If there's one furry series I should be completely behind, but have always been a bit down on, it's Illumination's Sing franchise. The series is set in a completely furry world, with a complete lack of humans – something I can always get behind. And yet, I can't ever quite get behind them.

I think if I had to put my finger on what's wrong, it's that the Sing movies feel like the Illumination version of Oscar bait, being behind the scenes musicals that ostensibly celebrate the performing arts, something Academy Awards voters should, in theory, love; and yet, they can't even get the easy lay up of Best Original Song, which is straightforwardly embarrassing for movies called, well, Sing. It's not that they're failed Oscar Bait, it's that they're not going for Best Picture, or even Best Animated Feature, but simply seem to be aiming to be nominated in that category. They're not aiming for the top, and they're still missing!

Or maybe I'm just being too hard on them, and displacing my own Oscar obsessions on this otherwise innocuous series of jukebox musicals with no higher goal than to be entertaining bits of fluff. The newest entry in the franchise, if it can be called that, is just that. Sing: Thriller is a short available on Netflix, and it features a simple take on a nightmare zombie apocalypse, but furry and kid-friendly; an obvious homage to Michael Jackson's Thriller. It's definitely for kids, with a rating of TV-Y, for "fear", which I think would only apply to the absolute youngest viewers.

"It's a brutal world for all of us, really, and some aspects of it are not comfortable for the sentimental or the squeamish. Somehow that's never dimmed my love for all animals. I celebrate their beauty, even the darker side of it." (Introduction, The Book of Deadly Animals)

"The predators far outnumbered the vegetarians."
(last words, The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators)

It's October, the "spooky" month with Halloween at the end of it; I sometimes take advantage of that to bring to light something a bit more horror themed than the usual Flayrah fare.

This year, I'd like to share the non-fiction books of Gordon Grice, which are about animals and their sometimes very tense relationship with man, because they are some of the scariest things I've ever read, and so appropriate enough under the "it's about animals and it's spooky" month to stretch the boundaries of what a furry publication can cover. Furthermore, from a personal angle, Grice spent much of his life where I'm originally from, the Oklahoma Panhandle (we share a birth town), and I occasionally like to shine a light on what would be to me local authors.

"The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators", Delacourte Press, 1998, 259 pages, Kindle $5.99, hardcover $19.32, paperback $17.10
"The Book of Deadly Animals", Penguin Books Ltd., 2010, xxvii + 383 pages, Kindle $4.99, paperback $24.00, illustrated, originally published as Deadly Kingdom

WARNING: READ BEFORE PLAYING

Liar's Bar contains intense and graphic depictions of violence and death, themes of suicide, and other mature content that may not be suitable for all audiences. Player discretion is adviced. If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please seek help from a qualified professional or contact a local mental health service. Your well-being is important to us, and we encourage players to prioritize their mental health while engaging with our game.

The game features mature themes, and is intended for adult audiences only. If you are under 16, please step outside.

This warning is one of the first things you see after booting up Liar's Bar. I want to stress, and I don't care what you think of "trigger warnings", this warning is not kidding. This is a messed up, repugnant game; I think I kind of love it. (It also contains depictions of tobacco use.)

Okay, real talk, this is kind of a dark streak of submissions from this contributor (thank goodness for animated movies ... with jokes about infant mortality!), this game might be the most worrisome yet. I retweeted some fan art of the game, then realized, out of context, that might not look like something entirely, well, healthy to be reposting. Because the marquis attraction of Liar's Bar is that it's basically a furry Russian roulette simulator. Just so you know what you're getting into.

Liar's Bar is published by Curve Animation, and is currently available on Steam for $6.99, where it is still an "Early Access" game.

Chris Sanders has only directed four animated features (plus a live action adaptation Call of the Wild), and the previous three (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train your Dragon and The Croods put him in four way tie for most nominations without a win in the Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars. It feels pretty certain that The Wild Robot will be the movie that finally wins him that Oscar, but we'll keep such speculation to a minimum.

Sanders's first feature, Lilo & Stitch, is probably the only truly great movie to come out of Walt Disney Animation Studios in the first decade of this century. (To be clear, you're allowed to like other movies from that decade, but most were flawed.) Anyway, the upshot of Lilo & Stitch becoming a beloved classic is that its directors, Sanders and his writing and directing partner, Dean Deblois, were driven out of Disney by John Lasseter a few years later (I don't like that guy).

Sanders and Deblois took their talents to DreamWorks Animation, where they delivered How to Train Your Dragon to the studio, often seen as one of the highlights of its output.

