Hollywood, leave the '80s cartoons alone

Because of the success of Transformers, movie studios have moved on from filming mediocre features based on sitcoms (Bewitched, The Honeymooners) to making equally mediocre projects based on cartoons from the '80s, a rather lousy era for animation (except for Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, I can't think of an '80s cartoon that ever approached the caliber of later shows like The Simpsons or Batman: The Animated Series). New Regency wants to launch its own Transformers-like franchise with Voltron, while Italian Job remake co-stars Mark Wahlberg and Jason Statham are rumored to be reuniting for a G.I. Joe film. Tobey Maguire's production company just bought the film rights to Robotech, the Roots of mecha cartoons (trying to squeeze Robotech into a two-and-a-half-hour live-action feature would be like trying to make a two-and-a-half-hour film out of, well, Roots). News items about long-delayed Thundercats and He-Man adaptations continue to haunt viewers like me who grew up watching those cartoons but don't think they've aged well--or would make for great live-action films either.

The He-Man franchise already blew it once with Cannon Films' 1987 Dolph Lundgren vehicle Masters of the Universe. The Mattel higher-ups expressed their shame about releasing toys that contain dangerous amounts of lead. If only they were equally apologetic about the Masters of the Universe movie, which isn't as poisonous but can induce seizures in viewers who are unable to sit through a Cannon Film, especially one that features so many flashy and annoying laser ray effects.

Hollywood needs to stop turning to the RetroJunk site for movie ideas. If there's one animated series that I'd like to see adapted to film--hell, I'd just be glad to see it return in any form other than comics--it'd be the lesser-known Megas XLR (2004-05), a too-short-lived Cartoon Network giant robot spoof that was sharper and more entertaining than the '80s cartoons it parodied. (Titmouse, the studio that created Megas, is currently busy producing Adult Swim's delightfully gory Metalocalypse.)

Megas is the story of Coop Cooplowski, a Jersey schlub who stumbles upon the future's most coveted superweapon--a giant robot that its time-traveling female pilot, Kiva, hid in Earth's past from extraterrestrial baddies. A live-action Megas movie would be the perfect vehicle for Tyler Labine, a scene-stealing veteran of good but short-lived shows like Dead Last, Kevin Hill and Invasion (hopefully, Labine's much-buzzed-about Reaper won't join that list). Labine was born to play Coop, and he even sounds like David DeLuise (Dom's son), who voiced the lazy but bright gearhead on the cartoon. Megas' Kevin Smith-meets-Robotech premise has tons of potential as a live-action feature (unless any one of the filmmaking geniuses listed in the A.V. Club's "10 Directors You Didn't Know You Hated" article gets his mitts on Megas--then the movie's really in trouble), and unlike the overlong, overstuffed Transformers, it wouldn't take over an hour for the lead robot to finally appear.

Around the Internets: 09/04/07

- G4's Attack of the Show pokes fun at Miss Teen South Carolina's concern for us U.S. Americans and our map shortage by inviting viewers to send their own maps to the Maps for Us site to help South Africa, the U.S., the Iraq and the Asian countries.

- Former Cheers writer Ken Levine and his readers rant about lousy movie theater behavior. My solutions to this never-ending problem of annoying theatergoers: either go during a matinee showing on a weekday afternoon (barely anybody shows up) or wait for the movie to come out on Netflix. Simple as that. As one commenter on Levine's blog says, "Thank goodness for Netflix."



- "The Batmobile: What a Pain in the Ass": The Dave's Long Box blog wonders how Batman has managed to keep a low profile all these years despite driving around in a car that attracts attention wherever it goes.

"Passin' Me By"

They don't make rap videos like this anymore:



The rap video honeys were classier and a lot better looking back then. The Pharcyde's signature jam--the ultimate "shy guy anthem," as one YouTube commenter calls it--is one of my favorite songs. It's also a great summer song--that is if your summers are often on the angsty side (it was released as a single in March 1993, but was all over the music video channels during the spring and summer). The sample of Quincy Jones' cover of "Summer in the City" lends "Passin' Me By" that summery vibe.

"The only lying I would do is in the bed with you."

