FRED Entertainment

Author: UncaScroogeMcD

  • QSE News: 1/5/2007

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    Here are today’s top entertainment headlines:

    • qsnews.jpgAccording to people “in the know,” there is a legitimate chance that the rock group Police will reunite sometime this year. The other two guys from the Police, drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers, were unavailable for comment as they were “rubbing Master Sting’s feet, preparing his breakfast and readying the living room for company.”
    • After a down year in 2005, Hollywood is rejoicing at the news that the domestic box office saw a modest 3.4% jump in profits.  Many insiders thought 2005’s downward trend would continue through 2006 and possibly into 2007.  Luckily with such films as Little Man, Aqua Marie, and Slither leading the charge, the movie industry was able to rebound.
    • Busta Rhymes?  More like Busta Nose.  The rapper, whose real name is Trevor Smith, has been arrested for allegedly beating a man over money.  The incident marks the first time in several years that Rhymes has been associated with a hit.
    • In a sad bit of news for the 13-year-olds in our great nation, the hit television show, The O.C., has been cancelled.  In addition to crushing the Thursday night viewing dreams of pre-pubescent children, the move has thrown the California Tourism Board into the unenviable position of pushing Fox to greenlight other shows like The L.A., The S.F. and The S.D.
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    That’s all for today’s news, stay tuned to this channel for all the news that matters least but you still care about.

    (Compiled by J. Allen)

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  • Nocturnal Admissions: DVD Review The Covenant

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    After impressing Hollywood with films made in his native land, Renny Harlin came from Finland, where he was known as Lauri Harjola, to direct movies in America, and became one of the many directors to jumpstart a career by helming a Nightmare on Elm Street entry. He leapt from that to Die Hard 2, just as good as and arguably better than the first film. He stumbled a bit and then did Cliffhanger with Stallone. His next few films featured his then wife, Gena Davis, and included what might be considered his masterpiece, The Long Kiss Goodnight. An expensive film, it flopped at the box office and then he collaborated again with Stallone on Driven. At $72 million, that was his last big budgeted film. Since then Harlin has dwelled in the more modestly acquitted realm of films budgeted at around $20 million dollars. Exorcist: The Beginning and Mindhunters were both troubled projects and essentially reviled by the critics, and Harlin, perceived as vulnerable, clearly became a whipping boy for them.

    Renny

    Yet for me there continues to be something about Harlin’s films that I find attractive. Even at more modest budgets, they evince a command and control that should be the envy of others. And his career should be a cautionary tale to others who specialize in the action film. After burning brightly, the Ratners, the McGs, the Finchers, the Bays will at some point themselves also all fall into an abyss of one kind or another.Harlin obviously likes to do genre material but his films are mocked, while Tarantino, equally genre mad, gets a pass, indeed gets praised.

    Covenant box

    Now comes The Covenant which sneaked in and out of the theaters last fall and now appears on DVD from Screen Gems, hitting the street on January 2, 2007, for $28.95. It’s not the level of film that a Harlin apologist wants to go out on a limb for, and in fact is filled with rather amateurish mistakes. Ideally, it is Joel Schumacher material.

    Harlin rather confounds critics who approach him from an auteurist bent. His films have a consistent visual quality, but it is also the same quality found in most big budgeted action films and might better be counted as a producer’s style. And it is difficult to pinpoint a thematic consistency. One of his Finnish films, Born American, concerned three American tourists who jokingly cross the border into Russia and end up in a Soviet jail. Mindhunters, Deep Blue Sea, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Cliffhanger, and Die Hard 2 all also feature innocents or something equivalent to that who stumble into a larger life threatening situation. And that’s speaking very broadly. Also, this list accounts for less than half of his output, and on cursory consideration those films don’t scream out with any kind of thematic consistency.

    Team

    The Covenant also features an innocent, in this case Sarah (Laura Ramsey), who is the new student at the prestigious if also wholly ominous Spenser Academy in Ipswitch. She gets an insta-crush on Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait), the naturally charismatic leader of the student body, but a lad who also happens to be one of the descendants of the Salem witches. His posse makes up the other descendants. There is another new student in the school, the goofy Chase Collins (Sebastian Stan) who turns out to be something more than what he seems – a rival warlock who wants to suck dry Caleb’s power as he “ascends” to a higher level of skill on his 18th birthday. The film climaxes with a battle royale between the two antagonists, with Sarah held hostage between them.

    Villain

    If nothing else, The Covenant shows the problems facing filmmakers making a Dr. Strange movie, because it devolves into two guys facing off throwing CGI fireballs at each other across a room. Roger Corman did the same thing better 44 years ago in The Raven.

    Shower scene

    Most of the problems with The Covenant can be traced to the script credited to J.S. Cardone. The 97 minute film appears to have narrative gaps (though the disc doesn’t feature any deleted scenes), and introduces about 12 characters in its first 10 minutes. By the time you reach a state where you can tell them apart, the movie’s over. Its fantasy world is typically inconsistent, is one of those scripts in which every casual thing you see will loom large later, and is one of those “arrivals and departures” scripts, in which every scene begins and ends with someone arriving then departing. This approach to screen writing makes for very enervated, predictable, and repetitious stories. The fantasy world is inconsistent in that way typical of such films, in which powers characters have are opportunistically inconsistent. For example, on the one hand these warlocks can fly, but on the other, at the end Caleb simply carries Sarah out of a burning barn. Why doesn’t he fly out?

    Thus, The Covenant is a disc for Harlin completists only. The widescreen transfer (2.35:1, enhanced), with a full frame version also available on the same disc. It’s a good transfer that makes the numerous special effects believable. Subtitles come in English and French under a English Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks. Extras consist of a commentary track by director Harlin that emphasizes the technical challenges of the production. Besides trailers, there is also a making of featurette called “Breaking the Silence: Exposing The Covenent” which is typical upbeat EPK fluff.

  • Quick Stop Thingamabobs: 1/5/2006

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    The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦

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    • George Harrison’s rarely seen video for “Blow Away”… (Thingamabob)
    • And The Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care”… (Thingamabob)
    • The Sound of Young America talks to the blokes behind The Knights of Prosperity… (Thingamabob)

    Have a THINGAMABOB? Send it in!

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  • Music For The Masses: A New Beginning

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    Happy New Year, QuickStoppers, and welcome back to the new and improved edition of Music for the Masses. That’s right, friends, you read that correctly. New AND improved.

    You see, I have decided to change things up here a bit, going forward, to help streamline the column and keep the focus squarly where it belongs… the music. Now, don’t go getting all excited like Lindsay Lohan ordering another vodka drink at an “open bar,” I’m not changing things up a whole bunch. Just “some.” For instance, all of the non-sequitor bullshit that usually starts the column? You know, the same “jokey” shit that drives some of you crazier than Mel Gibson with a belly full of Patron? The same shit you are reading now? Gone. Yep, going forward, you ain’t gonna see this no more. This is the last time and, honestly, the only reason you’re seeing it now is because I wasn’t going to write up the only new release of note this week, Carly “Why So Long In The Face?” Simon’s Into White, and I have space to fill. But seriously, if you’re tuning into this column to catch a review of music that your parents fuck to, you REALLY are in the wrong place.

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    Carly Simon playing chess with some dude…

    That’s right, friends, we are going to start focusing solely on the music and we are going to start doing it weekly. Serious as a lump on a fat man’s tit. Once a week. No more bi-weekly dick and fart jokes for you my friends. You deserve better. You deserve dick and fart jokes EVERY week and finally, FINALLY, you’re going to get them. “Breathe deep the gathering gloom…”

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    You can also kiss the “Bastard Love Child Of…” comparisons goodbye. No real reason here… just thought it would be fun to change the description of the music to the more simplified “Sounds Like?” For instance, using the above-mentioned Carly Simon album as an example, I would say that her new album “Sounds Like?”… well, it sounds like your parents fucking. Umm… so I’ve heard. Through the wall of that Motel Six in Salida. But I digress.

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    I am also going to start incorporating more concert reviews – which I have done sporadically in the past – and some actual, artist interviews. No shit. Oh yeah, and I am also going to hit you – like Jackson Browne, only not in the face – with the occasional podcast. And joining me on these occasional (read: whenever the hell I feel like it) podcasts will be Double A, the “rap guy” from this here column, and QSE News guru J. Allen. I’m pretty sure this is one of the signs of the apocalypse, right behind “raining frogs” and an “underwear-less Brittany,” but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Here is a taste of what you can expect…

    [CONTENT WARNING]: This podcast, much like the column you have been reading, contains foul language, horribly off-color jokes and multiple, inexplicable usages of the word “va-jay.” Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

    DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
    Music For The Masses: Episode 1 (MP3 format) ““ 7.75 MB

    Kinda like listening to three 9-year-olds with a tape recorder, huh? By the way, I’d like to thank the “real man” stunt voices for filling in there. Nice work, guys!! Double A will pay each and every one of you with a special “mouth hug” and “pickle tickle.” And, on the off-chance you are actually wondering, future podcasts WILL focus on “real” reviews of new music, so you can consider this first one as a simple “test of the system,” so to speak… just in case you’re sitting there going “What the fu…?” Oh yeah, lest I forget, I’m going to change my rating system (which is, believe it or not, actually serious) to something a bit more “graphically interesting,” continue to pimp unsigned bands whenever the opportunity arises and, perhaps most importantly to some, post the upcoming music releases for your shopping pleasure. Eww… that reminds me… coming up next week, we have the following:

    Artist Title Genre
    A New Dawn Fades I See The Night Birds Rock/Pop
    Alexis Gideon Welcome Song Alternative
    Big C**k Year of the Cock Rock/Pop
    Blue Six Tropicalia Dance
    Boils, The The Orange And The Black Rock/Pop
    Chow Nasty Ungawa….The Party StartsRight F**king Now EP Rock/Pop
    Complicated Shirt Compromising Compostions Rock/Pop
    Cosmic Gate Earth Mover Dance
    Das Oath Das Oath Punk
    GRATEFUL DEAD Live At The Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976 (3CD) Rock
    Great White Recover – Deluxe Edition Rock/Pop
    Greene,Heather Five Dollar Dress Rock/Pop
    Hatepinks, The Tete Malade/ Sick In The Head Rock/Pop
    Hinder Tribute Uninhibited: The String Quartet Tribute to Hinder Rock/Pop
    Holy Molar Cavity Search EP Rock/Pop
    John Waite DOWNTOWN”¦Journey Of A Heart Pop
    Lil C H-Town Chronic [Deluxe Edition] Rap
    Love Kills Theory, The Happy Suicide, Jim! Rock/Pop
    Magic Lantern, The The Magic Lantern CD EP Rock/Pop
    Marco V Live At Innercity Dance
    Mercury Rev Back To Mine Rock/Pop
    Mr. Lil One Browner Than Pride Rap
    OG Ron C F Action 46 Rap
    P.F. Sloan Measure of Pleasure Rock/Pop
    Patriarch Son Of A Refugee Rap
    Popo, The The Popo Rock/Pop
    POWND Circle of Power Rock/Pop
    Questions In Dialect The Ghost Wishes To Speak ToYou CD EP Rock/Pop
    Ron Sexsmith Time Being Rock
    Self Against City Teling Secrets To Strangers Rock
    Sloan Never Hear The End Of It Rock/Pop
    Soporus Atomove Elektrarne CD EP Rock/Pop
    Superpumas Muscles Electronica
    Ultramagnetic MC’s The Best Kept Secret Rap
    Woss Ness Bangin Screw 2000 Rap


    Good stuff… umm, maybe. So, there you have it folks. The new AND improved “Music for the Masses. ” What do you think? Huh? Maybe? Well, anyway, thanks again for reading and we’ll see you next week with some actual music reviews.Peace.

    Send pictures of your “va-jay,” assorted hate mail and review copies to:

    M.C. Bell
    P.O. Box 1222
    Arvada, CO 80001

    E-MAIL THE AUTHOR

  • The Fred Hembeck Show: Episode 85 – “…But How Did You Like Dallas OTHERWISE, Mrs. Kennedy?…”

     

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    Pardon me, friends, but I’m afraid things got a little bit away from me over the holidays. Thus, today we’re offering up a classic little essay originally presented over at Hembeck.com back on November 22nd, 2004, one I cleverly titled:

    “…But How Did Like You Dallas OTHERWISE, Mrs. Kennedy?…”

    But, as I mention in the piece’s opening line, to fully grasp what’s what, you need to first go and read the story I scanned in just for the occasion, one from the very comic you see below. Do that, and then come back and begin reading my, ahem, ageless commentary, okay? Thanks!

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    If you haven’t already done so, you might just want to go and read “The Infamous Four” before tackling the following frank and open discussion of this shock-laden mid-sixties Superman Family entry! Go – NOW!! Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

    Okay – everybody back? Are you all comfortably sitting down, freshly used smelling salts at your side, the breath that was knocked out of you by the story’s stunning finale gradually re-entering your collapsed lungs? Good. NOW we can pick away mercilessly at our featured presentation, “The Infamous Four”, written by Jerry Siegel, drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger, and originally published in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen number 89 (December 1965, but going on sale earlier that Fall in late October).

