Top 10… Animated Voice Performances

Posted on September 28, 2013 by jaycluitt

I’m not really one for new year’s resolutions. Regardless of how many things in my life I’d like to change – weight, social life, number of films I watch – the whole resolution concept is one I’ve just never comfortably got behind. However, at the start of this year I made a small mental note that I’d like to podcast a bit more, with the specific aim of appearing on one podcast in particular – the Milfcast, the official podcast of manilovefilms.com. Hosted by Kai and Heather, it’s easily one of the most entertaining podcasts available, and covers such diverse subjects as the Alien franchise (particularly Aliens) and defecating in cereal (particularly Cheerios). A few months ago I was fortunate enough to appear on a Lambcast episode with Kai, during which I’d intended to ask him how one would become eligible to guest on his great show, only for him to invite me on before I had a chance. As such, you can hear Kai, Heather and myself discussing all manner of film-related things on the latest episode of the Milfcast, which can be found here.

On the episode, the general discussion topic, as selected by myself, was our favourite voice performances of animated characters. I mention on the show that this was perhaps the hardest list I’d ever compiled, mainly because it could only consist of three entries. However, with so many possible entrants available I just had to expand it, so here’s my top 10. Oh, and I limited myself to just one selection per film, if you were wondering.

Honourable Mention: Mr. DNA (Greg Burson), Jurassic Park If there is any possible way that I can crowbar Jurassic Park into a Top 10 list, you can rest assured that life will find a way. Although Mr. DNA doesn’t have much screentime in Jurassic Park, he has one of the most important roles in the film – delivering the most perfectly executed exposition sequence in movie history, and he sounds exactly like the kind of second rate educational short films you’d be forced to sit through at school.
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Top 10… Reasons Why I Love Demolition Man

Posted on September 13, 2013 by jaycluitt

The Top 10 lists are back! Apologies for the recent extended break I’ve unintentionally taken from posting anything, I was waiting for my housing situation to resolve itself but that doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon, so I may as well get back to typing. Anyway, as I said, the Top 10 lists have returned, and this time with something a little different. Normally, I’d list of ten films, or scenes, or characters or whatever, but this week – and every so often after – I’m looking at just one film in particular, as a celebration for how much I love it. The prestigious honour of the first film goes to a movie I championed for the most recent Movie of the Month poll over at the Lamb. Due to it being so amazing, the film won with a landslide victory, and I was able to host an episode of the Lambcast on it, which can be listened to here.

So what is this film, I hear you ask? Well, it’s Demolition Man, the 1993 action/crime/sci-fi/comedy directed by Marco Brambilla, produced by Joel Silver and starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock. The basic premise sees Stallone’s sergeant John Spartan, a renegade cop in 1996’s burning L.A., track down Snipes’ Simon Phoenix, a psychopathic killer. During Phoenix’s arrest, Spartan is incorrectly blamed for the deaths of Phoenix’s hostages, and both men are sentenced to prison, but not just any incarceration. No, they are cryogenically frozen and mentally ‘reprogrammed’ to become better citizens, with the intention of thawing them out many years in the future. In 2032, Phoenix is thawed out for a parole hearing, but escapes the prison facility and goes on the run. The police force in the now-peaceful future utopia are ill-equipped to deal with Phoenix’s brand of mindless violence, and so Spartan is defrosted to help catch him.

So, without further ado, here’s my Top 10 reasons why I love Demolition Man: [Spoiler warning]
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Slacker

Posted on September 12, 2013 by jaycluitt

Various aimless yet opinionated wander around early ’90s Austin, Texas, as we see short snippets of their lives. There’s no plot, and the camera follows characters seemingly at random, as soon as it’s done with one conversation, the speaker is abandoned and forgotten, never to be seen again as we track some other person go about their day.
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Before Sunrise and Before Sunset

Posted on August 28, 2013 by jaycluitt

Whilst on a train returning home from visiting her grandmother in Budapest, Céline (Julie Delpy) moves seats when her journey is interrupted by an arguing couple nearby. She impulsively sits across from Jesse (Ethan Hawke), and the two soon strike up a conversation. When they arrive at his stop in Vienna, he asks her to join him as he spends the night strolling around the town before his flight back to America in the morning. What begins as a moment of spontaneity slowly grows into a life-altering encounter. Nine years later, we revisit the pair in Paris, and catch up on where they are in their lives and their relationship.
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Superman The Movie

