FRED Entertainment

July 31, 2008

Ken P. D. Snyde-Cast #54: Wiki Or Won’t He

Filed under: Ken P.D. Snydecast — UncaScroogeMcD @ 11:09 pm

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Adult Swim’s Dana Snyder and FRED’s Ken Plume set out to have a literate conversation between two pals, but inevitably devolve into a verbal, and funny, free-for-all full of bickering, infighting, and the special kind of male bonding that comes from conflict expressed through the podcast medium.

Actor/comedian/raconteur Dana Snyder, you’re certainly aware, is Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s Master Shake, Squidbillies‘ Granny, Minoriteam’s Dr. Wang, and The Venture Bros.‘ Alchemist. Available for weddings and bar mitzvahs (bat availability pending), you can keep tabs on him via his website, www.eyeofthesnyder.com.

Ken Plume is the editor-in-chief here at FRED. He is a friend of Dana’s, as well as his arch-nemesis.

VISIT THE SNYDECAST EXPERIENCE

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KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #54: Wiki Or Won’t He – Ken & Dana return with post-Comic-Con tales of gift giving etiquette, reminders of competitions past, declare themselves the world’s most “Multi-poded” podcast out there, and cry out for a crazy uberfan. Oh, and to hell with those bastards at Wikipedia.

[CONTENT WARNING]: This podcast may contain some foul language and horribly off-color jokes. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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Comics in Context #228: The Bat Who Shot Liberty Valance

Filed under: Comics in Context — admin @ 5:06 am

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On July 21 The New York Times ran an article with the headline “Batman’s Dark Knight Sets Weekend Record.” In the piece reporter Michael Cieply wrote that ” Fevered fans pushed The Dark Knight, the sixth in Warner Brothers’ series of Batman movies, to record three-day ticket sales of $155.3 million over the weekend, ” surpassing the record set by another superhero movie, Spider-Man 3, the previous year. The next day Cieply provided an update: “A final tally raised the three-day box-office sales for The Dark Knight to $158.3 million”.

And yet New York Times movie critic A. O. Scott, who has been a source of exasperation ever since this column began a half decade ago, weighed in on July 24 with a Times essay titled “How Many Superheroes Does It Take to Tire a Genre?”. “Are the Caped Crusader and his colleagues basking in an endless summer of triumph, or is the sun already starting to set?” What an odd way to interpret The Dark Knight‘s extraordinary commercial success. Superhero movies are more successful than ever therefore, they must be in decline. Scott acknowledges not only that The Dark Knight is not only a major financial success but also that it has received considerable critical praise from his colleagues. Nevertheless, Scott says, “Still, I have a hunch, and perhaps a hope, that Iron Man, Hancock and Dark Knight together represent a peak, by which I mean not only a previously unattained level of quality and interest, but also the beginning of a decline. In their very different ways, these films discover the limits built into the superhero genre as it currently exists.”

The key phrase here is, of course, “perhaps a hope.” Other critics welcome Dark Knight‘s thematic ambitions and skill in characterization as signs that the superhero movie genre is maturing and growing in sophistication. For example, another Times film critic, Manohla Dargis, in her July 18 review of the movie, wrote that director “Christopher Nolan’s new Batman movie feels like a beginning and something of an end. Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind–including Batman Begins,”

However, Scott believes that The Dark Knight states its themes without truly exploring them. Even were that true, Scott, were he more favorably disposed to the genre, would urge superhero filmmakers to go still further in exploring the thematic potential of the genre. Instead, Scott has decided that the superhero genre is inherently too limited for thematic complexity. He just doesn’t like superhero movies, and, as he concedes, he hopes they will go away and stop bothering him. “I don’t want to start any fights with devout fans or besotted critics,” he claims, trying to be conciliatory on the surface but actually marginalizing anyone who disagrees with him as either fanboys whose enthusiasm borders on worship or as “besotted” critics whose emotions override their reason.

Towards the end of his essay Scott observes that “˜’The westerns of the 1940s and ’50s, obsessed with similar themes, were somehow able, at their best, as in John Ford’s Searchers and Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo, to find ambiguities and tensions buried in their own rigid paradigms.” Scott claims that superhero movies cannot do the same. Yet when classic Westerns such as these came out, the critical establishment was blind to those very “ambiguities and tensions,” and the true complexity and depth of these films was not recognized by American critics until many years later.

Scott has stumbled across an important point, that the superhero genre is a in various respects represents a recasting of the archetypes of the Western for a contemporary urban America. Yet I have the feeling that if Scott had been around in the 1940s and 1950s, he might well have been insisting that Westerns were by their nature shallow entertainments, and disparaging any filmmakers who attempted to infuse them with “ambiguities and tensions” as pretentious.

Scott’s willful ignorance of the genre is also annoying. He claims in his essay that the movie Hancock “which played with the superhero archetype by making him a grouchy, slovenly drunk rather than a brilliant scientist, a dashing billionaire or some combination of the two.” Hasn’t the idea of the typical superhero being either a genius scientist or millionaire playboy been out of date for forty-some years? (All Scott need have done is think back to the Spider-Man movies.) With the Watchmen movie coming out early next year, can’t someone induce Scott to read the graphic novel beforehand? Maybe that will change his ideas about the limitations of the superhero genre. Or will he be blind even to Alan Moore’s sophisticated subtexts? I recall when I showed a comic boom I liked to a friend decades ago, when most adults disdained the medium, and she just started reading the sound effects aloud, unwilling to pay attention to the dialogue or art. Her mind was made up that comics were silly, and therefore she fixated on a convention of the genre she could easily mock.

Since Scott predicted the fall of the superhero movie, The Dark Knight has continued to break records. On July 28 the Times reported that “Among other records it delivered the best second-weekend gross in recent Hollywood history” and “The Dark Knight has sold $314.2 million in tickets domestically in its first 10 days of release, a record”. This is not the start of a decline. This is a sign that the superhero movie has firmly established itself as a 21st century mainstream film genre. In G4’s coverage of this year’s San Diego Comic Con, Michael Uslan, executive producer of the Batman movies and producer of the forthcoming Spirit film, said that we are now experiencing a “Golden Age” of comics-based movies. The evidence, I think, is in his favor.

Critic David Ansen, in his Newsweek review of The Dark Knight, is more open in his insistence that superhero movies should be empty entertainments: “[Director Christopher] Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn’t be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not Hamlet. Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun”.

I get the sense that history is moving forward, and that Scott and Ansen, in their condescension towards the superhero genre, are being left behind. I might call it a generational divide, except that there are older critics who get it.

For example, Roger Ebert begins off his review of The Dark Knight thus: “Batman isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree Iron Man, redefine the possibilities of the “˜comic-book movie'”.

While I agree with Ebert about the movie, I am dismayed that he felt he had to imply that Batman had transcended its origins as a comic book series, implying that the comics medium is incapable of matching the artistry and depth of cinema. In other words, he seems to be saying that comics are necessarily shallow and superficial; movies can achieve the level of tragedy. Further, he seems to be implying that a “comic-book movie” and a superhero movie are the same thing, as if comics only dealt in that single genre, and as if the movies American Splendor, Ghost World, A History of Violence, Persepolis and Road to Perdition were not all based on comics of the same name. However challenging The Dark Knight movie may be, to my mind it still falls short of masterpieces of Batman comics such as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, and the Steve Englehart-Marshall Rogers Batman collaboration, all of which surely influenced the new film, directly or indirectly. (By calling the film The Dark Knight, Warners may consciously be attempting to associate it in audience members’ minds with the Miller series, since it was he who popularized this name for the Batman.)

But still, Ebert recognizes that as this decade of superhero movies proceeds, filmmakers are pushing the envelope ever further: “Something fundamental seems to be happening in the upper realms of the comic-book movie. Spider-Man II (2004) may have defined the high point of the traditional film based on comic-book heroes. A movie like the new Hellboy II allows its director free rein for his fantastical visions. But now Iron Man and even more so The Dark Knight move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes. And the Batman legend, with its origins in film noir, is the most fruitful one for exploration.” Batman debuted in 1939, just before the rise of film noir in the 1940s and 1950s, and it would be pleasant if Ebert gave some of us “comic-book readers” credit for the intelligence to consciously realize that the superhero genre deals in “fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes.” But whereas Scott insists on limiting the superhero genre, Ebert perceives both its great potential and the ways in which filmmakers are exploring it.

As in the past, I continue to be impressed by veteran film critic Andrew Sarris’s open-mindedness towards the superhero genre. Though he admits never having been a comics reader, he seems unfettered by preconceptions about the medium or the superhero genre. Admitting in The New York Observer that “it may seem strange for many that so much weight is being given to a movie about a comic-book superhero,” Sarris nonetheless declares The Dark Knight to be a “masterpiece,” acknowledges that “the moral despair in The Dark Knight has moved me so strongly” and asserts that “after The Dark Knight, I may have to rethink my past reservations about Mr. Nolan’s place in the 21st-century cinema”.

To my mind, The Dark Knight is a far greater achievement than its director/co-writer Christopher Nolan’s previous movie about the character, 2005’s Batman Begins, which I found disappointing in various respects (see “Comics in Context” #89: “Batman Reboots”).

One of my biggest problems with Batman Begins was its failure to properly portray its principal villains. The film’s Ra’s al Ghul–both the Asian Ra’s in the beginning and the “real’ Ra’s later on–lacked the regality, the sense of sinister force, and the sheer presence that the character should convey. (It’s certainly not impossible: think of Ian McKellen as Magneto, Christopher Lee as Saruman, or Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, whose performance is growing in me with repeated viewings, among recent on-screen villains.) The Scarecrow’s brief reappearance at the beginning of The Dark Knight serves as a reminder of the first film’s failing. He returns with his grotesque mask, and yet doesn’t seem intimidating or eerie in the least. Compare this to the way that Jeffrey Combs makes a chilling impression from his first moments voicing the Scarecrow in “Never Fear,” a 1997 episode of the classic Batman animated series. So I worried that Nolan was simply incapable of handling the operatic dimensions of Batman’s larger-than-life villains and would similarly blunder with the Joker.

But Nolan surprised me by turning Batman Begins‘ greatest flaw into The Dark Knight‘s greatest triumph, through the late Heath Ledger’s remarkable performance as the Joker.

Nolan and actor Aaron Eckhart handles Two-Face effectively, though he does not rise to the heights of Ledger’s Joker. I was particularly pleased with Nolan’s first revelation on-screen of Two-Face’s scarred facial features. At first Nolan teases us: we think Eckhart is going to turn his head to show us the scarred side of his face, but he doesn’t; it reminded me of the unmasking scene in Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera (1925), with its similar suspenseful feints before the grand unveiling. Finally, Eckhart turns his face fully, and the makeup surpassed my expectations. capturing the grotesquerie of some of the most memorable depictions of Two-Face in the comics.

One might have expected that Two-Face would get to be the lead villain of his own Batman movie. But, as I will show, it’s necessary to the thematic structure of The Dark Knight that Harvey Dent not only becomes Two-Face in this movie but even goes through a complete character arc ending with his apparent demise by the film’s end.

As for Ledger’s Joker, as other reviewers have observed, this is the post-9/11 Joker. He blows up a hospital; through bomb threats and actual assassinations, he forces the evacuation of Gotham City. It is as if the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center were followed by a sustained series of terrorist assaults on New York City. The Joker of The Dark Knight thus becomes the realization of nightmare scenarios inspired by 9/11. In the movie Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler and counselor, points out that the Joker doesn’t abide by rationality: he wreaks havoc just for the sake of seeing a city “burn.” This points to suspicions I suspect that many of us have about the real life terrorists: that despite their professed ideologies, their real motivation is pleasure in inflicting mass destruction.

Amazing as Ledger’s performance is, and as different as it is from previous on-screen characterizations of the Joker, I am not going to claim that it renders previous actors’ portrayals of the character obsolete, as some reviewers have suggested. Granted, I’ve never been a fan of Cesar Romero’s comparatively harmless Joker in the 1960s Batman TV show. But I happened to see the part of the 1989 Batman movie on television the same day I saw The Dark Knight, and was paying attention to the more sinister aspects of Jack Nicholson’s performance as the Joker. When I saw The Dark Knight there was a big audience reaction when Ledger’s Joker rams a criminal’s head onto a pointed pencil, a sign of the character’s sadism; I had forgotten that Nicholson’s Joker kills an enemy much the same way, impaling his forehead with a quill pen.

Batman first appeared in 1939 in Detective Comics; the Joker debuted the following year in Batman #1. These are iconic, archetypal characters who have proved capable of being interpreted in numerous ways. Nolan and Ledger’s version is a Joker for the post-9/11 period, but that does not invalidate different approaches to depicting the character.

Romero’s and Nicholson’s Jokers, and the Joker as so memorably voiced by Mark Hamill in the 1990s animated series, are all showmen. They turn crime into performance art, and they always seem to be “on,” always putting on a show, whether for their henchmen or Batman or the entire city, when delivering one of their threats over the airwaves. They may be killers, but they’re also trying to make their audience laugh. These Jokers are over-the-top extroverts, and there’s something appealing about their boisterous laughs and high spirits even as we may be appalled by their crimes.

Nolan is said to have based his Joker on the character as he first appeared in Batman #1, the grim serial killer who did not laugh, and whose smile seemed more like a death’s head grin. In a radical departure from previous Joker portrayals, contrast, Ledger’s Joker seems introverted, quiet, even laid back. He occasionally laughs loudly, but not all that often. Ledger’s Joker isn’t putting on a performance: he is only interested in amusing himself through manipulating the people–and the city-at his mercy. His sense of humor is more clearly something that is entirely his own, unlike anyone else’s, his own perverse, ironic, cynical way of looking at his fellow man. If there were such a person as the Joker, he would more likely be like Ledger’s Joker, someone cut off from the sensibilities of other people, someone with a sadistic sense of humor that is wholly his own. This creepy self-centeredness is what makes Ledger’s Joker seem more truly demented than the supposedly crazy Jokers of Nicholson and Hamill.

One of the most striking differences about Heath Ledger’s Joker is the coloring of his face and hair. It’s referred to as “makeup” in the movie, yet when Ledger’s Joker is in police custody, his makeup is not removed. That suggests that it can’t be, and that, as in the comics and the 1989 movie, the Joker’s face and hair have been permanently discolored by chemical wastes.

But in the comics and the 1989 movie, is it really credible that those chemicals could have so nearly dyed the Joker’s face chalk white, his lips red, and his hair green, making him look as if he had made himself up to look like a circus clown? Ledger’s Joker is the first one I’ve seen who looks as if he were the victim of a horrible accident. The chalk-white face color isn’t solid: in closeups you can see through, here and there, to his original Caucasian skin hue. The red on his lips no longer looks like lipstick; instead, it looks like a thick red smear across his myth and the scars to either side.

Something that many writers don’t seem to get is the power of mystery. Sam Hamm’s screenplay for the 1989 Batman film gave the Joker a real name, Jack Napier (“Jackanapes,” get it?). In contrast, in offering an origin for the Joker in The Killing Joke, Alan Moore did not give him a real name, and even made clear that this was only a “possible” origin story for the character, who may tell different accounts of his past at other times. In other words, the reader may accept or reject this origin as he or she likes. By not giving the future Joker a name, Moore may have been implying he was an everyman figure, or that the horror that drove him to become the Joker could do the same to anyone. More importantly, if the Joker has no real name and no definite origin, then it is as if the Joker is the only identity he now has, as if he is cut off from humanity, as if he is some mysterious evil force. Batman is grounded in humanity through his alter ego, Bruce Wayne; in the Joker’s case, it is as if his original human identity has ceased to exist.

Following this idea, Dark Knight‘s director/writer Christopher Nolan has repeatedly referred to the Joker as “an absolute”. I very much like the scene in the police station in which we learn that the Joker can’t be identified through fingerprints, dental records or even DNA samples: this is the 21st century version of utter anonymity. In The Dark Knight the Joker also gives differing accounts of how he got his scars, suggesting that Nolan is carrying on Moore’s idea that the Joker is an unreliable narrator of his own past.

At one point the Ledger Joker shows off his “card,” a Joker. But it’s not the typical playing card Joker figure that looks like a medieval court jester. Instead the Joker on the card looks like a laughing devil, complete with a tail. That’s appropriate, since the Joker in Batman is a modern descendant of the vice figure in medieval drama, a figure of evil who, as the drama evolved, also became the principal comedy character.

The Vice’s original dramatic function in medieval morality plays was as a tempter of human souls. One of The Dark Knight‘s primary innovations in portraying the Joker us to cast him as a tempter. As Roger Ebert realized, “He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.”

Nolan and Ledger’s Joker also fits the Vice mold in that the Vice will cause trouble simply for its own sake. Shakexpeare’s Iago, a descendant of the medieval Vice, is notorious for what the poet Samuel Tayloir Coleridge called his “motiveless malignity.”

Hence, the Joker sets a series of challenges for Batman and the people of Gotham City, forcing them into positions in which they have to make painful moral decisions. The Joker’s apparent goal is to expose morality as a fraud, and compel people to choose self-interest over the fate of others. He says at one point, “These civilized people, they’ll eat each other.” The Joker is out to demonstrate that the rest of humanity is on his moral level; the difference is that he admits it and they don’t.

This begins with the Joker’s first criminal scheme in the movie, in which he has organized a team of criminals, disguised by clown masks, to rob a bank. The Joker has also arranged for each member of the team, once his function is fulfilled, to be shot dead by another team member: in the end, the Joker himself, wearing one of the masks, kills the final member of the team. We learn later in the movie that the Joker doesn’t care about money; perhaps he regarded his real triumph in this case to be inducing each of the criminals to betray the others. No honor among thieves, indeed.

Later, the Joker declares that he will continue killing people every day unless Batman publicly reveals his true identity. Despite Alfred’s counsel that the Joker can’t be trusted to stop his killing spree, Bruce Wayne is unwilling to let anyone die if he can help it, and is willing not only to reveal his dual identity but also to go to prison, since Batman is wanted by the police. In the end, the Joker is thwarted when an unexpected alternative is found, and Harvey Dent announces that he is Batman. (Watching this part of the film, I wondered, is he Spartacus, too?)

Stiil later, the Joker simultaneously puts both Harvey Dent and assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes in peril, forcing Batman to choose which of them to rescue. (Ironically, the Joker is unaware that Batman is Bruce Wayne and is in love with Dawes.) Again, Batman solves the problem by coming up with an slternative that perhaps the Joker hadn’t considered (though it is fairly obvious), sending Gordon to saved Dent. (Perhaps the Joker sought to learn more about Batman by seeing who he would choose to rescue himself.) But in the end the explosives go off, killing Dawes before she can be rescued.

Finally, the Joker threatens to blow up the bridges and tunnels leading out of Gotham City, the city begins evacuating people by ferries. The Joker announces that he has planted explosives on two of the ferries, one carrying convicts and the other carrying ordinary people, and that he will blow both ferries up at midnight. However, each ferry is provided with a trigger for detonating the explosives on the other ferry. The Joker claims that if either ferry’s passengers blow up the other ferry, he will spare the survivors. It seems as if some of the convicts are willing to blow up the other boat, whole people on that second boat argue that the convicts don’t deserve to live as much as they do. But in the end, the passengers on neither ferry are willing to blow up the other, apparently hoping for a miracle. And the miracle occurs: since Batman succeeds in besting the Joker, neither ferry blows up. Batman forces the Joker to confront this fact: he attempted to prove the darkness of human nature by corrupting hundreds of people on the ferries and failed. Similarly, the Joker recognizes that he has failed to corrupt Batman himself.

Even apart from the challenges he explicitly sets, the Joker’s very presence in Gotham serves as a temptation to Batman. One of the key lines in the movie is the repeated observation that in time a hero eventually becomes a villain. How often in Batman stories in different media have we seen Batman threaten to drop a criminal from a great height unless he gives him certain information? We never see Batman drop the criminal, and so most of us probably assume he’s bluffing. But in The Dark Knight, when Batman so threatens Boss Maroni, the latter calls his bluff, saying the fall wouldn’t kill him. But Batman wasn’t out to kill Maroni but to hurt him, and drops Maroni, who lands painfully on his legs; the audience at my screening was audibly shocked. Does Nolan mean us to think of the contemporary controversy over the U. S. government’s use of torture? Does he mean us to think that Batman is going too far? Similarly, when Batman interrogates the Joker at the police station. Batman begins punching him, but Nolan does not stage the scene in a manner to invite the audience to enjoy the Joker’s punishment; instead, Nolan emphasizes the brutality, and makes certain we see that Commissioner Gordon, looking in, is horrified. And yes, the Joker ends up telling Batman where his men are holding Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes captive, but it becomes apparent that the Joker wanted Batman to go after them, and the Joker reverses their locations. So what good did that torture via beating accomplish?

Towards the movie’s end, Wayne’s confidant Lucius Fox is shocked to discover that Wayne has found away to monitor all the cell phones in Gotham City. Contending that this is too much power for any man to have, Fox declares he will resign once the Joker crisis is over. Does Nolan mean us to think of the current administration’s vast expansion of warrantless wiretapping? Is he, perhaps, alluding to V’s similar wall of TV screens, enabling him to look through the fascist government’s omnipresent “Big Brother”-style video cameras in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta? Or the real life video monitoring system that the British government installed after Moore wrote V? Could Nolan even be alluding to Batman’s satellite monitoring of metahumans in the comics some years ago (said to be returning in the forthcoming Justice League movie)?

But Dark Knight‘s Batman does not ultimately succumb to the temptation of misusing his own power. He instructs Lucius Fox to enter his (Fox’s) name into the monitoring system after the Joker crisis is over, and this causes the system to self-destruct. In other words, Batman/Wayne only temporarily assumed this power over people’s privacy to defeat a massive threat to their security, and then gives up the power once the need is over. One reviewer referred to Alfred and Lucius Fox as serving as Batman’s “consciences,” so it’s appropriate that it is Fox’s name that destroys the monitoring system.

Moreover, perhaps we are meant to contrast the Joker’s final fate in the movie with Batman’s earlier treatment of both the Joker and Maroni. At the end, Batman lets the Joker plunge from a high building, but then saves his life, suspending him upside down. (Earlier the Joker had hanged Batman in effigy; now Batman “hangs” the Joker without killing him.) The Joker is responsible for killing Rachel Dawes and turning Harvey Dent into Two-Face, yet the Batman resists any temptation to avenge them by killing him.

There’s a tradition in the Batman movies from 1989 on of killing off most of the major villains. It’s ironic that The Dark Knight keeps the Joker alive, as if setting up his return in a sequel. That was presumably the original plan: the Joker even says in his last scene that his feud with Batman will go on eternally. Since Heath Ledger died after completing the movie, it’s now unlikely that Nolan and Warners would attempt to recast the role in the current series of Batman movies, forcing a different actor to compete with Ledger’s extraordinary performance. Will Ledger posthumously become the first actor to win an Academy Award for playing a role that originated in comics?

The character who fails the Joker’s moral challenges is Harvey Dent, who, as in the comics, starts out as the idealistic District Attorney who is out to clean up Gotham City. Bruce Wayne regards Dent as the potential savior of Gotham City, the man who can do a better job of ridding it of crime through legal means than Batman can through vigilantism. Once Wayne’s girlfriend, Rachel Dawes is now in love with Dent. Perhaps Dent, in this movie, can be seen as Wayne’s doppelganger, showing what might have happened had Wayne chosen to fight crime as a lawyer or a government official instead.

But this one man, Harvey Dent, proves all too vulnerable. After being captured by the Joker’s men, half of Dent’s face burns and is horribly scarred. His disfigurement and the murder of Rachel surely push him to the brink of madness. Then, disguised as a nurse, the Joker confronts Dent in the hospital and pushes him over the brink. As Two-Face, Dent’s crusade against crime is twisted into a series if murders of those he holds responsible for Rachel’s death. Thus Dent becomes a corrupted version of Batman, the crimefighting vigilante, crossing the moral line that Batman refuses to. This ultimately leads to Two-Face’s clash with his thematic doppelganger Batman and to his death. (Or so it seems. Two-Face’s fall may not have been as lethal as it looked. See here)

The Joker, as tempter, won a major victory by corrupting the crusading district attorney Harvey Dent, turning him into the criminal Two-Face. Batman is determined to deprive the Joker of his victory and is adamant that the people of Gotham need the image of Dent as incorruptible champion of the law. Therefore, at the end of the movie, Batman insists that Gordon blame him–Batman–for the murders Two-Face committed, so that Gotham will look up to Dent as a martyr to the cause of law and order.

I’m not the only person who has noticed the resemblance here to the ending of John Ford’s The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). (See, for example, here). In that movie, it is Tom Doniphon, the character played by John Wayne who actually shoots the outlaw Liberty Valance dead. But the public believes that the hero was Ransom Stoddard, the lawyer played by James Stewart, who eventually rises to become a United States Senator. As in The Searchers, Wayne’s character, who takes the law into his own hands, is necessary to rid the territory of evil so the rule of law may take root. But once a society governed by law arises, the gunslinger has no place in that world. Doniphon allows Stoddard to take the credit for killing Valance, because Doniphon recognizes that he belongs to the past, and Stoddard, and the rise of law and government, are the wave of the future. Years later, when Stoddard returns to attend the now forgotten Doniphon’s funeral, he tells the local press the true story of who killed Valance. The members of the press, acting very unlike members of the press, decided to bury the story; as one of them famously puts it, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” It is more important to them that Stoddard still be credited with the heroic act that launched his political career. Ford’s earlier Fort Apache (1948) ends similarly, with Wayne’s character continuing to speak of his deceased former superior officer, played by Henry Fonda, as a hero, even though the movie has shown that the Fonda character was a martinet who was responsible for leading his troops into a disastrous massacre.

