Peter Capaldi's FRANZ KAFKA'S IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Following the news that Peter Capaldi will take over the role of the titular Doctor on Doctor Who, the Scottish actor suddenly finds himself an object of intense fascination for nerds around the globe. That's led to the unearthing of Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, a dark yet daffy and kind of delightful short-ish film that Capaldi wrote and directed in 1994. Richard E. Grant is spectacular as Kafka, making this famously tormented writer both comical and affecting.

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Miniature models of classic artists at work in their studios

Courtesy of the folks at Juxtapoz magazine, check out this amazing gallery of miniature model portraits of classic artists at work in their studios.


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A very Betamax Christmas to you!

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 1989 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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But do you recall... the most obscure Rankin/Bass specials of all?

Much as I love the classic Rankin/Bass holiday specials, at this point I've seen 'em and seen 'em and seen 'em all again. But it turns out that there are a few that aren't familiar to me, and maybe they're just as new to you.

Does Pinocchio's Christmas sound even slightly familiar to you? How about Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey? Or The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold?)

(I get that feeling that as time passed Rankin and Bass started getting kind of desperate for new Christmas special ideas. I mean, Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey?

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"I'm Dreaming of a Blue Sunset"

Enjoy this Doctor Manhattan-esque footage of a sunset as seen from the surface of Mars.

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FREAKS AND GEEKS: THE INTERACTIVE YOUTUBE GAME

Courtesy of the Fine Bros. Unofficial, but awesome.

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The alien designs Stanley Kubrick rejected for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Here's a fascinating article about some of the alien designs that Stanley Kubrick rejected while shooting 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's full of surprising revelations, like the little factoid about Carl Sagan being the one who suggested not showing the aliens at all. Apparently there's some controversy about whether it was Sagan's suggestion or not, but Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke both thought it was, and that's good enough for me. (Also, Sagan and Kubrick apparently didn't get along well at all. What would you give to listen in on those arguments?)

Some of these designs are kind of funky, but some of them look decades ahead of their time. The little beauty pictured above, for instance, could easily pass as a Wayne Barlow design.

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THE LAST OF US: THE MUSICAL!

If you've played the award-winning video game The Last of Us, you know it's got what may well be the most gut-wrenching ending in game history. In this bizarre and hilarious video, we see the actors who did the game's voice acting and motion capture improvise a very different take on the conclusion: an epic, Broadway musical of the angsty Les Miz variety.

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8 Weird Catchphrases From Old Warner Bros. Cartoons Explained

Today I've got what I hope will be the first of many articles posted on the nifty website Topless Robot: 8 Weird Catchphrases From Old Warner Bros. Cartoons Explained!

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JK Rowling almost starred in a HARRY POTTER/DOCTOR WHO crossover

This is old news, but it's still news to me: apparently, back in the Russell Davies era of Doctor Who, J.K. Rowling was in talks to guest star in an episode as herself, in an absolutely nutty story that would've seen the Harry Potter author getting sucked into the magical world of her books, with the Doctor venturing in to rescue her. It sounds like it could've been great fun, or totally embarrassing, or perhaps both, in that uniquely Russell Davies-ian way.

The whole thing was shut down by David Tennant, who found the idea too "spoofy." It was probably for the best...

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Catching up with Derek Riggs, Iron Maiden's cover artist

Growing up as a heavy metal goon, I spent entirely too much time staring at the art of Derek Riggs, Iron Maiden's album cover artist from the late 70s to the early 90s. Riggs' work crackled with nasty, lurid energy and was filled with endless, fiddly little details for angry loner teens to get lost in. It's all pretty embarrassing now... but I have to admit that some of this stuff is still kind of awesome.

I stopped following the band about five minutes after I graduated from high school, but recently I got curious about what Riggs had been up to and a quick Googling led me to his website. He offers up lots and lots of his artwork, along with his cranky, poorly-spelled commentary. (Apparently he had a bad falling-out with the Maiden guys some years back, a development that makes me sad. Pouring over Riggs' art was at least half the fun of being an Iron Maiden fan!)

