Hey gang! I was at a swap meet and found a bunch of unmarked blank videocassette tapes that I brought for a buck!
...and then I found out why. I was hoping for someones pay-per-view recordings, but this was interesting ... and disturbing. Here's a transcript from a video diary on one tape dated October 14, 1997...
OK...Last time, I talked about how I was going to different flea markets, yard sales and swap meets - they're all kind of the same, but with different names, I don't get it - shopping for a specific type of lantern. Well, I've got eight so far and I need two more. I've maxed out my credit card and I'm worried if I borrow her card, she'll catch on to what I'm doing.
The tracking started to go on the video at this point. It continues for about ten minutes before the picture and sound come back.
I'm nervous about this. I was willing to believe the house was built on a hillside and the elevation kept us constantly adjusting furniture and anything hung-up on walls and anything on wheels - that type of thing. And when I found all those dead mice in the basement the day after we learned there were mice...and when we came back from our second Honeymoon and that whole family of squatters was found...hung from the ...
Another break, this time the color went to black and white and the whole image bent and at acute angles for a few minutes before the VCR went off. I checked the tape and blew off on odd accumulation of grimy ashes forming along the edges of the tape itself. Then I played it again...
I also didn't mind that she was into scary stories, particularly this Lovecraft guy. She's got boxes of stuff - all books, most of them in different languages, I think. Some of them have pictures of ...I don't know, some kind of tantric kama sutra voodoo stuff with a guy wearing an Octopus head...My last girlfriend was a huge My Little Pony fan. Michelle, I'm sorry I made fun of you, then. You haven't met Pamela.
The last watchable footage on the tape shows the man, now holding the camera, showing off the lanterns he purchased. They are all laid out on the floor in the formation of the points of a pentagram, with their cords and extension cords connecting to form the completed shape. He is also waving a large unwieldy hardcover book with his remaining free hand.
This is it...the book shows that if I stand in the center with the lanterns powered on, I will be safe for the night. So, I'm going to put the camera back on the stand and let it continue filming while I go to sleep.
He places a rocking chair in the center of the pentagram after setting the camera on its stand. He then plugs in a power strip that is hooked-up to all the lanterns on turns it on. The lanterns light up the area, which looks like the living room of the house. A voice calls out. It does not sound friendly.
"Michael? Are you coming to bed?"
"Michael" rushes toward a nearby desk and pulls out a gun. He then scrambles into the chair at the center of the pentagram.
"I'll be right there. I'm still watching the Late Show."
At this stage the picture tends to fade out and fade in at ten-minute intervals, with "Michael" dozing off in his rocker. The gun appears to have fallen out of his hand at some point...then, the lanterns start to flicker and a weird gurgling noise starts traveling into the room from off screen. Michael is startled and starts to look panicky before staring at something lurching forward...again, off screen. Then the power goes out.
The tape ends there.
...I started searching the tapes for more information. It seems he taped "Full House", "Step by Step", "Hanging With Mr. Cooper" and "Family Matters".
Just when you thought you'd seen the scariest thing ever, there's always something MUCH scarier...
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Friday, September 28, 2012
No $#!+ Sherlock!: Elementary School
"..and Sherlock Holmes after all is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue."
- Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder
Well, I could say the same thing about Phillip Marlowe, but I'd rather talk about Elementary, the new CBS drama that premiered last night, starring Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson, respectively. It was a show pilot, setting up the show's premise - Sherlock Holmes moves to New York - and meets Joan. He also meets Captain Gregson, played by Aiden Quin (Tobias Gregson is a character that sometimes pinch-hit for Inspector Lestrade in the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so, yes, London had more than one cop protecting the city). The mystery was routine - basic Law & Order/CSI/Monk/Mentalist stuff. What was really interesting was Holmes.
In recent years, adaptations of Sherlock Holmes lean toward him as acting like an aloof, misanthropic rock star - if you can't keep up with me, piss off - that kind of thing. Benedict Cumberbatch is like that, Hugh Laurie is like that (yes, I am counting House M.D. - I believe that's how the revival really began) Robert Downey Jr. has that same approach, with the sexual ambiguity thrown in (I'm sure all the mystery writers who thought making their detectives confirmed bachelors with no sex lives and ridiculous-sounding names are all wearing ice bags on their heads in the afterlife - it used to be a school of thought that the bouquet of roses and magnifying glass were two separate worlds and the genre would be more "romantic psychological suspense thriller" than "puzzle-solving detective story" How could they have known that they couldn't have been more wrong?). At this stage, Gordon Ramsay and Simon Cowell could be Sherlock Holmes.
Anyway, Johnny Lee Miller does give his performance that same rock star vibe - I'm surprised they haven't thought of playing Sting's "An Englishman In New York" or maybe they're getting to it and I'm jumping ahead again - but he also comes off as a gentlemann - we haven't seen that in a while! That was Basil Rathbone's Sherlock - calm, composed and careful. There's also some of Jeremy Brett in Miller's performance - the scenes where Homes is going over the details of the various living quarters and draws inferences from how the layout influences how the people who lived in it would have moved about. And yet, he uses his gentlemanly demeanor to deliver backhanded compliments, so their is an edge beneath the surface. It'll be interesting to watch how he stands out from the pack.
As for Lucy Liu, I think this the first time she gets to really play a character who isn't emo or a prop of some sort. There are hints that she'll get to blossom acting-wise. We'll see, we'll see.
As for the production values, I would like to see them have more fun with the New York locations. It's shot the way most films are shot in New York - flat and grainy. Terry Gilliam made New York look like a Medieval fantasy world in The Fisher King. London was Sherlock's playground in the BBC series, but it's actually smaller than New York. Think about it, guys, just think about it... 
- Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder
Well, I could say the same thing about Phillip Marlowe, but I'd rather talk about Elementary, the new CBS drama that premiered last night, starring Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson, respectively. It was a show pilot, setting up the show's premise - Sherlock Holmes moves to New York - and meets Joan. He also meets Captain Gregson, played by Aiden Quin (Tobias Gregson is a character that sometimes pinch-hit for Inspector Lestrade in the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so, yes, London had more than one cop protecting the city). The mystery was routine - basic Law & Order/CSI/Monk/Mentalist stuff. What was really interesting was Holmes.
