Happy Thanks-For-Giving on Thanksgiving! (Part 1) :)

I know, I know!  It's called Thanksgiving, but the play on words is a nod to the rarely-seen TV Special, Daffy Duck's Thanks-For-Giving Special, which was produced and directed by Chuck Jones. The reason why it's not shown often is because the cartoons had little/nothing to do with the holiday - it was really just a chance to premiere Jones' sequel to Duck Dodgers Of The 24 1/2 Century: Duck Dodgers And The Return To The 24 1/2 Century. But the marketing for the cartoon featured an image of Daffy Duck in pilgrim garb, which I've posted below, along with other images of Thanksgiving craziness that I've found, including an epic crossover between the stars of three 1960s sitcoms: The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. Too bad it was just a photo op. It also appears to have been taken in the late-60s,  since June Lockhart is present (replacing Bea Benederet).

And I did not forget the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (or CBS's coverage of the parade, which had gotten a little bit hipper after they ditched the cheesy "All-American Thanksgiving" format around 2004/2005, though I wish they'd brought back Daisy Fuentes to cover it like they did to launch the change - nothing wrong with having a hip, sexy woman host a parade, says I). Remember the days when there was no Spider-Man balloon and a fan created an online petition to bring it back? I'm not sure if it made a dent, but I recall meeting the guy while standing on line for autographs from the Romitas, John and John jr. - he was low-key and nervous; he ducked out (!) and the woman accompanying him (I'm assuming it was his girlfriend or wife *) got them to sign a copy of the petition on his behalf.

"I'm a man on a mission" - his reply to me when I saw the long form in his hand and asked about it. Maybe it turned the tide?  Who knows?

And how can I not mention A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving? Even if I had forgotten,  all of cyberspace would have reminded me! My favorite tribute is the fan who made a batch of cupcakes depicting images/items seen in the special. The Peanuts gang's antics might be hard to take in large doses these days (nowadays ol' Chuck would be hooked on anti-depressants), but nowadays people are trying to reinvent Thankgiving dinners to allow for vegans or calorie counters; Charles Shultz's original target was anyone who insisted on having Thanksgiving dinner at a diner or restaurant, in which the experience gets shortchanged by flakey service; we're slowly learning how to love a plate full of pretzels, toast & jellybeans. My favorite scene is the last one played over the credits,  with Snoopy & Woodstock quietly enjoying a Thanksgiving feast after all the kids have left.

Lastly, I'm not a huge fan of Planes, Trains And Automobiles, the John Hughes film in which Steve Martin & John Candy play strangers who keep running into eachother in airports and train stations during the Thanksgiving weekend travel crush and eventually have to work together if they're going to get anywhere - partly because their characters were a bit cardboard (Martin was on his way to becoming the bland suburban "Dad" of Cheaper By The Dozen; Candy is sort of playing off himself - and his weird moustache & frizzy hair - for all of it - their chemistry was weak; maybe if it was Rick Moranis playing the Candy role to Martin or Chevy Chase playing the Martin role to Candy..), but it might be the only Thanksgiving movie I'm aware of, except for Other People's Money, which has a few scenes set around the holiday.

Tomorrow in part 2's installment I'll talk Turduckens - of the comic book kind, that is.

*I don't believe that woman was his wife or girlfriend. It was his mother.

The Other Three Doctors

Yesterday, I watched Doctor Who: The Day of The Doctor on BBCAmerica. This TV special just earned a Guinness World Record for being the largest live simulcast of a TV drama in history, airing in over 200 countries at the same time. It will also be shown in many movie theatres throughout the weekend in 3D and will premiere in American cinemas Monday, November 25th.  This special celebrates the 50th anniversary of the series premiere in 1963.

Was it good? It was excellent!  I loved it! I believe it's the best episode of the current series. I was impressed with how writer/producer Steven Moffat was able to integrate a lot of continuity, nods to the past, running gags and characters eloquently in a fairly short (it's about 75 minutes long) movie. The Last Great Time War - the apocalyptic battle on Gallifrey, the Doctor's home planet, was the source of all the angst that had underpinned the characterization of the titular hero for the last eight years; with The Day of The Doctor , the chip gets wiped off his shoulder in a big paradigm shift that actually makes more sense than what we were told; given what we know of him, the Doctor, even when bred for war, is not a killing machine - he wouldn't be the Doctor,  he would be a different character altogether,  and it wouldn't be Doctor Who anymore. Moffat figured out a way to finally resolve/reconcile this contradictory plotline by introducing John Hurt as The War Doctor.

I was curious to see what this new "black sheep" Doctor was going to be. There were a LOT of theories online regarding this mayfly incarnation - happily, they turned out to be wrong. Hurt's performance is fantastic and colorful; his grizzled Doctor is equal parts Gandalf/Obi-Wan Kenobi and 1890s Klondike Gold Rush prospector (think Walter Huston in The Treasure of  The Sierra Madre), he holds his own next to series star Matt Smith and fan-favorite Doctor David Tennant (whose performance is so flawless, it's like he never left!),  which is no easy feat. Costars Jenna Coleman and Billie Piper also get to shine (Moffat's script took care in giving everyone a real part to play and avoid turning the whole works into an overlong curtain call, which is why it bugs me when people compare his & Russell T. Davies efforts to Joss Wheddon, when I believe Joss should take notes - he only knows how to write teenagers, geeks or immature adults who won't grow up). Joanna Page as Queen Elizabeth the 1st was cute as a very catty & minx-like "virgin queen" Bess; at times, she resembles Judi Dench (!), who has played the Queen as well.

