Web Sensations!!!

I Just wanted to take some time to visit some of the strangest animated shorts I've ever seen on the net. Some of them scary, some of them fantastical, some of them just plain f***ed. So enjoy another some of these internet sensations:

SALAD FINGERS

I first came across this David Firth creation at Jengajam, which hosted a link to Newgrounds. The Salad Fingers flash animation series has eight episodes, the first of which appeared in July of 2004. In 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle had placed the series in it's top ten list of pop culture phenomenas.

Eerie music surrounding a character who seems to reject reality and substitutes it with one of his own, this is one show that will either make you laugh, or make you scared of what the youth of today are being exposed to. It surrounds a slightly sadomasochistic young lad with scrawny 'salad' fingers who is very friendly, but apparently socially defected. Despite his quirkiness, and the difficulty we have relating to him, the audience feels very sympathetic to his plight. And it's very twisted.

Watch all eight episodes here

HAPPY TREE FRIENDS

I've always thought of this is 'Carebears from Hell.' It disguises itself as a cute children's show, until everybody dies. And the death scenes are often times extremely graphic for a cartoon.

The best part is the characters. When you watch the show enough, you'll learn all of their personality traits. Some of them are:

• Mime Deer, who doesn't talk
• Flakey, a porcupine who is afraid of his own shadow
• Lumpy, a moose who is just not too bright
• Flippy, a Post-Traumatic war vet who goes Rambo on the other characters when triggered.
• Petunia, who is an Obsessive-Compulsive neat freak.
• And Many More!!!

Every character has their own distinct personality traits, and this show does a great job of portraying it with very little dialogue (everyone talks in mumbles). The "Charlie Brown" speech does not hurt the show, but actually helps, as the audience knows exactly what's going on anyways, and makes the death sequences even funnier.*

Mondo Mini Shows publishes Happy Tree Friends here

*I am not implying that death is actually a funny subject. I am only saying that this animation uses death as comedic device, and thanks to the talented writers, does so quite well. Not all audiences will find Happy Tree Friends funny. Only for those who like 'shock humour.'

MAAKIES

Tony Millionaire started MAAKIES as an alternative comic strip back in 1994. In 2002 - I think - he was asked to create four animations for Saturday Night Live. Not one of them aired. He then distributed these animations independantly. I can't find an official site that hosts the animations, but you can still visit his website for the comic strip at http://www.maakies.com/. The animations can still be found on youtube as well.

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There is a lot to be said about the internet. And it's good for more than just porn. Come on, and give it a chance. You may be surprised at what you find.

Unnecessary Sequals

I was reviewing my movie catalogue when I realised that a lot of movies I owned really should never have existed. Faced with utter dissapointment at every turn, the entire problem, I learned was that I only owned them because they were part of a series. Some of these movies just plain sucked, and some of them would have actually been really cool as a stand alone movie, not part pf the series. Here's my list of unnecessary sequals to what were really awesome movies (or if not awesome, at least popular) movies.

Cube²: Hypercube

I actually kind of enjoyed this movie, as a bit of a guilty pleasure. It wasn't very scary though. Rather, it was an interesting sci-fi conspiracy piece that really, the series could have done without. In this movie, eight strangers wake up in a giant box, in which the rules of space-time are completely ignored. This is explained as being a four-dimensional cube. So when they exit one room and enter another, they are actually entering the same room, in a parallel time frame. Plus, everyone has a link to a company called IZON, which really has very little significance towards the series. The third movie CUBE ZERO, is a prequal which returns to form, and the series can be enjoyed and make perfect sense watching the original CUBE and CUBE ZERO alone.

Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy's Revenge

Okay, this wasn't a bad movie, and the scene where Freddy rips through young Jesse Walsh to enter this world is pretty cool, but it is a total break from "Nightmare" canon. I mean, we get the boiler room, and all that stuff from here, but the events during the movie are pretty much ignored during the rest of the series. While all the other movies have some form of continuity, this one is pretty much on it's own, except for the fact that Freddy Krueger is in it. While this movie does reference the first movie, the third movie (and it's sequals) do a much better job of going back to the original storyline.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

I shouldn't have to explain this one... No Laurie Strode, no Dr. Loomis, and most importantly: no Micheal Meyers. Just another evil corporation trying to exploit children, kind of like McDonalds. But this movie really should not have even been called "Halloween."

Jurassic Park III or Lost World: Jurassic Park

One of these movies was totally unnecessary, but I'm not sure which one. Lost World could have used a different title, since the premise of the novel it was based upon was an explorer trying to find an island where dinosaurs survived or resurfaced naturally when they went extinct elsewhere, much like the original novel by Sir Arther Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holme fame). However the gentlman stumbles upon Hammond's Site B instead. Ian Malcolm and the journey to Site B is the only thing shared between the movie and the novel. And the third movie didn't have a novel to base itself on, but was much better than Lost World. However, it relied a little bit on continuity from the second movie - such as the reference the T-Rex running loose in San Diego.

Which one belongs? You decide.

Pet Semetary 2, Carrie 2, and any other sequal to a Stephen King Movie

Need I say More?

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It's been awhile since I've been on but I'm coming back in style. Starting February 6th, I will be opening a new blog - 100 chills in 100 days. I will watch and review/critique 100 Horror films in 100 days. All this while still doing articles here, on Hubpages, and managing my webcomic "Cutting Room Floor."

First post on 100chills.blogspot.com will be on Event Horizon so check it out starting tomorrow (February 6th 2011)

This Isn't Your Grandma's Looking Glass

"The time has come, Walrus old friend,

To test our many stills.

The oohs, the ahhs, the healing drops,

The passions, the thrills,

And to see how joy and awe and lust

can all be turned to pills"

- Syfy's miniseries Alice (2009)

In Canada we don't have this Syfy channel, but we do have Showcase, which aired Tin Man back in 2008, and so I was just a tad interested to see this new re-imagining of the classic Lewis Carrol novel. Showcase did in fact air Alice in 2009, and it was definitely interesting. You see, as a child, I had always been partial towards Alice in Wonderland whether it was in movie or book form. I went and saw the midnight opening screening of the recent Tim Burton film earlier this year. But this, was altogether different. Teas brewed from emotions traded like stocks on the market. And just about every character was there, just not in the ways we remember them. The Hatter owned a tea shop (which would make sense) with his friend the timid doormouse working in sales. His old friend "Mad" March Hare - Get it? It's the Hare that's mad, not the Hatter - is the Queen of Hearts most beloved assassin, in charge of finding Alice and a magical ring she possesses.

The first thing you'll notice of course, is that things are a little less "anthropomorphic" - that is to say, that most every "creature" from the Wonderland we remember is actually a nicknamed Human. The few animals in the show do not actually talk, and gives the show a good sense of reality, without losing some of the fantasy. In fact the show is, in my opinion, more fantasy than ever.

Brief synopsis for people who seem to rely on them to make movie-watching decisions: Alice Carrol (Any guesses to the tribute there?) is a black belt martial arts instructor who is unlucky in love, until she meets Jack. When Jack gets kidnapped, she follows his kidnapper, wearing two rabbit-ear like ponytails, into an abandoned building and through a looking glass into a fantastical world, the same wonderland 150 years after the original children's tale, where she gets lost, kidnapped herself, and then only the Hatter and a valiant white knight named Charlie can save her, but not until she finds out what happened to Jack, and the clues she keeps finding about her father, who disappeared when she was ten.

As she follows the clues, she gets curiouser and curiouser, but then again, curiosity killed the Cheshire cat...

"Do I need a reason to help a pretty girl in a wet dress?"

- Hatter

While this two-part mini series failed to gain the attention that Tin Man had, and will likely never have a strong enough following to gain cult status, if you want something weird and unusual this just might be "your cup of tea."