The Blade Runner Sketchbook has been out of print for years, but now the whole book is available online for free. The book features the original drawings by Ridley Scott, Syd Mead and other artists who designed the classic film. Check it out here.
Weirdos the world over are in mourning today, with the tragic news that Lex Gigeroff, the co-creator of the cult hit sci-fi series Lexx, has passed away at age 49. The show was wildly uneven, as even the most hardcore fans will admit... But there has never been anything quite like it on TV before or since, and it its best it was one seriously freaky good time. Here's hoping that Gigeroff's spirit is now enjoying an eternity frolicking with the sexy natives of planet Water.
The Year Without a Santa Claus isn't the best of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. Sure, it's cute as heck, 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 the awesomeness of Heat Miser and Snow Miser.
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.
If 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.)
If you've wished that you knew how to bust a move like the Peanuts kids in the classic holiday special Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown (and goodness, who hasn't?) now you can, thanks to the helpful diagrams on the accordion Christmas card seen on the website of designer Candy Chang. The girl's head-flopping move is diagrammed on one side of the card, the boy's weird neck-jut thing is depicted on the other.
The card, however, does not appear to be available to actually print out so you can mail it to your loved ones. That's just... Well, Scrooge-ian is the phrase that comes to mind. A lump of coal for you, Ms. Chang!
"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.
