I stole this from Tobias Buckell, but I thought all of you should see it, because it’s bloody hilarious. It’s Daniel Radcliffe…er…I mean Harry Potter explaining who he really is. By that I mean… Oh screw it. Just watch (after the fold): I Am Harry Potter from Daniel Radcliffe And you thought the Harry Potter franchise couldn’t get any better…
I stole this from Andrew Wheeler, who stole it from someone else. Should be fun! All the animated movies in the world, sort of: – X what you saw – O what you haven’t finished/seen or saw sizable portions – Bold what you loved – Italicize what you disliked/hated – Leave unchanged if neutral (I’ve added a final thing to these: a grade–good, average, and sucked. I might as well, right?) CLASSIC DISNEY ——————————- [X] 101 Dalmatians (1961) — Good [X] Alice in Wonderland (1951) — Good [X] Bambi (1942) — Good [X] Cinderella (1950) — Average [X] Dumbo (1941) — Good [X] Fantasia (1940) — Good (and trippy. Every time I see this movie, I feel like someone has inserted an extra ten minutes. No joke. My experience watching this as a kid involved frequently feeling as though I missed something the last time I watched it.) [X] Lady and the Tramp (1955) — Average [X] Mary Poppins (1964) — Good [X] Peter Pan (1953) — Good [X] Pinocchio (1940) — Good [X] Sleeping Beauty (1959) — Good (I liked it, but I’ve only seen it once.) [X] Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) — Good [X] Song of the South (1946) — I barely remember it, so I can’t grade it. (Note: My grandma pretty much made me grow up with most of the Disney movies. I’m not complaining, but I’ve pretty much seen every classic and semi-classic Disney movie ever made, even if I can’t remember seeing it. That is, except for new Disney, which I’ve mostly been avoiding.) DISNEY’S DARK AGE ——————————- [X] The Aristocats (1970) — Average [ ] The Black Cauldron (1985) [X] The Fox and the Hound (1981) — Good [X] The Great Mouse Detective (1986) — Average [X] The Jungle Book (1967) — Good [X] The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) — Good (They were on constant re-run when I was a kid.) [X] Oliver and Company (1986) — Average [X] Pete’s Dragon (1977) — Good [X] The Rescuers (1977) — Good [X] Robin Hood (1973) — Good [X] The Sword In The Stone (1963) — Good THE DISNEY RENAISSANCE ——————————- [X] Aladdin (1992) — Average [X] Beauty and the Beast (1991) — Average [X] A Goofy Movie (1995) — Average [X] Hercules (1997) — Good [X] The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) — Average [X] The Lion King (1994) — Good [X] The Little Mermaid (1989) — Average [X] Mulan (1998) — Good [X] Pocahontas (1995) — Average (the manipulation of history is rather annoying) [X] The Rescuers Down Under (1990) — Good (I loved this one as a kid for some reason) [X] Tarzan (1999) — Average DISNEY’S MODERN AGE ——————————- [ ] Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) [ ] Bolt (2008) [X] Brother Bear (2003) — Average [ ] Chicken Little (2005) [X] Dinosaur (2000) — Sucked [X] The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) — Sucked [ ] Fantasia 2000 (2000) [ ] Home on the Range (2004) [X] Lilo & Stitch (2002) — Average [X] Meet the Robinsons (2007) — Average [ ] Treasure Planet (2002) (You’re probably noticing a trend, what with Disney films progressively becoming worse as the years went by. I don’t know if that’s because I grew up and lost interest in the Disney style, or if they simply got bad.) PIXAR ——————————- [X] A Bug’s Life (1998) — Average [O] Cars (2006) (I refuse to see it. I’ve seen five minutes or so and just couldn’t stand it.) [X] Finding Nemo (2003) — Good [X] The Incredibles (2004) — Good [X] Monsters Inc. (2001) — Good (one of my favorites, actually) [X] Ratatouille (2007) — Average [X] Toy Story (1995) — Good [X] Toy Story 2 (1999) — Good [ ] Toy Story 3 (2010) [X] Wall-E (2008) — Good (top three for sure) [X] Up (2009) — Average DON BLUTH ——————————- [X] All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) — Good [X] An American Tail (1986) — Good (loved the Fieval films) [X] An American Tail: Fieval Goes West (1991) — Good [X] Anastasia (1997) — Average [X] The Land Before Time (1988) — Good [ ] The Pebble and the Penguin (1995) [X] Rock-a-Doodle (1991) — Sucked [X] The Secret of NIMH (1982) — Good [X] Thumbelina (1994) — Average [X] Titan AE (2000) — Matt Damon! [ ] A Troll in Central Park (1994) CLAYMATION ——————————- [ ] The Adventures of Mark Twain (1986) [X] Chicken Run (2000) — Average [ ] Corpse Bride (2005) [X] James and the Giant Peach (1996) — Good [X] The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) — Average [X] Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) — Average [ ] Coraline (2009) CGI GLUT ——————————- [X ] Antz (1998) — Average [ ] Bee Movie (2007) [X] Happy Feet (2006) — Good [X] Ice Age (2002) — Sucked [X] Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) — Sucked [ ] Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) [ ] Kung Fu Panda (2008) [X] Madagascar (2005) — Sucked [X] Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) — Sucked [X] Monster House (2006) — Average [X] Over the Hedge (2006) — Sucked [X] The Polar Express (2004) — Average [X] Robots (2005) — Average [X] A Shark’s Tale (2004) — Average [X] Shrek (2001) — Good [X] Shrek 2 (2004) — Good [X] Shrek The Third (2007) — Average [ ] Shrek Forever After (2010) [ ] Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) IMPORTS ——————————- [ ] Arabian Knight (aka The Thief and the Cobbler) (1995) [ ] The Last Unicorn (1982) [ ] Light Years (1988) [ ] The Triplets of Belleville (2003) [ ] Persepolis (2007) [ ] Waltz With Bashir (2008) (I actually read the graphic novel) [X] Watership Down (1978) — Average [ ] When the Wind Blows (1988) [ ] Wonderful Days (2003) [ ] Yellow Submarine (1968) (I have no intention of seeing most of these, to be honest.) STUDIO GHIBLI/MIYAZAKI ——————————- [X] The
Click the record button… Yeah, that’s right. I’m that guy. The guy who arranged an interview with an awesome author of an awesome book, who participated in an awesome interview with said author, and then said goodnight. The problem? The recorder wasn’t on. Yup. It would be fair to see that I’m feeling like a bloody moron right now, because that’s an awful reason for screwing things up. It’s one thing for software to malfunction, but entirely another when the only malfunctioning thing is the conductor. So, consider this thread an open invitation to insult me as you see fit. Pretty much anything goes. Have at it… P.S.: FML.
