Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964 Embassy Pictures Corporation Dir. Nicholas Webster)
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Don't waste your money on The New Annotated Dracula by Leslie Klinger
Just threw the New Annotated Dracula across the room. As an annotated book, it is utterly and completely worthless. The first two paragraphs of the actual novel result in 7 full pages of annotated text, which is double columns in case you’re wondering. Almost none of it is in any way germane to the book and really feels like the idiot who annotated was just shouting (get your best Caboose voice ready) “I AM ANNOTATING! I WILL ADD LOTS OF NOTES TO SHOW THAT I AM ANNOTATING!” I don’t need the whole wikipedia article on Wallachia reprinted for me. The text dumps are exhausting, and we’re not into page two of the actual novel yet.
Worse yet, I’ve discovered that I already don’t trust anything this guy has to say about anything he’s said in his notes. I don’t know if any of the books he’s quoting exist, and I suspect that some probably don’t. He’s utterly destroyed his credibility with the bullshit fiction he’s woven into his annotation.
The central joke of the annotation, that the whole thing really happened and it’s all true, is so very frustrating and stupid that it really makes the book nearly impossible to read. I don’t need bullshit theories as to why there are inconstancies in the book. A bad writer didn’t write or research very well. Mina didn’t polish Harker’s diary up. Stoker wasn’t influenced by the hand of Dracula himself in a bid to tell the world he was dead so they wouldn’t come looking for him. Van Helsing was inspired by three people, and no amount of pretending he was one of those three will make it so. Quincy Morris wasn’t at the Battle of Shiloh and Steward never rapped on stage with Professor Elemental BECAUSE NONE OF THOSE PEOPLE EXIST BECAUSE THIS IS A WORK OF FUCKING FICTION!
The idiot probably giggled himself silly while doing this, but it’s an impossible read. It’s got to value or weight, just a lot of noise. Even when I see something that might have some bearing on the book, that is suspect because I don’t know if it’s just part of the bullshit or not. I can’t separate the wheat from the chaff, and I don’t feel inclined to try. I know now why the book looked like it hadn’t been read past page 17, which is exactly the page I got to before deciding to quit.
Worse yet, I’ve discovered that I already don’t trust anything this guy has to say about anything he’s said in his notes. I don’t know if any of the books he’s quoting exist, and I suspect that some probably don’t. He’s utterly destroyed his credibility with the bullshit fiction he’s woven into his annotation.
The central joke of the annotation, that the whole thing really happened and it’s all true, is so very frustrating and stupid that it really makes the book nearly impossible to read. I don’t need bullshit theories as to why there are inconstancies in the book. A bad writer didn’t write or research very well. Mina didn’t polish Harker’s diary up. Stoker wasn’t influenced by the hand of Dracula himself in a bid to tell the world he was dead so they wouldn’t come looking for him. Van Helsing was inspired by three people, and no amount of pretending he was one of those three will make it so. Quincy Morris wasn’t at the Battle of Shiloh and Steward never rapped on stage with Professor Elemental BECAUSE NONE OF THOSE PEOPLE EXIST BECAUSE THIS IS A WORK OF FUCKING FICTION!
The idiot probably giggled himself silly while doing this, but it’s an impossible read. It’s got to value or weight, just a lot of noise. Even when I see something that might have some bearing on the book, that is suspect because I don’t know if it’s just part of the bullshit or not. I can’t separate the wheat from the chaff, and I don’t feel inclined to try. I know now why the book looked like it hadn’t been read past page 17, which is exactly the page I got to before deciding to quit.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
My Problems With Game of Thrones
The other day, I got a comment to a post I made complaining about the three episodes of Game Of Thrones I'd "watched" a while back. The comment was everything you wish it wasn't. I've deleted the comment, the post and all, because I deleted the post on LJ a long time ago (I wasn't making my points clearly and I didn't want to argue about something that was just making me angry) and just forgot to delete the one on Wordpress.
You can read the rest, but you've only yourself to blame.
You can read the rest, but you've only yourself to blame.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Product review: Magic Marbles
I bought these Magic Marbles a little while ago, and you simply must buy these things! You can get them cheaper from this place, but you don't really need that many. The kit came with 5 grams, and the other place sells them in groups of 50 grams. You may want that many, but need and want are different things.
All these things are, is a kind bead that absorbs water and becomes a gel like marble. Simple enough, but they have some fun properties.
The kit comes with a small tank, which helps because it gives you something to put them in. However, you can't put all the marbles in the tank and expect them to grow to full size. For once, there's actually too much stuff for the thing that they include to put them in. This means... MORE SUFF TO PLAY WITH! Unapproved uses! WOOO!
Now, what makes these things really fun, is that they have the same refraction index as water, so unless you look very close, you can’t tell they're in there. If you have colored ones, you just see splotches of color. While they're being sold as a toy here, the real use for them is growing water loving plants. They hold water and release it slowly, so you don’t need to water quite so often. I'm going to buy some bamboo, which should look neat held up by these marbles. They also feel neat when you slip your fingers in and wiggle them around.
Let's look at some pictures...
All these things are, is a kind bead that absorbs water and becomes a gel like marble. Simple enough, but they have some fun properties.
The kit comes with a small tank, which helps because it gives you something to put them in. However, you can't put all the marbles in the tank and expect them to grow to full size. For once, there's actually too much stuff for the thing that they include to put them in. This means... MORE SUFF TO PLAY WITH! Unapproved uses! WOOO!
Now, what makes these things really fun, is that they have the same refraction index as water, so unless you look very close, you can’t tell they're in there. If you have colored ones, you just see splotches of color. While they're being sold as a toy here, the real use for them is growing water loving plants. They hold water and release it slowly, so you don’t need to water quite so often. I'm going to buy some bamboo, which should look neat held up by these marbles. They also feel neat when you slip your fingers in and wiggle them around.
Let's look at some pictures...
Sunday, September 4, 2011
The Problem with Lembas
Lembas, or elf bread or way bread, or any other number of names you might have for it, is a real problem in Lord of the Rings. The elves are not mechanical, they live in the forest, and as such don’t seem to have any actual agricultural class in their society. So how do they get the bread for grain? Who grinds the corn? Who bakes the bread? They’re strict isolationists, so they can’t be trading with the hobbits, who at least have farmers. And how can a person live off it for days with a single mouthful? What’s the caloric intake? How many carbs? How can it last nearly indefinitely? Is it a twinkie? It’s a twinkie, isn’t it? How do they get the cream in when they eschew machines then? This is one of those places where “It’s magic bitch” isn’t a good enough answer. They need to get the raw ingredients from somewhere. They need to process those ingredients, they need to combine them and put in a lot of extra ingredients in to make it last as long as it does. There is a lot that goes into that wafer of bread. There are a lot of steps to do anything truly from scratch.
This is a major problem I end up having with fantasy, over and over again. The writers stress that it’s a pre-mechanical medieval style society, forgetting that even medieval people have machines. Water wheels are parts of machines, they’re the power source, and they weren’t just used by millers to run grindstones for corn. They could be hooks to other machines to power blast furnaces, or sawmills, or even stamping machines. If you disallow all kinds of machines (as in Tolkien) there start to be things you can’t really have.
Brass buttons for one, you need a lot of technology to get brass buttons. Yes, they can be stamped by hand, but since Bilbo uses brass instead of gold, because wasn’t rich enough, there has to be some kind of middle class here. If there is a brass level, there has to be some kind of manufacturing system in place to make those people brass buttons. Even if we accept a simple hand powered stamp like a coin stamp, how do they get brass for the buttons? Okay, maybe there are miners because hobbits are hole dwellers and digging should get raw metals sometimes, but processing ore into brass requires smelting, and blast furnaces are “teh debil” in Tolkien’s world. He said several times that he mistrusted anything more complicated than a wheelbarrow, and a water wheel is more complicated. The point is, there is a lot of work that goes into a simple brass button. Anyone who has tried to make things for an authentic SCA costume can tell you the trouble that goes into making an outfit with no modern shortcuts. There is a large and complex society, once which Tolkien says doesn’t really exist, that is needed to produce brass buttons. Never mind the woven and brocaded waistcoats and the mechanical looms needed for those complicated designs for anyone but the royalty level rich.
This always becomes my problems, we’re told that these fantasy realms don’t have machines, but they’ll often have styles of armor that have leather bits connected to their metal bits with small screws. Metal screw are pretty much only machine made, you have to own a lathe to do them properly. Yes, you can make them by hand, but even then the expert making them is going to charge you up the ass. Lathes have been around for about three and a half thousand years, but they never seem to turn up in fantasy. Many a technological device is denied the fantasy world. In fact it’s often explicitly stated that they don’t have these things. It’s this blind spot that always annoys be, because they want to have the things that said technology will bring, but not the society or technology that demands it’s invention.
Clothes are much the same. I’m wearing a t-shirt that, as far as I know, can only exists form the 20th century on. It has no seams along it, except where the sleeves meet the body, because the main of the shirt was woven as a tube of fabric. Even if the sock with sleeves method has come before, there is also silk screening, the cut and the fact that it’s a t-shirt to peg me at the late 20th, early 21st century. There are social and environmental reasons that the clothes I’m wearing can only fit the time I’m in. Like wise, it’s just as bad when someone wears an Elizabethan style doublet during what is clearly supposed to be a society gripped in the tenth century. And no, I’m not talking about someone wearing a gambeson, or an armored jack, but what is clearly a warm weather doublet in what is clearly a cold weather climate and about 300 years too early when compared to other clothing in the story. Not tunics or jerkins either, but highly complex doublets with removable sleeves and short fringe like skirts. This, quite often, from a society that hasn’t yet moved past the “big lumps of fur” coat design for winter and summer wear. You basically end up with everything thrown together, from roman shirts to colonial era jackets, without any understanding of how each outfit had come about and what need it filled.
This extends to weapons, which are not interchangeable with each other and have their own niches and societal influences. You can’t just carry a 45 inch bladed sword on your hip with you wherever you go, that’s a war sword, not a local fracas sword. And if I may digress for a moment, a hollow pommel is just stupid. Even the Irish, who are dumb enough to make a hollow pommeled sword, still stuck the end of the tang through it to secure it, because they understood having your sword break because of a weakened tang was an embarrassment that could kill you. It’s just too darn big and unwieldy for a foot level entanglement. Even granting that someone might carry such a large blade, those are heavy things to always have on you, and they make moving awkward as hell. Swords have specific purposes in both fighting and in societies that make them important, and they need to fit in those societies. You should be able to simply look at a sword or knife and tell exactly who uses it and what purpose it serves, and in fact I can. Once in a while I get one wrong, but I’m not an expert, I just play one on the internet. Rapiers cannot exist with two-handed broadswords because one is a civilian weapon devised after the middle class started putting on airs and the other is a weapon for the battle field devised after noticing that things die when you hit them with five pounds of sharpened metal.
And guns, don’t get me started on guns. Cannons started turning up in the mid 1300s or so, hand guns soon followed, but never in a fantasy story, not even one that uses weapons, clothing and armor developed after the firearm and some that were developed as a reaction to firearms. Oh no, we don’t never have no guns, even if we are basically retelling the Wars of the Roses in all but name. We don’t need no stinking guns, we got dragons and shit. Besides, guns aren’t romantic and we’re being all romantic with our fantasy story and why do you have to be so damn pedantic all the time?
I just have problems with lazy writing, and I’ve learned enough about the history of technology to know that you can’t have this unless you have that. And if you have that, then there’s this other thing over here that you can also have.
So, yeah, where do the elves get the grain to make lembas?
My thoughts on Game of Thrones
So, if you read here, but don’t read facebook or twitter, you might be wondering what I thought of the first three episodes of Game of Thrones.
Okay, here is a run down.
#1. The makers of this show really, REALLY hate women. They’re not to fond of men either, but they despise the female in all forms. Weak, stupid, vapid, shallow, whore… these are the words used to describe their female characters. The closest thing to a likable female is like 8, and as such is not a person. All the women are either trouble making whores, or holes for men to stick their dicks in. I found the treatment of women wholly distasteful and I’m going to have to watch Hell's Bloody Devils to get the taste out of my mouth. You fucking think about that for a minute.
