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It's obvious shows beginning with the letter 'F' are destined to fail.

Too bad that the people doing the animated restorations aren't the same folks at WB that have done such a good job of restoring old films like Casablanca and Citizen Kane. The Onion AV Club has a very interesting interview with the senior VP in charge of their classic catalog.

From this weeks Savage Love"

I wish I'd known when I was 15 that dating older men does not mean you are hot shit; it means you're dating a dude who can't get women his own age, and that those women are avoiding him for good reasons.

Makes sense to me.

There's interesting comments on this in the Onion AV Club interview with Moore.

"What I've tried to do with my work, from Watchmen onward, is to do things that can only be done in comics. For example, with a movie, the audience is going to be dragged through that movie at 24 frames per second. That's the running time of the movie. It's going to take them two hours, or whatever, to watch it. It doesn't matter who they are; that is the speed at which they're going to watch that movie. Now, with comics, it's a much more user-friendly medium. The reader can focus upon one panel for as long as it takes to absorb all of the information that is there, and then move on to the next. If they want to see whether there's some correlation between a bit of dialogue and something that happened a couple of scenes ago, they can, in a matter of seconds, flip back."

Basically, a big part of the elegance of the comic is very deeply tied into its format. In that same interview Moore refers to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Blade Runner" as a good model for translating one format into another: both are quite good, but they're good for different reasons, they each make use of their form in appropriate ways. I think this is the same kind of reasoning behind the critical praise for the third Harry Potter movie.

On the other hand, I'm inclined to be pessimistic: Moore was hoping that "From Hell" would pull off a Blad-Runner-like success when it moved from comic to screen. Not so.

On the other hand, developing bad attitudes towards violence screws up nothing in their life (since the misunderstandings are rarely so bad that it would actually cause them to go out and hurt people). That's why I would argue porn is more harmful to children than violence.

This interview offers a good look at Joss's work and his experiences with getting his work butchered and mismanaged.

http://www.theonionavclub.com/feature/index.php?is sue=3731&f=1

I found that line... amusing. Because we all know that American comics are "just for kids," right?

"Little do they know, our clients, that it would be through the filter of Devo. Our subliminal messages would be fully intact, and attached on like antioxidants working their way into the system."

yeah, and he stole that joke from a review of LOTR:FOTR on the onion a few years back:

http://www.theonionavclub.com/review.php?review_id =5084

--Stephen

I don't get it. Why do people trust reviews from people they've never met, have no reason to believe, and who are posting "anonymously" on the internet?

I'm a lot more inclined for or against a movie/book/CD if i read a review from somebody I've come to trust a bit because I've found in the past that their opinions hold some merit...

dec 11-2003
I have been in Nashville for a little over a week playing with William Shatner---that guy is amazing...everyday has been a different lineup of people---the main core is Ben Folds-Sebastian Steinberg-John Painter-and me but last night was surreal--I played a improv drum solo to Shatner and Henry Rollins ranting and Adrian Belew freaking on his guitar--wow! a couple of days ago it was Joe Jackson and the group doing some Jazzy improvs to Shatners words-----reality is stranger than fiction---bye---Matt C

There's also an archived Shatner interview at The Onion AV Club where he briefly touches on the original recording he did and why he approached it in that particular fashion.

Anyway, enough of the movie reviewer crap, I wouldn't list the movie here unless I thought it was good. It's hard to be like, "DOODE, you have to see it!" since there are certain scenes in the movie that are just painful to watch they're so sad. But, you don't have to take my word:

IMDB

Filthy Critic

Onion AVClub

a little cannibalism among friends never hurt anyone

These guys certainly agree with you. Yet still, the survivor is on trial.

Breathed was also interviewed in Salon last week, and in The Onion's A.V. Club in 2001. He gets to swear in these interviews, too.

ditto. I put my name on an EFF or MoveOn.org (I forget which) letter about the FCC consolidation, and got a condescending letter back from Senator Santorum's office about why his position was so vastly superior to my own. Yet another reason why I approve of Dan Savage's new use of the word Santorum.

