Lake Neuron

… according to this clip from one of my childhood favorite game shows:

This post was prepared prior to my Costa Rica trip and is scheduled to be published while I am away.

It’s on YouTube now, but here’s the link to the official 20th Century Fox site with the nice QuickTime trailers for another ill-advised attempt to remake a classic. I have to admit, the trailer is impressive, but …. why?

Here’s a great review of WALL-E from a United Methodist web site. An excerpt:

Where the movie really shines—and where it is most daring—is in the two leads. Most of Wall•E is completely free of dialogue, leaving the robots and others to express themselves entirely in body language. Wall•E, a perpetual klutz, comes to resemble the lovable losers of the silent-film era.

I’m watching a real curiosity: “Good Times.” No, not the mid-70s sitcom with Jimmie Walker, but a 1967 movie starring Sonny and Cher. I thought I’d blogged about it before, but a keyword search for “Sonny” turned up nothing, and I don’t seem to be shy about repeating myself anyway. (I first tried a keyword search for “Cher,” but that turned up posts about everything from Phil Vischer to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.)

The plot of the movie (and “plot” is overstating it a bit) is that Sonny and Cher, playing themselves, are having angst over whether or not to appear in a movie. Sonny has gotten them into an ill-advised contract with Mordicus, a vaguely-malevolent movie producer played by George Sanders. They’ve either got to come up with their own idea for a movie or they will be forced to appear in a hack script, which they hate, by one of Mordicus’ associates. The movie is mostly a series of tongue-in-cheek fantasy sequences as Sonny and / or Cher imagine different movie genres in which they might appear — western, private eye, Tarzan, et cetera. Most of the sequences are built around musical numbers.

As a movie, it’s sort of cheesy, but considered as a series of music videos, it’s a great period piece. The songs are terrific. It was the directoral debut for William Friedkin, who went on to more serious work in “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist.”

Title	Content
Movie:	Good Times
Director:	William Friedkin
Release Date:	May 1967 (USA) / Other Countries
Genre:	Comedy | Musical
Tagline:	Sonny & Cher's ONLY motion picture together!
User Rating:	149 votes, average 4.5 out of 10
Runtime:	91 min
Cast:	...
Others:	Additional Details Close Move Title Content MPAA: County: USA Language: English Color: Color Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Sound: Mono (Westrex Recording System) | Mono Company: Motion Pictures International Certification: Iceland:L | Australia:G | Finland:K-8 | Sweden:11 IMDBTag: Powered by IMDBTag & imdb.com Sound Mix, Aspect Ratio ...
Photos:	N/A
	Powered by IMDBTag

I know some mashups can be kind of lame, but I thought this one — which I saw on the Mental_Floss blog — was both funny and well-executed.

I linked to some news stories about this earlier, but here, courtesy of the Futon Critic, is the official press release. AMC, ITV and Granada are producing a remake of “The Prisoner” which will star Jim Caviezel as Number 6 and Sir Ian McKellen as Number 2.

I am both curious and wary. I’m not sure there was a need to remake the original, but this could be interesting.

It’s the law of averages; one of these days, the folks at Pixar Animation Studios are going to fire a dud. Maybe it will be a first-class stinker; maybe it will just cause people to shrug and say “that’s not up to their usual standard.”

Whenever that may happen, it did not happen in 2008.

WALL-E is great. Just great.

A few advance reviews accused it of being a heavy-handed “message movie,” and maybe even a political polemic. Balderdash. It’s certainly no more of a message movie than “Ratatouille,” and — like “Ratatouille” — it is entertainment first, parable second. For one thing, the cartoonishness of its apocalypse is self-deprecating; it both makes its point and mocks itself for having a point. There’s a major vein of science fiction that has some sort of apocalyptic, look-what-we-did-to-ourselves slant. At its best, it can be poignant; even at its worst, it can be overlooked if the story and characters are good enough.

“WALL-E” goes way beyond good enough. It’s beautiful, and thrilling, and fun. See it as soon as possible.

The short subject, “Presto,” is terrific as well, just as we’ve all come to expect from Pixar.

