The Pirates of Dark Water

Right from the first frame, this cartoon is still striking. The colorful backgrounds, swashbuckling music and totally unique character designs draw you in immediately. Created by David Kirschner, The Pirates of Dark Water is a well-written and highly polished cartoon that enthralled me as a kid. Unfortunately, the high production values that made it such a joy to watch were also its undoing, as it was canceled after two short seasons with its overarching storyline not even close to completed. Twenty years have passed since then and unless some Kickstarter project comes along, those of us who remember it will never know how it ended. Needless to say, that made revisiting the series on DVD somewhat bittersweet, although I still had a great time.

The series takes place on the alien world of Mer, which as its name suggests, is mostly ocean. The planet's ecosystem is threatened by a mysterious substance called "Dark Water" that destroys everything in its path. The only solution appears to be the Thirteen Treasures of Rule - mysterious artifacts that make the toxic substance dissipate upon contact. Ren, prince of the fallen kingdom of Octopon, has a brief meeting with his long-lost father and receives a magical compass that will lead him to the treasures. Voiced by George Newbern, Ren is very compassionate but sometimes hopelessly naive, and it's clear that he needs a crew with some street-smarts. His allies are the cranky pirate Ioz (Hector Elizondo), bartender turned powerful ecomancer Tula (Jodi Benson, who played Ariel in The Little Mermaid) and gluttonous "monkey bird" Niddler (legendary voice actor Frank Welker). The crew is relentlessly pursued by the feared pirate Bloth (a great performance by Brock Peters) and his two lieutenants, Konk (Tim Curry) and Mantus (Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen).

It's quite a formidable cast and the actors really get some juicy material. One of the most memorable elements of the show is its collection of unique swear words. The one most people remember is "Noy Jitat!" which seems to be the equivalent of "God damn it" and even has an adjective form ("Jitaten"). Another one that comes up all the time is "Chungo Lungo," which is used so often and in so many different contexts I can only assume it's their equivalent of the F-bomb. Other ones that pop up regularly are "kreld-eaters," "skut pongo," and "Naja Dog." The characters drop these at least a dozen times per episode, making them real potty-mouths by the standards of their own world, but no kid was ever going to get grounded for running around shouting "Noy Jitat," just weird looks.

One of the great things about 80s and 90s cartoons was that a lot of them opened with huge multi-part story arcs to establish the premise. The first five episodes of Pirates of Dark Water are one of the finest examples of this - they are epic and powerful, with perfect pacing and outstanding animation. The rest of the series never quite matched up, but that's not a complaint. The show simply went from "great" to "good." Some of the more familiar cartoon tropes began to set in (there's even a Freaky Friday body-switch episode) and it obviously doesn't help that the series ends abruptly after 21 episodes with only 8 of the 13 treasures recovered. A terrible episode called "The Little Leviathan," in which Ren befriends a googly-eyed pink sea serpent, is an embarrassment. Thankfully, that's the only episode that deserves harsh criticism, and the rest of the show is consistently entertaining.

Unlike some other stuff that has been featured in this series, this cartoon doesn't address real-world issues head on...or so I thought. I had an epiphany during one episode that showed some dark water seeping out of a crack on the ocean floor. It looked strikingly similar to footage from the 2010 BP spill and I said out loud, "Oh my God, the dark water is oil." (Perhaps I should have busted out a "Noy Jitat.") This is obviously a lot more subtle than something like Captain Planet and as a kid it went completely over my head, even though this show debuted only two years after the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. As an adult, I really enjoyed that subtext and it helps preserve that same sense of seriousness I enjoyed as a youngster. What can I say? I like my cartoons with a bit of bite.

So what's next for Nostalgia Series? Well, if those chungo lungos at Disney ever release the rest of Gargoyles, we'll do that. But until then, I think the next installment will be our first live-action entry, the short-lived Heath Ledger show Roar.

I also want to do another more in-depth series soon, like I did for Iron Maiden and Satoshi Kon's films. Any ideas?

Samson and Sally

I know I keep teasing The Pirates of Dark Water, and that one is in progress, but in the meantime I suddenly remembered another major piece of my childhood. I hadn't thought about this tiny little Danish animated film in years, but when my wife was singing "Baby Beluga" to my newborn son Andrew recently, all of a sudden images from it flooded back. The movie actually has nothing to do with that song, but I think my parents bought it for me because I was listening to the song all the time and would probably enjoy a cartoon featuring whales.

Samson and Sally, sometimes given the subtitle "The Song of the Whales," was released in the United States on VHS back in 1990 but has become more obscure over the years and has still not seen any sort of digital release. However, I was able to find the entire film on YouTube and watch it for the first time in about 20 years. Even though I hadn't seen for ages, I had watched it a lot of times back when I was kid, so the entirety of it was instantly familiar. The movie is a coming-of-age story featuring an albino sperm whale named Samson, who becomes best friends with Sally after her pod is slaughtered by whalers. In fact, a lot of whales die in this movie...including in one sequence that's almost a shot-for-shot underwater remake of the legendary scene in Bambi. A lot of children's films from this era were pretty grim, including Disney films like Oliver and Company and the entire filmography of Don Bluth (especially The Land Before Time, which I must have watched 500 times growing up). Something about the 1980s had a lot of animators feeling hopeless about humanity and the world and there's a stark sense of futility that hangs over the second half of Samson and Sally.

