Stirfry Studios

I enjoy making these lists, so you’ll probably see more the future. 

Anyway, Disney movies are awesome.  But there are certain scenes that are just so awesome they just send a chill down your spine (for a lack of a better explanation).  So without further ado, here’s my list of the top ten Most Epic Animated Disney scenes, but be prepared to adjust your speaker volumes, as the sound intensity fluxuates between videos.  (To Those who haven’t seen these movies, beware, ahead be spoilers.)

10:  The Castle Siege/Final Battle from Beauty and the Beast. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UGfdv5DC7M)  I LOVE this scene.  It uses suspense mechanisms to incredible effect and gives audiences just what they were hoping for… a comedic “defend the castle” bit between the castle’s enchanted subjects and the angry mob.  Hilarity most definitely ensues, but it all takes a stark turn when Gaston encounters the Beast in his quarters… what follows is an epic battle between the two, finally settling once and for all who gets the girl: the “Monster” or the “Man?”       

9:  Prince Philip vs. Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk0Mm6irR4Q)  The classic “good vs. evil” fairy tale battle, and the even more classic “knight slaying the dragon” bit.  The twist on this is that the Prince would have been burnt to a crisp, eaten and all around miserably failed if he wasn’t assisted by the three good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merriweather.  While the dragon poses a challenge to the young prince, he quickly gains the upper hand in battle as the dragon makes itself vulnerable to attack.  What follows is one of the greatest screams in cinematic history.  It sends a shiver down my spine every time. 

8:  Both Hun Battles from Mulan.  (I couldn’t find a clip of the avalanche, but if anyone finds it, link me please. <3  Fireworks Victory:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbibTGHJ4L4)  The sheer size alone of the Avalanche scene is jaw dropping.  Thousands of powerful Huns racing down the mountain, their battle cries echoing in the air, their horses thundering towards a miserably outnumbered enemy batallion.  All hope seems lost, until our heroine is struck with a brilliant idea:  Use the last cannon to blast the mountain’s side, creating an avalanche that wipes out the entire Hun army in one fell swoop.  However, she narrowly missed their leader, who in his rage injured her with his sword.  Aaaand cut to the final battle!  All that results is sheer pwnage. 

7:  A Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Ca_edg6RE)  With an intense musical piece like this in the background, what do you expect to play?  My Little Pony?  Actually, I’d love to see that.  But I digress.  With the mythology behind the music, Disney had a set concept that they were able to work with, and what came about was quite possibly Disney’s most dark and risque animated piece to date.  The freaks come out at night… and they have a wild party all under the command of their leader, Chernabog, and they are at his mercy.  As the music intensifies, so does the celebration of evil until ultimately the church bell tolls, sending the dead back to their graves and putting evil in it’s place.  Like clockwork, Ave Maria begins to play as the evil fades and the divine enters.  Though drastically different in tone and mythology, these two pieces set each other off perfectly, which in itself is epic as well.

6:  Finding the Genie’s Lamp/Lava Run from Aladdin. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHi5kHb_4ns  Sorry guys, couldn’t find this one in English).  This is the turning point in Aladdin’s story.  Find the lamp, get rewarded, keep on living.  However, Aladdin bites off more than he can chew when he brings his treasure obsessed monkey companion into the Cave of Wonders.  What ensues is a frantic, fast paced, edge of your seat escape with Alan Menkin’s musical score adding to the adrenaline rush. 

5:  Sabor vs. Kala from Tarzan.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5uB4K0_Wjo)  Before Kala finds the infant Tarzan, she walks through the site of his parents’ slaughter, the memory of her child’s death still on her mind.  However, she soon forgets her woes after having a touching moment with the baby, only to be brought back to reality after realizing that the savage killer is still in the room…  I considered putting adult Tarzan’s fight with Sabor on the list, but after thinking about it, Kala’s struggle seemed more epic to me for a few reasons, primarily because Kala was fighting for a more noble cause than the approval Tarzan sought.  Kala’s struggle was based purely on maternal instinct on a child that wasn’t even her species, but she fought tooth and nail for his protection and later raised him as her own, despite many glaring differences between her child, herself and their clan.  That’s dedication.  You go Kala, you go,

