MST3K on Hulu!

On the one hand, you've been paying (arguably a bit too much) for those Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD sets, and it's kind of frustrating that now those old shows are turning up for free on Hulu. On the other hand: complete episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are now free to see on Hulu! So far there are only five episodes, but hopefully there will be more soon. (I see that the complete series of Strangers with Candy is also now availble on Hulu... After we shelled out for the DVDs!)

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IRON SKY moving ahead

In the early '90s, when they were teenagers, the geekboys of Finland's Energia Productions started making crude Star Trek parodies using spaceship models they programmed on home computers. But while other fans dabble in such things and then move on as they grow older, the Energia crew kept making amateurish Trek parodies in their living rooms, all through their teens and into young adulthood.

Their Star Wreck series became increasingly elaborate with each film, eventually culminating in 2005's Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a bizarre, feature-length fan film that pits Star Trek against Babylon 5 in an epic battle that seems like it's maybe supposed to be funny, but it's sort of hard to tell. What it looks like more than anything else is a trailer for a Playstation 1 Star Trek game, and one you wouldn't feel too proud of yourself for beating.



But while most fan filmmakers are content to just keep playing with stuff made up by other people, the Energia boys are actually moving on and creating something of their own. And I'm as amazed as you are when I say that their next film, Iron Sky, looks like it could be kind of brilliant. Check out the trailer:



Yes, the gag with the bird poop was pretty unfortunate, but you've got to admit that up until that point you were grooving on the gorgeous CGI and the Sky Captain-ish steampunk-edness of it all.

While I can sometimes admire and enjoy fan films, there's usually something a little stunted about them. I almost feel like I'm watching adults play house, dressing up like characters from their favorite shows and pretending. It can be cute, but if they're any good I always end up wishing they would either try to get a job working on the real show, or they'd go make something of their own. Why pour all of your talent and passion into something that can never really be yours?

But the Energia guys seem to be moving on from fan films and creating something wholly their own. And it looks like Iron Sky is actually happening. If they can make the leap from making Star Trek parodies in their kitchens to making actual, worthwhile movies, they will have gone where far too few fans have gone before. Fleets of Nazi warships, flying our way from their base on the far side of moon! Gene Roddenberry himself would've been proud to come up with anything that crazy.

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To boldly go under the sea

Everybody's linking to this rather gorgeous footage of a remote controlled Starship Enterprise (circa Star Trek: The Motion Picture) gracefully soaring along at the bottom of a swimming pool. It's absolutely mesmerizing.

But this clip, featuring the USS Voyager encountering the Millennium Falcon in fluidic space, also deserves some attention. They look like two undersea creatures doing an elaborate mating dance.

What I want to know is, if Voyager contacts the Falcon, will Voyager's universal translator actually translate what Chewbacca says, so it sounds like he's speaking Federation Standard English? (Something tells me that Chewbacca isn't a great conversationalist. Most of his dialogue in the original trilogy probably consists of variations on the phrase, "Uh-oh! This is scary! Let's get outta here!" Plus the occasional, "Oh no, something just exploded!")


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DREAM WRAITH: An interactive horror "annotation game"

Dream Wraith is a very clever and genuinely spooky "horror annotation game" produced by two English gents who call themselves the Camcorder Bandits.

What's an "annotation game"? Well, you know when you're watching a Youtube video, and suddenly a little gray square will pop up in the clip, telling you to click it? Annotation games use those pop-ups to create elaborate, interactive little movies.

I think the genre is still fairly new, and nothing I've seen compares to the ambition of Dream Wraiths. Be prepared to spend the next 45 minutes or so frantically clicking around, trying to escape from that damn thing.

FRAGILE AND FEARLESS

Start your Sunday morning off right, with a big helping of scrambled (and NSFW) eggs. In David Commander's 2007 short film Fragile and Fearless, a neurotic little egg lady (voiced by Ish Klein) is ready to crack, when her shrink advises her to grow a thicker shell. But is her new outlook on life a little too eggs-treme?

