Thank you Mask Man
Here's a review of a book about a film genre that fascinates me, even though I've never actually seen one... Mexican masked-wrestler films.
I have, however, seen a cartoon about 'em.
I love the fact that masked wrestlers are/were real life superheroes of a sort in Mexico... it reminds me of how me and every kid I knew felt about Evel Kneivel when I was growing up. (Not to mention Elvis and Dr. J, but that's another post...)
I saw the Cartoon Network's Mucha Lucha
when CW's cousin Terry brought a DVD of it over to one of CW's "movie nights"... EVERYBODY loved the cool musical open to the show, and then lost interest once the show itself started. A note to the Mucha Lucha guys- pacing, pacing, pacing.
But I digress... :D It sounds like a lot of the classic masked-Mexican wrestler films are either gone, or just buried in non-home-released limbo. Regardless, I may have to track down this book, just because of the aforementioned superhero aspect.
posted by Lee H. @ Wednesday, July 20, 2005
3 Comments:
I've seen a couple of the movies, typically on one of those "Here are some weird and bad movies!" type local shows (that basically seems to show the flip side of the half of the Rhino MST3K DVDs that has the raw movie on the other side), and they seem kinda interesting. Strange.
Cannot stand Mucha Lucha though. I hate the writing, the acting, the half-assed character design and the abysmal Flash animation. I used to say that Flash should never be used for TV, until the beautiful Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends proved me wrong.
(It's funny, though, a bunch of the Mucha Lucha people are working on the similarly abysmal Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi (excellent band, though), and CN is-or-at-least-was showing Fosters and Puffy back to back... it was sort of a "Take you to heaven before I take you to hell" type thing, or perhaps an explanatory thing on "This is how you do Flash for TV! This is how you do NOT do Flash for TV!"... all... Goofus and Gallant.)
I don't think we even got as far as making fun of the animation, just because the story was so lacking any humor or character development or ANYTHING to hold your interest.
I've seen posters around here for Foster's but have never seen the actual show... I'll have to check that out.
Foster's is really excellent -- it's created by Craig McCracken of Powerpuff Girls fame, and it's just as good as that show, though completely different. (It's strange, too -- CN didn't play up the connection at all; the advertising was all "New show! Foster's! Watch it!" and it was only during the opening credits that I saw that it was Craig McCracken. (Though the visual style is kind of a giveaway -- it was too good to be one of the awful McCrackenripoffs (like Fairly Oddparents/Danny Phantom, both of which have the McCracken Style without any of the understanding of the McCracken-World-Physics and as such just... don't... work), and looked to be someone building off of the McCrackenstyle, which, you know, ripoff people rarely do, because then, um, they wouldn't be ripoffs.)
Unfortunately, CN keeps showing marathons of Fosters, which isn't really a good idea because:
a) There's only a handful of episodes, so you see them over and over and over
and
b) The episodes are all very similar in terms of pacing/style, which means that a couple are _awesome_ at a time, but it gets slightly monotonous watching several hours of it. (Whereas, say, with Teen Titans, my other current favorite non-adult-swim (eh, screw it, I like it more than most of the Adult Swim stuff, too, and I adore AS) CN show, there's a lot of variety in the eps that make it suited for Marathons (not to mention the ongoing story arcs).
Still, though, it's a beautiful show, and it's kind of, um, flooring that it's done in Flash. It's like McCracken set out to prove that Flash Animation doesn't have to suck on TV.
(seriously, though, the stuff on TV that's flash that isn't Fosters is flooring in the opposite way, mainly in that a lot of stuff done explicitly for the internet looks way, way, way better -- i.e., Homestar Runner is more suited for TV, as is than Puffy AmiYumi. (Also, the writing is, um, good.))
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