#2. It’s like a fantasy based Film Noir, only without likeable characters or an interesting hook. It’s like a Ren Fest, gone dark and gritty. The Bastard (the love child of Orlando Bloom and Keanu Reeves) is like Phil Marlowe. He doesn’t belong, he works along side legit people, but he himself can’t be legit, he’s got some sense of pride and honor… I can keep going. You got femme fatales all over the place, or in contrast to that, the stalwart and stupid girls. A corrupt system, a guy who’s outdated sense of honor doesn’t fit the new system, a smart guy who works around the edges, a spoiled rich kid who wants to cause trouble, a crime lord, the dwarf… everyone is there in one form or another. It’s just not interesting and I don’t care about any of the characters. They forgot that I need at least one person to compel me to keep watching.
#3. On that, I don’t know a single character’s name. They are “The Dwarf” and “Ace Rimmer” or “Eowyn Jr” and “Orlando Reeves” instead of whatever names they’re supposed to have. This is how little they’ve impacted me. The actors are between bad and teeth grittingly terrible. Princess Bad Wig is probably going to be an important part, with an interesting story arc, but I don’t care because instead of hiring an actress, they hired a stupid little girl, so desperate for fame she’d go full naked and get faux-raped on HBO for the first episode.
#4. HBO is so interested in making it shocking and gritty, they forgot to give us anyone to actually root for. HBO is trying to hard to be outrageous, they just come off like a fourteen year old shouting “FUCK” because no one is going to yell at them this one time. Everything they’re doing is for shock value, and that’s dull. They also forgot to tell a story, they’re just laying on more and more horribleness to show how horrible the middle ages where, despite the fact that they weren’t. Do some fucking research, don’t just tell me those were awful terrible times. Don’t present me this grubby Ren Fest view with no accuracy or intelligence. They just assume horribleness and go with it from there. A lot of thought hasn’t gone into this script, it’s just laying on awfulness from people I don’t care about and have refused to know them by name to hate them properly. I can’t tell you how many times I was yelling “That’s not how that works!” at the screen.
#5. On that point, no one has ever just walked around any castle just wearing both their swords. Even in feudal Japan, where that shit was taken as read, people didn’t just carry al their weapons, while wearing their armor, with them from room to room like that. Also, the swords shown seem to have been handed out with the idea that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings was a good place to start on sword length. People are carrying two handed broadswords on their hips, and incongruously wearing fencing poniards on their other hip. The costumes are all over the place, some people wearing Elizabethan doublets while others are wearing what look like Roman tunics and still others are in actual medieval outfits and some seem to have taken their cues from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It’s just all over the fucking place. Why they have Celtic knots on the shoulder pieces of their armor is anyone’s guess. It’s such a sloppy mish mash, I would have found it distracting if I wasn’t so distracted by how bad the whole thing was.
We won't even go into how the wedding ceremony in EP 1 is right out of a racists handbook for how savages comport themselves written by some white (probably English) fucker circa 1845.
Sooo, yeah. I found the whole thing to be pretty hateful and shitty overall. I was simultaneously bored and angry. I doubt I’ll watch the rest from here. I gave it three episodes, and I didn’t like it much. I know, I know, I’m supposed to watch the whole thing and only then am I allowed to have an opinion and that opinion had better be that I love it. I know, I know. We’ve been through this with Dr. Who, which also sucks by the way. And yes, I am saying you’re stupid for liking it*. However, I’ve got lots of things I’d like to watch, lots of things vying for my attention, and continuing to watch something I don’t enjoy only makes me hate geeks more than I already do.
Anytime I’m actually shouting at the screen and stomping off isn’t a good sign.
*If you can’t tell this sentence for the satire it is, please smack yourself in the face as hard as you can with a garden weasel.
EDIT: I should point out that I do like Peter Dinklage's Character and he's a good actor.
Okay, here is a run down.
#1. The makers of this show really, REALLY hate women. They’re not to fond of men either, but they despise the female in all forms. Weak, stupid, vapid, shallow, whore… these are the words used to describe their female characters. The closest thing to a likable female is like 8, and as such is not a person. All the women are either trouble making whores, or holes for men to stick their dicks in. I found the treatment of women wholly distasteful and I’m going to have to watch Hell's Bloody Devils to get the taste out of my mouth. You fucking think about that for a minute.
#2. It’s like a fantasy based Film Noir, only without likeable characters or an interesting hook. It’s like a Ren Fest, gone dark and gritty. The Bastard (the love child of Orlando Bloom and Keanu Reeves) is like Phil Marlowe. He doesn’t belong, he works along side legit people, but he himself can’t be legit, he’s got some sense of pride and honor… I can keep going. You got femme fatales all over the place, or in contrast to that, the stalwart and stupid girls. A corrupt system, a guy who’s outdated sense of honor doesn’t fit the new system, a smart guy who works around the edges, a spoiled rich kid who wants to cause trouble, a crime lord, the dwarf… everyone is there in one form or another. It’s just not interesting and I don’t care about any of the characters. They forgot that I need at least one person to compel me to keep watching.
#3. On that, I don’t know a single character’s name. They are “The Dwarf” and “Ace Rimmer” or “Eowyn Jr” and “Orlando Reeves” instead of whatever names they’re supposed to have. This is how little they’ve impacted me. The actors are between bad and teeth grittingly terrible. Princess Bad Wig is probably going to be an important part, with an interesting story arc, but I don’t care because instead of hiring an actress, they hired a stupid little girl, so desperate for fame she’d go full naked and get faux-raped on HBO for the first episode.
#4. HBO is so interested in making it shocking and gritty, they forgot to give us anyone to actually root for. HBO is trying to hard to be outrageous, they just come off like a fourteen year old shouting “FUCK” because no one is going to yell at them this one time. Everything they’re doing is for shock value, and that’s dull. They also forgot to tell a story, they’re just laying on more and more horribleness to show how horrible the middle ages where, despite the fact that they weren’t. Do some fucking research, don’t just tell me those were awful terrible times. Don’t present me this grubby Ren Fest view with no accuracy or intelligence. They just assume horribleness and go with it from there. A lot of thought hasn’t gone into this script, it’s just laying on awfulness from people I don’t care about and have refused to know them by name to hate them properly. I can’t tell you how many times I was yelling “That’s not how that works!” at the screen.
#5. On that point, no one has ever just walked around any castle just wearing both their swords. Even in feudal Japan, where that shit was taken as read, people didn’t just carry al their weapons, while wearing their armor, with them from room to room like that. Also, the swords shown seem to have been handed out with the idea that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings was a good place to start on sword length. People are carrying two handed broadswords on their hips, and incongruously wearing fencing poniards on their other hip. The costumes are all over the place, some people wearing Elizabethan doublets while others are wearing what look like Roman tunics and still others are in actual medieval outfits and some seem to have taken their cues from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It’s just all over the fucking place. Why they have Celtic knots on the shoulder pieces of their armor is anyone’s guess. It’s such a sloppy mish mash, I would have found it distracting if I wasn’t so distracted by how bad the whole thing was.
We won't even go into how the wedding ceremony in EP 1 is right out of a racists handbook for how savages comport themselves written by some white (probably English) fucker circa 1845.
Sooo, yeah. I found the whole thing to be pretty hateful and shitty overall. I was simultaneously bored and angry. I doubt I’ll watch the rest from here. I gave it three episodes, and I didn’t like it much. I know, I know, I’m supposed to watch the whole thing and only then am I allowed to have an opinion and that opinion had better be that I love it. I know, I know. We’ve been through this with Dr. Who, which also sucks by the way. And yes, I am saying you’re stupid for liking it*. However, I’ve got lots of things I’d like to watch, lots of things vying for my attention, and continuing to watch something I don’t enjoy only makes me hate geeks more than I already do.
Anytime I’m actually shouting at the screen and stomping off isn’t a good sign.
*If you can’t tell this sentence for the satire it is, please smack yourself in the face as hard as you can with a garden weasel.
EDIT: I should point out that I do like Peter Dinklage's Character and he's a good actor.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Advertizements of the Damned!
I will take you away from all this.
This advertisement for Cheer Detergent chronicles one woman’s decent into madness. Our protagonist, let’s call her Suzy Jenkins, is seeing her kids out the door. She examines her children as they leave, not to see that the children themselves are alright, but to examine their clothes. She grabs each child by their shoulders and turns them to look at their shirts. A Dune like internal monologue informs us that the little girl’s white clothes were cleaned with a hot water wash. This is regarded as being just “okay” while the boy, dressed in a red shirt is different. His red shirt was given a cold-water wash, which we’re told is “pretty clean” as she barely even recognizes the fact that he tries to kiss her. His kiss instead lands unrewarded and unrecognized on her cheek, despite the fact that he just wanted to get a moment of love from this cold beast. As the door closes, she stands and declares “Aww, they didn’t look that good!” and then walks to the middle of the room and asks “When can I stop kidding myself?” While one presumes she’s about to go on and say “I don’t love them, I hate their father, my life is a lie!” she’s instead interrupted by a Mr. Spock knock off who beams in and introduces her to All Temperature Cheer
. At least, that’s what she sees, we know this to be madness though, since Spok is hardly going to show up just to give her a box of laundry soap available at any Piggly Wiggly. No, she’s imagined this to break her day up, if only a little. He then explains how Cheer cleans in all temperatures. Instead of begging him to take her with him, which is what a younger her would have wanted, her madness demands she stay here and marvel over the clean clothes. One presumes that, having spent so much energy on the clothes she’ll slaughter the family the next time they so much as get their clothes dusty. If you look here, you can see the murderous look of madness. The world isn’t perfect, and she’ll make them pay. Watch the ad and see if I’m wrong.
Don’t leave her alone with the children!
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Movie Review: Morozko (Father Frost)
While I'm away, have a simple cut and paste job.
Morozko (1964 Gorky Film Studio Dir. Aleksandr Rou) MST3K Episode 13 of Season 8. Airdate: 1997-07-12
You might want to settle in folks, this is gonna take a while.
So here we are, another Russian movie that was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. There were actually three movies that fit this mold. This, Sadko, and a movie called Ilya Muromets, which I own but haven't reviewed yet. Interestingly, not one of them exists on the show under their original name. Sadko became The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, Ilya Muromets became The Sword and the Dragon and this became Jack Frost. Out of the three, this one remains the least changed by the transfer to the West. The dub is actual actors doing the voices rather than two people talking in heavily accented English over the Russian track, and it seems to be the one that was on MST3K, so all should be well. The name isn’t even too far off as the character of Ded Moroz translates to Grandfather Frost (although usually made into just Father Frost) and he fills the same sort of niche as Jack Frost does in American folk lore with a little bit of Santa Claus mixed in. There’s more to it than that, but that will do for this review.
Look, kid. I’m a rooster, I really don’t care if that knit ends up on Ravelry.
So we begin our story with a woman telling the tale from her window. She only shows up here at the very beginning and at the very end, so we won’t talk too much about her. She tells the tale of a poor girl named Nastenka, who lives with her father and step mother, who looks like a comic version of Judi Dench if she was kept from her make-up people and beauty regime for a year. I’m not sure if we’re seeing multiple fairytales mixed into one movie, or if they just cross over, but Nastenka is going to take up aspects of half the Disney Princesses before we’re done. When we meet her, she’s being forced to work for her ugly step-sister, and told to finish making some stockings before dawn. In fact, she’s told if she doesn’t finish the stocking by the time the rooster crows, then Dame Judi will yank her lovely long braid off. This begins the first signs of Nastenka’s very annoying habit. You see, cute little Nastenka is auditioning for the role of Jesus, which she understands was left vacant after the whole crucifixion thing. A rooster shows up, and she stops to go talk to him. I mention this because they actually show the dog sitting down in reverse. There are four or five times in this movie that an animal is shown moving in reverse when they could have just as easily gotten and animal that could, you know, sit or something. It just helps this movie be a little more wacky I guess. Can’t imagine why they’d think it needs the help.
“ Where the hell is Bond?”
She runs to a rooster and begs him not to crow, explaining that she only has one row left. The rooster is sympathetic to her plight, what with her being the Snow White of Russia and all, but claims he’s got to crow when the dawn comes. You know how it is, we all are a slave to The Man in our own little way. Until the glorious revolution that is. Even the rooster knows that if he doesn’t get his stuff done his ass will be on the line. So does she knit faster? No. She runs to the horizon and begs the sun not to rise until she finishes this one last row. I don’t know much about knitting, but I’m guessing it would take less time to just finish the stupid sock than it does to run to the sun and ask it to screw up the fabric of space and time just for her. Still, the sun is sympathetic as well, since she has eyes the size of dinner plates and skin like alabaster. It sinks below the horizon and damn the poor Transylvanians who are waiting for the sun to come up and fry Count Dracula. They aren’t as cute as she is, and those stockings aren’t going to knit themselves. So the sun goes down, she finishes, Dr. Van Helsing dies checking his watch and an almanac while Dracula eats his face, and she shows the sun her pretty stockings. The problem is that finishing the stockings just gets her yelled at because in typical Cinderella fashion, nothings good enough for Dame Judi.