As I said earlier, Scott had hit upon something important by comparing superhero movies with Westerns: Dark Knight seems to be invoking Liberty Valance. Batman is the vigilante who operates outside the law, who seeks to preserve the good reputation of Harvey Dent in the hope that Harvey’s memory will inspire the people of Gotham to rise up against crime through legal means, thereby rendering Batman’s vigilantism unnecessary.

Fort Apache and Liberty Valance appear to advocate this “print the legend” philosophy. But arguably both films actually advocate the opposite. In both Ford reveals the truth behind the “legend,” thereby indicating it is better that we know that truth. At the end of Valance, Senator Stoddard seems trapped in a lie that falsely gives him credit for the heroism of another man, who has died in poverty and obscurity.

Nolan’s Batman films radically differ from the comics in depicting Batman’s motivation. In the comics, traditionally, Bruce Wayne takes a vow to battle all criminals when he is a young boy, right after the murder of his patents. From childhood on he is driven to pursue this goal. Some stories, including Paul Levitz’s origin for the Earth-2 Batman’s daughter, the Huntress, and the animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), have indicated that if Batman/Bruce Wayne found fulfilling love, he would no longer feel the need to continue his crusade against crime. Other stories, such as Englehart and Rogers’ tales of Silver St. Cloud (see “Comics in Context” #84: “Dark Definitive” among others), and Tim Burton’s first Batman movie (1989), instead shows that love would not deter him from his self-appointed mission. Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns shows that if Bruce Wayne ended his costumed career, he would be left an empty shell of a man. The Dark Knight Returns and its sequel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, also show that Batman would continue his crimefighting career well into middle age, as long as he was physically able. The animated series Batman Beyond presents an elderly, wizened Bruce Wayne, still dedicated to his mission, even if he must now work through a young costumed protege. In short, it is difficult to imagine the Batman of the comics ever turning aside from his lifelong crimefighting career. His dedication to it is arguably an obsession, and it may end only with his death.

In sharp contrast, Nolan’s Batman Beyond presented Bruce Wayne as a lost and directionless youth, who merely became fixated on killing his parents’ killer, Joe Chill; once Chill was assassinated by someone else, Wayne had no goal in life until his childhood friend Rachel Dawes turned his attention to combatting crime in general, and Ra’s al Ghul subsequently molded him into the warrior he became.

In Batman Begins, as in Miller’s Batman: Year One, Batman is learning on the job how to operate as a costumed vigilante. In The Dark Knight Batman has mastered his new career and has become the commanding figure we know from the comics.

But, rather surprisingly, Nolan’s Batman can not only envision the end of his costumed career but actively seeks to bring it to an end. Nolan’s Bruce Wayne supports Harvey Dent as district attorney because he comes to believe that Dent is a truly dedicated man who can break the grip of crime on Gotham City. Indeed, Dent succeeds in bringing Gotham’s mob bosses to trial.

It appears, then, that the Bruce Wayne of The Dark Knight regards Batman as a necessary only in a Gotham with a dysfunctional system of law and order: the corrupt Gotham depicted in Batman Begins–and in Batman: Year One–in which James Gordon seemed to be the only honest cop. It’s rather like the Robin Hood legend, in which nobleman Robin of Locksley turns outlaw, battling the Sheriff and Prince John–only until good King Richard returns and restores the rule of law. The Bruce Wayne of The Dark Knight hopes to make Batman obsolete: if Harvey Dent can clean up Gotham City through legal means, then Wayne will happily retire Batman.

Moreover, The Dark Knight gives no indication that Bruce Wayne would become that purposeless, self-destructive man from Miller’s Dark Knight Returns if he gave up being Batman. The Bruce Wayne of The Dark Knight believes that once he ends his other life as Batman, he will be free to marry Rachel Dawes. However, she is intent on marrying Dent instead, a secret that Alfred keeps from Wayne, even after Dawes’ death, perhaps believing it is necessary for Wayne to think that a happy life with her was indeed a viable alternative for him, and that he was not necessarily doomed to be alone.)

So Bruce Wayne is in the position of Tom Doniphon from Valance, and Harvey Dent takes the role of Ransom Stoddard. Wayne is the man who takes it upon himself as Batman to battle outlaws, who makes it possible for Dent, like Stoddard, to bring about the rule of law through the government, making Batman unnecessary. The parallel even extends to Rachel Dawes, since Vera Miles’ character in Valance is originally in love with Doniphon but ends up marrying Stoddard.

In the movie Dent repeats the line that the night is darkest before the dawn. I expect that Nolan wants us to spot the pun here: Batman is the Dark Knight, whose presence is necessary to bring about the dawn, the new period of a Gotham that rises above the mire of crime, that Dent, this secular Messiah, promises to bring about.

Nolan’s Bruce Wayne even seems to regard Batman as a necessary evil. Nolan establishes early in the movie that there are various incompetent Batman wannabes in Gotham, attempting to imitate Gotham’s new vigilante. Batman disapproves of them. One Batman wannabe is later captured and apparently killed by the Joker, demonstrating that it is dangerous to try to imitate Batman.

I suspect it’s not just that this movie’s Batman wants to keep imitators out of danger, but that he doesn’t want people to treat him as a hero at all. By insisting that Gordon blame him for the murders that were actually committed by Dent as Two-Face, Batman ensures that the public will not think of him as a hero. If indeed Batman wants to bring about a Gotham City in which he will be unnecessary, then it makes sense that he does not want to be acclaimed as a hero, or to inspire any imitators. Batman operates outside the law because the law, compromised by government and police corruption, is ineffective in stopping crime; in the world he wants to bring about, in which the law regains its effectiveness, there is no place for a vigilante who operates outside the law. Bruce Wayne would hardly end up in poverty or obscurity, but his alter ego, Batman, would be “dead,” just as Tom Doniphon is.

There is further irony. It was Dent who kept predicting that a hero eventually becomes a villain, as he himself ended up doing. The Batman, however, begins to overstep moral bounds, but by the film’s end has pulled back. Yet he pretends to have turned villain in order to conceal Dent’s own villainy.

The moviemakers have it both ways: the people of Gotham City may regard Batman as a murderer and criminal, but Commissioner Gordon makes a stirring speech to his son, praising Batman as a true hero, willing to sacrifice his own reputation, and, of course, the audience will agree with Gordon. Is there a certain moral confusion here, though? If vigilantism is wrong, and the people of Gotham shouldn’t look up to Batman as a hero, then why should we?

Moreover, Gordon and Batman are engaging in a cover-up of the truth about Harvey Dent. Do cover-ups ever truly work? Doesn’t the truth eventually emerge? Is it ever really for the best to conceal wrongdoing in order to preserve someone’s public image?

Alfred is engaged in a cover-up as well. He has read the letter that Rachel Dawes gave him before her death, explaining that she will not marry Bruce and that he should not count on her to give him a normal life once he gives up being Batman. Alfred decides not to give it to Wayne. Perhaps Alfred believes Wayne is better off continuing to regard Rachel as a sort of muse and inspiration, continuing to believe that it would have been possible for him to give up being Batman and lead a normal life with her. But would it be better for Wayne to come to terms with the truth?

Does Nolan believe that these cover-ups are necessary? Or is he setting up another sequel. in which the lies will be exposed (especially should Two-Face return from his seeming grave)?

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Tom Doniphon perpetrates a lie that works; he rids the territory of its most dangerous criminal, and makes it possible for lawyer Ransom Stoddard to become a hero in his place, to lead the territory into statehood, and to establish civilization and the rule of law there. Doniphon makes tremendous sacrifices: he never gets his rightful credit for killing Valance, he loses the woman he loves to Stoddard, and he dies impoverished and nearly forgotten, his time having passed. But the film indicates that those sacrifices were worth it. In the framing sequence of Ford’s film, the vision that Stoddard had, of law and civilization, has come to pass and is firmly established.

But what about the sacrifices in The Dark Knight? When critic Andrew Sarris writes of the “moral despair” in The Dark Knight, he seems specifically to be referring to the fates of “Mr. [Aaron] Eckhart’s Harvey Dent and Ms. [Maggie] Gyllenhaal’s Rachel Dawes. Their deaths are testaments to the omnipotently anarchic evil of Ledger’s Joker. And for once, Bruce Wayne/Batman, for all his wiles and wizardry, is unable to save either Dent or Rachel, when earlier Batmen could have rescued them with a climatic swoop of their Batmobile, and have thrown in a wedding for the two virtuous lovers besides.” Sarris is quite right. The death of Rachel seems to have had something of the same effect that the death of Gwen Stacy had on Marvel readers in the 1970s: a violation of the conventional genre expectations that the leading lady will never die, and a shocking sign that happy en dings are no longer guaranteed. Consider too that in Bill Finger’s original Two-Face two-parter in the 1940s, Two-Face’s sanity was ultimately restored, as were his handsome facial features.

Rachel and Harvey each represented Bruce Wayne’s hopes for the future: that Harvey could release Gotham from the grip of crime, that he could make Batman unnecessary, that Rachel would someday marry Bruce. With Rachel and Harvey both dead, Bruce now seems trapped in his role as Batman.

Batman is determined to conceal Dent’s transformation into Two-Face and to keep the image of Harvey Dent, crusader against crime, alive. That image, Batman appears to think, will motivate others to believe that the fight against crime and corruption in Gotham is not hopeless, and to carry on Dent’s crusade.

Arguably, this Batman needs to believe in the memory of Harvey Dent himself, so as not to concede that the war on crime is hopeless.

Still, Batman is perpetrating a lie and an illusion, deceiving the people of Gotham, supposedly for their own good. But at the movie’s end, with Harvey Dent dead, his case against Gotham’s criminal bosses has apparently collapsed. There us no sign that anyone will take Dent’s place or that Gotham will indeed be freed from criminal domination. Doniphon died knowing that his sacrifice had borne fruit. It remains an open question whether Batman’s sacrifices will bring about that new dawn that Dent prophesied.

And Batman too is the victim of illusion. Just as he and Gordon have deceived Gotham about Harvey Dent, so too Alfred has deceived Bruce Wayne about Rachel Dawes, in order to preserve his illusion that she would one day have married him.

So Bruce Wayne/Batman is trapped in lies, trapped in what may be his endless one-man war on crime, and he has willingly forfeited the support of the very citizenry if Gotham that he has saved from the Joker. Ebert is correct about the tragic aspect of The Dark Knight.

But Sarris is not entirely correct about the film’s “moral despair.” The Joker, that force of anarchy and amorality, remains alive, but the Batman has thwarted him for now. Batman has transcended the temptation to abuse his own power. Dent’s legacy is his appointment of the honest James Gordon as Police Commissioner. And, most importantly, those two ferryloads of Gothamites, some criminals, some not, passed the moral challenge that the Joker set them. There us hope in Gotham City after all. But one cannot rely on a single savior like Harvey Dent. The struggle of Batman, Gordon, and their fellow Gothamites to save their city will be a longer, harder struggle than they had hoped.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

However condescending some of today’s critics may be towards comics, matters were far, far worse in the 1950s, when comics were widely accused of contributing to juvenile delinquency, the comics industry was investigated by Congress, and hundreds of comics professionals lost their jobs. Columbia University professor David Hadju recounts this dark period in disturbing detail in his new book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. You can find my review of the book in the July 7 edition of Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week. It has taken a half century for comics to recover and progress to the point that it is now no surprise to see graphic novels taken seriously in the pages of Publishers Weekly, The New York Times and other leading publications.

LINKS IN THE AMAZON CHAIN

You can find Hadju’s book at Amazon here.

As for one of my own books, since much of this week’s column is about the Joker, I’ll recommend The Supervillain Book: The Evil Side of Comics and Hollywood, edited by Gina Misiroglu and Michael Eury. Published by Visible Ink, this is an encyclopedia of supervillains in comics, film and television, for which I was a contributing writer.

–Copyright 2008 Peter Sanderson

July 30, 2008

Comics & Comics: Bring on the Baddies!

Filed under: Comics and Comics — admin @ 11:24 pm

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Howdy Inter-Webbers. I’m Matt Cohen, and I dig villains.

Sure, I enjoy the occasional hero now and again, but since an early age I can remember enjoying – if not empathizing – with Comic Book super villains. There is something so infectiously addictive about reading the exploits of men and women (and other creatures… I mean, we are talking comics here, folks) who have zero shame, zero pretenses, and zero morals. When a character is not tethered by worries and fears, when they are a being of pure purpose and driven to that goal, there is some level of primal thinking in all of us that goes, “I wish I could do that.” Not necessarily committing crimes and taking over the world, but rather the attraction to living a free and guiltless life. It seems, well… Fun.

But, shockingly enough, no mainstream comic company has ever dedicated an ongoing series to a supervillain. Sure, there are some exceptions and slight distinctions (Thunderbolts), but for the most part baddies are relegated to supporting appearances and one shots.

Not anymore, they’re not.

With the help of the world famous Jesse Rivers, I have put together a list of books coming out this year (IN OUR IMAGINATIONS… fun ) that showcase the badguy in all of us (and, more specifically, in the Marvel and DC universes)

And so, without futher ado, Jesse and I present you with our slate of upcoming series, all starring those we love to hate… Supervillians!

Reading glasses, kids.

Born on a Monday:

Starring: Solomon Grundy

Premise: How would you feel if you knew you couldn’t die? Happy – nay, thrilled, one might think. One hasn’t met Solomon Grundy, then. Set in the backwoods and marshy bayous of southern Louisiana, BORN ON A MONDAY gives us a closer glance at the man who can’t die. Grundy doesn’t want fame, he doesn’t want money, and he surely doesn’t want power. As a man who can’t die, he simply wants what he can’t have – Peace. Set to the gorgeous and somber pencils of Mike Mignola, this will be a modern fairy tale that leans heavily on the tragic side. You won’t want to miss it.

Artist: Mike Mignola

The Lizard:

Starring: Dr. Curt Conners

Premise: Jeckyl and who? For years, one of the most compelling figures in comicdom has been the heart wrenching tale of Dr. Curt Conners, the man who would be the Lizard. A simple man who fooled with things beyond his understanding and wound up paying the ultimate cost. By day a conflicted and brilliant scientist searching for a cure to his madness – By night, a bloodthirsty monster bent only on carnage and destruction. Told in a sprawling, traveling type tale, The Lizard finds Dr. Conners on the run across the backwoods of America, from the authorities, the superhero community, and worst of all – Himself. Can Curt find a cure before the monster overshadows the man?

Artist: Bernie Wrightson

Hellfire Club:

Starring: Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce, Harry Leland, Mystique

Premise: The most powerful, the wealthiest, the most influential private club in the world has seen better days. Sebastian Shaw resides over the remnants of what once the most cunning and threatening force in the mutant universe. His queens are dead or in prison. His rooks decimated. He and three men are all that remain. All the money and social/political ties in the world can’t bring the once glorious club out of its slump. It seems all hope is lost for the storied Hellfire Club. That is, until a new queen comes into town. Black? White? More like blue. That’s right, Mystique is now the leader of Hellfire, and you all know the saying… Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Artist: Jim Lee

Latveria:

Starring: Dr. Doom

Premise: We’ve seen plenty of books about Victor Von Doom, arguably the greatest supervillan in Marvel Comics history. Plenty of them. What we never see are books about the lives Doom affects on a daily basis. A lot of people forget, but besides from being an ego-maniacal supervillian bent on conquering earth, Doom is also the leader of a nation. And that nation is made up of many interesting and diverse characters who both worship and revile their glorious leader. LATVERIA is simply that, a look at the small landlocked European nation from the top to the bottom, from Victor Von Doom himself to the lowliest serf who lives in his mighty shadow. Take a peek behind the iron curtain. You might be very surprised what you find.

Artist: Alex Ross

The Axis:

Starring: Red Skull, M.O.D.O.K, Sin, Crossbones, Arnim Zola, Baron Zemo, Batroc the Leaper

Premise: With the death of Steve Rogers, the members of his rogues gallery faced a dire dilemma. What do the world’s most hell-bent villains do when they have accomplished their one and only goal? Sell their services to the highest bidder, of course. A villainous “Heroes for Hire“, each issue will find the Axis trying to bump of a villain’s caped archenemy (for a hefty fee). Had enough with your respective foe? Just give the Axis a call. And let’s face it… They killed Cap. Does anyone else really stand a chance? (Guest starring everyone’s favorite Frenchie, Batroc the Leaper, as the Axis’s “neutral” contact on the outside world.)

Artist: Jack Kirby


Taskmaster:

Starring: Taskmaster

Premise: The Anti-Booster Gold. Taskmaster, the deformed and devious (and yet freakin’ hilarious) villain, has decided that he is too much man for one time period. With the help of a stolen time travel device (Dr. Ivo really should lock his doors at night) and a laundry list of targets, Task travels through time gathering powers and fighting techniques (and causing all sorts of mayhem) from famous heroes and infamous villains alike. Where is Task headed? Only to some of the most beloved and well known stories in comic book history! When Gwen Stacy got thrown off the bridge, Task was there. When the Beyonder decided it was time to hold a Secret War, Task was there. When Jean Grey bit the dust (both times), Task was there. In fact, Taskmaster is damn near everywhere. The question is… Will you be?

Artist: Joe Madureira

Mad Love:

Starring: Joker and Harley Quinn

Premise: What happens when you mix a sociopathic clown, his longtime girlfriend, a stolen red convertible, and the open road? You’ve got the premise for the delightfully twisted new love story “MAD LOVE“. Joker and Harley Quinn take off from Gotham with only their sick minds to guide them, and there is no telling what these two lovestruck psychos will get into. WIth dazzling artwork by comic great Darwyn Cooke, this book is sure to please even the most jaded fans. Romance has never been so damned complicated.

Artist: Darwyn Cooke

Arkham:

Starring: Vandal Savage, Mr. Zsasz, Weather Wizard, Dr. Light, Calendar Man and Gorilla Grodd

Premise: PRISON BREAK with powers. Five men (and one ape) decide they have had enough of being incarcerated in Gotham’s most notorious “Looney Bin” and hatch a plan to escape. Only problem? Let’s face it – If there was only one problem, they’d be out by now. Join us each issue as we continue the episodic saga of six villains who only want their freedom… or are there other motives behind the breakout? With more twists then a roller coaster, be sure to tune into what will become the gold standard for serial sagas.

Artist: Dave Gibbons

The Wonderfully Woeful Misadventures of Mr. Mind:

Starring: Mr. Mind

Premise: The evilest kids book around! Told in the style of a Dr. Seuss story, each issue follows Mr. Mind on his quest to destroy earth and enslave all humanity. He’s so cute! Marvel as Mr. Mind ravages alien planets. Amaze as he conquers lost civilizations. Drop your jaw as he shops for those tiny spectacles he is so fond of wearing. And remember – “Death, destruction, all at one time – Just come along with Mr. Mind!!!”

Artist: Jeff Smith

Hatter:

Starring: The Mad Hatter

Premise: After years of being viewed as a joke, as a gimmicky c-lister obsessed with hats and frankly out of his mind, Jervis Titch has had a revelation. He is not mad, rather it’s the world that lacks sanity. In a fit of eerie calm, he burns all his hats save one. We all know Jervis has dabbled in mind control on the past, but what happens when one can control one’s own mind? And what if that mind is a jumbled mess of psychosis and paranoia? The Hatter is not so mad anymore… no, he’s the mellowest he could ever be. And he has a mission. To cure the world of its inherent insanity. His method? One murder at a time… A shocking and graphic relaunching that will propel an oft laughed at buffoon into one of the most dangerous and evil villains comic books has ever seen. Be there… If you can stand the madness.

Artist: Matt Cohen

————-

If only the above were true folks… If only. We’re working on it. Like what we came up with? Hate it? Leave a comment in the message section and be heard from the herd.

Tune in next week for a look at the new film STEPBROTHERS. I promise, there will be fun had.

And as always kids,

“Keep em’ bagged and boarded”

–Matt Cohen is currently wondering why he doesn’t write comics for a living.

–Jesse Rivers is currently wondering why he is billed under Matt Cohen

Cabin Fever #33: Turty Tree and a Turd

Filed under: Cabin Fever — UncaScroogeMcD @ 11:01 pm

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cabin.jpgOh no! Just when you thought it was safe to hang out at the Quick Stop…

Cabin Fever (hosted by the twisted souls Brian Fitzpatrick and Aaron Poole) is the result of having too much time on your hands and access to your local community radio station.

Over the course of an hour, they manage to trawl the depths of good taste, plus throw some music in. How much more could you want from a podcast?… Quality? Oh… we didn’t think of that.

Enjoy! And we hope our cross Atlantic friends can understand the Irish accent 😉

Hugs and Kisses,
Aaron P. + Rev. Fitzy

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CABIN FEVER #33: Turty Tree and a Turd – This week the lads get perplexed by a man’s sexual habits, get shocked by what two girls do with their Wii, and get a little spoiler happy with the new X-FILES movie. There is music from Moth Complex and, as always, plenty of things you won’t want your kid to listen to. Disgusted? So are we.

[CONTENT WARNING]: Explicit contents! We say every naughty word you can think of. You have been warned!

DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
Episode #33 (MP3 format)

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/cabinfever/cabin_fever_33.mp3]

SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

Got something to say? E-mail Aaron & Brian at the Cabin Fever mailbag.

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CLICK HERE FOR THE CABIN FEVER ARCHIVES

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Toy Box: SDCC 2008 – The Best and Worst!

Filed under: Toy Box — admin @ 2:27 am

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Another year, another San Diego Comic Con goes by. For many years now I’ve been braving the crowds and crazyiness to savor all that is the nerd prom, and I always enjoy myself. This year, the entire show sold out in advance – no tickets were avalable on site. I don’t know of any other public convention where that occurs, particularly since we’re talking around 125,000 advance ticket holders.

Here again is my Top 10 best and worst aspects of this year’s con. And while I’ll be complaining about some things (it is our nature after all), please let me say that the positives of the experience greatly outweight the negatives. Let’s get to the list!

Number 10 Best – The panels of course. While I’ll be the first to admit that overall the panels this year weren’t quite as blockbuster as last year, I did attend some terrific ones. I think this is the first year they’ve ever held any panel in Hall H that was television show themed, but both the Heroes and Lost panels were fantastic and filled to capacity. We got to see the entire first episode of this seasons Heroes (with lots of great answers like who shot Nathan Petrelli and plenty more interesting new questions), and while the Lost guys never tell us much, at least they do it in a Hell of an entertaining way. I also enjoyed panels on the Venture Brothers, Robot Chicken, Terminator: Salvation, Pixar’s next film Up, and Disney’s next animated release, Bolt.

Number 10 Worst – The lines for the panels, of course. Hall H wasn’t too bad, even when the lines were long. That’s the thing about lining up almost 7,000 people – it’s one HELL of a long line, but you all get in. In fact, I got in line at 9:45 am for the 10:30 am Heroes panel, thinking I’d never get in (the lenght of the line was awe inducing), and yet I made it in on time with room to spare. I plan on turning the experience into a uplifting documentary film called Waiting. I smell Oscar.

But other rooms were not so lucky, and there were great panels in the other rooms. This year, 6CDEF was particularly bad, and by Friday morning I realized that I was more likely to have a pleasant experience with Hall security than seeing anything in the large combined room.

Number 9 Best – The celebrities. Comic-con is becoming the place to pimp your show/movie/projecct. I didn’t see a lot of celebs wandering the flow (Scott Adsit from 30 Rock was there, as was Dennis Miller, and Triumph the Insult Dog was enjoying himself), but the panels had everyone from Matthew Fox, to the entire cast of Heroes, to Chris McCulloch (creator of Venture Brothers, and voice of Hank Venture). It appeared as though all were having one Hell of a great time, too.

Number 9 Worst – The crowd. This was particularly obvious on Wednesday night. It appears as though they are selling just as many tickets for Wednesday as any other day…but there are no panels or other activities to pull people away from the main floor. Add to that all that geek adrenaline that’s been pent up for 360 days since the last Comic Con, and you get one large, pushy, annoying crowd. At some point they have to look at moving to a larger location, perhaps in Vegas, or the show may simply implode to form the first nerd black hole.

Number 8 Best – My introduction to the Flight of the Conchords. Actually, this has nothing to do specifically with the con, but while I was there my nephew had me watch the entire first season DVD’s. And they kick ass. If you tend to like weird, off beat comedy, and particularly if you like novelty music, you should check it out. I am da Boom King. And the Hip Hoppopotamus.

Number 8 Worst – getting a Mattel or Hasbro exclusive. The demand was high, and neither booth could truly accomodate it. Hasbro went with an approach where you had to get a ticket at one location, and that ticket told you when to go to the booth to buy your exclusives. However, this just meant you got to stand in one long line to be given the opportunity to go stand in another long line.

Mattel committed the cardinal sin of switching how they did their distribution during the middle of the con. First, they started out simply selling them first come first serve up to an alloted amount each day. This means long, painful lines of course. Then, a couple days in, they switched to passing out raffle tickets early, and going to the booth later in the day. While this second approach was less painful, the confusion caused by the switch created some serious fanboy animosity. There was much grinding of teeth and cursing of mothers.

