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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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Friday, July 28, 2006

Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:06 AM

I was excited when I heard there was a movie coming out called Crank but I watched the trailer six times and I don't see J. Arthur Crank anywhere in it. Same damn thing happened to me several years ago when I went to see Fargo.

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Thursday, July 27, 2006

Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:35 AM

Box art and feature listing for the Police Squad DVD (which is, without exaggeration, the greatest television show in the history of television). Thankfully, unlike the Airplane DVD, we're spared Leslie Nielsen mugging on the cover.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:27 AM

San Diego featured two animatic clips of the Simpsons movie and, of course, they're now on YouTube. Clip 1 and Clip 2. I think I can say, without exaggeration, that this will be the greatest movie in the history of cinema.

UPDATE: The clips were dropped but I found two new links and updated. Enjoy while you can.

UPDATE 2: ...And those clips were dropped because how dare people be excited about a movie before they're told to. The Simpsons Channel is currently hosting the clips.

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Monday, July 17, 2006

Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:48 PM

Via Cowan, a man who worked for GM/Hughes debunks the electric car movie. What always confused me about electric car advocates is "Where do they think the electricity comes from?"

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:44 PM

I always thought the lyrics of "Has anybody seen my gal" were

Five foot two, eyes of blue,
Oh, what those two eyes could do

It's apparently "Oh, what those five feet could do", a vaguely dirty lyric suggesting I may have heard an expurgated version of the song.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:38 PM

Someone who sat through Little Man found three more jokes lifted from the cartoon. The first two (and the one I noted) are arguably obvious jokes in a midget-disguised-as-a-baby plot. But the third, the lights-out-click joke, is clearly theft. No reference to the cartoon's authors is in the credits, which argues theft over homage.

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Monday, July 10, 2006

Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:19 PM

Whoopi Goldberg ruins the marginally-entertaining Universal tour:

Goldberg, who shows up in virtual form at one of Disney's California Adventure attractions, appears in several pre-taped segments here. She reminds riders that she is an Oscar winner and that she made her first movie, "The Color Purple," on the Universal backlot. Still, given the wildly erratic nature of her film career since that debut, she seems an odd choice for a tour celebrating the glory of Hollywood. Out-of-towners may find themselves researching if they will be stalked by another "Whoopi" at SeaWorld or Legoland.

And some of her shtick, such as when she advises filmmakers that the studio needs "less movies with giant monkeys, more movies with me," is not terribly inspired. The "Psycho" house gets more laughs than she does.

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Friday, July 07, 2006

Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:13 PM

Suppose there's a movie whose plot is exactly the same as a Looney Tunes cartoon albeit with more breast-feeding and gay panic jokes. And suppose that movie features a scene that's actually in the cartoon ("baby" shaving with an electric razor while smoking a stogie). Is that scene homage or theft?

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:07 PM

Via Evanier, a 1981 McDonald's commercial starring the great Frank Nelson. The commercial is interesting for two reasons:

It demonstrates that Frank Nelson could make reading the telephone book funny, which is kind of what he's doing here.
It features character who is clearly designed to evoke Jack Benny (money-grubbing, drives an old car) but just different enough from Benny to make the Benny estate lawyers happy.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:06 PM

I'm once again forced to apologize for the lack of posting with the excuse of a combination of an automobile accident and a vist to grandma with her circa-1992 technology.

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