Post #8 Ren and Stimpy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv2LCSJcDaE

The Ren and Stimpy Show was one of my favorites growing up, watching it at the time, I always thought of it as an “off the wall” type of show. The Ren and Stimpy Show is a classic example of a kids show having very adult themes. Looking back now, I did not realize some of the subtle things in the show. Animation for Ren and Stimpy is simple and rough. The background will be an animated still in a lot of cases. Also the characters facial expressions will be the same in certain instances. Stimpy has a human butt, while Ren has pink eyes. In this clip, it shows Ren and Stimpy getting ready to go to bed, Stimpy is going through his routine in the bathroom, which includes taking off his nose to clean it, and taking out his eyeballs. Crude jokes like that made the show stand out from all the other shows on Nickelodeon, it also caused some controversy.

The clip also shows that Ren and Stimpy sleep in the same bed, one can simply look past this and say “it is nothing, one is a cat, and the other is a dog”. It would be naïve however, not to think that they are in a homosexual/abusive relationship with each other. Ren is the dominant one, he is always yelling and angry, and in some episodes he physically abuses Ren. Stimpy is the passive one, he is never upset it seems, and always sees the glass half full. The passiveness of Stimpy is shown in his dream, where Stimpy is breast feeding several cats, and when Stimpy is sleeping he has hair curlers in his hair. The clip shown is only a miniscule of some of the crazy things the show use to show.

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Blog #6 and #1

Post #7 Odd Ballroom

http://www.theoddballroom.com/watch.html

The clip above is a short computer animated movie made by some college kids. The Odd Ballroom does struggle in some areas, it does succeeds in having an original story, and is very detail oriented in some aspects. The voice actors also play a very important role, for the narrator has a very deep, raspy voice. It fits well for the clip, because it is about freaks performing on stage. The clip does a good job to tell what it is about, and does a good job with the humor. Having the mimes fighting each other, and having the small kid bring out the massive man were the standouts. I thought it was funny as well that the janitor wished he was a freak, and at the end he finally gets his moment.

Obviously the quality in it is not on par with a lot of the computer animated movies the other stuff out there, the massive man’s breathing at times look unnatural as with his arms moving, and the water that came out of the fish woman did not look real. When the janitor falls, and spills the dirty water on himself, it looked very poorly dripping down him. I thought that the lighting was done very well, the light bulb would flicker in and out at times, which gave it a real look. The music in the background also went with the tone of the clip very well.It shows though, that you do not have to work at Pixar or somewhere like that to do computer animation.

Comment on Amanda Martin and Alissa Potter

Monsters vs Aliens review

Watching Monsters vs Aliens felt like I was watching a combination of different films, ranging from The Incredibles and Monsters Inc, to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. The plot in a nutshell, is a woman gets hit by a meteor, and becomes really, really tall. She then is taken by the government, where she is classified as a monster, and meets other monsters, and they become friends and have to stop an alien invasion. Giving that, the plot felt unoriginal, I had the feeling that I knew what was going to happen next.

With that being said, I think the film is a good movie, just not a rememberable one. There was quite a few funny parts, and it did feel like an animated B-movie. The lead female character at the beginning of the film, is very dependent on her boyfriend. Throughout the film, she finds out that she does not need him, and is stronger without him, and she sees the flaws that were in their relationship. These speaks out to the young female audience watching the film, it tells them that they do not have to be reliant on a man. With the exception of the blob monster, the characters for the most part, were forgettable. The movie does have it’s share of noticable voices though, Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Stephen Colbert, and Keifer Sutherland for example. Overal I felt the film seems to rely on familiar voices, rather than substance in the film itself.