Best and Worst CGI Movies

Some nerd's opinion.

I agree about Shark's Tale (although my wife bought the DVD and soundtrack). Dinosaur was an incredible disappointment--the first ten minutes before they start talking was fantastic but the dialogue between an iguanadon and a bunch of lemurs didn't work for me.

I've watched all of one Veggie Tale and wasn't impressed. My daughter did check out one of their CDs from the library and some of them were pretty decent. I've seen Antz and Polar Express at the library and decided against either.

All of Pixar's efforts--Toy Story & II, Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc., and The Incredibles--were good to excellent. I felt a little let down by the second Shrek but the first was great. Ice Age was funny but the background animation looked cheap.

Incredibly cheap CGI movies made directly for toy products like Barbie and Hot Wheels are about as bad as you'd expect. The Hot Wheels movie doesn't even try to make sense, just shows cars zipping around on tracks.

The weirdest CGI movie I've seen is The Magic of Mozart. It basically shows letters of the alphabet with classical music. I'm not sure how educational it is but it puts Devilboy to sleep pretty quick.

Xmas Presents

In the spirit of spending in excess, here's the list of Christmas presents for the Devil Spawn. We were supposed to only get seven presents for each of them but we kept winding up with extra for one of them and after trying to even it out, we bought a whole toy store.

Devil Step-daughter

Five-in-One Game Table - Converts to mini-pool, ping pong, and three other games. Currently unopened in the back of her closet

Clash of the Titans DVD

Latest Series of Unfortunate Events book, the Penultimate Peril - Great children's series.

Latest Artemis Fowl book - I hate this series but, then again, I'm old and fat.

Toy Octopus - Great for making Barbie into Chthulu. Actually used for mock Pokemon battles with sister.

King Kong DVD

"How to Draw" book

Toy turtle - More Pokemon fights.

Devil Bat DVD - Yeah, they can't all be Kong.

Five Brainteaser games

Glow in the Dark Dragon jigsaw puzzle

Binoculars

Little Women - Token classic novel.

Plug and Play Atari Pacman game

Bengals sweatshirt

Harry Potter poster

Acoustic Guitar - Surprisingly, no problems yet.


Devilgirl

Simpson's Operation - Like the original but with Homer instead of the guy with the Moe haircut.

Lombre Pokemon figurine - See octopus and turtle.

Plastic battle axe and shield - Within 15 minutes, Devilboy broke the axe.

Plastic bug toy - More fights.

Pokemon DVD

Teen Titan trade paperback

Spidergirl trade paperback

Another Teen Titan trade paperback

Scooby doo book

Another Pokemon DVD

Rockem Sockem Robots - Currently on top of the kitchen cabinet after Devilboy went medieval on the red robot.

Yu-Gi-Oh Battle Blimp - When playing Pokemon isn't stupid enough.

Scooby Doo in "Where's My Mummy" DVD - Better than average Scooby mystery mainly due to--

SPOILER

the mummy turning out to be Velma.

Atomic Betty: Betty, Set, Go DVD - Better than Scooby cartoon show.

Anti-Alien Zap Gun - Fires easy to lose plastic disks.

My Pretty Pony Pegasus

Plush Unicorn

Plastic lump of coal with plastic Pokemon figurine inside

Dora the Explorer book

Play exercise equipment

Pixter computer learning-game

Pixter Teen Titans game

Pixter Scooby Doo game

Dora the Explorer costume jewelry

Chef outfit - Announced that she hated it, making her mother very angry.


Devilboy's

Set of coal cars - Toy cars inside of plastic lumps of coal

Hot Wheel race track

Jaws monster truck

King Kong talking book

Giant "We Will Rock You" car

Model motorcycle

Toy tool kit

Remote control car

Toy bulldozer

Toy jets - Already broke seven out of twelve within 24 hours.

Another model motorcycle

Book about tractors

Remote control jet

Remote control silver convertible - Broke control, now just really expensive rolling toy.

Toy chainsaw - Yes, I'm tempting fate.

Toy helicopter with parachuter

Set of racing cars

Ray gun with six sound effects

Model Air Force jet, Army tank, and Navy patrol boat

Library List

Here's a big nothing for you--what's checked out on my library card. It was up to nearly 50 items just days ago but now is down to nine.

