LAND OF THE LOST drama

My sometime (OK, one time) pen-pal, original Land of the Lost star Wesley Eure, has written a lengthy post on his blog about attending the premiere of the new Will Ferrell comedy based on the classic '70s kid series.

It's kind of a sad post, on several levels. Eure seems like an incurable optimist, but as he writes about paying for parking ("How the mighty have fallen!") and wandering around the glitzy premiere as a guest instead of a star, it all sounds a little Galaxy Quest. Philip Paley (Chaka) was there, but there's no mention of Spencer Milligan (Rick Marshall) or Ron Harper (Uncle Jack.) It had to be a bittersweet evening.

The most conspicuous and troubling absence is Kathy Coleman, who played his sister Holly on the old show. In Eure's words, Coleman did not attend because "she has had a difficult life and Marty Krofft and Universal were afraid for her to show up and embarrass them. Kathy has faced a difficult life that many child stars have battled. I was very disappointed she was not there. She should have been there! Her performance on LOTL was a main reason the show was a hit! It felt very empty without her."

Eure doesn't go into detail about Coleman's troubles, but he says that she will reveal her story this week in the tabloids. As a fanatic for the original show, I have to say that reading Eure's comments about Coleman saddens but doesn't really surprise me. Coleman was such a talented young actress (she could really sob with the best of them,) and I always thought it was strange how she vanished from the public eye so completely after the show went off the air. Watching her in the extras on the Land of the Lost DVDs, you somehow knew this was a woman who had seen some hard times.

I've had a lot of fun hating this stupid (stupid, stupid) movie based on this show I grew up loving. But Eure's been a very good sport about the whole thing, and if the star of the show can laugh it off, I suppose I should try to be a little more forgiving too. This show meant a lot to me when I was growing up and I still wish somebody had tried to make a proper remake instead of a spoof. But in the end it's a piece of pop culture, and as such it's fair game for spoofs. The movie is generating a little PR for the original series, and that's not a bad thing.

(But still. Showing the Sleestaks mating... That's just wrong.)

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Mektorian toys = incalculable awesomeness

I can't tell if these MINDstyle Doktor A Mechtorian 3.5 inch figures are $14.95 per figure or $14.95 for the whole set. All's I know is, I don't even collect toys and I am drooling at the sheer fantasticality of these little steampunk babies. According to Tenacioustoys.com, "Series 1 features six figures: Stephan LePodd, D.J. Gramo, Mr. Head, Scuttler The Butler, Sentry Wheel & Sir Shilling."

So... At some point in the future, there will be a series 2?! HDAKJGDAHEGADJHG. (Sorry, I just passed out on my keyboard for a minute, there.)

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Abigail's Teen Diary

Abigail is a 13-year-old girl with Bloomberger's Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that has rearranged her DNA so she looks like a chubby, hairy, middle-aged man. Abigail has held on to her sweet, girlish personality, but life can sure be complicated for a teenager who looks like she could be her own dad. In her video diary, Abigail shares her daily struggles, comments on pop culture, and introduces us to other Bloomberger's sufferers, her parents, her very (very, very) attentive Spanish tutor, and her rakish uncle, Agaton. (Doesn't he look like Rich Fulcher from The Mighty Boosh?)

Abigail is a very courageous young lady, and there's nothing funny about her video diary. If it makes you laugh, you're just a bad, bad person. Especially if you laugh at this one.



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NEWSCHUNKS for 05.30.09

NEW DOCTOR WHO COMPANION REVEALED: The BBC has announced that Karen Gillan, a young actress who previously had a smallish role in the fourth season Doctor Who episode The Fires of Pompeii alongside current Doctor David Tennant, will return as a full-time co-star when Matt Smith takes over the role of the Doctor in the upcoming season. Steven Moffat, the show's incoming lead writer and Executive Producer, commented on Gillan's hiring: "We saw some amazing actresses for this part, but when Karen came through the door the game was up. Funny, and clever, and gorgeous, and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it. A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too."

KILLER REVIEWS FOR DRAG ME TO HELL: Sam Raimi became famous for directing the cheesy and fantastically entertaining Evil Dead pictures, and reviews suggest his new horror movie Drag Me to Hell is a terrific return to his roots. Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman writes that "Raimi has made the most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years." The Los Angeles Times' Betsy Sharkey gushes that "Raimi's Drag Me to Hell does everything we want a horror film to do: It is fearsomely scary, wickedly funny and diabolically gross." "As in the best horror movies," writes the Washington Post's Dan Kois," Drag Me to Hell keeps the audience on the edge of hysteria throughout, so that every thump sets the heart racing and every joke earns a slightly out-of-control laugh."

ALIEN PREQUEL CONFIRMED: It seems those Alien prequel rumors are true, with Tony Scott telling Collider, "Yes, Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He’s one of our directors at our company." He also said the film could start filming as soon as the end of this year. At least a prequel sounds a lot more promising than a remake of the 1979 original. You don't tamper with horrible, gut-bursting perfection.