In recent years, adaptations of Sherlock Holmes lean toward him as acting like an aloof, misanthropic rock star - if you can't keep up with me, piss off - that kind of thing. Benedict Cumberbatch is like that, Hugh Laurie is like that (yes, I am counting House M.D. - I believe that's how the revival really began) Robert Downey Jr. has that same approach, with the sexual ambiguity thrown in (I'm sure all the mystery writers who thought making their detectives confirmed bachelors with no sex lives and ridiculous-sounding names are all wearing ice bags on their heads in the afterlife - it used to be a school of thought that the bouquet of roses and magnifying glass were two separate worlds and the genre would be more "romantic psychological suspense thriller" than "puzzle-solving detective story" How could they have known that they couldn't have been more wrong?). At this stage, Gordon Ramsay and Simon Cowell could be Sherlock Holmes.
Anyway, Johnny Lee Miller does give his performance that same rock star vibe - I'm surprised they haven't thought of playing Sting's "An Englishman In New York" or maybe they're getting to it and I'm jumping ahead again - but he also comes off as a gentlemann - we haven't seen that in a while! That was Basil Rathbone's Sherlock - calm, composed and careful. There's also some of Jeremy Brett in Miller's performance - the scenes where Homes is going over the details of the various living quarters and draws inferences from how the layout influences how the people who lived in it would have moved about. And yet, he uses his gentlemanly demeanor to deliver backhanded compliments, so their is an edge beneath the surface. It'll be interesting to watch how he stands out from the pack.
As for Lucy Liu, I think this the first time she gets to really play a character who isn't emo or a prop of some sort. There are hints that she'll get to blossom acting-wise. We'll see, we'll see.
As for the production values, I would like to see them have more fun with the New York locations. It's shot the way most films are shot in New York - flat and grainy. Terry Gilliam made New York look like a Medieval fantasy world in The Fisher King. London was Sherlock's playground in the BBC series, but it's actually smaller than New York. Think about it, guys, just think about it...
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Silver Dollars: Ducktales at 25 Part 4
Time to play a game...or watch someone else play it HERE . I got a chance to promote Chris's blog and show both of the Ducktales NES video games at the same time. Yay me. That Australian commercial for McDonald's Happy Meal toys smacks of the 1980s! I assume it must have aired with an epsiode of "Mr. Belvedere" or "Growing Pains", followed by "The Facts of Life".
I'm happy to report that my NES still works. My Game Boy is a different story altogether. It's the strangest thing - you do your best to keep things in good shape...and entrophy makes sure that it still falls apart. Anyway, I was knee-deep in the Sega Genesis (and playing Quackshot, which is a kind-of sequel to Ducktales, really - there's no other way to explain it) to get Ducktales 2. Besides, I don't remember the first game being easy to find, anyway. I recall my mom brought it from one of those small toy shops that had backpacks hanging outside the entrance from the awnings. I remember smacking my head against the wheel of a low-hanging stroller once...
I also remember the issue of Nintendo Power that had Scrooge on the cover. And that I don't have it anymore. :(
The Ducktales game was a big improvement by Capcom after the hideous Mickey Mousecapade game...the less said about that, the better. Ducktales was actually an add-on to the pre-existing board for Mega Man, (not unlike how Ms. Pac Man was an add-on created by students at MIT and submitted to Namco) so there is a
fair amount of deja vu in the gameplay. If you've played the game before, or seen the footage provided, you can see the appeal of it. I think the highest compliment paid was an epsiode of Icons on G4 devoted to the NES - a few seconds of the Ducktales Game and title card appeared in a montage of the Nintendo Entertainment System's "Greatest Hits"/highlights. Nice.
Mickey Mousecapade - this made me run and hide behind the sofa...after my mom saw how this $50.00 game that her "intelligent" son made her buy looked on the tv.
Donald Duck in QuackShot - I recall seeing a guy selling his Sega Genesis at a yard sale and this was the only game he offered with the system. Not Sonic, not Altered Beast. Quackshot. That makes a lot of sense to me.
To the surprise of many... Scrooge made an appearance in Kindom Hearts 2, but it was in pantomime. Squareenix made up for this egregious error by bringing back Alan Young (!) for this special appearance...
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep ... I wonder what that series would have been like if it began with Sora teaming up with a certain tycoon from a town where life is like a hurricane, full of racecars, lasers and airplanes. 
I'm happy to report that my NES still works. My Game Boy is a different story altogether. It's the strangest thing - you do your best to keep things in good shape...and entrophy makes sure that it still falls apart. Anyway, I was knee-deep in the Sega Genesis (and playing Quackshot, which is a kind-of sequel to Ducktales, really - there's no other way to explain it) to get Ducktales 2. Besides, I don't remember the first game being easy to find, anyway. I recall my mom brought it from one of those small toy shops that had backpacks hanging outside the entrance from the awnings. I remember smacking my head against the wheel of a low-hanging stroller once...
I also remember the issue of Nintendo Power that had Scrooge on the cover. And that I don't have it anymore. :(
The Ducktales game was a big improvement by Capcom after the hideous Mickey Mousecapade game...the less said about that, the better. Ducktales was actually an add-on to the pre-existing board for Mega Man, (not unlike how Ms. Pac Man was an add-on created by students at MIT and submitted to Namco) so there is a
fair amount of deja vu in the gameplay. If you've played the game before, or seen the footage provided, you can see the appeal of it. I think the highest compliment paid was an epsiode of Icons on G4 devoted to the NES - a few seconds of the Ducktales Game and title card appeared in a montage of the Nintendo Entertainment System's "Greatest Hits"/highlights. Nice.
Mickey Mousecapade - this made me run and hide behind the sofa...after my mom saw how this $50.00 game that her "intelligent" son made her buy looked on the tv.
Donald Duck in QuackShot - I recall seeing a guy selling his Sega Genesis at a yard sale and this was the only game he offered with the system. Not Sonic, not Altered Beast. Quackshot. That makes a lot of sense to me.
To the surprise of many... Scrooge made an appearance in Kindom Hearts 2, but it was in pantomime. Squareenix made up for this egregious error by bringing back Alan Young (!) for this special appearance...
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep ... I wonder what that series would have been like if it began with Sora teaming up with a certain tycoon from a town where life is like a hurricane, full of racecars, lasers and airplanes.
Friday, September 14, 2012
A Lost "Last"/ Last "Lost" Tale...
I'm posting this link to one of the blogs I follow:
The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of...: The Witches: The Real Deal.: BEWARE! SPOILER ALERT! The scariest film I ever watched as a child was Nicolas Roeg's The Witches (1990). There were many scenes in films...
