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Review: 'DC League of Super-Pets'

Your rating: None Average: 3 (7 votes)

DC League of Super-Pets poster Between the time I went to see DC League of Super-Pets and writing this, things got weird at Warner Bros. Two movies that were reportedly near completion were suddenly shelved. Most mainstream movie press outlets covered this as "What does this mean for this group of comic book superhero movies?". Even Flayrah's Newsbyte on the subject only mentioned Batgirl, despite the fact that Scoob! Holiday Haunt, an actual movie featuring anthropomorphic animals, rather than just one superhero in a pseudo-fursuit, was also cancelled.

And that has some bearing on my thoughts on this movie. Warner Animation Group is looking like it could be in trouble. Even though it appears that the studio will survive in some capacity, people are going to lose jobs in this area. So, it doesn't feel like a good time to take a look at their latest output, shrug, and say, "It was okay, I guess?"

DC League of Super-Pets was directed by Jared Stern and Sam Levine, and stars Dwayne Johnson as Krypto, Superman's superpowered pet dog. When the evil guinea pig Lulu (voiced by Kate McKinnon) manages to depower Krypto, he must lead a team of newly-empowered shelter pets in order to rescue his kidnapped master.

It was okay, I guess?

Those Other Pets Need Love Too

The campaign to legalize ferrets as pets in California (yes that’s a thing) recently let us know about My Name Is Musky, a picture book for young people written by Matty Giuliano and illustrated by Morgan Spicer. It’s rare to find a cute book about pets that actually focuses on ferrets! “Poor Musky! A small white ferret is abandoned and left by the side of the road. Things start to look up, though, when a nice lady named Stephanie shows up and saves the day. It’s off to the cozy, warm animal shelter for this little ferret—but will anyone want to adopt a different kind of furry animal friend?” Check out the official web site too.


image c. 2022 Humane Press

Dice-Rolling Rovers

A friend pointed this out to us — and just in time too, as it just hit the shelves! It’s Campaigns & Companions, a new hard-cover book by Andi Ewington,  Rhianna Pratchett, and Alex De Campi, with illustrations by Calum Alexander Watt. “If there are two things all geeks love, it’s roleplaying games, and their pets. So why not fuse the two? It’s time to grab your dice, dust off that character sheet, and let your cat or dog (or guinea pig, or iguana, or budgie) accompany you on an epic adventure! It’ll be great! … unless you have pets like these.” Distributed by Simon & Schuster, it’s available everywhere now.


image c. 2021 Rebellion Publishing

Review: SLoP 2: SLoPpy Seconds

Your rating: None Average: 3.3 (19 votes)

gidget-5c746a080706b-1.jpgLook, the best joke in the first Secret Life of Pets is that if you do the trendy thing of acronym-ing it's title, it becomes SLoP, which is funny because it's true.

Honestly, I can't even say I remember the first movie very well. I did see it. I mostly recall that I didn't really like it that much. So, as you can probably deduce, I wasn't entirely looking forward to the sequel. The trailers also prominently featured coprophagia, so that wasn't helping anything.

But about those trailers— if you take out the inter-titles and the music, you just watched that scene in the movie. That's exactly how it's cut in the movie. All of the trailers are like that. They're just scenes from the movie. The movie is cut like a trailer.

And the weirdest thing about this movie is that, somehow, despite being just scenes from the movie, this is a case of bad trailers being way worse than the actual movie. This is a very weird movie.

Review: 'Bunnicula, A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery' by Deborah and James Howe

Your rating: None Average: 3.3 (15 votes)

A book cover, showing a rabbit that looks similar to Dracula the vampire.In the days before mobile phones and the Internet, people would have to have conversations with their pets to keep themselves from going insane. That's how it is with the Monroes, a nuclear family with two young children, two careers, and two pets: a cat (Chester) and a dog (Harold).