I've often seen Sanders cast as the "idea guy" in the Sanders/Deblois partnership, as well as being the guy who brings a lot of unique visual aspects to his projects, while Deblois is the more story-driven member of the partnership, bringing in the emotional aspects. I'm not so sure about that, especially after this movie, which features an emotional story just as potent as Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, sans Deblois. The Wild Robot also features a visual design that echoes the original illustrations of the book it's based on, by Peter Brown, showing Sanders is more than just a recognizable art style.

It always pleases me to say, particularly to furry audiences, that a hiatus was taken for less exciting and dramatic reasons than those they may have cooked up. In this case, I’m glad to return to posting an occasional media review here and there after five years of being between smartphones, plus the additional snag of quite the dry spell in terms of worthy things to write of. (Thanks for holding back on Jackbox, guys.)

Making use of snazzy resources, both analog and digital – remember your local libraries, folks – takes you a long way. It certainly brought these two disparate cat stories back to my attention.

When discussing modern adaptations of classical Greek myths, you can frequently see people complain about the changes the authors made: "That's not authentic, not traditional; that's not what really happened in the original." In fact, reinterpreting old stories, giving them a new, contemporary meaning, weaving several different tales into one - is the truest, most authentic Ancient Greek tradition. That's what Greek (and, later, Roman) writers always did.

Of course, some older texts - Homer, in the first place - were regarded higher than others, but there was no 'canon', no Old Testament; no single authority on what 'really happened'. In one of Euripides' tragedies, Helen of Troy is a callous, cynical adulteress; in another by the same poet, she's a woman of the highest moral qualities who's never even been to Troy. That's because, when writing these two plays, Euripides set very different tasks before himself.

'Icare' (2022) is a French-language feature film mixing 2D and 3D animation. It was made by Luxembourg studio The Iris Group, directed and co-written by former Pixar employee Carlo Vogele. The movie was the Luxembourg's "Best Foreign Film" submission for the 2023 Oscars. It tells the story of Icarus, son of the illustrious artist and inventor Daedalus, entwining it with another famous Cretan myth - that of Asterion ("stellar", "star-like"), more commonly known as the Minotaur.

It's a flood of reviews! Today's trailers are for:

Those are in increasing order of recommendation. The first three are for kids, the fourth is anime, and the last one isn't furry but is worth mentioning!

Furality finished its eighth gathering on the second weekend of June 2024. When the VRChat-based congregation had finished it had shown continual growth hitting 21,000 attendees registered and raising over $42,269 for charity. It has shown that in spite of the naysayers who thought that online only furry events would die down in the wake of waning 2020 pandemic restrictions, online conventions held in virtual reality spaces show no signs of slowing and are now clearly a new staple in fandom activities.

Being in attendance myself this year, I go over the strengths and weaknesses that these events have over their real-world counterparts. The article will also cover some highlights of the events such as the eclipse and firework show. In short, what we find is that while Furality has taken events and formats inspired by in-person conventions, it is clearly an entirely different beast.

Before we even begin, what is some of y'all's problem with Chris Pratt as a voice actor?

He's a fine actor who can do comedy sidekick (his breakout role in the sitcom Parks and Recreation), character actor in supporting role (he had small but important roles in Best Picture nominees three years in row with Moneyball, Zero Dark Thirty and Her), full on movie star (he's great in Guardians of the Galaxy and, remember, I liked Jurassic World), and, yes, voice actor (The Lego Movie). And by all accounts he's a nice guy people like working with, and that does matter. He's hardly the only guy who does a lot of voice work, either. Since theaters like to play ten trailers before a movie before, I was able to notice a lack of Chris Pratt (or another personal favorite who people like to complain about online, Awkwafina), but not Keegan-Michael Key, who is way more ubiquitous as Pratt in voice work, and is often even in the same movie as both Pratt and Awkwafina, but who never gets this sort of backlash when cast. And, not to be too mean to Key, who I mostly like, but I've already noted Pratt is actually a pretty versatile actor and Awkwafina has a Golden Globe, while Key is the half of Key & Peele that is starting to look like he got carried by the other half. I'm sure he'll actually be great as Bumblebee, though.

But, to bring the movie I'm supposed to be reviewing into the picture, I really do not get why people were upset Chris Pratt was cast as Garfield, because, come on, it's freaking Garfield. Bill Murray voiced the role in 2004, and Murray went on to bash the movie in his cameo playing himself in 2009's Zombieland, picking it as his life's greatest regret. On the basis of that, if you don't like Chris Pratt, you should be thrilled he got the role! Garfield's creator, Jim Davis, has always been a pretty open about the commercial aspirations of the character. I mean, kind of like Keegan-Michael Key, I like the character fine, but he barely stands out as a comic strip and Saturday morning cartoon star, mediums that are known for producing mostly safe, crowd-pleasing pablum. And that's basically this movie.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth movie in the current continuity of the Planet of the Apes series of movies, and the tenth overall. It follows the adventures of intelligent chimp Noa (performed with motion capture technology by Owen Teague) some generations after the last movie, War for the Planet of the Apes. Directed by Wes Ball, it features a variety of apes, including gorillas and orangutans in addition to chimps (gibbons are also mentioned in passing).