Number 7 Best – All those wonderful costumes. This is a chance to let your geek flag fly, and fans unfurl them with great gusto. Oh, some of those flags shouldn’t be waving quite so proudly, but that’s for them to work out in therapy later. Big points to the folks that get and imaginitive in their choice of characters. To do a great costume requires a) that you pick a recognizable character, but not one that TOO obvious and b) that you take into consideration your own body and look. If you weigh 80 pounds soaking wet, I wouldn’t recommend dressing up as He-man. And while the title of the movie might have been ‘300’, that doesn’t mean weighing 300 pounds makes you an ideal Spartan.

Number 7 Worst – The sheer number of Jokers this year. I bet that probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to you…so I’m not sure why so many folks thought that it would make for a creative and interesting look. Oh, there were some guys there that have been doing the Joker for years, and they do it extremely well (such as this guy in the photo), but there were dozens and dozens around making all of them a whole lot less special. On the flip side, big props out to the guys dressed as the Monarch’s henchmen, Bender, and Black Manta.

Number 6 Best – The Sideshow Freaks party. I attend a number of parties during the week, and none are as much fun as the one put on by the Sideshow Freaks. This forum is ran by fans of the company, and has a wonderful relationship with the people there. The party has lots of great giveaways, food, drink, and lively conversation with some great folks.

Number 6 Worst – The latest step in the evolution of the show – video games. Comic Con started out almost 40 years ago exactly as the name implies – as a convention for comic book fans and creators. As the comic book characters began to merge with other forms of entertainment, like film and television, it was only natural to begin seeing more of that content included at the show as well. During the 90’s, the action figures and other collectibles based on the characters became so popular the the makers of these took over half the main floor, pushing comic book companies and dealers into a smaller and smaller area. Over the last 4 or 5 years, a new trend ermerged, with the producers of video content shoving out everyone else, and this year the same main floor that was once entirely dominated by comic book publishers and then dominated by toy makers, is now dominated by film and television companies like Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sci-Fi Channel, ABC Family, and many others. The next big thing that will dominate is already clear – video game companies. Companies like Konami have figured out that their target audience is here too, and their presence expanded quite a bit this year. They aren’t dominating anything yet, but just wait – the war between video games, movies and television for the best Comic-con real estate is only beginning. I’m sticking this under the ‘worst’ category not because I have anything against video games, but because the show risks trying to become everything pop culture, and pop culture is a tremendously broad category. When the breadth of the show gets to expansive, the depth will get more and more shallow, making it less interesting for the hard core fans of any one sub-genre, and even more crowded and painful in general. I can almost hear the sucking sound of that black hole now.

Number 5 Best – For me, seeing some really cool items that I might not have otherwise pre-ordered is always high on the list. There are always a number of items that I might think look okay in photos, but when I see them in person I realize I must have them. This year, the stand outs were items like the 18″ Hellboy with Big Baby by Mezco, the Watchmen figures (both small and large) from DC Direct, and the new Hot Toys Lost Predator.

Number 5 Worst – For my wife, seeing some really cool items that I might not have otherwise pre-ordered is always high on her list. I think this goes without saying.

Number 4 Best – New and interesting mediums being exploited for geek content. I attended one panel on a new series of ‘mobisodes’ being produced by CBS in conjunction with Marvel.com, based on an original story from Stephen King called ‘N’. These are done in a sort of comic book style with voice overs, and are designed to be viewed on mobile devices. I also attended a panel on original content being produced for the Xbox Live. They are starting out with a series of short horror-comedies directed by some well known names in the horror genre, like James Wan and David Slade. I’m always up for interesting and creative concepts to deliver cool content, and it’s nice to see companies exploring different ways to bring even more entertainment into our lives, rather than just re-distributing content we’ve already seen in another medium.

Number 4 Worst – Convention food. There are no conveinent fast food restaurants near the convention center, so most of your outside choices are more expensive and hard to get in to with all the crowds. Your inside choices are pretty much limited to things like Mrs. Fields cookies and $3 cans of Coke. You really don’t know what bad overpriced food is until you’ve had a $7 convention hamburger, made from only the choices cuts of road kill.

Number 3 Best – Sideshow announced and showed the second figure in their 12″ Indiana Jones line – Belloq. As always, there’s a regular and an exclusive. While many people are going to immediately wonder why they’d go with such a secondary character so early, there is a very positie aspect to it. Going with someone like Belloq over others does imply they expect to be doing quite a few figures in the entire series, much like their Star Wars line. He also looks exceptional, and the exclusive ‘environment’ is going to really add to the overrall Indy display.

Number 3 Worst – Sideshow DOESN’T announce any additional figures in their 12″ Lord of the Rings line. No Gimli. No Merry. No Pippen. I suspect this is bad news. Very bad news. You might want to pick up an extra Sam and Frodo now, and befriend someone that can sculpt…it might be your only chance to get the other two hobbits into your collection. And Gimli? That’s going to be a pickle, but you can always pick up the old Toybiz version and swap out some costume parts. Not getting the full nine would be one of the great action figure tragedies (not that any action figure tragedy is all that tragic), and I’m far less confident that we’ll be seeing them now.

Number 2 Best – Connecting with old friends and making new ones. One of the best things about this hobby is the people I’ve met over the last 15 years, and SDCC is a wonderful way to connect with folks from around the world. It’s always great to put faces to names, and to realize they’re all just as big of a dork as you are.

Number 2 Worst – finding a damn hotel room that doesn’t require a bank loan to afford it. While there are plenty of folks from San Diego and Los Angeles who attend the show, there’s even a greater number that fly in from all around the world, and the close hotels – those within a mile or so – realize that the supply of their rooms doesn’t come any where near meeting demand. And what does that mean? Prices go up, insanely so, during the Con. Even at the high prices, good luck finding one.

Number 1 Best – Sideshow’s annonced and showed the 12″ Darth Vader and Stormtrooper. Has any fan base waitd this long for a A list Star Wars character to make it into a particular line before? We finally get armored Star Wars figures from Sideshow, and they look terrific.

Number 1 Worst – I don’t have one. For all the issues that crop up every year, I have to say that I love every show. Yes, it’s crowded, and if you can’t handle mingling with your fellow man I’d stay away. But if you’re looking for the ultimate geek experience, I highly recommend it.

And since I’m always asked, here are some photos of the best looking new figures/busts/statues I saw at the con, other than those already shown above and in no particular order. Any questions, just drop me a line at mwc@mwctoys.com, and if you’d like to see more photos of the things that were on display, hit my coverage.

July 29, 2008

San Diego Comic-Con 2008: ZACK & MIRI MAKE A PORNO Panel

Filed under: Articles — UncaScroogeMcD @ 5:26 am

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Hello children. Georgia Malone reporting from my first Comic Con – and not just San Diego. I’ve never seen anything like this before. But, as a favor to a friend, I agreed to give you a report from the only panel I felt sober enough to attend, The Zack and Miri Make a Porno panel hosted by Kevin Smith.

Kevin showed a clip of the upcoming film featuring two surprise casting choices which resulted in cheers, giggles and gasps of disbelief!! “OMG!!! NO WAY!!!! SPOILER!! The Mac guy is Superman’s boyfriend!! And WTF?? They just totally kissed!!!”

After the clip, Kevin took the stage as moderator and introduced his panel: Scott Mosier, Ricky Mabe, Justin Long (Surprise!), Katie Morgan, Traci Lords, Jason Mewes, Seth Rogen, and Elizabeth Banks. He immediately began taking questions.

  • Question #1. How essential is film school? Well, Kevin thinks film school is not all that essential and said that he would rather sink the money into a picture. Seth added that he doesn’t think people should have to go to REGULAR school either.

  • No big stories to tell about the production of Zack and Miri except that Kevin ate a lot, gained a shit ton of weight and it fucked with his asshole quite a bit. Seth said, “same thing. When movies go well there is never a good story. It was boringly enjoyable. If I have one more fucking great day, I’ll kill myself.”

  • Two kids dressed as Jay and Bob asked “if you’re having trouble with the censors, when those problems arise, how do you decide what has to go?” Kevin said that the NC -17 was disappointing, and he feels that the movie is a hard R, but not an NC-17. He trimmed the movie two other times and feels he’s gone as far as he can go without fucking with his original vision of the movie. The MPAA is going to battle over 2 scenes/about 12 seconds of film. Kevin explained that one scene contains a lot of thrusting and the other contains something so fucking unspeakable that no one can even see it. He reminds us that ratings are for our own protection.
  • What is it like to be working under Kevin Smith? Elizabeth said working for Kevin was “joyful but if you’re really under him it’s hard to breathe.” Seth didn’t think so, if you get your elbows underneath. Justin thinks Seth is a natural bottom. Jason is used to being under Kevin and sucks his balls.

  • Katie says that Kevin is by far the most amazing director she’s ever worked for. Kevin reminded her that she’s only worked for one other director. Seth, reminded Kevin, “yeah but that guy’s made like 700 movies.”

  • SPOILER!!! Justin remembered that when he had to Kiss Brandon Routh, he had a temperature of 102. Despite Brandon’s confidence that he never gets sick, Justin was shocked to learn that Brandon became extremely ill after they shot the scene. Seth wondered whether Justin felt powerful knowing that his kiss made Superman sick . . .”Like Superman 2 sick!”

  • Ricky said he was just a kid from Canada who was happy to be there.

  • Jay Mewes doesn’t know when he’ll be in another movie because he sucks at auditions.

  • At the microphone, someone asked Kevin how he managed to create two of the most loveable characters in cinematic history. “How did you make them so loveable?” The answer yelled out from the crowd . . . “Marijuana!!”
  • The “Crazy for Cult” Art show will have more of the same kind of art that was featured last year.
  • Seth admits to smoking marijuana, but not while he’s filming. “The days are just too long, but pretty soon after we’re done filming . . .”
  • Kid at the microphone says “my mom’s here, so I’m going to pretend I don’t know who Katie Morgan is.” Then, he asked Kevin, “How do you shoot sex? In your other movies, they talk a lot.” Kevin said that he wanted it to look better than his other movies, and said that he and Dave Klein worked hard so that this one looks like a real movie. At the same time, he said that nobody wants to see his version of sex . . . He’s a bottom. He explained in great detail what sex with him would look like and noted, “It should be an AWESOME ride home with your mom.”
  • Guy in a Snoogans shirt from the Medieval Times Restaurant in Buena Park was astonished that they tore down the Mooby’s set from Clerks II, and wondered whether Kevin would ever open a chain of Mooby’s restaurants. Kevin said that they had to get rid of the stench from the donkey show and that he has no intention of ever entering the food service industry. He said that he worked hard to get out of the food service industry and that he doesn’t want people like him working for him.

  • Kid asked Kevin how he picks the songs for his movies. Kevin acknowledged that he picks the songs by listening to his iPod. Seth and Justin were impressed with the kid’s three-way nun chucks.
  • Kevin agreed with the audience member who suggested that society has become more accepting of adult humor. In response to her follow-up question, he says that the only subject that he feels is too raunchy for him to touch in his movies is “rape.” The crowd shouts out reminders of the movie Vulgar. Kevin is astonished by the “pro rape” members of the audience and cautions the women to exit the other side of the building.
  • Any more sequels to Jay and Silent Bob? Kevin says “No. Probably not. Maybe in 10 years.” Seth suggests, “Coming in 2010—Jay Rapes Silent Bob.” But, Kevin doesn’t think there is anything for them to talk about even when they are in their 40’s, and it would be sad if Randal and Dante were still clerkin’.
  • Traci acknowledged that she is notorious for her earlier experiences in adult entertainment because she was a “child star” in the porn industry, but she maintains that the events around her 18th birthday were very complicated. Kevin called her the Miley Cyrus of porn.

  • How does Kevin deal with all of his crazy fans? “From behind a microphone, usually.” He feels that stalkers are born out of an inability to access the object of their affections, but “you can’t get away from me.” Seth encouraged people to stalk him and send him their hair.
  • The inspiration for Zack and Miri came in 1996. He said that his movies are all a little bit like porn, in that “anybody can make ’em.”
  • Kevin acknowledges that he didn’t have a problem with the casts’ improvisations because Seth and the others were able to give him usable stuff. He complimented everyone saying that they were very gifted at making their adlibs sound like they were coming from the characters he had written.
  • After moderating a BSG panel the previous day, Kevin reported that he was not able to get Lucy Lawless to tell him who the final Cylon is.
  • And then there was the one and only Green Hornet question of the day: Have Kevin and Seth shared any notes or insights? They said that they haven’t really talked about it. Kevin mentioned that Seth had more freedom in writing his script, and Seth added that it’s not weird that projects go from person to person around town among comedy writers. He said that it’s an incestuous group. He also said that Sony’s only note to him was that Kato had to be Asian.
  • Kevin is not planning to make any documentaries, and Scott does not have a sweet ass camper anymore.

  • The Holy Christ Smodcast was just a joke. They are not making a film about a 100ft Mos infused with the power of Satan or about Jesus who knew Judo and Satan who only knew old fashioned fisticuffs boxing. They had fun talking about it, but it’s just “not a feature.”

  • Kevin is writing a Batman miniseries for DC that Walt Flanagan drawing.
  • He did not give Bruce Willis a hard time for not writing back on Jersey Girl. “Does that question even need answering at this point?”
  • Kevin said he would love to write a Court Room Drama someday and laughed at the idea of a Court Room Drama Musical? He was totally serious about writing and directing a courtroom drama movie, btw.
  • He said he is working on expanding his visual style and that it took him a long time to care about the way his pictures looked. He mentioned that we should be able to see evidence of it in the upcoming Red State and in his next movie after that. Next MOVIE after Red State? WHAT?!?! He said it was too early to give any details, but he did mention that it is “set in space.”
  • Elizabeth said that playing Laura Bush is just like playing a porn star . . .only the hair is different. Seth pointed out that she wouldn’t have to change her name.

  • Ricky said that he loves boobies.

  • Despite one audience member’s enthusiasm, Kevin is doubtful that the “Porno Comedy” genre will take off and get it’s own section at Blockbuster. But if it does happen, he said, “we will all remember this moment.”

  • And finally, to the one last kid who didn’t get to ask his question because the Comic Con employee jumped in the line and asked his question instead . . . just wanted you to know that I noticed, and you’re right. It was bullshit. That guy was a douche bag.

That’s all I have for now, kids. If you need me, I’ll be in the bar.

-Georgia

July 28, 2008

SModcast 59

Filed under: SModcast — UncaScroogeMcD @ 2:05 am

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Your TextSModcast is the meandering palaver of a pair of dudes whose voices are so dull, they don’t deserve to be on the radio (and, hence, aren’t). Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are SModcast.The best thing about SModcast? It don’t cost nothing.

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SModcast 59: Frosh Meat –

In which our heroes battle bargain-hunters, jealous lovers, the danger of dills, and misty, water-colored memories of the way they were.

[CONTENT WARNING] SModcast features harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Listener discretion is advised.

DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
SModcast 59 (MP3 format) – 61.40 MB

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Wanna add your two cents? Spend it here, in the SModcast mailbag.

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CLICK HERE FOR THE SMODCAST ARCHIVES

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Win NIM’S ISLAND on DVD!

Filed under: Contests — UncaScroogeMcD @ 1:49 am

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We’re giving away, in conjunction with Fox Home Video, two (2) copies of NIM’S ISLAND on DVD.

Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Monday, August 4th.

CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!

Official Rules

No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.

No Purchase necessary to win.

Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

One entry per day, per person.

All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Monday, August 4th.

The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.

TV Or Not TV: 7/28 – 8/3

Filed under: TV Or Not TV — admin @ 12:20 am

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Hello everyone. My name is Will Wilkins, and I love comi”¦um, I mean, television.

Now that we are easily over the hump of the summer slow-down it is nice to see that cable still has a few new choices for us to sample. This week, however, the main choices are on channels you may not usually peruse.

Tuesday night marks the return of Eureka on the Sci-Fi Channel. This is Eureka‘s third season and the show is one I would refer as good and quirky fun. If you aren’t familiar with the premise, I can break it down for you pretty well. A Federal Marshall (played by Colin Ferguson) ends up getting assigned duty as the Chief of Police for the small and hardly known town of Eureka. This town is actually the home of a massive government program to nurture the best minds of the country (and partially subsidized by questionable corporation Global Dynamics) so what you wind up with is a scientifically advanced micro-society that every week offers up a new type of mystery or problem for the Chief and the rest of the cast to solve.

Sunday night people will have to choose who they prefer more, Tommy Lee or Pamela Anderson with the premiere of both of their new shows at 10 PM. Tommy Lee will be facing off against rapper Ludacris to see who can affect he most change to going green on Planet Green’s Battleground Earth (not to be confused with the John Travolta flop Battlefield Earth). Pamela Anderson will be starring on the E! channel with her own reality show Pam: Girl on the Loose. I’m sure both channels are equally hard to find so good luck in making your pick in this face off of the former sex tape Titans.

Now let’s take a look at what else the week has to offer.

MONDAY

SCIFI ““ 9:00 PM: Star Trek: The Next Generation goes time tripping in the early days of San Francisco in Time’s Arrow, with both parts 1 and 2 airing tonight. I’m always a sucker for time travel stories, and this one was particularly interesting since it kicks off with Data‘s head being found in caves under the city. You also can’t resist a story that brings in none other than Samuel Clemens (or Mark Twain as he’s more commonly known).

HIST ““ 9:00 PM: Prehistoric Monsters Unleashed using CGI, location footage and scientific input to bring us some of the lesser known dino’s. One of them is the anomalocarus, which resembles a shrimp but is seven feet long. The closest thing I’ve seen to a shrimp that size was at the buffet at the Bellagio.

TUESDAY

CW ““ 9:00 PM: Tonight’s repeat of Reaper is one of my personal favorites from last season. Sam‘s gay demon neighbors want to exploit his relationship with the Devil to try to trap the Father of Lies. Seeing as how with no Devil there’s no show, you can imagine how this might end up.

AMC ““ 8:00 PM: One of the few tolerable Jean-Claude Van Damme movies airs tonight. Timecop was a good idea that was well executed and stays entertaining from beginning to end.

HIST ““ 9:00 PM: Paleontologists bring us a look at a prehistoric cannibalistic predator from the island of Madagascar on the series premiere of Jurassic Fight Club. Now there is a show with a name that can really grab ya!

SCIFI ““ 9:00 PM: As mentioned above, it’s the season premiere of Eureka. The show returns with the hunt for a drone that is on the loose (not to be confused with Pamela Anderson’s Girl on the Loose).

WEDNESDAY

NBC ““ 9:00 PM: Baby Borrowers ends its run tonight with the teen parents now caring for the elderly. This one is bound to tug at your heart strings.

A&E ““ 10:00 PM: Although his stuff is not my cup of tea, Criss Angel’s Mind Freak has its first ever live show where Criss is trying to escape from locks and chains in a building set to implode. I’m not sure who to root for.

THURSDAY

FX ““ 8:00 PM: If you have been living under a rock or you’ve just awoke from a coma and need to get caught up on all the hype you can watch Batman Begins tonight and then see The Dark Knight at your local mega-plex tomorrow.

FRIDAY

USA ““ 9:00 PM: Monk is sunk as he investigates a murder aboard a submarine. It’s claustraphobitastic!

SCIFI ““ 8:30 PM: In the much hyped season finale of Doctor Who we find out what happens to the injured and much loved Time Lord as he had begun to regenerate in the last episode. US fan’s have had to wait a month to see this, as it already aired in the UK on July 5th, so enjoy.

SATURDAY

I’ve been looking at the schedule for the past hour. After all that time I can only come up with one recommendation”¦

STARZ ““ 9:00 PM: Gone Baby Gone is the directorial debut of Ben Affleck. It also just happens to be a stellar film with outstanding performances given by the entire cast. If you have Starz I highly recommend that you watch this film.

SUNDAY

VH1 ““ 10:00 PM: You knew it would happen sooner than later. Hulk Hogan accompanies his daughter to Spring Break on a very special Brooke Knows Best.

Planet Green ““ 10:00 PM: As mentioned above, it’s Tommy Lee vs. Ludacris as they try to make the world a greener place in Battleground Earth.

E! ““ 10:00 PM: Also mentioned above, Pamela Anderson is once again in front of the lens with her reality show Pam: Girl on the Loose.

– Will Wilkins needs to learn that you can’t keep making something sound better by making it end in ““tastic!

July 25, 2008

Weekend Shopping Guide 7/25/08: Far Out Spaced Nuts

Filed under: Shopping Guides — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — UncaScroogeMcD @ 3:34 am

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The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Quick Stop Weekend Shopping Guide – your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

The Brits have a knack for taking the tired old sitcom format, blowing it up, and creating some absolutely brilliant television. Those bastards. Most definitely to be included in their long line of triumphs is Spaced, a show about a pair of twenty-something slackers – Tim & Daisy (Simon Pegg & Jessica Stevenson) – who pose as a professional couple in order to get a North London apartment. Sure, Tim could be a comic book artist if he tried, and Daisy’s quite a good writer, but being successful in either of those careers would mean applying themselves… By, of all things, *working*. Gah! With a gaggle of off-the-wall friends and acquaintances, if you think of it as a twenty-something Seinfeld with a postmodern pop culture twist (there are frequent surreal diversions) you wouldn’t be far off the mark. After much legal wrangling, fans and soon-to-be fans in the US can now pick up Spaced: The Complete Series (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$59.98 SRP). In addition to the audio commentary, outtakes, feature-length behind-the-scenes documentary, deleted scenes, trailers, raw footage, and galleries found on the original UK release, the US set also includes brand new commentaries featuring special guests Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Matt Stone, Diablo Cody, and more. Try out the show – I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Those clever bastards.

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I have a massive photo and slide archive. Ridiculously large, actually. And like anyone in this modern age, I’d like to digitize it. Unfortunately, digitizing that much material with old-school flatbed scanner adapters or standalone scanners has been a pain ass. Well, get one of these nifty 35mm Slide & Negative Digital Converters ($99.99) like I did and burn through scanning those archives. It’s got an easy-to-load film & slide caddies, fast scan time, and a snappy interface – plus it can scan at up to 1,829 DPI. Perfect.
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If you want a sure sign that an action figure line has gotten traction, a good indicator would be that they’ve been successful enough to begin releasing a second wave. Such is the case with Bif Bang Pow!‘s incredible line of figures based on the cult classic Flash Gordon movie. The first of those second wave figures to hit the street features Flash himself in his iconic T-Shirt, along with the green football-like thing from Mongo ($16.99 SRP). The sculpt – based on a design by Alex Ross – is about as movie-accurate as one could hope for, and only gets me more excited to see where this line will go.

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Every comic book series seems to be getting the snazzy deluxe treatment nowadays – with some bewildering choices – but certainly deserving of the honor is Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. The clothbound, hardcover Hellboy Library Edition: Volume 1 (Dark Horse, $49.95 SRP) contains the first two Hellboy mini-series – “Seed Of Destruction” and “Wake The Devil” – printed in oversize 12″x9″ with brilliant reproduction. There are even a clutch of bonus materials, including a sketchbook. Perfect for the library, and you’ll be counting the days until the release of volume 2 this Fall.

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After months and months of taunting and numerous delayed release dates, finally – FINALLY – we see the release of Comedy Central’s short-lived surreal gem, TV Funhouse (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$26.98 SRP). Created by Robert Smigel and Dino Stamatopoulos, it was a bizarre, low-rent Saturday morning kiddie show for adults, featuring appearances from Smigel’s Triumph, The Insult Comic Dog. The 2-disc set features all 8 episodes, plus audio commentaries, outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage, video commentary, and more.

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I admit to really loving the deluxe, hardcover, archival editions that Dark Horse has been releasing of titles I never thought would get that kind of treatment – namely the Gold Key runs of both Doctor Solar and Magnus: Robot Fighter. The complete run of Solar is contained within 4 volumes (Dark Horse, $49.95 SRP each), and the totality of Magnus is in 3 (Dark Horse, $49.95 SRP). All 7 are lovingly restored and presented, and ready for a place of honor on your shelf. They’re pure 60’s bliss… Think of them as the Mad Men of comics.

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Before Family Guy decided to jump on the bandwagon, Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken decided to venture into a galaxy far, far away for a bit of a good-natured puncture. With full cooperation from Lucasfilm, Robot Chicken: Star Wars (Warner Bros., Not Rated, DVD-$14.98 SRP) left no Wookie unturned. The special edition DVD features an audio commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes, galleries, panel presentations, and more.

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There’s no Kurosawa quite like overlooked Kurosawa, and that’s what makes his taut, high-tension High And Low (Criterion, Not Rated, DVD-$39.95 SRP) such a delight. Starring Toshiro Mifune as a wealthy man who’s plunged into a ransom nightmare when his family is kidnapped, it plays like a Japanese Hitchcock flick. The newly-remastered 2-disc Criterion edition features an audio commentary, a making-of documentary, a video interview with Mifune, trailers, and more.

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Set in a dystopian Los Angeles in the not-too-distant future, Duck (Westlake Entertainment, Not Rated, DVD-$19.98 SRP) stars Phillip Baker Hall as a man who sets out on a quest to find purpose and a sense of community in the urban sprawl, accompanied only by a mallard named Joe. Bonus features include an audio commentary, interviews, and more.

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Certainly living up to its name, Earth: A Biography (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$29.98 SRP) is an in-depth look at the history of the planet upon which we all reside, from its formation to its current state, with all of the serendipity, change, and cataclysms in-between.

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James Caan may have departed, but Tom Selleck more than fills his shoes in the fifth season of Las Vegas (Universal, Not Rated, DVD-$59.98 SRP), which by this point has become a Sin City take on The Love Boat. It’s a shame that this also proved to be the show’s final season, as I’m still interested to see how Selleck’s reinvigorating presence would have shaken things up. The 4-disc set features all 17 episodes, plus an effects featurette, gag reel, and NBC.com webcasts.

