To get you worked up into a suitable frenzy for the premiere of Lost's final season this week, let's have a look at some Lost treasures that have been floating around on the web.
It's been a while since last season, so here's a refresher on what the heck has happened so far.
A whole lot of stuff was happening at the Sydney airport before the passengers of flight 815 took off on their fateful trip. This clip takes various flashbacks to the moments before the flight and edits them all together. A similar clip recently showed us all of the exciting stuff that was happening when the plane crashed on the island. This clip reminds us just how deeply troubled the Lost castaways were, even before that plane hit the beach.
Finally, we have SCI FI Wire's compilation of clips featuring various Lost actors in earlier roles. There's some weird and funny stuff in there, but this 1992 clip of Sayid singing with a country band might be the gem of the bunch.
Over the decades, William Shatner has been endlessly parodied for his unique and, er, intense acting style. But when he gets hold of a script that allows him to go totally nuts, the results can be black magic. That's why he was so killer in those old Twilight Zone episodes, playing guys who were in the middle of spectacular freakouts... And that's why he's so awesomely creepy in this clip from a campy-looking 1983 Halloween TV special, in which he recites Poe's classic poem, The Raven. The lighting gives him a really grim, sickly look, and Shatner's famously peculiar cadences are a perfect fit for the poem. Read more...
This is incredibly goofy, the title sort of spoils the surprise and the clip does not end so much as just stop, but Star Wars vs. Star Trek is a few minutes of big-time nerd fun, featuring some impressive special effects done on an obviously minuscule budget.
Comics great Jack Kirby specialized in drawing mythic, monumental figures, especially alien creatures of godlike power. But the image above is notable in that it apparently depicts Kirby's notion of what the "real" God might look like. Kirby displayed three drawings of God in his home, and it's fascinating to see the almighty depicted in that trademark Kirby style. More Kirby Gods can be seen here.
This clip has been making the rounds, but if you haven't seen it yet, you really must.
Recently oddball Swedish singer Karin Dreijer Andersson - AKA Fever Ray - won an award on a European awards show, and when she went up to the podium to accept... Well, this happened.
Between Fever Ray and Lady Gaga, I sometimes get the feeling that we're all living in The Fifth Element.
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Now here's an unexpected treat for fans of legendary underground cartoonist R. Crumb... The Confessions of Robert Crumb, a candid, European TV documentary from 1987, is now online. This is not to be confused with Terry Zwigoff's 1994 documentary... It's a completely different film, much shorter and less penetrating but still definitely worth seeing. During my first throes of Crumb mania in my early twenties, I spent years looking for this doc and never managed to track down a copy. Don't assume it'll be online for long. (Of course, some language and images are not safe for work. This is R. Crumb, remember.)
Way back when, we all hated the Ewoks. They seemed like an absolutely inappropriate, cutesy distraction in the middle of Return of the Jedi. After two of the greatest sci-fi movies ever, suddenly the third film in the trilogy inflicted all these little warrior teddy bears on us.
Well, flash forward a few decades, and after we've all been subjected to Jar Jar, the Ewoks really don't seem so bad anymore. I mean, at least nobody can say that they're racist caricatures. And they can't talk. There are no embarrassing gags involving Ewoks stepping in "poodoo"...
Actually, the Ewoks are kind of bad-ass, in their own teddy bear way. They easily captured Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. They took down the Empire, using sticks and hang gliders. And they eat people.
That's right. Ewoks eat people. This article from a couple of years ago makes the case pretty well. Why else do you think they had Skywalker and company hanging on spits over a fire? Han Solo came this close to being Ewok chow.
Still don't buy the Ewoks as tough guys? Here, watch them make a tasty snack out of the Predator.
First, Supernatural is returning for another season. Eric Kripke, the show's creator, had previously made it quite clear he'd always planned for the current season to be the show's last, but now he's apparently changed his mind.
