Get Zapped by Disney!


[adrotate banner=”1″]Zapped is an upcoming Disney Channel Original Movie starring Zendaya. It has no relation to the Scott Baio/Willie Aames film of the same name (plus an exclamation point!), but does feature a teenager with strange powers. Namely, her phone has an app that can control boys and men. Of course, hijinks ensue, things go terribly wrong, and she will learn the Robert Pattinson/Chris Pine hybrid playing the boyfriend can only be loved if they actually like each other, and not by mind control.

Zendaya stars as Zoey Stevens, who now has a whole bunch of step-brothers and a step-dad, thus is all sick of crazy men stuff. Thanks to the crazy step-brothers, her phone gets all zapped and she can control guys using her dog training app. If you don’t know who Zendaya is, learn you some Google, fool! She’s one of the Selena Gomez series models of Disney stars, who as we all know are pumped out of a factory and upgraded every few years.

Zoey Stevens is a 16-year-old high school student who excels in dancing and academics. She has difficulties when she changes schools, including adapting to its inept dance squad, as well as her new stepfather and stepbrothers at home. A dog training app she downloads for her phone changes things when it lets her give commands to human males.

Chanelle Peloso plays the best friend character Rachel Todds, who wears a hat like all best friend characters ever (it’s weird how that’s true!) and she gets harassed by the knockoff Joseph Gordon-Levitt post-mind control. Spencer Boldman is the love interest who photoshopped from every handsome actor ever.

Zapped premieres on Disney Channel on June 27. IF that date is sort of ringing bells, it’s because that’s the same day Girl Meets World premieres on Disney! Holy busy day, Batman!
Girl Meets World

This is not the only new Disney film for 2014, and it’s not even the only new Disney 2014 film that has a premise/plot similar to an old 80s movie. Later this year, How to Build a Better Boy will be a gender-swapped Weird Science redux!

Episode Links – The New Hope!

Star Wars Escalator
[adrotate banner=”1″]It’s time once again to toss out a whole bunch of links, because that’s what makes the world wide web a web, all them link linking everything together like a web. Which means you have to leave your comfort sites like Facebook and Twitter from time to time to go to other sites, even if it is just briefly. Just make sure to avoid the giant spiders who live on the web and devour unwary travelers, discarding their dessicated husks in the dredges of reddit. Be sure to stop by TarsTarkas.NET occasionally on your journey because it’s just polite. And you don’t want to be rude, do you?

As usual, there is a mix of movie news and reviews and articles from our friends and neighbors. Don’t forget to drop on by our partners in MOSS for more eclectic fun!

The escalator above is in the Tel Aviv City Hall (or at least was as of 2011!) It could also be a fun project for an enterprising local artist who has a lot of time on their hands at a location where there aren’t security cameras at the escalators.

Until the next big long list, news article, or review of something weird and/or wonderful!

Descendants – Disney villain offspring go High School Muscial!

Disney Villains

“What Time Is It?” Villain Time, suckers!


[adrotate banner=”1″]Disney Channel original movies have become far more bigger spectacles in the wake of High School Musical, with several becoming highly promoted events. Descendants looks like it may top everything that comes before it, because it combines the Princess Franchise with the good clean teens having good clean fun franchises. Actually, the Disney Villains also have their own franchise. It’s a tornado of ideas that could come together into something mystical and magical. Or it could just be offensively boring and dumb. But I have hope, that there will be less winks and nods and awful jokes, and more of a central storyline that just happens to star all these kids of famous evil beings. Largely because Kenny Ortega will be directing, and I don’t think he’d just churn out boring crap.

In a present day idyllic kingdom, the benevolent teenaged son of the King and Queen (Beast and Belle from Disney’s iconic Beauty and the Beast) is poised to take the throne. His first proclamation: offer a chance at redemption to the trouble-making offspring of Cruella De Vil, Maleficent, the Evil Queen and Jafar who have been imprisoned on a forbidden island with all the other villains, sidekicks, evil step-mothers and step-sisters. These villainous descendants (Carlos, Mal, Evvie and Jay, respectively) are allowed into the kingdom to attend prep school alongside the offspring of iconic Disney heroes including Fairy Godmother, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Mulan. However, the evil teens face a dilemma. Should they follow in their nefarious parents’ footsteps and help all the villains regain power or embrace their innate goodness and save the kingdom?

