoustic subtlety replacing their open-hearted doom metal. As for the Misfits cover, the band apply their signature harmonic doom guitar work to give it a signature seal while adhering to the core foundation of the song, and they show that the song does take to their brand of doom quite well. After Desolation and being signed to Nuclear Blast, Khemmis sure were excited to get working on their fourth LP. Now that of course sits on the list of many projects the pandemic has forcefully postponed, but these kinds of offerings and the band’s hinting that they might just come out of this with two albums’ worth of material is helping make the wait a little more bearable. Thank you as always, Khemmis.

more respect to Khemmis/10

Inter Arma - Garbers Days Revisited

Coming off the back of their magnum opus, Sulphur English, Inter Arma’s offering to hold the quarantined world over until the band’s next opus is a quick (by their standards) covers album of metal and hardcore classics, as well as some surprising classic and southern rock tunes. And the band manage the eight diverse songs with an impressive display of two-way adaptability. Turning “The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” into a blackgaze blast-beat fest and “Scarecrow” and into a crushing blackened sludge-doom epic while layering their atmospheric black metal smoothly over the old-school rock grooves of Neil Young’s “Southern Man” Inter Arma show an aptitude for selecting cover songs that fit their style. It sure helps that they’re a versatile act too, bending their mammothian heaviness to suit the core appeal of covers of Cro-Mags’ “Hard Times”, Nine Inch Nails’ “March of the Pigs”, and Venom’s “In League with Satan” while shedding all that sludge to expose their southern rock roots on (slightly) more stripped back tunes like “Runnin’ Down a Dream” and Prince’s “Purple Rain” (a closer so fittingly beautiful it seems almost unfair), which find them embellishing soulfully and clearly enjoying themselves in the studio. A lineup of tracks like this would make be nervous for whatever band was trying to tackle them, but Inter Arma prove that can shapeshift back to their southern roots just as well as they can bulldoze as needed to do their own justice to these several tracks, making for one of the best cover albums I’ve heard for a while.

8/10

This Will Destroy You - Vespertine

Serving as a soundtrack project for a highly rated California This Will Destroy You seemingly took a long time with this project, having released the “Kitchen” single in 2017 under the same premise. The album is entirely ambient, and not quite as experimental with glitchy electro-ambiance as projects like Tunnel Blanket or Another Language were. Instead, Vespertine highlights the serene/somber atmospheric foundation of the band’s post-metal/rock sound that made the Young Mountain EP and their self-titled LP such transcendent experiences and exemplary advocates for post-rock upon their release. And it’s a great display of just how the band’s discernible ambient style can shine through even such a minimal approach. It is basic ambient music for sure, no additives, but it’s unmistakably This Will Destroy You to those who know them, and it hearkens back to some of their best work, so I see it as a welcome addition to the band’s catalog.

7/10

Static-X - Project Regeneration, Vol. 1

Rebooted in honor of Wayne Static after his untimely passing in 2017 the original line-up and Dope frontman Edsel Dope behind a mask resembling the late singer and the pseudonym Xer0, Static-X return after over a decade of radio silence since 2009′s Cult of Static to mesh the final recordings of Wayne Static for the band with contributions from Xer0 on the first of two volumes of new material under this premise of paying tribute. Despite the lengthy absence and the loss of the band’s central creative force, the album is a mostly smooth transition from Cult of Static with some callbacks to the electro industrial metal of earlier albums like Shadow Zone and Machine. While it captures the essence of Static-X across its 39-minute track list with a handful of hard-hitting industrial nu metal bangers, Project Regeneration - Vol. 1 is a bit of a dry recount of the band’s legacy, and I hope the band saved the better chunk of songs for the second installment.

6/10

An Autumn for Crippled Children - All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet

An Autumn for Crippled Children is an anonymous Dutch trio who are helping to keep the blackgaze movement going with their eighth full-length album here. The band released their seventh not long ago in 2018, but this year’s is my introduction to the band, which has been a pleasant one. All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet is a moderately sized offering of heartfelt blackgaze as you know it from the likes of Deafheaven and Ghost Bath channeled through more second-wave-like stylings of the Norwegian black metal scene; so it sounds kind of like if Mayhem made more open-hearted music rather than deflected edginess through Satan-worshipping (not to shit on Mayhem or anything). There is more to this album, however, than just diluted or lo-fi Deafheaven worship; through the haze of the band’s fuzzy blackgaze is some pretty dynamic songwriting and impressive. More than just soaking distorted guitars in reverb and juxtaposing blackmetal screams with post-rock ambiance, An Autumn for Crippled Children capture some of that emotional diversity that makes blackgaze at its best (...Sunbather) so divinely captivating. And the spacious beauty the band conjures out of the negative space in the static-y guitars and thin percussion on songs like “Water’s Edge”, “Paths”, and the title track is surprisingly enveloping, but the standout cut on the album I’d say is the very unashamedly Ghost-Bath-y “Silver” for its overt heartfelt delivery with every instrument and its integration of what even sounds like a piano. I doubt this would convert many black metal purists who idolize Burzum and Darkthrone. In fact I bet this album would upset them even more than New Bermuda, but for those without a stick up their ass, looking for some juicy blackgaze with a different set of ingredients than your Harakiri for the Sky or Wolves in the Throne Room, this is some good shit.

8/10

Bury Tomorrow - Cannibal

I gave this one a good several tries because 2018’s Black Flame grew on me significantly after my incredibly underwhelmed first couple of listens, but sadly Cannibal strikes melodic metalcore gold far less often than its predecessor and finds Bury Tomorrow knee deep in the unflattering tropes that the genre is trying to shake off. With a pretty one-note approach to melodicism that results in a largely homogeneously flat emotional tone across the album, it’s definitely a step down from the emboldened and invigorated Black Flame that negates any sense of the band’s ambition that that album might have given off. I can point out “Better Below” and the brief breakdown on “Gods & Machines” as mild highlights in the tracklist, but they only really stand out because the rest of the surrounding tracks are so dry. I’d like to say that things just didn’t click this time or that some experiments just didn’t pan out, but it’s quite clearly just the lack of imagination and ambition that sinks this project deep into the background of forgettable metalcore, and I know this band can do better.