I must admit that this season has been a bit hit-and-miss for me. After setting up this big apocalyptic plot, they haven't done as much with it as I would've liked. There have been a lot of monster-of-the-week episodes, and the show's tone has gotten a little wobbly. I've enjoyed their more comedic episodes in the past, but this season they've come perilously close to X-Files camp. (Remember those seasons where The X-Files hit us with one totally goofy episode after another, when you wished they'd just stop parodying themselves already and get back to the damn scary stuff? A few Supernatural episodes this season have given me bad Clyde Bruckman flashbacks.) But Supernatural hasn't felt like it was winding down. The show clearly has a lot of life left in it, and I'll be glad to see the Winchesters come back next season.
Second, Russell T. Davies is working on an American version of Torchwood for Fox, and there's talk that John Barrowman will be along for the ride. Davies is determined to make a dent in American TV, but I don't have high hopes for his chances with Fox. Fox likes to talk itself up as being edgy, but I can't imagine them giving Davies the kind of free reign he's enjoyed at the BBC. It seems almost inevitable that Davies is going to struggle with Fox endlessly as he tries to bring Captain Jack's sci-fi bi guy adventures to American prime time, and then the network will order reshoots and broadcast episode six as the pilot and cancel the show two months later with five episodes unaired. If Joss Whedon has an hour to spare, he should take Davies out to lunch and tell him a few Fox horror stories.
Whatever you were expecting Alex Cox's long-delayed Repo Man sequel to be, it sure wasn't this. Featuring a mix of unknowns and indie vets from Cox's 1980s glory days (Chloe Webb, Xander Berkeley, etc.), Repo Chick was shot on green screen sets partly to save money and partly to give the film a weird, deliberately artificial look. A lot of the shots here make me think of kiddie shows, with campy costumes and toylike backdrops. I suspect that fans of the original film will just be perplexed and annoyed, but this thing looks like it could pick up its own cult following.
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Chad, Matt and Rob are three bickering pals who must escape from armed thugs and horrible monsters as they attempt to make it to a birthday party for their boss. The trio of LA comics have created a series of genre-hopping, interactive YouTube adventures, and their latest is lots of silly fun.
Little Island is a company that will make a miniaturized robot version of you. Send away your specifications, and in six weeks you'll be the proud owner of a tiny robot you, one that's equipped with moving limbs, clips of your voice and other features. Apparently the company even has a special line of little robot brides, as seen at left. (Because this whole thing wasn't creepy enough already.)
In the clip below, you can see English comics Graham Norton and Chris Addison interacting with a mini-Graham as an appalled Gillian Anderson looks on. (Anderson saw a lot of spooky stuff on The X-Files, but nothing prepared her for this.)
A long time ago (1978), in a nation far, far away (Japan), somebody at an ad agency decided that the best way to sell tuna would be to dress a bunch of white actors up in cheap Star Wars costumes and have them hop around like lunatics while high-pitched voices shrieked out a little song. The result is freaky as all get out... But still better than those damn prequels.
Thanks to "augmented reality" technology, you can now point a web camera at yourself and play rock-paper-scissors with a hideous, corpse-like hand that bursts out of your own chest while a nightmare baby voice squeals words you can't quite understand. Just think, now you can see for yourself what it's like to be a crazy person who has forgotten to take their meds!
(Click here for our previous history of rock-paper-scissors.)
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My fellow Trekkies, I have a treat for you today. This clip, shot during the production of the original Star Trek series, features short interviews with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in costume as their iconic characters Kirk and Spock. (Actually, if you'll pardon me for dropping some serious dork on you, Shatner is in costume as his own android double from the episode What Are Little Girls Made Of?)
The clip is fascinating, for a number of reasons. Over the decades Shatner and Nimoy have of course been interviewed endlessly about Trek, but I've never seem them interviewed when they were this young. It's weird to see them break character, with Shatner answering questions in that 1966 James Tiberius Kirk voice, and Nimoy in full, original series Spock gear, smiling and talking about playing gangsters. It's also weird to see an interview from an era when Trek itself was an unknown quantity and sci-fi in general was generally dismissed as kids stuff. Shatner and Nimoy both seem a little embarrassed about the whole thing.
