5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (10/31/2012): Tron: Uprising, Motorcity, Kaijudo, Ultimate Spider-Man and Regular Show

Motorcity, Michigan's hottest Halloween costume of 2162 is the Slutty Eco-Terrorist.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

One of Batman: The Animated Series' best episodes was the emotional "Robin's Reckoning" two-parter. It used Robin's origin story to delve into why Batman adheres to a code of never killing criminals (unless he's directed and partially written by Tim Burton) and to present a great dramatic dilemma: should such a code be broken when the man who ruined your life resurfaces to ruin more lives?

The two-part "Scars" episode is the Tron: Uprising equivalent of "Robin's Reckoning," except instead of Batman attempting to stop Robin from killing the gangster who murdered his family, it's Beck who's trying to keep his mentor Tron from going too far in his pursuit of Dyson (John Glover), the turncoat soldier who Tron vaguely referred to in "Identity" as the reason for his trust issues (I originally thought the former ally Tron was referring to in that episode was Clu, who makes his first series appearance here since the premiere episode and is voiced by Fred Tatasciore instead of Jeff Bridges). And instead of a compelling protagonist like the B:TAS reimagining of Batman, "Scars" is stuck with the less compelling Beck, whose dullness as a hero sheds light on the fundamental problem with the Tron franchise: so many of its characters, who are nothing more than pixels in a hard drive, are about as deep as, well, pixels in a hard drive.

(Photo source: What.Jane.Says)

However, Tron: Uprising has been making an effort to bring depth to the character who was previously the dullest element of the franchise: Tron himself. Most of the fun of part 1 of "Scars" comes from watching this previously noble hero lose his cool and badly hide how mentally and physically damaged he has been from both Dyson's betrayal and Clu's maiming of him. At the end of part 1, the mentor, who assaults his own protégé to keep him from getting in the way of his plan to derezz Dyson, has become the loose cannon, and the protégé is now the level-headed one. Will this character switch help to make Beck more interesting or will he continue to be such a colorless bore?

***

This has been an insane week of news: Hurricane Sandy, the election, the San Francisco Giants' World Series win and now another Bay Area-based shocker, the Disney/Lucasfilm merger, a surprise wedding in the entertainment industry that came out of nowhere, like the surprise nuptials of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel. We all knew JT and JB were going to get hitched someday, but not this quickly. The same goes for Disney and Lucasfilm. For a long time, George Lucas has positioned himself as a Walt Disney for the 21st century, so his ties with Disney ever since the Star Tours rides aren't surprising. But his decision to suddenly cede control to Disney is unexpected. Or was it hinted at as early as last January?

"I'm retiring," said Lucas to the New York Times in a profile that the paper published shortly before the Black History Month release of what the profile described as Lucas' final film project, Red Tails, which he produced but didn't direct. "I'm moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff."

In another surprise move, Lucas is also ceding control of the Star Wars film franchise to "a new generation of filmmakers" and Disney, which will release the next three Star Wars films. Whether it's the current Clone Wars animated series (which I don't watch, even though it's well-animated and it has been better received than the much-maligned live-action prequels, because--except for that Chewbacca guest shot that I really enjoyed last year--it focuses on the prequel characters, who are hardly as interesting to me as Han, Leia, Lando and Luke) or 1988's Willow, Lucasfilm will not rest until it recaptures the magic of the first three Star Wars films.

(Photo source: MotorCity Disney XD Wiki)

To me, the next Star Wars--or rather, the closest someone has gotten to channeling the spirit of the Han/Leia/Lando/Luke era of that franchise--is actually a little-known animated series that Lucasfilm's future new owner introduced on iTunes and cable a few months ago. Like the original Star Wars trilogy, Disney XD's dazzling Motorcity is about a plucky band of freedom fighters who battle an evil empire, and it stars Mark Hamill, who plays the Darth Vader figure here--a corporate bully who dresses like a douchey gym manager--instead of one of the heroes. (In another link between Motorcity and Star Wars, one of Motorcity's most frequent writers is Clone Wars scribe George Krstic.)

The show has always felt more like a Lucasfilm joint than a Disney production, from the dizzying action sequences, which are like a post-apocalyptic, instrumental metal-scored and earthbound variation on Star Wars' dogfights in space, to the fetish for fast rides that's reminiscent of Lucas' fetish for hot rods and muscle cars in American Graffiti and both Star Wars trilogies. Even both the hot dog stand run by Jacob (Brian Doyle-Murray), the show's resident health food nut, and Antonio's, the pizzeria where the Burners frequently hang out, bring back memories of Mel's Drive-In from American Graffiti. But there's none of the ponderousness (or woodenly delivered dialogue) that marred the live-action Star Wars prequels.