4/10

Kansas - The Absence of Presence

They’re hardly even metal-adjacent but for their sizable contribution to the 70′s prog rock movement that such a huge proportion of metalheads are into, a new Kansas album I suppose counts as on-topic for this blog. The band returned after a decade and a half of absence with a stuttering restart without iconic vocalist Steve Walsh on 2016′s The Prelude Implicit, and it was clear that they needed to do more than yearn for glory days to get the gears back in motion, so with The Absence of Presence the band’s new blood has stepped up to the plate to inject some freshness into the band’s compositional process. The band still sticks to that core violin-spiced prog rock that characterized their iconic 70′s albums, but the structuring and soloing style (especially the keys) are a bit more modernized than the band’s past work, and by modern I mean what Dream Theater sounded like in the 2000′s. Make no mistake, though, it’s an improvement on The Prelude Implicit, and it highlights the band’s talents and natural grandiose tendencies far more than the radio rock singles they’re most widely known for, and the cinematic bridge of the opening title track is sturdy proof of this. It’s a testament to the influence they have had on modern prog through the genre’s biggest bands like Dream Theater, and perhaps a testament to the two-wayedness of that street as well as fun, bombastic tunes like “Throwing Mountains” sound like they would fit easily on something like A Dramatic Turn of Events or as a break from all the melancholy on a Steven Wilson project. The album does wear a little thin on ballads like “Memories Down the Line”, but it makes up for its duller moments with plenty of exuberant prog expressiveness on most of the songs (the closing track being probably the standout example), which should be a good time for most of the band’s fans who fondly remember albums like Masque and Monolith, and any newer prog fans who may not be aware of the band’s influence on today’s prog metal.

7/10

Haken - Virus

Speaking of respectable modern prog though, Haken’s aptly named album this year serves as quite the easy bar to clear for prog metal so far this decade. I regretfully missed out on their 2018 sister album, Vector, but I am partially mending that ill by covering Virus here. Like I said earlier, it’s a solid record that captures the smoothness and tempered heaviness of Soen and the attitude of early Opeth with the angularity of Tool, but even if it ends up being the year’s best prog metal album, I don’t think it will be too long before one of the genre’s juggernauts (or even exciting new faces) kamehamehas this one away. The album starts out pretty solid in its first few tracks, but remains pretty meager and restrained in its explosiveness until midway through the album, relying on rather short bursts of typical prog heaviness like the opening of “Prosthetic”, whose rumbly bassline is a delicious highlight amongst the Townsend-esque choir implementation. The ten-minute “Carousel” ups the band’s expressiveness after the deceptive soothe of the second track with a clash of goth-y ambiance and pounding metallic bombast. The five-part “Messiah Complex” suite finds the band at their most adventurous, straddling the winding mid-song compositional whirl of Dream Theater with the occasional eccentricity and djenty heaviness of producer Nolly’s former band Periphery, the band still sound themselves and confident in every move they make, like true prog masters, ending beautifully on the two-minute “Only Stars”. I think it might end up being the year’s best straight-up prog metal album, and the band have worked hard to earn that honor, but I would honestly be surprised if someone else or Haken themselves don’t outdo it within a year. That’s to take away from what an exciting 52 minutes of prog this is, because with such a moderate runtime for such a tight prog album, it’s definitely deserving of the respect of a top album in its field.

8/10

Skeleton - Skeleton

Even though I tend to end up liking them, I find myself skeptical of projects whose aesthetic feels forcedly retro or whose marketing is focused heavily on nostalgia, and the self-titled debut from the Austin-based trio, Skeleton, complete with its intentionally cheesy and amateurish cover art, definitely checked those boxes. I even got the sense from 20 Buck Spin (being that I’m on their mailing list and follow their accounts and all) that they were more excited than usual to be releasing the trio’s debut. And honestly, after a few listens through of not being all too aroused by the crusty proto-death metal at the core of the band’s sound, the traditional heavy metal focus on infectious guitar riffs helped the album grow on me a good bit. The stylistic versatility of the guitar playing really is the cornerstone of the album, from the Kill ‘Em All-style riffs on “Taste of Blood” and early Sepultura-esque galloping on “At War” to the blackened punk grit of “A Far Away Land” and the even more catchy classic metal riffs on “Turned to Stone” and the melancholic old-school doom atmosphere on “Ring of Fire”. The snarled black metal vocals are gnarly in that old-school sense, throaty and raspy but kind of cheesily thin too to fit with the aesthetic the band are going for, and it’s a pretty similar story with the drums: not flashy at all by today’s standards but just right to supplement the guitar work and complete the vibe. And of course with 11 tracks not even grazing the half hour mark, the songs are pretty trim and compositionally bare bones, falling into quick, crust punk formats foregoing the typical verse-chorus paradigm. Yes, Skeleton has grown on me, and I’m curious to see if they end up expanding this sound like Ghost did from Opus Eponymous to stay creatively fresh or if they plan to draw from the long-abandoned (or less frequented) wells of musical elements they did on this album for the foreseeable future.

7/10

Burzum - Thulêan Mysteries

I know that in a lot of circles (including some I consider myself a part of), saying something even vaguely positive about Burzum invites a wave of disapproval for supporting (or at the very least, excusing) the black metal world’s most notorious villain’s racism, but I can’t say with a straight that Varg Vikernes didn’t play a huge part in shaping Norwegian black metal as we know it or that I don’t like Filosofem or Hvis lyset tar oss. I don’t think that amounts to supporting the guy’s racist bullshit, and luckily Varg has made it pretty easy not to support his racist bullshit because Burzum has been shit for a long long time now; in fact I’d say Filosofem was the last worthwhile Burzum album, with his pathetically bad ambient records during and after his time in prison and the three stale black metal albums that welcomed him back from prison. After such a weak return to music from prison and Burzum’s discontinuation-turned-hiatus, it seemed overdue that Varg finally retire the Burzum project after the unimaginative ambiance of The Ways of Yore. I mean the project has thoroughly emulated the trope of the white guy who views everything he touches as way more genius than anyone else does, which is pretty rich for a guy so willing to dismiss the current black metal scene as derivative, and he’s seemed more invested in whatever it is he’s been doing on YouTube or his blog. Nevertheless, Varg remains an infamous figure in metal probably to a lot of dudes who think there’s some esoteric genius to decode in his lore, to an extent I find kinda disturbing. The weird reverence a lot of the metal community has for the neo-nazi murderer’s cult of personality (the vast majority of whose discography is masturbatory throwaway doodling) is astounding. So this guy’s back, with an hour and a half of, by his own account, ambient scraps of dungeon synth music that he built up over an extended period of time and basically figured he’d compile into an album (because, like I said, everything he touches must be gold in his eyes), and goddamn it sure sounds like exactly what he pitches it as. The first track, “The Sacred Well”, is actually pretty soothing and decent helping of ethereal ambient music, but it doesn’t take long for things to go downhill. The annoyingly repetitive acoustic motif of “ForeBears” and the absolutely amateurish improvised piano plinking of “A Thulêan Perspective” quickly shed light on just how lazily patched together this thing is, while the subsequent “Gathering of Herbs” literally cuts off awkwardly like the full track didn’t upload fully. A few tracks like “Jötunnheimr” and “The Road to Hel” offer some fleeting promise in their eeriness, but they disappear as quickly as most of the tracks here do, in a flash of confusion as clearly incomplete ideas piled into an album for no reason that even Varg can justify. The last third of the album contains some of the longer tracks, but the swapping of fragments of half-assed keyboard doodles for half-assed demos spread thinner than tissue paper is a trade-off akin to the upcoming general election and it’s too little and way too late. I have to highlight the laughably farty synthesizer horns on “Ruins of Dwarfmount”; I mean thank god it’s quick because it’s absolutely awful, but the chuckle I get out of how bad it is is probably the best experience I have from this whole album. Just about everything on here is some combination of irritatingly repetitive, blatantly incomplete, or grossly unprofessional, and the thing that gets me is that it’s not like ambient music or dungeon synth is any sort of rocket science. I’m not at all the kind of music genius Varg’s weird devotees see him to be, but given the same equipment, even I could undoubtedly make a better ambient album than this. Although I’m not nearly as well-versed in ambient music as I am in metal, I have heard enough of a chunk of it to say I know the good shit and the bad shit, but honestly, this album is a new low for me. I didn’t know an ambient album could suck this much. It’s like an extended Daudi Baldrs with a slightly better keyboard, but with no excuse this time for the cheapness of the sound and certainly not the length. Yeah, piece of shit.