Do I have anything in my teeth? Why yes, I’ve got some awesome stuck in there.
So now we meet the male lead Ivan, and the first thing about him that we learn is that even his mother thinks he’s a douche. That’s not actually a joke. When he emerges, with the worst wig I have EVER seen, his mother begs him not to be a cockbite. She doesn’t use those exact words, but you can tell that there is a measure of cockbitiness about him and his wig isn’t doing him any favors either. If the first thing said about him is that even his mother begs him to stop being such a jerk, what does that say for the rest of the movie? Well may you ask, since he then proceeds to sing a musical version of “I’m Sorry, I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am.” Actually, it starts with all the girls macking on his hot bod and bad wig (I guess his wig just brings all the girls to the yard) and then he proceeds to sing about how awesome he is. Not joking. He actually calls himself “a handsome, jolly lad” and demands people step aside for him in his song before declaring “Ain’t I great? I’m just a delight” and “Nothing’s wrong with me, I’m just right” despite the fact that he has… THAT WIG! So he doesn’t have a self-esteem problem then, though he should. I mean he looks in the mirror about a hundred times in the first five minutes we see him, he should be able to see how bad his wig is. I’m beginning to think, and stop me if I’m wrong, that maybe Ivan is an arrogant prick who is going to learn not to be a massive prick by the end of the movie. Ya think? Maybe? We’ll see.
He took a look at her and kept walking? Is there something wrong with Russian men?
Let’s get to one of this film’s major problems. Actually, it’s a problem many films of this type share. Whenever there is a movie based on fairy tales, there tends to be a sensation of fragmentation within the narrative structure. There are vignettes, and eventually the whole tale does come together, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the movie could have had a stronger narrative thrust in the first act. I found a version of the folk tale online and the movie must be padded or have another tale in here or something. It’s done better here than in some movies, but it does mean that we meander around for a while without getting anywhere. Speaking of which, the next scene has just started.
It this about my wig?
Ivan is strolling around, talking about how just spiffy he is and how it’s a shame there aren’t two of him so he could kiss himself, when he’s set upon by bandits. These are the greatest bandits in the history of banditry by the way. While waiting for victims to show up, they pull the petals off daisies saying “We will rob them, we won’t rob them.” How can you not love guys like this? Anyway, Ivan stumbles into them and they decide to take his stuff, while not making fun of his wig. You’d think they would, but since most of them are wearing prosthetic noses, they probably feel they can’t complain too much about his artificial head covering. Ivan takes the whole thing pretty calmly, handing over his bag and letting the bandits fight over his rye bread. While the bandits are fighting, the throws their clubs into the air, announcing that they won’t come down until winter. And then… he just walks off. The bandits don’t stop him, or try to beat him up, or inform him that while he has a freaky wig, he does have a real perty mouth. They just let him wander off. Ivan wanders for a while before a mushroom starts talking to him.
After falling on hard times, Gerard Depardieu put on a false beard and joined a band of robbers.
A little guy with a beard and a mushroom hat who wants to play a game with young Ivan. The little man being a magic guy, he challenges Ivan to either a game of Hide & Seek or just a game of who is faster. The dub and subs disagree on this point, what they agree on is that if Ivan wins he’ll gain a nice bow and arrow set that the Mushroom guy just happened to have hanging around. Ivan looses the game, but for being a good sport, the little Mushroom guy gives him the bow and arrows anyway. Ivan starts to run off but the Mushroom dude tells him that he forgot to bow and say thank you for the lovely present. Ivan arrogantly tells him that his appreciation is in another castle and that bears can bow to him. Ivan walks off and the Mushroom make a comment about how the bear will bow but it will be his back that bends. Once again, it’s going to take forever for the pay off of that gag to come.
Wow, Craigslist has gotten specific over the years.
Ivan wanders around a while, kills a goose to take one feather that evidently will lead him to destiny, and comes across Nastenka. She, it seems, is busying herself trying to find Bond so Judi Dench can yell at him. Until Bond remerges, Nastenka waters a stump until flowers grow up in it. Ivan, knowing a hottie when he sees one (unlike some Russian guys I could mention) decides to go over to her and turn on the mack daddiness. The problem is, while he’s telling her about how hot he is and asking if she’ll marry him, she’s sort of unimpressed. I’m guessing it’s because she took one look at his wig and decided against him, but decided not to press that particular issue. She says he’s sort of arrogant, which he objects to on the grounds that he’s so awesome and clearly the best thing in the universe. In order to prove how awesome he is, he tells her he’ll kill a bear with one arrow. Am I missing something about Russians here? Is whacking a bear the same as showing up with flowers and nice poem among the Eastern Slavic people? I’m sort of Celtic and Gallic with a dash of Teuton, so I don’t really know about how other folk’s courting rituals go. Being a viewer of Anime, I’m a little confused by how the Japanese run their mating rituals too.
Well, it seems Nastenka isn’t impressed either because she bungs a bucket on his head. The Mushroom dude realizes that his moment has come and decides to get Nastenka blamed for his little trick. He bangs those two little twigs, or bells, or whatever it is he’s holding and BOOM(!) Ivan is turned into a bear. At least that wig is gone, right? Well, if anything the bear head looks worse. This freaks Nastenka right the hell out and she faints. Ivan grabs his mirror and checks for her breath. Since he can’t resist his reflection, he also gets a quick look at himself and finding that he’s a bear reacts badly. In fact, he calls Nastenka a witch and claims she did it. This causes Nastenka to sit down and cry. She suffers so much, she’ll probably die for our sins and come back from the dead before the movie is over.
But am I still pretty?
Now, why Nastenka crying into the river should cause flowers to grow in that stump she was working on before, I have no idea. Those tears do some though, and spill from her near alien like eyes. Seriously, do they have to be that big? Anyway, the tears spill from her massive blue orbs and into the stream and this causes the flowers to grow. They grow suddenly, and she sits down and has a proper cry next to them. Ivan runs around, until the Mushroom Man shows up again and then he begs forgiveness. The Mushroom Dude however, instead of turning him back into a person, proceeds to tell Ivan some pretty unpleasant truths about himself. He goes into his selfishness, his arrogance, his narcissism and the fact that he’s never done a good thing for anyone else in his life. Ivan interprets this commentary as a need to go do good deeds, and runs off instead of listening to the Mushroom Dude, who claims that the answer is in another castle. Mushroom dude mentions that he has to collect a hundred stars and defeat Bowser, but Ivan has run off already.
Seriously, look at her! She’s all eyes with a bit of nose and mouth!
We’re then treated to Ivan trying to find people he can do good deeds for, but all the girls think he’s a werewolf and run away from him. Then, for reasons only known to the Russians, we get almost a full half minute of bear cubs running around and grabbing fake toadstools. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean to the movie, but it happens. For 28 seconds, which is a long time on screen, it’s just these two bear cubs running back and forth. They grab a fake toadstool, pick it up in their little arms, and walk back off screen. It can’t be meant to be Ivan, he’s always shown as wearing his clothes and is just bear-headed. Is it symbolic? If I had Slavs instead of Gales, Celts and Teutons in my lineage would I understand this? Is this just some circus act that someone talked the producers into or perhaps the director’s brother in law? And no, this never goes anywhere. It’s just bear cubs grab fake mushrooms and toddle off. It makes no sense! It’s just randomly weird.
What are we even looking at here?
Anyway, Nastenka comes back to the flowers she helped grown on the old stump and they have a little conversation about Ivan. She tells the flowers that she’s hopes she’s not bothering them, all the time talking in the same breathy half whisper of a voice. I checked all three audio channels, and all three actresses portray her in the same way. A soft, half whisper of a voice that tells you that when you eat of the bread and drink of the cup you should do it in remembrance of her. She asks the flowers questions about Ivan, who answer by nodding up and down or shaking from side to side. So either, these are magic flowers, grown from her magic, or she’s batshit crazy and thinks when the wind blows the flowers it’s the flower talking to her. Personally, I’m going to vote for crazy. Being slave to the wicked Judi Dench has cracked her poor mind and now she thinks she can control the dawn and talk to plants. We then go see Ivan trying to do good deeds. He gives a beggar a copeck, but that’s not enough. Can’t buy your way out of trouble kids, at least not for such a low price.
Come on! You can be the Robin to my Batman!
Now we return to the trails of Nastenka, and the cruelties foisted upon her. Her sister and Judi Dench are preparing to meet a suitor and they abuse poor Nastenka the whole time. Wiping her face with soot and wrapping her head in a scarf to cover her long lovely braid. The sister wanted to cut it off, but Dame Judi objects that if she cuts off the braid she’ll have nothing to drag her around the house with. They then comically doll the sister up for the suitor and the matchmaker. We then cross cut back to Ivan, who finds and old woman and helps her with her wood. The old woman is a little too enthusiastic about hopping on his back and getting a piggyback ride though if you ask me. Like, waaaay too enthusiastic. It’s a little creepy to be honest, like she’s been waiting for someone to give her a lift all month and is really going to enjoy this chance.
Sometimes, you don’t need a joke. Sometimes you can just sit back and let the screen cap do all the work.
So we go back to Nastenka’s sister being shown off to the suitor, his mother, the matchmaker while Nastenka is hidden away. While playing up the sister’s attributes, they claim she can cook like a dream, which is a lie because she never does a lick of work ever. The mother and suitor want proof, so they send the sister out to kill and cook a goose. Knowing that humiliation is coming, the townsfolk all show up to watch her fail. When she chases the geese, she falls into the lake. Nastenka has to run to the lake ans save her step system walking across the water instead of doing anything so pedestrian (ironically) as swimming in it. When Nastenka pulls her sister out of the water though, some of the water must have splashed on her because her face is clean and her hair is perfect. She’s not even wet, perfectly on display.
And she stepped on the ball!
While this was happening, Ivan dropped the old woman off at her home, and found that it wasn’t enough of a good deed. The problem was that The Mushroom Guy didn’t want to make him do a good deed, he wanted him to be a better person. Ivan sees the old woman’s stick, and decides to take it back to her. This actually thinking about someone is enough for the Mushroom Dude and he changes him back, at which point Ivan throws the stick down and announces to the world that he’s going to go get Nastenka. The stick disappears, but I would think for the trick to hold he should have taken it back.
Am I still wearing the wig?
Meanwhile, time passes and it becomes winter. Judi Dench tells her husband that she’s tired of Nastenka turning water to wine, raising the dead, curing the possessed, doing that loaves and fishes thing… yeah I’ll stop now. Anyway, she tells Father of The Year here to take his only daughter out to the woods and leave her there to die. And he does! WOW! What a dad! Actually, half way into the woods he decides he’s not going to do it. And seeing that her father is having a moment of courage that can’t possibly be maintained for more than two minutes, she hops off the sled so that we can tell everyone she was killed by men she loved. And seriously, when the father gets back to the house and discovers his daughter isn’t with him? He slinks right back into being the coward he was before. I hate this old man. Even the dog has nothing but contempt for him.
I haven’t had a bowel movement in fifteen years.
Ivan wanders through the wood, with no coat, hat, scarf, thermal underpants, or anything sold by either Carhartt or North Face. All he has to keep him warm is his very stupid looking wig. Still, he must be doing okay, since he’s clearly been carrying on all this time. Wandering through snow and ice, shouting Nastenka’s name over and over again. That is until he comes to the most awesome cabin in the WORLD! See, this is a cabin that walks around on chicken feet, and when it tilts the snow doesn’t shift, which means that BABA YAGA has entered the tale! WOOO HOOO!!! It seems that Baba Yaga knows Ivan, but he calls her Hunch back fairy in the dub and just old witch in the subtitles. Then comes an awesome bit of comedy. Baba Yaga wants the house to face the woods and Ivan wants the house to face him, so they go back and forth, stomping on the ground to make the house listen to them. It goes about five or six times and Baba Yaga keeps doing a little dance every time she comes out of the door. I know how dumb it is, but it cracks me up every single time.
See if you can get a gumball in my mouth from there.