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The Doctor swears

In this collection of bloopers and backstage clowning around from the Tom Baker-era Doctor Who, the Doctor swears, shamelessly flirts with Romana and generally carries on in a manner highly inappropriate for a Time Lord!

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SHATNER SUNDAY: GOTTA CATCH SANTA CLAUS

Even if you consider yourself a big William Shatner fan, there's no way you've seen everything he's starred in the last few years. According to the IMDB, between 2004-2008, while Shatner was starring on Boston Legal, he found time to squeeze in 15 other credits! He was in everything from Star Trek video games to Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous to the reality show Invasion Iowa. (And that IMDB list is by no means complete!)

But in a career that stretches all the way back to 1951 (the year of his debut as "a crook" in The Butler's Night Off), last year's direct to DVD, CGI kiddie picture Gotta Catch Santa could be one of Shatner's most poorly-chosen roles. From the anemic premise to the animation that would've looked iffy in 1996 to musical numbers that wear out their welcome in 5-second exerpts, Gotta Catch Santa is enough to make you pine for the glory days of Li'l Pimp.

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CHRISTMAS IN THE STARS

If the Star Wars Holiday Special wasn't awkward and embarrassing enough for you, there's always the Star Wars holiday album, Christmas in the Stars. The track above, featuring the vocal stylings of everybody's favorite protocol droid C3-PO, is just the beginning of the squirmy, uncomfortable anti-fun. There's also What Do You Get a Wookie? (When He Already Owns a Comb) and this deathless classic featuring a young Jon Bon Jovi in his first studio recording ever. (It was all downhill from there, Jon.)

Happy Life Day, everybody!

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Betamax Christmas

This year's holiday TV seems like the most anemic in memory. Flipping the TV dial, it's really striking how little Christmas stuff there is to be found on those many channels. I think I caught the end of a Rankin/Bass special around December 5th, but that's about it. What has happened to the Christmas TV of my youth? Where are all the Christmas cartoon specials? Where are any of the 400 or so adaptations of A Christmas Carol? Where's the Christmas episode of Perfect Strangers?

If, like me, you need a little retro Christmas TV, right this very minute, Betamax Christmas will put the jolly back in your holly. The site recreates a full evening of Christmas TV programming circa 1986 or so, complete with rabbit ears on the TV that you have to fiddle with to get a better picture. (You change the channel by flipping the remote floating over on the right. It seems obvious once you notice it, but it took me a while to spot it.)

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Check into Hoogerbrugge's HOTEL

Han Hoogerbrugge is a Dutch graphic designer and Flash animator who has been filling the Internet with delicious strangeness since 1996. His work is like what would happen if somebody dosed you with some bad LSD and then you were looking at a book of corporate clip art and all of the little cartoon businessmen suddenly started to crawl around on the page, making weird noises and doing surreal and ghastly things to each other.

All of his work is good, but Hotel is his magnum opus. Equal parts graphic novel and video game, this multi-part series draws you into the dark, frightening world of Dr. Doglin, a physician with the world's worst bedside manner. Check into Hoogerbrugge's Hotel... and you may never leave.

Her name is Talking Tina... And she doesn't like you

Sure, there are people out there who want a Twilight Zone Talky Tina doll of their own. Crazy, crazy people. Seriously, you'd have to be a freaking lunatic to want this plastic little psycho on a shelf in your house, gazing down at you every night while you sleep.

Talky Tina says the following phrases:

"My name is Talky Tina, and I love you very much."
"My name is Talky Tina, and I don't think I like you."
"My name is Talky Tina, and you'd better be nice to me."
"My name is Talky Tina, and you'll be sorry."
"My name is Talky Tina, and I'm going to kill you."

And Talky Tina doesn't just talk. This Biff Bang Pow figurine is actually a bobblehead. That's right, she moves.

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Jason Segel's DRACULA puppet musical must happen

As weird as it feels to already do another Forgetting Sarah Marshall-related post, I had to pass this amazing clip along.