Motorcity takes its action seriously, but it bears the irreverent touches of series creator Chris Prynoski's Titmouse studio. So while the show channels the original Star Wars, RoboCop, The Warriors, Escape from New York and the Macross arc of Robotech (the subterranean Motorcity setting owes so much visually to Macross City, the one that was erected inside the hull of the SDF-1, not the original city), it also has bits and pieces of past Titmouse cult favorites like Downtown and Megas XLR in its DNA. Motorcity's teen freedom fighters are as brash, fun-loving and sometimes self-centered as the 20-something New Yorkers on Downtown and the gamers and gearheads on Megas. The threats the Burners face on Motorcity are sometimes as comical as the Captain Harlock and Battle of the Planets analogs that Coop encountered on Megas, like the unwanted reality show the Burners are forced to participate in during "The Duke of Detroit Presents..." or the Halloween candy that emits fear gas in "Mayhem Night," the latest Motorcity episode.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about "Mayhem Night." This is the show's Halloween episode, and while we aren't treated to seeing any of the Burners getting their cosplay on--you'll have to click through tons of Motorcity fan art on Tumblr and Deviantart for that--we get to see what sorts of phobias paralyze Julie, Texas, Claire (Dana Davis) and Mike, who hinted at such phobias last week in "Fearless" when he admitted to the constantly fear-stricken Chuck that a brave leader like him isn't immune to fear, just like everybody else. The Terra Dwellers, the eco-terrorist tribesmen from "Texas-ify It!," want to topple KaneCo by collapsing Motorcity's ceiling--an insane plan that would destroy both Detroit Deluxe and Motorcity in the process--so they've tainted Halloween candy with fear gas to distract the Burners and prevent them from getting in their way.

Exposure to the gas causes Julie to relive the terror she felt when her father Abraham Kane (Hamill) nearly discovered her allegiance to the Burners in "Off the Rack." Mike has nightmares of being attacked by himself, or rather, his past self as a cadet in Kane's army, which means he continues to be racked with guilt over not being able to save a tenement building full of Motorcity residents from being demolished by KaneCo, a moment that was glimpsed in flashbacks in "Vendetta." Claire and Texas' nightmares are far more comical. Julie's class-conscious friend, who finds both Motorcity and Chuck to be repulsive, thinks she's trapped in Motorcity and married to Chuck (their baby girl looks more like Chuck than Claire), while Texas, who has a habit of binging on candy every Halloween, hallucinates that his candy is attacking him and trying to eat him. Chuck and Dutch--who has just started dating Tennie (Aimee Garcia), a resourceful mechanic from the Cabler settlement in Motorcity--are the only Burners who aren't poisoned, but we know that Dutch fears the wrath of Tennie's tough mechanic dad Bracket (Carlos Alazraqui).

So while "Mayhem Night" isn't really disturbing, it might be difficult to watch for hypochondriacs who have issues with Halloween candy. The most unsettling image in "Mayhem Night" isn't the demonic vision Julie has of her evil father's face while he taunts her on the road. It's the sight of an unconscious Texas from a previous Halloween, sprawled on the ground in his red-and-black boxers with his chocolate-smeared mouth open and the word "candy" scrawled in some sort of melted red candy on a belly that's distended from too many treats. Distended bellies aren't disturbing, but when they're seen on someone who's shirtless? Yikes.

Many lapsed Star Wars fans have said Star Wars is dead, and it'll continue to be a shell of itself when Lucasfilm drops Episodes VII, VIII and IX. I don't believe it's dead because I think the spirit of the original trilogy lives on. Well, sometimes it does on The Clone Wars--especially when Chewie resurfaced--but it's much more present on Motorcity. Now if only more people out there--not just kids--would just watch this damn show.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (10/25/2012): Tron: Uprising, Motorcity, The Avengers, Adventure Time and Regular Show

Chuck finally finds his niche in life as a competitive eater, especially in cherry pie-eating contests.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner"--or in this case, late late Wednesday--I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

In "The Reward," the first new Tron: Uprising episode in decades, General Tesler (Lance Henriksen) intensifies his hunt for the wanted Renegade (Elijah Wood), a.k.a. Beck, after experiencing a nightmare in which the Renegade derezzes him. Tesler decides to involve the Argon City citizens in hunting down the Renegade and even throws in a prized VL-1 roadster as a reward to the citizen who turns him in. Tesler's supercilious right-hand man Pavel (Paul Reubens), who usually kisses up to Tesler, gets pissed off by the general's recruitment of regular folks to do the task that was given to him by Tesler because it undermines his power, so Pavel comes up with a scheme to humiliate his own boss, with the hopes that Grid dictator Clu will oust Tesler and give Pavel the general's job.

