The Pagemaster with Chelsea Goodman

When Macaulay Culkin's family leaves him unsupervised, he has to face his fears and confront the lonely old man that only wants to be his friend. That's right, it's Home Alone 6: The Pagemaster with special guest director Chelsea Goodman of @watrflwrstudios and Epic Quest!

Below is a rough automated transcript of the episode. We are working on making this better:

Bret: welcome to another episode of last three watch the show we watch movies that we lived in our youth and find out if there's still any good I'm that's not how it goes

Ash: I'm Ash I'm trying to bring that big Pat energy to the podcast cuz he's not here

Sam: I know

Ash: has not here today he couldn't make it

Bret: yeah patzek

Ash: what is Big Pat energy

Sam: I reached

Ash: it's taking of all of the room actually

Sam: sure he wants us calling it big Pat energy

Ash: oh no he doesn't

Bret: now it's too late it's a thing

Ash: but he's not here so

Sam: we can say whatever we want that one time

Ash: whatever we want he's just such a big wonderful person

Sam: he truly is this is not facetiousness or anyting but I should really go back and listen to the episode where I wasn't on once and find out what y'all said about me when I wasn't there

Bret: there's nothing positive

Sam: text my husband the person I'm married to thank you for that

Ash: you know what I actually did was I sold Pat to Floyd this sexy new microphone

Ash: I upgraded guy

Sam: you do you do sound beautiful yeah absolutely hands down

Ash: do I do I sound like Phoebe sexy voice now cuz that's what I'm really hoping it does to my voice mics can do that right yeah

Sam: we are going to have to start paying a billion bucks and episode now

Ash: hello yes

Bret: a million podcast you'll find the exchange rate disappointing

Ash: oh no I can get one box of Stitch fix

Sam: I doubt that I will give you a nickel

Ash: I'll get half of one meundie or whatever

Sam: boxer just portions of meundies hello good morning

Sam: the McElroy Brothers get naked get like one meundie

Ash: will they have to split one so they get us 30 ch houses in the room with us

Bret: who are we replacing that with

Ash: replacing fat with Chelsea Goodman High Chelsea

Chelsea: hi guys it's so good to be here thank you so much for having me on the show

Ash: of course Chelsea year of filmmaker tell us about all your stuff we met at gencon this year which was super fun they did it online

Sam: oh you bet online

Ash: we already

Sam: you guys are true quarantine bodies like from start through current day

Chelsea: we are yep oh yeah

Sam: that's awesome

Bret: well thanks thanks for flying all the way in from Canada

Chelsea: no worries

Bret: no expense spared for the show

Chelsea: yep yep first class first class and everything yes

Ash: I think you're our first Canadian actually

Ash: I think so

Chelsea: am I Old Vine

Sam: yeah we've got an international baby

Chelsea: oh yeah

Bret: yeah we did it yeah

Ash: well we've already gone International but yeah we had Sam from New Zealand and yeah

Sam: oh yes we did England Obe have we are

Ash: and Martin from where worldly

Sam: yeah I forgot

Chelsea: nice nice

Bret: England's like a fake country though

Ash: nice that's rad

Bret: what are you bringing to the party

Ash: no you can if you want you brought us the movie yeah

Chelsea: yeah so my name's Chelsea Goodman I'm from Vancouver British Columbia Canada and I am a filmmaker and graphic designer so Ashley and I'm at Saint the online gencon film festival of this year my fantasy video game pilot Epic Quest was part of the film festival and Ashley and I were on many gencon recorded and available on YouTube and the best thing to come out of gencon is the fantasy network was the streaming service that was hosting everyone's films and pilots and episodes and at the end of the film festival are the fantasy Network contact me personally and asked me if they if if I could if I wanted to join their their Library their streaming service Library so so we yeah we have been Epic Quest was officially released on the fasting at work on September 4th and as of right now it has 988 views on the fantasy Network since September 4th and like our goal is 1K and we're just my team and I as we just were so happy we're so proud We have been promoting at the quest like crazy we've done all the social medias we started on a Discord Channel even this is so corny but even at work on the back of my business card I have QR codes that give out to my co-workers they scanned it and so and this movie came out in 96

Sam: 94 close though yeah

Chelsea: 394 oh my goodness yeah so I saw this film not in theaters I saw it on VHS when I was probably around five or six years old and I barely barely remember it I just remember the main character being with the three animated books kind of interacting with each other and I imagine it's very it's kind of similar to bring Rodger rabbit but I have not seen this film in years and it's yeah it's it's kind of a little Hidden Gem like you just you know it's almost forgotten in a way

Bret: yeah did this even have a theatrical release I've only ever seen it on TV

Ash: 320 wow

Sam: baby yes it did oh yeah it did well it tried

Ash: oh no

Sam: did so-so

Sam: this movie guys I'm excited to watch it

Ash: we've talked about doing it before right haven't we yeah oh

Sam: but yeah we've talked about it so I'm I'm the resident animation nerd for the podcast so I was asked to host and blue is this movie dripping with animation drama which just makes me laugh and in the dumbest ways so truly

Ash: I hope it makes like a I like purple prefer animation drama

Sam: so I'll start with kind of the basic facts does already said it's called the pagemaster it's from 1994

Chelsea: really

Sam: it was one of the first movies to include live-action traditional 2D animation and CG animation all three the trifecta baby

Ash: oh wow and this was this is after Rodger rabbit correct

Chelsea: right

Sam: correct so yep way after

Ash: Clear Lake let's do one more let's just throw it another medium guys let's do it

Bret: 95

Sam: let's just say yeah yeah yeah so I don't think Toy Story when did Toy Story come out like 92 93 95 so this is pre Toy Story So Colette that set that bar for the end of the CG animation guys

Ash: oh no this is bad it's going to be bad huh

Sam: yeah I'm sure I will only time will tell and that time is about 2 hours from now but guys did they put their f****** all into this movie so this cast is insane so we've got Macaulay Culkin as our main protagonist in his goddamn Prime this is like f****** Home Alone Central he is hot s*** he is 90s stardom at its Max for young children so he's

Ash: you know he has his own podcast now sorry I didn't mean to try

Chelsea: oh nice was it called I don't know I forget I'll Google it

Sam: I do know he is a podcast I don't know

Bret: and have their own the entertainment website to need something so bad at the McCauley facts

Ash: oh yeah it's the bunny thing yes

Sam: and he was on Macaulay Culkin was on the podcast with past Electra watch guests even so yeah

Ash: I think that's why I know about his podcast it's called bunny ears is the name

Chelsea: bunny ears okay

Bret: Steven Ray Morris

Sam: this is a weird triangle of

Bret: Stingray Morris is like all over though he's he works a lot of people

Sam: I don't know if we deserve him Stephen we remember you

Bret: that would be so amazing

Sam: so we've got almost have you got Steven Ray Morris know Steven Ray Morris is not in this movie Macaulay Culkin

Ash: crazy he time traveled back in time he would

Sam: no no she was he would we've got Christopher Lloyd or Doc Brown

Ash: wow

Chelsea: what

Sam: yeah we've got Whoopi Goldberg holyshit Yahweh

Ash: I know I saw that I cuz I was Googling to see where this was streaming and I saw that I was like Whoopi Goldberg is in this movie

Chelsea: piano

Sam: yeah oh just just wait guys just wait

Chelsea: yep yep

Sam: so so we've got Patrick Stewart

Chelsea: yes we do

Ash: oh man

Sam: no f****** joke Patrick Stewart continuing on this Star Trek same you know who else we got Leonard goddamn Nemo

Chelsea: yay

Ash: are you f****** serious wow

Bret: what is this morning

Sam: I am not joking 100erious

Chelsea: wow

Ash: alright how could it not be good

Sam: yeah yeah

Chelsea: that's that's like that's total like 90s started like like a 90 star stack like it's just the best of the best of the of the best 90s Stars altogether fun fact Leonard Nimoy and I have the exact same birthdays

Sam: that's awesome

Bret: live long and prosper

Chelsea: so every you know Leonard Nimoy make may he rest in peace but I just always look forward to every year on my birthday on Facebook I have like five other friends we all share the same birthdays and then of course I tagged Leonard Nimoy's official Facebook page and you know be like happy birthday buddy so I don't know

Sam: that's awesome yes so he's in it we have Frank Welker Welker who you won't know by name but you will know as Fred Jones from Scooby-Doo

Chelsea: oh

Sam: yeah and then we have

Ash: I like the original cartoons or okay sounds familiar though

Sam: yeah at least at the time the current voice of Scooby-Doo so I don't know if he was like the 1970s version but yeah Ed Begley Jr who I'm not super familiar with and nothing really jumped out and then we have yeah

Bret: I think we've been in some other stuff we bought

Sam: I'm sure oh yes TV guy like I recognize his face and was like oh it's that guy but I couldn't I couldn't Place anything

Bret: he's either that guy we got lots of that guys

Chelsea: is that that that guy

Ash: yeah you don't know his name but he has seen him

Sam: yeah and then we have Mel Harris who is another that guy face but it's a lady and she was in the ever-popular TV show 30 something which which none of us would have watched but my mom I remember watching it when I was a little kid and at Christmas time this year she's like remember the theme song from thirtysomething as she played it for me I was like oh my God I do and way back my childhood memory so who is popular with our parents probably not with us

Chelsea: yeah

Bret: the new title sequence for 30 something is just laying on your couch eating chips

Sam: crying softly yeah that's

Chelsea: it sounds like it

Ash: is this like the sequel to friends the next chapter in the life of friends

Sam: it's more drama so friends with all comedy

Ash: are you talking about it's so serious

Sam: yes I know I mean that that episode where they get the turkey stuck on their head and then like they almost died like it's just so classic drama was more dramatic and like I don't know how to describe it maybe a little closer to like 7th Heaven but minus all the churches stuff you know

Bret: minus all the big faces

Sam: yeah I mean honestly

Ash: haven't seen that either

Bret: ever notice on not on all of those 7th Heaven Party 5 everybody has a really big faces that was like they're casting Choice was like like a like a like the Nintendo like those enemies that everybody just has a meanie face or just like

Chelsea: yeah yeah yeah or or big heads and that's not because they're big actors like that that is

Sam: yeah I mean that could be

Bret: giant headed people there's

Chelsea: they're just big headed people

Bret: Bagel Q-tips

Chelsea: yeah yeah yeah yes

Sam: so soon this movie I'm kind of excited about but it's produced by Turner pictures and Hanna-Barbera so for you animation or it's out there Hanna-Barbera was the cream-of-the-crop 1950s stardom limited animation for television so if you're interested in a little bit of Animation history Disney was known for doing what's called Full animation so they would animate with complete or as real as physics as they could emulate through the hand-drawn medium and they would anime every frame so

Ash: what does extension were they using now

Sam: I know why it's the 911 engine

Ash: there you go

Sam: no no no no no no no

Bret: debit Disneyland Rio engine and my hanna-barbera's basically just Co-op

Ash: I'm sorry I'm sorry it's my fault

Sam: stop take it back it is not quat they I mean I was going to get all philosophical the animation Brett and had to print QWOP into this

Bret: fill it up with your soccer clothes

Sam: okay so Hanna-Barbera actually like they were really well known for taking the animation medium and making it really graphic and artistic so they straight away from kind of the Disney rules and they would not animate every frame they would anime maybe every six frames and then they would do these things called hold but they did them in a really beautiful artistic way so I'm really hoping some of that blood into this movie I'm hoping cuz you'll be super fun to see it's also this movies also made by a combination of ex-disney and X Don Bluth animators so

Bret: interesting

Sam: not a ton of like classic cartoon modern 1950s Style animators on this so I so I could see it I'm thinking it's going to go in like a Disney emulations sort of way but we'll see

