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Hey there folks

Around this time, I spend time youtubing old Christmas specials that my mom taped off the tv for me. Many times I have recounted these stories to my friends, who look at me cockeyed when I tell them my favourite Santa movie is the one where 'he is raised in a forest by wood nymphs'.

A lot of holiday specials I really enjoy were Rankin-Bass. Rankin-Bass really had it going on in my childhood. Not only did they produce The Last Unicorn, The Flight of Dragons (a often passed over fantasy flick I plan on writing about in the new year), The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings cartoon, they were heavily involved in the holidays. Not just Christmas mind you, as they also produced one of my favourite Easter cartoons too about a stuffed bunny that became the Easter Rabbit (of course, tying in with their Christmas theme, the stuffed bunny was given as a Christmas present from Santa).

Ranking-Bass made the most well known of the holiday specials. I am sure you have all seen:
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frost the Snowman

But do you remember these?



Puppet based
The Year Without Santa Claus
One year, Santa is sick with a cold and decides to cancel Christmas because he believes that the children don't care anymore. Mrs. Claus sends two elves, Jingle and Jangle, to a southern US town where it never snows to find out why people have stopped caring about Christmas. This movie is famous for its Miser Brothers, two sons of Mother Nature. Most people were reacquainted with this movie when Mister Freeze forces his henchmen to sing the Snow Miser's song in Batman & Robin. Not exactly one of my favourite specials but it is alright.


Rudolph's Shiny New Year
After Christmas, Father Time sends for Rudolph's help to find the missing new year baby who ahs run off because everyone laughs at his unusually large ears. With a clock soldier and a camel with a clock in its hump named Quarter After Five, Rudolph travels to many different islands looking for Happy, the baby new year (oh the puns kill me). Each island belongs to a Year after he retires. My personal favourite is the island belonging to OM (short for One Million BC) who yes, lives on an island of dinosaurs and sings a delightfully happy song about "raining sunshine" which my mom always started sisnging whenever it started raining with the sun out. The movie is a little dopey but it was one of my favourites. Rudolph was always a personal hero of mine. My mom's theme for Christmas decorations for me was reindeer, specifically Rudolph. When I was in daycare (which was at a nursing home), we had to sing a little Christmas concert for the old folks. I think I was about 4 at the time, and I had terrible stage freight. When we started singing Rudolph, I burst into tears and all the daycare supervisors started pointing at me, indicating that I was "Rudolph". My mom used that reasoning to associate me with the character I guess haha. My brother loved snowmen, so he got a lot of Frosty stuff. Anyways - as I was saying, Shiny New Year was one of my favourites because it's slightly weird and not many people remember it.


The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
A hands down favourite Santa movie of mine. It starts out with the council of Immortals, who must decide that night whether they will grant Santa Claus the mantle of Immortality. This was a big deal for them, as no mortal had ever been given immortality. The Great Ak, the master woodsman who had a hand in the raising of Santa Claus, tells of his life among the forests, raised by a woodland nymph and a lioness. The baby, Claus, is sent out to live with mortals once he becomes a young man. He is joined by a friend, a sound imp who teaches him all languages of man and beast. He becomes well known for making toys and acts of kindness. Ther eis a lot more to this movie and I do not want to give it away at all! Let's just say it was described as a very dark Christmas movie. The best part is it's a novel of the same name by L Frank Baum - the man who wrote the Oz series. This movie is hard to find because it is not on DVD. Apparently it is now, but I question the quality haha. They tried to do a cartoon remake of the story, without the songs and it was terrible.. terrible!!


The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold
I gotta say, this one is pretty bad. It's like they were trying to make a St Patrick's Day Special but decided that they had to throw Christmas in there somewhere. There is nothing Christmasy about this at all. A Banshee needs to have gold given to her before Christmas or she turns into tears. That's all there is about Christmas in this one. View at your own risk.


Nestor The Long Eared Christmas Donkey
A donkey with unusually long ears is made fun of (running theme for these movies) but finds his purpose as the donkey that carries Mary to Bethlehem. This movie used to make me cry, but it really is a tamer version of Disney's Small One (youtube that one if you want to have a misty-eyed night).



