There's been a movie from my childhood that has haunted me from time to time, a cartoon that I could never find again that had touched me in some magical and tragic way, and I think I found it again.

It came to mind today, and I tried another search. All I remembered was an animated joey and a girl and such supreme loss. I think I finally found it, and it might be Dot and the Kangaroo. I'd thought for the longest time that it's been an animated TV show. But this makes more sense.

I remembered a kid, and a fence, and a kangaroo saying goodbye (it was very much a SHANE! moment). And oh crud, but there at the end of Dot and the Kangaroo there's a fence, and I started to get all misty-eyed.

The end of that movie has haunted me for ages, touched with this magical mystical sad veil akin to elves going to the west.

I haven't rewatched the whole thing, for fear of spoiling that magical memory, because there seems to be suspect spontaneous song and weird use of live-action mixed with animation.

But, I still can't believe I found it on a random whim after all this time.

I saw part of the trailer and mostly tuned out and though that in the future there were SUPER ANIMALS that Really hate people and started killing off all the people so people fled. To the stars.

And now some dude is taking his kid back to Killer Earth to jump off of crap and face his fears as a rite of passage or something.

But the actual plot sounds much worse.

I don't think much of the chances of large animals that decide to fight against billions of people with modern or futuristic weapons. We took down the mammoth and smilodon back when we were still tying sharpened rocks to branches.

Rats are pretty much the largest creatures that we can't readily wipe out if we put our minds to it, aren't they?

I have no doubt opossums could survive just as well and are mostly larger than rats, but the general idea certainly stands.

I went to the website. They have After Earth lesson plans for real teachers.

And since M. Night Shyamalan is directing I expect there are several "twists".

I wonder if this will be like the killer pollen movie.

EW specifically said that there would be no twists. Take that for what it's worth.

Glark was angered by Star Trek. Since he liked the first one, I was curious enough to read spoilers. I'll just say that I don't think Prometheus was a fluke; Lindelof has a remarkable gift for comedy.

I expect STID to be grimly ridiculous, or ridiculously grim. I expect Cumberbatch has been directed to chew the scenery and he will chew it with grim gusto. I expect to watch the pretty people and pretty explosions and lens flares and pay no attention to what's going on, beyond the chewing and the flaring and the pretty.

Oh wow, I loved Dot and the Kangaroo when I was a kid - haven't thought about that movie in years!

It makes me crazy that they say there have been no people on the planet for however long, so all the animals have evolved to kill humans. Is that not the opposite of evolution??

Yeah, like remember when rabbits were introduced to Australia and the native ecosystem was so unfamiliar with them that the rabbits were all instantly killed by wallabies? Like that!

Trek was better the second time around, and the HUGE GAPING plot hole that had been bugging me is actually not as huge or as gaping as I'd thought. The plot is still silly and convoluted, but that one specific thing is explained ok.

(Once the movie comes out we can talk about the scene where my suspension of disbelief broke into tiny pieces and fell to the floor. Not a major plot point, but an insignificant little bit of actor business.)