S. CLAY WILSON IMPROVING, DRAWING AGAIN: Late last year legendary underground comix artist S. Clay Wilson was seriously injured when he fell while walking home drunk. (It's not known if he simply passed out and fell, or if he was assaulted.) He was in the ICU for a week, and suffered brain damage severe enough that he couldn't hold conversations and was unable to draw. Fortunately, OregonLive now reports that he's recovering well and recently drew some pages for an issue of Zap Comix due to be released this summer.

WESLEY EURE SENDS NICE EMAIL TO BLOGGER: This is incredibly self-indulgent, but what the hell. Wesley Eure, "Will Marshall" from the original Land of the Lost, sent me a short, really nice response after I emailed him a link to this post. That's right, I got a freakin' email from Wesley from Land of the Lost! And you didn't! It turns out Eure's actually had a pretty varied and interesting career, beyond his teenage days running away from dinosaurs on maybe the best TV show ever. He starred in a few movies (ranging from the kiddie flick C.H.O.M.P.S. to the gory, drive-in hit The Toolbox Murders,) was on Days of Our Lives for eight years, hosted hit shows for NBC, Fox and Nickelodeon, co-created PBS' Dragon Tails, wrote the children's book The Red Wings of Christmas (illustrated by Ron "Horshack" Paolillo!) and co-wrote and directed the campy vampire stage musical Bite Me! He also has his own blog, so click on over there to see what Wesley's up to next. (When you look all around, you won't believe the things you've found...)

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: The BPA - HE'S FRANK

The Brighton Port Authority is the new project from Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim. Allegedly the "lost tapes" of a feuding supergroup, the BPA CD I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat features Cook's collaborations with music heavyweights like David Byrne, Pete Yorn... And punk great Iggy Pop, lending his vocals for this brash little cover of the Monochrome Set's 1983 rocker He's Frank (Slight Return.) If Pop ever dies*, this Iggy Pop puppet (Iggy Poppet?) could still tour the country and a lot of fans probably wouldn't notice the difference. This is one puppet that will mess you up. (Click the image at left to buy I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat.)

*Note that I said if Pop ever dies. If he hasn't croaked yet, I kinda doubt he ever will.



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NEWSCHUNKS for 05.29.09

BARBARELLA REMAKE STILL ON?: Robert Rodriguez is officially off the project, but a "reliable insider" tells Moviehole.net that the Barbarella remake is still on, saying that Universal, and producer Dino De Laurentiis, are "meeting with writers as we speak (...) It's far from dead." (Click the image at left to purchase the original on DVD.)

TRAILER FOR DEL TORO'S STRAIN ONLINE: In addition to the seemingly dozens of film projects he has in the works, Guillermo "I never sleep" del Toro is collaborating with Chuck Hogan on a vampire novel called The Strain. A video trailer for the book is currently online, and it has a nice B-movie feel to it:



AND ANOTHER THING...: This isn't "news" exactly, but if you hadn't heard about the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sequel novel by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer, the Wikipedia page offers plenty of info. While part of me is glad to see the series continue (Mostly Harmless ended on such a grim cliffhanger, and Douglas Adams was apparently considering a sequel shortly before he died,) but what little I've read of Fowl's writing isn't encouraging. Here he is on how he discovered Adams' books: "I first read the Hitchhiker's Guide in my late teens when Ted Roche, a libertine friend of mine, pressed it into my sweaty palms and hissed at me with fanatical intensity that I must read it or be ridiculed forever by the school literati. Relax, dude, I remember saying with eighties' insouciance."

MEGAN FOX AS LARA CROFT?: Rumors say that producers are planning another Tomb Raider movie, but it will be a prequel replacing Angelina Jolie with the younger (and more affordable) Megan Fox and it will be less "action-oriented" and more "character-driven." Seriously? These movies are based on sci-fi/fantasy video games about a globe-trotting adventurer with improbably oversize boobs. This ain't Ingmar Bergman, people.


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The LAND OF THE LOST movie's worse than ebola

OK, right now that headline probably seems a tad hyperbolic. But you'll agree with me, after you see the new trailer below.

I am now more convinced than ever that the guys who wrote the Land of the Lost movie came up with the script by playing a little game called "How Many Ways Can We Piss Off Fans of the Original Show?"

I imagine their brainstorming sessions went something like this:

Horrible Man #1: OK, guys, let's look over what we have so far. Rick Marshall and Holly are lovers. Chaka grabs Holly's boobs, and so does Will. Hmm, let's see... Think we should throw in a cameo by Wesley Eure and Kathy Coleman, the people who played Will and Holly on the old show? Maybe we can have them doing something totally embarrassing and sad.

Horrible Man #2: Nah, including them could almost seem like we're trying to be respectful of the old show in some way, and Christ knows we can't have that.

Horrible Man #3: I know! Let's film a scene with them, and then cut it out!

Horrible Man #1: Excellent. Any other ideas?

Horrible Man #2: Well, I thought of something last night when I was huffing up my body weight in cocaine, but... It's pretty awful.

Horrible Man #1: Hey, pretty awful is what this movie's all about.

Horrible Man #2: OK. You know the Sleestaks? The hissing green lizard men who became iconic to a generation?

