The Quinta’s Ghost is an animated horror short that dramatizes the twilight years of Francisco Goya, as he paints his Black Paintings in his house, the Quinta del Sordo (House of the Deaf Man). In a novel twist, the story is narrated from the point of view of the Quinta itself, responding to what Goya paints on its walls. The short, done in computer animation, brings the demons and other nightmarish imagery of Goya’s work to life, incorporating state-of-the-art techniques such as VR painting. It’s a hellish depiction of an artist suffering through grief, madness, and issues of identity.

Chile has had some top-notch adult animation, especially in the horror genre, but Petra and the Sun is better filed under morbid humor, and it was an especially effective example of it too. In the Andes, 71-year-old Petra lives a lonely life until hotter-than-usual weather reveals the frozen body of a century-old mountaineer. Petra takes the body home, thaws it, and spends some uncomfortably in-depth quality time with his preserved corpse…the disappearance of which the police are aware of. Despite its premise, this was one of the funniest films they showed, though it’s definitely not for the squeamish. I felt that the ending could’ve been handled better, but overall, this one I really enjoyed. This short also won a Special Jury Mention.

How is River is Born was definitely one of the more mature shorts in the set. A woman has a sensual experience with what appears to be a nature goddess, but ultimately ends up being something less yet significantly more. This one’s pretty simple in terms of story, and is mostly carried by the beautiful animation.

Ovary-Acting is a comedy short about a 34-year-old woman who is pressured by her family and motherly friends to have children. As the stress gets to her, she unexpectedly gives birth her talking ovaries, leading to a musical argument about the pros and cons of motherhood. The animation style, which uses knit puppets with 2D-animated mouths, brings to mind something out of an R-rated version of KaBlam! This was definitely a fun one to watch, and it has a great sense of humor and heart to it.

Still Moving follows a divorced mother having a stressful car ride with her daughter as they head to their new home. The strength of this short is in the animation, which is probably one of the best depictions of anxiety I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s really experimental, though it definitely seems to be the main focus of the short over the story.

A Night at the Rest Area is an anime short in which a group of anthropomorphic animals on a bus stop at a rest area. There’s really not much to say about this one in terms of story. However, what it lacks in plot it makes up for with gentle yet effective comedy about everyday life. There’s a real appreciation of the mundane, where even the jingle playing as the nearby vending machine heats up your meal is given focus. Obviously, the use of animals adds to a lot of the humor, and the sketchy character designs are great. One of my favorite jokes in this involves a convenience store employee who is anything but convenient, and the punchline being obvious doesn’t make it any less funny (or relatable). This one doesn’t have much but in a way it also has a lot.

The Piano is a hand-drawn short in which a young girl discovers her father playing the piano late at night, creating a bond that lasts into adulthood. The animation is amazing, the music is beautiful, and the ending will warm your heart, if not open the tear ducts. It’s another short with a simple idea done extremely well.

As mentioned before, Best Animated Short went to Playing God, which I definitely feel could’ve fit into either of the shorts programs. This also qualifies it for the Oscars, and I guess I’ll find out if it gets nominated (though the short that won Sundance might be tough competition). Hopefully I’ll get to see it at some point, but overall, the 14 shorts I saw (if we’re only counting the competition) were for the most part highly enjoyable and I loved a lot of the styles used.

Tribeca, while certainly a star-studded affair, typically features films that don’t receive as much of the prestige attention awarded to the output of festivals like Sundance or Cannes. I’m come to accept that, but there are occasionally exceptions. There are always animated shorts, but year’s event comes off of a major achievement for the festival, in that the film awarded Best Animated Short last year, In the Shadow of the Cypress, eventually found it’s way to the stage at this year’s Academy Awards after winning for Best Animated Short there as well. (I don’t think that Tribeca was the reason for the short getting Oscar-qualified, but it was one of them.) Clearly motivated by this, Tribeca programmers not only featured the biggest short film selection yet, but an animated shorts program twice as large as previous years. Not one, but two programs of shorts were needed to fill the space of the selections this year, split into family-friendly and adult-oriented sets. Yet as I learned, that apparently still wasn’t enough. This year’s Best Animated Short winner went to Playing God, a short that was in competition but not included in the two shorts programs and put in the Midnight-themed shorts instead. Unfortunately, I was unable to see it, though I did hear good things. (I do believe that Playing God could’ve easily been included in the shorts blocks, but that’s another tangent.) Anyway, here are the short films that I did get to see, starting with the family-friendly offerings:

Linie 12 follows a conductor on a surreal train journey, whose rhythmic precision is interrupted by the arrival of a chaotic musician. I liked the scruffy linework in this a lot and the imagery in this is absolutely beautiful at times.