Eventually, Samson embarks on a quest to find none other than Moby Dick, who is a mythic figure to the whale community. To find the great white whale, he navigates through numerous man-made hazards like oil spills and barrels of radioactive waste. The environmental message in this film is not subtle - the first oil spill sequence is absolutely harrowing as the whale pod makes a mad dash underneath the sludge, hoping that they can hold their breath long enough to make it. Just after that, the camera pans up and we see just how huge the spill actually is. When Samson finally finds Moby Dick, the movie turns downright dystopian. The ancient whale, now so feeble he can't even catch his own food, lives in a sunken New York City. You gotta give the writers credit for showcasing the potential consequences of global warming decades before that term was so common. It's obvious that Moby Dick isn't going to be any help, so a disillusioned Samson has to return to Sally and the rest of his pod and then just get by as best he can. The ending is sort of happy, although there's not much hope in it. On this most recent viewing, it left me with a powerful feeling of melancholy.

It's becoming very clear that the one thing that unites everything featured in this series so far is melancholy. Even that ridiculous Felix the Cat movie had a bit of a dark edge. As a kid, I learned unusually early that the world was a harsh and unfair place. When the entertainment I watched didn't reflect that, it didn't stick with me very much. But when it did, I never forgot it. It felt like someone was showing me the world as it actually was. The movies and shows I latched on to helped me deal with loss that was too overwhelming to address directly at the age I was at. Now that I've sought these stories out again, they are having a much different effect. They help me see the overarching narrative of my life a little more clearly, which is something I really was hoping for when I learned I would be a father.

I just can't understand when people complain about children's shows or movies being "too dark." Obviously it would be a stupid idea to show a kid something like Martyrs or Cannibal Holocaust, but insisting that children only consume entertainment that is completely vapid and saccharine strikes me as profoundly stupid. For a kid who was dealing with overwhelming darkness and too shy to reach out for help, this stuff was there for me. I felt heard. Would you take those healing experiences away from me just for the sake of your squeaky-clean delusions?

Oscars 2013 Educated Guesses

A note on this year's predictions - I am a new father as of three days ago and will be watching tonight's ceremony from a hospital room. I had a draft of this mostly done but it still needed to be finished. I decided to go without pictures this time and I also omitted the writing categories this year. I hope you still find it enjoyable and I expect next year will be more typical.

Best Animated Feature
Brave
Frankenweenie
ParaNorman
The Pirates: Band of Misfits
Wreck-It Ralph

Who Will Win: We've got a whopping three stop-motion animated films competing this year, but I think the trophy will go to one of the CGI films - Brave or Wreck-It Ralph. Brave was widely considered average by Pixar's famously high standards but it's been doing well in some of these pre-Oscar competitions. Ralph was more acclaimed and took home a boatload of Annie Awards. It's close but I think Ralph is gonna wreck it in the end.

My Choice: I thought Wreck-It Ralph was a fantastic movie and I would be delighted to see it win. Still, I've got a soft spot for ParaNorman, an underdog nominee about underdogs.

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams in The Master
Sally Field in Lincoln
Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables
Helen Hunt in The Sessions
Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook

Who Will Win: This one was over around the time people starting seeing Les Miserables. Specifically, the scene where Hathaway, covered in grime and tears as doomed mother Fantine, belts out "I Dreamed a Dream" while the camera sits still for the entire shot. When that song ended, so did the suspense for this category. She's gotten a lot of hate on the internet for obnoxious acceptance speeches, but that kind of petty stuff rarely has any impact on the actual vote.

My Choice: It's not a huge or showy role, but Jacki Weaver did great work as one of the only relatively stable characters in Silver Lining's cast of eccentrics.

Best Supporting Actor
Alan Arkin in Argo
Robert De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook
Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master
Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln
Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained

Who Will Win: Not a slam dunk, but I'm predicting Jones will take it for his hilarious, blistering performance as the anti-slavery Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. His closest competition is Robert De Niro, whose role in SLP is one of the meatiest he's had in many years. It's been decades since a film has gotten a nomination in all four acting categories and I figure it will win at least one...but I think that one is Best Actress.

My Choice: Jones, De Niro, Waltz...I'm good with all of them. All five of these men have won in the past so there's nothing particularly high-stakes about this year's outcome.

Best Actress
Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook
Emmanuelle Riva in Amour
Quevenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild
Naomi Watts in The Impossible

Who Will Win: A highly competitive category. Lawrence has done best in the playoffs, followed closely by Chastain. However, I think Lawrence's biggest competition is not her but Riva, a veteran French actress who may pull a Marion Cotillard and take this trophy out of nowhere. She's 86 years old and has had a remarkable career...but I can also see a scenario where nine-year old Quevenzhane Wallis wins for her already legendary performance. Watts is probably the least likely, just because The Impossible came under heavy criticism for turning the story of the tragic South Asian tsunami into a story about how a bunch of white people had their vacation ruined. I'm going with Lawrence based on her wins leading up to this, but I'm far from certain.

My Choice: Naomi Watts is one of my favorite actresses and I really hope one day she pulls this off. She should have won for Mulholland Drive back in 2001, but I know she'll show up here again soon, hopefully for a stronger film.

Best Actor
Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
Hugh Jackman in Les Miserables
Joaquin Phoenix in The Master
Denzel Washington in Flight

Who Will Win: By contrast, this one is NOT competitive. Daniel-Day Lewis is about to become the first man to win Best Actor three times. The rest of them might as well just stay home.

