An old standard in making fun of older people is how they get the names of stuff wrong.  You can always get a laugh by saying someone in their sixties called the movie "THE Spider Man," or the actor "Tony McGuire" or the restaurant "The Factory for Cheesecake."  While it seems like a cheap stereotype sometimes, I'm constantly blown away by the truthfullness of it.  Why just yesterday, my mom asked me which person I knew on "The Last Comedian Show." 

I suppose the thing that gets me about this phenomenon is the lack of uncertainty old people have when they blurt out stuff like that.  When they butcher names of popular proper nouns, they have absolutely no self-doubt in their voice.  Moreover, when you correct them, they act like you're wasting their time with miniscule trivialities.  You'd think there would be some element of conditioning based on embarrassment, but it just seems to wash off them. 

I know whenever I read a book that has characters with unusual names (which really isn't that uncommon if you think about it), there's a good chance I could mispronouce the name of one of the characters if I were to talk about them.  Yeah, I may have seen it in black-and-white a thousand times, but that doesn't mean I have any clue as to how it sounds.  I'm therefore a bit hesitant when saying a not-obvious-how-to-pronounce name.  If I am butchering it, I've really spared myself from any embarrassment because I had no cockiness about it.  I wonder if this concern will disappear from my faculties as I reach a certain age. 
At my wedding, my mom gave a speech which included an allusion that I knew someone in the band, "Three Eye Blind."   This wasn't an improvised speech, she had all the time in the world to learn the correct name but it never registered as something worth fact-checking.  To this day, people who were at the wedding still bring it up to me.

Speaking of old people being out of it, I can't get over this quote from Jack Valenti about Richard Roeper saying "Everyone" should See "Farenhiet 9/11"

"Clearly, telling 'everyone' to see a film with an 'R' rating is an unabashed call to criminality," said the enraged Valenti. "If we were to allow this endorsement of age-blind anarchy, the nation's renegade seventeen-year-olds would abandon their marijuana-selling posts by the mall Pac-Man machines and turn their local cinematheques into sodomy-filled, psychotropic sock-hops. We cannot allow the children to download the movie into their brains!" 

SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK

Although my one-year-old daughter is too young to really benefit from it, I've been listening to CDs of SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK in her room while playing with her.  Few things are as sacred as SR to Gen Xers.  It's important to note that  the songs are not only powerfully nostalgic, but indeed truly wonderful educational tools.  Well...at least most of them are.  In listening to all of them again, one popped up that kind of washed over me as a kid - "Little Twelve Toes."  ABC must have had it on a really slow rotation because I don't remember them playing it much.  Moreover, when I bought the VHS tapes of SR in 1987, it wasn't on there either...And I'm starting to think that wasn't an oversight. 

Bob Dorough really phoned it in when he wrote this ditty.  If you look over the lyrics, you can see that the general message of the song is something like: "Twelves times tables are hard, there's really no tricks for learning them, but if there were some creature that had six digits on each extremity, he'd probably have a completely different numbering system using base twelve instead of base ten and therefore it would be easy for HIM to do HIS twelves."   I see.  So you've got nothing for me, but you're saying a fictional creature might be some help.  Thanks a lot.  I'll be sure to hum these sentiments while I'm taking my next math quiz. Maybe I can practice long division with a unicorn, too.   Why don't you write a song for thirteens while you're at it called "I'm Tired, Just Use a Calculator"

This song is flawed for many reasons.  First of all, I'm not sold that having twelve fingers would necessarily make you switch over to a different numbering system.  Base ten is pretty damn universal and  I kind of think Dorough realized that while writing and suddenly decided to make Twelve Toes from outer space in the middle of the song.    

Second, Twelvetoes can't "help me with my twelves," just as I can't "help you with your tens." As the song proclaims repeatedly,  we'd be using different base numbering systems.  According to the new digits in the song, I'd be helping him with his "deks" and he'd be helping me with what he'd call my "dohs."    And we really wouldn't be much help to each other. 

And while the song stresses that the singer and Twelvetoes himself are from different planets, the chorus keeps pleading for Twelvetoes to  "please COME back home." Yes, a modified lyric telling someone from a different planet to "please GO back home" would certainly present an extreme, isolationist viewpoint, but the current version makes no sense.  But now that I mention it, I kind of like the idea of the Schoolhouse-Rock-Universe Earth being so fearful of an alien landing and having such a wonderful new base numbering system that the powers that be wish to repell the visitor rather than allow his infectious ideas to take root.  Maybe Earth would then attack Twelvetoes home, wipe them out and then colonize the planet to get some more "Elbow Room." 