A few days ago, Jason Segel was a guest on the 1000th episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. The show had a puppet theme (because Ferguson just rocks like that) and Segel brought along his Dracula puppet from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and performed an absolutely ass-kicking version of Dracula's Lament, the big show-stopper from the Dracula puppet musical that Segel is apparently really trying to sell to Broadway.

After seeing this clip, I am now convinced this show has to happen. It has to. Broadway desperately needs a musical where a melancholy, creepy Dracula puppet belts out Jim Steinman-esque power ballads. Hell, America needs it. In fact, you should all click on that "Tip via Paypal" button up there and send me lots of cash, so I can get rich in a hurry and invest in Segel's vampire musical opus. Let's make this thing happen, people.

(Via Topless Robot.)

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SHATNER SUNDAY: William Shatner soundboard prank calls

In today's Shatner Sunday, Captain Kirk calls various businesses around Australia seeking some kind of... creature. All he's looking for is some simple... and plain... communicating. Why won't Mr. Cochran answer him?

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TV or not TV; that is the question

It's another one of these Pay Per Post deals, where I get paid a couple of bucks for blogging about something. In this case it's a site called TVchannelsfree.com, where you can watch tv online.

Now I haven't tried the site myself, but I am interested in learning more. The big digital TV switchover we were all subjected to some months back has been pretty much entirely a negative thing in our household. Now we're forced to get all of our TV from the one set in the house hooked up to cable, and because Time Warner's service is kind of crappy we lose the TV signal with some regularity. Even when the cable is "working", it often gets pixelated in the middle of a show or it'll black out for a minute or two. (This happened during the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. You would not believe the curses we hollered at Time Warner during that minute of downtime, when we had no idea when or if the signal would come back online.)

I often stay up for a while after my girlfriend goes to bed, and in the old days if I was watching a show in the bedroom and it got late, I would tuck her into bed and then finish watching the show in the living room. Well, gone are the days. Now I either have to keep her up another 20 minutes so I can finish a damn show, or just turn the darn TV off and go sulk in the living room. Time Warner does offer a solution, of course: we can hook up another feed in the living room, for a monthly fee. So, I can pay every month for the last 10 minutes of SNL that I used to see for free.

So, I am actually looking for a service like TVchannelsfree.com, something where I can just watch TV online, on an as-needed basis, without having to pay even more money cash to the dorkwads at Time Warner. It's possible I'll try the service soon. If so, I'll report back on the results.

CAPTAIN EO returning to Disneyland

Various sources are reporting that the 1986 Michael Jackson short film Captain EO will soon be returning to Disneyland. As callous as this probably sounds, it's hard to deny that dying was the best thing to happen to Jackson's career since 1990. Two years ago, Disney was probably on the brink of sealing every copy of the movie up in a vault, bricking up the vault's entrance and then hanging a sign outside that said DANGER! INCREDIBLY DEADLY RADIOACTIVE WASTE INSIDE!

Jackson basically had two modes: great and fascinatingly awful. Captain EO is mainly the latter, but if you saw it growing up you probably remember it with a certain nostalgic fondness. With Francis Ford Coppola and a pre-Phantom Menace George Lucas behind the scenes, folks were expecting big things. What they got was a bizarre, mega-budget, cutesy yet strangely off-putting and incoherent Jackson vanity product, sort of a prequel to 1988's Moonwalker. I've embedded it below, but you'll miss out on the full cheesy greatness of the 3D and laser effects. (And jeez, how much does Anjelica Huston look like a Borg queen?)




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You make my dreams come true

This is making the rounds today, but if you haven't seen it, you must. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, sweet and creepy and funny and dorky and cool, all at once. I haven't the words.

I went to the LA High School for the Arts, and I can imagine the kids I went to school with pulling off something like this, had Youtube existed back in the day. I would have found the whole thing disgustingly peppy and school spirit-y, and I would have abstained to go smoke cloves with my girlfriend behind the dumpsters. And I would've missed out on something absolutely magic.