My Choice: Anyone who has seen Lincoln knows that Day-Lewis has hit the level cap when it comes to acting. Still, I kind of want Jackman to win. He really held that movie together and some of those high notes...damn.

Best Director
Michael Haneke for Amour
Ang Lee for Life of Pi
David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook
Steven Spielberg for Lincoln
Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild

Who Will Win: This is usually one of the easier categories to predict. This year, it's been so unpredictable that it's had serious ramifications for the Best Picture race (more on that in a bit). It started when Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow, the directors of two of the most discussed films of the year, were left out. Bigelow's case is understandable - her Zero Dark Thirty has gotten excoriated repeatedly for its implication that torture contributed to the location and assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Although it sounds more like a writing problem rather than a directing one and screenwriter Mark Boal is a nominee. Perhaps Bigelow's win for The Hurt Locker three years ago is still too fresh. Affleck's case with Argo was more of a surprise and has been taken as mean-spirited by most of Hollywood, with people asking how long the poor guy was gonna be punished for the era where he was married to Jennifer Lopez and acted in a string of terrible films. But he's become an awesome director and the industry has rallied around him. He even got the Director's Guild of America award, which is often an oracle for this category but won't be this time for obvious reasons.

The irony is that I'm not sure Affleck would have even won had he been nominated. But he would have at least had that acknowledgement of his work and the lack of that acknowledgement is what's driving the backlash. With him out of the running, I would say Spielberg has the best chance (would be his third), but I could also see scenarios where Lee or Haneke upset. Russell's film isn't heavy enough and Zeitlin's nomination is a vote of confidence in his future work. So my tentative prediction is Spielberg but watch this one closely cause it will be suspenseful right up until the end.

My Choice: This category has been such a blindside I heaven't really given much thought to who I actually want to win. How about Zeitlin? That movie really did have a unique vision...and it was his first feature!

Best Picture
Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

Who Will Win: Let's knock off the outliers. Zero Dark Thirty, briefly a front-runner, has been totally sunk by the ongoing controversy. Amour's premise (old people dying slowly for two hours) alienates too many potential viewers - it will have to settle for the consolation prize of an easy win in the Foreign Language film category. Life of Pi seems to be viewed as mostly a technical achivement, with its support mostly confined to those categories. A movie as provocative and badass as Django Unchained has no chance. Beasts of the Southern Wild has done well to get this far but it won't go the final distance.

Now for the stronger contenders. Les Miserables has its fans but also some pretty ardent detractors, making it too polarizing for the Academy's preferential ballots to work in its favor. Silver Linings Playbook is clearly popular among the Academy members but it's also at least kind of a comedy and those almost never win Best Picture. So it comes down to the final two. Lincoln was the front-runner for a while and still leads in terms of nominations. Under normal circumstances, I'd call it a shoo-in...but those are not the circumstances we're seeing this year. Argo director Ben Affleck's lack of a nomination was so scandalous that the movie has swept the guild awards of the last several weeks. Those awards, much more so than the Golden Globes (although Argo won that too), are a good indicator of how the Oscars will go. It also doesn't hurt that the film casts its Hollywood characters in a highly positive light. Argo's looking good for the win, which would make it the first film since Driving Miss Daisy in 1989 to win the top prize without even a nomination for Best Director. Lincoln may come back, but it doesn't seem likely.

My Choice: I really enjoyed Argo, but I thought Django was a spectacular movie and very relevant to the times we live in. I would love to see it win, but it's just too edgy.

That's that. The ceremony starts in a few hours!

Felix the Cat (1989)

Well, this goes to show that digging up past fascinations doesn't always work out. I found a lot to appreciate about Casshan and was ultimately blown away by Teknoman, so I felt good tracking down this animated film that utterly enchanted me one night when I was about 7 or 8 years old. But...it's actually quite atrocious.

I'm not talking about the ancient Felix the Cat cartoons, those are an essential part of animation's early history (his first appearance on screen in Feline Follies was almost a decade before Steamboat Willie introduced Mickey Mouse). This feature-length film was a 1980s effort to revive the character for a new generation of youngsters growing up in the Disney Renaissance of that era. That comparison is not very kind to this particular film - it's no Beauty and the Beast. The freewheeling storyline places Felix in an adventure ripped right out of Star Wars - he gets a magical transmission from a princess in distress, who is in the clutches of a half-man half-machine villain.

One problem early on is that Felix just won't shut up. Despite his origins in silent cinema, any time he's on screen he's squawking away in that chirpy voice of his. Puns and pop-cultural references abound - in one bit, he tells the skull of a dead miner that it needs a Big Mac. Living creatures have no awareness of their privilege. But his constant jabbering is just one example of how the movie is just so busy, like they're afraid any pauses will lose the attention of the little kids. You still see this attitude today, especially in the Dreamworks animated films. But there may be something to this approach since I distinctly remember being thrilled by this when I saw it as a kid.

I think it was the very storytelling I now regard as messy or incoherent that made it so appealing. In its own bonkers way, it's very imaginative and colorful. It was something I might have imagined as a kid. The suggestion that a movie made by a studio full of professionals probably should be more competent than what an eight-year-old can dream up was not something I considered. Speaking of that, I miss playing pretend. That was really fun.

Academy Award predictions will be coming very soon (ceremony is this weekend). I have The Pirates of Dark Water on deck for the next installment of the Nostalgia Series. Hope to see you then!

