News Bites: Trolls and Tomorrow

Good morning folks, it’s Friday, time for the News Bites. For my regular readers, a quick update on when I’m getting back to regular content: very soon. The bad tooth was pulled out Tuesday, and while I’m still catching up on sleep and awaiting eating solid food again, I’m feeling pretty good. I want to build up a small buffer of watched films before I start posting reviews again, but hopefully those will start going up on Tuesday. The MMV will be along on Monday; I’m undecided right now on whether I’ll be posting a Sunday article or using the time to build up the buffer. It depends a bit on how things go; got a busy couple of days today and tomorrow.

But enough about me. You’re here for news about the movies. And there’s quite a bit of that, with sci-fi films, comedies, and family films all being heavily represented in this week’s News Bites. Read on to find out what’s going on!

MMV: Do the Bartman

This week’s MMV selection was made due to a simple time constraint; it’s near to midnight, and I need to be up early in the morning, so I wanted something easy to talk about. That doesn’t mean I’ll be giving it short shrift, though; merely that, as a musical performance, “Do the Bartman” is rather easy to research.

I’ve also got a bit to say about the random selection list, which took up most of my weekend prep time and isn’t quite finished yet. But more on that after the video.

The Iron Giant

The Iron Giant is one of those films that seems to have had a better reception in the long run than in the short run. Released in 1999, the film had very little press and was quickly ushered out of theatres. But a stronger marketing campaign for home video, coupled with heavy airplay on Cartoon Network, led to it becoming more popular as time went on. So even though I’m coming to the film “late”, as it were, at least I’m not alone in that.

The film was directed by Brad Bird, who would later become known for directing two of Pixar’s more popular films, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. This film, however, was for Warner Brothers. It is, on the surface, a story about a boy and his robot. Young Hogarth Hughes (voiced by Eli Marienthal) lives in a small town in Maine, being raised by his single mother Annie (Jennifer Aniston). He has a habit of bringing home “pets” which are stray animals or woodland creatures. The story starts when he encounters a “pet” that is just a bit more out of the ordinary.