That Horrible Pen

         Talking about the quality of Barnyard: The Original Party Animals (2006) is an undertaking immediately complicated by the seeming ubiquity of “Thing Good, Actually” narratives these days that renders any such claims immediately suspect. “Thing Childhood, Ergo Thing SEEMS Good TO YOU” is a valid-enough reflexive rebuttal. Let’s get that out of the way immediately: Barnyard is undeniably part of the post- Shrek (2001) dam-burst of pop-culture-fried CG whimsies of varying visual and conceptual quality that contributed, long-term, to the cultural, spiritual de-valuing of both the Shrek property—a real hoisted by its own petard of a splash-back scenario—and also the output of pop-behemoth Pixar, whose work has undoubtedly been rendered less impactful over time by the presence of so many imitators, actual quality aside. When everyone and their brother-in-law is putting out a 3D fart-and-giggler per-month, the lines get blurred. For the discerning gentleperson...

No grave is animated You’re buried all alone So let her work a wonder And wake your flesh and bone Powerwolf, “Resurrection By Erection” (2009) One “promise” implicitly made by the currently available Mortal Shell 2 pre-release material is that this game will remedy the first’s enemy variety problem. Roughly man- sized or shaped enemies like the ones pictured above are almost certainly easier to implement, but the first Mortal Shell was unfortunately short on true monsters. The new trailer in particular shows off a good many enemies of different sizes and builds (and species?). The 2020 “ Souls -like” action-adventure-with-light-RPG-elements Mortal Shell was a video game I enjoyed a lot, despite its noticeable rough edges—especially “The Virtuous Cycle” DLC expansion roguelite mode. I wrote a pretty big review of the original game and then an even bigger review of its DLC . Those are my credentials, in a sense. Poking around on Twitter and Bluesky for reactions to the Mortal S...

Arguably the centerpiece of the 2023 live-action Barbie movie is what the official “max” YouTube channel has presumptuously titled “America Ferrera’s Iconic Barbie Speech.” This is somewhat late in the film, when Ferrera’s human mother character and her estranged, Barbie-hating woke tween daughter have made the journey to Barbie Land alongside Margot Robbie’s titular doll to find the plastic-y paradise overrun with patriarchy, spread by Ryan Gosling’s love-sick, under-valued-feeling Ken. Robbie’s “Stereotypical Barbie,” whose only innate gifts have been related to her physical appearance and her baseline status as the doll from which all others may derive some fundamental essence of self, is at her lowest, which inspires Ferrera’s character to deliver a thesis on the challenges and contradictions of womanhood, for which the pace of the film slows to a crawl. Otherwise quite stylistically lavish and even self-consciously Wacky, here it backs off to just let this woman express herself. ...