Emergency Donation Review Time Again!

Tags

border, charity, detention centers, donation, emergency, families, family, funding, human rights, human rights violations, immigration, justice, movie review, save lives, stop fascism, stop injustice

One of my greatest fears, even before the events of 2016, was that one day my country would go the route of Germany in the 1930’s. In school we were told America was a land of freedom, equality and opportunity. Our teachers, comfortable in the routine of standard education, assured us it could never happen here.

But it’s happening right now.

Anyone who’s been on social media as of late has seen the stories of human rights violations at the border that recreate the concentration camp experience almost verbatim making the rounds, all of them perpetrated by those whose duty should be to protect and serve all people of this nation. George Takei is having flashbacks to his childhood in similar camps. The United Nations is actually trying to do something for once. It’s gone on record that the military is actively shutting out any attempts at press coverage because public outrage is the one thing that could shut down this whole operation immediately.

And guess who’s responsible for this nightmare scenario?

Like I told my parents, who both recently confessed they voted for the opposition because they thought the openly racist misogynist ableist homophobic xenophobic violence-encouraging war-mongering white supremacy-endorsing tax-dodging pussy-grabbing fake news-generating fast food-guzzling Russia-fraternizing blame-shifting North Korea-condoning wall-obsessed Twitter addict seemed more trustworthy than a woman with a slightly sketchy internet history, I’m taking the high road and not saying I told you so. As wrong as they were, please don’t hate on my folks. They’ve regretted it since, apologized, promised they would never doubt my political intuitions ever again, gave me some ice cream and a puppy and wished me good luck on my date with Chris Hemsworth that evening.

Okay, I may have exaggerated with the last two, but at least it’s not as bad as what the current administration has been pushing as “the truth”.

So you may be asking, “Shelf, what can I do? I’m just one person who can’t spare the time to rant at my senator or risk my safety by going to a protest or march. I just want to get my mind off of everything by reading funny movie reviews.” The good news is there’s plenty of charitable organizations working tirelessly to get as many detainees out of these awful conditions as possible. One of them is Fair Fight Bond Fund. They reunite them with their families and ensure they’re given their due process. It’s been proven that immigrants that are out of the cells and represented by a true lawyer have a substantially higher chance of winning their cases than those who are stuck in detention indefinitely. There’s also Freedom For Immigrants, Community Bond Project, LGBTQ Fund, Lawyers for Good Government, and Immigrant Families, all working towards the same goal of getting as many people out of these horrifying centers and to a safer place.

And that’s where you come in.

Donate anything, literally anything to this cause, and boom, movie review just for you of whatever you want that’s on The Shelf. That’s it. Even if it’s one fucking dollar. There’s no limit this time. And most of these organizations are tax-exempt. These people, these children, who are being starved and abused, more often than not to death, need whatever help they can get right now in any form, so who am I to hold anyone back from donating because they can’t give the price I arbitrarily demand in exchange for a reward?

However, if you care to donate $50, which by Fair Fight Bond Fund’s calculations is enough to free one person, then I will review a movie of your choice that isn’t on The Shelf. I do have my limits, of course, basically no porn or anything The Cinema Snob would recommend. Also it has to not be currently in theaters. But if it’s not on The Shelf then it’s fair game just this once.

And that’s it. Spread the word, please! Give multiple times if you’re able! And whatever you do, do NOT look away. As reprehensible as the truth is, we can’t afford to ignore it any longer. We…no, THEY deserve better.

August Review: An American Tail (1986)

Tags

1980's, 80's animation, a duo, american tail, an american tail, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animation, anthropomorphic animal, anthropomorphic animals, Barry Mann, bluth animation, cossacks, Cynthia Weil, Dom DeLuise, Don Bluth, dreams to dream, Ellis Island, fievel, fievel mousekewitz, Gary Goldman, giant mouse of minsk, give me your tired, immigrants, immigration, irish animation, James Horner, John Pomeroy, Madeleine Kahn, mice, mott street maulers, mouse, never say never, New York, no cats in america, obscure animated movie, obscure animation, Phiilip Glasser, somewhere out there, statue of liberty, steven spielburg, storm, street gang, sweatshop, tanya, tanya mousekewitz, tiger, tony and bridget

“Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight
Someone’s thinking of me, and loving me tonight…”

Chances are if you were to name a well-known American animation auteur besides Walt Disney, most of us who were children in the 80’s and 90’s will point to one man: Don Bluth.

Bluth formed his studio in the hopes that he could make quality entertainment unlike what Disney was putting out; the irony is that not only did Bluth use to work for Disney up through the seventies, but his career almost mirrors much of Walt and his studio’s ups and downs. Their early films are considered their best despite the common criticism that they’re too dark for children, and over time they grew lighter and softer to the point where they were criticized for, ironically, not being dark enough. That, and they made a few princess fairytale movies in the 90’s with their fair share of Oscar-bait ballads.

There’s also one other factor in this comparison which I think is important. For years after the premiere of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, every animated movie Walt Disney produced was inevitably compared to it. There was a period where Walt himself began to loathe Snow White because she seemed to overshadow all his other accomplishments. I have to wonder if Don Bluth feels the same way about his first foray into feature-length animation, 1982’s “The Secret of NIMH”, which many consider to be his best work. Admittedly I’m in that boat too, yet I feel guilty for saying it because doing so feels as though I’m negating everything that followed. Case in point – this month’s review.

“An American Tail” is one of the first Don Bluth movies I can remember seeing, and if it weren’t for “The Secret of NIMH” it’d be my number one favorite Bluth film. But hey, it comes this close. Funny thing is, I didn’t watch it all that much when I was kid, and not entirely for the reasons you might think. Sure, this movie has everything that comes with an 80’s Don Bluth production – heavy doses of nightmare fuel and a somewhat bleak atmosphere offset by cartoony animation, lighthearted songs, recurring comic relief actors and a happy ending – but it was on another one of those tapes that had more than one feature crammed on to it. In this case, An American Tail came on right after Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Four year-old me liked Ferngully just fine, but was never invested enough that she’d watch it all the way through to the end, usually stopping after the romantic “Dream Worth Keeping” segment because afterwards things got dark and moody and there weren’t any more songs. And if I did sit through it all, then I’d have to be in the right kind of mood to watch An American Tail because that was dark and moody and THOSE GDAMN CLOSE CALLS WHERE HE COULD HAVE FOUND HIS FAMILY IF HE ONLY –

…anyway, I’ve come to appreciate it much more for what it is an adult than as a kid for a number of reasons. That nostalgia is still there, but it’s well-tempered by time and a deeper understanding of the socio-economic background behind the making of this movie as well as the historical fictional one where the story is set.

Oh, did I mention I’m highly educated in happenings from the time period this all takes place in? Because I am. And this entire review is going to be part-silly observational jokes and part-gushing over how much history they cram into the tiniest details.