I had commented that "The Witches" was one of the last projects Jim Henson worked on before he died, but in truth, it was one of the last he oversaw. Henson was a very, very, very busy man for most of his adult life. In some alternate reality, he's the guy on Ed Sullivan's show who spins dozens of dinner plates. There are a lot of things that never saw the light of day and exist only on paper in file cabinets. For example, "Tale of Sand", a screenplay for a feature-length film which he co-wrote with Jerry Juhl. It was adapted into a graphic novel with art by Ramon Perez and won an Eisner award. It is not the last screenplay that he worked on, but it was "lost" for a while.
We do love discovering lost things, don't we? We all thought "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" was Dr. Suess's last book, but then his wife found "Daisy-Head Mayzie", "My Many Colored Days" and "Hooray For Diffendorfer Day!". We thought "Go Slowly, Sands of Time" would be the last Disney Duck tale written by Carl Barks, but then came "Hang Gliders Be Hanged", "Horsing Around With History" and "Somewhere to Nowhere". We thought "Curtain" was the final Hercule Poirot novel, but then Charles Osborne adapted the play "Black Coffee". We thought "Shoscombe Old Place" was the last Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but then came "The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", which collected all the apocryphal material we never thought existed. We thought "Salmon of Doubt" was all the material Douglas Adams had left behind, until Gareth Roberts adapted "Doctor Who: SHADA" into a full-length novel that is required reading for anyone curious about Doctor Who now.There's always something "lost" - never "last", or "One of the last", or something to be rediscovered...
In the 60's Jim Henson directed, wrote and starred in a short live-action film , "Timepiece", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short. The film is a series of jump-cuts to different sequences, all featuring Jim: Jim as a caveman running in the streets, Jim as a housepainter painting an elephant pink, Jim in a top hat and tuxedo jumping off a high diving board and into a pool, Jim as an escaped prisoner in stripes on the run, etc.. Then there's "The Cube" an hour-long drama that aired on NBC around the same time as Timepiece. "The Cube" is "Portal" without the portals - a man is stuck inside this white cell while others enter and exit freely, even interacting with him briefly. Both films have the potential to be pretty dark, but Jim seems to be enjoying it, so we're enjoying these meta-parables along with him.
"Tale of Sand" is "Timepiece" and "The Cube" for the widescreen. "a surrealistic comedy-drama", the introductory note describes, with most of the screentime set in the Southwest - the same battleground where Chuck Jones imagined those private battles between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. There's very little dialogue. The protagonist of "Sand" is Mack, an everyman who walks into a densely populated western town with the diverse townsfolk celebrating his arrival. He is drafted by it's kindly Sheriff into a quest: it is not clear what that quest is. He is given a map and a rucksack full of supplies, is instructed to follow the map, but don't trust it, then sent on his way.
Throughout the journey, Mack is pursued/bedeviled by "Patch", a tall, dark, suave, well-dressed, wealthy and better-prepared antagonist, who is always handy with a bribe and almost-always accompanied by a mysterious blonde vixen. Strange things happen: signs pop up, wild animals pop up, buildings that are smaller on the outside/bigger on the inside turn up. Mack meets more enemies than friends and his quest devolves into a chase. Toward the end, the tale unravels and we start to get answers...maybe.
Had "Tale of Sand" been filmed, it probably would have been filmed earnestly at a quarter of the budget it demands, yet come off as a camp psychaedelic experience to anyone who saw it - it would have been "a groovy trip" spaghetti western. As a graphic novel, we get a chance to taste the images more and look for the meaning of what's happening - that is, if you would like it to have a meaning. It's not casual spending and I'm lucky the library had a copy, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to read it (it's not in any comic shops I've been to). It's worth a look. 
The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of...: The Witches: The Real Deal.: BEWARE! SPOILER ALERT! The scariest film I ever watched as a child was Nicolas Roeg's The Witches (1990). There were many scenes in films...
I had commented that "The Witches" was one of the last projects Jim Henson worked on before he died, but in truth, it was one of the last he oversaw. Henson was a very, very, very busy man for most of his adult life. In some alternate reality, he's the guy on Ed Sullivan's show who spins dozens of dinner plates. There are a lot of things that never saw the light of day and exist only on paper in file cabinets. For example, "Tale of Sand", a screenplay for a feature-length film which he co-wrote with Jerry Juhl. It was adapted into a graphic novel with art by Ramon Perez and won an Eisner award. It is not the last screenplay that he worked on, but it was "lost" for a while.
We do love discovering lost things, don't we? We all thought "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" was Dr. Suess's last book, but then his wife found "Daisy-Head Mayzie", "My Many Colored Days" and "Hooray For Diffendorfer Day!". We thought "Go Slowly, Sands of Time" would be the last Disney Duck tale written by Carl Barks, but then came "Hang Gliders Be Hanged", "Horsing Around With History" and "Somewhere to Nowhere". We thought "Curtain" was the final Hercule Poirot novel, but then Charles Osborne adapted the play "Black Coffee". We thought "Shoscombe Old Place" was the last Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but then came "The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", which collected all the apocryphal material we never thought existed. We thought "Salmon of Doubt" was all the material Douglas Adams had left behind, until Gareth Roberts adapted "Doctor Who: SHADA" into a full-length novel that is required reading for anyone curious about Doctor Who now.There's always something "lost" - never "last", or "One of the last", or something to be rediscovered...
In the 60's Jim Henson directed, wrote and starred in a short live-action film , "Timepiece", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short. The film is a series of jump-cuts to different sequences, all featuring Jim: Jim as a caveman running in the streets, Jim as a housepainter painting an elephant pink, Jim in a top hat and tuxedo jumping off a high diving board and into a pool, Jim as an escaped prisoner in stripes on the run, etc.. Then there's "The Cube" an hour-long drama that aired on NBC around the same time as Timepiece. "The Cube" is "Portal" without the portals - a man is stuck inside this white cell while others enter and exit freely, even interacting with him briefly. Both films have the potential to be pretty dark, but Jim seems to be enjoying it, so we're enjoying these meta-parables along with him.
"Tale of Sand" is "Timepiece" and "The Cube" for the widescreen. "a surrealistic comedy-drama", the introductory note describes, with most of the screentime set in the Southwest - the same battleground where Chuck Jones imagined those private battles between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. There's very little dialogue. The protagonist of "Sand" is Mack, an everyman who walks into a densely populated western town with the diverse townsfolk celebrating his arrival. He is drafted by it's kindly Sheriff into a quest: it is not clear what that quest is. He is given a map and a rucksack full of supplies, is instructed to follow the map, but don't trust it, then sent on his way.