(Here's a little something to totally shatter your good mood. Not only is You Make My Dreams Come True an ancient curio to these kids, but so is The Hives' Hate to Say I Told You So, which plays in the closing credits. It was released in 2000, when most of these kids would have been six or so. That is their "music my older brother used to listen to" music, if not their "music my dad used to listen to" music.)

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Benson Arizona (and Beyond the Infinite)

This will quite probably be the most baffling thing you'll see today. There is a dignified-looking, gray-haired German fellow on Youtube who posts CGI clips, apparently starring digitized versions of himself. All of the clips are quite puzzling (and something tells me this would be so even if you spoke German,) but perhaps the very strangest of them all is the clip above in which three versions of the same guy dance around on the ocean as they lip sync Benson Arizona from the 1974 John Carpenter cult film Dark Star, with the ring space station from 2001 in the background. Oh, and they're all wearing shiny gold Elvis jackets. Of course.

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Zev and Xev in DER CLOWN

Here's a fun little bit of weirdness for Lexx fans. Der Clown is a 2005 action movie featuring both Xenia Seeberg and Eva Habermann. Habermann, as Lexx fans know, played the feisty love slave Zev on the show, while Seeberg played Zev after she died and was re-constituted as Xev by Lykka the man-eating plant. (Yes, Lexx was indeed a very special show.)

While Der Clown looks like a fun and fairly big budget enterprise - at least if this Spanish-language clip is anything to go by - the reviews were not kind at all. Nobody seems to have a good word to say about the film, and the reviewer on IMDB even thought the closing credits sucked. "If you tailor you next films after this model," Marco 23 Polo writes, "DON'T EVER ATTACH THE KIND OF CREDITS WITH FEELGOOD BACKSTAGE FOOTAGE AND BLOPPERS ... it's simply downright embarrassing, period (I had to cover my eyes)."

So, hear that, German action movie producers? No feelgood backstage footage or bloppers.

Oh, well. It's nice to see Eva and Xenia getting work.

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But the days seem so much kinder when we watch them, you and I

Dan O'Bannon has passed away. Best known as the screenwriter of the original Alien, he'll always be the hapless Sgt. Pinback to me.

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The DOCTOR WHO/MIGHTY BOOSH crossover, sort of

David Tennant, speaking with that Scottish accent he insists on affecting when he's not playing the Doctor. Noel Fielding, being rather quiet and introverted while wearing a hat with donkey ears. Catherine Tate being... Well, pretty much being Donna Noble, come to life. An Ood, chirping techno music with its horrible little tentacles.

It's an episode of the UK panel show Nevermind the Buzzcocks, and it's weirder than it sounds.

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Jon Stewart practices "practice"

In this clip from Sesame Street, Jon Stewart struggles with the nuances of the word "practice." It's a cute bit... Although watching Stewart repeatedly fail as he tries to define "practice" kind of makes it seem like he's had a stroke.

DRACULA'S LAMENT

Many of those who saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall wished the film featured a lot less of Jason Segel's pale, naked flesh and more of his musical starring the Dracula puppet. In the clip below, Youtube user arteyelyle animates Dracula's Lament and does a fine job of it, too.


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Second CLASH OF THE TITANS trailer online

The new trailer is online for the Clash of the Titans remake, and, thumpingly obnoxious heavy metal soundtrack aside, I have to admit it's got some impressive visuals. But does anybody really think it's a great idea to show us Medusa and the Kraken so soon? Seriously, those are your big show-stoppers, right there. Once we've seen them, what have you got left to wow us with?

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That MARMADUKE movie

USA Today has now graced us with the first picture from the upcoming movie based on Brad Anderson's inexplicably long-running comic strip, Marmaduke.

"We've approached the movie like a John Hughes movie with dogs," director Tom Dey says. "The dog park is like high school for dogs. To make this kind of movie, you really have to understand that it is the dog's world and we just live in it."