Is this the same Criswell who predicted that all people would be wearing nude bodysuits by the 1980s, and the world would end on Aug. 18, 1999?

I'm getting sick of this guy and his predictions. But I'm not getting rid of my bodysuit.

Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."

I just hope this is more accurate than his other predictions.

"Giving up on hand-drawn animation is akin to abandoning pianos because synthesizers have come along."

The shorter the movie is, the more times the theater can show it. The more times the theater shows the movie, the more tickets they can sell. The more tickets they sell, the more money the studio makes. Movie studios tend to do things that they think will make them money.

When I visited Madison, Wisconsin in 2000, the Onion was based thereabouts and was available for sale while the net version was also freebie.

By late 2001 they had moved to New York City and give it a way for free (Bars, sidewalk fist. boxes).

The serious section of the paper is reproduced online as The AV Club accessible from the upper right hand corner of the home-page,

the Onion website is 100% malarky

Not necessarily the Onion website proper but there's a prominent link to it on the front page of www.theonion.com.

"So I started recording in New York and continued in L.A., Michigan, Minnesota, and Florida. It was a lot of different people and a lot of different places, but all very necessary. There were a lot of engineers, and that's what we needed. The songs were good to go. We just needed all the best equipment and the systems to make them sound like they should sound. It was very work-intensive, to the point where some people didn't really enjoy working that way. It's very tedious and it involves fine-tuning and stacking, where you're looking at each song under a microscope and every split second is important."

The original was goofy, and somewhat likeable, but not exactly what I'd call "excellent".

Wheadon wrote the script for the original, and was pretty much horrified - or, at least, very disappointed - with the end result. When the opportunity came to turn the film into a series, he insisted on retaining ultimate creative control over the direction of the show. It was a smart move - he had great instincts, and the show rarely stumbled when he was responsible for the content. (Episodes written by others, on the other hand, didn't always turn out so well.)

If the guy responsible for both the movie and the series says that the series is much better than the original, I don't think it's so strange to agree with him.

Semi-tangential, magician Ricky Jay isn't just a performer; he's also a devoted student of the history of magic. He often talks about how important this historical knoweledge is to understanding his art, and his own place in the greater timeline of that art.

It's a lesson that could probably be applied to most contemporary professions...

(It's probably worth mentioning that Whedon passionately believes that some of the actors in the Buffy movie were playing star ego games. Even if its true, it doesn't validate a Kremlin model of production.)

I think that's a big reason Season 6 went so thoroughly wrong. It wasn't because it was "dark" -- Buffy has always been dark. What made it unbearable is that none of the characters seemed to be going anywhere.

One thing that particularly bugged me was Xander's poorly explained attack of cowardice in the wedding episode. (I guess this is an issue for me because "The Zeppo" is pretty much my favorite episode -- especially Xander's non-dialogue with Cordelia at the end.) If anybody had been tracking the character properly, they would have realized that it made no sense for him to suddenly lose his nerve. They would have found another way to break up his relationship with Anya, or simply eliminated the (not very interesting) subarc about their subsequent conflict and reconciliation. Instead, Whedon and the other writers just said, "Sorry, Nic, Emma, we need the marriage not to happen. Not open to debate." Big mistake.

Mind you, I'm not saying that Whedon should become one of those dweebs at the beck and call of soulless studio/network execs and idiotic focus groups. He has his vision, and he needs to defend it -- it's why we all love him. But he needs to understand that he can't realize that vision alone.

I once heard Jodie Foster say that making a movie is like raising a child. It's something nobody can do alone, and if the whole thing is successful, your project has a life all it's own. Not just true for kids and movies!

"trying to download my brownware"

I assume you mean UPLOAD your brownware. If you like to "download" brownware, keep it to yourself, or write a letter to Savage Love. Don't tell us.