And every day, when the family members head out of the house, they leave their pets unsupervised to indulge in their vices. Chester reads horror stories; Harold daydreams about food. Life is perfect.

Until the day the Monroes go to a Dracula film, and come home with a little fluffy bundle of a rabbit in a shoebox full of dirt.

Review: 'The Secret Life of Pets', Cute and colourful fluff

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (10 votes)

A dog sits in front of a door, waiting for its owner to come home.The Secret Life of Pets [trailer] is the first of two animated movies released in 2016 from Illumination Studios, most known for its films Despicable Me and Minions.

Compared with their competition at Disney and Pixar, Illumination relies less on strong storytelling and instead leans more heavily towards pure charm to make their movies successful. In the past, they've accomplished this with cute and colourful characters, and a child-friendly sense of humour.

With that history in mind, The Secret Life of Pets continues its studio's charm offensive, compensating well for a bland and forgettable story.

Review: 'The Secret Life of Pets', animated film

Your rating: None Average: 3.7 (18 votes)

A group of pets stare at a cityscape. The Secret Life of Pets [trailer] is Illumination Entertainment's latest CG animated film offering, released on July 8, 2016. It's an entertaining comedy that's been doing quite well at the box office. I went to a weekday early evening screening, and the theater was packed with about an equal mix of adults and kids. Everyone seemed to enjoy it!

The story starts in an apartment building in Manhattan. Max (voiced by Louis C.K.) is a terrier who adores his owner, a young woman named Katie. One day she brings home a second dog, a huge, shaggy brown Newfoundland named Duke. Max and Duke don't get along at all. Their conflict results in them getting lost in the city, avoiding animal control officers and a gang of abandoned pets led by an insane white rabbit named Snowball. Meanwhile, the other pets from the apartment building embark on a quest to find them, led by Gidget, a white pomeranian.

In Memoriam: RonRon the YouTube fox

Your rating: None Average: 3.4 (109 votes)

Internet-famous vulpine Ron the Fox, well known for the YouTube videos depicting his life, passed away in his sleep on April 6 (video), just ten days before his eighth birthday.

Former owner Albi Azul says he found Ron curled peacefully under his favourite picnic table. Albi had hoped to film an episode commemorating his channel reaching 100,000 subscribers; the award arrived just a few days too late.

News of Ron's death was widely distributed, and inspired art from many furry fans, including crashheart, Muzz, azora and Haru; it also received coverage in the Irish Examiner.

A combination "thank-you" and "memorial" video clip was uploaded on the morning of April 9, but be warned: it is very depressing: Goodbye, silly RonRon, sleep tight.

2016 movie showdown, part 5: Zootopia vs. The Secret Life of Pets

Zootopia
78% (14 votes)
The Secret Life of Pets
22% (4 votes)
Votes: 18

Trailer: 'The Secret Life of Pets'

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (6 votes)

And we've just become furry Variety.

Illumination Entertainment has released a trailer for The Secret Life of Pets, due summer of 2016, "a comedy about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day," according to Illumination's own description.

Given how jam-packed 2016 is with fully anthropomorphic animal movies, the fact that this movie only features talking animals makes it feel like almost a footnote (Finding Dory is another 2016 movie with "only" talking animals that would in any other year be the upcoming furry movie, but is also dealt with as an after thought, if at all). That being said, at the very least skip to the pogoing poodle at the end of the trailer.

Update (11/25): A second, Christmas themed trailer highlighting characters has been released.