4:  Savages from Pocahontas.   (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSu4hOLYrXk)  A bubbling conflict is brought to a roaring boil when a murder takes place between the Powhatan tribe and the newly arrived settlers, finally paving the way for all out war between the two.  The irony is, both sides remark that the other is different from them and therefore a threat, but both are going about the conflict the same way by rallying the soldiers and preparing to attack the other at dawn.  Maybe their not as different as they suspect… Disney seems to enjoy taking the idea of monstrosity and turning it on it’s head. (See Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback of Notre Dame) 

3:  The Car Chase from Oliver and Company. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNbrH8oIEfQ)  I am convinced that this is one of, if not the most brutal scene in Disney’s animated canon.  I don’t think I even have to explain why.  However, in terms of the epicness, the growing danger of the scene is just overwhelming;  One second can turn the tides of the situation, and can either promise safety or being splattered on the walls in the tunnels.

2:  “The Final Problem” (Big Ben) from The Great Mouse Detective.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1zwRL3rxwQ)  Extra epicness if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes.  Another situation of “one false move and you’re done for,” this scene also shows one of the most memorable villain transformations I’ve ever seen.  Ratigan, who at the beginning of the film lived and behaved with an elegant and gentleman-like air becomes a brutal, bloodlust driven monster at the drop of a hat.  Coupled with the voice talent of horror icon Vincent Price, this is one terrifying transformation, raising the stakes of the battle between good and evil.      

1:  Siege of Notre Dame from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH5toJXxrcE)  Oh look!  More recurring themes.  This battle royale is fraught with many types of symbolism, recurring themes and featured the ultimate karmic backlash for any Disney villain.  The build-up to this scene is epic as well, setting the stage perfectly for what’s to come.  I don’t want to say too much on this one, so if you haven’t seen it, or haven’t taken the time to observe what’s going on, please, please, PLEASE do.  You won’t regret it.  Frollo is a sith lord.   

Honorable mentions:  The Wildebeest Stampede (The Lion King), Stitch’s Prison Break/The 747 Sequence (Lilo and Stitch), The Resurrection of Gurgi (The Black Cauldron).

So there we go.  Hope you like it.  Now I’m going to sleep.  G’night, hope you like my list, and hopefully I’ll do more soon. <3

So I went to the dentist this morning so that they can take pictures of the inside of my mouth.  My wisdom teeth on the bottom are growing in at a bizarre angle and are starting to poke up, so I think we all know what that means…

They want to rip my teeth out ASAP.  Oh joy.  Actually, I have to wait until Xmas to get my mouth eviscerated since it would be a bad idea to do so while I’m at school.  Either way, not looking forward to the surgery, but I’m pretty excited about the painkillers. xD  I’m already making a list of movies to watch while I’m drooling all over myself on Vicodin.  So far, my list consists of:

• Alice in Wonderland (Animated)
• Fantasia (2000)
• Spirited Away
• Little Nemo
• Tron

So… any suggestions for expanding on this list?  Or how about some of YOUR dental stories?

I love surfing IMDb for useless movie trivia.  And I love animated films of all kinds.  And if there’s one thing that really pisses me off it’s that a lot of people seem to be under the impression that animation is a genre for solely for children, and will express outrage when anything remotely mature shows up.  PEOPLE!  Animation is a medium, not a genre.  And there are a lot of animated shows and movies that are geared to a more mature audience… which some people were dumb enough to show their kids because of the pretty pictures.  Well, no wonder you get mad.  You don’t do your research.  Anyway, enough of my ranting.  Here is my list of the top ten animated movies that prove that animation is not just for kids.  I’m not including anime on this list purely because it would dominate the countdown, so just western cartoons.

10:  Disney in general.

Yeah, I know I’m cheating with this one.  But there is a lot of stuff in Disney that is just terrifying whether you’re a kid or an adult, whether it was one character (Like The Black Cauldron’s Horned King) or a particular scene (Dumbo’s Pink Elephants on Parade), Disney knew how to keep its audience happy and scared shitless simultaneously.

9:  9 (lolpun)

Truth be told, I prefer the original short film over the feature length one.  But I’m going with the feature length one in the countdown since it went more indepth with everything.  The visuals in this film are haunting, macabre and don’t pander to the audience’s squeamishness.  Rather, they exist mostly to scare you or unnerve you.  And they do a really freakin’ good job at it.     

