#First series on an out and out comedy episode. A rare starring role for comic actor (and close friend and ubiquitous costar of Peter

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O’Brien Details 10-Minute Improv Zoom Session With Larry David for ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Audition to Play Himself

On the second episode of this season’s 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' David meets with O’Brien to consider casting him as a young version of himself on an upcoming Netflix series.

On the second episode of this season’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David meets with an actor to consider casting him as a young version of himself on an upcoming Netflix series. Teen Wolf and Maze Runner star Dylan O’Brien recalls first meeting with the Curb creator-star for a short improv session over Zoom to test for the role of, well, Dylan O’Brien.

“I even screen-recorded it, because I wanted to keep it as a memory,” says O’Brien, whose first acting experiences came in improvised sketches he performed as a teenager (which led to him pursuing an acting career). “I had headphones on at the time,” he laments of his session with David, “so I just have this 10-minute screen recording of me and Larry improvising without sound.” Luckily, O’Brien landed the Curb guest spot, where he got to improvise as a fictionalized version of himself who, like many of Curb‘s supporting players, has cringeworthy interactions with David’s TV persona.

Larry first meets Dylan at his band’s rock show, where his loud music forces Larry to stuff tissues in his ears. When Dylan finds Larry’s hearing protection insulting to his musical talents, Larry meets with him again to apologize and to convince him to take the role on his show — a genial gesture Larry bungles when he loses control of his friend’s dog, Angel Muffin, whom he could have possibly saved from running into traffic if only he could have brought himself to call out the dog’s silly name.

O’Brien, seen primarily in dramatic and action roles, was keen to show off his comedic side. “It’s probably the last thing anyone would expect from me,” he says. “But it’s so my sense of humor. I love taking the piss out of myself. Even in my old sketches, I would always play alternate versions of myself that were totally not me.” He notes that he didn’t want to play himself as “the typical douchey actor,” but one whose sensitivity and good intentions can often be misdirected and misunderstood.

He also says that his scene partner was equally humble, not the kind of comic performer who wants all the attention and the biggest laughs for himself — much less the irascible version of Larry David he plays on TV. “Larry has no ego, which is so rare for a guy in comedy,” O’Brien says. “And by the way, he was cuddling with all of the dogs off camera.”

[popculturebuffet]

One Year Anniversary: Top 12 Ducktales Episodes!

Happy anniversary all you happy people! Yes it was one year ago today I started reviewing animation and it’s been a ride to be sure. I’d always WANTED to be a reviewer: I love going on and on about stuff I love, really digging into it and picking it apart... but I could never get started. I tried youtube but I didn’t have the money for the equipment nor a proper shooting space to record, so my efforts.. were not great. And while I TRIED text reviews, my own looming pile of self hatred meant every attempt I made was shot down when it got hard as me not being good enough. 

But one year ago I finally got past that. I’d already been reviewing a bit, doing invididual issues of comics... but got way in over my head trying to do the current line of X-Men comics as it came out, and wisely bowed out of that. But that left a gap: I had nothing to cover week to week and with a demanding new job, I drifted into just doing in charcter chats, little fan fictions script styles. Not bad work, I should do some more at some point and I even got a comissoin once in a while, but nothing I could really live on and not what I wanted to do with my life. 

Enter Ducktales. I’d always WANTED to review the show.. and when the double premire happened, I decided fuck it, and put up my thoughts. And then decided.. hey maybe I can do this every week.. and slowly.. my work evolved, getting better and better, getting more and more likes. I picked up Amphibia when that came by week to week.

And eventually.. this went from a hobby, if one I was passionate about to a career. Not a largely paying one, as only one person was really intrested in paying me for it, friend of the blog and our fincial backer @weirdkev27, but .. it’s money and i’m now making about 30 dollars a month due to a comination of comissions and patreon. Other contributers are always welcome mind you, my patreon is here if your curious and comissions are 5 dollars an episode, but i’ts just nice to have money coming in. To have gone from simply WANTING to review things and make a living off it.. to simply doing it. 

And it’s been one hell of a year.. and not just because 2020 felt like hell or 2021 began with a full on insurrection. I feel like i’ve acomplished a lot in the year i’ve been doing this: I finished what I started with Ducktales season 3, getting better and better as I went. And I didn’t stop there with ducks: I started covering what brought me to Ducks in the first place, the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, and while that retrospective has slid a bit on the schedule, I intend to get it back on track this month. I reviewed a bunch of Darkwing Duck episodes leading up to the Just Us Justice Ducks.. chronologically anyway. The actual airing order reads like someone took 50 issues of a comic, made it rain with them, then just started reading whatever ones they picked up randomly. I also covered some of Duck Master Carl Barks work with the classics Night on Bear Mountain, A Christmas for Shacktown and Back to the Klondike, with more to come. 

And the Duck didn’t stop at just reviews I did on my own: Kev comissioned two MASSIVE retrospectives from me: My first for him was Ride of the Three Caballleros where in just a few short months I covered the boys entire televisied careers together from the movie, to house of mouse, to mickey and the roadster racers, to ducktales (again) and finishing with the wonderful Legend of the Three Caballeros. It has probably the worst Daisy imaginable, but otherwise is really excellent and i’m glad I finally watched it. I also covered Don Rosa’s two stories with the boys as part of it. It was a fun ride and I enjoyed every minute of it... okay most of them again Three Cabs Daisy is the worst. And once that finished Kev started up another idea: Shadow Into Light: a look at Lena’s character arc from start to finish that has gone on to be my most popular series on this blog, and that finishes next week. And there’s more to come as after that there’s a short breather with a look at Lilo and Stitch’s crossover episodes.. folllowed by me looking at all three of season 2′s ducktales arcs. And I fully intend to have covered every episode of the series by this time next year, so stay tuned. 

Outside of ducks though I didn’t slow down. I restarted my Tom Lucitor retrospective, covering what i feel to be one of Star Vs’ two best characters, tied with eclipsa, and my personal faviorite as he redeemeed himself, found love and I bitched a lot about the horrible directions the series took and probabably will more as that’s still not done yet. I did what I always wanted to do and started looks at some of my faviorite comics ever, starting with Life and Times and adding in New X-Men and Scott PIlgrim. I also threw in the awesome comic Blacksad. I did pride month for the first time and not only came out publicly, but also did two whole arcs i’m proud of with The Saluna episodes of Loud house and the rednid episodes of OK KO, and generally just had myself a good old fashioned time as an out bi man reviewing childrens cartoons. 

I started Season 2 of amphibia with it’s lows of an endlesss road trip and highs of adding Marcy to the cast and giving us more of the silky voiced keith david. And finally Patreon wise Kev’s taken me on a hell o fa journey: In addition to the restrospectives i’ve covered some additional darkwing duck, and a simpsons homage to the duck comics... but also got a bit weird and obscure with detours like the lost animnaics sucessor Histeria, the apocalyptic comedy where Santa dosen’t know how doors work Whoops! and the adventures of Santa’s bratty teen daughter jingle belle. In short.. it’s been a long year but damn has it been fun and there’s more to come. I’d like to thank all of you for reading, thank my Patreons Kev and Emma for supporting me, and thank my family for doing the same.  So with that out of the way, I figured the best way to celebrate was to do something i’ve been wanting to do for a long time, something honoring the show that gave me this calling in the first place. And with Season 3 sadly being the last, and enough weeks having passed for me to digest it between the finale and today, I could think of nothing better than my top 12 episodes of Ducktales.

Ducktales is one of the best cartoons of the 2010′s. Brilliantly taking EVERYTHING that had come before, the comics, the original cartoon and every bit of duck media period to craft a masterful, unique and wonderful reboot. It was funny, it was insane, and it had damn good character arcs. By the end every member of the main cast along with major supporting cast members like Fenton, Drake and especially Lena, had changed and signifigantly at that. The show was everything I could’ve dreamed of and more and I miss it terribly, hoping DIsney will do a revivial movie at some point. For now though, Frank and Matt’s run on ducktales, as they called it and I do too since i’m a massive comic book nerd, it’s time to look back on my favorite tales of ducks. So grab your sharks, your number one dimes and your friendship cakes with clear gay undertones and join me under the cut as I celebrate one of my faviorite shows and my anniversary in the best way possible. 

12. House of the Lucky Gander! 

 So as i’ve gone on about before and no doubt will again, Donald kinda got the short end of the stick in season 1. While Frank and Matt had good story intentions, keeping Donald away from adventure since he had no interest in it, in practice it meant a beloved Disney Icon who they and disney HEAVILY promoted as part of the series and whose being here this go round was a big draw for fans of the comics.... was only in a quarter of the season and only got TWO plots centered around him in 23 episodes, with only one being the main plot of the episode. The PIlot and Finale both centered around the family more as a whole if your curious how I counted those so while he got plenty of focus in both, it’s still not a day in the limelight sort of thing. 

But unusually for Donald, he lucked out as his one big starring role for Season 1 was both one of my faviorites and one of Season 1′s most inventive outings.  A lot of the episodes enegy comes from a one two punch of a great guest star and one of the series best settings. The guest star is of course everyone’s faviorite overly lucky himbo Gladstone Gander. The show adapted the prick perfectly: The original Gladstone from the comics.. was the worst asshole imaginable, utterly insufferable. And for a villian, and Donald’s rival, that’s all well and good.. but his super luck meant he RARELY , if ever, suffered any consequences for being just...

The 87 series simply made him nicer, while Going Quackers simply removed his luck. No adaptation really got how to make this fucker work.. until this one. Here Frank split the diffrence: Gladstone is still smug.. but he’s no longer actively malicious. While he is an insensitive prick to Donald in this one, unlike the comics he’s not constantly bragging about his luck or how great he is or actively BAITING Donald to fight with him or trying to ruin his relationship or a million other reasons he sucks and I hate him.

This version by contrast... is generous. He’s not the most empathetic, because he doesn’t get how life works, but he does share the riches of the casnio with everyone and in a cameo appearance in “Treasure of the Found Lamp” gladly offers his nephews some diamonds. He’s got a nice surface level charm to him that makes you understand why people like him.. but it’s also clear ther’es nothing UNDER that of value, making you equally understand why Scrooge and Donald hate him. Gladstone in this reboot is a perfect example of why we need reboots or new adaptations in the first place: Because sometimes the original got something wrong or something can be done much better by the new writers. 

He’s perfectly paired with the setting: The House of Lucky Fortune, a mystical casino with an East Asian astatic based in the country of Macaw and provides two great plots. Donald’s really highlights his character: His understandable jealousy at gladstone earning the boys love through nothing while he struggles to make a living for them, and how he feels like a looser and like Gladstone is simply showing that off instead of just not knowing what empathy is. Having Louie be the one to bond with Gladstone was also just pitch pefefct, as is showing some depth for the boy by having himr ealize his hero is an asshole and be the one to help donald in the end. 

The other plot is just pure joy though and is where the setting REALLY shines: Scrooge and the rest of the kids try to leave.. but can’t find the exit. This is where the creative part comes in: The Casino simply morphs to keep people trapped, and caters to them, giving them whatever they want to keep them trapped. In the cases of the kids it’s all hilarious and adorably in character: Huey becomes entranced by a fancy water show, in one of his best bits of the season, Dewey gets a pet tiger who sadly did not come home with him and Webby gets to live the dream we’ve all had of stuffing her face directly in a choclate fountain. Scrooge’s escape is likewise clever: He simply prepares to get a room.. then books it as the check in desk is ALWAYS near the front. 

We then find out Gladston’es trapped get the whole mystical contest with absolutely gorgeous animation, i’ll talk about it in full some time but this episode is just a treat to watch, has a great arc for donald and had some memorable gags. I can’t help but smile when I watch it. 

11. The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!  As I mentioned before i’m a superhero nerd so naturally Fenton was one of my faviorite parts of the show. Frank and Matt were just damn good at crafting superhero stories, and like gladstone improved fenton turning him from an awkward donald stand in to an awkward peter parker-esque science nerd who just wants to be a good person and the best hero he can be. He got into science not just because he thinks it’s neat, but because he honestly wants to help people and you can’t help but foot for him whenever he pops up. Lin Manuel Miranda is a large reason for that, bringing his incomparable a-game to the character. While we sadly didn’t get a ton of gizmoduck focused episodes, the fatct we got AS MANY as we did and that Lin didn’t drop out for a minute even with his busy schedule was a miracle and I’m acknowledging that. 

As for why this one, I feel it builds brilliantly on the previous Fentoncentric episode Who Is Gizmoduck?! which just BARELY didn’t make this list and uses the fact we haven’t seen fenton in a while as both a plot point and to move some things forward without having to spend screentime they clearly didn’t have. By having Fenton be just burnt out on superheroics it finds a way to both explain where he’s been, he’s been busy with his new job, and give us an interesting angle to the old “superhero is tired of the life” thing. He never once complains about saving people or stuff... it’s just like any job it gets tiring after a while. As someone who has his dream job but has struggled with it from time to time, I vastly relate. 

Though while I love my boy and Lin is game as always, the episodes real MVP is my other boy Huey. The episode has moved Huey up from being simply Fenton’s fanboy to being his best friend, and adorable as hell relationship. The two clearly respect and appricate each other and Huey is looking out for his buddy the whole episode. His love of love is also just really cute. Added in the mix is Webby, who in one of my faviorite gags of the series, finds out Fenton is  Gizmoduck because Huey is incredibly and insanely blatant with his unecessary coverup. But she of course is game to help while Fenton is trying to play it casual. We also just get a waterfall of great gags as everyone overdoes it wingmanning for fenton: Huey sets up an itallian bistro and tries to purposfully create a lady and the tramp situation, and sings opera (With Manny on acordian), the wonderfully 80′s suit from Fenton’s dad his mom gives him to wear, and Launchpad, who gives us a tremendous list of his exes, and plays my favorite song of the series: It’s a Date, a micheal mcdonnel riff. 

This episode also wisely ups Mark’s Beaks game as Fenton’s arch enemy, still keeping him hilaroius, with the guy acting like a bored teenager and guzzling so much nanite jucie he turns into a hulk, as well as said hulk mode leading to a ton of great gags from kidnapping the children (”I got your kids.. are they your kids? I don’t know how this family works), to “take that coach dad” to eating a pie with tins and all and wondering about said tins. But he’s an actual threat now, taking on fenton in one hell of a fight, and having an utterly transcendent scene where he hacks his way past gyro’s security while dancing.. and dabbing because of course he does. It’s a fun, well done character piece that’s mostly here for i’ts laugh but Fenton’s struggle with Gizmo overtaking his life, and finding out someone he truly hit it off iwth only wanted him for that.. it’s really good stuff and Lin’s delivery after Fenton finds out, the pure pain and betryal in his voice, is just excellent. Also that opera scene is poetry. 

10. Quack Pack!

One of the episodes that started my career naturally landed here. Not for that reason though: Quack Pack is a fun riff on sitcoms, specifically the tgif ones of the 90′s that Disney Afternoon Kids no doubt also watched, the kinds Disney Channel still makes today, and most importanly the kind the Disney Afternoon itself made like Goof Troop and well... Quack Pack. 

Riffs on sitcoms are nothing new and the last year has been FULL of them. 2020 gave us this episode, Beef House and the wonderful “The Perfect House” episode of Close Enough, and this year gave us WandaVision, my second favorite MCU project so far, right behind Black Panther, which used the sitcom deconstruction to create one hell of a character study. 

So you’d think with a year having passed and this concept happening as an entire mini series would dull this one.. but no. it’s still damn funny, having fun at the cliches while, again like WandaVision, having one of the main cast be responsible by accident but go along with it. The episode pivots from glorious affectionate parody of cheesy sitcoms, to that plus horrifying “Humans”, and a character piece for Donald. This brings Donald’s hatred and fed up ness with adventure to a head revealing his fondest wish is just to have a normal life and not loose anyone again. 

It takes one of his best friends to snap him out of it. Look Goofy is my second faviorite of the sensational seven, an episode with him was already an easy sell for me.. but the episode uses him really well. First for laughs as he’s gentically dispositioned to be a perfect sitcom neighbor.. but also for heart. With his family preoccupied and a bit hurt, i’ts Goofy who cuts to the heart of the issue, pointing out NO ONE is normal and even his normal domestic life raising Max, who we see go to prom with roxanne eeeeee, has all sorts of chaos. Normal is what you make of it and pining for some ideal that will never happen was just tearing donald apart piece by piece and by letting go of that.. he finally begins to grow as a person throughout the season. It’s also a great thematic tie in to the season’s overall plot with Bradford and what Makes donald, despite also disliking the chaos his family gets into, different. Donald accepted it and grew as a person.. Bradford clung to his hate and it ate him alive. Or turned him into a non-sapient kind of vulture. Before I close this part out Jaleel White is also excellent and I wish eh’d get back into voice acting. He’s so freaking good at it. Seriously man i’d love to see him and ben in a sonic property together as a mythology gag. Same with Jims cummings and carey. Just think about it whoever owns the sonic movies.. think about it. 

9. The Last Adventure!

Look I knew this was coming, you knew this was coming. But it had to be on here. The Last Adventure is not perfect: The lack of a build up episode like the previous two finales had really hurt this one: even at about 70 minutes, it still feels rushed in places and Huey, one of hte main characters of the season, dosen’t feel like he has a full payoff to his character like Dewey and Louie got. 

But despite those flaws.. this episode is just a damn good ending. Almost everyone gets a big moment paying off their character arc, everyone in the party that comes to rescue webby and huey, along with the two themselves, gets a moment to show off, and everything comes together to give us one last epic sendoff. There’s just moment stacked on moment stacked on moment from Launchpads heroic second wind and donning of the gizmoduck armor, to Webby’s tearful confrontation with Beakley, to Huey using the greatest adventure of all line to foil bradford in one of the most deligfhully nuts moments of the series, I could go on for days with just how triumphant this finale felt. While it left a lot of doors open.. that feels like part of the design. It’s the end of the fight with FOWL.. but our heroes will never stop adventuring, never stop going and never stop being in our hearts and the curtain call at the end is now my faviorite bit of end credits ever, perfectly giving the main cast and friends one last chance to take a bow in their own unique ways. I will always miss this show but I will never be disapointed by the note it went out on. 

8. The 87 Cent Solution!

Look some episodes are show stoppers, some are heartfelt tearjerkers, some are all this and more.. and some episodes are just clever and hilarious. The 87 Solution is the second funniest episode of Ducktales with me and my go to episode when watching the show. It’s just pure fun and with a clever premise: Scrooge notices 87 cents have gone missing, and already coming down with a cold, goes mad with paranoia as the kids slowly don face masks, something that has become even eeerier given everything, one by one realizing he needs to stop. 

While David Tennant is an EXCELLENT dramatic actor, his comedy timing is really something that shoudln’t be ignored and i’ts on full display here as his performance gets more and more deranged, to thep oint he thinks an 8th dimensional imp is repsonsible. He nicely balances the disturbing side of Scrooge’s paranoia, his distancing from his family, with plenty of great gags about it too, the standout being when he offers 2 million dollars to whoever took the money like he’s publicly appeasing kidnappers. It’s fucking brilliant. 

But while David is awesome as ever what really, truly makes the episode is my boy, one of my faviorite characters on the show if not my single faviriote FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Keith Ferguson is ALWAYS a dream as the character but this is his best performance by far. Part of this is the addition of Zan Owlson, Kev who I mentioned earlier’s faviorite Ducktales character. She’s not only throughly likeable in her own right, but provides the one thing Flinty was missing; a straight man.. or woman in this case. Scrooge wasn’t TERRIBLE in the roll, but can easily step away from his shit or foil it. Owlson has to put up with Glomgold’s nonsense while desperatly trying to stop him from undoing all her hard work with sheer force of jackass. The two jut play off each other brilliantly, Glomgold not getting sh’es not his employee but his equal and Owlson constnatly snarking at him. 

And of course both things hit their peak in the climax with the family staging a fake funeral (Though no one told donald it was fake), and we get the funniest scene in the entire fucking show as Glomgold burts in in a white suit, money shades and full dance number to “All I Do Is Win’, which when first watching this I was convinced the song was somehow accidnetly on in the background but nope. They got it after using it in the test phase and the scene is better for it. Glomgold twerking on Scrooge’s casket, trying to get on it to dance, and having to be placated like ac hild is the icing on this very rich cake

And the reveal scene is also gold as Glomgold gets into a YEARLONG staring contest with a baby, fails to steal more than the 87 cents and, in my faviorite touch, put on an imp costume just to make scrooge seem crazier... then keeps the damn thing on the rest of the time for no explicable reason. The episode is the show at it’s comedic peak while giving Glomgold a chance to be a genuine threat and that’s Glomgood. 

