Update Blog - 3/9/24 (Patreon)

This is the big movie weekend, where not only do we have Dune: Part Two and Kung Fu Panda 4 reigniting theaters again, but we also have the Oscars to have our big final lookback at the 2023 films. On my side, I've been preparing for this occasion so that I can takes these moments and turn them into content, including a review for Kung Fu Panda 4 and the Oscars special of AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast. But as I was setting up for those, I was also busy making more progress on my work and one step closer to finishing the next AL. So before we get into the movie, here's what I did this week.

- Released my review of Your Name: I'll admit that I don't know how controversial my opinion on this movie will be, but I do know that, because this is one of the most popular anime movies in history, it will sound like I am questioning its reputation. It's not that I don't find it to be bad or anything on that level. In fact, I think it is a good movie with great animation, solid world-building, fun humor, and an interesting concept. However, I don't find it to be among the best out there. It's good, but it's not great. My one problem with it is that the romance feels cheesy like some Disney Channel movie, and as the movie progresses, the more it loses some of its good narrative qualities to make it sound like some over-the-top romance that takes itself way too seriously. It's similar to how I feel about The Lego Movie. I agree it's a solid picture and well made, but putting it among the best animated feature feels like giving it too much credit than what it deserves. But now that I'm done with that one, it's time I head back to the US to talk about Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. I've honestly never seen the picture, and I've only seen a few clips of the two, but that will make it all the more interesting to watch next month.

- Writing and recording Animation Lookback: The Muppets Part 9: The next steps are officially happening and the big accomplishment of the week is that I finished writing the script for the last part of AL: The Muppets. Since this was the finale, it was honestly tough to figure out what to write for the conclusion and how to summarize what makes the Muppets the legends we know for so many years. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the script is complete. I still have to have it go through my fact checkers to see if everything I wrote is all good or if there's any additional piece of info that could be added. On top of that, before jumping into my next review, I was able to record the narration of what will be most of the video. However, I'll still need to clean it up and edit the recording so that it's ready to use in the video. The only thing I'll have left to do from there will be to do the filming parts and then I'll be ready to get into the editing with all the materials I've made. That will be the main mission for next week.

- I collaborated with Rachel's Reviews on this year's Animated Nominations at the Oscars: Recently, I've been doing more collaborations of Rachel from Rachel's Reviews, starting with our discussion about all the nominations in the animation categories at this year's Oscars. She helped me out with getting the screeners for the animated shorts and I was able to see Robot Dreams not too long ago, and it was a fun discussion doing our analysis on the shorts and movies we like and don't like. It's now available on YouTube where you can hear our thoughts about it. Just click here and you'll be sent to the video. However, this is far from the last video we'll do together. We've also been working together on a mini-series by discussing about our 50 greatest animated features and split them into different categories. We've already don't a few videos on it, and we still got a few more to go to round up our list. Stay tuned on her channel, because we'll have plenty of great films to talk about.

- Currently working on my review of Kung Fu Panda 4: As a Kung Fu Panda fan, it's great to see Po again doing what he does best on the big screen. However, I'm keeping myself cautiously optimistic on this one. While I have prepared myself by watching the third movie beforehand to have a refresher of what happened before this new movie, and I am hyped to see the villains making a return, but the fact that it's trying to extend beyond its trilogy does have that possibility that it could burn itself out. I'm not saying that this will drag it down to the levels of what we've recently seen with Trolls Band Together (or worse, that new Megamind sequel), but I'm hoping that it won't make me feel tired of Kung Fu Panda. But how will Po stand with his new feature? We'll have to find out when I release my review next week.

So that's been my whole week with Kung Fu Panda and the Muppets. Once we get through that Oscar buzz and I let that all out on the next podcast episode, that's when I'll put the camera to good use and gather everything I need to edit that final part. We're getting closer, and I can't wait to see it become real. So, until next time...

See ya later, dudes!