Here's a rather bracing bit of 1980s randomness: Madame, the loud and hideous yet weirdly endearing drag queen puppet of "Wayland Flowers and..." fame, performing a punk novelty song on her syndicated sitcom Madame's Place. Yes, this freaky, braying little monster had her own weekly show. Co-starring one of the Landers sisters. And Corey Feldman. (Jesus, this was a very '80s show.)
Madame's Place was pretty darn weird to start with, but I think this performance by "Drool" could be the show's weirdest moment, with Madame doing a surprisingly credible punk rock snarl while decked out like Captain Fantastic-era Elton John. (I've never been a Streisand fan, but it seems more than a little unfair for Madame to be busting on Streisand's nose. I mean, hasn't Madame ever looked in a mirror?)
Adventure Thru Inner Space was a great ride in Disneyland's Tomorrowland, in the spot currently occupied by Star Tours. The ride miniaturized guests and took them on a tour of the microscopic wonders all around us. (While you waited in line, you could see trams full of guests go rolling into the smallifying machine and then getting smaller and smaller!) This video gives you a taste of the ride and offers a little info about its creation.
In this video, a white blood cell is seen as it blobs its way around red blood cells and platelets in relentless pursuit of a staphylococcus aureus bacterium. I actually feel a little encouraged about my immune system, knowing these little guys are on the job. This thing is like the Terminator!
The Canned Film Festival is an 1980s TV obscurity that deserves more attention than it gets. It was a syndicated, late night series starring Saturday Night Live vet Laraine Newman as the eccentric and scrappy owner of a faded Texas movie palace. Every week she would show a different B-movie to her small gang of regular moviegoers, and we'd occasionally break away from the movie for ironic commentary from Newman and company. Today's episode features Robot Monster, a cinematic experience of wondrous, transcendent awfulness.
The Canned Film Festival was never a gut-bustingly hilarious show, but it was a lot of fun. It predated Mystery Science Theater 3000 but had a somewhat similar sensibility, lovingly sending up the cheapie screen fare of yesteryear. It reflects a now-vanished era when movie geeks still trekked out to the local indie house to catch a revival show of a movie they knew was no good at all. The sticky floors, the ripped seats, the flyers with print too blurry to read... Somehow, some way, this was what made us happy.
(And oh, dear lord, those 1980s, sci-fi Dr. Pepper commercials...)
If you're a Time Bandits fan, set aside half an hour or so for this fascinating interview with Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin about the film. I was obsessed with this movie growing up and read everything I could find about it, but there was plenty of stuff here that was new to me.
I don't have the numbers to back me up on this, but I believe that Time Bandits might be the biggest hit that Gilliam and Palin ever had. It's obvious that they're both happy with how it turned out, and it makes me wonder why they never collaborated on a script again.
They don't discuss it here, but some years back Gilliam seriously pursued the idea of a sequel. Part of me would very much like to see that film, but ultimately it's probably for the best that it didn't happen. The original film gave us John Cleese as Robin Hood, giants with boats on their heads and little things hitting each other. How do you top that?
This is pretty cool, and I'm a little surprised that apparently nobody thought to do it before. It's all of the stuff that was happening on Lost - on the island and in the air, in the moments before, during and after the fateful crash of Oceanic Flight 815 - all edited into one clip, 24-style. One could quibble with some of the editing choices and this clearly isn't a pro job, but there's no denying this clip is cleverly put together.
I'm surprised to see so little of the "tailies" in here. Did we really never get to see any scenes of Ana Lucia and company before the crash? (If you're wondering where that spooky clip of Jack's dead dad comes from, I believe it's from one of the "minisodes" that ABC used to post in the show's early days.)
No matter how many times we see it, that crash never stops being scary as hell.