Check out Wil's interview with The Onion AV Club. Lots of good insights on the absurdity of child stardom, and the bizarre love/hate relationship with Star Trek fans.

I think Wil's done a great job moving away from his strange past... hopefully he will soon find a strong movie role that suits his unique personality.

Even better, here is a good interview with Ian MacKaye, from the good folks at the Onion.

http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3517/avfeatu re 3517.html

I dunno... check out the onion AV club for a review that didn't like it for good reasons.

I mean, we should be happy about this. Anime is finally getting reviewed by the same standards of story composition and directing that "real" cinema is. And I've got to agree with them -- the Bebop movie had some great scenes and animation, but it felt like one more episode, and not one of the best. The series ending captured the whole point of the show so well....

Hey - try this:

The Onion AV Club's Films That Time Forgot (FTTF)

Just what you're looking for. (Not that any moderator's going to find this post after the flood that this story has spawned, but anyway...)

I've just been re-reading the print versions of his stuff that I have. I find them to be amazingly relevant in today's world.

...is on the Onion A.V. Club interviews. They interviewed Jeff Lee, a Q*Bert creator, a while back, to see what he was up to.

Here is the article: http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3513/avfeature 3513b.html

Here is a sample excerpt:

O: There was a TV show once, a cartoon.

JL: Right, in Q*Bert's heyday. I would love to see tapes of that. I remember they gave Q*Bert arms so he could have these adventures. He needed arms for some reason.

O: Why didn't you originally give him arms?

JL: For the game, you didn't need 'em! We just needed something that jumped around, and the arms were superfluous.

You raise some interesting points, but five years could be a very short time indeed.

Five could be too little, but 80% of the time, if a work is going to earn money, it'll have done it by 5 years. (I've heard films do 40% of their earnings in 18 months of worldwide screenings, then 50% more in video rental, cable, and broadcast TV across the next 4 years). 15-25 years should be more than enough for 98% of the potential profit to come in. (And its just enough time for kids to grow into adults)

(I think the main motive for media companies to desire 50+ year copyright terms isn't to collect more profits on old works, but to reduce the free competition to their new works)

What I can't do is sell, publish, or distribute these stories.

With the pervasiveness of the internet (it's growth has only started), a major part of our communications with our friends and family takes place over it. Interpersonal communication can now be interpreted as "publication". You send someone an email/recorded story- he'll share with his friends, etc etc. Word gets around. And then lawyers drop by.

It hasn't happened much yet, but it may. We've already seen 11 year-olds C&D for their Pokemon websites...

I would be cool if after the last movie goes onto DVD if Lucas would open source Star Wars, but I think it should be his choice.

In a way, Star Wars (and Star Trek, and Buffy Vampire Slayer, and other huge franchises) are already a little like Open Source, in that dozens of authors have contributed stories that became part of the "canon". The copyright holder still holds the position of gatekeeper, but we've seen that they'll allow quite low quality work to get the stamp of approval, as long as it promises a little money. (Author Whedon has admitted that he can't bear to read the Buffy books he's allowed to be published)

for those who felt the responses lacking, he recently did an interview with the onion's av club. it's quite a bit more insightful than this piece.

The Onion AV Club just had an interview with Shatner. Besides being rather interesting, it's a list of questions that you can avoid reasking.

It appears that many people, even here, fail to understand that the songs you sing are "songs that [you are] performing as an actor" (from the Onion AV Club interview). You seem to have a lot of fun with them, and I can personally say that your cameo on the Fear of Pop album with Ben Folds was the highlight of the record. Do you plan on popping up in more "underground" recordings and continuing to confuse people? I hope so.

levine

The best, from The Washington Post

It's too long, it's too dull, it's too lame.
But the mythic source he seems to have based this episode on is . . . "The McLaughlin Group"

It's like reading the latest dispatch on the Mongolian parliament, as reported by Elizabeth Drew in a really cranky mood.

the master Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) and his young mentee, Anakin Skywalker (played by 'N Sync star Justin Timberlake - no, no, played by Hayden Christensen, who looks like an 'N Sync kid but doesn't have as much talent).

