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lookbackmachine · 5 years

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Manny The Uncanny Oral History Transcript

00:07 Speaker 1: When you're a kid, there's a few television moments that make you say, "What the hell was that?" Those shocking moments in which you're exposed to something wholly different than you've ever experienced. This doesn't occur often because most television shows created for kids are trying to replicate what has already worked in the past. It's why after a juggernaut like Ninja Turtles you get Biker Mice from Mars, Street Sharks and Moo Mesa. Children's television breaks with the old adage, "everything old is new again". Instead it's everything new is new again. In addition as a child, you are limited in what you can see. Your movies generally go up to PG, PG-13 if your dad was cool or if your older brother was cool, and NC-17 if your grandmother was weird. Profanity, sex, and violence are beyond your cultural scope. Not to mention as a kid you don't have the cultural framework or vocabulary to describe what you've seen. It's a purely internalized experience of the weird. That's why when there's something truly different it's so memorable. In the '90s, Manny the Uncanny definitely falls within this distinguished, "what the hell" category. Not only because he's weird; he certainly is, but because this...

01:21 Speaker 2: Why don't you go talk to the head potty guy? Come on! And Mr. Jim Langely, the head potty guy, is going to be telling us all about what happens with our potty bits. Tell me about potty bits.

01:32 Speaker 3: Potty bits?

01:33 Speaker 2: Potty bits.

01:33 Speaker 3: Potty bits.

01:34 Speaker 2: Grandma's trousers!

01:38 Speaker 1: Was on a Disney-branded Saturday morning. It begs repeating, What the hell? This character creation comes from the brilliantly deranged mind of Paul Rugg, and he spent the majority of his adult life making your childhood strange. But first a little history. Steven Spielberg has made several attempts to be Walt Disney. There was An American Tail, which eventually launched his own animation company Amblimation. There was Roger Rabbit and the Roger Rabbit shorts. And of course there was his most famous endeavor, DreamWorks. And yes, he's not Walt Disney, but he's damn close. And what puts him even closer to the heights of Walt Disney's pencil thin moustache was his run at Warner Brothers Animation in the '90s.

02:24 Speaker 1: It had been 20 years since the studio had created an animated short. The days of Termite Terrace were long gone, and that's where Spielberg saw opportunity. He thought maybe a Looney Tunes movie would work, and was working on one in 1987 about young Tunes learning from the greats at the Acme Academy, but it never panned out. Instead, the movie was put into television development, which was better suited for the wonderful short form zaniness of the Looney Tunes, and thus Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures was born.

02:55 Speaker 1: The show borrowed the Disney television animation model and infused historically cheap television animation with cash resulting in smoother animation and live orchestration for every show. Before the first episode, $25 million had been spent on Tiny Toons. After all, there was a daunting legacy to live up to, and it did. In its second year it was beating Darkwing Duck, Ninja Turtles, and DuckTales. Buoyed by that initial success, Spielberg and Warner Brothers Animation created the Animaniacs, which gracefully captured the essence of the old Looney Tunes classics, that have long evaded reproductions. Because the classic Looney Tunes shorts are perfection. That's not an exaggeration or an opinion; they are perfect. If you're a non-believer, imagine writing a joke that's still funny 70 years later. Imagine doing animation 70 years ago that is still seen as some of the best to this day, which is why its spirit has been so difficult to recapture. But the Animaniacs are the closest thing to the Looney Tunes since Looney Tunes. An integral part of the team that captured the bygone era was Paul Rugg.

04:02 Paul Rugg: I was in, sort of a offshoot of The Groundlings, called the Acme Theatre, which was founded by some people from the Groundlings. Where the Groundlings was more Hollywood-based, we were more San Fernando Valley-based, just because we were all very lazy and we all live in the San Fernando Valley. I had written some sketches for a show. Sherry Stoner, her partner Mark Sweeney, he was the director, and she started liking my stuff along with John McCann, and she said, "You know, I think you should come and we're developing this show." And I was like, "Oh, okay." And I didn't really know what they were talking about. They sent over a bible, which is everything about the characters, what the characters are. And I think I read that a couple weeks, and so did John McCann. And then we went in to meet Tom Ruegger to just get one script. He sort of told us more about characters, that they were very similar to the Marx Brothers, which is all I really needed to know. Over a week sort of wrote one and then got hired the day I turned it in, and that was it. When I saw that all of the scripts were being sent to Steven and we were waiting for his approval, and then I was like, "Wow, so he's gonna read these, huh?"

05:15 Paul Rugg: When they started doing the auditions, backgrounds, he was... We're always pending Steven's approval, so after a time I was like, well, he really does read this stuff, and he looks at this stuff and he listens to the record. And then I'd written something that never actually made it, but he sent me a memo saying, "That was really funny," so I was like, "Wow, he really is reading this stuff! My gosh, this guy really is involved". We really were writing for ourselves, and luckily he sort of liked that style. We never wrote for him, or oh, he likes this or he likes that, we were just doing what we thought was funny. And luckily he was liking it.

06:01 Paul Rugg: Once or twice, I think I might have written a joke and Tom Ruegger would say, "There's no way a kid's gonna know what that means," and I remember changing it. But maybe that happened twice out of all the scripts that I wrote. So, no, we never really thought about kids. We always wanted to keep it clean, but I can't remember ever catering a joke or a line or any of the ideas for a kid. I remember we did a parody of... Not of Apocalypse Now, but the documentary that Coppola's wife made about his making of Apocalypse Now, which is so totally obscure, and it was like, yeah, make that. So [laughter] I don't think... If we were really writing for kids, we never would have done that.

06:47 Speaker 1: Then there was Freakazoid! Which Paul voiced, wrote, and eventually produced. Freakazoid! Came along during two major changes, Time Warner would create The WB, and the Warner Brothers Animation shows would be transferred from Fox Kids to the new network. And the second, Spielberg made his final attempt to become Uncle Walt.

07:07 Paul Rugg: They were developing Freakazoid! For Steven. It was Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, and Steven wanted to take a really quirky turn and make it more very, very comedy-based. Tom Ruegger took over, and then he took John McCann and I off of Animaniacs and said, "You know, you really gotta help me, this show airs in like eight months, we don't have anything." By that time, I of felt that I had written as much as I could about Animaniacs, and as much as I loved the character I was looking for something new to do, so it was perfect.

07:38 Paul Rugg: The WB just didn't like it at all. I just don't think they liked it, which was a shame because we were having a great time with it, and Steven was really having a good time with it. We would send him a script, he goes, "This is crazy, I can't believe you guys are doing this, this is nuts". So we were all just loving it. But the WB was trying to think about... Well, in the second season, they asked us to do half hour stories in the hopes that it wouldn't be so bizarre. All that really did was [chuckle] give us a license to do more bizarre long-form stuff. Yeah, I don't think they were delighted with what we were doing.

08:20 Paul Rugg: Our demographics were coming in. Well, they weren't coming in right at the sweet spot that they want, we were really appealing to an older group, more high school, college, and some very intelligent younger children. Well, I don't wanna say The WB changed everything, but it did change everything. I think The WB in and of itself was sort of the demise of Warner Brothers Animation as we knew it then. They had a definite agenda, and that was to compete in this broader field of children's television. And they had a certain idea about what that should be. Well, they wanted Pokemon, they wanted... Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was doing really well, they wanted stuff that wasn't what necessarily we were doing. They wanted hits. While I think Warner Brothers Animation was doing very well, you know Animaniacs was doing well, they didn't care what it was, they wanted big hits. And well Freakazoid! , while it was doing really well with the critics and Steven was happy, it didn't fit in their wheelhouse.

09:34 Paul Rugg: They didn't really understand what they had. They had Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, they had the golden chest, in my opinion. And then they had the Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. I don't think they ever really truly understood what they had. The way Disney sort of takes care of their characters... I think for reasons that I've never really understood, I think that they didn't really understand the characters. And therefore you got things like Space Jam, which you might like Space Jam, but it was... I remember we all watching and we're like, "Oh my gosh, what are they thinking?"

10:12 Paul Rugg: When he formed DreamWorks, we still had, I think, some Freakazoids left to do, Animaniacs left to do, but we knew that, that sort of partnership was over. And then there was a lot of talk about us all maybe moving over. I think we all got interviews at DreamWorks when they were just starting it, we all went over there and had a meeting. And then some of us decided to go, some of us decided to stay. I was one who decided to stay because I really liked working for Ruegger, I really liked working for Jean MacCurdy. As far as bosses go, they didn't get any better.

10:54 Paul Rugg: We used to work at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, and there was this fountain where we would all... We would go down from the lobby and sit and talk, and I remember sitting there and somebody came up and said, "Hey, Steven's starting this big new thing." And we all went upstairs, and I don't think there was the internet then, but somebody got a copy of Variety and we read it. We're like, "Wow, this is big." And I think... As I recall, we were still doing the first season of Freakazoid! So I started putting that in some of the Freakazoid! Scripts, there's a Lord Bravery script that mentions DreamWorks. And in typical Warner Brothers fashion, we made fun of it because that was our job, so. Nobody was scared, I don't remember being scared because I remember we were really happy working at Warner Brothers and we really liked the anarchy there, but I think maybe people were ready to move on, to try different things.

11:53 Speaker 1: Peter Hastings was a writer who had his fingerprints all over Warner Brothers television animation. And this resume led to Disney putting him in charge of creating the vibe of Disney's, One Saturday Morning. He based the program around Bob McAllister's '70s kids show, Wonderama and Late Night with David Letterman. The colors were bright, the jokes were fast. And if you were wondering if an elephant could crush a blueberry pie with its foot, you could find out here. And within this wonderland train station was a man, a beacon of weirdness, an 11 on the dial, if you will. Manny the Uncanny.

12:32 Speaker 2: How's it going? I'm Manny the Uncanny today with the US Mint in Philadelphia to see how they make the coins. Come inside and don't be lazy. How does, how does, how does it... This is the build, large epoxy quarter. Here it is. This is touching, feelings. It transfered here, into this machine which is drilling it in there. It goes from shrunk down to this, which will make our coin.

12:53 Speaker 5: That's exactly correct.

12:54 Speaker 2: Wow, you learn... So much. Does Amos make you nervous? Okay Tim, now you're... Hey, I'm Manny the Uncanny. Do you ever wonder where all of your potty bits go when you flush them down? It comes here to the sewage treatment plant. Let's go talk to the head potty guy. Come in. Hey, hi there and all of that, this stuff. I'm Manny the Uncanny and today I am at the Bazooka Joe where... Sorry, Joe Blasco Cosmetics where we're going to learn about the make-ups. But not the make-ups for going to market or going to the fishing store, it's the makeup of scariness to be in the movie. So I tell you what, let's...

13:37 Speaker 1: Manny is delivered to each destination by a hot air balloon man, known as Mr. Lighter Than Air. He's suspended below the man's belly by cords that are similar to a baby's jumper. His glasses are thick, his suit God-awful plaid and he looks like a cartoon exiting a dynamite explosion. He's of course not the first bizarre children's TV show host. In fact, Linda Ellerbee and LeVar Burton come to mind as the only normality within this group. At the top of the list is of course, Pee-wee Herman. The voice, the suit, the bike. Strangely enough, his world is so off-kilter that Pee-wee, despite the odds, is the straight man in many of his scenes. A weirdo pointing to bigger weirdos and saying, "Isn't that weird?" In fact, Pee-wee Herman loves who he is and goes home to his amazing house filled with warmth and friends. He's undeniably happy. Manny, on the other hand, is desperately trying to relate in man-on-the-street segments with real people while having a complete inability to do so and lack of understanding of how to do it.

14:40 Speaker 1: And you can't imagine Manny going home to a magical talking chair. Instead his one counterpart is a mechanized cat puppet which you know Manny controls and voices. There's no magic, just desperation and loneliness. Because even though the shows are titled, "Manny Goes to the Mint" and "Manny at the United Nations", they might as well be titled, "Manny tries to make a friend." It's tragic comedy. This isn't Greek by any standard, but there is something incredibly human about this fictional farce that comes from Paul Ruggs's performance, which is real and grounded. But he's playing off the wall insanity.

15:20 Paul Rugg: Because we knew that Freakazoid! Was cancelled. So myself, and John McCann and Doug Langdale were developing a Daffy Duck show based loosely on the Larry Sanders Show where Daffy had his own extravaganza sort of like the old Carol Burnett Show. And it was sort of behind the scenes and in front of the scenes, and then it was clear that the WBJB counter didn't really want anything like that so that's when I decided to leave Warner Brothers. I had shot a couple of things for Peter Hastings who was... Who really wanted me to do Manny the Uncanny for One Saturday Mornings. Manny developed out of a thing I had been doing at Acme. He was this sort of washed up, cruise ship entertainer, he was the worst magician ever. So that's what I would sort of do on stage. And Peter always liked it, and I sort of always liked it, and the audiences always liked it. Which is why [laughter] I was more surprised than anyone that give me... Sort of said we should do it there but that's all Peter.

16:21 Paul Rugg: I mean Peter wanted to have fun, that sort of goes back to what we learned at Warner Brothers. If we think it's fun, hopefully it'll be fun. And then he said, "Well, maybe Manny should just go out and sort of meet people." a la Cole Huaser who was sort of a very famous guy on public television here who used to go out and visit with various people in the LA community. He would go to a bagel maker and spend time with the bagel makers. And we said, "Well let's do the same things." So Manny's segments basically became, where are the really weird places that we can go where Manny can be the world's worst interviewer. So he took a camera while I was working at Warner Brothers and decided to film some stuff of me doing Manny. I guess they really liked that. And I was writing the Daffy show when he asked me to come actually be Manny for the wrap arounds that they were doing, the on set, the whole digital set they had created. So I took two weeks off of Warner Brothers and filmed that. And then, came back to Warner Brothers. And then, I left Warner Brothers because they didn't pick up Daffy. And he called and just wanted to know if I wanted to come be a part of it.

17:38 Paul Rugg: I helped him pitch it. I remember sitting in front of the executives [chuckle] who were sort of horrified because I had dressed up in my whole Manny costume and I was, I was sort of doing my whole Manny act for them. And I don't remember them being very enthused that there was this really weird guy with funny hair in front of them, but. Which was, [laughter] which was kind of funny, but. They were liking it but they didn't wanna be a part of the Act, meaning, executives are very funny, they're like, "Great we like it, just don't put us in the position of having to sit there and be a part of this", they were just more like, "Don't look me in the eye, stop it" and so we was like, I think that day Peter and I learned a very valuable lesson. Never go pitch and sort of make those people you're pitching to part of the act. Because Manny was very abrasive he was very silly and I remember literally picking out people who we're pitching to and these are the big, big wigs and I'm insulting them and they were smiling but you could tell they wanted it to end like now.

18:51 Paul Rugg: Peter and I were having a great time I think we just did the whole thing, we were just having a blast we heard later that you probably shouldn't do that, but then we were Walt... Warners and we were more pushing the boundaries having some fun. Because I helped Tom Ruegger do the same thing at Warner Brothers when he was pitching Hysteria and he had me come as Nostradamus and do my whole act in front of the president of Warner Brothers and they were all very happy about it. So it's just a different culture at Disney it's a little more... I found it to be a little bit tightly wound, let's just say, and the Warner Brothers vibe was a little bit more it wasn't that I had never worked at Disney and so, and I was so stuck in that Warner Brothers we can do anything it never occurred to me that they wouldn't like it. So I was never surprised that we were getting away with it 'cause I didn't know that we were getting away with anything if that makes sense. I didn't know sort of what I know about Disney which is a fine company and stuff but they are definitely hands on and they want it done as a certain way, but back then I don't really remember knowing that.