    By now, you’ve been able to surmise my reason for posting it on this very specific date, as it deal’s with events taking place in Superman’s Metropolis exactly 59 years from today. Yup, folks in Supes adopted home town are still stricken by the tragic assassination that had taken place precisely a century earlier, which, frankly, may’ve been a bit of wishful thinking on the part of the comics field’s most blatant JFK groupie, Superman uber-editor Mort Weisinger. After all, wasn’t the very year THIS story was published, 1965, the hundredth anniversary of the shooting of one of our OTHER most beloved presidents, Abraham Lincoln?

    And yet, thinking back, I can recall no special ceremonies when THAT dark day rolled around (heck, I don’t even know WHICH day it was!…), and certainly nobody took five minutes off to stare, stone-like, at the front of a five dollar bill (the technology to project an image of a bearded chief executive into the ether not having been invented as yet)! Instead, we twelve-year olds were more likely to crack our black-humored “…but besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?…” jibes as to pay tribute to a fallen hero (hence the above title).

    The handsome young President appeared in a score of stories overseen by DC editorial honcho Weisinger during the three brief years Kennedy was responsible for the country’s welfare – a survey for another day, people – but as best I can determine, this was his third, and final posthumous cameo in one of Mort’s magazines. (The first was his ill-timed stand-in gig for the Man Of Steel in Action Comics #309’s lead tale, which hit the stands just weeks – and perhaps only days – after the stunning assassination. You can read a more thorough examination of this infamous episode accompanying my Classic Cover Redo of said issue’s frontispiece by going here – and view JFK’s two panel gig by cueing up the November 22nd, 2004 “Fred Sez” entry. The second turned up in Superman #168, a story that was in the works when the shooting occurred but which was finished and printed at the behest of President Johnson (so it was said) concerning one of the slain leader’s pet projects, promoting physical fitness among the nation’s youth, a story that wound up doubling as a tribute to JFK as well. And then, there was THIS story, the one everyone invariably overlooks. Which brings me to one of my slightly off-kilter, long-festering personal anecdotes…)

    Mort Weisinger’s Superman Family of titles were primarily responsible for sparking my interest in adventure-themed comics in 1961, when I was eight. Four short years later, the bloom was definitely off the rose: Marvel Comics had come along in the intervening time, and by late 1965, DC was desperately trying to seem hip, as both their surprisingly new (yet old) competitor – AND the decade’s rapidly evolving styles, mores, and attitudes – were making their fifties-based approach (once the industry model) seem stale by comparison virtually overnight. To that end, DC was only a month or so away from their lamentable Go-Go Checks era, which would tarnish the uppermost reaches of the cover of the very next issue of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen. Even a quick look at this cover is a clear indication of how the clueless National Comics big-wigs were flailing about, trying to hop aboard any available band-wagon in the hopes of not being left too far behind. The times, they WERE a-changin’ – even, it would seem, in the halls of four-color fantasy publishers.

    I make this point to explain how, in later years when I’d grown older and became warmly nostalgic for the comics of my youth – including the very mockable but nonetheless lovable Weisinger line – I invariably pulled out an early sixties issue to wax goofy-eyed over. Reliving the red-headed cub reporter’s antics in his recurring guise of Giant Turtle Olsen was SO much more fun than seeing him attempt to one up James Bond. Fact is, over the years, I’ve rarely cracked open many post-1964 Weisinger comics (I even stopped buying em’ all early in 1967, unhappy with the direction the line was taking, though I ultimately rescued many of these skipped issues from a score of quarter boxes during my Comicon tours of the eighties – but that’s a whole ‘NOTHER story altogether…). This, patient readers, is all a partial explanation serving as a prelude to the story that (finally) follows…

    Come the mid-seventies. Having grown up with friends who weren’t at all interested in comics, I was lucky enough to eventually meet a kindred spirit while attending college by the name of Charlie Johnson. Though we soon became great pals, he lived 30 miles away from me in those days, so our visits were severely limited by the excessive distance. When we did manage to get together at my parents house, we’d gleefully go down into the basement and enthusiastically rifle through the piles and piles of comics, discussing, celebrating, and – the most fun of all – good naturedly mock them!! And there was this one story in particular I was near desperate to show him – it was this bizarre Jimmy Olsen story that ended with a snap ending, one that ALSO served to memorialize JFK!

    There was only one problem – I had somehow gotten it into my head that it had appeared in an issue the latter day double-sized dollar comic, Superman Family, and thus spent several precious minutes pouring through issue after issue, looking for this story I’d excitedly expounded upon for my fellow funnybook fancier, all in vain. The reason that I was looking in that title? Well, I’d correctly remembered that Kurt Schaffenberger was the story’s artist, and though he’d drawn a few stray episodes in Olsen’s sixties series, most of the art during that era came from the drawing boards of Curt Swan, John Forte, and Pete Costanza. However, when Jimmy was demoted to sharing just a portion of the Superman Family anthology title, Schaffenberger became his regular illustrator – and Kurt, unlike most other cartoonists, never much changed his style once he’d mastered it, so the difference between Schaffenberger from the fifties and Schaffenberger from the eighties was, at best, minimal. Plus, I was sure this tribute had to’ve come a decade after the fact, and NOT so soon after the crime, so, foolishly, I didn’t even think to look in my earlier Olsen issues…

    This sad scenario repeated itself over the years, again and again. When my pal Rocco first visited, I described to him what I remembered to be a particularly oddball Jimmy Olsen story, one containing an outrageous denouement, and then I’d proceed to page through issue after issue of Superman Family, always with the same frustrating result – no such story! I was beginning to doubt my own sanity! I hadn’t imagined everything – had I? Repeatedly, this would occur when I’d host any visitor with half an interest in comics – and if that weren’t bad enough, my memory of the tale in question began to strangely morph in my muddled mind.

    While that final panel of a saintly John F. Kennedy hovering in the sky remained crystal clear in my mind’s eye, and the key plot element of everyone standing completely still in deference to the moment, thus outing the bad guys who, ignorant of the local’s customs, were running through the streets just as everyone else voluntarily freezes – THAT stayed with me, too. But, vaguely recalling how everyone was dressed, I had somewhere along the line decided that this adventure DIDN’T take place in a future version of Metropolis, a century after the assassination, but instead in the bottle city of Kandor!!

    That’s right – the shrunken Kryptonian city that resided in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. In my mistakenly twisted version, I had Jimmy following a group of fleeing Earth crooks seeking refuge in the miniature metropolis, only to be exposed as the (present-day) Kandorians mark the passing of the American leader in this peculiar manner! Well, this only made the story all the more ridiculous to me, and in fact, was the very selling point I used in describing it to the various folks just before I’d inevitably fail to locate it: WHY the heck are the tiny Kryptonians making such a big deal out of commemorating the loss of an EARTH dignitary? Sure, they’re sad and such – I’m certain Superman had told ’em all about what a swell guy he was and all – but isn’t the whole city-wide statue imitation bit a tad much? C’mon, now – that’d be just plain silly! And I LOVED it all the more because it was…

    I’d nursed that pivotal – but apparently mistaken – plot point for over three decades now, and you can’t begin to imagine how deflated I was the other day when I FINALLY located the story and sat down to read it. (How’d I find it? Simple enough – I wrote to my pal, the all-knowing, ever-helpful, Lou Mougin, describing pertinent plot details – including my inadvertent red herring – and he quickly emailed me back with its whereabouts, And soon after I thanked him, I ran downstairs and eagerly fished it out of its longbox home, where it had languished far too long.) Oh, it’s still an interesting little tale, but without the ludicrous Bottle City angle, it loses a hefty chunk of its inherent – or should that be, “invented”? – goofiness. Worse, it killed any chance I might’ve had for titling this essay something snappy like, “Ich Bin Kandorian!”, or “Ask Not What You Can Do For the Bottle City, Ask What The Bottle City Can Do For You!”

    So Charlie? Rocco? And anybody else I may’ve once regaled with that crazy JFK/Kandor crossover, here it is. I, um, got a few of the details screwed up – hey, can you really BLAME me? Much as I dearly love Kurt Schaffenberger’s work – and I DO – the futuristic garb his characters are wearing look EXACTLY like the sort of fashions you’d likely find in mid-sixties (not-so-swinging) Kandor, giving me SOME small excuse for my confusion.

    Lou informs me that this story’s never been reprinted, and frankly, I doubt it ever will be. Not to play fast and loose with someone else’s property, but when you add in the historical, ahem, importance of this unique entry with my above observation, I think we’re on reasonably solid ground offering this up for your perusal.

    As for those OTHER two stories? Well, I’ve gotta save something for the next two November 22nds, don’t I?

    And I do hope, that while you’ve been reading this, you’ve remained perfectly, absolutely, and totally still. It’d only be appropriate, don’tcha think?…

    (But now you can go on over to Hembeck.com if you like – it’s okay!…)

    -Copyright 2006 Fred Hembeck

  • QSE News: 1/4/2007

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    Here are today’s top entertainment headlines:

    • qsnews.jpgGoing back to the well, NBC has announced plans to produce a remake of the 1970’s series The Bionic Woman – a tale of a woman who receives hi-tech implants that save her life. Obviously, we here at QSE News could go for the “easy” joke about where those implants are located but that would be degrading.  Instead, will simply say the new series deals with how the new technology will help the Bionic Woman do all the things women love to do”¦ like clean the house and cook for her husband.
    • Black Eyed Peas main man Will.i.am is getting ready to help Michael Jackson with a new album. The new material is said to be a concept album narrating Jackson’s own personal struggles while fleeing a horribly oppressive society that persecutes men for spending “naked time” with children.
    • After several rumors over the past few weeks, Barbara Walters has come out in defense of her decision to hire Rosie O’Donnell as a host of the television show The View.  Walters was quoted as saying “I do not regret hiring Rosie one bit.  We had an affirmative action quota to fill and I ask you, where else am I going to find a fat, obnoxious, anti-Asian lesbian?  Huh?”
    • We here at QSE news want to give a belated birthday shout out to Mr. Mel Gibson, who turned 51 on Monday.  Those close to Mr. Gibson claimed that this year’s celebration was a little more subdued and only included 72 bottles of Jack Daniels and 187 racial slurs. The Los Angeles Police Department was not invited to the party but did manage to stop by “for old times sake.”
    • And finally today, George Lucas has said that filming for the much anticipated fourth Indiana Jones movie will begin in 2007. Lucas also announced the special-edition, digitally-enhanced version of the film will go into production in 2008. At press time, there was no release date for the super-special, extended and digitally-enhanced version of the film.
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    That’s all for today’s news, stay tuned to this channel for all the news that matters least but you still care about.

    (Compiled by J. Allen)

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  • Quick Stop Thingamabobs: 1/4/2006

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    The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦

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    • Shortly after George Harrison lost the court case that accused him of “subconciously plagiarizing” his hit “My Sweet Lord” from The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine,” he penned the tune “This Song” as a means of venting his frustration – and this is the video for it… (Thingamabob)
    • Syncronised Swimming, courtesy of Shearer & Guest… (Thingamabob)
    • The fish-slapping dance, just because… (Thingamabob)

    Have a THINGAMABOB? Send it in!

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  • Interview: Jonathan Katz

    -by Ken Plume

    katz-01.jpgA few weeks back, I had the pleasure of sitting down for an in-depth interview with Jonathan Katz. I can only assume he was sitting as well, a necessary bit of speculation considering he was over a thousand miles away and our only connection was a phone line and the fact that he had agreed to do the aforementioned interview.

    Besides his 20 year stand-up career, Katz was the star of Comedy Central’s award-winning Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist (the first two seasons of which are currently available on DVD), and is a regular contributor to The Next Big Thing radio show on NPR. He recently performed Dr. Katz: Live in New York along with Jon Benjamin, and has just released his first CD, Caffeinated.

    You can visit Jonathan on the Web at www.jonathankatz.com, listen to his contribution to our “Holiday Havoc” celebration here, and read our conversation beginning now…

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    KATZ: Hello?

    KP: Hey, Jonathan, this is Ken.

    KATZ: Hey Ken. Is this an okay connection on your end?

    KP: It sounds fine on mine.

    KATZ: It’s perfect on mine. So to give myself a little pep talk, first of all, are you recording? Because I encourage you to do that.

    KP: Yes, just started recording.

    KATZ: I was giving myself a little pep talk, and I was thinking about two things. One is a comedian I used to work with named Ron Darion. And he used to do this bit about New Yorkers, how they’re missing that little part of the brain that tells you you shouldn’t do something. I was thinking about this in the context of these two radio interviews I did on Monday. And I just could not censor myself.

    KP: Were these in promotion for the live performance of Dr. Katz?

    KATZ: It was part in promotion of that and partly in promotion my enormous big fat Greek ego. But mostly I’m promoting this CD that’s coming out this month.

    katz-03.gifKP: Caffeinated…

    KATZ: Yeah. That’s the thing I’m mostly excited about. Because I kind of like to document my work, and this really represents 25 years of my life. I just got so bored saying that one phrase. So the one thing that made me think about is that Ron Darion thing. And then the other thing is that I was trying to find a reason to justify is taking that very expensive trip into space which is being offered commercially now. Do you know about this?

    KP: This is the Virgin Galactic flight? Or is this another one?