Kenny Ortega, the Emmy Award-winning director and choreographer of Disney’s record-setting High School Musical TV movies and feature film, returns to Disney Channel to direct Descendants.

For those of you keeping track of the film franchises: Belle and Beast have a son, and Fairy Godmother, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Mulan also have unnamed children. The focus of the film seems to be on the villain offspring, as they actually have names in the press release: Carlos De Vil is the son of Cruella De Vil, Mal is the offspring of Maleficent, Evvie is the daughter of the Evil Queen from Snow White, and Jay is the child of Jafar. So far no one has been cast yet, but imagine diverse mall kids with California tans. Will they all go straight, or go evil? There are just enough villains for each to score a hero/ine boy/girlfriend, though there will be one hero/ine left over! Unless someone dates the parrot offspring of Iago!

The important question is will Angelina Jolie cameo as Maleficent???

via D23

Frozen

Frozen

Frozen
2013
Story by Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, and Shane Morris
Screenplay by Jennifer Lee
Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee

Frozen
Disney’s take on the Snow Queen tale is an overall positive experience, but I hesitate to praise Frozen as a new classic. Despite some very good twists and themes that throw some classic Disney Princess tropes on their ears, the good parts don’t transform an overall uneven story into something great. Instead, we have something that is pretty good, just not amaze-tastic.

Frozen‘s strength is in its story of sisterly love. As children, Elsa accidentally injures Anna with her snow powers, causing Anna to have part of her memories erased. Ever since, the girls grow up separate, with Elsa hiding away due to her powers, taught to fear and suppress them. Anna is forever wondering why her sister hides away, and no one bothers to just tell her what happened. After the deaths of their parents (this IS a Disney movie!), Elsa comes of age to be coronated as queen, which will be the first time the palace has been open in years.
Frozen
Anna’s elation at having actual people to interact with causes her to act almost drunk with gittiness, and it helps that one of the first things she does is bump into a handsome foreign prince, Hans. Elsa’s increasingly solemn demeanor (a manifestations of her duties and her worries that her powers will be exposed in front of all the visitors) drives Anna closer to Hans, to where they become engaged that night. Elsa realizes this is crazy, and doesn’t want to give her blessing at such a quick relationship, nor have a giant wedding where more people will be around to possibly expose her powers. This leads to an argument that leads to Elsa accidentally blasting parts of the palace with her ice powers. The powers go out of control, Elsa runs for the mountains, and accidentally freezes the whole town as she flees.

Anna (Kristen Bell) – Anna goes after her sister, desperate to mend their rift, and also to help save the town, which now has a complete ice over in summer. She’s unprepared for such a harsh journey, but is motivated by her surviving memories of fun and love of her sister.
Elsa (Idina Menzel) – The newly crowned queen of Arendelle is happier being alone in the mountains, free to use her power and free from accidentally harming anyone with it.
Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) – A mountain man who runs an ice business, and lives a solitary life with his reindeer, Sven. He’s hired by Anna to take her up the mountain to the source of the cold. Their relationship starts as the typical antagonistic people from two worlds who grow together as they travel on a journey thing. Kristoff was an orphan, but was adopted by trolls (coincidentally, when he saw the young Anna be healed by trolls)
Sven (Himself) – Reindeer owned by Kristoff. Sven loves carrots and pushing Kristoff to do things. Sven does not talk, but Kristoff often has conversations to himself where he provides a voice for Sven.
Hans (Santino Fontana) – A foreign prince visiting the town for the coronation, he befriends Anna due to their shared experiences of having older siblings ignore them. He and Anna have a whirlwind romance that ends with them engaged on the day they meet. Hans is put in charge of the town after Elsa flees and Anna leaves to go find her. He does his best to take care of the frozen city, and leads an expedition to find the Queen and save Anna.
Olaf (Josh Gad) – A snowman created inadvertently by Elsa when she’s playing with her powers, Olaf resembles the snowmen built by Elsa and Anna as children. He attaches himself to Anna and her party, and is excited about everything. Olaf’s greatest wish is to experience summer, blissfully unaware as to what happens to snowmen in summer.