8:  The Secret of NIMH

Arguably Don Bluth’s Magnum Opus.  The Secret of NIMH dealt with a lot of dark and adult themes like animal testing, mutiny, the advances of science and how they can be benign or harmful.  Also despite being mostly rodents, the characters were very human and shared a certain relationships with one another, everything from affection or annoyance to maternal love or backstabbing hatred.  The overall feel of the film is dark and bleak, but gorgeous and moving.  The numerous multi-faceted aspects of the film may be tough for a kid to get, but to an adult, it’s simply fantastic.     

7:  Persepolis

Based on a graphic novel autobiography by Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis details Satrapi’s life growing up during the Islamic Revolution.  While the film has some humorous bits, the rest is bleak, violent and unnerving, just as Satrapi remembers while growing up.  If you thought growing up in America was tough, just watch Persepolis and be amazed. 

6:  The Adventures of Mark Twain

Not a lot of people have seen this one.  This stop-motion film depicts three kids going on adventures through the stories of Mark Twain, such as Tom Sawyer, etc.  But things take a macabre and disturbing turn when the segment “The Mysterious Stranger” begins.  A ghostly angel named Satan appears and asks the children to create their own miniature civilization out of clay, which falls susceptible to jealousy, greed and other such vice.  As the segment progresses and Satan’s true colors are shown, all that can be expressed is horror.  This is one fucked up piece of animation.

5:  Watership Down

Imagine cute, fluffy bunnies.  Imagine cute, fluffy bunnies being gassed alive, torn apart, killing each other or enslaved by other bunnies.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Watership Down. 

4:  South Park:  Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

I don’t think I need to go into this one.  The title says it all.

3:  The Plague Dogs

By the same author and animation team as Watership Down, you can expect similar animal predicaments for this film.  However, it’s much worse.  Two dogs narrowly escape from a vivisection lab, and from the get-go things aren’t pretty.  A team of scientists immediately begin chase, fearing the dogs might be carriers of the Bubonic Plague.  What follows is a lot of blood, bleak atmosphere and an ending that will shake even the most stonehearted.

2:  Felidae

Take Watership Down and Plague Dogs, replace the characters with cats and crank the knob on the “WTF?!” Scale up about 50 points.  Yet another animal flick that dabbles in the wonders and horrors of science, Felidae also combines aspects of racial cleansing, religious extremism, macabre surrealism and mass murder all in a single, animated package.  Definitely not for the squeamish.   

1:  Fritz the Cat

R. Crumb, the creator of this character, hated this film so much that he killed the character off so that no other movies like this could be made.  Despite this, this is not a bad film.  But it is definitely not for kids.  Fritz the Cat was the first X-rated animated film, with good reason.  Immense amounts of drug content, sex and violence are displayed throughout the film, all expressed by anthropomorphic animals.  The film is a representation of college life in the sixties and all that implies, hence the content.  Director Ralph Bakshi believed that animation was a medium that was always intended to be on the razor’s edge. 

“…If you only take apart what they allow you to take apart, you’re Disney. Cartooning is a low-class, for-the-public art, just like graffiti art and rap music. Vulgar but believable, that’s the line I kept walking.”  (quote from IMDb)

So there you have it, I’m done ranting for now.  I hope you enjoyed my list, and hopefully I’ll do more of these in the future.  Let me know what you think, but be nice.  Being uncivil won’t get you anywhere.

Have a nice day! :D 

I ARE ARTIST YAY.

Actually, a bit of an artistic update rather than a life update, purely because nothing’s happening.  Meanwhile, in my imaginary land of artistic endeavors…

I GOT COMMISSIONED.  This makes me so happy, there may be hope for my art yet! :D 

So here’s a list of my current projects:

• An octopig for Kathy. (<3)
• Solid Snake Cardboard Stealth Keychains (2 styles)
• A 10-inch (apx) sculpey model of Sailor Saturn
• A commission related to Fullmetal Alchemist’s Maes Hughes (details not finalized)

Along with that, I’ve got lots of stuff that I’m drawing for figure drawing and the London course.  I think just in the past few weeks, my art has improved quite a bit.  Hopefully I’ll continue to learn as the further I go.

Have a good day, wiggle and squeal!  Be happy! :D