It's a Munstrosity...
We got'cher reboots, folks. "The Munsters" is going to be put through the re-imagining meat grinder, because apparently there wasn't enough damage the first time it was tried, so this time they're going to try to kill it by making it "darker." Another veteran of TV days gone by that's going to get the Ctrl-Alt-Deluxe treatment in movie form is "Woody Woodpecker." That last one must have raised a few eyebrows in the boardroom:
"Won't Pixar sue? They have a whole franchise based around a character named 'Woody.'"
"That's a cowboy, and this is a... what is it, again?"
"A red-tufted avian drawn as a cartoon character, developed around the time of World War II."
"Great! We can probably get EA Games to sponsor it when they come out with 'Battlefield 4.'"
"Yes, we'll look into that, sir. In the meantime, some of the people down in creative want to know what you want them to do with the character, exactly."
"The usual. Re-imagine him with a modern take for today's youth."
"Today's youth? I can already re-imagine what they'll do with the words 'woody,' 'wood' and 'pecker.'"
"That's marketing's problem."
But seriously, here's what I don't get: The young audience they're trying to target wouldn't care if you called the movie "DJ Awesomebird McGinger," because unless their parents are cartoon obsessives or they mis-keyed something on YouTube, they'll never have even heard of Woody in the first place. I'd like to point out that I'm through with the argument about our childhoods being destroyed, as it doesn't do anything to actually stop it, and few respect that line of reasoning anymore. My new phrase is "why are they so needlessly lazy about making work for themselves?" With the Munsters and Woody Woodpecker, the fan base that grew up with the shows are older, or in some cases, dead. Those in the middle who saw them during re-runs and so on have probably moved on to other interests or won't like any changes. So other than maybe an older person changing the channel for a younger one to watch it, I really don't see the cache in sticking a name the audience largely doesn't care about on it. Not to mention all the work needed to de-camp and update the concept for said new audience, which could have gone into (I know I sound like a broken record looping WAV file) something new. Again, it doesn't matter if your childhood is involved or not if retooling old characters results in things like this or this.
I just caught last week's "Fringe." Putting aside any likes or dislikes about the story, it's got just about the most prominent and blatant product placement currently on TV. It's from a cell phone carrier (one I haven't cited as being particularly evil, but still) and we usually get one or more glimpses of said phone company's hardware with logo per episode. This time, the video chat function was brought into play. It was done when a federal agent wanted one of our heroes to see the macguffin in action, threatening to cause the deaths of several civilians. It was truly weird, but everyone involved it had seen or been briefed about similar phenomena before. It wasn't like the hero hadn't been told what would happen prior to the event occurring, and her seeing it really wouldn't change anything plot-wise. It was pretty much just a commercial for a certain carrier's phone and its video chat capability. I was, however, happy that it highlighted something on a personal level: It annoyed me as much as when shows have inserted other such products in the past (mostly Apple, because their devices are distinctive enough to be spotted at a distance, so they're willing to pay for placement), so my own journey of self-discovery includes the fact that I'm irked by most all product placement equally, not just the activities of only one company. :)
I have another thing from the KC Game Fair I forgot to mention. The convention folks gave me a t-shirt of some art I did for charity the previous year! It came out pretty spiffy-looking, I think, By the way, if I've ever done a sketch for you or some other thing involving pencils/pens, feel free to post it online, make t-shirts for you and your friends/group/pub trivia team, whatever you like. You can even sell sketches on eBay, though I'd appreciate the name of the buyer so I can see if they're interested in a few dozen other criminally-priced items.
Speaking of art, it's almost time for me to put together another holiday card. I've got an FFN strip from Comics Buyer's Guide that's suitably holiday-ish, but I recall getting an e-mail that I might want to consider a less specifically geek-centered card for 2011. Is talk of the DCU "New 52" reboot followed by a dig at the Hallmark Channel too much for most non-us type folk? Should I come up with something different entirely? Suggest away, and I'll see what my gray matter can do for us.
On that note, it's time for the linkdump, but first an annoying bit of science. I read somewhere that sleep (among other things) helps you to organize your memories, moving them from short-term into long-term. This, I presume, is why it's even harder to remember what day it is if you've messed up your sleep cycle; I once did an all-nighter and took a few catnaps the next day, each time feeling like I'd skipped ahead a day. Anyway, it looks like doorways do the same thing. So basically, we owe a lot of advancement to the first person to discover "the cave entrance."
I'm off to hate my brain for being so easily manipulated, but it did find all of this stuff, so it can't be all bad:
- Once again, Pixar shows off what it can do with amazingly complicated computer-rendered hair in their trailer for "Brave." I would pay triple the retail price if the Blu-Ray came with an "Amazingly Scottish" language track with the most authentic accents possible.
- China has been building huge weird things in the desert. The prevailing wisdom says they're to calibrate spy satellites, but I think it's so the ISS astronauts will get spam for Chinese part suppliers when they scan the things from orbit with their smartphones.
- I'm having a harder and harder time thinking these "bugs" in "Skyrim" aren't intentionally coded bits of artistic expression.
- However, there is an exploit for leveling up early in the game. You just have to try to carve up an NPC that's trying to help you.
- Speaking of artistic expression, here's the flash game Orpheus. Rescue your true love from the underworld with the power of your lyre.
- File this under "possibly way cool place to film a sci-fi movie": Uyuni, Bolivia's train cemetery.
- There's now an Asteroids-style arcade game you can control with your eyes.
- An Etsy-person is "upcycling" a lot of old stuff, but I especially like this suitcase cat bed.
- If you have a spare $350,000 lying around (the overage is for the waiter's tip) you can buy a lab-grown burger-thing. I'm all for this if it reduces the resources going into raising cattle, but it looks an awful lot like just about any food I've accidentally left out for more than a week.
- For less than the cost of a vat-burger, you could buy four carbon fiber Stormtrooper outfits. Maybe they'll be able to stand up to two blaster shots and/or Ewok sling stones.
- Nothing particularly nerdy about this, I just thought it looked cool: A dendrite quartz.
- Are you fully prepared for the upcoming half-sugar-half-diet fizzy drink, Pepsi Next? You have until 2012 to steel yourself.
- Here's a bunch of rejected versions of famous movie posters. Via Superpunch
- Nothing like some physics to wreck a few robots. Cars vs. Robots pits your collection of toy cars against an army of toy man-machines arranged to challenge your launching skills.