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So there you have it… my humble suggestions for what to watch, listen to, play with, or waste money on this coming weekend. See ya next week…

-Ken Plume

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July 24, 2008

Ken P. D. Snyde-Cast #53: Fleet Feet And All You Can Eat

Filed under: Ken P.D. Snydecast — UncaScroogeMcD @ 11:10 pm

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Adult Swim’s Dana Snyder and FRED’s Ken Plume set out to have a literate conversation between two pals, but inevitably devolve into a verbal, and funny, free-for-all full of bickering, infighting, and the special kind of male bonding that comes from conflict expressed through the podcast medium.

Actor/comedian/raconteur Dana Snyder, you’re certainly aware, is Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s Master Shake, Squidbillies‘ Granny, Minoriteam’s Dr. Wang, and The Venture Bros.‘ Alchemist. Available for weddings and bar mitzvahs (bat availability pending), you can keep tabs on him via his website, www.eyeofthesnyder.com.

Ken Plume is the editor-in-chief here at FRED. He is a friend of Dana’s, as well as his arch-nemesis.

VISIT THE SNYDECAST EXPERIENCE

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KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #53: Fleet Feet And All You Can Eat – Ken & Dana return with another installment to both baffle and alienate, as they launch into a discussion of the late, great Jack Benny before announcing the potential launch of their own little nerd Olympics. Then they answer the great buffet debate, before winding things down with a very special message.

[CONTENT WARNING]: This podcast may contain some foul language and horribly off-color jokes. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
Episode #53 (MP3 format)

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Got something to say? E-mail Dana & Ken at the Snydecast mailbag.

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Masters Of Song Fu #1: Final Challenge Voting Begins

Filed under: Masters Of Song Fu — UncaScroogeMcD @ 11:08 pm

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We here at Quick Stop Entertainment are true lovers of music, in all its forms. We’re also quite keen on the spirit of competition, and of spurring creativity through said competition.

To that end, we’ve launched a brand new form of creative combat here at the Stop.

In this age of manufactured and painfully earnest talent contests, we’ve decided to instead shine a light on the quirky, quixotic underworld of musicians that don’t get nearly the attention they deserve.

Ah, but I did mention that there was a competition involved…

A few weeks back, we sent out the call for challengers. Hundreds of you heard the call and fought for a chance to be in the initial group. 20 were selected. Only 19 responded in time.

Like a songwriting version of Iron Chef, the challengers were presented with a very specific songwriting challenge. They were given one week to complete their songs – however they saw fit, within the parameters set forth below…

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ROUND 1 CHALLENGE

You must do a song in the style of a classic television show. Not only that, but this song is the theme for a fictional television show about yourself (or your band). By “classic television show” theme song, we mean the type of themes found in shows from the 1960’s – 1980’s (ie Gilligan’s Island, Cheers, The Fall Guy, Diff’rent Strokes, Welcome Back Kotter, Greatest American Hero, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Facts Of Life, Green Acres, Gimme A Break, The Monkees, etc.). Your theme song must include both lyrics and music. It must run no shorter than 30 seconds, and no longer than one (1) minute.

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When all was said and done, only 16 of the 19 Challengers were able to send in the songs in time. You voted HERE. The TOP 7 vote getters then moved on to Round 2. Here’s the challenge given to our 7 Semi-Finalists…

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ROUND 2 CHALLENGE

Here’s where we step things up a notch. Your challenge is to write a song that utilizes a repeating syllable (ex: la, na, doo, etc.). The syllable must repeat at least 5 times in a row (ex: la la la la la). The resulting “repeated syllable” phrase can appear anywhere in your song, but must be repeated in full at least 3 times within the song. Also, this challenge includes a thematic element. Your song must feature a conflict between two (2) elements, provided below. You must choose one (1) element from COLUMN A and one (1) element from COLUMN B.

COLUMN A
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Santa Claus

Miami Dolphins

Stephen Hawking

A Beach Towel

High School Physics

Albania

The Color Orange

A Toothpick Factory

Marc Singer

Hydroponics

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COLUMN B
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Dracula

Linux

Pudding

Coupons

Scabies

Cosplayers

Your Kindergarten Teacher (must be named)

Albert Camus

Non-Alcoholic Lager

Doc Hammer

Your song must be at least 1m45s in length. Finally, your song must be an ORIGINAL CREATION, both music and lyrics, and can not utilize or sample a preexisting work.

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You also voted on the contributions of our three Masters, eliminating one. Two Masters remained, and they were presented a special challenge of their own. Their entries were also be voted on by you, the readers. The winner of the Masters Challenge is the one who dueled with the winning Challenger.

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ROUND 2 MASTERS CHALLENGE

The following challenge applies to our Masters of Song Fu only. As Masters, it is expected that they have achieved a musical voice all their own – but does their mastery extend to assuming the voice of another artist? With that in mind, Each Master is tasked with writing a song in the style of their opponent. The Masters will be judged on how accurately they write a song in their opponent’s style without it becoming a simple parody. When listening to their entries, you must genuinely believe that they were written by the original Master. Got that? The Master’s songs must also be no shorter than 1m45s.

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Well, you voted on the Round 2 Challenge HERE. Your Challenger was Jeff MacDougall, and the Master he had to face was Jonathan Coulton. They were both presented with a final challenge…

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FINAL CHALLENGE

THE REIMAGINING (aka THE RECKONING): For this final duel between Master and Challenger, we’re going to combine a little bit of all the previous challenges. For this ultimate show of skill, adaptability, and personality, you will be given a preexisting song. Your task is to completely reimagine that song with your own lyrics and music – while retaining the same basic story and at least some sonic “cue” or “quote” from the original tune (a short phrase or series of chord changes; the key word here is “brief”). THIS IS NOT A COVER – you are crafting something more akin to an homage, but with your own creative voice. Here is the song you’ll be reimagining:
DAVID BOWIE: “SPACE ODDITY”
You will be judged on how closely your reimagining hits the basic “story points” – spaceman goes up, spaceman talks with control, spaceman goes for a walk, spaceman disappears – but beyond that, anything goes.

The song must be at least 1min 45sec, and must be an original creation.

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Below, you’ll find the Final Challenge songs from both Jeff and Jonathan, as well as the lyrics and some background on their creative process. You will then be able to place your final votes and determine Round 1’s MASTER OF SONG FU!

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MASTER OF SONG FU

JONATHAN COULTON

songfu-01.jpgJonathan Coulton on Jonathan Coulton: “In 2005 I left my day job writing software to pursue music full time. To keep myself busy I released a new song on this website every week for a year in a project called Thing a Week. A few of those songs became big internet hits (my folky cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”, a funny video called “Flickr”, a song called “Code Monkey”), and I am now fortunate enough to make my living as a musician.

I write about a lot of geeky stuff because I am a geek. Some of it’s funny, but a lot of it’s not so funny, and even more of it is somewhere in between. I’ve been compared to They Might Be Giants, Barenaked Ladies, Loudon Wainwright III, and other musicians you REALLY LOVE.

I give lots of music away because I believe it helps my cause, and I love it when people use my music to create other stuff – music videos, pictures, remixes, etc. At the moment I’m unsigned, and I’m proud to say I’ve created this whole thing mostly on my own (with plenty of help from an amazingly supportive bunch of fans). But it certainly is getting busy… I will probably sell out and go Hollywood any day now…”

Official Website: www.jonathancoulton.com

FINAL CHALLENGE SONG: “Space Doggity”

“You’re right, I almost went with the first monkey in space, but I didn’t want to be accused of going overboard with the monkeys. So I went with the first dog in space instead.

Her name was Laika and she went up in Sputnik 2. In doing my research I discovered that Russian scientists recently released the truth about what happened to her during the launch, which is that she died just a few hours into it, and not after a week as they originally claimed. She died from stress and overheating (the cooling system malfunctioned and it was 104F in there) but mostly she died from being LAUNCHED INTO SPACE IN A FUCKING ROCKET.

I thought it would be much nicer if instead Laika gave scientists the finger, stepped out in a spacesuit and then disappeared. Whereabouts unknown…”

Lyrics:

The cage is very small
A tiny silver ball
That makes you a hero
The moment you step inside
The world is watching you
What you’re about to do
Will live on forever
Even though you’ll be dead
And gone
Buckle up
We’re about to turn the engines on.

Boyoyoing

Hello from Sputnik 2
I am receiving you
Thanks for the dog food
I’m somewhere above you now
Guess what Malashenkov?
I took the collar off
I’m holding my own leash
And walking myself outside
This door
I don’t think
I want to be a good dog anymore.

Now I’m floating free
And the moon’s with me
And it’s bright enough
To light the dark

And it’s so high up here
And the stars so clear –
Are they close enough?
Will they hear me bark from here?

Moscow to Sputnik 2
I think we’re losing you
Your life signs are fading
We can’t really say that we’re
Surprised
It’s a shame
There is always something that gets compromised

Now I’m floating free
And the moon’s with me
And it’s bright enough
To light the dark

And it’s so high up here
And the stars so clear –
Are they close enough?
Will they hear me bark from here?

ROUND 2 SONG: “Big Dick Farts A Polka (in the style of Paul & Storm)”
ROUND 1 SONG: “Monkey Shines“

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THE CHALLENGER

JEFF MacDOUGALL

songfucomp-16.jpgThe Deal: After 20+ years making music as a hobby, I recently wrote and recorded a song for my daughter. I got a little taste of mild success (hey, my mom liked it). So now I’m taking my music out of the closet, dusting it off, and seeing how it does in the sunshine. Who knew there was so much work in just attempting to do music for a living. I feel like I am opening a Subway franchise (Only opening a Subway franchise seems more fulfilling in a creative way).

Official Website: jeffmacdougall.com

FINAL CHALLENGE SONG: “High”

“When I first read the final challenge I was, at once, excited and scared. Such a great song to use for inspiration and also, a very high bar to get over. I mean, trying to measure up to a Bowie song is bad enough, but trying to do it and do it better than Jonathan Coulton?… yeah… no problem… I’ll get right on that.

Right away I decided to do try something grand, to keep in the spirit of the original. Whether or not I achieved that remains to be seen. I didn’t want to try to be funny because A) It’s not really a funny story, and B) I’m not going to do funny better than my competition. I’m just not. So here you go… the end result. To sum it up, I just really tried to re-do the song with my own song writing and production style. I think I achieved that… for better or worse.”

Lyrics:

Safe in the capsule,
gonna leave here soon.
Nothing around me,
though there’s not much room.

It’s quiet. It’s calm.
Can you hear me? It’s Tom.

I’m high!
Can you see me?
I’m the blink in the night sky.

I’m not afraid.
So much to fear.
Hey, I can see my house from here.

No air to speak of
and still my hand is on the door.

I give it a shove
and I’m out into the clear.
Don’t want to take a fall from here.

Out of the capsule,
gonna leave here soon.
And the stars look very different today.
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way.

I’m high!
Can you see me?
I’m the blink in the night sky.

I’m not afraid.
Everything’s clear.
There’s nothing left to engineer.

I’m high!
Can you see me?
I’m the blink in the night sky.

I’m not afraid.
Everything’s clear.
Tell my wife no need for tears.

ROUND 2 SONG: “A Brief History Of Pudding”
ROUND 1 SONG: “Jeff MacDougall Dot Com“

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FINAL CHALLENGE VOTING

And now, it’s time for that all important voting, where you’ll decide who has shown the most Fu in the final challenge. This person will not only win the remarkable (and potentially off-putting) bragging rights and a clutch of fantastic mystery prizes, but also become the proud owner of the magnificent, one-of-a-kind MASTER OF SONG FU TROPHY, designed and handcrafted by [adult swim] superstar Dana Snyder. Please remember, you can only vote FOR ONE song – so choose very carefully. You may only vote once, so make it count. VOTING CLOSES AT 11:59pm EST on THURSDAY, JULY 31st.

[poll id=”4″]

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Good luck, and bring on the Fu.

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Cabin Fever #32: Worst. Episode. Ever.

Filed under: Cabin Fever — UncaScroogeMcD @ 3:20 am

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cabin.jpgOh no! Just when you thought it was safe to hang out at the Quick Stop…

Cabin Fever (hosted by the twisted souls Brian Fitzpatrick and Aaron Poole) is the result of having too much time on your hands and access to your local community radio station.

Over the course of an hour, they manage to trawl the depths of good taste, plus throw some music in. How much more could you want from a podcast?… Quality? Oh… we didn’t think of that.

Enjoy! And we hope our cross Atlantic friends can understand the Irish accent 😉

Hugs and Kisses,
Aaron P. + Rev. Fitzy

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CABIN FEVER #32: Worst. Episode. Ever. – Despite the fact that we have a good song from Bad Poetry Minute playing out the show… there’s not much else about the show this week that went well. Sure, we have a another taste-test. Yeah, we have some odd news from around the world. We even announce the start of the Cabin Fever Fantasy Premierleague competition. But try as they might, these morons just can’t figure out what’s wrong. Help us diagnose this mess by listening.

[CONTENT WARNING]: Explicit contents! We say every naughty word you can think of. You have been warned!

DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
Episode #32 (MP3 format)

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/cabinfever/cabin_fever_32.mp3]

SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

Got something to say? E-mail Aaron & Brian at the Cabin Fever mailbag.

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CLICK HERE FOR THE CABIN FEVER ARCHIVES

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Trailer Park: Shailene Woodley

Filed under: Interviews,Trailer Park — UncaScroogeMcD @ 1:52 am

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

Sometimes it’s hard to peg what will catch my interest.

Sometimes I don’t respond well to whatever the flavor of the hour is, I don’t like generic press releases telling me what’s the latest and greatest and I generally despise being pitched from someone who doesn’t know me. That’s why when I was asked to talk to the star of ABC Family’s THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER I was intrigued but not necessarily on board. I’ve been fanatical about my love for AMERICAN TEEN, my appreciation for the television series HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL and, as I stare down the raising of two young women I have a certain vested interest in keeping my finger on the pulse of the American teenager. To boot, the series co-stars Molly Ringwald and has the most peculiar tag on it which says “Viewer Discretion Advised.”

Say no more, I was down for the 15 minute interview.

Now, talking with Shailene Woodley, a woman nearly half my age (Man, am I getting old…), I got to know something that I’ve never been able to tackle before: the life of the budding actress. I’ve learned that the closer you get to those who are finding their way and finding their footing in this business the more interesting the conversation. Shailene has that kind of eagerness and excitability that many times gets snuffed out by the time many other actors reach that sort of cranky, jaded stage. One can hope that this woman can retain that same sense of wonder at appreciating those she’s been able to work with and who will see every job as a chance to actually learn something.

She was fun to talk to about what it is that this series hopes, and wants, to be and it’s also a series which could use a few supportive fans who can see what she expresses below. From sex, to pregnancy to the process of filtering what it does mean to be a teen in America today, Shailene talks eloquently on it all.

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER is on every Tuesday night 8/7c on ABC Family.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Fill me in on what the series revolves around.

SHAILENE WOODLEY: It revolves around teenage conflict with sex. It is very controversial in the fact that it talks about things that television has never talked about before as far as in teenage language. It explores these tough decisions to have sex or not have sex and the consequences in the end for that. I think it has so many good morals and standards for teenagers to live by and for their parents to realize what they’re teenagers are doing because a lot of times parents don’t realize what teenagers are doing when they are not in the home. I think it’s going to be very good for parents and teenagers alike to learn from and also to enjoy.

CS: And which network is this on?

WOODLEY: ABC Family.

CS: And that’s what I have in my notes but there’s one of the sticking points. I can only imagine with a network like this there is a fine line between family entertainment and whether it’s appropriate for everyone to watch. Was there any hesitation on the studio’s behalf to not make this a “Viewer Discretion Advised” kind of program?

WOODLEY: I know that ABC Family is expanding their horizons just in the fact that they are launching, not launching, that’s not the right word but more intricate adult like themes into their network and our show definitely mentions a lot of things that ABC Family has never mentioned before but I think it’s good because it mentions it in a way that is good for families. It doesn’t try to urge you to go one way or another or think one thing and not the other it’s very positive. Of course it’s a TV show drama so it’s going to suck a lot of teenagers in who love drama but it does have a lot of good messages and ABC Family is very respectful of that.

CS: Was there any hesitation on your part? Did you read the script first and say this was a flat out good series or was there things about this series which might have caused some second thoughts?

WOODLEY: Absolutely not. I read the script and fell in love with it. Brenda Hampton wrote it. She was with 7th Heaven which ran for 11 years and she is so good at what she does. She asks about what teenagers go through everyday. Everyday in America teenagers deal with divorce and deal with the pressure to have sex in high school or not have sex. The storyline in the script evolves around decisions. And it’s really important for teenagers to understand that what they do now will effect them in the long run. Not that they will regret it ““ it has nothing to do with regret. It just has to do with decisions made in the present.

CS: Molly Ringwald. She plays your mother…

WOODLEY: Yes. She plays my mom.

CS: Man, that makes me feel old. I remember 16 CANDLES, BREAKFAST CLUB and scads of others. She’s playing a mom.

WOODLEY: I know. She’s amazing. She’s so beautiful and so down to earth and such a great actress ““ I learn from her all the time. I am so, so fortunate to be able to work with her.

CS: When a series starts they usually have a premise where they want there characters to go. Is there a long term vision? I assume that you are in high school. Is it one year, two years and then you’re off to college?

WOODLEY: We are all Freshmen in high school except for 2 leads that are sophomores. Brenda Hampton did 7th Heaven for 11 years so I think in the long run she has ideas for 10 years from now. It’s hard to assume and hard to think that far into the future because we don’t know if the show is going to be picked up. We don’t want to jinx it or get our hopes up. Whatever. We try to just live in the now.

CS: As you go through the script process and the characters in the series, do you look at it and say, “I’m kind of this age, I wouldn’t talk like this. ” Is it real in your own reality?

WOODLEY: A lot of things are real for me and a lot of things are real for a high school. There are so many characters and each character has a different conflict. This one girl Adrianne who’s mom is never home ““ she’s home once every two weeks. So Adrianne resorts to getting attention from guys. And there’s another character, Grace, who is very religiously stuck to her religion, Christianity, and believes in abstinence. So every character right now in the script is being defined as to who they are. It’s very relatable to a normal high school – very relatable.

CS: The message ““ you’ve talked about the writing pedigree, 7th Heaven a really solid show that ran for many years and had a lot of good things to say, is this going to be the same way, always sort of a message based drama?

WOODLEY: It definitely has lots of messages but I don’t think that when a teenager watches the show they’ll come out of it saying I got that message. They are more hidden messages. It’s more like if you’re going to have sex, you’re going to get pregnant. That’s the way it goes. Brenda Hampton is able to take real life situations and put them into the show. I think a lot of the real neat things about the show ““ like my character, her parents are going through a divorce. All the millions of teenagers out there who’s parents are going through a divorce or have gone through a divorce can look at my character and say oh, this is the way she handled it. It’s gives them something to compare and contrast with and I think everybody needs that.

CS: Just the touchy subject of young kids and promiscuity ““ young kids having sex ““ is a touchy notion to a lot of people in this country today ““ did Brenda ever say, “This might be a lightning rod…We’re in an election season…They might point out that this is exactly what’s wrong with America?” That sort of thing?

WOODLEY: Who is to say it’s wrong or right first of all? You know what I mean?

CS: True.

WOODLEY: I think it’s all opinions but definitely a lot of controversy. I think it’s good for mothers and fathers to watch the show because they actually can see exactly what they’re teenagers are thinking and what they’re teenagers do when they are not necessarily looking. And I think there a lot of parents out there who are clueless. They judge before they know what the actual situation is. And I think this show will help that. And, teenagers as well. They judge their parents without knowing the full situation. So, there’s definitely a lot of controversy but Brenda writes it in a way that doesn’t provoke arguments. Does that make sense? It’s controversial but not provoking arguments.

CS: Looking at your resume and what you’ve done since ’99 ““ with the exception of the OC around 6 episodes ““ I shouldn’t say it’s hard ““ you would probably welcome the notion of being front and center by now ““ But being the lead, is this something that feels comfortable to you, being such a pivotal character in a series?

WOODLEY: I did a movie 3 years ago and I was in actually every scene in that movie and that role was bigger than this role. It’s definitely weird being a lead in a TV show ““ I’m not acting it’s my hobby and I do it because I love it. It’s so trippy and it’s humbling in a way to be in that position to inspire others and all that kind of stuff but then again it’s kind of weird. I’m doing phone interviews! I’m not used to that.

CS: On that same idea, is it odd growing up in Hollywood? You’ve done this since you were 8 ““ so now all these years later, is there such a thing as a child star turning into an adult? Is there like that problem area that some people can’t get over that hump or deal with things when they are so young?

WOODLEY: I’ve grown up in this industry knowing it’s a hobby. I’ve gone to public school my whole entire life. I’ve gotten straight A’s and stayed the person my parents know I am and I don’t have very many friends at all in the industry because I don’t really like to take part in “young Hollywood” I guess. Just because there are so many kids that really do get wrapped up in that but then again there are a lot of teenagers who are really down to earth and want a future in something other than acting as well and that is really neat to experience both sides of that. But, I definitely think that growing up in Hollywood has matured me faster than if I hadn’t because it shows me you definitely have to figure out who you are and stick with it. And that can be very difficult to do but I’ve found it very easy. I have such amazing parents and amazing family and friends that I really have a base that keep me going ““ keep me Shailene.

CS: This whole series is based on the American teenager. Has Brenda asked you about whether teens are really doing this or that or is she consulting with teens themselves to find out what is really going on?

WOODLEY: I’m not sure if she’s consulting with other teens but she definitely asks me and other people in the cast where would teenagers get in a fight or “Where would this happen if you were in high school?” or “Where would this happen if you were in high school?” or “How would you react to this situation?” and she definitely takes your input and it’s really neat because you feel like you are adding something to the show to make it more authentic and make it more like everyday life.

CS: And, I’m sure you hope the series keeps going and you can keep doing it for as longs as you can ““ Is it important but intrinsically when you take a script is it because you really want to do it or because right now you can’t be as choosy as you’d like and sometimes these things happen because you have to?

WOODLEY: It’s always because I want to all the time. I never do anything I don’t want to do and there are some many scripts out there and so amazing roles and so many roles that I don’t necessarily I wouldn’t want to do. It’s all about keeping your integrity and saying yes and no without hurting another’s feelings.

CS: And based on that, when I’ve talked to working actors in their 30’s they tell me that this is what they do to help provide for their families. How do you see your life in the next 5 years as you progress into adulthood to try to stay out of those things where push comes to shove you have to do something because you have to pay the rent this month?

WOODLEY: I want to go to college and I want to get a degree in psychology and interior design because I want to always have options. Acting is my passion, I find myself in it and I love it do death but I’m kind of a person that wants to try it all. And if that ever happened to me in my 30’s I would want to be a psychologist or “¦. I’m all about being about options and doing what you love and not sticking to one thing because of the money. Money isn’t happiness ““ happiness is doing what you love and then get your money from that.

CS: Where does that come from? You’ve probably worked on so many projects and seen the glitz and what people aspire to be and never make it at all. How do you keep it in check at such a young age?

WOODLEY: A lot has to do with my family. My parents are amazing people. My dad is a principal of an elementary school and my mom is a counselor at a middle school so education is something I have grown up to respect and enjoy. I have such amazing friends who are so down to earth. Everyone I surround myself with is very positive and very into nature and the environment and I guess just being able to be myself and go on a hike realize that we are just walking this earth with the same everything except the only thing that separates everyone is our mentality and if you can keep your mentality in line then everything just falls into place. It’s all about being positive and staying down to earth. Because really, what makes one person better than the other? Know what I mean?

CS: If I have one more question for you, when this series premiers, and people start talking about it, what’s the one thing you hope people talk about?

WOODLEY: I hope it pulls teenagers in to watch it. Anything that has the word sex in it or anything like that teenagers are going to watch it .and I hope they will be able to enjoy the drama and enjoy the laughs but also enjoy the messages that go along with it without thinking that we’re trying to preach.

Win THE GREATEST SCI-FI MOVIES NEVER MADE!

Filed under: Contests — UncaScroogeMcD @ 1:49 am

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We’re giving away, in conjunction with Titan Books, five (5) copies of THE GREATEST SCi-FI MOVIES NEVER MADE.

Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Thursday, July 31st.

CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!

Official Rules

No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.

No Purchase necessary to win.

Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

One entry per day, per person.

All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Thursday, July 31st.

The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.

Party Favors: Joe Versus The Joe-cano

Filed under: Joe Corey's Party Favors — UncaScroogeMcD @ 1:27 am

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DURHAM – I survived the other Joe the Lion.

There are a few things that get me out of bed at 5 a.m. But when Hall of Fame basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski needs a P.A., I’m there. He’s bringing the Olympic gold back to America. I’ll carry his water for my normal daily fee.

Coach K was starring in an ad campaign for a product I can’t discuss. They needed a P.A. for the website video and the print campaign shoot. In between these gigs, I’d get a breather as the coach would be working with the 35mm commercial crew.

I was still rather sleepy when I pulled onto the Duke campus. I reported to the producer and curiously asked who was shooting the Coach K commercial. The last time I worked with Coach K, it was Oscar winner Errol Morris doing the American Express ad. I was hoping to hear an ex-Propaganda guy would be on the court. The producer softly said, “Joe Pytka.”