Bret: is going to ever going to get a lot of that like Don Bluth this is animation but it's basically live action cuz they wrote it the heck out of it

Sam: Don Bluth was very well-known for rotoscoping yes I don't know the Disney animators may not have been in with that but this came out in 94 Disney was just starting till I come back with their Golden Era films you know they had had a couple of mild successes but weren't like Disney start I'm so animators at this time would kind of take whatever jobs they could get it wasn't as bad as like that 80s 1980s. But it's still early so

Bret: pretty Lion King

Chelsea: just yeah yeah

Sam: only just only just by like a year 2 and Lion King was really a huge hit I think at this point they would have had the Little Mermaid Beauty and the Beast and maybe Aladdin which are still three really big hats for Disney but they weren't releasing two films a year by any means so you know but Archer Rector is several directors because as we talked about in the past when you combine animation and live-action usually happens director for each so we have Joe Johnston who actually we've had many of his films on the podcast he did Honey I Shrunk the Kids

Bret: now you said it right this one

Ash: Banji know you're fine

Sam: and then I tried to say it right okay I so I actually said it right and I was just like this is just going to go over this is nobody's going to say s*** cuz I actually nailed it and then

Ash: you know we would never let you get away with everything

Sam: I know thanks Brett anyway he also did Jurassic Park 3

Ash: wow

Sam: so

Sam: digital

Ash: fashionably maybe the worst one but anyway or is it the second one I can't remember which one's worse Steven which one's worse

Bret: there has to be a worse one even if you're a fan by the numbers one of them has to be worse

Ash: I actually think the third one is Win Sam what's his name oh my God play Jurassic Park card is being revoked yes I think the third one of those when Sam Neill comes back

Sam: so either way this guy has some street cred and they trust him with pretty pretty big names stuff so he clearly is expected to deliver on this phone and then we hate for animation director it is a name that I cannot pronounce

Ash: and won't even try

Sam: fretz Park

Bret: yeah it's like picked a Ho-Tep pixote

Sam: it's the it look like the Hispanic X and which like I'm not sure how to pronounce

Bret: package at like a cat sound

Sam: like like in the name so cheap soap it to Sochi Sochi hunt I'm sorry if I'm butchering your name I'm trying

Ash: normally we have Pat for that he spoke name person

Sam: yes he's a resident literature person so this should be interesting guys because this director is known directing some of Disney's worst

Sam: including

Ash: so they got they got them cheap is it a him

Sam: yeah yeah yeah I don't know I did not research that if I had cared enough I would research.

Bret: Sam just saw the list of stinkers and was like

Ash: no worries I like butt

Sam: I was trying to bring my animation facts and honestly I didn't think to look that one up but they directed The Rescuers Down Under Eye arguably I liked it but I haven't seen it in ages

Chelsea: play I like it I like it too

Sam: Fantasia 2000 which I also kind of likes not as good as the first one but some good ones and then also The Black Cauldron

Sam: yes

Chelsea: I love the Black Cauldron I do know I think it is a definitely an underrated Disney movie and I I like it because I'm I'm

Chelsea: I like animation I'm not a big animation buff I've never done animation in my life but I know Disney was definitely struggling in the 80s and The Black Cauldron was just such a different direction for them and it was dark and it was it was it was almost but yeah I love it I know not a lot of people do then again my most favorite Disney movie is Tron so I'm kind of the dishes under a Time the Auntie Disney Disney sad I'm the you know yeah so yeah

Bret: I haven't taken a look at Black Cauldron since I was a kid I mean I have no idea what that would be like now really

Sam: The Black Cauldron

Ash: I literally did not know that this thing existed until right now I'd never I've never heard of this movie

Sam: yeah it is it is dark I do like the direction my grits with the Black Cauldron come from the storytelling

Chelsea: it's a bit it's a bit dicey

Sam: it's a it's a bit Rocky yeah

Chelsea: it's a bit dicey

Sam: but I love the look and I love the like sense of danger and I remember being a kid and like loving the princess that like learns to escape from prison and like that was all really cool but then I re-watched in college and I was like okay but I would love to re-watch a sense yes

Bret: there's a caveat that comes with every College viewing of a movie which is I might have been real far up my own butt

Sam: it's true there is there is that Danger CJC

Ash: so far up you found a cauldron so it

Bret: that's a horrible name for your butt oh my God

Sam: The Black Cauldron

Sam: alright moving on

Bret: I'm not here to make this an adult show

Sam: okay so remember that CG that I mentioned yet so keep an eye out for a dragon made of paint

Bret: sounds cool

Sam: a pink Dragon it sounds cool yeah apparently wasn't insane challenge for all of the filmmakers because you have all of these traditional animators from booths and Disney Blues excuse me trying to work their magic and CG so I'm very curious how it holds up but that

Bret: that kind of sounds like a like on the music world Lena like no like you play the drums while maybe you can try this violin part like I don't know

Ash: yeah

Chelsea: good luck

Ash: I didn't say it sounds like when you get high off of paint fumes and you follow the pain tracking

Sam: oh my God

Sam: that is appropriate for children definitely

Ash: star show appropriate for children I was not aware

Sam: no I'm talkin about the movie if there's a paint dragon and that's what their looting to in a movie for children is definitely

Bret: we only have one episode that we've ever released that wasn't marked explicit and y'all got mad at me about it so never again

Sam: you ruined our track record we were 100 0nappropriate until that point

Ash: until that point Brett Vitas and will never beat again

Sam: not worth the effort

Ash: I mean Disney already had like the dick Castle in and Ariel right so little mermaids so is it only on the cover

Sam: only on the cover of the DVD case it's the actual actual cover in the movie or actual castle

Bret: also had to like they actually had two other scene in The Little Mermaid where was it the priest guy had a boner and they had to like Photoshop it out in the re-release

Sam: sounds about right but I don't know and then

Chelsea: I remember hearing about that

Sam: I mean there's also like the the questionable just seen in Lion King you know

Ash: I call b******* on that I've tried to find that I don't think it's real

Sam: it you have to watch the VHS first version because anything they've released since they've they've digitally altered it out the animator claims it was their initials the effects animators but internet says that it's spelled the word sex

Sam: in the dust of Lion King

Chelsea: right right

Chelsea: didn't didn't tangle have that to one of the promotional posters were Rapunzel had her hair like tied around what's his name and the way her hair was floated like spelled out sex as well you guys remember that

Bret: I didn't know that

Ash: oh wow I didn't know that either

Sam: I don't remember that

Chelsea: yeah one of the promotional pictures like Google it so

Ash: I like to think it's just all these animators that are like f****** with each other and be like let's see if anyone notices this one

Chelsea: I think it's that yeah

Sam: very dangerous territory now like back in the 90s

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Sam: they couldn't predict where we would be with technology they were like what this movie is going to be in theaters for like 6 weeks and then you're going to get a VHS tape like who's going to posit you know like who's going to who's going to be able to grab screengrabs or like just stills from my film like nobody jokes on you animators yep yeah

Chelsea: years later yeah

Sam: yeah there's like in the Frozen series there's a famous cheat among animators where Elsa singing and she has her ponytail and she like whips her ponytail forward and it totally goes through her shoulder

Chelsea: yes I remember seeing that yeah yeah

Sam: the action is beautiful and like it's an emotion shiny like you normally would never see it but would you work with animators there got the train die

Chelsea: it's like us film it's like us filmmakers like I'm constantly constantly seeing continuity errors all the times and films like I just watched the new Bill and Ted face the music and there's a wedding scene and if you kind of look at all the drinks in the food like it just doesn't match up or like certain like background characters aren't there and it's just like I'm constantly seeing those mistakes with us that's typical when you do work in that sort of Industry animation or film it's like of course you're going to have that train die and you're going to see those sort of mistakes

Sam: totally

Ash: I see glitches all the time for sure I like you guys see the babysitter it's like a horror film on Netflix Tucker & Dale vs Evil

Chelsea: ice ice

Ash: it's really funny it's like a campy like slasher film it's super fun actually the second one sucks yeah yeah they're like poking fun at horror movie tropes with stuff like that but like there's totally like there's this one shot super cool the two actors are standing there talking and everyone else around them is moving in slow-mo and their shot on green screen and then like composited back in but there's like a background plate them and then there's a foreground plate cuz people walk in front of them and there's totally like a glitch where somebody like like jumps like five frames ahead at one point and only I noticed it and I had to run to my boyfriend

Ash: the small details that only yeah

Chelsea: those little details

Ash: I feel like it's a director thing Chelsea as like a fellow director like that's what you're looking for all the time is like the little like I'll get stuff back from like an After Effects artist or something I was like in the bottom corner there's a little thing can you get rid of this like weird line thing and he's like I didn't even know that that was there to see this

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Bret: I spent 30 hours rendering this how did I not see it

Ash: I'm so sorry Nick pasok I'm so sorry I do this to you all the time

Chelsea: yeah I drove I drove my post production team crazy without the with those details especially with the with all the graphics and visual effects like I was just like oh that's too far away or that needs to get closer that needs to line up and it's just like you know and yeah you got to be the perfectionist

Ash: pixel peepers

Sam: all right so you guys want to play the the traditional game budget versus gross domestic game or gross worldwide

Ash: okay well I'm I'm going to say right now it sounds like the gross domestic probably wasn't good she said in the beginning

Sam: Army guys say they planned for a big Christmas release

Ash: oh no

Sam: this was a big Christmas release all the families we're going to go to the theater and see this for Christmas okay

Ash: this is my favorite new character

Sam: so how much do you think that at that paint dragon cost

Bret: yeah

Sam: and all them fancy actors

Bret: August 1st

Ash: Hoshi oh you want to guess first Chelsea

Chelsea: I know cuz I'm so masschallenge no seriously I'm very number challenged

Ash: that's okay I'm going to guess where this is 96 1994 60 million

Sam: okay little high I'll give you that tents to the next people

Ash: okay I was going to stay between 40 and 60 I feel like

Chelsea: I would say anywhere from 10 to 20

Sam: it's closer but still that's under threat

Bret: yeah I was going to say this seems like a lot like a 45 and then they made like half of that back

Sam: not 100

Chelsea: wow

Sam: so pretty

Ash: I was expecting higher with all that cast it like live action animation and CG oh that makes sense

Sam: yeah so I guess it's kind of the difference my guess is the cast is maybe not as expensive for an animated film because it's one or two days of recording as opposed to months of shooting

Bret: and also you

Chelsea: right

Bret: you called out a bunch of TV names and TV people were at a time cheaper than moving people

Sam: Patrick Stewart was not a TV name in 1994

Ash: yeah there's yeah whipping

Bret: yeah it was Star Trek

Ash: Whoopi Goldberg

Sam: he was on Star Trek but he was in a lot of films then

Ash: oh no oh no

Sam: but usually an animation to the talent will do a profit deal so they will get portions of box-office yay

Chelsea: no

Sam: so you guys want to

Ash: I don't know they probably regretted that deal

Sam: you guys want me to rip off the fan

Bret: what did I do

Chelsea: blood tiara

Ash: wait I wouldn't guess I wouldn't guess okay so it was 35 million and we're saying gross or 34 gross worldwide I'm going to say 16 million

Sam: surprisingly close

Chelsea: I would say I would say I would say 5 to 10 million

Bret: half so like asset 1718

Ash: oh no

Chelsea: no

Bret: painful

Sam: is Chelsea our guests it made 13.7 million with its big Christmas release yeah so

Ash: oh my gosh

Sam: so apparently it suffered from some word-of-mouth issues of don't go see this I'm guessing