Posted on August 13, 2013 by jaycluitt

On the planet Krypton, the elders have disrupted the planet’s core and caused it to begin to erupt. Everyone on the planet is doomed, except for a small, barely explained plot contrivance that allows one newborn baby to be launched in a pod and sent to another planet that will be hospitable to him, but where the atmosphere and density are different enough to provide him with extraordinary powers. Krypton explodes, but the baby arrives safely on Earth, where he lives his life as a loner, the last of his kind… wait a minute, didn’t I write this the other week? Hmmmm. Anyway, Kal-El…Earth…Smallville…the Kents…Metropolis…Lois Lane…Daily Planet…Kryptonite…Laser vision…flying…Superman. Continue reading →

Adventures in podcasting

Posted on July 7, 2013 by jaycluitt

Hi everyone, apologies for not putting up any new content for a while, I’m in the middle of moving house, and there probably won’t be anything up for a few more days yet. If you really miss me that much, you can listen to me on the most recent episode of the Lambcast, on which I discussed the most recent film I’d watched alongside Dylan and Kai from Man I Love Films, Iba from I Luv Cinema and Nick from Your Face.
Alternatively, I recently sat down with Bubbawheat from Flights, Tights and Movie Nights to record an episode of his excellent FilmWhys podcast, upon which we discussed the Sidney Lumet classic 12 Angry Men, as well as the far cheesier but still great 1978 Superman movie, which I’d never seen before. We also meandered around the topic of superhero movies in general, and I managed to get the new Lego film in there too, as I am wont to do.

So, apologies again, but you can look forward to some coming reviews for the aforementioned Superman and 12 Angry Men, as well as a few others that have stacked up during the move. Until then, you can either go back through my archives (which I’m still re-linking after the site move, sorry for that too), or you can just go and check someone else’s site out instead. Or, you know, go watch a film, read a book, spend some more time with the kids, or go fix that shelf you’ve been meaning to get to for about a year know. This is the perfect opportunity, as soon as you can remember where you put those nails.

Top 10… Scenes That Creeped Me Out

Posted on June 21, 2013 by jaycluitt

It’s time for another top 10! And you know what that means… it’s time for me to tenuously link it to something in my life that happened this week! And wouldn’t you know it, I was only on another bleedin’ podcast. I even hosted it! I know! They asked me back, who’d’ve thought? Anyway, over at the Lambcast I hosted a show featuring the discussion of Peter Jackson’s Braindead (or Dead Alive, as it’s also known), along with Dan from Public Transportation Snob, Kristen from Journeys in Classic Film and Lindsay and Jess, both from friend-of-the-site French Toast Sunday. Spoiler alert: I bloody well loved the film, and recommend everyone go see it, as long as they have a little tolerance for gross-out scenes, as there’s plenty in there. Which leads me to this week’s Top 10, a celebration of the scenes in films that have creeped me out beyond belief. I tried to limit the amount of these from horror films, but some of them just crept on there, what could I do? And I’ve also limited to one scene per film, as there’s a few that could have monopolised the list, but we’ll get to that. Oh, and there’s definitely spoilers here.

Honourable Mention: Braindead Well I had to include Braindead on here somewhere, seeing as it was the inspiration for this list. There’s a wealth of scenes to choose from, be it the removal of a zombie’s teeth with pliers or pushing in the bulging eyes of a recently deceased corpse (eye and teeth mutilation will be a running theme on this list), and the zombie baby came close – God I hate that zombie baby (also a theme), but the winner has to be the custard scene. After Lionel’s mother (Elizabeth Moody) is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey, she turns into a zombie, complete with a pulsating bite on her arm. This unfortunate turn of events just happens to coincide with an important dinner meeting she has with the Mathesons, head of a group she wishes to become a member of, so she insists her son (Timothy Balme) host the meeting anyway. During the meeting, her wound squirts a delectable blood/pus mixture into the bowl of custard belonging to Mr. Matheson – which he then eats – and her own ear falls into her own bowl, which she then eats. This is quite possibly the closest I’ve ever come to vomiting purely from a film, especially because custard is consumed with alarming regularity in my house, and ever since I’ve not been able to bring myself to eat any more without thinking of that scene, and that just turns my stomach.
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Top 10… Movie Superheroes