That's right. Marmaduke = Ferris. That's an angle that never would've occurred to me. But then, that's why guys like Dey are making that fat Hollywood money. They lack that little glimmer of common sense and decency that prevents you or I from conceiving of such horrors as these.

"Marmaduke is a teenager, and he's trying to find his way in the world," Dey says. "It's a boy-meets-girl story, a coming-of-age and cautionary tale. My job as director is to try to place the audience inside this world."

I don't want to be placed inside that world, Mr. Dey. That world sounds like some sort of freakish hellscape to me, a plane of eternal torment populated by CGI great danes winking at CGI poodles while Yello's Oh Yeah plays on the soundtrack.

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The ALICE cupcakes of Emily Bode

Emily Bode's (Disney-esque) Alice in Wonderland cupcakes are so beautiful and tasty looking, you don't even care if eating one will shrink you to the size of a caterpillar.

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New trailer for Burton's ALICE online

Here it is, courtesy of ComingSoon.net. It does look interesting, I'll admit... But that distant whirring sound you hear is poor old Lewis Carroll spinning at about 300 RPMs in his grave.

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Obama's favorite movies

A short, 2008 election clip from CBS news, in which Barack Obama talks about his favorite movies. Worth watching just to see his brief Brando impression.



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The IRON GIANT art blog

The other day I was surprised to discover a thriving Coraline blog quite a while after the movie came out and a long time since the book came out. But now I'm even more surprised to discover the Iron Giant Project blog, featuring new Iron Giant art created by various artists, a decade after the film flopped in theaters.

It's really varied stuff, including a Hogarth's mom as a sexy anime babe and an Iron Giant/Astro Boy team-up!

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New TREK ONLINE trailer.

A new trailer is live for the Star Trek Online MMORPG. This one is actually pretty grim, making it sound like the Federation is on the brink of falling to the Klingons. There's also been news that Zachary Quinto will provide a voice in the game... But he won't be Spock, he'll be the voice of an Emergency Medical Hologram. (That seems like sort of a strange choice. Quinto is a Trek A-lister these days, and voicing an EMH is not what'd you call the coolest gig.)



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Decorating Disneyland's Storybook Land mini-houses

An interesting article on the Jim Hill site, looking at the folks who do the tiny holiday decorations on the miniature houses you see in the canal boat ride in Disneyland's Storybook Land. If you've never gone on that ride because you thought it sounded babyish and insufferably cutesy (or because you were scared of the giant Monstro the Whale entrance), you've really missed out. The display of miniatures in the ride is impressive at any time of year, but I imagine it's really charming all lit up at night during the holidays.

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Vincent Price chats about THE MONSTER CLUB

A nice little bit of random, vintage horror camp, as Vincent Price sits down in a sinister nightclub setting and chats with an English lady reporter about a now-obscure 1980 picture called The Monster Club. He really was a charming old lizard. Who else could possibly get away with the line, "Your veins stand out so beautifully?"




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London: City of Fruits and Vegetables

In a remarkable series of images to promote healthy living, London's famous skyline has been recreated in miniature using fruits and vegetables that have been carefully glued together.

The pods of the London Eye are really tomatoes, while The Houses of Parliament are made of asparagus, green beans, runner beans and baby sweetcorn. (As beautiful as it is to look at, I suspect that photo shoot probably didn't smell so great by the end of the day!)

See more here.

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SHATNER SUNDAY: Shatner as a genuinely depressing alcoholic ex-priest

In the 1973 movie The Horror at 37,000 Feet*, William Shatner appears as a bitter, alcoholic ex-priest who offers little comfort to his terrified fellow passengers. There's something genuinely grim about Shatner in this scene. While he became famous for his hammily heroic speechifying on Star Trek, Shatner had an under-used talent for portraying self-pitying cads, too.



(* Not to be confused with the famous Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, also featuring William Shatner.)

