Slashdot Mirror
Shatner to Record Another Album
s20451 writes "Slashdotters may remember Canadian actor William Shatner from such hit TV shows as T. J. Hooker and Rescue 911; he was also known to dabble in science fiction. Shatner released an album, The Transformed Man, in 1968. Intending the album to be taken seriously, it is now held up as one of the campiest recordings of all time, including the worst Beatles cover ever produced. Now a new album is in the works, featuring joint work with Ben Folds, Henry Rollins, and Brad Paisley. More on Ananova."
I watched this a while back, when the Fellowship movie came out. Call me crazy (and yeah, you will by the time I'm done here), but I actually find that video kind of charming in its own stupid, campy way.
I mean, it's bad -- really terrible -- anyone talking about Jackson's interpretation of LotR making Tolkien roll over in his grave really ought to have a gander at this.
But I find a kind of endearing naivete in the way this is put together... "Let's have Leonard Nimoy sing a song about Bilbo Baggins, and put him in a junkyard with a bunch of teenaged girls... and here at the part where he's describing all these battles and adventures, let's just have the kids throw some crap up in the air. That's kind of like re-enacting a battle. Here, take this piece of plastic junk, that looks like a ring... have Leonard toss that around awhile. Yeah, yeah."
And then someone put money into it (granted, not much). And produced it. And shot it. And put it on the air.
If they made something like this today (shudder), it would be awash in irony and campy winks to the audience. I think whomever made this genuinely thought it would be entertaining as presented... which, again, is so innocent I think it's great.
The entertainment media we get these days is, for the most part, slickly produced and well-budgeted, maybe even well-written if you're lucky. This dippy little movie is none of these and still gives it all it's got.
Yeah, I know, I'm weird.
The actors in Incubo didn't actually know Esperanto... they just memorized the dialog by sound. That is, apparently, why it sounds so terrible. Allegedly the director wanted a language that would sound foreign to all people (apparently considering the population of fluent esperantists to be negligible :-) and hence chose Esperanto. The only other Esperanto film reference I know is that the announcements in Gattaca are supposedly in Esperanto, although I haven't re-watched the film to verify that.