Michael Hutchison: March 2006 Archives
There's good news for all of the Trekkies who don't have the money to buy 28 season box sets at $100 each. There are now "Fan Collective" box sets which group episodes around a theme. Unofficially, this was started with the Jean-Luc Picard Collection.
Pardon the banner ad, but it was a faster way to link to these:
The Borg Collective features the following 14 episodes:
Regeneration (from Enterprise), Q Who?, The Best of Both Worlds pts 1 and 2, I Borg, Descent pts 1 and 2 (all from Star Trek: The Next Generation), Scorpion pts 1 and 2, Drone, Dark Frontier, Unimatrix Zero parts 1 and 2, Endgame (all from Star Trek: Voyager)
Upcoming Collective Box Sets will center on Time Travel and Q.
One goofy and aggravating element is that there's a lot of double-dipping forced on the buyer. Tthe Voyager episode "Endgame" qualifies as both Borg and Time Travel, and so is in both sets. Similarly, "All Good Things..." is both a time travel and a Q episode, and is on both sets. (And it qualifies as two episodes.) And just for good measure, "Q Who?" is both a Q and a Borg episode. If you buy all three collectives, you'll have duplicates of all those episodes.
So far, the tenth season of South Park looks to be a grand slam. Here's a summary of "Smug Alert", the new episode about hybrid cars. If you missed it last night, it will be repeated again Thursday, Friday and Sunday. (Episodes are also available on iTunes.)
I wake up, wondering how three dozen years of my life have gone by so fast, only to find Beau Smith telling us all that we're going to die soon and the ticking of the clock is the sound of doom.
Thanks, Beau! I forgive you. As you can see, I did put "devastating omen about the fleeting aspect of life" at the top of my Amazon wish list, so I brought it on myself.
Don't worry, Beau. I won't seek revenge. Nah.
On a completely separate topic, Beau, which Amazon wish list is yours? I searched for "Beau Smith". I rejected the one with the Che Guevara, Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre...not because of the ideology, but because it would probably have too many big words. Nah, I think this one is your list.
Heh heh heh.
Worth watching just for the THX joke.
Fox has been giving King of the Hill the Futurama treatment for the last two years, pre-empting it for football all too often and ordering less-than-full seasons... then acting surprised when the seemingly-never-on show isn't able to draw high ratings. So it's a bit of a surprise that they finally decided to renew the show for an 11th season. Fox had let the renewal deadline pass without comment, and as the producers were somberly emptying their desks, they were suddenly called out for an emergency meeting to commit to an 11th season.
King of the Hill is one of my favorite shows, so this is exceedingly good news. I just wish Fox would show them some proper respect. The new episodes haven't been promoted much at all, even when the "entire" Sunday line-up is promo'd/
I had not seen this Lay's ad with the fence.
The movie "Flight 93" has been renamed "United 93", and the double-meaning of the title is beautiful in its simplicity. The new trailer is available for download.
Well, they say death in fiction isn't permanent unless you see a body, and maybe not even then, but for all intents and purposes South Park has removed Chef from the show. I don't know to what extent Isaac Hayes wanted off the show...whether he did, or his Scientologist minder quit for him... but it's done now. There is still a possibility for bringing him back if it is all resolved.
Here's what happened in "The Return of Chef":
SPOILERS!! FULL SPOILERS!! Do not click the extended entry and read further unless you want to know what happened.
A lady came up to me on the street, pointed at my suede jacket and said, "Don't you know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" I said "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too".
Man tries to convert lions to Jesus, gets bitten
He was quoting Aslan 5:23-28 at the time.
Bash.org, which reposts funny Instant Messages, has this:
#628630 +(2287)- [X]<samsim> I heard about this guy who broke into a lion's den at the zoo
<samsim> and got mauled
<samsim> and people were talking about how there should have been better defences put up to prevent people getting into the cage
<samsim> a friend of mine suggested setting up some kind of deterrent
<samsim> for example, putting some sort of fierce animal in the cage, which would attack anybody who climbed in
Thanks to Scott Kurtz for alerting me to Bash.org!
Oh sure, Mel Gibson gets tortured in a couple movies and Trey Parker figures he has a masochistic obsession, but there aren't any similarities in Harrison Ford's body of work!
I remember reading once that a cat had a better chance of surviving a fall from 10 storeys up than 6 storeys (those numbers are my best guess; it was something like that) because a cat falling from a low height wouldn't have time to orient itself to landing on its feet, whereas the higher altitude gave it time to twist in the air and land properly. I hesitate to think there were physicists chucking dozens of cats out of windows to test feline survivability. (I may eat meat but I'm not a monster.)
Check this out:
Caught On Video: Cat Survives 80-Foot Fall
Flying Cow Leaves Two Police Cars in Flames
A flying cow (no, not this one) led to the destruction of two cop cars and one cop was almost run over by a truck carrying illegal aliens (no, not the ones abducting the cow).
If Roger Friedman is right about Chef's Quitting Controversy, then someone has been falsely representing Isaac "Chef" Hayes while he's been incapacitated. After South Park ran a daring and controversial episode attacking Scientology, there was some outcry from Scientologists but then the controversy died down. Then, out of nowhere, Isaac Hayes allegedly quits the show...and that is followed fast on his heels by Comedy Central's yanking a rerun of the episode.
The episode in question is online. If you have not seen it, click on the extended entry for this post and you can watch it right now.
According to Friedman:
...Hayes is in no position to have quit anything. Contrary to news reports, the great writer, singer and musician suffered a stroke on Jan. 17....Friends in Memphis tell me that Hayes did not issue any statements on his own about South Park. They are mystified.
“Isaac’s been concentrating on his recuperation for the last two and a half, three months,” a close friend told me.
Hayes did not suffer paralysis, but the mild stroke may have affected his speech and his memory. He’s been having home therapy since it happened.
That certainly begs the question of who issued the statement that Hayes was quitting South Park now because it mocked Scientology four months ago. If it wasn’t Hayes, then who would have done such a thing?
Of course, Matt Stone would not have been talking to the press if South Park Studios hadn't received some form of official resignation from Hayes' "people." The pivotal consideration may be, who are Hayes' "people" in question? Hayes is a Scientologist, and as Friedman notes, "Hayes, like Katie Holmes, is constantly monitored by a Scientologist representative most of the time." (Emphasis mine.) These advisors are often guiding the celebrity's actions, with advice like "You must never show it to the Laker Girls."
'V for Vendetta' takes the top spot, which isn't really hard when the competition is the likes of cross-dressing soccer film "She's the Man", the Tim Allen Disney remake (that's three strikes right there) "The Shaggy Dog" and the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes." There really isn't anything to see in theaters right now.
Still, V for Vendetta made only a tad less than the expected $30 million and as Box Office Mojo notes, dystopian future pics are a bit of a hard sell regardless of quality (Brazil, Blade Runner, The Island).
It's odd that Box Office Mojo's "analysis" just skips over all controversial elements. Brandon Gray's "News and Analysis" columns are often strictly business; despite all the "Mel Gibson's an anti-semite" controversy in 2004, Gray's summary of the Passion of the Christ's debut only mentions "media frenzy and religious fervor." Purely from a business standpoint, however, the national argument over this film should at least be noted as a factor...particularly when the movie's delay from November was just as much (if not "entirely") due to the real-life terrorist attacks in London which used the London Underground.
BitTorrent is used to exchange illegal DVD rips and music files, and that's bad. It's also used to exchange copyrighted works that aren't available on DVD, and that's still illegal but not without some merit. And here's a great example of that.
The footage from September 11th, 2001, has been kept off TV for years, but there is a torrent for ABC's 9-11 footage (1.5 GB). It is not edited; instead, it is the entire news broadcast, uncut, for over four hours. I wish all of the networks and news channels would release their 9-11 footage on DVD. In the meantime, you can grab this.
There is at least one seeder I am aware of, so leech away.
I didn't realize you could buy "Return to the Batcave." This was a TV movie which seemed to have a multiple personality syndrome, but it was a lot of fun. It details the making of the 1968 Batman TV show in flashbacks, and that part is played straight while focusing on such silliness as Burt Ward's second fiddle status and Adam West being caught in a threesome with two bat-groupies. (That part isn't really funny; I think it's included at Adam West's urging just so he can brag.) The other half of the movie is a wacky modern story about Adam West and Burt Ward searching for a stolen Batmobile. The adventure is a campy Batman story with thugs wearing shirts that say "thug" on them and encounters with a pseudo Catwoman and Riddler played by Frank Gorshin and Julie Newmar (not respectively).
It's great to see Gorshin in one of his final roles doing what he did best; for that alone, I may buy this one. No Bat-completist should be without it.
Many of you have asked where they can see the Justice League of America pilot, which I reviewed for Fanzing back in 1998. It is now available online through YouTube.
If you'd like to see it now, click on the extended entry and it will begin loading.
Hollywood, Interrupted has the Tom Cruise episode of South Park viewable online as a RealMedia video. Get it while the getting's good...who knows how fast this may get shut down!
Hat tip: Lucianne.com
Videos by vMix Member:
blinky500
I'm not really sure I get the point of the movie, aside from showing off the good casting and costuming skills. The story is rather "eh" but it has some laughs, the actress looks very much like Power Girl and the camera angles tend to not care about the top of Power Girl's head, if you know what I mean.
An advance preview of Pixar's "Cars" has thrilled theater owners in its first public screening.
The owners, who are, of course, interested in off-setting the poor 2005 ticket sales with movies that have wider audience appeal, were extremely satisfied with Cars, the first John Lasseter film since Toy Story 2.
One of them describes it as "the perfect antidote to 'Brokeback Mountain.'" I don't think that will be on the posters.
Variety reports that a re-showing of the South Park Scientology episode was mysteriously yanked and replaced by the early episode "Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls" which featured Isaac Hayes' character Chef. That's a noteworthy choice, since Hayes recently quit the show due to their Scientology parody. Forced between tweeking the nose of Scientologists again or kissing up to Hayes, Comedy Central chose Chef.
However, Matt Stone and Trey Parker released this statement:
"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"The duo signed the statement "Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu."
Season 10 of South Park starts next Wednesday.
PREDICTION: Parker and Stone will not dodge the controversy but will instead make fun of it in the episode, since they can parody things that have happened only a few days earlier. (Remember the Christmas episode that showed Saddam in a spiderhole only four days after his capture?)
Have you subscribed to Bob and Brian Podcasts yet?
A couple good ones recently on the uselessness of hamsters, the possibility of setting up shop while flying... and a hilarious story about Clear Channel's high class art show and Martinifest.
I talked about Bob and Brian earlier, in case you missed it.
Doctor Who is on tonight. Get your wheelbarrow of tacos ready!
You're welcome.
Alan Moore gives a rare interview to MTV.com about V for Vendetta and his frustration with all movie adaptations.
In all the months we've been debating this movie, here and over on the Libertas boards, people are always firing back that the movie can't be a parable or metaphor for the War on Terror because the original book wasn't... as though it's not a movie with a modern screenwriter adapting it to fit. Well, here the guy who wrote the original finally speaks out about people who think a book and a movie are the exact same thing.
The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some excerpts.
Those words, "fascism" and "anarchy," occur nowhere in the film. It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country. In my original story there had been a limited nuclear war, which had isolated Britain, caused a lot of chaos and a collapse of government, and a fascist totalitarian dictatorship had sprung up. Now, in the film, you've got a sinister group of right-wing figures — not fascists, but you know that they're bad guys — and what they have done is manufactured a bio-terror weapon in secret, so that they can fake a massive terrorist incident to get everybody on their side, so that they can pursue their right-wing agenda. It's a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what "V for Vendetta" was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England]. The intent of the film is nothing like the intent of the book as I wrote it. And if the Wachowski brothers had felt moved to protest the way things were going in America, then wouldn't it have been more direct to do what I'd done and set a risky political narrative sometime in the near future that was obviously talking about the things going on today?...Presumably it's not illegal — not yet anyway — to express dissenting opinions in the land of free? So perhaps it would have been better for everybody if the Wachowski brothers had done something set in America...
Tip of the hat to Chilean Knight on Dixonverse for the link.
Rocky Balboa (Rocky VI) has a trailer, if that's what you want to call it. It's just Sly shot in extreme close-up while monologuing. Infiniti car ads were more informative.
Oh, and extreme close-up of Sylvester Stallone at just-shy-of-60? Not a good look.
DC Comics releases for June have been announced.
Worth noting:
Director Bryan Singer and the screenwriters pen Superman tie-ins for the "Superman Returns" movie.
"52" #5 is so top secret that the cover cannot be shown.
WARNING: Do NOT read the summary for Birds of Prey, as it gives away a major spoiler.
DCU: BRAVE NEW WORLD is a sampler of DC's new titles. 80 Pages for $1!
* Martian Manunter by A.J. Lieberman, with art by Al Barrionuevo and Bit.
* OMAC by Bruce Jones with art by Renato Guedes.
* Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti with art by Daniel Acuña.
* The Creeper by Steve Niles with art by Justiniano and Walden Wong.
* The All-New Atom by Gail Simone with art by John Byrne and Trevor Scott.
* The Trials of Shazam!
JLA Classified chronicles a missing adventure of the Detroit League.
Chuck Dixon's Claw the Unconquered debuts.
The first Archives I will have bought in over ten years, "The Metal Men Archives." [HOLY COW! Amazon has it for $30 instead of $50. Gimme gimme. I'm glad I went there to get the ASIN# for the link.]
And joy of joys...
*sob*
No, no, I just have to reprint the whole thing:
SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE ELONGATED MAN VOL. 1 TPWritten by John Broome and Gardner Fox, art by Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams, Murphy Anderson and Gil Kane, cover by Infantino and Sid Greene.
This Showcase volume spotlights Ralph Dibny, collecting tales from The Flash #112, 115, 119, 124, 130, 134, 138, and Detective Comics #327-371! Along with his wife Sue, Elongated Man travels the world to solve crimes, crossing paths with Batman and Robin, the Flash, Green Lantern and Zatanna!
560 pages, black and white, $16.99, in stores on July 6.
*choke*
This story is such a pick-me-up.
CollegeHumor Movie: The amazing story of Jason McElwain.
Jason is autistic, and for years he helped coach his high school basketball team. The last game of the season, the coach let him play. Read the full story at CBSNews.com.
Hat tip to Lucianne.com, which has a cool picture, too.
Teen Shot in Fight Over Tater Tots
A teenager was shot Monday afternoon after he was arguing over tater tots with another teen, San Antonio Police said.
I think it went a little something like this.
In point of fact, though, "Vendetta" is not good. The film may spark interesting debates—about the nature of terrorism and governments, about the inalienable right of artists to shock and provoke—but what we're dealing with is a lackluster comic-book movie that thinks terrorist is a synonym for revolutionary.
Another interesting bite:
...the movie plays like a clumsy assault on post-9/11 paranoia. It references "America's war," uses imagery direct from Abu Ghraib and contains dialogue likely to offend anyone who's not, say, a suicide bomber. Buildings are symbols, V tells a haunted young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman), after saving her from some vile, rampaging cops: "Blowing up a building can change the world." The filmmakers have insisted that V is not intended to be a hero. Which is bollocks. The movie grants him absolute moral superiority from beginning to end.
Ya know, if V is not intended to be a hero, someone should tell the publicity department. The e-mail I recently received from their promotional campaign begins,
"On March 17, the creators of The Matrix bring you a provocative new hero and a story of the struggle for freedom and the power of humanity."
Richard Roeper actually takes the other critics to task for not evaluating the movie the way he does. Richard, by the way, is wrong. Not in his opinion, he's welcome to that... but he is factually wrong. He states that it's an England where it's as if World War II turned out differently and the Nazis won. Er...not quite. Unless the film has been altered since initial reviews, there are ample indications that it is a future England warning that England has turned fascist because of its participation in the War on Terror. We know that the War on Terror is part of the history included in this alternate future because a man who collects banned items has "a banner comprised of the American flag, the British flag, and a Nazi Swastika overlaid on top of them with the slogan 'Coalition of the Willing.'" Now, a basic point here: that is something that wasn't in the original text.
You can pretend that this movie isn't a comment on the world today and isn't trying to say anything provocative. You can even pretend that this is merely an adaptation of a 25-year-old book fretting about Margaret Thatcher kicking off fascism in the UK. One wonders why they'd make a multi-million dollar adaptation of it now if that were true. However, to do so is to think that the guys behind the Matrix would want to make a film utterly lacking in subtext.
I can just picture Richard Roeper setting down his copy of "Animal Farm," remarking that it's a cute book about talking animals but that anyone trying to read a message into it is a hot-headed ideologue.
Meanwhile, Beau Smith comments about it, as always, with brutal honesty:
"I also have to tell the truth. I tried to read V For Vendetta when it came out as a comic. Even though it is well written, it just isn’t anything that interested me. Just a matter of personal taste, that’s all. I’ve seen the trailer to the movie ... It strikes me as what women would think a good action film was."
E-Man, the energy being from outer space who makes his home on earth as a super-hero, returns to comics this September from Digital Webbing Press. Created by Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton for Charlton Comics in 1973, E-Man has always been a fan favorite, marked by equal amounts of action, mystery and humor.E-Man enjoyed a 10 issue run with Charlton followed by 25 issues from First Comics in the 80's. Digital Webbing will release a one-shot E-Man this fall by series creators Cuti and Staton.
E-Man will be joined by his girlfriend, Nova Kane, who developed energy powers herself early in the initial Charlton series.
Oh my gosh. "Nova Kane". I just got that.
Staton fan that I am, I'm putting this one on my pull list.
Religion of Comic Book Characters is a quite excellent compilation site. It's cool to see our own Fanzing articles used as references.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 web site has announced the four episodes that will be included in DVD Box Set #9.
104- WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET 207- WILD REBELS 613- THE SINISTER URGE (with short: KEEPING CLEAN AND NEAT) 812- THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIESAs a bonus for "Women of the Prehistoric Planet," Rhino has taped a short intro to the episode with Irene Tsu, who played Linda in the movie. There will also definitely be a bonus intro to "The Sinister Urge" with Conrad Brooks, who played Connie.
Now, I'm a bit underwhelmed by these choices, but it's for the odd reason that I haven't seen three of them. Isn't that weird? You'd think I would want to buy a box set with episodes from a decade ago that have been unavailable all this time. Instead, I'm more excited about the "Incredibly Strange Creatures..." movie, which not only features a lead that is an uncanny double for Nicholas Cage but introduced the Ortega character to MST3K.
A huge thank you to our own Seth Gottlieb for finding the video for this!
My brother alerted me to the Live Action Simpsons earlier this week, but the links on the page weren't working and I didn't want to post it without showing the actual video.
My link above goes to a Sun article explaining the promo.
Here's a problem:
A TV show box set of the first season sells poorly because the first season sucks. Everyone wants to buy the later seasons when the show rocked, but the distributor figures people just aren't interested in the show. Instead of putting out Season 2, they release a cheapie collection of "favorite" episodes which must have been grabbed at random and one of the episodes is even a repeat from the Season 1 box set. There's even a cliffhanger shown without the conclusion! The TVShowsOnDVD people say the makers are gauging the response to determine whether to sell the other seasons.
Now: Do you buy this cheapie to support the show, even though it will just be duplicates of episodes you would rather own on the season sets, or do you angrily protest and demand a season set?
Oh, the agony of being a Night Court fan. I want them to get up to those "marathon" episodes where the court would race through a docket of 250 wacky cases by midnight for some contrived reason or another. (The best one had a cameo by, of all people, Wile E. Coyote.)
"What's your favorite case from Night Court?" is our Question of the Week on the Forum.
For those of you who haven't yet bought the four "Batman the Animated Series" box sets, you'll be happy to know that I found them at Sam's Club for $21 each. That's $10 less (apiece) than I can get them at DVDPacific, and $12 cheaper than on Amazon!
I'm glad I waited!
Who Wants To Be A Superhero? is now taking applications. You have to have a costume, powers and I would imagine a physique that looks good.
Now, in the past, I've been quite open with you all that I am not an Adonis. I've shared with you my hopes to get on another reality show: The Biggest Loser. (That there probably tells you I'm not costume-ready, unless they want a variation on Bouncing Boy.) Yeah, it would be embarrassing, but worth it.
So I asked myself: which would be more humiliating? Would I rather take my shirt off and stand on a scale in front of millions of people, or dress up in a costume with some third-rate name (you KNOW all the good ones are taken!) and tell the millions...okay, tens of thousands...watching Sci-Fi Channel about how much I want to be superhero?
You know what? It's not even close. I love comic books but I wouldn't be caught dead on that show.
If you have the courage, go ahead and sign up.
The New Doctor Who finally airs in the USA on the Sci-Fi channel March 17th. Count down the days, fellow Whovians!
Sci-Fi Channel has a review of Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God, the straight-to-DVD sequel to the regrettable and forgettable 2000 movie.
In short: better than the first one.
The Razzie Awards for 2005 films didn't really generate much news this last week. The list is so forgettable that I didn't even recall many of the movies on the list. Then again, that was true even for the Oscars.
On Mondays, I check the comics that ran over the weekend, including Day By Day by Chris Muir. For a few months, Muir has been doing new Sunday strips, and frankly, they kind of suck. The first panel promotes the fact it's a Sunday strip, leaving only two panels for the joke which isn't much of a payoff. I really didn't see the appeal.
Yesterday, in the middle of a tiring spring cleaning, I decided to pull up the comic at home. I typed in the URL and was shocked to see an entire separate cartoon below the daily strip-sized comic. The intro section which I've been seeing is the equivalent of that optional top third row in your Sunday paper. You know, the part that has a logo and then a meager one or two-panel joke or just an unimportant first panel to the right of it. Comic strips do that for newspapers that would like to jettison the top row to make the comic fit better.
The top part, unfortunately, is the only part of Day by Day that shows up when viewed using the calendar archive. I have no clue what the technical problem is, but until it's fixed, I'm going to have to remember to check in on Sundays.
If Target hadn't been cleared out of Firefly box sets last week, I'd have paid $30 for it! As it is, I have a rain check in my wallet to go buy it when they restock. But it's not going to be used because
AMAZON NOW HAS IT FOR TWENTY DOLLARS!!!!
Thank you to Mr. Arndt for sending me the link!
I don't know how long that price will last, so grab it while you can!
Only problem is that the box set is SO cheap that you need to spend another $5 or more on something else in order to get the free shipping. If I may make a suggestion, how about "Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers", the awful B5 spinoff that generated zero interest in turning it into a series. It's probably because of the weapons system on the ship which requires a kickboxer floating in zero gravity. What, it's not piqueing your interest? No? Not even in memory of Andreas Katsulas? My, but you're mean.
OK, how about the Home Movies box sets? I love that show, and this third season has some of the coolest animation of the show's run.
A cheaper suggestion: I recently discovered that Michael J. Nelson of MST3K has been doing commentary on various classic movies, such as Night of the Living Dead, House on Haunted Hill and Reefer Madness. (Not yet available through Amazon: Plan 9 from Outer Space)
Here is my Serenity review, for those of you who missed it.