The Less-than-Auspicious Other Debuts of Wonder Woman

The common consensus seems to be that Wonder Woman's appearance in BATMAN V. SUPERMAN, the first (or second, if you count 1989's ALYAS BATMAN AND ROBIN) time the character has appeared in a feature-length theatrical film as a live human being, is the highlight of the movie.  However, Diana Prince's earlier debuts in other formats haven't been nearly so notable or well-received.

The first time the character appeared in live-action was in the prospective television pilot for a "Wonder Woman" TV series entitled "Who's Afraid of Diana Prince?" in 1967.  Clearly inspired by the successful "Batman" series of the time, Elle Walker plays Diana, who lives with her nagging mother who demands she not go save the world on an empty stomach.  She does, briefly, become Wonder Woman (and is then played by Linda Harrison), but mostly it looks like a zany comedy about a man-crazy single woman who sometimes saves the world.  It's... not good.


Wonder Woman's animated debut came along a few years later, and may be even less noteworthy, as she's not even the star.  In the 1972 episode of "The Brady Kids" animated series, itself a spin-off of "The Brady Bunch" but with fewer parents and more magical talking birds with the voice of Larry Storch (as was the style at the time), Jan Brady visits the university library in order to research Euclid and meets librarian Diana Prince.  When the aforementioned magical talking bird zaps them back to ancient Greece, zaniness ensues.



As with much '70s kids animation, it's pretty awful, and the randomly-appearing laugh track (which even goes off when Wonder Woman makes her first appearance!) doesn't help matters any.  At least Wonder Woman gets to do something and the Grecian setting pays some reference to her origins, so it's mildly better than the 1967 pilot -- or it would be, if it wasn't over four times as long.

Celebrate Bugs Bunny's 75th birthday by watching his 50th!

Today marked the 75th anniversary of Bugs Bunny, who made his debut in Tex Avery's 1940 classic A WILD HARE.  And there's plenty of points around the web celebrating such on occasion, so instead of just bringing up Bugsy, why not check out the festivities the last time he had an important birthday? 

1990's HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUGS: 50 LOONEY YEARS is about as ridiculous as TV specials get, filled with guest stars (Seriously, look at this cast of guest appearances) and containing very little content about the guest of honor himself.  In fact, much of it is presented as though Bugs is an  actual person with an acting career rather than, well, going into the actual history of his animated exploits.





Here's what you get:

Little Richard singing "That's not all, folks, we want more!" with a cavalcade of the guest stars you'll be seeing -- you know, animation staples like Jon Voight, Fred Savage and Harry Anderson. 

"Pro-Daffy Duck protesters" (including "Moonlighting'"s Allyce Beasley) opposed to the Bugs Bunny event. 

An "Entertainment Tonight" profile of the rascally rabbit, which serves as a full "biography" of Bugs' rise to fame claiming that he grew up in Brooklyn and was soon discovered and became a superstar.

Shatner. 

Fake talk show segments featuring Joan Rivers, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Donahue and Sally Jesse Raphael.

A montage of a cross-dressing Bugs backed by Robert Palmer's "Simply Irresistable."

A shirtless Chuck Norris working out.

A very strange conversation between Bill Cosby and Raven Symone that I'm not sure Symone is aware is being filmed.

Dan Quayle jokes.

Milton Berle in a bunny outfit claiming that he's the real Bugs Bunny.

Shadoe Stevens shilling for Acme products.

Hulk Hogan.

Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Mel Blanc and Fritz Freling are mentioned in passing, and Freling and Chuck Jones have brief interview segments, but for the most part, it's fully committed to the idea that Bugs Bunny is a real-life being, forcing the concept into as many deeply committed gags as it possibly can while tossing out as many random (and usually unidentified) vintage Warner Bros. cartoon clips as it can. 

There are moments of brightness, such as a clever Daffy Duck segment in which he meets his agent and clips of Mel Blanc recording Bugs' voice, but most of it is just random footage of Bugs and celebrities paining themselves to come up with something original to say.

Happy birthday, Bugs!   I hope your 75th is much better than your 50th.

Beyond PIXELS: The other short works of Patrick Jean

With the feature film version of PIXELS arriving in theaters this week, I looked at a few other options for video game nostalgia, including the short on which it was based.  But what has French director Patrick Jean been up to since the 2010 short went viral?

Well, for one thing, he directed this music video for German electronic musician Boys Noize, which was one of my favorite music videos of 2013, as a man without super powers moves into an area populated entirely by caped crusaders.



Boys Noize - What You Want from Patrick JEAN on Vimeo.