Then there were the cameos. There were two BIG surprise cameos, one not-so-big, and one BIG surprise cameo in a separate "minisode" that served as a prequel and premired the week before. That minisode, The Night of The Doctor, featured the first onscreen appearance of Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, an incarnation that was introduced in a Doctor Who TV movie that aired in 1996, but only made subsequent appearances in tie-in novels and audio plays thereafter. His appearance in this short film has revived interest in seeing him reprise his role again, and I wouldn't be surprised if he does appear in the next batch of episodes.

The not-so-big cameo was the reappearance of all the other actors who played the Doctor (living & dead) during the climatic battle sequence via footage from old episodes reedited to appear "new"...and amongst that was a quick blink-or-you'll-miss-it BIG cameo by Peter Capaldi (!), who will be replacing the departing Matt Smith. We only see his eyes and eyebrows, but they are very intense eyes and eyebrows! This Time Lord is a man on a mission - perhaps the mission implied in the final scenes...

The last BIG cameo featured Tom Baker (!). Even though the actor (arguably the most-famous, iconic & recognizeable incarnation of the Doctor - y'know, the one who looks like Harpo Marx, wears an impossibly long scarf and has been caricatured on The Simpsons & Futurama often) told the Huffington Post that he was appearing in it, nobody really believed it. The only clue that he was being truthful might be the Radio Times cover promoting the event, which offered a cover featuring Tom as the Doctor from a 1993 TV Special, "Dimensions in Time", in which he's noticeably older and not an older photo of him from the past, in his classic 70s look. He's spry for his age, even though he's lit up in this special as though he were were feeble/ghostly/spectral in appearance, although there may be something to that - Tom's final DW adventure, "Logopolis", featured the Doctor being haunted by a ghostly watcher as well...one who turned out to be an avatar of his future self!

There's a big debate online as to who Tom was playing in The Day of The Doctor. Was he merely playing the humble museum curator his character claimed to be (with an extensive knowledge of  the Doctor and Gallifrey, even proclaiming/hinting knowledge of what lies ahead?), a future incarnation of the Doctor - one who chose to resume the form of the 4th Doctor and "retire", or maybe he's the Doctor's brother,  Irving Braxiatel, a Time Lord known for his extensive art collection? Nobody knows, but it's a surprise appearance that was loved by many...maybe it was just Tom Baker as Tom Baker, the only man alive who could get away with knowing more about the Doctor than the Doctor!

So...after three years of wobbly storylines that seemed to mark a series that was coasting on good will earned by old feats of greatness (this was Moffat's best script since "Blink", an episode that's regarded as the most-popular episode of Doctor Who of all time in most online polls..an episode that the Doctor, ironically, has only a minor part to play in!), or just support from new audiences keen on feeling like they weren't late for the party, this TV special delivered. It had the meat, the sauce, the lettuce, the spice...anyone who disagrees should go watch Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D ...because they're too spoiled from having the good stuff and could use a dose of the opposite.

Here's a fun gallery of images related to the  whole works. Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween! To celebrate, I decided to simply offer a gallery of ghoulery to create the right mood...like an all-star Halloween TV special. I reccommend that you chow down on candy corn on the cob & chocolate spider-chip cookies while admiring all the beautiful...pumpkins. :)

A Document On A Documentary...

I've watched and rewatched all three episodes of Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, the documentary about comic book superheroes that premiered this month on PBS several times now. This is the newly-revised history of the genre, because it ignored a few big watershed events in comic book history...probably because they're not as relevant as they used to be, but if you know the history of superhero comics, then you were just watching for fun...I'm not certain if new audiences were aware if anything was missing.

There were some surprises. The Neal Adams-Denny O'Neill run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow is now regarded as high-end material, yet for a long time, was considered condescending, clunky, creaky, preachy "junk" - a form of lip service - ditto the "I am Curious (Black)" issue of Lois Lane; these stories were marketed towards parents buying comics reluctantly for their kids - "Maybe they'll learn something!" ...like learn that they should buy the books they want themselves?...;)

I knew they were going to bring up the 9-11 issue of Amazing Spider-Man..that's become law now...let me put it this way: that issue of that comic is no better or worse than other very special issues, only it's connection to a real-life tragedy keeps it relevant to the real world, so it's stuck around more than anything Marvel's done with Spider-Man in the last 30 years, an event keeping company alongside the faux "Wedding of Spider-Man & Mary Jane Watson" ceremony at Shea Stadium (a ballpark that no longer exists), or Todd McFarlane drawing Spidey's webbing like spaghetti (The spaghetti webs rival the nipples on George Clooney's Batman costume in terms of unimportant details that people with no lives obsess over).

