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Post by Pavan on Mar 29, 2019 16:54:33 GMT
The least Tim Burton-y of his recent films besides 'Big Eyes' but it's a return to form for him. It's earnest, heartfelt and has so much visual flair thanks to a spectacular production design (I expect an Oscar nom for Rick Heinrichs) which covers the shortcomings of the banal cinematography. Mr. Burton please bring back Bruno Delbonnel.
I'm not a big fan of the original animated film. It's a simple and feel good film but less on content. So Burton and his team had to come up with human characters and some theatrics. In this process the film feels a bit workmanlike and over stretched even at just 112 min run time. The little girl character was etched well but the rest didn't get anything meaty but they did well. Eva Green especially looked lovely and she played a warm character different to the majority of her oeuvre. I'm still waiting for Burton to give her a full fledged lead role. Hopefully in the next film. Farell, Keaton and DeVito are alright.
In hindsight the film does feel a bit unmemorable but it improves on the original animated film in some aspects. Especially the ending (not the circus bit) with Dumbo. But the scene stealing talking mouse from the original has been reduced to just an animal that appears for a few seconds. Guess Burton didn't want them animals to be anthropomorphic.
Safe and familiar but the film does put a smile on my face- 7.5/10
P.S.: Now Mr. Burton go back to Sleepy Hollow days and make a film of that kind with Eva Green as the lead. Please give me that.
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morton
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Dumbo
Mar 29, 2019 17:40:18 GMT
Post by morton on Mar 29, 2019 17:40:18 GMT
The least Tim Burton-y of his recent films besides 'Big Eyes' but it's a return to form for him. It's heartfelt and has so much visual flair thanks to a spectacular production design (I expect an Oscar nom for Rick Heinrichs) which covers the shortcomings of the banal cinematography. Mr. Burton please bring back Bruno Delbonnel. I'm not a big fan of the original animated film. It's a simple and feel good film but less on content. So Burton and his team had to come up with human characters and some theatrics. The little girl character was etched well but the rest didn't get anything meaty but they did well. Eva Green especially looked lovely and she played a warm character different to the majority of her oeuvre. I'm still waiting for Burton to give her a full fledged lead role. Hopefully in the next film. Farell, Keaton and DeVito are alright. In hindsight the film does feel a bit unmemorable but it improves on the original animated film in some aspects. Especially the ending (not the circus bit) with Dumbo. But the scene stealing talking mouse from the original has been reduced to just an animal that appears for a few seconds. Guess Burton didn't want them animals to be anthropomorphic. Safe and familiar but the film does put a smile on my face- 7.5/10 P.S.: Now Mr. Burton go back to Sleepy Hollow days and make a film of that kind with Eva Green as the lead. Please give me that. It's been a long time since I've seen the original, so I remembered the basic gist of it and remembering blubbering when Dumbo gets separated from his mom and misses her. Reading another forum yesterday though, I forgot that he really doesn't fly until close to the end, and then I had to look up the rest of it again on Wiki because I thought he flew for longer like he does in the remake. Then, I saw that they were right, and you're right that it's a very simple film. All of the parts that I remembered (mad elephant, "Baby Mine", pink elephants, crows, mice, flying, feather) are basically it, nothing more than that. Still anything to do with mother and baby in the original packed a real wallop. They were the best scenes here too, but they weren't quite as powerful as in the original, imo. The rest of the film is okay. I enjoyed it, and I think families will too. It's a pretty cliche story, but there's some highlights. I agree that the production design should get awards love next year at least in the form of nominations, and I would add the costume design to that too. The human actors range from awful to bland to fair to magnificently over the top. Most fall in the bland to okay category with Green, Farrell, and DeVito being fair. I think they did the best that they could, and the film doesn't really offer much depth for them, and some of the dialogue is bad. Although it did have a few classic gems as "come on Big D" and "Let's get ready to Dumbo", so I guess I can't criticize it too much, lol. Most of the circus people didn't really make much of an impression, but again I think it's the fault of the screenplay more than anything else. And the two villains that weren't Michael Keaton were who I would put in the awful category. As for Michael Keaton, I know I've seen some criticism for how over the top he is and how much scenery he chews, but it completely works for me. Even the accent changes worked because it fit the character imo, that he's basically a conman, who thinks by putting on airs that he can fool people into thinking he's more. I loved that the character was clearly based on Walt Disney with a little P.T. Barnum, so dialing it up that much I think worked for the character. Everything the guy does is over the top, so I believe it's completely appropriate that his personality should be the same way. Plus, he's clearly getting in the spirit of a cartoon Disney villain especially an old time one, so he was perfect, imo. I can see this being a film that most people here, but Dumbo and mom, the production and costume design, and Keaton all made it worthwhile for me. I also want to give a special shout out to the updated pink elephant scene which I think is the best scene in the whole film, and I would recommend it just for that alone.