I'll tell you one thing: no star system central, as in, say, MGM, would have built a movie around the dim Americans who haunt this one. In fact, the movie is kind of a laboratory on American vs. British technique. Score: Brits 10, Yanks 0.

even an actual great actor, Samuel L. Jackson, seems ridiculous. He never looks comfortable as the Jedi Mace Windu, in robes and boots, and there's nothing he can do at all with a line like "The Genosians aren't warriors. One Jedi has to be worth a hundred Genosians!"

The 'N Sync kid is even worse. He seems to have wandered in from a Pepsi commercial. No, that would have been Justin Timberlake. Who knows where this dreary boy has been?

Salon.com hates it. The Onion isn't impressed, and Adequacy rips it as well.

Ninja Yoda sounds fun though.

When I read it, it just felt like the entire tone was off. The previous book was kind of the same way, but a bit too far over on the light and cheery side. I read all 5 books for the first time in the span of a couple weeks, so these two books really stood out for me. By the time I was well into Mostly Harmless, everything seemed locked into a downward spiral that couldn't be escaped except with the kind of sudden shift that the book started with. The ending was more a sad goodbye than deliberate destruction.

Adams explained his thoughts on the book's depressing tone in his interview in The Onion:

Another reason is that the last one, Mostly Harmless, is a very bleak book. People have tried to read all sorts of complicated reasons into it, and the reason was that I just had a lousy year. Just for all sorts of personal reasons, from a terrible death in the family to... Every kind of area, whether it was personal or professional, had just gone sour on me, against a background in which I had to write a funny book, which turned out not to be very funny. So I'd quite like to maybe do another Hitchhiker book that sort of perks up the tone again.

Don't underestimate the contribution the adult film industry has contributed to all sorts of video formats. According to Ron Jeremy, "People in porno have always been the leaders in new eras and new things--on tape, on CD. [...] ...Adult films have always been leading the way when it comes to technology."

Just think. If it wasn't for porno, we might not have the DVD format today. Just like porn was the pioneering format for VHS when it was first introduced. Kinda the reverse of the article's direction when you think about it... porn has probably had more of an impact on video formats than video formats have had on the film industry.

There's a long story on Michael Moore's page about how he managed to get his book in print in spite of the best efforts of his publisher.

Basically, his publishing company was either a) gonna reprint the book (at Michael's expense) with more PC language or b) sit on it forever. There was nothing he could do about it, legally speaking. A letter writing campaign by a bunch of librarians (and the promise of considerable bad press) evidently forced Harper Collins to capitulate.

As regards the argument that the publisher was right, and that the book was fundamentally flawed, the onion seems to agree. I am not saying that the Onion would condone censoring it on that basis, merely that they agree with the substantive portions of the publisher's complaints, and that POV deserves to be aired, as well.

I'm think that Michael Moore would agree that it his notoriety that saved his book, and that a less-well-known author would have had no such recourse, since their reamed-being would not have made a splash in the press.

You know, I would have agreed with you maybe a year ago. Who would want to watch a show called Buffy: The Vampire Slayer anyway??

But then one of my friends started raving about how good this series is, and he's the kind of guy who doesn't watch a show just for the good looking women.

Slowly he managed to convince me to watch the show. While season 1 was pretty bad and gave the necessary backstory, season 2 and 3 gave me some of the best hours of TV I've watched.

Angel is one of the best villians I have ever seen in my life. Sure, Darth Vader killed a lot of people and Kevin Spacey in Se7en made you want to throw up, but Angel was cruel, vicious and stabbed you in the heart with every mean word he said. The buildup of Angel as a good guy beforehand is what creates the intense emotional weight of Angel as a bad guy.