Bret: was it like pagemaster like books the hell my kids going to read books

Sam: you know I'm very curious

Ash: Flash Forward now this is where we are I think I I think I know

Sam: I'm very curious what the the issue is with it if if there is one cuz I mean different films hit at different times you know like we talked about that was Scott Pilgrim like it was way ahead of its time if it didn't do great but it was so good if it is just come out even like two or three years later it would have been smashing so who knows but director Joe Johnson

Bret: legendaries

Sam: was pissed because allegedly they re-edited the entire film without his consent

Chelsea: no

Sam: allegedly and he has since tricking it from his resume and he disassociated himself with this phone

Ash: I mean you can strike it from your resume but IMDb you

Sam: yeah I know it's good

Chelsea: Scooby right there

Sam: is going to follow you so

Ash: I'm sorry I was just so funny I'm just imagining turning in a resume and being like and here's the list of films I guess I guess I don't know

Sam: yeah yeah the person that directed Honey I Shrunk the Kids in Jumanji still has a a resume that's that's hilarious

Ash: yeah I like YT what are you doing

Sam: you know I don't I don't make the facts I just read them

Bret: has the vibe of like I've committed a terrible crime but you know honestly I'm not going to recognize it

Chelsea: we don't talk about it we don't talk about that though

Ash: I mean he didn't commit it he was just Guilty By Association I guess in his point of view

Sam: yeah but honestly the drama that happened with this film before release kind of lens me to believe our director here

Ash: Hasselhoff

Sam: because the producer David Kushner know what are the producers David Kushner was so far up his own booty about it

Ash: can see a Black Cauldron

Chelsea: yes

Ash: b**** please

Bret: browser

Sam: The Black Cauldron yeah she attempted to claim sole authorship of the screenplay and original story with no credit to its original screenwriter David Castillo

Ash: a real gem he sounds like

Sam: give me yeah yeah he sounds great so this drama was so big that they had to get the freaking wga The Writers Guild involved

Chelsea: wow

Sam: and they had to like before the release because you have to release wga approved credits with your film they were in intense litigation and arbitration meetings and they were the producer was trying to argue because so much of the film was animated that the wga did not have jurisdiction over the credits of the spill

Bret: cuz people don't write animated movies

Ash: I thought the other doesn't make any sense

Chelsea: wait what really

Sam: soapstone notoriously animation has not been part of guilt it's it's a more Reese a more recent thing so since like the Oscars kind of broke out animation into its own category that's about the time that they started to really give it the respect in the film industry that has nowadays at this time no animation was kind of like it something it's not really so much for the children so this guy totally tried to steal that credit and it went down as the most expensive and extensive investigation undertaken by the wga

Sam: on behalf of its members ever

Chelsea: right there

Bret: can you imagine if they had just like Google Docs and you could just see the revision history today like

Sam: I know and the thing is is it's like it wasn't even like developed in-house you know it was an original idea outside that they developed for this movie it was called something in the library I looked it up real

Ash: I was just Googling this guy and William Devine him and he's also the producer on Cats Don't Dance

Chelsea: oh

Ash: and Titan a e he's well he's the executive producer of Titan 80 but

Chelsea: oh yeah yeah

Sam: yeah that doesn't count

Bret: he's like the producer of like the the blower be tear animated films I guess

Chelsea: yeah the the underrated films

Sam: yeah I mean arguably custodians still has a very high reputation but for Turner pictures they were

Bret: can handle those clips going around a month or two ago and he looks fantastic still

Sam: yeah I would love to watch it again

Ash: I love that movie

Chelsea: it's a great film

Ash: it's so good I still sing the songs all the time to myself

Sam: so little bit of spoiler cats or dance was not a financial success for Turner pictures so with the combination of the unsuccessful box office numbers for Cats Don't Dance and pagemaster they no longer continue their animation to fish in so you missed out on all that beauty

Ash: also the other guy that was the writer has not done anything since page bastard it's so sad

Chelsea: no no

Ash: there's like something just now announced but there's no date on it and it's like who knows but literally his his IMDb stops at 1994

Chelsea: oh yikes

Sam: but yeah but you know

Ash: the poor guy or girl we don't know whoever was

Sam: and in the end they they won their case so they got credit for it but yep

Bret: I wonder if they would have fought so hard if they knew how well the movie would do

Ash: I know right if you were like actually take my name off of it

Chelsea: yeah I'm good I'm good yeah I'm that's definitely like the

Chelsea: like the beat the worst thing that can happen to an artist is you have one project that sales are financially flops and you just cannot recover from it like that is definitely a huge nightmare you know I I sometimes think about that myself like sure I have something successful now but will my next project be successful you know I'm definitely a filmmaker that takes risks as you can see from Epic Quest and I definitely like to think outside the box and do something different and either that can be a success or I could just blow up in your face

Sam: is that delicate balance right because as a director you are a creative but you're also kind of managing your production so you've got to like find that creative headspace where you're not hindered by the fear of failure and it's a really tough line to walk

Ash: yeah totally

Chelsea: it is it definitely is when I first was with stitching up a quest so just let you guys know Epic Quest was my was my thesis film it was my fourth year Film School thesis film The version you you have seen and is online right now is version 2 so we we got it re-edited but when I pitched it at the time at school I got nothing but negative feedback from absolutely everyone they're just like what you mean you want to do something based on video games this is you know your business should be about film you know nobody wants to see a low-budget fantasy pie let you know how are you going to make graphics I'll explain so it's it's typical so a lot of like Canadian in Indy Productions is kitchen sink dramas we're pretty much it's like two people in a kitchen talking or fighting over something and it's just it's everywhere it's happening all the time and it is so boring and you know why I had you know my other classmates just something completely different and like I really found in film school that you know Court of course you study the greats like follow their path be another you know Nolan be another you know Spike Lee be another whatever and you know when you decide to do something completely different

Ash: yeah especially at Film School

Chelsea: you can't you can't

Bret: yeah totally and I feel like there's a lot of you know a lot of that criticism that goes around where people don't provide helpful criticism they just say you can't or like this is bad but it's but it's never like it's never like the stuff that you need where it's like this doesn't work because they just say that's not going to work and they don't know what they're talking about usually like they can't tell you why it's not going to work it's just if you know if it doesn't it's not their cup of tea or whatever but like if you can't give actual useful criticism it's not really criticism

Chelsea: I know I know yeah yeah same with mine

Ash: yeah and I don't know if you're filled School experiences like this Chelsea but mine was I went to a year-round homeschool so every two months we were making a 10 minute short film and then everyone sits down in class and watches it in like talk about burning you out super fast cuz every two months you're hustling but then the criticism usually was just a chance for the class to like rip each other to shreds and it was never like it was like okay let's point out what's wrong but it was never like what how could they have made it better how could they have improved this thing at least in my experience is it was a lot of just like well this is wrong this is wrong instead of doing like cases podcast or friend case does a podcast called another past or he's like well let's talk about how to improve it you don't like that conversation weirdly didn't happen that often in my film school it was more about what's wrong

Sam: weird I had like this very like beautiful little safe Bubble at least with the students at my college of like we're all mistreated artist and everyone's been so mean to us since like everyone's super helpful like well your I like this about your story it'd be really cool you know it's like this building exploded or like if hear the 2 arch nemesis become friends are like so yeah Tunis TCM on paper really cool

Chelsea: nice

Ash: yeah I could see that

Bret: that was weird cuz it wasn't just like a student Vibe one of my favorites College stories was one of our past guest Mike wilensky he is one of the most talented illustrator draw crazy but I remember I was in the intro figure drawing class with him and everyone's trying to render out these drawings as I gain of the first semester and the guy that was teaching the class was actually the the MFA like head of the master's program and he comes over to my and look at this sheet of just scribbles that everything you're doing here is wrong

Ash: that's awesome

Chelsea: that's right

Bret: don't stop it's so good and he's like you never know what you're another scolding in anything you're doing and even if it's wrong there's probably something right in there that you could work on yeah

Sam: suck it haters

Chelsea: yep for sure yeah I definitely got to a point during pre-production of Epic Quest rubs just so tired of hearing like you can't do it you can't do it you can't pull that off you don't have time you don't have enough money you don't have that but you know I just I just kept going and thank God we got it done and thank goodness we got it re-edited the second time because now Epic Quest to this day has won eight Awards and six of those Awards sit on my shelf right there so anyone yeah so anyone listening don't listen to the haters

Sam: I love it that's what

Chelsea: just keep going yeah pretty pretty much like like like like I like the quote the the title from the Talking Heads documentary just stop making sense and just do you just do your art because we need something new when fresh everyday

Sam: that's what I tell all my art students to I'm like you know what thank you can work Forever on one perfect little drawing but the artist next to you that draws a hundred Giants is going to be a way better artist by the end so just keep drawing don't stop don't worry about being perfect in the more you do it the better you're going to become so don't worry don't worry about making something bad just keep creating and you'll naturally get better

Chelsea: there you go

Sam: but that's not what happened with this studio guys

Chelsea: no

Ash: oh man

Sam: they tried to make this perfect and then ended so with that caveat I'm sure we all think it's going to be great I'm I'm sure right I set your expectations so high

Ash: oh man

Sam: I can only live up

Ash: yeah definitely oh no

Sam: ask you want to go for it

Ash: okay so the truth of the matter is I did look this up when Chelsea recommended it just to make sure that we could watch it that it was on stream

Sam: did you cheater cheater pumpkin eater and watch the trailer

Ash: listen Sam no no no I didn't watch the trailer but you need to Google no wait

Sam: you watch the whole movie

Chelsea: I know it's like

Ash: when you Google a movie nowadays the f****** rating just Cub it's just their you know like I can't avoid it I'm just like that's it and so I saw the rating for this film and I was like I remember liking this but this doesn't bode well

Bret: like with a craft only have like 50

Ash: brat it's worse than 50

Bret: no I saw it too but

Ash: okay

Sam: oh I am managed to do my research while avoiding the rating I like Saul Rotten Tomatoes come up and was like nope nope nope I'm not looking

Ash: good job I will I won't say anything except that the Black Cauldron has a better rating than this one

Sam: OSHA.

Sam: oh my God

Ash: so temper those expectations

Sam: also also did anything Disney gets the Disney Rotten Tomatoes bump in rating so

Bret: I feel like what website do you trust nowadays it's like you can't trust Rotten Tomatoes you can't trust

Ash: I feel like IMDb is pretty fair

Bret: is it cuz like either things have no rating or like somebody's paid for it like I don't

Ash: that's true

Bret: like the Metacritic is that still around

Ash: because there's a huge difference between the IMDB rating and the Rotten Tomatoes rating for this one in particular and so I'm hoping that the Run tomatoes one is from I don't know but I will say okay I'll back up I'll say I remember watching this as a kid and like Brett I think I only ever saw it on TV so I don't I don't think I've ever seen it like in a theater or anything or even like owned the DVD or I mean sorry VHS because I think I would just see it like streaming on Disney or streaming God words mean things playing on the Disney Channel and I remember liking it I've liked Macaulay Culkin Home Alone enjoying it but I don't remember much I just remember I think the opening scene of him in the library that is so I just remember the live-action part of that same I remember nothing else about the animation or anything feel like when you mentioned the paint dragon that I have like a vague memory of that I might know I might remember that but anyway I don't remember much

Chelsea: it's just all there

Ash: and I went on the slight crazy roller coaster when I Googled it because I was like oh really bad rating but it also like you just can't avoid it it's like here's the people in the film and so I was like how could this be so bad with like a such a star-studded lined up cast so I really don't know what to expect I'm hoping that it's not like I'm hoping that it's not to like little kitty dumb down

Chelsea: I know

Sam: sorry

Ash: but I'm also excited about this cast in like hearing them and how they're in there but I don't know I don't I'm really I'm concerned and honestly you didn't make me feel any better about it safe I thought you were going to be like this is going to be great and I was going to be like awesome but you're like this movie had problems