This news woke me up better than using a beer bong to chug a gallon of Jolt soda, Red Bull and a meth chaser. While my life didn’t flash before my eyes, my soul could feel the short careers of other P.A.s vanquishing. For those who don’t squirm in horror, Pytka is best known for his thousands of commercials. He brought us the McDonald’s “Nothing But Net” series with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. He lensed the legendary “Your Brain on Drugs” series. He’s done an astonishing number of ads that ended up on The Superbowl. You might really know him for directing Space Jam with Jordan and Bugs Bunny. But for those who wrangle cable and pull focus, Pytka’s name rates up with “Bloody Mary.” You never say Pytka three times while looking into a Fresnel lens.

Stories of what Pytka has done to crew members are notorious in production circles. I can’t even repeat them on advice of legal counsel. A majority of them end with Pytka firing everybody on the set. But maybe these are just stories told by jealous bitches. Perhaps Pytka is a misunderstood, sweet, warm, lovable guy.

While cutting through the hotel lobby to retrieve stuff from the producer’s room, I spotted Pytka coming out of the elevator. He’s not quite the Lion of legend since his hair has grayed and thinned. He’s almost like a heavyweight version of Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror. Under normal circumstances, I’d say, “Good morning” and introduce myself as part of the crew (although not his crew). But as he got closer, I felt this hideous aura that warned me to not even make eye contact. Darth Vader’s “force” doesn’t come close to the menace of Pytka. The weight of my eyeballs on his black sweatshirt would probably cause him to erupt. I looked directly at the elevator and let him pass undisturbed. Without us exchanging a word, I sensed that all those stories were true. I didn’t breath until the elevator doors were closed.

Even though I wasn’t working on his crew, I feared that he’d fire me for having the nerve to bring myself to his attention. I’ve said hello to Sonny Barger of Hells Angels fame. I’m not a chicken when it comes to saying hello. But Pytka is literally like working with a lion. It’s not a question of if it’ll attack, but what’s your escape route when it attacks. Nobody will ever confuse Joe Pytka for Mr. Rogers.

The shoot location was the brand new Michael W. Krzyzewski Center for Athletic Excellence. Do you want to know why Coach K didn’t run off to the NBA when the Celtics and Lakers threw money at him? Cause he’s got an empire on Duke’s campus. This new Center is huge. It has two indoor basketball courts, massive lockerroom area, a weight room that could house Fit TV’s studios and a “film room” that rivals NASA’s Mission Control or Bill Gates’ home entertainment center. This is a long way from a corner in the gym with an abandoned blackboard and three half pieces of chalk. This is big time college basketball.

When it comes to pitchman, Coach K is a pure professional. I was in complete awe at how he worked his lines and nailed his marks. He needs to quit having VIP basketball camps and train executives how to appear in their industrial videos. I learned a lot watching him operate on the green screen. I was in charge of making sure he had water on the set. Anyone who complains that I’m a water carrier for Coach K, I can’t argue it. When it came time for him to work with Pytka on the courts, I remained hidden in the lobby.

A row of windows looked down on the court. We would sneak peaks of Pytka and his crew. We wanted to see what made him so special. At one point, I saw Pytka’s camera aiming up at our window. I ducked with a fear that Pytka would launch a chair at us for spoiling his shot. But the glass didn’t break. We were informed that it was mirrored on the other side. We exhaled and resumed our observation of Joe the Lion with the security of a security mirror.

Pytka was completely in his environment as he spent plenty of time dribbling the ball and shooting the hoop. No P.A.s attempted to get between the director and the backboard. It was an amazingly smooth shoot without any bloodshed. This was the rarest of Pytka location stories. When Pytka’s crew wrapped, I nervously went down to help prepare the court for the still photos. Even with Pytka done for the day, I kept on the fringes and out of his direct line of vision. It was a great sense of relief when he left the Center. I knew I’d get paid for a full day on location.

Coach K was jazzed about his Olympic prospects. I didn’t want to talk about Beijing with him because my last “Olympic” job involved Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery before the 2004 Athens games. I wished luck on Marion and Tim at the end of that shoot. Both of them are now in prison on various charges. Coach K doesn’t need that kind of luck from me.

GEARS OF WHEAT

A special thanks goes out to Cliff Bleszinski (formerly known as CliffyB) and the folks at Epic Games. I was over at their headquarters for a job that involved Cliff having to walk around in my size 15 sneakers. He walked 10 yards in my shoes around the hallways covered in awards collected for Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. I’m going to be putting them on eBay shortly. There’s got to be a freak in Japan aching for such a great souvenir. Cliff let me play around with an actual size Cog Lancer. I know what I’m putting on the list to Santa.

During our lunch break, I pitched my brilliant new video game: Amish Vengeance. Real estate developers want to buy up all the farms to turn into Super Wal-Marts, Home Depots and Starbucks. It’s up to you, a simple Amish farmer to fight back against the English. Being that you’re Amish, you don’t get to use real weapons. You only have one true super power to defend yourself from those money loving heathens: Shun-Force! In order to get up to critical shun levels, you have to accumulate grace points by building barns, driving buggies and praying hard. All this is simulated physical activity is done with your wii Nunchuks.

Kids always like to brag about their marathon sessions playing videogames. They’ll be in rapture when they enter the “Harvest” mode of the game. Six straight sixteen-hour days of toiling in the fields with their wii controls! You get to enjoy the sensation of using a scythe on the digital wheat! You get to grind the grain. And imagine all the fun with hours of cyber butter churning. The game shuts down on the seventh day to observe the Sabbath. Poorly done research proves this feature appeals to mothers of Orthodox Jewish gamers. After three weeks of playing the game, you’ll be growing a beard and calling yourself Eli Lapp.

Cliff and the Epic Games people seemed impressed and interested in Amish Vengeance, but are extremely focused on getting Gears of War 2 ready for the November release date. With any luck, I’ll have a launch time interview with Cliff for the Party Favors. I’ve already promised to pick up the tab for dinner at Raleigh’s Martin Street Pizza. This is best damn pizza joint in town. The menu is haunted by the ghost of Ed LaDou. Their ultimate is a pizza with prosciutto, asparagus and egg. Mmmmmm.

THE DVD SHELF

Is there going to be an actor’s strike? What’s the point of watching the Olympics when you know that all the winners will be stripped of their medals when they pee wrong in the next decade? Do you really care about watching dogs compete with their annoying owners? It’s all about digging up DVDs for my entertainment until Mad Men starts at the end of July.

Cannon: Season One, Volume 1 takes me back to a time when a really fat detective could solve any crime imaginable. William Conrad stepped away from the microphone as the narrator on Rocky and Bullwinkle. He was a hefty private investigator that roamed the country hunting down crooks, swindlers and homicidal maniacs.. “The Salinas Jackpot” reminds us of the danger posed by rodeo clowns. Tom Skerritt (Alien) looks creepy with the makeup and a gun. “Country Blues” should be seen as the precursor to Star Wars. Mark Hamill plays a kid stuck on the family farm who has ship from space crash on his land. It’s actually an airplane with a dead country star. But doesn’t that sound like Luke Skywalker? While Jaws isn’t influenced by “No Pockets In a Shroud,” Roy Schieder attacks through the screen as a low-life protecting a Howard Hughes-esque rich guy. There’s a dozen cases on this boxset that remind us of that time when an out of shape man could run circles around the bad guys.

Jake and the Fatman: Season One, Volume One brought the husky magic of William Conrad back to the people. He didn’t have to be nearly as active as Cannon in the role J.L. McCabe, the Los Angeles District Attorney. He had Joe Penny as his leg man. Guess which one was the Fatman? “Happy Days Are Here Again” kicks the series off with Robert Reed (Mr. Brady from The Brady Bunch) as a senate candidate who is following around on his wife with a female staffer. Shocking! An overzealous speechwriter (John Rubinstein of Family) solves his man’s problem. Wonder if this is based on Pat Buchanan’s time with Nixon? “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” has Mark Goddard, Major West from Lost In Space. The chemistry between Penny and Conrad works better than I remember. Although be warned that Jake and the Fatman is a gateway series to Matlock!

Beverly Hills 90210: Season Five is the year that Brenda disappeared. She supposedly did so well in her acting classes that she stayed in London to attend RADA full-time. Really? The immediately swapped her for Tiffani-Amber Thiessen from Saved By The Bell. She moves into Brenda’s bedroom after her dad commits suicide. She seems sweet, but you know she’ll have issues. Luke Perry’s drunk in Mexico with his amazing sideburns. Howie Long from Fox’s NFL team has a cameo in the first of the 31 episodes in this boxset. They even hype the upcoming CW resurrection of Beverly Hills 90210. I wonder if they’ll figure out what happened to Brenda. Is she the bad influence on Amy Winehouse?

Comedy Central’s TV Funhouse does not feature any of the shorts from Saturday Night Live. This was an 8 episodes series that aired on the cable channel in 2000. Robert Smigel and Dino Stamatopoulos attempted to expand their few minutes of nonsense into a twenty-two minute show. They made it a freakish kiddie series with Doug Dale as the human host. His Anipals were a mixture of puppets with live animals. The puppets had the same tone as Triumph, the Insult Dog. The best two episodes deal with the Anipals going to Atlantic City to party with Triumph. Robert Goulet swings with the stuffed fur. TV Funhouse makes a good double feature with Wonder Showzen.

Drillbit Taylor (Extended Survival Edition) is must see for those wanting to truly experience “The Summer of Danny McBride.” Forget Owen Wilson playing the title character. This movie is really about McBride as Don, Drillbit’s pal. Both men end up teaching kids without being stopped by the cops running the metal detectors. What does it say about our nation’s educational system when homeless men can clean up and sneak into schools as teachers? What’s child wants to get left behind if they know that Drifter Bob is in the classroom? Make sure you get this in BluRay so you can experience Danny McBride in Hi-Def action.

The Ruins reminds us why package tours are good. This time a group of Americans wandering around Mexico visit the ruins of a Mayan temple. They’re barefoot tour turns to mystical terror involving Mayan weirdness. This is the perfect kinda film for the SciFi Channel after Mansquito. The big plus is getting to watch Jena Malone being terrorized. Someday I’m going to quit confusing Jena with Tina Majorino. Although both were on Big Love.

Stop-Loss is another Iraq war theme movie that didn’t find an audience. This time it’s Ryan Phillippe who thinks he’s fulfilled his military obligations only to find he’s being sent back to the warzone under the Stop-Loss program. This is one of Ryan’s finest performances. Having known a person who was dragged back into the army years after he’d been discharged, this is a real subject.

Evening Shade: Season One brought Burt Reynolds to the sitcom world after returning to the small screen with B.L. Stryker. It’s amazing how much talent was on that soundstage with Marilu Henner, Michael Jeter (The Fisher King), Elizabeth Ashley, Ossie Davis, Charles Durning and Hal Holbrook. Burt’s character is an Ex-NFL player who returns to his quaint Southern town to coach the high school football team. It’s pretty easy work for Burt as he slides on his good ol’ boy charm.

Soul Food: The Final Season wraps up the Showtime series about the Jones family. Augie once said that this Chicago based drama was like Good Times without Jimmy Walker playing up to the studio audience. Girlfriends: The Fourth Season brings more of this quartet of ladies from the glory days of UPN. Remember that network? This season brings plenty of hot forbidden romance. I’m not spoiling the forbidden nature. Soul Food and Girlfriends remind us that there was a time before Tyler Perry.

Shine A Light finally brought the Rolling Stones and Martin Scorsese together after Marty had used “Gimme Shelter” in half of his films. This is a fun show recorded in the intimate Beacon theater. This makes it more enjoyable than the stadium shots in Let’s Spend the Night Together. Mick and Keith show their age, but still move around the stage better than Abe Vigoda. Christina Aguilera looks extra sassy while dueting “Live With Me” to Mick. Buddy Guy brings the blues when he unleashes “Champagne and Reefer.” What really would have made this film rock is if the Stones had brought back Mick Taylor to solo on “Brown Sugar” and “Midnight Rambler.” Couldn’t Marty at least CGIed Mick Taylor from the ’72 tour onto the stage? Bonus songs for the Blu-ray and DVD are “Paint It Black,” “Little T&A,” “I’m Free” and “Undercover of the Night.”

Toxic is one of those violent crime flicks that’s more thrilling for it’s amazing cast of actors. How else do you explain Dominque Swain, Master P, Danny Trejo, Tom Sizemore, Costas Mandylor, Steven Bauer and C. Thomas Howell in the same film? Toss in Bai Ling, Ron Jeremy, Brande Roderick, Shar Jackson, Tabitha Stevens and James Duvall. This is like a messed up Love Boat with the cruise ship replaced by firepower. It’s about deranged mental patients, strippers, crimelords and Ron Jeremy. What happens when they all collide? As a blurbmaster would declare: This film is Toxic! Master P working with Lolita defines fine entertainment.

LA Ink: Volume 1 lets us know what it takes to run a tattoo parlor in Tinseltown. The secret is a lot of hot women with needles. After Kat Von D was fired on Miami Ink, she returned to the West Coast with a camera crew. How come I didn’t get a reality show when my last job fired me? Kat’s got lots of high profile guests wanting tramp stamps and family portraits on their flesh. I’m not related to Corey, but he’s the only one I trust of the bunch. The sound mix on the show gets me queasy with the overwhelming needle sound. You might want to keep the remote close to adjust the volume.

There’s plenty of Blu-ray action coming you way at the end of July. Beowulf: Director’s Cut brings way more excitement to this poem than your high school English teacher’s pop quiz supplied. The animated frenzy of Grendel makes you believe that Ray Winstone is hunkier than those 300 studs.

Top Gun is a film that was made to test your home entertainment system. This was Tom Cruise before he became the sofa jumper. He’s just a cocky fighter pilot attempting to put Val Kilmer in his slipstream. In Blu-ray, the fighter planes pop on the attack. Careful with the volume or the FAA will investigate your house for an illegal landing strip.

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series gets the 1080p upgrade. The Hunt for Red October brought Alec Baldwin to the Ryan role. He gets pulled into a case of an incoming Soviet submarine captained by Sean Connery (Bond, James Bond). Baldwin has to figure out if America’s under attack or if Connery is defecting. Patriot Games bodyswaps Ryan so he’s now Harrison Ford. This time he’s battling those pesky Irish. Ryan stops an IRA hit on an English Royal family member. Now they are out to hit his family. Thora Birch plays Ford’s daughter. What happened to Thora after Ghost World? Clear and Present Danger brings back Ford to battle the Columbian drug cartel. The Blu-ray brings the ambush scene to the next level. You’ll duck from the explosions. The Sum of All Fears decides to make Ryan younger by bringing in Ben Affleck. Now he has to prevent a nuclear attack on a football game in Baltimore. This could also mean the destruction of Charm City Cakes! This is a quartet of films that should appease folks that want the theater experience with patriotic action.

SQUISHHHHHHH

Cool Whip now comes in an Aerosol can! What the hell took it so long to finally match the technology that’s given us the goodness of Reddi-wip? Now kids across America have a choose for their daily dosage of nitrous oxide.

FLEEING THE PLANET

George Carlin and Harvey Korman are dead. People are fleeing the earth because they know that something evil is coming down the turnpike. Every time I hear, “Rollerfucking,” I’ll think of Carlin. Anytime I want to hit Tim Conway, I’ll do it in memory of Korman.

TURN IT UP

My incompetent source at Fox News says that Rupert Murdoch is furious at a rumor that Time-Warner cable is lowering the master volume on Fox News to sway their elderly viewers to turn the channel to CNN. Rupes is already sending teams around the country to monitor the sound levels of CNN and Fox News on various cable systems.

July 22, 2008

Interview: Jessica Hynes

Filed under: Interviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — UncaScroogeMcD @ 6:13 am

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-by Ken Plume

The Brits have a knack for taking the tired old sitcom format, blowing it up, and creating some absolutely brilliant television.

Those bastards.

Most definitely to be included in their long line of triumphs is Spaced, a show about a pair of twenty-something slackers – Tim & Daisy (Simon Pegg & Jessica Hynes née Stevenson) – who pose as a professional couple in order to get a North London apartment. Sure, Tim could be a comic book artist if he tried, and Daisy’s quite a good writer, but being successful in either of those careers would mean applying themselves… By, of all things, *working*. Gah!

With a gaggle of off-the-wall friends and acquaintances, if you think of it as a twenty-something Seinfeld with a postmodern pop culture twist (there are frequent surreal diversions), you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

After much legal wrangling, fans and soon-to-be fans in the US can now pick up Spaced: The Complete Series.

After Spaced, co-creator/co-writer/co-star (with Simon Pegg) Jessica Hynes continued on with her acting career, accumulating quite an impressive CV – including guest appearances on Doctor Who, a regular role on the acclaimed Royle Family, writing the telefilm Learners, and even starring as Mafalda Hopkirk in the Harry Potter series – in addition to many others.

Find out about the Spaced trio’s appearance at LA’s Secret Stash on Wednesday, July 22 HERE. You can then catch Jessica, Simon, and Edgar Wright at the San Diego Comic-Con.

I got a chance to have an in-depth conversation with Jessica about… Well, about a lot of things… Read on…

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KEN PLUME: Hiya. This still a good time for you?

JESSICA HYNES: This is fine, yes.

KP: Did I catch you at a bad moment?

HYNES: No you didn’t at all. I was sadly just listening to the podcast of me…

KP: Well, then I caught you at a really awkward, self-reflective moment…

HYNES: You caught me red handed. (laughing) Oh, the sadness of it.

KP: I’ll make sure and send this tape to you for your collection…

HYNES: Yeah! (laughing)

KP: So, let me say, it’s a pleasure to be speaking with you…

HYNES: Oh…

KP: And something that we’ve definitely wanted to do for a few years now, so I’m glad it pulled together.

HYNES: Oh, great…

KP: But since everyone else is talking about Spaced, why don’t we just start off and talk completely about According to Bex?

HYNES: Oh God! (laughing) Do we have to?

KP: Well, all that Spaced stuff is covered. When are we ever gonna have an According to Bex interview?

HYNES: Listen, Accordion to Bex is a show I’m working on now. It’s when Bex finally learns to play the accordion. That was my original suggestion. I thought that’s maybe where the show should have gone in the outset, and they’ve finally come around.

KP: Is this being done for CBBC now?

HYNES: Accordion to Bex is a CBBC show starring, obviously, me. I’m the accordion. So I feel very positive about it. Feel very upbeat about it, yeah.

KP: Well, I heard you were bringing a monkey in for it to.

HYNES: The joke is the monkey tries to play the accordion but fails. He’s obviously not a real monkey, because it wouldn’t be ethical to have live animals on a children’s show. It’s a man dressed in a monkey suit.

KP: Well, I’m surprised that you got Simon to play the monkey…

HYNES: He did it as a favor. He had a week off and was feeling sort of in a good mood, so he came down and put the monkey suit on, and bingo!

KP: It’s good that you finally got a catchphrase. It’s, “Silly monkey, that’s my accordion!!”, right?

HYNES: (laughing) That’s what was lacking from the original format, I felt. No, no accordion catchphrase. No really good catchphrases. So I think we’re all set up now.

KP: It’s a good thing that that’s faded quickly, then, so you don’t have to worry about accordion catchphrases…

HYNES: Yeah, exactly. (laughing)

KP: Now I’m going to put you out of your misery and we’re not going to talk about According to Bex anymore…

HYNES: Okay! (laughing)

KP: I was actually just watching your Room 101 appearance, and your fight against marzipan…

HYNES: Oh yeah, marzipan. What is that about? What the hell? It’s got to be some holdover from the war or something, isn’t it? Some kind of foodstuff hanging over from the time when we didn’t have any nice stuff to eat.

KP: “We have no real food product – can we make some kind of faux food product?”

HYNES: Yeah. “That is disgusting, but because it’s so sugary, we can almost convince ourselves that it’s a treat.”

KP: “How can we make it festive?” “Well, we put it on cakes. People will eat it if it’s on cake.” “But we don’t have cakes right now.” “Well, we’ll just give them the marzipan.”

HYNES: “We’ll camouflage it amongst some actual genuine confectionery, and no one will know it’s there.”

KP: “It’s after the war. There’s no more munitions factories. We can get those people to start sculpting marzipan.”

HYNES: Yeah, all the women returned from the gun to the marzipan sculpting.

KP: You realize that all those wartime factories transitioned over to marzipan after the war…

HYNES: I’d almost rather they were still making munitions, frankly.

KP: Well, your convictions on marzipan were kind of full of holes during the Room 101 appearance. There were a lot of digressions to your hatred of it…

HYNES: Oh yeah…

KP: Which, of course, Paul (Merton) poked further holes in rather quickly…

HYNES: He’s so good at that. I mean, he’s just such a quick wit. He doesn’t miss anything.

KP: What is your comfort level on shows like that? Because you’ve been doing them for the past few years…

HYNES: Oh yeah…

KP: You did a rather memorable appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks last season…

HYNES: (laughing) I was really ready for that.

KP: Now, when you’re in the green room on that, at what point did you formulate, “You know, I’m gonna wrestle Simon (Amstell)…” ?

HYNES: When somebody came and interviewed me for the Guardian and they said, “Are you scared? Are you worried?” I said, “Look, I’m gonna snap his little arms like the twiglets they are.” I became extremely aggressive, physically. Honestly, in an ironic way. I’m not an aggressive person, but it was a kind of way of psyching myself up. And then I suddenly realized that I was just… that was it. That we were gonna wrestle as soon as he came out. Because it’s very difficult to get anything past Simon, so I realized the only way to go was just to bring him down. I thought that he would appreciate the physical contact, as well. He always seems to me like somebody who’d kind of, you know, appreciate a hug.

KP: Just needs a hug?

HYNES: Or a wrestle. And a kiss. He was quite keen for the kiss though, wasn’t he?

KP: Yes.

HYNES: He’s just straight in there…

KP: And you completely subverted him on that.

HYNES: Yeah, I did. I did!

KP: So you clearly proved dominance on that.

HYNES: Yes, I did!

KP: And by that point, it was your game to win.

HYNES: (laughing) Yeah. Yeah, he respected me after that, didn’t he?

KP: Yes, now you know. Exactly… wrestle and refuse the kiss.

HYNES: Yeah, I did.

KP: That’s the way to live life, I think.

HYNES: We became friends after that. It was great.

KP: When you talk about friends, what kind of contact have you had with Simon since?

HYNES: He’s in Paris at the moment, and I just got a nice text from him saying, “I’m in Paris and I’m having a nice holiday.” I’ve met up with him and gone out with him a couple of times. We haven’t done any wrestling since then, obviously. But he let me do… I tried out a bit of stand-up, a bit of comedy, in one of his shows and he let me do a warm-up for him. In Brighton. He wasn’t planning to because I’d done a warm-up for him up in London. I just did a tight three minutes at the beginning of one of his sets, because I’d mentioned I was into it, and he said, “Go on then, come along.” And then I went down to one of his gigs in Brighton, which is a sort of 1600 seat theater – and the intention wasn’t to do anything, and then when we got there he said, “Go on, do a bit. Do a bit on the stage while we’re warming up.” And he said, “Go on, why don’t you go on tonight? Go and do a bit.” So I did. It was fun. It was a great night. He’s a great guy. I love Simon.

KP: Now, you’ve done stage work before. How different is the sort of feeling and dynamic when it’s stand-up, as opposed to stage work?

HYNES: Stand-up is a lot more… it’s showmanship, stand-up. It’s showmanship. It’s absolutely about the very immediate and direct relationship that you have with the audience. The connection. (DOG BARKS) All right. That dog obviously disagrees. I’m out in the garden. Yeah, I think stand-up is, from the very little that I’ve done… hopefully I might do more. I’m rehearsing for a play, actually, at the moment. But yeah, stand-up is obviously about an immediate relationship that you have with the audience. It’s not about a character you – stage work is about a character, kind of thinking about the dynamic of the play. You want to play the play. You want to do the play and kind of bring it to life and be faithful and true to the author’s vision, if you like. Whereas stand-up is completely different. It’s pure entertainment.

KP: Do you think, on some level when you’re doing a production, you’re in some ways divorced from the audience?

HYNES: Not entirely. Because you can get a sense of them. You know when they’re with you. But it’s not such an immediate relationship in that way. And you’re not necessarily courting the audience, unless you’re in that kind of play. I’m working with a director at the moment, and he’s saying he recently was working on a comedy. He said it got to the point where everyone realized that everyone could get a laugh on every single line if they wanted to. So there was a point they were saying, “Well, do you know what, cut down the laughs and try not to get a laugh on that, because then that stamps on someone else’s laugh.” I think, when you’re doing a play, you’re not so totally focused on that immediate laugh, that immediate gratification – you’re focused on what you’re actually doing. Whereas when you’re doing stand-up, that’s all you want. You just want them to laugh. You do anything to get a laugh.

KP: Do you think that situation you just described – about toning down when an audience is sort of prompting you for gags – is the difference between stage and sort of panto?

HYNES: Yes. I think that’s where I’m headed. God.

KP: What’s the one panto role you’ve always wanted to play?

HYNES: Oh, god. I think the one panto role I’ve always wanted to play… let’s see. I think I’d like to play… I’d quite like to play a Dame, but I don’t think I can. I don’t know whether they have female Dames. And I don’t know if they have this big panto thing in America…

KP: No, not at all.

HYNES: Well, the whole panto thing in England is the Christmas show, and you tell the same stories. You basically kind of beef up the classic fairy tales – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Dick Wittington… which is a story about a boy who goes to London. That’s a very famous British panto. And there’s always… the female character is normally the cook in the castle, played by an enormously tall, fat, large drag queen. And that’s a pantomime Dame. And I kind of think that I wouldn’t mind being a pantomime Dame at some point. Sometimes I feel like I am a pantomime Dame.

