Can 2D Animation Make a Comeback Please?

Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Since Disney+ launched, I've been watching a lot of the cartoon movies and television from my childhood, and some I had missed like The Great Mouse Detective. As much as I love Pixar and all the really cool 3D animated movies that have been made, I really am missing 2D animation.

I miss how they looked like moving paintings and drawings, and the look of it being hand-drawn. I love seeing the different art styles that come with it. 101 Dalmatians doesn't look the same as Beauty and the Beast, or the same as Treasure Planet.

I'm not saying do away with 3D animation completely, but having some of these animated movies using 2D animation could be a good addition to what's being made today. It's one of the many, many reasons why Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was such a breath of fresh air, because they had characters from different Earths, they had different art styles.

Also, some of the best cartoon series are done with 2D animation. DuckTales, BoJack Horseman, Kim Possible, among others, so you can't say that audiences, especially audiences for children's movies, don't have an appetite for it or aren't exposed to it.

Technology for animated movies have improved so much in the last twenty-five years that even a hand-drawn animated can be completed on a faster timetable, and still be quality animation. And Disney/Pixar can look in house for this would work, because one of the Pixar SparkShorts, Kitbull, was hand-drawn, and still used computers. It was gorgeously animated, on top of being a beautiful story that was well told. There's also the Paperman short, that was a hybrid of hand-drawn and computer animated, and it's in black and white.

This is the nostalgia people should be recreating. Not the carbon copy remakes, with thirty extra minutes of new material with no actual content (exception that proves the rule is Cinderella, that was actually necessary and good). I want new stories told in the same way as they were in my childhood, not the same story told in a told in a different way, but worse (again, except for Cinderella, such a good movie).

I Have Never Related to a Character Like I Have With Chidi on The Good Place

Thursday, November 21, 2019
The Good Place is probably one of my all time favorite shows. And Chidi has always been a character I loved, because I am probably as indecisive as he is. In tonight's episode, "The Answer", everything we know about Chidi's indecisiveness was fully fleshed out, and how with each progressive reboot he slowly got more assured in making choices, culminating in his big sacrifice in the season three finale.

Chidi is indecisive because he wants to know that he's making the exact right decision, and know that he isn't making a completely wrong one. And I have that same problem. It's why I am where I am in my life at this moment. I just hope I can have the growth that Chidi has over the course of this show in my own life.

I've Been on Such a Disney Kick

These last couple of weeks I've been on such a Disney kick. The seed was probably planted in my brain from my couple of trips to Disney World last month, but it really started with the launch of Disney+. All the movies I haven't seen in years because I only have them on VHS available at my fingertips? Yes please.

I watched 101 Dalmatians, Sleeping Beauty, A Goofy Movie, Beauty and the Beast. I finally watched Tangled because somehow I missed that when it was in theaters. Haven't watched much Pixar yet, because I don't know how emotionally wrecked I want to be at this time (looking at you, Inside Out). 

I'm kind of scared to watch some of the television from my childhood, because I don't know if it was kids' tv good, or actually good. Like, the new DuckTales is actually good, but I don't know about the original or Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers, and I'm scared to tarnish the memories. And one of my favorite childhood Disney shows, House of Mouse, isn't on there yet, but I found episodes on YouTube and they hold up, so that's good. 

What I have been doing the most is devouring all of the shorts. The classic Mickey Mouse shorts, the new Mickey Mouse cartoon short series, all the Pixar shorts, including the SparkShorts, that are the Disney+ originals. My favorite is Kitbull, which I am obsessed with. I've been starting to pace myself with those, because I think I'm running out of ones I haven't seen yet. I just can't wait until Get a Horse! is available, because I love that short so much. 

Also, Frozen 2!!! I'm so pumped for it, it feels like this will be a culmination of my recent outpouring of love for Disney, and it'll either temper it or dial it up to 11. I'm ready for both scenarios to be honest. I love Disney. 

Although, more than just The Simpsons has been affected by aspect ratio changes, so Disney should get on that because I noticed a difference when watching A Goofy Movie and Beauty and the Beast.Yes, my memories of how some of those scenes were supposed to look is really good. I don't care if there's black sidebars on my screen, I want to see the full frame of the movie. So fix that. 

(Wish they weren't becoming a monopoly, though. That sucks on many levels.)

I Want a 2000s Teen Drama For Today

Tuesday, November 19, 2019
I was browsing around Hulu for another show to watch, that was something I didn't have to chart who's betraying who, like you have to with a show like Succession, and I stumbled across The O.C. and realized I had never seen it before. One of the landmark teen shows and I had somehow missed it and never caught up with it once I was an actual teenager. Then I realized something: there aren't that many straight-up teen dramas. I mean, there's Riverdale, but that feels like its own beast, which I love.

It could be fun. Think of the romance, the intrigue, the betrayals, the small town or big city scandals, the class differences. Everything that feels ten times worse when you're a teenager. I want them to either speak like real teenagers or speak in a super heightened way and reference obscure and/old movies, music, tv, etc.

Find a cool conceit, whether it be a small town scandal or something like Gossip Girl (that won't collapse after the fourth season, but that's a rant for another time and something I probably will do at some point) to bring these shows into the social media age properly. And really explore how social media affects them, and not just passingly mention that people are tweeting mean things. Make it an actual storyline for some of the characters, or make it part of the school culture and build it up into a big event that happens near the end of the season. And don't make it something supernatural, unless it's a Halloween special or an episode happening in a character's head, then make it as weird as you want and go back to normal the next week.

