Thursday, September 22, 2005

Speaking Of...

Speaking of Costco, as I just was, my pal Dave Schwartz reports that he found a batch of the new Warner Home Video animation collections at one of their stores for $13.99 each. He says he picked up The Jetsons and Wacky Races, and that they also had Dastardly & Muttley, Penelope Pitstop, Superman and possibly others. Some of these normally go for $32-$35 so that's quite a bargain and I'm guessing that if one Costco has them, others will have them.

And speaking of DVD collections of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, as I just was, last week I was interviewed on camera for a forthcoming collection of The Scooby Doo-Dynomutt Hour. Also interrogated were Fred Silverman, Iwao Takamoto, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, and several of the original voices, including Gary Owens. I have no idea when this one will be out (or even when it will be at Costco) but the folks doing the "extras" are really doing a thorough job.

• Posted at 5:01 PM · LINK

Change of Mind

According to Laura Brown over on her weblog, the just-now-being-released Complete Calvin and Hobbes has at least one strip that has been altered for republication. The last two panels of the 11/25/88 strip read as above in the original appearance and in subsequent reprints. Now, the balloons read...

CALVIN: Hmph! I'll bet a good mother would've bought me a comic book and made me feel better instead of shunning me like you.

MOM: Kid, anyone but a good mother would've left you to the wolves long ago.

CALVIN: Yeah, right. Let's see your training certificate.

As Laura notes, this was presumably done because the original was deemed offensive to adopted kids (and their adopters) and must have been done with the approval of Bill Watterson, who drew the strip and fiercely protected it. Personally, I have no problem with him doing this. It's his strip and his decision and I only note it here for the record, and to wonder if this is the only alteration.

By the by: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes can be ordered from Amazon by clicking here. At the moment, it's $94.50 and it doesn't seem to be eligible for their free shipping plan, even for us Amazon Prime members, though I could be wrong. If you're a member of Costco, they'll let you order one for $86.99 plus shipping costs. At the moment, the cheapest price I see online is that Overstock.com has it for only $85.00 plus only $1.40 in postage, though that may mean sending it by burro or something.

I'm probably going to just wait until the next time I go to Costco after they get them in. I'll just grab one and toss it in my cart next to the fifty gallon drum of Liquid Metamucil and the half-ton box of Pringles...and by the way, if you ever eat that many Pringles, you'll need that much Metamucil. Or maybe I'll wait a few months, by which time the book will probably be quite available at a much lower tab. I'm actually in no hurry to dive into Watterson's strip again. I really liked it when it began but every time I go back and read a batch of them, I find myself mentally lowering it a notch or two on my list of All-Time Great Newspaper Strips. This is the opposite of the way it works for me when I revisit a run of Peanuts or Doonesbury or Pogo or vintage Segar Thimble Theater. Maybe this new collection will reverse the trend.

• Posted at 2:45 PM · LINK

The Big Score

I've received a lot of entries in our little game of guessing which movie version of a Broadway musical used the entire score from the stage production with no deletions and no additions. The answer I was assuming was My Fair Lady. By the time that one was committed to film, the cast album was one of the best-selling records ever made, and many knew its every note by heart and considered every one sacred. I suspect the producers of the movie were even afraid to change the arrangements very much.

The only two other films anyone suggested were West Side Story and 1776. The latter, when filmed, used the Broadway score exactly but as we all know (or can read about here if we don't), "Cool Conservative Men" was deleted for the movie's general release and has only been restored in recent home video versions.

West Side Story sort of qualifies, depending on how you define the rules. One of the ballet numbers was cut, though strains of it show up as underscore elsewhere in the film. Several songs — including the lyrics for "America" — were rewritten. The list of songs that are sung is the same, though they aren't in the same order.

My pal Tom Hegeman raises an interesting point: "Another question to ask regarding adding new songs to filmed versions of musicals to be eligible for an Oscar — have any of those added songs ever won?" I just looked it up and while a lot of the added-for-the-film tunes were nominated, they don't fare so well on Oscar Night. The very first Academy Award for Best Song went to "The Continental," which was added to the score of The Gay Divorcee, which was the movie version of the musical, The Gay Divorce. That was in 1934. The next time it happened is arguable. In 1941, the Oscar for Best Song went to "The Last Time I Saw Paris," which was written for the movie, Lady Be Good. What makes it arguable is that the movie is almost not an adaptation of the 1924 stage musical of the same name. It uses the name and a few of the songs and that's about it.

After that, the only other example I note on the list was a long time coming: "You Must Love Me," which was written for the 1996 film of Evita. I may have missed one other long ago, but it sure looks like these songs which are added to maybe win an Oscar almost never win Oscars.

Okay, last call: Can anyone think of another movie that adapts a stage musical and does every single song with no tunes cut and no tunes added? I don't know if there is one but if there is, let's figure out what it is.

• Posted at 9:23 AM · LINK

Recommended Viewing

One of my beliefs about talk/interview shows is that it's nearly impossible to win an argument with the host. He has home court advantage. He sets the agenda. He decides when to change topics, go to a commercial, etc. On radio call-in shows, the host has the extra power to mute the caller's voice without the home audience realizing it. A favorite trick of Mr. Limbaugh when he finds himself in an actual argument is to cut off the other party, then ask him a question. The lack of response is allowed to suggest that the caller couldn't come up with an answer.

I stopped watching Bill O'Reilly some time back because he kept shouting down guests who were coming perilously close to scoring debate points against him instead of actually responding. The other day, he tried bullying Phil Donahue and here, through the courtesy of the folks at crooksandliars.com, is a clip. I don't know if Phil could win a shouting match with Marlo but he did a pretty good job of not letting O'Reilly knock him off-message. The segment runs a little more than eight minutes.

• Posted at 12:14 AM · LINK