Eventually, Baba Yaga announces that she’s had it with these melon farming snaked on this melon pale and gets the trees around her cabin to beat Ivan up. Seriously, there is nothing about this part of the movie that isn’t awesome. Once the trees throw him into her cabin, the trees hop in and push Ivan onto a large baking peel and get ready to shove him in to an oven. But the awesome doesn’t stop there! Ivan turned around and he doesn’t know how one should go about it. Seriously? Has that worked for anyone in the history of ever? Well, she falls for it, so that’s one. So, complaining about what they’re teaching kids in school these days, Baba Yaga shows him how to sit. This yields what, in hindsight, should have been predictable results. He shoves her in the oven and tosses the trees out into the snow. I’m not sure he notices, but his wig slips back quite a way during this event. He lets her out and tells her to tell him where he can find Nastenka, since that was the whole reason for his visit here.
What it’s gonna take to get you into one of these babies today?
We then cut to the other story, where a song has started and some singing has begun. It turns out to be Grandfather Frost, who at 48 minutes and 45 seconds finally shows up in a movie that bears his name! The whole movie is only like 84 minutes long by the way, so it’s taken this long to get to the title character. It also occurs to me that this is getting quite long and we’re only half way though. However, most the insanity is actually over and from here on out we basically just have plot and stuff. Frost wanders around, putting snow on the trees in some pretty good reverse filming. Normally, with someone with flowing robes, it’s very easy to tell that the film is running in reverse because of how the fabric flows. The actor and crew who did this though are great and the only sign is the obvious one that the trees shudder a bit and suddenly have snow leap up onto their branches.
I’m here! I’m here! Don’t start the movie without me!
Frost comes across Nastenka, who is freezeing to death in the snow and asks if she’s cold. Nastenka lies and tells him that she’s fine, and he rewards her lies. He takes pity on her and wraps his big coat around her. She confirms her attempt at stealing the throne of Jesus by telling Frosty that if she takes his coat, he’ll be cold so he better not. A bird lands on his staff and she proves how much you should hate her by warble-whispering ‘a bird’ like she’s never seen one before. It’s the whisper voice that bugs me with her, she never raises her voice or speaks in anything but that breathy “I’m so adowabwe that you must wuv me so evew much” sort of voice. The bird lands on the staff, becomes a lump of ice and falls off. While she morns the loss of the bird and her frustrating inability to bring it back to life despite touching it, he explains that whoever touches the thing will freeze and never wake up again. I mention this because he all but looks into the camera and shouts “Did everybody get that? Don’t want you to miss it when it becomes a plot point later!” They get on his rocket powered ice sleigh and go back to his big palace. Can I point out how awesome his outfit is and how annoying it is that our Santa just wears a big red fur coat? Father Frost’s outfit is so awesome that Santa looks sort of dull and boring by comparison.
With my new frosted highlights, I’m even cuter!
We go back to Baba Yaga telling Ivan all about how to find Nastenka, which turns out to be simply sending a little sled with a pig’s head on it to find her, which sending a cat to get there before them and pull a trick on Ivan. She keeps dancing as she goes into the house after letting Ivan go, she’s so awesome. I want to ask Baba Yaga over to have dinner with me. She’d be a hoot! Point of order, all the animals are just run backwards in this. The cat runs up the steps, and instead of shooting it running down again, they just reverse the film so the cat obviously walks backwards. Don’t know why they keep doing that.
Huh. Normally that works on the first try.
The trick is that the cat runs by Nastenka and, for our sins, causes her to touch the tip of Frost’s staff (scepter you perv!) and she turns into a cutecicle. The cat and sleigh both get back to Baba Yaga and she rewards them happily, proving that she might be evil but she likes cats and thus can’t be all bad. The movie even mentions the whole anyone who touches the staff turns to ice thing again. Her dog senses a disturbance in the Force and runs to lead Ivan the rest of the way to the house. They get to Frost’s house only to find she’s turned transparent, which is supposed to indicate frozenness. Ivan apologizes to Nastenka, which causes her to come back to life. He followers find only that the boulder has been pushed out of the way. Anyhow, she wakes up, Frost and the dog walk backwards again when just walking out would have done fine. Ivan brags at how he’s not a braggart anymore, and this time Nastenka thinks it’s cute and agrees to marry him. Baba Yaga isn’t through with them though, she knows this movie has twenty more minutes and we’ve got to have a big finish.
Did I leave the oven on?
We go back to the house of the old man, where Judi Dench is shouting at him for getting rid of Nastenka. It seems that without her to abuse and work like a slave, life isn’t fun anymore. While complaining though (or speaking of the devil one might say) Nastenka and Ivan come home to show they’ve made good. It seems that by virture of beingcute and having big eyes polite, Frost has given them coats and a big sleigh and a big box of jewels for a dowry. Sidenote: I have got to get a Russian seamstress, those people knew how to dress! SRSLY! While he had an awesome coat, Ivan still has that ugly stupid wig. Nastenka tells her father all that happened and how being cute won her all the bling she could ever want.
She is just not impressed with ABC’s new Thursday night line-up.
Now, the story isn’t quite over yet. If this were a German tale, it undoubtedly would be. The good people were rewarded, that’s about it as far as Grimm’s goes. But this is a Russian tale, so there must be some misery before we’re through. The step sister demands to be take out to the woods so she can get a chest of jewels and a husband like Nastenka got. The problem is that the sister isnot cute and doesn’t have big eyes spoiled so she insults Frost and demands these things from him. Now, in some versions of the folktale, Frost leaves her to freeze to death, but this is a children’s movie made in the 60s and even the filthy stinkin’ commies aren’t going to do that. You have to wait a little while though, because we have to have the pay off to the club thing from about a million years ago.
Nice coat, shame about the wig.
You remember the bandits from the beginning of the movie? Well, they don’t like the cold and Baba Yaga offers them more money than they’ve ever seen to whack Nastenka and Ivan. I love the person playing Baba Yaga. Georgi Millyar gives so much life and fun to this character. I want this Baba Yaga to come to my birthday party. I have GOT to see Baba Yaga drunk sometime, cause that’d be awesome. So, the bandits take on the commission and jump Ivan and Nastenka, almost causing Ivan to loose his wig in the process. However, just when our… do we call them heroes? Anyway, when it looks darkest for our heroes, those clubs Ivan threw at the beginning fall from the sky and knock out each bandit in turn. Then they kick Baba Yaga in the butt and send her on her way.
I have doubts! Not about anything specific, just doubts.
For our final bit of movie, we’ve got the return of the sister, who is on a small sled pulled by pigs. The dowry turns out to be a box of crows and the whole town turns out to laugh at her again. I feel sort of sorry for the sister at this point, because the movie is sort doing that “You see, ugly people are horrible and deserve to have bad things happen to them” thing and I don’t like that. Also, while she’s spoiled, they over do it and she’s just a product of bad parenting. The sister was sort of crapped on by this movie and I feel bad for her. The father then throws off his coat and tells Judi Dench that he’s going to make the rules now, because seeing his wife publicly humiliated gave him some backbone or something. Anyway, at that point the movie is over and all that’s left is to have Ivan and Nastenka’s wedding feast where she is as lacking of personality and pointless as she’s been this whole movie and Ivan wears and even uglier wig.
You want to see how bad this wig is? Look!
This movie is pretty good, and in places it’s really excellent, but I hate that wig. When you reach the end you sort of notice that Nastenka has made no progress as a character at all, she’s just been a sort of Christ figure and a pretty thing for the boy to eventually win. However, it’s an inventive and fun little movie, and it doesn’t even cost very much on Amazon, you do have to get it via the marketplace, but it still won’t run you much more than $20. The DVD has about 9 subtitle options, but the Russian, French and English dub tracks are all good and I think they were all dubbed so you don’t even need to worry about loosing part of the performance if you choose to listen in English. But you will need the subtitles for the songs, which aren’t dubbed.
CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!
Also, sorry this got so long. It’s a Holiday special though, right? They play this movie on Czech TV every year between Christmas and New Years, so it counts. It’s fun and it’s cute and it takes place in the same alternate dimension where The Adventures of Robin Hood takes place. It’s that super colorful light hearted romp you can watch with the kids. See? I like some things, they’re just all fricking weird.
I’ll catch ya on the flip side! Peace out G!
(I’m at a loss weather I love this lady or Baba Yaga more)
You wanna watch the MST3K Episode? Okay. I'll embed it for you. Just for you though.
Morozko (1964 Gorky Film Studio Dir. Aleksandr Rou) MST3K Episode 13 of Season 8. Airdate: 1997-07-12
You might want to settle in folks, this is gonna take a while.
So here we are, another Russian movie that was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. There were actually three movies that fit this mold. This, Sadko, and a movie called Ilya Muromets, which I own but haven't reviewed yet. Interestingly, not one of them exists on the show under their original name. Sadko became The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, Ilya Muromets became The Sword and the Dragon and this became Jack Frost. Out of the three, this one remains the least changed by the transfer to the West. The dub is actual actors doing the voices rather than two people talking in heavily accented English over the Russian track, and it seems to be the one that was on MST3K, so all should be well. The name isn’t even too far off as the character of Ded Moroz translates to Grandfather Frost (although usually made into just Father Frost) and he fills the same sort of niche as Jack Frost does in American folk lore with a little bit of Santa Claus mixed in. There’s more to it than that, but that will do for this review.
Look, kid. I’m a rooster, I really don’t care if that knit ends up on Ravelry.
So we begin our story with a woman telling the tale from her window. She only shows up here at the very beginning and at the very end, so we won’t talk too much about her. She tells the tale of a poor girl named Nastenka, who lives with her father and step mother, who looks like a comic version of Judi Dench if she was kept from her make-up people and beauty regime for a year. I’m not sure if we’re seeing multiple fairytales mixed into one movie, or if they just cross over, but Nastenka is going to take up aspects of half the Disney Princesses before we’re done. When we meet her, she’s being forced to work for her ugly step-sister, and told to finish making some stockings before dawn. In fact, she’s told if she doesn’t finish the stocking by the time the rooster crows, then Dame Judi will yank her lovely long braid off. This begins the first signs of Nastenka’s very annoying habit. You see, cute little Nastenka is auditioning for the role of Jesus, which she understands was left vacant after the whole crucifixion thing. A rooster shows up, and she stops to go talk to him. I mention this because they actually show the dog sitting down in reverse. There are four or five times in this movie that an animal is shown moving in reverse when they could have just as easily gotten and animal that could, you know, sit or something. It just helps this movie be a little more wacky I guess. Can’t imagine why they’d think it needs the help.
“ Where the hell is Bond?”
She runs to a rooster and begs him not to crow, explaining that she only has one row left. The rooster is sympathetic to her plight, what with her being the Snow White of Russia and all, but claims he’s got to crow when the dawn comes. You know how it is, we all are a slave to The Man in our own little way. Until the glorious revolution that is. Even the rooster knows that if he doesn’t get his stuff done his ass will be on the line. So does she knit faster? No. She runs to the horizon and begs the sun not to rise until she finishes this one last row. I don’t know much about knitting, but I’m guessing it would take less time to just finish the stupid sock than it does to run to the sun and ask it to screw up the fabric of space and time just for her. Still, the sun is sympathetic as well, since she has eyes the size of dinner plates and skin like alabaster. It sinks below the horizon and damn the poor Transylvanians who are waiting for the sun to come up and fry Count Dracula. They aren’t as cute as she is, and those stockings aren’t going to knit themselves. So the sun goes down, she finishes, Dr. Van Helsing dies checking his watch and an almanac while Dracula eats his face, and she shows the sun her pretty stockings. The problem is that finishing the stockings just gets her yelled at because in typical Cinderella fashion, nothings good enough for Dame Judi.
Do I have anything in my teeth? Why yes, I’ve got some awesome stuck in there.
So now we meet the male lead Ivan, and the first thing about him that we learn is that even his mother thinks he’s a douche. That’s not actually a joke. When he emerges, with the worst wig I have EVER seen, his mother begs him not to be a cockbite. She doesn’t use those exact words, but you can tell that there is a measure of cockbitiness about him and his wig isn’t doing him any favors either. If the first thing said about him is that even his mother begs him to stop being such a jerk, what does that say for the rest of the movie? Well may you ask, since he then proceeds to sing a musical version of “I’m Sorry, I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am.” Actually, it starts with all the girls macking on his hot bod and bad wig (I guess his wig just brings all the girls to the yard) and then he proceeds to sing about how awesome he is. Not joking. He actually calls himself “a handsome, jolly lad” and demands people step aside for him in his song before declaring “Ain’t I great? I’m just a delight” and “Nothing’s wrong with me, I’m just right” despite the fact that he has… THAT WIG! So he doesn’t have a self-esteem problem then, though he should. I mean he looks in the mirror about a hundred times in the first five minutes we see him, he should be able to see how bad his wig is. I’m beginning to think, and stop me if I’m wrong, that maybe Ivan is an arrogant prick who is going to learn not to be a massive prick by the end of the movie. Ya think? Maybe? We’ll see.