7. Let’s Get Dangerous!

Frank’s Rebooted Version of Darkwing Duck is probably his greatest achivment with the show. While this show is a team effort, something I slowly realized as I reviewed the show, it’s very clear from the way he talks, how well he knows the show and how much effort was put into porting Darkwing into the reboot that this was his baby. While redefining ducktales for the 2010′s was clearly a huge dream of his... doing the same for the master of suprise was an even bigger goal. And as a huge fan of superheroes i’ve seen my fair share of half assed takes on laired and complex characters. The XCU alone is one giant grab bag of missed opportunities for me. 

So i’ts no exageration when I tell you Frank.. nailed it. In one of the most brilliant moves i’ve seen for a superhero work Frank worked his love of the show into the reboot.. by having Darkwing have been a show, one Launchpad loved.. and so did Drake, who was inspried by the show to become an inspriation himself and while his attempt to do that through a zack snydery reboot failed, Launchpad encouraged him to do it for real. Drake was still himself, but the meta aspect and the toning down of some of darkwing’s more obnoxious traits that didn’t work in a universe that, while patently rediciulous still took it’s characters seriously, he made a BETTER version of the character.

This is where all that comes to it’s peak, and hoppefully convinced Disney to let Frank , and possibly matt, run the reboot. And no, even if Point Grey is producing that dosen’t stop that: Thanks to Invincible i’ve now realized that Seth and his friend Evan producing the show dosen’t mean it’ll be RAN by them, nor unrelated to this. It just means their helping make it and if anything given how lush and gorgeous invincible’s animation is, it’s a VERY good sign their helping out with it if it’s true. 

But wether this versoin continues or not, Frank gave it his best shot. Part of his diffrent angle is having Drake as a rookie here and as such here we see him truly struggle: he’s had his origin, he ahs the cape, he has the gadgets (in a brilliant turn thanks to fenton, who he actually likes... but is so far the ONLY person to not get he’s Gizmoduck), and the city.. but no crime to fight and no real idea how to go about his lifelong dream. The events of the episode slowly shape him: WHile he already had the spirit for darkwing, never giving up, looking good in a cape etc, this episode gives him the heart the same way it gave his original it: With Gosalyn. Dimantopolis and Beatriz just play off each other perfectly, as the two go from neimies to slowly bonding as Drake realizes this kid needs him and that he needs to fight for more than just filing the ohle inside, and goes to hell and back to help her get her grandpa back, with one of the best moments of the episode to me being when Launchpad helps her realize how hard he’s been working at it, an exausted drake refusing to acccept that he can’t get her grandpa back because he promised. He grows from simply trying to live the dream.. to surpassing the original. We also see more from Launchpad, who grows into his new family and helps push his boyfriend and newa dopted daughter in the right directions. The episode really evolves these characters from the simple disney afternoon versions, who while awesome were made into fully fleshed out characters. Gosalyn still has her edge but now has a hard lesson to learn about doing the right thing, forced to give up someone she loves for the greater good but finding a new family in the process. 

Part of what makes the episode work though as while it is funcitonally one big darkwing duck reboot pilot that’s awesome, heartrending and a joy to watch... it’s still a ducktales episode in parts without either part hurting each other. Huey plays a vital role, figuring the ramrod is too good to be true.. and discovering just how it is, then when captured, slowly unravling why Bradford’s there and being at least in part responsible for outing him as a FOWL agent. While this is largely Drakes story the rest of the cast is still vital to it: Scrooge trusting in huey, Louie serving as his logical counter and Dewey meanwhile bonding with team darkwing and helping Gosalyn, knowing exactly where she’s been and providing a nice foil. The episode is just one long and impressive love letter to the original show while creating it’s own thing and that’s really this reboot in a nutshell. It also has some of the best fights of the series, with the first fight between darkwing and bulba, where our hero, unlike his original counterpart, easily troucnes bulba using his speed and skill, is the standout. 

6. Woo-Ooo!

I covered this one recently so I won’t go on for too long.. but I will say I hold this one up as the gold standard for first episodes. In one hour, hell even in jus the first half we get a sense of the whole cast, the tone of the show, and the world we’ve been thrust into. It gets all the table setting out of the way by weaving it into a compelling story of Scrooge getting back in the game, finding a reason to get back to what he does best in those he loves most and setting up the season long arc effortlessly in the process. The worst I can say about the episode is it sets the bar a bit high for Season 1 and a lot of the first half really struggled to reach these heights. This episode is a masterwork and the perfect showcase for what the series would be at it’s height. 

5. Moonvasion!

Speaking of Golden Standards, Moonvasion is one of the best season finale’s i’ve seen. it’s not THE best.. but that’s a really high bar to clear and that spots currently taken in my heart by “The Crossroads of Destiny” from Avatar the Last Airbender. But while not the best of it’s kind, it’s sitll the best the series put out and is an utterly satisfying epic that ties up season 2. 

While I love the Last Adventure, it had a LOT to tie up and was really hampered by having to do all of that with no direct lead in. Moonvasion by contrast hits the ground running with the Moonlanders arriving on earth and all hell breaking loose, and the episode itself breaking into two stellar plots. Scrooge leading an army of every ally he has against the invaders, and Della seemingly going for reinforcements.. but really just trying to keep the kids safe from it, to their anger once they find out. 

Both sides end up going badly: Scrooge looses most of his army as Lunaris was one step ahead of him and is left iwth Beakly and Launchpad, while Della ends up marooned.. and finds Donald. The reunion between the two is the highlight of the special, as the two argue as you’d expect (And Dewey cutting in seemingly to stop it.. only to rant at Donald for costing him “ten years of turbo” is the best gag of the episode), before embracing. 

Our heroes naturally find ways to bounce back though. Louie, capping off his growth for the season, convinces his mom they can’t just hide.. and in the second best scene of the episode sings the lullabye she wrote.. one Donald sung them every night

And no sooner than Della gets her step back and realizes that dangerous or not she and her newly reunited family have to get back in there, do the cousins show up on Fethry’s giant shrimp/girlfriend Mitzi, and our heroes head back. 

Scrooge’s plot hits i’ts peak though as he’s forced to accept the help of an unlikely and unwelcome ally: Glomgold, who turns out to be exactly what they need: While his plan is as stupid, short sighted and insane as you’d expect, complete with forcing Scrooge to dress up as santa just to piss him off and dressing his sharks in parkas (”I call them sharkas”), the sheer lonacy throws Lunaris off as he dosen’t know how to deal with this and Glomgold not only gets the better of him but gets his company back as part of his scheme.  “You were prepared for our best but not our dumbest!” “And i’m the dumbest theirs ever been! Muahahahaha! Wait...”

And of course our other heroes arrive just in time to save things.. and the episode still manages to pull off what many works struggle to, something tha’ts very hard to: a SECOND climax. Lunaris decides to just say fuck it and blow up the earth and i’ts up to our core family to kick his ass in space. Epic space battles, Della’s girlfriend meeting the family and more insues and an emotoinal, action packed and fully satisfying finale is had by all... and it’s all topped with one of the best sequel hooks i’ve ever seen as FOWL makes themselves known to us.. and prepares to strike. 

4. How Santa Stole Christmas! This one will also be short as i’ve talked about this one.. a lottttt. The initial review, my best christmas specials list and my best of 2020 list. I stand by all of that: this is a unique and wonderful christmas special, i’ll be watching it every year, and i’ts full of charm, humor and gay subtext. In short it’s this series but on christmas footing. 

3. Last Crash of the Sunchaser! 

Another one I covered very recently, this episode is a master piece of suspense, slowly building tension as our heroes get closer and closer to the truth about Della.. and to death, the simple but deadly stakes making this an absolute nailbiter from start to finish. This is some of the series best pacing bar none... but what seals it is the ending: the masterful flashback finally explaning whatever happened to Della duck, our heroes lashing out at each other.. all cumilating in the best Scene of the show. I said it might be in the review but no I can confirm: Scrooge bitterly ruminating over things while we find out just how much he’s lost... ending with him tearfully and angrily sitting once again alone in one hell of a powerful shot echoing Scrooge’s first apperance. Damn fine stuff. 

2. Escape from The Impossbin Only one episode not only matches Last Crash in mounting tension and atmosphere but suprasses it. With FOWL and Bradford’s true nature now out in the wind, this episode uses that to create tension and rattles it’s two most unshakable characters: SCrooge’s normal boundless confidence is shot, not sure he can win this time against an opponent who knows him as well as he knows himself while Beakly slowly unravels, pitting Webby against the boys.. and pitting herself against Webby when Webby sees her terroizing them is only dividing them. Both plots start out funny enough but slowly escalate in tension and stakes until by the end your on the edge of your seat. The Beakly plot is the standout of the two, giving Bentina the starring role she badly needed, having gotten even better in light of the finale. Everyone is at the top of their game and everything builds up to one hell of a twist ending and one hell of a badass boast from our heroes: Their down.. but their far from out and this is far from over. 

1. Nightmare On Kimotor Hill!

I”ll be reviewing this episode in full later this week as part of my Lena retrospective, but I stand by putting it up top. This episode is ducktales in it’s purest form and focuses on it’s best original character as Lena grapples with her self hatred and her past. That core helps anchor an amazing concept: going into the Kid’s dreams and finding out their greatest desires. The results.. are all gloriously rediclous and are easily the best gags of hte series as a whole: Dewey’s high school musical santa claus is going ot high school nonsense from getting a’s in Dewology to running away from the abstract concept of a love intrest, to not getting the sybolism of himself crying a moon made of his own tears. Louie quite literally becoming garfield, and my faviorite scene of the show: Huey, wanting to be the tall older brother..g iving himself horrifcly long leg. While everyone else is just understandably baffled, what makes the scene is the banter between Dewey and Huey, with Schwartz and Pudi at their best as Dewey first freaks out and then asks what the hell man, while Huey defends his weird decision (”I”m not good at imagination stuff okay!”), and then tries to get a jar of pickles. Each dream is just so oddly and wonderfully specific to each kid and each one of the triplests dreams, as well as violets being color coded down tot he backgrounds is a very nice touch. The visuals here are just peak ducktales, using the setting for all it’s worth and the climax is utterly emotoinal and heartbreaking... and Lena’s break from her abuser, finally realizing she has the power now is not only a wonderful metaphor... but also just so damn cathartic. And that’s why this one’s the best to me personally: it just packs so much into 20 minutes: some of the series best and most creative jokes, a gripping emtoinal arc, and so much more. It’s just that damn good and tha’ts why it’s the best... that and starting Huelet for me. Seriously that LIbrary scene is so fucking cute. 

Thank you all for reading. If you liked this artcle, join my patreon and help me get to my stretch goal for monthly darkwing duck reviews, a review of super ducktales and more after! Until the next rainbow... it’s been a pleasure. 

[rachelbethhines]

Vintage Shows to Watch While You Wait for the Next Episode of WandaVision - The 50s

So the first three episodes of Wandavision have dropped onto Disney Plus and like me you’re probably already obsessing over it. Also like me you’re probably jonesing for another fix while waiting for more as the episodes only come out once a week. 

But never fear, we literally have decades of cheesy comedy sitcoms to sift through to keep us entertained during quarantine. Along with the occasional action and/or horror stuff  if you’re so inclined. So if you’re trying to decide where to start I’ll be making short lists for each decade that coincides with each episode. 

1. I Love Lucy (1951- 1957)

The granddaddy of all American television sitcoms staring the first lady of comedy herself, Lucille Ball. While not the first sitcom to air, tv had been kicking around since the late 40s, this show did pave the way for many technical innovations for the new medium both on and behind the scenes. As such Elisabeth Olsen cited Miss Ball’s work as one of her inspirations for her role as Wanda in the series, as do many a woman entering into the comedic field. 

Also the show is just flat out funny. One of those rare 50s sitcoms that manages to overcome some of it’s more dated aspects through shear force of personality and peak comedic screwball antics. The only downside is you have to have Hulu to watch it as the copywrite is tightly controlled even to this day.  

2. Amos ‘n Andy (1951-1953)

The 1950s television landscape was overwhelemingly white. It’s no secret that POC had a hard time finding work in the field of entertainment let alone be the stars of the show. Amos ‘n Andy, a spin off of the earlier same titled radio show, was one of, if not the first black led shows on television and so deserves a mention just for that alone. 

Now I will not act as if this show is perfect or ahead of it’s time. The series was controversial even during its day for is depictions of racial stereotypes. Eventually the series was canceled because of protests from the NAACP despite being very popular in the ratings. However I’m a full believer that history should be observed and talked about in order to progress further so check out an episode or two on youtube and decide for yourself if it’s worth remembering or not. 

3. The Adventures of Superman (1952 - 1958)

Ok, not a sitcom, but as we all know, Wandavision isn’t just a sitcom it’s also a superhero show and this is one of the first tv series in this genre. It and the Fleischer Superman cartoons from the previous decade helped to make the juggernaut industry that we know today. 

Plus Superman did an official crossover with I Love Lucy, seriously. 

4. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952 - 1966)

Hardly anyone talks about it today, but Ozzie and Harriet is the longest running sitcom to date. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia being the only other show threating to up seat it come next year. However the two sitcoms couldn’t be any more different. 

The series stared the real life Nelson family who had got their start in radio as comedians and singers who then crossed over into tv. While the show was completely scripted it tried to hew as close to real life as possible, kicking off American’s obsession with platonic voyeurism. Much in the way Wandavision has the meta storyline of being watch in their own home. 

5. Father Knows Best (1954 - 1960)

Another radio to television entry here, however the series drastically changed the main character during the transition. During the 40s radio sitcoms were very biting and sarcastic, often either going the complete surreal screwball route or were satires of the day. This fell out of favor as tv became more dominated by commercials and advertisers feared offending their potential costumers. So things were greatly toned down as the decade progressed. 

Therefore when Father Knows Best hit the small screen gone was the rude and domineering dad and in his place we got the very model tv father; affable, gentle, loving, devoted, and very congenial. All traits we love to see in Vision some six decades later.      

6. The Honeymooners (1955 - 1956)

I physically can not make a recommendation list of 50s sitcoms and not mention The Hoonymooners. I just can’t. It’s one of the greatest sitcoms ever made and hugely influential. So much so that The Flintstones ripped off the series whole sale to the point that Jackie Gleason threatened to sue Hanna-Barbera. However there’s little such influence in Wandvision. 

See what made The Honeymooners stand out at the time and what gave it such longevity is the fact that the main characters were poor. They lived in a cramped and over crowded sparsely furnitured one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. They owed bills, they dressed plainly, they worked long hours at low paying jobs, and they were often dirty from said work. 

Much like how Wandavision will pull back the curtain a little to see the reality hiding underneath their suburban utopia, so too did The Honeymooners defy the the ‘perfect American dream’ that was soled on tv during the 50s to show us the trauma of poverty and the only thing that you can do when you find yourself trapped within that reality, laugh. 

7. Leave it to Beaver (1957 - 1963)

You can not get any more quintessentially 50s than Leave it to Beaver. The series has become synonymous with the decade and it’s take on the ideal American family life to the point where it’s become a punchline of numerus jokes criticizing the values and attitudes of the era. 

Does it really deserve such mockery? Who knows. I think one needs to watch it for themselves to decide. However it slots right into the aesthetic that the first episode of Wandavision is trying to recreate and it must have been popular for a reason, right? 

8. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959 - 1963)

We featured wholesome family sitcoms and screwball comedies with married folks but we haven’t covered any surrealist humor yet, and Wandavision is seeped into that sort of stuff. That’s because there really isn’t a lot of fantasy in most 50s sitcoms. So while the trappings for episode one of Wandavision is very 50s the effects and premise is more 1960s. 

That’s where Dobie Gillis comes into play. Like Wandavision, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is based off a comic book, or comic strip rather. However that comic was very down to earth and tame compared to the tv show. More fondly remembered as the inspiration for Scooby Doo a decade later, Dobie Gillis quickly transformed from a typical coming of age show about teenagers to a surreal, sarcastic, tongue in cheek comedy, complete with get rich quick schemes, spys, bongos, and a giant chicken. 

9. Bonanza (1959 - 1973) 

Yeah, I know all of y’all are judging me right now. “A western in a sitcom/sic-fi list? What are you thinking?” Well one really can’t talk about 50s television and not mention westerns of some sort. They permeated all mediums and dominated the cultural air waves. And Bonanza is far more than just a western.

Bonanza is literally every thing. It’s every genre at once; western, historical drama, sitcom, action adventure, satire, crime drama, soap opera ,and yes even the occasional foray into science fiction, albeit with a more Jules Vern take than a typical spaceman theming. 

If Wandavision is a melding pot of seemingly disconnected genres then it’s because Bonanza paved the way with it’s similar breakage of formula. 

10 The Twilight Zone (1959 to 1964)

Yeah, you probably knew this was coming. When not being a homage to sitcoms Wandavision is a downright horror movie, but not one with gore and mindless monsters. Rather the show evokes old school surrealist horror, like that employed in the famous (or infamous) Twilight Zone. 

What you probably didn’t know is that we have the I Love Lucy show to thank for it. See Lucille Ball and her then husband Desi Arnaz had created their own production company in order to make I Love Lucy. This production company,  Desilu Productions, is responsible for picking up Rod Sterling’s pilot and producing The Twilight Zone. 

Runner Ups

Good shows that have little to do with Wandavision but are good anyways.

What’s My Line (1950 - 1967)

Just a really fun game show. Stars of the day would sometimes appear on it including many of the sitcom comedians listed above

Have Gun - Will Travel (1957 - 1963) 

One of the very few pure westerns that I can tolerate. The lead actually cares about people and justice and will stand up to bigots.  

Dennis the Menace (1959 - 1963)

While I have fond memories of the 90s film, I thought it was a tad redundant to put on the list when there’s already Leave it to Beaver. 

So there’s the 50s list. On Wednesday I’ll post a list for the 60s and cover some of the more obvious stuff Wandavision was paying homage to. 

[timeless-hollywood-classics]

Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi (December 11, 1922 – January 10, 2008), known professionally as Maila Nurmi, was a Finnish-American actress and television personality who created the campy 1950s character Vampira.

The daughter of a Finnish immigrant, Nurmi was raised in Oregon and relocated to Los Angeles in 1940 with hopes of being an actress. After several minor film roles, she found success in the Vampira character, television's first horror host. Nurmi hosted her own series, The Vampira Show, from 1954–55 on KABC-TV.

After the show's cancellation, she appeared in the 1959 cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space, directed by Ed Wood. She is also billed as Vampira in the 1959 film The Beat Generation, where she appears out of character and instead plays a beatnik poet. Nurmi also appeared in the 1959 crime film The Big Operator. She was portrayed by Lisa Marie in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic Ed Wood.

Maila Nurmi was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi in 1922 to Onni Syrjäniemi, a Finnish immigrant, and Sophia Peterson, an American of Finnish descent. Her place of birth is disputed: according to biographer W. Scott Poole in Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror (2014), Nurmi was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, during her career, Nurmi claimed to have been born in Petsamo, Finland, claiming she was the niece of Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi, who began setting long-distance running world records in 1921, the year before her birth. Public U.S. immigration records show her father's immigration at Ellis Island in 1910. Additionally, Dana Gould claimed in a 2014 public interview that he had seen Nurmi's birth certificate, which listed her birthplace as Gloucester, Massachusetts.

During her childhood, Nurmi relocated with her family from Massachusetts to Ashtabula, Ohio, before settling in Astoria, Oregon, a city on the Oregon Coast with a large Finnish community. Her father worked as a lecturer and editor, and her mother also worked as a part-time journalist and translator to support the family. She graduated from Astoria High School in 1940.

In 1940, Nurmi relocated to Los Angeles, California to pursue an acting career, and later in New York City. She modeled for Alberto Vargas, Bernard of Hollywood, and Man Ray, gaining a foothold in the film industry with an uncredited role in Victor Saville's 1947 film, If Winter Comes.

She was reportedly fired in 1944 by Mae West from the cast of West's Broadway play, Catherine Was Great, because West feared she was being upstaged.

On Broadway, she gained much attention after appearing in the horror-themed midnight show Spook Scandals, in which she screamed, fainted, lay in a coffin, and seductively lurked about a mock cemetery. She also worked as a showgirl for the Earl Carroll Theatre and as a high-kicking chorus line dancer at the Florentine Gardens along with stripper Lili St. Cyr. In the 1950s, she supported herself mainly by posing for pin-up photos in men's magazines such as Famous Models, Gala and Glamorous Models. Before landing her role as 'Vampira', she was working as a hat-check girl in a cloakroom on Hollywood's Sunset Strip.

