Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:30 PM

Someone emailed Mark Evanier complaining that the Bob Hope retrospective makes it look like his legacy was hosting Oscars. I respectfully disagree.

1. The Academy had three choices: retrospective of Hope Oscar moments, retrospective of Hope movies, and a combination of the first two. Any would have been a legitimate choice
2. Arguably the combination that the gentlemen wanted would have either been really long or would have given short shift to something. Personally I preferred just getting Oscar highlights.
3. Tom Hanks listed the accomplishments of Bob Hope before the retrospective.
4. I wonder if Universal (now part of the GE/NBC empire) was giving the Academy and ABC trouble about securing film rights to clips of the Hope library (of which they own most of the best work). It would be short-sighted of them but then like I once discussed here, it was short-sighted of them not to get the best of Hope on TV after he died.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:12 PM

If you're going to have all winners on stage at the same time, would it kill you to have them close out the show by singing "There's No Business Like Show Business"?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:57 PM

Mark Evanier suggests that the reason they put Best Actor after Best Director (normally the other way around) wasbecause there's more suspense on Best Actor and it might keep East-Coasters tuned in.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:56 PM

With three years in a row, it's now official: a new cliche way to get an Oscar is for a hot actress to put on ugly make-up.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:54 PM

Last year, when Adrian Brody pulled his kissing stunt, some wag suggested that this year's Best Actress nominee should do the same thing in revenge and demanded that Miramax get to work on a Holocaust-themed Oscar vehicle starring Bea Arthur.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:20 PM

Jack Black and Will Ferrell for next year's host!!!!1!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:03 PM

Lord of the Rings gets Best Editing? The original cut must have been 12 hours long.

Maybe he gets credit for that musical-chairs-esque, fool-people-into-thinking-it's-over, multiple endings thing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:40 PM

I haven't seen Mystic River but judging from the clip, if Sean Penn doesn't win an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor, he should win one for Most Performance.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:23 PM

When a Best Picture nominee starts sweeping minor awards like Lord of the Rings has, that means it's gonna win Best Picture. Except for the times when it doesn't.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:19 PM

Every year the presenter of Oscar for Make-Up doesn't do the Milton Berle "Make-Up!" joke and every year I'm disappointed. Seriously, every year.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:17 PM

Interesting that the Blake Edwards tribute included clips from Skin Deep and Switch. I wonder if it's more insulting to include them and imply that those films are equivalent to his greater work or not include them and imply that his last great work was Victor/Victoria.

The slapstick thing was funny even if the pre-film establishing shot of Edwards in a wheelchair to set it up was a little akward.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:36 PM

"Ben, it's their moment." --- I wish someone had given similar advice to Robin Williams.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:29 PM

How the famous joke would go in an alternate universe where Bob Hope won many Oscars: "Hey, welcome to Oscar Night or as it's known at my house, Hanukah."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:10 PM

Robin Williams told a freedom fries joke--- does ABC have the jokes on a one-year delay?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:59 PM

"There is no shame in seeking counseling...ya big crybabies."

"My fellow nominees are all spectacular and I want to work with all of you in a movie." I have just the screenplay; it's a buddy heist film set in the future.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:43 PM

I thought Billy Crystal said at some point that he was never going to the medley of songs about Best Picture nominees. And by "thought", I mean "hoped".
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:39 PM

One could argue that there's a subtle slam in Michael Moore yelling at the good guys in Lord of the Rings.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:30 PM

My first Oscar prediction for the night: Billy Bush will not be doing the ABC Oscar pre-show next year.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:54 PM

In discussions of Passion, you may have heard the name of Anne Catherine Emmerich, the nun whose book is as much a source of the movie as the Gospels. Here is the work in question. This portion (Section 131) has the "Jews throwing Jesus off a bridge" scene which appears in the film but not in the Gospels.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:47 PM

I don't know what this proves but a couple of days ago, I received an invitation from a Jewish group that has my email address to come see The Passion of the Christ for a mere five bucks and take part in a discussion afterwards. About several hours later, the event was cancelled. I don't know if the reason was the movie is doing so well that the theater decided not to sell discounted tickets or the organizers realized after reading enough reviews that perhaps this movie was not the best starting point for an interfaith discussion.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:41 PM

Fun Time Rainy Day Activity: Read the King James translation of the Book of John and count how many times the phrase "The Jews" is used and in what context.