Ordinary House Pets… NOT

More from MIPCOM. Aurore Damant is a former Gobelins student (if you don’t know who they are, every animation fan should!) who is now a professional character designer and art director. His latest project is called Zip Zip, produced in France by Go-N Productions. The premise is simple: A group of forest animals see that human civilization is encroaching on their habitat, and they figure if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. And so they conspire to disguise themselves as regular domestic house pets using zip-up costumes. Easy, yes? The show has debuted in France and it’s currently looking for international buyers to distribute it. Mr. Damant has several screen shots up on his blog to see.

image c. 2014 Go-N

image c. 2014 Go-N

Straight from The Hub

Hoping to duplicate the success they found with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (admit it, you know it’s true!) IDW now brings us Littlest Pet Shop in full-color comic book form.  Animal-talker Blythe and her multi-species compadres are off on adventures all over Downtown City on their famous polka-dot moped. The series is written by Georgia Ball (My Little Pony) with art by Nico Pena and Antonio Campo (Penguins of Madagascar). The IDW web site has more. There’s also a variant cover version by Katie Cook (My Little Pony).

image c. 2014 IDW Publishing

image c. 2014 IDW Publishing

Ponies and Vampires and Ghosts, Oh My…

And now for something… pretty darn different. Part of the Vamplets line of “cute horror” comics from Action Lab Entertainment, this time with a funny animal twist in Vamplets: Undead Pet Society. “The Legend of the Ghost Pony begins here in this terrifyingly sweet installment from Hasbro designer/illustrator of My Little Pony, Gayle Middleton! Ghost Ponies have been the harbingers of the weird for years. Whenever they appear, creatures near have disappeared, never to return. Where do they come from? What is their terrible secret? And what is the Ghost Pony’s connection to a vampyre baby named Lily Rose Shadowlyn?” You can head out to your local comic book shop right now and find out.

image c. 2014 Action Lab

image c. 2014 Action Lab

All the Mightiest Pets

After a successful run of the DC Super Pets comic book series, now DC comics bring us the DC Super Pets Character Encyclopedia, coming later this month as a full-color trade paperback.  This is from the pre-order page at Amazon: “Every super hero needs a Super-Pet! This illustrated encyclopedia features in-depth profiles, stats, and history about the DC Super-Pets and their owners. From Superman’s loyal dog, Krypto, to Batman’s heroic hound, Ace the Bat-Dog, this guide to the Worlds Greatest Pets has more than 200 DC characters, including many never-before-seen pets, all illustrated in Art Baltazar’s Eisner Award-winning style! With an introduction by legendary creator Geoff Johns, the DC Super-Pets Character Encyclopedia is sure to please comic book lovers young and old.” Not to forget, the text is written by Steve Korte. Take a closer look at the cover and you get an idea just how many animal characters are included here! [And with that, we'll see you all after San Diego Comic Con!]


image c. 2013 DC Comics

Furry con surveyed on porn, fantasy, pets, politics & bronies

Your rating: None Average: 3.9 (13 votes)

International Anthropomorphic Research Project logoResults have been released from an Anthropomorphic Research Project survey of 455 furs taken at Furry Fiesta 2013.

  • 78% of females and 96% of males report viewing furry porn. Both groups underestimated both figures by 8-12%.
  • Increasing furriness indicated a tendency to use fantasy for various purposes, including escapism, but didn't indicate blurring of reality, or an inability to have fun, self-motivate, fulfil needs, socialize, or cope with problems without fantasy.
  • Female furs had less sexual roleplay, owned less pornography, viewed it less frequently, and felt it had less influence on their joining the fandom. They also saw pornography as more openly discussed within the fandom.
  • Furries overestimated the positivity of both male and female furs towards furry porn: males tended to be positive or mixed, while over 20% of females had a negative view. 51% of furs preferred porn over general furry artwork; 17% had the opposite view. ~55% saw non-furry pornography in a negative light; some males only view furry porn.
  • Non-brony furs rated bronies less positively (50) than furries (79) or non-furs (61).
  • Furries are very liberal on social matters, but more moderate on economic topics.
  • Therians anthropomorphise animals more than non-therian furs; those strongly identifying as furries gave human characteristics to both regular and stuffed animals.

Around half of those participating chose to join the group's three-year longitudinal study.

On [adjective][species]: JM revisits Dr. Gerbasi's original studyNuka responds