The Mighty Boosh vs. The Sugar Monster

For readers in the UK this will be old news, but Mighty Boosh fans in the USA and elsewhere probably haven't heard about the great Boosh vs. Sugar Puffs controversy of 2008.

At random moments on The Mighty Boosh, Howard and Vince break into what they call "crimps", silly little almost-songs - part rap, part scat - spoken rapid-fire in perfect sync and often involving elaborate matching gestures. In the series three clip below, the boys' discussion on the joys of party bounce castles leads them into a classic crimp.



Last year, the makers of Sugar Puffs cereal launched a UK ad campaign that was rather obviously inspired by the Boosh. Check out the Honey Monster crimp:



While the ads were so close to the Boosh style that a lot of people assumed the Boosh boys were involved somehow, Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt couldn't sue because the concept of "crimping" itself can't be copyrighted. But the pair were clearly not happy. In their stage show a few months later they had Fielding's character Tony Harrison sexually assaulting the severed head of the Honey Monster, shouting, "Take it! Take it like you take other people's ideas, you plagiaristic yellow wanker!"


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Cheesoid

From the UK's often-brilliant comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, here's the sad story of Cheesoid, the robot that smells.

New Kids in the Hall DEATH COMES TO TOWN trailer

A new trailer is online for Death Comes to Town, the upcoming 8-part series from Canada's answer to Monty Python, the Kids in the Hall. It's longer than the last one, and gives us more of an idea of what to expect.

Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town - watch more funny videos

Also, I was surprised to see that there are more KITH sketches that were posted online around the time that the troupe was doing its last tour. I've never seen them before, and I'm going to assume at least a few of you haven't either. In one, the boys come up with a potentially controversial idea for how to open the stage show. In another, Buddy Cole decides to adopt a child. (Also, if you've missed it, the Car Bangers sketch is some bigtime evil fun.)

All of these bits are very dark and not safe for work, just the way fans would hope for. And it's great to see that the Kids seem to have picked up right where they left off, these bits work well. But while the Kids have always excelled at shock comedy, there's one shock you need to prepare yourself for, before you click: it's been almost two decades since the TV show ended, and the Kids have aged accordingly. (At this point, maybe they should change their names to the Dads in the Hall.)


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The Muppets RINGING OF THE BELLS

In their latest viral video, the Swedish Chef, Beaker and Animal help you ring in the holidays.




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DOCTOR WHO as a sleazy daytime talk show

If you've ever wondered what it would be like if Doctor Who was crossed with one of those tacky talk shows of the Jerry Springer ilk, those nerdy jokesters at Galacticast have the answer in the clip below.

This is an incredibly stupid bit - and I have no idea which of the Doctor's various incarnations these guys are trying to be - but I can't deny that it did crack me up a few times. (And there is an irresistible bit of geeky fun at the very end.)




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Dickensian London online game

How would you fare in the London of Charles Dickens' day? Find out in this immersive online game, courtesy of the BBC. Will you encounter Fagin, or Pickwick? Will you end up languishing in prison, or dying of smallpox? Don't just say, "Bah, humbug"; go ahead, give it a try. It's both cute, and squalid! (Tricky, that.)

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When George Lucas asked David Lynch to direct JEDI

It's one of those weird little Hollywood stories: George Lucas once approached David Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi. But while I've heard about it a thousand times from various sources, I don't know that Lynch himself has ever publicly told the story of what went down. In the clip below, courtesy of JoBlo.com, he does.




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The Peekaboo Revue's ELECTRO WOMAN & DYNA GIRL

The boys and girls at Philly's Peekaboo Revue - the same fine folks who brought us The Marshalls Season Three and the original Watchmen burlesque clip, have also gifted the internet with a campy, funny and only slightly filthy parody of the old Saturday morning fave, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl.

It's a raucous and shambling little green screen epic, told in two chapters. It takes a couple of minutes to really get going, but once the fiendish Glitteris pops up and the PG-13 puns start flying fast and furious, the laughs don't stop. (Warning: you will have that freaking theme song stuck in your head until 2010.)