2/10

Boris - NO

Tokyo’s prolific sonic shapeshifters have all but given up on giving up, and I suppose the title of this year’s record summarizes their brief questioning of if they stop making music. The band’s first intended farewell album, Dear, which found them (not really) bowing out to the sorrowful drone doom of their most iconic record (Pink), was followed them by last year’s LφVE & EVφL, which saw them revisiting various shades of their career as comfortably as ever. NO finds the power trio on another stylistic tour of sorts, this time through some of their heaviest and most grimy territory, starting from brooding sludge doom to spending most of the album on Slayer-esque thrash and hardcore punk ripe with gritty attitude. The production is thick and nasty as is usually best for Boris, but the writing on this record is just kind of absent-minded for such a stylistically varied project. While the more drony opener, “Genesis”, rides its runtime well on the raw heaviness that the band put the pure simplicity of their slow groove through, the farther the band step away from their wheelhouse, the more apparent sparseness becomes of the more underwritten songs like the meatheadedly punky “Kikinoue” and “Fundamental Error”. We get some crushing riffs like that on “Anti-Gone”, but also some clumsy wailing about like on the song “Lust” that calls into question the effort Boris put in at the drawing board. The sheer power is there, but it’s being used generally inefficiently on a sizeable portion of NO. Still, it’s pretty cool to hear Boris at this pace, and the pure energy they pour into this project is enough to get the job done.

7/10

Tuscoma - Discourse

Tuscoma’s follow-up to the wildly eccentric Arkhitecturenominus is gets off to a slow start with its rather generic churn of blowtorch-blackened post-metal through its first two tracks and is short on risks for the reputably ambitious duo, but Discourse does eventually kick in to dig deep to tap as much of the frightful potential of the band’s sound and showcases a decent example of what the New Zealanders are known for and of lies out in left-field of post-metal.

6/10

Executioner’s Mask - Despair Anthems

Making their debut as a collective for Profound Lore, the quintet of seasoned post-punk creatives embark on an eccentric voyage through darkwave on a ship of modern gothic rock, and the results are as fascinating as they sound on paper, recalling the cerebral ritualism of Children of God-era Swans as much as the energetically veiled despair of Type O Negative and AFI while dipping the rock elements into the industrial side of darkwave every now and then. And again, the product is an effortless immersiveness into the record’s moody journey, not through atmosphere-building, but through the infectiousness of the goth dance numbers take you on. It’s certainly more of a metal-adjacent album than a bonafide metal album, but the way the band captures the despair they set out to is as effective through more subtly seething means as DSBM’s best, and the band’s adventurousness with their sonic palette alone makes for an interesting listen, or several, as I will certainly be giving this project more than its fair share of my ears.

8/10

Ensiferum - Thalassic

Very similar to Amon Amarth’s longtime solidification of their sound, the Finnish talents seem able to simply exhale exhilaration through their both tried-and-true and continually honed black-reinforced power folk metal. And it’s clear the band are on autopilot at least to some degree on Thalassic here because the writing is pretty homogeneous and formulaic nearly all the way through; that being said, the sheer energy of the band’s performances into a sound experience allows them to wield so effortlessly more than carries them across the seas they sing of.

7/10 

Bedsore - Hypnagogic Hallucinations

Stepping out from the shadows of Italy to present the great big world of metal with their forty-minute debut-album, the four-piece on the 20 Buck Spin label make their grand atmospheric aspirations for their brand of death metal immediately known across seven tracks of hellish wails and haunted ambiance. Taking ominous clean guitar motif-writing and structuring influence from Neurosis to the point of uncannily resembling “Souls at Zero” on the second track, “The Gate, Closure (Sarcoptes Obitus)”, Bedsore still inject plenty of their own distorted flair into the cavernous death-metal-flavored howl they espouse on Hypnagogic Hallucinations. The band do bank rather heavily on the immersiveness of the atmosphere they try to conjure, leaving a blind spot in the album’s dynamic beyond the fluctuations between clean and distorted nightmare. Compositional shortcomings aside, this is a solid debut to set the Italians on a bright prospective future.

7/10

Spirit Possesion - Spirit Possesion

Blackened thrash metal is one of those smaller subgenres within metal that feels more like a niche occupied by a few stalwarts like Aura Noir, Goatwhore, and Deströyer 666, but now Spirit Possession is making the bid to join those ranks and potentially turn more spotlight onto the specifically hybridized style. The band’s self-titled debut brims with the thrash enthusiasm of Bathory and the old-school riffing that shaped the way the early progenitors of black metal composed theirs, and not only is the Portland duo’s riff-game on point, but goddamn does it sound savory and spicy as hell through the more flattering production and against the backdrop of modern black metal a la Watain. The nasty chug on the song “Swallowing Throne” really highlights the benefit of the thicker, tastier production. The exceptionally grand “Amongst Inverted Castles and Holy Laughter” is a fine example of the band straddling old and new with impressive flexibility, while the bulk of the album's indulgence into early black metal and thrash is impossible not to want to indulge with, like a really fun party with a good crowd that makes it so much easier to have a few more drinks than you originally intended to.

