Over the Garden Wall is an animated miniseries created by Patrick McHale for Cartoon Network, Patrick McHale has worked for Cartoon Network before, you may recognise some of the shows Patrick has created including Adventure Time and The Marvellous Misadventures of Flap Jack.
The first thing that needs to be known about Over the Garden Wall is that it really is a mini series, it only consists of 10 episodes which are all approximately 12 minutes long, the shows follows the journey of two brothers Wirt and Greg who are lost in a forest and are trying to find their way home, of course from a creator of such imaginative shows the forest in Over the Garden Wall is far from ordinary, without giving away too much the two brothers meet a large array of characters including a crazy woodsman who constantly warns the boys of a creature called the Beast, a primary school of anthropomorphic animals and a woman who has been turned into a bluebird.
The art direction the designers took here is simplistic but I find that it’s the smaller touches that really make it stand out, from the above image you will notice that darker shades of colour and a heavy use of shadows really help make the imagery unique, I cant help but feel that the decision to use a lot of darker art choices was to help support the rather dark premise of the show, now that is not too say that their isn’t the occasional uplifting and happier moments in the show and when these few moments do happen the art style is more brighter with much less shadows and shading, I cant help but feel that the art style of Over the Garden Wall will become a prime example in the future of just how smaller details can help bring out such vibrant detail in many forms of art.
The voice cast is phenomenal, the majority of characters in the show are voiced by very famous actors including but not limited too Elijah Wood, John Cleese, Christopher Lloyd, Samuel Ramey and Tim Currey, as you can imagine all of these actors do an outstanding job with their roles and Elijah Wood actually voices Wirt one of the main characters, the rest of the voice cast may not be as well known but that doesn’t mean that they are short on talent, to be honest my favourite character in the show was Greg who was in fact voiced by a young boy called Collin Dean, in the past Collin has done voice work for Hotel Transylvania and he even played a small role in the 2015 Christmas movie Krampus.
Over the Garden Wall was a show that I held off from watching for a long time and now I really regret that decision, this is one of the greatest animated series I have ever had the pleasure of watching and I do hope that a second season is being considered, I understand that the majority of voice actors here are very busy but I wouldn’t mind watching a second series with completely new characters and even a brand new cast, if you haven’t see the show yet then stop reading this review and go watch it right now and I guarantee you wont regret it.
Thank you for reading this review of Over the Garden Wall
The June Zbox review is coming, due to an issue at Zavvi’s warehouse one of the items didn’t arrive until recently and therefore the boxes have been delayed to early July, once the box does arrive I will get the review out as soon as possible.
Star Fox Zero is the seventh game in the Star Fox franchise and since it is the first game in the series to be released after an agonising ten year gap I suppose you could say it’s very important but after such a long wait for a new Star Fox game was this one worth it?
If you’ve ever played the Star Fox games before then you know that for the majority of the series the concept and general plot is very similar with only small details making up the biggest differences, for those who dont know Fox Mc Cloud is the leader of Star Fox a mercenary aerial attack team that travel the Lylat System keeping it safe from dangerous enemies and unknown threats, Star Fox Zero is another reboot of the original Star Fox for the Super Nintendo this has been done two times prior to Zero’s release in Star Fox 64 and Star Fox 64 3D, the plot of each game is very basic but very sad and when you finally win your victory feels so much more rewarding due to this, James Mc Cloud was the original leader of Star Fox, James was on a mission with his team consisiting of himself, Peppy O Hare and Pigma Dengar they traveled to the Planet Venom where they were to defeat a mad scientist named Andross who was threatening to take over the universe, before he could complete his mission James learns that his partner Pigma had set a bomb in his Arwing before they began the mission but it was too late and James was killed, Star Fox Zero takes place 5 years later, Andross has declared war on Corneria and now Fox Mccloud and his team Peppy O Hare, Falco Lombardi and Slippy Toad must travel to the Planet Venom to defeat Andross once and for all.