From Aardman Academy comes Awaiting the Lightning Bolt. Told in stop motion, an inventor tries multiple times to capture lightning, but his comic attempts hide a more heartwarming purpose. This one’s short, sweet, and really funny.

Actor Kate Siegel is mainly known for her work in horror. The short she directed, Lily, is a more family friendly take on the genre, even with the fact that it was written by Stephen King. Told in scratchy, Edward Gorey-esque pencil art, a young boy needs to go to the bathroom but is embarrassed in front of the class by his sadistic teacher. When he finally gets there, he makes a frightening discovery. I absolutely loved the animation for this, and the story is really fun.

Captain Zero: Into the Abyss Part II follows a superhero who, after losing a battle against a villain, finds himself on the receiving end of social media backlash and the taunts of a depression demon (expertly voiced by Keith David), ultimately finding himself in therapy. The anime-styled animation is superb, and I always enjoy genre fiction about mental health. It’s pretty clear this is intended to be a pilot for a series of sorts (in addition to being the second installment, it ends on a cliffhanger), and I hope the filmmaker finds the means of making more. Another thing I liked was his use of worn VHS as a visual aesthetic.

Ostrich takes an avian look at social media body image. A pudgy bird goes through extreme measures to be like the ostrich pop star plastered over the media. I liked the art style for this, which felt like something out of Adult Swim, and while the ending was pretty obvious the punchline was genuinely funny.

Tigre is, according to the festival site, “the animated story of a friend’s grandfather, a refugee from Laos, living in Thailand,” and “a narrative full of uncertainty and curiosity, where a young man who goes deep into the jungle without understanding that not everything is as it seems.” I liked the animation style, which is seemingly modeled after shadow puppetry, but to be honest I genuinely had no idea what was going on in this short. Maybe I needed more context.

Finally, the environmental-themed short Snow Bear follows a lonely polar bear who, unable to find others like him, builds a snowbear to spend time with. Unfortunately, it can’t stay cold forever. The short is directed by Aaron Blaise, a veteran animator who did the character animation for the Beast in Beauty and the Beast and directed Brother Bear among working in other Disney projects, so it’s no surprise that this has the best animation of the entire set. What is surprising is that Aaron apparently animated this himself, while still looking like the professional-grade work he did for the House of Mouse. (I asked him how long it took to make the film after, and he said three years, which is still less than I expected.) This was a beautiful short that will warm your heart.

In my next article, I’ll spotlight the adult animated offerings at the festival.

I’ve seen a lot of animated documentaries that use the medium to tackle sensitive subject matter in ways that make the material more digestible and profound, but Endless Cookie, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, might be the farthest, and funniest, approach to this. The entire movie renders its subjects in a hyper-surrealist style that mixes flashy colors and crass humor, with many of the participants being portrayed as anthropomorphized objects. The film, a combination of vignettes mixing illustrated recorded accounts and scripted scenes, initially appears like the sort of thing that would get its directors hired by the likes of Adult Swim. Yet it’s right after you get accustomed to it that the film plays its true hand. Beneath its hangout-comedy vibe is a devastating look at the experience facing Canada’s indigenous population.

Seth Scriver has just received a grant from Canada’s prestigious “N.F.G.” to make a documentary about his half-brother Pete (with whom he decides to share directorial credit with). Seth is white but Pete is indigenous, and lives on a reservation so inaccessible that Seth can’t even visit without flying. The idea is that Pete will tell seven stories about life growing up as an indigenous person in the 1970s and 80s, in ways that are both funny and poignant, and Seth will animate over them. All he has to do is deliver the movie in seven months, the kind of goal you get when the money people don’t understand how feature animation works. Also, Seth and Peter get sidetracked. A lot.

Through a mix of stories and satirical sketches, the Scrivers paint a hilarious portrait of late twentieth century Canada. Fans of stoner/hangout comedies and cartoons like Regular Show will find a lot to love about this film’s plot threads, from Pete’s buddies stealing chickens off delivery trucks, to pressing their luck with the local pizza place’s “30 minutes or less” policy (with the restaurant eventually getting back at them in an extremely funny way). This is a film that often doesn’t take itself seriously, and it’s not afraid to veer off course. It’s freewheeling and goes where it feels like. (A small story about an animal trap takes up almost the entire runtime of the film to tell.) This also extends to the warts-and-all nature of what Seth decides to show. A lot of the early moments in the film are dedicated to trying to get clean audio, and a recurring bit involves the N.F.G. representative, portrayed as a slide ruler, repeatedly questioning Seth’s direction for the movie (as a progressively-smaller pile of money burns off to the side).

