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WHEN YOU BELIEVE: I saw this book in the library and it gave me a serious case of the feels. Basically it's the story of Uni, a unicorn who was like all the others in almost every way: "had a special swirly horn with the power to heal and mend", "could make wishes come true"... Only Uni believed that little girls were real, much to the contempt of friends and mild disdain of parents. The book goes on for a few pages of all the things Uni imagined they would do together, like "running fast through the meadow", "helping forest creatures in need" and "sitting quietly and talking about important things". The book's revelation towards the end was that "somewhere far away (but not that far away)", there was indeed a real little girl, who in turn believed unicorns were real, much to the contempt of friends and mild disdain of parents. But the book ends without the two ever really meeting. Whimsical illustrations by Brigette Barrager complement Amy Krouse Rosenthal's heartbreaking story of two kindred souls' common desire to be united, despite their distance and disbelieving loved ones.

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DEN OF THIEVES REVIEW - STEALING FROM THE BEST I've read and watched several online reviews that compare this to Heat - yes, we have cops vs robbers in Los Angeles, which the opening narration declares the "bank robbery capital of the world"; yes, the lead cop has marital problems; yes, there is an armoured van heist, a bank job (kinda) and a street shootout; yes, there are gorgeous night-time LA and early-morning beach shots. But where Heat had two powerhouse leads in Al Pacino's scruffy yet by-the-book LAPD lieutenant and Robert de Niro's consumate robber, Den of Thieves has Gerard Butler's Dirty Harry-esque LACS deputy with O'Shea Jackson Jr, Pablo Shreiber and 50 Cent sharing the "bad guy" spotlight. Domestic sub-plots involving a messy divorce with kids and a prom date hazing go nowhere, unlike Heat's more meaningful payoff to the "don't let yourself get attached to anything" line. Still, Den of Thieves is a fairly accurate procedural: the FBI pokes its nose in every now and then (bank robberies are a federal crime), a hostage negotiator stalls for time, there is a nail-biting Mission: Impossible-style game of hide and seek in the Federal Reserve's fault. Scriptwriter and first-time director Christian Gudegast - who wrote the terrorism revenge fantasy London Has Fallen - must have done more research or have better consultants this time round. Less realistic is the incredible ambit of Butler's sheriff and his team - they abduct and torture a suspect at one point and repeatedly mention their SOP doesn't involve cuffs. The climactic gunfight has some nice squad tactics like leapfrogging and taking cover behind engine blocks (thank god for little shakey cam but it would be nice to have more overhead and far shots to see the groups' formations). The good guys and bad have trigger discipline (some of the latter are in fact vets) and perform speed reloads. Bullets penetrate cover and hit people. The guns have a deafening report that echoes like thunder and deserves to be heard in surround sound. Butler's character even tells his team to not bother aiming for centre mass (as the baddies wear body armour) and aim for the "limbs and head", targets arguably harder to hit and an ironic order as he isn't wearing protection on those areas himself. On its own merits, Den of Thieves has wasted character arcs, questionable police procedure and pretty good firefight tactics and realism. In comparison to Michael Mann's magnum opus, it's a semi-pale shadow - Butler is fun to watch as what another character calls a "gangster cop" and he gets a crying scene, but there's no memorable "coffeeshop" exchange and while Heat concludes beautifully with two enemies at peace, Thieves goes for a hackneyed twist ending.

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I'M BACK, MOTHER BITCHES! To celebrate the release of Equestria Girls: Legend of Everfree, here's a piece I did last year of my OCs - Sam Seng and Cili Padi - humanised! High-res: http://thedriveintheatre.deviantart.com/art/True-Crime-Streets-of-Singapore-562598145

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Can you feel it? Thoughts on Pixar's Inside Out teasers

