Dragons!!

[mothwing]

EDIT:  lordhellebore 's post just reminded me: Happy Easter, everyone! I hope you're having a great weekend.

Unlike Hellebore's Flist, I'm in OMG! mood not because of Easter, but because of Dragons and Vikings ♥. I don't know how I could have possibly missed this, but I learned only yesterday about the existence of "How To Train Your Dragon", the movie and the books. Male character and obvious annoyances aside, I'm incredibly excited about this. Even though the main dragon looks like a cross between a cat and a tadpole, what's up with that?

Still. There are Vikings!!, and someone on the giant love-fest that is DeviantArt told me there was going to be a shieldmaiden. Yes, she's most likekly going to be female action heroine stock, I know, but I like to think that that'll be counteracted by the awesomeness of Vikings.

Vikings. And dragons. I've already heard that whoever did the runes in that movie ought to have read up on them properly and not used English spelling, and how did someone raised by two guys with fake Hoot's Mon Scots get an American accent...?

Still. Vikings.

and cats tadpoles Stitch dragons!!

Comments

[count-tygath.livejournal.com]

Happy Easter, hun. To both of you... *hugs*

About the movie, I wonder if this'll be shown at the Streit's... Haven't come across it so far.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Happy Easter to you, too! Are you doing anything? I'm staying in, studying. Hrmph.

In Hannover, there isn't even a cinema that does show movies in English. The Cinemaxx has a Sneak, and occasionally, the very big blockbusters are in English, but usually, it's just German dubs. *sigh*

[count-tygath.livejournal.com]

Friday and Saturday I was out taking photos in Hamburg (needed some alone time), yesterday nothing much and today I was at my mum's. :)

Are you going anyways, sometimes at least, or mostly waiting for the DVDs, then? - It's really a bummer if one doesn't have the opportunity to go and see the movies in their original voice. Here in Lueneburg it would basically be the same thing. Nothing in English unless there's a festival or something. We have one Programmkino thingy here for that. That's all. -_-

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Oh, do share the photos! :)

I'm deliberating. I'd go, anyway, but the German dub is sometimes so atrocious that I can't really face it. I'll have to see. I'll definitely buy the DVD, though.
I wish there was such a thing as paid online cinema on demand. In 3D. Yeah.

[count-tygath.livejournal.com]

Okay, will do. :)

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Even though the main dragon looks like a cross between a cat and a tadpole, what's up with that?

Because it is CUTE.

The humans all kind of bored or annoyed me, but it is ALL WORTH IT for the dragon. Which I am convinced is female, because she is just like one of my cats, and also I am tired of animals in animated movies always assumed to be male unless they have giant eyelashes or built-in lipstick.

Anyway, Toothless the dragon is the cutest animated character to ever cute. You could remove the humans entirely and make it a non-speech animated movie all about Toothless saving the dragons by herself and I would love it even more. Heck, you could make a movie about Toothless frolicking in a lake and eating fish and I would watch that.

...I want a dragon.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I've just spent half an hour looking at Toothless fanart on DeviantArt and I think I am in love. Not so sure about the humans yet, but oooh, that tadpolecat dragon.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I confess that as a cat lover, part of me is slightly irritated that we get a super-cute animated movie about cats that happen to look like dragons, but whenever cats that look like cats show up in animated movies, they're almost always evil. :(

And then I look at clips of Toothless to cheer myself up. SHE IS SO DARLING. There is a scene with some tiny cats dragons who want her fish and it is THE CUTEST THING EVER. And so feline.

I cannot wait for this to come out on DVD so I can just watch certain scenes over and over.

(As far as the humans go, they're all pretty 2D, and the adults with fake Scottish accents/teenagers with American accents is bizarre. Hiccup has some nice qualities--pretty much all of them involving his relationship with Toothless--but also a lot of super-annoying whiny white teen boy hero ones.)

I may have taken to calling my black cat Toothless.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

True. Ever since watching Lady & the Tramp for the first time I've been wondering about why people in the movies hate cats. I wish I could have a cat that has scales - my wife is allergic, and I miss my cat terribly. Pet dragons cannot get here soon enough. :'(

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

It's not just movies. I have a Big Humorless Rant about this, but basically, there's this belief in a lot of Western cultures that cats are standoffish and mean and unaffectionate; they are more likely than dogs to be taken to shelters, more likely to be abandoned on the street, and more likely to abused. There has been less research into their medical treatment, so veterinary care is not as good for cats as for dogs. And people are less likely to spend the money on that care for their cats as they would for dogs.

Movies just reflect and reinforce that belief. About the only good thing I can see about the atrocious-looking upcoming Marmaduke movie is that the cat seems to be Marmaduke's buddy.

Pet dragons cannot get here soon enough.

OMG, I know! Sadly, real reptiles aren't much like cats. *sigh*

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yes, otherwise I'd get a pet iguana tomorrow. :(

Hm, that really surprises me. I'd have thought that what with dogs being more time- and care-intensive, not to mention the fact that they can be quite a bit larger, they'd be predestined to be abused and to end up in shelters. Still, thinking about it, it's true - our local shelter is usually overflowing with cats (to the point where they had to turn one of the bathrooms into another cat room - it's a nightmare), while the dogs can be found new homes, usually. o.O

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Dogs are more likely to be considered "part of the family", basically. (And reptiles--um, do not get me started. People get them when they're cute little babies, and abandon them when they're big and need large enclosures. And they often live 20+ years, so they're a big commitment, like birds. Basically, of all household pets, dogs are probably viewed as the least disposable.)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Hm. Having been raised with big dogs I'm glad that they are part of the family, but it's so sad that people think that cats and other companion animals are. :/

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah! I love dogs, too--I pretty much love all pets, although I don't really feel warmly about Madagascar hissing cockroaches (but still think they're a responsibility, not a joke pet). I just think that all pets are important responsibilities and valuable parts of our lives.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Also:



OMG. ♥

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

That is one of my two favorite scenes! The SMILE ♥!

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

SO cute. And I loved those little dragons who fought her for the fish, too. <33

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Oh, and she was all "I am full, but I'm going to eat them so YOU CAN'T ha ha!"

SO cat.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

It SO is! Our cat always does that with the dog's food. He has his own food, he doesn't even like the dog food, but he stil HAS to eat from our dog's bowl first, while our dog stands by with a sheepish look on his face. Because he can and he's the boss of the food bowls, just so we're clear. :D

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

It's not a tadpole, it's Stitch - only in black. (See my last entry about that.)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, that's the character that dragon resembles! I had been wondering.
Also, some of the humans seem to be clones of other animated humans - is that due to there only being so many shapes human animated characters can come in, or are there other reasons for that?

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

I could imagine that for crowd shots they took generic villager rigs with customisable body parts to give it a little variety. That's actually an advantage of 3D animation. In traditional animation all you can do is re-use complete animation and multiply it in the same shot, maybe recolour it, but that's it.
In Disney's Hunchback they first used 3D models for the crowd scenes. If you pay attention to the crowd members instead of the individual foreground character animation you'll notice the generic background characters look pretty robotic and horrible. It's OK, though, because the scene focus isn't on them and they wisely shrunk or blurred them to make up for their lack of detail.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. I'll put it down to them being horribly inbred and all interrelated. It IS a very small village, after all.