Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- 6. Titanic Animated Movies

Number 6 -- Titanic Animated Movies




(Seriously, MaroBot's a great CG artist. He even made the set pieces and exteriors for Linkara's spaceship!)

Titanic: The Legend Goes On
Release Date: September 15, 2000
Posting Date: March 24, 2009
The Legend of Titanic
Release Date: April 17, 1999
Posting Date: May 17, 2011

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- 7. The Haunting

Number 07 -- The Haunting


(Seriously, check out MaroBot's DeviantArt! He's also a brilliant CGI artist!)

Director: Jan de Bont
Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liam Neeson
Release Date: July 23, 1999
Posting Date: October 11, 2011

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- 8. Tom and Jerry: The Movie

Number 08 -- Tom and Jerry: The Movie



Director: Phil Roman
Richard Kind, Dana Hill, Anndi McAfee
Release Date: July 30, 1993
Posting Date: September 1, 2008

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- 9. Kazaam

Number 09 -- Kazaam



Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Shaquille O'Neal, Francis Capra, Marshall Manesh
Release Date: July 17, 1996
Posting Date: October 06, 2008

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- 10. Junior

Number 10 -- Junior


(Check out artist MaroBot's DeviantArt for more NC title cards!)

Director: Ivan Reitman
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, Emma Thompson
Release Date: November 23, 1994
Posting Date: January 12, 2010

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- 11. Saved By the Bell and Full House

Number 11 -- Saved By The Bell and Full House



(Full House title card by MaroBot. Check out his DeviantArt page for more NC title cards!)

Release Years: 1989-1993 (SBTB); 1987-1995 (Full House)
Networks: NBC (SBTB); ABC (Full House)
Posting Dates: August 25, 2008 (SBTB); May 26, 2009 (Full House)

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- Criteria and Index

When compiling this list of the best Nostalgia Critic reviews, I set a few points of criteria by which I would make my judgements. This is also evident in the Honorable Mentions section.

Read More after the jump.

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews -- Honorable Mentions

Before I bring out the Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews, I would like to go over a few honorable mentions. I will admit, the shortlist for this countdown had about 75 reviews on it. If that sounds like an outrageous sum for such a small, cult Internet show, that's because it kinda is, I'm not gonna lie. Still, it was hard to choose the best reviews for this list, because there were a few common traits to all of them, all with the same positive vibes.

And so, beyond the Top 11, here we have some of the reviews I enjoyed the most.

Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews Intro -- A Saulte

It all happened so fast. There were hints dropped months in advance, and the evidence seemed to have piled up like crazy. And yet, this big shift feels like it happened at the drop of a hat.

It was over so abruptly.

Indeed, internet comedian and film reviewer Doug Walker has just announced that he is not going to do any more Nostalgia Critic videos. This announcement comes on the heels of the conclusion of To Boldly Flee, the eight-part special celebrating the fourth anniversary of the ThatGuyWiththeGlasses.com website.
From my personal perspective, the first hint at this revelation was the initial teaser for the special released back in June, around the same time Spoony's departure from the site was announced. I had my suspicions when the next Nostalgia Critic was for the Digimon movie, a crossover with anime critic JesuOtaku. Doug made it clear that the cartoon was far outside of the span of his childhood and that he didn't want to review it (even though it wasn't on his "Top 11 Nostalgia Critics I'll Never Do" video), and this was evident as far back as the April  2008 review of Pokemon: The First Movie. If anything felt like crossing an item off a figurative bucket list, that review hit the nail on the head. Several reviews in the following weeks seemed to have followed suit, especially with all the crossovers that cropped up (and there were plenty in the year so far as well).

Still, I just shrugged those feelings off. But then came the Scooby-Doo movie review with its feelings of finality, in homage to the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale. And even then, I didn't really fall back into such suspicions until To Boldly Flee ended.

As he said, Doug intends to move on to new projects. Based on the footage of his new studio, they look to be more ambitious than he's ever been in his videos. As someone who's been watching the Nostalgia Critic since his humble YouTube beginnings and never missed an episode, I look forward to this new venture. But with this chapter coming to a close, I feel like I should follow suit with what Doug has planned for the immediate future and reflect on what was, through-and-through simply a fun ride.

Over the next few days, I intend to post commentaries on my absolute favorite Nostalgia Critic reviews. First off, I'll post a list of honorable mentions, going over some of the great, memorable and very funny reviews that only barely made the final cut. And then, I start on my list of the Top 11 Nostalgia Critic Reviews.