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Post by Pavan on Mar 29, 2019 17:59:07 GMT
The least Tim Burton-y of his recent films besides 'Big Eyes' but it's a return to form for him. It's heartfelt and has so much visual flair thanks to a spectacular production design (I expect an Oscar nom for Rick Heinrichs) which covers the shortcomings of the banal cinematography. Mr. Burton please bring back Bruno Delbonnel. I'm not a big fan of the original animated film. It's a simple and feel good film but less on content. So Burton and his team had to come up with human characters and some theatrics. The little girl character was etched well but the rest didn't get anything meaty but they did well. Eva Green especially looked lovely and she played a warm character different to the majority of her oeuvre. I'm still waiting for Burton to give her a full fledged lead role. Hopefully in the next film. Farell, Keaton and DeVito are alright. In hindsight the film does feel a bit unmemorable but it improves on the original animated film in some aspects. Especially the ending (not the circus bit) with Dumbo. But the scene stealing talking mouse from the original has been reduced to just an animal that appears for a few seconds. Guess Burton didn't want them animals to be anthropomorphic. Safe and familiar but the film does put a smile on my face- 7.5/10 P.S.: Now Mr. Burton go back to Sleepy Hollow days and make a film of that kind with Eva Green as the lead. Please give me that. Oh yes. The scene where Mrs. Jumbo gets locked up and Dumbo goes to his mother and hugs her with his trunk is extremely touching and somehow the live action didn't live up to that one. Yep. His character immediately reminded me of Barnum and i didn't mind Keaton's performance. Yes that's what i meant about the live action improving on the original. That and a couple of things.
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Dumbo
Mar 30, 2019 1:39:22 GMT
Post by countjohn on Mar 30, 2019 1:39:22 GMT
I've been looking forward to this because Dumbo is one of my favorite Disney movies and it's been looking like one of their better live action adaptations along the lines of Christopher Robin and Cinderella, as opposed to cookie cutter shit like Beauty and the Beast and Jungle Book. It appears to be getting mixed reviews so far, though. I will be seeing it this weekend and will probably make a more significant comment afterward.
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Post by countjohn on Apr 1, 2019 3:47:39 GMT
Saw it today and thought it was pretty good. It looked very nice and the adult leads (Green, Keaton, DeVito, Farrell) were all good, although I thought the kids were pretty bad. They did something different with the story and I liked the new fate for Dumbo, although it does piggyback off the legacy of the original at certain points, like in the straight redo of the classic Baby Mine scene. It still managed to be genuinely emotional because people being mean to a cute baby elephant is just sad. Kind of hard to mess that up. Of course not as good as the original which is one of the best Disney movies, but this was one of the worthwhile live action remakes.
I don't know if this is a problem, but part of why this may be underperforming is that it's unclear what the audience for it is. While the classic Disney movies were family movies rather than 100% children's movies, children were still the first audience they had in mind. This one is in some kind of middle ground. It's too sad/serious for most children but it isn't explicitly made for adults either.