FEEL THE RAGE: Watch out, we got a mad-ass over here in the form of Anger, one of Riley's five emotions. I USED to hang out on a Pixar fan forum, and one of the most popular threads was called "Current mood". We would share our current emotion and why we feel that way, and through it, we get a slice of each other's personalities - dreams, pet peeves and opinions - and environments - home country's political situation, socioeconomic status and cultural norms. Pixar must have picked up on this revealing aspect of our moods as it's structured its next feature film - Inside Out, or as I like to call it, Feels: The Movie - around such human emotions like joy, anger and sadness. The first teaser was released a few months ago and I never got round to reviewing it, but the second teaser, a vignette of a family dinner, premiered today, so I reckon I might as well kill two birds with one stone and share my thoughts on both ads. TEASER 1 (Click to watch) This is probably one of my least favourite Pixar teasers, because it felt like a "Greatest Hits" reel than an actual promo. Almost three quarters of the teaser is flashback filler of their previous movies. I do understand that it ties in with the theme of the movie, namely, the emotions we feel when we watch these moments. But this presentation is flawed for one simple fact: It relies on the viewer being familiar with the films. Now, there's a high chance that most of the audience in cinemas where this teaser is played would be familiar with the films. Pixar is the animation zeitgeist of this generation and I bet there would be many people sitting in those seats munching on their popcorn who would've grown up watching these movies. Some of them would probably be parents by now. But, it will have no effect whatsoever on those who have not watched these films. Some, like the scenes representing disgust, are instantaneously recognisable and don't need any insider knowledge. But others, like joy or especially sadness, would fly over the heads of those who haven't seen the Pixar films they appear in. It is also quite revealing of the studio's insecurity that it could not find enough footage to fill the runtime (or did not want to reveal that much), and relied instead on audience brand recognition and prior knowledge. Cars, arguably one of its most panned films, gets only one scene of Lightning going "Kachow", the underrated A Bug's Life also gets only one of minor characters bawling, and the underrated-and-panned Cars 2 doesn't get any, probably because the studio doesn't want to remind the viewer of its "lesser" films. And that's a shame, because the rest of the teaser is brilliant. A person coming in blind would immediately be able to tell the emotions jumping across the screen - oh, that little red guy with the frown looks like Anger, the one who shrieks must be Fear. And Sadness, oh, Sadness, you are so forlorn, you even make me want to shed a tear. She creys everytim. ;__; The use of Aerosmith's Sweet Emotion was very clever too. Pixar fans would no doubt recognise the moments in the Greatest Hits reel and react accordingly (with shrieks and tears). But to those who have not seen any of the studio's flicks or who have poor memories, their emotion will most likely be of confusion. TEASER 2 (Click to watch) Now this is a much better promo, because here, you don't need to know who died in Up or why is Woody happy that Buzz is flying. This is a great introduction for a person coming in from the cold. This is a vignette, much like Ratatouille and The Incredible's, where we get to see the protagonists in action and learn about their personalities and why we should care about them. And it's all told in a little more than two minutes. However, one qualm I have is the human characters are stereotypical. Here we have the crabby teen Riley, the concerned mum and the clueless dad. Of course, the kid doesn't want to talk about her day, the mum is doing the verbal equivalent of kicking the dad's shins, and the dad is preoccupied with the last football match. I really, really hope Pixar doesn't go down the cliched route and have the girl - who is the new kid in town - be bullied by schoolmates, or have a crush on her handsome lab partner. Or the dad loses his job (cos Bob Parr did that already), or we get a scene where the mum watches a soap opera. I trust that Pixar is smarter than that. And if it does go with these done-to-death tropes, at least do so creatively. Another concern I have is that with the emotions narrating everything, there's not much audience involvement. By audience involvement, I mean reading into characters' words and expressions. Pixar did another dinner scene in The Incredibles, and it is brilliant because there is so much going on and so much subtext to read into it. You can tell Bob hungers to be recognised as a superhero by his excitement over his son's rule-breaking, you can sense Violet's resentment over Dash revealing her crush on Tony, because it's true, etc. This deciphering of surface-level words, of the interactions, the actions (Bob poring over the paper, Dash's weak grin) is half the fun of the scene. It's subtle, it's engaging, it's brilliant. With Inside Out, I can foresee that the emotions doing a running commentary on behalf of the audience. It violates the "Show, don't tell" maxim, and is equivalent to the character speaking out loud what he is thinking, or how she intends to handle a sticky situation. Again, I hope Pixar spots this possible storytelling weakness, and finds a way around it. Another thing that's got me wondering is how the emotions coordinate. There's no sense of heirarchy (is Joy the boss?) nor protocol. They all sit at a control panel and whoever punches the other gets to punch the "reaction button". One of my favourite recent films is Wreck-It Ralph, which very carefully builds it world and introduces rules to the audience in a very natural way. So that when it comes to the grand finale, we get why, say, a character cannot leave her game world, or how this character survived, etc. Here, there's no discernible rhyme or reason to how the emotions operate as a team. And why is the scene in the real world shot in such dim lighting? It looks like a horror movie. Other than that, it's an enjoyable little vignette. I really like how the mother harbours feelings for a former foreign flame (although sadly, his nationality is yet another well-worn cliche), and how there's a callback to this at the end. Also, the dad's control centre is the funniest, with all the emotions sporting glorious moustaches and screaming military lingo. I do wonder why the girl has emotions of both sexes while her parents have only one, but that's not a really big deal compared to my earlier quibbles. FURTHER THOUGHTS I've complained about how Pixar tends to be very insular in its characters (mostly Caucasian) and settings (mostly pseudo-American), and I'm really curious to see how they are going to make the audience empathise with a suburban teenager. Rival studio DreamWorks has diverse characters (its next film, Home, has a black girl as one of the deuteragonists) and locations (Penguins of Madagascar, which had yet another interspecies relationship in the studio's long line - see Madagscar 2, Megamind, Shrek and Shark Tale - covers Venice and Shanghai). Also, Inside Out is going to be a very intimate piece - there's a high chance there will be no Incredibles-style explosions nor Wall-E-level grand setpieces - and I'm wondering how they are going to raise the stakes. I can foresee a meltdown - maybe the poor kid would attempt suicide at the climax, which would be pretty dark for a family film. But it's not like Pixar hasn't done small-scale dramas before: Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University were a corporate-conspiracy thriller and college dramedy respectively, but you come to care for the characters despite the mundane (well, other than the fact that the entire cast are boogeymen) settings. Lastly, a lot of people have praised the film for its originality. But I don't feel it is a truly original idea, because it's been done before in movies (Osmosis Jones, to a certain extent), TV shows (Herman's Head) and comics (The Numskulls, an old Beano favourite of mine). But just like James Cameron's Avatar (which has been accused of ripping off flicks like Pocahontas or Fern Gully), it doesn't matter if the idea isn't original, but how the storyteller delivers it. And knowing Pixar, I am confident that it will deliver the emotional verisimilitude (cos there is an element of truth in good fiction) we've come to love. No doubt, the studio would have put a lot of thought into its grand-return-from-hiatus flick. I hope it has put that break to good use and delivers another winner, especially seeing that its last few films were not the critical darlings its earlier titles were.