Oh hell, Here's Small One too


Frosty and Rudolph's Christmas in July
I haven't seen this one for awhile, but Frosty and Rudolph help a cowgirl (yeah...) have a Christmas circus/rodeo thing in July. You need to have seen Frosty's Winter Wonderland for the story of his wife in this clip.



Little Drummer Boy
A Drumemr Boy and his band of animals in another sad movie. Drummer Boy goes to the Wise Kings to heal his dying sheep. I haven't seen this one for awhile either.



Cartoons
I guess at one point they got tired of using puppets and claymation and did the animation thing. Which was fine by me!

Frosty's Winter Wonderland
The following winter, the kids miss Frosty. As soon as it is winter time again, he comes back and enjoys playing with them. But at night when the kids go home, Frosty is left alone in the snow. The kids decide to make him a wife. Jack Frost, jealous of Frosty's popualrity, tries to thrwart all their plans. Short and goofy, but Paul Frees is the king of voices as usual. Apparently this one still gets shown on ABC during the 25 days of Christmas.



The Stingiest Man in Town
My absolute favourite version of A Christmas Carol (Muppet's Christmas Carol is a close second. A remake of a live action musical done on the Alcoa Hour. This one has so many great voice actors in it (Tom Bosely, Walker Matthau) and I find the songs really catchy. It's hard to find because I guess a lot of stations don't have the rights to it. The whole thing is uploaded on Youtube and you CAN get it on DVD - it's on a Christmas Classics collection. They won't let me embed this one, so here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykm-nZ6bIoI

Bonus!!

I don't know where this one came from, and it is strange ... I do remember the intro vividly. I don't remember what else happens in this Christmas Special because I can't get myself to part 3.
Candy Claus

Hello all

I'd like to let you know that I am not dead, and I've been trying to think about this review for a long time. I have not been able to think of a lengthy review for it, because it's hard to review a story without giving it away. My main idea was to focus on the three different mediums the story was presented, and how each one enhances or takes away from the story.

I do not wish to spoil the story because this is one of my favourites, and one I hope most people would pick up at one point in their lives.

So without further delay:



The Last Uncorn: Can a story be told in different mediums?

As some may recall, I did a review on the Watchmen movie exploring this same topic. I felt that despite the movie not capturing the entire aspect of the Watchmen comic, it did a pretty good job delaying with the set backs of certain limitations of a form.

A movie adaptation will never be perfect. Some have come close, but there is too much of a gap between a written story and a visual one. Written stories rely too much on provoking one's imagination through descriptive words and additional details to move the story along, while a movie can just show you what it is trying to portray. A book can be as many pages as the author wants. Movies are forced to stay in specific time restraints, or be pushed into a series of movies to tell the whole story. A book allows the reader to picture what they think certain things look like, while a movie keeps the image the same for everyone.

Despite these limitations, movie adaptations can be successful. I actually grew up watching The Last Unicorn movie before I read the book. I didn't even know it was a book until I was in high school. But when I read the book, I realized that the movie version did not stray from its original concept. Sure, there were some certain parts of the book that were cut out, but their omission did not seem to affect the overall story. I am certain that this was probably because the author of the book, Peter S Beagle was the one that wrote the screenplay for the movie. While he may have removed a chunk of backstory on certain characters, anyone who compares the book to the movie may be able to agree that some of it is just not that necessary to get the same messages and themes across.

There is one form of story telling however, that is a marriage of words and pictures. A comic.

IDW publishing announced that it would publish a series on The Last Unicorn. A 6 comic series throughout 2010 that was approved by Peter S Beagle once again. In fact, he himself adapted the story for a comic.

Much like movies, a comic can be limited as well. I suppose the publishing company has the last say on how many issues you may have and how many pages in each one. As an owner of a couple of trade series, it seems a little daft that IDW would force an author to telling a story in only a limited number of issues and pages. Beagle himself announced in the summer that in order for them to properly tell the story, they would need additional pages in the 5th and 6th issue in the series. IDW told them it was a cost issue, and Beagle himself (and I think some others) paid out of pocket to get these additional pages.