The idea for the Vampira character was born in 1953 when Nurmi attended choreographer Lester Horton's annual Bal Caribe Masquerade in a costume inspired by Morticia Addams in The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. Her appearance with pale white skin and tight black dress caught the attention of television producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr., who wanted to hire her to host horror movies on the Los Angeles television station KABC-TV, but Stromberg had no idea how to contact her. He finally got her phone number from Rudi Gernreich, later the designer of the topless swimsuit. The name Vampira was the invention of Nurmi's husband, Dean Riesner. Nurmi's characterization was influenced by the Dragon Lady from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates and the evil queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

On April 30, 1954, KABC-TV aired a preview, Dig Me Later, Vampira, at 11:00 p.m. The Vampira Show premiered on the following night, May 1, 1954. For the first four weeks, the show aired at midnight, moving to 11:00 p.m. on May 29. Ten months later, the series aired at 10:30 p.m., beginning March 5, 1955. Each show opened with Vampira gliding down a dark corridor flooded with dry-ice fog. At the end of her trance-like walk, the camera zoomed in on her face as she let out a piercing scream. She would then introduce (and mock) that evening's film while reclining barefoot on a skull-encrusted Victorian couch. Her horror-related comedy antics included ghoulish puns such as encouraging viewers to write for epitaphs instead of autographs and talking to her pet spider Rollo.

She also ran as a candidate for Night Mayor of Hollywood with a platform of "dead issues". In another publicity stunt, KABC had her cruise around Hollywood in the back of a chauffeur-driven 1932 Packard touring car with the top down, where she sat, as Vampira, holding a black parasol. The show was an immediate hit, and in June 1954 she appeared as Vampira in a horror-themed comedy skit on The Red Skelton Show along with Béla Lugosi, and Lon Chaney, Jr.. That same week Life magazine ran an article on her, including a photo-spread of her show-opening entrance and scream. A kinescope of her The Red Skelton Show appearance was discovered in 2014. It is available as part of the Shout Factory DVD box set Red Skelton: The Early Years.

When her KABC series was cancelled in 1955, Nurmi retained rights to the character of Vampira and took the show to a competing Los Angeles television station, KHJ-TV. Several episode scripts and a single promotional kinescope of Nurmi re-creating some of her macabre comedy segments are held by private collectors. Several clips from the rare kinescope are included in the documentaries American Scary and Vampira: The Movie. The entire KABC kinescope, plus selections of the KABC pitchman who introduced the clips, is available in the 2012 documentary Vampira and Me.

Vampira and Me also features extensive clips from two previously unknown 16mm kinescopes of Nurmi as Vampira on national TV shows, including her starring guest spot on the April 2, 1955 episode of The George Gobel Show, a top 10 hit. The Vampira and Me restoration of the Gobel kinescope was documented in a 2013 short film entitled Restoring Vampira.

Examination of Nurmi's diaries in 2014 by filmmaker and journalist R. H. Greene verify longtime rumors that in 1956 she was the model for Maleficent, the evil witch in the Disney conception of the classic fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty." The Disney archivist subsequently confirmed these findings.

In 2007, the kinescope film of Nurmi in character was restored by Rerunmedia, whose restorations include The Ed Sullivan Show and Dark Shadows. The restoration utilized the groundbreaking LiveFeed Video Imaging process developed exclusively for the restoration of kinescopes. The restoration was funded by Spectropia Wunderhaus and Coffin Case.

A reconstructed episode of The Vampira Show was released on DVD by the Vampira's Attic web site in October 2007. The release imitated a complete episode by using existing footage of the show combined with vintage commercials believed to have been directed by Ed Wood[citation needed] and the full-length 1932 feature film The Thirteenth Guest.

Nurmi made television history as the first horror movie hostess. In 1957, Screen Gems released a syndicated package of 52 horror movies, mostly from Universal Pictures, under the program title Shock Theater. Independent stations in major cities all over the U.S. began showing these films, adding their own ghoulish host or hostess (including Vampira II and other lookalikes) to attract more viewers.

Nominated for a Los Angeles area Emmy Award as 'Most Outstanding Female Personality' in 1954, she returned to films with Too Much, Too Soon in 1958, followed by The Big Operator and The Beat Generation. Her best known film appearance was in Ed Wood's camp classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, as a Vampira-like zombie (filmed in 1956, but released in 1959). In 1960 she appeared in I Passed for White and Sex Kittens Go to College, followed by 1962's The Magic Sword. The classic clip from Plan 9 from Outer Space featuring Vampira walking out of the woods with her hands pointing straight out was used to start the original opening sequence of WPIX Channel 11 New York's Chiller Theatre in the 1960s.

By 1962, Nurmi was making a living installing linoleum flooring. "And if things are slow in linoleum, I can also do carpentry, make drapes or refinish furniture", she told the Los Angeles Times.

In the early 1960s, Nurmi opened Vampira's Attic, an antiques boutique on Melrose Avenue. She also sold handmade jewelry and clothing. She made items for several celebrities, including Grace Slick of the music group Jefferson Airplane and the Zappa family.

In 1981, Nurmi was asked by KHJ-TV to revive her Vampira character for television. She worked closely with the producers of the new show and was to get an executive producer credit, but Nurmi eventually left the project over creative differences. According to Nurmi, this was because the station cast comedic actress Cassandra Peterson in the part without consulting her. "They eventually called me in to sign a contract and she was there", Nurmi told Bizarre magazine in 2005. "They had hired her without asking me."

Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira. The station sent out a casting call, and Peterson auditioned and won the role.

Unable to continue using the name Vampira, the show was abruptly renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre with Peterson playing the titular host. Nurmi soon filed a lawsuit against Peterson. The court eventually ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "likeness means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair. Nurmi claimed that the entire Elvira persona, which included comedic dialogue and intentionally bad graveyard puns, infringed on her creation's "distinctive dark dress, horror movie props, and...special personality." Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was in part based on the Charles Addams The New Yorker cartoon character Morticia Addams, though she told Boxoffice magazine in 1994 that she had intentionally deviated from Addams' mute and flat-chested creation, making her own TV character "campier and sexier" to avoid plagiarizing Addams' idea.

In 1986, she appeared alongside Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers in Rene Daalder's punk rock musical Population: 1, which was released on DVD in October 2008. According to a Daalder interview on the 2 disc special edition of Population: 1, "There was a wild lady living out in back in a shed. Tomata befriended her and found out she had played Vampira".

In 1987, she recorded two seven-inch singles on Living Eye records with the band Satan's Cheerleaders. The singles, entitled "I Am Damned" and "Genocide Utopia," were both released on colored vinyl, the second one with a swastika on the label, and are extremely rare collector's items.

In 2001, Nurmi opened an official website and began selling autographed memorabilia and original pieces of art on eBay. Until her death, Nurmi lived in a small North Hollywood apartment.

Unlike Elvira, Nurmi authorized very few merchandising contracts for her Vampira character, though the name and likeness have been used unofficially by various companies since the 1950s. In 1994, Nurmi authorized a Vampira model kit for Artomic Creations, and a pre-painted figurine from Bowen Designs in 2001, both sculpted by Thomas Kuntz. In 2004, she authorized merchandising of the Vampira character by Coffin Case, for the limited purpose of selling skate boards and guitar cases.

In the early 1950s, Nurmi was close friends with James Dean, and they spent time together at Googie's coffee shop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. She explained their friendship by saying, "We have the same neuroses."

As Hedda Hopper related in a 1962 memoir that included a chapter on Dean: "We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil'). He said: 'I had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.'"

The 2010 public radio documentary Vampira and Me by author/director R. H. Greene took issue with Hopper's depiction of the Nurmi/Dean relationship, pointing to an extant photo of Dean and Vampira sidekick Jack Simmons in full Boris Karloff Frankenstein make-up as evidence of Nurmi and Dean's friendship. The documentary also described a production memo in the Warner Bros. archive citing a set visit from "Vampira" while Dean was making Rebel Without a Cause.

The Warner Bros memo was first mentioned in the 2006 book Live Fast, Die Young: The Making of Rebel Without a Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, who were given access to the Rebel production files. An interview Frascella and Weisel conducted with actress Shelley Winters also uncovered an instance where Dean interrupted an argument with director Nicholas Ray and Winters so he could watch The Vampira Show on TV.

In Vampira and Me, Nurmi can be heard telling Greene that Dean once appeared in a live bit on The Vampira Show in which Vampira, dressed as a librarian, rapped his knuckles with a ruler because "he was a very naughty boy."

The English Punk rock band The Damned wrote a song about their relationship entitled ‘Plan 9, Channel 7’ and can be found on the 1979 album ‘Machine Gun Etiquette ‘ ( Chiswick Records )

On June 20, 1955, Nurmi was the target of an attempted murder when a man forced his way into her apartment and proceeded to terrorize her for close to four hours. Nurmi eventually escaped and managed to call the police, with assistance from a local shop owner.

She married her first husband, Dean Riesner, in 1949, a former child actor in silent films and later the screenwriter of Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick, Play Misty for Me, and numerous other movies and TV episodes.

She married her second husband, younger actor John Brinkley, on March 10, 1958.

She married actor Fabrizio Mioni on June 20, 1961 in Orange County, California.

On January 10, 2008, Nurmi died of natural causes at her home in Hollywood, aged 85. She was buried in the Griffith Lawn section of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.



[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-4th Place

To anyone who plans on making a reboot of their favorite show in the future, you might want to take notes on this next pick. Because if you ask me, this next series that I'm going to talk about is the best example of how to do a reboot properly.

#4-Ducktales (2017-2021)

The Plot: Scrooge McDuck is the richest duck in the world, who made it big by also being one of the greatest adventurers of all time...ten years ago. Sadly, after an unfortunate accident with the family, Scrooge is forced to live the life of a normal businessman-er-duck. Up until Donald Duck asks Scrooge to watch over his nephews: Huey, Dewey, and Louie. What starts off as a single day of babysitting soon turns into a life of adventure as Scrooge gets back into the adventuring spirit to show his new family what the world really has to offer.

Now I want to make one thing clear: As of the moment of me writing this review, I have seen a total of zero episodes of the original Ducktales. That being said, despite my limited knowledge of the series, I still think it’s fair of me to point out how this is hands down the best reboot as of late (and I’ll explain more as to why that is later). And besides, from what I’ve heard from fans who have watched the original, Ducktales (2017) is a pretty faithful adaptation of the beloved franchise. The reason is that I believe this show remembers the two most important rules of making a reboot.

The first rule of a reboot is to try something new while still being faithful to the source material. Doing something like that is simple as a writer just needs to keep what the fans love and change what they hated. And trust me when I say that the writers of Ducktales (2017) knows how to do just that. For the most part, the show is about a family going on crazy globe-trotting adventures while still learning that family is the best adventure of all, much like the original. As for the characters, most of them keep their fun personalities. Scrooge is still a stingy miser with the heart for adventure, Launchpad is still the lovable idiot who can’t fly a plane, and Donald Duck still remains the one who gets stuck with all the bad luck. Then some characters have their personalities/roles revamped into something that improves upon the original. The best example is Fenton, who is still the wannabe superhero but is now a scientist in this show, wherein the old one was just Scrooge’s accountant. This way, both the hero and the man-DUCK-who’s behind the mask are equally capable of saving the day. There’s also Mrs. Beakley, who was originally a nanny that nagged Scrooge’s ear off for putting the kids in danger. In the reboot, she’s treated more as the anchor of reality to the more oddball characters, who also used to be a kick-butt super spy in her younger years. It is still the same role, but a different interpretation.

Now, some characters receive grand changes to their original personalities. But from what I’ve heard, those changes are made for the better. And there are no characters that need it more than the children. More specifically, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. This show does something that I’m eternally grateful for, and that’s giving each of these three their own distinct personalities and quirks. For years I couldn’t for the life of me tell the triplets apart. They had the same design, the same voice, the same personality, and the only difference people had to go off of are their different colors (which really didn’t do much to help). Here, they have different designs, voices, and now defining character traits for each of them. Huey is the smart and responsible boy scout, Dewey is the annoying attention seeker, and Louie is the best character in the entire show, and I WILL FREAKING FIGHT YOU ON THAT! And let us not forget the most appreciated change: Webby. From what I’ve heard, fans hated the original Webby, as she was nothing more than just the stereotypical girl of the group. Here, she’s given an actual personality and a fun one to boot. Webby is the ecstatic thrill-seeking adventurer who is skilled in combat training (thanks to her grandma) and is (of course) a socially awkward girl who wants to make friends. Like I said, this show took the idea that the fans hated and changed it into something that they’ll love. Which makes sense why the writers mastered this because they themselves are real fans of the show.

It is clear how much the writers are fans of the Ducktales franchise as they filled Ducktales (2017) with many references. And not just references to the original series but also references to the classic comics by Carl Barks and even the NES video game from the 1980s (seriously, this show will make you feel things about the “Moon Theme” you wouldn’t think was possible!). Even the show’s animation seems to be a homage to both the cartoon and comics. Not only do the characters and backgrounds have a more comic book style to them, but the characters also work on a mix of realistic and cartoony logic. And let me just say, it is refreshing to see characters in a Disney show have cartoon logic to them since Wander Over Yonder got canceled. And it’s not just Ducktales that the series reference, but even classic Disney movies (of course) and other shows in the Disney Afternoon lineup. And when it comes to these references, it’s more than just a subtle wink to the fans. The writers actually go out of their way to write a story around these beloved characters, so people who don’t get the joke won’t be one-hundred percent lost. For instance, without giving anything away, the writers found a brilliant way to reintroduce Darkwing Duck in this universe that feels right for this famous character. And if you ask me personally, these are the best ways to handle references for a reboot. Make them work within the story, even if you don’t fully get the joke.

This brings me to the second most important rule of a reboot: Make a quality product even though it is based on something else. Let us pretend that the original never existed. Would Ducktales (2017) still be as good as it is now? Personally, as a person who has never seen the original, I think it is.

This is another show that mixes slice of life episodes with adventure ones, similar to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And just like Friendship is Magic, both are equally interesting because the characters themselves make them so. No matter what situation the Duck Family are in, the audience will care about it because the characters care about it. In fact, I think Ducktales (2017) handles the mix of slice of life and adventure much better than Friendship is Magic. In MLP: FiM, the adventure-based episodes force the characters to stick to their simple personality traits to move the story forward, and character-based ones help them grow. In Ducktales (2017), because the characters regularly go on adventures, they grow as characters no matter the situation. For example, my favorite episode is “The Great Dime Chase” where the main plot is Louie finding Scrooge’s #1 dime after accidentally spending it. While in that same episode, Dewey and Webby try to solve a mystery around the boys’ mom. We get a great lesson about the importance of hard work and a fascinating plot of an overarching mystery within the season, all taking place within the same episode. Both are interesting, neither feels as though it overshadows the other, and the characters develop along the way.

Another thing this show mixes well is comedy and drama. A lot of shows recently tried way too hard to find that perfect mix. Ducktales (2017) is one of the few examples that nails it. The comedy is hilarious, the drama is endearing, and neither feels like it’s prioritized over the other. The show starts off with this mix as well, where others that I’ve talked about seem to start off as purely comedic only to take themselves more seriously later on. That isn’t entirely a bad thing, but I feel as though Ducktales (2017) is the best way to go about the method. That way, fans won’t be complaining about how much “better” the show used to be in its first batch of episodes, much like Star V.S. the Forces of Evil.

Unfortunately, while I recommend this show, it’s not without its fair share of issues. Or rather, issue, as there really is only one problem I have with it. And that problem can be summed up with one name: Dewey Duck. For the most part, I dislike Dewy. Because he’s nothing more than a Ben Schwarts character. No disrespect to Ben Schwarts himself, but lately, it feels as though he only plays the one character from time to time: The egotistical attention seeker slowly and surely learning to be a better person who realizes that not everything is about him. That’s the character he plays in both Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), and it’s the character he plays here. And the thing about these characters is that they’re not as lovable as Ben Schwarts thinks they sound. In fact (and, again, I mean no disrespect to the actor. I’m sure he’s a lovely person in real life), every single one of these characters comes off as kind of annoying rather than as the lovable rapscallions I’m sure they’re meant to be. However, there is one thing worth mentioning about Dewey. While he’s portrayed as annoying when used for comedy, Dewey is surprisingly a compelling character when used for drama. The thing is, he’s rarely used for dramatic moments and is meant as a source of comedy. Hence why I said I disliked him for the most part.

Other than that, there aren’t really that many problems with the show. Well, there are, but they’re mostly nitpicks that the series more than makes up for. Is it weird that the kids are voiced by adults? Yes, but the actors do a great job at being sincere and have great comedic timing than any kid could have. Are there changes to characters that fans might not enjoy? Probably, but I have yet to have seen anyone that has annoyed me as much as Dewey has. Are the villains just evil for the sake of being evil? Yes, but that’s not really a big deal. In fact, a villain doesn’t need a heartbreaking backstory as to why they’ve become so evil. They just need to have a great personality that’s fun to watch, which every villain in the show has (aside from season two’s antagonist who’s basically a Disney surprise villain. And I hate them with a fiery passion). Does it feel as though the show suffers from “too many characters” syndrome? It sometimes does, but each character has such a fun and unique personality that I find it hard to forget most of them.

So really, Ducktales (2017) is the best reboot in recent memory. This is crazy, seeing as how lately it feels as though Disney doesn’t even know how to properly reboot their own movies to save their lives. This is why I feel as though people should take notes on what Ducktales (2017) does if they ever feel like rebooting something they loved as a kid. Because this is more than just a retelling of the same story that people know by heart. This is a fantastic show with even better characters, stories, and tone. Whether you’ve been a fan since the beginning, or a part of the new generation of viewers, odds are you’ll be screaming Whoo-Ooo with every episode.

(Also, a word of warning to those who haven’t watched the show yet: Beware the theme song. Trust me when I say it’ll be stuck in your head until the day you die)

[papermoonloveslucy]

WILDCAT

December 17, 1960

Wildcat is a musical comedy about Wildcat Jackson and her sister who come to oil country in 1912 to strike it rich. She runs into the prowess of Joe Dynamite, and a battle of the sexes and the oil tycoons ensues. 

Wildcat wasn’t written with the 48 year-old queen of comedy in mind so when she showed interest, the script by N. Richard Nash had to be radically re-written.

At the start of the 1960’s Ball’s career was taking a new direction. She was leaving her TV personae Lucy Ricardo (as well as her real-life husband Desi Arnaz) behind for newer horizons. It was their company Desilu that would produce Wildcat with Lucy having say over who would be cast as her co-star. After several of her first choices proved not available (including Clint Eastwood), she settled on Keith Andes.

Although Ball was not known for her singing (a fact she traded on in “I Love Lucy”) or her dancing (which she was far better at), she had the determination of Wildcat Jackson to attempt it eight times a week. 

Director and choreographer Michael Kidd – known for his athletic dances – would put Ball through her paces. The score was by Cy Coleman with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, giving Ball the rousing anthem “Hey, Look Me Over!” and the tuneful “What Takes My Fancy.” 

The out-of-town critics were mixed, but obviously adored the red-headed star. The show was headed up the New Jersey Turnpike in trucks headed for Broadway when a serious blizzard stranded the caravan, causing the opening night to be delayed. 

With just two previews under their belt, the show opened at the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon) on December 17, 1960. Box office sales were buoyed by audiences expecting to see Lucy Ricardo, not Lucille Ball as Wildy Jackson, so eventually Ball interpolated more and more of her trademark comic inflections into her character. 

Then Ball took ill. She left the show for a bit with the idea to return and continue the run. But upon her return she collapsed on stage. Producers decided to close the show for as long as it took her to recover and resume when her strength and health had returned. But the musicians union insisted upon payment during the hiatus, which made the wait financially unfeasible. 

All in all, Wildcat lasted 171 performances. It wasn’t Ball’s only musical, however. In 1974 she took on the title role in the film of Mame with mixed to poor critical reactions.