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The Art of Rio Limited Edition unboxing and preview

I'm a huge fan of Rio (and to an extent, its sequel), so I was delighted when an art book of both movies was announced earlier this year. I got myself both the regular edition and limited edition a few months ago, and to celebrate my birthday yesterday, I finally unboxed the limited edition.

The book comes shrink-wrapped and packaged in a pizza box.

The dust jacket is a variant design. Between this and the regular edition's cover, I like this one a bit more because of the colour contrast of Blu and Jewel against the green of the city.

I found out that the cover, too, is a variant!

Each copy comes with a tip-in sheet featuring an image of Nigel by character designer Sergio Pablos, as well as a signature and doodle of Blu by director Carlos Saldanha. My copy is the "338th out of 500", so that must be 499 more head shots of the avian protagonist that Saldanha had to draw. :P

The following are a few pages from the book. All art belong to the respective artists and Blue Sky Studios.

Yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon!

Eagle-eyed viewers will remember that the bird colour wheel is on the wall of the security guard's office. I'm glad to see it reproduced in detail here.

I hope you enjoyed this preview, it's a really gorgeous book and I might do a video review and flipthrough sometime. If you're a fan of the movies or you want to support the talented artists at Blue Sky, I highly recommend getting it! You can buy the limited edition from Titan Books and the regular edition from Amazon and your local bookstore. Thanks for reading! Até mais!

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September 23 - October 22

Spread the Libra love! Reblog if you’re a Libra!

