Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Artistic License

That's what's on the license plate from my 1957 Thunderbird...which, by the way, I'm still thinking of selling. (That is, I'm thinking of selling the car. Whether or not you'll want the plate too may depend on whether your name is Mark.) In any case, that's not a photo of the actual plate. It's a computer generated image courtesy of this website. You pick your state and one of its past license plate formats, enter what you want on your plate and — POOF! — it creates an image of that license plate for you. Sure beats the way they make 'em in prison.

• Posted at 10:23 PM · LINK

Groucho, Harpo, Chico and (best of all) No Zeppo

As mentioned here, a DVD collection of Marx Brothers movies will be available in May. Based on the announced rundown of its contents, we like this package a lot...even if it does include A Night in Casablanca. We're going to advance-order it by clicking on this Amazon link and you might like to do likewise. The selection of films was pretty obvious: It's every Marx Brothers movie currently controlled by the Time-Warner empire. But whoever assembled this thing also picked some wonderful shorts and supplementary material, including Warner Brothers cartoons and shorts keyed to the same years as the Marx films they accompany. One thing I'd love to see some company do is to assemble a couple of DVDs that replicate the entirety of actual film programs seen in theaters...in other words, "Here's a DVD set that shows you exactly what you would have seen if you'd gone to the Bronx Bijou on such-and-such a date." They would include the features, shorts, cartoons, newsreels, trailers, etc. that went with one another. Years ago, I saw something of the sort with A Night at the Opera as the main attraction...and it was in the State Theater in Long Beach where, decades earlier, that film had its famously unsuccessful first preview. A great evening. I don't think a similar DVD series would be a huge seller but it might be a way for companies to market some of the items from their vaults that otherwise would never make it to home video.

• Posted at 5:28 PM · LINK

They're Kidding...Aren't They?

Stuttering John (of Howard Stern fame) as Leno's new announcer? Oh, great. It's not enough to do remote segments where the point is to laugh at how awkward and non-professional some people are on camera. Now we're going to have one of them in the studio every night.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to get on late night TV, the key was to be witty and professional. Today, only the host is allowed to be that and he surrounds himself with inarticulate stagehands, delicatessen owners and others who are guaranteed to never come up with an intentional funny remark. It's amazing how most of the comedians I know have gone from being not good enough to be on with Jay or Dave to being overqualified.

• Posted at 12:30 PM · LINK

Common Thought

Yesterday, three separate people said roughly the same thing to me: "I don't know why, but I have the feeling the Democratic nominee is going to be Edwards."

• Posted at 1:39 AM · LINK

Recommended Buying

Happy to hear that we're about to see a reissue of my pal Roger Stern's 1993 novel, The Death and Life of Superman. Well actually, I'm happy for you since I still have my original hardcover copy. The new one's a trade paperback that will be out in March, with new introductions by Roger, Mike Carlin and Charlie Kochman. I was not a big fan of the "Death of Superman" storyline that was done back then in the comics. It struck me as a bit loud, a bit exploitive and way overemotional, given that we all knew he was coming back. Still, I recall enjoying Roger's novelization of it, which had more depth than noise, and a really good sense of what it was that made Superman Superman.

I've read a lot of Superman stories over the years where my reaction was, "That wasn't a bad comic but Superman wasn't in it. There was a big muscular guy with an "S" on his chest but it wasn't Superman." That never happened with Roger's stories, so I recommend it even though there's no Amazon link available yet. When there is, I'll post one here, but don't wait for that.

• Posted at 1:06 AM · LINK