This may seem apropos of nothing, but golly gee, is this show awesome or what…
Huzzah for the new season!
Vodpod videos no longer available.Well, I don’t know exactly what pop culture activity in America spurned this, but considering the hip hop, the sunglasses, and the kicking of burgers, we obviously inspired it:
BONUS: If you haven’t seen this yet, you must still be on dial-up and rabbit ears:
While on vacation a couple weeks ago in Mehico, I picked up a few things other than the Spanish language (and The Clap… you all know The Clap… it goes with this song:
and… end parenthetical).
Anyquién, I also decided I loathe the above remake, but that’s neither here nor there. Well, it was there, at the resort, where my dislike upgraded to loathe because they played it every day at the pool. Now onto the mysteries!
MYSTERY 1) A fair amount of time ago, a friend was telling me about a documentary he watched on Animal Planet or Discovery that was about “cutie fish.” He told me about how they are amongst the smartest invertebrates, and about their survival methods. Interesting, thought I, and I preceded to look them up… and found nothing.
In Mexico, some friends went snorkeling and mentioned that they saw “cuttlefish.” Which look like this:
Neither a fish, nor cute.
And match the description given by my friend in regard to “cutie fish.”
MYSTERY – SOLVED!
MYSTERY 2) In my relaxing vacational TV viewing, I stumbled across a cartoon featuring a bunch of eggs that were battling, while some eggs were tied to a roller coaster track. One of them was friends with a strip of bacon, and one guy looked like this:
(Not So) Artistic Representation
It didn’t help that it was in Spanish, but I’ve not been able to find anything like it on Google image search.
BONUS MYSTERY: There was some CGI black and white movie that was in English, and it had a fairly intense shower sex scene. The main character’s name was Don Hudson, and he was being hunted by people the woman he just slept showered with called. There were reed accents throughout. Google search? Nada.
MYSTERIES – UNSOLVED
MYSTERY 3) In other TV viewing, there was some crappy Danny DeVito movie (I found out was entitled, Other People’s Money), and his character’s name was Larry Garfield. Now that’s not much on its own (although it was weird I had just watched Stand and Deliver and the school it took place at was also named Garfield High School), but after watching Shoot ‘Em Up, I theorized Odie meant “hate.”
Got home and Babel Fished it:
Boo-yah! Mystery solved! But a newer mystery remained. Did Garfield creator Jim Davis name his yellow dog this because his feline star hated him?
Apparently, no:
Odie was based on a car dealership commercial written by Jim Davis, which featured Odie the Village Idiot. Davis liked the name Odie and decided to use it again.
MYSTERIES – (UNSATISFACTORILY) SOLVED!
MYSTERY 4) Um, Boston Legal was called Justicia Ciega. What did it translate to? I figured justicia = legal, but what did ciega mean? Well on another show or movie (I don’t recall which one), a car accident almost occurred and a woman screamed, “What are you, blind?” Ciega flashed on the bottom. Boston Legal = Justicia Ciega = Blind Justice.
MYSTERY – SOLVED!
MYSTERY 5) Why did I spend so much time watching TV?
MYSTERY – UNSOLVED…
I’ve seen a few horror films that have creeped me out, and one documentary that reduced me to a shambled mess, but this may the first documentary that gives me the heebie-jeebies (I had it once already as a kid, but I’ve heard you can catch it again, unlike chicken pox, but very much like cooties.)
I dare you to watch the entire preview. In fact, you must watch the entire preview.
It was just announced last week the Masters of the Universe movie was cancelled, and although the version in the works sounded craptastic, it pains me a bit to know that a live action version is further away. But given the track record with cartoons about toys being given their due on the silver screen, I think a lot of those dues haven’t been paid, nor will they. Sure, in ten years Transformers or G.I. Joe may or may not get rebooted, but will I care? (Odds are yes. Because technically, this MOTU a reboot, and I do care.)
I apologize for the fact that I posted this video almost a year ago, but it’s too awesome and helpful in imagining what a He-Man movie could be like:
And how bad ass would this Thundercats movie be:
Plus, with the fate of the third Batman film from director Christopher Nolan up in the air, does this whet your appetite?
I'm not drooling, am I?
Finally, and this is definitely off-topic but in line with the post’s title, has anyone ever seen this movie?
The secret of his suck-cess
As a self-proclaimed prankster, I have to admit I love it when musicians release their crossover tunes onto easy-listening stations, knowing full well that their CD is nothing like that one song. Unwitting grandmothers and soccer moms hear it and think, “What a pleasant melody,” so they head to Target to pick it up, and image their shock at the remainder of the album. (I wanted to go into a whole thing about grandmothers looking for LP’s and cassette tapes, but I thought it was mean and stopped myself.)
So what better way to express the level of shock value than by rating them with surprised grandmothers?
The latest culprit: Shinedown, with their album The Sound of Madness
"Well I never..."
A few other groups have done it in the past, like Rise Against and their album Siren Song of the Counter Culture.
"That's music?"
Green Day committed the act late in the game, on their CD Nimrod.
"What silly boys..."
Oh, and what can I say about Extra co-host, Mark McGrath’s, “humble” beginnings in Sugar Ray. For the record (clever pun!), their first CD, Lemonade and Brownies (juvenile pun!) looked like this:
Nicole Eggert of "Charles In Charge" and something called... "Baywatch"?
It was their second album, Floored, that pulled the bait-and-switch.
(SIDENOTE: Both of the above videos were integral to launching McG’s future career as a feature film director. So every time you see Mark McGrath mugging on Extra, you can thank him for making Lemonade=Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Brownies=Terminator Salavation possible. And McGrath <> McG? Do I smell a conspiracy? Nope. Just turds.)