On a separate note, I think Dorough also went too hard on the nines.  They really are quite far from "mean-old," "naughty" or "nasty."  When I was learning my times tables, I couldn't believe how easy they were compared to, say, sevens or eights.  The trick to memorizing them was foolproof.  If you add the digits and don't get nine, you're wrong.

 

 

GODZILLA TOKYO SOS

Last night I caught the US premiere of Gojira tai Mosura tai Mekagojira: Tôkyô S.O.S.  at they Egyptian Theatre.  The place was packed and the full house wasn't disappointed.  I mentioned in this blog how much I enjoyed the last Godzilla entry, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, but this one may be even better.  Perhaps I'm biased seeing this one on the big screen whereas I watched the last on on DVD.  It's tough to separate the two films since they are so interconnected.  They really should be seen together like Kill Bill volumes I & II should. 

This film just felt so old school, but more beautiful.  The filmmakers are using suits and models (director Masâki Tezuka spoke afterward and said there was only one CGI shot in the whole film) but they're done so well, you lose the "laughable" quotient you used to get. The sensation now is "YEAH, I recognize that as being a model.  COOL, I'm glad they're staying true to the stylistic traditions of these movies. and WOW, I can't believe how gorgeous they've made models and suits look."  There were so many shots that were just stunning.  The sets were really great and the backdrops used for the skies were both painfully athentic to old-school kaiju movies and yet much better-looking.  Also, I've never seen Mothra fly so well.  One last critic note: the pacing of the movie was quite well done. 

Tezuka really has cherry-picked his continuity.  These two flicks are sequels to the original Godzilla, the original Mothra, War of the Gargantuas (in the last movie they mentioned the development of the maser cannon in hunting "Bigfoot Gaira") and now Yog, Monster from Space as the giant turtle, Kameba, is found washed ashore, apparently killed by Godzilla.  Tezuka mentioned that he originally wanted this to be Angillas, but that was nixed by Toho who didn't want such a popular monster to be reduced to the role of a corpse.  (They should have used Kevin Costner.  A big no-prize for anyone who gets that.)  All of the other Toho monster flicks are in a different universe though.  Mothra plays a big part in "S.O.S." and  Hiroshi Koizumi rprises his role from 1961 as Dr. Shinichi Chujo.  In some ways this movie is a remake of the original Mosura Tai Gojira (Godzilla fights adult Mothra, wins, twin larvae mothra hatch and come to save the day by cocooning him) with Mechagodzilla mixed in.  Forgive me if it seems like I'm giving away too much, there's actually a lot more to the movie than that.   

I was happy to see lots of young kids at the screening.  A new generation got a wonderful introduction to the Big G last night.  Also in the crowd were tons of really hard-core fans.  During the Q and A, one Japanese guy couldn't finish his question he was so passionate/enthused about talking to the director.  I also heard the name Stewart Galbrath mentioned as someone who helped prepare the festival.  I'm pretty certain this is the guy who authored Japanese Sciene Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films: A Critical Analysis of 103 Features Released in the United States 1952-1992 and I only bring up  him and his book because A: it's so incredibly scholarly and B: it was referenced in the Eisner Award-Winning Comic Book story "Bring Me the Head of Boba Fett," from Evan Dorkin's "Eltingville" saga.  The last question in the "trivia-off" had to do with the original English title of "Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster."  Josh used Galbraith's book to prove it was "Ebirah, Horror of the Deep"   The argument back and forth was quite hilarious and it really disheartened me to watch it removed and replaced with something vastly inferior when "Eltingville" - specifically "Bring Me the Head of Boba Fett" - was translated into a cartoon pilot. 

Anyway, after fifty years, Godzilla is alive and well and I'm really crossing my fingers that the next one keeps it going. 