So what did they miss? First off, they ignored Marvel's Secret Wars series. This wasn't the first time Marvel tried a big crossover storyline, but it was the first to capture the imagination of the audience and work well as a tie-in to sell toys. One of the first action figures I owned was a Doctor Octopus figure from Secret Wars; I let him have one last brawl with my Spider-Man figure before bidding it adios earlier this year. I'm well-aware that this series is panned nowadays for it's clunky writing and journeyman art (harsher words have been said about it), but it was a huge hit for Marvel in the 1980s.

Another big hit that was ignored by this program was Crisis On Infinite Earths. THIS is the one omission getting buzzed about across the web; it's still highly-regarded, DC Comics is still using it as a brand for various spinoffs that have capitalized on it/played off it, or given them the confidence to proceed with equally audacious events like The Death of Superman, Knightfall, Zero Hour, Kingdom Come, DC One Million, Batman: No Man's Land, Our World's At War, Infinite Crisis, 52, Countdown, Blackest Night, Flashpoint, Before Watchmen (an event that would have been unthinkable even when the film adaptation was made, for various reasons - long story) and MORE!  Now, I'll be the first to admit that when I first tried reading this series I didn't really understand what was happening (or what, beyond the "Where's Waldo"-ness of it, was the story REALLY was about) until I read two or three tie-ins that were published sometime after, but I understand why was it important, and the effort put into it is something that we really won't see again and has not been equaled - an exhaustive effort, with none of the shortcuts that our current generation of wannabe-rockstar writers & artists can match...but I know why this program skipped it..

It's yesterday's news. Supergirl has been alive and well for almost a decade, the Earth2 concept is back in action, along with the whole "Mutiverse" concept, Barry Allen is the Flash again, the Huntress was just recently revealed to have been Helena Wayne all along, Batgirl survived the events of The Killing Joke...I'm not sure if Clayface is Matt Hagen again, though. Anyway, it's still a good story, but it doesn't support the real argument this program is trying to make..

So...what was Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle all about? Their impact on film. Movies! Superhero movies - they've become a new genre now, separate from fantasy or adventure or action movies, so the program devoted three hours to arguing the cinematic element of those comic books and, reading between the lines, how they've become more palatable for Hollywood. A series like Crisis would only highlight the cynical, cyclical nature of how these "event" storylines can burn away audiences (a subject they danced around when they got to the 90s). The only comics this program made me want to go look for in a comic shop were Jim Steranko's Nick Fury, Agent of SHEILD, which is a bit sad, in the wake of Samuel L. Jackson's creaky Nick Fury on film and Marvel's Agents of B.O.R.I.N.G on television...Marvel still doesn't know how to tell entertaining spy stories.

So...if you're interested in a documentary about comic books that really makes you want to check them out, as well as understand how the medium can work as a legitimate art form, look for Comic Book Confidential. It's over twenty years old, but it's on DVD and has more to say in a shorter amount of time.

Silver Dollars: Ducktales Anniversary, Part 6

I just recently learned a brand new Ducktales video game was released right under our noses! And I'm not talking about Ducktales Remastered; I'm talking about Scrooge's Loot, the new FREE downloadable app that you can play on your smartphone or tablet.

There are cut scenes featuring original cast members Alan Young as Scrooge McDuck and Terry McGovern as Launchpad Mcquack, but it appears the gameplay involves four new characters created exclusively for the game...and I have no idea what their names are. I would like to know, because that implies a lot of things going on behind-the-scenes (it is the only Disney Afternoon show on DVD that's still kept in stock in retail stores - could it be that Disney will produce new episodes the way Warner Brothers cranks out new Scooby Doo cartoons?...). The last time new Disney characters crept onscreen without introduction was in the title sequence for The Disney Afternoon (Darkwing Duck, Gosalyn Mallard, Bonkers D. Bobcat) and we only learned who they were when their respective TV shows premiered.

Anyway, the new characters are a young boy duckling, dressed as a Junior Woodchuck and wearing spats; a tall, burly duck dressed as a chef; a nerdy duck that resembles Professor Frink from The Simpsons in duck feathers; and a female duck dressed as a flying ace. WHO they are in relation to the Ducktales cast of characters is not clear, though the team behind the game hints that they are aware of the show's continuity (a brief scene at the beginning establishes that Huey, Dewey and Louie are away visiting Donald). Only the design for the duck scientist looks original,  while the other ducks appear to "pick n' mix" types with features culled from incidental characters seen on the show.

I can't find any press releases online that would shed more light on what this is all about, but at a glance, it's a nice looking game. Samples of the gameplay I've seen on YouTube reminds me of Super Mario Sunshine, with all the gadgets that have to be used. To my knowledge, this is the first official platformer/shooter/adventure game offered by Disney for the current wave of mobile devices (I do remember a crude-looking Kingdom Hearts game offered years back, but that was a "card battle" game, not what we got here); all the games released in the last two years or so have been puzzle games - usually with recent Disney fare like Phineas and Ferb or the new Mickey Mouse short cartoons. This is a big deal! If you're a Ducktales fan, I recommend that you check it out - It's FREE! :)