20:09 Paul Rugg: Well after I left Warner brothers and did other things, I went back in for a meeting once when all of the people that I had sort of known were gone and it felt like walking into Disney and I remember going that's a shame. Because I think it was a very specific time a group of people got together and were just having a great time doing what they were doing. Manny works in very minimal doses. Anything beyond five minutes you sort of are like okay he's really beginning to annoy me which I love but no, we really didn't get any notes the biggest shout was stop screaming and that was it.

20:54 Paul Rugg: 'Cause Manny is very energetic and very sort of excitable and that is where I would play it on stage but when you put a camera like two inch in front of him it basically looks like he's gone insane. So we sort of modified him a bit and I wasn't quite sure how the bits were gonna cut together but we really lucked out and the first editor whoever took a crack at sort of putting the Manny's together was the lead editor on Waiting for Guffman and he was sort of in between gigs he just got this footage together in a way that was so surprising and fun that it really set the tone for all future editing then he eventually got busy and had to move on but we decided to sort of copy his style which was making the editing even more bizarre and it really worked. Peter Hastings and I came up with at Warner brothers and I have no idea why I think we were in the elevator, once and doing weird voices or doing something we came up with it's true.

22:00 Paul Rugg: And I have no idea where it comes from but I remember we just started giggling and then when he came in to say we need Manny song for his intro. I remember we wrote that in about 30 seconds, because we realized Manny didn't make sense so I remember, I just went into his office he goes, "I need this now". And we went in there we recorded it and that was it. I think we recorded at once it was just dumb and it made no sense, and It made us laugh and we're like okay we got that.

22:28 Speaker 2: Where are we going today miss Mr. Lighter than Air?

22:34 Speaker 6: Well, Manny some place wonderful.

22:40 Speaker 2: Hi there oh and happy days let's have some fun. And not be lazy it's true.

22:46 Paul Rugg: Yeah, I was trying to think about how Manny would get around and it just made me laugh my friend Mark Dropman was super, super, super funny guy I said I have this idea what do you think he goes, "That sounds great", so yeah, we filmed it I don't think we could get away with that now, but gosh it made us all laugh and I remember being in that harness and I think a couple of the execs might have come in and go, "Why are you in a harness?", I go, "Well I'm floating below Mr. Lighter than air." And they're like, "What the heck is that?"and I'm like, "Oh, never mind I think I've said too much already". So I don't think we would have the same budget today. We had this great makeup person and she always wanted to get Manny's hair perfect. So I think we went through literally 10 gallons of hair spray and she would sit and work on his hair and I remember that being like, Wow, I never thought anyone would be working on my hair. I remember they had been shooting a lot. They only needed me for a little bit. I came in one day and they said, "Stand here", and I was doing obviously my Manny thing very broad, very big, and the elephant wasn't liking it and they told me to not move so much 'cause the elephant was freaking out.

24:05 Paul Rugg: The trainer came over and said, "Really this elephant is about to kill you, so... " So, I might have changed a little bit. Maybe if you see it now because I hadn't seen if for years. But maybe you'll notice a very rather muted Manny who doesn't wanna get trampled by a very large elephant. I think maybe they separated me from the elephant at one point, but the elephant didn't like men. People, depending on who they were when they sort of saw what we were doing and how we were conducting the interview. And then was just all a bunch of fun, they really got into the fun. Some places didn't really like it. There was a... I remember we did something for the Egg Board of California. And we got... I think I got five minutes in to the interview, and they thought we were making fun of them and kicked us out. So, they literally put their hands in the in front of the camera and told us to leave because they thought... I don't know who they thought we were, but then as I just started airing, people were like, "Yeah yeah, you can come and do that." They saw that we were just having fun. But yeah, some people didn't really like it.

25:25 Speaker 1: Despite the Egg Board, most people seem to be enjoying themselves. They're in on the joke, which eliminates any cynicism. And they're as nice as they can be to Manny. It reaffirms acts of charity that deep down all people are good, or maybe they just wanna be on TV. Either way, it humanizes them. Likewise Manny never gets the best of someone. The ordinary people constantly try to help him understand. In the same way they would help an over-questioning kid understand. It's actually kinda sweet. The guy who is in charge of the State Quarters, or any of the knights at medieval times are for once, cooler than the TV personality, with Letterman, Conan, and Leno, that's never the case. Those are smart asses picking on the defenseless. While Manny is less than defenseless. It's this dynamic that provokes the wonderful moments in the sketches. In which an ordinary person who probably thought they had a lame job smiles. And it reads on their face "Yeah, I guess my job is pretty cool after all". As for Manny, there's a respite for the strange ones. In spite of everything, the security guard that Manny once feared... Well, see for yourself.

26:35 Speaker 2: Thank you very much. It's been a great pleasure. You wanna go get a soda or something?

26:44 Speaker 7: Sure.

26:46 Speaker 1: In that moment, there's hope for anybody weird, awkward, to meet at least somebody for a soda. Make sure to check out Paul Rugg's Freakazoid! Celebration Freak-A-Con on March 15th on Facebook Live.

#disney #one saturday morning #mannytheuncanny #retrodisney

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frederator-studios · 6 years

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Meet D.R. Beitzel, Creator of “The Bagheads”

DR Beitzel is a cartoonist, creative producer, and Pennsylvania fellow living a NYC dream. His day job is playing video games in a Times Square skyscraper; his evenings are occupied writing funnies and drawing comics for the likes of MAD Magazine, McSweeneys, and his own Phatypus Comics. And like several of his idols before him - Matt Groening, anyone? - he’s now making the petite leap from comics to cartoons. His GO! Cartoon “The Bagheads” is a historically accurate depiction of trash take-out travails with former roommates and his competitive clashes with his older brother. He maintains that the Goat (”Goooat”) is its sole foray into the cartoonish make-believe. He studied politics, so you know that he has 0 capacity to - dare I even suggest it!? - fib.

Sooo, where’d you study animation?

I didn’t! I first went to a community college in central Pennsylvania. It was full of a bunch of cool people - unfortunately not Donald Glover or Alison Brie, but fortunately also not Chevy Chase. Then I went to University of Pittsburgh and studied communications and political science.

Poli- what now?

Yeah... it was the Obama era. I thought “It’s all uphill from here! We’re just riding this political train into the Promised Land!” Reality hit hard. Back then, Jon Favreau was writing Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ speeches, and I was all riled up. I wanted to be a speechwriter.

At one point a local city councilman asked me to write some remarks for him to use on Martin Luther King Day. I was idealistic and had a head full of steam, so I wrote this fiery, passionate stemwinder that drew on self-sacrifice and righteousness. I even referenced "Letter from Birmingham Jail”. The thing was, it was for a pancake breakfast at a rural Pennsylvania fire hall. So, I'm pretty sure he went out and said something like, "Thanks for coming. Go Eagles”. I was young and naive, and didn't realize that every speech didn't have to be "Ask not what your country can do for you ..."

When did you decide to NOT work in politics?

When I met a real life politician. (I laugh) No, really! He was a hometown representative - I’m from the Pennsylvania boonies. And he was a Republican, which was fine; I was just looking for a foot in the door. But when he found out I wasn’t, he asked me if I was a double agent. Like he actually suspected me of being in cahoots with the Dems to get dirt on him! So weird. And then finally, it came down to either an unpaid internship with a politician or a paid gig without a politician, so I chose to get paid.

Chasing that dollar. What was the paid gig?

I started out as a freelance editor for fashion and fitness blogs. The biggest perk - and irony - was that I was working in sweatpants from my couch. I got jobs at some TV and radio stations. At the end of college, I did do one unpaid internship, which was the best free work I ever did. It was at WQED, the PBS affiliate in Pittsburgh where Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was filmed back in the day. They still had a bunch of the sets just hanging around the hallways - and I even got to meet Mr. McFeely, who was exactly as nice as you’d hope. Eventually, I decided to leave Pennsylvania and move to New York, probably for the cheap rent. And I’ve been here ever since, working with mobile games. I even got to visit the old MAD Magazine office when I did a comic with them. It was covered in original art from some of the all-time greats.

What kinda stuff have you done for MAD Mag and others?

For MAD, I did a comic parody called “Captain Red America”. He’s like Captain America but only represents conservative states, so a lot of his enemies are things he doesn’t actually believe in. So, when he fights the super villain Climate Change, Cap can’t fight back because he doesn’t believe in climate change, so it just beats him up. I also did some writing for McSweeneys. They have some of the funniest stuff published anywhere, and I always wanted to write for them. I love doing comics, too, because if I have an idea, I can just put it out there—there aren’t really stakeholders involved. Recently, I just finished a Valentines comic for Bushwick Daily, a local Brooklyn blog, about the types of people you meet on Tinder.

How was transplanting to NYC - did you always want to move there?

Ehhh… I’m one of those unwilling New Yorkers who loves to hate it. The city has its upsides; it’s the best comedy scene. When I first arrived I joined UCB, which I think is mandatory when you move to New York - they just issue you a membership with your MetroCard. I always brag that I got to see Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson perform their Broad City stage show before it became a TV show. I love that community, and part of me wishes I’d have stuck with it longer, but I was getting pulled in a bunch of different directions, including a new job.

Oh yeah? Where at?

At Nickelodeon! I got the opportunity very randomly, about a month after I arrived. My (soon-to-be) boss called two people in for interviews, and I guess all that theatrical training from UCB paid off, because I was able to fake being a functional person long enough for her to hire me. It’s a really fun place to work: talented artists, toys everywhere, and sometimes wide-eyed kids are touring the office or testing games for us and you remember what we’re all doing there. The downside is that we’re in Times Square, so when I venture into the street I’m guaranteed to get a face-full of armpit. But playing video games is part of my job - I produce apps and games related to Nick shows.

That is the Dream. What’s your favorite game you’ve worked on?

Probably TMNT: Legends. We had a tremendous team of real fans, and the game looks great. Plus, I got to go visit Montreal where the team is based. I highly recommend that everyone spend years developing a game with a blockbuster studio, so you can visit, too.

Did you choose the cartoon life, or did the cartoon life choose you?

Wow, I really need to get “Cartoon Life” tattooed across my stomach. It was mutual selection. As a kid, I’d go to my grandma’s house and draw through all the paper she had. I looked up to Sergio Aragones of MAD. I was always drawing in the margins of the handouts at church - that’s the only way I’d sit still. But in high school, I stopped drawing for a bit - I guess I was partying too much, or maybe I just lost all my pencils in one of my oversized neon Tommy Hilfiger jackets. Then, I got back into it in college, drawing editorial comics at my school newspapers. I get inspired by people like Matt Groening. He was grinding out “Life in Hell” for like 40 years - well after he became a TV tycoon with The Simpsons and Futurama - just for the love of it.

How did you come to pitch for GO! Cartoons?

Just a random Google search, looking for places to send some stuff. I only barely met the deadline. I put together a thumbnail pitch and sent it on in.

Did “The Bagheads” change much from pitch through production?

The core story was always a brother and sister arguing over trash take-out. But it fluctuated in length quite a bit. There were a lot parts I added and then we condensed or cut out. There were intros, flashbacks - at some point, probably dragons and ice zombies - a lot did have to be trimmed down. Which was tough, because as you can probably tell, I’m a pretty big blowhard.

Who inspired the Bagheads, and were they always, you know… bag headed?

The Bagheads were always bagheads. As a little kid, I used to doodle baghead people with my brother, who inspired me to start drawing at all. We’d draw the guys from Guns ‘N Roses, but with bags over their heads—I have no idea why, but probably because I was kid who was crappy at drawing and couldn’t draw faces. Anyway, it became a running gag between us, we called them Guns ‘N Baggies. And over the years since, I’d draw those types every now and then -- a muscle baggie, an old baggie, whatever. So when I was getting ready to submit to Frederator, I knew the character’s personalities, but I didn’t know their appearances. So I reached into my childhood and pulled out the Bagheads.

What do you enjoy the most about Elbow and Artemis?

Well, what I enjoyed most about the short in general was working with so many talented people to bring it to life. I gotta give a big shout out to Eric, Kelsey, Michelle, JoJo, Sylvia, Paul, Bill, Kevin, Stephen, our cast and everyone else at Frederator and Salami Studios who made this happen. I did not do this alone - nowhere near it.

As for Artemis and Elbow, I’ve always liked duos with friendly antagonism, like Ren and Stimpy, Bugs and Daffy. Those good-natured conflicts where you’re kinda buddies, but you’re also kinda at each other’s throat. I like that Artemis and Elbow’s personalities create conflict: she’s hyper-competitive, he’s lazy. And then there’s their poor clueless dad, who’s working too much and constantly worried about the safety of his kids but doesn’t realize the biggest danger to them is each other. Those relationships can serve up a lot of fun, simple stories.

What inspired Nuke Man Jones, who’s still pulling off the eternal dunk as we speak?

Harlem Globe Trotters, for sure. They basically have superpowers. I was really looking for things that Elbow might see at a high altitude and I wanted something silly. Nuke Man is stuck up there in Earth’s orbit now, cursed to never complete that dunk like some Sisyphean baller fate.

The billion dollar question: do the Bagheads have bags for heads, or are they wearing bags over regular people heads?

Ya know, I’m gonna opt not to answer that one. The question of the bags can remain an unanswered mystery if it gets a series. It’ll be like The Leftovers for kids.

How about some favorite cartoons?

I mean, my Top 10 would just be The Simpsons, Seasons 1 through 10: that’s my all-time favorite TV, right there. South Park can’t get enough love—those guys have turned out classic after classic, and they’re the smartest gross-out humor in history. Looney Tunes, Ren & Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead - Mike Judge is a genius. Jim Henson and The Muppets, even though it’s not a cartoon; puppets count, right? MAD Magazine stuff like Sergio Aragones features or “Spy vs. Spy,” which was an inspiration for this Bagheads short.

I’m also really inspired by old school newspaper comics. It breaks my heart that they’re disappearing. Calvin and Hobbes is gorgeous and the most inspiring thing to me. I just read the entire series again, and it’s as good as ever. I appreciate that Bill Watterson refused all the licensing and merch deals people wanted to make for it. I read once that he left something like $400 million on the table.

That’s amazing.

Yeah. Once, I made a parody album cover for a local comic shop’s art show, and I made one based off of Notorious BIG’s “Ready to Die” cover: Notorious HOB’s “Ready to Live”. People wanted prints so I started selling them, and then it dawned on me that I was breaking the spirit of Watterson’s anti-commercial stance. So I stopped selling them, and just told people, “Sorry, they’re gone!”

What do you like to do outside of your work*? (*everybody else’s play)

I like to connect with my inner hillbilly - errr, inner hippie - whatever it is. I go to the beach and state parks pretty often. And I love stand-up: I just saw Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, Jeff Ross and Kevin Hart at Radio City Music Hall. It was insane.

What are you working on now?