Throughout the journey, Mack is pursued/bedeviled by "Patch", a tall, dark, suave, well-dressed, wealthy and better-prepared antagonist, who is always handy with a bribe and almost-always accompanied by a mysterious blonde vixen. Strange things happen: signs pop up, wild animals pop up, buildings that are smaller on the outside/bigger on the inside turn up. Mack meets more enemies than friends and his quest devolves into a chase. Toward the end, the tale unravels and we start to get answers...maybe.
Had "Tale of Sand" been filmed, it probably would have been filmed earnestly at a quarter of the budget it demands, yet come off as a camp psychaedelic experience to anyone who saw it - it would have been "a groovy trip" spaghetti western. As a graphic novel, we get a chance to taste the images more and look for the meaning of what's happening - that is, if you would like it to have a meaning. It's not casual spending and I'm lucky the library had a copy, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to read it (it's not in any comic shops I've been to). It's worth a look.
Monday, August 27, 2012
5 Ways to Write A Martian Manhunter Movie
With The Avengers a rip-roaring success for Disney, fans on the Internet are busy wondering when Warner Brothers will launch a Justice League of America film. They tried before, with George Miller as the director and a script that tied-in to then-current storylines like The OMAC Project and Checkmate, but he had cast too many relative unknowns as the heroes and the script had been rushed into production too quickly.
There's a lot of talk about how c following the formula Disney-Marvel made to get to an Avengers film would not be possible - Christian Bale is done playing Batman, Green Lantern tanked, Zack Snyder's The Man of Steel is still a question mark and nobody knows what to do with Wonder Woman or The Flash. So everyone is looking toward the rest : Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man...etc. I want to play, too, starting with the other green guy - not the Hulk, not the Green Hornet, not the Spectre, not Green Arrow, not Green Lantern (he needs a break)...J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter .
I already mentioned in a previous post that I imagined Taylor Lautner as the Martian Manhunter and I haven't been turned off yet by that decision (the character is shirtless and pantless most of the time, so we need a popular young actor with pecs that can carry over 120 minutes). He played Sharkboy, for crying out loud! As for the voice, that's moot. Lawrence Fishburne was the voice of the Silver Surfer, so why not try casting him again as the voice of J'onn? There we go. Actor? Check. Voice? Check.
Also, the powers. MM has a wide range - he's Superman with extra powers, or the Fantastic Four-in-1. He can shapeshift/stretch, become invisible/intangible, has super "breath" (he can blow out any candles on any birthday cake), flight, super-strength,super-speed, "Flame vision" (fire shoots out of his eyes) and is telepathic. He is also a compulsive snacker: he loves Oreo cookies, or any other sandwich cookies (obviously, I would love to see a package of Oreos with J'onn J'onzz on the wrapper. That would be just right). He also may or may not still have a fear of fire...and may or may not still be the last of his kind...I'd rather avoid all that continuity baggage and focus on J'onn as an interesting complete character.
The villains - the White Martians, Scorch (a winged devil-gargoyleish chick with firestarting powers), Bette Noir (an albino vampire, kind of like Batman foe Nocturna, but BN is a vampire, whereas Nocturna was just a glamed-up goth who played like a vampire)...I'd throw the Ultra-Humanite in there because he'd offer a great visual - an albino ape with a Broccoli-shaped head and the voice of Jeremy Irons. Works for me.
Directors are tricky. I wouldn't mind Brad Bird or Terry Gilliam taking a crack at it - they would find a way out of the rut that a lot of these superhero movies are in - MM would/should have a different approach to it...
5 approaches...as short as possible.
Film Noir - yes, yes, in this genre, there are no winners, but who cares? In the comics, he supposedly rivals Batman as a great detective, so I would revisit The Maltese Falcon, only instead of a statue of a bird, how about kryptonite? An absorbascon? A talisman of the Bat-God Barbattos? Mercury's slippers? A golden lasso? set-up, set-up, set-up, set-up...
High Noon - how about planting the seeds for the rise of the Justice League with the disbanding of the Justice League International? J'onn has to suddenly put down the cookies and save Earth on his own, showcasing the full range of his powers. I would pit him against Manga Khan, who always seems one step away from the Fourth World villains of Apokilips... set-up, set-up, set-up...
"It's Like Die Hard But With A Martian Superhero!" - I couldn't resist that old chestnut, but think about it - J'onn rivals Batman in efficiency as well as deductive reasoning. This could be fun. Supervillains only, please. Bank robbers and generic Bond villains need not apply.
Remington Steele - The romantic comedy. He's fronting a struggling detective agency run by an attractive and intelligent, but neurotic P.I. and they go search for that macguffin I'd set up in the film noir pitch. How about Pierce Brosnan dubbing the voice?
Supermax - a few years ago, there was a pitch for a high-concept Green Arrow feature inspired by the TV series Prison Break, in which Green Arrow wound up in a prison filled with DC Comics Supervillains. Sharp-eyed fans might recognize the story played out in Marvel Comics' Thunderbolts with Hawkeye, not GA. Anyway, forget Green Arrow - why not let it happen to J'onn J'onzz? The concept would still work, only it would rise more to the occasion because you had a superhero who could put up a real fight.
Anyway, that's enough from me. It's time Hollywood put the spaghetti in the machine and started rolling. I know a place that sells green paint real cheap. 
There's a lot of talk about how c following the formula Disney-Marvel made to get to an Avengers film would not be possible - Christian Bale is done playing Batman, Green Lantern tanked, Zack Snyder's The Man of Steel is still a question mark and nobody knows what to do with Wonder Woman or The Flash. So everyone is looking toward the rest : Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man...etc. I want to play, too, starting with the other green guy - not the Hulk, not the Green Hornet, not the Spectre, not Green Arrow, not Green Lantern (he needs a break)...J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter .
I already mentioned in a previous post that I imagined Taylor Lautner as the Martian Manhunter and I haven't been turned off yet by that decision (the character is shirtless and pantless most of the time, so we need a popular young actor with pecs that can carry over 120 minutes). He played Sharkboy, for crying out loud! As for the voice, that's moot. Lawrence Fishburne was the voice of the Silver Surfer, so why not try casting him again as the voice of J'onn? There we go. Actor? Check. Voice? Check.