8/10

Defeated Sanity - The Sanguinary Impetus

Through just enough delicious riffing,  memorable accentuation, and technicality on par with Dying Fetus packed into structurally creative bite-sized portions, brutal death metal stalwarts Defeated Sanity somehow make a pretty persuasive take-it-or-leave-it case for the genre.

7/10

Paysage d’Hiver - Im Wald

The boldly two-hour debut double-album from Paysage d’Hiver is also a bit of a double-edged sword, basing partly its very ethereal black metal atmosphere on the homemade sound that regularly kneecaps the grander feel the project is going for. And the album does indeed reach some soaring heights of blizzard-stung ambiance, which the biting sound of the tinny, but engaged, percussion and the vexed swooning of the tremolo-picked guitar playing across the album’s several indeed well-organized lengthy tracks. It takes a lot to trudge through the long path covered in thick snow that this album sets out on, and the lo-fi production often doesn’t help the individual elements that make Im Wald enjoyable stand out, and it can be all too easy to get lost in the homogeneous whitewash of the hazy winter wind. It’s a rewarding journey to finally make it all the way through with unbroken attention, but blame for the easiness of that attention being lapsed can at least partially be placed on the shoulders of Paysage d’Hiver for its mastermind’s one-note approach to an otherwise well-arranged and well-composed album.

7/10

Gaerea - Limbo

Despite the members’ faceless appearances behind their fully-covering black cloth masks, Gaerea’s music does not hold back its sorrowful outpour through heavy atmospheric black metal that crashes through and drowns like torrential flood waves as much as it tears at the heartstrings through unabashed languishing. The massive weight of the band’s sound invokes the feeling of being in the presence of an incarnate deity weeping at the ills of mankind and the destruction they have forced this deity to bring about. Abstract descriptors of the album’s experience aside, the band aren’t really doing too much new for the atmospheric black metal they’re making, not breaking any rules or pushing any boundaries, but everything that makes the genre so attractive is turned up to eleven. I was ready to be as critical as ever, but I could immediately see not long into my first listen why Season of Mist were so excited to hype up the Portuguese outfit’s incredibly accomplished sophomore release. The guitar playing is simultaneously powerful and beautiful, much like that of the Ulcerate album from earlier this year (Stare into Death and Be Still) that I also loved, and the drumming is just as ceaselessly thunderous in support. The lamenting screamed vocals are possibly the least exaggerated facet of the album, but certainly not the the point of being unfitting, in fact they fit the chaotically despondent mood quite well, or a detriment to the record’s overall barrage of mourning. As for how all these massive pieces are arranged, they all crash in synchronized waves in a fashion, again, not at all unfamiliar to anyone who’s heard blackgaze, but the raw passion of the band’s performances exemplify why this strategy is so widely adopted for atmospheric black metal. Gaerea have made quite the statement of intent on this one, and I will definitely be enjoying it repeatedly throughout the year and beyond.

9/10

Upon a Burning Body - Built from War

Upon a Burning Body went full Lamb of God last year with their very trim and direct 31-minute fifth LP, Southern Hostility, focusing their efforts on making their southern brand of groovy deathcore as tastily whiskey-soaked as possible, laying on the groove heavily and unrestrained in a way that I thought definitely worked in their favor. Just a year later, the band are back with a 17-minute addendum to their infectiously brash display of muscular bravado, and it’s pretty much as brutishly intense as expected as the band bounce through single-string grooves and ripping drum rhythms to the same conclusions they did last year, only this time it feels so much more fatigued, like they’re trying to artificially replicate this genuinely pissed off attitude that produced results for them despite just not being in that kind of headspace at the moment. The songs are pretty baseline for them and generic as fuck, missing that X factor that made Southern Hostility’s distilled rage so tangible and fun. Built from War has some of the staple features that made its predecessor such a good time, but despite its few high-energy moments across the five tracks, it feels like an unnecessary rehash of the lightning in a whiskey bottle they had last year, just no lightning, so empty whisky bottles that bear the smell to remind you of what was previously in them.

5/10

The Acacia Strain - Slow Decay

I have been pretty harsh on The Acacia Strain in the past; they haven’t come up much on my blog, but the times they have, I feel I’ve been a little overly critical of their use of elements that I’ve perceived as excessive that they’ve used to forge their recognizable sound. The band released a mini album (It Comes in Waves) on Closed Casket Activities just before last year was over and I didn’t even hear it until a few months in to this year, and honestly, I wasn’t all too broken up about it because it was some of the band’s most lethargic, meandering material to date; dragging aimlessly until the last two tracks of the album, a significant step down from 2017′s already middle-of-the-road Gravebloom. So with those albums in recent memory I was kind of not looking forward to Slow Decay all too much, but a few days before its release, I refreshed myself on the band’s 2014 album, Coma Witch, which I remember as a culmination of what The Acacia Strain had been trying to morph their horrific, hardcore-tinged deathcore into since Continent, and it was a great time, that album, and it made me a little more hopeful for the band’s tenth LP (if you count It Comes in Waves). And Slow Decay indeed has The Acacia Strain back on track after the stuttering of the past two releases. The burgeoning metallic hardcore movement over the past few years has certainly vindicated The Acacia’s Strain’s steadfast adherance to their hardcore roots, and with there really being no time like the present for that kind of energy, the stars’ aligning has indeed brought the best out of The Acacia Strain. And on Slow Decay, it’s not like the band have changed up their hardcore-driven approach to djenty deathcore all too much from what they did on Coma Witch, they just sound energgized through a good batch of songs this time, the many situations at hand showing their influence on the rage the ban draws from bleeding through the lyrics ranging from critiquing anti-vaccine sentiments to blasting the snobbishly entitled attitude of boomers. The fiery disdain for the state of the world comes through hard on the blood-pumping chug of “Crippling Poison”, the punchy, pissed-off groove of “Inverted Person”, and the rest of the dissonant horror-tinged riffing all across the album, and it just goes to show that The Acacia Strain have found a groove that works for them and when they have the right fuel for their fire, they can incinerate anything in sight. 