Actual Sunlight

Whenever someone asks me what the key to making a successful RPG Maker game is, I always have the same answer - Focus on your strengths and make the game based on them. Don't try and make everything perfect just to meet the RM community's absurd standards. Perfectionism is the great foe of the RM scene, as too many highly talented creators abandon their projects when they realize that their quest to avoid every possible criticism that could ever be given is doomed to failure. This philosophy has served me well and makes it highly satisfying when a game like Actual Sunlight comes along and gets raves from big-time gaming websites solely on the strength of its top-notch writing.

Created by Will O'Neill, Actual Sunlight is the story of Evan Winter, a highly intelligent and talented guy whose skills are rendered useless by the severe depression that slowly destroys his life. The story is unbelievably bleak from the first few minutes on, with details so specific and familiar that it becomes clear this tale is at least a little autobiographical. We follow Evan on his daily routine as he avoids sitting too close to other human beings on the bus, wastes his time at a miserable corporate job and buys new video games despite knowing that the novelty won't bring him much relief from the burden of angst he's always carrying around. The highly linear nature of the story is essential to its overall theme, which culminates in the brilliant, nightmarish finale that turns the simplest RPG Maker functions into a demonstration of how depression can render a person completely powerless.

The game is rightfully getting acclaim for its unflinching portrait of depression, but I feel like what's missing from the discussion is how much it nails the soul-sucking corporate world that preys on people of the protagonist's generation (and mine). Yes, Evan is ultimately responsible for his own life and his own actions, but our shallow, sociopathic society is not doing people like him any favors. The office scenes in Actual Sunlight are a nice demonstration of "presenteeism" - this idea companies push that you should never ever take any time off becuase your work is just so important, so important that you get paid like crap as the joy is siphoned out of your life. Buy into that for too long and you end up like Troy, a co-worker of Evan's whose relentless commitment to work alienates the very family he was working so hard to provide for. I identified with Troy even more than with Evan, despite being closer to the latter in age, but I suspect my impending fatherhood is the reason for that.

As a veteran of the RPG Maker engine, I can point out little things to criticize. The buzzing noise that accompanies most of the text gets old quick, the maps (using my friend Lunarea's modern tileset) are very sparse, and Evan's chibi sprite is unable to convey his supposed obesity. But you know what? I can point all that stuff out, but I honestly don't care about any of that because this game is special. It is not easy to put out something this personal without it being insufferable. I'm not sure I'd call it "fun," but it's a riveting and undeniably brilliant piece of work.

The game can be found at its official site, along with an Indiegogo campaign to beef up the art assets. I am looking very forward to seeing more of the creator's work.

Disney still wishy-washy about Gargoyles DVD release

Well, I think an apology is in order. If anyone read my post in September about how a Disney rep had indicated to me that the long-delayed Gargoyles Season 2, Volume 2 DVD would finally get released, they may have gotten excited. And then watched that excitement turn into familiar disappointment as 2012 ended with no additional news, not even a release date.

I reached out to Disney again, referencing our past correspondence and pointing out that it was now 2013. This time, I was told "Although we do not have an official release date set, we would be happy to share with the rest of our team that you would like to have this available for purchase."

Oh, bullshit. If desire among fans for the release played any role in this, we would have had this DVD years ago. Gargoyles fans are a dedicated bunch, sometimes disturbingly so. There's one guy in particular whose screen name I've started to recognize because he shows up anywhere this DVD issue is mentioned, including this blog. Disney has to be constantly hearing from superfans like that and yet so far, they've only toyed with the idea.

Despite that, they still must not think there are enough fans out there to make the release profitable. That's hard to imagine, but it must be the reason. Sometimes fans say that Disney hates the show, but that's ridiculous. Money drives these decisions and nothing more. But still, I see on the Disney DVD release site that The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a very interesting but not necessarily beloved animated feature of theirs, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, one of those cash grab straight-to-home-video sequels that the company binged on in the 90s, are getting released soon. I can't imagine people are gonna be banging down the doors to get those. The original Hunchback has been released on DVD in the past and the people who really like it probably already have it.

The original response I got indicates that Disney at least considered the Gargoyles release. So in the highly unlikely chance that someone connected to the company sees this...just release the frickin' thing already. We will reward you with money. Not like Wreck-It Ralph money or anything, but a nice amount.

If anyone wants to pester them, the email is disneyinfo@disneyhelp.com.

Top Ten Films of 2012

As the long list of honorable mentions makes clear, 2012 was an outstanding year for movies. It was such a strong 12 months that I entertained the idea of expanding this annual column into a full-on Top 20, although in the end I opted to stick with tradition. It was the polar opposite of 2011, where this already-tardy list was delayed by another two weeks as I frantically sought out various films in the hope that I would finally find ten that I felt good enough about.

It's a good thing we saw such an improvement this year, because film culture is in very real danger of being completely supplanted by television. I can't think of any movies that generated as much interest as acclaimed shows like "Mad Men," "Game of Thrones" or "Breaking Bad." We're in the midst of an amazing period of television and we're going to need several movie years like this one in order to keep up. Someone more qualified can rank this year's television (I find it borderline impossible to be well-informed on both, so I choose movies). Here are my ten favorites.