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There's more bodies above ground than below in Liam Neeson's detective thriller, A Walk Among The Tombstones. I designed and laid out this page, as well as wrote the lead review. Read online: http://mypaper.sg/lifestyle/brooding-neeson-meets-pulp-noir-20140918

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Commissions and trolling from Andy Price at STGCC 2014

So the legendary Andy Price, comic illustrator for DC, Marvel and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, was in town for the Singapore Toy Game & Comic Convention as a guest speaker. He drew the first four issues of the MLP comics and a Rarity Micro Series called How Rarity Got Her Groove Back. I was quite disappointed his panel was quite badly conducted - the LOUDspeakers weren't LOUD enough and you could hardly hear what he and the other panelists were saying. What was not disappointing, though, were his commissions! He had a booth where he could meet the fans and take commissions and autographs. I missed out on getting a commision from him for Bronycon 2013 - partly because I didn't know if he was accepting any and partly because I had hardly any cash left from supporting the fan artists and getting guest autographs. I knew I couldn't miss out on this second chance. When I first went to his booth, he wasn't there, but his wife, Alice, was. I got this original from her. When he signed my Rarity Micro Series cover later, he told me he drew it in the airport.

I also saw it on his Twitter, so I was glad to see it in his portfolio folder and snag it. I then wandered around and returned about 20 minutes later. He still wasn't there! Then I realised Alice was in fact writing down commission requests for Andy, when I noticed the guy in front of me was informing Alice of his commission (a bat pony OC with Twilight Sparkle). She told him that he would have to pick his up at the very end of the show. I freaked out when I had a peek at her waitlist - it was one-and-a-half pages long and it's only two hours into the convention! I had only a one-day pass, so after the guy left, I sheepishly talked to Alice and we arranged for her to hand me my commissions the next day outside the convention hall at 10am. But she could wait outside only for 15 minutes before she goes back in. I then went to the Walk of Fame to have Andy sign the Rarity Micro Series. A girl in front of me was dressed in a Tigger suit. He asked her to hop to his table and he grinned! What a TROLL! Then it was my turn. I told him that Rarity's my favourite issue and that I met him previously at Bronycon. He said he enjoyed this year's Bronycon as well. I also told him his "boss" (as she called herself) had written down my commissions and he laughed. I asked him to sign it to me, but he forgot.

We took a selfie.

For the group shot, he told me to look to my left. I fell for it.

I spent the rest of the day watching his panel and hanging out with the guy who commissioned his bat pony OC with Twilight Sparkle (we had actually communicated on a FB group before). We lurked at Andy's table (Alice was there, she told us he had retreated to the guest lounge to finish his commissions) and flipped through his portfolio. I tried to show off my knowledge of the Rarity issue by pointing out who I thought was Wheat Grass, but Alice corrected me and said it's Flax Seed (Wheat is the mare, Flax is the stallion). #epicfail

This was a deleted scene - apparently telegraphs aren't canon.

An open print of Derpeeeee I sent in my references and instructions to Andy's e-mail at about 8pm and hoped he read it before starting on my commission. The next morning, I was a nervous wreck, because I had already paid for the commissions upfront. Did my e-mail reach them? Was I standing at the right spot? What if I missed them? The worst that could happen was he drew something else involving my OCs and I had to pay just to get in if I missed them, but it's no big deal - because it's Andy Price!!! But, lo and behold, the couple arrived on the dot at 10am! Alice handed me the commissions while Andy went ahead. The first was a 1-figure pencil of Fluttershy eating ramen. Shy's my fave pony and ramen's my fave dish. I love the speech he added!

The second was a 2-figure marker of my OCs - Sam Seng, a male earth pony gangster, and Cili Padi, a female mousedeer cop. My brief to him was: Heat is one of my all-time favourite movies, featuring a cop (Al Pacino) vs a criminal (Robert De Niro). If you could draw my OCs dressed like them having a shootout in a Singapore setting, that would be super cool. :) And he drew this:

Either he didn't know how to draw guns or is a massive troll. I'm inclined to think the latter (kidding, I love his interpretation - they look WICKED!). So thank you to Big Boss Alice and the one-and-only, troll-tastic Andy Price!