He also helmed this other, equally clever video for the musician, created from using discarded keyboards.



Boys Noize - ICHRU from Patrick JEAN on Vimeo.



His inventive short film MOTORVILLE may not tap into the same nostalgia factor as PIXELS, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun, even if the metaphor ends up being a little messy.


Motorville (FULL SCREEN HD Version) from Patrick JEAN on Vimeo.



He's also been working on commercials, like this visually creative one for Audi.


Audi - Sphere from Patrick JEAN on Vimeo.


Check out some more of his work here and if you're powerful enough to do such things, maybe hire him for something nifty. 

Ten 8-bit nostalgia-inducing short film alternatives to seeing PIXELS

PIXELS opens today, and if the reviews are to be believed, it's somewhere between "pointless" and "awful," and probably not worth spending eleven bucks on.  Instead, why not sate your 8-bit nostalgia for free with ten perfectly good, and genuinely entertaining, short videos?  Save a few bucks and get WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? on streaming instead, and then you can just stay in your home and not have to deal with the type of people that would willingly spend the cost of a meal on an Adam Sandler movie.

1. PES's impressive stop-motion animated short that reimagines a number of video game classics


2. Lily Tomlin talking about Pac-Man addiction from a 1982 episode of "Saturday Night Live"



3. The incredible video for Royksopp's "Happy Up Here" about video game-related intruders



4. A 1982 animated short about a video game invasion


5. Alex Varanese's nifty stop motion short tribute to R-Type


6. A promotional film for the laserdisc game "Cliff Hanger" (using footage from Miyazaki's CASTLE OF CAGLISTRO)


7. Pac-Man reimagined as first-person driving game



8.  Eight minutes of commercials for food featuring video games



9. The vintage arcade game-inspired music video for The Montauk Project featuring a character called "Dookie-Poo"


10. Patrick Jean's original short film that inspired the feature you probably want to avoid



Bonus: The other stuff on this site tagged "Video games"

BIG BUG MAN - The final, lost film of Marlon Brando

Film icons making their cinematic swan song as the voice in an animated film of questionable repute isn't unheard of -- who can forget Sean Connery's (most likely) final role in the choppy Scotish film SIR BILLI (released to the states as GUARDIAN OF THE HIGHLANDS) or Orson Welles belting out commands as the planet-eating Unicron in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE?

At least those movies were released.  Marlon Brando's last foray into features hasn't been so lucky.  BIG BUG MAN, an animated feature that uses Brando's voice recorded on June 10, 2004 (three weeks before his death) has yet to see the light of day.

BIG BUG MAN is the story of a candy factory worker (voiced by Brendan Fraser) who is bitten by bugs and becomes a superhero.  You can check out the storyboards for the film here.

So who does Brando play?  A mob boss?  A kindly "Uncle Ben" type to Fraser's Spider-ish-man? 

No, Brando plays Mrs. Sour, the elderly owner of the candy company in which our hero works.  In fact, he was so committed to the role that, according to writer/director Bob Bendetson, he performed his voice acting in drag, with a blonde wig, a dress, full makeup and gloves.

"He was gorgeous," Bendetson said. "I guess it was part of his Method training or something, where you almost embarrass yourself as the character, so that way you're free to be the character. ... About halfway through he took off the wig because he was getting too hot."

 So where is this amazing piece of cinema that you can hear a clip from in this 2004 news report?


 Lost to cinematic limbo, unfortunately. The film has yet to find any sort of release, and a search for updated information has yielded no results.  Bendetsen, who wrote the infamous final episode of "Newhart," hasn't had a screen credit since.  How many SPIDER-MAN reboots do we have to go through in order to make this one see the light of day?

Jeff Hale, animator of "Sesame Street"'s Pinball Count and the Lenny Bruce short "Thank You Mask Man," dies at 92

Jeff Hale, the England-born animator who created the Lenny Bruce short "Thank You Mask Man" and worked extensively for animation that appeared on "Sesame Street," passed away in February at the age of 92.  Cartoon Brew has the full story, but here is one of his most noteworthy works, a compilation of the "Pinball Count" shorts (with vocals by the Pointer Sisters!) that appeared on "Sesame Street" starting in 1976.  12345, 678910... 11, 12...

Morning Cartoon: Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers - "Let's Party"

Okay, so Nana Mouskouri is a bit of a downer, so here's something much more upbeat -- the British act Jive Bunny and the Mixmasters performing a medley of Christmas tunes.