    KATZ: I guess somebody’s offering, “If you put up enough money, we’ll get you into space…”

    KP: I know the Russians have been doing it, but Branson has been taking bookings for that Virgin Galactic…

    KATZ: I think I can justify it two ways; one is that it’s a chance to meet my public…

    KP: What’s the implication, that your public has been slowly migrating towards space over the past few years?

    KATZ: No, I thought I was gonna meet them on the bus yesterday, because I took the Greyhound bus from New York to Newton where I live, and I hadn’t been on a bus in years and I thought that would be a chance to meet people I like and who are like me.

    KP: How do you define that? What are the characteristics?

    KATZ: Well, people I like is an enormous range. I like women more than men. I like people who get my jokes. People who make me laugh, I really like them. They are few and far between.

    KP: Now I’m getting performance anxiety.

    KATZ: No, no. Ken, you’re pre-sold.

    KP: (laughing)

    KATZ: I like Loren Bouchard a lot. Either a young woman or even an aging woman.

    KP: It’d be quite a surprise to his wife to find out he was either of those…

    KATZ: Yeah. But he gets my jokes and he also is very good at providing a context for them. And I also like people who know about stuff that I don’t know anything about. And those people are all over the place. I know so little about anything. Except myself, my family, comedy, psychology, psychiatry. I know a little about animation. I know a lot about audio, and I love audio.

    KP: So you really can’t say that you know very little about most things. There obviously is a large swath of stuff you do know quite a bit about. You certainly know about comedy.

    KATZ: Yeah, but I was on a plane recently and I met some guy from Armenia. I don’t know anything about Armenia. Coming back I met a guy who was a… what do they call somebody who looks for pieces of previous civilizations?

    KP: Archaeologist?

    KATZ: Yeah. But he had a such a unique take on archaeology. Because that’s my definition of an archeologist – you go look in the sand for things. Or you look under a building to find traces of what was going on before there. There’s so many more aspects of archeology. But I do know a lot about comedy.

    KP: When you talk about that 25 year span, what are you trying to condense into an 80 minute CD?

    KATZ: First of all, it’s 50 minutes long. Because the first 20 years just flew by. The CD’s 50 minutes long, five-oh, and I’m trying to give people a sense of what I did as a stand up comic during those years. So it’s material that started in the real world and then it just sort of morphed into comedy.

    KP: Was your path into comedy a surprise to you?

    KATZ: I guess so. People have been laughing at things I’ve said for years, but I never thought I would get paid for it. Nor was that an ambition of mine. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to make my living in music, and I did for a while. You know, I’ve written more than 40 songs in my life, and they all fall under the heading of mediocre.

    KP: By your definition?

    KATZ: Yes. And even by the definition of my iPod. I created a category called Mediocre.

    KP: Is it only populated by your songs or have you included others in it?

    KATZ: No, just me. It’s just a playful look at my songs. Not that they don’t have good qualities. I think I’m challenged as a lyricist. I write pretty good songs, but when I write the lyrics, I write myself into a hole.

    KP: So you’re saying that you need a Sondheim? Or a Taupin?

    KATZ: Well, I’ll give you an example. This is my favorite example. This is an example of a bad lyric I wrote. This is me running into a hole with just a bad lyric. It was a samba. And I wrote it in the 60s and it goes, “Another night with you would be too much to ask; a final fight with you would me flabbergast.”

    KP: It’s certainly unique.

    KATZ: Just to use the word flabbergast…

    KP: It reminds me of something you might hear from Shel Silverstein.

    katz-04.gifKATZ: Or Howdy Doody.

    KP: Or Howdy Doody. But really, isn’t that a fine line?

    KATZ: Yeah, it is. This is an example of me writing myself into a hole, because I think this is not a bad song, I just got stuck. The lyric is, “It’s a strange situation that I find myself in, perhaps you’ve been there too; I’m caught between a hard place.” And now that I’ve written that line I am fucked. I have nowhere to go.

    KP: Well, I’m sure there’s a rhyming scheme. You could find something.

    KATZ: Oh yeah, but there’s no happy ending to that lyric.

    KP: Unless you do a complete 180…

    KATZ: I could bend that line that leads into it.

    KP: I believe that’s when people normally go to the bridge.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: And hope that people forget what the last lyric was when they come back.

    KATZ: I was once at an improv class in New York, and a woman named Lisa Mende was my instructor. And I guess we met twice a week, and one time she brought in a pianist who was a friend of hers. I was really so bad – and this was probably in the mid 80s. I was really bad, and the pianist was playing, and I sing one line and then I say, “Take it!” and asked her to do a solo.

    KP: Not exactly the way that improv is supposed to work.

    KATZ: No, not at all.

    KP: Did she take it? I guess in improv you’re not supposed to turn anything down.

    KATZ: No, she took the solo, yeah. I can picture her. She was quite beautiful. Although on the other hand my memory is quite jaded. People look so much better in my mind than they do in real life, especially in my mind on the past.

    KP: So you’re saying you frequently clean up the images in your memory?

    KATZ: Yeah. What do they call it what they do in those girlie magazines?

    KP: Airbrush?

    KATZ: Airbrush, yeah. I can’t believe I said girlie magazines. That makes me sound like I’m about a thousand.

    KP: Give or take. But hey, that could make a comeback.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: You could reclaim “girlie” for the modern hipsters.

    KATZ: Yeah. I always thought that the character Ben on Dr. Katz was always doing cheesecake poses, which is really ancient.

    KP: Yeah, but he always struck me as the type that would do it consciously.

    KATZ: You’re probably right about that.

    KP: As an affectation.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: And with the belief that it would make himself more appealing to any woman that might encounter him.

    KATZ: Yeah. We did Dr. Katz live in New York on Tuesday. That was when we did two shows. One was with Dave Attell and Janeane Garofalo, and one was Janeane, Eugene Mirman, and a guy named Tom Leopold. And Tom Leopold is just like an improvisational genius. He’s on the Jon Benjamin scale in terms of his improvisational speed.

    KP: Well, that certainly puts him up there.

    KATZ: Yeah

    KP: Listening to the audio pieces you did for the DVD, what struck me was that Dr. Katz could return at any point. There’s nothing about the comedy, the presentation, or the premise that’s aged in any way…

    KATZ: Right…

    KP: So it’s always surprised me that it hasn’t made a comeback yet.

    KATZ: Yeah, you and me both.

    KP: What was the genesis of doing the new audio pieces for the DVD?

    KATZ: People that put out the DVD at Paramount, they do it to generate revenue. And I guess bonus tracks make a DVD much more appealing to a consumer.

    KP: The concept does make some sense.

    KATZ: Do you own any Dr. Katz DVDs?

    KP: Both of them are sitting right here.

    KATZ: The bonus tracks I guess were… Tom Snyder and I, we work a lot together still since the cancellation of the show. When we talked about doing the bonus tracks, we needed some kind of angle to make them feel new. And we’re both new to the world of bonus tracks, so he came up with a conceit that was on the 2nd season set, with Emo and Steven Wright and Joy Behar. I think Dr. Katz has always been slightly needier than you want a therapist to be. So he’s calling them just to catch up. That’s thinly disguised on the DVD, but that’s really why he’s generating that call. He’s just lonely.

    KP: No no, you definitely get… particularly in the Behar call that he not so much wants to plug his book, as he wants to see that a patient will care about him plugging his book.

    KATZ: Yeah. The only patient who really raised the question directly was Dom Irrera; “Who’s your favorite patient?” But I think it cuts both ways. “Who’s your favorite therapist?” was always the question on Dr. Katz’s mind.

    KP: Well, it seems like he was just about to take them all out to dinner.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: There always seemed to be that undercurrent, that he would love to have hung with them socially – just to have someone to hang with socially besides Ben.

    KATZ: Well, he hung with Will Le Bow at the bar. But I think you’re right; I think he wants… it’s just like comedians – when you start doing standup, there’s a real desire for the camaraderie of it. Just as important as getting your first laugh on stage is getting your first laugh at the bar. And I think Dr. Katz wanted to be one of the guys.

    KP: Do you think, as a character, he was capable of that?

    KATZ: No. Totally not. Even with Laura, he wanted her acceptance. I think there’s an episode on this season where he’s trying to get her to hang around to celebrate Christmas with him?

    KP: Yes.

    KATZ: And it’s really kind of heartbreaking to see how desperate he was for companionship.

    KP: Just short of locking her in.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: In fact, that situation could have turned at any point.

    KATZ: She was so close to changing her mind.

    KP: Do you think it’s almost more a matter of Dr. Katz keeping Ben around than Ben himself keeping himself around? That the dependency leaned more to him being the motivating factor that kept Ben from ever moving out…

    KATZ: I always saw Ben – and Jon Benjamin, of course, may resist this notion – but I always saw Ben as me as a young man. Because I had this incredibly overindulgent father that cut off my allowance when I was 30.

    KP: That’s gotta hurt.

    KATZ: Yeah. And he just could not say no to me. My dad said to me at one point… he noticed that I was at an age where I should have an income of some sort. But he would never, ever not make his apartment, his food, and even his money available to me. Which is why I was this 35 year old man living in Manhattan who never owned a checkbook.

    KP: That’s gotta be quite the learning curve by that point.

    KATZ: Yeah. So as much as I loved my dad, he enabled me to stay a boy much too long.

    KP: So like Ben, you just really, as you describe him, had no momentum behind you.

    KATZ: Right. I was very much like that as a young man. I never met anybody like Jon Benjamin and I never met anybody who approached comedy the way he did. Because my background in comedy – and I think that’s one of the reasons the show survived, is it was totally different than his. He comes to comedy from a totally different angle than me. I try to construct jokes in my mind, and he tries to construct moments.

    KP: So you’re saying you have more of an architectural style of comedy?

    KATZ: Well, at least it’s the more familiar style. To me. And probably to people my age. Even people who were weaned on stand-up comedy. There’s kind of an elaborate setup. More elaborate than most, in my act. And then it’s sort of a sleight of hand and then I take something out of context, and that’s the joke. I’ll tell you my most elaborate setup, because people laugh not so much at the joke, but they laugh that I would take the trouble to write this joke, I think. It’s about a guy who was a farmer in upstate New York and had to go out of business because he couldn’t make a living, and he went into the phone sex business. And he did it – and this is going to sound cruel – by cutting off the lips of his sheep and the lips of his cows. And he puts them in the barn with a speakerphone. And people call up and they hear, “Ooo, ahh, ooo, ahh.” So all by itself that joke is not that funny. Do you get it?

    KP: Yes, I got it.

    KATZ: But when I tell it to a live audience, they are so amazed that I conceived of it that they laugh…

    KP: I always thought, when viewing your standup, that it was sort of a balancing act. The audience was sort of looking at you up on the trapeze…

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: Wondering when you would take the next step… Would you fall? Would you continue along the surreal lines of the set-up for the finish? It was like watching a dangerous spectacle, because you constructed this sort of bizarre, unique universe around yourself. If that makes any sense…

    KATZ: Yeah, I understand what you’re talking about.

    KP: I think there are comedians that create bubbles of reality around them.

    KATZ: Yeah. But I think I have… Like most comedians, I have trouble censoring myself. Unfortunately, it bleeds into my real life much too much. But I guess my audience is whoever happens to be in the elevator with me.

    KP: So you’re saying that essentially anyone can be your audience…

    KATZ: I’m always working the crowd. Doesn’t matter if it’s in a comedy club, in an elevator, at Staples, at a restaurant. The only place I try not to work the crowd is at the dinner table with my family, because they deserve better.

    KP: How often do you find that people try and work you?

    KATZ: Well, when someone finds out I’m a comedian they feel almost obligated to say something funny. Sometimes it’s excruciating how hard they try. Then when I hang out with comedians, which is rare… Dave Attell’s a guy who makes me laugh most. Just the idea of him is pretty funny. And Jon Benjamin, of course. But so much of what he does in life is funny, Jon Benjamin. When we did this live show, one of the conceits was that Ben thinks that my therapy business is in trouble. That I need to spice it up a little bit. So he proposes a million different ways to help generate business. He does it on stage in such a convincing way, and I think we’re pretty believable as a father on son on stage. It’s weird.

    KP: What was interesting about the audio commentaries from that first season Dr. Katz set was how quickly you two fell into patterns of playing off each other.

    KATZ: That’s true.

    KP: That goes back to what I mentioned earlier, that literally it feels like there’s no reason why there couldn’t be more Dr. Katz. Particularly since it’s an animated medium, and based on how the live show and the DVDs have been received, the audience is still very receptive to the characters and the premise.

    KATZ: Right. Well, it’s all about money.

    KP: Has anyone approached you about re-launching the show?

    KATZ: Occasionally. My manager would love to see that happen. That’s the great thing about having a manager when you’re a performer, is that you have somebody else who has a financial interest in your life. But I would love to make more episodes of Dr. Katz.

    KP: Loren had mentioned that he was under the impression that you may own Dr. Katz, and that there was some deal worked out years ago with Comedy Central as far as the ability to do more material…

    KATZ: It’s much more complicated than that, and something I don’t feel qualified to discuss. Oddly enough.

    KP: It isn’t a black & white situation, then…

    KATZ: Right.

    KP: Did it feel right and natural doing the live shows and bringing the characters back in person?

