u/Borgisium

“Ren and Stimpy” was made great and ruined by one man, John Kricfalusi. The Canadian-born animator got his start thanks to Ralph Bakshi and his mentor and icon Bob Clampett, and eventually would create “Ren and Stimpy” one of the first Nicktoons, and one of the most iconic. The documentary follows the creation of the show and interviews many of the animators. And if there’s a big takeaway to be had from the documentary, it’s that John K is an asshole and a creep. 

Long story short, watch the documentary for more details, John was a control freak and a perfectionist who operated a hostile work environment. He was eventually let go, which was a controversial move at the time with fans sending death threats (but letting him go was really was the right thing to do given K’s volatile behavior). And well after his career was over, news came to light that he groomed two of his teenage animators, Robyn Byrd (who appears in the documentary) and Katie Rice. John K didn’t necessarily deny the allegations, and he mostly tried to blame his behavior on his ADHD and bipolar disorder.

There are two camps when it comes to reviews of this film. It’s either “this film focuses too much on John K and makes the animators look good” or “this movie doesn’t properly address the allegations”. I feel like both of these statements are true. I saw this one review on IMDb which was mad that the last quarter of the film focused too much on John K’s issues and trashes the people who “bult themselves up off of the allegations they raised against him”. Which is such a horrible take. John K deserved to be fired for mistreating his staff, even if the pressure was on him. The man is the definition of his own worst enemy. Second, most victims of abuse have very little to gain from calling out their abusers. Take the women who were victims of Louis CK (the biggest myth I keep hearing is they consented, they didn’t), they haven’t gained much. Most people don’t even know who they are, and their stories deserve to be known (watch Comedy Without Error’s brilliant video series on Louis CK). And take Byrd and Rice, they may be more well known now but they’re not famous, and didn’t get much financial gain out of outing John K. They were abused by someone they trusted so they deserved to have their stories told. But that’s another fault of the documentary. I’ll give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt since it was released two years after the allegations and usually documentaries take a long time to complete, but the film feels like it’s not telling the full story. We get Byrd’s perspective, but Rice’s is mostly a footnote. Maybe Rice didn’t want to appear in the documentary, which is fair. John K is interviewed in the documentary as well, and the way they allow him to speak will either make you sympathetic to him, or hate him even more (for me the latter). 

I’ll give the documentary credit for one thing. It may really make you dislike John K. I feel like there was a mythos around him I used to believe, that he was a brilliant but tough guy who was screwed over by the network. Reality is much more complicated and a lot more ugly. And the documentary allows the efforts and stories of other animators like Bob Camp, the late Chris Reccardi, Jim Ballantine, and even Spongebob’s Mr. Lawrence to come through. It’s also great that they got Robyn Byrd to share her experience. 

So yeah I would recommend watching it. I take issue with some things in the doc but overall it’s not bad. It won’t make you happy, but it will provide you with more of the true story that’s largely been hidden thanks to nostalgia. 

Comedy Without Errors: We Need to Talk About Louis

1. Lord of the Rings - this has been pointed out before, but one of the orcs says “looks like meats back on the menu boys!” So do orcs have restaurants?

2. The Jungle Book (2016) in the remake when Mowgli is describing the law of the jungle, Baloo says “that’s propaganda”. I can’t explain why but it feels somewhat out of place.

3. Sponge on the Run (2020) SpongeBob has always avoided bad language. It’s not bad language but I felt out of place for SpongeBob to say the word “Crappy”.

Before you comment anything I want to be clear I’m still against garments like Burqas. I just find it ironic that Christians have very little self-reflection

We all know about the Criterion Collection, they preserve the classics. But who’s going to preserve the other classics? That’s where boutique collector labels come in. These small companies specialize in producing high-quality Blu-Rays of more obscure titles. Some of these include Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow Video, Kino Lorber, Something Weird Video, and my personal favorite Deaf Crocodile. 

