A review from me :)

Imafish and I just got back from watching the Kung-Fu Panda, the new Jack Black animated film, and I just have to rant/rave about it as our first real post =)

To begin with, the previews sucked. I know its a children's movie, but honestly the best preview on it was the Wall-E one (I think thats how you spell it) which is starting to get a lil old to me. Other than that there was a Pink Panther 2 snippet (which imafish groaned mightily at) and a Star Wars: The Clone Wars preview... to which I took exception. To begin with the animation is odd, the background characters (i.e. the aliens and Yoda) look pretty good if not decent, but the two main humans and the main 'girl' look bloody weird, none of them look like a decent representative of their respective species. Its this girl though, this lovely token girl that bothers me the most (the feminist in me at least). She is described as being as brash as Anakin but trained in the old ways like Obi-Wan, sounds cool right? A refreshingly strong female lead character, right? Nope... as far as I can tell from these previews. She has the voice of a timid 10 year old, meek and polite, and she is dressed far too sexually, especially for a children's type of movie. While Anakin and Obi-Wan are dressed in their long flowing Jedi robes and are given primacy in the scenes and movie poster, she is shoved off to the side wearing a tube top and mini skirt that are only shades off from her skin color and thigh high boots. Yeah... great female role model there Lucas Arts, lets show the girls what it means to be a good, strong minded girl... flashing skin and pandering to the men around you.

*deep breath* Ok enough ranting... for the moment...

Now back to your regularly scheduled review folks. I absolutely loved this movie. The animation in it was so gorgeous, subtly Asian inspired with beautiful facial expressions and personalities. I have to say the turtle was by far my favorite, but mostly because he reminds me of my Papa, especially the part where he can kung-fu-ify anyone who pisses him off. The movie had a great little moral to it too for the kiddies. And I was actually rather impressed that 2 of the Heroic 5 were female (yes, I know I said no more ranting, but its been more than a moment on this side of the authorial line). Granted they were the only two females in the cast (there is like a total of 12 characters), but I was rather pleased that there wasn't just a token female and they weren't sexualized! For once many of the male characters were wearing less clothing and were more 'sexualized' than the females. Oh Hallelujah! The best part, the main female was supposed to be the heroine, the Dragon Warrior, and she was by far the most competent, graceful, and heroic of the Heroic 5. Sadly though, the blundering man (panda) managed to nab it out of her hands, silly firework chair. Anyways, really good movie. There is an absolutely hilarious part about midway through, the ENTIRE theater was cracking up for a good 30 seconds if not more.

All in all, this will definitely have to go into my library as soon as it comes out and I actually have money.... yay for being a broke college student no one wants to hire for some ungodly unknown reason.

Night y'all