Frozen
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Girl vs. Monster

Girl vs. Monster

Girl vs Monster
2012
Written by Annie DeYoung
Teleplay by Annie DeYoung and Ron McGee
Directed by Stuart Gillard

Girl vs Monster

This song goes out to all the Disney stars who didn’t have a meltdown.


Take a little bit from Hocus Pocus, a little bit from Ghostbusters, and a scandalously unused title, mix it all up, and out pops a kids vs ghosts adventure that deals with the nature of fear. Disney Channel Original Movie Girl vs. Monster features children standing against the fears that cripple and control their lives, preventing them from becoming their full potential. Of course, all these fears are just simple things represented by ghosts/monsters making fun of them, but to a teenager, that’s totally the worst thing ever. Sometimes, it’s the simple things that are the biggest problems.

The monsters/ghosts are technically manifestations of fear of the living, though they essentially act like ghosts as far as the plot is concerned. They haunt you in your lives, making you more scared, from which they grow their powers. Yeah, it’s a sort of weird Monsters Inc. thing going on, and it doesn’t really make much sense when you think about it too hard. In fact, the lead character Skylar Lewis’ fear monster is the queen evil witch Deimata, and because she’s been trapped for the past 15 years, Skylar knows no fear. Like Daredevil. But then Deimata is released and Skylar is suddenly afraid and the witch is looking to possess her soul. Like Ben Affleck.

The fear equation seems like it is some sort of statement about not having fear control your life. Skylar’s friends are all cowards of various degrees, thanks to their own monsters who haunt them, controlling their lives by making them to afraid to try much of anything. The handsome boy Skylar is crushing on knows no fear, thus he’s popular. Eventually, the scared kids learn to fight back, confronting and conquering their fears by bullying them in turn. Luckily, all their fears are easily deflected, and the ghosts that haunt them dumber than a wet bag of rocks, so the worm turns quickly. There is no real fear, no real horrors, no kids shocked so traumatically they desire to end their lives or live forever entombed in their own minds. This is an entirely fictitious representation of fear, which makes it ring hollow. I understand that they were trying to make a point, but they end up just making a blunt object. Yet blunt objects can still drive in nails.

Girl vs Monster

I have devoured all the scenery and will now work on the actors!


The squeaky clean world of Disney would never allow the horrors of reality to scar their channel and their audience of pre-tweens. Their Official Disney Kid Replicant Factory is hard at work churning out the next generation of clean upper-class California cool kids, all magically ethnically diverse yet having identical faces. This entry’s model is Oliva Hold, who looks the part so well it is as if Disney crafted her from the bodies of the failed earlier models. She’s joined by Brendan Meyer and Kerris Dorsey, who stand out for not fitting the normal Disney profiles, but they only deviate enough to be In Universe acceptable as the target of bullies. The love interest shares no such deviations, he’s Ryan Dean (Luke Benward), and not only is girl melting handsome, but also the leader of the bland rock band that everyone goes gaga for. And his character is saddled with a low-rent Sharpay from High School Musical as a girlfriend. Katherine McNamara rises above her role, but she has little to work with. Until she’s taken over by the evil Deimata, at which point things become cool for a brief period. McNamara is the break out star in my opinion, which is the correct opinion.

Skylar’s ultimate ambition is to sing with Ryan in his band, a chance she has, though the monsters come to ruin things. OMG, what will Skylar do if Ryan thinks she’s not the coolest girl in the universe? Probably just die.