Another episode is up, folks! If you like the show, let us know. Episode 25 is all about the crazy things happening in the world (some of them, anyway). So tune in and enjoy.
I told you I’d have another poll soon enough. Since this poll is in connection with the poll we will be running tomorrow on the website for The Skiffy and Fanty Show, your answers will actually be both informative and helpful. And all you have to do is click your mouse a couple of times (or type a short comment). The poll question is: what is a good length for a weekly podcast? You can find the poll on the left sidebar. There are five options: 20 min., 30 min., 45 min., 1 hr., and other. If you select other, we’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment somewhere letting us know the length you’d suggest. So vote away!
An amusing discussion took place last week in one of my classes (the SF/utopia one). We were talking about Tom Moylan’s Scrapes of Untainted Sky and Luckhurst’s Science Fiction and how Luckhurst’s one-page claim about the awful practice of canon production in key theoretical texts (Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Carl Freedman’s Critical Theory and Science Fiction, and Moylan’s book) sets itself up as a contradiction. For Luckhurst (and this is based on reading one page from his book), the aforementioned authors are participating in political games: Suvin in a game of the literary elite; Freedman in an equally problematic project; and Moylan in utopian readings of SF. He views these authors as having agendas that “reflect back the ‘reader-critic’s cherished political dispositions’” (9) and argues that SF studies needs to be open to examinations and discussions of Pulp Era and Golden Age SF. Since even Luckhurst is participating in canon production–even though he is attempting to open up the critical framework of SF studies to more texts than Suvin and others have been willing to address–the contradiction should be readily apparent. Luckhurst’s solution is a good one (in my opinion). Since I’ve already written about the inside vs. the outside in SF criticism, it seems prudent to point out that political agendas play a crucial role in forming theoretical and critical texts. It also seems prudent to suggest that one can’t escape from political readings. But can one escape from the project of canon production? That is the question that I am concerned with here (and one that I was concerned with during class). Part of our discussion centered on the problem of canon production and the naive assumption made by Luckhurst that his personal vision of SF criticism was somehow apolitical (or at least non-ideological in a canonical sense). The problem, obviously, is that Luckhurst isn’t removing himself from the system of canon production. Instead, he’s as much a part of it as everyone else. All critical texts, thus, are participating in the canonical system, even if the author’s intent is to do otherwise. When you select texts, you are producing a canon, since no matter what you do, you are excluding some texts for one reason or another. Even if you acknowledge that space prevents you from talking about everything, you’re still making a decision on which texts you’ll talk about, and, thus, an assessment of their quality. The inescapability of canon production, however, is where I suddenly find myself asking “why.” Why are we talking about canon production at all if nothing you do can be anti-canon in a purist sense? Nothing a critic produces can be outside of the system, which suggests to me that talking about how an author is participating in it is similar to talking about how your neighbor breathes every day–they’re both natural features of a system of existence (one tied to life and one tied to the literary critical form). It seems to me that the only relevant time to talk about the production of canon is when one is personally invested in an ideological/political project related to canon, such as might be said of someone like Harold Bloom or the detestable E. D. Hirsch (whose “cultural literacy” is one of the most problematic canonical forms next to the literary canon). Beyond those figures, however, talking about canon is, as I just said, like talking about breathing; if your next door neighbor is breathing special gas to become a super mutant to take over the world, then maybe you should pay attention and have a discussion–most likely, however, your neighbor is just suffering from lung cancer. To put it another way: unless canon is being used to exclude for political, rather than critical, reasons (i.e. SF isn’t in my canon because it’s not real literature), we shouldn’t be talking about it. Argue about the exclusions, but don’t bother talking about how the production of canon is a problem that needs to be addressed. Sometimes talking about canon is pointless (read: without purpose or meaning). We need to move beyond canon and start asking why we make the selections we make, why others make them, and what the rationale behind all forms of inclusion and exclusion offer us. Sometimes we select texts to talk about because there is a relationship we want others to see, and as the “others,” we should be willing to set aside the pointless discussions and engage the material (critical or otherwise) on its own terms (just, as I said yesterday, as we should do when producing critical works on SF). But what do you think about canon production? Do you agree with me here or do you disagree? Let me know in the comments.