Horrible Man #3: Yes, the fallen Altrusian race. Once they were a peaceful, intelligent species, but centuries of war caused them to devolve into blood-thirsty savages. Theirs was a surprisingly dark cautionary tale for children's TV in the '70s, emblematic of the respect this show had for its young audience. What of the Sleestak?

Horrible Man #2: Well... How about we show them... You know... Doing it? And while it's happening, Will and Rick watch, and Will makes wah-chikka, wah-chikka porno music, with his mouth.

(Long pause as this idea sinks in.)

Horrible Man #1: Son, you just earned yourself a promotion. You're now the Vice President in Charge of Crapping On America's Childhood Memories.

Horrible Man #2: Really? Cool.

Horrible Man #1: By tomorrow afternoon, I want your ideas for how we can make an utterly despicable Great Space Coaster movie.

Horrible Man #2: I got an idea already: Paris Hilton, as Goriddle Gorilla.

Horrible Man #1: Hey, not bad!

Horrible Man #2: And the little movies Roy shows on his TV gizmo? They could be product placements for Axe Body Spray.

Horrible Man #3: And will there be farting?

Horrible Man #2: Lots!

(They all laugh. The door opens, and a frightened young girl in a French maid outfit leads in a goat for the traditional 3 p.m sacrifice to Asmodeus, King of Demons. We freeze the frame, as the three Horrible Men share a triumphant thumb's up.)






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Trippy Levi's commercials from the '70s

By the mid-'70s, the trippy, drug-inspired imagery of the hippies had filtered it way into the American mainstream - so much so that even TV commercials were becoming increasingly weird, colorful and psychedelic. The Levis commercials of the era are easily some of the most bizarre ads ever aired on network TV. They were like 30-second, corporate-sponsored acid trips.


Here's an incredible, Yellow Submarine-ish mind-warper called Evolution, featuring narration by Ken Nordine, the originator of Word Jazz.




The Stranger is another psychedelic freak-out featuring narration by Nordine. Back in the '70s people probably thought this mysterious, glowing stranger was doing these poor, colorless folks a favor by spicing up their wardrobes... But to modern eyes it kind of looks like he's transforming a bunch of emo kids into circus clowns.




Here's yet another bluejean headtrip featuring Nordine's narration. This one features some CGI effects that were surprisingly advanced for the era. You could easily believe the featureless, CGI walking figures were from the late '80s, or later... But they would be just as freaky in any era.




I kind of hate the sneering, feather-haired, very '70s couple in this ad. They meet a pair of robot aliens who just want to be pals, and they look at them like they're trash. (Sure, the robot aliens may be made from trash, but that's no reason to treat them like trash.) Well, these robots are still cool as heck 30 years later, while the denim twins look like extras from The Bionic Woman.




Here's an unforgettably peculiar, very Heavy Metal-esque commercial featuring the "Acclidian Warlord" who gave a generation of kids nightmares. Even now, it's hard to imagine anything more terrifying than an Acclidian Warlord telling you that he has "long admired the fit of your Levi's jeans." There's no way that ends well.




Sadly, just when Gen-X kids had at last forgotten the Acclidian Warlord and gotten on with our lives, he turned up in this ad from the '80s to traumatize us all over again. He's still out there somewhere, even now... Probably lurking in your closet, waiting for you to fall asleep so he can eat your jeans.



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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Cut Chemist - 1st Big Break

First, a rant.

Much as I love bringing you Music from Space, it seems to get a bit harder every day to find videos I can actually embed here. The record industry is run by a bunch of greedy, technophobe jerk-asses who actually think it's a bad idea to let people post music videos online. Well, sorry to break this to you guys, but MTV has turned into reality show swill. If fans aren't allowed to share music videos online, then music videos got no place else to go. You may as well just lock the things up in a lead case and bury them at the bottom of the sea.

What? Oh, yeah... I'm supposed to say something about the video itself. Well, it's simultaneously cheap and goofy and flashy and awesome. Remember when you were a kid and you'd spin around and around on the merry-go-round and then even when you stopped spinning everything around you would keep spinning for a while until it made your head hurt? This is kinda like that. With robots. (Click the image above to buy the CD The Audience is Listening.)

Cut Chemist - 1st Big Break from eyestorm on Vimeo.

And as a bonus, here's a fan-made video for this song that is perhaps even better, featuring a bunch of college dorks poppin' and lockin' in their tin-foil robot suits. Enjoy it now, before the record company makes 'em take it down.




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Shanghai 2020: the Bigature

Click this link to see a giant miniature (or "bigature") of how Shanghai is expected to look in the year 2020. (And you really should click that link. You need to see a large picture of this thing to grasp how vast and amazing it really is.)


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Change (and chainsaws) we can believe in

It sounds like a Robot Chicken sketch that would last for about 45 seconds max, but the folks at Dynamite Entertainment are planning a four-issue comics series teaming Ash (the hero of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead film series, played in all of the films by genre great Bruce Campbell) and Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama.

Army of Darkness: Ash Saves Obama will follow Ash as he journeys to a comics convention. While there he encounters Obama, and the pair team up to thwart the latest uprising of the sinister Deadites.