With the first 3 issues, I was quite excited. I did have a slight issue with the art because I was hoping that the artist would have used her own style for some of the characters. Most of them looked exactly like their cartoon movie counterparts. A comic is a great way to get anew persepctive, but I felt that by using the same image of the unicorn as the 1982 film just reinforces that the cartoony unicorn is the image the author himself finds to be the most accurate, which I have a hard time believing.

Another thing I did notice with the comic was it was very slow at story telling. When the comic series is only 6 issues long, and you haven't even reached the middle of your story yet by the end of issue #3, you risk cutting some poignant parts of the story. I was delighted that some of the book that was not able to make it into the movie worked its way into the comic though they might be slightly minor.

I felt that the last two issues were really lacking and I was not keen on their design. In issue #5, the artist decided to label a spread with a character's name. It just seemed so out of place, especially since the reader had already been acquainted with the characters. I also felt that this issue's layout was just so mumbled compared to the previous issues. Issue #5 is also the first time we meet the main antagonist. In both the book and movie, he speaks deeply about the reason why he has captured all the unicorns in the world for himself. The comic ignores this outright, which is a shame since it is with that speech he becomes a sympathetic character.

As if issue #5 wasn't bad enough, the last issue really dropped the ball. Much like the main antagonist, the Unicorn herself exits the story with a relfection of her quest that sets her apart from the rest of the unicorns because of the life changing situation she had encountered. Instead, in the comic, she leaves the story quite quickly. Her reflection is vague and hurried, like the entire quest wasn't a big deal. It just seemed so unfitting and I was quite disappointed.

The art was okay. As I mentioned, a lot of the characters were very much lifted from movie itself. I did like how the issues started very bright, then increasingly got darker and more grey until the end of the last issue., using the contrast to reflect the moods of the story.

Overall, I thought that a comic version of the story could have been utilized a better way than it was. There was a chance for the comic to bring in what the movie had missed, but also offer visual stimulation. It started off well, but petered out in the end. I am not sure if this was a decision made by the author, or there were too many restrictions placed upon him. I think if he was allowed to do an eight issue series instead of a 6th, it may have worked better in his favor. At the end of the day, I will likely buy the trade when it comes out because I have a collection of TLU items and I am a weird collector in that way. I do hope that the comic book version of the story has encouraged others to read the book (now in its 40th year). At the end of the day, I guess the book will always be better.

Now for some pictures from the comic!

Hey dere!


I recently came to a shocking realization:

I am the only person writing for this blog who has never done a review or recap of a movie or TV show!

I know, right?


So seeing as how I've finished my second article for TR, and since Comcast OnDemand just got in the entire first season (which I've so far watched twice) I thought I'd lose my reviewer's innocence with an examination of Comedy Central's newest animated series: Ugly Americans.


Comedy Central has been very unreliable when it comes to animated programming. In 1997 the first season of South Park aired, and over the next 13 years it grew to become a global phenomenon and critical success second only to The Simpsons.

The network has since attempted to recapture South Park's magic with a litany of failed, mostly unfunny toons: TV Funhouse, Lil' Bush, and Drawn Together, to name a few.

With Devin Clark's Ugly Americans, it seems they may have a chance. And coupled with their restoration of my beloved Futurama, and Adult Swim's baffling trend towards Live-Action programming, Comedy Central might end up surpassing Cartoon Network as the premier provider of adult-oriented animation.


The show is pretty standard fare: It follows the various trials and tribulations of an overworked, underappreciated New York City social worker with a deadbeat roommate, a drunken co-worker. a moody, unstable girlfriend, and a boss from Hell.

The kicker is: The deadbeat roommate is a brain-eating zombie(yay! zombies!), the drunken co-worker is a 500 year old wizard, the moody girlfriend is a succubus, and the boss from Hell is precisely that.

