Christmas Shelf Reviews: Olive the Other Reindeer

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20th century fox, 2D animation, adventure, animated, animated special, animation, artwork, cgi, cgi animation, children’s book, Christmas, Christmas cartoon, christmas elves, Christmas review, christmas special, computer animation, dan castellaneta, drew barrymore, ed asner, elf, fox animation, futurama, j. otto seibold, jack russell terrier, james otto seibold, joe pantoliano, Matt Groening, michael stipe, north pole, olive, olive the other reindeer, penguin, reindeer, santa, santa claus, Simpsons, television animation, television review, television special, tv, tv review, tv special, underrated, vivian walsh

While I remember the hype for the FOX Christmas special Olive The Other Reindeer back in 1999 –

…

…

…Excuse me, I was suddenly struck by the realization that I’m old.

Anyway, while I remember the promotions for it before it premiered, I’m ashamed to say I never got around to watching it until several years ago. Shame, really, because it’s been among my personal favorites since. Olive The Other Reindeer is loosely based on a children’s book by Vivian Walsh and award-winning artist J. Otto Seibold, the main conceit being “Hey, doesn’t that one line from the Rudolph song sound like they’re saying Olive The Other Reindeer instead of ‘all of the other reindeer’? Wouldn’t it be funny if someone named Olive got confused over it and tried to become a reindeer?” The book is fairly straightforward with little-to-no stakes, though it has some wonderfully stylized and colorful artwork. Naturally the leap from page to screen meant the story had to be significantly fleshed out, but who could possibly step up to the task?

Eh, how about the guy behind the biggest animated adult show of all time?

To this day I have no idea why Matt Groening took the job but I sure as hell am grateful for it. He, along with Futurama co-creator David X. Cohen, took what could have been another simple Christmas special and injected it with the sly modern wit and cheeky sense of humor they’re known for (the fact that Olive premiered on the same night Futurama did couldn’t have been a coincidence either). They spice up the proceedings with wonderful touches exclusive to this adaptation: the other characters with mondegreen names; the snappy dialogue; the background sight gags that you have to watch multiple times to catch; the running joke with the cordless drill; the self-depreciating jabs at Fox, and more. The smart writing in addition to the unique animation gives this outing a strong sense of identity without losing the heart and charm that’s inherent to the story. It also marks Olive as the only “family-friendly” thing Groening’s made to date; an interesting designation to have, but not a bad one at all.

A Snippet of an Untold Dragon Story

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and you thought dragons didn't exist, barry, boy, chapter book, children's story, children’s book, China, chinese dragon, chinese folklore, chinese girl, dragon, dragon egg, dragon flight, dragon folktales, dragon stories, dragon story, dragon tales, dragons, fiction, flash fiction, flying dragon, girl, great wall of china, last dragon, middle grade fiction, original story, Original Writing, story idea, yún, zuìhòh

Hey all! I’ve been going through some of my old writing for new story ideas and I rediscovered something I wrote five years ago that I felt like sharing with you. I created this in a twenty-minute sprint based on the sentence prompt “And you thought dragons didn’t exist”. The way it turned out, it read less like a short story and more like a chapter pulled from a preexisting book. For a time I constructed a plot to go around it, but eventually dropped it in pursuit of other projects. Having read it again, I felt inspired to return to work on it. I re-edited what I originally wrote, and that’s what I’d like to present to you today.

The plot, as of posting this, goes thusly: In modern-day China, a great-grandmother gives a young girl the location of the last dragon egg with her dying breath. The girl raises the dragon while keeping it a secret from her family. After she befriends her former bully, the son of the American ambassador, they must work together to learn its secrets before one of their respective governments can capture it. Think How To Train Your Dragon meets E.T. or The Iron Giant. The ideal age group for this book would be middle grade (about 8-12 years old) so keep that in mind. And now, I take you to a wooded park in the middle of China, where our story is already in progress:

August Review: Shrek (2001)

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2000's, 2001, academy awards, Action-Adventure, adventure, all star, animated, animated feature, animated franchise, animated movie, animated movie review, animation, anthropomorphic animal, Cameron Diaz, cgi animation, children’s book, computer animation, donkey, dragon, Dreamworks, Duloc, Eddie Murphy, fairies, fairy, fairy tale, Fantasy, Farquaad, Fiona, franchise, Gingerbread Man, Gingy, hallelujah, Hollywood, I'm a Believer, jeffrey katzenberg, John Lithgow, knight, Lord Farquaad, magic mirror, meme, memes, Michael Eisner, Mike Myers, movie review, ogre, ogres are like onions, ogress, onion, oscar winning, oscars, Pinocchio, pop culture reference, princess, Princess Fiona, quest, review, Robin Hood, Shrek, shrek is love, shrek is love shrek is life, shrek meme, shrek memes, smash mouth, spell, swamp, three little pigs, Vincent Cassel, william steig

Oh, Shrek. Where to begin with this guy?