Dynamite's previously matched Ash with such geek icons as H.P. Lovecraft’s ReAnimator, Darkman, Xena, Freddy Krueger and Friday the 13th's Jason, but this will be his first teaming with a US president. But it won't be Obama's first comic book appearance. The 44th president has previously been featured in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man and other comics.


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NEWSCHUNKS FOR 05.28.09

ALIEN REMAKE/"ORIGINS STORY" COMING?: It's still a rumor at this point, but Bloody Disgusting is reporting that an Alien reboot (or possible prequel) is in the works, to be produced by original Alien director Ridley Scott, his brother Tony Scott and Michael Costigan, with Carl Rinsch directing. If this project actually exists and Ridely Scott's involved, it's much easier for me to believe he'd approve of a prequel than a full-on remake.

IT'S ABOUT TIME - DOCTOR WHO SPECIALS COMING TO BBC AMERICA: American Doctor Who fans who were starting to wonder if David Tennant's final episodes as the Doctor were going to air in the US will be happy to learn that the episode The Next Doctor will air on BBC America June 27th, and the follow-up Planet of the Dead will air in July. Air dates have not yet been announced for Tennant's final three episodes. Tennant's last run as the Doctor will presumably air on SyFy at some point, but SyFy usually cuts several minutes from the BBC America versions.

GLAU TO PLAY IN THE DOLLHOUSE: TV Guide's Ask Ausiello column quotes Joss Whedon saying he plans to bring former Firefly star Summer Glau onto Dollhouse now that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been cancelled. "If anybody thinks (bringing Summer onto Dollhouse) hasn't occurred to me already then they have not met me," he says. "I mentioned it to her before (SCC) was canceled. I was like, 'You know, we should get you in the 'house.' But first we have to come up with something that works."

Whedon isn't interested with casting Glau as an active, however. "Summer would be perfect to play an active, but she's done that (type of role) a lot," he says. "I'd rather see her play someone who talks too much. The most fun I have is when I get somebody who's good and comfortable at doing something, and then I make them do something else. Summer said to me, 'I would like to play a normal girl before I die of extreme old age.'"

FOR WORSE AND WORSE: As a follow-up to the post about disgruntled For Better Or For Worse fans creating elaborate fanfic set in various alternate timelines of the long-running comic strip, reader DreadedCandiru2 sent an interesting note: "There's another alternate timeline; members of the LiveJournal community that's dedicated itself to deconstructing the strip have revived the monthly letters to tell the story of a Patterson family that are dealing with Elly's having gone insane last September. The focus of her mania is that she's lost sight of the year and is acting out the new-run strips in the 'real' world. Watching John let Elly fester for propriety's sake so repulses Mike and Liz that they re-evaluate their priorities in life."

TENNANT TO STAR IN DOCTOR WHO FILM?: More Doctor Who news, as the UK's ever-reliable tabloid press reports a rumor that David Tennant is in talks to star in a film spin-off. The paper quotes an unnamed source: "The script is still in the early stages but David wants to be in the film. There have already been discussions and David needs to feel the story is right but right now things are looking very positive. He understandably wants to go off and do different roles but he still loves Doctor Who. If the film takes off and there's demand for more, he can continue to play the Doctor occasionally without having the pressure of the relentless schedule that the TV series demands."


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Ackbar, Bantha, Chirpa

Monsters and Rockets is back online after a daylong journey through time and space... And we return with this little bit of insufferable cuteness: the alphabet as illustrated with various Star Wars characters by Tweedlebop. (Tweedle gets bonus points for illustrating J with jawas instead of... that creature from the prequels.) Can you name all of these characters? If so, here's hoping that you can take enough pride in your accomplishment to distract yourself from the sad knowledge that you will die having never known the tender caress of a lover.



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Tennant's WHO-ZAPALOOZA

Doctor Who fans who have been dreading the upcoming departure of series star David Tennant will be delighted to know he has a surprising number of Who-related projects coming up... In fact, it's almost sounding like he'll be more busy than ever as the Doctor! (Click the image at left to buy the fourth season of Doctor Who.)

It's already been confirmed that Tennant will appear as the Doctor in an upcoming story in the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. But it seems this won't just be a cameo, the Doctor will be teaming with Sarah Jane to face off against "their biggest threat ever."

Also, a sequel is in the works for The Infinite Quest, the animated Doctor Who story featuring Tennant and Freeya Agyeman. The new cartoon will be called Dreamland and will feature Georgia Moffett (she portrayed the titular character in The Doctor's Daughter but will be playing a new role here) and genre great David Warner (Time Bandits, Tron, Time After Time, et al.) Like The Infinite Quest, Dreamland will appear on UK TV as a series of shorts, which will then be compiled into one long story and released on DVD.

Meanwhile, outgoing showrunner Russell T. Davies tells Doctor Who Magazine that yet another special project with Tennant is the works, although Davies is coy about what the project will be. "It would be nice to round things off with a Special Project 3... I can promise, it's worth waiting for!"

Finally, the BBC press release about Tennant's appearance on The Sarah Jane Adventures also says that a Who feature film script is in development, although there's no word on whether a Who film would star Tennant, incoming Doctor Matt Smith or somebody else, and the release cautions that if the film happens at all it will be "a long way away."



