The furries of summer are here! Originally conceived as an animated sequel to 1974’s Blazing Saddles comedy, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank took a long time coming to fruition, and was originally planned with the less cumbersome title of Blazing Samurai. At last we have our Wild West saga with a Japanese tilt that retains the legacy of Mel Brooks, who even voices the character of theShogun!
Now if you’ve seen Westerns (or “Easterns’), there’s a little bit of many things you’ve seen before here, with elements drawn and blended fromKung Fu Panda, The Karate Kid, The Magnificent Seven, and Zootopia. An evil cat warlord (voiced by Ricky Gervais) seeking to destroy a town of cats sends an inept canine (Michael Cera) to be their defender, knowing full well that cats and dogs tend not to get along, and anticipating to sow internal chaos and destruction. Canine Hank, however, truly aspires to be a samurai, and finds a trainer and mentor in the unwilling, grumpy person (furson?) ofSamuel L. Jackson’s character.Overcoming feline xenophobia against dogs, the aspiring canine samurai gradually acquires their acceptance and cooperation while developing his own skills, and the rest is history…
Paws of Fury is already playing in theaters, and I may borrow a kid as an excuse to go see it….
When Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani erroneously booked the Four Seasons Total Landscaping business instead of the Four Seasons hotel in Philadelphia for a press conference, hilarity ensued as furries recreated a virtual reality version of the business complete with Trump campaign trappings on VRChat, and populated it with themselves as a hang-out!
The virtual reality recreation of the event location is spot-on with great attention to detail, complete with Trump campaign posters plastering the outer wall, and even the podium at which Giuliani not-so-memorably spoke. Instead of dour-faced Trump reality deniers populating the site, however, it is now virtually inhabited by furry avatars who can move about within the location while conversing with their fellows. Truly, lemonade has been made from lemons, and art imitates life!
Talk even exists about expanding the site to include the adjoining real-life properties of a sex shop and a crematorium, which would make it truly a commentary on the human experience. I wonder as well if Four Seasons Total Landscaping would offer attractive rates on raking up and disposing of my blasted leaves, since yard work is hardly one of my favorite things to do…
Director Tom Hooper’s movie adaptation of Cats is now available for a broader audience on HBO, and it was there that I viewed it in its entirety for the first time. If you don’t have HBO, wait a bit longer, and you’ll probably be able to catch Cats on Fx or a similar network. Released in December of 2019 to almost universally scathing reviews, Cats is an odd duck if you pardon the mixed metaphor. It is, as one reviewer aptly described it, a plotless spectacle probably unlike anything you’ve ever seen, or would wish to see again. By one estimation I’ve read, only 27% of those viewing it actually liked the film.
My short take on the movie is that it’s not as bad as you’ve been led to believe, although you may just want to sample it to see what all of the negative reviews are about. It definitely helps to be a furry as I am to appreciate Cats, although once the spectacle of seeing A-list stars morphed into felines wears off, the novelty is gone really fast, and the movie light on plot becomes repetitious and even tiresome. While not a horror movie, Cats can be horrible, and it’s said represents a career low for many of the big name stars in it.
Parts of the movie are memorable, and the anthropomorphic cats move and dance with a fluid grace and athleticism that is memorable. Taylor Swift projects a lithe feline sensuality that…well, I won’t go there. The creepiness factor that set so many off the film is readily identifiable mixed with the incomprehensible such as why these cats are rendered with humanoid hands and feet. As one reviewer huffed, “This is not a cat…this is an abomination!” – – Jeez, lighten up dude, this is entertainment, although it may have failed in that purpose for many people. I think that the long-running Broadway show version of Cats worked better for many as patrons were always aware that they were viewing actors and actresses in dazzling cat costumes rather than a CGI-generated hybrid. A live theater performance also permits a kind of interactive intimacy between performers and audience that is largely lost in a movie.
Love it or hate it, Cats is a unique experience likely to persist in the memories of its viewers as either a vision or a nightmare…Meow!
People tend to either love or hate The Masked Singer on Fox, and we were provided a preview of the upcoming season’s costumes recently. Shown above are Baby Alien, Serpent, and Seahorse.Additionally the animal kingdom will be represented by Giraffe, Jellyfish, Crocodile, and fictitiously Dragon. The show itself for those unfamiliar with it is kind of a singing competition run through a furry convention, a unique type of cheerful and inspired insanity.