There are some fascinating oddities on the site, such as this Christmas card featuring Maiden's zombie mascot, Eddie, giving directions to the Three Wise Men. If you're an old Maiden fan, seeing the massive temple from the cover of Powerslave in ruins is kind of heartbreaking. But fear not! Eddie never stays dead for long.

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THE X-FILES: 20 years old this month

Believe it or not, September 10th was the 20th anniversary of the debut of The X-Files. To mark the occasion, here's a few minutes of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson clowning around on set and screwing up their lines. (Mostly this is just an excuse to hear Anderson's adorable cackle.)

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Come sail away... with Lee Harvey Oswald?

Paul Wilson is a big fan of the 1970s disaster picture The Poseidon Adventure, miniature models and Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps these seem like three interests with very little overlap, but Wilson has actually managed to combine them... by building an enormous model of the SS Poseidon and sending a little doll of himself and a little doll of Oswald on a romantic cruise together.

Wilson's Flickr account is a wonder to behold. In the photo above, Paul and a very hairy Lee relax on deck in the hours before the ship's fateful New Year's Eve party.

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The divine MAD-ness of Basil Wolverton

For many years, Mad Magazine hyped Don Martin as "Mad's maddest artist." Martin's work featured square-headed, dimwitted idiots who were forever doing gross, improbable things while accompanied by such sound effects as GAZOONT! and SPLOINK! It was gloriously goofy stuff, sure, but if true madness was what you looking for - nightmarish, squirm-inducing, sometimes even Naked Lunch-esque madness - well, Basil Wolverton was your guy. Wolverton's characters were hilarious nightmares, fleshy horrors with noodle hair, staring eyes and big, drooling mouths with cracked teeth going every which way. These were some of the greatest beasties to ever crawl out of the end of a pen.

There's something so hideously tactile about Wolverton's creations. The little hairs on their heads, each strand so distinct (they always have hairs, not hair) that they look like they would be springy to the touch and leave an oily film on your fingers. The flesh appears warm and clammy, like you could really reach into the page and grab hold of those saggy jowls and floppy noses. (Not that I'd recommend it.) And those nostrils! Lord almighty, you can practically hear the snorting laughter of these freaks and smell the garlic on their breath. You definitely wouldn't want to invite Wolverton's parade of grotesqueries into your home - even if you put down plastic, you just know they'd totally ruin your furniture.

It seems almost inevitable that Wolverton dabbled in vaudeville as a young man, but fans of his comedic work will be amazed to discover his crackling sci-fi adventure comics, depicting fat little rocket ships of the Buck Rogers school and faraway worlds that look like backgrounds from one of Dr. Seuss' crazier picture books.

It's even more startling to learn that the creator of all these cartoon ghouls was a deeply religious man; baptized into Herbert W. Armstrong's Radio Church of God in 1941, Wolverton became ordained as an elder in 1943. Wolverton illustrated some horrifying pamphlets that Armstrong gave away as part of his long-running radio show, The World Tomorrow (Wolverton's 1975 in Prophecy is even more grim than the real 1975 turned out to be). He also wrote and illustrated The Bible Story (a.k.a. The Story of Man), a six-volume series covering the entire Old Testament.

Wolverton's apocalyptic visions of people suffering from sickly boils and wretched famine don't exactly put the fear of God into you; they put the fear of everything into you. Spend enough time with Wolverton's art, and you don't even want to have a body anymore. You just want to be a nice, safe brain in a nice, clean jar on a nice, quiet shelf.