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BLEEDING ART: Myron Conan Dyal

During my stint as OC Weekly art critic, I got to promote the work of some wonderful artists, and one of my favorites was Myron Conan Dyal. Here's a modified version of my write-up for his 2007 debut show.

Myron Conan Dyal is a self-taught artist who creates astonishing, one-of-a-kind paintings and statuary, fusing together humans, animals, plants, musical instruments and lots of other things into fantastical, citrus-colored beasties. Dyal's cast of characters reaches out at you with lobster claws, crawls along the ground on snake bellies or skitters around on pretty little crabby legs, and soaks up the sun with great flower petals growing from atop their heads. It's such a joyous, anatomical free-for-all that before long you start to feel like you're the odd man out, with your paltry two legs and your boring old head with nothing but hair growing out of it.

The colors are electric, like those strobing fish who spend their entire lives at the bottom of the darkest seas and never get a good enough look at themselves to know just how freaking bizarre they are. Many of Dyal's creatures have a flayed quality, with pulpy-looking musculature and sheets of unfurling skin on proud display, and there are great piles of skulls all over the place, growing out of bellies and backs like clusters of boils, yet looking strangely comfortable and pleased with themselves, like they have every right in the world to be there.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Dyal's work sort of looks like somebody took the cast of Cirque du Soleil, stitched them together with the monsters from Where the Wild Things Are, and then set them all on fire . . . except much prettier.

This description probably makes it all sound much more ghastly than it really is; the truth is that most of Dyal's work is rather startlingly benign (although when it is ghastly, it's ghastly in a really neat way). Sure, Dyal's strange little world seems like it should be what the boys of Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have called "pure nightmare fuel," but somehow it's all dazzling and lovely rather than sick and horrifying. "Yeah," the creatures all around you seem to be saying, "go ahead: Look at my naked monster parts. I don't mind. We're all friends, here."

You look at Dyal's work, and you just sort of assume he's completely nuts, and it turns out he does indeed have the kind of exotic backstory that would fully entitle him to spend his life wandering downtown in a tinfoil beanie. He started having visions and seizures at the age of 4 following a four-month coma, and his fundamentalist parents decided he was possessed by demons and had him exorcised on two separate occasions. But while Dyal's "demons" never left him (he was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy), he managed to build a remarkably sane life for himself, getting married, earning a bachelor's degree in music from Cal State Long Beach and eventually becoming vice president of Digital Communications Corp., a position he still holds today. He began creating his art in the '70s, working in secret for decades.

Dyal could've been a Henry Darger case, one of those guys who toils away in lonesome, self-imposed isolation all his life and whose genius remains undiscovered until after he dies and some unsuspecting janitor stumbles upon the old coot's garage full of dusty treasures. Fortunately, this story has a happier ending, with the artist venturing out into the bright sunshine and dragging his creations along with him to share with an unsuspecting world.


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DIY "witches kitchen" supplies

In a post on the AranaMuerta blog, DeadSpider offers up complete instructions for how to make your own inexpensive and wonderfully ghastly witch or wizard supplies, including ancient-looking bottles of HobGoblin Brains, Snake Oil and more. (Note that with a little imagination this stuff could do equally well for your mad scientist lab. Just change the HobGoblin Brains label to read Cortex Miniaturization Experiments #333-357, and you're good to go.)

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Ackroyd talks GHOSTBUSTERS 3

Dan Ackroyd tells the UK's Guardian that, should the rumored Ghostbusters 3 move forward, the characters from the original Ghostbusters would probably have smaller roles and the film would focus on a new group of Ghostbusters with a female leader.

"There'll be a whole new generation that has to be trained and a leader that you'll all love when you meet her," says Aykroyd. "There'll be lots of cadets, boys and girls who'll be learning how to use the neuron splitter and the inter-planet interceptor - new tools to enable them to slip from dimension to dimension."

The filmmakers are perhaps underestimating how attached audiences are to the original Ghostbusters team. I don't think we really want Bill Murray and the old gang to step aside so we can follow a new team of kids. After all, that was basically the premise of the Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon back in the '90s, and that died a speedy death.

It's an interesting interview, with Ackroyd touching on his belief in the supernatural and his plans for future sci-fi videogames. He wrote the script for the upcoming Ghostbusters game, and it seems he had a lot of fun with it.

"I have what I think are two great cool science fiction stories myself right now," he says, "and I think I'm gonna skip the movies altogether and find some gamers, maybe go with these guys again. I'll just give them the scripts and say, 'pretend this movie got made'."

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Whedon-less BUFFY movie in the works

Buffy fans, I have good news, and I have bad news so bad that it kind of cancels out the goodness of the good news. First, the good news: a Buffy movie is finally coming! And now, the very bad, bad news: that movie will be based on the sub-par early '90s Kristy Swanson/Luke Perry movie, and not the ass-kicking TV series that followed. (Click the image at left to buy the series on DVD.) Oh, and it looks like Buffy's creator Joss Whedon has nothing to do with this thing.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Buffy creator Joss Whedon isn't involved and it's not set up at a studio, but Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are working with original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, on what is being labeled a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel.