Meanwhile Xander, Willow, Oz, and all the regulars have such a great ensemble together. Joss Whedon gives them some great, witty dialogue and you find these people would be people that you'd actually want to be friends with.

This is a show that never sells out for an easy plot. When the show has twists, turns and surprises, it earns it. Even in all the silliness of the episode Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered, where Amy's love spell screws up and makes all the girls go after Xander, this act has repercussions. Willow is upset afterwards for how she was forced to act with Xander, for example.

Hush, an episode where the characters can't speak, nominated for an Emmy.

The Body, an episode where Buffy's mother dies, and the BEST episode ever for portrayal of a death. Many long cuts, slow scenes, very realistic, and no music through the entire show.

Recently, the Buffy Musical was a great achievement, even UPN allowed the show to run 9 minutes longer than the usual 44 minutes for an episode.

The show sounds really cheesy, the ideas really campy, but it never takes itself too seriously and makes fun of itself a lot. Throws in some excellently written emotional plotlines and earns the audiences' feelings. Even actors who want to get on the show usually have to convince their Agents. "You want to be on Buffy the WHAT??"

And the spin-off is quality. Angel can be described as the best stuff on TV you're not watching.

If you're not convinced, check out Buffy creator/writer/producer/director/superhero Joss Whedon's interview on The Onion and you can see how intense and visonary this guy is.

Well it's Katz, I don't read the article, and after the little I did read, trashing it is doing it a favor. Once he said it was funny, I know that I wasn't missing out on anything. "Not Another Teen Movie" is just another Scary Movie. You're talkin to the guy who liked Tomb Raider. I know a pervert wannabe hacker who makes his own Angelina Jolie porn, and he didn't like Tomb Raider.

So it refers to itself all the time? I think he just means referential.

If you were in the habit of reading movie reviews, instead of just browsing through this one because it happened to be on Slashdot, you would know that the term "self-referential" means that it depends on gags that refer to the genre itself, not the movie itself. For an example I refer you to The Onion's movie reviews, where you will find that pretty much every cartoon movie's review uses the term (at least Shrek and Monsters, Inc.). Granted, the term is confusing, but so are terms like "functional computer language" or "operating system kernel" if you don't already know what the writer is talking about. Maybe instead of automatically assuming that you're smarter than the writer, you should start by assuming that you're the ignorant one, because in this case it's true.

I wish I could say that I was boycotting record companies for their action against Napster, or for some other big moral reason, but I can't. I simply haven't heard anything new that interests me.

When it was around, I found myself reading every music review I could get my hands on. Occassionaly, I'd read a review from The Onion's AV Club that got me excited about some band I've never heard of. I'd run over to Napster, and get the full album. Other people must have been doing the same thing, because the tracks were fairly rare at first, then became easier and easier to find, and the downloads from my own system increased over a week's time.

Some didn't interest me, so I deleted them (hard drive space is still at a premium.) Others, I listened to all the time. I had a general rule of thumb - if I was still listening after 2 weeks, then I would buy the CD. Not to directly support the artist, who gets a fraction of the sale, but in a way to vote, to say to the record companies that this band, who may be currently obscure, is a good band, should get promoted, and should get more backing for the next album. Sure, the current system may suck, but sometimes this is the only way to ensure another album.

Of course, now that Napster is down, I have a hard time trying out new stuff. I know there are other services, but I haven't had time to try them out. Net result - the record companies aren't getting my money, simply because I'm not willing anymore to buy a CD that I'm not sure is addictive.

...so I'll say KRS-One. I'd assume that Alanis Morisette's also big into Napster, but KRS-One you'd actually have a decent shot at snagging. He may be on tour supporting his new album, but he's also a bit of a veteran of the college speaking circuit. Very pro-Napster as well. He'd be an interesting one to talk to: along with being a musician, he worked A&R for Warner Bros. records.