CGMaxed is the name of a Youtube animator (or possibly a group of animators) who has posted some short clips that are sort of breathtaking. While the character models and animation are usually a little crude, the characters are blended into the action so seamlessly that the effect can be downright bizarre.
Check out this clip, CG Girl in Real World.
On the one hand, the bikini girl's proportions are off and her movements are very stiff and robotic. On the other hand, she is absolutely there, you can totally buy that this weird, plastic gynoid is sitting there by a backyard pool with the sun glinting off of her hard plastic skin. And the way that she falls short of reality makes her sort of sad, as you watch her in action you end up feeling sort of sorry for her. First she spends like five minutes pleading with that real girl about something, while the real girl sits there reading a newspaper and totally ignoring her. Then our poor bikini-bot is left alone to click and whir on the patio, stiffly jerking her mannequin limbs around as she tries to access flirting-with-the-poolboy subroutine #341.
If that clip didn't give you the squirms, let's go soaring high above the uncanny valley with our next clip, Terrorists Killed on Airplane Takeoff.
The aliens have spoken indeed, friends.
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This January 22nd at 8 PM, a unique theatrical event will kick off at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. Brat Productions will begin performing Eugene Ionesco's absurdist play The Bald Soprano, and they will carry on performing it every hour, for the next 24 hours.
Audience members who attempt to make it through the whole thing will be given shots of coffee to keep them awake, but I'd wager things are going to get very surreal indeed 'round about hour 12. If it's gonna be rough on the audience, I don't even want to think about how the performers are gonna hold up. This wacky little conceptual art prank is probably gonna seem a lot less funny by the time the sun is coming up.
As if the whole thing isn't already peculiar enough, the troupe has posted the above ad for Bald Soprano "inaction" figures. Are these things actually for sale? Hell, I don't know. The show hasn't even begun, and I already feel like I could use a cup of joe to help me puzzle it all out.
Journey with us now to a Japanese-y, soundstage wonderland where a kind of fey superhero in a glittery gold cap and rainbow kimono spends the days lovingly combing the hair of his pretty lady friend and not quite kissing her. But look out, here comes the giant red demon who likes to encase people inside of big, sad snowballs! (Man, what a jerk, huh?)
Now it's up to this sunshine superman to save the day. Using only his magic twinkle powers, stuntman cartwheels and soulful looks, he must vanquish the demon before it lays waste to this tiny kingdom. Though it's cold outside, our sparkly hero is not here in vain... Hold on through the night! There will be no shame.
The 1983 Coneheads TV special is a weird fusion of Rankin/Bass animation (featuring some kind of fun Jack Davis designs) and the comic sensibilities of Dan Aykroyd, Al Franken and other folks from the early days of Saturday Night Live. It's a meld that doesn't quite work, and even the mildest sex or drug jokes seem weirdly out of place in a Rankin/Bass cartoon. But the show does have a certain weird appeal, and if you're fan of early SNL and/or Rankin/Bass, this one is a must see. Nebs! Nebs! (Note that the Amazon link to the left is for the 1993 feature film, not the animated special.)
This little darling is actually part slug, part plant. It's also part awesome, part disgusting. It's a slug that can survive by photosynthesis. Put it in a tank with nothing but sunlight to feed it, and it will thrive.
It's officially known as Elysia chlorotica, but that's an unpleasant mouthful. I say we call them splangs, an unholy mashup of slug and plant. (Hey, it's better than calling them plugs. Or slants. Or sluts. Anything's better than calling them sluts.)
This is a very silly business indeed, but rather well-done: Neo from The Matrix takes on Robocop. Of course, Neo wasn't counting on the arrival of Robocop's backup...
Two surprising developments are afoot in genre TV land.
First, Joss Whedon is apparently sitting down for talks with the president of the FX cable network. It's way too soon to say a series is actually happening, but this is a promising development. Whedon's fans have been all but begging the guy for years to give up on network TV, and try a show on cable. (But stay away from SyFy, Joss! They'd probably just end up screwing you over as badly as Fox has in the past.)