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Post by JangoB on Apr 2, 2019 21:59:48 GMT
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I love the original animated film - it is short and perhaps doesn't have much of a story but the emotional power of it is simply immense. The Tim Burton version was also rather moving but it sure didn't pack the same intense emotional punch as the original did. I mean, I was touched by the film but in the original 'Baby Mine' had me straight-up bawling like a bitch. Here it was just a sweet sad little moment. In fact my main issue with the movie is that the first half of it seems to be paced in a bit too quick of a way which is perhaps an understandable concession for kid audiences but it still bothered me a little. Felt like the movie was rushing somewhere when it would've been better to stay with a scene, to let it play in full. But once Keaton enters the picture, the pace seems to settle pretty nicely. I appreciate Burton and his team for not making this an almost shot-for-shot remake like Disney seems to be doing with some other of their properties and for actually creating a new story while still paying tribute to the original's enduring moments. This remake is filled with new characters and one of its biggest triumphs is that by the end I found myself caring about them. The new story is in fact nothing really that new or memorable, it's fairly simple stuff, but its emotional core is in the right place. I found myself liking all the characters I was supposed to like and rooting against the bad guys whose nastiness I also happened to rather enjoy. And of course Dumbo himself is just a delightful cutest little creature and through the magic of modern CGI he's brought to life in an amazing way. To give a bunch of pixels that kind of soul and emotional expression must've been a tough task but the effects people pulled it off very well. Some of the other CG is sometimes a bit iffy (that little monkey was an especially annoying offender) but most of it is great. The production design and the costumes are also totally wonderful, imaginative and beautiful, while Danny Elfman's score doesn't perhaps produce the most memorable themes but is still pretty good and whismical in that very Elfman kind of way. The cast is for the most part very good but I do have a problem with the kids. I like the character arc of the girl played by Thandie Newton's daughter but her performance left a lot to be desired. I get that they wanted to portray her as this non-comformist brainy girl but she played it almost without any facial expressions, just with a blank stare. The boy was okay but he didn't have much to his character. Thankfully the grown-ups are uniformly good especially Keaton with his delicious scenery chewing and Eva Green who's very sweet and of course gorgeous as heck. I liked all the bit players that comprised the circus family too. So overall I thought it was a success. Not without its flaws but moving, good to look at and engaging. Tim Burton will probably never be the same director he was in his heyday but as a journeyman director with some kind of a personal vision he's just fine. All of that really doesn't matter much as long as the emotional heart of the film is beating, and I thought it very much did here. But not as much as in the great animated movie. And now after this moment of love allow me a tiny bit of pure hate: I fucking despise kids at the movies. I gotta make a promise to myself never to go to a kids film in the theatre unless its some sort of a late screeing or something. There's nothing that brings out the hate and evil in me more than fucking kids who scream, shout, run around and can't shut the fuck up in the movie theatre. Fuck kids. The movie's quite sweet though and Dumbo's incredibly cute and just lovely!
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Dumbo
Apr 2, 2019 23:18:50 GMT
Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 2, 2019 23:18:50 GMT
Me during Beauty and the Beast: “It’s too similar.” Me during Dumbo: “And yet it’s still better. I can’t make up my damn mind.”
Out of all the Disney remakes this year, I had the most hope in Dumbo. It’s not like the original was a great movie by any stretch of the imagination (“Baby Mine” is overrated), but it’s a sweet little movie nonetheless. But at the very least, it offered a lot of potential for this new movie. Free from having to make a 1:1 retelling, it had the chance to drastically improve on its inspiration. I don’t think it did.
Start with what I liked: - Michael Keaton, when he finally enters, is such a delightful ham of a villain. - Eva Green is so very sweet, almost stealing the movie as it’s heart. - Dumbo is adorable. - Burton’s visual eye is the best and most inspired it’s been since Sweeney Todd. - I want the Production Design to be an Oscar contender. - What sparing callbacks it has are charming and non-intrusive. - Familiar or not, I utterly melt at hearing Elfman’s classic sound.