That’s a rhetorical question, I know exactly where to start. It all comes back to one man, a man with a vision: to stick it to his former boss.

We meet again, Katzenberg.

There’s a lot of history and tangled truths behind the birth of Shrek, and Jeffrey Katzenberg is at the dead center of it. I was sorely tempted to make this another two-parter like the Black Cauldron review to go into more detail, but I was already running behind schedule with March of the Wooden Soldiers so here’s a slightly condensed version:

Between the disaster that was the making of The Black Cauldron and the glorious premiere of The Lion King, Katzenberg picked up a few tricks when it came to making acclaimed animated features. Then in 1994, Disney CEO Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter accident, and the Magic Kingdom was torn asunder as Michael Eisner took the reins and began his descent into madness. Katzenberg hoped that he would inherit Eisner’s former position of Vice President, but here’s where things get tricky. Katzenberg claims that Eisner fired him when he made his ambitions known; but the way Eisner tells it, Katzenberg was impatient, ungrateful, took way too much credit for the studio’s successes, and left of his own accord. Either way, it was a notoriously bitter separation with deep ramifications for the animation industry. Apparently Disney didn’t learn their lesson with Don Bluth because once again they wound up creating their biggest competitor – and this time, they were here to stay.

Katzenberg teamed up with David Geffen and the one and only Steven Spielberg to create Dreamworks SKG, the first major studio to truly rival Disney when it came to making animated motion pictures. The most important thing to them was to not be like every other feature on the market. For the first few years they flipped between making some great traditionally animated films that have been swept under the rug (Spirit, Sinbad and The Road to El Dorado are enjoying a comfortable cult status online and The Prince of Egypt only just got upgraded to blu-ray last year. Still waiting on that Broadway version, though), and openly trying to one-up their direct competition (when not teaming up Aardman to produce the same but with effort and a soul). Pixar announces their next movie is about ants? Dreamworks comes out the following week and says they’re doing a CGI movie about ants. Pixar says they’re making a film about fish? Dreamworks makes one about fish the following year. They make movies for children of all ages but with A-list actors, no Alan Menken musical numbers, and attituuuuude, dude. And nowhere is that jealousy and vitriol towards Disney more obvious than in what we’re reviewing today.

Shortly after Dreamworks was founded, co-head of the motion pictures division Laurie MacDonald gave Katzenberg a book by esteemed children’s author/illustrator William Steig simply called “Shrek!”; a fractured fairytale where a fire-breathing ogre was the hero, a donkey was his noble steed, and his happily ever after is defeating a valiant knight and marrying a princess even uglier than he is. He took one look at it, saw how it turned the traditional Disney-style fantasy he helped re-popularize in the 90’s on its head, the potential for even more slams at Disney fairytales and celebrity voice casting that worked gangbusters with Aladdin and had this to say:

Shrek evolved far beyond its humble literary origins into a green middle finger pointed at Katzenberg’s former workplace, and audiences and critics ate it up because nobody had dared to do such a thing before. And I’m not gonna lie, I loved this movie when I was a kid. But over time, mostly thanks to Katzenberg’s penchant for quantity over quality, Shrek became the very thing it was parodying: a shallow, over-hyped, over-marketed fairytale cash grab, and it’s affected my view of the original installment somewhat.

Well, it’s time for this non-star to get my game on and hopefully get paid. Let’s look at Dreamworks’ watershed studio-defining blockbuster…Shrek.

January Review: Pinocchio (1940)

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1940's, a real boy, adaptation, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animation, anthropomorphic, anthropomorphic animal, anthropomorphic animals, Bill Tytla, Blue Fairy, Carlo Collodi, children's story, children’s book, Christian Rub, classic, classic disney, classic Hollywood, cleo, Cliff Edwards, coachman, conscience, cricket, Dick Jones, Dickie Jones, Disney, disney animated, disney animated feature, disney animated movie, disney animation, disney golden age, disney review, donkey, donkey scene, donkey transformation, donkeys, figaro, foulfellow, fox and cat, Frank Churchill, Frank Thomas, Fred Moore, Gepetto, giant whale, gideon, Give A Little Whistle, golden age of Hollywood, hand drawn animation, Hi Fiddle Dee Dee, honest john, I've Got No Strings, italy, j. worthington foulfellow, jiminy cricket, Joe Grant, John Lounsbury, lampwick, Little Wooden Head, marionette, Mel Blanc, Milt Kahl, monstro, nine old men, Pinocchio, pleasure island, puppet, puppet show, puppeteers, puppets, real boy, star, stromboli, swallowed by a whale, traditional animation, transformation, Turn On The Old Music Box, Ukelele Ike, Vladimir Tytla, Walt Disney, Walter Catlett, whale, whale chase, When You Wish Upon a Star, wishing star, Wolfgang Reitherman, woodcarver, Woolie Reitherman