Even more surprising, it seems a Lost spinoff could be in the works. While Lost's creators have been adamant that they have no plans for Lost after the series finale this May, ABC is seriously considering going ahead without them.
Those fine folks at Evilolive3000 are back, with another gift to all the peoples of the Earth. .357 Lover's Event Horizon is a soaring, arena rock-style tribute to that 1997 Paul W.S. Anderson sci-fi horror picture you can't quite remember if you saw or not. After you see this clip, you'll spend your Sunday strutting around the house in your underwear, hollering, Event Horizooooooooon! That's my plan for the day, anyhow.
In this clip, William Shatner and his daughter discuss his signature dropkick move from Star Trek, and its potential application in a fight against three husky teenagers.
Read more...
But today I discovered something that put the spin back in my propeller. It seems that back in 2000, there was an actual Yellow Submarine theme park ride in Germany and Japan. Guests boarded the Yellow Submarine, where Old Fred took them on a journey to Pepperland, stopping off along the way for a visit to the Sea of Monsters, the Sea of Science or the Sea of Time. (Apparently it was totally random which sea you'd visit, but the Sea of Monsters was definitely the E-ticket acid trip of the bunch.)
The kind folks at Fab4Art have posted all of the ride's filmed material on YouTube. You won't get the full, immersive experience of the actual ride, but this footage is still a real treat. First, Jeremy the Nowhere Man and Old Fred prepare to bring us aboard, before those damn Blue Meanies arrive and totally screw everything up. (Ain't that just like them?)
As you can see, the ride's creators did a really good job of capturing the film's freewheeling spirit, and the CGI animation is rather startlingly effective, bringing the film's very stylized, 2D characters into the third dimension. But you ain't seen nothing yet, kids...
The Sea of Monsters! Complete with Kinky Boot Beasts! And the Vacuum Monster! And then off to Pepperland, where we defeat the Blue Meanies with music. Now I can die a happy geek. (If the Hey, Bulldog song doesn't sound familiar, that's because it was cut from the original film and wasn't re-inserted until the 1999 theatrical re-release.)
But we must sail on, we have other seas to see. Let's go for a dive in the Sea of Science. You can skip ahead to the 1:20 mark to avoid seeing the whole intro sequence again.
Impressive as it is, this is arguably the weakest of the three seas. It seems the least connected to the film itself, with various images and scenes just sort of floating around in a psychedelic void before we get involved in some strange business with a shrink ray.
Now, off to the Sea of Time! Again, fast forwarding to 1:20 will get you past the intro.
This sequence also feels like it could have benefited from sticking a little closer to the film, but it's impressive in its own right and must have been stunning as a ride. (Imagine zooming through those giant, churning clock parts!)
In this article one of the ride's creators talks about all the hard work that went into making the ride, and you can really see it. This thing is clearly the work of people who really understood the original film's weird appeal, and who piled on enough crazy details and inside jokes to keep fans coming back for years.
But sadly, the ride wasn't around for long. It's all gone now, leaving only these Youtube clips behind. But hey, at least we can re-watch them without having to stand in a long line, crossing our fingers in hopes that this will be the time we finally get to see the Sea of Monsters.
I've never seen anything quit like this. It's a lengthy and thoughtful analysis of Kubrick's 2001, presented in the form of simple yet very effective flash animation. I don't agree with all of its conclusions - but then half the fun of 2001 is disagreeing about what it all means.
Cyriak is a twisted, brilliant and prolific animator whose work is often rather reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's cartoons for Monty Python's Flying Circus. In this clip he takes Beggin', the old hit by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and works his evil magicks upon it. The video is mesmerizing and grotesque, and you'll have this song stuck in your head for the next six to eight weeks. (Via Metafilter.)