The New York of UA is populated by a multitude of non-human beings: zombies, werewolves, vampires, wizards, demons(an escalator to Hell allows visitors to come and go), robots, blobs, and God knows what else. Most of them are just average Joes and Janes, trying their best to make it in the world--which is where our protagonist comes in, let's meet him and the people and things who comprise his social circle:

This is Mark Lilly, voiced by Matt Oberg. He works at the Department of Integration. At the beginning of the first episode, his department is gutted so the bulk of the budget can be diverted to Law Enforcement, leaving only Mark, and his inebriated co-worker Leonard, to handle the onerous task of helping various not-quite-human creatures(and a few normal, human immigrants) successfully assimilate themselves into American society.

Basically, he's one of those poor, deluded souls who work Civil Service jobs and actually care--give him two years and he'll either become a broken, nihilistic cynic, or go on a rampage with a hunting rifle.







Meet Callie Maggotbone (the "t" is silent). She's Mark's girlfriend and supervisor. She's the sterotypical "wrong kind of woman" taken to the most absurd extreme. What else would you call a woman who consumes souls and actively seeks to bring about the End of Days? Her mixed parentage(Mom was essentially Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby)makes her incredibly moody and often confused about what she wants out of life. Will she marry a nice guy like Mark and settle down in the Suburbs? Or will she cave in to Daddy's wishes, take a high-ranking Demon for her suitor, and become a broodmare for Satan's Dark Army?

I find this character profoundly, disturbingly attractive. Even though she dumps Mark at least once an episode, has been known to bite whole chunks out of his flesh, and has something called a "Threehole" which is better left unexplained.

Oh, Callie is also voiced by stand-up comic and local girl(Rockford, about an hour southwest of me), Natasha Leggero. Ms. Leggero is a regular on Chelsea Lately, and a regular guest on several late-night talk shows--she's cute, too:







Introducing UA's resident Zombie and Mark's roomie: Randall Skeffington--voiced by Kurt Metzger. Randall "went zombie" a few years back in an ill-advised attempt to impress a girl who claimed to only date the walking dead. Naturally, by the time Randall made the change, the girl in question had lost interest in zombies and now exclusively dated Warlocks. Well, we've all been there, huh?

Randall works a few odd jobs, but for the most part lives off of Mark--though not in the more literal way he'd like to: Randall copes daily with his cannibalistic urges--Mark is fully aware that his roommate would like nothing more than to crack open his skull and devour his brain, yet he accepts Randall nonetheless(This kinda defines the line between Noble and Stupid).

Though technically dead, Randall's sex-drive is second only to his urge to consume human flesh. He's become remarkably non-selective in his choice of sex partners/acts, to the point that his penis actually became disgruntled and ran away in one episode.

Randall's Dad fought in the Zombie-Human Civil War, and until Mark accidentally let it slip on a visit, He'd successfully hidden his condition from his family.




Leonard Powers has mastered the art of work avoidance through magic. He's the only employee left in the department besides Mark, and despite being a wizard, he's a useless shell of a human being who's slowly drinking himself to death(and given that he's 500 years old, this is a process that apparently takes wizards a very long time).

Worthless and apathetic though he is, he does like Mark and attempts, when it's not too much trouble, to help him out.

Leonard is voiced by Randy Pearlstein.

(Nerdtastic moment: At his desk, Leonard watches "America's Next Top Wizard" online, where a young, Harry Potter-esque wizard is verbally reamed by Dr. Strange as a Simon Cowell-type judge)







Twayne The Boneraper(of the Connecticut Bonerapers)is head of the department. Though imposing and intimidating on the surface, Twayne is little more than a mid-level cog in a monolithic bureaucracy--the classic "big fish in a small pond".

None of his superiors, co-workers, or fellow Demons have an ounce of respect for him. Particularly Callie, who in every practical sense runs the office for Twayne, who wouldn't have a clue how to manage it alone. There is also the creeping inevitability that Callie and Twayne will end up together, if only because he's the kind of man her father wants for her.

One might find the idea of a Demon running an office set up to help people counterintuitive, but apparently the Department of Integration is part of a larger Satanic design to introduce as many non-humans as possible into human society. Exactly what the purpose of this plan is will hopefully be explored in the next season.