While Whedon is the person most associated with Buffy, Kuzui and her Kuzui Enterprises have held onto the rights since the beginning, when she discovered the Buffy script from then-unknown Whedon. She developed the script while her husband put together the financing to make the 1992 movie, which was released by Fox.

The new Buffy film (...) would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon (...) One of the underlying ideas of Buffy allows Vertigo and Kuzui to do just that: that each generation has its own vampire slayer to protect it. The goal would be to make a darker, event-sized movie that would, of course, have franchise potential.

The parties are meeting with writers and hearing takes, and later will look for a home for the project. The producers do not rule out Whedon's involvement but have not yet reached out to him.

Whedon has been openly critical of the 1992 film, and he's often spoken of his clashes with Kazui over the storyline. A Buffy movie without Whedon's involvement isn't just a bad idea. It's an idea that makes S. Darko sound brilliant by comparison.


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STAR WARS early drafts were utter crap

The unnamed person who runs the Mystery Man on Film blog has posted a long and fascinating essay about George Lucas' early drafts for the original Star Wars. (Click the image at left to buy the original trilogy on DVD.) I'd always heard that Lucas tinkered with the story quite a bit on his way to the finished script, but it sounds like his early drafts were just awful in a way that's eerily similar to how the Star Wars prequels were awful - incredibly stilted dialog, protagonists lacking clearly defined goals, an obsession with bureaucratic protocol, etc. And we're lucky that Lucas decided to make R2-D2 talk in bleeps and bloops. In early drafts he could speak, and had lines like this:

The external bombardment does appear to be concentrated in this area. The structure has exceeded the normal stress quotient by point four, although there appears to be no immediate danger.

The relationship between Luke (then called Annakin Starkiller!) and Princess Leia is sexist in a way that goes beyond the conventions of old-fashioned pulp and becomes just plain creepy - at one point, Starkiller actually shuts Leia up by knocking her out with a punch to the jaw. (As horrifying as that is, it still doesn't compare with Lucas' apparent intention to make Indiana Jones a pedophile in the early drafts of Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

Actually, there's stuff in the final Star Wars script that seems a bit clunky on the page, but it works well in the finished film thanks to the breakneck pace, deliberately pulpy storytelling style and the strong performances of actors like Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness. It's like Lucas struggled to learn how to write a good space opera script in the '70s, then he finally got it right and produced a film that was loved all over the world... But then he took a few decades off, and by the time he sat down to write again in the '90s, he'd forgotten every single thing he'd learned and started over with all of his old bad habits.


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Happy Towel Day!

Today isn't just Memorial Day. It is also Towel Day, a day when fans honor the memory of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams by carrying a towel with them.

Why a towel? Well, as Adams pointed out in the first book in the series, a towel "is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

Pictured: Towel Day in Innsbruck, Australia, where Adams claimed he first got the idea for the Hitchhiker's series while lying drunk in a field.

Do you know where your towel is?


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The alternate timelines of FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

You probably already knew that J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot has been controversial with old school Trek fans, because some of them believe the film's time travel plot essentially erases the last 40-plus years of Star Trek stories. But while it hasn't attracted as much attention, recently another long-running pop culture property has made some abrupt, sweeping, retroactive changes, and its fans are at least as ticked off as the Trekkies.

Canadian cartoonist Lynn Johnston began her popular comic strip For Better Or For Worse in 1979. (Click the image above to buy Just a Simple Wedding: A For Better or For Worse Collection.) For decades she chronicled the daily adventures of the Pattersons, an average family closely based on her own. The characters aged in real time, so Michael and Elizabeth, the children in the strip, grew into adults, while Elly and John, the lead characters based on Johnston and her husband, went from being harried young parents to retired grandparents.

On August 30th, 2008, Johnston ended the ongoing adventures of the Pattersons, with a follow-up strip the next day detailing what happened to everybody in the years ahead. That strip ended with a note that stunned her fans: starting September 1st, Johnston was going to start the whole strip over, sending the characters back to their lives in the late '70s. The strip would become a mix of re-run strips and what Johnston called "new-runs," featuring new material set in the old days.

Overnight, characters who had been senior citizens were young again. Elizabeth, who had been a grown woman getting married mere days before, was suddenly regressed to babbling toddlerhood. Farley, the Patterson family dog who died in 1993, was once again a puppy. But Johnston didn't just hit rewind on the strip and add in a few new gags, she was making changes large and small to the Patterson family history. As she wrote at the time, "I can fix what I don't like about my early work as I add and subtract...redraw and just improve everything."

That "adding and subtracting" has been very controversial with the strip's long-time fans. Some fans have been so upset they've launched their own online comics and prose stories, set in their own versions of Johnston's cartoon world. If the strip that Johnston drew for 29 years could be considered FBOFW Universe A and her revised version is FBOFW Universe B, fans are filling the net with their own versions of FBOFW Universes C, D, and quite possibly on beyond Z.

Foob's Paradise imagines ongoing adventures for the characters of FBOFW Universe B, adventures where Elizabeth called off her wedding to Anthony (a weird, milquetoasty guy widely despised by fans) and characters like Elly and Michael are looked at in a much less flattering light while minor or villainous characters are re-imagined as more complex and interesting people.