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BronyCon 2013 Souvenirs Part 1

BronyCon is on this weekend, and it's been a year since I attended the 2013 edition in Baltimore. It was wonderful to meet a few of my overseas brony friends, fanartists and the talent behind the show in person. Here are some of the souvenirs I got from the convention - I tend to go for commissions and autographs because they're one of a kind and it supports fanartists and talent more directly, as opposed to official merchandise.

Left pic: (Clockwise, from top left) Auction card and Signed issue 9 by Katie Cook and Heather Breckel, within PixelKitties' Elements of Harmony book box; Bronycon 2013 exclusive Princess Twilight Sparkle trading card; Amy Keating Rogers business card; Blank Canvas sticker; fan-designed Bit coin; PixelKitties stickers and badges (which I got for wearing a T-shirt with her design to her booth); BronyCon badge & booklet; John de Lancie, Lauren Faust & Tara Strong signed Blu-Ray; mascot pins Right pic: (Clockwise, from top) PixelKitties Elements of Harmony book box, con badge, con bag

Left pic: As a Silver Sponsor (the lowest sponsor tier), I get a T-shirt, cap, a pair of shades and a credit in the programme booklet. Right pic: Credit in programme booklet, under Silver Sponsors.

Autographs by M.A. Larson, Amy Keating Rogers and Lee Tockar. I did not have anything for them to sign, so I gave 'em my programme booklet.

Postcards from PixelKitties. She and her sister were there and they were one of the friendliest vendors.

One of PixelKitties' autographs. She was thoughtful enough to cover them with Post-It Notes so that they don't smudge.

(Clockwise from left) BronyCon exclusive cover variant of issue 9, CSIMadMax's Hellboy & Derpy crossover comic, Mandi's DerpyQuest comic, CSIMadMax comic

(Clockwise from left) Signed BronyCon exclusive cover variant by Andy Price, Katie Cook and Heather Breckel; Fluttershy request kindly drawn by Mandi; CSIMadMax comic

Autographs from Pacce. Unfortunately, CSIMadMax wasn't at the booth when I bought the comics. Look out for Part 2 tomorrow!

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Quick thoughts on MLP: FIM Season 3 and 4

Art credit: secret-pony The following is a FB post in response to a discussion about the season 4 finale and how storylines in FIM feel rushed. Okay so i haven't seen episodes from Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3, but I just finished the season finale. IT WAS EPIC. And a game changer, not only for the Mane Six, but also Discord. Re season 3's finale, i agree too it was pretty rushed. Like, there was no warning, no foreshadowing, Twilight just *poof* became a princess. At least this season, there is a discernable arc, with the introduction of the tree of harmony, then the mystery of the six keys to unlock the chest, and then the revelation in the season finale. Season 1 also had something like that for the Grand Galloping Gala, but season 2 and 3 lacked any season-long arc. Other than Discord, though, FIM's supervillains are introduced only in the season openers or finales. I'm wishing that in future seasons, they introduce antagonists who encounter the heroes consistently throughout the season, instead of just showing up for 1-2 episodes and then being defeated. There were some nice resolutions in season 3 - Rainbow attending the Wonderbolts Academy, Scootaloo finally seeing Rainbow as a surrogate sister (something that had been the fandom's headcanon) and the return of fan favourite minor antagonist Trixie. This season saw more new characters (the adorable Coco Pommell, the crazy Mane-iac), new species (the Breezies, batponies) and new places (Manehatten, Maretropolis). I hope next season we see more returning characters (Gilda, perhaps?) and the continuing evolution of Twilight and her friends, especially in their expanded role.

