Change Your Image
HeoandReo
Reviews
The Hoarder (1969)
Fun, short film, for the family, and alone. Or at least I like it.
The Hoarder is a short film by Evelyn Lambart, famed Canadian animator. It chronicles the story of an ambitious bird, hungry for more extravagant things for his collection, does things such as bullies a female for her eggs, another bird for his fruits, and even goes to dominate the Sun by stealing his rays. (And the sun himself. Lol to the max. It might be herself, though. Either way, I wouldn't hit it.) And of course, there's a happy ending, but you'll have to figure it out.
Like all of Evelyn Lambart's 'Birdland' creations, this one is expressed with no words, nor spoken language, but with music and actions alone determine both the mood and the events. This is a unique style of doing a film for children, dare I say a cartoon. The story is quick, and gets straight to the point. Albeit, some of it is a bit liberal with risks. (C'mon, the bird fights the fruggin' SUN!) Nonetheless, I still find this entertaining even today.
What About Mimi? (2000)
A guilty pleasure.
I happen to like this television series plenty, despite my gender (male) and the current times. Basically, this show consists of the various adventures of a sixth grader (Although you wouldn't know it by seeing) named Mimi and her friends, Elaine, and enviromentalist undershirt-wearer (And that fact happens to turn me on) and Russell, a good-intentioned sports-lover. Then we have the standard high school popular girl who rubs it in everyone's faces, a bully, and everyone else you'll expect in a standard school drama. Think of this as 'Lizzie Mcguire Lite', right down to the blatantly obvious attraction between protagonists.
Now, each episode seems to have a charm to them, except for a few, which aren't worth staying up until 6 AM to watch because they're so boring. The various episodes cover a lot of subjects and situations, such as the obligatory 'Western' episode (one of my personal favourites) right down to a crush on a foreign exchange student (Another personal fav.) and having Mimi and the popular girl, Sincerity, catfight over a movie star who's at least 20 years old. (Pedophilia? They're only 11...) There's a few stinkers, too, such as an episode where a fishing contest is involved, and it ultimately is poorly-done, but those are rare.
The animation is very well-done and bright, and most of the music is tolerable, even the remixes and original songs. The music doesn't quite have the impact as of composers of John Williams or Nobuo Uematsu, but it's decent. Voicing is great as well. Chiara Zanni does an amazing job portraying the laid-back, never-thinking-things-through Mimi, and many of the other voices are good as well. If you do see this show on TV, watch it a little. You aren't going to be disappointed.