New Dog, Old Tricks.

      Continuing on the thread that I can't seem to clip and bring to a stop, the best time of my college life is usually spent on the vastly infinite expanse of Netflix. I was recently given the Australian adventure-comedy show Danger 5 to binge after I finished a few select others over the summer. Well, let me rephrase that. I lost a bet and had to watch the pilot with my boyfriend and, let me tell you, I still have no clue what the hell is going on. I've seen about 5 episodes and the only thing that I can actually tell you is that it was filmed rather recently but looks like it was made in the 70s, both visually and audibly (which btw, is so goddamn cool). I've also learned that every episode they are given a new mission and, of course, they must try and kill Hitler. I think Hitler is trying to steal famous monuments from around the world like the Eiffel Tower and the like. I honestly have zero idea what is going on but it's constructed in such a way that it's coherent enough to look like none of it is nonsense when, in fact, it's literally nothing but pure nonsense.
      While the show is made so it looks like it's straight out of a time that is not this current one, it's clearly got technology on its side. Reconstructing the sets, lights, and the rest of the jazz to look 1000 years old, Danger 5 tends to showcase the type of humour that could easily be from today or the past, which I adore. It's funny with its running gimmicks and jokes but also has gags that poke fun at the era that it's desperately trying to recreate. Spoiler, they are actually doing it better than the poor folks who made the inspirational material in the first place. The show incredibly has enough plot for those who actually want a show to watch with a little bit of weight to it instead of the class 'binge because it's got nothing going on'. Danger 5 does have a running storyline, it's just the fluff around it that's a little crazy. Ok, a lot of crazy. There's a lot of weird puppets and giant animal-headed people but honestly, that sounds like a normal Tuesday night for me. I totally recommend at least watching the pilot and appreciating the hard work that all of the hardworking people at D5 did in order for this show to become a reality.

"Frozen" will melt your heart!

Featuring the voices of Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel, "Frozen" is the coolest comedy-adventure ever to hit the big screen. When a prophecy traps a kingdom in eternal winter, Anna, a fearless optimist, teams up with extreme mountain man Kristoff and his sidekick reindeer Sven on an epic journey to find Anna's sister Elsa, the Snow Queen, and put an end to her icy spell. Encountering mystical trolls, a funny snowman named Olaf, Everest-like extremes and magic at every turn, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom from destruction.

I am still amazed at the progression of animation and what is has become.This adorable movie is getting rave reviews, from both critics and their audience members. One critic claims Frozen is “Beautifully animated, smartly written, and stocked with singalong songs, Frozen adds another worthy entry to the Disney canon”. On RottenTomatoes.com Frozen received a 91% overall rating for people who enjoyed the loveable film. The snowman featured in this film, called Olaf is hilarious and I wish he was real. This film has adorable characters that everyone, young and old, can relate to. 

This film is a must see, as it has a great cast an adorable plot line. If the winter weather has got you down, go see Frozen and warm up your chilly bones!

Here is the trailer, check it out: 

Super 8 & Optical Flares

This past summer was one of the biggest blockbuster movies that I can remember. It was one of my favorite from the summer and made me feel like a kid again.

It's the story of a group of young boys who witness a train accident and all these strange events begin to occur. Granted a lot this seemed far beyond realistic since it was about aliens but I truly appreciated the story because it truly captured a kid. All kids want to do is play and explore. In the movie, all they wanted to do was explore and create their own movie based around what was happening



Another thing to point out were all the lens flares. For a few years, lens flares have become a very stylistic attribute to the image. These were seen in the 2009 Star Trek, which was also directed by Super 8's J.J. Abrams. Since learning After Effects, videocopilot.net has a package called Pro Presets, which contains Optical Flares. The person created Optical Flares, Andrew Kramer, worked on both of Abrams' movies to create these futuristic flares seen on screen.

I very much felt like I was watching ET since it was produced by Spielberg. These kids had some sort of a connection with this alien creature since they are sheltered as children like alien in previous time. All in all it was one of my favorite movies from the summer.

Legends never die...just retold

Due to the massive flooding I have been watching a lot of television and by that I mean a lot of cartoons because I am twenty years young. While bingeing on cartoons I have noticed a pattern with some shows that I loved (and still do) and probably you guys and gals have watched too when you were little.

Let's see if you figure out which show I am talking about:

A trickster, a womanizer, a tough guy and a voice of reason travel great distances to collect X, be it for personal gain or to save the world. During their travels they stop at multiple towns to help the villagers out with their problems. They have a creature that they use for traveling and the trickster has a bo staff and can ride the clouds.

Give up? Obviously I was talking about Dragonball!

No wait! I just described Avatar: the Last Airbender!

Hold on! That kinda sounded like Pokemon!

What the hell is going on? Why are these shows similar to each other? Did they all just copy each other? Well kinda not really, to fully understand what is going on here we need to jump to 1590 in China.

Meet Sun Wukong...he is the inspiration for these show and many others that I did not mention. He is one of the main characters of the famous Chinese epic, Journey to the West. The basic summary of the story is a monk named Xuanzang must travel to India to recover Buddhist scriptures with the help of a monkey named Sun Wukong, a pig named Zhu Bajie, a water demon named Sha Wujing and a dragon king named Yulong that took the form of a horse. Along the way they encountered villages that required help or demons that are trying to steal Xuanzang and/or the scriptures.

Sound familiar? You can change certain key words like scriptures to dragon balls or Sun Wukong to Aang and you get the basic gist of each story. But why did these shows (and many others) use this story as a inspiration?

To give a really short answer to that question it is because Journey to the West is, at the basics, a pure adventure story. The story is about a group of people that go from point A to point B and dealing with challenges along the way; that is easy to use as a backbone for a story during any time, place or with any type of characters. The characters' personalities are simple tropes that can be molded into fleshed out characters with little effort. The story itself can be viewed as a basic skeleton of a adventure story that a writer can pick up and alter to fit the needs of the television show that they are creating.

I wanted to show the roots of shows that we have all seen as we were growing up.