Having only read the "Good News Bible" translation of the Gospels, it shocked the hell out of me.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:38 PM

Many critics when complaining of the anti-Semitism of The Passion of the Christ give Gibson the benefit of the doubt as to whether this anti-Semitism was intentional. Christopher Hitchens writes that perhaps this benefit is undeserved.

Particularly worrying to Hitchens is Mel Gibson's answer in a Reader's Digest interview on whether he thinks the Holocaust happened. David Bernstein tells why that answer is troubling.

Also of interest is the fact that Gibson did not cut the "His blood be on us and our children" line. He just removed the English subtitle. Whether international distributers will show similar judgement remains to be seen.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:28 PM

Ted Frank writes in overlawyered about IBM's victory in a case where they were being sued for so-called "systemic chemical poisoning." In the case, this exchange occurred:

An IBM witness testified that the trichloroethylene(TCE) that plaintiffs blamed for "system chemical poisoning" was frequently used as an anesthetic for surgery. Plaintiffs tried to turn that around: "Hawes asked Whysner if putting a patient to sleep using TCE would have an effect on the entire system, a systemic effect. 'Yes,' Whysner agreed."

I picture Hawes facing the jury box during most of that question and turning around dramatically to face the witness at the words "systemic effect". The question elicits a gasp and several walla-wallas from the folks watching the trial.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:33 AM

Conspiracy theory found in the comments of a Reason Hit & Run item on Clear Channel ditching Howard Stern:

Mo writes:
Before you laud XM, lets remember CC has a hefty investment in that.
This makes [me] want to break out my tinfoil hat. Suppose CC is getting the "interesting" stuff off of the free airwaves and putting it on XM so that people will pay for it?

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:19 PM

Record numbers of Chinese folk will have access to the Oscar broadcast (story here). I guess this means the worldwide audience will increase from one billion viewers to one billion viewers.

The Reuters story contains what reads as almost a parody of all-viewpoints "balanced" journalism:

During the live airing of the U.S. Super Bowl earlier this month, state television let through the fleeting image of a man blocking a Beijing tank column, a politically sensitive photo that came to symbolize the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.

The Chinese government has labeled the protests a counter-revolutionary rebellion aimed at toppling the Communist Party and says using troops to end it was justified.

Glad we have the Chinese government's point-of-view of why they murdered students.


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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:50 PM

Jacob Levy suggests that Ralph Nader may get more press scrutiny this election for stuff like shaking down college students six to ten bucks at a time (as detailed in this article).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:02 AM

The website of the guy bringing the complaint against John Edward (that I talked about here yesterday).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:54 PM

Coming to a theater near you: Smokey and the Bandit 4000. An interview with the writer-director Tim McLaughlan here. He shows a strong familiarity with the three other flicks of the franchise. Also during the discussion over whether space kills a franchise, he corrects the interviewer 's claim that Happy Days went to space (it, of course, travelled through time). Finally, after asking if Snowman will be in it and if Burt is going to do a cameo, there's this exchange:

O: What about Frog?

Tim: That’s a part of the script I’m not inclined to discuss at this current time.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:42 PM

Consumer Affairs in Victoria Australia is examining a complaint that John Edward does not talk to the dead. (article here, thanks to Jeff Jarvis). Edward's Australian rep says that Edward would have been exposed if he were a fake. Like he was exposed here and here and here and here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:59 PM

"No one's happier or more well-adjusted than a stand-up comedian."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:04 AM

Speaking of classic pictures on DVD, Universal just released an Abbott & Costello set. The extras are non-existent other than you're getting eight movies for at most twenty-five bucks (and supposedly cleaned-up prints according to the reviews). The plan is for Universal to release all the Abbott & Costello movies they own in this manner. They're doing this for other franchises (indeed, calling them Franchise Collections) such as Ma & Pa Kettle and the Airport series.

Plus Universal will be doing something similar (although with a few more extras) for their monster movies: a set each for Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man or get a all three sets in one package. Coming out in May just in time for Van Helsing.