Also, the powers. MM has a wide range - he's Superman with extra powers, or the Fantastic Four-in-1. He can shapeshift/stretch, become invisible/intangible, has super "breath" (he can blow out any candles on any birthday cake), flight, super-strength,super-speed, "Flame vision" (fire shoots out of his eyes) and is telepathic. He is also a compulsive snacker: he loves Oreo cookies, or any other sandwich cookies (obviously, I would love to see a package of Oreos with J'onn J'onzz on the wrapper. That would be just right). He also may or may not still have a fear of fire...and may or may not still be the last of his kind...I'd rather avoid all that continuity baggage and focus on J'onn as an interesting complete character.
The villains - the White Martians, Scorch (a winged devil-gargoyleish chick with firestarting powers), Bette Noir (an albino vampire, kind of like Batman foe Nocturna, but BN is a vampire, whereas Nocturna was just a glamed-up goth who played like a vampire)...I'd throw the Ultra-Humanite in there because he'd offer a great visual - an albino ape with a Broccoli-shaped head and the voice of Jeremy Irons. Works for me.
Directors are tricky. I wouldn't mind Brad Bird or Terry Gilliam taking a crack at it - they would find a way out of the rut that a lot of these superhero movies are in - MM would/should have a different approach to it...
5 approaches...as short as possible.
Film Noir - yes, yes, in this genre, there are no winners, but who cares? In the comics, he supposedly rivals Batman as a great detective, so I would revisit The Maltese Falcon, only instead of a statue of a bird, how about kryptonite? An absorbascon? A talisman of the Bat-God Barbattos? Mercury's slippers? A golden lasso? set-up, set-up, set-up, set-up...
High Noon - how about planting the seeds for the rise of the Justice League with the disbanding of the Justice League International? J'onn has to suddenly put down the cookies and save Earth on his own, showcasing the full range of his powers. I would pit him against Manga Khan, who always seems one step away from the Fourth World villains of Apokilips... set-up, set-up, set-up...
"It's Like Die Hard But With A Martian Superhero!" - I couldn't resist that old chestnut, but think about it - J'onn rivals Batman in efficiency as well as deductive reasoning. This could be fun. Supervillains only, please. Bank robbers and generic Bond villains need not apply.
Remington Steele - The romantic comedy. He's fronting a struggling detective agency run by an attractive and intelligent, but neurotic P.I. and they go search for that macguffin I'd set up in the film noir pitch. How about Pierce Brosnan dubbing the voice?
Supermax - a few years ago, there was a pitch for a high-concept Green Arrow feature inspired by the TV series Prison Break, in which Green Arrow wound up in a prison filled with DC Comics Supervillains. Sharp-eyed fans might recognize the story played out in Marvel Comics' Thunderbolts with Hawkeye, not GA. Anyway, forget Green Arrow - why not let it happen to J'onn J'onzz? The concept would still work, only it would rise more to the occasion because you had a superhero who could put up a real fight.
Anyway, that's enough from me. It's time Hollywood put the spaghetti in the machine and started rolling. I know a place that sells green paint real cheap.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Silver Dollars - Ducktales at 25 Part 3
In our last episode, I talked about free stickers and erased video tapes. And now, back to our story...
Season 2 (1989): Now Ducktales was going to be on a different TV station in New York - PIX11, and it would be part of an hour-long block with a new show, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers. I've got to admit that by this time, I had seen all the episodes from the first season at least three times and was watching other stuff. There was a clone of Double Dare called Fun House, which I found more entertaining because it had more of a pace to it (Double Dare tended to be show host Mark Summers motormouths play-by-play on updated versions of rounds of ring toss, frankly), but it was knocked out of PIX11's Fall schedule to make way for the new "DisneyHour". Who was going to complain? New Ducktales episodes? Not me!
But come September, I was willing to skip the Monday afternoon premiere in favor of watching an episode of The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which had premiered a week earlier. Big Mistake. The episode of SMBSH that aired that day was a clunker, so I switched over to see what was happening on Ducktales. The were showing the "Tralla La" episode. I couldn't believe what I had missed out on! It's even more of a big deal now, because the episode has been censored - a key scene where Fenton creates a rescue flare by lighting up a bottle of Scrooge's nerve tonic was deleted from future broadcasts. If the episode is ever released on DVD, I wonder if they'll show it complete and uncut...
Anyway, the heck with Mario, I went right back to watching Ducktales. Among the notable episodes from that season:
Tralla La: Scrooge has a breakdown from too much business. The antidote is a stay at an exotic faraway land where money and greed do not exist - until he gets there and Fenton makes the discarded bottle caps from Scrooge's nerve tonic the new currency. It wasn't until I actually read the Carl Barks comic that inspired it that I understood why Scrooge specifically choose to act like a squirrel in his "fugue state". Nervous breakdowns are heavy subject matter for a weekday afternoon cartoon. As the years went by, characters plagued by stress and anxiety become recurring themes in most of the Disney Afternoon toons (Scrooge and his "worry room", Dale's inferiority crises in Rescue Rangers, Pete and his "stress level" in Goof Troop, Lucky Piquel and Sgt. Grating in Bonkers, even Darkwing Duck suffered from stress about his public image and paranoia about being usurped by anyone offering a helping hand).
Allowance Day: I included this one because the "convince-someone-else-that-today-is-payday-and-realize-that-the-whole-world-was-fooled-and-you-have-to-move-the-clouds-to-reveal-an-eclipse-of-the-sun" theme was also used in an episode of Talespin. I think it worked better on Talespin, due to the handily established Thembrians and their politics, but act 3 of this episode (with Scrooge and Fenton facing a firing squad - the one sequence that plays out better than it did on the Talespin episode) is terrific, the stuff of old Golden Age Superman comics.
The Big Flub: this episode, in which Fenton tries to get a promotion in one of Scrooge's other companies, only to wind up creating a marketing campaign for Gyro's helium-infused bubble gum prototype that makes people float into the air before and after they've chewed it, is very, very Barksian . I don't know if there's a speciffic story that inspired it, but it does seem like one of Donald's blunders.
The Masked Mallard: One of the few episodes in which Scrooge saves the day entirley on his own. I don't know if this was one possible inspiration for Darkwing Duck, but I'm inclined to think the inspiration for Scrooge's pogo cane in the Ducktales NES video game came from here. The plot: Scrooge thinks dressing up as a superhero will result in good PR. Obviously he's never read Spider-Man comics.