At the moment, I’m investing all my resources in trying to score “Black Panther” tickets. Otherwise, I'm working on a musical animated series idea with two musician friends, Jeff and Matt. It's really cool and is somewhere between Hamilton and Freaks & Geeks. I'm also working on a comic strip about animals in a post-human world. It's really cartoony, except the president is a photo-realistic opossum whose speeches are just incoherent, ear-piercing screeches. I'm not sure where that falls on the fiction/non-fiction spectrum. So much for giving up politics!

youtube

Great talking with you D.R., thanks for the interview! Looking forward to all of your future endeavors. And I’ll be sure to vote for you if you ever return to politics / being a spy for those wily Pennsylvania Dems.

Everybody: keep up with Phatypus Comics on Facebook and Instagram, @phatypus! And here on Tumblr: @phatypuscomics

- Cooper

#The Frederator Interview #frederator #frederator studios #go! cartoons #interview #cartoon #comic #animation #comics #cartoons #new cartoon #The Bagheads #phatypus #phatypus comics #DR Beitzel

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ive-just-begun-to-care · 6 years

Text

Popularity

Warning: Lengthy essay ahead!

Long-debated questions: Did The Monkees' push for musical stardom hurt their careers? Did it hurt their popularity?

I'm gonna say "no." And now I'm gonna explain why, based on my own observations. (BTW, there's quite a bit of rambling here, because the fans and audiences I'm referring to here are not hard-core fans. Most people I know like The Monkees, but they're not in love with them, like we are. Maybe I've just always lived in a Monkees-deprived part of the world, I don't know. So my observations might be a little skewed. If any of you have had different responses from the fans, please let me know!)

First of all, let's look at the typical man-on-the-street's responses upon hearing the names of each Monkee, without knowing they are Monkees:

Michael Nesmith. "Who?"

Peter Tork. "Who?" or maybe "Did he invent those big paper napkin dispensers in restaurants?"

Micky Dolenz. "The name's kinda familiar..."

Davy Jones. "Oh, yeah, everybody knows him!"

Even people who grew up with them are like this. They may remember the songs, but not so much the guys, or even most of the episodes. Maybe "Fairy Tale" and the Frankenstein's android, but that's it. In fact, I have a friend that has the whole series in her collection, and when she sees Richard Kiel in another show, she's like, "Oh, it's that 'Doo-rah, doo-rah' guy!" And then she asks, "What show was that from, again?" *rolls eyes*

Funny, isn't it? Back in the sixties, so many people- including Davy and, originally Micky- thought the show was more important than the music, but people today remember the music better than the show. So I don't think the Monkees dabblers- the ones who hear a "greatest hits" collection, watch a dozen episodes, and think they've seen it all- or the TV fans- the ones who agree with Davy and Kirshner, that the boys should have just minded their business and concentrated on the show- were ever gonna remember them as anything but four zany guys who could sorta sing and play. It's only the really big fans, the ones that get into the back story and take the time to learn about them, who seem to see them for the talented young men they were. I suppose that's true of any show, and equally true of any group- but the Monkees were both actors and musicians, and there's two different factions in the fandom because of it.

My observation is that the TV fans don't really seem to think of them, at least not all of them, as anything special. My Monkees-watching friend favorably compares Micky to Jerry Lewis, and she sorta appreciates Davy's talent ("he's kinda funny, for an English guy"), but doesn't think Mike is funny at all, and thinks Peter "became" funny as time went on! She also doesn't really like Mike's or Peter's voices. She does, at least, think Peter is very talented musically. In her eyes, Micky is the funniest, Davy was the sweetest in real life- and, BTW, she's seen Daydream Believers, and she believes every word of it- Peter is the best musician, and Mike was nothing but a you-know-what-kind-of-hole. And I seem to get similar reactions from other fans. And from the ones who have only ever heard the songs, I get all those "Who?" responses I mentioned above.

And I've had TV fans ask me, "Well, what have they done since that was so great?" Everybody remembers Davy on The Brady Bunch. Some younger people remember the Boy Meets World episodes. I mention that Micky was turned down for the role of Fonzie, and then later became a director in England, and they're like, "Oh, well, that's what happens when you get typecast." I say that I heard Peter went broke and became an algebra teacher, and they're like, "Well, he wasn't that great of a singer, anyway." And I mention all the things Mike's done, and I get, "Oh, so he couldn't stick with anything, huh? Nobody liked his music? So all that garbage he pulled in the sixties didn't get him anywhere, did it?" And at that point, I give up. You can't make people listen. And then if they know anything of their personal lives- well, never mind. I'm not here to discuss the hypocrites in the fandom.

Now, can we just take an honest look at the way the television world works? Mike and Peter were never going to big-name TV stars, and if the world didn't like their music, then "The Monkees" was going to be the only thing they were known for. Excellent actors that they were, they were primarily musicians. If "The Monkees" had lasted ten seasons, and all four boys had stuck it out that long, the world in general still would not have remembered them as anything but their TV personas. They had no ambitions of becoming leading men or sitcom stars; they just wanted respect for their music, especially Michael. TV, especially a crazy sitcom, was never going to give them that.

As proof of this, let's look at what "The Monkees" did for Micky. He was typecast so bad, he could hardly get any other acting jobs after that. And nothing serious. To quote Daffy Duck, "You're typecasting me to death! Comedy, always comedy! 'Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Yak-yak!'" Come on, anybody that can do crazy comedy that well can do serious drama, too. Like, one of my favorite Robin Williams movies is Bicentennial Man. But for some reason, nobody ever gave Micky that chance. He couldn't even get into comedies! He had to go to England and start directing, and we lost a wonderfully talented actor. Thanks a lot, Hollywood.

You wanna know what I think is the real reason everyone remembers Davy? Cuz he was so darned cute. No, really! Talk to anybody that's not a huge fan like us. They can't tell you a single one of Davy's lines, not even "little metal bottle caps" or "you must be joking" (well, maybe they remember that one). They know "Daydream Believer" and the stars-in-the-eyes. That's about it. And they usually complain because every other episode is about Davy falling in love. But they still remember him for it. It was his sex appeal that sold him to the public, because that's the way the producers worked it out. So even if he did become the most well-known, it was still a raw deal, because it was for the wrong reason. Look at the Brady Bunch episode. He got to sing, and Marcia was in love with him because he was cute. His looks and his musical talent- but no recognition of his acting talent or respect for him as a member of The Monkees. (I mean, if they respected the Monkees, might not they have brought Micky in on another episode, considering how popular the Davy episode was?)

So, in answer to my original question- no, the music did not hurt their careers or their popularity. Their acting careers did fizzle out, not because of their mistakes, but because they were Monkees. It was gonna happen. That's just the fate of a sitcom star, especially a one-of-a-kind sitcom like theirs. Reminds me of what Don Adams said- "I was gonna be completely typed as 'Get Smart,'" and he was. Bob Denver was Gilligan, Fran Drescher is The Nanny, Vicki Lawrence is Mama- they get into these larger-than-life characters and they have so much trouble getting back out. And the exact same thing happened to the Monkees.

The main problem with the music is, I think, the fact that The Monkees WERE born out of a TV show. People don't take them seriously. "Oh, they were a group on a show. They were just supposed to tour to promote the show. The music was cool, but it didn't mean anything on its own." At least, that's the reaction I usually run across. Because of that, they were never gonna get respect for their music, unless they did push to be seen as a legitimate band. If the general public knows them for anything, it's usually their music that comes to mind. I asked somebody if they remembered the TV show "The Monkees," and he broke into "I'm a Believer." It's the music that sticks in people's heads. So you know what? I think the push for musical fame may actually have helped them.

We'll never know for sure. This is just how I see it. And, like I said, my views are skewed because I run across so many people who hate The Monkees (or at least, Mike and Peter), or who think of them as only a TV show, or who know nothing about them, or who just plain don't understand them and don't really want to, either. It's only online that I've been able to find people who can actually remember more than just a handful of episodes, and who actually still listen to their albums. I thank all of you for supporting my love of the best group of musicians and mayhem-makers in the world, and I would once again like to invite you to share your opinions and your experiences within the fandom.

#monkees #mike nesmith #micky dolenz #davy jones #peter tork #my opinion

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glapplebloom · 6 years

Photo

With next week being Christmas, I figured now would be a good time to settle which of these two versions of the Christmas Carol is my favorite.

On the left side, we have Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. It is a surprisingly close to the original source story with additional music added. On the right side, the more recent Bah, Humduck: A Looney Tunes Christmas which is a more modern take of the story. So which of these two are my favorite?

Round 1 - Opening

The thing they both have in common is that the story begins with the Scrooge showing no interest in Christmas, harassing their employee and demanding them to work on Christmas despite wanting to take it off.

Mr. Magoo begins with the reveal that this is actually a play on Broadway. We get our first musical number with some classic Mr. Magoo comedy. Only the opening and closing will contain this kind of comedy, as the rest of the play will be a straight forward affair. While cutting a bit to keep it short while adding songs, it is pretty close to the original story. The second song is a duet with Scrooge and Bob Cratchit as one sings about gold and the other about it being cold.

Bah, Humduck begins as this is actually taking place. As I said, it modernizes it. Daffy (our Scrooge of the movie) owns a giant Superstore and instead of one employee to harass, we have an entire staff. Most of your favorite Looney Tunes work in this store with the exception of one: Bugs Bunny. He doesn’t add much to the story in comparison to everyone else. He’s just Bugs being Bugs, not getting the suffering the others get and one upping Daffy with no negative consequences to him. I will be ignoring him for the rest of the movie.

Winner: Magoo. I’m giving this to that one because it sets up everything that is going to happen. You see that it’ll contain music, be like a play, and how it’ll follow the original story. The flaw with Daffy’s version (outside Bugs) is that its still going on by the time the first ghost shows up.

Magoo: 1 | Daffy: 0

Round 2 - The Messenger

Like the original, a messenger arrives before the three spirits. It happens to be a person Scrooge knows and they try to warn him that if he doesn’t change their ways, he will be just like them but worse.

Mr. Magoo doesn’t believe it is a ghost at first because it could have been a trick in the eyes. But once he does believe he begins to cower. This ghost also shows him the other spirits floating outside just like him. But when he leaves, he believes it was just his imagination.

Bah, Humduck first change is that Sylvester wasn’t a business partner but someone Daffy idolized. Sylvester died last Christmas because an employee squashed him with a forklift nine times. While Daffy defends his points, he does cower the moment he sees Sylvester, even trying to escape. Despite the warning, Daffy continues to be Scroogy.

Winner: Daffy. Magoo’s version was short and straight to the point, but the changes Daffy’s made was more enjoyable. Having Sylvester being the Messenger was pretty good idea since he could be like Daffy when it comes to being greedy.

Magoo: 1 | Daffy: 1

Round 3 - The First Ghost

Normally in the Christmas Carol, the first ghost shows up to show Scrooge visions to hopefully begin his transformation into good.

Mr. Magoo follows the book and begins with the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows Scrooge the Cratchit House. This also contains my favorite song of this version in The Lord's Bright Blessing (though I like the reprise version more). Tiny Tim in this version is being played by Gerald McBoing-Boing, who actually speaks instead of saying Boing Boing.

Bah, Humduck actually goes with a more logical order and begins with the Ghost of Christmas Past. Played by Granny Smith with Tweety on hand. They first begin to BEAT Daffy for being a bad person. After that, they go back to the past to Daffy’s childhood. In an Orphanage, on Christmas, he was hoping to be picked to become someone’s kid (using the Baby Looney Tunes design) but never getting pick. It affected him so badly, the Superstore’s name is the Lucky Duck. And despite seeing all this, Daffy tries to bargain with the Ghosts to use this power to bet on a horse and make lots of money.

I’ll save the points giving after this, since they are two different ghosts.

Round 4 - The Second Ghost

Second verse, same as the first. But not exactly the same.

Mr. Magoo now has the past which, again, follows the book. It shows his childhood in school with a really touching song. It also showed his old job and how his boss was like to him. And finally how his relationship ended. This part also contained a pointless song according to MusicMovies and I do have to agree. It felt like it was added there just to have one more song. The scene ends with the Ghost flying away laughing like someone evil.

Bah, Humduck gets their Present now, and its Yosemite Sam. Funny thing to note, he was the original Scrooge when they tried to make a Christmas Carol before. But as the Ghost of Christmas Present, he first proceeds to beat up Daffy. He then goes on to show Daffy all the employees and how they are reacting to his abuse. He still fights off the change, but Porky’s daughter (Priscilla) seems to really affect him.

Winner: For Ghost of Past, I am giving it to Daffy’s. While it was short, I personally think it hit the heart stings more effectively. It also didn’t show that Scrooge was already beginning to turn, making the final ghost unnecessary. And not to mention Granny Smith seems a lot nicer than the Magoo Version

For Ghost of Present, that will be with Magoo’s. Precilla’s scene was sweet, but the others kind of weighted it down.

Magoo: 2 | Daffy: 2

Round 5 - The Final Ghost

The final ghost shows that Scrooge will die if he doesn’t change his ways.

Mr. Magoo begins like the book of Scrooge overhearing that someone died but not figuring out its him. Then he sees people raiding the poor dead guy’s stuff to get money. This begins the last original song that is memorable but really pointless. It also shows that Tiny Tim died and finally his grave. With these visions, he vows to keep Christmas true in his heart. It ends with a reprise of the song from the Christmas Past that was touching.

Bah, Humduck begins Bugs “trying to hide” Daffy but proving ineffective. The Ghost (played by Taz) shows that Daffy died, taking all his money and making it so his employees are now unemployed. Seeing all this, he promised to change his ways like the other Scrooge. But in a different take, Precilla doesn’t die like Tiny Tim does. She says a goodbye to Daffy and promises to visit him every Christmas so he wouldn’t be alone. This truly moved him and makes it seem like a true sincere change.

Winner: I’m giving this to Daffy. While Bugs ruins it for me, Precilla’s speech trumped the two songs.

Magoo: 2 | Daffy: 3

Round 6 - The Ending

With the Ghost’s messages working and done in one night, Scrooge makes it so those who suffered because of him will not suffer again.

Mr. Magoo once again follows the book getting a big bird for the Cratchits, making Bob a partner, and ending the play with two reprises. The movie ends with one last Mr. Magoo joke.

Bah, Humduck ends with Daffy getting everything his employees always wanted (vacation time, going back home, stuff for their kid, etc). But seeing all this be begins to relapse into his old ways. But before he could change the story from a Christmas Carol to the Grinch, Precilla comes up with a symbolic reminder why he wanted to change in the first place.

Winner: I’m giving this to Daffy. One flaw with the original story is that the change to Scrooge seems more like a scared straight situation than an actual real change. While Magoo kept true, Daffy’s version change it so it seems more true. Death is inevitable. No amount of good or bad will change that. But like Precilla showed, its better to give them a chance to change instead of trying to force it.

Magoo: 2 | Daffy: 4

Winner: Bah, Humduck

I can now confirm my favorite version of the Christmas Carol is of Bah, Humduck. Ignoring Animation quality (since Magoo was done in the 60s), they both did a fine job at telling the story. Ultimately, I feel Bah, Humduck made changes that ultimately benefited in the long run. Outside Bugs’ pointlessness to the story, everyone’s roles were perfect. And despite Precilla wanting a doll over Tiny Tim being sick, I was more invested in her than with Tim.