Recappin' and yappin'

Because of the Judd Apatow media empire's success with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and this summer's Knocked Up, Alan Sepinwall has been recapping episodes of Apatow's earlier work, the cult favorite Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000), all summer long on his What's Alan Watching? blog. Sepinwall ought to compile his insightful recaps into a book--maybe a Freaks and Geeks Compendium like that Star Trek Compendium tome I bought when I was a kid and was into Star Trek reruns. I recommend checking out Alan's recaps, as well as the interesting fan discussions in the comments section. If you're a Freaks and Geeks fan like I am, you probably already have read two or three of the recaps.

The recaps have made me want to dust off my limited edition Freaks and Geeks yearbook box set and revisit some of the eps, especially one of my personal favorites that Alan has recapped, "Girlfriends and Boyfriends," which features some great non-verbal acting by Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley. The scene between them at the end of "Girlfriends and Boyfriends," in which Lindsay comes home from her bizarre Styx-scored evening with Nick and watches her brother Sam get stuck on the phone with Cindy Sanders, who's prattling on and on about the jock she's crushing on, is my favorite Lindsay/Sam moment, as well as one of my favorite scenes in the whole series. The way Lindsay and Sam interact in this scene is a lot like how I interact with my older sister.

Alan's posts have even made me want to watch the last three or four eps, including the series finale, "Discos and Dragons," all eps I never saw because I was so bummed about the show's cancellation.

Simpson Tide

SoundtrackNet has posted an early review of Hans Zimmer's Simpsons Movie score. The reviewer says the score is one of the year's most enjoyable ones. Though I can't wait to hear Danny Elfman's opening theme reinterpreted by an orchestra much bigger than the one that performs the music on the show, it's a bit disappointing that TV show score veteran Alf Clausen, the series' clever musical director, got passed over for the Crimson Tide composer, whom producer James L. Brooks has relied on for his film projects. (Some of the NoHomers.net fans are especially pissed.)

Maclean's staff writer and blogger Jaime J. Weinman wonders if there's any validity to the notion that a composer with more film experience like Zimmer is better suited for The Simpsons Movie than Clausen, who's worked more often for TV:

Is it right to assume that a feature film needs someone with "feature experience"? With movies based on TV shows, the truth may be the other way around. Sometimes movie composers can't match the style of the original series; the movie version of Mission: Impossible wrecked the famous theme song by arranging it in the wrong time signature. How Zimmer will do on the Simpsons movie remains to be seen, but his music may not sound Simpsons-esque, because Clausen's music has already defined what's right for the characters and the setting.

But The Simpsons Movie has a problem that most movies don't: its characters are in syndication several times a day. The use of a big-name movie composer may be a way of giving audiences something they can't get for free in syndication.

Weinman is referring to U2 members Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton and their much-maligned end credits version of Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible theme in a 4/4 beat instead of Schifrin's original 5/4, not Danny Elfman's version of the theme, which was faithful to the original. Elfman's score is one of the best scores from a feature film based on a TV show because he paid tribute to Schifrin's jazzy music, which was like a sixth character on the old show (Elfman even brought back Schifrin's bongoes), and he did so without sacrificing his own style.

One fact about Zimmer that Weinman overlooked is that in 2000, Zimmer wrote the score to the extreme sports-ish sequel Mission: Impossible 2. Unlike Elfman, Zimmer mangled Schifrin's timeless theme in a nu metal version that's aged badly, one of the few missteps in Zimmer's career. I can't hear Zimmer's nu metal Mission: Impossible 2 theme without thinking of the "Extreme!" dorks from Harold & Kumar.

Zimmer may have wrecked the Mission: Impossible theme seven years ago, but I think it's unlikely that he's bungled this new assignment. Unlike all those Comic Book Guys out there who have already formed their opinions on the Simpsons fan forums without hearing a single note of the score, I'm a wait-and-see guy (or rather, wait-and-hear guy), so I'll say what I think of this score after I see the movie. The fact that Zimmer wrote a large-scale choral rendition of Homer's "Spider-Pig" theme may be a sign that he gets The Simpsons.