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Paper toy version of R. Crumb's Mr. Natural

If you're broke, short on time and you're desperately trying to think of a Christmas gift for somebody who is a big fan of R. Crumb's beloved shaman/charlatan character Mr. Natural, then boy, is today ever your lucky day! Over on the Toy a Day blog, there's a Mr. Natural paper toy you can print out and assemble in mere minutes.



Seriously, if you were broke, short on time and desperately trying to think of a gift for a Mr. Natural fan, you finding this thing just now is a very strange coincidence. I mean, what are the odds? It's kind of eerie, really.

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Lou Reed and Mattotti team for THE RAVEN

Now this is interesting: former Velvet Underground-ling Lou Reed has collaborated with Lorenzo Mattotti, one of the finest stylists in all of comics art, to produce The Raven, an adaptation of Reed's music/spoken word theatrical piece and concept album based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. (So, it's a book based on Reed's CD/theater piece, based on the work of Poe. Got that?)

This link will take you to a Google translation of an interview with Mattotti about the collaboration - it's surprisingly clear, given the quality of most automatic, online translations. Note that the interview includes one illustration that is possibly not safe for work. I'm not really sure what the heck we're looking at there, but I think it's something nasty. (You'll know it when you see it.)

Note also that the Amazon link to the left will take you to Reed's CD, not the book he's produced with Mattotti.

(Via Comics Reporter.)

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STRANGE TOONS: Karel Zeman's INSPIRATION

Settle in nice and warm for Karel Zeman's bittersweet little story about the love that blossoms inside a raindrop on a dark and cold winter's night.

Zeman was a fascinating animator who produced a lot of work that's under-appreciated today, but his 1948 short Inspiration could be his most formally daring and affecting work. He created the short using actual glass figures, heated and bent between each frame to produce the gliding, sliding movements of a graceful ballerina and the little clown who longs for her.

The result is equal parts 3D Fantasia and your grandmother's curio cabinet come to life. It's my understanding that Zeman invented the technique, and so far as I know, nobody ever tried it again.




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LOGO-PHOBIA

As a child, were you inexplicably terrified by corporate logos that appeared at the end of certain TV shows? Cartoon Brew has a post about logo-phobia (I don't know if this phobia has a more official name), including news of The S From Hell, an upcoming documentary about people who were scared witless when the Screen Gems logo would appear at the end of Bewitched reruns.

Wow. I was a sissy kid, and even I didn't freak out about corporate logos. I wish I had known some of these kids when I was six, so I could have had somebody around to make me look tough.



The S From Hell site features a gallery of the most frightening logos of yesteryear. But are you brave enough to enter this tomb of terrifying typography?!

EVIL BUTTONS: ALL THINGS CORALINE

I liked Coraline, both as a book and as a film, but at this late date I wouldn't have thought there was enough news about it to support an entire blog. Well, how wrong I was!

Evil Buttons, a blog by Super Punch's John Struan, is still going strong, regularly offering up all sorts of interesting Coraline stuff... Including the absolutely terrifying Wybie cosplayer seen below.



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THE DARK KNIGHT IS CONFUSED

While there was a lot to admire about Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, it had a convoluted plot full of holes you could drive the Batmobile through. In this clip from Key of Awesome, Batman explains his misgivings about the film's story, in song form. (That's actually the same guy playing Batman, the Joker and Michael Caine!)




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The return(s) of Heat Miser and Cold Miser

The Year Without a Santa Claus isn't the best of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. Sure, it's cute as the dickens, but the plot is a little draggy at times, the songs are a mix of covers and rather undistinguished originals, and the animation lacks the boundless charm of efforts like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But it's become a classic thanks to Heat Miser and Snow Miser, two of the most unforgettable characters in all of Christmas TV special-dom. Here, I'll let the boys introduce themselves:



They have yet to invent a scale capable of measuring how much Heat Miser and Snow Miser rock.