Kids' Books
Picking apples & pumpkins. Hutchings, Amy
Scooby-Doo! and the cactus creature. Gelsey, James.
Scooby-doo! and the phantom cowboy McCann, Jesse Leon.

Kids' CDs
The lord of the rings, the fellowship of the ring [sound recording] : original motion picture soundtrack Shore, Howard.
Piglet's big movie [sound recording]

My Books
Armageddon now : the end of the world A to Z Willis, Jim
Greasy grimy gopher guts : the subversive folklore of childhood Sherman, Josepha. Dragons, unicorns, and other magical beasts; a dictionary of fabulous creatures with old tales and verses about them Palmer, Robin
A Chinese bestiary : strange creatures from the guideways through mountains and seas = [Shan hai jing]

At Last--A New Post

Never meant to get so far behind. It just kept on building up.

A couple of moments from the last few weeks:

Dec. 23: A guy who lives in the building behind mine was walking home from Kroger and hit by a car on Five Mile Road. The crash broke his arm, his wrist, and both legs.

Dec. 24: An idiot kills a third-cousin once-removed. My mom thought that I met him all of once but his aunt and uncle live a few houses down from my parents, obviously making it about the worst Christmas imaginable for them.

Jan. 1: Devil boy is sick and keeps me up until 7:00 a.m. He is scheduled for a battery of tests at Children's Hospital tomorrow.

Assorted fights and misery.

I'm glad the holidays are over.

Xenacate

Here's a post from the Museum of Hoaxes about the definition of "Xenacate." It's original meaning was:

Xenacate, v.: To kill a TV or movie character off so completely that no chance remains of bringing her back from the dead. Inspired by the TV show Xena: Warrior Princess. Its occurrence usually indicates that the actor playing the character has lost her job under unpleasant circumstances and has no hope of being rehired.

but judging from the comments, the new definition is:

it primarily means killing a character off in an extremely violent and irreversible way. It only secondarily (and not in all cases) might suggest that the actor was fired.

Can anyone help?

I thought of Ricardo Montalban at the end of the Naked Gun. He is shot, falls from a stadium, is run over by a truck, a steam roller, and a marching band. George Kennedy surveyed the scene and sobbed, "My father went the same way."

Imagine the Spam

Walnut Hills, my old high school, had nude Greek statues in one of the hallways. Did graphic nudity warp my young mind or was it something else? One thing that I couldn't help but notice is that the guys weren't well endowed back in the day.

My only other real input about the average length of a penis was from letters to Penthouse's forum which put the normal penis at approximately 11 inches. This made me feel tremendously inadequate--I was almost half an inch shorter than most.

I haven't spent a whole lot of time on it but later I guessed that the teeny Greeks were the result of prudish sculptors, trying to de-emphasize something they couldn't realistically entirely remove.

I couldn't be more wrong. Tiny Greeks were the equivalent of the American foot-long.

A passage from Aristophanes sums up the most desirable masculine features: "a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks, and a little prick."

Greeks fought wars to prove who were the shortest.

Here's a full explanation.

If the Greeks had e-mail, what would clutter up their in-boxes? "Shrink your penis," "Have the smallest one on the block," "She'll need to invent the magnifying glass!"

In one of Kurt Vonnegut's novels, he states that the average penis is five and a half inches long. I guess the nice thing about modern America and ancient Greece is that nobody wants to be just average.

Groping Angels

Another goofy news story is the horny angel wrapping paper that was handed out by a Canadian movie theater. Not much of a story but when I was looking for a picture of the paper on-line, I found several outraged religious types who threatened to boycott (how many more boycotts until they can't spend their money on anything but Mel Gibson videos?) One holy fellow pointed out that "This isn't an accurate depiction of angels."

How would anyone know what an angel looks like? Even if you accept the Bible as definitive proof, various parts of the Bible describe angels in different forms and list several types of angels. No Biblical descriptions match the cutesy winged angels found in Christian bookstore windows (those look more like Cupid, god of erotic love). For this blasphemy, I'm boycotting Christian bookstores.

Here's what it looks like. I wouldn't have noticed anything except for the big deal the angry folk made.

Dry Ohio Counties

Dope opens bar in dry county.

This has been all over the news but what surprised me is that there are dry counties in Ohio. Driving through the south makes it clear that many areas ban store-bought liquor but I'd hoped that craziness ended at the Ohio River.

How do these places generate revenue without alcohol taxes? I'm guessing they make it up with speed traps.