10. The Innkeepers
Horror had a very good year. A new group of young directors is moving away from the excesses of the "torture" era and with the "found footage" trend mostly burnt out, they are relying on good old-fashioned suspense. Ti West's The Innkeepers was the most impressive of this year's offerings, filmed at the real life (and supposedly haunted) Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, CT. A masterful slow burn, it builds character and backstory for quite a while before the major scares start coming. When they do, they are delivered with a lot of ingenuity and creative restraint. One terrifying scene in the hotel's basement relies on the viewer's knowledge that a malevolent ghost is lurking just outside the frame without showing anything at all. If Alfred Hitchcock and Takashi Shimizu worked together, the result might look something like this.

9. Bernie
Richard Linklater's dark comedy is based on a true incident in suburban Texas, starring Jack Black as an affable, popular funeral director who becomes the prime suspect in a murder case. His neighbors just can't believe that such a pillar of the community would be involved in something so heinous and even when they are presented with ample evidence, make excuses for him. Many of these real-life folks are interviewed on camera, delivering dozens of eccentric homespun one-liners that add a distinctive tone to the movie. The actual storyline would be dull by comparison, were it not for Jack Black's career-best performance as Bernie.

8. The Raid: Redemption
The most thrilling action film I've seen in years. With too many modern blockbusters relying entirely on computer-generated replicas of actors when it comes to stunts, Gareth Evans's amazing Indonesian hybrid of kung-fu epic and police drama makes an unbeatable case for the power of old-fashioned fight choreography. When a raid on a notorious drug lord's hotel base turns bad early on, it's up to a few remaining cops (led by the very talented Iko Uwais) to fight their way past his vicious underlings. It's not the most original or intelligent story, but it's tough to get too worked up about that when your jaw's hanging wide open.

7. ParaNorman
The studio behind the awesome Coraline turned in another fantastic piece of stop-motion animation this year. A young outcast who can see the spirits of the dead becomes the only one who can avert a supernatural apocalypse, but the truth behind the spectral threats is much more complex than what viewers typically expect from a "kid's film." The movie has great fun at the expense of society's tendency to torment those who are unique, but also explores the real damage that stifling comformity can do. All that's just a bonus to the absolutely peerless stop-motion wizardry on display.

6. Cloud Atlas
I saw an unusual amount of three-hour movies this year and none of them flew by quicker than this staggeringly ambitious epic from the Wachowski siblings. Jumping back and forth through several different time periods, the movie creates one beautiful story of perseverance and the importance of the greater good. I'll be the first to admit that this is not a perfect movie - some of the casting choices are odd and a handful of scenes are so ridiculous they are downright laughable. But regardless, this was the most emotionally powerful experience I had in a movie theater this year. That has to count for something.

5. Lincoln
Daniel Day-Lewis, arguably the world's greatest actor, plays America's greatest president. How can anyone resist? The master's embodiment of Honest Abe goes against most popular depictions of him, particularly that reedy voice, but he makes you believe. The movie explores Lincoln's uphill battle to get the Thirteenth Amendment through Congress so that the freedom he promised in the Emancipation Proclamation could actually come to pass. The parallels between then and now are too numerous to count and the movie knows the viewers don't need any overt hints to make the connection. Director Steven Spielberg is as competent as you would expect, but it's the script by Tony Kushner that really makes this work. His period dialogue is highly satisfying, especially the withering oratory of Tommy Lee Jones as Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

4. Wreck-It Ralph
This was the year Disney out-Pixared Pixar. The consensus on Pixar's Brave was that it was good but not great, an opinion I generally agree with. Then the studio's in-house Wreck-It Ralph made it clear that the witty, emotional brand of storytelling that made previous Pixar films so fun and powerful had not gone unnoticed. The movie takes its ingenious premise of a society inside the local arcade to amazing heights, creating a world so detailed and well-developed that it could support a whole season of television rather than just one film. Yet for all the superb world-building going on, the movie never forgets the small crew of characters at the center of the action. John C. Reilly's vocal work as the title character is a master class in this kind of acting and the script wisely balances out the requisite slapstick with a big heart.

3. The Invisible War
Kirby Dick may be the most skilled and versatile director producing documentaries these days. He made viewers laugh hysterically as he stuck it to the MPAA in the superb This Film is Not Yet Rated, but strikes a far more serious and appropriate tone for this painfully moving examination of the prevalence of rape in the United States military. The film gathers a group of very brave soldiers (and they're not all women) who open up about the abuse they suffered while serving their home country. If the incidents themselves weren't bad enough, they were met with indifference and hostility at the hands of the military's leadership. Americans like to brag about how much we "support the troops," but none of us have any business using that phrase until something is done about this.

2. Argo
Ben Affleck continues his impressive directing career with a tremendous dramatization of a recently uneveiled rescue mission that unfolded in the background of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. The ending is a foregone conclusion for those who know their recent history and yet the movie is packed full of white-knuckle suspense. The drama is skillfully balanced with more comedic portions as CIA operatives work with Hollywood moguls to concoct a fake movie called "Argo" that provides the cover story for the mission. It turns out that both show business and international relations rely on a great deal of self-aggrandizing BS. There's a lot to like about this movie and yet the most valuable part might be the intro, which gracefully gives a brief history of the toxic relationship between Iran and the United States and provides invaluable insight as to why that country is so hostile to us. Spoiler alert - it's not because they "hate our freedoms." This complex reality is something America will have to wrestle with if we don't want to be stuck in a permanent state of conflict in that region.

