Blogs Against Humanity - Adventures in Sympathetic Misanthropy

  So, the reaper has struck another celebrity, and what a shitty week-plus of deaths too: Hayden Panettiere, Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and now Peter Cullen , a decades-long voice-actor whom most people know as none other than Optimus Prime . All of these were sad, particularly the death of Panettiere, who died far too young as was essentially yet another victim of the Hollywood machine that chews up child stars. We failed to save the cheerleader, it would seem, but I digress.  When I think of fictional heroes from my youth, my small list is pretty crystalized in my mind. I think of Captain James T Kirk, Spider-Man, Superman, the Fourth Doctor, and I think of Optimus Prime.   Peter Cullen gave a toy a soul, and did such a good job that Hasbro didn't even realize that the fans cared. Killing off Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie was an easy business decision for them because of that ignorance, but a sea of subsequent parental complaints revealed it to have b...

  The perfect antidote to the tiresome early-aughts teen comedy "So what was all that about enlarged holes and tight cracks?"   These days, GHOST WORLD rarely gets a mention when most people discuss the best cinematic comic-book adaptations of all time. This is something of a crime, because 25 years later, it remains exactly that: a phenomenal adaptation of a highly-regarded comic series.    This is somewhat understandable when you consider the fact that Daniel Clowes' critically-acclaimed 8-issue series doesn't feature superheroes in tights, but rather a pair of sardonic 18 year-old girls who have just graduated High School and who find themselves on increasingly divergent paths in their road to adulthood. The screenplay was written in a collaboration between Clowes, and director Terry Zwigoff, and while the film was a critical success, it didn't make much of an impact at the box office and remains something of a cult film. And coming in on the heels of a decade...