    KATZ: It did, because there’s such a loyal fan base. If nobody showed up it wouldn’t feel right. And also the live show itself is flawed in many ways, and I think we would need a bigger venue, a more theatrical venue. It shouldn’t really be staged in a comedy club, it should be done in a theater and it should be done with very good sound and good lighting and good sight lines. And if people are drinking, I guess that doesn’t bother me but I don’t think it’s necessary, necessarily. I’m not afraid to perform in front of the alert.

    KP: Do you think it’s less conducive to the comedy to have a level of inebriation in the room?

    KATZ: No, it’s not that. If I was going I’d want to drink.

    KP: That’s for different reasons.

    KATZ: Yeah. But I think it’s more the physical structure of a comedy club, and the expectation. If you’re a laugh-a-minute guy, you can’t make it in the comedy club. They need much more. You’ll be unemployed. But you can be a laugh-a-minute guy on public radio. You can be a laugh-a-minute on Dr. Katz.

    KP: Because of the energy or the level of attention?

    KATZ: Because of the audience’s expectations… Because of the attention span of the audience. And because some jokes take a little longer in the construction and don’t necessarily have this enormous payoff that comedy clubs require.

    KP: Some have called you a more cerebral comedian than some.

    KATZ: If you substitute the R in the word and put in a W, how would you say that?

    KP: Like Elmer Fudd?

    KATZ: Can you try it?

    KP: Cewebwal.

    KATZ: That sounds funny! I would pay to see a cewebwal comic.

    KP: I should conduct the entire interview like this.

    KATZ: Yeah. I was trying to get Sirius to call themselves Siwius. “Here on Siwius Radio.”

    KP: I might actually listen to it then.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: It seems there’s a particular kind of comedian that really depends upon pacing and delivery; Steven Wright being another one…

    KATZ: Right.

    KP: That it really is about hitting a rhythm within the performance. Was it something that took a long time for you to develop, that balance to where you can bring the audience with you but still not betray the type of comedian you were?

    KATZ: I think the thing with me and comedy is I like to give the audience as little information as is necessary for them to get the joke. And I guess if that’s cerebral, then that’s what I am. If it’s annoying, then that’s what I am. But there are other comics, and I guess the guy I admire the most – and I’ve never gone this long without talking about him – is this guy Ronnie Shakes, who is a comedian who died before he turned 40, I think of a heart attack. He was one of Johnny Carson’s favorites. I always tell the same joke, but I’ll tell a different one this time, which is… and he had kind of a 1940s throwback delivery. Had a very big handlebar mustache. And he would say, “I got busted last night on some trumped up charge. They threw me in the clinker, and they said you’re allowed one phone call. Nobody called.” But that was the kind of joke he did. His most famous joke is that “being in therapy for 12 years, yesterday my shrink said something to me that brought tears to my eyes; ‘No habla Ingles.’” He’s a very efficient comedian, and I guess…

    KP: Did he have a rapid fire delivery?

    KATZ: No, it wasn’t rapid fire at all. He was efficient in his use of words. Rita Rudner is a fan of his, and she’s somebody who I admire in terms of the jokes that she writes. She’s not my favorite performer, but she really is a brilliant joke writer. She helped me with a joke of mine years ago which is, “My wife insists on turning out the lights before we make love. Which does not bother me. It’s the hiding that seems so cruel.” Now I forget how I put it, but I had an extra sentence in there. And when she pointed that out, the joke started working.

    KP: It has a natural 3-beat rhythm to it.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: I mentioned that reality bubble that requires a certain level of attentiveness from the audience, and with this one, it’s not just a knock-knock joke or an observational joke, it’s a situational joke that requires the audience to actually listen to you.

    KATZ: Yeah. I told a joke a New York, but it had never worked before. And this is a joke that is interesting because I’m not sure when it’s over. Usually I can tell when a joke is over, but this joke, I honestly don’t know when it ends. It has to do with me coming home the other night and seeing this strange car parked in the driveway. “I got back a day earlier than I anticipated. There was this strange car parked in the driveway. I open the door, I see a cigar smoldering in the ashtray. I tiptoe to the bedroom and there’s my wife in bed with some strange guy, going at it. Now, I don’t smoke.” I didn’t set the joke up correctly. I said, “Maybe I read too many detective novels.” The end of the joke could be, “Now, I don’t smoke.” Or if that doesn’t work, I say, “and then I go back to the ashtray and there’s a naked man smoldering inside the ashtray.” I would keep doing different versions of a joke until I can figure it out, because I think there’s something innately funny about it. Or I could be wrong. That’s the thing about comedians; if a joke doesn’t work, they might say it louder. They might take it up an octave. But ultimately they have to admit it’s just not funny.

    katz-05.gifKP: How often in the past have you blamed an audience for a joke not working?

    KATZ: When I first started out, if a joke didn’t work I’d always blame the audience. But I would record everything I did, so at some point I had to relieve them of the responsibility and assume it.

    KP: What was the joke that you thought was funniest for the longest time, that you eventually came to the realization was simply not funny?

    KATZ: I guess it was… “You know the expression you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink? Now they can make him drink. Those Japanese.” And the joke never worked.

    KP: I can see what you were going for.

    KATZ: Yeah. But to hear 150 people say, “I see what you’re going for,” cannot replace a laugh.

    KP: No, I suppose it can’t. Although it would certainly be an interesting discussion for a night at the comedy club.

    KATZ: It would be great to try and get them to do that.

    KP: You should hand out pencils and a pad of paper when they come in and go, “You know, help me work this out.”

    KATZ: Right.

    KP: “We’re gonna workshop this.” First interactive standup act.

    KATZ: We were doing this thing at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts. Me and Tom Snyder and a guy named Bill Braudis. Wonderful comedian and also wrote on Dr. Katz. He was my first patient, and one of my oldest friends in the comedy business. We were doing something in Somerville, and I would get on stage holding a sign that said “Hysterically Funny” or “Doesn’t Work For Me.” And then we’d ask somebody to come up on stage and hold the sign. And I would tell them a joke. Those two phrases were written on different sides of the sign.

    KP: Right. So they’d just flip it back and forth.

    KATZ: Yeah. I would tell them a joke and then say, “Now show the audience how you feel about this joke.” And if it said doesn’t work for me, I would bring up somebody else. That kinda stuff works in front of a live audience pretty well. That’s what Tom and I referred to as a set piece. Because I also like to plunge into the audience, into the big unknown more and more these days. Because you really can’t lose if you have the mic and if you’re comfortable on stage. And that’s another thing you’ll hear on my CD, which is my comfort with the audience.

    KP: Do you think it’s a hard-won comfort? Is it something that took you a while to achieve?

    KATZ: Oh yeah. I used to be terrified of… I would never stray from my act. I was trapped in a one man show that was a hit, for 15 years, and then I met Jon Benjamin and developed confidence in my ability to improvise. It was like, anybody who had seen my act could do it. In fact, my wife did one night, she’d seen my act so many times. They didn’t even change the crowd, they just changed the menu. So when it was time for the third show and I started doing my act, they said, “We saw this before.” So my wife got on stage and finished for me. She has no memory of it, she was so scared.

    KP: I have clear memories of your HBO special from years ago. I enjoyed the special, but it almost seemed like you were using the guitar as sort of a protection device. Like, “I’ve got a guitar, back away. Don’t get too close.”

    KATZ: That was one of the big things in my career was the day I let go of my guitar. And I did it because some guy from the Letterman show approached me and wanted me to do the show but he said, “You can’t bring the guitar with you.” So I had a great reason to learn how to do five minutes of comedy.

    KP: Was that like asking you to perform naked?

    KATZ: In a certain way, yeah.

    KP: Did you use that as a way of distancing yourself from the audience and the situation?

    KATZ: No, it was just… the guitar was not really a guitar. I mean, it was a guitar, but it had a tape deck built into the guitar. So I wasn’t really playing, I was pretending to be playing. And I know there are little certain things on that tape that would work, and also it’s a way of sort of injecting some new energy into a show.

    KP: At what point did you realize that the guitar was not necessary?

    KATZ: Well, I probably would have still been doing it if it wasn’t for the fact that this guy suggested I could be on the Letterman show. And that was in 1983 or ’84. In ’85 I made my debut on Letterman.

    KP: Does it surprise you to think that it’s 22 years ago?

    KATZ: Who’s doing your math? Yeah, you’re right. It is kind of surprising.

    KP: So, knowing how successful Dr. Katz live was, how well the DVDs have been selling, you have the CD coming out, you’re obviously doing the radio projects, you’ve got documentary projects you’ve been working on – what is the one thing that you really want to see happen in the next year?

    KATZ: I guess the space ship. The trip into space. No, I have a role in a movie that’s coming out this year called Are We Done Yet, starring Ice Cube. And I have an occasional role on an ABC show called Help Me Help You. I guess the thing I would like the most is to have my own radio show.

    KP: On standard terrestrial radio, or does internet radio appeal to you? Like podcasting?

    KATZ: I think what appeals to me is both a combination of work and income. So I guess I’m talking about satellite radio, or commercial radio. But I don’t know if there’s an appetite for what I do on any kind of radio where they would have a budget for a weekly show.

    KP: Considering that you could still fill an audience with Dr. Katz and people are still seeking you out, I don’t see how you can think there’s not an audience.

    KATZ: Okay, I’ll do it.

    KP: Wow. See how easy that was?

    KATZ: Okay. You know, I produce a radio show everyday called Hey, We’re Back. And last week I did an interview with Bob Dylan, and at the end of it when I told my wife and daughter about it they reminded me that I don’t really have a radio show. The fact that no one is paying me doesn’t prevent me from producing one. I’m sort of compelled to do it.

    KP: But that’s the whole ethos behind the internet.

    KATZ: Yeah.

    KP: I think you’d make money on the internet if you went the podcasting route. But that’s just me saying it.

    KATZ: Do you?

    KP: Considering my job is working on the internet doing these kind of things, I guess I’m one of the success stories.

    KATZ: Well, maybe you and I should talk to my manager. My web designer is a believer in podcasting. She often talks about some enormously successful song that was just put up there. Or YouTube. Let me talk to my manager about this conversation. I think you make an interesting point.

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  • QSE News: 1/3/2007

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    Here are today’s top entertainment headlines:

    • qsnews.jpgABC Television has announced that they have greenlit a TV series based on the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith.  The new series will pick up six months after the events of the movie and will reportedly be darker and funnier than it’s movie predecessor.  With the series, ABC hopes to capture the same magic the movie had by putting an end to Jennifer Aniston’s current romance.
    • Mike Tyson has joined the ever-growing list of celebrities who like to take a little drive after polishing off a fifth of Jack.  Tyson was nabbed outside of a Scottsdale, AZ nightclub after nearly hitting a sheriff’s cruiser.  When asked for comment on the arrest, ex-Tyson opponent Evander Hollyfield shouted “HUH?  WHAT??  YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO SPEAK UP!!  I CAN’T HEAR A SINGLE WORD YOU JUST SAID!”
    • According to reports coming out of England, ex-Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty and paper-thin model Kate Moss may have tied the knot. While representatives of the couple have denied that the pair married, Quick Stop News has learned that an enormous, five-tiered wedding cake made out of cocaine and heroin was ordered by Doherty.
    • California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his leg over the weekend. Although the exact details are not known, early reports indicate that Schwarzenegger got his leg caught in a metal press while chasing Sarah and John Connor through an abandoned steel mill.
    • And finally, in her continuing effort to ensure that her children later refer to her as “the reason we need therapy,” Britney Spears reportedly passed out at a New Year’s Eve party in Las Vegas. Punting rumors that she was drunk off her cootchie, her publicist says Britney was just tired and simply fell asleep. We here at QSE News stand by Britney as lord knows 12 shots of Jagermeister and two kamikazes always makes us sleepy too.
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    That’s all for today’s news, stay tuned to this channel for all the news that matters least but you still care about.

    (Compiled by J. Allen)

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  • Quick Stop Thingamabobs: 1/3/2006

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    The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦

    ————————————————

    • Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer commentate on the first two seasons of The Venture Bros. … (Thingamabob)
    • Ever wondered what the effects of drugs and alcohol would be on a spider’s webspinning capability? Look no further… (Thingamabob)
    • Explore the cyber-lair of the ultimate Iron Giant fan… (Thingamabob)
    • Seasick Steve’s amazing 3-string guitar performance at Jools Holland’s Hootenanny… (Thingamabob)
    • I’m in a George Harrison mood today, so here’s Harrison’s video for “Crackerbox Palace,” directed by Eric Idle and guest-starring Neil Innes… (Thingamabob)

    Have a THINGAMABOB? Send it in!

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  • Quick Stop Thingamabobs: 1/2/2006

    thingamabobs.jpg

    The web. It’s a big place, full of plenty of distractions ““ some funny, some informative, some ludicrous, some disturbing, some inane, some profound. Each and every weekday, we present links to a few of our favorite finds”¦

    ————————————————

    • Sneak Previews on Sesame Street, with Siskel & Ebert… (Thingamabob)
    • Find out about all kinds of crap you can waste money on (with the help of SNL and Napoleon Dynamite alums) at the Home Purchasing Club… (Thingamabob)
    • Why haven’t you checked out the wonderful Wings For Wheels podcast series? Go on! (Thingamabob)
    • Direct from the 1950’s, it’s an episode of the Paul Winchell – Jerry Mahoney Variety Show… (Thingamabob)
    • Here’s what to do with all those Christmas “Tickle Me Elmo” dolls… (Thingamabob)

    Have a THINGAMABOB? Send it in!