Tesler, Pavel and his rival Paige (Emmanuelle Chriqui)--a woman of integrity who's working for the wrong side--are a more interesting pack of characters than Beck and his mechanic friends Mara (Mandy Moore) and Zed (Nate Corddry), simply because of the ongoing discord between the irritable general and his aides, one of whom will backstab anybody at the drop of a hat, even his own boss. Meanwhile, what are Beck, Mara and Zed stuck with in the A-story of "The Reward"? "You never hang out with us anymore, Beck!" That's not as entertaining. Zed's constant whining about Beck (who can never win with Zed, whether he's himself or in hero mode as the masked Renegade) has started to grate since "Identity," a.k.a. the Lake Bell episode. It's nice to see the weekly visual spectacle that is Tron: Uprising back on the air after months of no first-run episodes, but I'm also starting to realize why I didn't completely miss the show, and one of those reasons is Zed.

***

Chuck experiences a personality change and Dutch finds love in Motorcity's long-delayed "Fearless" episode, which finally aired in America last Friday when the show resumed airing first-run episodes after a way-too-long hiatus. There were rumors that Disney XD shelved "Fearless" for so long because its drug addiction plot was too dark for the channel (cowardly Chuck gets hooked on a KaneCo "booster" that purges him of his fear but turns him into a rage-filled asshole), which, if true, is strange because "Fearless" is the kind of story the channel's younger viewers need to see these days instead of being shielded from it, at a time when so many of their peers or maybe even their parents are heavily medicated like Chuck in this episode.

It's also the kind of ripped-from-the-headlines sci-fi story Star Trek used to frequently tackle, often successfully and sometimes not-so-successfully (see the original Trek's third season for the cheesiest and most heavy-handed examples). The scene where Mike has to snap Chuck out of his asshole state and ends up getting into a scuffle with him is even reminiscent of the scene in Star Trek's "This Side of Paradise" episode where Kirk frees Spock from his alien spores-induced blissful state. "Fearless" is, fortunately, a non-preachy, "Just say no" bullshit-free story about the negative side of relying on medication to try to improve your life. Instead of lecturing Chuck with an unnatural-sounding "Boosters are bad, mmm-kay?" speech or going all A&E on his ass and staging an intervention with the help of the other Burners, Mike gets through to Chuck by admitting that he experiences fear too in a rare serious moment that this lighthearted action cartoon executes quite well when it needs to.

Meanwhile, Texas competes with Dutch for the attention of Tennie (Aimee Garcia, the leggy and hot nanny on Dexter), a teen mechanic in the "Cabler" village who's a whiz with machines like Dutch, and of course, an Asian guy once again gets the shaft. Somebody at the Burners' garage should point Texas in the direction of the more athletic Julie, whom several Motorcity fans have been "shipping"--God, I hate that word--Texas with ever since he lifted her up during a celebratory moment at the end of "Off the Rack." But if you do that stupid merging-the-names-of-a-guy-and-his-boo thing with Texas and Julie, you end up with "Tulie," which sounds exactly like the name of one of the show's villains, Kane's idiot assistant Tooley, so that's a bad sign, just like how it would be wrong for Liz and Jack to hook up on 30 Rock because the result of the merging of their names is "Jizz."

Hold your breath and count to 10 as Skyfall covers "AFOS Prime"

Beginning today, A Fistful of Soundtracks is streaming selections from Thomas Newman's score to the new Bond movie Skyfall--as well as the Skyfall theme song performed by Adele and produced by her "Rolling in the Deep" collaborator Paul Epworth--during the "AFOS Prime" and "New Cue Revue" blocks. The score album doesn't drop until November 6. The film doesn't come out until November 9 here in America (England, of course, gets dibs on the film this Friday before we do--those limey bastards).