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB in 1997. Maybe that doesn't sound like that long ago, but a lot has changed since then. After seven successful seasons, Buffy went off the air in 2003. The WB went under, merging with UPN to form the CW network. Sarah Michelle Gellar went from "hot, young, notoriously difficult talent" to "aging, underemployed actress who would probably be pretty thrilled to star in a Buffy movie at this point". And the internet took over the planet.
In an interesting article, Martin Belam looks at the Internet as it was depicted in the 1st-season Buffy episode I Robot, You Jane. The plot concerns a demon that lives inside the internet, and Belam uses the episode as a kind of time capsule to explore the tech and technophobia of the Clinton era. (As Belam points out, that's actually the most interesting aspect of the episode. I, Robot is kind of rough going, even for Buffy's first season.)
That clip I posted a while back of Laurel and Hardy kicking out the jams to the accompaniment of the Gap Band led me to this interesting little oddity. In 1999, Piet Schreuders presented the Dutch TV documentary The Shortest Main Street in the World. In it he journeyed to America to visit the section of Culver City where Laurel and Hardy shot a lot of their movies. Taking his fannish enthusiam to impressive extremes, he even created a detailed, 3D model of the neighborhood as it would have appeared in Laurel and Hardy's day. I live in a part of LA not too far from Culver City, and it's a strange thrill to see the True Value store and other perfectly humdrum local buildings rendered in digital form and obsessed over like this.
A lot of outsiders knock Los Angeles, and even the people who live here make a lot of bad jokes to the effect that this town is full of Paris Hiltons. But those jokes have nothing to do with the LA I know, and I wouldn't live anywhere else, not for nothin'.
I go to some random corner to mail my electric bill, and I'm standing on the spot where Laurel and Hardy got chased by a goat. Beat that, you smug San Francisco so-and-so's.
In an all-out war between relentless, shambling hordes of zombies and bloodthirsty legions of vampires, which side will ultimately emerge victorious and claim world domination? The Southern Fried Scientist investigates.
Flying squids are squids that can fly. Don't believe me? Look at the picture. See? A flying squid. Still don't believe me? Well, here's some fancy science-talk:
Members of the Ommastrephidae are small (about 10 cm ML) to large (about 100 cm ML), muscular squids that are often the dominant large squids in oceanic and, occasionally, neritic waters. A number of species are fished commercially. Ommastrephid squids are among the strongest swimmers in the Cephalopoda. Some are commonly known as "flying squid" due to their ability to glide over the ocean surface as seen in the photographs.
What, you still don't believe me? Jeez, you're really starting to get on my nerves, bub. Head on over to the Tree of Life web project and bother them with your incessant doubting. Go on, scram.
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I'd always assumed that Bill Murray spent a few months at most reliving the same day in the 1993 comedy classic Groundhog Day. But it seems his ordeal was actually quite a bit worse than that!
Director Harold Ramis once remarked that Murray must have spent ten years or so trapped in Punxsutawney, given that he had enough time to learn how to be an ice sculptor, play piano, speak French, etc. And now an enterprising blogger has broken it all down, with graphs and everything, to figure out exactly how many Groundhog Days Murray endured.
At first Øyvind Thorsby's art for his webcomic Hitmen For Destiny seems crude and kind of ugly, somewhere between Rocky and Bullwinkle and a five-year-old kid's doodles. But once you start reading you quickly get sucked into the story, and the drawing takes on a charm all its own.
The comic follows the adventures of Annette, an average young woman who comes into possession of a mystical sword that grants her awesome powers. She soon finds herself journeying between dimensions, fighting monsters and picking up strange new friends as she goes.
The strip is endlessly imaginative, hilarious, thrilling, violent, sweet and gross, all at the same time. It's hard to think of anything to compare it to... Picture a collaboration between Joss Whedon and Henry Darger, with Dr. Seuss dropping by now and then to toss in a monster or two.
I'm not asking you to give Thorsby's strip a chance, I'm insisting. Just read two or three pages (you just click on a page to go to the next one in the sequence) and I can pretty much guarantee you'll be hooked forever.