Twayne is voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley, an actor and singer who recently did the voice of Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors" on Broadway.





Frank Grimes has become, in a sense, Mark's nemesis within the department. While Mark is devoted to helping the people and creatures under his supervision, Grimes is convinced that all non-humans and non-Americans are inherently evil and criminal. He and his goon squad comb the streets of the city looking for those among Mark's clients who slip up--even in the slightest.

Grimes has a laundry list of injuries received from tussles with various creatures, plus his wife left him for a vampire(his daughter would later marry one too, but he learned to live with that, as you'll see in the episode).

Frank Grimes is voiced by Larry Murphy, and may or may not be a Simpsons reference.





It's important to remember that an animated show's appeal is 90% in its look. Ugly Americans has taken a page from South Park's book and gone for a bare-bones, "less is more" style. But instead of using South Park's paper cutout medium, they've instead gone for a wonderfully retro, old-school horror comic look--which not only fits the subject mattter perfectly, it's also refreshingly uncomputerized(don't know if that's a word--oh, well).

Bottom line--I enjoy the hell out of this show. It's neat-looking, clever, smart, bold, and a lot of fun.

I can easily imagine it not being for everyone. The dialogue is a bit off-color at times, as are the visual gags, and there's a lot of sexual humor. If these things offend or simply do not entertain you--then this isn't your show.



Well, it's 4:30 in the goddamn morning--man, these things take a long time! I gotta go to bed.

Quick revision of the previous article concerning the Blog's stats: Apparently, I need to get better glasses, for I failed to notice that the numbers I gave for our hit count were not cumulative, they were the numbers from each individual month. In other words--the real total was all of those numbers added together: As of now SOHB's all-time hit total is actually 7,236! Sorry about that.

I leave you with a video some kindred spirit made about Randall's tumultuous relationship with his penis, scored with a tune that was oft played in my utterly wasted teen years.






Scooty Doo

I need to apologize to my fellow TR SuperFriends for being out of touch this week. Suffice it to say a lot of school related work came to a head and needed my attention. Anyway, today I am free...to torment Rob...er...yeah.

Speaking about Rob.... YAY, I got my shirt! :) It's too bad I do not have a camera. It would be my entry for that Nerd in Nerdom thread Scooter wants us to do.

I promise good FFF as opposed to typical FFF. This week's column features a work that I love immensely. (Or, in WalMart-terms, I want to mix DNA with it all over teh place.) Yes, I love it. It inspired my own "Somebody Who Loves Me" a fluffy/fuzzy/warmy feeling story. And that's not a place I venture into ordinarily. It's also (hold on to your lightsabres!) Sam/Bumblebee.

Yes, Sam/Bumblebee!

Electrosexuality - with a twist. It's about romance not sex. It's not a ComicsNix joint. It examines the emotional side of the Sam/Bumblebee ship and does so in a very touching and realistic (!) manner.

In The Wake by Piscaria

A few notes about the story. It relies on a couple of bits of fanon. Namely, that the "spark" is like a soul and that the Transformers are able to project realistic 3-D holograms of themselves. This is referred to as holo!Bee (or holo!Prime, holo!Megatron, etc). Myself, I only ventured into that holo-territory once (see above) as it's not my favorite way to approach human/bot ships. I like to keep bots as bots! (Now, admit it, machines can be ubber-sexy - you know it!)

In other news - I re-watched Avatar last night. It's officially out of the theaters :( yet I managed to watch it 5 times during its re-release :) I've completed, in first draft form, two Na'vi related stories. And! I'm trying to learn the Na'vi language. I leave it to your imagination to figure out why. >:D

Hi-Ho,



I've noticed a trend as of late.


More and more loyal, card-carrying nerds are stepping out from the shadows and admitting(often with a twinge of embarrassment)that they don't share the popular geek obsession with all things Anime.