The two biggest complaints I hear about this game is one that its too short , I personally disagree with this as I really enjoy short games however Nintendo should not have charged such a high price when this game originally came out, there is an unlockable arcade mode available after you beat the story mode but its nothing more than the main game without any power-ups or health upgrades, the second big issue people have with Star Fox Zero is the motion controls, I will admit that the controls do a take a while too get used too but I personally didn’t find them that difficult too use and people often fail to notice that the motion controls can be switched out for a regular analogue control on the games pause menu, one great choice Nintendo made with the controls was how easy it is to now pull off a U Turn or a Somersault, both of these allow much easier control over your vehicles and unlike some of the older games in the franchise here they can pulled off with the simple click of a button, sometimes aiming at enemies on the TV can be a little bit of a challenge but if you look at the game pad you will have a view from the cockpit which makes aiming much easier.
The graphics are very impressive for a game as simple as Star Fox, I will say that largely civilised planets such as Corneria are much easier to appreciate than the sections where you are fighting in space, in these sections you will mostly see enemy ships and debris coming towards your Arwing and that is essentially the only major things you will see during those parts of the game where as when your in a city you will see flowing rivers, large buildings and waterfalls.
Each box has a its own unique theme, this months theme was knights, every Zbox comes with a small magazine which includes a detailed description of every item in the box and the rest of the magazine is filled to the brim with content related to the theme, this months magazine talks about some well known knights from history as well as how knights are portrayed in modern media, there is even a really fun section which modifies the plots of popular movies by adding knights into the mix, the magazines are usually the most uninteresting part of the Zbox but they are still a fun edition to read every month.
This is what the construction kit looks like once its been built
The game is based on a 1989 comic book release where Sam and Max need to travel to various tourist locations spread across America in order to find a Bigfoot that has gone missing from a local carnival.
Sam and Max Hit the Road is a very good game which I think most people would really appreciate if they put aside some time to play it, It’s not perfect but its an innocent title that provides a lot of laughs and will leave you with some fond memories, I cant say I enjoyed it as much as I do Sierra Games but Lucas Art did a great job with this before the series got taken over by Travellers Tales 7/10
So Emma Watson takes the lead in this new adaptation of the much beloved animated classic and while I was afraid that she would do a miserable job playing such an important role, I will say that I was wrong and she was a perfect cast for the character, she gave a good performance which helped to represent Belle’s can do attitude and sense of adventure and for the most part you could tell she enjoyed playing the role, but the one and only issue I had was what everyone else has been saying, Emma Watson’s singing should have been dubbed, the poor girl couldn’t hold a tune to save the queen and this really took a lot of people out of the movies fantastic atmosphere.
Audrey Hepburn is in this movie, she plays an angel called Hap who guides Pete’s spirit while he try’s to set up Holly with a new love interest so that she can move on with her life and be happy, unfortunately this was the last movie Audrey Hepburn ever starred in before her death in 1993.
I had never seen or heard of the movie Munich until recently and to be completely honest if it wasn’t made abundantly clear that the film was based on true events it would have flown straight over my head.
Steven Spielberg’s film based loosely on these events stars Eric Bana as Avner an agent who is given leadership of a small group who’s job it is too track down and assassinate the members of Black September, the group consists of four other members, Daniel Craig plays the role of Steve the teams designated driver and working along side him is a professional document forger called Hans, Robert a crafty bomb maker and Carl who cleans up after the assassinations.
E.T has a lot of iconic moments that have remained in peoples hearts since the first time they watched the film, for some people its when you spot Yoda in the Halloween scene, for others its the part where E.T uses his magic to heal a cut on Elliot’s finger, for me it doesn’t get better than the famous flying bike scene and lets not forget the phenomenal musical score by John Williams whose name I am sure will be turning up in a lot of these reviews, all of these moments are amazing and are a good reason to pick up a Blu-ray however there is no directors commentary for this film and that is a real shame because for me directors commentaries are the best part of owning a movie and few films could really benefit from one more than E.T.
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