Sam: at least on the production end

Ash: speaking from personal experience we all know how that ends up well I'm sure

Sam: yeah there's this there's this like well-known fact and animation of like the more the executives or the money holders want to be involved with the project like the more it's going to fail and this project had a lot of money fingers in it so I'm like

Chelsea: right yeah

Bret: Mommy finger sounds like a James Bond movie

Chelsea: I was about to say is he is he is he in

Ash: Mommy finger

Sam: Chelsea what are you think I set the bar beautifully high you're going to gush over I'm sure

Chelsea: oh wow I unlike you horrible people I didn't Google or spoil everything you'll the only thing I saw was cuz cuz I had so you know obviously look up cuz I was pagemaster book master but anyways I only saw the poster and that's about it I don't even look at the rating but I I was quite Young when I saw this on VHS I just remember loving the mix of live-action and animation because I was such a huge Rodger rabbit fan in terms of liking the story I don't remember as I said I was quite young I was definitely at that point like you know at that age were just anything when entertain me so again I hope it's not really like kitty S I really hope it's not trying to be so funny that it misses the point or it's trying to be like so cool and select that it just turns out bad I mean I I I would imagine it would be kind of like kind of like that the stories kind of man but the fact that it mixed live action animation and CGI together I'm guessing well-drained like 94 so maybe it'll be visually appealing for something else for something that is from 94 please note I mean I think it's going to be entertaining I think it's going to be fun to watch

Sam: yes

Ash: Pat were here he would say net-positive you think it'll have a net positive experience

Chelsea: exactly exactly

Bret: mutineer Mike

Ash: we should get patinete like if we ever do a live show and met with like little pluses on it

Ash: this isn't the presidential debate

Chelsea: oh boy

Bret: that's going to be a three-year-old reference by the time this episode comes out kisses

Ash: what what do you mean a three-year-old reference cuz that's how it'll feel

Bret: is 1 month is 3 years in quarantine

Ash: yes okay alright

Chelsea: yeah

Sam: all right

Ash: Chelsea is Canadian she doesn't need to hear about our country strong

Chelsea: Yeah we actually so the province of British Columbia we just had our own election for for the premier so the person who runs our province that runs with it federally with Justin Trudeau so it's kind of weird kind of calling it like the double election season cuz we've had to deal with our own election for the province and then of course hearing all about you guys because you know our film industry we work with a lot of Americans also a lot of Americans live here so it's just you know and it's almost like

Ash: ours are the noisy b****** downstairs

Chelsea: and ours is very civil

Ash: probably

Bret: the whole world is watching a train wreck with us except the whole world is also on the tree

Chelsea: yeah yeah right yeah I mean you know it's good to know we are next door neighbor's you know we work together quite closely and yeah I yeah I so far though I've seen that many Americans have voted early or have voted by mail so I'm very proud of you guys kind of same here on our end because of covid-19 we were given the option to vote by mail and vote early so I'm very proud of both of us

Ash: yeah we did it we voted

Chelsea: yeah yeah ye yeah

Sam: are our beautiful state of Oregon is entirely vote-by-mail which is super awesome in Progressive we were like that pre pandemic to so

Chelsea: good for you right likes about time but

Sam: all right Brett sucks so we can jump into this glorious phone

Bret: I think it's going to look real good on the parts that are supposed to look real good but

Bret: the the opening scene that you remember this is what I remember about the pagemaster is I watched this a bunch of times cuz my grandparents had it on VHS I don't know anyway I think the opening scene you're talking about Start 45 minutes into the movie

Ash: what

Bret: this is my gas I think I'm pretty sure that this movie might be

Ash: it's like mostly live action

Bret: hella boring until

Ash: oh no

Chelsea: oh no

Chelsea: oh s***

Bret: yeah and then and then cuz what I remember is I think I've only ever watched the the non animated part to this movie once and then whenever my pet grandparents or like like pagemaster and we started like fast forward and so I can imagine the in the theater if if there was anything remotely boring for the children that it would have been just horrible

Ash: oh no

Chelsea: no no no I'm sorry guys I do like slow burning film so maybe I didn't mind I don't know

Ash: maybe adult brat

Bret: but that doesn't necessarily mean that it might be a movie that is for grown-ups

Ash: that's what I'm not sure about I'm curious

Ash: oh no

Sam: I was going to say something kind of similar to Brett's but more ambiguous and that I remember being really bored by one-half of this film but I couldn't remember if it was the live-action half or the animated has and I would only watched to certain point or like ignore to serve and then watch a little bit but I remember only liking what at my childhood brain at the time could recognize as a small portion of the film

Ash: can you remember that as a child see I must have blanked out I just completely blanked out the rest the film was like it starts here

Bret: notably I do remember I think like the library scene stuff that happens looks real cool and I feel like that's like

Ash: yes I remember it looking very cool

Bret: the reason to watch the movie is like what happens in that scene but got there has to be a reason why that's the only the other thing I remember about it

Sam: yeah so I mean we'll see we'll see what holds up right

Bret: yep yep so I guess we're going to pause a recording and go and watch pagemaster and I will be back in a minute with our thoughts whatever you imagine

Bret: come true

Bret: that's a song

Ash: we wanted to be Fantasia

Chelsea: we couldn't

Sam: oh my God so bad

Bret: they wanted to be a lot of different the soundtrack was all over the place

Chelsea: it was just mismatched just

Ash: oh yes

Ash: there's like a Star Wars moment to

Bret: or it was like depending on what scene it was this was like you know how when you want to have an exact sound but then like oh can't do that cuz copyright so like you find a thing that's like the bootleg version of that like after this movie it was like bootleg Beauty and the Beast and then bootleg Aladdin they were like you could just hear the producers like like more like Aladdin you know like a family like do that then we can just put the Aladdin soundtrack anywhere

Sam: yeah oh yeah it was it was a little I don't know every word that I think of is too harsh as like a little sad or like disappointed

Ash: you were wrong

Chelsea: yeah

Bret: okay well open open it up with I was wrong it was it only took 15 minutes for the animation to happen so the reason

Ash: inciting incident landing on page 15 as it always does

Ash: if you don't believe me stop every movie at 15 to 17 minutes and it will be the inciting incident

Bret: well it didn't quite work out on this one cuz I feel like

Ash: what's an inciting

Bret: there wasn't ever an inciting incident except like the book The Adventure but kept causing problems

Ash: but was the inciting incident actually not that this kid went into a magical book land but that he fell down and had a mini coma because what

Bret: yeah the inciting incident is negligence on behalf of the library cuz I noticed when he first walked in the library so I can 3rd floor is so muddy oh my God and then 10 seconds later the kids on his back in a coma yes

Sam: oh my God I know

Ash: literally 10 seconds later I will say though while you are right while you were wrong about it being 45 minutes into the film it takes 43 minutes into the film before this kid actually does anything because for the whole rest of the film he's just passive and everything is just happening to him but he's not actively trying to reach any goal and so it's like not till he holds a sword against the pirate guy Long John but even then he doesn't really do much you know

Bret: intelli hold the sword against senior from from

Ash: PNP or not feeding Pete Goofy

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Sam: it's funny it's funny that you said that cuz yeah it's funny that you said that ass because Brett literally like right around that Mark of the Pirates you know he was like Jesus did they really fight over the writing credit for this like it's not even written the stories just like propelling itself

Bret: when it was like you know yeah either he was just floating from seeing the scene until all the way up until that point you're totally right is like suckers just happened

Ash: until that point and even then he didn't do much he didn't even find the library card when he lost it the book found it for him

Sam: oh my God like two seconds later it wasn't even like a plot point that you could follow like

Ash: yeah it could have been a we need to find this library card now there's like steaks that I need to find this thing but no

Ash: yeah definitely

Chelsea: no no it was it was really Miss Matched like I did the reports of the film I was really was actually enjoying and then other parts where I'm like oh my God like the part where the Pirates and everyone goes to Treasure Island that was so bad the dialogues of jokes and it was it was it was it was inconsistent the main character was really passive I did like the three books I did love fantasy adventure and horror I love how very different they were active they were how they all complemented each other but at the same time yeah yeah

Ash: it feels very Christmas Carol Wright like Christmas carols like ghost of future present past you know

Chelsea: cast yeah yeah yeah

Bret: so they have those the three parts of the book strong Choice opening with horror

Sam: yeah

Ash: right cuz it's scary for kids

Bret: yeah I thought the even I was wrong about the boringness being the reason why children didn't like this movie I'm positive it was the horror that would that must have been a theater full of screaming toddlers

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Sam: Christmas time

Ash: oh no I didn't even think of that

Chelsea: Christmas time

Ash: are all hopped up a hot chocolate

Sam: Owosso Brett sound out another reason why this movie flopped so Brett tell tell them what was also in theaters at Christmas time that year

Bret: this was up against The Santa Clause

Chelsea: of course of course

Ash: yeah who's going to see this ever The Santa Clause no sorry

Chelsea: yeah yeah yeah

Bret: terrifier children with Vape crazy like demon dog or the the skeletons where the ghost

Ash: The Hound of Baskerville which is not it's it's one of the nacho three-story is one of the Sherlock Holmes short stories it is not big enough to fill a tone that size it's like a short story that they made it to a whole book for this

Bret: the characterization they had for dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde was truly terrifying

Sam: oh my gosh

Chelsea: that was scary yeah

Sam: and the lighting they put on it was like

Ash: the lady was cool

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Sam: it was cool but man not kid appropriate

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Ash: so funny I wasn't thinking that

Chelsea: and I'm the part with mobydicks that the water turned red and it just looks like blood but that would terrify kids like

Sam: also like straight-up ripped off from Pinocchio

Chelsea: that's right

Ash: oh yeah totally

Sam: totally ripped off from Pinocchio

Bret: even the end the fantasy segment where he pulls The Sword and the shield off of the night face caves in

Ash: dissolves just crumbles

Sam: I know he has no top of his skull

Bret: could God Bluth what were you thinking

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Ash: are they are they the same people who did the thief and the cobbler they're not are they okay

Chelsea: no

Sam: no no these are the cobbler is Richard Williams and that was kind of like his life's work so he did that

Ash: he only did that film

Chelsea: 25 years 25 years

Sam: I mean not his life works but yeah like he worked on it for an insane portion of his life

Chelsea: yeah yeah yeah

Sam: he was famous before he worked on that

Chelsea: has anyone on your channel review Dusty and the cobbler yet

Bret: that we haven't done that one yet

Sam: no it's been on our list

Ash: we haven't done that one yet we have talked about it I can't remember what episode we talked about it in another animation one where we are just like

Bret: I have real strong opinions about like which version to watch

Chelsea: I know right yeah yeah yeah

Bret: I think if I recall correctly a she really liked the narration but the first one

Ash: what's the only version I've ever seen I didn't know that there was another one

Bret: the first one I saw was the one without the narration and then I went into this is so weird with the talking over it like

Ash: totally it's like it's like Blade Runner where it's like a completely different movie with the narration

Chelsea: that's right that's right yeah for sure getting back to this movie yeah just look at my notes here so the CGI

Sam: yeah

Ash: yeah I agree

Chelsea: definitely chunky 94 CGI I don't I don't think I found it necessary they should have had those CGI moments just as animation and I thought this was going to be more Rodger rabbit where you have the live-action and then you got the animated characters interacting the only time we see the live action and animation come together is when Richard's character goes back into his body and that's pretty much it and then with the Treehouse they have the Shadows so maybe it was like just

Ash: which they got lazy with like at they're just doing the same movements over and over again like a video game character

Sam: arguably it looks the best that seed had the best color and the best lighting out of the rest of the film in my opinion

Sam: I mean it was a cycle sure but

Bret: 100

Ash: yeah I totally agree Chelsea I think I was like why why did you do this just because you could but you didn't think should I us Jurassic Park always points out

Bret: holy yeah because like the paint saying this is the paint dripping from the ceiling and electronic into those weird Globs like they eat at the in the moment I was like this would have looked a lot better if they would have just done it all too.