The Fifth Panel adds new endings to specific Johnston storylines, as the hypothetical scenes we missed after the day's punchline. For instance, in a story where Michael almost burned to death after he rushed into a burning building to save his laptop, Fifth Panel ends the strip with his wife slapping him for being such an idiot.

Foobar is by far the most surreal and disturbing of the bunch. It supposes that Elly has used awesome and terrifying magical powers to roll the clock back to the '70s, and the characters around her are aware of the changes but are powerless to fight them. Thus, Elizabeth and Mike suddenly finds themselves to be children again, forced to relive their early lives. (As an example of how Foobar weaves its bizarre narrative into Johnston's, here's a Johnston strip and here's Foobar's take on it.) If the whole thing gives you the creeps... Well, that's presumably the idea.

Howard Bunt's Blog, meanwhile, is basic nitpicking, combing through the strips for anachronisms and other inaccuracies. Blunt even critiques Johnston for a "new-run" where Elly used a dryer sheet in an era before they were widely available.

You have to wonder, if these people really find so much to hate about Johnston's strip, why do they devote so much time and energy to it? Well, they've been following the adventures of the Pattersons every day for many years, and now it seems they just can't let it go, no matter how much they wish they could. They're stuck with it... For better or for worse.


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New LAND OF THE LOST clip

And sometimes life is cruel... Like now, when we are subjected to 55 entire seconds of the Land of the Lost movie.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

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Three clips from Gilliam's IMAGINARIUM

Sometimes, life is good... Like now, when we are given the gift of three new clips from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the upcoming film from Brazil and 12 Monkeys director Terry Gilliam. (Scroll over this clip to see clickable windows that will open to show you the second and third clips.)

Comme Au Cinema

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Horror novel toilet paper

Acclaimed Japanese horror novelist Koji Sazuki (his work inspired The Ring) is printing his latest tale of terror on toilet paper. Drop is nine chapters long and is set, appropriately enough, in a public restroom. The story is illustrated with splashes of blood - although the blood is blue, for reasons unknown. The toilet paper company that's publishing Drop says that reading the book while using the restroom will invest the experience with "psychological fright." (Personally, psychological fright is just about the last thing I want to experience when visiting the restroom.)





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MUSIC FROM SPACE: The Broken Hearts - BLACK CAT

The Broken Hearts are Nisha Thirkell and Amber Jane Butchart, two rather improbably glamorous young ladies. They work in a trendy London vintage clothing store, design their own clothes and jewelery, and have become UK fashion gurus in their own right. They are performance artists and club DJs. Oh, and they just happen to front a little band that's earning rave reviews, with London's Guardian declaring that they are the prime movers - and only members, so far - in a scene the paper dubbed "nu burlesque." (Seriously, there's no way two people could cram that much coolness into every day. Do Thirkell and Butchart actually exist, or is their band bio just copy off the back of the box of one of those Bratz London Punk dolls?)

Their 2007 single Black Cat is both bouncy and slinky, which is really pretty tricky to pull off. The video is reminiscent of one of those trippy old Fleisher Bros. cartoons, with Thirkell and Butchart as two live-action, pin-up doll magicians vying for the attention of a cartoon cat with strange powers. Black cat is coming!




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When's that T-Rex gonna eat Will Ferrell, already?

Another trailer is online for that Land of the Lost movie. Sorry to start your Sunday off like this. Hey, at least after you see this thing, the rest of this week will probably seem a lot better by comparison.




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Cox talks REPO MAN sequel, slams Estevez

In a new interview on the Austin Decider website, Repo Man director Alex Cox recounts a number of his failed projects and saves me from having to write a Neverwas column about them. (Click the image at left to buy Repo Man on DVD.) But he also has some rather harsh words for Repo Man star Emilio Estevez:

"Michael Nesmith and the producers of Repo Man proposed this sequel to Repo Man to Universal about 12 or 13 years ago. The weirdest thing is Universal never got back to us, so we raised the money independently. It was kind of hard to raise money for a film with Emilio Estevez, because his career as an actor hadn’t been very illustrious. Peter McCarthy, one of the producers of Repo Man, worked and worked and was finally able to put together a deal. Then, suddenly, Emilio Estevez just dropped out, and from then all the energy just fell out of it."

Estevez later wrote a rebuttal to Cox's comments:

"Obviously Mr. Cox is feeling snubbed by me, as I have passed on participating not only in his Repo Man sequel, but on most other events related to the film as well, be they film fest retrospectives, re-release of the DVD with actor's commentary, and many other gatherings to celebrate the film. I remain proud of Repo Man, but my focus is on what's ahead of me, not what's in my rearview mirror."

We previously reported on Repo Chick, which Cox describes as "not a sequel, but it is set in the same environment—in the same economic crisis, only worse."

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LOST/DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES crossover ad

ABC has launched a series of ads where characters from their various shows all live on the same street. It's a cute idea, sadly botched. How sadly? Well, the ad below features Lost's Matthew Fox and Desperate Housewives' Teri Hatcher, doing a bit so bad it's kind of amazing it actually made it on the air. Seriously, the best they could come up with was a feeble "island" pun? (Click the image at left to purchase the just-completed Lost season 5.)