Keep watching this space!

The "Reason SOPA Sucks" Speech

Before I write a single word on the matter at hand, I should fully acknowledge the risk factors at hand. In a very Republican family, I tend to avoid most political matters and leave that all to them. I tend to be passive, non-partisan and diplomatic. Still, this is a surprisingly political piece, and it will no doubt infuriate a lot of people of power. Said people may very well not have read it at all or just look at the broad strokes, only focusing on the notion that this is against their interests and bad for their business. I would just be vilified for merely speaking my mind and emerge with a painful, crippling loss on my part.


Such is the reason I avoid politics or speaking my mind. But, this is a matter I cannot ignore in the slightest, one that involves liberty being put at risk and wherein human beings would become exploited for the benefit of a strong, powerful minority.

There is a variable alphabet soup of bills going on in Washington, with the intent of fighting piracy. I understand that piracy is a serious issue, and that it causes a lot of financial loss for the entertainment industry. That I cannot deny, and you can’t claim any benefit on my part because of it. I avoid websites that stream entire movies for free as well as street-side vendors selling illegitimate DVDs and make absolutely no attempt to undermine the severity of piracy.

However, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is one of the sloppiest, most blatantly destructive attempts to curb piracy. The main gist of the bill is that it would shut down any website that uses any piece of any copyrighted material. There are no exceptions, and no questioning. There’s also no fairness to the bill, the content so vague that it amounts to little more than studios childishly hoarding every frame of their content, refusing to share unless one is willing to pay for even a few seconds of it. What about average Americans who want to make fan works and can’t pay your royalties? Shouldn’t at least those who work hard creating quality works be allowed to share them with the public? Don’t fair use laws do enough to compromise? I guess that was just shameless, foolish optimism.

There was even a meeting this week to make the bill more palatable, creating reasonable exceptions for criticism. But that was shot down, and I heard that would just benefit the entertainment industry. Look, I understand if professional reviewers like Richard Roeper or the New York Times movie critics can keep pressing forward with their reviews, raising enough capital to license clips and stills to complement their reviews and commentary. But, what about the average people without such benefit? Should they just be limited to making text-only reviews and get thoroughly ignored because they can’t afford visual aids?

On one last point to make, I point to a major issue that has affected the country as we reflect on the end of the year. I will do my best to avoid sounding like a conspiracy nut, and won’t make any government-business connection beyond this one point. Throughout the final months of 2011, a lot of middle-class people have been protesting major corporations, big business, and just anyone who benefits from capitalism. They are holding such parties accountable for the poor state of the economy and in turn, for the general woes of society.

In this case, amongst the talk of “Occupy Wall Street” and splitting the population into “The 99%” and “The 1%” (the 99% are unfair to the 83%, Let’s Occupy Red Robin, and then I’ll Occupy the Restroom!) I must point out the irony of SOPA. I’m not sure how many people realize that the principle people supporting this bill are the 1%. What’s more, it’s a more direct attack on society in general than just business as usual. Hollywood is already plenty wealthy, and they have the business prowess to gain investment for productions, regardless of quality. And they’re trying to put a tight, cruel leash on the internet, the very digital frontier by which society has begun to rely so crucially on, and potentially destroy it, and to what end? Just to save a few bucks? So the CEO running the studios’ corporate parent can afford that ivory backscratcher?

What kind of hypocritical society would embrace such criticism of harmless business and yet let a law like this pass and cause much, much worse ramifications?

And I submit one last plea to the entertainment industry. If you really want to take the high road, I implore you to go back to your homes, and think more about combatting piracy. I sincerely believe that creativity should not suffer just because of a few rotten apples over the web. There are more reasonable ways to deal with piracy and protect your property without causing so much damage. With any luck, SOPA would just crash and burn and the only consequence for the industry would be the message, “Game Over, Please Insert Coin to Play Again”.

New Hope for the Soaps

Well, the last time I wrote on this blog roughly a month ago, I touched upon the fact that ABC has cancelled two of their three soap operas. As I said then, the way they went about this decision (made in light of changing times and diminishing financial stability for the network) was remarkably unprofessional and quite a unnecessarily cruel blow to the both fans and the genre itself. I'm still not a soap fan, but I empathize with the fans and express a great deal of respect for the genre itself.

But today, it would appear that the cloudy skies over the shows' heads have started to break. The production company Prospect Park has gained the rights to produce new episodes of both All My Children and One Life to Live, which will be streamed online. TVLine has the press release here.