KP: Maybe you need to break the glass ceiling on male pantomime Dames…

HYNES: Thank you! I don’t know whether that would be right…

KP: Do you think there would be a massive public backlash against it? “How dare a female try and be a Dame!”

HYNES: That’s so British. That would happen. People would boycott the theaters.

KP: “You’re ruining tradition!”

HYNES: “Who does she think she is?” (laughing)

KP: “You’re destroying our culture!”

HYNES: Yeah, exactly.

KP: Maybe that’s how the Spaced reunion has to happen. You all just get together as a rep group and put on a panto for Christmas.

HYNES: And put on a panto. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about!

KP: You’d probably have to fight Nick (Frost) for the Dame role, though…

HYNES: Do you know, it’s going to go to him. You know that, and know that. I’d be lucky if I get Buttons to his… if you ever look up. That is also a very famous pantomime role. Buttons. He’s the butler, I think, to Cinderella… or something like that.

KP: Maybe that’s what the panto is about – is the fact that you’re fighting to be the Dame…

HYNES: That’s what my life is about.

KP: It’ll be like a meta-panto.

HYNES: (laughing) Maybe that’s… I see what you mean. Yes, a meta-panto about me wanting to be the pantomime Dame. You’re a genius! I couldn’t take that from you. That’s yours. That’s yours, my friend.

KP: No, you can take it and run with is as far as your legs will carry…

HYNES: Oh my god, the hamster’s got out. The hamster. I swear to god – there’s a hamster on the floor…

KP: Gosh, everyone is disagreeing with this interview…

HYNES: I’m sorry. I don’t think he’s coming in protest. There’s just quite a lot of cats ’round here.

KP: He’s disgusted by the idea of a female Dame, too…

HYNES: I can’t believe… Yeah, he’s disgusted by it. He heard me from his tiny little plastic little network of pods…

KP: And he said, “Enough is enough. I’m dealing with this.”

HYNES: Yeah. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m getting out there. I’m gonna tell her what I think.”

KP: Yes, “Too much subversion of our culture…”

HYNES: No, I’m all about subversion. Yeah, and he better learn to live with it. That hamster, I’m gonna show him! (laughing)

KP: So that’ll be on the 20th anniversary release of Spaced – the meta-panto…

HYNES: The meta-panto. I’m wondering whether the final final might be Tim and Daisy – although I have said this a couple of times in interviews, so it might sound… oh look, he’s there… Maybe in an old people’s home, maybe.

KP: Just sort of what, reflecting?

HYNES: Making kind of catheter bag jokes? I don’t know.

KP: That’s how you do your clip show.

HYNES: What, as oldies?

KP: Yes. And flashbacks to the time when they were younger…

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: Of course, you have it peppered with flashbacks that never happened…

HYNES: Yes, that’s a good idea. (laughing) Lots of good ideas!

KP: Yeah, I’m sure. None of them workable. Strictly an idea person. Not anywhere close to a realization person. So, obviously, you’ve been working quite steadily over the past 20 years…

HYNES: Yeah. Yeah, I have.

KP: What was the appeal… because you started in National Youth Theatre, right?

HYNES: That’s right.

KP: At a rather young age…

HYNES: Yeah. I was 14 when I joined the National Youth Theatre. I auditioned when I was 13, and they didn’t let me in, but they wrote me a really lovely letter. They actually wrote me a letter and said, “Do try again. We just did feel that maybe you were a little bit too young to come up to London alone for two weeks.” But then I got in the following year.

KP: Were your parents always encouraging of that move to theater?

HYNES: Yeah. I mean, I was kinda lucky in a way, because I had quite a sort of… I mean, my situation was that I was able to kind of make those sort of decisions for myself. I mean, it was up to me to kind of get on with it. They were quite… my mother was a working single mother, so she was quite preoccupied with working. And I just got on with it. And I had quite a lot of freedom to do that, really, and no pressure to do anything else. So a friend from school said, “I’m in a Saturday afternoon drama class.” I just found myself a quid from somewhere, a pound, and got myself on the bus and took myself down there, because I wanted to do it and I sort of had that sort of freedom and autonomy. Because I think if you do have a working lone parent, you have to be quite self-sufficient – or, at least in my experience, that was the case. So I just kinda got on with it. It was what I wanted to do. I never met any sort of resistance. I mean, only from a couple of teachers, grumpy teachers. But I just sort of got on with it, and then as it picked up momentum I think my mum came to some… I won the Sussex drama competition or something when I was about 13, and I had to do a poem on stage. And I think my mum by that point was thinking, “Oh, you know, she’s really…” I remember her and my sister coming down and watching it and kind of being like, “Oh, yeah!” You know? It suddenly became so obvious that maybe it was something that was actually gonna happen and I might do it. But I was quite lucky in that way. I just had the freedom to do it, was never discouraged, and just I very, very early on realized that if you focus and you work hard enough, you’ll get there. You just have to keep working hard.

KP: I’m curious when you mentioned the grumpy teachers, how did that exactly take form?

HYNES: Well, I remember when I was at an A-Level college, I was very fond at that point of saying, “I’m gonna be an actress.” And almost enjoyed and sort of relished the response, which was, “Oh really, are you?” And this teacher would do that, and she would just give me a whole list of why that wasn’t gonna happen and why it was a bad idea, and why I should have something else to do. It may be kind of sound advice, but it only fueled my determination to go ahead and do it. I never let it deter me.

KP: Was there any point where your belief in yourself faltered?

HYNES: There’s a very clear point I remember going back to… because when I first started working, through the Youth Theatre, I had a really great foundation. Mainly from doing lots of theater work. And I had a fantastic artistic director who was very encouraging of me, and basically within three or four years of being in the Youth Theatre I was playing the lead in the big musical that year. So when I was 17, I was playing a big lead in a musical at the Youth Theatre. And agents came, and I got an agent. I hadn’t finished my A-levels, even, and I hadn’t finished college, but I decided, “Well, this is it. This is great.” I didn’t leave then. I kind of sat college out, basically, looking at my watch, just desperate to get out there and start auditioning and stuff. Once I finally got out, it wasn’t anything major – it was walking into a restaurant job and a washing up job, and then going to auditions. And on several occasions people would say, “You’re much too young. You’ve no experience. You haven’t been to drama school. You know, this is just ridiculous. I don’t even know why you’re here.” I remember bringing my reviews at one point, which was an odd decision…

KP: “Look! Look! They said I’m good!”

HYNES: My newspaper cuttings of my of reviews! “Would you like to see my reviews?” And I remember my mouth was so dry, my tongue was sticking to my teeth. I was so nervous. It felt like maybe they’re right. Maybe I just need to go to drama school.

KP: Not many actors go into auditions with scrapbooks…

HYNES: I went in with a scrapbook and said, “Here, these are my reviews.” I remember going in and working in a restaurant, and then getting my first job and thinking, “God, a paycheck. Brilliant.” And so you give up the job that you’re doing currently. But then eventually after a week, two weeks, a month, that little chunk runs out and you have to go back. And I always remember those… because you say, “Oh, I won’t need to do a restaurant job for a month or so. I can just relax and I’ll get another job, I’ll get another job,” and then you don’t, and you have to pay bills, so you’ve got to go back. And I think the going back is always… especially if it’s back to the same place…. It’s like you leave in a blaze of glory, “I’m going! I’m going off!” (laughing)

KP: You’ve got those smoke bombs and the flash powder…

HYNES: Yeah, the fireworks are going. “I’ll be in touch, I’ll see you…”

KP: Somebody there with a boom box to play your exit music…

HYNES: Exactly. And then you’re come back asking for your job back again because you’ve run out of money. That happened a couple of times, and I always remember those were the points at which I was low. But I never, ever, ever was ever going to give up, ever.

KP: So there was no point where you said, “Well, this is my fallback position…”

HYNES: My fallback position was busking in Covent Garden. The point at which I got my first job, I was already planning out this character that I was gonna do. He was gonna be a magician who couldn’t do magic tricks – because I couldn’t do magic tricks, so I was gonna play like… I was gonna get myself a fat man suit and a little table, and do magic tricks not very well, in a comedy way. I hadn’t really worked out exactly what I was going to do, but I thought, “Well, that’d be great.” I don’t even know if I’ve actually got notes for that somewhere, but I remember making little notes and jotting down the character and thinking… to me, to just be performing in any way, in any capacity – I had already set the bar extremely low in that way. And it was like, “That’s what I want to do. I want to perform; whatever it is, however it is, I will just do it. I will do it and I will just do whatever…” You know, “Whatever I need to do, I will do it.” And the fact that I was waitressing to pay bills? Well, that was just a necessity, but I was still an actress, and I was still a performer. Maybe I wasn’t making my living at it, but I still was that. And that was all that really mattered to me. And, in a way, I suppose that still is all that really matters to me. That feeling of feeling officially like you’re an actress. Mainly just having an agent, I suppose, and going to auditions. It’s like, if you’re failing at being something, you’re still something.

KP: Even if that agent gets you According to Bex?

HYNES: I left that agent. I left that agent very soon after According to Bex. That was a low point, actually, because that was an instinct that I didn’t follow – because I was instinctively thinking it’s not the right project for me. It’s not the right project for me at all. And I kind of… I let myself be persuaded, and my instincts were going, “No! No! No!” and I didn’t trust them. So, in that sense, you only have yourself to blame in that situation.

KP: Do you think there’s a line to walk – obviously because it’s a fickle business…

HYNES: Yeah…

KP: Do you find there’s a pull between, “Well, do I just take everything that comes along because it’s work and it’s working and it’s a career, or do I pick and choose and navigate it based on what I feel I should be doing?”

HYNES: Well, I think that I was always trying to pick and choose and navigate. But sometimes I was kind of trying to steer a rudderless ship, basically. And I kind of sort of feel, as well – I mean, I was never managed. I never had management. I only ever had an agent – and it’s quite different, actually. Because if you have a manager, they’ll say, “Okay, this is how we see things going for you…” And I never really had that. I had an agent that said, “Well, this person wants to audition you for this. How about that?” There’s a subtle – but I think quite significant – difference. The bottom line for me is that I think I’ve always seen my life as a learning experience. Because I didn’t really go on after college, I’m sort of prepared to accept the reality that I am gonna make mistakes and do things wrong – but then I will just get up and do something else. It’s the getting up and going on really that matters. It’s not the fact that you might take a bit of a bad turn, for whatever reason – it’s the kind of steering back on and keeping going. I think one thing I’ve really learned is that unless something jumps out at me, that it’s not such a great idea for me to do it. Because I’m much happier as a writer/performer, and I can generate my own work as a writer/performer. With the right production company and with the right people, it’s kind of where my heart is really. It’s where I feel I can have the most freedom, the most fun, and do the best work. But it is harder, and it took me a while to find the right production company to do that with. But next year I’ve got work as a writer/performer lined up. And this year I’m doing a play – which is great, because it’s a classic British play, an Alan Ayckbourn play. I don’t know if you know him, but he’s one of the most amazing dialogue and play writers, really, but his dialogue is just so quick and funny, but also very beautifully observed.

KP: Which play are you doing?

HYNES: We’re doing the trilogy, the Norman Conquests trilogy, so we’ve got three plays that we’re doing. And on certain Saturdays we’ll be doing all of them back to back.

KP: Really?

HYNES: Yeah. And it’s going to be at the Old Vic, that they’re turning into in the round. It’s a six hander. But it feels like a really hard, but really great job to be doing. It’s obviously very different from working in television. It feels like I’m very much led to strong scripts – like most actors are. And if those comedy scripts that come my way aren’t so good, I will and am really focusing on writing my own, as I was before. Yeah, but that’s a decision that I made, really, last year. I mean, I did a couple of low budget British films…

KP: You did Confetti…

HYNES: I did Confetti, and then I did Magicians, and then I did Son of Rambow, and then I did Faint Heart. And I really enjoyed working all those films and working with the actors, but I did feel a little frustrated as a performer, as a comedy performer, because I felt that I wasn’t able to really flex my muscles. I kept thinking, “When do I get the gag? When do I get the laugh?” And the thing is, the gags weren’t written. I didn’t have any. The writers were great, but that’s just not what they were writing. They were writing comedy for guys, and I was clearly not a part of that, and that was fine…

KP: Your voice betrays that..

HYNES: Yeah. I really mean that, don’t I? And that was just *fine*. That was just ABSOLUTELY FINE!! (laughing)

KP: “I can be a Dame!”

HYNES: (laughing) I was absolutely fine with that. Thanks very much, it was fine!

KP: Now I feel so bad I brought it up.

HYNES: Oh god. But you know, you can’t moan. You can’t moan about it. You have to just get on with it.

KP: Well, as you said, you’re in an enviable position because you can generate your own material…

HYNES: Yes. And now I’ve kind of hooked up with Julia Davis, who’s a great British actress. We’re going to write something next year together, which will be a really fun, exciting experience, and hopefully it will be a very funny show for ourselves. So that will be great. And then hopefully following that up with some more writing, but more writing/performing work. Writing a film and this sort of thing. So that’s what I’m very definitely moving myself toward. And it feels right. It’s definitely where I’m most happy, I think.

KP: How would you describe the opportunities and reception towards… There definitely seems to be more female piloted shows in the UK than there would be in the US…

HYNES: Are you kidding? America seems to me to be absolutely at the forefront of that. Do you think it’s the other way round?

KP: Yes. I don’t think you’d have a Royle Family or a Nighty Night, or anything like that over in the US.

HYNES: You think?

KP: I most certainly think. Particularly in regards to genre shows. I think a female show runner in the US would be skirted towards soaps or something like a Grey’s Anatomy, but I don’t think you’d get unique comedy views in the US…

HYNES: Yeah. I suppose when I look at the US, immediately I see the comedy icons – people like Ellen, Roseanne Barr, Sarah Silverman. These strong female comics. Joan Rivers, who is the longest living human being as far as I can see, let alone the longest thriving female comic.

KP: But the respect level and the admiration of Joan Rivers is much higher in the UK than it is in the US…

HYNES: You’re kidding me!

KP: In the US she’s viewed largely as a pop culture joke for her red carpet material over the past dozen years…

HYNES: And not for an absolutely consistent and brilliant comedienne, which is what she is…

KP: She’s not given the opportunity to showcase that in the US, at this point…

HYNES: So she’s sort of trapped in her multimillion dollar stand-up career, at this point?

KP: Yes.

HYNES: Poor Joan. (laughing)

KP: Yeah, she’s lonely at the top.

HYNES: But then she exists… We do have some good female stand-ups, but we don’t have any female stand-ups like Joan. And also the Queens of Comedy, the DVD I watched; is one of the most hilarious and dirtiest and filthiest stand-up comedy I’ve ever seen come from American women. We don’t have that here. And I love it. Obviously, on the male front, the stand-up icon for me – well, the major icon – is Richard Pryor. We don’t really… but then again, he found a place in the mainstream with Gene Wilder and a slew of, now I think, classic 80s comedy films. And people embraced him. But I suppose you’re right. It’s very difficult to find and write vehicles for good, strong female characters, I think.

KP: Right. Or they have to be created by the females, like a French and Saunders…

HYNES: Yeah. They are, I suppose, our most successful female comedy export, without a doubt. I mean, Absolutely Fabulous is global. It’s totally global. I love them. I just think they’re amazing.

KP: But again, the fact that you have a track record at this point, obviously with Simon on Spaced, you have a reputation and the ability to open doors.

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: Do you find it’s almost a pressure to now try and get those doors open?

HYNES: Well, it’s a pressure you put on yourself, or you don’t. The sort of pressure I put on myself creatively, in my work mode is… also, in terms of my kind of writing and performing, is just the constantly trying, at this point, to write original funny material, and that’s it. There is no other pressure. There is no other focus. Only to write original funny material. I wrote a film for the BBC last year, Learners, which kind of fell in between things for me, in a way. I was happy with it, but it was slightly more drama-y. I think that experience reaffirmed for me that I was very comfortable in comedy. You know, comedy born out of obviously truth and real relationships. But I have no shame in going all out for a laugh in a scene. I’m almost always inclined to do that as a writer, and that’s where my heart is and that’s where I’m… I mean, last year I did Learners, and that took a while to get on, but we did it and it did well. David Tennant was in it. It was prime time, BBC1. I think we got… I don’t know, we did well. The show did well. It was a one-off film, and David Tennant agreed to star in it, and I wrote it, and I was in it with him.

KP: That was a very good film. I enjoyed it.

HYNES: There was a thing about it, that I would have liked to have gone for more comedy moments. I felt that I’d written them, but because it was supposed to be more of a drama, I think some of that was lost in the making of it. I know now that I’m comfortable – that’s what I want to do. I want to write things slightly more… that are funny.

KP: When it comes to character work like that – and you did a lot of it in the early part of your career…

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: As you progress, do you move away from going back to the sketch comedy route?

HYNES: I never wanted to go back to sketch comedy. I remember doing sketch comedy and feeling so frustrated because the joy of sketch comedy is you sit ’round the table… you all kind of turn up on the Monday or whatever. You’ve got how many sketches you’ve got to do, and you immediately inform that character on the page, that sketch page. And the more you bring to that character, the funnier ultimately it will be. However finely observed it is or nuanced it is, then it’s more enjoyable to watch it. But I would find, more often than not, that I would get to a point where I would think, “Oh, that’s a shame we don’t do more. There’s not more of a story.” And that was really what led me on to wanting to write something like Spaced, because it was just the frustration – it was just sort of the interruptus, if you like, of sketch show comedy was always just deeply dissatisfying to me. I’d get into this character and go for it, and then think, “Can’t we have her doing more?” I suppose it’s the comedian combined with actor, really – ultimately – because as an actor, that’s what you do. You created a three dimensional character, and you really go deep. And then as a comedian, you want to make people laugh. So I suppose that, in a way, is my style, really. And sketch show comedy was always frustration. I mean, this show I’m doing with Julia next year will be… there will be characters, but they will be in half hour shows. So that, in a way – I suppose – is a sort of… not really a halfway house, but I think you can have more fun with them for longer. They don’t have to just be… And sketch show writing is a skill. It’s a specific skill. I suppose a good sketch is like the TV equivalent of a stand-up doing a really good joke. And there are some people who are great at just writing good jokes – joke joke joke. And there are some people who are great at writing good sketches. And it’s just that funny thing that’s just – that’s funny, that’s funny, that’s funny. I don’t know whether that’s particularly my skill as a writer. And I love to perform that. I love to do anything that’s funny. I mean, I love to get laughs, obviously. But as a writer, my skill is much more about character… building character.

KP: I think it’s interesting that you mentioned that’s the tack that you’re taking on the show with Julia. I’ve always wondered why more people didn’t try and do a show like Ripping Yarns…

HYNES: I didn’t see Ripping Yarns…

KP: Really?

HYNES: No… What’s Ripping Yarns?

KP: Ripping Yarns is the follow-up series that Michael Palin and Terry Jones did post-Python…

HYNES: Oh yes. And how did it go?

KP: Basically, each of the episodes was a self-contained sort of comedic play…

HYNES: Oh, well, that’s it. That’s what we’re doing. The only difference is that we are going to join them all up. I’ve had this idea about… I mean, the producer’s already saying, “Why are you making it so complicated?”

KP: You’re screwing up the ability to do the reruns, Jessica…

HYNES: That’s it. That’s the great thing about it in England, is that they really are prepared to make what I suppose you could describe as boutique television. You put everything into it to create this one-off unique series, blood sweat and tears, and your blood is stained on every single page of the writing. And that’s how they do it, I suppose. That’s how we do it. I mean, it’s so rare to find a situation where someone goes, “Great; let’s set up a writing team.” That just very rarely happens. What happens is they like your talent and skill as a performer, and they say, “Well, write a series.” I’m always the first to say, “Couldn’t we get someone else, as well, to help us?” And they go, “No, no – you can do it.” (laughing) That’s how it works here.

KP: Do you find that, more and more, you’re getting this pull from the executive level about, “Well, how can we get this to transition to America? How can we make this appealing enough to get someone to license this?”

HYNES: No. This production company I’m working for, they’re not like that at all. They’re very very happy in their groove, I suppose.

KP: Because I’ve never understood, in this day and age when you have so much exposure through the internet to other cultures, as it were, and the accessibility that you have now to entertainment across the world, why there’s the feeling that – outside of language issues – a UK series has to be adapted for the US and re-imagined. Particularly in light of the whole Spaced issue…

HYNES: I know exactly what you’re saying. I think that is a kind of revolution, in a way, in which we view material. I think that is ultimately changing. One thing occurred to me, when suddenly we were… the prospect that the channel’s streaming through our homes… what was available… the only thing that came into my mind as the only thing that matters, is quality. If it’s good quality, people will want to watch it. Bottom line. Quality is hard work – It’s concept, it’s imagination, it’s passion, it’s enthusiasm, it’s focus. A good example is something like The Mighty Boosh, which is just this really sort of dedicated little… it depends; you might not like it. It might be your thing. But these two stand-ups who nurtured themselves through the stand-up scene have now created their own TV show. And people will come to it and people will love it. But I can’t imagine that ever translating or being translated – or needing, really, to be translated – into a different version of itself, if you know what I mean, for another, different, English-speaking audience. I just don’t think that would ever need to happen. To some degree, there’s almost a case of it being… well, actually I’ve got two things about this. On the one hand, I feel that there’s a slight… it’s almost insulting to assume than an American audience wouldn’t enjoy it and love it for the way it was. Ultimately, America loved Python. There was nobody saying, “Let’s do a remake of Python.” They just loved it. People love what they love. The bottom line is – they love what they love. But what we do not have in England is anything like the kind of business setup and focus, in terms of making TV. We do not have the infrastructure. We do not have the executives. We do not have the companies that want to make 100 episodes of something. We just do not have it. We do not have the audience, specifically, more than anything else. You make 100 episodes of something for an English audience off the bat – like, straightaway, “Okay, let’s do 100,” and it’s not a success…You know, that’s a big deal. Whereas in America, you’ve got a massive audience there. So I think it’s an economic reason, more than anything.

KP: Yeah, but I think you would have an incentive to do more of that production if there was a faith in the universality of comedy.

HYNES: Good point. Very, very good point. That’s a very good point, yeah.

KP: I had this ongoing argument with Phil Jupitus and Alan Davies and Bill Bailey. We were chatting about the idea of how difficult it is for a UK comedian to penetrate America… When their idea of penetrating America is to do three dates in New York and three dates in LA…

HYNES: Yeah.(laughing)

KP: Compared to – and I was talking to Alan about this, because Alan’s a good friend of Eddie Izzard’s – that Eddie set out with a determination to break America. And he played every club and every city from coast to coast that he could, to build up and audience. The same way you would do in the UK. And it’s this weird sort of common sense idea that no one ever tries to do that in the US. I was saying, if you have a Kings of Comedy and a Queens of Comedy, why isn’t there a UK version of that, that goes into the US? Get together a bunch of comedians, and you could have the roster rotate depending on schedules, but tour as a block. Get a headliner that the audience knows, like an Eddie, and take that on the road.

HYNES: I think that’s a good idea.

KP: And the thing is you could do the same thing – I’ve had this idea for years, because I used to run a film fest in Atlanta, but I would show a ton of UK material. Including episodes of some of the television shows. Like, we showed Black Books one year. I showed them an episode of QI. And the audience loved it. The one good thing about a UK series being an average six episodes is you could very easily do a film fest of showing of a show. From start to finish. I know you’re going to be doing it in Austin with Spaced…

HYNES: Spaced, yeah…

KP: But the idea that you could actually say, “We’re gonna have a film fest. We’re gonna show the run of Black Books. We’re gonna show the run of Nighty Night. And expose audiences that way, and make it like a cultural thing… You know, the way Python started out in the US. That it became the thing that hip people knew, who started spreading the word about it.

HYNES: Well, hopefully that will happen with Spaced. I mean, hopefully that will… to some degree, it kind of already has, because it’s reached America and it’s already seemed to have made an impact. I’m not sure how that has impacted, but it seems to have made some impact.

KP: It was obviously strong enough to put a stop to the American version…

HYNES: Well, yeah. Well, I don’t know if that’s what put the stop to the American version…

KP: I would say that they did not appreciate the criticism in public, from the creators, as they were trying to gear up for their remake…

HYNES: Yeah. My feeling about that was that I felt that it ties in with my feeling about the whole mentality of making shows. Somebody has a good idea. They think, “Oh, that’s a good idea. Let’s make that into a show. Let’s carry it on. Let’s turn it into something more. Let’s make it…” Like, The Office had two series, and now the American Office – there’s so many. There’s seasons of them, going on and on. And presumably somebody thought, “Well, Spaced works. Let’s try and do that with that.” And that – as a basic intention – is not… there’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t think.

KP: I think they mishandled things on a very basic level, that would have prevented much of what happened…even if it was just a courtesy acknowledgment and communication…

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: The problem is you still have these production companies and these networks operating like the internet doesn’t exist. That this massive communication network doesn’t exist. And in the past, they would have just licensed something, and the show would have went out. No one would have heard from the creators in the UK, because there was no means to hear from them.

HYNES: Well, apparently they did a remake of Fawlty Towers, and they called it Annabelle’s…

KP: They’ve done it a couple of times.

HYNES: Yeah, they did. And they got rid of Basil. It was all about… oh, what’s her name? Sybil. It was all about Sybil. Basil was out. He was out on his ear.