8/10

Imperial Triumphant - Alphaville

After revolutionizing the method of jazzification of metal music on 2018’s Vile Luxury, I was ready for a satisfying continuation of jazzy death metal from Imperial Triumphant, but I was not prepared for the wildness of the band’s ambition with their sound and beyond and the incredible success of their sonic expansion on Alphaville. The band are still jazzy as fuck on their successor to Vile Luxury but they’re not advertising it as blatantly like a product-placed soda can this time around, partially because they can’t with so much else going on in the nightmarish mix of sounds. The combination of dissonant grand piano chords over palm-muted chugging and merciless blast-beats on “City Swine” is perhaps the most overt example of the trio’s love for the traditional sounds of the type of jazz often associated with the big apple, but the palpable jazz influence in the winding guitar lines and dizzying drumming all across Alphaville continues to set Imperial Triumphant apart even within their wing of metal’s avant-garde. Indeed, their sound reaches beyond mere genre hybridization; the band incorporates various avant-garde elements in an experimental, yet clearly well-engineered manner all over the album. From the haunting fuzzy dissonance and disorienting electronics of the title track and the odd inclusion of taiko drumming by Meshuggah’s Tomas Haake to the gloriously frightful choir climaxes on both “Atomic Age” and “Transmission to Mercury”, Alphaville is full of surprises, and a size-able step forward for a band already bounds ahead of the curve on their previous album.

9/10

The 2019 Charlie’s Angels Reboot Was A Good Project & Deserved More Respect From Hollywood

We’ve just finished watching the film and there was a lot both J and I really enjoyed about it. We’re critical of media and art in different ways and I certainly don’t speak for them, as for me, oddly I’m lenient in ways that they probably aren’t when it comes to production and culture. I don’t have to dive too deeply into the cultural response to this picture to know how it went down, I’ve come into contact with just enough of it to have a clear understanding of the popular digest. The response is not at all unexpected, it’s just uninformed.

I feel that the 2019 (year of publishing) Charlie’s Angels reboot was a good project with a wonderful spirit. Elizabeth Banks’ aims were clearly evident in the final product, however it may have been shaped along the way, and that it was under-served in the production process likely from the very beginning.

This casting is fantastic.

I do wish there were better cast-ensemble promos for me to lift from the internet and wonder whether that’s another telltale sign of production or whether the heat has just faded since release and they’ve just dropped out of the archives but I struggled to find well composed images.

The first short sizzle-teaser I ever saw for the film, I thought was quite good. Neckbeards and mouthbreathers won’t have paused for a second thought before launching hate for the project - anything in the most vague proximity of feminism or empowerment of women, or even simply just not being centred around men - will be enough to bring snide internet snark by the truckload. It remains interesting that men continue to struggle to live in a world where there can be things that also exist that are not for them, they cannot simply let these other things also exist without contributing in some way. As it were, the project looked good. Sharp, clever, playful, and a timely reboot reclaimed in the most contemporary way. When I looked up the production details and found out Banks was championing it herself, I really took an interest in it. As the first full trailers released, the casting looked great - genuinely diverse and with real chemistry, I hoped it would find the audience it was looking for.

J and I have had a lot going on in our lives over the last two years and still do. We’ve gone to theatres I think twice in that whole time, maybe three times and I think two of those were gift certificates generously paid for by family. So tonight we finally got around to watching Charlie’s Angels. If we’d seen this in theatres, I’d have still be satisfied and had the same evaluation.

A production budget of $55 million is low-balling a project of this scope; 

There seems to have been a bit of pre-production shuffling and Banks did a lot of wrangling herself early on. 

The whole shoot front to back was just over two months and I assume three countries, US/or studio inclusive. 

CGI is noticeably subpar but not exactly cheap either, so it still would have cost a significant portion of that prod. budget. When I say subpar, the CG in this film isn’t bad, please don’t take that criticism as overly negative of the CG artists’ work - remember that people do the best they can with the time and money they’re afforded. If you want to understand what that’s all about, I encourage you to watch Corridor Crew’s channel on YouTube.

Combat choreography with principle actors isn’t great, there’s far too much editing but again, I’m betting there wasn’t a whole lot of money and thus time for training and rehearsing for them, so combat is noticeably slow. 

2nd Unit photography looked very good because this kind of thing is very old-school Hollywood in that it contributes to what makes an action/spy movie look like one. Unfortunately, that means it was also expensive. We’re really running out of money here...

There is a lot of licensed music in this feature which isn’t cheap at all. Again this feels super old-school Hollywood and definitely demographic targeting, but it firmly timestamps the feature - any film, really - and unless your film is about capturing the essence of the time IT WAS THE 80′s! or FOLK FESTIVALS JUST BEFORE COVID BROKE OUT as an example of not necessarily wanting to capture the past, I really think trying to nail down pop songs of the hot present ultimately does your film a disservice.

And I’ll address that one first because I feel like it may have been one of the easiest changes to make to lift the overall quality of the picture. Instead of burning thru an immense amount of budget on a pile of pop licenses, I think a calculated risk could have been taken in getting a young contemporary musician to create a slick electronic score in its entirety to back it along side the generic orchestral action fare, no disrespect to Brian Tyler. To be honest, Tyler probably could have done it all himself but was also probably just writing to spec. BUT HEY... WHY NOT SCOUT FOR ANY NUMBER OF AMAZING WOMEN OUT THERE WHO ARE PHENOMENAL ELECTRONIC MUSICIANS AND PRODUCERS what am I talking about it’s Hollywood...

This is what I mean by the project deserving more respect and being under-served. Hollywood doesn’t believe in projects like this, they don’t realise what the project is and why it needs frontier, sincere, good faith hiring and instead under-funds but funds it nevertheless SEE? WE FUNDED IT, WE DID THE GOOD THING, SEE US SUPPORTING THE WIMMINS? WE’RE NOT  SEXISTS YOU CAN’T SAY WE’RE SEXISTS YOU CAN HAVE YOUR FILM oh it didn’t do very well except we didn’t let you make it the way you wanted to make it, we still shackled you to 

THE SAME TERRIBLE HOLLYWOOD TRADITIONS THAT, BY THE WAY, ARE FAILING OUR MANLY MAN MOVIES FULL OF MEN HOLY SHIT THE DEBT-RECOVERY CYCLE IS REALLY DOING A NUMBER ON OUR INVESTORS I SURE HOPE WE DON’T HAVE TOO MANY CONSECUTIVE FAILURES OR, SAY, SOME KIND OF GLOBAL CATASTROPHIC AND/OR ECONOMIC EVENT HAND-WRINGING

ahem where was I

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provided the entire soundtrack for The Social Network and it’s both fantastic and timeless. OK oranges and refrigerators, but the principle still stands - I get the intent of Charlie’s Angels was a summer blockbuster but it would have still been elevated by being all the more slick having its own identity in music, having its own sound. You want that soundtrack by that amazing young woman because it sounds fucken awesome.