Evening Entertainment: The 1975 animated TV special "The Tiny Tree"

Featuring the vocal talents of Buddy Ebson and music by Roberta Flack, the DePate-Freleng production about a group of forest animals that attempt to make a holiday great for a little girl is strangely obscure, having never been released to VHS or DVD, but it's a charming little special.  Maybe it's because there aren't any recognizable characters?  In any case, here it is, and it's got songs that will stick in your head for days -- not surprisingly, as they're written by Johnny Marks, who wrote the music for "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

R.O. Blechman's "Christmas Message" animated promo for CBS from 1966

I don't like to be one who longs for the "good old days," but I do think the idea of a major network airing something as low key as this in 2014 is pretty unlikely.

Morning Cartoon: Evelyn Lambert's "The Story of Christmas" (1973) is a beautifully-rendered version of the holiday's origins

Lambert worked primarily in cut-out animation, and this wordless short is amazing to watch, regardless of any religious meaning. 

Morning Cartoon: "The Little Match Girl," from 1968's THE WORLD OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON

A young Hans tells the tale of the Little Match Girl (to a particularly whiny child) in this little-seen animated film from Toei, re-dubbed for American audiences by Hal Roach in 1971.

Morning Cartoon: See what all the jazz is about in THE INTERVIEW (1960)

I don't know what everyone's complaining about.  You can watch THE INTERVIEW right now, or at least the one directed by Ernest Pintoff, the Oscar-winning animator who made the Mel Brooks short THE CRITIC, featuring an interview with a jazz musician.

1987's forgotten animated musical ROCK ODYSSEY presents Scatman Crothers

Hanna-Barbera's feature film ROCK ODYSSEY is mostly remembered only by die hard animation fans, but the Robert Taylor-directed flick is a strange little monster that deserves slightly less obscurity.  Intended as a TV special in 1981, the film featuring a thin plot thread as an excuse to animate music videos of covers of classic rock hits was shelved until 1987 when ABC got cold feet due to some of its disturbing imagery.  When finally released to international audiences, some additional sequences were added featuring Hanna-Barbera characters.  It's never been released in the U.S., but it occasionally plays on TV in Latin American countries, though the Spanish dubbing lacks the dulcet tones of Scatman Crothers, who plays the film's jukebox narrator.  Good luck finding a complete English langauge copy, though as it's mostly musically-based, it doesn't make much difference.

Morning Cartoon: Eliot Noyes Jr.' 1973 SANDMAN, done entirely in sand

Would this be SANDimation?  Anyway, it's neat.

Morning Cartoon: The Mighty Heroes in THE STRETCHER, directed by Ralph Bakshi and Robert Taylor

Robert Taylor, the animator who lent his talents to the likes of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Challenge of the SuperFriends," "Spider-Man" and countless more cartoons, passed away last week.  Here is one of his many projects with Ralph Bakshi, from the 1966 series "The Mighty Heroes," featuring five heroes that are only vaguely mighty.

John Carpenter and Rankin-Bass present THE THING

The trailer for Carpenter's 1981 classic gets a remake using footage from Rankin-Bass's Christmas classics.  And it's amazing.  Why has this not been posted on every "cool stuff" blog around?

Thanks Todd Graham!

Morning Cartoon: The Harlem Globetrotters Meet Snow White

In the '70s and early '80s, Hanna-Barbera was basically just trying to retry its name characters in as many combinations as it could.  Laff-a-Lympics!  Robonic Stooges!  Fred and Barney Meet the Thing!  That makes the bizarre combination of 1980's "The Harlem Globetrotters Meet Snow White," aired as part of "Fred and Barney Meet the Schmoo" a little bit more understandable, but it's still kind of strange watching the Globetrotters try to help Snow White learn how to really handle an apple.

Morning Cartoon: Isha Patel's THE BEAD GAME (1977)

Ease into the week with a more unusual work than normal, as Patel's beautifully-crafted work of bead animation is a heck of a lot more focused on having compelling images in a theme of increased aggression rather than a standard narrative.  It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. 

A Frank Sinatra album gets promoted by singing animated octopi and turtles

Sure, "Let's Do It" makes sense to come out of the mouths of those in the animal kingdom, but I don't quite know why advertisers thought that frogs covered in flies would be the best way to sell "Frank Sinatra's Twenty Golden Greats."  Happy 99th birthday, Ol' Blue Eyes!

Morning Cartoon: Insect infidelity in Ladislaw Starewicz's THE CAMERAMAN'S REVENGE (1912)

Yes, this work of stop-motion is over a century old.  It's still creative, interesting, and completely relateable, as a roach stepping out on his spouse makes an enemy in the form of a cameraman (or camerabug) that prepares a very special night out for him.