A couple of notes on these monster sets:

1. Frankenstein fans will have to buy the Wolf Man set to find out what happens when Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (as I noted once, not a hell of a lot.)
2. Abbot & Costello Meets Frankenstein is also not included even though, as this site notes, it's in continuity.
3. I've asked this before (twice in fact) and I'll ask again: how did the Universal monsters become the only franchise making movies during World War II not to fight Nazis?

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:28 AM

The Marx Brothers DVD set is listed on Amazon; more importantly, a fan was nice enough to list the extras. We've got documentaries, commentaries during two of the pictures, and a couple of Robert Benchley shorts amongst other stuff.

There's also an excerpt from a Hy Gardner interview Groucho did in 1961. Probably they're just going to show him telling the anecdote where the Brothers ended up naked in Irving Thalberg's office; I'd like to see the whole interview where he bad mouths Frank Sinatra and Lenny Bruce (go here and search for Groucho).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:06 AM

Grease 2 is the word, is the word: The Ultimate Grease 2 Fansite .
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:53 AM

Now the Sims can play SimCity! Article here and game here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:39 AM

Lee College in Houston is hoping to set the world record for the greatest number of people wearing Groucho glasses (article here).

Is this really the sort of thing that comes up in bar bets?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:20 PM

First, Outkast offended Native Americans, now Polaroid. Polaroid's support page is telling folks that they should not "shake it like a Polaroid picture" (Search on Outkast if they changed the link on me).

No word yet on Frigidaire's thoughts of whether ice cold really is cooler than being cool.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:09 PM

The press release for the DVD set of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon lists Dr. Magneto amongst the villains Spidey will be fighting. A Usenet poster provides this clarification:

This 'Dr. Magneto' was certainly not the mutant messiah and the X-Men's greatest foe, rather a man with a MAGNETIC WATCH.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:45 AM

Ken and Barbie have broken up (article here). The Mattell spokesman "hints that the separation may be partially due to Ken's reluctance to getting married"; I suspect that Earring Magic Ken maybe wasn't a blooper.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:16 AM

A friend asked me recently what was going on with the SCTV DVD release. I double-checked an article I linked to in August and found that the first set was supposed to have come out in January. Possibly the music clearance issue was thornier than they thought.

Now an actual release date has been announced, specifically June 8th. It's from the good folks of Shout! Factory who did the excellent You Bet Your Life - The Lost Episodes DVD set.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:34 PM

Simpsons movie news: This news is different than your average Simpsons movie news which usually consists of someone saying "Yeah, they'll probably be a movie, I guess"; numerous examples of which can be found here. In this case, they're actually paying people to write the movie and one of the writers says they actually have an idea. (thanks to Beau for the second link).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:56 PM

Reason's Hit & Run notices something that had been bothering me about coverage of Tower Record's bankruptcy filing: Tower which used to be the evil chain driving under local record stores is now a "traditional record store [...] under siege from big-box and electronics stores as well as from the growing availability of music online."

Also from Reason just in time for Comcast's bid on Disney is an article which debunks the hysterical claims of media consolidation.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:45 PM

The comedy team of McCall and Brill recollect bombing on the Ed Sullivan Show the day the Beatles debuted (article may require registration). In keeping with Lileks' "Everything is Connected to Star Trek" theory, Charlie Brill played the role of the disguised Klingon in "The Trouble with Tribbles".

The article also indicates that the DVD of that episode replaces a Paul Dooley cigarette ad with a more PC Pilsbury ad. Presumably when junk food gets the cigarette treatment, the Pilsbury ad will be replaced with something else.

I've always half suspected that if I had been alive when the Beatles had debuted, I'd be the one checking his watch wondering when the hell Frank Gorshin was going to appear.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:57 PM

A friend forwarded this ebay auction of a young lady offering to pretend to be a long-distance girlfriend. Since the auction was pulled, I assumed it was either a hoax or that ebay disapproved. I have since been sent a Fox News article about another young lady who has successfully done the same thing. Just goes to show what happens when you ASS-U-ME: you make a reasonable inference based on past behavior.

The young lady has her own web site, seemingly making it easy for someone to google her if someone actually tries to use this ruse. The two folks who have won her auction insist that they were just messing around and did it as a gag.