Scrooge's Last Adventure: another story in which a clunky 1980s computer outperforms anything we have on the market today and tomorrow, as well as a new feature for Scrooge's cane that Capcom forgot to add in the video game. The Plot: Scrooge thinks he's dying and Fenton suggests downloading his fortune into a computer. The problem is that Fenton doesn't know how to work a computer! so, obviously the best way to retrieve the data (or electric assets) is the enter the computer, TRONstyle and catch the dollar signs with butterfly nets while evading Moby Glitch. Again, we have another episode that was recycled into a Talespin story, though this time both work well on their own terms.
Metal Attraction: Gyro builds a robot maid, Robotica, who develops a crush on Gizmoduck. When Giz turns her down, she instantly decides it must be because he's overworked protecting the money bin and seems preoccupied with Fenton's girlfriend Gandra Dee for some mysterious reason, so she set both of them in range of a handy guided missile and prepares to launch. This episode is the only one where Bubba, Tootsie, Fenton and Gizmoduck appear, but not together, save for a "family photo" highlighted in one scene.
Blue Collar Scrooge: Scrooge plans to sell a skateboard factory to Donald Trumpcard (I love puns!) but then, oh, the irony, he skids on a motorized skateboard then drops him into a lake and hits him on the head. Now suffering from amneisia, he loses his looks and ...gets a job at the skateboard factory and organizes a strike! Oh, and he also gets freash and cozy with Fenton's mother, Ma Crackshell, while her son is away impersonating Scrooge. If anyone wants to see a less avuncular Scrooge, this is the one to watch.
The Bride Wore Stripes: Ma Beagle is at it again, this time posing as Scrooge's wife to fool the Justice of The Peace into thinking they are married and get his fortune. Yep, another screwball comedy episode, notable for featuring none of the new characters and only the season 1 cast. This epsiode was given heavy rotation during reruns - instead of seeing "My Mother, The Psychic" "Attack of The Metal Mites" or "New Gizmokids on The Block", we would get this one, like finding a penny on the sidewalk. It's very good, but it appeared all the time.
The Unbreakable Bin: Another Carl Barks tale gets tweaked, actually this borrows bits from two stories featuring Magica De Spell, ("Bye, Bye, Money Bin" and "The Unsafe Safe") her only appearance in the later episodes, but they made it count. Her late entrance in the second act is a neat surprise, since I had not read the comic at that time. It would have been neat if SHE had been the main villain in "SuperDucktales" instead of Ma Beagle. Sure, it's the same actress in both parts, but the characters have different bags of tricks.
Yuppy Ducks: again and again, stress, allergies, anxiety, being replaced, pests - these themes pop up a lot in the Disney shows over and over. Scrooge gets "loot lice", lice with Beagle Boy masks and has to sealed in a plastic bubble at the hospital. Huey, Dewey, Bubba (remember him?) & Louie take over running the business before everyone remembers this is a violation of child labor laws (technically, that only applies if they were being exploited, but they did come off pretty dumb, here - Fenton's not around this time, so they can't blame him). The best scenes are of Scrooge at the free clinic - holey moley, the writers did their research!
Ducky Mountain High: Glomgold was another villain that got the short end of the deal (though not as much as Magica), appearing only in a handful of episodes, but kind of, sort became the main villain in the hodge podge "3rd Season". Seeing him compete with Scrooge in a scheme to get a plot of land from old flame Glittering Goldie is a lot of fun. I would've loved to have seen a character like Brigitta MacBridge appear as a semi-regular on the show, because whenever the writers tackled screwball comedy, they did it very well. Brigitta was created by Romano Scarpa to even out the number of female characters available - she's like a "nice" Millionaira Vanderbucks (from "'til Nephews Do Us Part"), the tycoon Scrooge almost married in the season 1 finale.
The Duck Who Knew Too Much: It's The Fenton Crackshell Show as Fenton pretends to be sick so he can go on vacation with his girlfriend and avoid an assignment from the boss - but whaddyaknow, the assignment was to go to the same be he's having his vacation! Is this a Jetsons episode? More spy high jinks, plus there's a giant mechanical Praying Mantis (I guess Jon Peters produced this episode). This is one of several episodes where Fenton saves the day without the Gizmoduck suit, though he conveniently forgets in time for another episode in which he does it again. The highlight: Scrooge gets some screen time with Gandra Dee...waitaminute, doesn't she work for him too?
My Mother, The Psychic: Fenton and his mother deserved a spinoff - maybe that was the forerunner to Johnny Bravo? Fredericka Von Strangeduck appears in a cameo as the star of a daytime soap opera playing "Erica" (draw your own conclusions on what this is referring to) and gets psychic powers from a jolt on her TV. I think this was inspired by the urban legend about the couch potato who died of a heart attack while watching TV, but as he was being lifted onto a gurney, his hand smacked the TV screen and broke the glass. He was electrocuted and revived by his TV set! Anyway, Glomgold gets to play Goldfinger, only his mansion gets to be OddJob by hurling giant discus into space (what on Earth could that have been built for before this episode?).
Part 4 will be up soon - feel free to practice your Golf swing with a Pogo Stick while you wait...
Friday, August 10, 2012
Silver Dollars: Ducktales at 25 - Part 2
My memories of watching Ducktales episodes continues with Premiere events/episodes/stuff:
There was a lot of merchandise with Ducktales characters in 1988, just a few months after the show premiered in 1987. McDonald's Happy Meal toys, jigsaw puzzles, coloring books, a tie-in magazine with a comic strip. Then there was Gladstone Comics, which published the Ducktales comic book, which premiered with adaptations of two episodes in it's first two issues: "Armstrong" and "Jungle Duck". I was slowly being schooled on the history of Carl Barks and Disney comics by following letter columns, editorials and profiles of other series offered by the company. (Yes, it was named after Gladstone Gander, but it was almost named after Gus Goose) ;) . I had mentioned in the comments for Part 1 that the first Disney comic I saw was an issue of Uncle Scrooge in a grocery store; I started visiting the shops because the grocery stores would stock comics at random - they would just receive a bundle of comics from the distributor, maybe two or three copies of each, and that was that. My mom had mentioned seeing comic shops in Manhattan, so I asked if we could visit them. I have no reason to believe she regrets starting the hobby off - I just don't think she would like to say so out loud: she'll blame Dad or my Grandpa, instead. That's a whole other blog entry.
