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.

A treasury of '90s pinball promotional videos provide the guidance you never knew you needed

If you're a good, wholesome person, you like pinball, but if you're like me, you're basically an amateur when it comes to actual playing.  You know not to tilt, you know to make sure ther silver balls need to stay on the playing field and it's your job as administrator of the flippers to keep it there, and you can kind of figure out that it's cool when the ball goes into tunnels and up ramps and on to targets that make the pinball machine react excitedly.

But modern pinball machines are a hell of lot deeper than the "just try to hit all the good flashy stuff" level that the neophyte player enjoys.  There is, in fact, a recommended way to play these machines in order to  follow the "storyline" and maximize your points.

Williams Electronics, one of the primary producers of pinball machines throughout the '90s, produced a number of promotional videos for their machines, used to sell their wares to perspective amusement locales.  And sure, they're just promo reels, but they're more than just sales pitches to buyers -- they're complete guides to how the machines are meant to be played. 

The promo 1993's TWILIGHT ZONE (made by Bally, whom Williams had acquired in 1988) features a Rod Serling impersonator along with clips from the episodes that provided the inspiration for the table:




The DOCTOR WHO pinball machine, made to celebrate the show's 30th anniversary, even features a brief recap of the show, though I doubt the statement that there's a WHO convention in the U.S. on every weekend.


1995's DIRTY HARRY machine features "arresting" new features, but somehow misses the chance to ask "Did I shoot three balls?  Or only two?"  Still, this guide should help you feel lucky.  Punk.



The guide to the pinball machine based on 1994's THE SHADOW should help you figure out exactly how the random cavalcade of silver balls bouncing around relates to taking down John Lone.



And who the heck could possibily resist the charms of Elvira, who introduces the 1996 machine SCARED STIFF, featuring six (!) stories sure to entice any pinball boobie-er-newbie.


Lastly, the promo for THEATER OF MAGIC, one of the few machines not based on an existing franchise, has a full story to engage with.



There's a heck of a lot more fun to be had for pinball junkies as well, so check out Jan van den Munckhof's page here. (MONSTER BASH is a must-see for Universal monster fans.)

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?