I was very surprised to find that the new Shaun the Sheep movie was getting a theatrical release this side of the Atlantic. The last one, Farmageddon , didn’t get much play out here and Shaun the Sheep is far from ubiquitous as a brand. But there were a few children in my audience who laughed at the right moments and seemed genuinely engaged with the cute claymation farm animals. And that’s good, because it’s an endearing, intriguing art that only Aardman Animation seems to be doing anymore. And Shaun the Sheep , which is still producing new episodes, is the main thing keeping the lights on at that company. The Beast of Mossy Bottom is certainly a daring choice of title for a movie that otherwise taps into a Halloween theme fairly well. There’s been a shortage in the last decade or so of Halloween movies for kids, perhaps due to a lack of an audience in a young generation more desensitized and attuned to adult horror or an absence of imagination or impetus from the movie industry -...
Though some of the writers on the Hulu run of Futurama have been necessarily younger, let it be remembered that the show is primarily staffed by b oomers and the oldest of Gen-X. An episode like “Oceans Three”, with a demographic audience age of about seventy-five, is a reminder of that. None of its trilogy of parodies are very culturally understood among people under forty, even the one that is only about thirty years old. I’m aware of them because I’m a nerd for movie and TV history, yet some referential jokes even flew over my head. And maybe this genre of sixty-year-old pop culture pastiches would work fine if they didn't come boxed in another lame anthology episode. After last season didn't include one I believed the Futurama writers had realized the gimmick had run its course, but apparently no t . "Oceans Three", as its title implies, is a collection of stories set out on the sea . A particular thing that does distinguish this one is that each narrative ...