But then there were the videocassettes: Fearless Forutne Hunter, Daredevil Ducks, High Flying Hero, Masked Marauders, etc... Two episodes per tape, for the price of $14.95. This seems like a rip now, as well as the laserdisk offering (4 episodes for a few dollars more), compared to how you could get a boxed DVD set of over 20 for the same price. I remember Disney also had "Gold Editions" - about an hours' worth of the classic short cartoons, compiled accoring to a theme, Like Donald's Bee Pictures - those were almost $100.00 in some places! What was the appeal? ... You got a perfect recording. Even the current VCR/DVD recorder combo units tend to be very clumsy on the VCR end, with each pause and stop noticable on playback. Plus, you can never tell what the TV signal is going to be - even now with pop-up ads and emergency broadcast "tests". Pfft.
Pathmark Halloween Commercial: One Year later (1988), Pathmark aired a commercial featuring Scrooge, Webby and the nephews preparing to go Trick-or-Treating. The ad was for a special sheet of stickers available only at Pathmark Supermarkets/Drugstores featuring the characters, which could be used as an alternative to handing out candy. I'm certain most people thought the way I did: get the stickers, get the stickers, get the stickers ... and the kiddies can have the marked-down Fruitzee Rolls.
The stickers were interesting: Scrooge, Launchpad, Webby, the nephews, the Ducktales title logo...and introducing...Bubba the cave duck. This was the first time I saw him anywhere - when Ducktales magazine announced that he would appear as a new character, they did not include a picture of him. This sheet of stickers was it - it may be the only merchandise with him at all! His first appearance on TV was months later, too. Because the sticker had him standing alone, I had imagined he might be one of the tall brutish cave ducks that appeared in the "Dinosaur Ducks" episode - like it would be a sequel to that.
Time is Money (1988): A new 2 hour movie! This was great, but I don't remember it being promoted well. This was probably when I got into the habit of reading TV Guide. Fall Previews of new Saturday Morning Shows (Remember Saturday Morning programming?), listings of new schedules and occasional adverts for new Ducktales episodes (I had seen a half-page ad taken to promote "The Golden Fleecing" when it aired on a Monday afternoon, so that might have been what inspired this). Anyway, the point is, I found out about this just days before it aired, so I erased a tape of Daffy Duck cartoons. For many years, my recording of "Time is Money" was on a tape with the crude "Daffy Duck" scrawled on it.
So what did I think? I was surprised to see that Bubba was portrayed more like an adopted son of Scrooge's than a new pal for the gang. Scrooge's behavior was odd (although it's more in-character than we're used to seeing on the show) more like it was for the 1st 1/4 of "Treasure of The Golden Suns" - only there it took about 15 minutes to change - here it took 2/3 of the movie! The best parts were the odd stuff - the laser pen, the bombastion pops, the shopping cart chase (which the crew must have liked, because the print ads for the new episodes had Scrooge perform a rescue riding a shopping cart with a helicopter blade attached to it), the teleconference calls via computer (those old Apple2s could do so much more than an iPad in those days, couldn't they?) and the weird "I've got fish in my pockets" exchange, which made no sense to me when I first saw it - why bother with the banks in town when he has a wall safe at home (and THAT was a deleted scene which aired in the reruns of the film)?
The most remarkable thing about the memory of this event was that it aired on a Friday. I had been conditioned to expect new episodes the following Monday. That did happen, so I was left wondering if I had just seen the final episodes, which ended with "Scooge" building Jurassic Park in his backyard.
Speaking of which, did Michael Crichton's novel inspire what we just saw? That's a stretch, but who a popular sci-fi action film would inspire what came next...
Superducktales (1989): airing as a 2 hour film on NBC on a Sunday night as a special on the fading-fast Magical World of Disney, this seemed like confirmation that a little syndicated afternoon cartoon was a really big draw (when there's no internet, you end up trying to look for clues to a show's popularity beyond the schoolyard) . The Gizmoduck character name had not been announced, but the half-page ad was so obviously Robocop that it had to be "Roboduck", so of course they surprised us with that twist.
Right up until the premiere, they did not show Fenton Crackshell anywhere, so I wonder if they wanted us to think it was Donald under that armor. That would make sense - shift the paradigm back to Scrooge and Donald with HD& L, only this time, Donald has this new status quo following his for real stint in the navy. At the time, I was expecting to see Bubba in there. They went out of their way to establish him in the group and he's not there! I'm not sure if I thought they just imagined he wasn't there, but they don't mention that adventure at all, plus they were careful not to feature Glomgold, the main villain from that story.
Speaking of villains, Ma Beagle becomes the main villain of the series from here on, with June Foray's performance sounding more like Granni Gummi form The Gummi Bears . I guess it takes a certain kind of old woman to pull off schemes like that. Incidentally, they still have Gizmoduck's instruction manual, which appears to include schematics and data allowing for a pirate remote control to be built. The writers were probably wise to ignore this, since Gizmoduck eats up a lot of screen time as their puppet. Also, the focus on Scrooge protecting the money bin becomes a big part of the later episodes - it's all foreshadowed here. If I wasn't a fan of the show, I might be inclined to think the well had run dry!
In retrospect, the characters that own this are Fenton and Scrooge. Where did Fenton come from? He's often regarded as a milquetoast Donald with a lisp like Daffy Duck. The suit reminds me of Howard the Duck, but Fenton was more excitable than Howard. If I can imagine a plot connection to a bestselling novel to the last special, I can imagine a character connection to a classic movie. I think Fenton was inspired by the character of Sam Lowry from Terry Gilliam's Brazil. You go watch that film and you'll see what I mean.
Oh, another tape got erased for this one. This one featured a TV special, Down and Out With Donald Duck, which got wiped because I needed the space (I had already learned not to record anything in EP or LP mode). It turns out that was rebroadcast in 1993 with the premiere of Bonkers because Donald had a cameo in that. If only they had rebroadcast Soccermania with the premiere of Goof Troop...
Part 3 will appear next week... 
There was a lot of merchandise with Ducktales characters in 1988, just a few months after the show premiered in 1987. McDonald's Happy Meal toys, jigsaw puzzles, coloring books, a tie-in magazine with a comic strip. Then there was Gladstone Comics, which published the Ducktales comic book, which premiered with adaptations of two episodes in it's first two issues: "Armstrong" and "Jungle Duck". I was slowly being schooled on the history of Carl Barks and Disney comics by following letter columns, editorials and profiles of other series offered by the company. (Yes, it was named after Gladstone Gander, but it was almost named after Gus Goose) ;) . I had mentioned in the comments for Part 1 that the first Disney comic I saw was an issue of Uncle Scrooge in a grocery store; I started visiting the shops because the grocery stores would stock comics at random - they would just receive a bundle of comics from the distributor, maybe two or three copies of each, and that was that. My mom had mentioned seeing comic shops in Manhattan, so I asked if we could visit them. I have no reason to believe she regrets starting the hobby off - I just don't think she would like to say so out loud: she'll blame Dad or my Grandpa, instead. That's a whole other blog entry.