I'm more of a fan of the 007 music than the movies themselves, although I love the more grounded and gritty direction the series has taken ever since Daniel Craig's Bond had that messy, nearly Dan-vs.-the-Captain-like fight with his first kill in the men's room. As someone who digs that John Barry/David Arnold Bond sound, I knew Adele's "Skyfall" would be a good Bond song right when I started hearing a guitarist strum the first four notes of the Monty Norman-penned (and Barry-arranged) "James Bond Theme" at exactly one minute into Adele's single. That's something that's hugely lacking from Madonna's "Die Another Day" (or a much worse track, Rita Coolidge's yacht-rock-y "All Time High" from Octopussy, not exactly one of Barry's finest musical moments) but is present in Adele's tune: an appreciation for the Bond series' storied musical past.

As for the score by Newman, who has regularly worked with Skyfall director Sam Mendes since American Beauty (except for Away We Go) and isn't the first person who comes to mind when I think "action movie composer," it's exactly how I imagined a 007 score by Newman to be: not as flashy-sounding as Arnold's 007 scores and more heavy on percussion than brass, which Arnold's scores were awash in. Newman came up with clever ways to work in bits and pieces of Norman's "James Bond Theme" throughout his score. "She's Mine," one of the Skyfall tracks I've added to rotation, expands upon the old Norman melody with stunning results.

Meanwhile, I'm hard at work on upgrading AFOS from mono to stereo after 10 years of the station being in mono, a format I chose over stereo in order to be able to carry more than 50 hours of music. Since October 1, I've been going through the AFOS music library and re-converting five station playlist tracks per day, this time into stereo mp3s instead of into mono mp3s. The slightly bigger file sizes will mean less music in the library, but far better sound quality. It's time for an upgrade. I've penciled in January 1 as the date of the station's conversion from mono to stereo because by then, I'll have enough tracks to fill several hours, but I wish the upgrade would begin tomorrow, so that tunes like "Skyfall" don't have to sound kind of tinny anymore.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (10/17/2012): Dragons: Riders of Berk, The Avengers, Randy Cunningham, Adventure Time and Regular Show

Nice to see Macaulay Culkin getting some acting work again.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated cable shows that are found outside my Adult Swim comfort zone. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Wow, those were really short seasons of Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice: Invasion. They must be going for a Sherlock "leave the viewers wanting more" thing.

Without warning last Saturday, Cartoon Network pulled both first-run episodes of GL:TAS and Young Justice off its schedule after only two weeks of new episodes. Viewers like me who DVR both cartoons were surprised to find back-to-back repeats of Dragons: Riders of Berk in their place while playing back the recordings of both later that morning. Adults and kids who are fans of the "DC Nation" block angrily took to Twitter and Facebook (Cartoon Network's "DC Nation" Facebook page asked viewers who their favorite supervillains were, and many of them snarked, "Cartoon Network execs"). In response, the channel hastily posted a two-sentence statement on Facebook that explained so much ("Fear not, DC NATION fans! Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice will return in January with new episodes, only on Cartoon Network!").

"Did anyone remind Cartoon Network that the end of the world is this December?," joked dissatisfied GL:TAS co-executive producer Giancarlo Volpe on Twitter.

This is stupid, NBC-removes-Community-days-before-its-fourth-season-premiere-level shit. It's also not surprising to see shady behavior like that from Cartoon Network, which moves first-run programs around the schedule--like it did with the short-lived Sym-Bionic Titan last year--without telling the programs' viewers where to find them and without explanation. I'm going to go with "contract dispute" as the reason why "DC Nation" kid viewers like this one are in a sour mood in their parents' Twitpics:

***

Well, good thing Dragons: Riders of Berk is occupying the "DC Nation" block's slot, not Annoying Orange. If it were the latter, I would have put my fist through the wall.

While the How to Train Your Dragon sequel series isn't always the most original of cartoons, it's definitely a quality kids' show, and a solid episode like "Portrait of Hiccup as a Buff Man" is why I'm glad Dragons is in the "DC Nation" block's slot for the next three months. Like the best episodes of Young Justice, "Portrait of Hiccup" combines well-staged action with rich characterizations as it channels both the integrity and zest of How to Train Your Dragon.

(Photo source: How to Train Your Dragon Wiki)

Feeling inadequate after Bucket (Thomas F. Wilson) paints an official portrait of him with his father Stoick that inaccurately depicts him as a buffed-up teen, Hiccup embarks on a treasure hunt that Stoick and Gobber failed at to prove his mettle. How to Train Your Dragon stood out from other DreamWorks Animation feature films because it wasn't so reliant on pop-culture reference humor that has sometimes aged really badly in those other films. The treasure hunt in the caves leads to Dragons making what has to be its first-ever pop-culture reference gag when Hiccup does the exact same movements Indiana Jones did with his hands before grabbing the idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The gag should have fallen flat, but "Portrait of Hiccup" somehow makes it work and not seem so out-of-place on a show that usually doesn't go for that kind of gag.