"Then I go to New York with the two children, my mother and two maids. We have a seven-room apartment on 69th Street at Lexington. I’ll start rehearsals right away for a Broadway show, 'Wildcat.’ It’s a comedy with music, not a musical comedy, but the music is important. I play a girl wildcatter in the Southwestern oil fields around the turn of the century. It was written by N. Richard Nash, who wrote 'The Rainmaker.’ He is co-producer with Michael Kidd, the director. We’re still looking for a leading man. I want an unknown. He has to be big, husky, around 40. He has to be able to throw me around, and I’m a pretty big girl. He has to be able to sing, at least a little. I have to sing, too. It’s pretty bad. When I practice, I hold my hands over my ears. We open out of town - I don’t know where - and come to New York in December.”  ~ Lucille Ball,  TV Guide, July 16, 1960

THE SCORE

Lyrics by Carolyn Leigh and Music by Cy Coleman

Act I

I Hear - Townspeople

Hey, Look Me Over - Wildy and Jane

Wildcat* - Wildy and Townspeople

You've Come Home - Joe

That's What I Want for Janie* - Wildy

What Takes My Fancy - Wildy and Sookie

You're a Liar - Wildy and Joe

One Day We Dance - Hank and Jane

Give a Little Whistle and I'll Be There - Wildy, Joe, The Crew

Tall Hope - Tattoo, Oney, Sadie, Matt and Crew

Act II

Tippy Tippy Toes - Wildy and Countess

El Sombrero

Corduroy Road

You've Come Home (Reprise) - Joe

(*) Songs cut sometime after opening night.

THE CAST

Lucille Ball (Wildcat Jackson) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon, which was not a success and was canceled after just 13 episodes. 

Keith Andes (Joe Dynamite) was born John Charles Andes in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1920. Andes played Lucy Carmichael’s boyfriend Bill King on “The Lucy Show” in “Lucy Goes Duck Hunting” (TLS S2;E6) and “Lucy and the Winter Sports” (TLS S3;E3) and played Brad Collins in “Lucy and Joan” (S4;E4) co-starring Joan Blondell.  Andes took his own life in 2005 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Valerie Harper (Dancer, right) became one of television’s most recognizable stars as “Rhoda” (1974-78) a spin-off of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” She appeared in  at “Kennedy Center Presents” honoring Lucy in 1986. She died in August 2019 after a long battle with brain cancer.

Paula Stewart (Janie) appears in the fourth of her six Broadway musicals between 1951 and 1965.  Her only series television appearance opposite Lucille Ball was in “Lucy and Harry’s Tonsils” (HL S2;E5) in 1969. In 2017, she published a memoir titled Lucy Loved Me, about her friendship with Lucille Ball.

Hal Linden (Matt, replacement) became one of television’s most recognizable stars as “Barney Miller” (1974-82). He appeared at an “All-Star Party for Lucille Ball” in 1984 and at “Kennedy Center Presents” honoring Lucy in 1986. 

Howard Fischer (Sheriff Sam Gore)  

Ken Ayers (Barney)

Anthony Saverino (Luke)

Edith King (Countess Emily O'Brien)

Clifford David (Hank)

HF Green (Miguel)

Don Tomkins (Sookie)

Charles Braswell (Matt)

Bill Linton (Corky)

Swen Swenson (Oney)

Ray Mason (Sandy)

Bill Walker (Tattoo)

Al Lanti (Cisco)

Bill Richards (Postman)

Marsha Wagner (Inez)

Wendy Nickerson (Blonde)

Betty Jane Watson (Wildy Understudy)

Dancers: Barbara Beck, Robert Bakanic, Mel Davidson, Penny Ann Green, Lucia Lambert, Ronald Lee, Jacqueline Maria, Frank Pietrie, Adriane Rogers, John Sharpe, Gerald Tiejelo

Singers: Lee Green, Jan Leighton, Urylee Leonardos, Virginia Oswald, Jeanne Steele, Gene Varrone

MRS. MORTON 

Lucy met Gary Morton while doing Wildcat on Broadway. She put off their first date due to her rigorous performance schedule. Eventually, he showed up with a pizza just when Lucy was craving one. They married on November 19, 1961.

Comic Jack Carter served as best man at Lucy and Gary’s wedding in 1961.  A few weeks later he married Paula Stewart, who played Lucy’s sister Janie in Wildcat. He acted in “Lucy Sues Mooney” (TLS S6;E12).

“HEY LOOK ME OVER!”

On June 4, 1976 Lucille is joined by Valerie Harper and Dinah Shore on “Dinah!” to sing her signature song from Wildcat, “Hey, Look Me Over.”

When Lucille Ball was celebrated at “The Kennedy Center Honors” in December 1986, Valerie Harper, Beatrice Arthur, and Pam Dawber sang a song parody of the “I Love Lucy” theme expressing their affection for Lucy. The medley ends with a specially-tailored “Hey Look Me Over”. 

In “Lucy and Carol Burnett: Part 2″ (TLS S6;E15) on December 11, 1967, Lucy, Carol, and the ensemble perform “Hey, Look Me Over” with specially written lyrics to suit the episode’s theme of air travel.  

In “Lucy Meets Danny Kaye” (TLS S3;E15) on December 28, 1964, the opening of “The Danny Kaye Show” is underscored with the music to “Hey, Look Me Over.”

While David Frost is trying to sleep during a transatlantic flight, Lucy wears her headset and hums along to “Hey Look Me Over” while tapping it out on the glasses with her cutlery.  The scene is from “Lucy Helps David Frost Go Night-Night” (HL S4;E12) aired on November 12, 1971.

In “Lucy and Petula Clark” (HL S5;E8) in 1972, Lucy Carter leaves the office singing “Hey Look Me Over.”

On “Life With Lucy,” Lucy’s grandson Kevin plays on the YMCA soccer team The Wildcats. The name of the team is probably a reference to Lucille Ball’s only Broadway show.

In the second scene of “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” (1986), an un-aired episode of “Life With Lucy”, Lucy comes down the stairs of the living room singing “Hey Look Me Over.” 

WILDCAT WILDCARDS

In April 1961, Lucille Ball played softball in Central Park for the Broadway Show League when she was appearing in Wildcat. Julie Andrews (starring in Camelot) was the catcher!  The catcher was Joe E. Brown. 

In the play Love! Valour! Compassion! Buzz, a gay musical theater aficionado (Nathan Lane on Broadway) breaks the fourth wall (a common conceit of the play) to tell the audience something personal about himself. 

The song title was also the title of a 2018 revue about rarely produced musicals at City Center in New York City.  Performer Carolee Carmello called it her “hair homage to Lucille Ball.” 

~ From the memoir Under the Radar by Clifford David, who played Hal in Wildcat

[mrjoelgarcia9]

Let’s Talk #Gotham: Final Thoughts

Gotham was never about Batman.

For my Final Thoughts on FOX’s Gotham, feel free to keep reading. There will be spoilers.

While there have been an abundance of animated shows starring Batman, either centering around him or as part of the Justice League, the same cannot be said about live action shows. There have been only three either based on or centering around Batman: the titular 1960s Adam West series, Birds of Prey, and Gotham.

The reason for such a low number is due to Warner Brothers prioritizing Batman for theatrical features and restricting his live action TV appearances to mentions and shadowy cameos.

Gotham was able to work as a show because it did not exclusively focus on Bruce Wayne and his path to becoming Batman. If it had done that in the first place, the show would just be a bloated re-tread of the first act of Batman Begins. With an ensemble cast, the show was able to explore different characters and how their respective paths clashed with one another.

It presented something rarely explored in the comics or even past productions: the origins of Batman’s villains and supporting characters. While the early beginnings of certain characters such as The Riddler, Commissioner Gordon, and Penguin have been previously explored in other adaptations (with ranging degrees of success), Gotham expanded upon them in new ways.

Notable examples include Selina’s mother, Edward’s love life, Oswald’s implied bisexuality, Jonathan Crane’s father, Jervis Tetch’s sister Alice, and The Joker’s twin origins. The most notable of these expansions were Barbara Kean, Leslie “Lee” Thompkins, and Butch Gilzean.

For Barbara, the show was able to work with a blank slate since not much has been shown of Barbara Gordon’s mother either in the comics or other adaptations. She went from being an annoying character fans may have wanted to see die during the second season to a major part of the fourth and fifth seasons. This was also the rare adaptation where she never married Jim, instead co-parenting their daughter Barbara with him and Lee.

Leslie Thompkins' only other prominent appearance outside the comics was on Batman: The Animated Series (coincidentally, another FOX show). The show radically altered the character from being one of Bruce’s longtime allies to someone who worked for the GCPD and eventually got into a relationship with Jim. It did retain her motivation of helping the poor, even if at one point she temporarily became an antagonist.

At first, Butch was shown to be just another mobster but prominently became one of the show’s biggest characters. When it revealed he was actually called Cyrus Gold, it retroactively gave Solomon Grundy an expanded backstory. While Grundy’s origins have been brought up in past adaptations, Gotham was the first to show him before the incident that turned him into Grundy. Additionally, it was the first one to bring him back to life (and then kill off again).

There were several flaws, especially during the first two seasons by how the show was trying to introduce nearly every single Batman character. 

The first season featured Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen. They were set up as potential antagonists within the GCPD to Jim and Harvey but felt redundant due to Maroni and Fish Mooney serving similar roles. Their disappearances after the first season did not hurt the show in any way, but they could have either appeared later on or properly made their debut in the series finale.

When it comes to the villains, some felt shoehorned in as fan service such as Hush (Tommy Elliot), Killer Croc, and Magpie. However, the one villain badly treated by the show was Harvey Dent (AKA Two-Face).

His involvement with the show was admittedly affected by his actor’s availability. Just as it seemed he began to play a prominent role during the second season, Nicholas D’Agosto went on to star in NBC’s short-lived comedy Trial & Error.

Likely because of his unavailability, Two-Face’s dual personality was instead presented via Edward alternating between himself and The Riddler. This was not the first time this had occurred. In The Batman, due to an embargo, it was presented with an original character who would eventually become Clayface.

The show featured villains who either only appeared once before or were making their live action debuts, such as Sofia Falcone, the aforementioned Hush, Professor Pyg, and Magpie. The latter two had only previously appeared on Beware The Batman.

When it comes to the seasons, the first two were great, parts of the third and the first half of the fourth were somewhat inconsistent (especially when the latter adapted Batman: The Long Halloween), and both its second half and fifth season were also great.

As I previously wrote, there are fans who want to see the show continue in some form. The only possible way would be as a comic book due to Warner Bros’ live action restrictions on Batman.

For now, at least one actor will be reprising their role very soon. Peyton List, who was the third and final actor to play Ivy Pepper in the show’s final two seasons, will play Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy in the upcoming animated film Batman: Hush.

Gotham was a great show that stood out from other comic book TV adaptations. Rather than be a straightforward origin story centering around Bruce, it used an ensemble cast to develop the characters into their respective recognizable roles of heroes and villains.

It did have several flaws, such as the occasional pacing issue, shoehorned fan service, and how long it took to get Bruce into becoming Gotham City’s Dark Knight.

Regardless of the show’s positives and negatives, at least Batman showed up faster than Superman over on Smallville.

Gotham/Smallville episode count: 100<217

Until next time, thank you for reading!

[imagitory]

D-Views: Aladdin (with guest input!)

Hi, everyone! Welcome to another installment of D-Views, my on-going written review series where I take a look at Disney-produced and/or owned properties, as well as occasionally non-Disney films that were influenced by Disney’s success! For more of these reviews, you may consult my “Disney reviews” tag, where I’ve discussed such films as Treasure Planet, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and Dreamworks’ The Prince of Egypt!

Today I’ll be doing something a little different. In lieu of the live-action Aladdin remake premiering in less than two weeks, I decided it’d be best to re-watch the original 1992 classic, and I invited two of my good friends, Christina and Jen, to help me analyze it. I will note any of their input when it arises, and hopefully you’ll enjoy hearing three voices for the price of one!

Aladdin was released in the midst of the Disney Renaissance in the 1990′s, sandwiched between the landmark hits Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. Out of Disney’s biggest blockbusters, Aladdin is easily the most “of its time” -- it relies on pop culture references for its humor and uses era-specific slang (i.e. ”NOT!” and “Made you look!”) more than most Disney films do and features a celebrity voice in a prominent role, which was quite uncommon, compared to previous Disney projects. (The best examples I can think of prior to this was having John Hurt, Peter Ustinov, and Vincent Price play villains in The Black Cauldron, Robin Hood, and The Great Mouse Detective, but...yeah, as amazing and well-renown as those men are, they weren’t insanely popular media stars of the time the way that Robin Williams was.) One could attribute this “hipper” aspect at least in part to Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was head of Disney’s animation department at the time, and Disney CEO Michael Eisner, both of whom put a lot of focus in following what was popular and marketable. (Katzenberg later put all of his attention and focus on molding Pocahontas into a historical-fiction retelling of Romeo and Juliet as he assumed a forbidden love story would be a hit, while Eisner kicked The Rescuers Down Under to the curb a year before Beauty and the Beast came out all because it didn’t break the box office opening weekend.) Fortunately the approach paid off and Aladdin was a big success, fueling two direct-to-video sequels, a spin-off TV series, and a show at Disney’s California Adventure that transformed into a full Broadway musical. Even now it’s still very well-loved by Disney fans, many of whom are now looking forward to the live-action remake coming out this month. As my followers might know, I’m still very on-the-fence about the remake myself, as I haven’t reacted very warmly to Disney’s other recent live-action remakes, but my two cohorts Jen and Christina are much less cynical about the prospect, so hopefully any commentary we might make about what we’ve learned about the remake compared to the original will be minimal. Now that our context is framed, let’s board this magic carpet of a movie and see where it takes us!

To start with, Arabian Nights is just such a fantastic musical introduction to this story! Aladdin was the last project that lyricist Howard Ashman worked on before his premature death in 1992, and like in the rest of his work, the word play in the songs he wrote for this movie (Arabian Nights, Friend Like Me and Prince Ali) is just masterful. Arabian Nights in particular just emanates “adventure” -- it was later used as the opening theme for the Aladdin TV series, and it got me so pumped up whenever I watched it, just as much as it probably excited those who first saw the movie in theaters. Fun fact: while listening to the intro, one might notice the names Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio credited as two of the film’s screenwriters, alongside directors John Musker and Ron Clements -- down the road, Elliot and Rossio would also write the screenplay for The Road to El Dorado, join the writing team for Shrek, and be the main writing force behind the Pirates of the Caribbean films. 

As much as I rarely go for films that market themselves as comedies, I feel like Aladdin handles its comedy really well. From the beginning, we see the comedic, spontaneous tone in the peddler’s narration scene, and that tone is taken on by Gilbert Gottfried as Iago until Robin Williams reappears as the Genie later. It makes it so that, unlike Mulan where the comedy kind of starts and ends with Mushu, the comedy is a constant fixture in the story, never distracting from the plot and never feeling out of place. 

One niche interest of mine that I rarely get to delve into is color psychology, and oh BOY, does this film give me a lot to talk about there! Aladdin’s production designer, Richard Wende, used a very simple, yet striking color palette for the film that favors blues, reds, and golds. The effect is a beautifully lush setting while maintaining a “desert” feel: any greens that appear really stick out, like when Aladdin and Genie arrive in an oasis after escaping the Cave of Wonders. It also makes it so that when the background is mostly red or gold, any blue shades draw focus, or when the scene takes place at night and is mostly shades of blue, anything red or gold likewise draws focus. This post goes into the color symbolism more deeply, but generally blue is representative of good characters, while red represents evil, with gold being a sort of middle ground. Primary colors often are used in properties marketed toward children (ex. Team Valor/Instinct/Mystic in Pokemon Go, Snow White having all three colors on her dress), so it’s understandable that so many kids from the 90′s gravitated toward this movie, but the palette never feels restricted or simple. The deep, saturated fusion of reds and blues and reds and yellows creates a lot of texture despite the limited color range, and it beautifully communicates the heat of the locations and creates a unique visual style for the film. I’ve noticed that in the trailers for the remake, this color symbolism was discarded in favor of a more “Bollywood” look, not unlike how the Beauty and the Beast remake likewise ignored the color symbolism of Belle being the only villager to wear blue (which accents how much she stands apart from the crowd) and decided to dress a lot of people in blue during the opening number Belle. I can only hope the decision means the film is just choosing to make Agrabah more like India than Arabia, rather than this just being a stylistic choice with no substance, but I think the subtle color psychology in the original film is very clever short-hand for the audience, even if they’ll likely not be able to consciously express how the color palette affected their viewing experience.

As Jafar and his stooge Gazeem come across the Cave of Wonders, I’m reminded of how awesome the Cave’s design is. It was made primarily with CG animation, yet the CGI is never distracting: on the contrary, it fuses together beautifully with the rest of the hand-drawn background. Even the sandy texture on the Cave is very well rendered. Christina also noted a neat detail I hadn’t picked up on before: the tiger head has an earring in one ear, just like the Genie whose lamp lives inside the Cave!

After the Cave of Wonders devours Gazeem, declaring that it will only allow the “diamond in the rough” inside, we meet our title character and resident “diamond,” Aladdin. Voicing Aladdin is Scott Weinger, or Steve of Full House fame, who brings such charm, energy, and personality to the role. I honestly think it’d be hard for anyone else to match the sheer likability rippling out of Scott’s voice. Accompanying Weinger and Robin Williams in this stellar cast are Broadway actor Jonathan Freeman as Jafar (who has since gone on to play the character in everything from TV shows to the Broadway musical), raucous comic Gilbert Gottfried as Iago, and three voice-acting legends -- Frank Welker (who voices Shaggy and Scooby Doo) as Abu and Rajah; Jim Cummings (the current voices of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger) as Razoul; and Corey Burton (who is best known for playing Ansem the Wise in Kingdom Hearts) as Prince Tiger-Fucker Achmed. Even Jasmine, who was voiced by the at-the-time-fresh-faced actress Linda Larkin, had her singing voice done by Broadway legend Lea Salonga, fresh off her success premiering the title role in Miss Saigon. Even though many of these names aren’t celebrities like Robin Williams, and so I would hesitate to call this an “all-star cast” exactly, it doesn’t change how much talent was accrued by Disney’s casting agents! 

Unlike most main characters in a Disney musical, Aladdin doesn’t get a full solo number to call his own. Originally Howard Ashman wrote a song for Aladdin called Proud of Your Boy, where Aladdin sings to his mother (who played a large role in early drafts of the story) about how he’ll make good for her. Unfortunately the story’s focus on Aladdin and his mother’s relationship ended up taking focus away from Aladdin and Jasmine’s romance and Aladdin’s character arc to accept himself, so the screenwriters ultimately had to cut the mother character from the story, at which point the song no longer fit. The decision was very difficult for the filmmakers at the time, given that it was one of the last things Ashman wrote and it’s such a beautiful, raw song, but I ultimately think it was the right decision. Putting Aladdin on his own with no one but Abu for company and giving Jasmine no emotional support outside of her naïve, misguided father and her pet and only friend Rajah I think goes a long way to explain why they’re such kindred spirits. Aladdin and Jasmine each become the friend and support that the other needed. (This is also why Christina and I are concerned about the inclusion of a servant/friend for Jasmine, as the choice would likely weaken any rationale Jasmine could have for leaving the palace and for connecting so instantly with Aladdin.) Plus I think Aladdin’s reprise of One Jump Ahead is just as beautifully raw as Proud of Your Boy, just with a slightly different message and less words. I really feel Aladdin’s frustration and yearning for something better, and Aladdin’s singing voice Brad Kane is able to stuff so much pathos into such a short tune that a longer song isn’t even necessary. And fortunately Proud of Your Boy was later utilized in the Broadway musical version of Aladdin, so it got its dues eventually. 

At the palace, we meet our heroine, Jasmine, who was Christina’s favorite Disney character as a kid and who I personally think is the prettiest of the Disney princesses. Jasmine was designed by supervising animator Mark Henn, who modeled her after a picture of his little sister, which honestly is so sweet that I can’t stand it. What I really like about Jasmine in comparison to other Disney princesses is that she is fiery, but clever: determined, but calculating: proud, yet compassionate. It’s this balance that makes her interesting: in my mind, Jasmine is the ultimate Slytherin Disney princess (with just as Slytherin of a prince!), because unlike Ariel, she isn’t reckless in her rebellion. What’s also very cool about Jasmine is that her circumstances are a perfect contrast to Aladdin, placing them in a more romantic Prince and the Pauper set-up where they envy each other, and yet they want the same thing: freedom. In fact, all of our protagonists do -- namely, Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie. Aladdin wants freedom from his poverty. Jasmine wants freedom from her privilege. Genie wants freedom from his purpose. They all have different cages, but they all want to be free to live their own lives, and it’s through Aladdin learning to empathize with Jasmine and Genie and see their respective prisons as clearly as his own that he grows as a character. (For a video that delves into this thought process further, please consult this piece by ScreenPrism -- it’s just beautifully done!)

Throughout the film, three animals emerge over and over -- the cobra, the elephant, and the tiger. Tigers -- which we see not only in obvious examples like Rajah and the Cave of Wonders, but also as a carving in the back of the Sultan’s throne -- are generally associated with courage and heraldry, not unlike their feline cousins, lions. The heraldry aspect I think is most relevant here -- only one who is deemed worthy, namely Aladdin, may enter the Cave of Wonders and access the wealth of kings, and when Jasmine runs away from home, she leaves Rajah, a symbol of her noble heritage, behind. Elephants in comparison are associated with wisdom and more notably royal power. In the film, Abu is transformed into an elephant steed for Aladdin when he becomes Prince Ali, and even the Sultan sits in a throne decorated with a statue of an elephant. As for the cobra, it’s entirely connected to Jafar, first as his magic scepter and then as a form Jafar takes on himself. Snakes overall are associated with many things like healing, rebirth, eternity, and the dichotomy of good and evil, but cobras specifically are the most poisonous snakes on earth. Legends even claim that Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, committed suicide by cobra bite. I reckon that meaning is more than enough reason for it to represent Jafar.

Through the use of a bizarre storm-making machine powered by Iago running on a treadmill-like wheel that Christina, Jen, and I thoroughly don’t understand and kind of find hilariously ridiculous, Jafar is able to discover the identity of the elusive “diamond in the rough.” He then sends the guards out to arrest Aladdin so as to coerce him into aiding him in his goal to enter the Cave, but in the process gets caught by Jasmine as he’s exiting one of the secret passages. Jen brought up the lovely point that Jafar seems to be the only person who knows about these passages in the palace, even though the Sultan presumably was raised in the palace just like Jasmine was -- this isn’t necessarily a problem, but it does make both her and me want to know the story behind this! Was Jafar basically raised in the palace too? Did Jafar partially create those passages? Were they forgotten after years of non-use and Jafar came across them by chance? It seems like there could be some fun explanation here, if someone wanted to write a fic or fan theory about it.

Okay, I really don’t want to express my concerns about the remake yet again, but I just have to say this flat-out -- there is no way that Abu in the remake could be as funny as he is in the animated film. Let’s be honest, CG characters in live-action films are almost never very charming if they’re more on the cartoony side compared to the so-called “realistic” world they’re supposed to inhabit. You can have very likable, well-developed CG characters -- just look at Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia -- but he wasn’t solely comic relief the way Abu is, and Abu’s comedy in particular relies on a lot of cartoon-like squash and stretch that would be difficult to recreate in CG for a live-action movie. Best case scenario, you’d have something like Pip in Enchanted, which is only irritating and visually out-of-place sometimes, but alternatively, you might get something like Alvin and the Chipmunks (where the humor falls flat), Dobby in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (where it’s clear he was never actually there the whole time), and/or the enchanted objects in the live-action Beauty and the Beast (where the characters end up looking creepy, like something out of the Uncanny Valley). Basically if they want Abu to work in the live-action setting, it’s likely they’d have to make him more like an actual animal, which as I said would make it so he is a lot less funny.

Anyway, not long after Abu unlocks Aladdin’s shackles, Jafar arrives to bust him out, disguised as an old man. Just as Jafar’s storm-making machine makes no sense, the three of us all concluded that his disguise makes no sense. Not only does Jafar suddenly look a good foot and a half shorter, which even with him crouching shouldn’t be possible, but he’s changed his teeth with no visible dentures (which would’ve slurred his speech anyway) and he can get rid of all of the white hair and beard he put on just by ripping off the beard in a single gesture. As Jen brought up, even the Evil Queen used a potion to turn into the Hag: if Jafar had used magic, these sort of physical changes would make sense, but he didn’t.

Back to the Cave of Wonders again, and now I get to talk about one of the most revolutionary aspects of Aladdin: the Magic Carpet. Our sweet little Carpet is a perfect fusion of CG and hand-drawn animation -- supervising animator Randy Cartwright drew the outline and tassels of Carpet with so much personality and silent comedy, and rather than have to animate Carpet’s detailed pattern in every single frame as the fabric folded and contorted, the pencil tests were handed to the CG artists, who melded the pattern perfectly to the line work, making it one perfectly cohesive character. Carpet’s pattern also has allusions to different parts of the film, including the Cave of Wonders, the magic lamp, and the flames that appear when Abu touches the red gem. Even if the technology of CG animation is much more advanced now than it was in 90s, it doesn’t change how seamless the finished result is.

As mentioned, the Cave doesn’t remain safe for our hero very long. When Abu snatches up a gem after being warned not to touch anything, the whole place starts to fall apart, raging with lava and fire. Christina brought up the question of why the Cave would allow Abu inside, since he wasn’t the diamond in the rough (yes, Abu was hidden in Aladdin’s vest, but the Cave was magical, did it really not know he was there?), but I almost wonder if it was an issue of Aladdin having trusted Abu when he shouldn’t have, which would end up being the true mistake in this scenario. Regardless, the CGI in this particular escape sequence is some of the more outdated material of the film. The flight on Carpet is still kind of fun, as it probably would make for a very exciting thrill ride, but it still looks incredibly fake, especially in comparison to other CG elements used in other scenes. Honestly, I’d say this Cave chase and the tower used in the “ends of the earth” sequence later are the worst instances of outdated CGI in this movie.

And finally, at long last, we get to the big, blue guy himself, the Genie. As much as I wouldn’t say Genie steals the show, as Aladdin has such a likable hero and heroine and an excellent villain, Jen, Christina, and I will say categorically that Aladdin would not be as good of a movie as it is without Genie and without Robin Williams. The directors Ron Clements and John Musker wrote the character with Robin in mind, but thought there’d be no way they’d ever get him -- fortunately Eric Goldberg, the supervising animator for Genie, got the idea to make an animation of Genie speaking a piece of one of Robin’s comedy routines, and the animation amazingly won Robin over and got him on board. And really, it is that flawless combination of Robin’s acting and Goldberg’s animation that really makes Genie as likable as he is. Even Robin’s humor, which still is very funny, is not what makes Genie as great of a character as he is, in my opinion -- if anything, I’d say it’s how much sincerity Robin gives the role. Genie is never a sidekick in this movie, as he has his own distinct motivations and feelings separate to the main character and their goals, and Robin just makes you feel so much for Genie and his own desire for freedom. One quote of Genie’s that has stuck with me since I was a kid thanks to Robin’s beautiful delivery is “To be my own master -- such a thing would be greater than all the magic and all the treasures in all the world.” It makes it so his humor is a sign of how resilient Genie is, despite how unhappy his circumstances are, which is something I understand very well as someone who has suffered from depression and I’m quite sure Robin himself understood very well too. I think it’s why so many people found Robin so likable and felt so much for the characters he portrayed over the years.

Speaking on Friend Like Me specifically, I’m afraid I’ll have to go off on a bit of a tangent and share a story with all of you. The day that Robin Williams passed away, I was working at the World of Color show at Disney’s Calfornia Adventure. When the Friend Like Me segment came on, I danced along to the music while in the walkway outside the show, trying to keep the grief off of my face and just make others happy, the way Robin used to. As the segment ended, everyone applauded like crazy. Then, all of a sudden, we Cast Members became aware of a strange, sputtering, almost sobbing sound. One of the show fountains in the water had gotten out of alignment and it sputtered softly in the background as the next segment (Touch the Sky) began, before after a minute slowly quieting and coming to a stop. It was as if the show was crying for Robin, this person who had given so much joy to so many people. And this, among other reasons, is why I feel so very sorry for poor Will Smith, who somehow has to try to fill the shoes that Robin wore. Jen, Christina, and I aren’t very optimistic about his prospects (I still personally might have offered the role to Wayne Brady instead, given that he can sing, he has done comedy, and he worked with Robin in the past), as even Dan Castellanetta, who voiced Genie in the Aladdin TV series, was never able to match Robin no matter how hard he tried.

On the note of Genie’s motivation, as well, we hear about it in a scene accompanied by the beautiful instrumental “To Be Free.” It’s one of my favorite pieces of instrumental music from the film, which became one of Christina’s favorite songs from the Aladdin musical, To Be Free, which is a solo sung by Jasmine. As very pretty and appropriate the song is from Jasmine, I do also really appreciate the number accompanying Genie’s monologue. The instrumental comes across as more spontaneous and thoughtful, like it’s making itself up as it goes along, until it gets to the sincere, meaningful line about freedom, at which point the melody that inspired the song To Be Free's chorus starts.

Another neat touch with Genie is his use of Yiddisms, such as “punim,” meaning face. Of course, Genie’s animator Eric Goldberg is Jewish, and the idea of Genie being Jewish as well I just find so unbelievably charming, particularly when you place him in an Arabian-like setting full of (presumably) Muslim characters, given that the Sultan at one point references Allah. Therefore Genie and Aladdin’s (adorable) friendship could be thought of as a friendship between a Jewish person and a Muslim! I think that’s really cool!

We return to the palace, where the Sultan scolds Jafar for Aladdin’s supposed execution, only for Aladdin to burst onto the scene, dressed as the dashing Prince Ali. During this scene, Christina noted the fun juxtaposition of Jafar’s fashion choices compared to the Sultan, Genie as a human, and Aladdin as Ali. All of them wear very similar robes and turbans, but the Sultan, Genie, and Aladdin wear turbans with more rounded, floppy feathers, which Jafar’s feather is sharp and straight. Aladdin’s and the Sultan’s feather even flop into their faces sometimes, whereas Jafar’s is rigid as a board. As Jen likewise pointed out, Jafar’s design gives him this pointed, slender look not unlike Dr. Facilier in future Disney project The Princess and the Frog. The shoulder pads on his shoulders also serve to give him this sort of sharp “T” shape, contrasted to the more rounded and well-proportioned characters. Couple that with a black/red color scheme that contrasts the more saintly tannish-white of the other three, and it really does communicate the “black cloud” nature that Jafar’s supervising animator Andreas Deja wanted to give the character, to compliment the “Severus Snape” level of dry sardonicism Jonathan Freeman gave the character.

Even though the Sultan is very impressed by “Prince Ali,” Jasmine most certainly is not. Genie counsels Aladdin (with a few outdated pop culture references) that he should tell her the truth -- the nice thing about the pop culture references is that, really, even if you don’t get the jokes, you can still understand them, and the jokes still drive dialogue and plot forward enough that those lines don’t feel like a waste of time. I mean, I didn’t get most of the jokes as a kid, and it didn’t hurt anything for me -- I still thought the Genie was funny because of his comedic timing and odd voices. (Oh yes, and since Jen brought this up while we were watching this -- Aladdin does not say “take off your clothes” while up on Jasmine’s balcony: the line that Weigner improvised for when Aladdin is trying to shoo Rajah away is “take off and go.” Get your brains out of the gutter.)

Fortunately Aladdin is able to soften Jasmine enough that she gives him a chance, and the two go on a magic carpet ride (a.k.a. the fastest world tour ever, as Christina described it! LOL). Accompanying this scene is, in my opinion, the single most romantic song in the Disney canon. A Whole New World was the very first song Alan Menken and Tim Rice wrote together. After the loss of his good friend and most constant collaborator, Howard Ashman, Menken was very nervous about working with someone else. Fortunately, as soon as he and Tim Rice met, they came together pretty quickly while working on the aforementioned love song, which ended up taking some inspiration from their circumstances as new collaborators in its melody and lyrics. So yes, one could listen to this song and some of its lines -- a new, fantastic point of view -- but when I’m way up here, it’s crystal clear that now I’m in a whole new world with you -- unbelievable sights, indescribable feelings -- with new horizons to pursue -- every moment, red letter -- let me share this whole new world with you -- as being not just about these two characters falling in love, but also about a brand new, exciting friendship.

Aladdin and Jasmine connect, Jafar is banished from the palace, and the Sultan blesses Jasmine’s decision to court “Prince Ali” -- but yeah, just as everything looks like everything’s coming up roses, things start to fall apart when Aladdin breaks his promise to set Genie free. (Another fun story: when I first saw this scene in the Aladdin Musical Spectacular at Disney California Adventure way back in the day, I couldn’t stop myself from yelling “BOO!” from the audience. The people around me giggled. Then the actor playing Genie, without looking away from the actor playing Aladdin, raised a hand and pointed out at the audience. “You hear that?” he said. “That’s my THOUGHTS.” I died laughing.) But yes, thanks to Aladdin’s mistake, Jafar is able to take advantage of the situation and snatch Genie for himself, singing his own quasi-solo, Prince Ali (reprise). Like Aladdin, Jafar doesn’t get a full number to call his own, but fortunately he doesn’t end up needing one: Prince Ali (reprise) is more than powerful enough on its own, and it concludes with the most amazing, deranged laugh in Disney history. Really, as good as some other Disney villain laughs are, I would say that Jafar’s is easily the best.

Jafar becomes the Sultan of Agrabah, imprisoning both Jasmine and the Sultan and banishing Aladdin to the ends of the earth. Even if Jasmine’s a prisoner, though, she is no damsel: in Christina’s words, she’s the Princess Leia to Jafar’s Jabba the Hutt, clever and proud as ever and ready to do whatever is necessary to break free...even if it means kissing our villain in order to distract him long enough for Aladdin to try to snatch back the lamp. (Insert a cringe from all three of us here.) Alas, the ruse fails, and Jafar discovers that Aladdin has returned alive and well. The “Battle” track used for this climax is just epic accompaniment, easily being up there among some of the best “final confrontation” instrumental tracks in Disney history like Sleeping Beauty’s “Battle With the Forces of Evil” and The Great Mouse Detective’s “Big Ben Chase.” The visuals as well are also thrilling -- speaking as someone with acute ophidiophobia, Jafar turning into a giant cobra is pretty terrifying.

Despite all of the odds being against him, our diamond in the rough street rat nonetheless is able to outsmart Jafar, and Jafar, tricked into the form of a Genie, is imprisoned in his own pitch black lamp, possessing all of the power he longed for but ignorantly sacrificing the power of autonomy he had already. (As Jen said, and I quote, “Karma, bitch!”) I just adore how Aladdin outwitted Jafar too: not only does it really suit his Slytherin personality to win through craftiness rather than just brute force, but it also perfectly showcases the difference between Aladdin and Jafar: namely, that Aladdin knows empathy, and Jafar does not. Jafar only sees what Genie has that he doesn’t have, supreme magical power, and longs to possess it -- Aladdin sees Genie’s circumstances fully and knows that he is both amazingly powerful in a magical sense and utterly powerless when it comes to making his own choices.

Accompanying the film’s resolution is the beautiful instrumental “Happy End in Agrabah,” which dips into lighthearted whimsy, resignation, bittersweet joy and exhilaration, alongside echoes of both “To Be Free“ and A Whole New World. Aladdin gives Genie his greatest desire -- his freedom -- and in the process makes, in Jen’s words, the most selfless wish you could make...for only a diamond in the rough would make a wish for someone else, not for himself. And as Jen also pointed out, the Sultan follows Aladdin’s lead, giving Jasmine her freedom just as Aladdin gave Genie his. Our story ends with all of our protagonists earning the freedom that they’ve so longed for -- the freedom to achieve their own happiness -- through their love of each other.

Aladdin may be very “of its era” from a humor point of view, but it’s a movie that truly becomes more resonant with age. When Jen, Christina, and I were kids, we all enjoyed this movie’s flights of fantasy, humor, characters, and songs, but as adults, we can feel for these characters and their desire for freedom more than ever. We can understand how similar these individual characters are, and how even though they’re all in different prisons with different advantages and disadvantages, they all need the same key to unlock their cages -- love and empathy. However much the new Aladdin film diverges from the animated version, I only hope that they remember that core of the movie and how it is integrated into the entire story, from how much Aladdin wishes people would “look closer” when looking at him to Genie’s last words to Aladdin being that “no matter what anybody says, [Aladdin will] always be a prince to [Genie.]” And if it doesn’t, well, we still have the 1992 original...

...and Christina, Jen, and I give that movie three thumbs up!

[tcm]

Celebrating the Centennial of Ernie Kovacs by Susan King

Ernie Kovacs was television’s first performance artist who turned the medium into his personal playground. His comedy was surreal, innovative, brilliant and at times just plain weird. Just look at the Nairobi Trio: three non-speaking apes wearing long coats and derby hats who played music and hit each other on the head to Robert Maxwell’s “Solfeggio” or blackout bits set to the German-language version of “Mack the Knife.”

When NBC gave Kovacs a live 30-minute color special in 1957, he decided to make “The Silent Show”; only the introduction and Dutch Masters commercials featured dialogue. He presented gorilla ballerinas dancing to Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” in his 1959 NBC special “Kovacs on Music.”

This year marks Kovacs’ centennial. Unfortunately, his fans never had the opportunity to watch him grow and mature as an artist. He was happily married to singer/actress Edie Adams, who was also his frequent partner in comedic crime, and he was the devoted father of three daughters when he died on Jan 13, 1962, just 10 days before his 43rd birthday. Kovacs’ car crashed into a power pole on the rain drenched Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Boulevards on his way home from a party at Billy Wilder’s house.

When Kovacs began on television in the early 1950s, the medium was young and populated with series starring veteran comics such as Milton Berle, Red Skelton, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny and Jackie Gleason.

Kovacs, who always seemed to have a cigar in his hand, offered something new and completely different.

“He was able to create television almost directly from his own imagination, from his own mind,” said Ron Simon, curator of the Paley Center for Media, in a 2011 interview I conducted with him for a Kovacs piece in the Los Angeles Times. “Television is so much of a collaborative art, but Kovacs made his TV very personal.”

Kovacs, added Simon, also realized that “there was a total falsity to being in everyone’s living room. His great sign-off line, ‘It’s been real,’ is so ironic. He understood, it’s not real at all.” Of his fourth, seventh, eighth and final episode of his ABC specials showing on TCM, the last aired after his death, an episode he had complete creative control over thanks to sponsor Dutch Masters.

Simon maintained they “redefined what we think of media. The specials are so strange. There was no linear narrative.”

Three specials illustrate his love of music. He sets Bela Bartok’s music to a silent New York street scene and George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” to a sequence involving women dressing for their dates. Bits include a turkey coming to life and a hand coming out of a bathtub drain.

“Nobody could figure out how his mind worked,” his late publicist Henri Bollinger told me in 2011. “I am talking about people who worked with him. He would do things that made absolutely no sense. He never had a script, or at least he never had a script that he showed anybody. He would go about and say, ‘We’re going to do this, we are going to do that.’ I couldn’t figure out what it was going to be about until we actually saw the show. The end result would be mind-boggling.”

Kovacs made 10 films from 1957-1961 and though his roles never allowed him to show his experimental, surreal side, he’s always fun to watch and tackled his roles with great gusto.

He made three films with his good friend Jack Lemmon, most notably the 1957 service comedy OPERATION MAD BALL, which marked his film debut, and 1958’s bewitching comedy BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE. Also of note is his 1960 service comedy WAKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER and the rarely seen 1961 comedy FIVE GOLDEN HOURS, which was Kovacs’ only lead and his favorite performance.

Kovacs was a larger-than-life figure in reel-life and real-life. He often took projects because he owed money in back taxes. He loved playing poker with his Hollywood buddies, and by all reports, Kovacs was a great guy.

“I just thought he was the sweetest man,” said Jolene Brand, who appeared in his ABC specials.

There’s little wonder why his headstone at Forest Lawn states: “Nothing in Moderation.”

[cookiedoughmeagain]

Haven DVD Commentaries: 4.01 - Fallout

Gabrielle Stanton Executive Producer, and Writer for this episode, and Matt McGuinness, Executive Producer

[As the ‘previously on’ section shows] Gabrielle Stanton: I just remember how many times we wrote the word ‘barn’ during the last few episodes of the last season. If it were a drinking game we never would have made it through.

[As Duke watches Audrey’s memories play out on the walls inside the barn] Matt McGuinness: What’s clever about this scene is it was a way for us to hide a bit of backstory because you got to see these various moments, but it also helped to explain what the barn was and how it is a repository for her memories and whatnot. GS: It was kind of a way for us to do flashbacks without actually doing flashbacks.

[As Duke lands in the aquarium] MMG: I have to do a big shout out right here. This idea of Duke landing in some sort of fluid and us not knowing where he was and then coming up, was Ginger McGuinness’s idea. My daughter at the age of 8 came up with this idea; ‘Daddy why don’t you have him land in a fish tank in an aquarium?’ which we thought was super cool. GS: And Balfour did too, until he realised how cold the water was going to be. MMG: Apparently that tank held lobsters or something, and Eric is a surfer - he knows cold water, but it was I think low 50s, which is bitterly cold. GS: But he was a trouper; went in again and again.

[As the detective is questionning Duke in the hospital] GS: I like this scene because it was Duke trying to talk his way out of something, and we got a chance to talk about his aliases and his fake IDs and it’s always fun when we get to do that... I actually worked worked with Balfour on a short-lived show called Veritas The Quest many years ago, and Calvin Banks, the name of one of his aliases there, was the name of his character on Veritas. MMG: Wow! Really? That is some inside arcane knowledge. GS: I thought there would be someone who got it, but I don’t think anyone did. Including Eric.

The outside of the Haven Bookshop is Lunenberg and the inside is in on location in Chester. GS: The Warp and Weft Giftstore in Chester closed down and we kinda took it over and shoot various things in there; bookstores, cafes, offices, MMG: If you ever get the chance to go to Chester, Nova Scotia, it’s a lovely little town. I might suggest the summer as opposed to the winter … GS: It’ll be raining either way, but it’s just whether it’s cold rain or cool rain. MMG: It’s a very nice spot, lots of tourists like to go there. And as you drive around Chester you will see plenty of places - and by ‘plenty’, I mean all of Chester. We’ve shot everywhere in Chester as we head into our fifth season. GS: Yeah it’s kind of amazing; I don’t think there’s anything we haven’t shot.

GS: And now we’re about to meet Jennifer. She is a great character, we’re really really happy with everything her and Eric do this coming season. MMG: Yeah we were really happy with the performance of Emma Lahana who plays Jennifer. GS: And they just had good chemistry. You hope you’re going to get good chemistry when you cast people, but you never really know until you start seeing it on screen.

MMG: Ah look, Eric’s got his pants on under that gown. I would have suggested no pants.

[As Jennifer starts talking to Duke] GS: This was the scene we used for auditions to cast Jennifer. We saw a great many actresses for this role. GS: I remember on the day there were many discussions about the hat she’s wearing. MMG: She kind of became known for her hats and scarves. There’s a hint for the fans; scarves will continue to play a part in the story of Jennifer.

GS: It’s so funny doing these commentaries because it’s always like a year later, since we shot it and edited it and everything, so it’s always looking back. I was telling someone earlier that usually about 10 minutes in, I just forget what I’m supposed to be doing and just start watching the episode.

[As Duke and Jennifer are talking about the barn etc.] GS: This was also a nice way … Every premiere episode you always want to reset the series for new audience members, and this was a nice way of telling Jennifer what was going on, but also telling new viewers; ‘hey there’s this town called Haven, people do weird things there …’. MMG: Do you know where we shot this scene? GS: I believe it was a real hospital. MMG: It looks like it. GS: I think it was outside Chester. Even though we now have a hospital set on our stages, but we came here because we wanted it to look different, so it could look like Boston. Although I think the next scene, in the parking lot, I think that is in fact Chester.

[Brief interruption as Matt leaves the room to take a phone call] GS: This is the life of an executive producer. You cannot do one thing at once, you have to do ten things at once.

[Duke and Jennifer in the parking lot] GS: Actually, I take it back - the memory is coming back to me; I believe we shot this in Halifax, to give it a big-city feel. Although I could be wrong about that because it is hard to remember.

[As Dave answers the phone to Duke] GS: OK so everyone wants to know what’s the Oprah Winfrey joke - we honestly don’t know. We just thought it would be the most hilarious thing to say, if Dave had some kind of Oprah Winfey thing. And he played it spectacularly. GS: This is the biggest time-cut I think that we’ve done in the series, this is six months since the previous events. We leave a lot of our seasons on these big cliff hangers - two people pointing a gun at each other, or ‘my name is Audrey Parker’, ‘no my name is Audrey Parker’ - and this was one of the few opportunities we had, and we said we could do something cool and do a time-cut.

[As we see Nathan with the bikers outside the diner] GS: Now for all of you Lucas fans out there - the beard. I’ll tell you a little story about the beard. He was actually supposed to have the beard through the first and second episode, and then when he realised he was going to find Audrey and he regained his sense of purpose he was going to shave it. But we ended up doing something called cross-boarding which meant that we shot episodes one and two not in order. So we would shoot some scenes of episode two during the episode one block and vice versa. So we couldn’t have him keep the beard because he couldn’t shoot one scene and have the beard and another scene and not have the beard. So this is the only scene that he has the beard, and it was devastating for Lucas Bryant because he spent all hiatus growing it. But he did a good job; it’s a good beard.

[Matt returns, saying he had to take the call because it was an emergency. Apparently related in some way to the 300 gallon salt-water aquarium he has at home. “That was my fish tank guru.”]

GS: Oh this is - did the slim jim joke stay in? MMG: Yeah, not really. We worked a lot on this slim jim bit and never quite got it where we wanted it.

[Discussing Dwight as Chief and the various names that Adam goes by] GS: We just get excited when we see him on screen because we know that some day he’s going to be a mega-super-star and we’re gonna be like ‘We cast him!’, ‘We had him on our show first!’. GS: I love the three of them together [Dwight and Vince and Dave]. We write a lot of stuff for them and they always totally nail it. MMG: Yep, Edge and the Teague brothers have an ongoing story, particularly Edge and Vince - Dwight and Vince.

[As we see Lexie in the bar] GS: We shot all these bar scenes in a block, with our fun character of Lexie. And for anyone out there who has nothing better to do with their time than thing about things I’ve written in my career; there are quite a few series I’ve worked on that I’ve gotten the name Lexie into. This was the most recent. I’m still trying to work out how many I’m getting screwed out of character payments for though. MMG: And here is season four’s suprising new male lead; Colin Ferguson. Lovely man, tons of fun. He used to do stand-up comedy nights, and when you do a comic con with him, that becomes immediately apparent. He’s very funny, and very clever and just sweet and professional.

[As the Guard welcome Nathan and Duke back to Haven] MMG: Oh this scene was fun, we’re introducing everyone in this episode. So here comes another favourite character of ours; Jordan McKee. The last name is the name of an old girlfriend of mine. GS: This was a very elaborate scene to block and shoot. MMG: Yes, it was. Pretty much any time you have cars stopping on marks and people getting out of car doors, everything gets shockingly complicated. GS: Not to mention we have a great number of our characters here, all in one place. GS: The funny thing about this, is that the tornado is about to go off, and every other day this week that we were filming, it was rainy and cloudy and that whole thing. And the one day we’re going to have a tornado and giant rain storm - beautiful blue crystal skies. That’s the way production goes.

GS: We have realised that the downside to Dwight’s Trouble is that he is in that bulletproof vest a lot. It’s very rare to see him without it. But we’re working on it. MMG: We get him out of everything, season five.

[As the tornado arrives] GS: Our director Shawn Pillar was very excited to blow the steeple off the church here, which is a real church in Lunenberg. And all these leaves were someone from props standing there with a big hefty bag of leaves in front of a giant fan. MMG: And the tornado is the work of Chris Wood GS: Our genius FX guy. MMG: He’s great; he’s a very big part of the show.

GS: Oh yeah the other body found on the beach [that Dwight mentions] that was going to be another Troubled person that we were going to see and we never actually ended up seeing them.

MMG: Adam Copeland came to us largely as a wrestler and it became very clear to us that he had lots of talent as a thespian as well. He’s good with the jokes [His ‘usually’ reply to Jennifer’s comment about police stations being safe]. He can throw away a funny line, and that’s not an easy thing to do.

GS: It’s so funny looking at this a year later and seeing how everyone’s hair and facial hair and everything looks a little bit different. MMG: The boys look great. GS: Yeah. MMG: It’s not a surprise as it’s a television show, but there are some good looking people living up in Haven, Maine.

GS: These bar scenes were fun to shoot. Emily Rose liked it I think, getting to play someone so very different from Audrey. MMG: And one of the reasons we shaped season four the way we did was because Emily had a baby a week or two before we started shooting, so she was out of commission for around the first two months I think of shooting. So we wrote her into all the episodes but - oh this guy [who has just come into the bar with a gun in his belt] he works on the crew, but he’s great - he’s really good in this role and then you see him working on the crew. He’s a really nice guy, and I can’t remember his name right now. He’s a great guy but I’m blanking on his  name because I’m old. Anyway - we had to figure out a way to get Emily into the first few episodes, but shoot all the scenes together and them cut them in in post. So we wrote all these bar scenes in the script and we didn’t shoot any of them when we were shooting the rest of the episode. And then when we got to around episode five or six, we shot what was going to be two days, and then three days, and then four, and I think it turned into six days in this bar. GS: By the way this character’s name [who is pointing a gun at Lexie] is Sinister. GS: This was a fun stunt sequence coming up, Colin rehearsed it quite a bit. MMG: I like the way he takes his glasses off there; he does a great job. Kyle! His name is Kyle [who plays Sinister] GS: Yes! Kyle. Kyle; you’re awesome. We’re just really over-worked and exhausted.

[In the station as Stan and other cop notice the return of Nathan] MMG: So the female cop there, Rebecca Rafferty, is played by the real-life spouse of Lucas Bryant. GS: Kirsty Bryant.

[About the photo of the fulgerite on the beach] MMG: That looked really cool with the hand and everything. GS: I know! It did look really good, we just didn’t have time for the full scene with it. MMG: Yeah, this is one of the whole challenges of production; we had this whole thing written … but we just had to talk about it and show the photo instead. GS: This episode was running really long because we had so much stuff going on with it. MMG: That thing you see in the background there behind Nathan is a popsicle stick lamp, which we’ve all imagined that Nathan built for his dad the Chief. I had a whole backstory for this in my head. There’ a bunch of popsicle-stick lamps in the Chief’s office, and they’re left over from when Nik Campbell was the Chief. [and then they appear to be interrupted by some kind of technical issue and we don’t get any more to this story, sadly]

GS: So as some of you may remember, Marian Caldwell was in the pilot episode, and we thought it would be cool to bring her back and see what happened to her. I think it was in Star Trek when Khan got really mad at Kirk telling him, ‘You fly around the universe, and you never check back in on people after you fix the problem.’ So here at Haven, we do: we come back to see what’s going on. GS: All this frosted breath here is special effects, but it looks really good. MMG: It looks really good. GS: And I like the way they made everything look cold and frosty. MMG: It looks great. And when Marian opens her eyes, it still makes me jump. That was really great, because it looks like she’s dead. GS: She is so good in this scene. We’ve got to bring her back. MMG: Yeah we’ve got to bring her back. Season five. She’s very talented. GS: She looks so mad there. I totally believe that she would freeze you.

MMG: There’s the Teagues and their very short-lived van. GS: Didn’t that explode in real life? Yes, it did. There was a fire in the van. MMG: The van has actually burned in real life. Which I think we used. GS: Yeah, the first thing we thought was ‘Sweet! How can we work that into a story?’

GS: I liked the way they did this reveal [with Conrad in the chair]. And I like how blue all this is. They did a really nice job. It really works with the emotion of the scene. I think when the ice moves, and the breath are CG, and the rest is pretty practical [effects there on the set]. GS: Poor Nathan, he gets beat up this whole season.

MMG: You know, I’ve noticed that Dave never wears his reporter hat any more that he used to love; that hat with the feather like an old timey news man. We need to get him back in that hat. GS: I think we should!

MMG: And there’s the Grey Gull, the world’s coldest place to shoot. GS: But also the most beautiful. MMG: I kind of want to go to a party at the Grey Gull; it looks fun. GS: I think they should open it as a real bar. I guess there’s no running water in it, but. I would totally go. GS: So this is our final introduction for this episode; Duke’s brother. This was chock full of introductions this episode. MMG: There’s a pretty strong resemblance to Mr Crocker there.

MMG: Nice nose-ring. GS: I think she keeps it for a while. MMG: She keeps it the whole time she’s Lexie. GS: That’s right - we wrote a whole scene where it comes out eventually.

[untapdtreasure]

TV Show Ask Game 1, 3, 5, 7, 9-29, and 31-49.

TV Show Ask Game

1. if you could reboot one TV show, which one would it be? Earth 2. But only if they could go back in time with the same cast at those ages. It was a brilliant concept that maybe just came ahead of its time.

3. have you ever quit a show before it finished? why? No. But I've wanted to. Once I start something I like to finish it.

5. what’s your comfort show? H20: Just Add Water. I seem to go back to it when I need something light and fun and that doesn't require a ton of thinking in order to enjoy it. I know it's an Australian teenage drama, but I absolutely adore it and the characters.

7. have you ever been inspired to start a new show based on gifs or memes it has produced? The Man From the High Castle and Westworld.

9. what’s one show you thought you’d hate but turned out to really enjoy? Family Guy. I usually don't care for shows with that kind of humor, but it has turned out to be a true gem and favorite of mine.

10. what’s one show you thought you’d love but turned out to really hate? Sons of Anarchy.

11. which TV show has the best musical soundtrack, in your opinion? Cold Case. And Supernatural.

12. have you ever watched a show just for a specific actor? did you enjoy it? I tried to watch Californication because of my love for David Duchovny. I didn't get past season one, and I haven't had the urge to continue it further.

13. what genre of TV show is your favourite? Science-Fiction.

14. do you tend to stick to one type of TV show (eg, short-form comedy), or are you into many different genres? I love a ton of different genres. I mean, sticking to one type is mega boring. And I'm not always in the mood for something funny or drama or sad or whatever. So I like to have options. Lots and lots of options.

15. do you feel like there are any overrated TV show formats? I'm not really sure what this means so I'm not going to comment.

16. do you feel like there are any underrated TV show formats? I'm not really sure what this means so I'm not going to comment. 

17. have you ever written fanfiction for a TV show? I started with CSI and The X-Files a long time ago (2004) and still write it today. So yeah. I've written fanfiction for a television show that I love. Several of them in fact. Fifteen years and still going strong.

18. have you ever drawn fanart for a show? I cannot draw to save my life. So the closest thing I've ever drawn for a show was stick figures for The Walking Dead for another ask meme. LOL.

19. are there any shows on your “to watch” list right now? Oh my heck! There are a ton of shows and movies that are on my list to watch at a later date. I even go through it sometimes and delete things that I've added in the past that I know I will never get around to watching. It drives my husband mad to see all the crap in there that never gets watched.

20. Netflix, Hulu, or Prime originals? I happen to like some of all of them, but my favorites just so happen to be Hulu ones. The Handmaid's Tale and Hollie Hobby!

21. if you could be a guest star on any show, which one would it be? The X-Files but that won't ever happen because I'm pretty sure that the show is likely done this time around. I hope anyway. LOL.

22. if you could write your own TV show, what would it be like? A complete disaster. It would be a feel-good show with characters that care more about others around them than anything else. So yeah! A complete disaster. I'll leave the writing to the professionals and stick to writing fanfiction because it's so much easier.

23. are you a fan of will-they-won’t-they plots? Yes, I am. Some of the best ships have come from just that scenario.

24. how do you feel about bottle episodes? I have a love/hate relationship with them. When I haven't seen a character or a couple of characters for a bit, they are fun to play catch up with them, but then I would rather every episode have a little of everyone than focus on one group or character solely.

25. do you prefer proper opening credits, or a simple title card? A simple title card is all that I need because I'm ready to watch the show. I know who stars in it. I don't need to see it every time.

26. favourite TV show theme song? Pretty Little Liars.

27. which actor do you think deserves an Emmy for their work on TV? Melissa McBride and Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead.

28. who would be your dream cameo on your favourite show? Kathryn Erbe in the Zombie Apocolypse would be an absolute dream come true! I'd love to see her play in a scene opposite Melissa McBride's Carol.

29. do you tend to quote TV shows a lot? have you ever started using a word/phrase because of a TV show? No, I don't usually quote anything from a TV show unless I'm talking to a fellow fan and we're discussing the show. And I can't think of a time that I've ever taken a phrase from a show/movie and used it in real life. OHHH! Yes, I have! There is a contestant on Survivor that says, "Oh my heck!" and I love that phrase now. LOL.

31. do you use subtitles while watching TV if you can? I will rewind a scene and turn them on if I'm confused about something that is being said, or I'm making a comic strip/photo or gif set where I need the exact quote.

32. what’s one show you could watch over and over? Earth 2, H20: Just Add Water, Mako Mermaids, etc. I could go on and on with some of my favorite feel-good shows.

33. would you be interested in trying a show in another language? I've tried to watch a new series on Netflix, but it just really takes me out of it when I have to read the words. I can't focus on the actions and scenery if I'm constantly having to read the dialogue.

34. what are your top 5 shows right now? The Walking Dead, Law & Order: SVU, Heartland, The Rookie, and 9-1-1.

35. who are your top 5 TV characters right now? Carol Peletier, Lt. Olivia Benson, Athena Grant, Howard 'Chimney' Han, Rookie Officer John Nolan

36. what TV character would you die for? Carol Peletier. But not really.

37. which TV show setting would you most like to visit? The Walking Dead.

38. do you prefer hour long episodes, or 30 minute? It really depends on the material. Sometimes thirty minutes is long enough to tell a complete story, but sometimes, you really need that full hour.

39. do you prefer 22 episode seasons, or 13? It really depends on the show and the story being told.

40. is there a show coming out soon that you’re really excited about? The sixth season of The 100. There is nothing new coming out that I'm that interested in.

41. if you could change 1 detail about any show, what would you change and why? I would change the way in which season four of The Walking Dead was executed so that it made better sense. I wouldn’t necessarily change the main plot points, but I would change how the story was told and would elaborate on whatever needed to be elaborated on so that it made more sense narratively speaking. I believe that certain things had to happen to get the payoff down the road, but the way in which it was written and executed was entirely bogus. Scott Gimple did not trust his audience at all. 

42. what’s the longest amount of time you’ve ever watched a show in one sitting? Five plus hours when binge watching ER with my Mom on the weekends.

43. what do you think is a good amount of seasons for a TV show? Six or Seven. But that depends on the show and material for the show. Some shows really can't be wrapped up in that time frame, but some that really should end on a good note. Justified is a wonderful show, but those in charge knew that it was time to let it go. But Supernatural doesn't seem to know that it should end already. The first five or six seasons were brilliant, but it got a little (or a lot) stupid after that.

44. if you could replace any actor on TV in playing their role, who would you like to play and why? I wouldn't want to replace anyone because I absolutely love and adore the people chosen to play their specific roles. I wouldn't want to mess with the chemistry of the cast for even one minute.

45. do you own any TV shows on DVD? I own several shows on DVD. Too many to list.

46. do you prefer to watch TV alone or with friends? Alone because if you watch with friends there is too much talking going on.

47. are there any shows you love but your friends aren’t interested in? Like almost everything. LOL. My tastes and theirs do not usually mesh. It's rare that we have overlapping interest in a show.

48. are there any shows your friends love but you aren’t interested in? Yes. Just about as many of my shows as their shows, honestly.

49. who are your favourite couples on TV? Well, most of them are really canon ships, but there is Carol & Daryl from The Walking Dead, Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba from SVU, Regina Mills and Robin of Locksley from Once Upon a Time, Mulder and Scully from The X-Files. There are several more, but I think those are plenty to list right now. I have an otps page if you'd like to see the ones that I love the most. Oh! Han & Leia from Star Wars.

[elizadoolittlethings]

Mark Gatiss: ‘There’s nothing quite like the sheer bloody terror of theatre’

by

Mark Shenton

- Sep 29, 2016

By a strange sort of coincidence, October sees Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton all appearing on the London stage.

No sooner does Gatiss open next Tuesday in The Boys in the Band at the Park Theatre, than the very next night Shearsmith begins previews for a West End revival of Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser, and three weeks later Pemberton leads the cast of Dead Funny. The three men were, of couse, all co-founders (with Jeremy Dyson) and stars of The League of Gentlemen, a TV comedy troupe that was born as a stage act (and won the Perrier comedy award at Edinburgh in 1997), before making three TV series between 1999 and 2002 and then a feature film in 2005.

“This is a sort of two-yearly story now, when we all seem to be doing plays at the same time,” says Gatiss, talking in a lunch break from rehearsals a couple of Saturdays before previews begun. “But we’re just working really.”