Of course, it’s not all fun and free pizza, and the movie isn’t only interested in fooling around. This is still a documentary about the indigenous experience in Canada, with recollections of police profiling, land grabs, and the specter of residential schools haunting even the most amusing of stories. Yet the film also finds way to mix its absurdist sense of humor into the proceedings. A fictional show called “Canadian Idle” shows Canadians being so passive upon hearing about indigenous incarceration rates and the factors contributing to them that they are rendered as car seats. The lawyer representing a wrongfully convicted indigenous youth is a literal snake. Police are caricatured as babbling cowards and, in probably one of the most unexpected political sequences I have ever seen in a documentary, a segment mixes the scars of colonization with a famous video game meme and a very cathartic parody of 90s first-person shooters. The tonal shifts sometimes get iffy, but for the most part, it works. There’s also a lot of great stories about Peter’s family and heritage, such his mom making snacks out of dried caribou stomach that, while he looks back on them as a fond memory of his family’s culture, he will admit smelled and tasted awful.

The animation work in this is hysterical, and really adds to the film’s tone. As mentioned, a lot of the film’s subjects are rendered as objects, such as talking socks, soda cans, and vegetables, and I loved seeing where the art style would go next. (Sometimes, actual objects end up talking too.) There’s also a ton of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it in-jokes and nods to Canadian/indigenous history sprinkled throughout for eagle-eyed viewers. Expanding the capabilities of documentary storytelling in extremely entertaining while still thought-provoking ways, it’s both a tribute to Canada’s native peoples and a good history lesson for those not in the know. I’ll be thinking about this movie for a while, and hopefully someone will pick it up so others can see it too.

P.S.: Speaking of trailers, etc., join me this Sunday as I move my annual #CommercialBowl to BlueSky!

P.P.S.: Did you find trailers we should feature? Let us know, and we’ll grab them up for next week!

Fantastic Four: The First Steps

Coming July 25, 2025 – Marvel’s First Family arrives in the MCU! Forget whatever Josh Trank thought he was giving us in 2015, forget Cloud Galactus (although this one still doesn’t appear to be sized to comic accuracy – we shall see), a retro take from WandaVision showrunner Matt Shakman featuring Pedro Pascal (Mandalorian, The Last of Us) as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby (Hobbs and Shaw, The Crown) as Sue Richards/Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things) as Johnny Storm/Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bacharach (The Bear, Andor) as Ben Grimm/The Thing.

Jurassic World: Rebirth

Coming July 2nd, 2025 – Five years after the last movie (which I still need to watch… maybe) Black Widow herself, Scarlett Johansson, along with Jonathan Bailey (Wicked, Bridgerton) and Mahershala Ali (The Green Book, Blade?) are tasked with headed back to “THE ISLAND” to recover a MacGuffin inside dino DNA in order to keep them going.

Final Destination: Bloodlines

Coming May 16, 2025 – Even Death can’t stop this franchise from coming back… But at least we’ll get to see more up-and-coming actors in new inventive deaths. Not to mention, one last cameo from the late Tony Todd of Candyman fame.

Smurfs (2025)

Coming July 18, 2025 – Now that Smurfs owners Peyo have been partnered with Nickelodeon since the 2021 CGI series, I suppose its only natural that we would see what appears to be a Lather, Rince, Repeat of Sony’s CGI/Live Action hybrid from 2011, starring Neil Patrick Harris. This go-around the Smurfs find themselves searching for Papa Smurf (voiced this time by John Goodman) in Paris, with the help of “Papa Smurf’s Brother” voiced by Nick Offerman. The cavalcade of Smurfs are voiced by a number of celebrities (none are actually credited on iMDB or elsewhere outside of Smurfette, voiced by singer Rihanna). The film is directed by Chris Miller (Shrek the Third, Puss in Boots). Hopefully the kids like it.

As a hardcore Transformers fan since day one (or G1 aka Generation 1), when I heard about Skybound & creator of The Walking Dead and Invincible, Robert Kirkman not only getting the IPs for Transformers and G.I. Joe but expanding onto the shared universe with a brand new series in Void Rivals, I was sold. 15 months and close to 50 issues collectively later, Energon Universe is nothing to sleep on (especially!) for the nostalgic Transformers/G.I. Joe/Hasbro Universe fans out there.