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  • Nocturnal Admissions: DVD Review Jet Li’s Fearless

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    Taking a page out of contemporary European radical thinking, Godard used to complain in his films about the “CocaColonization” of France. He was a profound American movie lover, but abhorred the deterioration of European culture at the hands of uniformity-demanding corporate culture, the rise of McWorld.

    A similar “CocaColonization” has taken place in the world of Asia action cinema. This has had a perhaps almost beneficial effect on world audiences, or at least American viewers because they are now easier to follow, having been denuded of their “odd” local cultural eccentricities. In addition they often have specific political messages embedded in their narratives, but not at all explicitly, as Godard’s later films did. For example, Yimou Zhang’s Hero had a specific and pro-Chinese message about unification and strong leadership to impart. Yimou may or may not have believed in the message himself, but it was obviously the price he had to pay to get the film made, a crazy mirror image of the patriotism test Howard Hughes made of the RKO film The Woman on Pier 13.

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    Which brings us to the latest example of Asian action, Fearless, also known as Jet Li’s Fearless. The titular possessiveness makes sense. It is clear from the making of on the disc that this is a highly personal film for Li, a practicing Tibetan Buddhist, whose film is the result of his grappling with the conflict between the subject matter of his movies and the nature of his beliefs.

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    Directed by Ronny Yu, who has made something of a name for himself in American films via Freddy vs. Jason, Formula 51, and Bride of Chucky, and credited to writers Chris Chow and Christine To, Fearless tells the oft-recounted tale of Huo Yuanjia, the martial artist who, according to the film, unified the disparate Chinese combat techniques back in the early 1900s. As the film tells it, Huo always admired the martial spirit of his father, who refused to let his son train. Huo does it anyway, secretly, and grows up to lead a popular school.One day he goes into combat to defend the honor of a student beaten up by a rival school master. Huo takes so much out on him that the rival dies. Then Huo learns that the beating the student suffered was more or less deserved, but that doesn’t stop one of the dead master’s students from killing Huo’s wife and kid before slitting his own throat.

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    Fearless is divided into four parts. The massacre ends part two. Part three follows Huo as he becomes a drifter, his hair growing wild and his mind apparently broken. One day he is pulled out of a stream and brought back to health by a village of rice farmers. Working with the villagers focuses and steadies him as his strength comes back, and Huo finds himself drawn closer to a blind girl (Li Sun) who “sees” better than him.

    The third and final part commences when Huo leaves the village (it’s probably obvious but I didn’t quite catch why), and sets about to help China regain its pride among other nations, whose leaders have nicknamed China the sick man of Asia. This is done, of course, via a succession of combats, the last one staged between Huo and a Japanese martial artist. The film ends on a rather solemn if elegiac note.

    Though the tale is perfectly clear, unlike many of the older action films beloved of buffs who first saw them back in the 1970s, the film still subscribes to some of the crazier aspects of the genre. For example, Huo has a preternatural ability to fly. He uses this ability to dance around his opponent, like a Muhammad Ali. But if you can fly, why bother to continue fighting so conventionally in the first place? If the movie were wholly funny and action oriented rather than having a political message in a mostly serious and realistic context, then the flying wouldn’t stick out, but it does. Being a “cleaned up” version of an action film, it is also bereft of humor, Jet Li taking his role and the message of the film very seriously.

    Asian viewers probably found its message of unification and working together as one rather unsubtle as propaganda, and in the finished film it comprises only a few minutes in part three as Huo rallies the masses. It’s subtle as messages go, but still there. It’s not clear to me, though, who its intended recipients happen to be, because the message seems at variance with Li’s stated beliefs in the making of doc. There, Li indicates that as a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, he must work on himself, on his own never-ending training and development. Maybe this isn’t really at variance with Huo’s call for national and martial unity, but it seems to be. What Huo seems to want is for the faceless masses of China to become strong though collectivism. What Li practices in private sounds self-absorbed and isolating.

    Jet Li’s Fearless comes in a smashing wide screen transfer (2.40:1 enhanced). It features both Chinese and English dialogue tracks in Dolby Digital 5.1, and has English, Spanish, French subtitles. The Unrated Edition also includes the original, slightly shorter theatrical version.

    Fearless Yu

    Supplements consist of one a 20-minute making of, and a deleted scene. “A Fearless Journey” recounts how and why this is Li’s final action film, and displays him wrestling with issues of screen violence and moral messages. It exists almost solely to prompt respect in the viewer for Li’s decision, but does have sound bites from Yu, and from some of the martial artists who play Li’s opponents in the ring. The deleted scene is a six minute sequence that takes place in the rice farmer village and shows a major stage in Huo’s development as a “peaceful warrior.” Jet Li’s Fearless hit the street December 19, 2006, and retails for $29.95.

  • Nocturnal Admissions: DVD Review, MI3: 2-Disc Collector’s Edition, Mission Impossible 1: The Complete First TV Season

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    How would you put together a movie version of a popular TV show? Would you modernize it? Or would you somehow tap into nostalgia memories of a program that viewers may not have even seen in some time?

    There is a third option, though, which is simply to ignore the show and create a new, different entity. That seems to be the choice of the makers of Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible series. The first one, directed by Brian De Palma, and therefore twisted and dark and obsessed with betrayal between friends, spent a few minutes repudiating the show by turning Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves from the show’s second season on, into a traitor and killer. No. 2 was a John Woo exercise. Now No. 3, just out on DVD after a recent release to the screens where it “underperformed” by the studio’s standards, serves as an entree for J. J. Abrams into the big screen.

    He was probably a good choice. If you aren’t going to truly adapt the source show you can at least adapt a modern equivalent that does its stuff better, i.e., Alias, Abrams chick spy program. It was an excellent show, at least in its first two seasons, and was innovative in its complexity. Plus, it didn’t look or sound like a TV show. In its camerawork, editing, and music, it was more like a movie. So the transition from small to big screen was probably logical for Abrams, who was otherwise distracted by his other hit TV show, Lost. And in any case, Cruise has an eye for, and the clout to work with, the best directors, so his imprimatur is really important to those who have the brains to pay attention to such things.

    As many have noted before me, reviving TV shows is a fad in Hollywood, born of the movie industry’s need to offer up material that is somehow familiar to the public. Yet then they go and change the thing. It’s such a confusing hash of influences. One of the most faithful TV show adaptations was The Flintstones, with good physical analogs for the original cartoon characters, is probably the closest adaptation, and that was a yabba dabba dud, a movie that everyone saw and no one liked (which makes it the perfect embodiment of the Houxian Principle, which states that, “Just because a movie made $100 million dollars doesn’t mean that anyone liked it”).

    In any case, Cruise’s adaptations have shown a savvy sense of the public’s tastes, which is a hunger for off season Bond films, mainly because the real Bond films are usually bad (until 2006, anyway). Cruise, as I never tire of repeating, is probably one of the great screen stars, and it isn’t an accident. He makes an interesting contrast with Johnny Depp, another great actor, whose choice of directors and projects is quirkier and more personal, and Sean Penn, probably the most overrated actor working, whose taste in projects and directors is appallingly bad. The person who should be in this top three is Robert Downey, Jr., who derailed his own career.

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    In any case, Abrams turned MI3 into a episode of Alias, with an emphasis on family, on loyalty, and on the conflict between the secret and the public life. Abrams is a master of the highly emotional boy – girl scene (as well as the father-daughter scene, and so on), and with certain very key scenes between Cruise and Michelle Monaghan develop a rapport that remains crucial later when Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is in extreme jeopardy. I thought that MI3 was a terrific film, very well cast and with non-stop well choreographed action.

    It’s unfortunate, then, that the special two disc MI3 is rife with terrible supplements that fail to do justice to it as a film. I could fill probably three or more columns with bile born of my mounting rage at the lost opportunities found on contemporary DVDs, of the contempt for the audience represented by most supplements, on the continuing disdain of filmmakers such as De Palma and Spielberg toward commentary tracks, of EPKs tossed in as if they had value as explications du textes. MI3 is a two disc special edition set, but frankly the regular old widescreen edition without the supplemental supplements should be fine for most consumers, as they won’t have their intelligence insulted by the faux extra extras (there is also a full frame edition; does anyone buy these?). DVDs are on the brink of being in trouble. Downloads are easier; there is a lot of bootlegging; the introduction of two new competing high standard formats is confusing and alienating. DVDs are slipping as a buffer zone for studios whose movies are weak at the theaters.

    Deleted

    Shared among the three versions of the DVDs are an audio commentary by Cruise and Abrams, deleted scenes, The Making of the Mission, and something called Tribute Montage: Excellence in Film.” Will you life be deprived of unexpected sunshine if you never see or hear these supplements? No. It’s not like missing out on the Peter Ustinov interview on the Criterion Spartacus, which I’ve shown to myself and others over 10 times. Supplements, basically, need to be valuable and entertaining in and of themselves. The five deleted scenes add some nuances, especially about the character Lindsay. The yak track is an excited account of how much fun it was for the duo to work with each other, how much Cruise got hurt making the film (Clooney raised the stakes on that aspect of filmmaking), and some scenes were rejiggered.

    Making of

    Abrams is a master of LA speak. I still recall something he said on the Lost first season making of, in which he said that when he met his collaborator on the show, they were so compatible that he was “mad that I hadn’t met him before this.” In the MI “making of” he is adept at praising everyone else in very specific ways that sound both true and false at the same time. The final supplement on the first disc is a nine minute anthology of Cruise movie clips (unsurprisingly Kidman free) originally screened when Cruise won a British film award. I liked it because it affirmed Cruise’s range and film wit.

    Cruise Abrams

    Except for one or two brief elements, the supplements on disc two are totally useless. “Mission Action: Inside the Action Unit,” “Visualizing the Mission,”
    “Inside the IMF,” and “Launching the Mission” are either for kids or morons, if not to fulfill some contractual agreement that stipulates that everyone associated with the movie gets 15 seconds of “making of” fame. “Mission: Metamorphosis” is about the making of the film’s mask sequence and is slightly interesting, and “Scoring the Mission” is about the film’s music, and that’s almost always of some value, but “Moviefone Unscripted” is an embarrassing throwaway, and “Tribute Montage: Generation: Cruise” essentially repeats the same thing from the first disc. Finally there is a photo gallery and trailers. None of the things that used to be on DVDs in abundance, such as isolated music tracks and complete screenplays, are bothered with anymore. It’s too “technical,” I guess, too “geeky” or “fannish,” and alienates the ordinary fucking people presumed to be the main consumers of DVDs now. The format is too popular for it to escape descending into condescending mediocrity.

    MI3 comes in a terrific widescreen transfer (2.35:1 enhanced), with a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track. The special edition retails for $34.95 and hit the street October 30th, 2006.

    MI title

    Since Paramount owns the Mission Impossible franchise, the studio is also able to release the first season of the TV show. In total it consisted of seven seasons and a two season revival series, but with Cruise divorced from Paramount it is unclear if there will be a fourth movie from him for the studio, so for further MI joneses, Paramount may have to relay on the six or eight remaining TV seasons.

    Landau

    Seeing the show again after all these years offers some evidence as to why the filmmakers changed so much. It’s fairly tedious. In fact, it’s a show that was more or less made by its theme song, which promised more tension and excitement than the show itself, constrained by conventions of the time, could offer. The individual plots don’t exploit the Topkapi-style engineer scam as much as you think, the politics of the show is retrograde, even for its time, and one of the episodes even posits the existence of ghosts, which come to the IMF teams aid.

    Picking

    This is a show with an international canvas that looks like it never got out of the Paramount back lot. It’s interior scenes are either badly lit or over lit. Like most shows of the time, the set decoration is atrocious. Orange couches on green rugs with red walls. While throwing up slightly into my mouth, I wondered why the sets were so garish, and then remembered that color TVs at the time weren’t particularly sophisticated (a fact parodied in the otherwise predictable Invincible), and the louder it was the easier it was to “see.”Seasons were longer then, and MI season one has 28 episodes spread across seven discs with no extras, though the episodes are announced as digitally remastered in both sound and picture. To harp on the subject of extras again, there are lots of fans of the show out there who have written books or kept blogs or fan sites in its honor. Presumably they are intelligent enough to add their voices to either commentary tracks or to write text for screen or booklet. Excluding the fans on the discs is to eventually exclude them from buying future sets because their viewing experience won’t be enhanced and there is no compensation for badly shot, acted, and written episodes.

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    Mission Impossible season one hit the street on December 5th, 2006, retailing for $59.95.

  • Ken P. D. Snyde-Cast #22: Part 2 – Holiday-a-Gone-Gone

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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 #22: Part 2 – Holiday-a-Gone-Gone – [adult swim]’s Dana Snyder and Ken Plume’s weekly chat podcast returns with a New Year’s Eve holiday special hot on the heels of their Christmas Eve spectacular, wherein they wrap up their holiday mix tape exploration and greet the coming of 2007. If you haven’t already, make sure you listen to Part 1 – you know, just because…

    [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 #22 Part 2 (MP3 format)

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/snydecast/ken_p_d_snyde_cast-22_pt_2.mp3]

    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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  • Lost Tales of the View Askewniverse #2 – “Kev & Mosier Are Gay”

    Even when you think you’ve seen it all, there are plenty of stories that fall through the cracks.