Today he tells me frankly: “I owe everything to the League – and we’re talking about doing something else now, as it has been 10 years since we worked together and we’d love to again.” Yet it also keeps reappearing in his life anyway: “It goes in cycles of rebirth. People come up to me and say they loved it when they were kids, which makes me feel ancient; but then kids come up to me who’ve just found it, too. It goes round and round.”

During those League years – “we were together for 11 years” – he and the others made a total commitment to it. “We made a pact that we wouldn’t get distracted. We’d seen a few of our contemporaries go off and do other things, but we didn’t want to lose sight of what we were doing, so if we did anything else it would be only short things that we could fit in.”

If the League will forever be a marker for him, another has become Sherlock, the modern version of Sherlock Holmes that he has written with Steven Moffat, and for which they’ve just completed a fourth series of three episodes.

“That takes it to 13 we’ve done in six years. People ask why we don’t do 10 a year, but it’s hard enough doing three every 18 months. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, like bottled lightning; it just came together, the idea of doing a modern version, the writing, the casting and the timing of it. Conan Doyle spent all his life trying to work out why people liked Sherlock Holmes; Steven and I just go, ‘fine’. It’s been astonishing; it sells to more places than there are countries, which is something to do with oil rigs and other territories. And Benedict [Cumberbatch] and Martin [Freeman] have become superstars through it.”

Gatiss is himself far too modest and self-effacing to consider himself a star, though as an actor earlier this year he won his first Olivier award for best actor in a supporting role for his appearance in Three Days in the Country at the National Theatre, and said in a post-award red carpet interview: “I’m over the moon, I really am. It’s a thrill, I’ve always wanted one and I am really pleased.”

https://youtu.be/0cAIHJ6f6zQ

He had every reason to be; as Kate Kellaway put it in her review in The Observer: “Mark Gatiss, as the ‘maestro of misdiagnosis’ Shpigelsky, gives a comic tour de force, and his immodest proposal to middle-aged Lizaveta brings the house down. He sinks to his knees to propose, but lumbago prevents him from rising and he crawls, in a most undignified style, across the stage, bottom up. It’s funny, but it is the more subtle aspects of Gatiss’ performance that fascinate most: the way he holds a smile, lets it go beyond its sell-by date: there is Shpigelsky’s vanity and misplaced confidence in it.”

He tells me he never had confidence in that comic routine himself: “Una Stubbs once told me that when she was doing a play at the Donmar Warehouse a friend told her how she loved that thing she was doing with her hands, and she never got a laugh from it again after that. It’s the old saw about a good review being as dangerous as a bad one. With the entire back routine in Three Days in the Country, I couldn’t remember what I had done about three months in; I lived in mortal dread of it going away, but it was also good because it kept it fresh.”

He keeps himself fresh by combining two careers, one as a writer, the other as an actor. “I’ve always done both. In an ideal year, I do half and half. Sherlock takes a long time to write, then four months to film; I then like to spend three months on a play.”

Theatre has become a mainstay for Gatiss. “I usually do a play a year, sometimes two,” with credits that stretch from the National (where as well as Three Days in the Country he also starred in Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings) to the Donmar (The Recruiting Officer, Josie Rourke’s first show at the helm), Hampstead Theatre (Howard Brenton’s 55 Days), and London’s Old Vic (All About My Mother). “I can write while I’m in a play, too, and I like that – it gives structure to the day – but I always forget, like the amnesia of childbirth, how tired I get. When you do a play you shift into a different pattern, and become more of a night owl, although I’m very much a morning person. When you’re in the theatre, you eat late and sleep later so that has an effect on the day.”

Theatre has also always been in his blood, ever since he first attended a drama club at school and an after-hours youth theatre, before going to study at Bretton Hall in Yorkshire, where he first met the other Leaguers and they formed The League of Gentlemen. “It’s such a different experience to sitting in a caravan waiting to film something. There’s nothing quite like the sheer bloody terror of theatre – and the smell of a freshly painted set is exactly the same wet paint smell I remember from drama club at school. It gives me the same tingle of anticipation and nerves and excitement.”

Being in a play is like a holiday romance – it’s very intense, then it dissipates

Of course, one of the joys of working in the theatre is that it is much more social than the solitary act of writing. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve been chained to a desk for months, so there’s nothing nicer than joining a new group of friends and everything that comes with it. It’s like a holiday romance – it’s very intense, then it dissipates.”

There’s no room for holiday romances, or ‘showmances’ as I’ve heard them dubbed, though: for the first time, he is working on stage with his actor husband Ian Hallard, whom he married seven years ago. “We’ll be like Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray now,” he quips. The ceremony was held at Middle Temple, the ancient Inn of Court in central London, and he can’t resist telling me: “The ceremony took place beneath the portrait of Edward Carson, the man who prosecuted Oscar Wilde. Who’d have thought? He’d be turning in his grave.”

Doing The Boys in the Band, Mart Crowley’s 1960s play about a group of gay men, together now was prompted partly by Hallard’s involvement in a rehearsed reading of the play four years ago, which Gatiss saw and tells me how much it resonated.

“One line that stood out was: ‘If we could only not hate ourselves quite so much.’ I thought it was brilliant. And then [producers] Tom O’Connell and James Seabright got a production together and the Park Theatre said yes, and I had a gap, so I joined, too. Ian was doing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Theatr Clwyd in the first three months of the year, and then I went straight off to do four months of Sherlock, so this is a good way of seeing each other now.”

There are other perks, too: “Jack Derges is utterly delightful – being kissed by him every day is all right. But Ian gets kissed by him first,” he hastens to add. The Park is also local to them – they live in nearby Islington – and he says: “I love this theatre. It has an indie feeling to it, and has a really loyal, local audience. But I’ve also wanted to play this part since I saw the film when I was 12 or 13. It’s an important play – it’s fascinating to see where we were, where we’ve got to, and between that, where we think things have changed or not at all. You know that a play is good when you stage it at different times and it means something different each time.”

Continues…

Q&A: Mark Gatiss

What was your first non-theatre job? I worked as a gardener in a hospital across the road from where my dad worked.

What was your first professional theatre job? Working at Darlington Arts Centre, now sadly gone, which in its day was second only to the Barbican in terms of size. I was a deputy stage manager.

What is your next job? I’ve got a lot of things to write, most of them secret at the moment.

What do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out? Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Who or what was your biggest influence? My greatest inspiration is Alan Bennett – I’ve never worked with him, but he is it. My acting hero is James Mason, who as a screen actor was unsurpassable; on stage, it is Mark Rylance – his Richard II was a life-changing experience for me, it was breathtaking.

What’s your best advice for auditions? Don’t go, leave them to me! But apart from that, whenever I’m involved in producing things, I try to get actor friends to come in and read in for those auditioning. It’s very unusual for actors to sit on the other side of the table, and they always find it revelatory. At the end of the day, they realise it is very rarely about not being good, but about the fit, and that’s reassuring to know. So my advice would be that if you can, try to get to sit on the other side of the table sometime – it will make you feel so much better when you don’t get a job.

If you hadn’t been an actor and writer, what would you have been? I’m very blessed to do this as I can’t do anything else. The only other thing I really wanted to was be a pantologist, but I didn’t have Latin.

Do you have any theatrical superstitions or rituals? I try not to as I’m quite a rational person, but in the face of the terror, I can’t tell you how many times I find myself whistling in the dressing room and having to go out in the corridor and turn around three times and blow a raspberry, hoping no one notices.

He goes on: “There is a lot of stuff in this play about self-loathing that is very relevant. The idea that that has gone away is a fallacy. The levels of mental illness and suicide in young gay men particularly is awful. I was talking to a friend recently who told me about a friend of his who struggled to come out. We imagine, living in our metropolitan bubble, that it is easy, but he had gone through hell – it sounded like something from the 1950s, but was to do with what was going on in his own head.”

The play premiered in 1968, a year ahead of Stonewall and the new age of gay liberation that ushered in, but it was a landmark play for portraying gay lives on a mainstream stage so unashamedly, and maybe critically. Some activists have resisted its portrait of these gay lives as too hostile and unhappy; but as Gatiss points out: “I hate the notion of things having to wear the weight of everything on their shoulders. This is actually a particular view of nine particular men, written from a very autobiographical standpoint by Mart Crowley. I feel very like I’m on a soapbox about this, but why should this play have to shoulder everyone’s stories? Obviously it was different when there were very few gay plays, but it’s not like that now that there’s a multiplicity of them, so we can look at it in its context.”

Photos: Tristram Kenton1 of 4

That context is also, of course, pre-Aids – though it’s a sad fact of that disease that it claimed no fewer than four of the play’s original New York cast. During the 1980s, the play duly fell off the gay theatre syllabus entirely; as Gatiss puts it: “There was a period when clearly this was the wrong thing to put on, when we were absolutely under siege. But the last time it was done in New York, Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times that it was apparently all right to like Boys in the Band again. As time passes and things shift, it is not just ripe for revival, but also still relevant. It’s a false assumption that all battles have been won. There’s a massive debate in the gay community about masculinity, for instance. And what really interests me is the notion how, in any community or cause, when you start to achieve victories, the things that give you common cause start to fray and then you start to turn in on yourself. It’s a bit like the Labour Party is doing now. But so much has been achieved.”

Yet the gay community is facing new challenges now, such as the disturbing rise in chemical drug addictions. “A friend has a really interesting theory about the perhaps subconscious feeling among gay people that we are somehow ‘other’. There’s that wonderful line in Inherit the Wind that you invent the telephone but lose the charm of distance; so for everything you gain, you lose something, too. And maybe the rise of chem-sex is a way for men to say, ‘Yes, I can marry and adopt children now, but I’m still not like you.’ And that’s really interesting.” Addictions are a way to try to cure, or at least temporarily relieve, pain, “whether it’s drugs or sex or booze, which this play is about. And from the outside, all looks fine now – you have Craig Revel Horwood and Bruno [Tonioli] on the TV, and Ian and I were on Graham Norton [on BBC Radio 2] this morning, so visibility is not an issue. Obviously huge steps have been made, but it’s folly to think that everything is rosy now.”

Continues…

Mark Gatiss’ top tip for an aspiring writer and actor

• As Churchill said, keep buggering on, that’s the only thing you can do. For writing, there’s no such thing as a would-be writer. You do it or you don’t, so just get on with it. People are scared, they think they’ll be judged – but the only person doing that is yourself.

Some may still resist the portrait of these bitching, unhappy gay men all over again, but Gatiss is ready with his answer to them: “If someone says that’s not me, it’s not supposed to be. I find repellent the closing down and over-policing of things; it suffocates debate.” That’s a debate he wants to have. And apart from working with his husband, the play has an added resonance for him, too: in it, he plays Harold, whose birthday party provides the setting for the story, and he tells me, “I’ll turn 50 during the run, though we don’t have a show that night.”

After the run finishes, he plans to take a holiday at last: “I’m going to try to have an actual month off, to see if I can do it. People ask me if I’m a workaholic – I don’t think I am, but I love to work. Noel Coward once said work is more fun than fun, and I finished a script the other day and gave myself a day off work and I went off for a massage. But I was quite bored by the end of the day.”

CV: Mark Gatiss

Born: 1966, Sedgefield, County Durham Training: Bretton Hall College Landmark productions: All About My Mother, Old Vic, London (2007), Season’s Greetings, National Theatre (2010), The Recruiting Officer, Donmar Warehouse, London (2012), 55 Days, Hampstead Theatre, London (2012), Coriolanus, Donmar Warehouse, London, with Tom Hiddleston (2013), Three Days in the Country, National Theatre (2015) Awards: Perrier award for comedy for The League of Gentlemen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (1997), BAFTA for The League of Gentlemen TV series (2000), Royal Television Society award for The League of Gentlemen TV series (2000), Golden Rose of Montreux for The League of Gentlemen TV series (1999), Writers Guild award for best short-form TV drama for Sherlock (2012), Olivier award for best supporting actor for Three Days in the Country (2016). Agents: Sarah Spear/Grace Clissold at Curtis Brown

The Boys in the Band runs at the Park Theatre, London, until October 30

[doctorwhonews]

Torchwood: The Last Beacon

Latest Review: Writer: Gareth David-Lloyd Director: Scott Handcock Featuring: Burn Gorman, Gareth David-Lloyd, Laura Dalgleish, Daniel Hawksford, Rick Yale, Marilyn Le Conte Big Finish Release (United Kingdom) Running Time: 1 hour Released by Big Finish Productions - April 2018 Order from Amazon UK “I can’t go in there – it’s got a hygiene rating of 1!” “Could be worse.” “How?” “Could be 0!” Since Big Finish acquired their prized license to continue the missions of Torchwood Three beyond their 2010 televised expiry date, we’ve seen their resultant monthly range deliver myriad unlikely character groupings: Captain Jack and Queen Victoria, Sergeant Andy and an enigmatic long-dead secret agent, Yvonne Hartman and Wales’ nightclubbing community, the list goes on. That trend of subversive matchmaking continues this month with The Last Beacon, wherein Cardiff’s famed coffee brewing extraordinaire Ianto Jones and its infamous soon-to-be eternal antihero Owen Harper must embark on the road trip to end all road trips. What could possibly go wrong? Well, we’re glad that you asked. Such circumstances could’ve never come about without sufficient incentive for both participants, of course, and indeed the pair has their work cut out locating the source of the elusive signal which endows Beacon with its name. Containing the language of an alien species long thought extinct, the sudden transmission brings Ianto and Owen out to the Welsh countryside for a makeshift bonding exercise-turned-trial by fire – the former equipped with his trusty coffee kit, mittens and years of camping experience, the latter only his wits and trademark bitter sense of humour. By now any Torchwood devotee should already have sensed the rife potential for fraught inter-team dynamics and rural satire just waiting for the play’s writer to exploit, and the scribe’s name? Gareth David-Lloyd. If the gamble of allowing one of the show’s lead stars to try his hand at penning their latest script, particularly with no prior writing credits to his name, seems a step too far even for a company as prone to risk-taking as Big Finish, then worry not; the studio couldn’t possibly have selected a more suitable custodian for this utterly spectacular buddy comedy. Whether he’s sending our heroes into pubs for spontaneous – if inevitable – brawls, eerie forests containing sinister visions of the past or abandoned clubhouses which Owen wryly brands as being “frozen in the ‘80s”, David-Lloyd evidently recalls transparently how the original series thrived on juggling humorous and horrific elements throughout its four-season run, straddling those contrasting tones with the same enviable ease as any of his fellow range wrights. Less surprising, however, is the man’s ability to brilliantly capture Ianto’s complex personality – on the printed page and in the recording studio – as if TV’s second most iconic butler after Jeeves had never departed from our screens or airwaves. It’s easy to forget at times how impressively multi-faceted a character Mr. Jones became over the course of 30 episodes, his quiet sense of humour belying intense romantic passion, psychological vulnerability and strained familial ties which then came to the fore in Children of Earth. Fair play to David-Lloyd, then, for placing this emotionally versatile character’s internal struggles front-and-centre in Beacon, with his struggle to reconcile the innocent tyke who adored visiting the Welsh mountains to see his gran with the oft-isolated man that we see today a core thematic and narrative element that lends vital gravitas to the mission and to his dynamic with Owen. Enter Burn Gorman, the return of whom to Torchwood marked by far one of the audio range’s biggest breakthroughs in 2017’s deeply unsettling masterpiece Corpse Day. Unsurprisingly Gorman – who successfully sent shivers down this viewer’s spine in the role of Oliver’s Bill Sykes on the West End a few years back – carries the performing mettle to simultaneously evolve Owen’s intricate relationship with Ianto, as the former discovers how the latter’s childhood experiences still inform his modern-day decisions, while also providing much of the tale’s pitch-perfect comic relief as Owen finds himself totally out of his element. Indeed, David-Lloyd confirms in Beacon's interview tracks that he and Goss conspired to bring Owen aboard what the former calls a spiritual successor to "Countrycide", knowing that he'd truly seem a fish out of water when met with the prospect of conversing with amicable bus drivers and alien badgers or indulging Ianto's newfound passopn for geocaching treasure hunts. That Gorman shares such obvious chemistry with David-Lloyd, particularly thanks to their hilarious good cop / bad cop approach, couldn’t have been predicted before recording, though; let’s hope that this month’s long-awaited team-up boxset Torchwood: Believe offers plenty more of this superb dynamic. Beyond the fine tonal balancing and gripping character drama, there’s even time for some provocative thematic exploration of communities and species straying from their traditional roots along the way. Guest star Ellie Darvill does an utterly tremendous job conveying her character’s underlying yearning for our species return to simpler times before our gothic pursuit of technology at all costs, a return to the rare community spirit which anyone who’s ever camped near rural villages will attest pervades that refreshing escapist experience. Once again, though, that David-Lloyd effortlessly integrates this increasingly topical talking point into the context of a sci-fi narrative – and indeed Ianto’s personal arc over the course of hour – speaks wonders for his previously untapped literary talents, to the remarkable extent that even Big Finish’s veteran scribes could learn a thing or three for future reference. Regular readers of our Torchwood audio verdicts might recall this reviewer previously calling out the range’s inconsistent approach to arc-building, but ultimately, if its – seemingly – standalone recent entries such as this one and last month’s brilliantly off-the-wall The Death of Captain Jack are even marginally indicative of what’s to come in future releases, then consider those qualms completely laid to rest. In The Last Beacon, Gareth David-Lloyd has delivered not only the definitive take on his still beloved character of Ianto Jones, but more importantly an incredible distillation of everything which made the show so successful on-air and which continues to ensure its hallowed place in fans’ hearts today. Next Time on Torchwood – We’re off for another road trip, this time of the psychological horror variety, as the Cooper family test their longstanding theory that We Always Get Out Alive to its nerve-wracking limits. First, though, who fancies attending Torchwood Three’s much-vaunted reunion party, the guest list for which includes immortal Time Agents, space pig-hunting medics and a certain renowned butler? Apparently securing an invitation to this prestigious three-hour event doesn’t take much effort for those in the know – all one has to do is Believe… http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/04/torchwood_the_last_beacon.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[ichigopansu-blog]

POPOLO 12/17

NAKAJIMA KENTO X KIKUCHI FUMA

We only feel destiny between us

A shinme like us will certainly not appear in the future

My comment towards Nakajima

Nakajima and I have always been together since the day of the first audition. There is hardly such relationship and probably will not appear in the future. We have been sharing experiences since the entrance from Jr. era to the debut. As far as I’m concern, there will never be such an existence. Nakajima is the only one. He is almost the same age, and it is true that I’m feeling a different kind of shyness towards him, compared to other members. When he came to my solo live, I was surely glad but also embarrassed. I have a different feeling when being seen by Nakajima and doing something together with Nakajima.

My comment towards Kikuchi

I think it is an honor that Kikuchi and I are called the strongest shinme and our relationship become a beloved subject. Kikuchi and I often talk about where there is no shinme like us in our generation that is always together since our entrance. Therefore, we want to become such unique existence. The two of us, each 5 of us have different color. Certainly, me and Kikuchi have an original color. If fans love our color, we will continue respecting that too.

“Music”

Both of them are recognizing their own world and challenging a solo work

The two who are different but fan of each other

Nakajima: Frankly speaking, I am a fan of Kikuchi’s music. In terms of music, you have exceeded a certain level that I haven’t been able to reach, so it’s amazing. And listening to the music made by Kikuchi, I unconsciously become a fan.

Kikuchi: Thank you. I am delighted. But, if you say that, I am also your fan. Nakajima’s music has elements which are different from my music. However, there are similar parts too. Since we have always been together, I became aware of your preference and types of music which influenced you. “I guess this is his favorite” or “This kind of thing inspires him”. There are time when we can understand each other. We are glad at those moments, aren’t we?

Nakajima: Certainly there is.

Kikuchi: In my mind, I often say, “I wonder if we were watching the same thing”, or “I wonder if he is watching it”.

Nakajima: I also feel that! This may be our special sense of awareness.

Kikuchi: I guess so. This year, Nakajima’s solo concert was very interesting. The concept was very clear and easy to understand. Besides, the dance performance with Snow Man was also very nice.

Nakajima: I’m glad. Very glad! Solo concerts obviously express our own color. This year, I finally went to see your solo concert, so I was able to experience Kikuchi’s view of the world and I become a fan of Kikuchi’s music more than before.

Kikuchi: Aren’t you praising me too much?

Nakajima: Really? These are my sincere words!

“Actors”

Each of them are checking out each other’s cast appearances!

Frank friendship in which they praise mutually

Nakajima: I’ve been watching all the works of Kikuchi. I have also watched all episodes of Wagahai no Heya de Aru that is broadcasted.

Kikuchi: Thank you!

Nakajima: I really like Kikuchi’s role in Wagaheya very much. First of all, I’m glad that you are starring in a drama series, and I feel proud of you.

Kikuchi: When the casting was officially announced, you sent me a mail with “Congratulations on your starring!”

Nakajima: I heard from the staff, I was really glad and unexpectedly send a mail. However, it seems really tough to perform alone for 30 minutes every time.

Kikuchi: Thankfully, but there are many lines to memorize, and I have a great responsibility to carry for the drama. It is hard work.

Nakajima: Recently, you told me “I want an energetic role as well”, didn’t you? Oh, that was a little cute! (laughter)

Kikuchi: Miseinen dakedo Kodomo janai had a really nice atmosphere, so I envied you a little. (laughter) Role of a prince in Misekodo and the role of tsundere type like Kurosaki-kun are really fitting for your personality. Personally, I prefer Hachiken in Silver Spoon. It was natural and I felt familiar, so the role was amazing. Well, but my most favourite thing is your act in “Tsuukai TV Sukatto Japan”.

Nakajima: Ahaha! I only performed roles of perverted men. (laughter)

Kikuchi: It was wonderful! (laughter)

Nakajima: Your preference is really strange! (laughter)

“Characters”

The two who resemble each other very much when being praised

Because our personalities are the complete opposite, we can always stimulate each other

Nakajima: Kikuchi’s charm for me is his cute smile.

Kikuchi: Yes. It’s cute.

Nakajima: You finally said so yourself! (laughter) However, your smile is really cute. When anyone laugh, it is wonderful, but Kikuchi’s laugh which you show when you felt happy even influenced me and makes me laugh almost unconsciously. With Kikuchi, I guess that I’ll always be able to laugh.

Kikuchi: I’m very grateful. (Embarassed laughter) Many imagine that Nakajima has that sociable image, but, in fact, you are shy, aren’t you? For example, when everyone are playing games in the dressing room, you seldom join us. Other than that, you may have something else you want to do, but, these days, you often feel shy. I think it’s cute.

Nakajima: Ahaha! I’m not cute. Don’t be mistaken. Instead, I am cool!

Kikuchi: I guess that our relationship has come to the point where it reaches the highest degree. You may feel embarassed the closer our relationship becomes.

Nakajima: That’s right.

Kikuchi: However, basically we are the complete opposite. Therefore, it is interesting.

Nakajima: No, aren’t we very similar?

Kikuchi: Such reactions are exactly the opposite.

Nakajima: That’s a joke! Yes we are completely different although our targets are the same.

Kikuchi: Absolutely! However, your ways of thinking and approaching things are completely different from mine.

Nakajima: For that reason, we can always stimulate each other.

“Future”

Nakajima who makes women’s hearts throb and Kikuchi who heats (motivates) men’s hearts

Nakajima who wants Kikuchi to play the role of Onizuka in GTO

Nakajima: When I was watching the music video of Gyutto, I thought that you should absolutely play the role of a teacher. More exactly, GTO Onizuka. If GTO 3rd is made, the third Onizuka must be you, Kikuchi!

Kikuchi: Of course. I will surely accept it if I receive the offer. I will play the role with my best efforts! (laughter)

Nakajima: I really want to see that! Forgetting the role of the 2nd season, I want you to revive as the 3rd Onizuka.

Kikuchi: If there are opportunities, I will do it with pleasure! What types of role will suit you? I think that a cool role will naturally suits you. For example, a Getsu 9 love dramas.

Nakajima: Thanks. I also like love stories, so I would like to play such roles if I can. I want to continue making women’s hearts throb! And “Kikuchi-sensei” will heat young men’s hearts. It will be nice!

Kikuchi: You really recommend me a role of a teacher. (laughter)

Nakajima: Because…it will certainly suits you!

Kikuchi: Love stories which are the most suited genre for Nakajima is nice, but I want you to act in a love comedy like Boku Unmei no Hito desu.

Nakajima: Ah, role such as that of Kamenashi-kun?

Kikuchi: No, a comic role such as Mitsushima-san.

Nakajima: That type of role? (laughter) The role played by Mitsushima-san wasn’t it too unique?

Kikuchi: Ahaha!

Nakajima: If I play that type of role, people will think that I’m a real pervert! (bitter smile) As expected , you want me to play such a perverted role. (laughter)

Kikuchi: That’s a joke! Please play a role like that of Kamenashi-kun!

Shori’s comment

The joy of prize reception

1st place? Can I consider that the reception of prize is my merit? (laughter) In fact, this time the shooting of the hidden aspect could be taken by chance. It was a rare shot!

The two of them who stand together in front of me. As I was releasing the shutter, eventhough we didn’t do any preliminary arrangements, both of them kindly changed their facial expressions one by one. As expected of the two shinme!

[aion-rsa]

Behind the Scenes on Inside No. 9’s Most Terrifying Episode

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Warning: contains spoilers for Inside No. 9 ‘The Harrowing’

“It was ‘WTF!? Oh my God! I’m not going to sleep! Why did you do that to me?!’” The moment the credits rolled on Inside No. 9’s series one finale ‘The Harrowing’, director David Kerr was deluged with messages. “People were very responsive,” he laughs. “We’d gone for something bold that was properly horrible and would haunt them. There’s not much out there that scares a horror fan because they’ve seen it all so many times. That’s the challenge. You want to hit people with a visceral, palpable gut punch that they didn’t see coming.”

Job done. The final shot of 2014’s ‘The Harrowing’ is truly deserving of the episode’s title. A schoolgirl, stripped, bound to a chair, gagged and anesthetised, whimpers in terror as the filthy curtains surrounding a four-poster bed begin to part. One necrotised cloven foot touches the floor, followed by another. A contorted, emaciated figure emerges, naked but for a soiled nappy, with curling fingernails and clouded eyes in a grey pock-marked face. It staggers towards the helpless girl, hissing a single world with demonic glee: “Mischief”

Kerr describes the image as “pretty strong meat” and few would disagree, especially considering that the meat in question was paid for by a comedy budget. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s anthology Inside No. 9 has never fitted neatly inside either the stall of comedy or drama. It’s one, the other and both at the same time. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a channel that has a horror department in the same way as comedy,” says Kerr. “That’s what we need to get going!”

Helen McCrory and Reece Shearsmith (BBC)

Kerr directed every episode of Inside No. 9’s first series: six half-hour films, each with a different setting, cast of characters, and tone. ‘The Harrowing’ is Shearsmith and Pemberton’s tribute to horror cinema classics, a specialist subject. Before starting work on the series, Kerr anticipated being schooled by the pair in obscure 1970s horror and rare Giallo movies they wanted to reference, but that wasn’t how it went. “’The Harrowing’ was very much a full-on genre film, and indebted to the Hammer tradition and the Amicus tradition of portmanteau horror, and though they have a tremendously deep knowledge of all that material – more so than me – Reece and Steve were actually very non-prescriptive.”

The script came to Kerr in a perfect state with plenty of detail, he remembers, but aside from some specific Vincent Price nods in costume and make-up, the creators were open to visual ideas – as far as the cash would stretch. “Always with Inside No. 9, budgetary challenges rear their head. You’re trying to make something that feels like a film, but you’re trying to do that on the budget of an episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys”.

It was clear there wouldn’t be the money for a full-body VFX transformation for the demonically possessed Andras who makes such an impression in the final scene. Like most limitations in Inside No. 9 though, it turned out to be a creative blessing, says Kerr. 

Andras is the eldest of the three Moloch siblings, brother to the vampiric-looking Tabitha (Helen McCrory) and Hector (Reece Shearsmith). He lives in an upstairs room of their freezing Gothic mansion, kept tied to the bed and fed like a baby on milk formula and Rusks. Fifty years earlier, we’re told, Andras was possessed by mischief demon Castiel, an infernal spirit now in search of a new home – hence the anesthetised babysitter, Katy (Aimee-Ffion Edwards). 

“You’re always wary of showing the monster, but we knew that we did want people to see Andras. A lot of the conversations ahead of the shoot were about what we could do with our limited pocket of money to make him properly scary, but in a way that you could still feel that he’s human. He’s right on the border between a poor, neglected sibling who’s just been left to stagnate in this room with a dirty nappy and untrimmed toenails. We wanted him to be just at the outer limit of the neglected human, but not to push him into a totally risible demon caricature state.”

Director David Kerr and actor Sean Buckley (David Kerr)

Casting Sean Buckley in the role was key to keeping a grip on the character’s pathos, says Kerr. He describes Buckley, who sadly passed away in 2016, as a hugely gifted physical performer. “He had a great physique and an amazing face, and he really understood the kind of contortions that would be useful for Andras when he was writhing and for his walk. The main thing was the physical tautness that he was going to be feeling when he’s writhing in the bed in chains. Sean just got it.”

As reference material for Andras’ look, Kerr and the team went to a range of sources: The Pale Man from Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Dickensian ghosts and the Pee Pee Demon from Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt’s Angel. The character’s make-up was the work of Lisa Cavalli-Green, who brought in skilled prosthetics designer Kristyan Mallett to create Andras’ horrific set of teeth. “We went for details,” says Kerr. “Planning a shot, it was very much about half seeing him through that veil. As ever with horror and comedy, you’re just holding back the reveal. Again – testament to Reece and Steve – they didn’t give Andras tons of dialogue. Less was definitely more.” 

The opposite applied to the episode’s Gothic location; in that case, more was definitely more. Kerr remembers his first look at the 19th century Highgate mansion that served as the Moloch house exterior (16 Broadlands Road, N6, if you’re planning a visit). “It was a real ‘we’ve got to use this’ moment. Reece would like to live there, incidentally, that’s going to be his home one day.”

For the interiors, it all came down to the staircase. Inspired by the grand staircases in films like The Others, The Orphanage and The Woman in Black, Kerr’s team went looking for similar. Another reference was more comic-horror. “For Reece and Steve, the characters of Tabitha and Hector felt a little bit like Addams Family characters. I found one of the original Charles Addams cartoons with a staircase in it and then found Langleybury and the staircase was almost identical. That was a real Eureka moment.” 

Charles Addams cartoon and Langleybury (David Kerr)

The interiors were filmed in Langleybury, near Watford, which has also been used in the filming of Harlots, a 2011 Great Expectations and feature film The Little Stranger. The atmospheric, dilapidated interior with a galleried area and a series of ante-rooms was perfect for Shearsmith and Pemberton’s script. “You just felt – what could be behind those closed doors?”

Taking viewers up to those closed doors were Steadicam shots by specialist operator Alf Tramontin, whose previous work includes the Harry Potter films and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. Kerr aimed to achieve “a prowling point of view” and designed shots very specifically to draw the eye through the house and give the impression there were whole rooms and wings that were rarely used. John Carpenter’s Halloween was an inspiration for the choreography of those shots. “It’s all about the girls, Katy and Shell (Poppy Rush) creeping up the stairs and just not being able to quite see past the corner, putting the audience in their point of view in terms of what might be behind a door, or a covered piece of furniture beneath a dust sheet.” The dusts sheets covering the furniture fed into the unsettling idea that you’re not quite sure what lurks beneath, says Kerr, before adding with a laugh, “that was also so that we could just put any old crap underneath without having to rent a lot of expensive props!” 

Custom props were made for the hellish pictures on display in the Moloch hall. Production designer Brian Sykes had reproductions made of 15th and 16th century paintings depicting the Harrowing of Hell. “That was tricky, because really you wanted a whole gallery of these things, just to feel they were everywhere, but the flip side of that is if Tabitha and Hector had this stunning art collection, maybe they wouldn’t live in such a ratty house. The fact they only have a few of those paintings makes you think ‘are they for real? Is this all a bit of a con?’ And that’s what you want the audience to be asking themselves.”

A crucial part of directing the audience’s feelings in the episode is the work of Inside No. 9 composer Christian Henson. “He’s so inventive and brilliant,” says Kerr. “None of those films sound alike from a score point of view.” For ‘The Harrowing,’ Henson drew inspiration from the Giallo vintage synthesizer used in the Goblin score for Dario Argento’s Suspiria, and once again, from Carpenter’s famous Halloween theme.

Poppy Rush and Aimee Ffion-Edwards (BBC)

That’s a lot of horror talk for 30 minutes of television commissioned under a comedy banner. The comedy though, is very much there in ‘The Harrowing’, which begins as a fond pastiche of the kind of lurid characters found in Hammer Horror films such as Roger Corman’s Vincent Price-starring House of Usher. Kerr knew that guest star Helen McCrory had the colours to make Tabitha something special. “Helen just took to it and had that voice and poise. The character’s this sort of grande dame, larger than life.” McCrory and Shearsmith’s performances are expertly pitched to riff on the theatricality of those stars of vintage horror. 

“So much of the film plays in a fairly camp register. You meet Hector and he’s Vincent Price-ish, a slightly campy eccentric. Tabitha is almost like a sort of Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, shuttered in the chateau. They’re oddballs, and they’re funny and bicker like an old couple. By the time Hector pulls out the guitar and is singing Lord of the Dance, you’re thinking ‘this is bordering on ludicrous!’, and then it’s about how far can we push that comedy and turn the corner to something properly dark. The Lord of the Dance silliness takes your guard down, I hope, so that by the time Aimee-Ffion Edwards’ character is sitting there and Castiel in Andras’ body is advancing towards her, it’s properly horrifying, and you’re thinking ‘I didn’t see this coming’.

“They are twins, comedy and horror. They’re both the cinema of sensation, you’re trying to create a visceral reaction from people. Fear and laughter are proper physical reactions in people, rather than intellectual ponderings. You want to incite those reactions and you do that by getting ahead of the audience and not letting them get ahead of you. And that’s always been the genius of a script by Reece and Steve. That’s what they do.”

David Kerr’s festive film Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse will air this Christmas on Sky One and NOWTV.

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Inside No. 9 is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.

The post Behind the Scenes on Inside No. 9’s Most Terrifying Episode appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCY IS N.G. AS AN R.N.

S6;E17 ~ January 21, 1974

Directed by Coby Ruskin ~ Written by Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Davis

Synopsis

Kim gets a cold, Harry hurts his knee, and Mary Jane breaks her fingers. Even the cat is having kittens!  Naturally, it falls to Lucy to nurse them all back to health.

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Carter), Gale Gordon (Harrison Otis Carter), Lucie Arnaz (Kim Carter)

Guest Cast

Mary Jane Croft (Mary Jane) played Betty Ramsey during season six of “I Love Lucy.” She also played Cynthia Harcourt in “Lucy is Envious” (ILL S3;E23) and Evelyn Bigsby in “Return Home from Europe” (ILL S5;E26). She played Audrey Simmons on “The Lucy Show” but when Lucy Carmichael moved to California, she played Mary Jane Lewis, the actor’s married name and the same one she uses on all 31 of her episodes of “Here’s Lucy. Her final acting credit was playing Midge Bowser on “Lucy Calls the President” (1977). She died in 1999 at the age of 83. 

Roy Roberts (Dr. Honeycutt) was born Roy Barnes Jones in Tampa, Florida in 1906. His early career was on the Broadway stage. In Hollywood, the veteran character actor accrued over 900 screen performances in his 40 year career, most of which were authority figures. He and Lucille Ball appeared together in Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949). On “The Lucy Show” he first appeared as a Navy Admiral in “Lucy and the Submarine” (TLS S5;E2) before creating the role of Mr. Cheever, the president of Mr. Mooney’s bank, a recurring character he played through the end of the series. On “Here’s Lucy” he played the Superintendent of the Air Force Academy in season two’s two-part opener.  He also played a Doctor in “Lucy and the Astronauts” (S4;E5).  

Al Checco (Dr. Crawford) was originally the comedy partner of Don Knotts entertaining US troops stationed overseas. This is the second of his two appearances on the series, having first appeared in “The Big Game” (S6;E2).  

Dr. Crawford, a veterinarian, is substituting for Dr. Moss.  

Harry, Kim's Cat (uncredited) is the mother of 20 kittens and is pregnant for the fifth time. She was briefly named Harriet, but refused to respond to anything but Harry. Harry is a kitten from the litter of a cat owned by Lucy's friend Vanda.

The title features abbreviations that might be confusing: N.G. stands for “No Good” and “R.N.” means “Registered Nurse.”  

The same evening this episode originally aired, Roy Roberts also appeared on “Gunsmoke,” “Here's Lucy's” lead-in on CBS. Roberts played Mr. Bodkin in 19 episodes of the long-running Western. Like his character of Mr. Cheever on “The Lucy Show,” Mr. Bodkin was a banker. These two back-to-back episodes are Roberts' last television appearances before his death a year later. In that year, he also starred in two feature films: Chinatown (1974) and The Strongest Man in the World (1975).

In his DVD introduction to the episode, Al Checco says that the “Here's Lucy” company worked like “a well-greased automobile engine.” Truthfully, Checco was the only 'outsider' in this episode full of “Lucy” regulars, having only done one previous episode.   

As the episode opens, Harry is catching up with his reading with the September 1969 issue of The Ring. The boxing magazine published its first issue in 1922. On “I Love Lucy,” both Ricky and Fred were big prize fighting fans, with the last scene of the very first aired episode set ringside.

Harry says he spends dinner-time watching Walter Cronkite deliver the news. Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) was anchorman of “The CBS Evening News” for nearly 20 years. He was recently mentioned in “Lucy Plays Cops and Robbers” (S6;E14) when Harry gets a new television set.

Lucy and Mary Jane are headed to San Francisco for a convention of The Girl Fridays Association, where Lucy intends to run for vice president. The Girl Fridays were last mentioned in “Lucy Gives Eddie Albert the Old Song and Dance” (S6;E6, above). The local members of the Girl Fridays are Lucy, Mary Jane, and Vanda.  

Kim has acquired a cat to keep her company at her Marina Del Rey apartment. This is the first full-grown cat on the series, although a kitten appeared in “Lucy the Fixer” (S1;E14, above). The previous episode to be aired, “Meanwhile, Back at the Office” (S6;E16), featured an even cat – a full grown lion!  

When she hears about Kim's cat having another litter, Lucy asks the cat if she's heard of the Anti-Litter Campaign. Pun aside, the Anti-Littering Campaign, also known as the Keep America Beautiful Campaign, started in 1953 and was co-founded by original “I Love Lucy” sponsor Philip-Morris. The Campaign was mentioned in “Lucy Meets the Law” (TLS S5;E19). Lucy alumni Iron Eyes Cody, who appeared as the Medicine Man in “Lucy and the Indian Chief” (S2;E3), was seen as the Native American with the single tear running down his cheek in TV and print ads for the Campaign.

When Lucy can't cat-sit, Kim wonders if Cindy can take the cat for the weekend. Cindy (Cynthia) was Lucie Arnaz's character name on several episodes of “The Lucy Show.”  

Lucy asks Mary Jane why she's reading a 'spicy' book like “Starved Love.” She's heard it makes Jacqueline Susann look like Dr. Seuss. Susann's novel (and the subsequent film) Valley of the Dolls, was parodied as Valley of the Puppets in “Lucy and  Eva Gabor” (S1;E7). 

When she catches Harry reading it, Lucy says “It sure beats 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas', doesn't it?”  

Sitcom Logic Alert! Harry is staying in Craig's old room and Kim is back in her old room. Just where Harry and Mary Jane are sleeping is not specified. Perhaps Mary Jane is bunking in with Lucy?  In addition to mentioning the absent Craig (formerly played by Desi Arnaz Jr.), the episode also mentions Lucy's friend Vanda (Vanda Barra), who hasn't been seen in several episodes.

Lucy Carter's daughter, Kim, has named her cat after her Uncle Harry, just the same way Lucy Ricardo's son, Ricky, named his dog after his 'Uncle' Fred.

Little Ricky: “I always name my pets after people I like!”

Running up and down stairs to help a sick friend was also done by Lucy Carmichael when Viv was bed-ridden (and feeling litigious) in “Vivian Sues Lucy” (TLS S1;E10).  

“Lucy is N.G. as an R.N.” rates 4 Paper Hearts out of 5

Al Checco’s observation that the “Here’s Lucy” troupe was like a well-oiled machine is spot-on. This episode feels like another series: no bellowing from Gale, no whimpering from Lucy - the characters treat each other in a realistic manner rarely seen on the series - one that probably mirrors real life.  Add to that clever writing and you’ve go one of the best episodes of the series. The only drawback is the abrupt ending, which needed a bigger comic finish. Oh, and the title is terrible, too!