Check out interviews below for each of the three series that make up the Energon Universe:
More info on the Energon Universe can be found at: https://www.skybound.com/tag/energon-universe

I’ve heard it and thought it several times now: Hollywood plays it too safe. The cost of making movies is so (almost certainly unnecessarily) high now that convention reigns and original or daring works are simply too risky. Unless a filmmaker has enough of a reputation that hearing their name alone will attract audiences, assuming that even holds true anymore (just ask Clint Eastwood), it’s unlikely we’ll see anything new. However, there are occasionally exceptions. If there’s a name that conjures up both beloved films and formal innovation, it’s Robert Zemeckis. While he’s certainly experimented with his last few movies through performance capture animation, his recent work has left a lot to be desired. His latest, Here, promises to be a return to form. Based on Richard McGuire’s acclaimed graphic novel of the same name, itself expanded from a groundbreaking 1989 comic in Raw, it aims to challenge cinematic convention while applying cutting-edge visual effects and telling a story that’s intimate while encompassing the enormity of time and the universal human experience. This is the sort of movie that tries to be unlike anything else, and it was one I was hotly anticipating. Having now seen it, I can tell you that they mostly failed and I’m extremely disappointed.

The story of Here is about a place and the people that inhabit it. The camera stays still but the scenery changes, starting during the age of the dinosaurs, and moving ahead to Native American peoples, colonial times, the 1800s, the entire 20th century, and the early 21st century to the present. A house is built, and a number of key players arrive to inhabit it. There’s an early airplane pilot and his wife and daughter. Then they’re replaced by an inventor and his wife, the former of whom may have stumbled on the perfect invention at the perfect time. However, once they leave, the primary focus of the story begins, as Al (Paul Bettany) and his wife Rose buy the house after World War II and start a family. Later, one of their sons, Richard (Tom Hanks), meets Margaret (Robin Wright), who becomes his girlfriend. He later marries and has a daughter with her, Vanessa. From there, much of the film follows the trials and tribulations of the family throughout the ensuing decades, all against the backdrop of what occurred before them and what will happen after.

First of all, this gimmick isn’t new, and didn’t take long to wear off. Hell, I’d argue that Adult Swim did this better two years ago with their Yule Log special, and that was just because they could. However, I do applaud the effort in translating the comic’s art style to the screen. Essentially, rather than cutting between time periods, windows will show the location as it was in the past or future, much like the original source material, before fading in to the whole frame. This often creates some fun editing opportunities, but many other times it doesn’t work as well as I wanted it to. (Also there’s some really off-putting transitions that appear to be automated.) In addition, the narrative doesn’t live up to the editing flourishes. The story is non-linear, but often jumps around at random, even if to set up a point, and it initially made it hard for me to get invested in the characters as a result. Also, the single perspective occasionally leads to awkward cinematography. Characters will sometimes speak their lines directly into the camera or stand too close to it. It’s like watching a play except instead of seeing it on a theater stage, you’re just standing in a house and the actors are ignoring you as they’re performing.

Once the main story became apparent, I was at the very least engaged. I can’t hate Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in this. Because of the length of time required for the premise, Zemeckis uses real-time de-aging technology to make the two of them look younger, and for the most part, I thought it worked. Yet while I may be a sucker for sentimentality, there’s some decisions in this that feel a bit too on the nose, and at the end of the day, it’s a pretty standard slice-of-life story. While I found it enjoyable in the moment, it was only afterwards when I started thinking about the film that the flaws became clear. Since the story jumps around so much, it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of the timeline. There are clues in the background that let you know the historical vicinity of the events, but other times I was unsure if the main story was even in order. There is a bit of a central conflict, but, without spoiling things too much, portions of the movie even early on flash forward to when the conflict is clearly resolved. On top of that, most of the other characters in this movie aside from the main story are more or less irrelevant outside of the primary theme and gimmick, so there’s not much reason to care about them from a narrative perspective. Despite this, they get a lot of screen time.