There are a number of “firsts” represented among this season’s contestants. At eight feet tall, Giraffe is the tallest costume ever, and is attired in a style reminiscent of French aristocracy. Baby Alien is the first costume to be fronted by a puppet, Serpent’s costume has animatronic features, and the Snowy Owls (below) represent the first double-headed costume.
So you may want to drop in on The Masked Singer, Season 4 which will debut on September 23rd…
In the mid-1940’s, the funny animal cartoon boom was in full swing, and every publisher wanted a menagerie of such anthropomorphic characters in print. Foxy Fagan was an obscure, Golden Age comic book character who was commercially unsuccessful, running for only a brief seven issues from 1946 to 1948. Furthermore, the drawn character had a disquieting resemblance in some panels to Tom of Tom and Jerry fame, almost as if he was a cat with a few fox features tacked on. The feet were also terribly wrong for a fox, but were drawn in the cartoon style of the day…
If the late great Foxy Fagan resembles the much more successful feline Tom, that’s because he was drawn by Harvey Eisenberg in collaboration with Joe Barbera’s storylines in a low budget, moonlighting-type operation called Dearfield Publishing which operated out of a shed while both of them were under contract to MGM. Dearfield also produced Red Rabbit comics. Eisenberg was a highly experienced and admired cartoonist who was for many years the main artist on the Tom and Jerry comic books, and he also did numerous stories for Disney comic books featuring Chip ‘n’ Dale, also drawing on the Yogi Bear and Flintstones newspaper comics. He could draw characters convincingly in any pose, and gave them expressive personalities, making them relatable and alive.
Now Foxy Fagan was cut in the Bugs Bunny mold, with Foxy being sly but trouble-prone, and things often didn’t work out as he planned. His foil was a hapless canine inventor, Bobble, who bore a striking resemblance to the later Hanna-Barbera character Droopy Dog, and kind of played the Porky Pig role. We can almost see Foxy morphing into Tom in this bottom image, and Tom and Jerry would become an enduring part of cartoon history…
The Masked Singer is back for a second season on Fox, that show which plays like American Idol on psychotropic drugs. Contestants wear full body costumes head to toe which totally conceal their identity, and perform popular musical numbers for which they are judged over intervening weeks in an elimination contest. The show is hosted by Nick Cannon, and also features celebrity panelists including Robin Thicke and Dr. Ken Jeong. Shamelessly weird, the show also incorporates “security personnel” who dress like the Men in Black attired in black suits and ties and wearing sunglasses at all times. I’m OK with all of this, as I prefer my fantasy worlds to reality, anyways…weird is good, and works for me!
Episode 1 for the second season commenced with a contestant called Butterfly performing Bang, Bang in competition with Egg who performed Just Dance. The costume worn by Butterfly was suitably dazzling and iridescent, and coupled with a good set of pipes enabled her to emerge victorious over Egg, who was later unmasked to reveal Johnny Weir. In a second matchup, Thingamajig (don’t ask) performing I’m Easy defeated Skeleton who performed Rappers Delight. A third pairing pitted Ladybug who sang Holding Out for a Hero against Rottweiler, who won with Maneater performed against a chain link fence that also appropriately housed a fire hydrant, which thankfully he didn’t use during the performance. Rottweiler was my furry fave for the night, working with backup dancers who wore canine masks and featured a rather sensuous and lithe female worth howling over. This was one fine bitch, and I’m not using the word in the pejorative sense!
The final pairing was even more surreal, with a contestant Tree dressed as a Xmas Tree performing High Hopes and defeating Ice Cream who sang Old Town Road. Ice Cream was unmasked as Tyler “Ninja” Bleving following a second chance “smackdown” defeat by Ladybug, who appropriately won singing Hit Me With Your Best Shot.
With two insect costumes and only one identifiable mammal, I was a little disappointed although an upcoming episode features a feline performer and one of personal interest called Mr. Fox, who appears to have steampunk stylings. Until we see their performances, I’m putting my paws up for Rottweiler…he’s such agood boy, even if he does remind me of Homer Simpson in an episode of The Simpsons where he voiced Poochie the dog…
AMC’s show Preacher is one of the most over-the-top shows on television, outrageous yet compelling, and definitely not for children, those easily offended, or squeamish about blood and violence. The series is complex and twisted, and so I won’t begin to attempt to explain it here; it even has Hitler and a likable vampire as recurring characters! At any rate, in the Deviant episode of the current season (Season 4, Episode 3), central character Jesse Custer enters DeSade’s House of Entertainment to rescue a child, and winds up fighting and prevailing against a small army within that included furries, people costumed as anthropomorphic animals.