This documentary takes a look at the history of these boutique labels, from the brief rise of laserdisc, to “Frankenhooker” director Frank Henelotter’s underappreciated work with Something Weird, to the rise and eventually lack of mainstream interest in DVD, to film critics gaining followings through blogs and eventually collaborating with boutiques, to Criterion’s version of an “Oscars so White” controversy and the importance of smaller boutiques in preserving movies made by POC or queer directors. The film’s central thesis is simple, movies deserved to be preserved, no matter the quality. You never know what’s going to be a success and the next cult classic. 

Overall it’s a good introduction to boutiques, and it made me want to go out and buy some of the blu-rays despite how thrifty I am with movies (hence why I’m on Tubi). Overall, definitely give this a watch. 

>!I didn’t like Chris Alexander at all. There was an arrogant vibe coming off of him I didn’t like. If you’re a movie buff and you cite Tobe Hooper’s “Life Force” as your favorite film, you’re either really cool or you suck and there’s no in-between.!<

Remember “Heavy Metal”? The iconic adult animated anthology based on the magazine of the same name? It wasn’t perfect, but it had humor, it had really good animation, and it had an awesome soundtrack which prevented its home video release for a while. Here’s two fun facts for you, David Fincher and Tim Miller’s “Love Death + Robots” had originally started as an aborted reboot of “Heavy Metal”. And did you know the original movie was produced by “Ghostbusters” director Ivan Reitman? Look up his filmography because he was producing a lot of wild films before 1984 (including a Soviet Gulag Dominatrix film called “Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia”). We all know the classic, now let’s meet its underachieving sibling. 

All this came about thanks to Kevin Eastman. Eastman is best known as one of the creators of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, and he wrote the graphic novel the movie was based on. After selling his comic book publishing house Tundra Publishing, Eastman bought the Heavy Metal magazine and would later be responsible for getting the film re-released and on home video. He and his then wife, the late model and actress Julie Strain, would then start to develop a sequel to the first film. It would be a half German, half Canadian production, which brought on Strain as the scifi Red Sonja-adjacent character Julie, Michael Ironside as the villainous sadist and bloodthirsty seeker of immortality Tyler (darn it change your name, watch out for Tyler!), and Billy Idol as the alien sage Odin. 

Of course it’s a heavy metal movie, so you got to bring in heavy metal. And it’s the year 2000 so you know what that means?! NU METAL BABY!!! Well I say that but most of the bands here wouldn’t be considered nu metal, but the sound can be nu-metal adjacent. And the soundtrack features Pantera, Machine Head, Monster Magnet, Insane Clown Posse, System of a Down, Queens of the Stone Age, Billy Idol, and Bauhaus. Overall, it’s not bad. 

Eastman talked about the film enthusiastically, “I always wanted to do an epic heroic adventure with a strong female lead. One that is thriving in a backdrop that combines the desperation of Road Warrior, the intensity of Aliens, the visual feel of Blade Runner, and the magnitude of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, Heavy Metal 2000 captures all that and more. The film combines classic 2D-cel animation with advanced 3D-computer animation, and an extraordinary original soundtrack featuring some of the biggest names in hard rock. It’s intense, full of action and very fast paced.” It’s a description which makes it sound like the most epic thing of all time.

Did he accomplish it? Absolutely fucking not! I read that quote after watching the film and as someone who’s seen the four films he mentioned, I didn’t feel any of those emotions. The 2D animation isn’t terrible, but when he says “advanced 3D-computer animation” think awkwardly spliced 3D characters popping out on a 2D background (mostly at the end). The characters, didn’t care about any of them. The performances given for them are good, but they're written like cardboard. The movie’s biggest sin is it feels like a fetish movie. The original was definitely horny and lewd, but this one has a scene where Julie has to make out with a slimy alien, and we focus on them for an uncomfortably long time. The whole film feels like a long episode of a saturday morning cartoon but with boobs and gore. 

The film was released direct to video and any hopes of doing a sequel or anything “Heavy Metal” related have all but fizzled out. I say skip this one and stick with the original. 

