Lindsay, with the help of her “sassy gay friend,” examines the Walt Disney Company’s somewhat complicated relationship with the LGBT community.  As always, the video is enlightening and funny, but there were times when I found myself leaning towards Nella’s straw man argument.  The video makes very good points, but there are one or two that seem to border on reading too much into things.  On the other hand, the point about Brave could have used some more elaboration as it was one of the video’s best.

Remember the Nostalgia Critic?  He’s back!  In slightly less nostalgic form.

The final part of the Nostalgia Chick’s analysis of The Lord of the Rings.  In this video, she looks at how the trilogy influenced what extras are included on DVDs, the depiction of the cost of suffering and trauma (contrasting it with Harry Potter), and the presence or absence of homosexuality.

(Part 4 of 4.)

The first part of the Nostalgia Chick’s analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which examines how to conclude trilogies while still making the final film its own story, and the nature of extended cuts.

(Part 3 of 4)

Nostalgia Critic is coming back in February!

Lindsay “The Nostalgia Chick” Ellis continues her examination of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy, this time looking at The Two Towers.  In this installment, she looks at how film adaptations have to condense characters in order to effectively convey who they are to the audience, character arcs across the series, and the trilogy’s influence on future film franchises.

(Part 2 of 3.)

The Nostalgia Chick examines Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Part 1 of 3: In this installment, Lindsay examines the rise of the fantasy genre as an industry and the nature of adaptation.

Context note: This video explains the phrase “big lipped alligator.”

The Nostalgia Chick’s review of the film adaptation of Les Miserables.

I love the Les Miserables musical, and was excited for the film, but with each new thing I see from it, I get less and less enthusiastic.  This… didn’t help.

The Nostalgia Chick looks at an old Warner Bros. cartoon called “Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves.”  Buckle up everybody, this is some crazy racist stuff.

Elisa Hanson, who got her start on That Guy With The Glasses as a friend of Lindsay “Nostalgia Chick” Ellis, now does reviews about vampires in pop culture.  This one, about 2007’s I Am Legend, explores the film’s presentation of vampires and how its deviations from its source material undermined a powerful social message.

There are a few Ghibli films that I haven’t seen, but of those, Only Yesterday is the one I’m most interested in.  This review has shifted my expectations a bit, but the film still sounds extremely intriguing.

Continuing through her retrospective on the films of Studio Ghibli, Jesu Otaku looks at Kiki’s Delivery Service, which is probably my least favorite of Miyazaki’s films.  I never saw it until I was an adult, and she presents a good argument for why I don’t hold it in the same esteem that pretty much everyone else does.  She also comments on the merits of dubs, and what makes for a good dub and what makes for a bad dub.

That Guy With The Glasses contributor Jesu Otaku is going through all the films of Studio Ghibli in the month of May, in an effort not to review them but to give more of a retrospective on the history of the studio as well as wax poetic on her personal thoughts about each movie.  She chose to look at the dubbed versions of each one (unless the film doesn’t have a dub), believing that most Western viewers of Ghibli’s films watch the dubs rather than the subtitles.  Her look at Laputa: Castle in the Sky initially made me rethink my vow never to watch the film in English again, as Mark Hamill, Cloris Leachman, and Jim Cummings all do fantastic work with their characters.  Then James Van Der Beek started talking and I remembered why I made that vow.  Interestingly enough, she has a much different take on Van Der Beek’s work in the film and makes a very good case for why she thinks he did a great job with the film.

The Nostalgia Critic and Nostalgia Chick review The Chipmunk Adventure.  I LOVED this movie when I was a kid.  I thought that watching it made me cultured.  Now, it’s laughable how broad the cultural stereotyping was.  And yet, watching this review, I can’t help but feel a bit nostalgic about parts of it, despite laughing at how silly the movie is.  (Compare this to Critic’s reviews for movies like Jungle 2 Jungle or Rock A Doodle, which make me embarrassed to even have watched them, even though I was probably 10 at the time.)

(1 nitpick: the “bad guys” Critic refers to are federal agents, and they want the diamonds/cash as evidence.)

In the wake of The Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence images and GIFs have taken over my Tumblr feed lately, and it’s made me want to rewatch X-Men: First Class.  Like The Hunger Games, it is a very good movie that suffers from some major flaws.  This video pretty much covers it.