While the ending certainly drives the point home and warms one’s heart, it also makes it obvious why I found this movie so disappointing: what is the point of it? Okay, that’s a bit harsh. It’s a slice of life drama about a single location through the enormity of time, mainly focusing on a single family across decades and highlighting major changes, historical recurrences, and human truths. That’s fine. Yet, I don’t think that’s what Zemeckis was going for. As a filmmaker, he’s known for trying to reinvent the wheel visually, having done so with films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump, and it’s obvious why he would be attracted to source material like this. The original comic was experimental with its use of panel art, and he clearly wanted to create something unlike anything anyone has done before. Here’s the problem though: People have done things like this before for thousands of years. It’s called theater. All he did was play around with the editing. As for the real-time de-aging technology, that’s certainly innovative, but it’s not going to carry a film. If you think about it, the story can basically be described as a family living in a house, after other people who lived after other people, before other people still, and in a location that changed massively over thousands of years. That’s certainly a premise with a lot of opportunity for interesting and mind-blowing storytelling, but Zemeckis didn’t seem to do that. However, a comic is different. It doesn’t move. It’s individual pictures that we can stare at for as long as we want, but we expect them to be sequential. Richard McGuire’s Here was actually innovative. It challenges the way we think about comic storytelling, in a way that only comics could do. It just doesn’t translate well enough as a movie.

In the end, Here is a perfectly normal story that really wants to be groundbreaking, as did I, but it simply isn’t. Comic book movies may be all the rage (for now), but some stories should just stay as still art. Incidentally, in the process of writing this review, I discovered a faithful 1991 student film adaptation of the original comic. You can watch it here. It does more in six minutes than Robert Zemeckis did in 104, is actually formally experimental, and drives the point home in the amount of time it takes for the gimmick to wear off.

For animation fans, Memoir of a Snail should be treated like an event. Australian animator Adam Elliot hasn’t done much, but what he has done has been widely acclaimed, and this also his first animation in 9 years as well as the follow-up to his 2009 feature debut Mary and Max. Keeping with his themes of social outcasts and autobiography, and featuring his signature mix of often blunt darkness with an endearingly offbeat sense of humor and art style, it thankfully lives up to the hype. While I don’t think it’s on par with his first feature, it more than avoids a sophomore slump. The film is narrated by Grace, a hoarder recounting her life story. As a child, she’s bullied for her appearance and enjoys collecting snails. Her only comfort is the bond she shares with her twin brother Gilbert, as well as her paraplegic father Percy, a former juggler and animator. When tragedy strikes, the two twins are separated. As Grace adjusts to her new life, she befriends an eccentric elderly woman named Pinky who always manages to find silver linings despite some unfortunate circumstances.

First thing’s first: if you haven’t seen an Adam Elliot animation before, be prepared. His stories are often unflinchingly bleak and deal with subjects like mental illness/disorders, marginalized people, and occasionally taboo subject matter. The fact that they’re always in some way shape or form autobiographical adds to their power. Even still, this is definitely one of the darker productions I’ve seen from him overall, though I don’t want to get into too much detail for the purpose of avoiding spoilers. Yet, like his other films, it’s also hilarious. Elliot has a gift for mixing bleakness with a humor style that’s eccentric, quirky, and absurd, and the tonal balance actually works really well.

Memoir of a Snail is rendered in Elliot’s trademark offbeat stop-motion style, which favors imperfect edges and shapes, and I still find it charming and unique. It’s sort of like watching an alternative comic come to life in three dimensions. In an age of CGI, it’s rare to see a movie where everything is lovingly hand-crafted. The voice acting is superb, with Jackie Weaver’s Pinky being a highlight. As Grace, Sarah Snook (Succession) nails the part, bringing the emotional weight of the character through her voice work. (For fans of Nick Cave, he also has a role.) As for any issues I had, there were parts of the story I definitely saw coming, and the ending I felt could’ve been handled a tad better, but I felt those were minor relative to the film overall.

Anyone who has ever felt detached from those around them will likely be put through the emotional wringer by the end of Memoir of a Snail, and while Elliot’s prior work has gotten accolades, it’s only recently that I believe adult animation has really caught up with what he’s doing. Hopefully, this will get the recognition I think it deserves, because it’s one of the year’s best animated films and a perfect example of how animation for adults can be both for mature audiences only and mature, as opposed to just the former.

I sat down with Tommy to chat about making the doc, both the positive and negative experiences of people visiting these famous homes, wrestling easter eggs, and much more! Check out the vid below.