But for everyone, Happy Holidays and I hope you can enjoy your favorite version of the Christmas Carol.

#Other Reviews

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kscmerrywives · 5 years

Video

youtube

It would be inaccurate to call Get Smart TV’s first cult comedy, because there are numerous series fitting that description that precede it or aired simultaneously to it. But look a little more closely at the run of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry’s daffy spy spoof, and the series starts to look slightly more like any one of a number of low-rated, critically beloved series that have struggled their way to 100 episodes over the medium’s history. Its humor was less broad than the standard television comedy and was based in audiences knowing something of what it was talking about. The series’ run capped out at five seasons, and it only got there because of some combination of goodwill and pluck. Get Smart probably should have been canceled after its second season, but it hung on, and it eventually became a television classic. But it was decidedly a near thing.

Get Smart’s primary reason for existence was to offer a goofy spoof of James Bond, the most popular pop culture touchstone of the mid-’60s world the sitcom arose out of. The show was launched in the shadow of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., a fellow spy series with a streak of whimsy, but Get Smart quickly ran toward the humorous side of things, more so than anything resembling a real spy story. There were missions of the week, and the agents at the center of the show went on adventures, but these stories were often taken wholesale from books or movies, the better to simply give everyone room to riff on pop culture tropes and come up with the silliest possible gags and gadgets. Take, for instance, an early spoof of Murder On The Orient Express, which takes the idea of murders happening onboard the famous train to provide the actors with the opportunity for wacky jokes and slapstick.

That first season was likely the height of Get Smart’s cultural influence. It landed at 12th place in the Nielsen ratings, building solidly off the programs that preceded it and beating out its chief timeslot competition, The Lawrence Welk Show. Reviews were largely kind—though the show had its detractors—and when it came time for the Emmys, the program received four nominations, including nominations for Brooks and Henry’s pilot script, “Mr. Big,” and for the series itself. The show would spend its first four seasons as an Emmy mainstay, eventually winning two comedy series trophies for its third and fourth seasons and winning three consecutive trophies for best actor in a comedy for series star Don Adams.

It was Adams who pulled all of the disparate tones of Get Smart together, who kept it from being just a weekly spoof of spy movies. His Maxwell Smart isn’t a particularly deep character—it’s difficult to imagine him having complex or thought-provoking layers—but he is a surprisingly effective spy, at least in terms of his stats. Smart usually gets his man, or, more properly, other people get Smart’s man, and he gets the credit for it. Adams was a master of slapstick and the deadpan, using his unique, nasal voice to underline the ridiculousness of the series with a weird combination of silliness and gravitas. Everybody else at CONTROL, the spy organization Smart works for, is aware that he’s mostly a buffoon, but they keep giving him jobs. The show exploits this tension marvelously, turning the idea of Max Smart being the only man who can save the day into something ripe with comedic potential. How will things go wrong this episode? And how will they go right in the next? The best sitcoms use formula as a way to guide the audience through the story, to make the laughs ebb and flow exactly when they need to. Get Smart uses formula as one of the primary antagonists; Maxwell Smart is going to save the day somehow, but along the way, everybody else will be humorously inconvenienced.

All of these elements are present in the pitch-perfect pilot episode, even if one of the series’ most notable elements—its brightly colored, surprisingly beautiful aesthetic—is buried under a swath of black and white. But Adams’ expertly modulated performance is there, as is the exasperation everyone who works with him feels toward him. So are the series’ weird gadgets and visual gags, the sorts of funny objects Brooks would return to and perfect in his ’70s film work. There’s, of course, the Cone Of Silence, one of the best TV visual jokes of all time, and there’s the shoe phone, the show’s most famous gadget.

Get Smart gradually fell down the ratings charts as it went on. In its second season, it tumbled to 22nd place for the year, and by season three—ironically, when the series won its first comedy series Emmy—it had fallen out of the top 30 altogether. Its renewal by NBC was far from a sure thing in both cases, yet it kept coming back somehow, because the show had become one of the biggest critical hits of the day with an obsessive fan base that devoured all the knowledge it could glean about the series’ increasingly complicated mythology and the different agents who worked for CONTROL and its evil counterpart, KAOS (only slightly disguised versions of the CIA and KGB).

After its fourth season (and second comedy series Emmy), the comedy was canceled by NBC, but CBS picked it up for a largely misbegotten fifth season that pushed the episode total to 138. Get Smart’s legacy actually proved more lasting than the show itself. It was exactly the sort of program that kids would gobble up in afternoon syndication, so it hung around in that fashion long enough to prompt legions of new fans, enough fans to eventually prompt some absolutely awful spin-offs, like the theatrical film The Nude Bomb and a mid-’90s revival with Andy Dick as the son of Max and 99.

But maybe the true legacy of Get Smart lies in where this piece began: in the idea that for at least a subset of viewers (albeit a small one), there’s great value in a sitcom that perpetuates itself and the sitcom form, a series that is constantly delving into its own interiors to find new things to mock and make fun of. Get Smart may not have been the most sophisticated sitcom in the history of television, but it used its weird parts to build something that proved lasting and sly, something that had far more to say about the world it took place in than it seemed to, and something that people continued to watch for decades afterward precisely because of all of those qualities.

(Source: https://tv.avclub.com/get-smart-invented-the-sitcom-mythology-1798265602)

#get smart #overview

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

Link

It has not been a great year for television so far.

There have been plenty of treats, to be sure, and even some real treasures. But compared to the way 2017 seemed to haul out new classics with astonishing regularity (to the degree that I couldn’t rank them when it came time to make a list), 2018 has featured a lot of shows where my recommendation comes with a caveat, or where I love it but plenty of my critical comrades despise it, or something like that.

This is fine, in many ways. TV criticism was defined too long by the idea that there were a simple handful of good shows, and critics could mostly agree on them. It’s exciting to get away from that era in some way, to argue about if Westworld is magnificent or malarkey, to discuss whether The Handmaid’s Tale is incisive or exploitative.

But it also means lists like these require far more grains of salt than they might have in the past. So here, presented alphabetically, are 24 TV shows from the first half of 2018 that I gave four stars or more and that have stuck around in my memory in the time since they aired. I hope you like them! But maybe you won’t! And since the TV year typically features more good shows in its first half than its second (due to the Emmys falling in September), my year-end list will likely feature almost all of these shows.

(A few caveats: I typically use the summer to catch up on stuff I missed, so some shows that aren’t here almost certainly will be come December. And I’ve tried to limit this to shows that aired six or more episodes in 2018 so far, cutting out some other favorites. I’ve made a list of things that missed due to one or the other of these caveats at the bottom of this article.)

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One of the best final seasons I’ve ever seen, the last 10 episodes of The Americans circled back to what the spy drama had always been about — whether this unlikely marriage between two KGB spies pretending to be ordinary Americans could survive all of the things threatening to rip it apart. The series finale is a pitch-perfect cap to six years of bleak but beautiful television.

How to watch it: The Americans is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Amazon Prime.

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The second installment of American Crime Story after 2016’s The People vs. O. J. Simpson was less immediately arresting. But its depiction of ’90s America is just as impressive, tracing the circuitous route of serial killer Andrew Cunanan backward from his most famous victim through a gay scene struggling not to be forced back in the closet. Darren Criss’s work as Cunanan is masterful.

How to watch it: American Crime Story is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Netflix.

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Donald Glover’s laconically loopy trip through the titular city grew bolder and more confident in its second season, as the characters endlessly debated ideas of what it means to be “fake” versus “real.” The season’s standout was the darkly funny horror tale “Teddy Perkins,” about the legacies of child abuse, but every episode stands as a pitch-perfect, beautifully honed gem.

How to watch it: Atlanta is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be on Hulu.

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So far, 2018 has been a year of uneasy comedies, of stories that are ostensibly funny but hide something dark and sad at their core. No “comedy” embraced this idea more than Barry, about a hitman who would be an actor, played by Bill Hader. The show is terrifically funny, especially in its depiction of the fringes of show business, but what sticks with you is Barry’s inability to change.

How to watch it: Barry is available for digital purchase, or on HBO’s streaming platforms.

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A riotous trip through the deleterious effects of income inequality, Billions had its best, most cutting season this year, as the show blew up its own premise (by burying the investigation that had always been at its center), then spent the rest of its season vamping for time by digging into the ways those with money and power seem utterly oblivious to those without those qualities in the 2010s.

How to watch it: Billions is available for digital purchase, or on Showtime’s streaming platforms.

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You like fish? This has so many fish!

How to watch it: Blue Planet II is available for digital purchase, or on BBC America’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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A deeply funny dark comedy about the cost of working for a terrible company, Corporate is one of the most visually audacious shows of the year, turning the workplace comedy into an excuse to indulge in gray, chilly frames, in the style of David Fincher. Somehow, that only makes the jokes, about the dehumanization inherent in trying to hold down a corporate job, even funnier.

How to watch it: Corporate is available for digital purchase, or on Comedy Central’s streaming platforms.

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For whatever reason, 2018 has been full of terrific spy dramas, but this one seemed to get a bit lost in the shuffle. Starring Oscar winner J.K. Simmons, it tells the story of a world that split in two late in the Cold War, with the second universe, initially a copy of our own, slowly becoming more and more different. Forget just having one great J.K. Simmons performance. Counterpart had two.

How to watch it: Counterpart is available for digital purchase, or on Starz’s streaming platforms.

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This satirical comedy, set on the campus of a predominantly white college, but focusing primarily on the school’s black students, hit another level in its second season. The show crystallizes Trump-era racism — just a new face on a very old American horror — through its storytelling and especially its visuals. The eighth episode, structured as one long conversation, is a marvel.

How to watch it: Dear White People is available on Netflix.

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I include the “season one” here in hopes that it’s unnecessary. Netflix has made noise about following up this dark British comedy with a second season, but doing so would be self-defeating, as this first season tells its story so perfectly that to tack on more would feel wrong. So watch this gem of a miniseries about a teenage sociopath and the girl he can’t bring himself to kill before it gets all screwed up.

How to watch it: The End of the F***ing World is available on Netflix.

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The space-faring political drama tightened the screws and ratcheted up the tension in its third installment, which collapses a full novel and a half from the book series it’s based on into a single season of television. Complete with memorable guest arcs from David Strathairn and Elizabeth Mitchell, the series finally dug into the true nature of the mysterious alien presence in our solar system.

How to watch it: The Expanse is available for digital purchase, or on Syfy’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Amazon Prime.

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The comedy about women wrestlers and the basic cable TV show that broadcast them to the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area has a bit more sprawl than it knew what to do with in its second season. But the show is so open-hearted and generous to its characters that it doesn’t matter. Its stories of women navigating men’s spaces and womanhood as a kind of performance make for riveting television.

How to watch it: GLOW is available on Netflix.

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Already brutal and bruising, The Handmaid’s Tale became even more so in its second season. It removed some of the cold comforts of the first season to examine how living in a totalitarian society inevitably means that you become complicit in at least some of its horrors, even as those horrors are being visited upon you. Elisabeth Moss and Yvonne Strahovski are fantastic as they navigate a society set up to oppress them.

How to watch it: The Handmaid’s Tale is available on Hulu.

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This stand-up set is a must-see, as Australian comedian Gadsby sets up a long series of punchlines that then resolve into a complete deconstruction of jokes and who gets to tell them in a society filled with fatal power imbalances. It’s funny, yes, but also filled with a scorching fury that finally resolves in a sense that to do better, we have to tear apart every assumption we have.

How to watch it: Hannah Gadsby: Nanette is available on Netflix.

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I’ve always enjoyed this rural noir about two best friends who solve strange mysteries in and around the American South. But the third season, which features the two of them taking on the Klan, felt like the show turning a corner into its examination of how much America is defined by its gruesome past and how little any of us are willing to pay attention to that. Naturally, Sundance canceled it after the season aired.

How to watch it: Hap and Leonard is available for digital purchase, or on Sundance’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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The CW’s daffy and inventive telenovela has always been some of my favorite TV comfort food. But in its fourth season, it somehow became something even more, leaning into storylines that underlined the show’s themes of family, perseverance, and love. It’s rare for a TV show to do a “character might have cancer” arc that doesn’t feel like a cheat, but Jane more than pulled it off.

How to watch it: Jane the Virgin is available for digital purchase, or on Netflix. Some episodes are available on the CW’s website.

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Here’s another terrific spy drama, this one focused on a bored spy (Sandra Oh) who finds herself intrigued — and then maybe even more — by her new quarry, a mysterious assassin (Jodie Comer). Killing Eve takes tropes you’ve seen a million times and makes them feel new again, and it’s the first TV show in ages to remind me of my beloved, dearly departed Hannibal.

How to watch it: Killing Eve is available for digital purchase, or on BBC America’s streaming platforms.

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The Looming Tower is dry and occasionally impenetrable. But I ended up loving the way this miniseries about the build-up to 9/11 slowly but surely built its case for how US intelligence agencies failed to spot what was right in front of them, leading to one of the biggest tragedies to ever occur on American soil. It’s not an argument for more intelligence work; it’s an argument for smarter intelligence work that remains relevant to this day.

How to watch it: The Looming Tower is available on Hulu.

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The middle stretch of this season reeled off classic episodes, like the show was in a groove it was never going to leave. What’s more, those episodes are all so recognizable as episodes — from a magic-inflected hour of short stories to a musical — that it became hard not to get caught up in the inventiveness. And the series’s emotional core about sad 20-something magicians trying to bring back the thing that makes them sad (magic) remains rock solid.

How to watch it: The Magicians is available for digital purchase, or on Syfy’s streaming platforms. It will eventually be available on Netflix.

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The second season of the remake of the 1970s sitcom of the same name is perhaps the most joyful show of the year, as the Alvarez family at its center struggles through life in these United States with heart and hope. You’ll see few TV performances as terrific this year as the work of Justina Machado and Rita Moreno, as a mother and daughter who are never defined by their conflicts.

How to watch it: One Day at a Time is available on Netflix.

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Ryan Murphy’s final series for FX (before leaving for Netflix) is this delightful, warm ’80s period piece about drag ball culture of the era and the idea of found families among people all across the LGBT spectrum. In particular, the show tells stories about trans women like few TV shows ever have, allowing them to have full lives and desires beyond their transition narratives.

How to watch it: Pose is available for digital purchase, or on FX’s streaming platforms.

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My favorite workplace comedy had maybe its best season with its third run, which both deepens the show’s interest in social issues (including age discrimination, something few TV shows would even think to touch) and also serves as a master class in how to spin romantic and sexual tension across an entire season of a TV series. When all of its stories came together in the finale, it felt almost magical.

How to watch it: Superstore is available for digital purchase, on NBC’s site, or on Hulu.

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More than 100 men sail into the Arctic in the mid-1800s, sure they’ll win glory for the British crown by discovering the Northwest Passage. None of them return, and this miniseries (the first in a new anthology series under the banner of The Terror), based on a Dan Simmons novel, imagines what might have happened to them, utilizing both historical research and a mighty monster to tell its tale. It’s grim and unrelenting but also starkly beautiful.

How to watch it: The Terror is available for digital purchase, or on AMC’s streaming platforms.