What I didn’t like: - Colin Farrell’s trying, but he’s pretty bland. - But he’s better than his kids. I don’t think Nico Parker has more than two facial expressions. - Danny DeVito’s fun, but the movie was inconsistent with whether or not I should or shouldn’t like him. - Really sluggish middle act, and Dreamland comes in a little too late. - Climax felt pretty artificial.
So in theory, I should have loved it, because it’s doing exactly what I wanted it to, but it fell pretty short of the mark. At least it ditches the racist crows (although I still would have loved to see what a disaster the man behind Skids and Mudflap could have cooked up), but that original still has more personality.
That Big Eyes is the best thing’s Burton directed this decade is kind of sad.
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Post by countjohn on Apr 3, 2019 0:23:03 GMT
(“Baby Mine” is overrated) STFU. I'd say they are pretty close but I probably liked this a little better.
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Dumbo
Apr 3, 2019 18:15:50 GMT
Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 3, 2019 18:15:50 GMT
So it’s grown in my esteem (and I slightly enjoy it more than the animated), but it’s still mid-tier Burton.
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Zeb31
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Post by Zeb31 on Apr 3, 2019 18:42:42 GMT
That Big Eyes is the best thing’s Burton directed this decade is kind of sad. I was about to say that I vaguely remember Dark Shadows being somewhat tolerable (very high praise, I know), and that as bland and flavorless as Miss Peregrine is, as far as I'm concerned it too beats Big Eyes, which I find downright terrible and not all that far from the disaster that is Alice in Wonderland. Then I remembered that Frankenweenie (1) exists and (2) is also a thing that Burton has directed this decade, and therefore it occurred to me that you might need to be reminded of its existence just as I was, so that's what I'll say instead.
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Dumbo
Apr 3, 2019 18:48:15 GMT
Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 3, 2019 18:48:15 GMT
That Big Eyes is the best thing’s Burton directed this decade is kind of sad. I was about to say that I vaguely remember Dark Shadows being somewhat tolerable (very high praise, I know), and that as bland and flavorless as Miss Peregrine is, as far as I'm concerned it too beats Big Eyes, which I find downright terrible and not all that far from the disaster that is Alice in Wonderland. Then I remembered that Frankenweenie (1) exists and (2) is also a thing that Burton has directed this decade, and therefore it occurred to me that you might need to be reminded of its existence just as I was, so that's what I'll say instead. I think it’s more fun to *forget* that Frankenweenie exists.
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Dumbo
Apr 3, 2019 19:03:26 GMT
Post by mikediastavrone96 on Apr 3, 2019 19:03:26 GMT
I was about to say that I vaguely remember Dark Shadows being somewhat tolerable (very high praise, I know), and that as bland and flavorless as Miss Peregrine is, as far as I'm concerned it too beats Big Eyes, which I find downright terrible and not all that far from the disaster that is Alice in Wonderland. Then I remembered that Frankenweenie (1) exists and (2) is also a thing that Burton has directed this decade, and therefore it occurred to me that you might need to be reminded of its existence just as I was, so that's what I'll say instead. I think it’s more fun to *forget* that Frankenweenie exists. Huh, wouldn't have guessed you didn't like that one.
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Dumbo
Apr 3, 2019 19:11:05 GMT
Post by Ryan_MYeah on Apr 3, 2019 19:11:05 GMT
I think it’s more fun to *forget* that Frankenweenie exists. Huh, wouldn't have guessed you didn't like that one. To be fair, it’s been like 6 years since I saw it, but I remember being really irritated by it. EDIT: I think I know what my next month-long retrospective will be.