Computer Pens

I'm sure many techies have seen this already but I was amazed at the size of these computers. How much smaller can they get before they're too small for comfort?

Shot by Police

On the heels of the mentally-ill man shot at the airport comes a dead chimp.

If all the facts are as they've been reported, I think the airport case was a tragedy but that the marshals were not in the wrong.

I worked a summer at the zoo and know chimps can be dangerous (one keeper had part of a finger bitten off) but have to wonder about the English police. Two orangutans escaped from the Columbus Zoo several years ago and Ohio police captured them (eventually) without incident (basis of one of Jack Hannah's books). Orangutans are more physically powerful than chimps (you don't want to mess with Dr. Zaius) so I wonder if the English shooting was necessary.

Here's a police shooting that's a little lighter.

New Ocean

Possible birth of a new ocean. I doubt if any of us will be around to surf on it but it changes projections of what the world will look like in the future.

Candid Camera meets Faces of Death

I'm sitting at the library waiting for my kids to quit piling up Yu-Gi-Oh DVDs. Devilboy just conked out for a nap and I'm balancing him, trying not to wake him up while typing.

But I had to add this link. I've always dreamed of doing something like this (although in a horror movie context). I'm surprised there hasn't been a When Pranks Go Horribly Wrong special on Fox.

Deadlier of the Species II

Yesterday when I was cleaning the hamster cages, one of the females made an amazing jump, landed near one of her brothers, and bit his eye out. They both started fighting and she bit off a piece of my fingertip when I put her back in her own cage (and weighed down the top). The male didn't seem to care that the side of his face was matted down with blood and that his eye was crusted over. He seemed fine today but I'll keep a watch on him.

I guess she wasn't quite as violent as O.J. but it scared the daylights out of me.

Murder and Blogging

Guess I shouldn't mention those six severed heads buried in the rose garden.

I saw a number of posts about this on Pseudojournalist but you'd think this is something even a sloppy killer would consider.

Did I Say "No Class"?

Whoops, I had one more regular NKU class. It was a cushy day on the classplan so it wasn't hard to get through.

NOW, it's just a matter of collecting final papers and grading.

Man Admits Guilt to Fatal Horse Sex

Remember the horribly disgusting case a few months back when the pervert was killed while having sex with a horse?

You can sleep easier knowing the man partially responsible is heading up the river.

Actually he just got a suspended license, a fine, and a few hours of community service but I wanted to throw in a "sleeps with the fishes" joke.

What community service would this guy be best suited for?

Future Darwin Award Winner

A man is dead. Why do I find it so funny?

Ho, Ho, Ho

A four-year old girl wanted to see mall Santa but her mom didn't want to spring for the $21 picture. In the spirit of the season, she was told to take a hike.

She should have kicked him in the crotch and pulled off his damn beard.

No More Class

What do I and Mean Jean have in common?

I start receiving and grading final papers on Saturday. This will cut down on my blogging time but should partially restore my sanity.

Devilboy's Kryptonite?

(Set roughly 25 years in the future when I have enough energy to write a new Devilboy script)

Devilboy (growing to 75 feet tall a la Apache Chief from Superfriends): All mankind is doomed! Prepare for the portal of hell to be opened and Hell and Earth shall be one.

Person opposing DB, I don't know, let's say...Moe: This ought to stop ya! (throws object)

DB (screams, shrinking to microscopic size): My only weakness! Noooooooooo!!!

Moe (about to say something smug but--)

DB (bursts out of the earth, blasting lava from his eyes, reducing Moe to cinders): I like my peanut chunky style. . . chunky with the tortured flesh of my enemies! (laughs hysterically and vaporizes the world)

(Credits roll)


It cost $55 and two hours of my life but DB doesn't seem to be allergic to peanuts, pecans, almonds, or walnuts.

Years ago when I was tested for allergies, about the age of 12, they dabbed 42 solutions of different solutions (containing cat saliva, pollen, mold, peanuts, etc) on my arm and broke the skin beneath them with a needle. Only cat and ash tree pollen caused a reaction.

Knowing DB would never sit still for something that involved, they tried seven solutions on his back (one was a control that always causes a reaction and peanuts were tested twice). Only the control area broke out.

The doctor wants us to try more blood tests (which ought to be really fun) but DB's problem on Tuesday might be totally unrelated to peanuts. This could be the end of the world as we know it.