By the way, I was shocked to see a teaser trailer for “Pink Panther 2″ in which Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau tries to weasel his way in to a screening of … “WALL-E.” “Pink Panther 2″ is from MGM; “WALL-E,” of course, is Disney/Pixar. Why would one studio want to promote the other’s product? I’d read in advance that “WALL-E” incorporates some live-action clips from a well-known movie musical, and so I thought maybe this was some sort of quid-pro-quo in return for MGM giving Disney permission to use the clip.

But I looked it up just now, and the musical in question was produced by 20th Century Fox. MGM had nothing to do with it. So there must be some other explanation.

Yesterday, I bought the Kroger store-brand equivalent of Triscuit crackers, and the brand name is “Weavers.”

Having just watched a documentary on Pete Seeger a few weeks back, several slogans for this product immediately came to mind:

• “Weavers: Wasn’t that a cracker?”
• “This cracker surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”
• “Are you now, or have you ever been, a cholesterol-free food?”
• “Here’s one snack food too tasty to blacklist.”

There aren’t many people who could be interviewed by both Christianity Today and the Onion AV Club and sound completely at home in either place.

I may have to go see Wall*E tomorrow night.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Thanks to my West Coast brother, who can’t blog this because he isn’t a blogger.

… virtual bubble wrap, of course.

Hat tip to GingerSnaps.

To whet your appetite, Turner Classic Movies has posted some great clips of this week’s “Essentials Jr.” movie, which I blogged about yesterday.

Here’s a great idea: the folks at “Late Show with David Letterman” have taken a nice, extended arrangement of the theme song (like the one you sometimes hear when they run full closing credits) and turned it into a music video of sorts to showcase the band.

Last summer (I think — it could have been two summers ago) Turner Classic Movies ran a Sunday-night series intended to showcase classic movies that could be enjoyed by the whole family. It was called “Funday Night at the Movies,” and it was hosted by Tom Kenny (the voice of Spongebob) with a group of kids in a sort of classic kiddie-TV-show mode.

This year, they have the same kind of family-film showcase, again on Sunday night, but with a very different presentation: “Essentials Jr.,” hosted by Chris O’Donnell and Abigail Breslin (apparently chosen to promote the “Kit Kittridge” movie, in which they both appear). They introduce the movie in much the same way that Robert Osborne and Rose McGowan introduce “The Essentials” on Saturday night. (If I had time, I’d figure out which couple has the greater age difference — Osborne & McGowan or O’Donnell & Breslin.) I haven’t seen any of the intros yet, but I have to say I hate the title — as if any child is going to have even heard of “The Essentials,” much less say “Gee! I wish there were a version of ‘The Essentials’ just for me!”

Well, regardless of the packaging, next Sunday night I will definitely have to tune in to TCM, and I suspect my West Coast brother will do likewise (or at least fire up his TiVo). The next “Essentials Jr.” movie is “Harvey,” with Jimmy Stewart.

Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.

My brother once played the lead role of Elwood Dowd in a stage production in Texas.

Title	Content
Movie:	Harvey
Director:	Henry Koster
Release Date:	13 October 1950 (USA) / Other Countries
Genre:	Comedy | Drama | Family | Fantasy
Tagline:	The Wonderful Pulitzer Prize Play... becomes one of the Great Motion Pictures of our Time!
User Rating:	16,070 votes, average 8.2 out of 10
Runtime:	104 min
Awards:	Won Oscar. Another 1 win&4 nominations
Cast:	...
Others:	Additional Details Close Move Title Content MPAA: County: USA Language: English Color: Black and White Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1 Sound: Mono (Western Electric Recording) Company: Universal International Pictures (UI) Certification: South Korea:All (2003) | Canada:G (Manitoba/Nova Scotia/Quebec) | Australia:G | Canada:G (Ontario) | Finland:S | Sweden:15 | UK:U | USA:Approved (certificate #14694) | Germany:12 IMDBTag: Powered by IMDBTag & imdb.com Sound Mix, Aspect Ratio ...
Photos:	N/A
	Powered by IMDBTag

Here’s a link to my video of the Moon Pie festival (I can’t embed it because of the way the AP video player is set up).

Here’s a link to my photo gallery.