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 unedited review

HANG IN THERE: Spidey gets into the swing of things in Andrew Garfield's second outing as the webbed superhero. CREDIT: SONY PICTURES THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (PG13) Action/142 minutes/Now showing Rating: 3/5 The story: Poor Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) can’t catch a break. His on-off girlfriend, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), has an offer to go to Oxford and may leave New York for England. His guardian, Aunt May (Sally Field), hides a dark secret about his parents, who abandoned him as a child. And his old buddy, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), is dying from the same disease that killed the latter’s father, who is the head of scientific research company Oscorp. Through his discovery of a Special Projects division, Osborn discovers that the blood of the city’s favourite superhero, Spider-Man, may hold the cure to his ailment. As we all know, Parker is Spider-Man, and his alter-ego is also in for a world of hurt. Enter Electro (Jamie Foxx), a power-hungry freak who looks like a neon-lighted Smurf. Then there’s the Green Goblin, a madman on a hoverboard who bears a striking resemblance to Osborn. Last, and certainly least in the intelligence department, is Rhino (Paul Giamatti), a Russian thug in a mecha suit. Looks like this spider’s gonna need a bigger web! BY ANDRE TEH IF I HAD to pick my favourite superhero, it would be Spider-Man, a wiseguy who can fire one-liners as well as his webs. But when he’s not busy saving the world, he’s Peter Parker, an average joe with girl problems and money woes. You know, real-world concerns that don’t bother Thor or Batman. And sometimes, the people he cares about get hurt. Sam Raimi, the director of my all-time favourite superhero movie, Spider-Man 2, explored this human cost of heroism with Tobey Maguire’s titular character abandoning his arachnid persona out of frustration. Those who have seen that sequel would experience deja vu with Marc Webb’s sophomore effort in Sony’s rebooted film series. Andrew Garfield’s Parker, like Maguire’s, has a love interest who might ditch him, an adoptive mother who is suspicious of his extracurricular activities and a best friend who becomes his greatest foe. However, the newer Parker has it easier. He’s got the looks, the moves and the zingers. It also helps that Garfield has palpable chemistry with his on- and off-screen flame, Emma Stone, their star-crossed lovers exchanging sweet nothings every chance they get. Webb’s film also makes it clear Garfield’s Spidey wants to rescue everyone, including the bad guys. For example, in a tension-laden stand-off in Times Square, he attempts to talk down supervillain Electro instead of attacking him. Electro’s prior human alter-ego, Max Dillon, is the real underdog here. After being saved by Spidey, the overworked and underappreciated Oscorp engineer develops a man crush on him. Following a workplace accident and a misunderstanding with his idol, Dillon becomes the blue baddie Electro. Jamie Foxx delivers an electrifying performance (pun intended) as his tragic antagonist transforms from an unassuming geek with a dorky comb-over into a walking Tesla coil who, through his control of electricity, is able to fry his enemies and plunge an entire city into darkness. The action sequences, especially those of Spidey flying through the concrete canyons of New York, are exhilarating in 3-D, with a massive car chase and a showdown at a power plant bookending the film. The soundtrack is superb too, thanks to Hans Zimmer and The Magnificent Six, which includes Pharrell Williams and Junkie XL. I especially dug Electro’s dubstep-inspired theme, filled with screeching strings and bass drops. Unfortunately, like Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, the film suffers from too many villains. The Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan) appears too late at the climax, although he gets to commit an act which will profoundly change Parker’s life and the course of future sequels. It is fans of Rhino (Paul Giamatti, who said the villain’s his favourite Marvel character from his childhood) who will get the short end of the stick – Webber said he appears for only four minutes. While it felt longer than that, this doesn’t diminish the fact that Rhino was merely an afterthought in an almost 2 ½ hour movie. I was also bored by the languid middle, in which Parker investigates his family’s past. A discovery about his father’s connection to Oscorp holds few surprises and wastes precious time that could be devoted to more cool action scenes. Also, the film comes off as perfunctory, as if it were an appetiser to an impending main course. Sony announced last year that, in addition to a third Amazing Spider-Man movie, there’ll be two spin-offs: Venom and Sinister Six, the latter of which features a league of supervillains that included Electro, Green Goblin and Rhino at different points in time. In its eagerness to set up the baddies for future instalments, the film is mechanical in its story beats – a little foreshadowing here, a revelation or two there – to the point that it never comes into own as a standalone adventure. And, horror of horrors, it ends on a cliffhanger. The film’s tagline goes: “When enemies unite, his greatest battle begins.” The Amazing Spider-Man 2 got the first half of the slogan right – at the expense of the characters’ development. The second part, in this reviewer’s opinion, could not be further from the truth.

