Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Review

Hi there. Lifelong Turtle fan here. It took me a while but I finally got around to seeing the newest film based on the morphed adolescent terrapins, directed by Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs the Machines) and Kyle Spears (storyboard artist for The Mitchells vs the Machines), and written and produced by Seth Rogan. It's an animated movie, the second ever after 2007's TMNT.

I have thoughts about it, so let's talk.

Perceptions Changed After Rewatching MCU

In the lead up to Civil War, I took up the task of rewatching everything that's happened so far in this crazy awesome universe. Supercut trailers made by fans that show scenes throughout the series as they pertain to Captain America 3 are really cool, and really illuminate the meticulous planning behind the camera to put this whole symphony together. But that wasn't enough -- I had to watch every movie over again.

Many of the MCU films I've already seen multiple times. As someone that doesn't get out to the theaters as often as I'd like, and certainly not to bear the expense on movies I've seen before, for me at least it's a big deal to say The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier were watched more than once on the big screen. The pair are the best comic book films ever made (so far), and each one cannot be seen too many times. They are truly the pinnacle of what we can do in the genre right now.

Reassessing the Prequels

It's funny, because in the world of films, just saying "the Prequels" will probably tell you all you need to know about what a person's talking about. And it immediately conjures up feelings about them, ones that are most often deeply seeded over a very long gestation period, more than ten years now since the release of the third film in the trilogy. Every opinion has been rendered, and I'm not about to open new ground by rendering my own, but I thought now was a good time to voice them in a cavernous void where few if any eyes will ever see them.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens will bring about the End Of The World -- And it's all that little droid's fault

By now, if you give five shits about Star Wars (and I'd hope so if you're reading this) then you've already seen the latest teaser trailer for Episode VII. If not, what the fuck? There's more epic and awesome in that little trailer than an evening on the lake with Zack Snyder and Michael Bay dueling in samurai gear on C4-powered jet skis. And it's not causing a stir because it's full of action and amazing-looking set pieces. It's making fans old and new foam in the pants because it's a new Star Wars, and it doesn't look like goofy melodramatic shit.

Disney's Golden Age: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

And now for something entirely different! As much as technology and gaming consume a vast breadth of my attention, I have other interests as well. One of them is animation, and starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I'm going to talk about Disney films of the golden era, spanning a ten-part series ending with Sleeping Beauty. This was inspired by a fellow blogger who calls his page "The Norman Nerd", in which he recounts Disney films during their renaissance period in the 90s. I thought that was a fun idea so I figured I'd give it a try, only this time covering their nascent years and early rise to pop culture stardom.

There's some caveats, though, as I'm going to be skipping much of their musical works such as Saludos Amigos, with the exception of Fantasia. This is equal parts because I'm less familiar with those films, and also because they don't fit the typical Disney cannon.

I love Blu-Ray

That really says it all. I'm really not historically a big spender when it comes to media, typically adopting new standards late in the game, but with Blu-Ray (apparently officially abbreviated "BD", even though I hate that) I find I'm suddenly drawn to rabid consumerism with a level of ferocity not wholly apparent with any other medium in the past. Since buying a BD-ROM drive for my computer and thus correspondingly acquiring my first BD movie player, I've been hitting the format hard, getting every film available for it I most desire. Since I got the drive in late-April, I've purchased about 17 movies (I say "about" because The Ultimate Matrix Collection has The Animatrix and feature-length Matrix Revisted which could practically count as movies on their own), which may not sound like much since I'm quickly approaching the two-month-mark but given my lowly income and the fact that I felt the need during that intervening time to upgrade my monitor almost solely to accommodate the demanding BD image quality, I find it to be an astounding pace for someone like me.