Charlie’s Angels still needed a few passes by a dialogue editor. I say that a lot. I know my standards are high and it’s a Hollywood film. There’s no problem at all with the vernacular, idioms and the casual language, that was all fine. It’s always just the little details - again, it’s always time and money which - really is just money. A good dialogue editor or script supervisor might have been able to just elevate this whole thing to that super-smooth level of flowing just right. Or perhaps if the actors had spent more time in training and combat rehearsal together, they’d have riffed better and improvised more. They still have good on-screen chemistry but again, more time - more money for time - and things improve.

If you don’t know my taste in film, you could see if you recognise anything in the Film Notes page of this journal, but it’s totally OK if you don’t. Basically most of them are long and boring, with super long takes of people not saying or doing much. I still love Hollywood films tho - I love all cinema and I’ll repeat like a broken record, I should either add a section to Film Notes of my favourite blockbusters or create a page for them. Anyway - Charlie’s Angels still has too much editing mostly due to the aforementioned combat, but also because of that good old Hollywood formulaic style-guide. It’s easy to look up the production credits and pluck out names but on a project like this, it’s difficult to pin the end result on the roles themselves. In these cases, personnel like editors are more like daily jobs rather than creative contributors which again is an immense shame. I catch myself before saying “It doesn’t have to be a Malick/Shortland/Lynch project...” but why not? Why can’t a summer blockbuster have its own fantastic identity? General audiences can identify Michael Bay and Christopher Nolan - sure, one or perhaps both of these people take themselves far too seriously, but why not let a project have its own identity?

We run back into the conversation of protecting investments and style guides.

The easy answer to Bay and Nolan is they’re men, but they’ve also had time to prove their worth over time with previous work and track record. Because they’ve had the privilege to do so. Because they’re men. And most of the people making decisions and letting them experiment and sometimes fail to recover investment on their projects and hey, don’t worry, just try again, are men - and they were permitted to try again because they were themselves men.

Whether individual men do or don’t deserve whatever they did or didn’t get, I’m not here to discuss. Many of them definitely didn’t and I can’t change it.

What we should be changing is how we finance, how we empower and how we hand over autonomy of projects to women in cinema, in the arts - in professional life, in any industry.

YOU DON’T KNOW THE DETAILS OF THIS PROJECT

So. Fucking. What.

I can make educated guesses and I can support as much as possible as fair and equitable an arts industry wherever I engage with it.

I really liked Charlie’s Angels. It had a lot of heart. It had a wonderful sense of play and sass and smarts. Yes, a few too many “why didn’t they just shoot the bad guy” moments etc. - again - script reviews, better writers, more time...

More money.

More respect from an industry that doesn’t respect women and women’s autonomy; social, professional, in all aspects.

I hope Elizabeth Banks wants to make another one, can raise the finances for it and has even more control of the next project. More power to her.

Hello! What're your 10 favorite episodes of Doctor Who?

god this is one of my favorite things to talk about, tysm and let’s begin:

1. heaven sent. this isn’t an episode, it’s a work of art. it could be played on loop in a museum. it’s poetic and beautiful and the mystery captures the audience from the doctor’s first cough as he appears in the confession dial. the pacing of the reveals of the passage of time and the meaning of his entrapment is perfect, and his speech about the bird at the end is fucking breathtaking. best ep ever.

2. the doctor falls. i was more emotional watching this ep than almost any other. the combination of characters is hilarious and tension-building at the same time, and we say goodbye to literally all of them within the span of an hour. missy’s character arc coming to a crux (albeit all for nothing and without the doctor’s knowledge hhh) is beautiful and tragic. twelve’s speech is inspirational. bill and heather’s relationship had me sobbing all over my computer. amazing.

3. the husbands of river song. it was so hard to decide if this should be 2 or 3 but here we are. we get to see the exact opposite of the doctor’s experience in silence in the library and it’s tragic and beautiful and hopeful as always. aside from the hilarious and dead-on political commentary, this is a perfect close to river and the doctor’s arc in a way that wonderfully encapsulates both of their characters and their relationship, bringing it all back to the start, teasing us with the threat of tragedy and goodbyes, and ultimately leaving us with a hopeful, happy ending.

4. the day of the doctor. this has always been my ultimate comfor ep so it’d be silly not to include it. it’s exactly what it needed to be for such a big occasion— the perfect amount of callbacks to classic things, new characters along with old, and answering the question of the time lords that’d been hanging over us since the beginning of the reboot. i could probably quote this entire ep back to the tv.

5. journey’s end. comfort episode part 2. i have always always loved stories where the whole cast of characters comes together for one last hurrah, and boy does this deliver. i was even more impressed after watching sja and torchwood and seeing how they intersect with this ep. the ensemble cast works so well together and god the scene of everyone flying the tardis together is so cheesy but it WORKS.

6. vincent and the doctor. we all knew this was coming. what can i say, it’s an iconic ep and probably had a hand in me overcoming depression back when i first watched it. it’s wonderful and emotional and hopeful and artistic, and if those aren’t the main things that make up the essence of doctor who then i don’t know what are. vincent coming to the museum is one of the best scenes in the whole show with what is probably The best message.

7. the girl in the fireplace. one time i dressed up as madam de pompadour for a class project because of this episode. the people ship and the windows in time and the jumps throughout her life all just connect together in such a satisfying way AND THEN when the name of the ship is revealed it’s like everything just comes together perfectly.

8. the unicorn and the wasp. this is the funniest episode in all of doctor who. every single line makes me pee with laughter and i’ve seen it probably over a dozen times. the plot is so stupid in the best way but also weirdly emotional?? it’s also my mom’s fave ep to watch with me which is another nice thing.

9. twice upon a time. the main plot of this ep isn’t my fave (honestly i can’t really remember it), so it’s placement in this list is more about the symbolism. it was a last hurrah for this era’s dream team- moffat, capaldi, talalay, and gatiss to an extent. despite what everyone else says, i think the first doctor was funny here and served as a lovely callback to the og series. the doctor’s regeneration speech is phenomenal, of course, and i’ll never forget those first glimpses of thirteen.

