Hey folks... Harry here. Today... today has been one of them days that just... doesn't continue to do anything that I planned on doing. First, I get home around 6am from partying with Silver Devil Girl and her friends, only to find the site in need of it's Weekly Recap. Then, I wake up to Dad telling me there's a camera crew in the front yard wanting to interview me. I had no idea they would be there (I party-ed too much last night) do a quick mental shuffling, do the interview, hook up with RoRo for one of those, 'where we are in our lives now that we are nearing 30 type of things.... The night before Silver Devil Girl's Identical Twin was pregnant and I'd been thinking about kids and babies and all of that... While out with Annette Kellerman and her mom, Ninotchka, started the whole, Can you believe Ninotchka gave birth to me thing, then I come home to find out I'm going to be an uncle and that my lil sister satan is going to be a mommy satan.
Then I sat down... came to my keyboard and saw a review for POKEMON THE MOVIE. All I can say is my nephew or niece is going to be brainwashed with Tim Burton, Ray Harryhausen, Tom Savini, Jack Pierce, Jack Kirby, Neil Gaiman, Peter Max, Frank Kozik, Freddy Krueger, John Carpenter, Travis Bickle, Wet Gooey Gore Flicks, Mexican Wrestler movies, Robert Newton, George Pal, George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Busby Berkeley, Robots, Dinosaurs, misshapen burnt Barbie dolls with razor blade arms, Olivia Newton John, Cab Calloway and Marilyn Manson and Leopold Stokowlski and Danny Elfman and Bernard Herrmann... This kid will know the names of Miyazaki and G-Force and Star Blazers and Godzilla and Ultra-Man and Ghidorah and Blue Meanies and Scrubbing Bubbles and Dr Seuss and Harold Potter and Roald Dahl and Eric Draven and Mad Max and Snake Plissken and Jack Burton and The Mariachi and Ron Ely and Errol Flynn and Raggedy Ann & Andy and Winnie the Pooh and Uncle Remus and the Nowhere Man. The kid will know and treat with the proper respect the verse according to Weird Al Yankovic, Spike Jones, George Carlin, Ray Stevens... This future Knowles progeny will be raised with Poe, Shelly, Stoker, King, Socrates, Plato... The Simpsons, 100,000 comic books, toys from all eras, a sense of what came before, during and will be coming tomorrow. Steve Ditko, Jack Davis, Mike Mignola, Mike Allred, Al Feldstein, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Hal Foster, Max Fleischer, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Hanna Barbara, Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, Kenneth Robeson, Asimov, Bradbury, Ackerman, Ellison, Tolkein, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur, Wallace Berry, Spy Smasher, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and John and James Belushi and Dan Akyroyd and the good Chevy Chase years and Eddie Murphy and Lenny Bruce and the kid will know the names of the werewolf movies for these actors: Henry Hull, Lon Chaney Jr, Oliver Reed. The kid will know not to wander from the path, that the words Klaatu Barada Nikto are important, that to summon a genie you say while rubbing the magic lamp, "From The Land Beyond Beyond, from the world past hope and fear, I bid you genie now appear. The kid will know John Woo, Tsui Hark, Chow Yun Fat, Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, the Shaw Brothers, William Smith, Frederich Forrest and Stacey Keach and Mel Blanc and Jimmy Stewart. And a billion other things off the top of my head... But the one thing this kid will never know, and if this means HOME SCHOOLING, then dammit, it means HOME SCHOOLING.... Is POKEMON. I loathe this show about raising slave creations and pitting them against one another like some sort of sick Cock Fight in a hillbilly community. There is so much in this world you can give your kids.... You can give them THE IRON GIANT, THE LITTLE MERMAID, THE LAST UNICORN, THE HOBBIT, WATERSHIP DOWN, PINNOCHIO, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.... You can brainwash all of their friends with your utter coolness factor. You can fight it.... Take control... rip them out of the school system, form tight knit communities of geeks and begin training and raising the kids properly. EVIL POKEMON SLAVE TRADE must come to an end! Oh... Here's the review....
Hey Harry,
I have been reading your site for a few months, but haven't really had anything to write about 'til now. This morning I saw a preview of the long-awaited English translation of "Pokemon: the First Movie" subtitled "Mewtwo Strikes Back".
Now this movie, unlike a lot of other Japanimation fare, such as the current PRINCESS MONONOKE, this film is strictly for kids.
It begins with a short feature entitled "Pikachu's Vacation" which the youngest of the audience enjoyed thoroughly. The comedy centered around physical comedy of the Looney Tunes variety.
Then the feature itself began. The story centers around a genetically altered clone (Mewtwo) of the "rarest pokemon on earth" (Mew). Mewtwo finds his existence puzzling and decides that humans are the enemies and the pokemon they train are nothing but slaves.
We follow Ash, Misty, and Brock as they are invited to travel to Mewtwo's island and challenge him in a pokemon match. Mewtwo begins cloning super-pokemon and there is a battle between real and clone pokemon at the end.
The kids in the audience ate this up and yelled the names of their favorite pokemon. My little brother couldn't sit still and kept commenting to me on "who was who" and what was going on, although the plot was not all that hard to follow. The movie failed to thrill me, an 18-year-old, however. The animation was better than the TV show, but it was still subpar as far as other animated features go.
Just so your readers are aware, this is not Princess Mononoke, this is not the Iron Giant. It is another way to cash on the HUGE pokemon phenomenon. The movie does have a good message, though, concerning tolerance and acceptance of others, even though they are different.
Take it easy
Call me Jimmy Gator
