Blockbuster Video is running a neat program here where, for two bucks, you get a card that entitles you to one free rental each day from the kid’s and family section. It’s a fundraiser for….well, something. Of course, it’s a limited program: no new releases, and it’s restricted to VHS only. But it’s still a cool way to explore all the old releases.

I’ve heard a lot recently about the death of hand-drawn animation, now that computer-generated animated films are so popular, with hits like Shrek, Finding Nemo, both Toy Story movies and so on being so wildly popular while traditionally animated films, like the current Sinbad movie, Treasure Planet, and others don’t do very well at all.

I’ve seen varying explanations, but they basically boil down to story and script. The computer-animated films, right now, have scripts that are far-and-away superior to the traditional animated films, or so we’re told. And yeah, I’d grant that generally-speaking, Monsters, Inc and the other Pixar movies have had better scripts lately than the traditional Disney films. But I’m not convinced the scripts are that much better. We watched The Emperor’s New Groove the other night, a film which somehow completely eluded my radar when it came out. I have no memory of it ever being in theaters. But here’s a film with one of the wittiest scripts I’ve seen in a long time, a film which cheerfully plays with just about every convention that animated movies follow. The cutesy sidekick is not so cute; the villain’s anger at the hero is actually justified; and most fun is the film’s way of poking fun at these kinds of films in general. (Toward the end, the heroes are inches away from victory when the villain arrives. The heroes ask, “How did you get here?” and the villain’s dumb-lug henchman pulls down a rolling map — from nowhere — and says, “By all accounts, it doesn’t make any sense.”) This film’s script is, in my opinion, every bit as good as that of Toy Story II or A Bug’s Life, so why did it leave nary an impression on the filmgoers?

I don’t know, really. I’d like to chalk it up to computer animation, but then, I’m not sure if Dinosaur was a huge hit or not. Maybe it’s just subject matter — Pixar’s movies tend to hit on storytelling subjects that are of pretty-much common interest, after all. I mean, part of the fun of the Toy Story movies is just looking at all the characters and saying, “Hey, I used to play with that!” And of course, everybody loves big, gross but lovable monsters, so there’s Monsters Inc.. Shrek built through word-of-mouth. Why didn’t The Emperor’s New Groove, then? Hell, I don’t know. I just chalk it up to William Goldman’s basic explanation for why Titanic blew out the box office while The Postman just plain blew: people simply didn’t want to see The Postman. And if people don’t want to see it, you can have the best movie in the world, and it won’t do well. Just ask all those people who love animated movies, but whose eyes fog over at the suggestion that they take in Princess Mononoke or Kiki’s Delivery Service. In the case of The Emperor’s New Groove, people probably don’t get the concept: a buddy-movie about a poor villager and the Emperor of a pseudo-South American realm who’s just been turned into a llama? Huh-whuh?

Well, watch it. This thing had me laughing from beginning to end.

:: We also watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame, earlier in the week. There’s another movie that, when I saw it in the theater in its initial release, didn’t impress me very much…but this time, I found a lot to admire in it. A lot to admire. The songs are Alan Menken’s best since the death of lyricist Howard Ashman, who inspired Menken to his best work in Beauty and the Beast before passing away of AIDS. Yes, the message is pretty heavy-handed; but it’s also excellent in its non-cutesy way of dealing with a love triangle and in the way it explores the sexual desires of the villain, in about as frank a way as a Disney animated movie could ever do. Of course, some of the story’s logic falters a bit — if Quasimodo is strong enough to break chains, why isn’t he strong enough to pound Frollo into Parisian pulp at the end? — but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the film this time out.

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Two more names, apparently, for the “People I’ve Never Met But Really Hate” list.

(The financial situation in these parts is getting pretty dire lately. I don’t like to air too much of my personal dirty laundry here, so I won’t say more than that. But a stroke of luck as befell these two folks would be very welcome right about now.)

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Reflections in d minor, the victim of a hosting snafu, is back up and running. Good.

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Hugo Drax succumbed to the temptation to buy what is obviously a bootleg DVD, and had a “All your base are belong to us” moment. Heh. Indeed.

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Oh, the things this guy has ahead of him:

“Hey, did you ever get one of those VCR things?”

“It’s DVD now.”

“Oh…well, how are we doing on building that big space station?”

“Not too good.”

“Oh. Say, how much gas does a flying car use, anyway?”

“A what?”

“Forget it. Sigh…when will I ever have time to listen to all the albums Men At Work must have released by now?”

“That’ll take you about thirty minutes.”