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 published review, April 30 Read online at My Paper: http://mypaper.sg/lifestyle/action-and-villains-galore-spidey-20140430 AsiaOne: http://news.asiaone.com/news/showbiz/action-and-villains-galore-spidey

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TDIT's thoughts on Brenda Chapman's "Pixar is a sequel machine" remark

Here are my thoughts on Brenda Chapman's remark on Pixar being a "sequel machine". I think Brenda needs to... Let it go... Let it go... *shot for Frozen reference* But yeah, I can understand where she's coming from. Brave is, after all, her baby, and she had to "give it up" to Mark. I also agree with her that Pixar is, indeed, becoming a sequel machine. I mean, Finding Dory, Incredibles 2, CARS 3?!? But, as a great guy once said: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Dreamworks is making Kung Fu Panda 3, with HTTYD 2 opening this summer. Disney is rumoured to be making Wreck-It Ralph 2. Blue Sky just released Rio 2 and is making Ice Age FIVE. Sony and 20th Century Fox are churning out Amazing Spidey 2 and Days of Future Past respectively so that they don't relinquish their rights to Spidey and the X-Men to Marvel. Studios everywhere are sequel machines. Sequels are reliable because they bring in fans of the first movie. Pixar wants money and is scared (or rather, less scared than most studios) to take risks in an unstable economic climate with fickle moviegoers. Ipso facto, Pixar is a sequel machine.

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~ Box-office roundup ~ Last weekend in the Lion City, a family of blue macaws clawed a red, white and blue superhero down to No. 2, as Rio 2 dethroned Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Blue Sky Studios’ victory in the Republic is due to two factors: the extensive marketing blitz on TVs, fare gates and posters throughout the public train system; and the fact that Cap is on his third week of his tour of duty here. This writer, who has reviewed both movies in print and loved them, is very pleased with their box-office success. Meanwhile, the biblical tale (more like apocalyptic horror with shades of a slasher flick towards the end, in this writer’s opinion) Noah dropped to No. 3. The film has been banned in several countries in the region because it is against the religion of Islam to depict a prophet, which Russell Crowe’s eponymous character was. Arnie’s Sabotage debuted in the middle of the pack to scathing reviews in the mainstream media, with Nick Frost’s Latino dance comedy, Cuban Fury, barely making it into the Top 10. Stateside, Cap kept up the good fight by holding onto the No. 1 spot with US$41.3 million in its second weekend. Blu and friends wiggled and jiggled to an opening of US$39 million, putting it on a par with Mr Peabody & Sherman at US$32.2 million, Cloudy 2 at US$34 million and Blue Sky’s last film, Epic, at US$33.5 million. Kevin Costner, who starred in the kinda-okay Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and the abysmal 3 Days To Kill, plays a Cleveland Browns general manager in Draft Day, which opened at No. 4. No doubt fans of American football - or as Costner’s spy in 3 Days would say, “real football” – helped its box-office performance. Divergent tumbled two spots to No. 5, coinciding with news that the series’ final instalment, Allegiant, will be split into two parts. This is the latest in a trend of chopping trilogy finales in half – from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. One can imagine the suffering that parents of pre-teens and their wallets must be facing. Two family flicks, Muppets Most Wanted and Mr Peabody & Sherman, round up the USA’s Top 10. Muppets Most Wanted is set for an April 24 release in Singapore. This Easter weekend, Heaven Is For Real and Son Of God are hoping to preach to the moviegoing choir in America and Singapore respectively. Those looking for a resurrection of a different kind might wanna witness Johnny Depp’s spooky-looking sci-fi drama Transcendence - which is helmed by The Dark Knight and Inception cinematographer Wally Pfister - or Donnie Yen's Iceman, a remake of the 80s Hong Kong time-traveller-from-the-past comedy The Iceman Commeth.

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History has never been more improbable - Mr Peabody & Sherman review

