These live streams have been such a fun way to cover Soul in more detail as it continues to reach a bigger audience on Disney Plus. For that reason, I decided to dig into the alternative ending of the film, which was actually a bit darker. But was it for the better? Check out my live stream above to find out what you think, and be sure to provide your two cents in the comments. I really want to hear what you all have to say.
As you can imagine, the video contains massive spoilers for Soul, so you’ve been warned. If you want to know when I’m going live ahead of time, follow my YouTube Channel Jon In Theory. Ring the bell for notifications, so you’ll find out when my next live stream is scheduled. I hope to see you all in the live chat, where I can answer any and all questions in real-time.
Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s hoping 2021 is a better one.
If you’re reading this website, or live on this planet, I don’t need to explain to you why Pixar is worthy of its own video essay guide. In fact, I am probably doing Pixar and its body of work a disservice by lumping them all into one guide. All I will say is: Here are five video essays about Pixar you should watch.
Will’s list is wonderful (and his previous video essay guide for “your favorite cartoons” is also worth a look).
There’s a lot in these videos some of you super fans will no doubt have heard before, like how Pixar uses music to make us cry, or how the animation studio pays homage to classic films.
Snarcasm is an editorial column I do when I read something so upsetting, I have to publish something snarky and sarcastic about it. Thanks for indulging, and definitely take everything you’re about to read incredibly seriously.
Hi. Fan theories are both the best and the worst. Kind of like people! But you can’t say the same about Pixar’s WALL-E, a triumph of animated cinema about the reckless, capitalist dangers of mankind passively wreaking havoc on the environ—
“Sinister WALL-E fan theory will change the way you watch the sweet Pixar film forever”
Oh, OK. I forgot we were watching this “sweet Pixar film” all wrong. How, exactly, was WALL-E some sort of overtly nice and go-lucky tale, considering all the dystopian apocalyptic subject matter?
The first Deadpool was a parody of the superhero genre, and so is Deadpool 2 in a lot of ways. But watching the movie recently, I came away with the conclusion that this sequel is more about the superhero genre’s fans, lampooning us and our expectations going into these summer franchise flicks.
To explain this, I took to my trusty YouTube Channel Jon In Theorythe other day and rambled into a microphone. It’s not the shortest video, but hopefully some of you will find it interesting. This is less of a review and more of a spoiler analysis from the perspective of someone a bit mixed on the film.
Usually on Cinemaholics, we stick to covering one featured movie and leaving the rest for “mini reviews.” But for the second week in a row, the summer release schedule disagreed with us, so Will Ashton, Maveryke Hines, and I reviewed both Dunkirkand Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planetsthis week.
This was a more contentious episode than usual, with most of us differing quite a bit on both of these movies, particularly Valerian. If you’re at all interested in seeing either of these films, our conversation might prove useful.
Just two Mini Reviews this week: Aftermath(starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Colossal(starring Anne Hathaway). The latter is a film I saw just this week as a blind buy on Will Ashton’s recommendation.
Full disclosure: I was very tired during this latest episode of Cinemaholics, and you can clearly hear it in my voice. For fun, simply imagine that it’s my disdain for Transformers: The Last Knight fueling my weariness and it should sound just fine.
Maveryke and I are joined this week by CJ Mellon from That Kind of Nerdpodcast. You may remember CJ from his guest appearance on Now Conspiring last fall, when we discussed the best and worst movies of 2016 (or maybe just the summer?) Unfortunately, Will Ashton is out this week due to scheduling conflicts.
Fortunately, our Mini Reviews were a bit more lighthearted than our featured discussion of Transformers. We talked about GLOW, the new show on Netflix starring Alison Brie, which is about the “gorgeous ladies of wrestling” in the 1980s. Highly recommend now that I’ve seen a few episodes myself. CJ shares his love of iZombie and speaks briefly on Season 3 without spoiling anything. And I gave a sneak peak review of Friends from College, another new Netflix show premiering on July 14th. I’m still working my way through the season, but it’s a solid recommendation.
There are just three things we want you listeners to do if you have a spare moment this week, and it will greatly benefit Cinemaholics:
Email us! We truly enjoy your feedback through the cinemaholicspodcast(at)gmail.com email. It also helps guide our early segments and ease into conversation. So please keep your great emails coming.
Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Yes, yes, I know it’s a hassle, but doing this ensures that our podcast stays afloat as we pay our bills and bring on new guests. For those of you who’ve already done this, thanks again for taking the time.
Join our Facebook community. We’re steadily growing and finding new ways to talk to you all, and it’s great to find listeners from YouTube and podcasts mingling in the same group. Thanks again for all of you who’ve liked the page already.
No Cinemahomework this week, but stay tuned for some bonus content in the next few days surrounding some big news stories we didn’t have time to get to in the main episode. See you all next week.
Is Pixar’s Cars franchise worth another lap with Cars 3?
One of the stark differences between the Cars movies and many of the other Pixar films is that there’s no explicit purpose for its own high concept…except to sell toys. There’s no real commentary on what it means to be a car or own one, and audiences are instead given a “human” comedy that replaces the characters with cartoon sketches simply for visual and experiential distinction.
Even Zootopia, a Disney film that appears to do the same with animals, allows its story to be controlled and guided by the real implications of a society governed by anthropomorphized animals in order to say something relevant about humans. Pixar’s magic has been to get away from that type of storytelling with films like Toy Story, which commit to the real differences between the plight of toys and the separate experience of being a human.