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Two sisters return to their Los Angeles neighborhood in the wake of their mother’s death, then vow to keep the bar she ran open to preserve their neighborhood in the face of gentrification. This lively half-hour drama examines ideas of identity, sexuality, and class consciousness, but never in a way that feels didactic. Instead, it offers heart, humor, and a touch of magical realism.

How to watch it: Vida is available for digital purchase, or on Starz’s streaming platforms.

The Good Fight CBS All Access

12 Monkeys and Channel Zero are other Syfy treats I’ve highly recommended in the past, but I’ve been able to catch up with neither so far. The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend technically aired six episodes in 2018 (exactly six), but I really want to see where it’s going with its current story arc. CBS All Access’s The Good Fight is one I just haven’t caught up with yet, to the consternation of my friends. NBC’s The Good Place will surely be on my year-end list but only aired five episodes in 2018 so far. I loved HBO’s The Tale, a searing story about the aftermath of sexual abuse, but it already made our “best movies of 2018 so far” list. And someday I will finish Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, but I liked what I saw.

Original Source -> The 24 best TV shows of 2018 so far

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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nathanielwharton · 6 years

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My 2017 in Pop Culture

Same deal as usual. This is what meant most to me last year in pop culture.

Top Forty Things From 2017

40. The Mummy I liked it. It's definitely got the worked-over vibe that people most object to in these shared-universe experiments, and it goes a little bigger and more action-heavy than I'd probably prefer for a Universal Monster movie. But, I liked the way it fused a modern Tom Cruise narrative with a traditional monster story. I liked the genuine horror movie flourishes throughout. I liked the winks at monster fans in the Prodigium headquarters. I loved Sofia Boutella's Ahmanet. And I loved Russell Crowe's silly/creepy thug Mr. Hyde. This one also got bonus points for The Mummy: Dark Universe Stories, the iPhone game that came out a month after the film. The story plays out a sequel to the movie, but the real nerdy thrill of it was the way it incorporated a bunch of original Universal Monsters characters and ideas, including Lisa Glendon from Werewolf of London and Kharis and Boris Karloff's Ardeth Bay from the original Mummy movies! 39. Baby Driver This was just a delight, a combination of classic crime movie and classic musical with that Edgar Wright energy giving it that extra nitrous burst of excitement. 38. "Every Country Has a Monster" on Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return I'm one of those fans who loved Mystery Science Theater 3000 when he stumbled across it on cable in the 90s but has a little trouble with the way it gave license to a certain sourness and superiority about older movies among some audiences. Still, I found myself looking forward to the revival with a little trepidation as to whether it would find the right tone (or recapture the lo-fi public access charm of the original). The first twenty minutes or so of the first episode back (focused on the Danish giant monster movie Reptilicus, so they were doing well by me right off the bat) were pretty promising, but this song about giant monsters of myth across the world was where I decided I was on board for this revival. 37. Happy Death Day What a fun time this was! It's got a really charming lead performance and a fun story hook, but it's really the energy and inventiveness that it applies to slasher movie/Groundhog Day story of self-improvement that put it over the top for me. 36. John Wick Chapter 2/Free Fire/Atomic Blonde Hard to pick from among the three of these in terms of which action movie I had the most fun with this year. They've all got something special to recommend them. 35. The Scariest Story Ever: A Mickey Mouse Halloween This doesn't quite scale the heights of last year's Duck the Halls Christmas special, but it was still a funny, thoroughly delightful seasonal treat that I'll probably make a point of watching next October too. 34. My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol. 1 I checked it out because I'd read it was a comic about a 10-year-old girl who was obsessed with monsters (picturing herself as a little wolfman) who tries to solve the murder of her neighbor. What I got was a moving story about historical injustice and personal revelation told with dazzling illustration. Really, this knocked me out. 33. Gemini/Murder on the Orient Express I think Gemini is actually going to be a 2018 release, but these two mystery films really scratched an itch for me this year. I was a big fan of director Aaron Katz's Cold Weather, a wonderful little mumblecore mystery story, but I wasn't prepared for how much I dug his twisty neo-noir, Gemini. And Murder on the Orient Express was kind of a similarly satisfying experience on the other end of the spectrum: a lavish, big-budget adaptation with a cast stocked with movie stars and exciting up-and-comers. I loved it, and now I'm all about seeing Branagh continue to work on his little proposed Agatha Christie universe. #thirtyBranaghPoirotmovies 32. Okja It's a new Bong Joon-ho film! That means it's got a bunch of thrilling filmmaking, wild performances, tricky tonal shifts, and a beautifully clear-eyed honest empathy. 31. The Get Down Season One, Part Two I was sorry to see this one cancelled after the still thrilling but also melancholy second half came out this year. I really fell in love with these characters, and it was always an exciting experience. And this was just one of the many Netflix shows I really loved this year (including Mindhunter, BoJack Horseman, Lady Dynamite, GLOW, Orange is the New Black, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). 30. The ending of Split I loved the rest of Split, and I was already onboard the M. Night Shyamalan comeback train from The Visit (after riding like five movies on the “oh no, he’s lost it so bad!” train). But those surprising final moments of Split, while holding the potential for another dive into disastrous hubris, made me straight up gasp out loud in confusion & delight.

29. The Samurai Jack Revival/Finale I enjoyed a lot of the original run of Samurai Jack, but I wasn’t exactly a devoted viewer & hadn’t particularly missed it in its absence. So I checked out the revival largely just to see what the great Genndy Tartakovsky would to with it after spending time on other projects. And wow! It turned out not only to be a truly gorgeous & riveting experience, but it also took the characters & elements of the original & gave them some interesting psychology & moral challenges. 28. Nathan for You’s "Finding Frances" I love Nathan For You, but this year’s season finale, “Finding Frances,” was probably the most interesting thing he’s done with the format. In some ways it’s basically Nathan For You: The Movie, finding a sprawling emotional journey, still filled with nutball comic cul de sacs, that also digs into the “Nathan” character & finds a new place to take him by the end. 27. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events Season One I figured I’d check out the first season, despite the fact that it would mostly be covering the same material covered in the totally decent Jim Carrey movie, because I was interested to see Barry Sonnenfield finally get a shot at the material & because I wanted to see what they’d do with the later books. But from the first moments with Patrick Warburton’s Serling-esque take on Lemony Snicket (and that infectious theme song) I fell in love with the show. The cast is great, the adaptation work is clever and involving (including an ingenious side story with Will Arnett & Cobie Smulders that seems brilliantly designed to provide different-but-complementary experiences for fans and non-fans), and I stress again how much I loved Warburton. There’s also a wonderful flourish in the season finale that amped my love into adoration. 26. A Cure For Wellness If Gore Verbinski can keep getting people to give him huge budgets to make big, weird genre films about the rot at the center of capitalism and western civilization, I will keep seeing them and (presumably) loving them. 25. Opening sequence of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets The rest of the movie is a colorful bit of fun, but the opening sequence where we see, via montage, the establishment and development of the titular city of a thousand planets, is as sublime and moving a movie moment as any I saw this year. Thrillingly optimistic and hopeful, Besson briefly hits on something more than his usual enjoyably daffy nonsense. 24. Final seasons of The Leftovers & Vice Principals Two HBO shows I loved aired their final seasons this year. Both of them had set themselves up with particularly tricky tasks in providing satisfying resolutions without either ruining the mystique of what had come before or pulling their punches in a way that impacted the whole. And they both nailed it. 23. A Ghost Story I wrote about this one for SportsAlcohol.com. I found it bewitching and it stayed with me. 22. Star Trek: Discovery It was a long wait, but this new Star Trek show pretty immediately justified my subscription to yet another streaming service all on its own. I love the characters, I’m engrossed in the storytelling, and I’m challenged by the moral and intellectual ideas it’s exploring. Good Star Trek. (This also may as well be where I mention that I also watched, and pretty much enjoyed, the whole first season of Seth Macfarlane’s generic brand Trek cover, The Orville. Pretty well scratches whatever old school Trek itch Discovery could have left me with.) 21. Wormwood I love most everything of his that I’ve seen, but this is basically in competition with Tabloid for my favorite Errol Morris project.

20. Gorogoa Feels almost silly that I found what basically amounts to a puzzle game for my phone so entrancing & even spiritual. But I LOVED this thing. My only complaint is that it wished it kept going and going. 19. DuckTales Wrote about this for SportsAlcohol.com. A testament to how delightful this show is can be found in the fact that I put it in this slot instead of the also hugely enjoyable Milo Murphy’s Law. 18. Marvel Cinematic Universe While this year I definitely cooled on the Marvel television offerings (I still watched and enjoyed the Netflix shows despite some underwhelmed feelings, and I'm still pretty high on Agents of SHIELD, but Inhumans was a total misfire), it was perhaps the best year yet for Marvel Studios's cinematic offerings. I totally loved Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor Ragnarok. They each offered something fairly distinct and emotionally engaging (even Ragnarok, despite it's hilariously cheeky tone) and they were all a complete blast. Best Guardians yet, best Spider-man yet, best Thor yet! 17. Lady Bird Between 2016’s Edge of Seventeen and this, guess I’m gonna hope for a wonderful teen girl coming-of-age movie every other year. And thanks to Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and the idiosyncratic empathy of Greta Gerwig, this one was a true highlight of 2017. 16. Get Out The terrific horror-themed sketches on Key & Peele suggested a genuine feel for the genre, so it wasn’t a huge reach to expect Jordan Peele’s directorial debut horror movie to turn out well. But this one still felt like a revelation at the beginning of the year (not to mention a huge event when seen with an audience). 15. Your Name Another wonderful surprise, this one makes some clever and twisty shifts as what starts out as a charming body-switching comedy reveals an emotional core that really swept me away. 14. War for the Planet of the Apes I wrote about this one for SportsAlcohol.com. 13. Blade Runner 2049 I also wrote about this one for SportsAlcohol.com. 12. The Post I wrote about this for SportsAlcohol.com too! 11. Coco Look, I’m generally less excited about Pixar’s sequels than I am about its originals (and I generally really like or love their sequels! but still...), and Coco is a perfect example of why. It’s a great story with a bunch of lovable new characters, beautiful new worlds, and the fun of seeing something new. And as is often the case, it also packs a real emotional wallop. 10. S-Town Speaking of emotional wallops, this podcast miniseries was already shaping up to be an involving look at a fascinating character, but a bombshell dropped in an early episode spins the thing into something deeper and more powerful than anything else I listened to this year.

9. Colossal Wrote about this for SportsAlcohol.com. 8. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel While this show has many things that set it apart from the other Amy Sherman-Palladino shows I love (namely Gilmore Girls & Bunheads), it does share the qualities of being unstoppably effervescent and entertaining while offering hidden depths. We gulped the whole season down in two plane rides and can’t wait for the next batch. 7. Star Wars: The Last Jedi Wrote about the movie on SportsAlcohol.com. It was another good Star Wars year in general, with some excellent Star Wars Rebels episodes, the continuation of the fantastic Marvel comics, and some cool novels (generally I didn't read any bad Star Wars books this year, so that's good; personal highlights were Aftermath: Empire's End and Leia: Princess of Alderaan). But the real highlight was, of course, the movie. It was a joyful, powerful experience opening night (in a way that felt interestingly different from the experience of The Force Awakens), and it’s a movie that has lingered and deepened in my mind as I’ve thought about it. 6. The Shape of Water I run pretty hot and lukewarm on Guillermo del Toro (that is to say, I don’t particularly dislike any of his movies, but while I love some of them, others just don’t connect like I feel they should, despite how much the separate elements might appeal to me). But for every one that I just like okay, he connects with something like this, a gorgeous, perverse fairy tale retelling of the Creature From the Black Lagoon with tributes to Cold War paranoia, classic movie musicals, and a great Michael Shannon performance added to the mix. Just a lovely tribute to the way love can unite the disenfranchised and overlooked. 5. Kong: Skull Island An eye-popping fever dream of a monster mash, this movie assembled a stacked cast of actors I love and surrounded them with some of the most stunning monster movie images I’ve ever seen. A++++infinity 4. Stranger Things 2 What a wonderful surprise the first season of this show was, and what a relief and a joy to get this sequel that is, in most ways, even better. By the final scenes of the finale, I was more in love than ever. 3. The Florida Project I wrote a bit about this for SportsAlcohol.com, so I think it’s enough to say here that this is a very special movie. 2. American Vandal What a wonderful little surprise this was! Like Stranger Things last year, this was something that popped up on Netflix & gave me something I didn’t know I wanted. On one level, it’s just a silly, dirty joke really elaborately told. But on another level, it’s a sneakily moving portrait of the way that expectations and choices made when you’re young can really impact what you become in that transition from teenager to adult.

1. Twin Peaks: The Return I was looking forward to this, and I had a pretty open mind as far as what it could be or what to expect from it. But I still had no idea how amazing and immersive and gripping it would all be. I wrote about it over at SportsAlcohol.com and talked about it on the podcast and I STILL only scratched the surface of how I felt about it.