KP: Did you ever see the remake that starred John Laroquette in sort of the Basil role?

HYNES: No.

KP: Basically, what they did was…

HYNES: I would love to see that.

KP: Their idea of remaking it, and making it unique, was that they mirrored the set.

HYNES: They mirrored the set. They recreated the set?

KP: Yeah. They recreated the exact layout of the set, but they mirrored it. So instead of the reception being on the left, it’s now on the right. Everything was just flipped. The problem is that you’re still retaining the basic stories, but comedy seemed off-kilter…

HYNES: That is a special screening I would like to see. Six of the best remakes. You could probably put the Spaced pilot in there. Annabelle’s would probably be in there.

KP: Red Dwarf…

HYNES: Red Dwarf would be in there. What else would be in there? You need to get hold of the pilots. I think this could be a DVD. I think this could be a box set.

KP: It’d be the only way these things would get released.

HYNES: With the whole Spaced in the US thing, there was a part of me that felt bad that they’d actually put all that effort in and then it hadn’t come off for them. Because at the end of the day, everyone’s just trying to do it. Everyone’s just trying to make a show. Make it happen. And in America, it’s not unusual to pick up a show and remake it. In England, they don’t do that. I felt that was almost… it was a cultural thing going on. There was a little bit lost in translation there. A little bit of, “Oh, we don’t do that in England, because that’s not the way our industry works.”

KP: Well, maybe that’s what you should do. Maybe you should propose a six episode remake of Cheers.

HYNES: I know, a British remake of Cheers. What would that be like? Well, I suppose it would probably be After Hours, wouldn’t it? I don’t know. I think that there should be more British remakes in lots of things. I was thinking maybe you could do an opera of Friends or something. How would that be? I don’t know. We could turn it into a three hour… maybe a sort of Ring Cycle. Maybe a six hour…

KP: You turn it into a period costume drama for the BBC.

HYNES: What, turn Friends into a period costume drama?

KP: Or you can get authentic 1890s costumes meticulously recreated from the massive BBC costume department…

HYNES: Friends in the 1890s…

KP: Yes, exactly.

HYNES: It’s perfect! Do you know, you could probably list it completely and no one would notice. You could pass it off as some Jane Austin classic.

KP: There’s your task.

HYNES: Yeah, there’s my chance. That’s what I’ll be doing in 2010.

KP: That’s good. I’m glad we’re making progress.

HYNES: I really thought it out.

KP: I think that the other issue is – I was talking to John Lloyd about this, because I’ve been a big proponent of QI. I think that what a lot of UK creators are starting to realize is that you’re not really helped by the production companies…

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: And you’re not helped by the UK networks. But you have this marvelous platform in the internet, and going out to the US yourselves to go and make your case and get the show out there yourself, and do this sort of guerilla marketing of this material…

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: Because the audience is receptive. The audience just needs to see it. And to know it exists and know it’s out there. I mean, the audience loves it. I’ll show an episode of Black Books and the audience loves it. There’s no translation issues. I’ll show an episode of QI. John’s been fighting for years, and the response it always, “Oh, we need to Americanize it for the audience.” Well, no. Funny is funny.

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: And the audience loves it.

HYNES: I should tell you the hamster’s back in the cage.

KP: You did it?

HYNES: I did it. It sounds a bit like a spy euphemism doesn’t it? “The hamster is back in the cage.” But he is back in there.

KP: “And the dog digs at midnight.”

HYNES: Yeah. But yeah, it’s exactly as you said. What you said. Funny is funny. Funny is funny… Funny is as funny does…

KP: I’m glad that you’re getting out there and getting the recognition that is well deserved…

HYNES: That’s such a nice thing to say. I’m waiting for it. I’m really expecting… my hopes are quite high now for this tour. Because I feel like I just really, really kind of not at all have… I have no expectations. And actually, it’s only the journalists I’ve been speaking to in the last few days that have made me feel like, “Yeah! Yeah!” I swear to god!

KP: Well, you just have to make sure it doesn’t turn into a boy’s club…

HYNES: Well, you know…

KP: (laughing) They have a habit of unintentionally pushing you out…

HYNES: Yeah.

KP: I notice on the commentaries they wouldn’t allow you to complete a thought.

HYNES: Yeah.(laughing) You just gotta talk quick. I do manage to… I think I manage to… really? Do I not finish anything, or do I finish some?

KP: What I think I noticed was I think you were setting a land speed record during those first couple of commentaries with Kevin (Smith)…

HYNES: Right, good.

KP: It’s like you saw a spot, you saw an opening, you knew you had to fill it quick.

HYNES: I took it.

KP: Yeah.

HYNES: I took it and ran with it. I didn’t look back.

KP: No. No apologies.

HYNES: No apologies. Well I’m a toughie, me. I’m a toughie. I loved it. It was such a thrilling weekend to go and do that. And I love the play I’m doing. I love it. I absolutely love the play. And when it gets rough, I just get rough. Sometimes I get too rough. I was telling Simon that sometimes it feels like I’m… it’s like that thing you sometimes feel a little bit like you kind of misjudge it. (laughing) You get so excited.

KP: Are you the kind of actor that’s able to stand outside themselves and sort of view that performance as you’re doing it, and meter it?

HYNES: When I get into my stride, I’m just happy as anything just honing and getting the best laugh. When I was doing Spaced with Edgar (Wright), that was the best fun. You both kind of know what you’re going for with a gag, and you’re just working it, working it. And you both know when you’d really got it, and it couldn’t be any funnier. Those rare moments, or those few moments, I mean – you always… they’re great. That’s what it’s all about. It’s just the thrill of doing it keeps you doing it, I think. Just the love of doing it.

KP: Is there any regret that divergent careers have separated you from collaborating with Simon further?

HYNES: I don’t know what we would have done next together, to be honest. We would have done more Spaced, obviously. But I know Edgar wanted to do a film, and I know making Spaced, for the money we made it, was extremely difficult. What Edgar achieved was incredible. I mean, it’s basically like building a kind of 747 from a couple of dustbins in the back yard. We were strapped for time. We presented him with these scripts and he was so enthusiastic. But it was tough. I think the thought of a third series was just daunting. But at that point, creatively, Simon and Edgar had just gone “joooooo” over this kind of zombie scene in the beginning of episode three in series one, I think. Tim had been up all night playing Resident Evil 2, and Simon was just like, “We’ve got to do a zombie film. That’s it.” And at that point, that was a project that Edgar and Simon were just salivating over. And I was excited about it, too, but it was their project. At that point, it was like, “We’re going to write this together.” So apart from a third series of Spaced, I don’t know if there was anything that Simon was really craving to write with me. Do you know what I mean? Whereas his only project with Edgar was something he would just absolutely… you know, that was a natural progression from doing Spaced. Hot Fuzz was a pet project, I think, of Edgar’s that he was burning to write. So him and Simon wrote that, and I know Simon’s now writing with Nick on a project that they’re both loving. It’s about finding the project. Spaced was Simon and my writing project, that was fantastic. It was great. It worked out really well as a show. But I don’t know what we would go on to write together. I don’t know if his projects would necessarily need me. I mean, Spaced was particular because of this female character that I wrote, obviously, and because the dynamic between Tim and Daisy and the kind of relationship, and the other characters and the world. It was very much coming from my experiences and sort of gelling with Simon’s kind of brilliant grasp of this kind of… I don’t know.,, The film reference world, which gave this sort of elevated dimension which we’d been striving toward at the very beginning. But Simon really consolidated and brought it into focus. And the combination of those two is really what created Spaced. Any further writing projects would… anything that we would come up with together, I think, would have to be something we’re both just as passionate about, just as into, and just as ready to sort of share. And, as yet, I don’t think that’s happened. But it might happen. I’m looking forward to it. When it does happen, if it does happen, I loved writing with Simon and I hope I do again, definitely.

KP: Do you think that Spaced was sort of an alchemy of the moment?

HYNES: Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. It was born out of my experiences of living in rented flats and squats and shared houses, and the fun I was having even though sometimes you have no money, but you had your mates and you were going out. I wanted to really create a subversive and authentic world that reflected my experiences, and make it really, really funny. And Simon was really, really into that, and I’d always wanted to kind of elevate it from the quite gritty sort of kitchen sink type of comedy that I didn’t feel really served the material. I wanted to elevate it all and make it kind of super and magical. And Simon was so into that. I only realized recently, not that it has any particular bearing on Spaced as it is, but I used to work in a cinema as one of my jobs when I was, like, 14. I worked as an usherette, and one of the films I watched was When Harry Met Sally. I watched it probably about 30 times. And I’ve always been a big… I’m just a total film addict and TV addict. I love watching telly and I love watching films. Anyway, that was a film that was… the core of that relationship, that unrequited love, was something that had really captured my imagination. But I just absolutely loved that film. And then feeding any of that into Spaced – I don’t know what was there, but Simon told me he’d written an essay at college comparing Annie Hall to When Harry Met Sally. Basically, I realized that at that point in time, we were both… that was one detail of our experiences and our education, leading up to the point in which we both sat down and wrote Spaced together. But I just realized that, in different ways, we were both actually completely on the same wavelength. We were both absolutely in the right place at the right time, and writing shows that we kind of both really wanted to write. And that was a really special moment. It was almost like this was a natural conclusion of our television watching childhoods. I imagined both Simon and I had watched probably about the same amount. The same television. Him definitely, definitely watching Star Wars more times than me, although I absolutely loved Star Wars, as well. I’d never dare 66:46) to call myself as much of a fan as Simon Pegg, who wrote his dissertation on Star Wars, but we had both been on this journey of growing up watching TV.

KP: A sort of pop culture odyssey?

HYNES: On a pop culture odyssey. And it had led us… When he would say, “What about this?” I knew exactly what he was talking about, and vice versa. We just absolutely clicked, and that was it. I always knew exactly what he was talking about, and he always knew exactly what I was talking about. And that is absolutely reflected in the show. Our ambition for it – and my ambition knew no bounds in terms of what we were striving for, what we wanted to do – which is comedy, and fun, and entertainment. Like, “Let’s make this fucking brilliant.” And I only felt like that because I was writing with Simon. And, at that point, I like to think he felt the same writing with me. So it was just a great moment for us, creatively. But whether or not that will happen again in a different way, I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t need to. We did Spaced. Isn’t that enough for you? (laughing) ISN’T THAT ENOUGH, FOR GOD’S SAKE?

KP: No! We demand more!

HYNES: But I’d love to write with him more. I mean let’s face it; everything he’s done since then hasn’t been as good – so what does that tell you?

KP: Really. The collaboration with Edgar, what has it really gotten?

HYNES: (laughing) No, I’m joking. That’s my acerbic, sarcastic, ironic British sense of humor. I’m joking.

KP: I don’t think the tape’s picking up any of what you just said.

HYNES: I’m joking. I’m joking with you.

KP: In all seriousness, how does it feel, knowing that there’s probably a college student somewhere who’s written a paper comparing When Harry Met Sally to Spaced? That you’ve become part of the pop culture lexicon?

HYNES: My work is done. That’s all I ever wanted. That was what I wanted. I wanted to be part of the pop culture lexicon. And I wanted to be part of the pop culture lexicon on my own terms without compromising and without pretending to be some idiot. Although Daisy is a bit of an idiot. No… (laughing)

KP: I wouldn’t say that. I’d say that Daisy had a very realistic maturation arc…

HYNES: No, Daisy’s great.

KP: The great thing is you can say that, while they’re the same person, there was a lot of growth between the Daisy in the first episode and the Daisy of the last episode…

HYNES: Yeah, there was. And that was great as well, being able to write a series and say, “Well, let’s make them develop. Let’s make them grow. Let’s make them change.” So I suppose, yeah, there was. There was. But it’s great to think that’s the case.

KP: So, what is Daisy doing now, almost 10 years later?

HYNES: Yeah, what is Daisy doing now, 10 years later? I think she’s still living in flats. (laughing)

KP: Do you think they ever would have moved out of the flat?

HYNES: I think Tim would have moved out. I don’t think Daisy did. I think Daisy stayed there. I reckon Daisy might be having a bad flat mate experience as we speak. (laughing) She’s getting a little fat. She’s got a cat that’s got a little poop tray in the corner.

KP: What’s the name of the cat?

HYNES: The cat is maybe called Maxine…

KP: Even though it’s a male cat?

HYNES: Yeah. Colin’s dead. And actually, she’s never really recovered from the death of Colin, especially since Tim’s moved out. He keeps promising to come back and visit, but he never does. A new flat mate’s moved in.

KP: Male or female?

HYNES: A male flat mate who’s really sullen and grumpy and anal, and won’t take any phone messages. And Daisy’s trawling through a novel. She’s about 3/4 way through the novel.

KP: Is the what the title is? It has no other title but “The Novel”?

HYNES: She doesn’t know what it’s called yet. The novel. She’s thinking about calling it Maxine, but that’s as cute as it’s got. (laughing) Marcia’s got a really good looking new boyfriend, which really pisses Daisy off.

KP: Does she make awkward appearances just to try and upset things?

HYNES: Yeah, she turns up with her gorgeous boyfriend, rubbing it in Daisy’s face.

KP: Is Daisy instigating, trying to orchestrate some kind of breakup?

HYNES: No no, Daisy wouldn’t be interested in that. She tried to gather inspiration from her book. That’s all she wants because she’s running dry. She’s got 3/4 of the way through and she’s just realized she’s absolutely got no clue what happens next.

KP: Does she come to the realization it’s actually an autobiography?

HYNES: (laughing) That’s maybe a little bit too Dada. I don’t know. I don’t know where you’re going with that. She’s writing her own life! Ahh!

KP: Yes, as the camera spirals above her. And where’s Mike?

HYNES: I don’t know. I think Mike is now openly gay and is enjoying… I don’t know, the thrill of being part of the small, openly gay group of soldiers who campaign and make appearances. And very, very happy. He’s in a steady relationship, finally, after years of denial. Yeah.

KP: And Tim? Is he happy?

HYNES: I don’t know. He thinks he is. I think he might be in a kind of loft apartment somewhere.

KP: What caused him to move out?

HYNES: What caused him to move out? Oh god, I haven’t actually thought that far.

KP: Well, it sounds like there’s certainly plenty of stuff that can percolate.

HYNES: Well, yeah…

KP: You realize this entire interview was just a grand brainstorming exercise and Simon put me up to it.

HYNES: Oh right, good.

KP: He figures it’s the only way to get you motivated…

HYNES: Yeah. Well, yeah. I’d always love to go back to those characters.

KP: Maybe it’ll be the Spaced Christmas Special.

HYNES: I would love to do that. I’d love to do the Spaced Christmas Special.

KP: Maybe it can be the Only Fools and Horses of this generation.

HYNES: Oh yeah! God, that was the biggest Christmas special, wasn’t it?

KP: They did, what, three total? Two total, post when the series “ended”?

HYNES: Yeah, they did. The final. “No, this is the final one.” “No, *this* is the final one.”

KP: With massive gaps between them. Wasn’t there like five or six years between at least one of the sets?

HYNES: Yeah, I think there was, actually. And then it was the final one, and they all went off into the sunset, I remember.

KP: Well I hope it hasn’t been too painful an interview…

HYNES: It’s been a lovely interview. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate your support. It’s been lovely to talk to you.

KP: Likewise…

HYNES: As I say, you know, every person I speak to makes me more and more excited about coming over to America and promoting the DVD. It’s very gratifying to know that…

KP: Until you spoke with me. I was the one who put the chink in the armor…

HYNES: You really put the chink in the armor. But I know now there are at least 10 or 11 Spaced fans definitely in America, and that makes me feel good.

##

Toy Box: MatchMaster!

Filed under: Toy Box — admin @ 2:06 am

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Once again this week, I’m doing something a little different. Not quite a review, not quite a product overview…but something in between. I’m checking out a hand held game called MatchMaster. This is billed as a ‘head to head soccer game’, just in case you aren’t getting enough of the sport this time of year.

I’ll be at San Diego Comic Con this week, taking in all the sights and sounds, and I’ll be doing coverage every night at my regular site, Michael’s Review of the Week. Next week right here, I’ll run down the top ten best – and worst – news from the show. Until then, let’s play a little soccer…

MatchMaster – Head to Head Soccer

I’m showing you two versions of the game, one light blue and one dark blue. You actually buy one at a time of course, at a SRP of about $20, but you need two if you’re going to do the ‘head to head’ aspect.

Think of this as a Soccer Player Tamagotchie. You ‘train’ your soccer player by deciding when he/she sleeps, eats, and trains – and just what they’ll be eating and doing for their training. You also can play a series of single person mini-training games to increase your players strength, agility and other factors.

The hand held device is egg shaped, with 4 small buttons and an arrow pad. One button is Start – pretty obvious, but you can use it to start the various mini-games, and it also works as a pause button. The ‘sound’ button turns the volume up and down with each press. The A and B buttons are used to navigate the menus. A works like an escape key, taking you back up a level, and B works like Select.

The arrow pad works like you’d expect, moving things and your player left, right, up and down. On the two units, one had some trouble with the pad being a big sticky and unresponsive, making playing the games tougher than it needed to be.

Once you’ve popped in the 2 AAA batteries (not included), you set up some basic info for your player, like the display language, players name, club and number, and the date and time which are critical to the timing of various daily events.

The player has 6 life lines covering Power, Health, Fitness, Sppeed, Ability and Condition. These start out in the ‘danger’ zone, with only 15 points in each. As your player trains, sleeps, eats and plays games, these life lines go up. You want to keep these 6 areas fairly well balanced, to avoid injuries. Over developing in any one can cause your poor player some serious pain.

You’ll use the Daily Routine Planner (DRP), well, every day. Here is where you decide when and how long your player will sleep, what he or she will do for his morning and afternoon workout, and what they’ll eat for their three meals. The better the choices the better your player becomes. However, you can’t set all this up at once – there are specific times during the day (always the same) to set them up. For example, you can’t decide what you’ll be having for dinner except between the hours of 5pm and 7pm that day. That means you need to keep your player with you most of the day.

You can also play the 7 mini-games on your egg, each designed to improve different skills. The first two times you play them in any single day, they add to your lifelines. Any additional plays do not – then you’re just doing it for fun. These aren’t exactly the most exciting games – again, think 90’s Tamagotchies for level of detail and graphics.

When you reach Pro Level on the lifelines (all of them have to be 20 or higher) you can start playing Infrared games against another egg. There are 4 games in this mode – Match (where it’s a straight match), Sprints (where you race against each other using the key pad), Penalty (each player gets 5 penalty kicks against the other), and Free Kick (each player takes 5 free kicks and tries to get it over the heads of the defenders).

All the games, both single and duel player, are fairly quick and easy to play. The outcome usually depends on how well you’ve trained your little guy, so it does help to teach kids about proper nutrition, exercise and rest. The basic graphics are likely to be an issue for kids of the PS3 generation, but this is more in like with the 7 – 9 crowd, kids that love soccer and are looking for something else to fuel their passion. For the average kid that isn’t a soccer fan, it’s far less likely to hold their interest.

These are exclusive to Wal-mart right now, and they run about $20 a pop. There’s also a sweepstakes going on right now where you get a code inside the package to enter, and could win a three day David Beckham Academy course in London or LA for you and several of your friends. Check out more details at MatchMaster Games.

And if you do pick one up, try to treat your little David better than I did…

July 21, 2008

TV Or Not TV: 7/21 – 7/27

Filed under: TV Or Not TV — admin @ 2:36 am

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Welcome back everyone! It’s a new week filled with amazing possibilities (not really) worthy of your television viewing time.

Last week brought us the premiere of both Monk and Psych, even though both shows are only going to have a seven week run and won’t return until after January of 2009 (in other words before we know it they will be gone again). I don’t understand why USA keeps doing this type of scheduling but it seems to be working for them.

Monk delivered a very heartfelt episode while trying to recover from the loss of Stanley Kamel. They did a good job and I was entertained but I really miss some of the more complex mysteries that Monk used to solve like when an astronaut somehow murdered someone while up in orbit in outer space.

Psych is another show that I think is very entertaining but seems to have strayed far from the original concept that I enjoyed. Part of the attraction of the show was the fact that the lead character was what I would call a hyper-observant person that picked up on the details most of us would miss and uses them to solve the crime. Last season there really seemed to be far less observation and more silly theatrics. Here’s hoping they get me to eat my words.

Now, however, it is time to set aside my wordy observations and give you my much shorter picks for your watching week.

MONDAY

VH1 ““ 8:00 PM: If you missed both the premiere and second week of Brooke Knows Best than tonight you have a chance to get caught up.

HBO ““ 8:00 PM: Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal thought she had a great idea in starting a man-whore ranch for lady clientèle. Someone should have told her they already have these”¦ they are called New York Night Clubs. Thankfully HBO was there to capture it all go down in flames.

HIST ““ 9:00 PM: With the record breaking box office of The Dark Knight I bet The History Channel is happy they already had Batman Tech lined up at 9 and Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight at ten.

TUESDAY

FOX ““ 8:00 PM: Imagine you have a restaurant with bad food and bad service and someone sends Gordon Ramsey from Hell’s Kitchen is the one that comes in to fix it? No wonder the show is called Kitchen Nightmares.

CBS ““ 9:00 PM: In all seriousness, this is one of the better Big Brother seasons in a long time. It’s still not too late to get in to it.

WEDNESDAY

NBC ““ 9:00 PM: This week the Baby Borrowers the teen parents get teen kids. I can already see the fireworks from over here.

HIST ““ 9:00 PM: On MonsterQuest investigators hunt the dreaded animal vampire of legend, Chupacabra. I only bring this up because I love typing Chupacabra.

THURSDAY

G4 ““ 9:00 PM: Day 1 of coverage from The San Diego Comicon. It’s absolutely nothing like being there.

AMC ““ 10:30 PM: If you don’t know who Keyser Soze is than I highly recommend you finally watch The Usual Suspects.

FRIDAY

USA ““ 9:00 PM: Monk and Psych. “˜Nuff said?

G4 ““ 10:00 PM: Day 2 (and the final day) of G4‘s coverage of Comicon. Friday is a big day with lots going on so couldn’t hurt to watch as well.

SATURDAY

DISNEY ““ 2:00 PM: Get ready for the Hanna Montana mania with a marathon of the show before the 3D concert Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds. Get your 3D glasses in this week’s issue of TV guide if this is a must watch on your list.

ABC ““ 8:00 PM: Relive your childhood with the animated classic Peter Pan. Try not to cringe during the scenes with the Native Americans.

A&E ““ 8:00 PM: Proof that someone in programming has a sense of humor. The amazing and powerful The Last Samurai is followed by the laughable The Karate Kid, Part Two.

SUNDAY

DISNEY ““ 9:00 PM: With super hero and comic book movies all over the place you can take in one of the best super hero movies ever rendered with The Incredibles.

COMEDY CENTRAL ““ 8:00 PM & 9:00 PM: I love it when shows tie in to their own mythology and you can see the big set up happen on Futurama with Roswell That Ends Well at eight and the payoff in The Why of Fry at 9.

FOOD ““ 10:00 PM: The big winner is chosen on The Next Food Network Star. You can actually start watching at 8 PM to see the final four get taken down to the final 2. I highly suggest snacking well before watching.

VH1 ““ 10:00 PM: Brooke throws a house party in order to spend time with a cute kite surfer clearly showing that the name of the show may not be right on Brooke Knows Best . Wasn’t this a story line from Three’s Company?

– Will Wilkins is not the Next Food Network Star.

SModcast 58

Filed under: SModcast — UncaScroogeMcD @ 12:29 am

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Your TextSModcast is the meandering palaver of a pair of dudes whose voices are so dull, they don’t deserve to be on the radio (and, hence, aren’t). Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are SModcast.The best thing about SModcast? It don’t cost nothing.

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SModcast 58: Kodachrome –

In which our heroes talk a little shop, muse over collegiate nudes, wax Parisian, and seek salvation in Shrewsbury.

[CONTENT WARNING] SModcast features harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Listener discretion is advised.

DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
SModcast 58 (MP3 format) – 49.41 MB

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SUBSCRIBE
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Wanna add your two cents? Spend it here, in the SModcast mailbag.

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CLICK HERE FOR THE SMODCAST ARCHIVES

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July 20, 2008

Win SPACED on DVD!

Filed under: Contests — UncaScroogeMcD @ 11:02 pm

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We’re giving away, in conjunction with BBC Home Video, five (5) copies of SPACED: THE COMPLETE SERIES on DVD.

Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Monday, July 28th.

CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!

Official Rules

No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.

No Purchase necessary to win.

Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

One entry per day, per person.

All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on Monday, July 28th.

The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.

Comics & Comics: Who Watches The Trailer?

Filed under: Comics and Comics — admin @ 5:48 pm

COMics & Comics 31208- lOGO

watchmen logoHowdy Inter-Webbers, I’m Matt Cohen and I dig WATCHMEN.

Oh, do I dig WATCHMEN. Besides Hellboy of course, WATCHMEN is my single favorite comic book of all time. I remember reading it when I was 16 years old and being completely and utterly blown away by its level of reality, and depth and respect for the reader. Alan Moore is arguably the greatest comic book writer of all time, and WATCHMEN is his masterpiece. It single handedly reinvented what comics could be, and how fans perceived them (including lil’ old your’s truly). Since the mid eighties there have been various attempts to adapt the twelve comic books into a feature length film, and all had sadly failed. Comic book films in general were hard sells, and one based on a comic book that was read by very few people and contained no iconic characters? Not a chance. And it stayed that way for many years, until a movie by the name of 300 came out; and with it, its director/wunderkind Zack Snyder. The success of that film, both monetary and critical (shrugs), has led to something amazing and unexpected, even – A genuine big budget studio WATCHMEN film. The most anti-superhero of all superhero books, and probably the toughest sell of all. And geek cups (probably those Taco-Bell/Star Wars ones) runneth over. That news broke over a year ago, and though we’ve gotten slight (and I mean slight) glimpses and glimmers of the production, the first real watershed of goodness broke yesterday… and boy did It break.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at the brand new, first ever WATCHMEN trailer. And I promise I’ll do my best to contain myself.

