A wise, fresh prince once said, “Take it from me, parents just don’t understand.”  I have a feeling that Count Dracula’s princess, Mavis, would have to agree, in the new release, Hotel Transylvania.  It’s Mavis’ 118th birthday, and her father is throwing yet another party at his titular resort castle in the countryside, where all the werewolves, mummies, Frankensteins, gremlins, and even big foots (big feet?) can come to relax, safe from being pitchforked or torched by intolerant humans.

However, this year, Mavis’ birthday is supposed to be different: this is the day that her father promised she could finally leave the hotel and venture out into the dangerous world beyond the 400 acres of haunted forest and zombie graveyard that surrounds the castle.  The danger outside doesn’t lie with other monsters or even the burning rays of daylight, but the humans who, the Count believes, will never understand Mavis, and will only respond with violence.  Admittedly, the Count has good reason for his bias, as Mavis’ mother, the Count’s one true love, was killed by intolerant villagers over 100 years ago.
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When I got a Google+ notification the other day from Rob saying the troubled script for Michael Bay’s upcoming TMNT reboot had leaked, I knew I had to read it out of sheer morbid curiosity. Bay is just producing the movie, but his presence within a mile of my beloved Turtles is enough to turn me into a big, green, nostalgic rage monster.

For some reason, I had been staying optimistic about the movie, even when details leaked about the Turtles being aliens. In my head, I was willing to let their origin story change (slightly) if it meant getting a movie that had Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady, and the Technodrome in it. I kind of want that to happen really bad.

So, I sat down with my wife’s iPad and a 119-page PDF of the script not knowing what to expect, and within two minutes I knew that if this script gets made it would be cinematic suicide for the Turtles franchise. It is literally the worst thing ever, you guys. Literally.
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There were a few VHS tapes that I had as a kid that got watched all the time. Rock-a-Doodle, We’re Back!, and Fievel Goes West come to mind, as well as a direct-to-video movie tied to one of my favorite cartoons of the early 90s, Tiny Toons.

Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation came out in 1992 and for some reason is just now coming out on DVD, years after all my other favorite VHS tapes have made the jump. I was excited to watch this again and add it to my media center, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to hold up. Is it still watchable?
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I love Coraline. I’ve always been a huge stop-motion nerd, but Coraline got me really excited about the medium again, and I’ve been waiting and waiting for Laika’s second movie to hit theaters. ParaNorman looked amazing from the first teaser, but could the new studio pull off another awesome animated film without Henry Selick’s directing or Neil Gaiman’s story?

I was really worried ParaNorman would be all style and no substance. Thankfully I was wrong.
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Today would have been Julia Child’s 100th birthday. Google is celebrating with a lovely doodle on their home page, but I thought I would pay tribute to the French Chef by highlighting her role in my nostalgia. While most people know her from her cooking show, I grew up associating her voice with one of my favorite animated movies, We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story.

In We’re Back! Julia Child plays Dr. Bleeb, a short, possibly blind lady that works at the Museum of Natural History. She welcomes the dinosaurs when they reach the city, and then doesn’t really pop up for very long until the end. We’re Back! is Julia Child’s only acting credit on IMDB, and it’s a shame that Dr. Bleeb was the only animated character she ever portrayed. Wouldn’t it have been awesome if she could have lent her voice to a character in Ratatouille?

We’re Back! doesn’t hold up well anymore, but I still have it on in the background from time to time to please my inner child. You just can’t beat John Goodman as a T-Rex singing Roll Back the Clock around Times Square.