A number of silent movies, long thought to be lost, have been found in — of all places — the Soviet Union. Read all about it and note that the Soviets were more diligent about preserving American motion pictures than was America.
This fact check of Donald Rumsfeld is interesting not because it tells us Rumsfeld is misrepresenting history — we all kinda expect that — but because it details what happened with Iraq and all those weapons inspectors. Remember when folks were making jokes likening Chief Inspector Hans Blix to Mr. Magoo because he couldn't find Weapons of Mass Destruction there and all our leaders assured us Saddam had 'em?
As I've mentioned here before, I've long been a big fan of an ever-diminishing chain of "fast food" eateries called Koo Koo Roo. I put those quotes in there because Koo Koo Roo offers pretty healthy cuisine — and pretty tasty, as well. But the brand is failing. There were once more than twenty, mostly around the Southern California area...and I once counted and determined I'd dined at more than half, including a couple in pretty outta-the-way locations. I had a kind of radar sense for them. Driving through unfamiliar territory, Carolyn and I will sometimes decide to stop and get something to eat. A little voice (not from my GPS) used to tell me when to pull off the freeway at the perfect spot to find a Koo Koo Roo.
Now, it's easy to find where they are. There's one on Wilshire in Santa Monica, one on Santa Monica Boulevard near La Cienega and one at Larchmont and Beverly Boulevards. That's it. They're down to three.
I just captured the photo above from Google Maps. It's of one of the two I used to go to on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills and neither is actually there anymore. The location in the pic is currently being retooled into an outlet of The Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Company, a chain of bakery-restaurants. Larry King, who I guess needed something to do, is the most prominent investor behind this venture.
I came across this photo when I looked up the address of Mr. King's new line of work so I could know where it was...and there I found this image of the now-defunct Koo Koo Roo. I thought I'd share it with you because something in it struck me as funny.
Google Maps sends cameras all over the world to capture images of street scenes...zillions of 'em. There are often pedestrians in these photos and for legal reasons (I guess), they employ some kind of software that analyzes each image and blurs any facial features that appear. I don't know how well you'll be able to see this on your monitor but the software decided to protect the identity of the little rooster in the Koo Koo Roo logo.
The witty Peter David is the latest of several folks to send me this link to a blog post by Heidi Gilbert, an artist who thinks that the movie version of the Broadway show Wicked should be animated, not live-action. She makes her case quite nicely with a video she cobbled up with a song (the best song, most feel) from the show. Never having seen Wicked, I don't know what to think of this notion...but I do believe that the whole concept of musical comedy in the cinema has been served better by animation the last few decades than by live-action.
About a dozen years ago, I was briefly involved with an attempt to bring a Broadway musical to the screen in animated form. In that case, it was a show that no one wanted to film in live-action and the argument against doing it as a cartoon (which won out with the studio) was that if the show had any true following, it would have been done with real people, not drawn ones. In other words, they were afraid it would look like, "We did this in animation because it wasn't important enough to be done live-action." Silly, I know...but it would have cost an awful lot of money to do it animated and even that much of a negative was reason enough to not proceed with it. I don't think anyone would think that of Wicked. It's just too popular a show. What they would think is that in live-action, it might snag all those Glee watchers, whereas in animation it might get lumped in with kiddy fare. So even if it's a good idea, I doubt they'd chance it.
Today is the birthday of comedian Woody Woodbury. Woody was a big hit in the club circuit back in the early sixties with his slightly-bawdy act...though these days, I think Elmo's using some of those jokes on Sesame Street. Anyway, I became familiar with Woody when he replaced Johnny Carson on Who Do You Trust and later starred in his own popular talk show. He was one of the most likeable, friendly presences I ever saw on my TV screen and when I was old enough to, I ran out and collected his best-selling record albums.
Our pal Christopher Bay has assembled a little four-minute sampler of Woody from one of those albums and you can listen to it here. It's over on Facebook and while you're there, check out The Woody Woodbury Facebook Fan Page which Christopher operates. Since I can't figure out how to link directly to it, you'll have to do a search...but it's worth the five seconds it'll take you to do that. And while you're there, how about posting Happy Birthday wishes to Woody, who reads that page and will be mighty happy if you do?
This is in Chinese but if you aren't fluent in that tongue, the language won't get in your way. It's a series of pretty decent magic tricks...but what's interesting to me is that if you know magic and know how these feats are accomplished, you'll probably think the first few are the more difficult and therefore more impressive. If you don't know, you'll probably think the grand finale is the most impressive. Thanks to Gordon Kent for telling me about this...and you may want to go full-screen for this one...
February 8, 2011