Ash: yeah totally

Chelsea: yeah yeah and then the Two Worlds could like just you know intertwine a lot better sort of thing

Bret: and all that talk about the paint Dragon we're just like yeah I could see how that would have been a challenge they animate in 94 but like

Chelsea: Oggi's

Sam: I'm indeed the thing is is the animation itself of the Dragon looked pretty good but the rendering and the texturing in the lighting of the CG was nowhere near acceptable by any means it it looked plastic

Chelsea: yeah yeah it was it was definitely cringeworthy it was like sort of

Ash: oh yeah it's like paper yeah

Chelsea: I do that there are a couple of moments are really liked I liked when fantasy ripped a page out of her and you know it was Arabian nights and then it you know with her wand she was able to turn that into a carpet I found that really cool and then you guys probably noticed but the pagemaster himself like his beard or Scrolls yeah all curled and then his robe the back of his robe is is a book spine

Ash: oh I didn't notice that

Bret: yeah yeah I noticed that yeah that was a fun character

Chelsea: I don't know if you guys caught that yeah so his and then like his is Wanda's is a scroll so I really love the page Masters design I think you know they'd like. That was very well designed and Christopher Lloyd of course yeah yeah and I was kind of hoping he would be more present in the film rather than just being there at the beginning

Ash: hear his creepy voice from time to time which I can only assume in real life he's kneeling next to Macaulay Culkin and just whispering in his ear cuz there was no motivation for that whatsoever

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Sam: I mean it that would have story-wise that would have made way more sense if he was like a part of the story because then it would be Macaulay Culkin's character kind of passed out asleep on the floor and then he would be kind of energy acting trying to wake him up and take care of him

Ash: right

Sam: as he's like coming in and out of Consciousness like that tracks better for the story as opposed to just like

Bret: then we would have gotten like a weird Arrested Development jokey like it's instead of relevant interjections that Christopher Lloyd voice would have just been like

Chelsea: yeah yeah yeah that's funny also

Chelsea: why was Richard's lips like you know the live-action he was painted red and animated it was painted red I was like I was like

Sam: I said that too

Ash: yeah he look like he was wearing lipstick

Chelsea: he was wearing lipstick

Sam: it was it was a very slushy color I meant to say something wildly inappropriate but

Sam: not just like the color of a vagina on his lips like it was a lip color what is dying

Ash: if you could see my face right now so happy

Sam: rats dying he's going to cut that out

Ash: it is so true though it is the color of a vagina

Bret: it's just been coming up a lot because last night we were we were drawing on

Ash: okay I'm glad you finished that was drawing keep going

Bret: we had our quarantine friends over and we were drawing on Halloween take take away bag so we can actually give out candy to kids or just like prefilling some bags and this kid kept drawing vaginas on the bags and he's like

Chelsea: oh

Sam: he was drawing like for the for the lists in the defense of a child he was drawing like the eye of Sauron you know that likes that triangular I

Bret: but vertically

Sam: you just admitted the globe around it

Bret: a minute was it Whitney Way it was not die of sorrow and it's just been a lot of that

Ash: both of those are very sophisticated choices for that young man

Sam: he's an excellent artist yes

Ash: Keys nail that you inform

Sam: we did convince him to Adam monster we did convince him to Adam monster mouth to the bottom of his eyeballs so that helps

Bret: it didn't really help

Sam: it's quite good

Chelsea: oh no

Ash: so it's like that movie Teeth Now

Ash: sarri Chelsea

Chelsea: oh my God I love it I love it

Ash: a lot of the times yeah right right

Ash: I am dead inside and outside so

Sam: anyway but yes the color color choices were odd yes and they picked consistently like an ash gray color for his skin ashy sorry asses in like a burnt charred like or dead like a dead color like his flesh no

Bret: will they instead of like developing a night palette it kind of looks like they just made everything less saturated in a little gross

Ash: yes

Sam: yeah but yes yes

Chelsea: that's right

Ash: yes and there were times where like like when he's standing on the Rock the Ariel Rock for lack of a better term the one by the ocean it's like totally the scene from Ariel with the water that splashes up and like the rock is lit like it is hard afternoon lighting like the Sun is setting it is hard lighting but he was lit like there was no light on him whatsoever and it was so confusing the way it was lit

Sam: I'm like a color perspective there was no color language of the film there's no cohesive color palette that unified the story or even unified each individual segments it was just random and like nothing mesh together

Bret: that's real consistent with the blue universe

Ash: the blue converse

Chelsea: universe

Bret: the verse I feel like like the the the thing that's what I recognize whenever it's like 8 if either oh this is Rhoda must be blue or oh this looks muddy as heck must be blue

Ash: what health survey done

Sam: also heated secret of nym land before time he also did Thumbelina which arguably probably has the best color

Ash: yeah yeah I do see your point but that like they're not like super saturated colors they're like very muddied colors

Ash: right

Chelsea: yes

Sam: at least like his past films felt like they had a color palette like they weren't bright but they were at least coming from the same color family this was like like the Photoshop wheel of every color and they're just like picking from random

Sam: I like it didn't work and it was not interesting and like I'd argue that Treasure Island may be worked the best but

Ash: who's the most vibrant I feel like

Chelsea: it was the most colorful us yeah yeah

Ash: hahaha this is true

Bret: I feel like the the the CD seen in the library but yeah yeah it's like it's like it is what like the basic color wheel thing where it's like you don't you're not using the right Digital Color Wheel so when you when you lower the brightness you also are lowering the saturation

Ash: desaturation

Sam: yeah but this is this is done on ink and paint they did stay Hadsell painter so they're not coloring digitally which is kind of odd because at the time Digital Color was a thing so the last Incan painted film from Disney was The Little Mermaid so everything after they are able to color digitally

Bret: it wouldn't surprise me if they designed the color palettes digitally like because they were working out OCT artist

Sam: I don't think so I really don't think so

Ash: once you know the CG artist only did one scene

Bret: write like

Ash: I think you're a moron

Sam: dice I really I see what you mean but I I think you're drawing a comparison to what you know but I don't think that's no I just don't think there's nothing to help

Bret: I'm actually I'm just trying to give like the humans credit and like maybe it was a machine error and like computers were bad and like no human would have done that on purpose

Ash: Brett technically machine errors or human are we made the machine

Chelsea: that's true that's right

Sam: this is true it is true

Chelsea: do you think maybe I know again I don't come from the animation world I don't know very much about animation but I know Austin when a movie or series is made they usually have like two different animation how is this and then maybe one did was one type of pallet and one did another type of pollen and they kind of squash it together so it didn't match exactly you think it like I know they were all under the same umbrella same company but do you think they may be outsourced a couple of scenes to you no third-party companies or would it like when when I explained about this I think about like Jem and the Holograms like you can tell by some of the episodes like what episode is animated better than the other because they had to do that do you think that was a case

Sam: not at this time in animation history all almost all animation was still done in the US and there was no like Outsourcing Ethan animated TV like early Nickelodeon was still animated a lot of times in country so I doubt I doubt that I think it was probably all done it loose but what I didn't see was an animation like colorist like a color specialist so that's like a big Pixar thing that they have where they will tonal color map the entire film and so they will it's super cool to look at and they'll take like one scene one frame from one scene and line up the whole movie visually but in tiny little thumbnails so that you can see the colors going between and then you can map the major color of each scene and make it cohesive and it's just

Bret: Maps look incredible 2 it's like wow

Ash: yeah I want to see that

Chelsea: those are cool I love looking at those

Sam: I'll grab you one off of my shelf real fast but they they clearly did not do that in this movie at all like clearly even for a seeing they did do that

Bret: yeah it's almost like they had their like all right color your own scenes

Sam: yes yeah that's exactly what it feels like it's I don't think there was a color palette you know clearly the main character had one you know like that weird lip color when he was like ashy gray like that was weirdly consistent I'd like nothing else was so

Chelsea: yep yep

Ash: do you think like because you mentioned earlier how clearly the producer and the director like had conflicting opinions considering that to me I wonder if it was like you know them fighting over color palettes to you know I'm possibly like disagreeing about colors and things

Bret: I mean maybe but it looks so very much in the booth wheelhouse

Sam: yeah

Bret: who's won the fight if that's what happened

Sam: I'm guessing I'm guessing know I'm guessing that the director director like directed The live-action directed The Story Probably looked at the storyboards but didn't have that kind of hand in the minut decisions

Ash: because I did notice I don't know if you guys noticed but that producer

Chelsea: oh yeah

Bret: I did see that

Ash: who tried to steal story credit also taught build himself first and said a film produced by and then and then the director isn't even credited until almost like five or six movies or five or six minutes into the film and then even then he's only credited as director of live-action

Chelsea: oh yeah

Bret: like they were making two different movies

Ash: exactly

Chelsea: that could have been that yeah

Sam: yeah there was I don't know I think they just thought it was going to be this like magical transformative film that like inspired kids to read again you know like just a very like pretentious way of looking at youth like the youth are so lame now they don't understand like anything like if we just made if we just made this film that inspired them to read

Bret: I want to make a movie that looks at all those participation trophies scared to skin and need to see little kids and and show them that there's a World of Magic if you only read and stop being an illiterate piece of crap like oh that's cool

Chelsea: oh yeah that is really neat that is cool

Bret: Sam is holding up the the color board

Sam: holding up the color script for up its stand several pages and but you can just see even from glancing that it's got a very similar color palette even though it bounces between Cool Blues and cool kind of Pinkie colors they're all in the same family as far as like saturation and color

Sam: and it just helps create a cohesive look

Chelsea: for sure just going off of what you said about the this movie inspiring kids to read more if they thought back in 94 kids were Hooligans for not reading

Chelsea: they could not imagine what is happening now with social media and everyone having smartphones I mean

Sam: I mean you literally can read whenever you want to and people do like that's your main form of entertainment it's not like a classic novel but literally most people communicate exclusively through text which is reading and writing it is so funny to like see how wrong they were you know and I even like I talked to my Grandma she's like kids don't read nowadays and I'm like actually grandma people read more nowadays like well no like you read like libraries are actually more used today than they were several years ago like Grandma people read a lot now

Bret: I follow a lot of younger people on on Twitter am how much like smarter and well-read than me they are is frightening

Sam: maybe it's cuz we all grew up with the pagemaster

Bret: yeah if I can I can pay it

Chelsea: that's where everything went wrong

Chelsea: oh God that's where everything went wrong

Bret: I'm an idiot because of this movie

Chelsea: yeah I blame you yeah

Ash: well I feel like that was like one of the things that kind of bored me about the movie where I was like okay if you're going to make a movie about reading in about making reading exciting why did you go for like the lowest hanging boring fruit to pick from

Sam: I have an answer

Ash: they're in the public domain sepia Sur

Ash: yeah

Sam: yep that's the answer that's the that's the answer

Chelsea: is Publix public domain ding ding ding ding ding

Sam: I mean honestly there is better s*** that was in the public domain like they didn't also there's like a way better way to tell those stories that are in the public domain

Ash: yeah or like just tell like we have seen that f****** Treasure Island seen so many times can we please I've read I didn't finish the book but I've read the majority of the book and there's a lot more to the book than just that seem like there's other good stuff could we get that stuff

Sam: I know I know we're not another past but can we take a hot second to another past this movie because I feel like it legitimately had potential as a story like is a good idea