You can also check out all of our previous interviews with Tommy on the site:
Adventure Club Podcast #65 (I am Santa Claus – Also includes a cameo from Mick Foley)
Adventure Club Podcast #100 (Ghostheads)
Pop-Culture Anonymous #7 (I Love You, You Hate Me) – Also available on YouTube

The House From… is now available on digital as well as streaming on Fubo and wherever you can watch the Maximum Effort Channel! Check out more info at TheHouseFrom.com

According to director Alex Ross Perry, the indie rock band Pavement didn’t want a documentary made about them. It’s easy to see why. Many rock docs tend to follow a set pattern, following the band’s story before gushing about their legacy. That’s the best-case scenario. At worst, you get a prestige biopic primed for awards season, with a cast that may or may not resemble the real deal. (Perry even opened the screening by jokingly welcoming the audience to James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic with Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown.) As Perry said during the Q&A, Pavement’s music defied easy categorization, and a hundred fans could each have different opinions about them. Encapsulating their career in a single movie about them wouldn’t make sense. This is why he didn’t make a single movie encapsulating their career. He made every single movie about Pavement, and just edited them together.

I wanted one “weird” pick for my NYFF screenings, and Pavements fit the bill more than I could’ve imagined. Part rockumentary, part mockumentary, brazenly satirical and refreshingly idiosyncratic, it is probably unlike any music movie I’ve seen. At first, it seems standard. It opens with “the world’s most important and influential band” Pavement breaking up in 1999 (which is described as “not a big deal”) and then reuniting in 2022 (“a huge deal”). As expected, from there the film alternates between two threads: tracing the band’s history through a wealth of archival material covering everything from international interviews to their appearance on Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and a present-day look at the band as they prepare for their first tour in 12 years (they briefly got back together in 2010). If that were it, I likely would’ve eaten this up anyway because I love 90s indie rock, but I probably wouldn’t have much to write about.

As mentioned, though, Pavement didn’t want a standard documentary, and Pavements is anything but. It’s not long into the movie before Perry plays his true hand. He’s not only directing a documentary about Pavement, but he’s also making an off-broadway jukebox musical about Pavement that re-interprets their songs. Not only that, he’s also making a museum dedicated to Pavement. Not only not only that, he’s also making a big-budget Pavement biopic with an all-star cast that seems primed for awards season. All at the same time.

From there, the movie basically becomes a mosaic, often using split screen to cover the movie’s five threads (six if you include the making of the biopic, which Perry also includes). Just in case that still seems too normal, half the movie is also a mockumentary. (The NYFF program guide called it a “sorta-documentary). Perry is filmed creating the musical, Slanted! Enchanted!, as a pretentious theater director, while the cast’s experience with Pavement ranges from them being longtime fans to finding out about them within the last few weeks. The bulk of the film’s humor, however, comes from the biopic, Range Life. Perry made his disdain towards these kinds of movies known during the Q&A, and it’s on full display here. I won’t spoil some of the best jokes, but suffice it to say, he was pretty spot on. The cast of the film-within-a-film is great and includes Fred Hechinger, Griffin Newman, and Nat Wolff as members of the band, while Tim Heidecker and Jason Schwartzman portray the executives of Matador Records. The real scene-stealer, however, is Stranger Things’ Joe Keery as lead singer Stephen Malkmus. Playing himself, he believes he’s bound for Oscar gold for this part, and all I’ll say is that he gets a bit too involved trying to get into the role.

The more the film goes on, the more the line between truth and fiction begins to become a liquefied blur. Even after looking it up, I was surprised to find out what was real and what wasn’t. (HBO sponsored the documentary screenings at NYFF this year. Noticeably, they didn’t for this movie.) This all may seem like an experiment that has a good chance of falling apart, and it does drag a bit at over two hours. Yet as the film goes on, a coherent story does begin to emerge, and everything started to make some sense by the end. If you don’t know the story of Pavement, as I didn’t, this should be a good primer and a hilarious comedy to boot. If you do know the story of Pavement, this should be a refreshing reprieve from the standard treatment I’ve seen bands like this get. Either way, you are not prepared for Pavements, and hopefully you’ll all get to see it soon.

Incredible Group has you covered! They recently expanded on their line of Squishi Toys, designed with the full-sensory/nostalgic collector in mind to take you back to said simpler times as well as remind you how brands such as Oreo Cookies, Swedish Fish, and Sour Patch Kids were (and still are) awesome. Even if you’re not into collecting, feeling and squishing these toys is a treat, especially for those of us who may need something (I.e.: fidget cubes, stressballs, etc) to grab on to and play with from time to time.

Check out my video below where I unbox and review all three toys and marvel at my own enjoyment with them. I also chat with Brand Rep. Ryan Carr about how Incredible Group came about designing the toys, including the materials inside and out as well as the care and safety that goes into each product, and much more!

Special thanks to both Incredible Group and Chiz Six for providing the products as well as the interview.