But while Wolverton excelled at sci-fi and holy terror and pretty much everything else he did with his pen, he will perhaps be most fondly remembered for his "beautiful girls"—who were, of course, anything but. He first got noticed in a big way when he won a 1946 Li'L Abner contest to depict Lena Hyena, the ugliest girl in the world. The judges were Boris Karloff, Frank Sinatra and Salvador Dali (and man, don't you wish you could've heard those three fumbling to make small talk), and they rightly proclaimed Wolverton's Lena the most unattractive female in all the land. With her H.R. Giger teeth protruding from a vulture-like face, Lena was a punk-band mascot 30 years ahead of her time.

As brilliantly twisted as Wolverton's art was, he had a way with words that was equally inventive. His comics assaulted you with relentless wordplay—murderous puns, groan-worthy rhymes, thumping alliteration. One moment, Wolverton's mutant boxer Powerhouse Pepper is getting sweet-talked by a pretty girl, and he has a "lush blush on his mush." Then he's encountering a belligerent monster and threatens to dish out "a clout on your snout." Wolverton once described himself as a "Producer of Preposterous Pictures of Peculiar People Who Prowl This Perplexing Planet." (And that's all well and good, of course, but we wish we could have asked him: Which planet?)

(This post originally appeared in an altered form as an article for OC Weekly.)

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LONESOME ECHO: The record that brought Jackie Gleason and Dali together

Walt Disney wasn't the only unlikely American entertainer that Salvador Dali collaborated with. Dali also illustrated the cover for Jackie Gleason's record album Lonesome Echo.

Yes, the Honeymooners star had a sideline as a musician... and a surprisingly successful one. He wrote the theme for The Honeymooners, among many other songs. He recorded over 20 albums, with Music for Lovers Only selling over 500,000 copies.

I have no idea how Gleason hooked up with Dali, but frankly this cover strikes me as a rather indifferent Dali composition, about as close as the famed surrealist came to "hacking it out".

How is the photo on the back of the album, featuring Gleason and Dali shaking hands, not for sale as a t-shirt already?


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The weird original designs of Disney characters

I feel like a lazy blogger, just grabbing content off of Buzzfeed... but I can't resist linking to this gallery of early designs of Disney characters. Maleficent with antenna! Cruella de Vil as a sexy young goth chick! The Genie from Aladdin as a grinning, demonic horror!

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SEASONS

Seasons is an enchanting little flash story thing (you can't exactly call it a game) where you steer Thomas - a sort of egg-man on a unicycle - through various pastoral, surreal scenes. Don't hurry through the environments. It's worth it to take your time pedaling around and seeing what Thomas discovers.

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The KING KONG stage musical doesn't look like what you'd expect

When I heard a King Kong stage musical was on the way, I expected something heavy on spectacle and camp. But this promo clip, featuring Esther Hannaford's performance of the haunting song Full Moon Lullaby, is momentous but also melancholy, capturing the tragedy at the heart of the story. I'm impressed.  

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THE BARSTOW BONES INTERACTIVE AUDIO GAME

I recently collaborated with my dad to produce THE BARSTOW BONES INTERACTIVE AUDIO GAME, a new kind of YouTube annotation game based on my dad's new mystery novel Barstow Bones. The game is produced in the pulpy style of an old-time radio thriller. As you listen to the story you make choices that determine the destiny of Tommy, a young Asian American trying to drive across the California desert not long after Pearl Harbor.

The road ahead is dangerous, so choose carefully.

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Go buy my dad's book, BARSTOW BONES!

My dad, in addition to being a pretty great dad, is also a pretty great writer. His latest book, Barstow Bones, is a pulse-pounding mystery set in the Barstow of the 1980s. It's a time and a place I know well, and in addition to writing a compelling mystery I think my dad has really captured the era and setting. Perhaps I'm a tad biased by my dad being my dad and all, but I think this book is terrific and I'd suggest that you buy a few dozen copies immediately. (And hey, you don't have to just take my word for it that my old man's got the goods. Publisher's Weekly described the book as having "real depth" and said the plot was "smooth paced.")

You can click on over to the official website to learn more about the book and buy yourself a copy in paperback or as a Kindle edition.