“When You Wish Upon A Star
Makes No Difference Who You Are
Anything Your Heart Desires
Will Come To You…”

In my last review, I compared Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Star Wars; a blockbuster that captivated audiences, revolutionized filmmaking, and was an all-around fun adventure with a likable cast. Well if Snow White is Disney’s Star Wars – before Disney owned Lucasfilm, I mean – then Pinocchio is undoubtedly Disney’s Empire Strikes Back: refined visuals, more complex storytelling and characters, and much, MUCH darker.

The success of Snow White marked the beginning of big things for Disney animation. The sizable influx of cash meant Walt could build a bigger studio, hire more staff, and give his projects a noticeably larger budget. The question is, where to go from here? What movie could possibly follow the fairest one of all? Investors were clamoring for a sequel and the idea was toyed with for a time, but Walt was not a one-trick pony. Then animator Norm Ferguson brought a copy of Carlo Collodi’s Le avventuri di Pinocchio to Walt’s attention. Walt and a few of his key guys had attended a performance of Yasha Frank’s successful staging of Pinocchio prior to Snow White’s release and noted the story had possibilities for adaptation – plenty of spectacle, cute comic relief critters, etc. Seeing that book sparked Walt’s memory; after reading it, he intended to make Pinocchio his third animated venture behind the upcoming Bambi. But when that movie ran into production troubles, Pinocchio was bumped up to its place. Does it measure up to Snow White, though? Let’s find out.

July Review: Pippi Longstocking (1997)

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“Children need a little order in their lives, especially if they can order it themselves.”

I’d like to start off by pointing out a mistake which should have been fairly obvious from my last review. When I said that the only two Disney movies that haven’t gotten a blu-ray release yet were the remaining package features, I was wrong – The Black Cauldron has yet to be released on that format. This is something I should know both as a Disney fan and for the fact that it’s On The Shelf for future voting (it might even be perfect review fodder for Halloween…)

Anyway, on to this month’s review.

Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking, or Pippi Longstocking for short, was one of my childhood idols, something I never quite realized until I rediscovered the film that introduced me to her in the first place. Pippi lived a Peter Pan-esque life completely independent from grownup rule and schooling; she called the shots in her own house, but had a firm grip on average adult responsibilities – which she was able to approach and complete as if they were games – and little to want for thanks to a sizable fortune she happily shared with those in need, not to mention she knew how to run circles around stuffy useless old farts with her playful, seemingly simple wit.

Basically, she’s everything I wanted to be as a kid AND as an adult.

And who do we have to thank for bringing this character to life? That would be none other than Sweden’s own Astrid Lindgren.

If JK Rowling is the literary world’s cool mom, then she’s its sweet and occasionally sassy old granny.

Lindgren is revered in her homeland for perfectly capturing a child’s point of view in her stories; you’ll find no wishy-washy protagonists or condescending for the kiddies in them. Her female main characters in particular are fierce, free, and adventurous, though they keep a genuine loving heart beating within them. That’s probably why I was drawn to Pippi so much after finding her. Though it’s been years since I’ve picked up the Pippi Longstocking books, I recall them being among my childhood favorites. They’ve been adapted multiple times for television, film, and even stage, yet as of writing there’s only been one full-length animated version, the one we’ll be looking at today from Canada’s primarily television (but sometimes film) animation studio, Nelvana. This wasn’t the first time Pippi was courted for an animated retelling, however. Hayao Miyazaki approached Lindgren for one back when Studio Ghibli was just getting off the ground, even going so far as to draw an entire sketch book’s worth of preliminary designs and storyboards, but she turned him down because…

Because…

You know what? She’s got no excuse. As satisfied as I am with the one we got, you really dropped the ball, Lindgren. Just think about it. HAYAO MIYAZAKI’S PIPPI LONGSTOCKING. Something simple yet beautifully animated and whimsical that could have stood on the shelf between Kiki’s Delivery Service and Whisper of the Heart. Seriously, look up the drawings he did. You’ll be wondering why he got left holding the bag too.

So without further adieu, let’s sail right into Nelvana’s Pippi Longstocking and see how it holds up.