William Shatner and Rush Limbaugh sit down on an s-shaped love seat and discuss politics and tinnitus in this excerpt from Shatner's interview series, William Shatner's Raw Nerve. It's not a shouting match, and Shatner is clearly not interested in letting it devolve into one. But Shatner scores some solid points, and this clip accomplishes something I wouldn't have thought possible: it makes me like Shatner even more, and Limbaugh even less.
Read more...
This is another one of those pay per post deals, where I get a couple of bucks for mentioning a product. But this is a weird one, because I'm not supposed to mention the actual company name or any of their competitors. I'm just supposed to use the phrase Panama hotels. And I just did, so my work here is essentially done... Although this post is also supposed to be 200 words long, and doing a quick word count I see that I'm only up to 86. Oh, dear. How do we stretch this baby out? What am I supposed to say to pad this post, to make it reach the required minimum word count so that I can get a couple of bucks for mentioning Panama hotels?
Well, now we're up to 132. Still a ways to go. Jeez, this is harder than it looks. I could use a relaxing trip to Panama. Ah, Panama! So lovely this time of year. At least, I assume it is. I've never actually been to Panama and frankly I don't know diddly about Panama hotels. But I don't have to know anything about Panama hotels, I just have to mention them in this post and then keep writing for 200 words. And I have.
Leerone, the talented lady previously described on this blog as a "willowy songstress" (Jesus, was I sipping a mint julep when I wrote that?) recently sent along an email expressing her appreciation for my post last month about her awesome music video, Empty Houses. I'm using this as an excuse to re-post the video, which really is lovely in a spooky, haunted dollhouse sort of way. Leerone also has an online store. Head over there and buy some stuff, so she'll have cash to spend on more freaky music videos. She'll even write you a love letter for four bucks!
I'll never get used to the way that the web can make celebrities so accessible. First I write about Wesley Eure from the original Land of the Lost and hear back from him, then I write about Butch "Eddie Munster" Patrick and he sends me a note, and now I write about Leerone and I hear from her! At this rate, I'm expecting Salvador Dali to send me an email from beyond the grave.
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Alan Thicke is more interesting than you think. Yeah, he was the dad on Growing Pains and he hosted that Thicke of the Night show that bombed in the 1980s. But he also wrote a bunch of unforgettable TV theme songs (including The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes) and he was a writer for edgy comedians like Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison. The Onion A.V. Club has a pretty good interview up to catch you up on all things Thicke.
The OC Weekly (my old stomping grounds) reports that a fan campaign is afoot to remake the rather forlorn Tom Sawyer/Pirates of the Caribbean island at Disneyland into a Lost-themed attraction.
I doubt it'll ever happen, and if it did it frankly sounds like something that could date quickly. The last thing Disney wants is to end up like Universal Studios. That park is always unveiling attractions based on popular franchises, only to end up looking pretty sad a few years later when the show goes off the air. (They got stuck with a pathetically irrelvant Miami Vice stunt show that ran until sometime around the Lewinski scandal. Then they replaced it with a Waterworld show, which wasn't exactly trading up.) Lost is not the smash hit it once was, and while the upcoming final season should attract plenty of interest, I suspect that this is a show won't linger on in reruns. Six years from now, it's not unlikely that kids visiting the park would have no idea what Lost was.
But the idea of a Lost island is so cool that I can't resist hoping it happens. Not only does Disney already own the rights to Lost (via ABC), the attraction would also be relatively cheap to produce. A hatch here, a puff of evil black smoke there, a rickety dock, palm trees, a big stone foot, and you're pretty much done. But here's hoping there are no animatronic Michelle Rodriguezes. The kids already get enough nightmares from The Haunted Mansion, they don't need some angry robot lady ranting at them.
Frank Miller's recent movie based on Will Eisner's classic comics series The Spirit was an epic disaster, so much so that it appears to have put the kibosh on Miller's previously announced Flash Gordon movie and the Sin City sequel. While Miller's early cartooning displayed a clear Eisner influence, the film played like the work of a guy who was only glancingly familiar with Eisner's work and simply had no idea what made it great.