“Really? Well, I’ll see a movie or two. I’ll bet those computer-animated movies like Tron are getting really good these days.”

“Yeah…”

“Yup. Say, how’s Governor Clinton doing, anyway?”

“Funny you should ask….”

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Best TBOGG post ever.

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Go watch Teresa Nielsen Hayden “fisk” the living hell out of an article that’s about the publishing industry, and pretty wrong in the course of being about it. Wow.

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The Department of Weird Convergences reports that, just days after I finish reading a book whose plot partly involves the mating habits of various species of whale (Fluke), a strange picture is debunked on Snopes.com….

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Time for a few short political thoughts that have been upwelling from the depths of my hypothalamus.

:: David Horowitz, like Andrew Sullivan, is another of those weird “conservatives-with-an-axe-to-grind” that are so, well, weird. I rarely read either, because invariably when I do they’re just laughable. Here’s Horowitz on Ann Coulter, basically saying, “GASP! You mean, she actually believes the stuff she writes? It’s not just satire, but her actual beliefs? Hold me while I swoon!” (This is rather like Andy Sullivan’s sudden realization, a month or two back, that his beloved Bush Administration might not be as gay-friendly as he had once believed.)

:: Speaking of Andy Sullivan, TBOGG points to an Andy post where he cheers for Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s possible entry into California’s next gubernatorial race. I actually have to partly agree with Andy, in that Arnold might make a pretty capable politician — he is good with people, and interesting interview, and he can lie while smiling with the best of ’em. (I once watched an interview with Arnold, in which he grinned while saying, “I was so excited to do Last Action Hero because it was the best script I’d ever read.”) Of course, like TBOGG, I continue to be amazed with the American fascination of entrusting high governmental offices to people who are relatively inexperienced in matters of governance, but that’s just the lay of the land in this country. (And we do it on all sides of the political aisle. Look at Jesse Ventura, Jimmy Carter, Dwight Eisenhower, and the current Democratic fascination with Wesley Clark.)

:: I read a profile of Republican activist Grover Norquist this morning. Basically, Norquist is of the perennial belief that long-term Republican ascendency is just a year or two away. I’ve seen predictions like this, on both sides, for a long time and I’m never really convinced. But who knows, maybe it’ll happen and Democrats like me will spend the next few decades on the outside looking in. Here is a key quote, though, that struck me:

The Republicans are looking at decades of dominance in the House and Senate, and having the presidency with some regularity.

Now, the first part of that seems possible. Republicans are already working to shore up the political infrastructure that keeps them in power in Congress; that’s what the whole Texas redistricting fiasco is all about. The problem there, as Morat points out, is that as time goes by, the activist conservatives tend to get militant to the point of seriously overreaching. I just don’t know that Tom Delay, or any of the other real hardliners, has enough self-control to do the occasional bit of backtracking or compromising necessary to maintaining a grip on power for a long time. As for the second part of Norquist’s formulation here, well, what does “some regularity” mean, exactly? In the roughly 140 years since the Republican Party first arose and elected its first President (Abraham Lincoln, and for the purposes of this post I won’t delve into whether or not today’s Republican Party bears much, if any, resemblance to the party of Lincoln’s day), there have been 28 Presidents. Of those, 18 have been Republicans. Narrowing the focus, since 1953 we have had ten Presidents, six of whom were Republicans. So just what would Norquist consider as “having the presidency with some regularity”?

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Rachel Lucas had a post last week that I meant to mention, but I forgot about it until a few minutes ago. It’s about paying dues, a summation of how hard she’s worked to this point in her life and her faith that it’s all going to lead to something someday — if not something big, at least something that will make clear just why she spent so much time beating her head against the wall. I can relate to this, as is probably obvious from my blatherings here, and while I think that Rachel makes a habit of being wrong, I admire her efforts and, like her, I wish I’d started taking “dues-paying” seriously earlier in life. (Not that I’m getting old, mind you; and not that I begrudge the lessons that I needed to learn over the years. More that I wish I’d been less slow in learning them. We’re not talking about designing space craft and working out their telemetry for a multi-year mission to Jupiter here, folks — just stuff like “You need to write every day” and “The Muse hates slackers” and “You’re not a college student anymore, so you need to eat something other than pizza once in a while”.)

Paying dues stinks, but hopefully it all turns into admittance into The Club. Of course, it would be nice if there were some actual, definite period after which one “makes it”, instead of seeing some people vault into The Club after what seems (to me) like an absurdly short apprenticeship, while I’m still plugging away…but that’s not the way it is. Oh well.

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