Our own Joltess recently penned an article on this subject, and others have voiced their agreement, so I thought it time I threw my hat into the ring:

I've got nothing against Anime--I've greatly enjoyed some of it, though granted what I've liked is mostly old-school titles like Speed Racer, Gigantor, and Star Blazers. And, indeed, some feature-length Anime would be appealing to anyone who enjoys good movies(Akira, for example).

I suppose the main objection comes from two sources:

One--More and more the twin forces of Anime and CGI are dominating the animation universe, leaving less and less room for the kind of toons I grew up on.

And two--Anime fandom is becoming synonymous with the nerd community, to the point that those of us who neither know nor care to know anything about the genre are feeling just a tad alienated.


But I didn't write this to curse Anime or bemoan the state of modern animation. Instead I thought I'd throw a few well-earned accolades to my personal heroes in the cartooning game.

This isn't an exhaustive study of the careers of these men, nor is it my attempt to rank them and determine the "World's Greatest". Nope, just a few kind words and a smattering of clips--anyway, let's kick things off with:



GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY

Creator of Samurai Jack and the original(and far superior)Clone Wars cartoon, Mr. Tartakovsky will forever live in my memory as the man who gave us half an hour a week of pure wonderfulness in the form of Cartoon Network's first original show: Dexter's Laboratory.











RALPH BAKSHI

Arguably the father of modern animation, Mr. Bakshi scandalized the cartooning world with his profane, sexually explicit, drug laden cult classic, Fritz The Cat.

But it's his brilliant and innovative revitalization of Mighty Mouse in 1987 that first brought him to my attention.











JOHN KRICFALUSI

John Kricfalusi(coincidentally, a protege of Ralph Bakshi)was part of a group of talented young cartoonists hired by Nickelodeon to make their original Nicktoons. The idea: Return to the days of creator-controlled toons before Hollywood studios and toy companies ran the show.

Thus, Nickelodeon gave Mr. K just enough rope to hang himself, and he gave millions of diehard fans the magic that is Ren and Stimpy. When Nick finally decided that John K's brand of creativity was too much for a "kid's network", they gave him the axe and allowed his marvelous creation to linger on for two or three miserable, humorless seasons.

A few years ago, Spike TV offered him the chance to once again make Ren and Stimpy cartoons, this time with no restrictions or censorship whatsoever. It just wasn't the same. Half the fun of Ren and Stimpy was seeing what the writers were able to get away with each week. In short--Where's the fun in being a rebel when there are no rules to break?

(Yeah, I know way more about this guy than all the others put together)




Is there anything more awesome than Gary Owens saying "Cling tenaciously to my buttocks!"?

JHONEN VASQUEZ

The mad genius creator of sick and twisted underground comics like Johnny The Homicidal Maniac and Squee also gave the world probably the coolest toon of the past decade: Invader Zim

Like John K. before him, he was cut off in his prime by Nickelodeon(you'd think they would've learned their lesson the first time)but still has a fanatically loyal fan base.

We can only hope that cartooning has not seen the last of Mr. Vasquez.

(to anybody who groans at the video clip I chose: Fuck you, it's funny)






MATT GROENING

One needn't be a nerd or an animation buff to know the creator of pop-culture juggernaut and longest running comedy in television history: The Simpsons.

But 'round these parts we prefer to think of Mr. Groening as the co-creator(with David X. Cohen) of Futurama, The Simpsons' smarter, funnier little brother.

(Think of it like this: Futurama is to The Simpsons what The Kids In The Hall was to Saturday Night Live)

Anyway, since finding a clip that isn't a horribly doctored and re-edited fan film is nearly impossible--here's a reasonably cool salute to the Robot Devil:



VOLTAIRE ROCKS!


TEX AVERY

Without Plato, we wouldn't have Aristotle--

Without Socrates, we wouldn't have Plato--

And without Tex Motherfuckin' Avery--we wouldn't have any of the artists in this piece. PERIOD.

There really isn't any other way to do the man justice than to present one of his most famous works: Ladies, Gentlemen, Nerds--I give you, Red Hot Riding Hood.
Enjoy!





Thanks folks, for joining me in honoring these men of genius.

Until next time,

Scootzarro