1. Django Unchained
It's not very often that a piece of mainstream American entertainment forces us to confront the national disgrace of slavery head-on. Only a filmmaker with a reptuation like Quentin Tarantino's can expect studio support and a wide audience for a topic so inflammatory. And yet Tarantino never forgets he's making a movie, resulting in a wildly entertaining epic that's also an important reminder of our troubled history. Tarantino's a diehard fan of classic exploitation cinema and brings that sensibility to the film - it's definitely more than a lot of people will want to stomach. Still, when you hear the self-anointed moral guradians whine about the violence in this movie, it's important to remember that the reality was far worse. What people forget about exploitation films is that the best of them could use their intensity to make a powerful moral statement. I prefer violence that comes with a clear message, unlike movies that clinically present violence with no comment and then let other people argue about what the point of it is (i.e. Zero Dark Thirty). Django Unchained is a highly satisfying middle finger to the bigotry that still continues to have a strong influence on our national dialogue. It's also masterfully shot and full of great acting - Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio are all excellent. This is my favorite Tarantino film since Pulp Fiction.

Honorable Mentions: Chronicle, Looper, The Cabin in the Woods, The Secret World of Arrietty, Silver Linings Playbook, Moonrise Kingdom, Sound of My Voice, Excision, The Avengers, The Tall Man

Clone Saga Revisited - Conclusion

This is the last entry for this series, so I'm going to add a few links in case you stumble upon it first. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11.

We're done going through the Clone Saga itself, but its impact was felt for a number of years afterward. The "Revelations" storyline ended with Peter and Mary Jane believing that Baby May was dead, when she had actually been taken to Europe by Norman Osborn's agent Allison Mongraine. As I said last time, this is a premise that could have led to some truly epic storylines. Imagine Peter and Mary Jane getting word from some mysterious source that the baby was still alive and Spider-Man adventuring through Europe searching for her. If they ever keep a series of Spidey movies going long enough without restarting it, that idea sounds like a winner. For a while, it seemed like Tom DeFalco was patiently building up to that.

In the "Identity Crisis" storyline, one of the last truly great Spider-Man tales before that rancid "One More Day" crap ruined the continuity, there was a subplot about all of this. Allison Mongraine met with members of the Cult of Scrier, who told her to hand May over and unsuccessfully tried to assassinate her. The Scrier cultists were ambushed by Kaine, who presumably rescued the baby. After all, as another clone of Peter, he's basically an uncle. Later, in the "Gathering of Five" storyline, Mongraine was killed and told Peter before she died that "May is alive." It all sounds pretty good so far, right?

Well, the brass at Marvel didn't think so. They intervened and tried to convince the readers that Mongraine was actually referring to Aunt May - you know, the ancient character who had passed away peacefully in a beautiful story during the Clone Saga? The writers were forced to bring her back, using the absolutely heinous rationale that the old lady who died was actually an actress who underwent plastic surgery to resemble Peter's aunt. Yes, I'm serious. This was one of the first salvos in a noxious campaign to undo Peter Parker's character development to try and appeal to the Johnny-come-lately fans who would have been more likely to make fun of comic readers on the playground until the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film made $400 million at the box office. This culiminated in the "One More Day" storyline (have I mentioned yet how much that one sucks?) but I was gone long before then. As an older fan, I could tell I wasn't wanted.

Years later, something caught my eye at a local pharmacy - an issue of "Spider-Girl." The cover featured a woman in the classic Spidey suit but also a visibly aged Peter Parker. I wondered to myself, "is this a series about Baby May?" There was only one way to find out, so I took a chance and bought it.

I loved it. Every panel of every page. With DeFalco at the writer's desk, this series was a lifeline to those fans who were left out in the cold and a chance for him to pursue storyline which had been wrested from him years earlier. It turns out Kaine really was the one who rescued the baby and returned her to the Parkers. He had a role too, as a mercenary working for the United States government who was often a mentor figure for May, now protecting New York City as Spider-Girl. Many readers latched onto this series as the "true" continuity. We were older and we were ready for Peter to be older as well.

I read the Spider-Girl comics faithfully for a number of years, but unfortunately a female heroine doesn't always inspire confidence in comics executives. The series was constantly canceled, un-canceled, and restarted until it finally vanished. Once again, I'm an aging Spidey fan without any Spidey comics that capture the stories I grew up with. So I wind up going back into the comics of the past, which is what I've done for the last 2+ years as part of this blog retrospective.

Since the Clone Saga ended, many of the creators have come forward with their views on why an otherwise promising storyline eventually imploded. "At its heart, the Clone Saga was a very simple story," DeFalco said. "[It] was a storyline designed to last a few months, but, for various reasons, kept getting extended and extended and extended."

J.M. Dematteis said that "it would have been a classic if the creators had been allowed to follow their original vision through to the end." Another writer, Todd Dezago, recalled when "we realized the train was being driven by indecision and sales figures." For an amazingly detailed look at what was going on behind the scenes during the entire Clone Saga, I'd suggest reading the Life of Reilly blog. It was a superb resource while I worked on this series.

In late 2009, DeFalco and fellow Spidey-writer Howard Mackie wrote a six-issue mini-series called, (what else?) Spider-Man: Clone Saga. This was an interesting attempt to do-over the Clone Saga and was likely very cathartic for the creators who watched that original storyline spin out of control. It's a fascinating, highly entertaining take on the storyline that basically fixes every wrong turn the first version made. Here's the list.