FILM COINCIDENCES

I caught Love Actually a short while ago.  For those of you who don't know, it's a series of interconnected love stories set in England.  I suppose it's good enough overall, but some of the plots are done much better than others.  The film ends in London Heathrow airport, a month after the main action.  We catch up with the large cast of characters and see how their romances are doing.  Over this full-cast epilogue, director Richard Curtis chose to play "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys.  While it's a wonderful song and is put to fitting use, I'm surprised he chose it/wasn't told not to choose it, since it was used EXACTLY THE SAME WAY in Boogie Nights.  At the end of B.N., we see Reed Rothchild doing magic, Buck Swope opening his store, Maurice Rodriquez open his club, Roller Girl taking classes, etc. over the same tune.  It's really freaky.  While I don't think Richard Curtis ripped off P.T.A., I'm just surprised that no one brought the similarity to his attention.  This is much worse than when Ally McBeal was using the "Ooga Chakas" from "Hooked on a Feeling" for the dancing baby after Tarintino had them just before the robbery in Resevoir Dogs.  At least there, they were used very differently.  "God Only Knows" may be becoming the overused song flavor of the month.  I believe a cover of it was also over the closing credits in Saved.  It still has miles to go before it catches up to "I Feel Good" by James Brown and "Money (That's What I Want)" by the Beatles, which are not only ubiquitous, but relentlessly on-the-nose in their usage. 

Here are some other similarities in films that annoy me. 

--Gary Sinise is a seemingly good guy who turns out to be a bad guy in both  Ransom (1996) and Snake Eyes (1998).  The reveal takes place in almost the same minute in each film.  Talk about typecasting.  I don't understand why he took "Snake Eyes" and simply didn't say "I'm the last person who should be playing this part, since I JUST played it."

--Chloe Sevigny plays an innocent girl who contracts an uncurable sexual disease in both Kids and The Last Days of Disco.  It's not nearly as bad as the Gary Sinise thing, but  the similarity stood out to me since I saw both movies pretty close to each other.

--Here's the strangest one.  In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Jude Law plays someone who has his I.D. successfully used by Matt Damon.  In Gattica, Jude Law plays someone who has his I.D. successfully used by Ethan Hawke.  I guess Jude Law just has one of those faces that looks like everyone?!
 

COMEDY CONTESTS PLUS TIME = FUNNY

"Last Comic Standing" has certainly brought the comedy competitions back into the limelight.  Most comedians will say that they don't approve of any comedy "contest."  But the thing is, standup is such a brutal racket that those same comedians will most always enter such contests because of how tough any break is in this business.  During July and August of 1989, I had finished my sophomore year at the University of Michigan and was home in Massachusetts for the summer.  I wound up entering the WBCN Boston Comedy Riot. 

Comedy was incredibly hot in the late 80s and even an amateur contest such as this was a big deal.  At least it felt like a big deal.  At the very least it would most likely lead to a solid amount of road work in the Boston area - work that I most likely couldn't take since I had to go back to school in the fall.  But I am (and was) putting the cart before the horse.   

I had a decided advantage over the year-round locals.  The comedy scene in Michigan wasn't as log jammed with comedians - or at least starting comedians - as the Boston scene.  I could get up at open mics with great regularity in the Metro Detroit area.  In fact, several clubs were already giving me paid work.  The fight for any sort of stage time amongst the horde of Boston open mic-ers was much more fierce and they therefore had greater struggles to work on their acts.

I shoehorned my way into the Boston open mic scene as best I could.  Having the experience I had helped and I made a splash which was aided by the fact that no one had really seen me before.  I came across as "a hot new comic." 

I remember lots and lots of comics auditioning for the Riot and felt very lucky when it was announced I was one of the 24 to make it to the semi-finals.  The way it worked is six comics performed at Stitches Comedy Club for four nights.  The winner of each of the nights plus one wild card chosen by the judges would go to the finals on the fifth night, which would be held at the Paradise Theatre. 

I still have the promotional card from the event.  In looking over the lineup, several names of the contestants and the hosts for the night stand out.  I'll post my memories of how the whole thing went down later in the week, but can you guess how the judges voted?  It's interesting to note how their selections have aged over time. 


I know the above isn't that easy to read.  I would have scanned it, but I'm having trouble getting my scanner to work right now.  Anyway, the lineups were:

MONDAY, AUGUST 7th
Hosts: D.J. Hazzard, Mike Donovan
Contestants
1. Joe Rogan

RAPPERS DON'T LOSE

I caught the last half of Halloween: Resurrection last night.  I'm a big fan of the original to the point where I've been able to put up with each and every new sequel that has been released over the decades, no matter how bad.  While this new "Resurrection" gets a thumbs down from me (I can't imagine the first half saving it) I have to admit that I was a big sucker for a couple of the ideas.  The main gist of the plot is that six kids have stay in the Myers house for a night for a webcast  (kind of reminds me of the old standard where a bunch of people have to stay in a haunted house for a night in order to get their inheritence.)  Anyway, the idea of the flick was most likely the result of wanting to cash in on the craze of reality TV, as well as have lots of "Blair Witch"-type footage, but the end result produced some interesting side effects. 