Founding of the USA: 99 BJC, 246 BM, 213 BBTAPUTJ

I’ll admit, I knew what I was walking into. I did so out of morbid curiosity and came out the other side a horrified man. Have you ever seen a movie on Tubi and thought, this looks messed up, I need to watch it. I joked about it on r/okbuddycinephile, and someone commented that the title says it all. It really does. 

The Michael Powell film is about James Mason as a successful painter named Bradley looking for inspiration. He finds inspiration while on holiday in Australia, in an underaged blonde named Cora played by Helen Mirren. Together they get into romantic shenanigans and he even paints her nude. Yes, she’s nude. Mirren was 22 at the time of filming, but she’s supposed to be playing a teenager. And they were originally going to find an “unknown Australian 17 year old” to play her so, yikes. And of course the only person who disapproves of this “courtship” is Cora’s grandmother Ma Ryan, who’s written to be a comically unlikeable crone, like an alcoholic Baba Yaga with an Australian accent. *sarcasm* How dare that old hag get in the way of an affectionate middle-aged man and teenager relationship. 

But trust me it gets worse. Not only do we get a Lolita-esque plot with none of the tragedy, we also get two tasteless attempted rape scenes. One is between a young man and Cora which is mostly portrayed as serious, and one where an older woman does it to a bumbling man and it’s played for laughs. 

Then there’s the ending. In the final scene, Bradley and Cora embrace while in the ocean. As they hold each other affectionately, the film freezes on a shot of Mirren’s foot. The credits roll and the first movie Tubi recommends is Roman Polanski’s sex comedy “What?”. I did indeed say what as all this unfolded. 

What’s worse is that as a movie, it’s decently made. But, you know, why did Mason agree to this? And why did he star in two 60s movies about an older man chasing after an underaged girl? (The other’s Lolita)

I say just skip this one. In terms of Michael Powell films, it’s on a low priority.

Ignatius Donnelly was a 19th century American politician who’s greatest claim to fame is popularizing the idea of Atlantis. In his book on Atlantis, one of the more baffling claims he makes is that Plato describes Atlantis as having cold and hot springs, and assumes he couldn’t have made it up since Plato apparently didn’t know about them. As David Miano points out (Atlantis Video 23:45 ) the Greeks definitely knew about hot springs. The person in the meme is Hippocrates, who talked about the benefits of hot springs

When I die and go to heaven, the first person I want to meet is Eartha Kitt. She was a great singer, a fantastic actress, and a fascinating woman with enough wit for three lives. Her roles in film and TV have remained iconic, and I would argue with Yzma, she played the most quoted Disney villain of all time (technically the evil queen from “Snow White” doesn’t count since everyone misquotes “magic mirror”). This movie was from her early career, between “Santa Baby” and Catwoman (as well as her subsequent “whitelisting” thanks to Lady Bird Johnson). 

The film was the second adaptation of the play of the same name. The story of the titular Anna, a prostitute who returns to see her family as they expect her to marry the rich Rudolph. The play was originally performed in NYC’s American Negro Theater company (with Frederick O’Neal reprising his role). The first adaptation was in 1949, featuring an all white cast, and the second adaptation features an all-black cast. Eartha Kitt plays Anna, Henry Scott plays Rudolph, Rex Ingram and Georgia Burke play the patriarch and matriarch of the family, John Proctor and Rosetta LeNoire as Anna’s siblings Stanley and Stella, Frederick O’Neal plays Stella’s misogynistic husband Frank, and Sammy Davis Jr. plays navy guy Danny who tries to woo Anna (Danny’s role was expanded on to take advantage of Davis’ fame). 

Overall it’s a pretty good family drama. All of the actors do well, the pacing is good, and the film even features a trippy-edited scene near the end. I didn’t like the way they handled the last minute of the film but the buildup to it was nice. And of course, Eartha Kitt. I mean what else can I say, she’s great. Definitely watch it for her when you have the time.