Ash: it's a good idea it's not a bad idea yeah you go into them

Chelsea: yeah

Sam: can you imagine if they had made the books kind of like Westworld where you could jump across different lands and they're just like he's in the world of books and these are like Westworld land and you pop into them and you can like interact with the story and like sticks choose-your-own-adventure style through this story and like you could follow the character that isn't the main character in the book you could you know in Gulliver's Travels you could like Goldberg could be there and then you could be like one of the little guys like there was a way better way to do this and they did it in the most mundane straightforward way possible predictable down to the dialogue

Ash: predictable predictable and boring and I totally agree they even like mention at one point that like the different genre categories you know like that there's different genre categories in the library like you don't even have to go into the books it could be him wandering through these different genres and then looking vastly different and you know having different styles and and interacting the kind of almost did it looks like the hounds of Baskerville you know came out of the book but like it would have been fun if it was more stuff like that or like I kept expecting them cuz they set up the whole state with by the way how was opening the saying and having the giant squid come out helpful

Chelsea: because it yeah right no

Ash: anyway it wasn't but still like but like I kept expecting them to be like okay they're going to use the books against the bad guy which maybe that's the problem there is no bad guy in this movie

Chelsea: you're right Dylan no

Ash: there's no like actual like antagonist yeah

Sam: I mean Jesus

Bret: I mean he's the yeah the kids the antagonist

Ash: I know but that sucks

Bret: I feel like

Sam: successfully LRG

Bret: so I want to hit you with the thing I think the the movie that you and Sam were describing that the much better story it exists I know it exists like literally in the words you described it as but it's not books it's video games and it's Wreck-It Ralph

Ash: oh wow I thought you were going to say escape from the museum

Chelsea: Night at the Museum

Sam: I thought you were going to say

Ash: you're right yeah

Bret: known nine Museum now No Wreck-it Ralph is exactly the the good version of this story it's they jump across the different video game worlds to have all the fun video game characters

Ash: yeah that's true

Chelsea: cuz they can't afford them they can afford Sonic they can remember that

Ash: but also like that you know that the main character that he's not passive you know like he has goals and he's trying to achieve them and I think that that's like one of the biggest flaws of this movie is that the main character is so boring and doesn't do anything

Sam: is one-note he's got zero Dimension scared

Ash: what is wrong with people

Bret: Christopher Lloyd's just like if I hadn't put your life in danger you would have just been safe like okay thanks

Chelsea: hahaha

Bret: absolutely

Chelsea: oh man yeah I I just kept like what got me through the movie was just it was just the three novels of Adventure horror and fantasy especially fantasy especially being voiced by Whoopi Goldberg I was just like as soon as she came on I was like yeah yes yeah yes yeah

Sam: yeah I liked her clear shoes that you could just like see her feet through that made me laugh

Chelsea: I love that

Ash: I kept thinking that must have been in an animator's like just nightmare of having to do these shoes how do I cut out again

Bret: Auto lights outlining the foot every time

Chelsea: again and again and again yeah yeah yeah

Ash: yeah right like every single time they were like I could have just drawn a f****** shoe but now I have to do her foot and a shoe thanks thanks

Sam: yeah but okay so on that though

Chelsea: oh yeah

Sam: give it to Bluetooth does run a good animation team in terms of technical animation the effects or animated very well lighting was all animated very well the characters heads are solid they turn you don't see even a lot of the Disney stuff at this time had like kind of the goodenough effect of like if you watch Bell her eyes like a like back and forth

Bret: in a lot of the Disney stuff was there not like was the focus of the scene if they're like one person back from the foreground like everyone looks goofy as hell

Sam: yeah yeah but I mean everything was like meticulously animated probably cuz a lot of it was rotoscoped

Chelsea: I love rotoscoping anyways continue I'll tell you why

Ash: oh they have to we've talked about it so many times but do it anyway and there's new lessers yeah

Sam: in case our listeners don't know what rotoscoping is halfway okay well I'll cover it rope I'll do the TLC are basically Don Bluth was known for shooting live action of it and then tracing over the live-action to copy the movement Disney would shoot reference but typically they would only rotoscope their own past animation or they would rotoscope like Snow White and then redo it so Don Bluth we kind of take a lot of the live-action directly as is witch from the Nick the animator's perspective creates a little bit of a stiff movement you know that the Disney way was too kind of over exaggerated movement and squash and stretch and he's animation principles yes

Chelsea: yeah for sure yeah yeah the I love her to scoping just because it just looks real it looks realistic it flows well it's the proportions are right like I love the scene where the I just called him the Danzig light fairies

Sam: yeah but that was a brat. That was an excellent effect so that was rotoscoping but they added a really great Artistic Touch over the top of it so I argue that was X like beautifully executed and they really they took a shortcut that they probably needed to do for budget but did it in a fun artistic way in like so that it plus the look and feel the film I thought that was incredible.

Bret: that's the danger of the rotoscope because it can look incredible or I like it can be like oh I like I wish this had more animation I'm gesturing wildly on camera for the listener

Bret: yeah I like those those that scene was really great some of the stuff that

Ash: except for the fact that it's like out of f****** nowhere all the sudden it's like

Bret: yeah but will the song the song

Ash: I'm not saying it's not beautiful but it's like what is even happening right now

Sam: but yeah it did go 100

Bret: what kind of underwear that fit in with the original I have a hard time believing that unless they cut out like whole scenes I can't see this movie being dramatically better based on the edit

Sam: I agree because here's the thing animation is f****** expensive and you very rarely have animated sequences that this time that don't make it in because it's just expensive Phil get cut much earlier on you know you might rough animate something and then cut it in be like oh crap that doesn't work like but you're right ass like I think no

Ash: you don't you don't have extra footage to re-edit a seem like you would like live-action you know but I don't think think those scenes would be dramatically different

Sam: I think that was the director's cover-your-ass move of like all this film didn't hit like it's not my fault

Chelsea: run it was only other thing yeah yeah yeah it's not like you could do like pick up shots or you know or just like like like film especially digital film I never had the chance to learn on like film film I've always learned digital and nonlinear editing so I'm just I I take that freedom as if all of this much as I want tons and tons of scenes takes

Chelsea: yeah this is this film is is is a mess it's a mess they they tried and they failed I just disappointed that I I remember Ryan do I silence film a long time ago but I remember the live-action and the animation being together like Rodger rabbit I thought there was more of that I I don't know I guess

Bret: kid brain

Ash: I feel like the the cut will also the the poster art is him live-action and then the rest of the animation so I could see that replacing you know the memories in your brain is like oh this must be what it's about you know for sure

Bret: on a slightly more positive note I feel like even though some of the writing was real bad the voice acting in this movie was surprisingly good for the content that we that it had Macaulay Culkin especially I was just like I actually believed like 900f what's coming out of this little kids mouth is it you know like his all of his motivations like mashed-up is a business that he's doing a good job at like we're as freaking like I love him but Patrick Stewart a little bit overacting

Chelsea: yeah

Ash: which one was he

Bret: he was The Pirate Bay

Chelsea: he went way way too over-the-top which which is a shame

Sam: I would I would argue that's totally it could totally be fine and within the realm of acceptable for the content

Bret: if they wrote him at more animated stuff to do like it would have been great but it was like to it was too grounded to be as fun as that character was

Sam: Orly directions

Ash: yep yep you know

Chelsea: that could be a doctor and then

Sam: there were jokes

Ash: yeah the jokes were like really over-the-top and cheesy sometimes too

Chelsea: they were oh my God

Ash: I mean they were they weren't funny but there were there

Chelsea: yep they were someone like me who loves camp and does comedy and you know Hamming it up and all that it just it it's such a delicate art because especially if if you're doing Camp you know it especially or something like like kids content you just you just want those jokes the land and I think the the writer really kind of had to dumb things down for the kids and really like I don't know it's really hard to say because maybe as a kid I really found those jokes really funny maybe I did and now is in a tall I don't but I mean you just just just because it's like you know you're not clever thank you

Ash: yeah they were super trophy

Bret: totally like the jokes were not clever they were it was like almost like a trophy and wrote like the 100 the dragon did fire so that means he has to come back and be like smoking because that's never been done before or like the angry one throws a tantrum who would have thought like it's not funny

Ash: or like the angry ones hugging the other one cuz he actually cares about him but then everyone notice so he's going to look awkward now like

Chelsea: yeah

Bret: it's not unexpected and like a lot of the comedy comedy is you know nothing in an unexpected way it that's that's why most that's that's funny none of this was unexpected

Chelsea: you could see it coming

Ash: yeah or comedy points out like a truce and makes fun of it and none of those were really true like pointing out a truth or anything either yeah that's just it was the whole movie like just like that was just like Trophy and predictable unfortunately which just wasn't great I'm sorry

Bret: I feel like you said on the show before about comedy like the stuff that goes out of style overtime at like the

Ash: yeah I was going to bring that up to I think this humour was envogue and is not anymore

Bret: well yeah for especially like in the 90s like really cartoon stuff because I kind of had I recognized I mean it would be impossible to figure out who specifically but like there's a couple of scenes were like I recognize the actual like animator of this scene I've seen their style like in Rocko's Modern Life and stuff like to some of the movement to like that is so familiar I think about that you had once talked about like the the throwing throwing up I like what I gag and how like that was once funny and like an actual joke and this whole movie feels like a pie gag

Sam: absolutely

Bret: but like also might it might even be like the Trap of these public domain stories to like

Bret: they offered nothing new anymore and like the tropes from them have been adapted to Modern storytelling in honestly in better ways than were originally told at this point like that was where a lot of the stuff started and now it's evolved and we have other expectations and so when they just give us like the the literal text of Moby Dick to watch on screen like yeah

Chelsea: Moby Dick is a good is a good you know story I was excited when that was coming up in like yes finally Moby Dick it's going to get better and then I was like so

Bret: there's a white whale there like oh this is Moby-Dick and like that was all we got

Sam: yeah well it's so so we are we are watching this from a modern perspective of where animation is now and due in large part to more modern animation companies really not talking down to their audiences and giving them a really well-rounded heartfelt thought-out story that as a consequence please while to adult and children has really growing the audience and made them more sophisticated so we are looking at a film at that time that was not low budget but lower budget and just quickly put together without that sophistication so they really were just kind of doing the bare minimum of what was expected of an animated film at the time which was like keep a kid in the same spot for an hour and a half you know maybe make them laugh like it wasn't trying

Bret: failed miserably ask because if the kids sat through half-an-hour that movie they were terrified and running out of the theater

Sam: yeah absolutely but no I don't think so

Chelsea: I don't think I did either

Ash: I don't think I ever have seen this whole movie to be honest with you once I watch this I was like I must have lost interest and change the channels a kid

Sam: because it's not trying to tell any crater sort of moral or a story to the child literally that its morale is be brave like but in a very nondescript way like there's no consequence there's no willfulness of the character

Bret: condescending

Ash: is really no steaks like

Sam: yeah there's no steaks I mean yeah I have the the up book here inarguably kind of a similar theme like this old man doesn't want to go out and doesn't want to do Adventures because he's scared of being hurt again

Ash: oh my God I'm going to cry if you just talk about it

Sam: what the crap like kids love the movie up and they relate to an old man character like that is great story telling you know and it's not talking down to its audience they have a whole opening segment in that movie about about loss I know it about like lost and like

Ash: like adults

Sam: a kids watch it and get it because they are treating them like they're smart enough to

Bret: it's a little bit rehashing the thing we were talking about earlier but like talking down and like looking down on the audience because they assumed that the audience would connect with but this cowardly do nothing like bumbling fool of a kid that and that I could do that what they thought of children like this is a movie that's going to teach kids to stop being afraid and be brave like like get your head out of your ass guys