A bunch of kids view the broadcast from a party and, much like Rear Window, watching someone who doesn't know they're in danger can really have amped-up tension when you're sharing the suspense with on-screen characters.  Much bigger though is that last girl who survives is sent text messages telling her where Michael Myers is throughout his pursuit of her.  I can't count the number of horror films I've watched where you're screaming at the screen for a character not to do something or go a certain way.  It was such a release to watch a heroine be sent spectator-based warnings and effectively use them.  It was kind of like a Giligan's Island TV movie where they finally get rescued in the first ten minutes.   It was the end of a type of horror movie blue balls that I didn't know I had. 

Anyway, there's a scene where Busta Rhymes fights Michael, doesn't get killed (in fact kind of holds his own with martial arts moves) and comes back at the end to give MM a seemingly-fatal blow.    Now correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't LL Cool J survive the last installment of Halloween?  Also, I seem to recall  LL Cool J surviving at the end of "Good Shark Hunting," I mean Deep Blue Sea.  Moreover, in Exit Wounds, I believe DMX fights Steven Segal and again, holds his own.  Come on, now.  Hasn't this gotten out of hand?  It scares me to think that rappers are so filled with ego that they won't let themselves get bested in a make-believe movie, even when their opponents are supernatural creatures.  While I do firmly believe that Busta Rhymes could create a superior, more-visually-inventive music video than Michael Myers, the confrontation stretches credulity, even in the Halloween franchise.  (Perhaps the biggest irony is that the one thing Busta Rhymes clearly deserves to win is Video of the Year, but he's been essentially shut out at the VMAs). 

LAST COMIC STANDING

This season of LCS has turned into one of the strangest reality programs I've seen.   First of all, an American Idol-like show about standup has a massive, built-in problem.  Standup comdey is different than any other art form.  Unlike singing, one performance really doesn't necessarily tell you much about the abilities of a comic.   You could have the same seven comics do a week together and each one could have a night where they had the best set.  While the idea itself is flawed, hey, reality TV is popular and you gotta go with the heat.  This is showbiz, baby. 

The first season of contestants were essentially open-mikers, undiscovered wannabes who were so raw that you couldn't really assess their potential.  Again, standup has it's own laws, one of them being that it's never clear how good someone will become when they're starting out.  No one, and I mean no one, is capable of forseeing that without a crystal ball.   The path to fame is without rhyme or reason and the ways people can "make it" have no bounds.  The problem with the first season of LCS was that these amateurs were truly not-ready-for-prime-time-players and yet they were on on prime-time.
 
A decision was made this season to open it up to any comic, regardless of how experienced or credential-filled their resume already was.  Mind you, I don't believe this was done strictly to make the show funnier.  Yeah,  showcasing acts that have been honed through years and years of experience will yeild a more entertaining program, but the real issue is that standup comedy has been struggling for about a decade.  Lots and lots of serious comedians are having a very tough time and it indeed seems a waste to give so much highly-watched screentime to beginners when there's so few venues for veterans these days.   

But while the new approach makes sense and while being on the show is amazing exposure, it still seems odd to see these pros reduced to this.  Many of the comics have already done the Tonight Show.  Sue Costello had her own sitcom.  Kathleen Madigan won female comic of the year in 1996.  It kind of made my skin crawl to watch them have to wait in line all day and then perform in front of Ross and Bob without an audience. 

I suppose the biggest irony is that the second most harmful blow to the standup comedy industry (America's decade-long disinterest in standup being the first) is the decline of the sitcom.  No longer is the Montreal Comedy festival ending in a string of network development deals with breakout performers there.  And why is the sitcom dying?  Reality TV is certainly a huge factor.  If a sitcom is built around this season's LCS champion and is aired, can it possibly be as successful as the show that spawned it?  It would certainly be an uphill battle.  Despite its flaws, this season of LCS does seem to have made America care about standup again. 