Back in the early 1980s, Brad Bird - who would go on to direct classics The Iron Giant and The Incredibles - struggled long and hard to launch his own animated movie based on The Spirit. And it sounds like he could've done something great, too.
"I blew a lot of energy and time on it," he told Michael Barrier in 2005, "and I kind of think in my mind it should always be a hand-drawn thing, and right now, Hollywood idiocy being what it is, that's considered the kiss of death. I don't think you could get any money for a big animated feature if you insisted on it being hand-drawn."
Bird was so passionate about making the film his own way that he apparently turned down an offer to direct it as a live-action movie. Fortunately the tide has turned a bit since Bird did that interview, and drawn animation is becoming viable in Hollywood again. That being said, after the spectacular failure of Miller's Spirit, I doubt we'll see another movie based on the property for a generation at least.
So, the Doctor, as played by David Tennant, has died with a bang and a whimper. We knew it had to happen eventually, but it still stings.
A trailer has been released, showing Matt Smith in action as the new incarnation of the Doctor, and... Well, now I guess I know how a lot of UK Doctor Who fans felt back in the early 1980s, when the awesomely peculiar Tom Baker was replaced by a young and tentative Peter Davison. It's sort of like your mother abruptly divorcing your father and then bringing home some gangly college kid she wants you to call "Dad."
What you are about to see may disturb you. It certainly creeps me the hell out. It's a bizarre skit from a now-forgotten early '90s attempt to resurrect The Carol Burnett Show, in which the original crew of the Enterprise flies through some sort of magic gender-bending space cloud. The clip starts a ways into the sketch, but you'll get the gist in a hurry. Burnett's Shatner is actually pretty good, which only makes the whole thing that much wrong-er. That's SCTV's Andrea Martin as Spock. So, in addition to the squirmy horror of Kirk and Spock as improbably buxom ladies feeling each other up, there's the additional touch of ick from seeing this little scenario enacted by two classic comediennes of your youth.
Disney cruises will now feature "virtual portholes" where Disney cartoon characters will suddenly appear at random moments, gawk at you for a while and then slink away.
I suppose that could be delightful if you have little kids with you... But as a childless adult, it sounds like just about the creepiest thing I've ever heard of. Seriously, imagine you're getting undressed for bed, you're standing there with your underwear around your ankles, and suddenly freaking Goofy is there at the window, happily grinning as he appraises your nude body. Or imagine you're getting intimate with your spouse, and suddenly there's Donald Duck staring down at you! That wouldn't just kill the romance for the evening, it'd probably kill it forever. You'd never enjoy marital relations again, and it would all be Disney's fault.
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In the early 1980s, Marvin, the chronically depressed robot from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, released a couple of novelty singles. It gets weirder: he went on a PR tour that took him through the studios of Blue Peter, the long-running UK kids series. Thus: this clip.
As I write this, Neil Gaiman's new short film Statuesque (starring Bill Nighy and Gaiman's girlfriend, Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer) is on Youtube. But it probably won't be for long, so see it while you can.
Maybe then you can explain the plot to me. While the film does look good, I'm not really sure what's going on. What is Nighy doing every day when he goes to watch the statue people? It doesn't seem like he's only pining over the one statue girl. He's keeping some sort of record. But of what? And why does he join the human statues at the end? Is it just a way to get closer to the one statue lady who isn't Amanda Palmer? It's not like Gaiman's work normally leaves me baffled, but I feel like I really missed the gist, here.
"Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket." - W.H. Auden
Who is he, this one who is called "Greg Stacy"?
Greg Stacy began the MONSTERS AND ROCKETS blog in April of 2009. Prior to that, he was editor of the popular sci-fi/horror news website DARKWOLDS.COM. He has also written for LA WEEKLY, OC WEEKLY, UTNE READER and LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT. He always feels weird writing about himself in the third person.