    Well, consider this a means of plucking those anecdotes from out of the void and presenting them to you, our loyal audience of Kevin Smith aficionados, via a little feature we like to call “Lost Tales of the View Askewniverse.”

    You’ll find Chop Shop Entertainment‘s feature length, in-depth documentary on the development and making of Clerks 2, Back to the Well, on the second disc of your 2-disc Clerks 2 DVD set, but Zak & Joey shot hours more footage than could ever fit in the doc… And believe you me, there’s plenty of cool shit that they were forced to excise due to constraints of time and narrative flow.

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    LOST TALES #2: “Kev & Mosier Are Gay” ““
    Here’s our next formerly lost tale, which goes into greater depth regarding the special bond that has held together the creative partnership of Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier for over a decade”¦

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    Download Lost Tales #2 – “Kev & Mosier Are Gay”:

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  • Holiday Havoc Day 17: The Venture Bros.

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    Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.

    Not us.

    Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).

    Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you.

    Ain’t that cool?

    It’s Christmas, and that means the fine folks over at AstroBase Go – Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer – have put together a very special Venture Bros. Christmas song…

    In 2004, The Monarch & Dr. Girlfriend gave us their take on the Bowie/Crosby “Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy“, while 2005 brought the tender trio of The Monarch and Henchmen Nos. 21 & 24 belting out Dolly Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas” while The Monarch was still incarcerated.

    This year, Dr. Venture has pulled together family, friends, and enemies alike for a very special holiday single, sure to solve all the world’s problems – or at least that’s the idea.

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    Download “Venture Aid 2006“:

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    Check out the rest of this year’s Holiday Havoc – and past Havoc – HERE

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  • Ken P. D. Snyde-Cast #22: Part 1 – Holiday-a-Go-Go

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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 #22: Part 1 – Holiday-a-Go-Go – [adult swim]’s Dana Snyder and Ken Plume’s weekly chat podcast returns with a Christmas Eve holiday special, wherein they explore their holiday mix tapes and reflect on the spirit of the season. Be sure to check back on New Year’s Eve for Part 2 of this very special Snydecast…

    [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 #22 Part 1 (MP3 format)

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/snydecast/ken_p_d_snyde_cast-22_pt_1.mp3]

    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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  • Holiday Havoc Day 16: Dana Snyder & Ken Plume

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    Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.

    Not us.

    Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).

    Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you.

    Ain’t that cool?

    Today, we’ve got a special treat from [adult swim]’s Dana Snyder and FRED poobah Ken Plume, co-hosts of our own Ken P.D. Snydecast – an exclusive holiday single.

    Not only does non-singer Ken get put on the spot, but Dana uses Ken’s lack of musical talent to his full advantage with this catastrophic masterpiece of musical comedy. Also, be sure to check out the extra-special Christmas Eve edition of the Snydecast (which you’ll find HERE), but also remember to check back on New Year’s Eve for the second part.

    Until then, here’s Dana making a fool out of Ken, yet again…

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    Download Dana Snyder & Ken Plume’s “Let It Snow Spectacular“:

    [audio:http://asitecalledfred.com/holidayhavoc/ken_p_d_snydecast_let_it_snow.mp3]

    Check out the rest of this year’s “Holiday Havoc” HERE

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  • Holiday Havoc Day 15: Monkey Talk with Paul Dini & Rashy

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    Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.

    Not us.

    Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).

    Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you.

    Ain’t that cool?

    Today, we’ve got a special holiday edition of Paul Dini’s “Monkey Talk” (co-hosted with his irrepressible sock monkey son, Rashy), which finds Paul taking Rashy and his little brother, SuperRica, on a pleasant drive to see some Christmas lights in the neighborhood… But Rashy has other plans…

    Be sure to check out Rashy’s official site at LittleRashy.com“¦ And while you’re at it, be sure to check out Rashy’s “mom”, Misty Lee, at MistyLee.com

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    Download the Monkey Talk 2006 Holiday Special, “Christmas Lights”:

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    Check out the rest of this year’s “Holiday Havoc” HERE

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  • “Oooooh”¦ Shiny.” #2: T’was a Very Pop Culture Christmas

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    The story you are about to read is true. I didn’t even change the names.

    It happened a few nights ago when my wife and I were decorating the tree. We try to celebrate both holidays equally, but the little menorah just can’t hold a candle (sorry) to the big artificial Christmas tree in the corner of our apartment. But, our tree is less of a religious icon and more of a paean to American popular culture.

    My wife, let’s call her “Stephanie,” (on account of that’s her name), was hanging an ornament. Homer Simpson slipped and bumped into Wimpy. While trying to save Wimpy from falling, Stephanie accidentally knocked another ornament to the floor, breaking it into several pieces. It took a short time for usshiny2006-12-22 01.jpg to realize the comedic irony of the shattered ornament that lay there on our hardwood floor. It was a five-inch replica of a famous “major award” ““ a “A Christmas Story” leg lamp ornament.

    We looked at each other.

    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I broke the leg lamp.”

    I smiled, but all I could say was “Not a finger!!!”

    “We can fix it.”

    I dashed to the kitchen junk drawer.

    “WE’RE”¦ OUT”¦ OF”¦ GLUE!”

    This little incident, to us, was our little Christmas miracle. I mean, we have dozens, perhaps hundreds of pop culture Christmas ornaments. We’ve got Spongebob, Snoopy, The 3 Stooges, Howdy Doody, Superman, Batman, Captains Kirk and Picard, The Enterprise, The Millennium Falcon ““ you name it. What are the odds, that of all of our ornaments, the one that would break was our frag-i-lay major award?

    As a famous narrator once intoned, “all was right with the world.”

    But, was it? While inside our home, everything was right with the world, there were a lot of wrong things happening in other places. Here’s a short list of SOME of the things that are just plain wrong about the current pop culture landscape of Christmas:

    • shiny2006-12-22 07.jpgNBC produced a nice, star-packed, family movie, The Year Without a Santa Claus (reminiscent of those NBC contractual obligation TV movies of the 1980’s starring Michael J. Fox and Nancy McKeon). Now, a big holiday event movie like this should be seen by the whole family, right? So, of course NBC broadcasts it from 9 to 11 pm. What happened to the nice Sunday night at 7pm time slot? That’s when you air family movies!
    • shiny2006-12-22 02.jpgI refuse to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on ABC. To me, this will always be a CBS special from the rotating “BUM-BUM-BUBADABUBADA-BUM-BA-DUM-BA-DUM-BUMP!!!” of the CBS Special Presentation logo, through all of the commercials for York Peppermint Patties right to the end credits. You can take the special off CBS, but you can’t take the CBS from the special. And please, don’t even get me started on I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown. I will only say one word on that matter. “Why?”
    • shiny2006-12-22 03.jpgWhile we’re talking about ABC, did anyone notice that their broadcast of the classic Grinch cartoon included the behind-the-scenes featurette created back in 1994, but they painstakingly removed Phil Hartman as host and replaced him with Tom Bergeron? They used the same exact script!!! They didn’t even revise the verb tenses to reflect the passing of interviewees Chuck Jones, Thurl Ravenscroft and Albert Hague!
    • shiny2006-12-22 04.jpgWhere’s Mr. Magoo? Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol should be broadcast on a major network alongside of Rudolph and Charlie Brown. And for that matter, so should Emmet Otter, but only if the Kermit the Frog sequences (deleted for legal reasons) can be restored. (You can’t see Kermit on the currently available DVD of the program, but you can see a one-hour documentary on the making of the program — a documentary produced by yours truly).
    • shiny2006-12-22 08.jpgThe remake of Miracle on 34th Street is still being shown ““ what’s with that? Every 35mm print, 16mm print, VHS cassette, DVD and negative of this film should be rounded up by 20th Century Fox and buried on their studio lot next to the M*A*S*H time capsule. And while we’re on the subject of Kris Kringle, anyone who watches the colorized version of the original classic should be boiled in their own pudding (whatever that means).
    • shiny2006-12-22 09.jpgThe holiday season has traditionally started with Thanksgiving. Santa riding through Herald Square on Thanksgiving morning ““ that’s the official start of the Christmas season. This year, I began seeing Christmas decorations as soon as Halloween was over (and Halloween seemed to start filling the stores as soon as the Labor Day Back to School shopping season was over). I guess the retailers of America find it easier and more lucrative to go from one holiday shopping season to the next with as little down time as possible. Have these people not seen Miracle on 34th Street? (Any version ““ including the 1970’s David Hartman debacle!!)
    • shiny2006-12-22 06.jpgThe holiday should be about joy and brotherhood ““ not about shopping and money. (And this is true no matter what holiday one celebrates). Almost 50 years ago, a man named Theodor Geisel wrote a book espousing that sentiment. When the Whos’ Christmas is stolen by a nasty old Grinch, the Whos still celebrate the holiday. Christmas still comes. So, the all time irony of irony is that the Estate of Dr. Seuss has turned this tale of the true meaning of Christmas into one of the most commercial ventures in the history of family entertainment. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Craig, you were a writer on The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss ““ You even wrote the Wubbulous holiday episode!!” I did indeed. I was part of the posthumous exploitation of Seuss. But we did new stories based on the original characters, not overblown adaptations of the books. I’m proud of that work ““ I received a WGA Award nomination for my work on the show. Now, I knew that Dr. Seuss was very protective of his work while he was alive and probably would not have allowed the Henson company to license his work to produce our show. But I felt that we were doing our best ““ and if I wasn’t a part of it, someone else would be ““ and perhaps someone who didn’t care as much.

    It may be a fine line, but I find a lot of difference between doing what we did with Wubbulous World and taking The Grinch book and well, getting greedy.

    I find it ridiculously ironic that Seuss’ anti-commercial Christmas manifesto has turned into a seasonal money-printing machine for the Seuss Estate. This year, after cranking out every dollar possible from the feature film version and subsequent DVD release of Grinch, the venue is the Hilton Theater on Broadway ““ the Grinch’s face is on the marquee beside a Target Stores logo. I guess the Grinch buys Max’s dog food there.

    One thing I’ve learned over the years: what you’re saying is important, but how you convey your message says just as much. And I think it takes real nerve to put on a show about the true meaning of Christmas while grossing millions (they do 12 performances a week ““ most shows do 8 ).

    I’m not saying the show is bad ““ I haven’t seen it. I hear it’s good. But, it’s expensive to attend and there’s a ton of merchandise being hawked in the lobby. The 80-minute show may be about the true meaning of Christmas, but everything around the show just plain reeks of profit, greed, money and all of those other things that I really like in most other situations. Some people say that “content is king.” That may be true, but in a situation like this, it’s all about context, folks.

    I could go on and on with this sort of thing, but I don’t want you all to think I’m some kind of old curmudgeon who only complains about how great things used to be. I don’t want to be like that at all, so if the powers that be are reading this, here is some advice: Don’t let things suck. That’s the deal. Don’t let things suck and I won’t rant. Seems easy enough, doesn’t it.

    Somehow, I think I’ll still have a lot of ranting to do.

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  • Scrubs Blog: My 6×03 Table Read

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    VIDEO BLOG #71: “My 6×03 Table Read” ““
    It’s holiday break time, so how about if we head into it with a full-length cast table read of the script for episode 6×03, “My Coffee.” Happy holidays, everyone!

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    Download Scrubs Video Blog #71:

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  • Noctural Admissions: Holiday Movie Roundup

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    When the holiday season comes around, new movies end up divided into two general categories. There are the explicitly Christmas films, such as Deck the Halls and the whatever latest Santa Clause there is, and there are the Oscar whoring films, crammed into the last few days of December to qualify for Academy consideration.

    I’ve had a chance to see most of the Oscar whoring films, and the challenge is to determine which if any of these movies will be of lasting importance. Some of them have already even come and gone, if by “gone” we mean failed to make enough money to qualify for continued residence in the main auditoria of first run theaters. And while the financial hell of the sub run and second run theaters is filling up, the new movies crowd the starting gate like Boston Marathon aspirants.

    Turistas

    Take Turistas and Deja Vu. It’s always struck me as odd that slasher films are frequently released at Xmas, and several good ones have been, such as Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (which I saw on Xmas Day way back when it first came out), so they must appeal to some particularly suicidal mood in loner Americans. Turistas was a short-lived new release, a general addition to the genre about Ugly Americans and other tourists in Latin America cunningly routed to a house of horror in which their internal organs are slated for distribution among the poor. Summer fun specialist John Stockwell’s film is beautifully photographed and has a strong cast, including Las Vegas‘s Josh Duhamel and the wonderful Melissa George, but it appears to have struck reviewers and subsequently the audience wrong, and quickly faded. I liked it, though, but in the way you like a TV show that isn’t top flight, or the way you like minor poetry, which is often better than high art.