10. the eaters of light. romans plus queer characters plus doctor who? it’s like this episode was made for me. i’m a sucker for anything having to do with latin or ancient rome so this ep had me from the start. the doctor’s treatment of the other characters isn’t my fave, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? he’s not the saving grace of this story, the locals are— which is a nice change of pace from the usual layout.

so there we have it! i realize a full half of these are twelve’s eps, and six of them are written by moffat, but what can i say- i’ve got preferences! it was hard to start choosing/ordering after the first three, but i think this is as accurate as i’ve ever gotten this list to be. thanks so much again for asking for this!

Robotnik Art Historia- Final: Fade to Flynn

Would you believe me if I told you that when I first wrote that up I wasn’t planning for the alliteration? True story! 

Anyway, welcome on and all to the final installation of the Robotnik Art Historia! Well folks it’s been a fun ride, but all good things must come to an end. In this final segment we take a look at the scant few appearances that ol eggbelly had during the Flynn Era of the Archie book- a time where one author ruled the roost of the book, where the Sonic comic would expand in a way unprecedented with previous eras and where, most astoundingly, ACTUAL artistic standards were met and kept consistent. It would also be a time of great upheaval- previous writers had left a trainwreck in their wake, and much of Flynn’s time would be spent untying the knot that was the continuity while moving several longstanding plots forward, all the while working to more closely align the books to the games... until events outside his control would force things to be closer to the games than ever before as the continuity was rebooted. 

This was the time when the old Robotnik’s relevance to things would fade almost entirely, but still he would still make a scant few appearances. This would be the last era in which this design and interpretation of the Eggman would be used, the final chapter in a story that was a lot longer than anyone could have anticipated. The Robotniks here don’t quite have the same level of wide variety as the others in the past did- thanks to the more stringent rules of quality and consistency, Robotnik is more uniform here than ever before. That being said, while the variety might have taken a hit, the quality of these Robotniks cannot be denied, and it is nice to know that the doc’s last hurrah was done by such skilled artists as these. 

25. Tracey Yardley

Many great comic writers tend to have an artist to help complement them and make their work truly iconic- Stan Lee had Jack Kirby, Chris Claremont had John Byrne, and Ian Flynn had Tracey Yardley. Coming in like a hurricane, Yardley quickly established himself as the primary artist for the book during this time, to much acclaim, with a toony, expressive style that none the less managed to gel nicely with the in-house Sonic Style. He had few opportunities to draw the Big Round Guy, and the first time was... not all that great, essentially being Eggman’s head stuck on a bigger balloon body. However, his later take on the guy- done for the History of Mobius segments that would be made for the Super Special Magazines showed VAST improvements, creating an appropriately massive and menacing Robotnik. Once again- so very frustrated that this couldn’t be showcased in a story proper. Story of my life. 

26. Renae De Liz

Renae De Liz had only two issues to her name, but had a much more extensive career outside of Archie, including working on DC’s Legend of Wonder Woman book and the comic adaptation of The Last Unicorn. She would only depict Robotnik once, in two panels of a flashback sequence detailing how the Iron Queen came to work for Robotnik, but as luck would have it, she did a good job- that one panel in particular is one of my favorites, managing to capture the essence of Julian juuust right. By now you know the song and dance- ‘would have liked to see more’. That’s the mantra by this point. 

27. Ben Bates

Another fan favorite, Ben Bates was in the eyes of many the absolute master of the ‘Sonic Style’, managing to fit anyone and everyone into it during his time on the Sonic book. His career was hardly limited to Sonic though- he also did work on the Megaman series, and the New Crusaders book (both of which were written by Flynn), and outside of Archie worked extensively in IDW’s Ninja Turtle books. Unlike most during this time, he got to draw an actual story featuring the dock- as you can see, his drawing is practically a perfect replica of Robotnik’s design as depicted in SatAM, a sweet surprise for fans such as myself who missed the old doc’s design (all five of us). This would mark the last time this model of Robotnik would feature as a character in any story of the book, even if it was only in the form of an extended flashback. 

28. Jon Grey 

Ah, now this is a complicated example! See, Jon Grey is a much beloved fanartist, and didn’t get his start in the Flynn era- he was part of the same wave of fanartists who came onto the book back in early-to-mid 2000s that gave us Jay Axer and Dawn Best, bringing his toony and ultra-expressive style into the book, most notably being the main artist for the acclaimed Return to Angel Island arc and being the designer of Dr. Finitevus. I call this a complex example because technically, he only drew Robotnik once for the books, in a bit of promotional art for the first Sonic Digest book. However, I have witnessed his work on the guy in fanart- while his style might be better suited for stuff like Adventures, all the same his able to appropriately convey all the right things in Julian, with a superb attention to detail. 

29. Evan Stanley 

Another fanartist turned pro, Stanley first came to fan attention for her popular fancomic “Ghosts of the Future”, demonstrating a keen ability to depict Sonic characters in a somewhat more realistic fashion without detracting from the Sonic Style or general tooniness expected from the Sonic series. The bulk of her work being in the Post-Reboot continuity, she is noteworthy for her redesign of Von Schlemmer, her creation of the character Gold the Tenrec and for establishing the precise kind of future that Silver that came from. She is also the very last person to draw Robotnik in the Archie Sonic comic, in a flashback scene involving Sonic’s faded memories of the old continuity (where notably, like many other times, his nose is a tad on the big side). This is noteworthy as it will not only be the last time this design of Robotnik would feature in the book, but it is extremely likely that this is the very last time that the SatAM model of Robotnik will ever be utilized in anything ever again, marking this as the final depiction of the design. In his Warlord uniform no less. 

And with that, this artistic retrospective of Robotnik comes to a close. What else can be said? I did all this to celebrate the sheer variety of the comics over the ages and to celebrate one of my favorite characters in the books while doing so, because much like the overall character of Dr. Eggman/Robotnik in general with regards to the history of the franchise, he has had the most variation in his depictions within the book, and I felt that was something worth looking over and celebrating. Because while the artwork wasn’t always good and it was amazing the kind of sloppiness that was allowed in the old days, there’s something kind of charming about the fact that once upon a time, there could be as much visual interpretation in the book as there was then. It is ultimately for the best that Archie’s art got its act together before its untimely cancellation, to be sure, but at the same time I do miss the level of creativity that could be demonstrated in the old days, even if it didn’t always end well.

And so, we bring this series to an end. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I did making it, and I hope I’ve given you something to think about at least!

Smufs the Lost Village: review

So I saw this forever ago, but there were so many movies coming out this review kind of got pushed on the backburner...

