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"Daniel Frank is a very funny guy with a funny weblog." --- Mark Evanier.

Once I bagged six tigers

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Thursday, November 24, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:59 PM

So I was watching Miracle on 34th Street or fast-forwarding to the highlights since NBC cut the film to fit it in two hours. Now I'm wondering, what's the subtext behind the prosecuting DA's Jewish-looking assistant?

Last year, I explained why this version works and the two remakes don't.

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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:29 AM

Via Cartoon Brew, Jasper and the Watermelons.

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Monday, November 21, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:32 AM

Thanks to this post by Evan Dorkin, I learn about the genre of Bruce-ploitation (many examples of which can be found here) and the movie The Dragon Lives Again featuring Bruce Lee in the Underworld fighting James Bond, Clint Eastwood, Dracula, Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman, the Exorcist and Emmanuelle (yes, of the soft porn film series). Helping Lee are the One-Armed Swordsman, Caine from Kung Fu, and Popeye (yes, the sailor man). The ineveitable Film Threat review is here.

UPDATE: Commenter Marty McKee notes that the Godfather is also part of the villain team.

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Sunday, November 20, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:13 AM

The Advantages of this Wonderful Age We Live In: When SNL does a sketch where Vincent Price hosts a Thanksgiving Variety Show in 1958 (and how did Robin Jones get screwed out of that gig?) and I say to myself "Hey, Vincent Price wasn't a 'Master of Horror' in 1958", I can confirm that.

UPDATE: Now they have Clark Gable plugging The Misfits in 1958!

UPDATE 2: Hey, those iPods just keep getting smaller and smaller. That's crazy!

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Friday, November 18, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:15 PM

Faced with cancellation and the possibility that the episodes they're filming won't even air, an upcoming episode of Arrested Development gets so self-referential that it becomes a singularity. Variety story here.

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Monday, November 14, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:48 PM

Urban Outfitters is selling the tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. One's natural reaction is "That just totally goes against everything the special was trying to say. I can't believe the cynicism behind this. Only twenty-four bucks though and it looks really nice."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:41 PM

The on-again, off-again Graduate psuedo-sequel is, according to trailers, is coming: "This Hoiliday Season". A early-winter trailer with a release date of "Coming Soon" or "This Hoiliday Season" is, of course, code for January.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:21 PM

I apologize for the sparse posting but I was moving into my new digs Thursday.
A move made more difficult by DirecTV which is apparently trying to demonstrate that their service can be as crummy as cable's (Worse in some ways since DirecTV only gives you 8-12 or 1-5 installation windows whereas Comcast gives you several three-hour windows).

Last time I moved, I had trouble with mail forwarding because my brother/roommate and I were moving to seperate locations and at different times. This time the confusion was that I unreasonably did not want my mail forwarding requested for November 10th to start before November 10th.

Some things I learned at the Wal-mart (a trip necessitated by the fact that Target only carries fancy $20 designer kitchen trash cans):

The name of the Wal-mart brand Dr. Pepper knockoff is Dr. Thunder. Amazingly, they sell a diet version of that beverage.
The George Foreman grill has a super advanced version with an on/off button (as opposed to plugging and unplugging it), a timer, a temperature control, and a preheating countdown doohickey. I'm keeping an eye open for a sale.
There's a nifty lazy-Susan-like doohickey for shopping bags. You load items into a plastic bag and turn the doohickey to get to the next empty shopping bag.
Vacuum cleaner technology has also vastly improved since I last bought a vacuum cleaner ten years ago.

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Monday, November 07, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:54 PM

Anyone interested has probably seen it but here's Thomas Haden Church as the Sandman (hat tip to the Howling Curmudgeons). The part I liked best was that they kept the striped shirt.

This reminds me that on Thursday when I was driving over to sign the lease to my new apartment that I saw a Daily Bugle truck making a left turn northeastward at Overland and Culver (which is where the Sony Studio is at).

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:25 PM

My brother posting on grocery shopping has noticed, as I have, the absence lately of 99-cent two-liter soda specials. Yet the soda companies have been reporting record profits lately. We need a tax on these excess profits to force Big Soda to ease the burden on consumers of these record soda prices.

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Thursday, November 03, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:46 PM

Some plot details of the Aaron Sorkin behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-esque-show.

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Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:49 PM

From Slate: An editor of the Oxford English Dictionary shows that people who complain about the use of the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" are literally talking out of their asses.

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