Ash: I kept thinking how this kid seems to be far more intelligent than everyone else like he clearly knows all this stuff but everyone's talking to him like he's dumb and he shouldn't like something's wrong with him and it's like it doesn't seem like anything's wrong with him like he just seems to be really well-informed also horrifying fact it's not 700f accidents are caused by household situations it's 75 Buck man

Ash: right

Sam: that's funny I mean even I choked like he stumbles into the library for the first time I like now kid you f****** live there if you know all those facts and a Time free internet you view live at the library

Ash: yeah where else is he getting all this information it doesn't make any sense

Sam: purple

Chelsea: yeah the internet was not what it is the internet was just born back in 94 or not boring but was just was it was was new in 94 so it's not like he was getting it from the internet's or the thing but yeah totally

Bret: but if you really want to highlight a failure of the American educational system it's that we don't teach statistics because Boeing that 750f accidents happen at home doesn't mean anything who's home whose home is the 750f danger is everywhere and you know why because 750f the time you're a f****** home like you're going to get hurt with the same odds anywhere you are stop it

Sam: also you think he would take it the other way and be like I'm outside of my home virus risk percentage 30 0own

Ash: yeah my risk is diminished

Bret: Seaford outside of my house

Sam: you should be like Bobby tablet to get out of her house

Ash: yeah it didn't make any sense and then I think you know the other large problem with his character is like they do nothing to make you like him like there's no save the cat or pet the cat moment with this kid instead it's just all like this kid doesn't want to do anything and his parents think he sucks

Sam: yeah what shitty parents

Ash: there's nothing to make me like him or care about him or anyting him peace nothing

Bret: no and I can't even give like a good theory for the end of this movie like I had a thought like maybe this was like The NeverEnding Story oh I don't like it I don't like it

Ash: Christopher Lloyd kidnaps children keep make them slipped so that they go into a coma and then he whispers creepy things into their ears she Strokes their head

Sam: no no

Bret: I know like I was like

Ash: he was right there when he woke up I'm just saying

Bret: from the first moment of the animated things like oh died like is this

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Bret: is this that a butt

Ash: I was like halfway through the field when I was like this kid totes is in a coma right what's going on

Sam: okay here's a much better I'm going to I'm going to another pass it again how much how

Bret: get another pass

Chelsea: roasted

Ash: Jason's going to cases go to trademark your ass roses

Sam: it's promotion it's in podcast promotion

Bret: we are wholesale stealing your stick it's ours now

Ash: oh yeah yeah we Never Ending Story it

Sam: no I'm not I'm not but how much better would it have been if he was a kid that already had an established relationship with the library had an established relationship with the librarian he's in the library reading about his boring statistics and the Librarians trying to get him to like read fantasy and read other things and he falls asleep and then like falls into these fantasy Realms kind of kind of not so much that but that would make so much more sense you know and then

Ash: what if he falls asleep and gets locked in the library right

Sam: node in the middle of the storm and then he jumps out a window

Ash: in the middle of the storm he can't get out and then you know all he thinks he just woke up but he still dreaming but you know

Sam: yeah we had the bullies in this one too so

Bret: holy is his dad

Chelsea: yeah

Sam: the bullies when he's like riding his bike and they're bullying him

Ash: oh Bo

Chelsea: who do nothing they just said that they see you know that they say a couple of insults and then that's it I thought they were going to chase after him on on hitting his bike or I thought they were going to pressure him to do that stun and maybe he would do that stun and then he fails and then they like make more fun of him yeah yeah chicken bookbag yeah and he just Rides Away

Bret: they were just like chiding him just like you look very is and then like he rides away and I bet they all felt real bad about it afterwards like

Sam: you're right like they were there but they didn't progress the story or progressed the character development in any way it was

Ash: they were just to make us feel sorry for him but because I had no emotional attached to him attachment I didn't care it didn't matter I was like whatever

Sam: not totally and you just like okay and I like a weird way it felt like they were kind of like promoting being a bully to kids you know cuz it was like just presenting like another way that you could be a kid you could be the scary piece of s*** kid or you could be the one that makes fun of that kid which one would you want to be like

Bret: I will for sure be the bully in that scenario

Sam: totally

Bret: absolutely

Ash: say what the father like forcing his male like masculinity onto this child like being like he doesn't want to be in the tree house or play the sports balls I don't understand him at all

Bret: you scared of everything so I put his playroom in a tree

Ash: but you're just being a dick no yeah

Chelsea: your shity ass

Sam: so even though she's like you won't even touch the treehouse in the mobs know he's scared of heights and then he's like am I a bad dad and she's like knows you're a great dad like no your city dead you do know your kid is scared of heights oh you build him a treehouse like f*** you are you kidding me

Ash: it's your own like wish fulfillment like you wished you had this as a kid or something and so you're forcing it on your own butt

Sam: like listen to your kid I did too totally did

Ash: and I do wish I had a treehouse though pretty cool

Chelsea: I do too yeah I actually growing up I hadn't neighbor kid he had a tree house and it was it was dope it was so cool and many as we all know

Chelsea: don't you know just want to say

Bret: I'm feeling stereotyped here

Ash: why is it always the boys that get the f****** treehouses and movies I wanted a goddamn Tree House 2

Chelsea: yeah same here oh no

Sam: I wanted you so bad but we lived on a slope so I had no backyard

Chelsea: yeah we just don't have a big tree

Ash: my boyfriend and I were talking about it and he's like saying how he wanted one as well and he's like you know what I'm glad my parents didn't make me one though cuz they sure as s*** don't know anything about construction and that would not have been space

Bret: yeah his dad was building that treehouse with really long finishing nails that wasn't going to support

Sam: I like why aren't you using like screws that are like weatherproof for the outside that won't like Russ like

Ash: is he doesn't know what he's doing

Sam: he doesn't and then he let his kids sleep up there in front of the open side with like no protections like rolling out of a 10-foot tall drop from a tree like you are shity dad's cheese

Bret: that was an obvious like his wife was like let's bring him inside inside

Bret: why don't you let him sleep out here

Ash: I've been trying to get rid of this f****** that's what's really happening the dad's trying to kill you

Sam: yeah yeah

Chelsea: there you go oh man

Ash: right you should like cut a whole new trailer for The

Ash: the horror film version

Sam: oh my God yes honestly would make such a better horror film like this poor kid is scared of everything and then he like turned out to be right because his own dad is trying to kill him

Ash: videos watching last night

Chelsea: always follows right

Ash: are some similar themes

Chelsea: all right

Sam: well do we want to do final thoughts or do we have more

Bret: God

Ash: no I want to keep talking about this for like five more hours I did want to say one thing though

Chelsea: roasted

Sam: yes yes

Ash: this kid would survive

Sam: is this correct

Sam: but his dad would be an anti masker so that might not save him

Ash: oh my God

Chelsea: yes yeah yeah

Ash: you have you take some risks sometimes Marty

Bret: herd immunity Karen like

Bret: closer to where ash lives

Ash: yeah unfortunately

Chelsea: oh Jesus I don't mean to go off topic here folks but do you have like where you guys lived you guys have like Auntie Masters like parading around every weekend like the downtown core sort of thing cuz that's been a huge yeah this has been a huge problem here yeah

Sam: it's almost

Ash: I live in California which I thought was a fairly liberal state but we also have places like Bakersfield and there's a lot of people I'm finding that lives in the state that don't believe in facts or science and a lot of them live in my neighborhood

Sam: it's it's almost like they've been emboldened by like a really uneducated very powerful public figure who will just say whatever is on their mind without speaking about or researching

Bret: what you know it comes to a point where

Chelsea: natural selection

Bret: you you have the real information and you try to make laws that say wear masks and be safe and like you do you try to set up the system so that they can they can be safe and you know you don't want to wish anyone ever gets hurt but like at a certain point you just have to like let them die like they're like if they all want to hang out and cough on each other and you've like we put in legitimate efforts to stop them from doing that and they still want to do it it's just like f****** guys we tried

Sam: here's the thing is they're not going to just kill each other they're going to kill the poor server that needs to like waitress to survive

Bret: and that's the rub in it

Chelsea: love it

Ash: yeah I will say quick quick plug for Johnnie Taylor who we've had on the show before but he has a new podcast called hipster autocracy and he had a very good episode 2 with David Cyrus who's the writer of king of Staten Island he's like my co-writer or whatever but anyway they taught he talks breaks down how people can be emboldened by that in a very interesting way and how people are threatened people who aren't necessarily super-intelligent are threatened by people who are intelligent and us having this non intelligent President telling them this not intelligent thing is just like in Bowling them to be like see those scientists don't know what they're talking about and it's really horrified but anyway

Chelsea: yeah yeah sorry didn't mean to go off topic

Sam: okay Auto positive spin then we can move back out of the office the opposite thing can happen so like when gay marriage was tasked in the United States a lot of people were against it

Ash: what episode is all over the place

Sam: yeah a lot of people were against it but then like so by one side of my family is very conservative like country bumpkins lives in the middle of nowhere in California and one of my cousins came out as gay on they're all accepting of it where is that that has not been the case they would have been like that so

Sam: I can work both ways positive hope final thoughts on the pagemaster guy

Chelsea: let's do it

Ash: you know what it's not as much of a disaster as 20/20 so I will give it back it is a still a disaster but not as much of a disaster

Chelsea: yeah yeah

Ash: I ate it I guess I'll keep going with my it I will say this film was not great I feel like though the expectations I had after the beginning I kind of maybe I set such a low bar that I was like okay it's not as bad as I thought it would be like like you were saying fam like the animation itself is pretty good even though the color choices are weird so visually like it was interesting to look at but story-wise it it just really suffered and and just fell on all these tropes unfortunately and chose this bad you know that you want your main character to be different and grow but I think making them completely passive his is I mean I'm not even just my opinion view open pretty much any screenwriting book they will say don't make your main character passive that's like pretty much so it was but it felt like it wasn't like it needed to be Rewritten several more times before he got there

Bret: probably ask

Chelsea: for sure yeah my final thoughts is it's it's it's an okay still it's it's a film that it's it's it's fun like it's it's good visually the animations well done you know that's her thing but the Astorian the tone is very mismatched and I really didn't like how the humour was and the story what was definitely looking and talking down to its audience and I understand why they had to you know pick you know a public domain stories but they could have just done such a better job in public domain stories and characters in Alice in Wonderland the actual live action and the animation interacting with each other just like Rodger rabbit and do that and the film was just ripping off everyone and more Disney

Bret: I feel like I usually have a slightly more nuanced review either good or bad but I feel like just as long as we're stealing things from the network going to screen snarks three word review this one and say this movie sucked

Ash: I like how you did it like someone cut three different words together to just like the color palette of the film

Ash: oh yeah it is

Bret: I didn't like it is also three words I think I don't think I've ever liked solidified my opinion and I have some friends who will be like I don't think I like anything Bluth I think I'm I'm think I'm done with it and there's I'm not going to be I'm not going to say

Ash: you're not going to Bluetooth yourself anytime soon

Bret: exactly I'm not going to say you're bad for liking it cuz I know some people are like really into some of that stuff I just I don't hold any reference for it I think it's just like

Ash: it's like your aesthetic of of the 80s or 90s or whatever where they were like to put trash everywhere this is your animation equivalent

Bret: totally if they animation trash aesthetic and I don't dig it I think it's just bad and that's all I forgot for this it was it was the writing was bad color was bad it just wasn't fun and like that's honestly like all an animated film needs to be if anything is just fun and they couldn't capture that for more than a couple of seconds at a time and that's just a bummer

Sam: I agree it is locked like a cohesion it lacked a sense of like cohesive Direction and the biggest grievances just the Mist potential you know it is hard to watch this and enjoy it for what it is because you watch it and you think about what it could have been which is really a bummer you know it's not it doesn't even fall into that like so it's not great but it's still fun you know that net positive that Pat always talks about it wasn't as much of a slow-burn as some other things that we've watched but it's also like 40 minutes shorter than a lot of other films so