Top Twenty Things I'm Excited About in 2018

Arrested Development Returns! I adored both the original run of the show and the fourth season that hit Netflix five years ago. I cannot wait for this. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs It's the new Coen brothers project. And it's supposed to be something like six hours of new Coen brothers project. Holy smokes. The Last Best Story I really loved Maggie's last book, and the tidbits I've heard about this one make it sound terrific. Been anticipating this one for nearly three years and it's almost here! Isle of Dogs Wes Anderson movies pretty much automatically quality as "most anticipated" for me, and the trailer for this one looks thoroughly delightful. And it hopefully augurs an exciting year for stop motion animation. While I'm obviously into The Incredibles II and Ralph Wrecks the Internet, I'm even more intrigued with the untitled Laika film scheduled for this year. There's been so little news about it, it seems possible it won't actually hit this year, but even if it doesn't there's Early Man, a new Aardman film directed by Nick Park due out in February, and Jan Svankmajer's final film, Insects, that I hope makes its way to the US this year. Ready Player One I'm sure I'd see this one no matter what, but the fact that Steven Spielberg directed it means I'm actively excited to catch it on day one. Marvel Cinematic Universe After a stellar 2017 (and all the goodwill they built up over the last ten years in general) I'd be excited for their three pictures this year. So the fact that they've got Black Panther (a terrific cast in Ryan Coogler's follow-up to Creed!), Avengers: Infinity War (the beginning of this big two-year culmination event, written & directed by the folks who made my beloved Captain America movies), and Ant-Man and the Wasp (I had a great time with the first one, and Down With Love guarantees Peyton Reed my attention forever), gives me confidence that they'll have another great year in 2018. Star Wars I'm forever excited about Star Wars (or at least the current firehose volume of it still hasn't made me bored of it yet) so I'm pretty interested to see Solo: A Star Wars Story, and I'm also really on the hook to see the final batch of episodes of Star Wars Rebels. Roseanne Revival Maybe I'm just tempting fate because of how the Twin Peaks revival turned out, but I'm excited for this one. I love the original show (one of my favorite little things about getting cable has been that Roseanne is on one channel or another almost all the time) and I'm equally apprehensive about and intrigued by the news that's come out about the revival so far. But I'll definitely be watching the whole thing. Lethal White AND Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald A new Cormoran Strike book and a new Wizarding World movie with a screenplay by J.K. Rowling! I understand why neither of them are exactly the kind of cultural event that the Potter books and movies were, but I'm personally so excited for both. A Wrinkle in Time AND Mary Poppins Returns Two big Disney productions that are super up my alley, so I'm grouping them together. Wrinkle promises an adaptation of a wonderful book from an exciting director and a fantastic cast. And Poppins has the liability of a director I've been extremely mixed on in the past, but it also has a perfect cast and the original Mary Poppins is a movie a really love deeply. Really excited to have these bookending the year. A New Cloverfield The God Particle was on this list last year, and it's on there again this year. We're only a couple of weeks into the year and it's already been delayed again, so this is in hopes that it does really come out this April. But in any case, with God Particle and Overlord, another mysterious genre film from Bad Robot that fans have been speculating could be another Cloverfield movie, both scheduled for release this year, seems pretty likely we'll at least get one new Cloverfield picture. (UPDATE SINCE I WROTE THIS: the game is afoot again!) Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters It's got a killer premise and it's just hit Netflix! I'm excited for this one, and it seems possible that the second film in the announced trilogy could also hit Netflix before the end of the year. New Darin Morgan X-Files episode The new season of the X-Files revival already seems off to a stronger start than the last one, but no matter what it does hold the promise of another new episode by writer Darin Morgan. This is an event. Disenchantment Look, I still watch (and usually enjoy) The Simpsons. I adore Futurama. I am super excited for a new Matt Groening animated series, and tickled by the notion that it'll explore a new genre. My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol. 2 The first half of the story was such a beautiful, engrossing, moving surprise this year, that I can't wait for the follow-up. Sense8 Finale Movie I'm glad they're getting a chance to wrap things up the way they want to here, and I'm looking forward to one more visit with this nutty, beautiful show. My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman AND Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee I don't keep up with all of Netflix's stand-up comedy offerings or the like, but I am super excited for these talk shows by a couple of my absolute favorite comedy curmudgeons. I actually watched (and really loved) the episode of Letterman's show with President Obama, and I'm looking forward to getting through all the rest of both of these throughout this year. Mute It looks like Duncan Jones's new film, some kind of spiritual follow-up to his great Moon, is finally going to show up on Netflix early this year! And they've also got the next films by Gareth Evans, Jeremy Saulnier, and David Mackenzie that could always drop sometime this year AND The Other Side of the Wind, a lost Orson Welles film! The Predator A new Shane Black movie is a cause for celebration, and while trying to revive the Predator seems like a dicey proposition, he's assembled an exciting cast and co-wrote the film with his Monster Squad collaborator Fred Dekker, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they've cooked up enough to put it here instead of the other genre sequels I'm intrigued by this year (like David Gordon Green's Halloween or J.A. Bayona's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom). The Happytime Murders A Roger Rabbit riff with puppets would be enough to get my attention, but get Brian Henson to direct it in his first theatrical feature since his Muppet films from the 90s and I'm fully excited.

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randomrichards · 6 years

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HONOURABLE MENTION: Gru and Dru Impersonate Each Other from DESPICABLE ME 3 After a period of bonding, former Supervillain Gru (Steve Carell) and his bumbling estranged brother Dru (also Carell) decide to make a family dinner a little fun by dressing up as each other. Sure, this scene might be a little random, but it’s so enjoyable to watch these two try to imitate each other. I included this scene thanks to Carell’s impressive voice acting. Rarely do you hear a voice actor portray one character impersonating another character they also voice. To pull this off, they can’t sound like the later character, they must sound like former character trying to impersonate the later character. One perfect example is the scene in the Looney Toons Cartoon Rabbit Fire, when Bugs Bunny (Mel Blanc) and Daffy Duck (also Blanc) pretend to be each other to trick Elmer Fudd (Arthur Q. Bryan). When Bugs impersonates Daffy, you don’t hear Daffy’s voice. You hear Bugs doing his best Daffy impersonation. The same goes the other way. Carell pulls off the same affect with the characters. When Dru imitates Gru, it’s more innocent compared to Gru’s snarkier imitation of Dru. Such is a challenging task for a voice actor, and Carell pulls it off with graces. The Aging Montage from A QUIET PASSION This brilliant montage starts with each member of the Dickenson clan sitting in front of the camera like they’re posing for a portrait. When the camera closes in on Emily Dickenson (Emma Bell as a teen, Cynthia Nixon as an adult) and her family, they age right in front of our eyes. Director Terrence Davies is not known for using special effects, but the way this film flawlessly ages up the characters from one actor to another is breathtaking. 10) Wonder Woman Enters No Man’s Land from WONDER WOMAN As if I need further explanation. It’s Wonder Woman strutting in the middle of a battle field! And she’s dodging bullets with her shield and bracelets! And she’s kicking German soldier’s asses! All to the tune of her awesome theme song (courtesy of composer Rupert Gregson-Williams). Of course, it wouldn’t have worked without Gal Gadot’s performance as Wonder Woman. Not only does she give off the presence of a true warrior, but you can feel the conviction as DC’s greatest heroine steps into battle, ready to defend the greater good. 9) The NASCAR Heist from LOGAN LUCKY Steven Soderbergh is a maestro when it comes to filming a heist scene. Watching a Heist unfold in Ocean’s Eleven and the sequels were always a blast to watch. He proves he still has the moves with Logan Lucky, where he brings a blue-collar spin to the tropes. This time, the masterminds are the unlucky Logan brothers (Channing Tatum and Adam Driver) who plot a heist on NASCAR with the help of demolitions expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig). Of course, they must break Joe out of prison to accomplish this goal. And it must be done quickly so Jimmy (Tatum) can be on time for his little girl’s beauty pageant. So not only do we see a heist unfold, but also a prison break, and a riot to boot. It’s just as glorious as the Heists in the Ocean’s movies. There are also a lot of funny moments surrounding this sequence, from Clyde’s (Driver) prosthetic arm getting stuck in a tub to Joe stopping a heist to explain the science of using gummy bears to make a bomb. 8) That Plot Twist from SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING To me, what made Spider-Man so special was Peter Parker’s struggles to balance his personal life with his superhero life. He had enough problems being bullied at school and having money troubles at home, but getting super powers only added complications to his life. Sure, Peter earns the glory of beating up bad guys as Spider-Man, but it comes at the expense of letting people down in his personal life. It made matters worst when those dangers found their way to his doorstep. Case in point: this plot twist. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) second life as Spider-Man has taken its toll on his social life, making it near impossible to socialize with Liz (Laura Harrier). Despite missing multiple events, Liz finally gives him a chance when she becomes his date for the homecoming dance. Just when everything’s coming up Parker, his joy comes crashing down when he finds out Liz’s father is Adrian Toombs, aka the Vulture (Michael Keaton). Now Parker’s faced with a dilemma; go through with his date and let Toombs get away with his heist or stop Toombs and ruin Liz’s life. When Marvel movies were criticized for being too predictable, this plot twist took everyone by surprise. I was at a preview night for this movie, and never have I heard an audience sound more shocked by a twist in my life. 7) The Opening Bank Robbery from BABY DRIVER Of course, we can’t talk about the best scenes from 2017 without mentioning the years’ best car chase. From the opening scene, we witness the precision Baby (Ansel Elgort) puts into his driving as he helps bank robbers (Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm and Eliza Gonzalez) evade police while listening to John Spencer Blue Explosions’ Bellbottoms. It’s always fun to watch a heist unfold in movies, but this car chase is a sight to behold. This scene plays more like a musical number the way the car sways gracefully in tune to the song. And the way that car swerves around that tight alleyway is a beauty. 6) All the Bomb Disarming Scenes from LAND OF MINE These are among the most intense scenes of the year. You can’t help but be on the edge of your seat while young German POWs try to diffuse millions of landmines on a beach. Yes, they’re Nazis, but they’re also frightened kids. They all dream of going home, yet they are stuck in a village that despises them. You sit there with dread knowing that one wrong move and Kaboom! These kids have to maintain a steady hand, but many of them are fidgety from terror. You are always anticipating an explosion, yet every Boom comes as a shock in this movie. 5) Run Rabbit Run from GET OUT Is it just me or does easy listening Rock N’ Roll music make horror films more unsettling? Notice how creepy Robert & Johnny’s We Belong Together sounds in Christine, as if it’s emphasizing the car’s obsession with its owner. And then there’s the infamous X-Files episode “Home”, when the sound of Johnny Mathis’ Wonderful Wonderful warned of the mutant monster’s oncoming attack. What makes these innocent sounding songs work so well in moments of terror? One reason is how the director plays on the irony of the upbeat music playing over a terrifying scene, as if to taunt the heroes. Another reason is how the lyrics an unintentionally further the tone of the film, as indicated by the former. A most recent example is how director Jordan Peele uses Flanagan & Allen’s Run, Rabbit, run in the opening scene of Get Out. First, the chorus is almost warning innocent bystander Dre (Keith Stanfield) of oncoming danger. Second, the uppity tune is as unassuming as the suburban environment, adding more suspicion to the world around Dre. Finally, it introduces the reoccurring theme of running which includes the creepy scene of the Armitage’s groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) randomly running around at night. And I haven’t even started on the brilliance of how the film was shot. Shot in one take, Peele has the camera circle around Stanfield as he walks alone at night (never a good idea in horror movies). And then we see a white car U-turn right behind him and follow him and you know the shit’s about to hit the fan. Then the camera circles around him, we realize the car’s door opens and out of nowhere, a man in night’s armor knocks him out and drags him into the car. This scene is a lesson on how to build suspense. There’s also a satirical element in how it takes the stereotype of white people’s fear of black neighborhoods and turns it on its head. 4) The Opening Fight Scene from THE VILLAINESS and the Stairway Fight Scene from ATOMIC BLONDE The reason I put these two together is they share a theme of female assassins fighting multiple killers within a confined area. And they are both shot in one take. What separates them is how they are filmed; one done with stylized glamour and the other with gritty realism. Let’s start with the Korean action film and learn how to start an action movie. This Korean action film hits the ground running with our anti-heroine Sook-Hee (Ok-bin Kim) going John Wick on a group of gangsters. Facing off armed and sword-wielding assassins, She shots and slices across a seedy alleyway through a hallway. All shot from Sook-Hee’s point of view. That’s nothing compared to when they take the fight to the gym. In an environment surrounded by mirrors, cinematographer Jung-hun Park deserves credit for keeping the camera out of sight. Then in a moment of master filmmaking, we see Sook-Hee’s POV as her head smashes into a mirror and then the camera switches to a third person perspective. How they managed to pull this off is a miracle. While director Byung-gil Jung was looking to impress through camera work, Director David Leitch was looking to impress through choreography with Atomic Blonde. While trying to transport key witness Spyglass (Eddie Marsan), MI6 Agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) finds herself ambushed by two KGB agents. And so, commences a brawl that leave all battered, bloody and exhausted. But just when it seems like Broughton is done, along comes more Agents to open fire on her. The camera follows Theron and the villains as they try to shoot at each other, throw each other down the stair and pummel each other to bloody pulps. It offers a more realistic portrayal of brawls. In most action films, the hero takes down thugs with ease. But like the Hallway scene from Daredevil, when henchmen get knocked down, they get back up and deliver their own hard blows. This not only humanizes the protagonist, but makes the action more gripping. 3) Remember Me from COCO Okay, it’s more of a song than a scene. But this song is special in how its meaning changes throughout the film. Remember Me is the most famous song of Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez)’s late idol Ernesto De La Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). Trapped in a family with a draconian “no-music” rule, the song embodies Miguel’s passion for music and his longing for escape. But as the spirit realm reveals the downsides of a music career, the song’s meaning changes in Miguel’s mind. By the end of the film, the song showcases music’s power to connect loved ones. It also serves the film’s theme of the importance of remembering loved ones after they’re gone. On the lighter side, the song was also used to make fun of overplayed songs like Disney’s own Let it go.[1] 2) The First Rehearsal from A LONG TIME RUNNING In the first day of rehearsal for the Tragically Hip’s final concert, late singer Gord Downie returns from cancer treatment bearded and frail. From the recorded footage, you can see the rest of the band unsure of what to do. And then guitarist Paul Langlois begins the first notes of Escape is At Hand for the Travelling Man, and the band follows suit. In this moment, we watch Downie in suspense, waiting to see if he’ll have the strength to go on. But then he sings the first lyrics, he slowly reveals the charismatic front man Canada has grown to love. While we already know the Tragically Hip final concert goes off across Canada without a hitch, this documentary still has us in suspense in this moment. This moment feels like a moment of triumph for Downie, who is using his last ounce of strength for his last hurrah. With the recent passing of this extraordinary front man, this scene has more weight to it. 1) The Ending from Dunkirk No film ending has left more of an impact than this haunting, beautiful conclusion to the year’s best war movie, Dunkirk. SPOILERS AHEAD: After spending nearly two hours on the edge of our seats, we are finally relieved to see the 300,000 soldiers finally rescued from Dunkirk. In this moment, Zimmer finally breaks the cycle of intensity to deliver a beautiful melody of triumph. To the soundtrack of a Winston Churchill speech, we are treated to a series of haunting images, from Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) staying behind while his fellow men leave to a newspaper article declaring George (Barry Keoghan) a hero. But none compare to the conclusion of Farrier’s (Tom Hardy) storyline. There’s something awe inspiring about the image of an airplane slowly landing on a beach during sunset. Add Zimmer’s music and it almost brings a tear to your eyes. There’s also the image of the heroic pilot standing alone as he sets his plane on fire. Add the fact that not only does he have no way to get home, but he ends up captured by German soldiers and this scene stays with you forever. [1] Which was written by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who also wrote Remember Me.

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st-riley-the-brave · 7 years

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The G+G One-Shot Challenge|Day 5

Ghost+Grave 20: To Heal

[One-shot submission for this very prompt and a continuation of the thread from Wednesday night. Person A: Riley. Person B: Egon. (Trigger) Warning: Mention of family death involved… which also means some Angsty Riley. You may need a tissue or two while reading this.

And lastly… to my ship-mate @realghostbusteregonspengler ❤]

“…y'know… this was a nice idea after all…”

“Couldn’t agree more, love..”

Riley and Egon were given a suggestion by Anthony–to sneak out of the Cemetery by a secret gate in the secluded corner where her family was buried. Anthony had the secret gate set a few years ago one day while Riley slept. He hoped she could somehow make use of the gate and now… now she would find out about it. Not to mention put it to good use, as was the case tonight.

Once she and Egon each were given a key, Anthony led the way to the gate. Past the gate was a wooded area, which led to a clear, grassy vale. And there, in the middle of spacious grass and flowers, was where the engaged couple lied down and continued what had begun atop the House'oleum moments earlier.

Lying down on the grass, Egon clasped Riley’s hand as the two gazed into the expanse of midnight heaven. “And I thought the clearing in the gravey’d had a lovely view” Riley whispered.

“Looks like Anthony had a pretty good idea when he put that secret gate” Egon whispered back. “I’m sure he’s happy knowing it’ll be put to good use in the future.”

“Agreed” Riley sighed.

“Riley?”

“Yes, love?”

“How… would you imagine our wedding?”

Riley gave his question a moment’s thought. “Well… maybe something simple… I may need t'look up whatever traditions happened… I just want a simple, sweet wedding.” She smiled, squeezing his hand.