The rules of no live contact and "by winning this auction, I do not become your girlfriend … this is only pretend" suggests that falling in love is not part of the deal.

Classic Captain Spaulding: Here was my reaction to a similar set-up on Craig's List last August, including what to do with the film rights.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:39 PM

The Making of Casablanca also discusses the version of the film released in Germany in 1952; it reads like a MAD magazine article or a Carol Burnett sketch:

The Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo, played by Paul Henreid, became a Norwegian physicist named Vikto Larsen who was pursued by some shadowy "international police force" because he invented delta rays. Although Conrad Veidt was still listed in the credits, his Major Strasser vanished into thin air before ever landing in Casablanca, as did his entourage of officers and any reference to the Third Reich.

The film was not properly redubbed in Germany until 1975.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:31 PM

Speaking of Jack Benny and Casablanca, this page (scroll to the bottom) suggests that "Play it again, Sam" (which is, of course, not in the film) may have originated from the Jack Benny parody of the movie.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:29 PM

The chapter of The Making of Casablanca about the advertising and publicity for the movie features an image of the pressbook and its suggested stories for the local papers. One such story claims that Jack Benny is an extra in the movie; my natural reactions was "What what what what what what what what what what?" The image does not contain the whole article and the book makes no mention of the story or Mr. Benny at all.

An Internet search turns up this gentleman who claims to have found Benny's appearance. I have looked at the man he's talking about on DVD and believe he's mistaken. Also neither of the commentary tracks refer to Jack Benny during those seventeen seconds.

I suspect that if one of the top radio stars of the Golden Age of Radio was in one of the best movies in all time, I'd find some reference to it somewhere.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:23 PM

According to the LA Times, the Brockman Building, the building which Harold Lloyd climbed and dangled from a clock in Safety Last, is being converted to condos. So you can live there! Presumably the condo next to the clock itself is the most expensive.

I discussed how they did the stunt here and here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:13 AM

Dan Weintraub of California Insider reports on a study by the Los Angeles Economic Development Commission that says Wal-Mart's entry into Southern California would have a huge net gain for the economy. Why does the study not reach the usual two-jobs-lost-for-every-one-gained conclusion? Because it takes into effect that people will take the money they saved on groceries and spend it on other things, creating new jobs in those areas exceeding the jobs lost in the grocery biz and the jobs lost due to lower wages in the grocery biz.

The study is funded by Wal-Mart and should thus be taken with a grain of salt; however I have to wonder why it's the first study to take spending grocery savings into account and speculate that perhaps other studies have their own ideological axes to grind.

This LA Times editorial (login:cptspaulding/cptspaulding) discusses an upcoming vote on an LA ordinance to ban Wal-Mart, especially in areas marked for redevelopment and revitalization. The same folks behind the ban usually complain that these areas don't have access to cheap groceries. And you have the specter of the economic development bureaucracy fighting against economic development.

The author notes that all this ban will do is just drive Wal-Mart and its sales to outside city limits areas thus depriving the city of sales tax revenue. She does not take into account the possibility of a state-wide ban. This possibility is only easily dismissed because Schwarzenegger is governor (or, more accurately, because Davis or Bustamante isn't governor).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:44 AM

Google is available in Mock Swedish or, for my mock-Swedish-speaking audience, Google-a ees efeeeleble-a een-a muck Sveedeesh, Bork Bork Bork! (Thanks to the Critical I).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:34 AM

From the Department of WOO-HOO!: Warner Brothers has announced they'll be releasing a boxed set of all the Marx Brothers movies they own (basically everything after and including A Night at the Opera) on May 4th. These films will be getting the full Warner classic movie DVD treatment with restored prints, documentaries and contemporary cartoons and short subjects (with presumably an introduction from Leonard Maltin explaining that movies used to be shown with cartoons and short subjects). The price of sixty smackers for seven movies is a bargain even if you pay the full retail price.

UPDATE: Although the set will be called the Marx Brothers Collection, it should not be confused with this Marx Brothers Collection which is public domain footage and, according to reviews, unplayable DVD's.

UPDATE 2: Of course, Mark Evanier scooped me on this.
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