None of this rich kid problems talk is really what Girl Vs. Monster should be remembered for. The simple fact is the villains make the story, and Deimata is a formidable opponent. Her looks and her story makes the Hocus Pocus comparison’s inevitable, so let’s just get it out of the way and say she doesn’t compare to the three sisters from that flick. Her character is different, as is her interactions with her two ghost pals, Anna Galvan as bitter old school marm Theadosia and Stefano Giulianetti as a creepy scarecrow Bobb (neither are credited with their names, I had to pull them from dialogue!) Just why those two work with her is a mystery, perhaps Deimata has great power and they like being around that. Or maybe they’re old friends and have been together for countless child hauntings. In any event, it’s lucky that the children they haunt are friends with Skylar. Or maybe its more than a coincidence. Maybe it’s destiny. Or maybe this whole thing was a setup by Skylar’s mom to teach her about her destiny as a monster hunter by putting the entire town in danger. Always bet on conspiracy!

Girl vs Monster

I’m here to audition for the new Mask reboot!


Skylar Lewis (Oliva Hold) – Daughter of Steve(Brian Palmero) and Julie(Jennifer Aspen), Skylar is unaware that she is the latest in a long line of monster hunters, and that her lack of fear is due to her fear monster being imprisoned. But all that changes one fateful Halloween. Like usual.
Sadie (Kerris Dorsey) – Skylar’s nerdy friend who is totally afraid of not doing well at school. I blame her parents, who are so horrible of parents they don’t even appear in this movie.
Henry (Brendan Meyer) – Skylar’s dorky male friend, completing her pair of unlikely friends. Everyone makes fun of Henry, because kids are jerks. We learned this from Cyberbu//y
Cobb (Adam Chambers) – Cobb works for for Skylar’s parents and is training to hunt monsters, which somehow involves dressing like a hipster. Helps clean up Skylar’s mess and tell her how to save the day after her parents get ganked.
Ryan Dean (Luke Benward) – Skylar’s cute boy crush, who plays in a band so there can be song tie-ins for additional digital download revenue for Disney. Expect the Avengers to also be in a band by the next movie. He’s hella popular, which is why he dates Myra Santelli instead of Skylar Lewis. Take that, Skylar!
Deimata (Tracy Dawson) – The very powerful leader of the local group of fear monsters that wants to possesses Skylar’s soul. It’s also implied she killed Skylar’s grandfather (or maybe was also his fear monster)
Theadosia (Anna Galvan) – A fear monster that manifests as an evil school marm and luckily is Sadie’s fear monster.
Bobb (Stefano Giulianetti) – A fear monster who manifests as a creepy scarecrow, becoming a literal straw man fallacy when his attempts to bully Henry are torn down.
Myra Santelli (Katherine McNamara) – Henry’s girlfriend, who is bad because she’s sort of snotty against Skylar after correctly deducing Skylar is trying to move in on her man. Gets injured emulating Skylar, then possessed by Deimata, at which point Katherine McNamara steals the film.

Girl vs Monster

Skylar, comin’ for YOU!


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Super Buddies brings the Puppy Power!

Super Buddies puppies
[adrotate banner=”1″]Air Bud was a great dog, he was Comet on Full House and he was wise enough to know there was no specific rule against dogs playing basketball. And though he is long dead, his legacy lives on in the annual Air Buddies movie. The latest entry, out today on BluRay, DVD, and VOD, is Super Buddies. And, yes, that means super hero puppies!

Watch the fur fly as a new breed of super hero is born in Disney’s fun-filled epic adventure. An ordinary day at Fernfield Farms turns extraordinary when Budderball, Mudbud, B-Dawg, Buddha and Rosebud discover mysterious rings that grant them each a unique super power. Before you can say, “Buddies, assemble,” the pups unleash their amazing abilities and race to the rescue when a shape-shifting bully from outer space threatens the planet. But can they succeed in kicking major tail without revealing their new secret identities?

Yes, super puppies vs a space pig. Also there is a mentor character, Captain Canine, who looks like Beethoven making a secret cameo.

I know what you’re thinking: “Tars, I love this Buddies crap. But I really want commemorative cards of each of these Air Buddies super heroes!” Well, you are in luck, so check out the gallery below! Also the trailer, because talking green space pigs are worth it for that alone!

SUPER BUDDIES!!!!!!! Hopefully next year will see Avengers Buddies Or Star Wars Buddies! Disney gobbling everything up makes the possibilities endless…