I want a new sarcastic second-lead who comments on everything and sees the truth in a lot of the more self-absorbed or oblivious characters, but then becomes one of the hearts of the show. I want the pretty girl who seems oblivious and self-involved, but over time shows depth and becomes one of the best people on the show, who you want to see succeed because of those that overlooked her brain for her looks. I want a couple that stands the test of time, and one that is constantly breaking up and getting back together.

(This also means we get a good teen drama without low-rise jeans and the rest of 2000s fashion, because that decade was a nightmare. Honestly, what were they thinking?)

I don't know if this is me feeling nostalgic for a genre of television or just wishing for something different from what I've been watching lately.



I Love Disney Cartoon Shorts

Saturday, November 16, 2019
I love Disney cartoon shorts. I grew up watching House of Mouse and I would watch it every morning before I went to kindergarten and I loved it. Whenever a Pixar movie was coming out, I always look forward to the short that premiered before it. And then Disney started releasing shorts before some of their own animated movies, my favorite being Get a Horse, a throwback to the classic Mickey Mouse shorts, and I am a lover of the classics. And now that Disney+ has launched and they put up a bunch of Pixar and classic shorts, I have been devouring them.

I know it's cliche, but they're short and sweet. They are able to communicate the joke or the emotional arc that doesn't stretch the premise too thin to fill time. You can feel when a movie has run out of steam, and you check the run time and you think that they could've done with twenty or thirty fewer minutes.

I'm super stoked that one of Diisney+'s original programs is SparkShorts, where up and coming stories at Pixar can experiment and make their own shorts. And they were all cool. My favorite of the first four to be released was Kitbull. It's about the relationship between a stray kitten and a pitbull, and it has not dialogue, and was a great portrait of those two animals and how they reacted to each other.

It's not about quantity of content, but quality, and that's what these shorts are.



Earworm: "You're No Good" by Linda Ronstadt

Friday, November 15, 2019
I honestly did not know Linda Ronstadt existed until this year. I mean, I do know. Female artists and their work aren't considered as serious as men, therefore aren't included in best of lists, and therefore isn't passed down and remembered for newer generations. So that means we have to find these artists on our own, either through scrolling through music platforms or watching documentaries about the time period that features them.

The reason I found out about Linda Ronstadt is because my mom was going through some of her old records for things I might like, and she pulled out one her Linda Ronstadt Greatest Hits albums. This song wasn't on the volume she had, but when I got the record I pulled up her Spotify profile to look up what her most popular songs were, which is how I found "You're No Good". And it has not left my rotation since.

It is the perfect kiss-off song. Just telling someone repeatedly that they suck must feel good, especially if they were awful to you in a relationship.

This song rocks, it grooves, it's a fun time.




I Believe in Jinxes

Monday, November 11, 2019
I honestly believe in jinxes.

When this first solidified for me was when I was working at an ice cream store. Whenever I would get myself dinner during a night shift, a line would come in and it wouldn't stop until closing and the food would be inedible, no matter how I stored it. Also, whenever someone would say out loud that it was a slow night, it would no longer be a slow night. I really got into the habit of having to jinx something, I would only do it if there were some way for me to knock on wood.

All of the other stuff is total nonsense. Horoscopes are bullshit, and so broad they can apply to anybody. I'm a twin, so we have the same star sign but we are very different people. I don't even understand what crystals are and how they work. Karma is just life and consequences, sometimes is happens, but not always immediately, and a lot of times it doesn't happen. Bad people continue to have good things happen to them, and good people continue to get bad breaks.




My Favorite Classic Movies

Friday, November 8, 2019
I wrote about why you should watch classic movies, so I figured I'd make a list of my favorites as like a starter pack, broken down by genre, for anyone who wants to take me up on my advice.

(I am classifying classic movie as any movie that came out before 1990.)

Earworm: "Lost & Found" by Lianne La Havas

Tuesday, November 5, 2019
I interpret the 'you' in this song differently, but I'm not ready to share that online yet. So, since I'm not doing that, here's the song. I'm just gonna cry it out now.



I'm Actually Going to Try to Write a Real Journal

Monday, November 4, 2019
I know I do posts tagged journal, but it's not a real journal. That's just a way for me to separate the things I want to share about my life from my culture thoughts, helpfully labeled thoughts. But I am actually going to physically write a journal.

I've tried really journaling before, but I never found a way to accurately express my thoughts and a way to have a conversation with myself, so I would abandon the journal after a few entries.

I also have an issue with making mistakes because I like to write in pen, and I want my journals to be neat and not have a lot crossed out, but when writing out your thoughts and you need to reword them sometimes. And I got gifted a lot of really nice, very cute journals, and I'm so scared of losing the aesthetic of the page if there's a whole bunch of scribbles in it.

So, I found a really old composition book. (It's Lisa Frank-themed, that's how young I was when I first got it.) I tore out the few used pages so I could start fresh, and since it's just a composition notebook, I don't mind if there's mistakes. I might rewrite them into a fancier notebook or type up each entry just for my very weird OCD about needing my penmanship to be neat.

I don't know what will come from this exercise, but I'm gonna actually try to put effort into it. And who knows, I may be able to do something creative with it. At the very least I hope this will be helpful to me on a personal level.
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