There is quite a lot that I find downright fascinating about this decision, beginning with the very nature of this experiment. If we're lucky, this just may be the evolution that the soap opera needs to survive and keep going.  There's been a little bit of questioning on whether or not that the built-in audience for the genre would be substantial enough to keep it going in this new medium. Other questions that naturally arise involve how much the budgets would have to be cut to make it work, if it can work at all.

Personally, I'm rather optimistic about this venture. It's certainly an interesting experiment to say the least, and it will at least extend the life of both these prolific shows. At the same time, I'm already a big fan of content made for the internet, in the form of the company Channel Awesome. That particular company operates the website ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com and offers comedic videos covering elements of popular culture in the form of reviews and the occasional sketch. Granted, each video is the effort of a few people at most working to produce at the longest a half-hour review. These are nerds just talking about their favorite things and editing their compositions on their own. But these videos are very popular and have a niche audience all their own, not unlike the soap opera.

If anything, while ambitious this leap to higher-budget productions also seems fairly natural for the medium of the internet. It should be possible to get enough sponsors for these shows and generate plentiful product as good as when it aired on broadcast TV. And the audience for the soap opera is quite loyal, a poll on TVLine shows a whopping majority of fans, specifically 72.7% (at the time of this writing) would follow their favorite shows to the internet. There would be some kinks to be sure, but I reiterate that if it works it can easily be a revolutionary move that can potentially salvage the genre.

And I must say, if a single nerd can make a living off internet-based reviews (a case in point being "Atop the Fourth Wall", the official blog for which I have posted right to the side) and a whole company can base itself around showcasing these various individual's works, I remain optimistic. It can work out for All My Children and One Life to Live.

Incidentally, this decision came a week and a half after ABC announced when the final episode of All My Children (or rather, final for now) will air. Said finale will air September 23, and the new "lifestyle show" The Chew will debut the following Monday. Of course, with this announcement ABC had to figure out what The Chew was about. I've read that press release, and it appears to be about a talk show. Or more specifically, a talk show about food.

Uh-huh. I will grant ABC that this decision to shake up their daytime schedule makes financial sense, based on diminishing audiences for the lineup. This is akin to CBS launching their own talk show The Talk after Procter and Gamble decided to close As The World Turns. Furthermore, they deserve the benefit of the doubt for taking a reasonable stance on their old soap operas and letting another company try to continue them.

But, what ABC regards as "lifestyle shows" and it would appear "introducing bold new reality concepts" I still view as "making this all up as they go along". This seems to be why The Revolution, the show replacing One Life to Live still can best be described on Wikipedia as a "Health and lifestyle show hosted by Tim Gunn." I'm not the target demographic for Gunn to appeal to me, but I'm certainly familiar with him, having seen him in commercials and on an episode of How I Met Your Mother. I can certainly understand his forte and his profession, so he's certainly the right man for the job of hosting such a lifestyle show.

Still, that makes it all the more apparent how lazy this development was, especially since I can recall that this was supposed to be a makeover show. Are ABC executives still going over whether to devote five hours (a week of shows) to a single subject, or if they can get enough participants to keep up with the potential demand of a daily show? (I imagine the latter should make sense, even if it sounds like it shouldn't.) If you don't know what your show's about but you do know who's going to be a part of it, it displays more committee thinking than the lack of effort put into the title.

Maybe I'm naive and am not giving enough credit to them. After all, they have a better idea now for The Chew than they used to. It may all work out in the end, and these may be worthwhile, appealing shows. But, I cannot ignore how unprofessional and irrational the development of The Chew and The Revolution were. ABC was too quick to cancel both the soap operas compromised for them, and it was quite an unnecessary blow to their fans. If I can say anything can serve as the death knell for broadcast TV, it would be this whole business that's gone about. It almost seems like ABC is embracing its own decline as it downplays its daytime schedule like this. (And yet, their primetime schedule remains ambitious, as far as I can tell with the choices of new shows and the recent pickup of the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies CBS dropped a few months ago.)

And after all that cynicism, I do have one interesting note to point out. Prospect Park, the very company picking up both the ABC soaps, also produces the very likable USA Network dramedy Royal Pains. That series stars Mark Feuerstein as a concierge doctor serving a variety of patients in the Hamptons of Long Island, NY. With their name on such an affable show, it seems too fitting that these same producers are going to try to save the soap opera.