It begins with a quick prologue to the funeral of Caesar, the ape protagonist of the previous trilogy of movies. I felt like those movies came to a definitive end with the last movie; Kingdom is less a direct sequel to War and more the start of a new story set in the same world, so it feels a bit like the proverbial cake that you can both have and eat, too, as far as previous trilogy endings are concerned.

Robot Dreams (trailer) is a 102-minute animated film released in December 2023, made by Arcadia, Lokiz and other studios. Based on a 2007 graphic novel (Amazon US - UK - Spanish edition) by Sara Varon, this Spanish-French production was written and directed by Pablo Berger, who had never worked in animation before, so he collaborated closely with art director José Luis Ágreda and storyboard artist Maca Gil for a year and a half to plan the project. It worked out really well!

Two neat things: it's a 2D film in an overbearingly 3D market, and there's no dialog. It takes place in a slightly alternative version of New York City in 1984, a funny-animal one. The main character, "Dog", lives in a Manhattan apartment. He's extremely lonely. One day he sees a TV ad for robot friends, so he orders one; after putting it together - he's not lonely anymore! Aside from this modern leap in artificial intelligence and robotics, the film is as early-80s as it gets: boomboxes, cassettes, VCRs, and Walkmen.

Furry Weekend Atlanta continues its monstrous growth, smashing its prior record with a total of 15,021 attendees and raising $100,000 for their charity of Lost-n-Found Youth. This has solidified its position in the top three, and for the time being surpasses Anthrocon – that had a 2023 attendance of 13,641 – making FWA, for the next few months, the world's second-largest in-person furry convention.

The increase this year from last was 4,693 attendees. For perspective, the total attendance of Anthro New England this year was 4,482. So staff at the Atlanta convention this year had to take care of the total they handled in 2023, plus an Anthro New England-sized convention at the same time in 2024. The gathering has never desired further volunteers more.

It was also my first year in attendance, so I wanted to go over my experiences, the challenges, and the strengths of the convention.

"I don't get the joke. Is it dirty, or what?"
-Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States of America (attributed)

You guys remember Bitter Lake?

Way back in the before times, when dinosaurs roamed the land, there was a tiny, micro-budget, barely feature-length "fan-movie" known as Bitter Lake, featuring a cast entirely clad in fursuit to represent its anthropomorphic animal characters, made by furries, for furries.

Before Bitter Lake, I'd never considered this method to realize a furry movie, and after Bitter Lake, well, I still haven't. Noble experiment, sure. Quality movie? Well, we're not reviewing Bitter Lake now, so let's just move along…

Hundreds of Beavers is a sort of outside the fandom take on the "fursuit movie" that, after playing film festivals last year, had a very short theatrical release this year before launching on various streaming services. It is a black-and-white, mostly dialogue-free slapstick comedy featuring newbie fur trapper Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) as he struggles to survive in the wilderness around the Great Lakes region of pre-United States America. Fellow co-writer Mike Cheslik directs. The movie features beavers, raccoons, rabbits, dogs, skunks and wolves, all played by actors in mascot costumes.

Let's review some computer-animated films! Here are trailers for:

Short version: The Tiger's Apprentice, action, one character has a tiger form, lots of Chinese culture, story is nothing great. Heroes of the Golden Mask, terrible. Rumble, wrestling-sponsored sports comedy, very formula loser-wins story, maybe of interest to furry macro fans.

The Animal Kingdom (trailer) is a 128-minute live-action French film released in 2023 (Le règne animal). It's the second movie directed by Thomas Cailley, and co-written with Pauline Munier.

Set in modern-day France, there's been a worrying development: some people are slowly mutating into animals, and society has not been adjusting well. The story follows a small family, Émile (Paul Kircher), a disaffected and conflicted teenager, and his father François (Romain Duris), who move to the south-west of France to be near the family's mother, Lana, who's been in government care ever since she began to change. A road accident makes her fate unclear, adding stress to an already stressful situation. With many people heavily biased against the mutations, Émile finds himself starting to change too.

Despite the fantastical premise, it's primarily a drama about the relationship between Émile and his father. I'd hesitate to call it a coming-of-age film, because Émile isn't going to become an adult - at least, not a human one.