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The really big stained glass crab at Baltimore-Washington International Airport

This handsome fellow is a 500-pound stained glass crab on display at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. In 1984 the state of Maryland commissioned Baltimore artist Jackie Leatherbury Douglass and her husband John to create a tourist attraction celebrating the Chesapeake blue crab, and the Douglass' spent a reported 5,500 hours assembling this unforgettable display. After John Waters and The Wire, this guy has my vote as the third greatest thing that ever came out of Baltimore.

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The Full Scale Millennium Falcon Project

The Full Scale Millennium Falcon Project is just what it sounds like. A group of Star Wars fanatics is planning to recreate a full-size replica on the Millennium Falcon, exact in every detail. (Well, other than the ability to make the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, presumably.)

You'll be amazed to see just how far they've gone toward making this thing a reality. This isn't a corporation doing this, it's not a new prop for a theme park someplace. These are just geeks, on a mission from God. And as unlikely as it sounds, I suspect they may actually get this done. May the force be with them!

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Protect yourself with ELDER SIGN

Are you forever plagued by nightmarish visions of the ancient Flying Polyps? Ask your doctor what the Elder Sign can do for you.

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LABYRINTH's Hoggle restored... sort of!

A while back, we explored the tragic fate that befell the original Hoggle puppet used in Jim Henson's classic 1980s fantasy picture, Labyrinth. (Briefly, poor Hoggle ended up a decaying horror on display at Alabama's Unclaimed Baggage Center.)

Well, good news! Hoggle has been restored to his former glory... sort of. Doll maker Gary Sowatzka spent several months restoring the puppet, and Hoggle is now... Well, he doesn't look exactly like the Hoggle we all know and love, but he has an actual face again and he is now about 80% less horrifying.

The restoration was apparently undertaken by the good folks at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, and Hoggle is now once again on display there. Labyrinth dorks everywhere owe them a debt of gratitude. We'll sleep a little more soundly tonight, knowing that poor Hoggle's nose isn't falling off anymore.

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Shatner vs Gorn rematch in the new TREK video game ad!

William Shatner and the classic Star Trek baddie the Gorn have a rematch in the new ad for the video game based on JJ Abrams' upcoming Star Trek reboot sequel thing. (I was most definitely not a fan of Abrams' 2009 reboot movie, but this new ad almost makes up for Abrams blowing up Vulcan. Almost.)

Shatner celebrated his 82nd(!) birthday this weekend. We neglected to mark the occasion here at Monsters and Rockets, but in hopes of making up for this terrible lapse, here's 45 installments of our former regular feature, Shatner Sunday.  

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The last surviving Geocities site?

It seems Geocities is not completely dead. The Slacker Film Guide website is still online, sporting a Geocities url. I sort of feel like I just found the last dodo or something.

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BRAZIL: A burlesque musical tribute

Those scamps at EvilOlivE 3000 Studios return with another unlikely burlesque tribute to a cinema classic: Terry Gilliam's 1986 dystopic masterpiece, Brazil.

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The ghosts of Google Street View

Artist Paolo Cirio takes the images of random people photographed on Google Street View and then uses wheatpaste posters to recreate those images in the real world. The results are intriguing to see online, but I suppose they must be rather confusing when you're driving by. (Especially if you were the subject of the original photo. Imaging going for a stroll in your neighborhood, only to encounter yourself going for a stroll in your neighborhood!)

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The bear sleeping bag (that is, a sleeping bag that looks like a bear, not a sleeping bag for bears)

Hey, campers! What could be more cozy than snoozing under the stars in a sleeping bag that makes it look like you've been swallowed by a big freaking bear?

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Johnny Cash's THUNDERBALL theme

Thunderball does not feature one of the more memorable James Bond movie opening themes, despite the best efforts of Tom Jones. (Jones reportedly fainted while belting out that final high note.) But had the producers gone with this proposed theme by Johnny Cash, the Man in Black himself, it's safe to say that nobody would ever forget Thunderball!

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