Let me get this out of the way. I really enjoyed Snyder’s first feature, the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake; but absolutely HATED 300. In my opinion it’s not a movie, rather a 90 minute music video/commercial/screensaver. More style over substance then I’ve ever seen in my entire life (except GERRY – and if you know what I mean, I feel sorry for you). So, in my opinion, Synder was 1-1. Basically tied. He had one more chance to win me over to his side before he lost me forever. And what a chance – an adaptation of one of my all time favorite works of art! This was make or break time (’cause I’m sure he was super concerned about my opinion of him). And with my first reaction to the trailer, I have only one thing to say…

Thank… you… dude.

It looks absolutely PERFECT, in my opinion. Every character nailed (with one exception, which I’ll get into in a bit), the look and feel of the city down to a “T” and the effects and costume design are as impressive as I could have ever hoped. We may have a genuine WATCHMEN flick on our hands here, kiddos. Lets break this boogie down. I’m gonna attempt to give two views here, one of the uber-fan I am, and one of a non-fan – someone not initiated into the world of WATCHMEN. Also, the casting, the direction, all that will present itself in due time. For now, I am reacting purely to the imagery.

NON FAN RESPONSE: It’s a solid trailer, though nothing exceptional. It gives absolutely nothing away of the plot and I have no idea what this movie could possibly be about, save a crazy blue floating guy with superpowers and a bunch of scrubby looking b-listers running around a city I’ve never seen before. It obviously has a fan base, being proclaimed “Based on the most celebrated graphic novel of all time” so I’m sure it’ll be good. That owl guy looks a lot like BATMAN. Wait a minute… I like BATMAN! Speaking of BATMAN isn’t that the SMASHING PUMPKINS song used in BATMAN and ROBIN? That movie was awful… Now I’m conflicted. But 300 was visually crazy so at least you know this movie will look great. I’m so confused right now. A new superhero movie about superheroes I’ve never heard of. My head hurts. The effects look cool though, especially that blue magical dude from ALMOST FAMOUS. And that guy with the ink blot mask seems pretty bad ass. Hmmm. I think I do want to see this movie. Maybe I should buy the book its based on.

*Slams door-enters car-heads to LCS-buys trade-goes home-opens book-blows mind.

SPOILER ZONE: If you haven’t read the WATCHMEN comics yet DO NOT read my reaction to the trailer, as I will be discussing specific moments from the plot of the story/film.

Rorschach

MY RESPONSE: Hold on one moment… Lemme dry the tears. Okay. Better now.

OH MY F’ING GOD THEY MADE A WATCHMEN MOVIE!!! My body broke out in goosebumps the second I saw Osterman/Cruddup on screen. I love how the trailer just starts with that cold opening. No warning, no prologue, just the creation of the world’s most powerful superhero. I’ve seen this trailer about fourty times now so I’d like to go through it clip by clip If I may.

1. Dr. John Osterman becomes Dr. Manhattan: This could have gone so wrong. We’ve all seen cheesy and unrealistic transformation scenes in comic book movies before (I’m not gonna drop names, but you know which ones I mean). It is a strong statement to start the trailer off with what is one of the more technologically complex effects shots from the movie, in a world filled with brilliant cgi and big budget blockbusters. How does this effect match up to others of its ilk? Wow… Wow, wow and more wow. I gotta take my hat of to Snyder, who has appeared to have blended his signature 300 hyper-stylized look with one of more traditional “Superhero” CGI, and the result is something that is so stunningly gorgeous and yet hauntingly sad at the same time. In fact, there are so many images from this trailer that I would love to take stills of and have blown up into posters. This is art, at its highest form (much like the comic book it is based on). We get no awful face melting, no hacknied body shakes, the transformation is instantaneous and carries the emotional weight of a fork lift. What a way to start this trailer off, and further, to start our ride down the road that leads to WATCHMEN. And the slight glance at his watch… Yeah.

2. Archie flying out of the water: A perfect adaptation of Nite-Owl’s vehicle. The size is exact, the coloring just as it should be. I love the feeling of speed this shot conveys. Also, that skyline is unbelievable. Archie fits right into this world. Nothign too flashy, nothing too sleek, but it does the job it’s meant to do. Kinda like Nite-Owl 2 (Dan) himself.

3. Silk Spectre crashes down: Booom! And with that millions of fanboys drooled the world over. It couldn’t get better then that, could it? See number 9

4. Nite-Owl 2 in Action: I’ve heard some fans criticize the costume design for Dan in this film, but I think it is exactly how it should look. Semi-Home made, not worn in years, and anything but boisterous or loud. Yes, it rings a little Batmannish, but if you know the history of the book then that makes sense as well. I dig it. The textures, the color… Very good.

5. Bye-Bye Comedian: A glimpse at the moment that (in a way) starts it all. Good job of the editor to keep the uninitiated confused. The sequencing makes it look like Nite- Owl from the previous shot is the one to kick Blake through the window. This film is a mystery. Let’s try our hardest to keep newbies from having the ending spoiled for them. Imagine how amazing it would be to see the final reveal in theaters, fresh and unaware? I get chills…

6. Ozymandias Revealed: In my opinion, the weakest translation from book to screen. I’ve seen MATCH POINT and know that Matthew Goode has some chops, but that costume screams BATMAN AND ROBIN (Trailer song coincidence anyone?). I just imagined Veidt to look sleeker, more refined, less cartoony. We’ll see. of course. in the finished product, but as of now that is the only design flaw to this film, in my opinion. Dig old Nixon in the background though. It’s the little things folks.

7. Manhattan Phases: The good doctor goes all sub-particle and it looks real, if that doesn’t sound ridiculous enough. I love how it’s a seamless transition from form to floating matter. Again, that style that Synder has cultivated fits amazingly well into the world of superpowers and super feats. Not only does it not distract, but it takes this to a whole other level, one closer to an art film then a pumped up comic book movie.

8. Say hi to Rorschach (and a face full of flame): The moment of truth. Undeniably the most popular character from WATCHMEN and one of the most beloved heroes in all of comic books. And… we have what might be one of the greatest on-screen characters of all time. YES!!!! THAT IS RORSCHACH! Everything down to the last minute detail. The mask is downright breathtaking. For a fan who never thought this movie would come out to see Rorschach in living, breathing full color is a dream of a lifetime and a moment I will never forget. Honestly, from the bottom of my heart, thanks to everyone who made this movie a reality. Even if it sucks (like that could happen), just to acknowledge something a small group of dedicated people love and to do it such honor is a really amazing thing.

9. Silk Spectre, come on down..: I think I am in love. With Malin Ackerman, with the designers of the film – hell, right now, with planet Earth. I have never been more intimidated – and yet turned on at the same time – by a woman in my life. This IS the only woman who could steal Dr. M’s heart away. Another beloved character seemingly transported straight out of the four color funny book pages and landed onto our respective screens. Respective drool covered screens, that is.

10. Dr. Manhattan X 3: Our first real glimpse at what has become of John Osterman. What many people are calling the most difficult aspect of the translation and, in response to the trailer, the most succesfull. Simply put, that is Billy Cruddup’s face on Dr. Manhattans body. There is NO other design choice for this character. The look we see in this movie is the look Gibbons created for the book, and it is the only look that works. And oh, how it works. This is the image and the character that will draw non-fans into the film. And fans… well, I think you can guess how we feel.

11.Nite-Owl Swoops: Did Snyder just out Batman Batman? That single shot evokes so much emotion, memory, and nostalgia in me that it has became my favorite of the trailer (and the screencap, the background on my computer). Such grace and silent power Dan carries. I love the running citizens in the background. Love how all-business Nite-Owl is. Fanboy gold, through and through…

12. Funeral for a friend?: Not much to say other than tonally it seems to be in the right place. Not overly sad (due to the man Blake was), but mournful – more for the death of an idea then the death of a man.

13. The Comedian and Dr. Manhattan go to Vietnam: Again, Synder wows me with the visuals. Not only is Comedian perfect looking, the color palette of the scenes really go far to paint a picture of this idealized, almost romanticized version of the end of Vietnam that creator Alan Moore crafted. The shot that follows – a few scenes of Dr. Manhattan vaporizing the Viet-Cong gentlemen – is too awesome to put down in words. The look on Dr M’ face – not really contentment, not really purpose… Hell, I don’t want to try and describe it. I just want to see it on a big screen (IMAX big… You listening WB and LEGENDARY?).

14. The Crowd turns angry: One of the more powerful images from the book translated into an extremely powerful image on screen. I love the attention to detail that has been paid on dressing the extras. These people are STRAIGHT out of the comic. Also, it’s reassuring to know that the plot seems to have remained entirely intact on the adaptation.

15. Dr. Manhattan Pops in: Yeah… He can do that. And he is in a prison. Us fans know what that means. The best (fan favorite) sequence in the film is about to begin. Damn teases.

16. Let’s get it on: Laurie and John share an intimate moment. And we, as the viewer, get to see a shot that is so damn beautiful, it should be hung up on the wall in a fine art museam. It’s visuals like this that will make this film so much more then just another “Cape” movie and take in into the realm of “Higher” art

17/18. Blake + Rorschact + Veidt throw their collective weight around: One of my major complaints with 300 was that I was bored with the fighting style/action scenes. Synder, thankfully, has done away with that “Gold Hue” that made me nauseous but kept the intense and artfully choreographed action that first gave him a name in this town. Yes, it appears that this movie will have its fair share of slo-mo, but that is forgivable in a world where we are meant to feel every blow as if it strikes our own body. The viewer SHOULD feel beat up after leaving this film, physically and emotionally. As long as Synder doesn’t rely too heavily on his old tricks, I think we are in store for some truly remarkable action pieces.

19. Nite-Owl screams: A taste of the darkness to come. People think DARK KNIGHT is a tonally bleak movie. Heheheheheheheehehehe. Right….

20. Crowd gives Comedian what for: A powerful, evocative image directly from the books. I love that Snyder and the producers of this film haven’t shied away from the political and non-traditional nature of the source material. Most superhero films present us with a world in which the heros aren’t questioned. This movie will strongly bring up the point “Do we need Superheroes” – and at a tumultuous time in our own society, the question (or deeper metaphor) couldn’t be more perfect.

21. Rorschach busts a pose: Folks, if any single image has excited me more then this one in the past few years, I don’t know what it could be. The moving ink blots? BRILLIANT! The voice… Haley couldn’t have been a better choice.

22.The Moony shot: There it is folks. The future of the human race in all its glory. And impressive is an understatement. What a way to go out. If non fans were confused already, this shot will take their minds over the edge. With this image, I and a countless horde are left waiting and wanting more. Perfect cap to a perfect trailer.

OVERALL REACTION- There is now not a single film I am looking forward to as much as this one. What an incredible trailer/gift for the longtime fan. Sweet, succinct, jaw droppingly badass (I can’t get that song out of my head). Honestly, the best possible trailer I could have hoped for. No need to throw away plot or exposition. Tease em’… and leave ’em wanting more. And I do… A lot more. WATCHMEN countdown officially starts now, folks. I, for one, cannot wait.

So, if you haven’t, read the book. If you have… yeah, I’m that psyched as well.

Check back next week, friends, for more fun in the proverbial sun. And, as always,

“Keep’em bagged and boarded”

–Matt Cohen is currently watching the WATCHMEN trailer again… and again.

Opinion In A Haystack: The Dark Hype

Filed under: Opinion In A Haystack — admin @ 5:20 pm

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***SPOILER FREE***

I’m writing this only one day after the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Only one day. This is not a review. I was lucky enough to be one of the many to catch a midnight screening of the film, and let me tell you… it was jolly good. A wonderfully written, acted, directed, shot, and toned piece of respectful comic book cinema. Heath Ledger’s performance was, no doubt, astounding… possibly the best overall part of the movie. However, since the last frame rolled through the projectors at around 3 am on Friday morning, the entire film/geek/online community has completely jumped overboard into the crazed anus of praise-land, forsaking all else in the name of The Dark Knight. All there is to be seen or heard, from the giddy and temporarily irrational masses, is the following:

“BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIE OF THE YEAR!”

“BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIE OF THE DECADE!”

“BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIE EVER!”

“BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR!”

“BEST MOVIE OF THE DECADE!”

“BEST MOVIE EVER!!!”

“HAVE THEY EVEN EVER MADE ANY MOVIES OTHER THEN THIS!?!?!?”

“HOLY HELL! I CARVED HEATH LEDGER’S NAME INTO MY INFANT’S FOREHEAD!!!”

“LET’S GET THE POSSE TOGETHER AND MURDER JACK NICHOLSON’S FAMILY!!!”

It does not end there even. It is already number one on the IMDB top 250 movies list and if you are bored enough to mosey on over to the IMDB message board for Tim Burton’s Batman, you will find a constant ongoing war between the Bat’s fanboys trying to have a bigger dick contest. Sentiments such as “Well, Nolan just put this movie to rest.” or “Jack should be ashamed of himself considering Ledger’s performance.” can be found through out. To everyone involved, all those calling out these insane, quick claims of instant cinematic glory on behalf of Nolan’s Dark Knight, I would just like to say one thing…

CALM… THE FUCK… DOWN!!!

I understand how you feel. I’m excited too. There is a wonderful new Batman movie playing at my local theater, the best in almost 20 years. It’s an amazing blessing and all living Batman fans (of which I very much am) are lucky to be alive to see it. However, no matter how good it is or how amazing the acting might be, that is no reason to instantly spew geek splooge all over your shorts and act like it’s the greatest film ever. The beginning of my second column on this magnificent site details Matt Damon’s and my opinion on the true judge of quality… time. Now, that argument does not fully negate the instant notion that something is good, which this new Batman movie most certainly is. All I am trying to say is take a big deep breath, and think for a minute… just a minute. I’ll wait.

Ok, feel good? Calm? Alright. Was it a great movie? Yes, yes it was. I agree too. Was it the best movie of the decade, possibly ever? Keep breathing… no, no it wasn’t. Now, let’s examine why you had the initial reaction that you did. First, because the overall quality of the movie, production and acting all considered, crossed with the fact that it is a Batman movie makes it all the more astounding to you as a fan. Now, if we remove Batman, change characters names, keep the Joker as the villain but call him The Clown and show you a movie much akin to Michael Mann’s Heat (Nolan’s supposed inspiration for The Dark Knight) would you be nearly as excited even if it was of the same quality in the acting, directing, writing, and action department? No. You would most likely dig it, as would I, and move on with the possible thought of picking up the DVD in a few months. You wouldn’t scream insane notions of superiority from the mountain tops, you wouldn’t get extremely defensive to those of us who also enjoy the (fictional) Tim Burton Heat-esque movies, and you wouldn’t rush over to the Internet Movie Database and cast your vote to rank a two-day-old film as far superior to about 200 classics that have gestated in the public stomach for decades on top of decades. You would dig it, and leave it at that. Am I wrong? This is a great film, but the only reason I feel people are freaking out is because it is great and it involves a character they love… which does not make it GREATER, it just makes it a pleasant surprise to fans of that character.

As for all the hate being heaped on Tim Burton and Jack Nicholson and their defenders, it is completely unneeded. The 1989 Batman is a different take, by a different director, from a different time, and made in a different world of cinema. If you dislike it that is fine, but why is there a need to be threatened by it? The same goes for the Burton defenders; The Dark Knight does not erase Michael Keaton’s life. If you want to argue comic-book accuracy then both sides have nowhere to go. Either of the two films has just as many comic book inaccuracies as the other… don’t believe me, fine, but you’re wrong. Please understand I don’t care about them being accurate, I am just trying to point out that neither one nor the other is a complete comic book bull’s-eye. I, for one, like all four movies, each of them good or great in their own way and am happy to have a variety of tonally different Batmans to choose from (excluding Schumacher of course.)

Heath Ledger’s tragic death aside (now all the more painful after seeing his amazing performance,) the argument of Ledger being superior to Nicholson is also useless; they are merely two separate performances with two extremely different actors, both doing a great job and giving their own spin on the character. If you are a fan of Heath’s Joker (as am I) and want to tell off all the Nicholson-Joker fanboys (as am I) then you should be fair and also attack all the Cesar Romero fans as well, because when you want to talk about differences of portrayal… I think Romero’s live action Joker is just a tiny sarcastic tad farther from Ledger then Nicholson ever was. This is not the same thing as getting angry because of a remake or a re-envisioning of a character. Batman and the Joker are not screen-derived characters, much like James Bond or Jack Ryan they are derived from an external source, so several different takes on the character are common and there is no reason to get viably angry at the actor whom you don’t prefer. Now I could understand the hatred if, say, they recast Snake Plissken, Ash, Feddy Krueger (they already did), or Doc Brown. Those are SCREEN DERIVED characters, the actors that played them ARE the characters, it is a different story then with the Joker. Anyway, It was a great movie, just not the greatest ever made and if you don’t know who Cesar Romero is, then this entire rant has been directed at you. Damn kids. Thanks for reading!

July 18, 2008

Ken P. D. Snyde-Cast #52: Holland Tunnel Vision

Filed under: Ken P.D. Snydecast — UncaScroogeMcD @ 6:23 am

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Adult Swim’s Dana Snyder and FRED’s Ken Plume set out to have a literate conversation between two pals, but inevitably devolve into a verbal, and funny, free-for-all full of bickering, infighting, and the special kind of male bonding that comes from conflict expressed through the podcast medium.

Actor/comedian/raconteur Dana Snyder, you’re certainly aware, is Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s Master Shake, Squidbillies‘ Granny, Minoriteam’s Dr. Wang, and The Venture Bros.‘ Alchemist. Available for weddings and bar mitzvahs (bat availability pending), you can keep tabs on him via his website, www.eyeofthesnyder.com.

Ken Plume is the editor-in-chief here at FRED. He is a friend of Dana’s, as well as his arch-nemesis.

VISIT THE SNYDECAST EXPERIENCE

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KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #52: Holland Tunnel Vision – Ken & Dana return with another of their patented “Dana Is On The Road So The Sound Quality Is Iffy” extravaganzas, as our dynamic duo trade compliments, take a letter from a time traveler, and even debate whether or not Dana’s seen the yo-yo version of a different kind of traveler.

[CONTENT WARNING]: This podcast may contain some foul language and horribly off-color jokes. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
Episode #52 (MP3 format)

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SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

Got something to say? E-mail Dana & Ken at the Snydecast mailbag.

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CLICK HERE FOR THE SNYDECAST ARCHIVES

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Weekend Shopping Guide 7/18/08: You Give A Little Love

Filed under: Shopping Guides — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — UncaScroogeMcD @ 4:13 am

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The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Quick Stop Weekend Shopping Guide – your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

In what may be the quickest turnaround time from air to release, the complete fifth season of Reno 911! (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP) arrives in stores literally within weeks of the final episode airing. The 3-disc set features all 16 episodes, plus audio commentaries, 40+ minutes of extended scenes, and “Cop Psychology: Inside The Minds Of Reno’s Deputies”.

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There are some things in life that are practical, that make you feel like a genuine cliché of an adult. Like buying a weed-wacker. Then there are things that have no practical purpose other than to make you feel absolutely, unashamedly, giddily childish in their uber-cool appeal to the 10-year-old still kicking around in your brain. Such is the case with the high-resolution iWear video goggles currently available at ThinkGeek ($349.99). This is the future – and we are here. Lightweight and durable, they display a virtual 62″ screen 9 virtual feet away, at a resolution of 640 x 480 (with an average of 6 hours battery life). You can connect it to your TV, DVD player, video iPod, computer – the sky’s the limit. It’s glorious, I tell you. Glorious.
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Largely a neglected novelty in the US, Alan Parker’s wonderfully bizarre Bugsy Malone (ITV, Rated G, DVD-£19.99 SRP) is a certified kiddie holiday classic – think of it as the equivalent to what A Christmas Story is in the US. Yes – wonderfully bizarre – how else would you describe a gangster movie starring kids, with music by Paul Williams? It’s never been released on DVD in the States, but they’ve long had a standard-edition DVD in the UK, featuring an audio commentary from Parker, trailers, galleries, and more. Well, now they’ve gone and shown up the States again by releasing a beautifully high definition Blu-Ray edition (ITV, £19.99 SRP). If you’ve never seen the film – well, that’s the way to see it. You must see it.

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Back on the road again, actor Robbie Coltrane is exploring the interesting and unique to be found across the breadth of England in Robbie Coltrane: Incredible Britain (Acorn Media, Not Rated, DVD-$29.99 SRP). From 20-ton monster trucks to wing-walkers to rugby played with a beer keg, it’s a bizarre, fun travelogue.

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If the slice of the 60’s presented in AMC’s Mad Men leaves you wanting to sonically explore the period a little more, then by all means pick up Mad Men: Music From The Series Volume 1 (EMI, $17.98 SRP). With tracks from Vic Damone, Bobby Vinton, Ella Fitzgerald, The Andrews Sisters, series composer David Carbonara and more, it’s worth a spin.

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I always get a kick out of the sheer energy and exuberance – and, frankly, unhinged quality – of talk and variety shows in the UK. Case in point is The Friday Night Project, which is an hour long comedy program presented by Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins, and featuring a different guest host and musical guest each week. Think of it as a funny Saturday Night Live, deriving much of the humor from the unpredictability of Collins and Carr, and the permissibility of UK television. If you’d like a nice sampler of what I’m getting on about, check out The Friday Night Project: Unleashed (ITV, Not Rated, DVD-£19.99 SRP), which is essentially a bonus-filled best-of compilation.

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Anticipation of The Dark Knight is building to a fever pitch, so it makes sense that Warners would quickly shuffle out a Batman Begins: Limited Edition Giftset on Blu-Ray (Warner Bros., Rated PG-13, DVD-$49.99 SRP) to exploit the mood. In a nutshell, it’s got the same on-disc bonus features as the standard 2-disc DVD, plus a 2/12 minute sneak peek at Dark Knight, a collection of postcards, a look at the filming of the prologue sequence of DK, and a comic book adaptation of the same.

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And you know that, since you’re already in the rip current, you’re going to pick up the score to The Dark Knight (Warner Sunset, $18.98 SRP), by Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard. You know you’re going to get it. You just know it.

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Despite cultural affectations, the bottom line is that funny is funny. Such is the case with Al Murray: The Pub Landlord Live At The Palladium (ITV, Not Rated, DVD-£19.99 SRP). It’s always wonderful to watch a comedian craft stand-up that transcends a stage persona, while still firmly rooting it in said character. Al Murray’s nationalistic, xenophobic, lager-loving pub owner is a thing of cliched glory, ranking right up there with Bob & Doug McKenzie. Heartily recommended. The DVD also features a behind-the-scenes featurette.

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First of all, let me say that it’s no Meet The Spartans. And I mean that as a compliment, because that was just unwatchable excrement. No, Superhero Movie (Dimension, Not Rated, DVD-$29.95 SRP) is better than most of the horrid pop culture parody flicks to come down the pike since the high water mark of Airplane!. can you guess what the subject matter is this go round? Can you? I knew you could. Bonus materials include an audio commentary, deleted scenes, an alternate ending, featurettes, and the theatrical trailer.

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They still haven’t found a good vehicle for Raven Symone, but Disney’s College Road Trip (Walt Disney, Rated G, DVD-$29.99 SRP) is an amiable enough affair, as its essentially Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, but with a father (Martin Lawrence) taking a road trip to check out colleges with his soon-to-be-leaving daughter (Symone). The DVD features audio commentaries, deleted scenes, a video diary, a gag reel, and more.

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Finally, what has become an iconic bit of television finally hits DVD with the complete ninth season of Dallas (Warner Bros., Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP). What iconic moment do I speak of? Well, let’s just say it’s the second most iconic shower scene below Psycho‘s. The 4-disc set features all 31 episodes, plus an in-depth featurette on the season’s elaborate dream sequence.

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It’s not a full season set, but at least it’s a solid batch of episodes in the first set collecting The Adventures Of Ozzie & Harriet. The Best Of Ricky and Dave (Shout! Factory, Not Rated, DVD-$34.99 SRP) features 24 episodes spanning the show’s 14 season run, with Ricky becoming a teen idol in the process.

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Dr. Alec Holland’s hulking, green alter-ego returns to DVD with the second volume of Swamp Thing: The Series (Shout! Factory, Not Rated, DVD-$34.99 SRP), which collects the first 26 episodes of the show’s massive 50-episode 3rd (and final) season.

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Everything – and I mean everything – comes to DVD eventually, even when it’s such an embarrassing disappointment as the short-lived Birds Of Prey (Warner Bros., Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP). In fact, the best thing I can say about comic book series is that – in the flashback showing how the former Batgirl, now Oracle, was crippled by the Joker – they were smart enough to cast Mark Hamill as the voice of the Clown Prince of Crime. The 4-disc set features all 13 episodes, plus the unaired pilot and all 30 episodes of the animated web-series Gotham Girls.

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So there you have it… my humble suggestions for what to watch, listen to, play with, or waste money on this coming weekend. See ya next week…

-Ken Plume

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