“That’s not a bad thing at all,dear” Egon sighed, smiling as she had squeezed his hand. Her hand felt so warm despite the cool eventide chill.

“Egon?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“How… would you imagine our children?”

Egon gave her question a moment’s thought. “Well… if we had a boy, I think he would be named Eli. If we had a girl, Delilah, nicknamed Daffy… they’d be absolutely adorable… they’d be both brilliant, and brave. Just like their parents.” He smiled again, squeezing her hand.

“Your Mum would be havin’ a field day by the plenty with those two” Riley laughed softly. “Add the animals and it’d almost be a funny farm!” Egon laughed with her, as the mental imagery played itself in his head… Egon chasing Eli with Daffy hugging Riley’s leg… Gabriel and the cats chasing each other around the human Spenglers and the owls just perched like,“Whatever.”

“…Egon, darling?”

“Hm?”

“I am looking forward to our life together… to being your wife.” A tear fell down the side of her head as she smiled. “I never thought the day would come in which I would be saying that.”

“…Riley, love?”

“Hm?”

“I am looking forward to being your husband… to our future together.” He turned his head to smile lovingly at his future wife. “To think that you would ask me to marry you… I never thought the day would come.”

Riley turned her head to smile back at him. “An’ t'think we’d been thinkin’ ‘bout a future t'gether on our own… I hadn’ thought of bringin’ it up with you, because I wasn’ sure how you would feel ‘bout it.”

Egon squeezed her hand again. “I can’t begin to tell you how often I had thought about it… I remember telling my Mother about my feelings for you, about wanting you in my future. I just… I guess we both, perhaps, dreamed the same dream…”

“Well I am certainly looking forward to our dream being reality, Egon.”

“As am I, Aurelia.”

The two smiled at each other again, before looking back up at the stars above them. There was something magical about the way the sky looked tonight. Something they could not put into words… it made the Gravekeeper wish she had thought of this much sooner. But–as one saying went–better late than never. It seemed, to them, the timing was perfect.

The two lied side-by-side for what seemed forever… talked about their future. Their pasts alone, their past together. Their own families growing up. Their dreams when they were younger.

Their lives before each other.

Once more a silence overcame them with comfort and peace… after a while however, Riley was hit with a memory she hadn’t expected. And it stunned her as she recalled…

“Mumma… the stars…”

Egon looked to her in worry. “Riley?”

“I… I remember when m'Mother died” she answered, tears filling her eyes as she spoke. “I was 20 then… her broken heart was finally givin’ out.” Her face paled and while Egon couldn’t see it, he could hear it in her voice. “Uncle Eli and I pleaded for ‘er t'stay… but she felt she couldn’ go on.”

Egon clasped her hand tighter as she spoke, looking to her with worry and yet, with love. “I was there, Egon” she continued, her voice now shaky as everything she had suppressed began to surface. “An’ she told me… that the stars… she kept sayin’ that they were… growin’ dim…”

At a loss for words, Egon turned his body to face her completely as she was losing her composure. “She kept sayin’ tha’ the stars were growin’ dim… tha’ the stars were fadin’ away” she said in whisper–and that was when her voice cracked. “An’ she died–an’ I… Eli could not… we couldn’ save her an’ she… Eli was so hear'brok'n–”

It was then that Egon pulled her to face him and held her in his arms as she broke down into a sob. “Uncle Eli… felt like a failure–upset at 'imself because he couldn’… he couldn’ save 'is only sister.” Riley simply… fell apart… in her fiancé’s arms. Fell apart and yet, knew she was safe enough to do so. Egon held her tightly, one hand tangling into her crimson tresses and holding her head against his heart.

“…I… I couldn’ save them, Egon–”

Riley fell apart completely and Egon, overwhelmed in a rare way, began to cry with her. But he knew that right now, more than anything, she needed this. She needed to cry. She needed to deal with what had happened. She needed to do the one thing she struggled with–she needed to grieve. And Egon… he grieved with her. Wept with her. Made sure she knew he was with her and always would be.

Finally she began to calm down and the Ghostbuster brushed away crimson bangs from her forehead, planting a tender kiss there. “I… never got t'do that, Egon” she whispered, listening to his heartbeat. “I ne'er got t'grieve. Not like this.”

Egon was shocked. “N-not even around Jim!?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

Riley shook her head. “No… not e'en 'round Jim. I couldn’… I just couldn’ put the Town May'r through the pain of watchin’ 'is bes’ friend succomb t'grief.”

Her fiancé sighed, holding her still. “How… how do you feel now, Riley?”

“A lot better… now that I’d let all that out.” She touched a hand against his chest, still a bit shaky but not as before. “I hadn’ realised how much I needed this, Egon… thank you…”

Egon kissed her forehead again. “Always, my Brave One” he whispered in reply. “You’re so brave even when you cry… do you know that?”

“…n–no?” she replied nervously.

There was a hint of a smile in his voice… “You showed me that it’s okay to cry” he whispered. “You told me to not be afraid to cry… that we are both very human.”

Riley looked up and reached the hand that was at his chest up to touch his face. There were still tears from when he cried with her. And it was then that she realised… their bond was much stronger now because of that. Because of moments like these… those little moments when their defenses were down and they were able to make each other strong. They grew through moments like these.

Egon gave her a reassuring smile. Words were no longer necessary as Riley smiled back at him, knowing that all would be well. That all would be just fine. He lied her back down on the grass and leaned over her, clasping his hands with hers–in a moment reminiscent of the minutes just before their first kiss. Egon kissed her forehead again, then glanced up at the stars… took in its mysterious wonder, before smiling to his future wife. And the kiss that followed… became reassurance for Riley, that there wasn’t anything she and her future husband couldn’t face together.

#otpprompts #ghost+grave #the ghostbuster and the gravekeeper: egonxriley #tw family death #tw death #angsty riley #aesthetic: together we're stronger [egon and riley]#realghostbusteregonspengler #one-shot challenge #one-shot #v: main ~ powered by steam and magic

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ducktracy · 3 years

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189. my little buckaroo (1938)

release date: january 29th, 1938

series: merrie melodies

director: friz freleng

starring: mel blanc (the terror), tedd pierce (pig, narrator)

erroneously titled my little buckeroo upon the short’s blue ribbon re-release, this cartoon is the third last cartoon directed by friz freleng in his first stint at WB. he headed off to MGM in 1937 to reconnect with former colleagues hugh harman and rudolf ising, only to return to WB back in 1939.

here, the notorious terror has been tormenting the town of boiled beef, texas. it’s up to a shrill-voiced, wimpy, andy devine caricatured pig and his trusty steed to put a stop to the evildoers doings.

the cartoon begins with a montage: a monotone droll “calling all sheriffs, calling all sheriffs--be on the lookout for the terror. that is all” narrates the action as we spot said terror riding into town on his horse and mercilessly robbing a bank, shooting guns wildly as he exits. overlaid footage of the terror riding his trusty steed and leering into the camera attempt to elevate the theatrics of the sequence. the montage is short and lacks substance--while it does a fine job of exposing the plot, it’s not nearly as masterful nor careful than the montages present in frank tashlin’s cartoons.

(my little buckaroo, 1938, on the left, and gold diggers of ‘49, 1935, on the right.)

fade out and in to the town of boiled beef, texas, 1872. a keen eye will notice that the pan of the village, from trucking into the calendar hanging in a covered wagon to sweeping over the town itself, is directly ripped from tex avery’s gold diggers of ‘49 back in 1935, merely repainted and lacking the snarky commentary brought on by tex’s subtitles (”the time”, “the place”, etc.)

according to the narrator, the town has been terrorized by “a notorious desperado known as ‘the terror’”. focus on a wanted poster of said terror, not without its own witty commentary:

a crossfade and pan out reveal the terror himself perched against a cactus brandishing the wanted poster. mel blanc (of course) voices the terror in a thick, stereotypical accent: “that’s me--the great jose cuervo santa barbara la cucaracha smith.” he hardly breaks eye contact as he rolls himself a cigarette. “i put anybody on the spot for seven-fifty and a quarter a day.” he chuckles, then adds after a pause, “...mother in law, two-fifty.” the animation is hilariously nonchalant, full of character while almost feeling too natural at the same time.

once more, fade out and back in to the 4th national bank, protected by the keen eye of a guard dog... who’s fast asleep on the rickety wooden porch, a sash peddling him as the “burglar alarm” wrapped around his stomach. with the suddenness of a rattlesnake (narrator’s description, not mine), the terror gallops into town, firing his pistols and screeching to a halt in front of the gate. the guard dog awakens, all too happy to see some company. as the terror raids the bank of its good, the dog excitedly wags its tail, to which the burglar alarm (a cowbell) rings. definitely a clever bait-and-switch.

the terror rushes out of the bank with his goods, before heading back in again. he slides in to collect a spare coin sitting in the payphone, eyeballing it eagerly before darting off again on his horse. the inside of the bank is a refreshing change of scenery, if only for a bit--the layouts seldom change of the terror going to and fro.

finally, the citizens of boiled beef texas poke their heads out of the buildings and opt to take action, charging together to get their horses. suddenly, they screech to a halt--the horses glare on as they lounge inside their pen, all touting picket signs (”we’re on a sit down strike”, “we balk--you walk”, “we’re sitting because we can’t stand for it!”, “no feed--no steed!”, etc). stalling’s sardonic score of “the old gray mare” is a nice touch.

according to the narrator, the terror has now fled the border and seeks refuge in his hideout. his hideout is merely a gambling ring--the terror himself loads up one of the slot machines with his good. however, he halts. a close-up painting reveals a slug coin (a counterfeit coin), much to the outrage of the terror, who rants and raves, throwing his hat on the ground in defeat. yet another fade-out-- the pacing of the cartoon feels rather disjointed with all of the fade ins and outs.

friz’s artistic sensibilities start to eke their way out as we cut to nighttime, a lone rider silhouetted against the dark night sky and the moon. the terror pops out in front of the rider, snarling “STICK ‘EM UP!” a gorgeous head-on shot of the terror--the lit cigarette is a small but lovely detail, especially juxtaposed against the deep blue sky. the rider screeches to a halt, and all of his horses stack on top of each other, one by one, balancing on top of the rider’s wagon.

an iris wipe showcase the sheriff and his posse “close on the marauder’s trail”, a bunch of spherically designed cowboys riding on their horses (has the strike ended already?). nevertheless, the terror and his horse share snide grins as they take off into the night. a refreshing change of pace as the terror and his horse slide across the border line, a baseball umpire popping out of nowhere to declare “SAAAAFE!” with that, the terror sticks is tongue out to the sheriff’s posse, orlando martin trombone gobble sound effect and all.

while the cartoon has been largely unremarkable thus far, the introduction of a new character, a silhouette riding his horse against the sunrise, provides some much needed lightheartedness. tedd pierce switches from narrator to character as the silhouette screeches sings an obnoxious rendition of the title song.

a close-up reveals a pig caricature of andy devine, ‘30s western star often satirized time and time again for his shrill vocals. the blank expression on the pig’s face juxtaposed with the grimaces of disgust on his horse as the pig wails to his heart’s content is nothing short of priceless. the vocals are so shrill and obnoxious that it’s impossible NOT to laugh. one can only imagine what an uproar this would have brought to the movie theater in 1938, when devine was a much more well known figure.

thankfully for the audience’s ears, the pig’s shrill singing is interrupted by the telltale sound of gunfire--the terror is at it again. he darts right past the pig on his horse, cueing a hilarious gear-up run from the pig and his horse as they chase hot on his trail. each time the pig fires his gun, he’s sent flying backwards on his horse, stars and other grawlixes taking his place. even though the ricochet gag is a tired gag, the insertion of the grawlixes add a nice touch of two-dimensional design and cartooniness to the equation.

after having his hat shot off a few times, the terror retaliates. in another gag similar to one in tex’s gold diggers of ‘49, the terror’s gun is revealed to have a built-in slot machine, reflecting his love of gambling. the slots spin: two peaches, two shots. he eventually hits the jackpot, firing a (n admittedly underwhelming) barrage of bullets towards his foe. he repeats the “hat getting shot off” gag with the pig, who replaces his hat with a top hat, a boater hat, etc.

conveniently for the terror, he stumbles upon an escalator built into a nearby canyon, complete with WATCH YOUR STEP signs. he and his horse board the escalator no problem, followed by the pig and his own. a funny gag, but the lack of urgency does little to punch it up to its full potential. the chase sequence feels like a game of monkey see, monkey do: the terror rounds some sharp curves with his horse, momentarily defying gravity as he turns the bend on the canyon. the pig rider does the exact same thing with his own horse, the speed of both anticlimactic and slow.

nevertheless, a bright spot--the terror and his horse slide down a steep slope, followed by the pig and his horse. ken harris does some hilarious animation of the horse as he grins into the camera, trademark ken harris excitement marks decorating the scene as he jumps up and down, whinnying and clapping his hooves together in jubilation. he gallops up the slope to a jaunty, broken score of “the merry go round broke down”, turning around and sliding back down on his butt, hooves in the air in excitement.

the fun doesn’t stop there. the andy devine pig scolds the horse for wasting his time, prompting the horse to give a full on tantrum. “AWWW, GEE! I NEVER HAVE ANY FUN! OTHER HORSES HAVE FUN! I NEVER GET TO DO ANYTHING!”

finally, the pig gives in. “aww, ALL RIGHT!” with that, the horse runs off to repeat his exercises offscreen--and we never see him again.

in yet another reprisal of gold diggers of ‘49, the pig, horse-less, captures the terror by shooting a makeshift gun/fishing pole. a lasso shoots from the barrel of the rifle, tying around the abdomen of the confused marauder. the pig, with a few struggles, finally reels in his prey, who flops around on the ground like a fish. (friz would later perfect the absurdity of the fish flopping gag in his 1944 entry duck soup to nuts, with daffy in place of the terror.)

a happy resolution: the pig proudly whistles the eponymous song as he leans back in his chair in his office. pan along the wall to find a row of mounted animals: a boar, a moose, some fish... and the terror. the camera pans out to reveal the terror behind bars, his head wedged in a mount as he struggles to break free. fade out.

while not one of friz’s best efforts, this cartoon still has bits and pieces to appreciate. the pig’s introduction and the horse’s ecstasy at riding down the slope are the definite highlights to the cartoon. tedd pierce does a fine job as both the pig and the narrator, especially the former. ken harris’ animation is lovely, too.

however, this isn’t as indicative of friz’s talents as other shorts. while trying to feel like a tex avery cartoon (down to recycling gags and layouts), the short instead comes off as a disjointed segment of gags. the pacing is staggered and slow--the chase sequence during the second half of the cartoon lags and lacks any real sense of urgency. while there are bright spots, this feels more like a quota filler than anything. friz is a wonderfully talented director and criminally underrated in my opinion, but this isn’t a knockout from him.

so, with that said, i would skip this cartoon. the highlights i’ve already posted--there’s not really much else of interest. however, with that said, it wouldn’t be a total waste of time to watch it, either.

link!

#lt #looney tunes #my little buckaroo #freleng #reviews #long post #I DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT THESE I SWEAR #i'm gonna make a point to get better about doing them

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televisor-reviews · 7 years

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“Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil” Movie Review

Please help me get my name out by following me on Letterbox: http://letterboxd.com/AnimatorReviewa

“It’s not just a fairy tale, it’s an adventure.”

