BUCK 2016 guests: Daniel Ingram out, Peter New and Nicole Martel in

Some big news on guests for this year's BUCK – some good, some bad. Let's get the bad out of the way first: Daniel Ingram will not now be able to attend, owing to pressure of work. Let's not beat about the bush: this is a big disappointment. In fact, if I'd still been thinking of going to BUCK this year, Mr Ingram's attendance would have been the single biggest draw. The announcement post does slightly slip in the bad news (it's not mentioned at all in the threadline) but it's not as if people are going to miss a change like that.

Happily, there is good news as well on the guests front. Two new names have been announced, the first of whom is Peter New. He has a superb reputation as a con guest, and I'm sure that BUCK will benefit immensely from his presence. The second new guest is a name many may not know: Nicole Martel. She works as layout designer for several big-name cartoons, among them Friendship is Magic. She'll be presenting a workshop, a format which worked very well last year with the likes of Heather Breckel. It's a very interesting choice of invitee.

Film review: Friendship Games

Gee, I wonder who the final six contestants might be...?

It seems a while ago now – because it is! – but a few weeks back, I went with some of the other Worcester meet regulars to the Vue cinema in the city centre to watch Friendship Games. We'd all thought for a while that we weren't going to get a big-screen release, seeing as this third Equestria Games instalment was a direct-to-TV movie, but happily we were wrong. Kudos to Vue for reducing their usual (high) prices for this film, too. Attendance wasn't bad, a mix of bronies and familes. Anyway, on to the review! This is a short one, since otherwise I'm never going to get it done.

Film review: Rainbow Rocks

I guess they still have to get their heart shapes in there somewhere

It's Rainbow Rocks review time! As was the case with the first Equestria Girls film, I wanted to wait until I'd seen the thing in an official screening before writing this – but having now seen it at the cinema, I can get cracking. The hype before the film came out was much larger (and more brony-targeted) than the first time round, and there was a lot less hostility from the fandom at large. That was a double-edged sword, though: could Rainbow Rocks live up to expectations? Spoilers from here on in!

Film review: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

It's impressive how they're all instantly recognisable in silhouette

All right; I said a little while back that I wouldn't be reviewing Equestria Girls until I'd had a chance to see it in some official medium. I've now done that — by going with some other bronies to the screening at the Showcase Cinema de Lux in Leicester. It was a very enjoyable day, with that wonderful feeling of camaraderie that comes with knowing you're sharing in something really rather ridiculous but also really rather special. Enough about the meetup, though: it's time I got on with my actual movie review. Click past the jump for that — spoilers ahoy!

Why "really pretty good, considering" won't be enough for Season 4

Despite the practically rock-solid certainty of large swathes of 4chan that the show is in terminal decline, the only sensible answer to that question is: "No idea yet." I think most fans would agree that season 3 of Friendship is Magic was the least impressive yet, but how much of that has to do with Lauren Faust's departure and how much is due to other factors remains to be seen. It's interesting that Hasbro seem to have given the creative team more freedom once Faust had gone, perhaps realising that they'd made a mistake, though I doubt they'd admit it.

Season 4 this winter will be the big test. The team have had a long time to prepare for it, it's a full 26 episodes long and the sense of people finding their feet without Faust will no longer be an excuse. In short, it must be more consistently good than S3 if faith is to be maintained/restored (delete according to preference). Yes, S3 had some wonderful moments, not least "Sleepless in Ponyville" — one of the all-time classic episodes — but it also had some pretty shaky moments. It simply wasn't up to the overall standard of either S1 or S2.

I've only seen a few snippets of Equestria Girls, but it looks as though that may be a potentially terrible movie saved and lifted into the realm of the genuinely good by a tremendously talented creative team. That's not a million miles from what happened with "Magical Mystery Cure", where MA Larson and Daniel Ingram in particular came up with the goods, to the extent that the only really major complaint was the one they couldn't help: that it was very clearly a two-ep story forcibly crushed into 22 minutes.

But that's not going to be good enough when S4 finally arrives. What I want, and need, to see is a season whose episodes are excellent in their own right. Not "really pretty good, considering", but just plain excellent. FiM is a special cartoon, as all of us in this remarkable and (let's be honest) bizarre fandom know. The standards it set in S1 were amazing, and it mustn't aim simply at being a good, solid kids' cartoon. It has to be more than that, and I'm sure Meghan McCarthy knows it. Let's hope she can pull this off.

Daniel Ingram discusses writing music with comicbook.com

Daniel Ingram has been talking to comicbook.com about what it's like to write music for kids' cartoons. (There's a mistake in the title: he was only nominated for Emmys.) The interview doesn't bring any stunning revelations, but it's certainly worth a look. The highlight for me was Ingram's comment that "catchy doesn't necessarily mean its good", using Disney's infamous "It's A Small World After All" as his example. He also says that he doesn't really consider the brony audience (or even the core demographic's parents) when composing, just whether he likes what he's created.