But then there were the videocassettes: Fearless Forutne Hunter, Daredevil Ducks, High Flying Hero, Masked Marauders, etc... Two episodes per tape, for the price of $14.95. This seems like a rip now, as well as the laserdisk offering (4 episodes for a few dollars more), compared to how you could get a boxed DVD set of over 20 for the same price. I remember Disney also had "Gold Editions" - about an hours' worth of the classic short cartoons, compiled accoring to a theme, Like Donald's Bee Pictures - those were almost $100.00 in some places! What was the appeal? ... You got a perfect recording. Even the current VCR/DVD recorder combo units tend to be very clumsy on the VCR end, with each pause and stop noticable on playback. Plus, you can never tell what the TV signal is going to be - even now with pop-up ads and emergency broadcast "tests". Pfft.
Pathmark Halloween Commercial: One Year later (1988), Pathmark aired a commercial featuring Scrooge, Webby and the nephews preparing to go Trick-or-Treating. The ad was for a special sheet of stickers available only at Pathmark Supermarkets/Drugstores featuring the characters, which could be used as an alternative to handing out candy. I'm certain most people thought the way I did: get the stickers, get the stickers, get the stickers ... and the kiddies can have the marked-down Fruitzee Rolls.
The stickers were interesting: Scrooge, Launchpad, Webby, the nephews, the Ducktales title logo...and introducing...Bubba the cave duck. This was the first time I saw him anywhere - when Ducktales magazine announced that he would appear as a new character, they did not include a picture of him. This sheet of stickers was it - it may be the only merchandise with him at all! His first appearance on TV was months later, too. Because the sticker had him standing alone, I had imagined he might be one of the tall brutish cave ducks that appeared in the "Dinosaur Ducks" episode - like it would be a sequel to that.
Time is Money (1988): A new 2 hour movie! This was great, but I don't remember it being promoted well. This was probably when I got into the habit of reading TV Guide. Fall Previews of new Saturday Morning Shows (Remember Saturday Morning programming?), listings of new schedules and occasional adverts for new Ducktales episodes (I had seen a half-page ad taken to promote "The Golden Fleecing" when it aired on a Monday afternoon, so that might have been what inspired this). Anyway, the point is, I found out about this just days before it aired, so I erased a tape of Daffy Duck cartoons. For many years, my recording of "Time is Money" was on a tape with the crude "Daffy Duck" scrawled on it.
So what did I think? I was surprised to see that Bubba was portrayed more like an adopted son of Scrooge's than a new pal for the gang. Scrooge's behavior was odd (although it's more in-character than we're used to seeing on the show) more like it was for the 1st 1/4 of "Treasure of The Golden Suns" - only there it took about 15 minutes to change - here it took 2/3 of the movie! The best parts were the odd stuff - the laser pen, the bombastion pops, the shopping cart chase (which the crew must have liked, because the print ads for the new episodes had Scrooge perform a rescue riding a shopping cart with a helicopter blade attached to it), the teleconference calls via computer (those old Apple2s could do so much more than an iPad in those days, couldn't they?) and the weird "I've got fish in my pockets" exchange, which made no sense to me when I first saw it - why bother with the banks in town when he has a wall safe at home (and THAT was a deleted scene which aired in the reruns of the film)?
The most remarkable thing about the memory of this event was that it aired on a Friday. I had been conditioned to expect new episodes the following Monday. That did happen, so I was left wondering if I had just seen the final episodes, which ended with "Scooge" building Jurassic Park in his backyard.
Speaking of which, did Michael Crichton's novel inspire what we just saw? That's a stretch, but who a popular sci-fi action film would inspire what came next...
Superducktales (1989): airing as a 2 hour film on NBC on a Sunday night as a special on the fading-fast Magical World of Disney, this seemed like confirmation that a little syndicated afternoon cartoon was a really big draw (when there's no internet, you end up trying to look for clues to a show's popularity beyond the schoolyard) . The Gizmoduck character name had not been announced, but the half-page ad was so obviously Robocop that it had to be "Roboduck", so of course they surprised us with that twist.
Right up until the premiere, they did not show Fenton Crackshell anywhere, so I wonder if they wanted us to think it was Donald under that armor. That would make sense - shift the paradigm back to Scrooge and Donald with HD& L, only this time, Donald has this new status quo following his for real stint in the navy. At the time, I was expecting to see Bubba in there. They went out of their way to establish him in the group and he's not there! I'm not sure if I thought they just imagined he wasn't there, but they don't mention that adventure at all, plus they were careful not to feature Glomgold, the main villain from that story.
Speaking of villains, Ma Beagle becomes the main villain of the series from here on, with June Foray's performance sounding more like Granni Gummi form The Gummi Bears . I guess it takes a certain kind of old woman to pull off schemes like that. Incidentally, they still have Gizmoduck's instruction manual, which appears to include schematics and data allowing for a pirate remote control to be built. The writers were probably wise to ignore this, since Gizmoduck eats up a lot of screen time as their puppet. Also, the focus on Scrooge protecting the money bin becomes a big part of the later episodes - it's all foreshadowed here. If I wasn't a fan of the show, I might be inclined to think the well had run dry!
In retrospect, the characters that own this are Fenton and Scrooge. Where did Fenton come from? He's often regarded as a milquetoast Donald with a lisp like Daffy Duck. The suit reminds me of Howard the Duck, but Fenton was more excitable than Howard. If I can imagine a plot connection to a bestselling novel to the last special, I can imagine a character connection to a classic movie. I think Fenton was inspired by the character of Sam Lowry from Terry Gilliam's Brazil. You go watch that film and you'll see what I mean.
Oh, another tape got erased for this one. This one featured a TV special, Down and Out With Donald Duck, which got wiped because I needed the space (I had already learned not to record anything in EP or LP mode). It turns out that was rebroadcast in 1993 with the premiere of Bonkers because Donald had a cameo in that. If only they had rebroadcast Soccermania with the premiere of Goof Troop...
Part 3 will appear next week...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)