Sam: there is not a lot that happens there aren't even like fun Side characters that kind of can carry a lackluster plot through the books try to do that but for half of the movie two of the books or dead you know or dead you know

Ash: and they're very OneNote to like you were saying about the main character

Sam: yeah yeah we didn't really touch on this but it kind of goes without saying like the representation of women and minorities is really Dreadful in this you know that there's two minorities and they're the bad pirates like wow

Ash: yeah

Bret: Sam said that as soon as they showed up on screen she's like oh you can tell they're bad because they're the minecart that

Sam: yeah there a tone-deaf I not very aware

Ash: plus the lake the pirate book kissing Whoopi Goldberg book character

Chelsea: send

Sam: yep he gets that she doesn't like it at least she fights back but then he tries to kiss her again at the end like no dude you were already told no stop it also like cool way to make you know there's literally only three female characters in the entirety of the movie the entirety the mom

Ash: yeah the mom has nothing to work with nothing

Sam: mom has nothing to work with that there's a bully on the bike who's a girl and then there's whoopie okay

Ash: which is a little original thanks women to be bullies do I guess good job

Bret: unnamed mom unnamed girl on bike and fantasy

Sam: ya and fantasy

Ash: oh no

Chelsea: yeah

Sam: oh and uncomfortable point of view their thank you but

Ash: but true

Sam: true I mean like even in the Gulliver's Travel scene that's a freaking crowd scene not a single one of them was a girl 20 little

Ash: which which one was which seed was that sorry I've never go right right right okay I've never seen or read Gulliver's Travels so didn't know

Sam: basically this little tiny Fairy like people known people that wreak havoc

Bret: total sausage fest

Ash: I was thinking it was like the Evil Dead 3 scene remember they do that to him an Evil Dead 3

Sam: oh a little bit like that little bit for sure so yeah like I mean that's kind of to be expected but honestly like not very Progressive for even 1994 you know I expected better I guess that's that's my review that's my three words review

Ash: and if this podcast is taught you anything your expectations will constantly be dashed

Chelsea: me too

Sam: it's true it's true I would say it's not really worth re-watching help maybe some of his other stuff is like I would like to go back and re-watch secret of nym it's dark it's creepy

Ash: I really like Fantasia personally

Sam: Fantasia Disney but yeah

Ash: so it came up as one of his films

Sam: Fantasia 2000 was this director's film but not dumb blue

Ash: oh really it's came up as done Bluestone when I Googled his movies

Bret: I wonder what he did

Sam: it's not it's made by Disney feature

Ash: producers Don Bluth

Sam: so. Okay oh yes so you're. Techno Fantasia 2000 I want Fantasia so Don Bluth

Ash: no no I didn't say Fantasia I said anesthesia

Bret: oh I totally heard Fantasia

Sam: you cut out it yes anesthesia was Don Bluth I heard Fantasia and I was like Don Bluth definitely did work for Disney at some point though so it isn't impossible for you to see his name attached to some Disney projects but

Bret: one day he was just like I'm sick of all of this appeal and color I'm going to start my own movie studio where things are muddy and boring

Sam: you know it did it did have an appeal for a little bit arguably he was not afraid to tell kind of a grittier story and that did work in his favor for several movies which we have not re-watch so I feel like I need to rewash them to find out if that is actually true or not

Bret: can you get me to walk back my my new stance

Sam: play I don't know. I think you'll still have issues with them but there was a brief point in time during the Disney Dark Ages so that like late 80 or mid to late 80s time. After Disney had passed that it looked like Walt Disney Animation was going to go under and Don Bluth was the prevailing animation house he was getting all the good reviews who's making the better movies so times just they flipped is very interesting and sadly this is probably in dog BlueStar cages this movie

Chelsea: no is is Don Bluth in his is Don Bluth animation company still around or was this the movie that just axed it

Sam: no their last movie I believe was Anastasia

Ash: 1997

Chelsea: oh oh you're right you're right

Ash: well they're also listed for Titan AE which is confusing

Chelsea: okay okay

Sam: yes was that CG

Ash: okay so that was their last one right I'm pretty sure Titan a e put them out of business it is

Bret: it was a blast

Sam: a blunt

Chelsea: I've been a boss yeah yeah

Ash: yeah yeah both because my old boss actually worked on that movie

Ash: yeah she was an animator

Sam: yeah there was a bit

Ash: I don't remember liking Titan AE personally sorry Fiona

Bret: the concept of Titan a e was really cool and like a lot of the art was really cool I think

Chelsea: I love the art

Ash: I like this movie

Bret: the characters didn't have a lot of appeal and yeah kind of and I think that's where I fell flat was like even the story was really cool I think they just didn't have interesting people in the story

Ash: I'm going to throw this down and I could be wrong but I do feel like Anastasia's a good movie I feel like that one

Chelsea: it's fantastic

Sam: yeah I liked it but I haven't seen it in probably decades so I think we need to throw that one on the list for sure

Ash: yeah that would be an interesting one I do feel like that one holds up much better than the other ones

Sam: much more cohesive color palette from my memory

Chelsea: yes all that gold

Ash: I mean even just looking like I'm looking at stills from the movie and they're just much more High policing overall

Chelsea: they're beautiful that the golden the purple that they use beautiful yeah

Bret: okay well sounds like we've got a pretty conclusive wrap up on pagemaster thank you very much for joining us Chelsea would you like to tell the audience where they can find you on the internet

Chelsea: oh yes of course so my production company is called water flowers Studios and we're on all the social medias at waterflower Studios or Facebook Twitter Instagram we have our Discord server also Epic Quest is on the fantasy Network and it is free to stream so just

Ash: I watched it today by the way

Chelsea: wonderful

Ash: yeah cuz I didn't get to watch off watch like the first couple minutes before Gen Con panel together but I didn't fight I didn't get to watch the whole thing and I was going to tell you that I love if you didn't already know from getting of our podcasts about video games and I love how Chelsea mixes different fighting styles from video games in the piece as a joke and it's really great I love that

Bret: that's rad I'm downloading the fantasy Network app right now

Chelsea: yes so the audience out there you can either watch Epic Quest on the passing that works website or they have a free app that you can download from from the Apple App Store or Android store and and then Epic Quest is also has its own Facebook page they can definitely follow us there and as of right now water flowers studios.com is being built so that will be up soon for everyone to enjoy and we also are putting together a Epic Quest fanclub wherever it where anyone can sign up for free and you'll get of course of monthly newsletter of what is happening everything Epic Quest and of course we we are slated to film the very first season of Epic Quest in summer of 2021 so we will death really need everyone's support and we will soon be running a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to shoot the very first season which is going to consist of six episodes which will then be available to watch also on the fantasy Network so please watch the pilot

Ash: yeah very cool nice

Bret: very cool yeah this is rad Epic Quest first page first item on the 3-Series on the on the app so it's like you guys are top of the list right now that's rad

Ash: I'm one of them

Chelsea: that's right we are and I checked to this about an hour ago but we have as of right now 995 use and we've only and we've only been there you go and we've only been on the fantasy Network since September 4th so

Ash: wow awesome

Chelsea: people are discovering it was the fantasy Network thank you for having us on page one of your free section

Bret: fancy Network actor seems really cool that just a little page that they give you when you first download the app it's like you know fan supported content you can you can sign up to be a paid member and get like their premium stuff or you can watch the free stuff and like that's that's in school

Ash: yeah it was very cool they had all of our films up there and you could be Sasquatch all the mean it's kind of convenient right compared to a normal some screening where you have to watch all the films at the screen times and said with this you could watch them at your own convenience which was kind of cool obviously it's still fun to have real screenings but you know

Ash: it was it was a great solution

Chelsea: yeah and I've been to a few film festivals where it's just so small it's what it's literally just the creators and you know there's not a very large outside audience that gets to see your material but for being online anyone can see it anyone can see your film so it's it's

Bret: well thanks again that sounds awesome and I know we're going to check out your short probably right after this

Chelsea: oh thank you

Ash: and actually speaking of shorts as you guys probably know listeners cuz we have mentioned a few times but Pat and I made a short film in quarantine and if you haven't already heard an ad for it because I don't know if we're going to record it in time but if you haven't the short film is coming out November 20th and we're super excited it's finally coming out it's coming together and it is going to premiere on my YouTube channel last Josh TV so make sure you go over there and subscribe so you don't miss it and it look for it November 20th I'm not sure of the time yet but I know the day

Chelsea: perfect I can't wait it sounds cool I'm really digging these quarantine films so

Ash: yeah it was super fun I mean it was like

Bret: that's the day that's comes out by the way

Chelsea: oh wonderful right

Ash: how cool will perfect head on over right now go watch the film or click the notification Bell for when the premier will start so you don't miss it but yeah perfect it was a fun idea that like Pat just sort of like texted me one day and then we started spitballing ideas and next thing we know he liked it developed into this whole short film and it's like it was like a 16-page script so it was a lot to shoot you know all in one day on a shot it on Discord but you don't see Discord at all but but yeah it was it was a lot of fun all the actors had to light and shoot themselves which was a tremendous technical fee for a lot of them a lot of experience with shooting video some of them weren't everyone was experience with recording audio thank gods that wasn't a challenge but yeah it's it's and all of the things of being in your house in quarantine get in the way like children and couples arguing and technical difficulties so it's kind of like a slice of life right now through the lens of nerds

Chelsea: nice nice That's cool

Bret: I'm about to say it

Chelsea: cast

Chelsea: nice nice

Ash: but while you're on the internet's subscribing to last Ash TV so you don't miss it also follow us you can follow the arpad podcast podcast you follow our podcast on Twitter and we do fun things like movie poles where you guys get to pick the movie or if our guest picks the movie I tweet photos of it so that are still frames that you guys can guess it in this time I'm very excited guys because we have a new Contender John congratulations John you are the first person who guessed it good job followed by real movie critic also got its second so good job guys we had some new people in there before Matt storm could snipe it matter case or Mitch with some new people contending

Bret: match ya got a new a new John

Sam: if you like our podcast please give us a 5-star review on Apple podcasts in Google podcast we appreciate your very positive glowing loving feedback

Sam: and we are so proud and so excited to be part of certain POV Network we are one of many fabulous podcast including reignite scruffy Nerf herders Men of Steel screen snarked don't Whip and dreams many other fabulous podcast you should check them out

Bret: will be stealing all of your bits

Ash: we will

Sam: yeah we'll just keep we'll just like morphine to this amazing Transformer of a podcast will take a little bit from everyone and become the super podcast

Ash: guys we have a new Apple podcast review

Sam: we do read it read it read it thank you person

Ash: yeah we do just from two days ago I'm not sure if I'm getting your name wrong it's either Three L's or an eye in 2 L's

Bret: who's someone's doing the thing

Chelsea: yay

Ash: Hispano listen I don't know but thank you they say great listen I really enjoy listening to this podcast the host really do have a good time free watching and talking about certain movies they're hilarious yet informative highly recommended and I also suggest to listen in the beginning actually re-watch the movie and listen to the end you won't regret it keep up the good work you did it thank you so much

Sam: oh my gosh I am so excited this fills my heart with so much joy thank you reviewer

Sam: oh my gosh

Ash: nobody ever does that thank you for doing that

Chelsea: oh that's awesome

Sam: but we love you we don't know who you are but we love you thank you

Bret: join us and El Hispano next time we watched another adaptation of a public domain classic Don Peyote

Sam: what what

Bret EaglestonNovember 20, 2020Comment

Lets Rewatch

The Pagemaster with Chelsea Goodman