-In general, Peter Parker is much more reasonable. He does scuffle with Ben Reilly during their first meeting but is in a more sensible place by the end of the first issue. When it's "revealed" that Reilly may the original, Peter simply says "I honestly don't care if I'm the clone. The way I live is more important than the way I was born." Uh...yeah! Very refreshing indeed.

-Judas Traveller, Gaunt, Seward Trainer, and the Cult of Scrier are completely excised. The Jackal's role is also mercifully less grandiose. I'm sure Marvel got a lot of angry letters about this...maybe even one.

-Kaine defeats Doctor Octopus but doesn't kill him. This obviously means that Lady Octopus and all her "cyberwar" nonsense doesn't come up.

-The mastermind turns out not to be Norman Osborn, but Harry Osborn, who had been dead for far less time. As for Norman, he does show up as a clone. Interestingly, he winds up as one of the good guys. Perhaps because the clone was unburdened with the insanity that eventually twisted the original Norman Osborn?

-Aunt May survives her stroke and Baby May is returned to the family by Kaine shortly after her kidnapping. Ben Reilly also survives the final battle and eventually heads off to seek new adventures.

As you can see, there were many improvements but I don't think this mini-series is perfect either. If over two years worth of comics was way too much, six issues isn't quite enough. It feels a bit too breezy and there are pretty big time skips between the issues that you couldn't get away with in a main continuity. Twelve issues would have been just right...but I don't want to sound ungrateful, this was a very valuable effort!

I suppose that brings us to the end. It's been very satifying to get some additional insight by revisiting this saga and I hope these write-ups provided some of that same insight. But Oscar season is in full-swing once again, so this blog should remain busy!

Clone Saga Revisited - Part Eleven

The sixth and final "Ben Reilly Epic" collection, the eleventh in total with the five other "Clone Saga" collections, finally offers the conclusion to this storyline. Given how far this plotline had spun wildly out of control, actually ending it in a way that would satisfy frustrated readers (the ones who hadn't already left) would be challenging indeed. Did they pull it off? Well, kind of. We'll get to that soon enough, but first there are a lot of loose ends to manage.

This final collection opens with a two-part story that brings the subplot about Fortunato, a new crime boss and Jimmy Six, the thug who has been hiding out with Ben Reilly, to a climax. Turns out Jimmy is Fortunato's son, but he still can't condone his father's methods, so he works with Spider-Man (not knowing the Reilly connection) to foil his dad's plot. Daredevil helps out too. The next story's task is to get a handle on one of the saga's lamest characters, the demigod Judas Traveler. This is a much tougher problem although only one issue is devoted to it.

This story tries to convince us that Traveler isn't really all-powerful, he's actually just an X-Men-style mutant with illusionist powers. It sounds reasonable at first...unless you go back and check out the older Traveler stories - that heinous "Crossfire" story in particular. If you recall, that was the story where our buddy Judas supposedly took Peter Parker into a future where New York was destroyed but then had to be saved by Parker when he was too reckless with the space-time continuum (you really have to be careful about that!). So if we're now being told that all these incidents were illusions, why did Traveler want to fool Spider-Man into thinking he was an incompetent idiot? Oh well, the two Spider-Man save him from The Rose and in the process, they discover that his mysterious assistant, "Scrier," is actually just one member of a huge cult where they all dress like the Grim Reaper. This is kind of important later.

Next, we have to resolve the "Great Game" storyline where various super-powered folks fight each other and wealthy jerks bet on the results. Reilly's been drawn into this silliness a number of times and it's pretty satisfying to see him finally teach these guys a lesson. In a surprising twist, this story features the death of Nightwatch, Marvel's ill-fated Spawn rip-off. After this is some filler - team-up stories featuring Gambit and Howard The Duck. Yes, I'm serious. The Gambit story is actually pretty good, the Howard the Duck story is as terrible as you would expect.

However, after that is "Relevations," the four-part story that finally ended the Clone Saga. Right from the start, you know that things are dead serious. Seward Trainer, the genecticist who determined that Ben Reilly was the real deal and that the man we knew as Peter Parker was the clone, is on the run. We had found out that Trainer was in league with the mysterious Gaunt and the even more mysterious figure who they both answer to. After a lengthy chase, Trainer is killed by Gaunt, who is revealed to be Dr. Mendel Stromm, the "Robot Master" and an old foe of Spider-Man. It's up to Ben and Peter to defeat Stromm once and for all, but in the meantime the pregnant Mary Jane is in trouble. A con-artist named Allison Mongraine slips a drug into one of her meals that induces labor. Baby May was already almost full-term, so that in itself might not be a huge deal, but there's more trouble ahead.

Peter leaves to try and be with Mary Jane, while Ben is confronted by Stromm's boss. It's none other than Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin, who had been presumed dead for 20 years worth of Spidey comics. Osborn kills Stromm and defeats Reilly without much trouble. In the meantime, newborn baby May is taken from the hospital by Allison Mongraine. It turns out Osborn engineered this whole situation and tells her to hide the baby in Europe. For whatever else he's capable of, Osborn isn't willing to kill a newborn. He's perfectly content just to let Peter and Mary Jane believe she was stillborn. It's brutal- any Spidey fan's heart will break for the two of them when reading these scenes.