The fight scene was extended, epic, and spectacular, beginning with fists and progressing from there to blunt objects, then knives, and finally guns. Preacher Jesse was victorious, of course, because it is after all, his show! I’m not quite comfortable with the portrayal of furries on the episode and I’ve seen far better fursuits, but it was all intended to be outrageous in keeping with the general tone of the series, which has previously given us the divinity in a Dalmatian suit…
I recently revisited Ray Harryhausen’s 20 Million Miles to Earth, which I first saw as a kid and which hooked me on science fiction for life.The 1957 black and white film featured Harryhausen’s stop-action creature features, and wasfilmed in Italy because that was where Harryhausen wanted to vacation. He wanted the film to be in color, but they didn’t have the budget to do so at the time although a later colorized version was made. The name of the snake-tailed Ymir creature from Venus was not mentioned in the film because they were afraid people would confuse the name with “Emir.”
The film included many memorable scenes such as a fight to the death between the Ymir and an elephant, which traumatized the young me as the elephant lost. Then there was the grand finale scene which featured a show-down with the creature in the Roman Coliseum; what could be better staging?!
Equally epic was Harryhausen’s stop-action filmed fight with the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts. That one creeped me out as a kid for some time…
I’m glad that my cousin, Ralph, finally made it to the big screen! He always had dreams of going to Hollywood, and deserved it after all those years of parking cars, pumping gas, and hanging out at furry and video game conventions. It was annoying to him that people would pull at his costume only to discover that it wasn’t one. – – Ahh, his mother would have been so proud of him! On the other hand, I wasn’t granted Ralph’s athleticism, being only a bookish writer…fortune, thou art a cruel mistress!
I suppose it was inevitable that they’d make a movie loosely based on the vintage video game, Rampage, and starring Dwayne Johnson. After all, Doom turned out so well! In the long-ago, I can remember playing the video game, and never doing terribly well…such is the the story of my life! Anyways, in his latest action film outing, the Rock plays primatologist Davis Okoye who is attempting to intervene on behalf of his albino silverback gorilla, George, the object of a rogue genetic experiment gone awry. – –Tell me about it! George, Ralph, and other mutant animals grown to enormous size are, well, rampaging through North America, and causing big trouble and general mayhem. It’s up to Dwayne Johnson and others to find an antidote…
This sci fi/fantasy offering sounds like good brainless fun, and is opening April 13th at a theater near you! A CGI-heavy movie, it also features Jeffrey DeanMorgan of The Walking Dead,minus his Negan bat, Lucille. I expect that Ralphie will give a memorable performance, and even if he doesn’t, I’m still proud of the big lug… 😉
This year brought the novelty of a new Halloween special in the form of Michael Jackson’s Halloween, a 3D animated hour-long special which aired on CBS October 27th, and featured the music of…Michael Jackson! While centering on the efforts of two young people to rescue a dog and defeat an evil witch (Conformity) who wants to banish music and dancing, the high point of the hour to me occurred about seventeen minutes in when the two protagonists guided by a talking Bubbles the Chimp to “follow the music” entered a surreal pumpkin field where Hay Man, a groundskeeping scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head voiced by Jim Parsons (Sheldon from Big Bang Theory), was kind of channeling Michael Jackson in a Jack Skellington-esque way…
With an entourage of dancing pumpkins and forest and field animals (including some foxes), a rather funky rendition of Jackson’s Dangerous was performed, complete with Jackson’s trademark moves and even a pelvic thrust or two. Also memorable was a later encounter with a mad scientist cat voiced by Dietrich Bader, Franklin Stein, creator of a machine to destroy music but really a frustrated musician himself whose technology becomes converted to summon Jackson. And fear not, the evil witch (Lucy Liu) is defeated in a big dance finale by a stylized representation of 1980’s Michael Jackson himself in an outfit reminiscent of his Thriller attire. Music and dancing are safe, so relax…
Jackson enjoyed both scary things and animals, and his presence looms large over this special, both in terms of the soundtrack and assorted images of the performer, seen even in the wallpaper pattern of the mysterious Jackson Street Palace Hotel where much of the action transpires. As someone who appeared in quirky delights such as Disney’s Captain EO and Moonwalker, Michael probably would have liked this “magical adventure of personal discovery,” and we foxes do like to get our groove on!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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