Daily Archives: May 12, 2025

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Animated Films (8) Inside Out

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(8) INSIDE OUT

(2015-2024: INSIDE OUT 1-2)

 

The depiction of a mental landscape may not have been an entirely original concept, but it was executed superbly in Pixar’s Inside Out.

The first film was set in the mind of a young girl Riley, dominated by a console or control panel run by five personified emotions – Joy, Sorrow, Fear, Anger and Disgust (color-coded for your convenience!)

The control room overlooks an imaginative mental landscape, primarily consisting of islands of memory or personality about the memory dump – which is a literal memory abyss or hole (or a metaphorical Lethe of forgetfulness). The plot revolves around a typical odd couple pairing of Joy and Sadness, as the two are accidentally sucked into Riley’s long-term memories and try to return to the control room, as the mental landscape deteriorates into outright collapse around them in something akin to emotional breakdown (due to Riley’s family moving from Minnesota to San Francisco). Of course, while Joy is paired with Sorrow (and helped by Riley’s imaginary friend), it leaves only Fear, Anger and Disgust to run her psyche (or as Honest Trailers quipped, leaving her psyche to be run by “your average YouTube comments section”. Or any internet comment section for that matter, as well as the X formerly known as Twitter).

Although now that I think about it, it would be interesting to see the (adult) Freudian version of the film, particularly with the superego, ego and id. (But then again, I am my own id. I’m all id, baby!). Or perhaps, the Jungian version, with all those mythic archetypes…

There was the sequel film in 2024 which added a few more adolescent emotions headed by Anxiety to Riley’s mental landscape.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP-TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention: Revised) (12) Richard Barber & Anne Riches – A Dictionary of Fabulous Beasts

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(12) RICHARD BARBER & ANNE RICHES –

A DICTIONARY OF FABULOUS BEASTS (1971)

 

Exactly what it says on the tin – a literal dictionary in alphabetical order of entries for fabulous beasts.

The publisher’s blurb sums it up best

“Mythical creatures drawn largely from medieval travellers’ tales, but encompassing civilisations from the Sumerians to the Wild West…an astonishing ark filled with beasts from a fabulous zoo far more varied and entertaining than anything from ordinary natural history. From Abaia and Abath to Ziz and Zu, from the microscopic Gigelorum that nests in a mite’s ear to the giant serpent Jormungandor who encircles the whole globe, there are beasts from every corner of man’s imagination: the light-hearted Fearsome Critters of lumberjack tales find a place alongside the Sirrush of Babylon and the Winged Bulls of Assyria. Some of the fabulous beasts turn out to be real creatures in disguise – a Cameleopard is a kind of glamourised giraffe -while others are almost, but not quite, human. Among the six hundred entries are some which are full-scale essays in their own right, as on Phoenix or Giants; and just in case it seems as though the authors dreamt up the entire book, there is a detailed list of books for the would-be hunter in this mythical jungle.”

 

 

RATING:

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Special Mention 1-5)

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Kebaran culture (Levant and Sinai) microliths 22,000 – 18,000 years ago (public domain image)

 

 

TOP 10 STONE AGES / STONE AGE ICEBERG (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s more!

There are my twenty special mentions I have for my Top 10 Stone Ages

You know the drill – just like the top ten itself, it’s one of my mostly tongue-in-cheek top ten lists where I look at a subject which has a fundamental continuity or unity, but which can also be broken up into distinct parts or perspectives. Alternatively, it’s just more and deeper layers in my Stone Age iceberg meme.

It’s also one of my shallow dip top ten lists– with a few lines or so for each entry – than my deep dive top ten lists on other subjects.

So here goes…

 

(1) HOMININ STONE AGE

 

It’s striking to think that most of the period usually identified as the Stone Age – 3 million years or so – is not for our own hominin species of homo sapiens but for preceding or other hominin species. And by most, I mean 90% – anatomically modern homo sapiens only pops up in the last 10% or so and behaviourally modern homo sapiens even more recently.

You know, there’s enough hominins for their own top ten…

 

(2) NEANDERTHAL STONE AGE

 

Everyone’s favorite hominin other than homo sapiens – and viicon of the Stone Age, so they deserve their own Stone Age

 

(3) HOMO SAPIENS STONE AGE – BEHAVIOURAL MODERNITY

 

There we are.

Behavioural modernity has its own Wikipedia article, but no settled range of time for it – anywhere from 40-50,000 years ago to 150,000 years ago

 

(4) INDUSTRIAL STONE AGE – LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

 

No, we’re not talking Fred Flintstone’s job at Slate Rock and Gravel Company (as a bronto crane operator)…but surprisingly not far from it. Apparently, you didn’t just pick up any stone to make it the Stone Age – some stones are better than others and there were “industrial” sites for stone tools at locations of ideal stones, although quarry is probably a better term than factory.

Lithic technology has its own Wikipedia article

 

 

 

 

(5) SPEAR STONE AGE

 

Paleolithic salesman: (Slaps tip of spear) “This baby can fit so many megafauna extinctions into it”.

Although spears go way back, probably at least in the form of sharpened sticks – apparently chimpanzees have been observed to use sticks as spears – the development and use of spears with stone heads or points – always seemed something of a game changer to me, particularly when thrown (and when spear throwers like an atlatl were developed and used to add range and speed).

You know, like the Paleolithic equivalent of gunpowder empires, except against megafauna. Just think – we hunted the mammoth to extinction with spears.

I mean, I wouldn’t want to face off a sabertooth tiger or cave bear with a few chipped rocks, unless, you know, there was like a hundred of us pelting it with rocks or ideally dropping rocks on it from above. Add in a spear (and perhaps something like fire) and…oh, who am I kidding, I’d still want a hundred of us hurling spears from a safe distance. Or better yet, a spear gun.