He took a look at her and kept walking? Is there something wrong with Russian men?
Let’s get to one of this film’s major problems. Actually, it’s a problem many films of this type share. Whenever there is a movie based on fairy tales, there tends to be a sensation of fragmentation within the narrative structure. There are vignettes, and eventually the whole tale does come together, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the movie could have had a stronger narrative thrust in the first act. I found a version of the folk tale online and the movie must be padded or have another tale in here or something. It’s done better here than in some movies, but it does mean that we meander around for a while without getting anywhere. Speaking of which, the next scene has just started.
It this about my wig?
Ivan is strolling around, talking about how just spiffy he is and how it’s a shame there aren’t two of him so he could kiss himself, when he’s set upon by bandits. These are the greatest bandits in the history of banditry by the way. While waiting for victims to show up, they pull the petals off daisies saying “We will rob them, we won’t rob them.” How can you not love guys like this? Anyway, Ivan stumbles into them and they decide to take his stuff, while not making fun of his wig. You’d think they would, but since most of them are wearing prosthetic noses, they probably feel they can’t complain too much about his artificial head covering. Ivan takes the whole thing pretty calmly, handing over his bag and letting the bandits fight over his rye bread. While the bandits are fighting, the throws their clubs into the air, announcing that they won’t come down until winter. And then… he just walks off. The bandits don’t stop him, or try to beat him up, or inform him that while he has a freaky wig, he does have a real perty mouth. They just let him wander off. Ivan wanders for a while before a mushroom starts talking to him.
After falling on hard times, Gerard Depardieu put on a false beard and joined a band of robbers.
A little guy with a beard and a mushroom hat who wants to play a game with young Ivan. The little man being a magic guy, he challenges Ivan to either a game of Hide & Seek or just a game of who is faster. The dub and subs disagree on this point, what they agree on is that if Ivan wins he’ll gain a nice bow and arrow set that the Mushroom guy just happened to have hanging around. Ivan looses the game, but for being a good sport, the little Mushroom guy gives him the bow and arrows anyway. Ivan starts to run off but the Mushroom dude tells him that he forgot to bow and say thank you for the lovely present. Ivan arrogantly tells him that his appreciation is in another castle and that bears can bow to him. Ivan walks off and the Mushroom make a comment about how the bear will bow but it will be his back that bends. Once again, it’s going to take forever for the pay off of that gag to come.
Wow, Craigslist has gotten specific over the years.
Ivan wanders around a while, kills a goose to take one feather that evidently will lead him to destiny, and comes across Nastenka. She, it seems, is busying herself trying to find Bond so Judi Dench can yell at him. Until Bond remerges, Nastenka waters a stump until flowers grow up in it. Ivan, knowing a hottie when he sees one (unlike some Russian guys I could mention) decides to go over to her and turn on the mack daddiness. The problem is, while he’s telling her about how hot he is and asking if she’ll marry him, she’s sort of unimpressed. I’m guessing it’s because she took one look at his wig and decided against him, but decided not to press that particular issue. She says he’s sort of arrogant, which he objects to on the grounds that he’s so awesome and clearly the best thing in the universe. In order to prove how awesome he is, he tells her he’ll kill a bear with one arrow. Am I missing something about Russians here? Is whacking a bear the same as showing up with flowers and nice poem among the Eastern Slavic people? I’m sort of Celtic and Gallic with a dash of Teuton, so I don’t really know about how other folk’s courting rituals go. Being a viewer of Anime, I’m a little confused by how the Japanese run their mating rituals too.
Well, it seems Nastenka isn’t impressed either because she bungs a bucket on his head. The Mushroom dude realizes that his moment has come and decides to get Nastenka blamed for his little trick. He bangs those two little twigs, or bells, or whatever it is he’s holding and BOOM(!) Ivan is turned into a bear. At least that wig is gone, right? Well, if anything the bear head looks worse. This freaks Nastenka right the hell out and she faints. Ivan grabs his mirror and checks for her breath. Since he can’t resist his reflection, he also gets a quick look at himself and finding that he’s a bear reacts badly. In fact, he calls Nastenka a witch and claims she did it. This causes Nastenka to sit down and cry. She suffers so much, she’ll probably die for our sins and come back from the dead before the movie is over.
But am I still pretty?
Now, why Nastenka crying into the river should cause flowers to grow in that stump she was working on before, I have no idea. Those tears do some though, and spill from her near alien like eyes. Seriously, do they have to be that big? Anyway, the tears spill from her massive blue orbs and into the stream and this causes the flowers to grow. They grow suddenly, and she sits down and has a proper cry next to them. Ivan runs around, until the Mushroom Man shows up again and then he begs forgiveness. The Mushroom Dude however, instead of turning him back into a person, proceeds to tell Ivan some pretty unpleasant truths about himself. He goes into his selfishness, his arrogance, his narcissism and the fact that he’s never done a good thing for anyone else in his life. Ivan interprets this commentary as a need to go do good deeds, and runs off instead of listening to the Mushroom Dude, who claims that the answer is in another castle. Mushroom dude mentions that he has to collect a hundred stars and defeat Bowser, but Ivan has run off already.
Seriously, look at her! She’s all eyes with a bit of nose and mouth!
We’re then treated to Ivan trying to find people he can do good deeds for, but all the girls think he’s a werewolf and run away from him. Then, for reasons only known to the Russians, we get almost a full half minute of bear cubs running around and grabbing fake toadstools. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean to the movie, but it happens. For 28 seconds, which is a long time on screen, it’s just these two bear cubs running back and forth. They grab a fake toadstool, pick it up in their little arms, and walk back off screen. It can’t be meant to be Ivan, he’s always shown as wearing his clothes and is just bear-headed. Is it symbolic? If I had Slavs instead of Gales, Celts and Teutons in my lineage would I understand this? Is this just some circus act that someone talked the producers into or perhaps the director’s brother in law? And no, this never goes anywhere. It’s just bear cubs grab fake mushrooms and toddle off. It makes no sense! It’s just randomly weird.
What are we even looking at here?
Anyway, Nastenka comes back to the flowers she helped grown on the old stump and they have a little conversation about Ivan. She tells the flowers that she’s hopes she’s not bothering them, all the time talking in the same breathy half whisper of a voice. I checked all three audio channels, and all three actresses portray her in the same way. A soft, half whisper of a voice that tells you that when you eat of the bread and drink of the cup you should do it in remembrance of her. She asks the flowers questions about Ivan, who answer by nodding up and down or shaking from side to side. So either, these are magic flowers, grown from her magic, or she’s batshit crazy and thinks when the wind blows the flowers it’s the flower talking to her. Personally, I’m going to vote for crazy. Being slave to the wicked Judi Dench has cracked her poor mind and now she thinks she can control the dawn and talk to plants. We then go see Ivan trying to do good deeds. He gives a beggar a copeck, but that’s not enough. Can’t buy your way out of trouble kids, at least not for such a low price.
Come on! You can be the Robin to my Batman!
Now we return to the trails of Nastenka, and the cruelties foisted upon her. Her sister and Judi Dench are preparing to meet a suitor and they abuse poor Nastenka the whole time. Wiping her face with soot and wrapping her head in a scarf to cover her long lovely braid. The sister wanted to cut it off, but Dame Judi objects that if she cuts off the braid she’ll have nothing to drag her around the house with. They then comically doll the sister up for the suitor and the matchmaker. We then cross cut back to Ivan, who finds and old woman and helps her with her wood. The old woman is a little too enthusiastic about hopping on his back and getting a piggyback ride though if you ask me. Like, waaaay too enthusiastic. It’s a little creepy to be honest, like she’s been waiting for someone to give her a lift all month and is really going to enjoy this chance.
Sometimes, you don’t need a joke. Sometimes you can just sit back and let the screen cap do all the work.
So we go back to Nastenka’s sister being shown off to the suitor, his mother, the matchmaker while Nastenka is hidden away. While playing up the sister’s attributes, they claim she can cook like a dream, which is a lie because she never does a lick of work ever. The mother and suitor want proof, so they send the sister out to kill and cook a goose. Knowing that humiliation is coming, the townsfolk all show up to watch her fail. When she chases the geese, she falls into the lake. Nastenka has to run to the lake ans save her step system walking across the water instead of doing anything so pedestrian (ironically) as swimming in it. When Nastenka pulls her sister out of the water though, some of the water must have splashed on her because her face is clean and her hair is perfect. She’s not even wet, perfectly on display.
And she stepped on the ball!
While this was happening, Ivan dropped the old woman off at her home, and found that it wasn’t enough of a good deed. The problem was that The Mushroom Guy didn’t want to make him do a good deed, he wanted him to be a better person. Ivan sees the old woman’s stick, and decides to take it back to her. This actually thinking about someone is enough for the Mushroom Dude and he changes him back, at which point Ivan throws the stick down and announces to the world that he’s going to go get Nastenka. The stick disappears, but I would think for the trick to hold he should have taken it back.
Am I still wearing the wig?
Meanwhile, time passes and it becomes winter. Judi Dench tells her husband that she’s tired of Nastenka turning water to wine, raising the dead, curing the possessed, doing that loaves and fishes thing… yeah I’ll stop now. Anyway, she tells Father of The Year here to take his only daughter out to the woods and leave her there to die. And he does! WOW! What a dad! Actually, half way into the woods he decides he’s not going to do it. And seeing that her father is having a moment of courage that can’t possibly be maintained for more than two minutes, she hops off the sled so that we can tell everyone she was killed by men she loved. And seriously, when the father gets back to the house and discovers his daughter isn’t with him? He slinks right back into being the coward he was before. I hate this old man. Even the dog has nothing but contempt for him.
I haven’t had a bowel movement in fifteen years.
Ivan wanders through the wood, with no coat, hat, scarf, thermal underpants, or anything sold by either Carhartt or North Face. All he has to keep him warm is his very stupid looking wig. Still, he must be doing okay, since he’s clearly been carrying on all this time. Wandering through snow and ice, shouting Nastenka’s name over and over again. That is until he comes to the most awesome cabin in the WORLD! See, this is a cabin that walks around on chicken feet, and when it tilts the snow doesn’t shift, which means that BABA YAGA has entered the tale! WOOO HOOO!!! It seems that Baba Yaga knows Ivan, but he calls her Hunch back fairy in the dub and just old witch in the subtitles. Then comes an awesome bit of comedy. Baba Yaga wants the house to face the woods and Ivan wants the house to face him, so they go back and forth, stomping on the ground to make the house listen to them. It goes about five or six times and Baba Yaga keeps doing a little dance every time she comes out of the door. I know how dumb it is, but it cracks me up every single time.
See if you can get a gumball in my mouth from there.
Eventually, Baba Yaga announces that she’s had it with these melon farming snaked on this melon pale and gets the trees around her cabin to beat Ivan up. Seriously, there is nothing about this part of the movie that isn’t awesome. Once the trees throw him into her cabin, the trees hop in and push Ivan onto a large baking peel and get ready to shove him in to an oven. But the awesome doesn’t stop there! Ivan turned around and he doesn’t know how one should go about it. Seriously? Has that worked for anyone in the history of ever? Well, she falls for it, so that’s one. So, complaining about what they’re teaching kids in school these days, Baba Yaga shows him how to sit. This yields what, in hindsight, should have been predictable results. He shoves her in the oven and tosses the trees out into the snow. I’m not sure he notices, but his wig slips back quite a way during this event. He lets her out and tells her to tell him where he can find Nastenka, since that was the whole reason for his visit here.
What it’s gonna take to get you into one of these babies today?
We then cut to the other story, where a song has started and some singing has begun. It turns out to be Grandfather Frost, who at 48 minutes and 45 seconds finally shows up in a movie that bears his name! The whole movie is only like 84 minutes long by the way, so it’s taken this long to get to the title character. It also occurs to me that this is getting quite long and we’re only half way though. However, most the insanity is actually over and from here on out we basically just have plot and stuff. Frost wanders around, putting snow on the trees in some pretty good reverse filming. Normally, with someone with flowing robes, it’s very easy to tell that the film is running in reverse because of how the fabric flows. The actor and crew who did this though are great and the only sign is the obvious one that the trees shudder a bit and suddenly have snow leap up onto their branches.
I’m here! I’m here! Don’t start the movie without me!