Much has been made of the show being "rigged."  While I do think NBC has covered their bases, there is a much greater connection between several contestants and some of the people making the show than is being shown.  And while Drew Carey and fellow celebrity judges got mad that they felt their votes were discounted (which they essentially were), I found it equally non-objective to watch Drew judge Monty Hoffman, his buddy and old co-star from The Good Life.

Since NBC and the producers are being so surreptitious in revealing the extent of their connections to certain contestants, I feel it would be sanctimonious for me to do so as well.   While I've worked with a number of people in the top 40 in one place or another, I've been buddies with John Heffron since his very first set.  It seems like just yesterday that Eric Champnella and I got him booked on his first paid gig in Alpena, Michigan and then laughed our assess off because we'd both done the room and knew he wasn't ready for that hell.  Well, the joke's certainly on us now.  Good luck, John.

I've been so out of it that I missed the release of a new Godzilla film.  Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S. has completely slipped in under my radar and will see its American premiere later this month at the Egyptian Theatre during the American Cinematheque's celebration of the 50th anniversary of Godzilla.  This sequel to the well-recieved Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla came out in Japan in 2003. How on Earth is it possible that I did not know this?  Why have I not already seen an untranslated, poor quality bootleg dub of this six months ago?  I really gotta start spending less time with my family and get on the ball.    

While I believe that blog entries should do more than just link to other things on the net, I'm kind of at a loss for words over JAY MAYNARD'S TRON COSTUME.  Where do you even begin? 

FANBOY GOLDEN BOY

It was recently announced that five more episodes of "Clone Wars" will air on Cartoon Network next March.  As I've said before, the main problem with the initial runs of CW was that the mostly-three-minutes-long-episodes were too short.  As a viewer, you never had enough time to get into things.  Even when you watch a bunch in a row, stories never were allowed to pick up steam.  The last three chapters are an exception.  The two-part fight between Anakin and Asaji was great and was only eclipsed by Chapter 20.  The introduction of General Grievous was amazingly well-handled and powerful.  It's important to note that it was, by far, the longest chapter, clocking in at over seven minutes.   It is therefore wonderful news that each of the five new episodes currently being produced will be TWELVE minutes in length.  With Grievous now in the picture and so much time to tell these new chapters, it's tough not to get really excited about this. 



Chapter 20 of Clone Wars is my favorite thing these days.  I watch it all the time.  The extent to which the Jedi are frightened of GG before you even see him says so much.  The actual second Grievous is introduced -- when he stomps on the Hudson-from-"Aliens"-like padawan and then unfolds -- is quite momentous, although certainly not as cool a design or transformation as when the Iron Giant turns into Battle Giant.   Things really go off the hook once he starts fighting.  His moves are endlessly inventive and graceful.  I haven't seen a robot kick butt so beautifully since  Black Magic M-66.     




The obvious comparison to this one-verses-many animated fight is the the classic appearance of Great Mazinga in the end of Majingâ Zetto tai Ankoku Daishôgun (Mazinga Z vs. General Dark).  GM probably puts on an even greater show of jaw-dropping power, but since Great Mazinga is technically on the side of good, the effect is much different.   General Grievous is a villain and seeing his effortless ass-whupping has a more heart-stopping impact.  You're watching a conclusion where evil wins, wins easily and you can't imagine anything being able to stop it.  It's just brilliant.   



The success of "Clone Wars" has to fall squarely at the feet of Genndy Tartakovsky, who's really become the fanboy it-boy these days.  In addition to helming these additional CW chapters, he also has just been hired to write and direct the new live-action ASTRO BOY, which will be produced by Don Murphy and Christine Belson.  The project has been in development for a long time, but with the red-hot Tartakovsky on board, I'd say the classic Osamu Tezuka property will indeed finally show up on the big screen.  In an age where cheerished properties are "messed up" by Hollywood left and  right, it's refreshing to see something you care about fall into the hands of someone who will respect and understand the source material.   

But it's important to note that Genndy isn't someone who just likes the right stuff and has fanboy street cred.  His own, original creations have garnered high respect.  Samurai Jack followers are almost manical in their praise of him and the internet is filled with bulletin boards pointing up clever Dexter's Laboratory jokes.   

In re-watching the first 20 Chapters of Clone Wars with a friend, something was pointed out to me that I somehow hadn't noticed before:  not one second of Jar Jar.  Considering what a Rosetta Stone Tartakovsky has become to fanboy sensibility, it wouldn't surprise me to learn the omission was something he put in his contract.