    Deja Vu

    Deja Vu also carried with it some baggage, being another Tony Scott – Jerry Bruckheimer collaboration, with all which that entails in our minds from their past associations, and in addition sparking the revilement of Manohla Dargis in the New York Times for the casualness with which it played with terrorist themes. It’s the most “normal” of Scott’s recent films (no ad-agency style subtitles, and a less frazzled editing style), and concludes two different ongoing trilogies, one on American policy and paranoia and the other being films extolling the virtues of Denzel Washington. Again, I enjoyed watching it, but it did feel light, and turned out to be much more romantic than the usual Tony Scott film, while also inspiring the usual mind wrinkles time travel films generally do.

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    Those two films are unlikely to garner any Academy consideration, as are the two big romantic comedies of the season, The Holiday and Stranger Than Fiction. Director Marc Forster and writer Zach Helm’s comedy, about an IRS tax investigator (Will Ferrell) whose life is inexplicably controlled by a reclusive novelist (Emma Thompson) has a very interesting thought at its center, i.e., that characters in books are more than “galley slaves” and that authors have a certain responsibility toward them, but this being a Hollywood movie and not completely a Charlie Kaufman enterprise, the thought gets lost. Still, it worked as a movie, and its second half is very touching.

    Holiday

    Nancy Meyer’s The Holiday is her attempt to replicate the tone and spirit of recent British romances such as Love, Actually and Notting Hill, and though I am far from a fan of Meyers’s previous films, including the Father of the Bride remakes and the Oscar voguing Something’s Gotta Give, this one won me over. I was teary eyed all through it. This is partially because The Holiday is as movie mad as I am, with one of the film’s temporary house-trading characters (Cameron Diaz) being a movie trailer editor, and the other (Kate Winslet) befriends a ancient Hollywood screenwriter (Eli Wallach). In fact, Wallach may end up nominated for best supporting actor, if the Academy’s tendency to acknowledge very small almost non-roles remains consistent, and Meyers’s Oscar cred remains high.

    For Your Consideration

    For Your Consideration, which mocks Oscar buzz, has generated Oscar buzz, and that’s a pity because it is a very unfunny comedy about movies made by people who don’t seem to understand movies. It is ludicrous to suggest that someone would make an indie film called Home for Purim set in the post-war South, even in the cockeyed world they are imagining. In fact, the film’s TV satire is more spot on than its movie satires. Where’s Billy Wilder when you need him? His movie quips would have been achingly accurate. And I’m getting rather fed up with Christopher Guest and Company’s absolute and unremitting cruelty towards their characters. They could take a lesson from Thompson’s Kay Eiffel.

    Volver

    I was under-whelmed by Almodovar’s Volver. This entirely female-centric tale of a mother comes back as a “ghost” (there is a surprise twist) to help her two daughters and granddaughter is being praised by critics and award dispensers far and wide as the director’s crowning achievement, but to me it was Almodovar Lite, a conventional movie that shows how far he has strayed from his surrealistic roots.

    Babel

    Another title that can’t be mentioned without the breath of Oscar on the lips is Babel, Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s latest foray into that genre that the Oregonian‘s Shawn Levy calls the “web of life” film. Since Amores Perros, his films have grown colder and more oblique and despite the sunny climbs of this film’s three main locations where distant, loosely connected cross-cultural family dramas are enacted, it is actually quite soft at its center.

    History Boys

    Babel‘s Cate Blanchett is clearly the star of the season, appearing in no less than three of its films. She is excellent in all of them but outstanding in Notes on a Scandal. In a time period that insists on sharing with us unintentionally paired films, this one goes with The History Boys, a cinematic adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play about the conflict between an old style view of learning as a civilizing end in itself, and a cynical view of education as a tool for advancement in a money mad society. Richard Griffiths is excellent as the old codger whose values and sexuality conflict with the new world order. There is an exquisite scene, in which Griffiths’s character, just forced into early retirement, attends a conference with the student most like him and discusses the Hardy poem “Drummer Hodge,” which becomes a vehicle through which he discusses his most sacred feelings. It’s one of the best moments in recent cinema.

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    Call Judy Dench in Notes on a Scandal the “History Girl.” She is a severe dinosaur in a modern school whose new headmaster wants modern teaching techniques. She is also prone to rather obsessive fixations on younger female colleagues. Told from her viewpoint, via voiceover readings from her acerbic, hilarious diary, Notes on a Scandal recounts how various passions in her circle of friends and colleagues flail out of control. Dench, Blanchett, and Bill Nighy (as Blanchett’s husband) are all superb in this film based on a novel by Zoe Heller. It, too, is awards bound, and the only blank spot is the kid who plays the object of Blanchett’s affections. Either as acted or as written, he fails to embody the sort of predatory Beatty-in-Embryo he is supposed to be. Nevertheless, Notes on a Scandal is surely one of the best, if not the best film of the season.

    Queen

    Dench will no doubt be up against Helen Mirren, titular character of The Queen, about the few days the monarchy endured after the death of Diana. Though directed by the otherwise dependable Stephen Frears, The Queen ends up being just a very, very good TV movie, in all ways, as it ends up slobbering over the royals in the most craven and arse-licking manner. Furthermore, Mirren is OK in the role, but really, come on, 12 other stars could do just as well. I’m also getting rather weary of actresses and actors being over-praised for just doing their jobs, and for at-best competent performances being hailed as Oscar worthy because of sentimentality over the performer. Awards, if they must be given, should be reserved for the truly most outstanding, risky, and successful performances of the year.

    Rocky Balboa

    Speaking of TV movies, that’s what Rocky Balboa turns out to be. This sixth Rocky entry is a slow paced, lumbering, impoverished film that comes across like an ’80s inspirational TV movie you might see on a Lifetime channel, as Rocky pauses periodically to espouse his “philosophy” of life. The only innovation, as the film virtually repeats the structure and climax of the first Rocky, is that the final fight itself is presented as if it were an HBO broadcast, which should make for a good DVD transfer.

    Mayan

    Who would have thought that two holiday films would feature, at some point, Spanish conquistadors? Both Mel Gibson’s derivative Apocalypto and Darren Aronofsky’s turgid The Fountain reference such throwbacks. But that is not the only thing ancient about both films. Each one harks back to the roots of American cinema. Apocalypto, which draws upon about 30 film clichés, from the choppers at the start of Apocalypse Now to the blood dripping from a wound that betrays someone hiding, from Rio Bravo and countless other films, is ultimately derived from silent films such as F. W Murnau’s Tabu and the some of Robert Flaherty’s docs, and alternately also from Terrence Malick’s near-silent modern epics of love and war. Apocalypto, from its “beheading cam” to its stacks of Maya holocausts bodies, is as excessive as we might expect, but ultimately a minor film that replays scenes from Gibson’s earlier films.

    Fountain

    Aronofsky’s muddled, well-meaning movie is a variation on D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, which also told several stories simultaneously, inter-cutting among them. What it comes down to is that each of the three Fountain stories features one of a trio of Hugh Jackmans (conquistador, contemporary scientist, bald spaceman) is trying to save his dying wife by finding the secret of eternal life. The wife is played, mostly in closeup, by Rachel Weisz, a current critical darling, but who here is treated, boringly, like a delicate, virginal spirit of life itself.

    Heart
    Blood Feast

    I’d like to add a footnote to this brief discussion of Apocalypto, however. Back in 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman, the moral equivalent of carnies, produced a small horror film, shooting it in a Miami motel room. It went on to be one of the most controversial films ever made, one that unleashed a radical change in what and how we watch movies. I refer, of course, to Blood Feast, aka Feast of Flesh. One of the most striking images, much reproduced, shows the murderous and deranged Egyptian caterer Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold) just after he has torn out the heart of a female victim, holding it up for the geeks in the audience to see. Forty-three years later, Mel Gibson virtually recreates that moment, on a grander scale, toward the middle of Apocalypto. The implications of this stagger me. Speaking only visually, few other paired images show how far we have come, or how much the old psychotronic films have been taken over by mainstream media.

    Good German

    Also in the realm of confusables are The Good Shepherd and The Good German. George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh’s German, which also stars Blanchett, is an adaptation of a pop novel that they turn into an academic exercise in mimicking 1940s Hollywood styles. This film is quite simply boring, confusing, and repetitious (Clooney is beat up about three times in the first 20 minutes). It’s possible that Soderbergh has some high-minded goal of mocking the MPAA’s standards or something like that with his blend of old fashion camera techniques and modern era humping, but for this Soderbergh supporter, the experiment failed.

    Good Shepherd

    Though often a part of Clooney’s posse, here Matt Damon strikes out on his own as a withdrawn, laconic CIA administrator modeled loosely on James Jesus Angleton, who, like Damon’s Edward Wilson, was befuddled by a Soviet mole and betrayed by British double agent Kim Philby (here played by Billy Crudup). This is one of those dream projects, the apple of director and co-star De Niro’s eye as well as of writer Eric Roth. It also makes for an interesting variation on, a sober corrective to, Damon’s Bourne films, with Wilson being an inward operative whose whole career is a failure. In a brilliant, all-star cast that includes Alec Baldwin and William Hurt, the only false note is the freckle-faced guy who plays Wilson’s son, who is dreadful and too often shot in eyeball peeling close-up.

    Little Children

    The other big confusables are Todd Field’s second film, Little Children, and Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of the P. D. James novel, Children of Men. They couldn’t be more different, although the ironically titled Little Children bears the influence of American Beauty in its examination of adultery and spiritual corruption in suburbia. I didn’t like this film as much the second time I saw it, when it came across much more mechanical and schematic. Still, Kate Winslet is, once again, very good in a tough part, and Field does capture well the wind blown suburban environment well.

    Children of Men

    Children of Men is a movie I wanted to like but for all its visual pyrotechnics has very little affect. The mono-expressive Clive Owen has something to do with this. Although clearly the people of this film’s future, where childbearing has ceased due to some vague environmental factors, is populated with depressed unexpressive people, it seems like Owen could be a little happier later as he tries to escort the last birthing mother to safety. As a director Cuarón appears to like journeys, at least in the few movies of this prolific filmmaker that have received wide distribution, but in this one the journey is the least interesting part of the film. Only the very beginning and very end really seem to matter, like in a basketball game. Nevertheless there are at least two stunning long takes that are utterly surprising.

  • Keneteph’s Korner: Industry Profiles – DJ Ju-Ice

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    Who Says Great Things Don’t Come Out of Jersey!

    keneteph-01.jpgI still can’t figure out why New Jersey is at the tail end of many jokes (some even calling it the “armpit of the US”) when a lot of good talent and ideas come out of NJ. The whole vision of the View Askewniverse is an example of this, along with our own Quick Stop Entertainment. Another example of creative innovation coming out of Jersey is Trenton, NJ DJ, DJ Ju-Ice. He’s raised the bar of the DJ game by releasing DVDs of the mixing/mash-ups he does on CD. The whole mix lines up perfectly with their respective video. So you are not just watching a Jay-Z or Pharell video, you are actually watching it completely remixed by DJ Ju-Ice! It truly takes mixing and mixtapes to the next level and will leave you wondering what will be thought of next!

    This musical art you have to see to experience has won him the 2006 Justo Mixtape Award for best DVD blends, and best mixtape blends. Winning a Justo Mixtape Award is something many urban DJs aspire to get, as it was the first award keneteph-02.jpgceremony offered for DJs. Ju-Ice’s recent mixtape video blend DVD is the third one he’s released since last year. I’ve had a chance to see all three and they get better with each one he makes, but still unique in their own right. Being unique does bring a lot of copycats though as Ju-Ice has seen a lot of DJs copy his style of mixing. Despite this he still welcomes creativity from others. On one of his DVDs he encourages other DJs to stay original and keep their creativity up. This new one features a few mixes by his protégé DJ Seductive. A lot of time was placed in editing the over one and a half hours of videos into one continuous mix. He even throws in some Marvin Gay and Dianna Ross into the mix, put to some new beats. The mixtape video blends make a great gift for friends, or even for yourself to watch or show at parties.

    Ju-Ice is staying busy working on a mixtape video blend DVD featuring all Mary J. Blidge videos. DJ Seductive also working on her solo blend DVD project.

    Check out the you tube link for a preview of his blends. For ordering information please call 609-984-8062 or go to myspace.com/therealdjjuice

    –Copyright 2006 Keneteph Entertainment

  • Holiday Havoc Day 14: Mike Nelson & Rifftrax

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    Some people hang the holly, others decorate the tree, and a few even terrorize the neighborhood with off-key caroling.

    Not us.

    Here at Quick Stop Entertainment, we’re celebrating the holiday season by giving a little something back to you, our readers (you know who you are).

    Every weekday leading up to the holiday break, we’ve got uber-exclusive gifts provided by a whole range of artists, actors, comedians, and studios. One a day, straight from them to you.

    Ain’t that cool?

    Today, we’ve got an exclusive Holiday Havoc gift from Michael J. Nelson ““ formerly of the legendary Mystery Science Theater 3000 and author of numerous best-selling & very funny books ““ and the rest of the team at Rifftrax.

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    If you’re unfamiliar with Rifftrax, they’re essentially downloadable audio commentaries that you can play back on your mp3 player of choice, which you then sync up to your very own DVDs of such classic (and not-so-classic) films as Lord of the Rings, The Phantom Menace, Roadhouse, The Fifth Element, and even Star Trek V. Even better, the commentaries feature that patented Mike Nelson humor we’ve all been so desperately needing back in our lives (and you can’t beat the tracks featuring Mike’s special guest riffers, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett ““ tho I would give nickels for life if they could bring Trace Beaulieu into the fold, but that’s a Christmas wish for another day”¦).

