Christmas Tally

It was a much quieter more laid back Christmas in terms of loot since, for obvious the reasons, the one thing I really, really, REALLY wanted this year was already picked up during American Thanksgiving and has been played religiously since then. However, some other stuff has been picked up along the way. The Wife is now the proud recipient of a piece of her childhood in the form of this:

Since she’d grown up as a kid watching this, it’s a precious piece of her childhood, and now she can watch it in the comfort of her own home, commercial free and enjoying the Deep Dark Shame where no one can see.

I have to admit I was quite surprised when, upon viewing some of the episodes I saw the name Paul Dini (he created Batman: The Animated Series amongst other Warner Brothers modern animation classics). I had no idea he had actually been involved in the series, but upon watching the episodes he wrote, it was pretty obvious that even at that early stage, he was already showing a flair for half-hour animated episodes since his episodes, in some incredible way that I still can’t believe, actually evince something of plot and characterization. That’s not to say that he wrote Emmy worthy episodes of He-Man, but compared to the quality of the more usual staple in the series, he did actually manage to create genuine moments of story here and there in the episodes he wrote. I guess when you’ve got it, it’ll always shine through in some way, shape or form, regardless of limitations.

This is the other thing, and man are we ever happy with it. I’d been hearing for ages and yonks about this “totally freakin’ amazing nature documentary with the British guy” that was supposed to have had some of the most startling footage ever put to film. After watching this, I can totally believe it. When you hear some of the stories that the camera crew went through (like waiting around on a Norwegian polar reserve for four months just waiting for ONE shot of a Polar Bear coming out of hibernation and crawling out of its hole) you immediately begin to appreciate just how much work went into this series. Despite the fact that nearly every shot looks like a high budget CG rendering from Lord of the Rings or Walking with Dinosaurs, aside from some tricks with time lapse photography, every shot is the real thing. Which I find somewhat disturbing because even when I know it’s real, I still sometimes find myself thinking “That shot of the shark looked more realistic in Chased By Dinosaurs.”