Monday, October 09, 2017

The Trails We Blaze

It was pouring when I rolled out of bed this morning. Listened to the rain on the roof while reading an essay and two poems on Christopher Columbus in the Colliers Harvest of Holidays book. All three are surprisingly honest about his failings. He wasn't much of a sailor. His men almost mutinied several times. He was terrible to the natives, too, even kidnapping them. He thought he found the gold and riches of Japan and India...but he ultimately found what's now known as Cuba, San Salvador, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean.

With the rain continuing, I thought it was the perfect weather for an episode of Scooby Doo, Where are You? Went with one of the final episodes of the second season, "The Haunted House Hang-Up." The gang is stranded at an abandoned mansion on their way to a rock concert. Shaggy's supposed to be retrieving water from the well for the overheating Mystery Machine, but ends up seeing a ghost! When they go inside to get help, they find the headless ghost of the house's former owner wandering around and a painting that seemingly points to nothing...

Worked on writing for a few hours. Luke and Leia have a chat on the back porch of their cottage the night before the surfing contest. Luke tells Leia he's going to give himself in to Vader after the contest and go with him to Palpatine. He's hoping he can talk some sense into their brother. Leia protests this. She doesn't believe there's anything left to find in their machine of a brother, and she's afraid she'll lose Luke. Hank, who shows up to invite them out for ice cream, ends up comforting her.

Broke at 1 for lunch. I'd tried calling Dad for a ride, but he never called back. Thankfully, by that point, the rain was starting to slow down. It still made a nice backdrop for a spooky second season episode of Wonder Woman, "Seance of Terror." Diana Prince investigates the disappearance of three ambassadors whose countries were involved in peace talks. They were lured to a car by a young boy who handed them photos of loved ones who had passed on. Now she has to find those ambassadors so the talks can continue, and rescue the boy from his guardians, who are using him for his powers.

The rain was down to a mild shower by quarter of 1. I was only slightly damp when I arrived at work. What a mess that was! I barely got anything done for the first half of my shift. They kept putting me in the register, to the point where I never did finish the indoor trash. Between bad weather, the holiday, and this being the last day of a 4-day sale, we were swamped. It's probably just as well that I spent the second half gathering carts and baskets. It didn't really start slowing down until around 6:30, which of course, is when I finished. At the very least, the rain disappeared, though it remained cloudy and insufferably humid.

(Oh, and I called Dad and Jodie on my break. Turns out Dad left his cell phone in his car. By the time they retrieved it, I would have been just getting ready to go.)

When I got home, I cheered myself up with The Road to El Dorado while making scrambled eggs for dinner. Two Spanish con-artists, practical Tulio (Kevin Kline) and dreamer Miguel (Kenneth Branaugh) accidentally end up taking a trip to the New World when they land in the ship of explorer Cortez (Jim Cummings) after dodging angry locals. They had managed to win a map to El Dorado, a city of fabulous wealth in the Indies. When they do manage to find the city, the natives mistake them for gods. While Tulio wants to keep up the deception just long enough to get the gold and have a little fun with tough-minded native girl Chel (Rosie Perez), Miguel genuinely comes to love El Dorado and its people. Miguel wants to stay...but when the city's rejected shaman (Armand Assante) leads Cortez to the gates, he may not have a choice if he wants to help his friends save El Dorado.

This is such a fun movie. It's was one of my brother Keefe's favorites in the early 2000's. Critics were harsh on it at the time, comparing it unfavorably to other Dreamworks films and complaining about the animation and the music. Actually, I think it's dated better than a lot of the animated films from that era, including some of Dreamworks' early movies. Branaugh and Kline recorded together, and it shows. A lot of their ad-libs apparently made it into the finished film. Perez is fun as the sassy native who may be more street-wise than either of the guys. Elton John's music and Hans Zimmer's score are also excellent. My favorite John single, "Someday Out of the Blue," was written for this movie.

If you love the cast, comedy adventures, or are looking for an animated movie for older boys, this is one of the most underrated movies in the entire Dreamworks Animation roster and is highly recommended.

There really aren't that many movies about Christopher Columbus, and most of them are uniformly terrible. Take the infamous 1992 German animated film The Magic Voyage. I found the US dubbed version from 1993 on YouTube. Here, Columbus (Dom DeLouise) is accompanied by a curious woodworm named Pico (Corey Feldman) on his journey to the Caribbean. Columbus has a huge crush on Queen Isabella (Samantha Eggar), while Pico falls in love with a fairy princess named Marilyn (Irene Cara). The fairy princess has been carried off to the West Indies by the evil Swarm Lord (Dan Haggarty). Pico is determined to find her in San Salvador. Columbus is more interested in the gold of the Indies.

Uh, yeah. Other than a few historical details, this has even less to do with Columbus than Anastasia had to do with Russian history four years later. Even if they had to have Pico, they absolutely did not need the whole side plot with Marilyn and the Swarm. The animation wavers between too cartoony for the subject matter and too jerky, the few songs are dull, and the characters are even more so. The sheer kitsch of the thing does have a slightly odd charm of its own, but not enough to redeem this mess.

I do remember seeing this on video at our local mom-and-pop rental store for years, but it's one of the few animated movies from this era we never took out. Now I'm glad we didn't. This is just plain bad. Only recommended if you're a really, really huge fan of the cast or remember renting this yourself in the 90's.

If you're interested, here it is on YouTube:

The Magic Voyage

And two more major announcements. First of all, several American Girl web sites have reported seeing covers for BeForever re-releases of Molly's book and a new choose-your-own-adventure story for her. Sounds like we may get an online-only re-release of her in February, as we did for Lissie this year. I may pick up her new meet outfit, but otherwise, my Molly is very spoiled. I'm hoping for new mysteries for her instead. (Nanea and Rebecca are also going to have new mysteries, and there's talks of a third contemporary character.)

And yes, the second trailer for The Last Jedi finally debuted tonight. I don't like that ending at all...

Second Last Jedi Trailer

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