The characters have been popular for decades, so it was perhaps inevitable that eventually Hollywood would decide that a remake was required. And so, in 2006, we got a live-action TV movie remake of The Year Without a Santa Claus, starring Harvey Fierstein as Heat Miser and Michael McKean as Cold Miser. How bad was it? Well, watch this clip:



Friends, that clip was the best part. It actually gets worse from there, with a lot of awful pop-cultural gags. And Chris Kattan. Sweet Jesus, this show makes the Star Wars holiday special look good.

The remake was swiftly and justly forgotten, but two years later somebody decided to try again with A Miser Brothers' Christmas, a direct sequel to the original show. This special would feature stop-motion animation and would try to be more faithful to the spirit of the original. Here's the big show-stopping number:



Yeah. It's somehow missing something, huh?

The animation is very good and the character re-designs work well enough, you can tell that the people making this special really wanted to honor the original. But there's something inert about the finished special, it never comes alive and it's just not very... well, special. If the original show is a little slow in spots, the sequel is downright sluggy, and it lacks the crude vitality that has made the original endure. The 2006 remake failed by trying too hard revamp and parody the original, while the 2008 sequel failed by arguably being just a tad too reverent toward its source material.

Of course, if we're looking at the various renditions of Heat Miser and Cold Miser, I have to include this one:



Sorry about that. But those 37 seconds of exquisite agony, courtesy of Joel Schumacher, were still better than anything in the 2006 remake.

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MUSIC FROM SPACE: Tom Waits - FOR NO ONE

That N.A.S.A. video featuring Tom Waits as a red cartoon cloud of evil isn't the first time that Waits has starred in an animated music video. That distinction belongs to 1979's Tom Waits for No One. Directed by John Lamb, the short film features rotoscoped footage of Waits cavorting with a stripper while he does one of his rambling, skuzzy jazz tomcat raps. (I'm a Waits fan, but I'm all about his crazy, experimental rocker side; his noodly piano beatnik stuff can make me wanna open a vein.)

I don't think this short represents Waits at his best, the animation is kind of crude and American Pop-y, and it's not safe for work... But Tom Waits for No One is definitely worth seeing just as a historical curio. I guarantee you've never seen a cartoon quite like this before.

Video: Tom Waits - For No One Animation Benzer: tom, waits, for, no

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No BOOSH 4th season, but they're planning their own MUPPET show

A few days ago, Noel Fielding confirmed the sad news: there will not be a fourth season of the brilliant and surreal UK comedy series The Mighty Boosh.

Fielding and his comedy partner, Julian Barratt, had previously expressed doubt that they would do a fourth series, but so far as I know this is the first time they've made it clear there absolutely won't be a fourth season.

The STV Entertainment site quotes Fielding: "We love all that stuff and the back projection but we've decided to do a film instead of a new series (...) We'll do a film instead, and an album, then maybe a live thing just to keep it fresh. We've taken it as far as we could in terms of being on BBC Three and going out and touring. We need to mix it up."

But Fielding went on to say that the Boosh are planning a return to TV, just not as Vince Noir and Howard Moon, the characters they've been playing in various formats for over a decade.

"We were thinking of a different kind of show. We like The Muppet Show. We were thinking about characters putting on a show and having guests. We've always wanted to do this Muppets thing and it's never gone away - sort of a live version with music and cabaret and an audience."

I can see the humor of the Boosh boys working in a format like that, and the uneven third season of The Mighty Boosh did suggest that they needed to mix things up somehow. But I always thought the Boosh were at their best when they went on adventures and met weird and ridiculous but still genuinely creepy monsters. A backstage show sounds like it could get a little samey. (And isn't there some way the show could at least be hosted by Howard and Vince? There's your season four, right there!)

But hey, whatever the Boosh do from here, I'll be there. No matter whether they're playing Vince and Howard or not, they'll still be the Boosh. As a wise man once sang, it's what's inside that counts...




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