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Post by alexanderblanchett on Apr 14, 2019 19:51:21 GMT
I really liked it and dont understand the bad press. It is a really beautiful family film and a very well done adaptation of the famous animated feature. The film is charming and touching and equally has a very good story to tell. The story lives from the touching animal character Dumbo (obviously) who is perfectly animated. Sometimes they pushed it too hard with his sad eyes but still it worked. The real life actors were tolerable. I liked Colin Farrell in the lead, the character was well crafted and nicely performed by Farrell. Danny DeVito was great and possibly the best of the cast. Nice to see him in a bigger role again and one that really fits him. Michael Keaton was the most disappointing link. Didn't like his acting here which was really below the line and kind of annyoing at times. He obviously didn't take his role or the film itself seriously or tried too hard to be a stereotype villain. Nah, not my taste of performance. Good performance by Eva Green who was very charming. Nice score by Danny Elfman. Tim Burton's approach was refreshingly un-dark. A good family film for a rainy sunday afternoon.
8/10
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Zeb31
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Post by Zeb31 on May 1, 2019 22:37:20 GMT
So.
One of my little sister's school mates threw a birthday party at the cinema this past weekend. They closed out one of the screens and had a private showing, which is a brilliant idea and is how I'll get to watch Voyage of Time and Suspiria at the movies since they never got released where I live. Awesome.
But anyways, I took my sister to this party and this was the movie that they screened, which was basically the only possible scenario where I'd wind up seeing this, I guess.
Knowing that I'd have to take her, I decided to rewatch the original from 1941, which I hadn't seen since I was too young to remember a single frame of it. Two things stood out to me: first was how short and light on plot it was, and second was how much of it absolutely would not fly today (pun fully intended). It's only 64 minutes and largely episodic instead of driven by a clear central narrative with a beginning, a middle and an ending; a good portion of it is dedicated to musical numbers and detours that have nothing to do with anything, like Pink Elephants on Parade, which is nevertheless one of the greatest things about it and the clear standout next to Baby Mine. (It reminds me of Be Our Guest from the 1991 Beauty and the Beast, in that it's a virtuoso display of creativity and visual fluidity that does nothing to forward the plot yet remains one of the most memorable things about it.)
But still, it's a 6-minute scene of a baby getting drunk and hallucinating, and it's immediately followed by that bit with the crows, the leader of whom was originally named Jim Crow, which... didn't age particularly well, let's put it that way. Add to that the multiple instances of emotional abuse and animal cruelty (like the musical number with the animals building the circus, which seems intentionally analogous to slavery) and the whole thing winds up being kind of a challenging watch for a toddler. Dumbo and his mom go through a lot of shit before finally reaching the catharsis of finding out that he can fly, and even that only comes at the very end. Having read very little about the remake, I did wonder how they could've possibly taken 64 minutes of minimal plot and largely outdated content that's nearly impossible to adapt for children today and stretched it out to 2 hours, even more so because the original is a musical in which ~90% of the dialogue is spoken/sung by animals, and the remake is not a musical and has no speaking animals.
And the answer to my question of how they did that is... badly. Very badly. It's not aggressively terrible or anything; it's just the laziest, most uninspired thing in the world. It's exactly what you'd it expect it to be knowing that it's a remake commissioned by a studio that knows there's money to be made in exploiting nostalgia without putting any effort into making a valuable artistic statement. Not a single person involved with this seemed to approach it with anything other than the bare minimum of effort required to get it finished and shipped to theaters as fast as possible. (Except for Arcade Fire's cover of Baby Mine. I liked that.)
Dumbo 2019 spends 40 minutes remaking the original (minus all the bits with racism and alcohol, of course) and then launches into the most uninteresting follow-up plot that isn't really about Dumbo at all and is clearly the result of a board of producers throwing darts at a focus-grouped chart of ready-to-go banalities to pad it out and add another hour of limp, snooze-inducing content to its running time. There's the usual easy nods to progressivism with the teenage girl that loves science! and the circus going animal-free! at the end; there's the tragic story of orphaned children with absolutely no personality or relevance to the plot that lose their mother and then find a replacement one at the end; there's a load of characters that exist for absolutely no reason at all like the youngest son; there's a million suggestions of plot threads like Colin Farrell returning from the War and readjusting to life at home only for that not to matter at all, or struggling to relate to his children only for it to be resolved with a single easy line of dialogue at the climax that chews up and spits out the whole message; and (my favorite) there's the anti-corporation message involving Michael Keaton's character.