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. The trailers looked promising but I had heard it didn’t receive stellar reviews. I couldn’t imagine an animated film suffering from what I believed the first two Smurf movies did, but I was hesitant no less. There were a few years where Hollywood believed the only way to reinvent vintage material was to grossly mock it throughout, and even though the trailer didn’t look as though it was headed in that direction, I couldn’t be certain.

I’m glad I gave it a chance. The animation itself was colorful, crisp, and true to design. I actually found it something of an improvement over the original cartoons, but that might be my generation speaking. I found the palette played a large part in dictating atmosphere: always rich, but used in different ways (the blues and purples of Smurf village compared to the sickly yellows and greens Swamp of No return I think it was called?) I’ve always found it amazing how strongly a hand color plays in creating the tone of an environment: the female Smurf village (whose name also escapes me) also used several greens and golds, for example. In contrast to the swamp, there was a welcoming, almost dream-like quality floating around it, largely, I believe, to reflect Smurfette’s reaction.

At its barest bones, the plot wasn’t overly original. That said, in context, I found the focus on Smurfette mixed with expanding Smurf Mythos in a respectful and I’d say ‘serious’ way, worked very well. I’ve never been a big Smurfette fan: I found her too delicate and feminine as a child. As a tomboy, I tended to dislike female characters of that nature. As an adult, however, I look at things more critically, and I definitely think she was the right focus for this film. She’s not only the one female Smurf, but she’s also got an unconventional origin. I admit, despite being an animated reboot I was afraid Sony would retcon this. I admit, I prefer to go into most movies blind—after the first couple of trailers, I stayed away in order to avoid any spoilers and I certainly didn’t look up more info beyond its critical reception. An honest review, I think, comes from blank slate, rating aside. I like to know what I’m up against, if that makes any sense.

I also think this movie did a decent job expanding on Smurf personalities, characteristics and bonds. Brainy, Hefty and Clumsy were an odd but at the same time expected trio to accompany Smurfette on their journey. I do like, however, that they were more than their names made them out to be. They each had a lot of heart, and I felt their friendship genuine. Not only that, but presented in a way that was not over-the-top touchy-feely or preachy, which in my opinion, is a bit rare for a children’s film.  And it was called a kid’s film by many critics. I get it, not every movie can possess the sophistication of Moana or Kubo and the Two Strings, but there was more maturity in this movie than say, Ice Age or Trolls. There was hardly any potty humor and far less over-the-top reactions than I expected.

Side-note: I liked the female Smurfs a lot. They had their own quirks without being too stereotyped any one way, which I actually find very interesting. I love that they were named after flowers and plants, as did I that they seemed almost to move more as a unit as opposed to one standalone trait. I wonder if that was alluding to how the female Smufs are, like Smurfette, who also doesn’t have one set defining trait. I mean they definitely had unique personality traits (Smurfwillow and Smurfstorm for example) but there was a notable difference. Or maybe it speaks of how their village is, the rules to live by or the way these Smurfs grew up (provided Smurfs grow up and don’t just appear out of mushroom dust or something.)

I will say that while I like this change in Gargamel’s antagonistic pursuit of the Smurfs, stealing their magic to enhance his own just seems far less intimidating than wanting to eat them.  It’s also, at least, I think it is a more-heavily relied on trope. I understand times have changed, and the film seemed like they were trying to veer away from an overly dark tone. It’s just different, and it does succeed in maintaining Gargamel as a goofy, only moderately successful villain. I haven’t seen the series in several years, but I do feel like the film captured his essence and that of his animal companions, despite toning them down a few notches. If his character suffered from anything at all, it was the degree of exaggeration and silliness, but again, they toned him down. And I do like that he didn’t reform at the end. I didn’t expect him to, but it’s always interesting to see the hero’s offer of generosity blow up in their face. And I loved Gargamel’s dialogue leading up to that moment. Probably the funniest I found him in the movie.

Papa Smurf’s character was…interesting. I loved most of his interpretation: I’m not sure the balance between ‘serious father figure’ and ‘dumfounded humor’ worked entirely successfully. That said, I didn’t dislike his character. It’s hard to dislike anyone played by Mandy Patinkin.  He’s the perfect father figure. My friend and I were joking the other day he must have some kind of ‘father figure’ phone, on reserve for whenever Hollywood requires immediate casting for any such father character. I will say I’m a little surprised Papa Smurf and Smurfwillow didn’t have any kind of history, but that’s for the better I think. It suggests this separation surpasses their generation and I hope it means we’ll see more of it explored in the future. If Papa Smurf and Smurfwillow want to become a thing (because let’s face it, there was something there) I’d be more than alright with that. Leading a village is a daunting responsibility. They could use someone to lean on.

Speaking of character chemistry, I actually didn’t mind Hefty’s little crush on Smurfette. Love interests aren’t terribly unsurprising, even in animated films, but this, I felt, remained mild enough it felt honest, natural as opposed to forced. And I also liked Smurfette’s reaction to it. She wasn’t a damsel and actually protested his protecting her, but appreciated his admiration as well, and when his protection actually led to his capture that was more important than the act of his jumping in the way. As it should be, and as it usually seems to be, but it isn’t always easy to tell what direction some movies will go. Admittedly, when I discovered this movie really would revolve around Smurfette I worried the director would turn it into a preaching pedestal for female empowerment. I have no problem whatsoever with female empowerment—I actually love it, having grown up in an era where most female characters were delicate sidekicks or love interests. I just don’t want it shoved into my face. I worried it was headed that way with the opening narration. A direct approach tends to go either very well or very poorly. There’s so much more to a film than that and a successful message not only blends in but promotes itself through strong, likeable and believable character development. It should never overshadow or corrupt the art of a movie itself. If it does, it veers away from entertainment into political propaganda and I just don’t want to see that. This is a personal preference of course, but it’s one I’ve believed for a very long time, frustrations or no.

Overall, I really liked this film. I laughed out loud now and then, felt engaged enough with each character to care, and I loved the use of that classic nineties’ song, Blue. It’s not a perfect piece, it’s not the most original and the ending was so predictable it was like watching the first Pokemon movie again; despite all this, when looked at in the context of the film on its own, I came away satisfied. It’s funny, I feel like this growing trend of animated reboots began with the Charlie Brown film. Maybe I’m wrong, but that was the first one I’ve seen that didn’t try to make fun of itself and didn’t try to be anything more than what it was. The characters, the art style, remained as true to the source as hey could and proved, at least to my opinion that what you think may not be cool anymore, what you think won’t sell, actually will. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Looks like the Smurfs are finally on the right track.