NOTE: Everything that follows is my opinion… and it’s all fact.
Fantasy movies are geared toward the audience that longs to be whisked away, and that’s namely the pre-teens of this world. The reason why they are so susceptible: there’s still imagination (child-like wonder) remaining in their brains. Any adult that is too into fantasy films obviously has a mental/social disorder (hello PotHeads and Twihards)…
I’m not meaning to be mean. I’m merely meaning to get to the bottom of why fantasy films don’t do it for me anymore.
Growing up, I loved Clash of the Titans, The Beastmaster, The Dark Crystal, Gremlins, Tron, The Princess Bride, and some movies had to deal with a Star War or a few. There were others that I couldn’t quite get into like Legend and Labyrinth, but I always felt they were more for the young ladies (for the record, The Princess Bride was being read to Kevin Arnold Fred Savage).
Outside of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (it’s insanely absurd and clever), when I was turning thirteen, Willow wasn’t even cutting it anymore. If I was going to like a dopey fantasy movie, it had something else going for it, such as my crush on Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands or me still being a fan of Steven Spielberg when he made Hook.
Let’s use The Neverending Story trilogy (yes there were three – and a TV show) to reiterate:
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
The first film released in 1984: AWE-SOME (hyphen added for pause worthy emphasis).
The second film released in 1990: (Avoid making tasteless joke about Jonathan Brandis, avoid making tasteless joke about Jonathan Brandis, avoid making tasteless joke about Jonathan Brandis…)
The third film released in 1994: Really?! Highlights from an IMDB review:
I cannot begin to describe how awful this movie is… NES3, for lack of a better term, sucks. The storyline was as unimaginative and vapid as you could hope for… After the fart jokes and potty humor commenced, I just couldn’t take it any longer. My advice is don’t wast your time and ruin your childhood memories with this piece of refuse.
Now I don’t count superhero movies or animated films because they’ve almost attained the status of having their own genre. Outside of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, what do you have left to defend? The Mummy films? Van Helsing? (Not fair – those are mostly Stephen Sommers‘ pieces of crap.) Okay, then. MirrorMask? Eragon? Beowulf? Lady in the Water?! Stardust and Coraline were even kind of meh.
(SIDENOTE: I will give props to The Last Mimzy, The Bridge to Terebithia, and Big Fish for tugging my heart strings, 300 for being new, and the first Pirates of the Caribbean for the laughs. Am I missing any others?)
Ultimately, have fantasy films declined from being the shit to just shitty, or am I just getting old? I guess the proof will be in the pudding (sorry for the oldtimer-y expression) when the following films get remade or updated:
(FINAL SIDENOTE: I really, really, really, seriously hope that M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t fuck up The Last Airbender. I looooove that cartoon. That ended it’s run. On Nickelodeon. Just last year. Stop looking at me that way! I don’t have that serious of a mental/social disorder! Use this blog as proof!)
Just for clarification: Coinkydink = yes, it’s a coincidence. Coinkydonk = no, that sh– is on purpose.
I’m a fan of the old days when spoofs were actually quality works, and a noble genre in it’s own right. Early Mel Brooks and Zucker Brothersfilms are often sited as classics, but lest we not forget, um, nope, there’s nobody else. Satire is a dying form, mostly because it requires intelligence blah blah blah highbrow chitter-chatter… onto the jokes, man. No seriously, I have never seen a joke on this blog since it started last October.
So speaking of October and spoofs, what about comedy-horror films? For every Young Frankenstein, there’s a Love at First Bite. For every Transylvania 6-5000, there’s a Dracula: Dead and Loving It. For every Saturday the 14th, there’s a Saturday the 14th Strikes Back. And for every Scream, there’s more than enough Scary Movies.
So now we have two more vampire-themed “comedies” heading our way, and it’s Round 189 in “Hollywood’s Run Out Of Ideas So Let’s Make Two Versions Of The Same Movie And Have Them Compete Against Each Other.”
Examples of previous rounds:
The latest entries to the list are Transylmania and Stan Helsing (srsly). Here are their trailers:
The Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk-nesscomes down to this simple question: Do studios release similar movies against each other on accident (dink!) or on purpose (donk!)?
It’s stunts like these that explain how a chimp can all of a sudden snap and try to bite their master’s (is that the appropriate way to put it?) face off. Speaking of Face Off, how much cooler would that movie be if it was about monkeys trying to eat Nick Cage and John Travolta’s visages. It’d be like Outbreak meets Every Which Way But Loose… Or Most Valuable Primate meets Midnight Meat Train.
What was I talking about?
Vodpod videos no longer available. more about “Monkey Goes Apeshit“, posted with vodpod
I was at my mom’s house today for some free grub, and she was was watching a rerun of Oprah. It was a compilation of old segments that wowed and moved her (Oprah, not my ma, as far as I know), and I was regarding it without being wowed and/or moved. Sure, Criss Angel and David Blaine can be interesting, and Terry Fator and Paul Potts’ stories are inspiring, but otherwise, meh…
Then Faith appeared (this is not the actual show footage, but you’ll get the gist of it):
Instant tears. Let me say this: there is no amount of free food that makes my sudden outpouring of emotion worth it. Almost no amount of food (a pepperoni pizza with Cajun crust and double cheese is a good start).
(SIDENOTE: In regard to Opie & Anthony, the third segment of the above video – I didn’t know assholes could walk on two legs.)
On the lighter side of doggy’s overcoming obstacles:
monkeyBLOG monkeyDO 