It's 2019, Disney just made an anti-greed fable about evil suits mistreating their employees and buying out smaller companies to monopolize their industry and why that's bad. I LOVE IT.
I'm yet to watch many of Tim Burton's most beloved projects, but the man has made several films that I really like. I do think he can churn out good content that's pleasantly inventive and abundant in charm when he bothers to try. The issue is, he just doesn't anymore. I liked Frankenweenie a lot, but that's been it for him after Sweeney Todd and Corpse Bride.
Aside from Big Eyes, which is his own version of shitty Weinstein Oscar bait and contains some of the worst A-lister acting of the entire decade, everything else he's made in the past 10 years has been soulless studio-mandated nothingness that mistakes colorful costumes and overdone makeup for visual spark. For years now he's been coasting on this reputation for being a whimsical auteur that's all about fantastical world-building, magical charm and lovable freakness, but the stuff that he spits out today couldn't possibly be farther from that. It's mostly a string of cynical cash grabs and attempts at jumpstarting franchises that have none of the personality and pathos that he exhibited with his early projects like Edward Scissorhands.
Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Miss Peregrine and now Dumbo are anything but whimsical and lovable; they're what happens when Tim Burton agrees to whore out his trademark style for studios that want to commercialize quirk, remove anything that was organic about it at the outset and serve it in neat, perfectly impersonal packages that are forgotten as soon as you toss your 3D glasses on your way out of the theater. Dumbo feels like it could've been directed by anybody, and I guess it was. The man's imagination seems to be completely depleted, and now he's using the spectre of what he used to be capable of to milk some money to pay his bills. So go for it, I guess. Disney would've found someone else to make the exact same movie anyways if Burton had turned them down.
Starting next year, let's start giving Eva Green better roles, please and thank you.
Jenny Nicholson hit the nail on the head.
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Dumbo
Jun 16, 2019 22:09:02 GMT
Post by TerryMontana on Jun 16, 2019 22:09:02 GMT
Just saw this. Nothing special, just a fine movie for kids. Very nice SFX (except for some animals and Dumbo himself, imo). I'd prefer Burton did other fairy tales instead of this. Maybe even darker tales. But then again, we saw what he did with Alice in Wonderland.... Keaton did not convince me as the bad guy. Yet, it was nice seeing him again alongside De Vito in a Burton film. Overall, enjoyable but not great. 6/10.
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Dumbo
Jun 17, 2019 8:15:41 GMT
Post by Pavan on Jun 17, 2019 8:15:41 GMT
Starting next year, let's start giving Eva Green better roles, please and thank you. and more roles. I wish she is more prolific.
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Dumbo
Jun 20, 2019 18:22:37 GMT
Post by cheesecake on Jun 20, 2019 18:22:37 GMT
I thought it was unnecessary, soulless and forgettable, like all the other Disney live action remakes.
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Dumbo
Jul 31, 2019 20:14:07 GMT
Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jul 31, 2019 20:14:07 GMT
So I finally gave in and watched this. I wasn't going to for the longest time, as Dumbo is my favourite Disney animated film and I failed to see the point ofthese live action remakes. Honestly, I'll never be checking out Aladdin or The Lion King, as I don't care for them as animated films anyway. So what of live action Dumbo, well it wasn't bad. I can say that much for it. I can't imagine myself ever revisiting it, but I'm not sorry I watched it. The only thing that really sucked about it was Michael Keaton. I can see what he was going for, but as far as I'm concerned he failed miserably.
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Zeb31
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Dumbo
Oct 3, 2019 14:28:04 GMT
Post by Zeb31 on Oct 3, 2019 14:28:04 GMT
Not sure where to share this because it's not just about Dumbo, but here's Lindsay Ellis making points.
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