Overweight teen Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is the resident coward in the group of dragon trainers and a frequent source of "what a wimp" humor on the show, but there's an intriguing moment in "Portrait of Hiccup" where Fishlegs rises to the occasion when Hiccup and Toothless' lives are in danger. He persuades a more-panicky-than-usual Astrid that leaving Hiccup and Toothless behind in the caves so that they can send for help is better for the team than being trapped along with Hiccup and Toothless. The usually hypersensitive kid puts aside his cowardice to make the kind of hard decisions the absent Hiccup--and no one else in the group--would have made.

It's as if Fishlegs and Astrid have briefly swapped personalities, but like with the Raiders shout-out, "Portrait of Hiccup" somehow makes the moment work and not feel like it's so out-of-character for Fishlegs to toughen up and Astrid to panic like Fishlegs would usually do. In fact, what that scene actually does is show that there are many sides to these characters, and that kind of rich character writing is an example of why Dragons is more enjoyable than the lame and corny Annoying Oranges of the world.

The spy who spoofed me

Deadlier Than the Male

Early on in November, I'll be doing a series of posts about some of the music in the official Bond movies to lead up to the release of Skyfall, Daniel Craig's third Bond installment, which coincides with the film franchise's 50th anniversary. In the meantime, I've compiled a bunch of standout spy movie theme songs, but none of these original tunes are from the official or unofficial Bond movies. They're all from spy spoofs that either attempted to cash in on the success of the Bond movies (1967's enjoyable Deadlier Than the Male, a Bond-style reboot of British private eye Bulldog Drummond) or referenced at least one facet of that series (Robert Rodriguez's family-friendly Spy Kids flicks are loaded with gadgets like all of the Bond installments from 1963 to 2002).

I've been looking for an excuse to post Smokey Robinson & The Miracles' theme from the obscure 1967 spy comedy Come Spy with Me, and I've finally found one. I've loved that Miracles track ever since I first heard it on YouTube while I was searching for Sammy Davis Jr.'s catchy theme from The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World because the Circus employees sang along to the Davis record in last year's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. There's one other spy movie theme that was recorded by a Motown act. It's The Supremes' theme from Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, but it's not as good as the Miracles tune.

Spotify has the Supremes track, but unfortunately, it doesn't have the Davis track (Spotify is also devoid of any themes from Get Smart or the Derek Flint and Austin Powers franchises that are to my liking). Despite the Davis tune's absence, the playlist's title is copped from one of Davis' lyrics: "He's every bit as good as what's-his-name/With a dame, any dame." "What's-his-name" refers to, of course, that baller named Bond.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

Lalo Schifrin composed Shirley Bassey's Bond-style Liquidator theme, while Hans Zimmer composed Robbie Williams' twangy "Man for All Seasons" for Johnny English, a movie I've never seen. I wouldn't be surprised if "A Man for All Seasons" is the only good thing about Johnny English. In fact, except for The Liquidator, bits and pieces of What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Deadlier Than the Male, Fathom, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and the hilarious Black Dynamite, I've never seen any of the spy spoofs or 007 knockoffs that have themes I featured on the playlist. I'm sure they're all Oscar-caliber works.

Fathom

"Every Bit as Good as What's-His-Name" tracklist
1. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, "Come Spy with Me"
2. Vikki Carr, "The Silencers"
3. Nancy Sinatra, "The Last of the Secret Agents"
4. John Dankworth, "Modesty Blaise - Main Theme"
5. Shirley Bassey, "The Liquidator"
6. The Lovin' Spoonful, "Pow" (from What's Up, Tiger Lily?)
7. The Walker Brothers, "Deadlier Than the Male"
8. John Dankworth, "Fathom's Theme" (from Fathom)
9. Steve Allen, "The Swingin' Dagger Theme" (from A Man Called Dagger)
10. Joe Simon, "Theme from Cleopatra Jones"
11. Robbie Williams, "A Man for All Seasons" (from Johnny English)
12. Alexa Vega, "Game Over" (from Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over)
13. Ludovic Bource, "Le Caire, nid d'espions" (from OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies)
14. Adrian Younge featuring LaVan Davis, "Black Dynamite Theme"