    You can purchase these commentaries and many more directly from Rifftrax.com for only a few dollars, and additional titles are being added to the library constantly.

    Today, however, we have that special gift just for our Quick Stop readers ““ an exclusive Rifftrax, absolutely free!

    Not only that, it’s a Rifftrax of a very special holiday classic”¦ Well, maybe not a classic, but it’s certainly a lesser light in the Rankin-Bass stop-motion pantheon ““ Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. You can find Nestor on Warner Home Video’s DVD of The Year Without A Santa Claus – and here’s how you can get your free Nestor Rifftrax“¦

    PLEASE NOTE: Now that the holidays are over, the free download has ended. But you can still purchase the Nestor track for only $1.00 – And, while you’re over there, why not check out the Rifftrax catalogue and pick up a couple of their other fine commentary tracks (both Roadhouse and Star Trek V are personal faves)…

    Just to whet your whistle and give you a taste of what you’re in store for, here’s a small preview of Nestor with the full Rifftrax experience”¦

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    Download the video preview of the Nestor Rifftrax:

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    Check out the rest of this year’s “Holiday Havoc” HERE

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  • Weekend Shopping Guide 12/22/06: Happy Holidays!

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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 end is nigh, as the ninth season of The Simpsons (Fox, Not Rated, DVD-$49.98 SRP) begins to show the creative fraying around the edges that would completely undermine the show over the next few years. Still, there’s a few great episodes to be found, including the family’s journey to New York, the arrival of Apu’s first wife, Homer’s tenure as the waste commissioner, and the tale of the trillion dollar bill. As with previous seasons, every episode features an audio commentary, plus deleted scenes, illustrated commentaries, commercials, sketches, and a U2 featurette.

    While this year’s wave of Walt Disney Treasures collector’s sets (Walt Disney, Not Rated, DVD-$32.99 SRP each) doesn’t feature the 3rd volume of Donald Duck cartoons I’d been hoping for, it’s still a nice clutch of must-have releases for any Disney fan. In addition to the second volumes of both Pluto and Silly Symphonies, there’s also the complete Hardy Boys, from The Mickey Mouse Club, and Your Host Walt Disney, which features memorable episodes from Walt’s 10 years on television. Your guide through all of these discs, as always, is Leonard Maltin, and there are plenty of bonus materials to be had, including audio commentaries, featurettes, art galleries, and more. Now, that 3rd Donald volume had better be on next year’s slate…

    Unfortunately, due to spiraling paper costs, Gemstone Publishing is suspending publication of the regular comic-sized Donald Duck and Friends & Mickey Mouse and Friends (Gemstone, $2.95 each), with issues #346 & #295, respectively. It’s not all doom and gloom this holiday season, though, as they’ll still be publishing their deluxe-sized Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories ($6.95), both of which will have only a modest price increase in the new year. Be sure to pick up all the wonderful holiday-themed issues, though, as there are some classic stories from the likes of Barks and Gottfredson inside.

    If Bacchus were to ever step off Olympus and become a British comedian, his name would be Johnny Vegas. More a force of nature than a man, he’s an incredibly funny, shambolic, bombastic onscreen presence whose seemingly inebriated manner hide a sharp mind and a quick wit. Many critics dismissed his Channel 4 show, 18 Stone of Idiot (Channel 4, Not Rated, DVD-£19.99), as a raucous, lowbrow mess. Personally, I think it’s a very funny show that has a rhythm and vibrancy outside the norm, and its seeming maelstrom is an elaborate construct. The DVD condenses the short-lived series into 90 minutes of highlights, with bonus features including an audio commentary and outtakes. Any show that has the moxy to ask Elvis Costello if he felt like an idiot for refusing to sell one of his songs for millions of dollars to be used in an advert when he had just performed it live on the show for free is a how that needs to be rediscovered on DVD.

    Anyone that can view Spike Lee’s powerful documentary about the devastation wrought on New Orleans – and its shameful aftermath – without feeling a mixture of sorrow and anger well up within them must have something beside a human heart beating in their chest. When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts (HBO, Not Rated, DVD-$29.98 SRP) is an incredible document of an outrageous tragedy not only for the region, but for America as a whole and the government that is expected to be there in the aftermath of such tragedies. This 3-disc set also includes a 105-minute follow-up film, as well as audio commentaries from Lee and a photo gallery.

    Abby has arrived, Green is on the rise, Carter faces tragedy, and Alan Alda makes a memorable guest appearance in the 5th season of ER (Warner Bros., Not Rated, DVD-$49.98 SRP). This season marked the increasingly soap operaish trend that would threaten to derail the show just a few short seasons hence, but for now, it balances the personal and professional lives of County General quite nicely. The 6-disc set features outtakes and the by now must-see gag reel.

    While all eyes are turned towards his seasonal classic It’s a Wonderful Life, be sure not to pass up the new Premiere Frank Capra Collection box set (Sony, Not Rated, DVD-$59.95 SRP), featuring 5 newly remastered classics from the director’s storied career, with brand new audio commentaries to boot. Those films are American Madness, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, You Can’t Take It With You, and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. If that weren’t enough, the set also contains the Ron Howard-hosted documentary Frank Capra’s American Dream.

    After 8 seasons, many of which are rightly remembered amongst the most classic ever to air on television, The Andy Griffith Show (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$38.99 SRP) came to a close a few seasons past its prime. In the 30 episodes contained in this 5-disc set, Aunt Bee gets married, Opie goes rock n’ roll, Goober becomes his own man, and there’s even a surprise return of one Barney Fife.

    There’s an undeniable down-home charm to Jim Nabors as prototypical Gump Gomer Pyle, and they managed to export it nicely from The Andy Griffith Show and into his own starring vehicle, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$38.99 SRP). Unwitting torturer of the short-fused Sergeant Carter, Gomer is stationed at California’s Camp Henderson, where is small-town naiveté drives everyone nuts, but gawl darn it, it sure is funny. The 5-disc box set features all 30 first season episodes, plus audio intros from Nabors, audio commentaries from Nabors and Ronnie Schell on select episodes, the episode of The Andy Griffith Show which served as the series’ pilot, Nabors on The David Frost Show, a Jim Nabors Hour clip, and a Lucy Show clip. Bring on the second season!

    Of course, that’s not the only military comedy you can partake of this holiday season. If comedic follies in World War II prisoner of war camps is more your cup of tea, then the penultimate 5th season of Hogan’s Heroes (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$38.99 SRP) is just the ticket. I’m sorry, but even after all these year, I still find “I know nussing!!” profoundly funny. The 4-disc box set features all 26 remastered and uncut episodes.

    More than living up to its title, Roy Thomas’s Conan: The Ultimate Guide To The World’s Most Savage Barbarian (DK, $24.99) is an essential overview of the creation, history, and mythos of that famous Cimmerian warrior, lavishly illustrated and packed with information.

    Before Ugly Betty took over the airwaves this fall, Americans were enamored with the awkward position young Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) found herself in as the assistant to incredibly demanding New York fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). I could care less about the fashion industry, but The Devil Wears Prada (Fox, Rated PG-13, DVD-$29.99 SRP) is a spot-on character piece that’s full of plenty of laughs and a makes for a solid night of entertainment. Bonus features include an audio commentary, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and a gag reel.

    Rocky Balboa is back in theaters and angling to get into your MP3 player of choice with a pair of new releases – a 30th anniversary remastered edition of the original Rocky soundtracks, as well as Rocky Balboa: The Best of Rocky (EMI, $18.98 SRP each), which contains tunes from all the flicks (including Survivor’s immortal “Eye of the Tiger”).

    If you want a pretty clear case of how not to handle a remake of a cult classic horror flick, be sure to give a spin to the recent retake on The Wicker Man (Warner Bros., Rated PG-13, DVD-$28.98 SRP). Gone is the creepy British provincialism of the original, replaced with a bland American enclave of women situated on a private isle, and Nicolas Cage as the cop who picks the wrong day to go investigating on said creepy island. Do yourself a favor and stick with the Brit original. Bonus features include both the theatrical and an unrated version of the film (with a different, still ho-hum ending), an audio commentary, and the theatrical trailer.

    Where films like The Blair Witch Project tried to revive the creep factor of the unknown darkness existing just outside the light, The Descent (Lionsgate, Not Rated, DVD-$28.98 SRP) achieves that in spades through the tale of a group of female spelunkers are stranded deep in the bowels of the Appalachians and find they’re not alone.. and it’s not human. The unrated cut features a pair of audio commentaries, deleted/extended scenes, storyboard to screen comparisons, a behind-the-scenes featurette, an interview with director Neil Marshall, a stills gallery, and outtakes.

    While there was still humor to be found, audiences went largely lukewarm to what they viewed as a “message” show after Ellen’s big announcement during the fourth season, making the fifth season of Ellen (A&E, Not Rated, DVD-$49.95 SRP) its last. With time and distance, it’s worth giving these episodes a second chance. The 3-disc set features outtakes and cast bios.

    While a fascinating visual trip, A Scanner Darkly (Warner Bros., Rated R, DVD-$27.98 SRP) is another one of those not quite there attempts to make a cinematic translation of a Philip K. Dick story. As adapted and directed by Richard Linklater as a rotoscoped fantasia, it can’t seem to find a footing in the tale of a suburban society hooked on Substance D, with a government doing more harm than good in order to “save them.” Still, it’s a worthwhile try, and at least interesting enough to maintain your attention. Bonus features include an audio commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and the theatrical trailer.

    Fill your winter with wit via the second volume of the Will Rogers Collection (Fox, Not Rated, DVD-$59.98 SRP), featuring the film’s Ambassador Bill, David Harum, Mr. Skitch, and Too Busy To Work. Each film is fully remastered, with restoration comparison featurettes on every disc.

    It’s natural to want to compare Gene Simmons’ family reality series to the hell-brood featured on Ozzy Osbourne’s show, but the surprising discovery of Family Jewels (A&E, Not Rated, DVD-$24.95 SRP) is just how normal Simmons, his partner Shannon Tweed, and their two teenage kids are. In fact, compared to the Osbournes, Gene’s raised a pair of angels. Those expecting the kind of train wreck normally found in these types of shows will be largely disappointed, but it’s a fascinating peek behind closed doors nonetheless. The 2-disc set features the complete first season, plus unseen interviews, a rough cut of the pilot, bloopers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and more.

    Featuring seven centuries of art, Masterpieces Up Close: Western Painting from the 14th to the 20th Centuries (Chronicle Books, $22.95) is a fun, informative oversize coffee table book that spotlights the hidden in plain view secrets of many classic works of art, from Michaelangelo to Dali, with a fun and breezy presentation that makes discovery a real joy.

    There’s always a very noticeable tipping point where megalomaniacal directors suddenly go off the deep end of their own outsize egos, and M. Night Shyamalan has reached his with the overblown, pretentious, and altogether uninvolving Lady In The Water (Warner Bros., Rated PG-13, DVD-$28.98 SRP). Like some kind of ersatz cross between 12 Monkeys and Splash, a schlubby apartment manager (Paul Giamatti) is caught up in a tale of something or another when he rescues a mysterious water nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) from the communal swimming pool. Then stuff happens, much of which revolves around the fate of an artiste played by… M. Night Shyamalan. Bonus features include behind-the-scenes documentaries, additional scenes, auditions, a gag reel, and theatrical trailers.

    It’s been said before, but watching Zach Braff in The Last Kiss (Paramount, Rated R, DVD-$29.99 SRP) is like watching a weird, bizarro remake of his writing & directorial debut, Garden State. Sadly, Braff’s lost, maturity-delayed character in Kiss is simply annoying, and the film itself is frustratingly flat and off-putting – whereas Garden State was anything but. Bonus features include director and cast audio commentaries, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes featurette, a gag reel, and the Braff-directed video for Cary Brothers’ “Ride.”

    After so many years, all of the various locales of Survivor begin to blend together in a miasma of challenges and bickering, and such is the case with Survivor: Vanuatu (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$49.99 SRP). This 4-disc set features not only all the episodes, but also additional footage, featurettes, audio commentaries, and the reunion episode.

    While not exactly holiday fare, you can now own a trio of Henry Jaglom’s films, new to DVD – New Year’s Day, Someone to Love, and Tracks (Paramount, Rated R, DVD-$14.99 SRP each). All three discs feature audio commentary from Jaglom, who is joined by Dennis Hopper on Tracks, Andrea Marcovicci on Someone To Love, and David Duchovny on New Year’s Day.

    Return to the estrogen-thick walls of Wentworth Detention Center via the second collection of the Australian cult classic Prisoner Cell Block H (A&E, Not Rated, DVD-$49.95 SRP). Think of its sometimes outlandish soapy-ness as a female prison version of Oz.

    Only completists will want to pick up the first volume of The New Adventures Of He-Man (BCI, Not Rated, DVD-$49.98 SRP), the 90’s follow-up to the 80’s “classic” that managed to strip away any charm or iconic design found in the original. The 6-disc set features the first 33 episodes, plus 2 new documentaries, commercials, trivia, character profiles, and more.

    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…