Frost comes across Nastenka, who is freezeing to death in the snow and asks if she’s cold. Nastenka lies and tells him that she’s fine, and he rewards her lies. He takes pity on her and wraps his big coat around her. She confirms her attempt at stealing the throne of Jesus by telling Frosty that if she takes his coat, he’ll be cold so he better not. A bird lands on his staff and she proves how much you should hate her by warble-whispering ‘a bird’ like she’s never seen one before. It’s the whisper voice that bugs me with her, she never raises her voice or speaks in anything but that breathy “I’m so adowabwe that you must wuv me so evew much” sort of voice. The bird lands on the staff, becomes a lump of ice and falls off. While she morns the loss of the bird and her frustrating inability to bring it back to life despite touching it, he explains that whoever touches the thing will freeze and never wake up again. I mention this because he all but looks into the camera and shouts “Did everybody get that? Don’t want you to miss it when it becomes a plot point later!” They get on his rocket powered ice sleigh and go back to his big palace. Can I point out how awesome his outfit is and how annoying it is that our Santa just wears a big red fur coat? Father Frost’s outfit is so awesome that Santa looks sort of dull and boring by comparison.
With my new frosted highlights, I’m even cuter!
We go back to Baba Yaga telling Ivan all about how to find Nastenka, which turns out to be simply sending a little sled with a pig’s head on it to find her, which sending a cat to get there before them and pull a trick on Ivan. She keeps dancing as she goes into the house after letting Ivan go, she’s so awesome. I want to ask Baba Yaga over to have dinner with me. She’d be a hoot! Point of order, all the animals are just run backwards in this. The cat runs up the steps, and instead of shooting it running down again, they just reverse the film so the cat obviously walks backwards. Don’t know why they keep doing that.
Huh. Normally that works on the first try.
The trick is that the cat runs by Nastenka and, for our sins, causes her to touch the tip of Frost’s staff (scepter you perv!) and she turns into a cutecicle. The cat and sleigh both get back to Baba Yaga and she rewards them happily, proving that she might be evil but she likes cats and thus can’t be all bad. The movie even mentions the whole anyone who touches the staff turns to ice thing again. Her dog senses a disturbance in the Force and runs to lead Ivan the rest of the way to the house. They get to Frost’s house only to find she’s turned transparent, which is supposed to indicate frozenness. Ivan apologizes to Nastenka, which causes her to come back to life. He followers find only that the boulder has been pushed out of the way. Anyhow, she wakes up, Frost and the dog walk backwards again when just walking out would have done fine. Ivan brags at how he’s not a braggart anymore, and this time Nastenka thinks it’s cute and agrees to marry him. Baba Yaga isn’t through with them though, she knows this movie has twenty more minutes and we’ve got to have a big finish.
Did I leave the oven on?
We go back to the house of the old man, where Judi Dench is shouting at him for getting rid of Nastenka. It seems that without her to abuse and work like a slave, life isn’t fun anymore. While complaining though (or speaking of the devil one might say) Nastenka and Ivan come home to show they’ve made good. It seems that by virture of being
She is just not impressed with ABC’s new Thursday night line-up.
Now, the story isn’t quite over yet. If this were a German tale, it undoubtedly would be. The good people were rewarded, that’s about it as far as Grimm’s goes. But this is a Russian tale, so there must be some misery before we’re through. The step sister demands to be take out to the woods so she can get a chest of jewels and a husband like Nastenka got. The problem is that the sister is
Nice coat, shame about the wig.
You remember the bandits from the beginning of the movie? Well, they don’t like the cold and Baba Yaga offers them more money than they’ve ever seen to whack Nastenka and Ivan. I love the person playing Baba Yaga. Georgi Millyar gives so much life and fun to this character. I want this Baba Yaga to come to my birthday party. I have GOT to see Baba Yaga drunk sometime, cause that’d be awesome. So, the bandits take on the commission and jump Ivan and Nastenka, almost causing Ivan to loose his wig in the process. However, just when our… do we call them heroes? Anyway, when it looks darkest for our heroes, those clubs Ivan threw at the beginning fall from the sky and knock out each bandit in turn. Then they kick Baba Yaga in the butt and send her on her way.
I have doubts! Not about anything specific, just doubts.
For our final bit of movie, we’ve got the return of the sister, who is on a small sled pulled by pigs. The dowry turns out to be a box of crows and the whole town turns out to laugh at her again. I feel sort of sorry for the sister at this point, because the movie is sort doing that “You see, ugly people are horrible and deserve to have bad things happen to them” thing and I don’t like that. Also, while she’s spoiled, they over do it and she’s just a product of bad parenting. The sister was sort of crapped on by this movie and I feel bad for her. The father then throws off his coat and tells Judi Dench that he’s going to make the rules now, because seeing his wife publicly humiliated gave him some backbone or something. Anyway, at that point the movie is over and all that’s left is to have Ivan and Nastenka’s wedding feast where she is as lacking of personality and pointless as she’s been this whole movie and Ivan wears and even uglier wig.
You want to see how bad this wig is? Look!
This movie is pretty good, and in places it’s really excellent, but I hate that wig. When you reach the end you sort of notice that Nastenka has made no progress as a character at all, she’s just been a sort of Christ figure and a pretty thing for the boy to eventually win. However, it’s an inventive and fun little movie, and it doesn’t even cost very much on Amazon, you do have to get it via the marketplace, but it still won’t run you much more than $20. The DVD has about 9 subtitle options, but the Russian, French and English dub tracks are all good and I think they were all dubbed so you don’t even need to worry about loosing part of the performance if you choose to listen in English. But you will need the subtitles for the songs, which aren’t dubbed.
CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!
Also, sorry this got so long. It’s a Holiday special though, right? They play this movie on Czech TV every year between Christmas and New Years, so it counts. It’s fun and it’s cute and it takes place in the same alternate dimension where The Adventures of Robin Hood takes place. It’s that super colorful light hearted romp you can watch with the kids. See? I like some things, they’re just all fricking weird.
I’ll catch ya on the flip side! Peace out G!
(I’m at a loss weather I love this lady or Baba Yaga more)
You wanna watch the MST3K Episode? Okay. I'll embed it for you. Just for you though.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
TV Review: Beverly Hillbillies Thanksgiving (Pain Box)
The Beverly Hillbillies: Turkey Day (1963 CBS Dir. Richard Whorf)
The Beverly Hillbillies is to the south what a Minstrel show is to blacks. It’s nasty, ugly, and carries a lot of very jokes that just aren’t funny. This episode is in black and white, and it’s hard to think of a time when this was on in prime time, instead of weekday afternoons. Actually, in this day and age it’s hard to imagine this hateful crap was on screen at all. There can be no mystery as to why so many people in America think people from the south are stupid when watching this.
A chill just ran down Jack Haley's spine.
So anyway, this episode starts with Granny singing a song, accompanied by an unseen band. Don’t know where the band comes from, but there it is. She’s getting ready to cook a turkey that was given to them by the Drysdales. When she goes out to check the turkey, she finds that the turkey has vanished, probably stolen by… um… the girl. What’s her name? Elly Sue? Elly May? Wait a second, they called her Elly. It seems she doesn’t want them to whack the bird. A lot of the jokes surround the fact that the Clampetts are a bunch of stupid, red neck hicks. It’s not even that they’re simple or don’t understand our modern urban ways, they are shown to be just plain stupid. How was this a popular show? The word “vittles” seems to be a punch line here. Why is vittles a punch line? Why are they still wearing rope belts and check shirts? Don’t they have like, billions of dollars? Why buy a huge mansion in Beverly Hills and then continue to dress in a tattered jacket and battered hat? If they were so in love with simplicity, why didn’t they stay back home? It’s a stupidity that confounds me.
I don't know what it is, but if it were alive, I'd try to have sex with it.
A long period is taken up by these guys thinking a billiard table is a dinner table. Not only that, they think a rhino is called a billiard and that the table is designed for eating them. I am really left looking at the screen and shouting “WHAT?” at the top of my lungs. How could none of them ever seen a billiards table before? They didn’t come from Saturn, they came from the Ozarks! I’ve BEEN to the Ozarks, they HAVE billiard tables out there and these guys should know what they are. It’s like the writers think that everyone from any part of the rural areas is an alien masquerading as a pretentious moron who knows nothing of our human ways. I keep expecting to see one of them get their faces scratched and revel the lizard skin under the mask like in V. That would be the proper V from ’83, not the new one that sucks.
*Running gag alert!* See, I was thinking since it was alive, I could have sex with it!
Then there is some more gibberish about the bird that Elly doesn’t want to kill. Evidently she taught him to shake hands, which she gets him to do a lot. I mean a lot, a lot. A tedious number of times really. When Jed, that’s his name right? When Jed comes to kill the bird, he sort of feels sorry for it and decides to get a “billiard” instead. He has come to the conclusion that they are easy to find in the city of Beverly Hills. You know what? They also have picture books in the Ozarks, they should know what a rhino is. Are they completely incurious? They had a rhino in their house and never once asked what that thing on the wall is? Anyway, Granny balks at the idea of cooking that huge beast and gets Jethro to “clean and dress” the bird. This leads to a HIGH-larious instance of Jethro bringing in a bird with clothes on. How stupid is he? Someone would have explained the “clean and dress” thing to him at some point! Magical, how the hell did this crap ever get on TV?
Even a turkey should have some dignity! Take off the stupid sailor’s cap.
The racism then make an appearance and ramps right up with a pair of “Indians” hanging out with the Drysdales. They’re supposed to take a photo for the newspapers, with these guys playing as the “Indians” and the Drysdales are supposed to be the pilgrims. Because white people are stupid, she thinks these guys are real Native Americans or something. She actually starts talking to them with “Me whiteface daughter of pilgrim. Me heap grateful to you.” and I guess it’s only a few minutes before guys with black shoe polish on his face shows up and demands some watey-mellon. We’ve now had every other stereotype. The “Indians” however, are fake (hence the quotes) and are just guys who tell her she’s a dork and that they come from central casting instead of being actual Native Americans. They refuse to play along with her stupid “Me paleface squaw, me get you drink” routine. They keep trying to convince her that they’re not even Indians, but she won’t even listen. I guess that if someone came up to her dressed like Hamlet she’d bow and speak in pidgin iambic pentameter at him. Just because they show up in costume she behaves like they MUST be “Indians” who talk in that “Ugh” way they do in bad movies. Is Mrs. Drysdale supposed to be completely stupid? Maybe everyone is just supposed to be massively stupid, instead of just the Clampetts.
Yeah, they can't believe it either.
None of the family wants to kill the turkey for Granny. Instead of killing it herself she demands everyone else do it. Jed and Jethro take the turkey away, and Elly goes next door to pick of nuts or something. She finds the “Indians” tussling with Mr. Drysdale, because he was trying to run off and they wouldn’t get paid if he did. So they grab him while Mrs. Drysdale goes to check on something, just long enough for Elly to see them and misunderstand. See, you must remember these are closed head injury sufferers. So they see someone dressed as an “Indian” and they assume it’s a real Native American. They would also imagine if they saw someone dressed as Robin Hood that either time travel had been invented or that Beverly Hills is the new Sherwood Forest.
Jed meets someone of a similar intellect.
So Elly decides “Them injuns is attacking” and granny declares “The injuns always attack when the men folk is gone” and they run off. Because, you know, that happens all the time in Beverly Hills. Hell, it never happens in the Ozarks, it never happens ANYWHERE! How fucking stupid are these fucking people? How do they avoid swallowing their tongues when lost in thought? The “Indians” decide to get the turkey, which was meant to be a prop for a photo, and the girls attack! Then the racist comments about Indians increases, claims they steal hair compound on everything else. They even claim “they tried to scalp us, but we jumped ‘em first!” when all the guys did was walk across the lawn. They then threaten the men with shot guns and Jethro asks if he can play “Squeal like a pig” with them. Then there is a Jewish gag, which almost no one would get now.
Hey there! You're still alive, and we'd like to have sex with you.
Then it all works out in the end, they have gefilte fish that one of the actors (one of the guy who played the “Indians” you remember) brought from home. Everyone sits at the same table, even though Granny tired to kill these guys five minutes ago. I guess if you have money, attempted murder is easily forgiven. Syd claims this is a paragon of cultural sensitivity. I’m waiting for a joke about rape being awesome and lynching being the best way to deal with people darker than an Italian. No wonder so many of our older relatives are as casual about their racism as I am the word “motherfucker” if this is the kind of crap they watched. This is just about the worst thing I’ve seen in some time. There were so many flat jokes, so many points where I was shouting “Where is the joke?” and sop many points where is was clear the joke was racism that I kind of feel like setting fire to everyone who ever laughed at this show.