TIME CRISIS: It's history in the wrecking for (from left) Sherman, Penny and Mr Peabody, the time travellers of DreamWorks' feature adaptation of Peabody's Improbable History. Everybody - or, at least, most Americans - has heard of the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. But the tale of honest Georgie is not true! It was first told in a book written by Parson Weems in 1806, seven years after the Founding Father died. Most of the stories in the tome, like the cherry tree, were made up. Even "Parson Weems" was fake, the guy's real name was Mason Locke Weems. I learnt all this reading Terry Deary's Horrible Histories special on the USA when I was a teen, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear Sherman, the deuteragonist of DreamWorks Animation's latest film, clear the air on this historical fable for a new generation of history buffs. The worst part is Deary's an Englishman! In many ways, Mr Peabody & Sherman is like Deary's infotainment book series. There's some gruesome gore (not explicitly shown, but implied, like the guillotine executions of the French Revolution), horrid historical hoodlums (like King Agamemnon, voiced by Patrick Warbuton of Hoodwinked! and The Emperor's New Groove) and foul factoids (Did you know King Tut died ad the age of 18 after ruling for just nine years?). I love this. I wish Mr Peabody was my history teacher. I mean, he can swordfight, perform bartending tricks and make cringeworthy puns. He's a geek with combat skills. And he's a dog! Anyway, the movie is actually based on Peabody's Improbable History, a series of shorts from The Rocky And Bullwinkle show. This was before my time, so I actually went to good ol' YouTube to watch a few of them after the film. I must say that the movie captured the personalities of the two eponymous characters rather well. Of course, the original shorts were incredibly racist. I mean, not outright offensive or anything, but kind of unpolitically correct. The kind of stereotypical jokes that wouldn't get past censors nowadays. Just Google the Geronimo or Great Wall of China episodes and you'll see what I mean. But yeah, this modern take on the adventures of a dog and his boy was pretty good. It's helmed by Rob Minkoff, the co-director of The Lion King, and stars Ty Burrell (who plays a supercop called Napoleon in Muppets Most Wanted), Max Charles (The Amazing Spider-Man), Leslie Mann (Rio and Rio 2) and Stephen Colbert (Monsters vs Aliens). The story is a bit like that of Brave and Finding Nemo. You know, a parent learning to let go of his kid, empty-nest syndrome, that sorta thing. It's very well executed, you really feel for Peabody's fear of abandonment (which I picked up in the trailer) and his persecution by people who think that, as an animal, he is unfit to take care of a human child. The historical settings were fun, but it does get more... improbable... as the film goes on. By the time they reach Troy, the characters were talking about Odysseus and Achilles as if they were real people. The first segment - the French Revolution - was my favourite, because it was the most accurate (save for Marie Antoinette's "Let them have cake" line). I also like "Peabody vision". At certain moments in the film, usually when Peabody is hatching a brilliant escape plan, we see little arrows and notes appear on screen, as if we were inside his mind, calculating flight trajectories and weight differentials. It's like "Master Builder vision" from The Lego Movie, or those ghost jump lines in Need For Speed: Rivals. The score by Danny Elfman is serviceable, but I struggle to remember the theme, unlike Kung Fu Panda's or How To Train Your Dragon's. But the licensed songs are great! There's Rhapsody in Blue, John Lennon's Beautiful Boy (used during a very sweet flashback sequence) and Aquarela do Brasil. Basically, my kind of music. Art style is exquisite too. Lots of retro goodness going on, I love the design of the WABAC, it reminded me of STEVE, another time machine in last year's Free Birds. I'm gonna get a bachelor pad like Peabody's... some day. Ohmygosh, the WABAC looks like the time machine in Free Birds! How unoriginal, DreamWorks! One aspect I didn't like can be summed up in one character: Penny. For an antagonist-turned-love-interest (at least, by pre-teen standards), she's a very unpleasant character. I mean, she's outright mean and ANNOYING. If it weren't for her sudden heel-face turn in the third act, I would've called her a villain. A lot of the conflicts and messy situations are caused by her. Sherman, too, to an extent, but he's so naive and well-meaning that it's easy to forgive his goof-ups. She's a dog too. The story also felt a little aimless at points, although every historical segment had a reason. For example, Egypt is when we learn Sherman likes Penny, the Renaissance is when Leonardo talks to Peabody about raising a kid, Troy is the pre-climax, etc. But it does get a little boring at parts. Still, I love the humour, I love the music, I love all the history! It's so horrible (in a good way)! Take your kids, or nephews, or nieces, or historically-illiterate friends to go see this. You can tell them that it's the only movie where they can see George Washington high-fiving Abraham Lincoln. Rating: 4 out of 5 bad puns Look out for more history-related reviews in TDIT’s Blast From the Past four-part special! Promo sig: