Odds & Ends
Friday, March 14, 2008
Round-Up of the Frivolous Things
The site has had, until yesterday, another quiet few weeks, what with one thing another. Whenever I go through one of these periods where I don't have time to get something substantial up (or where, as was the was the case over the last week or so, I'm labouring over something that starts as a short post and ends as a great big one) the temptation is always to keep the page ticking over by posting the various silly things and rumours on this page. But then I get self-conscious about how lightweight some of this stuff is. After I've just published a "proper" article or post, though, I've got no such qualms. So on the coat-tails of my piece on Film Theory, it's time to catch up on the frivolous stuff from the internet. Bees! Bees! Millions of Bees! This one came from Jaime J. Weinman's Something Old, Nothing New, where Weinman was taking about Irwin Allen's The Swarm. A very dumb clip, but it gets me every time: as a commenter over at Weinman's blog put it, the way the guys says "Millions of bees!" makes it sound like he's selling them, not getting killed by them. Bosko Says What? Everyone loves it when a cartoon character swears. Via Cartoon Brew. Clampett Update There's been some good stuff on the internet about Bob Clampett over the last few eeeks: this post by Kristin Thompson looks at some freeze frames from his work and Michael Barrier talks about the cult of Clampett. The latter follows a debate that had played out following Barrier's earlier comments about the merits of Clampett's Buckaroo Bugs; you can follow that earlier debate through links from the more recent piece. If you're not that familiar with Clampett, I would humbly point you towards my earlier essay on him, which was intended as introduction for the uninitiated.  Wall-E.T. The main trailer for Pixar's Wall-E is out. YouTube below, but the much nicer HD version is here. People are really flipping out over this movie. I don't know - I don't find the trailer as completely convincing as others do, and Pixar have lost that aura of invincibility. But here's hoping. Speed Racer Trailer Now here's one that redefines the term "garish." YouTube below but this one you really need to see in HD (here). Who knows what to make of this. It kind of looks hideous and badly shot, but then I've commented just recently on what good action directors the Wachowskis are. Harry Potter and the Multiple Films And apparently Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is to be two movies. Given the really good bits of the last book are in the second half (see here for my comments when the book came out) this strikes me as unwise. Perhaps they can give the first half of the book, where the kinds are wandering the country, an epic Lord of the Rings-ish scope. But I think they risk getting a real dud out of this. Labels: animation, bordwell, clampett, harry potter, humour, pixar, rumours, trailers Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 14.3.08 - 0 comments  
Friday, May 25, 2007
He Shouldn't Have Released Him
Just a nod to the thirtieth anniversary of Star Wars. (This sentence is just filler to get around a layout bug in Blogger - if you can see it, please ignore it). Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 25.5.07 - 0 comments
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Trademark Infringiest Place on Earth
We are living in a golden age of intellectual property theft. But you have to hand it to people who can steal not just a piece of music, not just an unlicensed image of a character, not just a digital copy of a movie... but a whole amusement park. Yes, it's the unlicensed Chinese Disneyland. The park even has a song that rivals "It's a Small World" in the irritation stakes (and which far outdoes it in lyrical audacity): Although they could just be laughing their way to the bank. (Spotted at Cartoon Brew). Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 10.5.07 - 0 comments
Pulp Muppets
Exactly what it sounds like. hchvn wghhsdg dshfhsd dfhhdsf dsghh dfshh dghshgs dghshgs gdhsgh dghsgh gdhghs gdhsgh dghhdsg dghsgh dghsghsd dghsgh dhshsdg gdhsgsh gdhsgh ghdgshd dghssghd dfssdg gsgh. Also reminds you what an awesome trailer that film had. (Pointed out by Bevis). Labels: humour, muppets, tarantino Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 10.5.07 - 0 comments
Sunday, May 06, 2007
The Crudtastic Four
Before the disappointing Spider-man 3 there is a trailer for the next Fantastic Four movie: my possibly unfair assumption is that it will suck, which might burst the recent superhero revival bubble somewhat (although there is still the next Batman film to come). But it could be so much worse. For example, had you realised that in 1994, Roger Corman produced a version of The Fantastic Four? The rights to the series were contractually tied to the production of a movie by a certain date; if no movie was made, the producers' option would lapse. So a movie was produced, on an absolutely rock-bottom budget, with no intention of ever releasing it (at least not through conventional channels). And of course, it now circulates as a bootleg. Here's the trailer: And here's the ending. Spoiler and shonky rubber arm warnings apply: The funny thing is, the costume for the Thing is actually not so bad. Labels: corman, humour, superheroes, trailers Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 6.5.07 - 0 comments
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Here, Under Protest, is "Beef Burgers"
Now here's an oddity. For years a bootleg audio-tape has circulated of Orson Welles berating the directors of an advertisement for frozen peas, complaining about the script and the quality of their direction. It was a strange little curio, mentioned in David Thomson's Welles biography Rosebud, and one of those little pop-culture artifacts with its own tiny infamy - witness the existence of its own Wikipedia article. (Just thinking about it now, I wonder if it wasn't also the inspiration for the routine in Tootsie where Dustin Hoffman's Michael Dorsey complains about the script for an ad in which he played a tomato.) Anyway, that bootleg was the inspiration for a sequence in the nineties TV cartoon Pinky and the Brain where a slightly cleaned-up version of the dialogue was performed by the mice. (Maurice La Marche, who voiced the Brain, is known for his Welles impression: he overdubbed Vincent D'Onofrio as Welles in Tim Burton's Ed Wood). And now someone has gone and reunited the original Welles audio with the Pinky and the Brain animation. The result is, well, an even stranger little pop culture oddity. (This was brought to my attention, as so many of these kind of things are, by Jaime J. Weinman over at Something Old, Nothing New). Incidentally, I asked over at the the original post what The Brain had said instead of "I'll go down on you," and apparently it was "I'll make cheese for you." Which is a fortuitous substitution, as it preserves the lip-synch. If nothing else, the existence of the original Pinky and The Brain animation is a testament to the strange kinds of things that get slipped on to kids television when nobody at head office is paying attention. What on earth did the 99% of people who'd never heard of the "Frozen Peas" tape make of this? Labels: animation, commentary, humour Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 7.4.07 - 1 comments
Saturday, February 03, 2007
I Quit on You When You Cleared Out of Detroit with Willie the Pimp!
By the miracle of YouTube, a clever remix of Darth Vader's scenes in Star Wars with incongruous dialogue from James Earl Jones' other films. Strange, overlong, but intermittently very funny. It doubles as a tribute to Jones and the range of roles to which he's put that remarkable voice. Credit to Akjak.com. Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 3.2.07 - 0 comments
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Die Hungry
I believe the original Die Hard is one of the all-time classic bits of action cinema, but have no high hopes for the fourth film in the franchise, because, well, I have an ounce of common sense. It's going to suck like the vacuum of space. Beyond that, all I will say is: a) "Internet Terrorists" = Lame. Alan Rickman's gloriously Eurotrashy Hans Gruber would have hung their nerdy hides out to dry. b) It's a shame John McTiernan's not doing it. Even Die Hard with a Vengeance was pretty good until the script finally fell apart completely in the last third. c) This is only notionally a Die Hard film. Bruce Willis could be anybody: he's John McClane only because the Die Hard brand has more name recognition than any of his other franchises. If Striking Distance was his biggest hit, this would be Striking Distance 2: Strike Further. At least Renny Harlin's first sequel was recognisably a partner for the first film, with the same characters and some continuity of premise. d) Live Free or Die Hard may be the worst title since, well, Die Hard 2: Die Harder. So, the trailer that prompted these thoughts: And, with a nod to Jaime J. Weinman, Ben Stiller's take from The Ben Stiller Show, nearly 15 years ago. Labels: humour Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 21.12.06 - 0 comments
Saturday, December 09, 2006
The Monkey Remark
What's the best ever bit of editing? Eisenstein's Odessa Steps in Potemkin? Robert Wise's work on Citizen Kane? Or is it, just possibly, the following clip that is currently spreading on the net? (Before you go to the clip - it relates to Michael Richard's racist outburst the other day, so beware of potentially offensive language / comments, and comedy that jumps off from what a racist mongrel he proved himself.) One thing that always fascinates me about people when they get pulled up for making racist comments: they always apologise for saying something stupid. Nobody ever picks them up on the fact that if they've been stupid enough to reveal their deep seated racial hatred, its the latter that's the real problem, not their stupidity for revealing it. Labels: humour Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 9.12.06 - 0 comments
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This page is for assorted musings and editorialising that don't fit elsewhere on Cinephobia. Stills Avery, Jones, Clampett The Other Jones Iron Man 2: Early Review Location, Location, Location The Casting of Tintin Round-Up of the Frivolous Things Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Quicktime Tra... Franchising December 2003 May 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 Want to contact me? 
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