Are you fucking kidding me? This is supposed to be a joke?
If you wish to view this reprehensible garbage though, allow me to furnish you with an embedded video!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Cartoon Review: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
HERE! As a bonus, listen to one of the best cartoon theme songs ever recorded while you read.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973 Dir. Bill Melendez)
From his dopey, drugged out look I have to suggest he was watching "I love the 80s" on VH1
When this review was first written, this was the only other Thanksgiving special I could find in my collection. Someone told me that there are some more, but I'd have to watch TV shows I hate to find them so never mind. Using the two I've seen, I will now make sweeping generalizations about any and all Thanksgiving specials. They are heavily padded to make up for short scripts, they involve lots of costume changes, grandmothers not being up to the normal ideal of granmotherlyness, they all have jazz soundtracks, alternate menus for thanksgiving feature heavily as do the difficulties in food preparation and Drew Barrymore was hot in the 90s. That's not actually part of the show, but this picture just popped up as my wallpaper and it sort of stopped me for a moment. Nothing serious but it did give me a second of "Whoa, she was hot there" and I thought I would share that moment with you. After looking her up out of curiosity, she still looks really good actually. Enough of this tangent though! Let's start the cartoon, shall we?
You can just smell the sexual tension can't you?
The cartoon starts with another episode of Lucy tricks Charlie Brown into trying to kick the football again. This is Lucy's only scene in the entire special and while she entertains, it's too little meat for her. She knows it and it drives her to commit darker evils on Charlie than she has in the past. Not only does she yank the football away, she teases him with his stupidity for falling for the same trick again. Sadly, he deserves it for failing at simple pattern recognition. This then leads us into the opening credits which are amazingly short. We do get to hear my favorite of Vince Guaraldi's songs for the peanuts gang "Thanksgiving Theme" which you can buy at Amazon on the Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits Album. You could probably download it as an MP3 or something. Say what you might about the Peanuts Specials, the music was always kickin'! It's greatly because of Vince Guaraldi's tunes being on these shows like I got into jazz in the first place. All the music in this show is excellent, even if other bits are lacking.
The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.
The show starts with Charlie and his sister Sally discussing Thanksgiving, and you'd think that this is the worst thing to ever happen to them. Sally complains that all the stores have things for Christmas, to which Charlie Brown exclaims "Christmas? Already?" leaving me to wonder what world he lives in. If it's thanksgiving before you're seeing the stores stuffed with green and red, then the stores have been remarkably patient with their decorations. Even in 1973 when this was made. Then Sally goes off about how she's got nothing to be thankful for because the world is just unfair to her. Linus shows up to give his normal condescending attitude a walk around the block, but not before Charlie complains "We've got another holiday to worry about." as if everything would be great if he could just get rid of those pesky holidays. Sally interjects her usual wisdom by shouting "I haven't even finished my Halloween candy yet!" and now I know this show doesn't take place on Earth. Linus says blah, blah, blah, tells a lie about thanksgiving and acts like his crap don't stink.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
After getting all that garbage out of the way, the plot finally kicks in! Peppermint Patty calls, explains her dad is out of town and invites herself over to have Thanksgiving. Chuck can't get a word in to tell her that they won't be home, so he expects her to arrive. A minute or so later he gets another call. It's PP again telling him that now Marcy is coming, and then another call a moment later there's another call saying that Franklin is coming over too. In a great stride for civil rights, Franklin is given exactly two lines in the whole production. I’m always bothered by this. Franklin is treated very badly in this cartoon. Why does the single black character have to be so maligned? Franklin gets no love.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Linus walks up, because… he works in the same house as Charlie Brown? I have no idea. Kids just walk on and off as needed in these specials and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I always have problems with the way people just show up at random in the cartoon. The other characters were occupying themselves in ways that would say to me that they weren't the focus of the guests. That says to me that there was something intimate and private going on that they weren't part of. If Linus was over, why was Charlie Brown watching TV by himself a moment ago? Was Linus getting it on with Sally (who came out to check on her brother a second ago) but came to see what was bothering his friend because Sally's just a chick and thus less important? Did he… you know, finish before he left? He sure wasn't worried about her orgasm, but did he get his? Is it maybe that despite the way the kids are drawn these are actually college kids and instead of houses these are dorms? That would explain everyone just showing up randomly because it's dorm life. It would also explain Sally putting up with Linus not worrying about whether or not she came since she's just now exploring her sexuality and is still crushing on him so hard that she's just happy to have him. You people just watch shows, but I have to THINK about them. Seriously, you have no idea what it's like living inside my head. It's scary in here, and I don't even have a teddy bear.
There is no such thing as joy, happiness does not exist.
So where was I before I suggested that Linus was banging Sally Brown but was totally unconcerned with her orgasms? Oh right, Linus was about to be annoyingly condescending again! Linus suggests that Charlie Brown have two meals, instead of calling Peppermint Patty back and lowering the boom on her or anything. Poor Charlie Brown admits that the only thing he can make is cold cereal and toast. You can see he's in pain, he needs support. He needs love. What he gets is Linus telling him that he's seen Chuck make toast and that he can't butter it on his own. He says he can help and tells Snoopy to get the stuff together. When he turns away, Charlie gets a look of mingled hatred and resentment on his face that can't be matched. As soon as Linus looks back at him, he's back to smiling. Charlie Brown is too much of a looser to let the guy who's putting it to his sister know that he'd kill him in his sleep for a nickel.
This is the look of sad, impotent rage.
Now, we reach an epic amount of padding. Snoopy is padding gold. All they had to do was write a few lines and let him go crazy. Nothing he does makes much sense, but that really doesn't matter. He's supposed to be getting a table and chairs out for the meal. I have no idea where the Peanuts gang is supposed to be located, but it sure as hell ain't Michigan! You couldn't have a thanksgiving meal outside in Michigan, they must be in the south somewhere. Snoopy gets the table out and it's a ping pong table, so he plays with the table for a few seconds (after shooting some hoops) and gets scolded by Linus for messing around Linus says "We don't have any time to play Snoopy!" and yet I can't help but notice that Linus is no where to be seen when the work is being done. Snoopy is the only one doing anything at all. He has to get all these folding chairs out and set them up on his own, including a lawn chair that he can't seem to manage and eventually gets into a peyote fueled kung fu match with. I've got to point out, while this is going on a great song called "Little Birdie" is played. It's about Woodstock and Snoopy. After Snoopy gets the table all set up, Linus comes in and demands he cook the food for them too.
Where did they get to many toasters? Ebay!
Not only is the cooking scene padded all to hell, but it uses repetitive animation too! Some of the bits show three and four times. The exact same piece of animation over and over. Snoopy makes a grand meal, which has been covered in great articles on the internet! He sets the table, which has seating for 12 when he sets it. It also doesn't have that lawn chair I mentioned him kung-fu fighting with. This will be important because clearly when they noticed Franklin had shown up, they changed the seating arrangements. More padding then happens with a costume trunk and Snoopy trying to get Woodstock to dress up like what pop culture would have us believe an American pilgrim looked like. It does nothing for the story because they'll be dressed like this for a total of 65 seconds. Then you never see those costumes again.
OMIGOSH! Snoopy is going to whack Woodstock for talking to the feds!
When the guests arrive, they come to a table that has seating for 12, but strangely, when they actually get seated the only chair left for Franklin is the broken lawn chair. Not only that, but this poor guy who had one line ten minutes ago, is forced to sit alone on one side of the table. I think that this must have been in the old south, because they've clearly put poor Franklin in the Coloreds Section. Even Snoopy gets to sit in the Whites Only section, but poor Franklin sits alone. The racism is sickening, as is the continuity. Sometimes he's in the broken chair, with no other chairs on his side of the table and sometimes he's got better chairs on either side of him. However you view it, Franklin is a victim of some pretty disgusting racism here. No actually, I'm not joking. What the hell? Honestly, they couldn't give the black kid more than one damn line? He couldn't sit with the white kids? Are we supposed to feel grateful that he's even allowed to be in the show or something? They'll let him come over for dinner, but he has to sit in the worst chair and remain silent while there. He can only talk when at Peppermint Patty's house. Maybe it's not racism, maybe it's some weird BDSM game that Peppermint Patty has going on. I would like to think that there is an innocent solution, but I doubt it.
Note that Franklin is also placed on the left while all the whites are to the right.
Linus gets on his high horse and rams a stupid prayer down everyone's throat, just trying to prove he's smarter than everyone else. He’s not of course, because he’s foolishly hanging on to the idea that a pack of English bigots were anything to be proud of. Besides, a lot of thanksgiving lore is nothing but bullshit. It’s probably all lies. Then Snoopy serves the meal. Toast, jelly beans, popcorn, pretzel sticks. PP of course looses it and shouts at Snoopy and Charlie Brown for not serving them a proper meal. Chuck leaves the table in disgrace, his head hung low and the thirty-eight in his pocket telling him how nice its barrel would feel in his mouth. Linus uses the opportunity to prove he knows about Miles Standish, no one is impressed. I hate Linus in the cartoons. Someone should run him over with a steamroller like that kid in Maximum Overdrive.
Charlie Brown is forever shamed.
Marcy doesn't dig Patty’s treatment of Chuck and gives Patty a serious come to Jesus style verbal pwning. She grabs Patty's stupid forelock and bashes her head into the table, screaming at her for hurting the guy she loves. I mean c'mon! Marcy is totally crushin' on Chuckles. Marcy leaves the table to go tell Charlie Brown that it's really okay and everyone loves him and takes away the gun so he can't shoot himself or anyone else. He tells her it's no big deal and reminds her how many sleeping pills he has upstairs. He doesn't do it in words, but you can totally hear the words in his head. Marcy then calls Charlie Brown Charles as she leaves him, which sounds formal and post-coital to me. She then greets Patty as Priscilla and now I'm just confused. I mean not really, they can all be one big swinging family as far as I'm concerned I just never thought of Marcy as bisexual is all. So, for the mutual love of Marcy, Patty and Charlie Brown admit their feelings, have a quickie and prepare to go back to the group with their love stronger than ever. And as wacky as all that sounds, it's 10 times better than what was on the screen.
You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It's the little differences. I mean they got the same stuff over there that they got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different.
So Charlie Brown discovers that not only are they late, but by the shape of the clock they got some furnishings from Dr. Caligari's yard sale. Charlie Brown goes to call his grandmother on a phone with a cord that comes out of the dial. He calls Grandma and tells her all about what happened. Grandma says they can all come to her place, at least that's what eventually comes across. All we hear is a muted trumpet playing at him. They then sing over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. This gets really bad because it shows that none of the kids recorded their parts together. As a result, after about three words, none of them are on beat and you can't understand what anyone is saying. They’re supposed to be singing together, but they’re all over the place as far as the song goes. Then we get the joke that “My Grandmother lives in a condominium.” because that's SOOOOO unexpected! Gosh, a grandmother living in a condo! I'll bet she has a motorcycle too! No word about grandma being emotionally dead, going through a quart of scotch a day or despising the day when “the mistake, her husband and their spawn” show up.
Yeah, we've got the clock, someone else got the cabinet before we got there or we'd have a matched set.
The last bit is great though. First off, we hear the whole of the Thanksgiving theme, which is awesome. When the kids leave, Snoopy and Woodstock wave goodbye and go into his dog house. A bit of sound effects later and Woodstock brings out a table and Snoopy brings chairs. He then brings out a roast turkey that he'd been holding back from the kids. Snoop and Woodie eat like kings while they were prepared to serve the kids popcorn and toast. The wishbone is yanked from the bird and Woodstock gets the biggest part. As the credits roll, the two of them share one of the biggest pumpkin pies in history.
In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
This DVD has one of those This Is America, Charlie Brown shows called The Mayflower Voyagers. I'm not going to review that, because it infuriates me. It's too simplified and really works hard not to tell any of the little the inconvenient truths. While they are technically telling the truth, they aren't giving you all the facts and they are totally slanting the story to be pro-pilgrims. It's very annoying to watch because they really just paint the American Pilgrims (who were neither) as noble people who have misery heaped upon them, instead of complete and total bigoted jackasses that the gods were clearly trying to kill. You want to know the honest truth about what happened to the American Indians? I’ll tell you. The Gods were trying to kill those fucking puritans, the Indians got in the way and saved them, and the Gods turned their wrath on the bitches what ruined the plan.
Yeah, I know a lot of guys who try to fight with the furniture when they get drunk.
