Time to Rest a Bit

Lots of new developments on the Fester Fish Front: Joe Murray featured it on the KaboingTV Indie Showcase! Canadian Animation Resources did a mini-interview with me! I'm also discussing pitching it to networks.

Now that the cartoon is done, I can finally relax, because now I actually have a tiny bit of free time. I've been taking the opportunity to catch up on a lot of movies and anime I've been meaning to watch. Sadly there aren't a lot of Western cartoons I'm really interested in watching at the moment.

I saw "Bridesmaids" recently, and liked it a lot. Kristen Wiig is great, and pretty much the whole cast was really funny. Just like all Judd Apatow-related movies, it sort of sagged a bit between the big comedy centerpieces, but even the non-funny parts were enjoyable. I just wish they'd picked a different destination for the plane trip. Even though we didn't actually see any of the trip beyond the plane scene, going to Vegas is such a worn-out comedy cliche, and it invites cries of "Hangover ripoff" beyond already being a gross-out comedy about people preparing for a wedding.

Last night I watched Paprika, which was pretty enjoyable, and re-watched some of Cowboy Bebop. I love the structure of that series-- it's fairly short (26 episodes) for an anime, and it's mostly episodic, although there is a larger storyline that gradually unfolds. My favourite thing about it is that it plays with different genres and tones from episode to episode, while still feeling cohesive. As with Lupin III, a series that was a big influence on Cowboy Bebop and also varied in tone, I tend to prefer the sillier episodes like the blaxploitation-themed 'Mushroom Samba', and the suspense/horror parody 'Toys in the Attic', but the more serious ones are great too.