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Movie marquee mashups

One night in 1981, my dad went to the movies and saw this on the marquee: SWAMP THING MISSING ON GOLDEN POND. The theater was showing Swamp Thing, Missing and On Golden Pond, but, with the titles all squished together like that on the marquee, it was hard not to imagine a movie about a shambling green monster who loses his way while visiting Golden Pond. (Actually, I think I'd pay to see that movie.)

Ever since my dad told me about that, I can't help but look for similar movie marquee mashups. I'm always delighted when I spot one, and they're not as rare as you'd think. (Sometimes I'd swear the people who put up the titles on movie marquees are deliberately arranging them to make the most goofy combos possible.)

Here are some of my favorites over the years:


WATCHMEN RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN FAST & FURIOUS

STONED THANK YOU FOR SMOKING

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD SHUT UP AND SING

EASY VIRTUE IN BRUGES

A WALK TO BEAUTIFUL PARANOID PARK

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN HELL RIDE

WHALEDREAMERS WALKING ON DEAD FISH

PROUD AMERICAN TOWELHEAD (Apologies if this one offended anybody... But I really did see it on a marquee!)

MISS POTTER THE DEAD GIRL

JET LI'S FEARLESS JACKASS NUMBER TWO

MARIE ANTOINETTE RUNNING WITH SCISSORS

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE JAILBAIT

TWO DRIFTERS WAIST DEEP SAY UNCLE

STRANGERS WITH CANDY WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR

SEE NO EVIL OVER THE HEDGE

HOOT DOWN IN THE VALLEY

PHAT GIRLZ TAKE THE LEAD

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL FILTH AND WISDOM

FLASH OF GENIUS BLINDNESS

CHOKE SHOOT ON SIGHT SMOTHER

THE HOUSE BUNNY DEATH RACE

A GIRL CUT IN TWO ELEGY

RAMBO MEET THE SPARTANS

JUMPER OVER HER DEAD BODY


I see these things online, too. Just the other day, I saw a listing for upcoming shows of ANGELS & DEMONS DRAG ME TO HELL.

Have you seen any crazy movie marquee title mashups? Share 'em in the comments.


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IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS trailer online

Apparently this has been online since March, but I'm a Terry Gilliam fanatic and I didn't see it until today, so I'm going to assume you haven't seen it yet either. It's a lengthy trailer for Terry Gilliam's upcoming movie The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus, featuring Gilliam talking about the film's creation and glimpses of sketches, props and more. Gilliam's output has been pretty inconsistent for years now, but I am officially geeked out for this movie. Gilliam says this reminds him of the movies he made when he was younger, and I can see why.

Unfortunately the film has yet to secure a release date in the US, despite it being Heath Ledger's last role and a cast featuring other A-listers like Johnny Depp and Jude Law. So far, reviews have suggested that the film is simultaneously brilliant and a bit of a mess. (So, business as usual for Gilliam, then.)




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NEWSCHUNKS for 05.22.09

STILL MORE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE TRAILERS: Oh, God... The Harry Potter trailers won't stop coming. Jeez, here comes another one. Please, I can't take any more! No one movie can possibly have enough footage for all these trailers! They're going to start sneaking in clips from Potter Puppet Pals, just to pad these out.

TERMINATOR SALVATION NOT A HIT WITH CRITICS: The critics are not blown away by Terminator Salvation, suggesting that the film is uninspired action movie stuff. Claudia Puig writes in USA Today: "The predictable story feels as if it were written by a computer program labeled 'sequel.'" The Philadelphia Daily News' Gary Thompson declares: "When machines finally take over the world, they'll probably make movies that look like Terminator Salvation." Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post: "What makes this movie is the digital effects. It's got all the heart of a demolition derby." "(The film) isn't really action," writes Mick Lasalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's commotion. It can't be action if nothing happens, and nothing can happen because the commotion doesn't advance the story. The commotion, the explosions, the fireballs function here only to delay action. ... Terminator Salvation looks busy, but it's static. The thing doesn't budge. It's an epic waste of time."

FIVE NEW DRAG ME TO HELL CLIPS: Bloody Disgusting has posted five new clips from the upcoming Sam Raimi horror picture. So far, this movie is looking like some old school Raimi nastiness.

EISNER WASTING TIME WITH BAZOOKA JOE MOVIE: I'd heard a few years ago that Michael Eisner was determined to make a Bazooka Joe movie. I hadn't heard anything since, and assumed he'd come to his senses. But, no. According to the Hollywood Reporter, he's now hired Mark Hammer to write it. Hammer is kid who has never had a produced screenplay, and who will be graduating from OC's Chapman University this weekend. Bazooka Joe, in case you've never heard of him, is a boy with an eyepatch who stars in the little comics inserts in Bazooka bubble gum. In 2007, after being forced out as head of Disney, Eisner purchased Topps (Bazooka Joe's owners) for $380 million. I bet the Disney shareholders are really rueing the day they let him get away.


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