"Relevations" concludes with "Night of the Goblin," which is a pretty great comic on its own. The art is superb and full of atmosphere, and however you might feel about Norman coming back, seeing his return is epic. He confronts Peter and explains everything - how he survived being impaled by his own glider years ago and has been plotting his revenge for years while hiding overseas. With Trainer's help, he made Peter believe he was a clone in a scheme designed to destroy his very identity. If that wasn't enough, he's also manipulated a group of Peter's friends and family into the Daily Bugle building, which he plans to destroy. Ben recovers from the beating Osborn gave him and the two Spider-Men are able to save the others and subdue him. However, the Goblin once again sends his razor-sharp glider at Peter while his back is turned. This time, it's Ben who intervenes and takes a fatal hit. He still believed he was the real Peter but was still willing to sacrifice himself for his "brother."

Peter hits the Goblin with a bag full of pumpkin bombs and he vanishes in a fiery explosion...but he just got back, so we know he'll be sticking around for a while now. Peter tends to the dying Ben, whose body suddenly undergoes the "degeneration" process, revealing beyond all doubt that he had always been the clone. One loss leads to another - the battered Peter finally arrives at the hospital only to hear that baby May is apparently dead. There's another issue after this where Peter and Mary Jane try to cope with the horrible loss of both Ben and the baby. The writers try to get some uplift in there, but it doesn't work. It's brutally sad. There's also a little subplot about the Chameleon, but that doesn't really matter because the Clone Saga is officially over!

Let's take a detailed look at the ending - what was done right and what didn't work?

The Good
-Obviously, the most important accomplishment of the finale was that it reinstated Peter Parker as the true Spider-Man. The Revelation that Nobody Wanted was finally undone.

-Bringing Norman Osborn back was actually pretty awesome. The Clone Saga had gotten so convoluted that there were precious few characters devious enough to pull off a scheme like that. In fact, Spider-Man himself had been lacking a real arch-enemy for a while. It's not like Venom has the intellect to manage something like this.

-The presumed death of Baby May would have been a truly epic story premise...

The Bad
...if Marvel hadn't completely botched it in the coming years. Despite the best efforts of the great Spidey-writer Tom DeFalco, the editorial staff squelched this subplot and then the absolutely terrible "One More Day" thing made it irrelevant. But more on that next time. Yeah, there's gonna be one more entry, we gotta talk about the legacy of this saga and how it has been perceived over the years.

-Actually killing Ben Reilly was a step too far. The fans didn't want him dead, we just didn't want him to replace Peter. We still liked the guy, he'd been in the comics for over two years at this point! One of the main problems with 90s Spider-Man was that the writers kept killing off longtime supporting characters to create "events" and sell more comics. The problem was that Spidey's world was a lot less interesting without all these folks. Ben could have helped turn that around, but now he was gone too. I suppose the rationale was that the writers wanted to assure the readers that under no circumstances would Ben be declared the original Parker again, but there were other ways to do that. Just another genetic test by someone of unimpeachable moral character - Reed Richards, maybe?

This collection has a few more goodies before it ends. The "Osborn Journal" attempts, with mostly success, to explain just how Norman Osborn planned the entire scheme. After that is "101 Ways to End the Clone Saga," an in-house parody of the difficulty Marvel writers had with the storyline. The final story is "Dead Man's Hand," a convoluted tale of the villain Carrion, whose continuity was in conflict with the events of the Clone Saga. This story was an effort to set things straight, but I think very few fans even thought about it with everything else going on during the saga.

It would be nice to say that the Spider-Man comics got back on track once the Clone Saga was finally over. Unfortunately, things eventually got much worse...but that's a story for another day. In the final entry of this series, I'll go into the saga's legacy and some of the important storylines that came in its aftermath.

Gargoyles on DVD - Disney confirms "tentative" release

After years of waiting, it looks like fans of the outstanding 1990s cartoon Gargoyles may finally get the rest of the series on DVD.

A little background about these releases - Disney put out the entire first season on DVD in 2004. In 2005, we got Season Two - Volume One. It made sense to break it up because the second season was over 50 episodes while the first had been only about a dozen. I bought both and was delighted at the chance to experience this show once again. Fans waited with excitement for the second half of that season...and waited...and waited. Years went by. Creator Greg Wiseman told fans at a convention that Disney had abruptly scrapped plans for the release (Season 3 is also unreleased, but Wiseman wasn't involved with that one and it is typically considered as outside of the canon by most of the fans).

Last year, rumors began to circulate that Disney might finally release the rest of Season 2. I wasn't aware of these rumblings until recently and decided to contact Disney on my own. Here was the response.

Dear Robert,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us! We truly appreciate your interest in Gargoyles.

At this time, we have a 2012 tentative release set. Although there is no additional information currently available, we would be more than happy to share this great suggestion with the rest of our team for future consideration! We truly appreciate the feedback from all of our guests!

You may also be interested in visiting our website at www.disneydvd.com for updates and new title announcements.

There's no official listing for it on that DisneyDVD site and the use of the word "tentative" suggests that this is not a done deal yet. So if anyone reading this would like to see this on DVD, I'd suggest sending an email regarding your interest to disneyinfo@disneyhelp.com. In my email, I wrote about my fond memories of the show, how I would be sure to buy it when it came out and how it still has a lot of loyal fans who would do the same. If they get enough emails like that, we might finally get this in a few months!

On a more personal note for this blog, this series would immediately become the next subject of the "Nostalgia Series" if this works out.