Posted on May 18, 2013 by jaycluitt

This week saw the drop of the latest episode of the Lambcast, on which the topic of discussion was Iron Man 3. Not only did I appear on this episode (something I’ve been making a bit of a habit of lately), but I only went and hosted it too! Apparently it didn’t go too badly, so I urge you all to listen to it, but only after going to see the film (which is pretty damn good), as Dylan, Lindsay, Bubbawheat and I got into some fairly heavy spoiler territory. Anyway, as I’ve been doing recently, I’ve tied this week’s Top 10 into the theme of the podcast (as will also be the case for the next two weeks, anticipation-lovers), and this week that means counting down my list of Top 10 Movie Superheroes. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean my favourite superhero movies, although in some respects they do pair up. No, this is more a list of the heroes themselves. I’ve tried to take into account if the character has been played by more than one person, although on occasion this hasn’t always worked in the character’s favour. Also, this is entirely based upon the character’s depiction in cinema, mainly because I’ve never read a comic book (the closest I’ve come are graphic novels Sin City, Preacher and Watchmen), and I’ve done my best to block out every Saturday morning cartoon I ever saw in the otherwise culturally empty void of my so-called childhood. I’ve tried to steer clear of sidekicks too, that’s a whole different list, as is super-villains.

Honourable Mentions:

I think the position that’s hardest for me to decide upon each week is the Honourable Mentions. There are generally an awful lot of viable entrants, and this week is no exception, and as such I feel the need to offer the position to be shared once again. This week the honours go to Thor, a surprisingly funny chap (“How dare you attack the son of Odin!”), Hellboy, Big Daddy and, on occasion, Spider-Man. I was tempted to include the Human Torch too, because Chris Evans does a good job with him, but he’s just such a dickish character that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Continue reading →

Star Trek Into Darkness

Posted on May 15, 2013 by jaycluitt

Previously on Star Trek… James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) was born during an attack upon the spaceship his father, Thor, was briefly captaining. His Dad gave his life so James and his mother (House‘s Jennifer Morrison) could survive. James grew up to be a reckless, rebellious dropout with a way for the ladies but not much else going for him, until a bar fight saw him catch the eye of Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), a Starfleet captain, who recommended Kirk sign up. Kirk does so, and eventually ends up captaining Pike’s ship, the Starship Enterprise, along the way compiling a trusty crew including emotionless half Vulcan Spock (Zachary Qunito), frenetic engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg), ship’s doctor Bones (Karl Urban), communications officer Uhura (Zoe Saldana), helmsman Sulu (John Cho) and navigator Chekov (Anton Yelchin).

Now, Kirk is still captaining the Enterprise and investigating other planet’s life forms. On a routine reconnaissance mission to observe the primitive planet of Nibiru, things do not necessarily go to plan when an active volcano threatens to wipe out the indigenous species. Kirk’s solution to the predicament is frowned upon back at Starfleet, and his ship is taken away from him and returned to its former captain, Pike. Meanwhile, a former member of Starfleet, the necessarily tediously named John Harrison (played by the incredibly un-tediously named Benedict Cumberbatch), begins to wage a one-man war against Starfleet, beginning by blowing up a data archive. Kirk takes it upon himself to, along with the rest of his crew, track Harrison down and bring him to justice. Continue reading →

Top 10… Animated Disney Movies

Posted on May 12, 2013 by jaycluitt

Well look at that, I’ve gone and been on the Lambcast again. This week’s episode saw myself, Nick, Kristen, Dylan and, via pre-recordings Pat, discuss the Disney renaissance, the nine films released by Disney from The Little Mermaid to Tarzan. The show ran a little long – two and a half hours in total – but it’s well worth a listen. Anyway, to celebrate, here’s my list of the top 10 animated Disney films. I haven’t included any of the films Disney has made with Pixar, or any of their non-animated efforts, this list is just cartoons.

Honourable mentions:

Of the 52 animated feature films Disney has released, I can remember having seen a total of 22 (and I’ve not really heard of eight of them. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some of the other ones, but I can’t for the life of me recall anything about the likes of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, The Fox and The Hound or even Dinosaur, a film I should justifiably adore because of the subject matter, and one that I’m pretty sure I saw at the cinema. Therefore, there’s a total of twelve films outside of the top 10 that are eligible for the Honourable Mention slot on this list. Of these twelve, I think it’s going to be shared between Pinocchio and The Princess and the Frog. Pinocchio is a classic, the second feature length animation Disney released after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The story is a bit nuts – a toymaker wishes on a star and his latest marionette comes to life, before going on a series of adventures that involve smoke-ring-blowing mammals, boys being turned into donkeys and eventually everyone being eaten by a whale – but the animation is great. The Princess and the Frog may seem an odd choice too, but I liked the idea of a strong, independent heroine who had a dream and intended to work hard to achieve it, and the villain – voiced by Keith David – is one of my favourites from Disney.