EDIT: I've posted this four times today, and once a couple of years ago. And yet, I keep forgetting to provide a link to the article about someone recreating Snoopy's meal. I'd always meant to, but never did until now.
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973 Dir. Bill Melendez)
From his dopey, drugged out look I have to suggest he was watching "I love the 80s" on VH1
When this review was first written, this was the only other Thanksgiving special I could find in my collection. Someone told me that there are some more, but I'd have to watch TV shows I hate to find them so never mind. Using the two I've seen, I will now make sweeping generalizations about any and all Thanksgiving specials. They are heavily padded to make up for short scripts, they involve lots of costume changes, grandmothers not being up to the normal ideal of granmotherlyness, they all have jazz soundtracks, alternate menus for thanksgiving feature heavily as do the difficulties in food preparation and Drew Barrymore was hot in the 90s. That's not actually part of the show, but this picture just popped up as my wallpaper and it sort of stopped me for a moment. Nothing serious but it did give me a second of "Whoa, she was hot there" and I thought I would share that moment with you. After looking her up out of curiosity, she still looks really good actually. Enough of this tangent though! Let's start the cartoon, shall we?
You can just smell the sexual tension can't you?
The cartoon starts with another episode of Lucy tricks Charlie Brown into trying to kick the football again. This is Lucy's only scene in the entire special and while she entertains, it's too little meat for her. She knows it and it drives her to commit darker evils on Charlie than she has in the past. Not only does she yank the football away, she teases him with his stupidity for falling for the same trick again. Sadly, he deserves it for failing at simple pattern recognition. This then leads us into the opening credits which are amazingly short. We do get to hear my favorite of Vince Guaraldi's songs for the peanuts gang "Thanksgiving Theme" which you can buy at Amazon on the Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits Album. You could probably download it as an MP3 or something. Say what you might about the Peanuts Specials, the music was always kickin'! It's greatly because of Vince Guaraldi's tunes being on these shows like I got into jazz in the first place. All the music in this show is excellent, even if other bits are lacking.
The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.
The show starts with Charlie and his sister Sally discussing Thanksgiving, and you'd think that this is the worst thing to ever happen to them. Sally complains that all the stores have things for Christmas, to which Charlie Brown exclaims "Christmas? Already?" leaving me to wonder what world he lives in. If it's thanksgiving before you're seeing the stores stuffed with green and red, then the stores have been remarkably patient with their decorations. Even in 1973 when this was made. Then Sally goes off about how she's got nothing to be thankful for because the world is just unfair to her. Linus shows up to give his normal condescending attitude a walk around the block, but not before Charlie complains "We've got another holiday to worry about." as if everything would be great if he could just get rid of those pesky holidays. Sally interjects her usual wisdom by shouting "I haven't even finished my Halloween candy yet!" and now I know this show doesn't take place on Earth. Linus says blah, blah, blah, tells a lie about thanksgiving and acts like his crap don't stink.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
After getting all that garbage out of the way, the plot finally kicks in! Peppermint Patty calls, explains her dad is out of town and invites herself over to have Thanksgiving. Chuck can't get a word in to tell her that they won't be home, so he expects her to arrive. A minute or so later he gets another call. It's PP again telling him that now Marcy is coming, and then another call a moment later there's another call saying that Franklin is coming over too. In a great stride for civil rights, Franklin is given exactly two lines in the whole production. I’m always bothered by this. Franklin is treated very badly in this cartoon. Why does the single black character have to be so maligned? Franklin gets no love.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Linus walks up, because… he works in the same house as Charlie Brown? I have no idea. Kids just walk on and off as needed in these specials and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I always have problems with the way people just show up at random in the cartoon. The other characters were occupying themselves in ways that would say to me that they weren't the focus of the guests. That says to me that there was something intimate and private going on that they weren't part of. If Linus was over, why was Charlie Brown watching TV by himself a moment ago? Was Linus getting it on with Sally (who came out to check on her brother a second ago) but came to see what was bothering his friend because Sally's just a chick and thus less important? Did he… you know, finish before he left? He sure wasn't worried about her orgasm, but did he get his? Is it maybe that despite the way the kids are drawn these are actually college kids and instead of houses these are dorms? That would explain everyone just showing up randomly because it's dorm life. It would also explain Sally putting up with Linus not worrying about whether or not she came since she's just now exploring her sexuality and is still crushing on him so hard that she's just happy to have him. You people just watch shows, but I have to THINK about them. Seriously, you have no idea what it's like living inside my head. It's scary in here, and I don't even have a teddy bear.
There is no such thing as joy, happiness does not exist.
So where was I before I suggested that Linus was banging Sally Brown but was totally unconcerned with her orgasms? Oh right, Linus was about to be annoyingly condescending again! Linus suggests that Charlie Brown have two meals, instead of calling Peppermint Patty back and lowering the boom on her or anything. Poor Charlie Brown admits that the only thing he can make is cold cereal and toast. You can see he's in pain, he needs support. He needs love. What he gets is Linus telling him that he's seen Chuck make toast and that he can't butter it on his own. He says he can help and tells Snoopy to get the stuff together. When he turns away, Charlie gets a look of mingled hatred and resentment on his face that can't be matched. As soon as Linus looks back at him, he's back to smiling. Charlie Brown is too much of a looser to let the guy who's putting it to his sister know that he'd kill him in his sleep for a nickel.
This is the look of sad, impotent rage.
Now, we reach an epic amount of padding. Snoopy is padding gold. All they had to do was write a few lines and let him go crazy. Nothing he does makes much sense, but that really doesn't matter. He's supposed to be getting a table and chairs out for the meal. I have no idea where the Peanuts gang is supposed to be located, but it sure as hell ain't Michigan! You couldn't have a thanksgiving meal outside in Michigan, they must be in the south somewhere. Snoopy gets the table out and it's a ping pong table, so he plays with the table for a few seconds (after shooting some hoops) and gets scolded by Linus for messing around Linus says "We don't have any time to play Snoopy!" and yet I can't help but notice that Linus is no where to be seen when the work is being done. Snoopy is the only one doing anything at all. He has to get all these folding chairs out and set them up on his own, including a lawn chair that he can't seem to manage and eventually gets into a peyote fueled kung fu match with. I've got to point out, while this is going on a great song called "Little Birdie" is played. It's about Woodstock and Snoopy. After Snoopy gets the table all set up, Linus comes in and demands he cook the food for them too.
Where did they get to many toasters? Ebay!
Not only is the cooking scene padded all to hell, but it uses repetitive animation too! Some of the bits show three and four times. The exact same piece of animation over and over. Snoopy makes a grand meal, which has been covered in great articles on the internet! He sets the table, which has seating for 12 when he sets it. It also doesn't have that lawn chair I mentioned him kung-fu fighting with. This will be important because clearly when they noticed Franklin had shown up, they changed the seating arrangements. More padding then happens with a costume trunk and Snoopy trying to get Woodstock to dress up like what pop culture would have us believe an American pilgrim looked like. It does nothing for the story because they'll be dressed like this for a total of 65 seconds. Then you never see those costumes again.
OMIGOSH! Snoopy is going to whack Woodstock for talking to the feds!
When the guests arrive, they come to a table that has seating for 12, but strangely, when they actually get seated the only chair left for Franklin is the broken lawn chair. Not only that, but this poor guy who had one line ten minutes ago, is forced to sit alone on one side of the table. I think that this must have been in the old south, because they've clearly put poor Franklin in the Coloreds Section. Even Snoopy gets to sit in the Whites Only section, but poor Franklin sits alone. The racism is sickening, as is the continuity. Sometimes he's in the broken chair, with no other chairs on his side of the table and sometimes he's got better chairs on either side of him. However you view it, Franklin is a victim of some pretty disgusting racism here. No actually, I'm not joking. What the hell? Honestly, they couldn't give the black kid more than one damn line? He couldn't sit with the white kids? Are we supposed to feel grateful that he's even allowed to be in the show or something? They'll let him come over for dinner, but he has to sit in the worst chair and remain silent while there. He can only talk when at Peppermint Patty's house. Maybe it's not racism, maybe it's some weird BDSM game that Peppermint Patty has going on. I would like to think that there is an innocent solution, but I doubt it.
Note that Franklin is also placed on the left while all the whites are to the right.
Linus gets on his high horse and rams a stupid prayer down everyone's throat, just trying to prove he's smarter than everyone else. He’s not of course, because he’s foolishly hanging on to the idea that a pack of English bigots were anything to be proud of. Besides, a lot of thanksgiving lore is nothing but bullshit. It’s probably all lies. Then Snoopy serves the meal. Toast, jelly beans, popcorn, pretzel sticks. PP of course looses it and shouts at Snoopy and Charlie Brown for not serving them a proper meal. Chuck leaves the table in disgrace, his head hung low and the thirty-eight in his pocket telling him how nice its barrel would feel in his mouth. Linus uses the opportunity to prove he knows about Miles Standish, no one is impressed. I hate Linus in the cartoons. Someone should run him over with a steamroller like that kid in Maximum Overdrive.
Charlie Brown is forever shamed.
Marcy doesn't dig Patty’s treatment of Chuck and gives Patty a serious come to Jesus style verbal pwning. She grabs Patty's stupid forelock and bashes her head into the table, screaming at her for hurting the guy she loves. I mean c'mon! Marcy is totally crushin' on Chuckles. Marcy leaves the table to go tell Charlie Brown that it's really okay and everyone loves him and takes away the gun so he can't shoot himself or anyone else. He tells her it's no big deal and reminds her how many sleeping pills he has upstairs. He doesn't do it in words, but you can totally hear the words in his head. Marcy then calls Charlie Brown Charles as she leaves him, which sounds formal and post-coital to me. She then greets Patty as Priscilla and now I'm just confused. I mean not really, they can all be one big swinging family as far as I'm concerned I just never thought of Marcy as bisexual is all. So, for the mutual love of Marcy, Patty and Charlie Brown admit their feelings, have a quickie and prepare to go back to the group with their love stronger than ever. And as wacky as all that sounds, it's 10 times better than what was on the screen.
You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It's the little differences. I mean they got the same stuff over there that they got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different.
So Charlie Brown discovers that not only are they late, but by the shape of the clock they got some furnishings from Dr. Caligari's yard sale. Charlie Brown goes to call his grandmother on a phone with a cord that comes out of the dial. He calls Grandma and tells her all about what happened. Grandma says they can all come to her place, at least that's what eventually comes across. All we hear is a muted trumpet playing at him. They then sing over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. This gets really bad because it shows that none of the kids recorded their parts together. As a result, after about three words, none of them are on beat and you can't understand what anyone is saying. They’re supposed to be singing together, but they’re all over the place as far as the song goes. Then we get the joke that “My Grandmother lives in a condominium.” because that's SOOOOO unexpected! Gosh, a grandmother living in a condo! I'll bet she has a motorcycle too! No word about grandma being emotionally dead, going through a quart of scotch a day or despising the day when “the mistake, her husband and their spawn” show up.
Yeah, we've got the clock, someone else got the cabinet before we got there or we'd have a matched set.
The last bit is great though. First off, we hear the whole of the Thanksgiving theme, which is awesome. When the kids leave, Snoopy and Woodstock wave goodbye and go into his dog house. A bit of sound effects later and Woodstock brings out a table and Snoopy brings chairs. He then brings out a roast turkey that he'd been holding back from the kids. Snoop and Woodie eat like kings while they were prepared to serve the kids popcorn and toast. The wishbone is yanked from the bird and Woodstock gets the biggest part. As the credits roll, the two of them share one of the biggest pumpkin pies in history.
In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
This DVD has one of those This Is America, Charlie Brown shows called The Mayflower Voyagers. I'm not going to review that, because it infuriates me. It's too simplified and really works hard not to tell any of the little the inconvenient truths. While they are technically telling the truth, they aren't giving you all the facts and they are totally slanting the story to be pro-pilgrims. It's very annoying to watch because they really just paint the American Pilgrims (who were neither) as noble people who have misery heaped upon them, instead of complete and total bigoted jackasses that the gods were clearly trying to kill. You want to know the honest truth about what happened to the American Indians? I’ll tell you. The Gods were trying to kill those fucking puritans, the Indians got in the way and saved them, and the Gods turned their wrath on the bitches what ruined the plan.
Yeah, I know a lot of guys who try to fight with the furniture when they get drunk.
EDIT: I've posted this four times today, and once a couple of years ago. And yet, I keep forgetting to provide a link to the article about someone recreating Snoopy's meal. I'd always meant to, but never did until now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)