Let’s end Sequel Month on a low-note transitioning somewhat well into Disney Princess Month with a sequel to shit film based on classic fairy tales.

Years after the events of the original Hoodwinked!, Granny & the Wolf are working for Flippers while Red is training even though she’s perfectly well trained enough but whatever. On one mission, Granny is kidnapped by Hansel & Gretel for a special recipe for immortality. So, Red must team up with Wolf to get her back.

A trend from the original that continues here is the acting talent this has for whatever reason! Along with the cast of the first film, there’s also Joan Cusack, Bill Hader, Amy Poehler, Phil LaMarr, & Cheech & Chong! Why are all these great actors in this shit, & more importantly, why did they give legitimate performances!? Don’t get me wrong, it’s clear they’re not giving an A+ performance, but they are good B-’s. There is no reason why they gave anything more than a D!

Something this film loves doing that was present in the first, but not nearly as much as this one, is pointing out any cliches it uses while continuing to use them. The effect meaning to be funny, but actually coming off as, “What we are doing is dumb, we know it’s dumb, but we’re gonna do it anyways.” There’s also constant references to Silence Of The Lambs, LSD, Goodfellas, & other things children this is aiming towards would get. They’re here for practically no reason.

And there are constantly cliches in this that are mostly annoying. For example, when Red & Wolf need to team up, they use the tired cliche of the chief making 2 policemen who hate each other work with one another because one works by the book & the other is a renegade & they’ll learn to respect each other & blah blah blah. I’d be able to make a movie with this cliche if I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen this cliche! I hate it & all the other cliches this dumb film uses!

The humor is very hit & miss for me. There’s a few jokes that make me laugh, but most don’t. There’s this one running gag where the goat from Hoodwinked! is constantly in peril & being hurt for really no reason. It got to a point where I was genuinely feeling bad for him, he didn’t do anything to deserve this, what did he do? For a joke like this to work, the goat had to have done something to deserve it; that’s what makes seeing Tom from Tom And Jerry & Daffy from Looney Tunes getting hurt be so humorous. Otherwise, it’s just not funny!

I don’t know how, but the animation in Too is somehow even worse than it was in Hoodwinked! How did it do that? That was already bad enough, you’d think the only way to go would be up, but I was wrong. The animation is way worse here than in the original!

The plot & the flick as a whole is clearly trying to bite off The Avengers. The entirety of this just feels like an Avengers knock-off, & it’s kind of distracting at times. Granted, if you are going to rip-off another film, Avengers isn’t a bad choice (though this could just be me seeing how this came out a year before Avengers).

Lastly, the saving grace of the first film was just how much effort everyone put into it even though it clearly didn’t deserve it. But here, it’s not overtly obvious that there was no effort or care, but it wasn’t obvious that the opposite was true. There was clearly care put into this, but not nearly as much as the original, & I think that best describes this film. Just enough effort to make this tolerable.

Overall, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil is tolerable, but not good. I’d have a hard time saying this is awful, especially seeing how much care & effort that was put into it. But both as a movie in its own right & compared to the original, Too is clearly not living up to its potential.

2/10

#hoodwinked #hood vs evil #joan cusack #cheech and chong #bill hader #amy poehler #phil lamarr #little red riding hood #hansel and gretel #movie #film #analysis #critique #review

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ducktracy · 4 years

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159. she was an acrobat's daughter (1937)

release date: april 10th, 1937

series: merrie melodies

director: friz freleng

starring: mel blanc (dole promise, who dehr, heddie camphor, hippo, stickoutski, donkey, leslie howard, duck, father duck, angry moviegoers)

mel blanc’s roles are growing increasingly larger and larger, as they should be! not only is this a popular motif used in cartoons (such as being sung by daffy in daffy doodles), footage from the cartoon itself has been reused. bob clampett and art davis’ bacall to arms uses a hefty amount of footage from this cartoon, but for good reason. it’s a turning point for freleng for sure as we observe parodies of news reels, songs, movies, and more.

the title song is underscored as we iris in and pan down to the outside of a movie theater, advertising 36 HOURS TO KILL WITH HIS BROTHER’S WIFE (intentionally read as one single title). pan over to the other side: 15 FEATURES 15¢ -- ALSO REJECTED SHORTS (a pun on selected shorts). i believe this gag was in buddy’s theatre as well. inside, reused in bacall to arms, a lone moviegoer gets up and switches his seat. another decides to do the same, and then another, and soon enough the interior of the theater is whipped into a frenzy as everyone scrambles to change seats. a very funny gag with succinct timing. i don’t like comparing everything to tex avery, because friz has just as much talent as tex and i feel like i’m holding tex up as the Ultimate way to do animation, but this gag certainly does feel like an averyism.

one of the many WARMER BROS. puns that we will be seeing in many a short (i believe debuted with hollywood capers? though it could have been from one of the bosko or buddy shorts too) as we open to the beginning of the show, a screen flashing WARMER BROS PRESENTS -- GOOFY-TONE NEWS -- SEES ALL-KNOWS NOTHING. the “sees all - knows nothing” is a take on “sees all, hears all, knows all”, from fox’s movietone news reels back in the day. the puns just keep on coming!

a caricature of movietone news reporter lowell thomas, caricature design courtesy of t. hee, opens us up, billed as dole promise instead. mel blanc provides the vocals as dole announces “good evening, folks. this is, uh...” he pauses, forgetting his own name. the gag is wonderfully structured, as he has a nameplate and a sign posted on his desk, as well as his name posted in big letters right on the screen, yet he still squints at his script with the most analytical, stupefied concentration he can muster. the offscreen whisper of “dole promise!” is just the cherry on top. “oh yeah. this is dole promise, bringing you the latest news events of the day.”

the first news reel: U.S. BUILDS LONGEST LINER IN SHIP BUILDING RACE. wonderful timing (and a neat overhead layout!) as we see the longest liner in person: an extremely elongated ship right in the middle of new york and london. the ship inches forward to london, and then back to new york, and then we cut away to the next order of business. next: FLASH! SPECIAL! heddie camphor (a take on eddie cantor, of course) finds “little oscar”, vitamin (a take on vitaphone) newsreel man gets exclusive interview with oscar. we see a little bug next to a purse (that has the initials of JW on them, jack warner of warner bros fame) and hear mel blanc talking in a russian accent. “ahh, dere you are! tell us, oscar, how does feel for to be back home after being lost for such long time?” the little bug rambles on in high pitched, nonsensical garbles. “oh, thank you very much, oscar! how you like that? he say he would rather be lost!” i haven’t found anything as to what the gag means, so unfortunately the meaning has been lost to the sands of time. but, if anything, it’s amusing hearing mel do one of the voices we’ll be hearing so often in many cartoons.

what is it with movie-centric cartoons and hitler? bosko’s picture show in 1933 was the first cartoon of any studio to ever depict a caricature of hitler, and now we have a gag where a man is invited to sit in the last seat in the row. unfortunately, his view is seldom ideal: we see some rather impressive perspective and animation as hitler on screen marches forward, eventually disappearing into nothingness because the moviegoer can’t see anything. aggravated, he moves a few seats down, right in the front row and in the middle. i believe this is bob mckimson animation--this scene would be reused two years later in the film fan, with porky in place of the dog trying to crane his neck to see animation of a jockey riding on the horse. the warped perspective is quite impressive and does a good job of hitting home. we’ve all been there, stuck in the front row and trying to see what’s happening. nevertheless, the dog begrudgingly accepts his fate, forever doomed to view the news reel at inadequate angles.

also reused in bacall to arms is a gag of a hippo trying to get out of the row, proving to be a nuisance in the process. he’s a polite nuisance, at least, repeating “pardon. pardon me. pardon.” as he bulldozes his way through. tex avery would also lampoon overweight hippo moviegoers in his hamateur night in 1939.

time for the birth of a caricature! we have our first caricature of vaudevillain lew lehr (penned as who dehr in this case), whose catchphrase “monkeys is da cwaziest peoples!” would be lampooned in many, many, many, MANY warner bros cartoons (especially bob clampett cartoons: porky in egypt, porky’s snooze reel, russian rhapsody, and so forth). here, he opens us up with nit-wit news. “ladies and peoples, listen while explaining you the latest news of da day.” the napoleon hat/garb in general is a nice touch, often used to symbolize insanity (like porky suffering here from the “desert madness”).

lehr (or in this case dehr) narrates the malady of a strange dog bite affecting the city of “boondoggle”, mo. that strange malady has turned the citizens of boondoggle into boonDOGS as everyone runs around on all fours. “look at dat! even da mayor leads a dog’s life in boondoggle!” the mayor, digging a hole, comes across a dog and growls (i love the detail of his sideburns raising like a dog’s ears in defense), both him and the actual dog engaging in a tussle. the brushing on the fight is very well done for this time period, feeling like a precursor to drybrushing which would be so prevalent in so many cartoons. the mayor wins the fight, running away with a bone in his mouth. elsewhere, BOONDOOGLE'S LEADING SOCIETY MATRON IS LATEST VICTIM OF SCOURGE. amusing animation and narration by blanc/dehr as a woman sits on a pillow, panting like a dog, eagerly running up to her butler and eating a piece of steak thrown at her. dehr wraps up the presentation, he himself getting a taste of the scourge as one of the affected residents crawls onscreen and bites dehr right in the leg. nonsensical? absolutely. but it’s the GOOD kind of nonsensical. the use of black and white is a nice touch with this being a technicolor cartoon. many of the other news reel cartoons have been/are in black and white, so the mixing of technicolor and B&W really adds some authenticity.

“boulevardier from the bronx” seems to be a theme for slow, lumbering characters as the lumbering hippo makes his return, squeezing himself through an angry row of patrons while he dismissively pardons himself. he sits himself down just in time to see “STICKOUTSKI at the fertilizer”. a lion caricature of leopold stokowski invites the moviegoers to a rousing chorus of “she was an acrobat’s daughter”--not unlike bosko getting his own audience to sing in bosko’s picture show. the song is very catchy, the slideshow visuals equally as entertaining as the lyrics. i especially love the gag where one picture, not a part of the slideshow, reads “please do not spit on the floor”, yet the patrons sing it in tune regardless, then correcting themselves and singing the next verse in the same tune. a hilarious gag with great timing. a short merrie melody for sure, but a good one at that.

next is a parody of the MGM lion, crowing like a rooster instead of doing its signature roar. the film is “petrified florist, a take on “petrified forest” (which would be used as a gag in book revue). after an interminable cast scroll through (reused in bacall to arms), we see the star of the film, a caricature of leslie howard unsuccessfully hitchhiking, tying his thumb to a railroad crossing sign, making the light swing. while the film is playing, a random donkey decides to peddle peanuts, crackerjack, chewing gum (with an underscore of “puddin’ head jones”, a favorite of mine). the donkey is booted out of the theater, hitting his head on a streetlight and still repeating his peauts, crackerjack, chewing gum mantra in a daze. a little incongruous and random, but there are some interesting angles and closeups as the donkey walks straight towards the audience.

back to the film, the leslie howard caricature summons a bette davis cariature (again, caricatures by t. hee), demanding some food. bette flirts with him, smitten. “what’s your name?” “puddin tame. ask me again, and i'll tell you the same.” “are you a poet?” “after a fashion. “ooh, i love poetry!” “would you like me to recite?” “no.” even better than the “no” gag is howard struggling to recite mary had a little lamb regardless. “mary lad a little hamb. mary mad a little amb. mary had... oh, she had a goat.” while leslie struggles to retell the story, bette sighs, completely enamored.

a very interesting discovery, at least for me: i always wondered why in some porky cartoons, porky had a little white duck sidekick (not daffy) who was a pest. mainly a 1939 phenomenon: i’ve only spotted him in it’s an ill wind and porky’s hotel. his name is either dizzy or dippy duck, i can’t remember. but i always wondered why he was porky’s sidekick when daffy was getting to be established as porky’s sidekick at the same time. turns out THIS dizzy/dippy duck’s first appearance, or at least a prototype. here, he pesters his dad, barraging him with questions. “why, daddy? why did the man look at her like that, daddy? why, daddy? does he like her, daddy? does he like the lady, daddy?” and so on. while the dad furiously attempts to hush his kid, his efforts are futile. the duck is only silenced once the entire row in front of him turns back to shoot him down with glares. that is, until the duck starts rambling again, asking a bunch of obnoxious questions. i love this in particular, for i can relate--weird anecdote, but my mom said the first movie she took me to i started walking up and down the aisles and chatting up strangers. so i like this kid! even better is when the angry front row shushes him once more with angry “NYEHHHH!”s. now, the father speaks up in a w.c. fields voice. “heyyy, what’s going on?” a punch to the face from an offscreen fist.

the kid, not getting the memo, pesters his dad once more, who shooes him away. now, the kid darts out of the theater and up to the projection booth. i love the animation of the kid turning his head in wonderment, staring at the door (bob mckimson maybe? it’s pretty solid and constructed). he barges in, fiddling with the controls. he turns a lever from MED. to FAST, and the movie is sped up to frightening speeds. the kid panics, trying to fix his error, but to no avail. now, the movie plays backwards. the animation is quite good--skipping and jumping around, but still room for there to be inbetweens of SOME sort. i can only imagine trying to sort those frames out in the (in)correct order! it’s easy to mess up, but hard to mess up on purpose!

now desperate, the kid sticks his beak inside the projection camera, where it gets caught. in a similar (yet less gruesome/strange) manner to baby bottleneck, the kid gets caught in the gears, his body twisting up and down and around, feathers expelled into the air. iris out as the kid flops to the ground, unscathed, cursing as his body is covered in film.

this cartoon is a GREAT one, probably the best we’ve seen from friz. or, at the very least, the funniest. it’s so ahead of it’s time--so much so that it was reused in chunks in bacall to arms in 1946, which proved to be quite anachronistic. you have the conflicting styles of clampett/davis (mainly clampett, this is probably the most clampett-y short in terms of looks out of the ones he didn’t finish) from 1946, and the simplistic 1937 friz style. that’s QUITE a contrast, but that tells you how well the humor holds up. i’m really fascinated by the dizzy/dippy prototype. in all likelihood, it was just a one off character. friz didn’t sit down thinking this would be his next star (our next review will cover talkative, famous ducks ;)), but he is VERY similar to the duck used in hardaway/dalton’s it’s an ill wind and later clampett’s duck used in porky’s hotel. i believe mel does almost all the voices, save for bette davis. i don’t believe the w.c. fields voice provided by the father duck is tedd pierce. it’s very exciting to see him climb up the ranks--next cartoon, he gets to voice our favorite pig (and duck!) in all, this is a hilarious cartoon. some of the gags are a little (or a lot) dated, often skewing the joke--i wish i knew what the meaning behind the little oscar joke was--but it wasn’t a constant thing. the song number was hilarious (i love the “please do not spit on the floor” gag) and catchy, the animation was good, the caricatures were lovely... while there are many more funny cartoons than this one, in terms of this time period and comparing it to what friz has churned out up to this point, it’s probably his funniest one yet, and that in itself constitutes a watch. it’s definitely the funniest news reel cartoon we’ve seen so far. go for it!

link!

#lt #she was an acrobat’s daughter #reviews #looney tunes #freleng #long post

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