Snake and Bacon?!

So there I was, watching the first couple of episodes of The Flight of the Conchords, trying to see if I like it enough to watch on TV, now that I have HBO and all that, and there's this one character who I swear I've seen in something else.  So I hopped over to the IMDB like I always do in that case, and learned the actress was Kristen Schaal basically, the only thing I knew her from was Valentine's Day, although I don't remember who her character was.  But as I was looking over her list of roles, a title jumped out at me: Snake 'n' Bacon.
Y'see, back in my high school days, I stumbled up Snake 'n' Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, a collection of comics by Michael Kupperman, and just had to buy the book, even though the comics were pretty weird.  Although I lost my copy, most of the comics are pretty well-etched into my brain.  (I should still buy another copy, though.) So seeing that, some ten years afterwards, this apparently got a TV show, I just didn't know what to think.  A little investigating revealed that it was merely a pilot for Adult Swim that didn't get picked up, which is too bad.  But the entire thing is up on Adult Swim's site (and it's only like ten minutes, so there you go).
Frankly, it doesn't quite capture what made the comics so funny, but it's sort of faithful to them (as far as I can remember, anyway).  That's probably why it didn't get picked up.  But here's the middle section of the show for you to check out:

Charlemagne the Musical?

I heard it from RevolutionSF first, but apparently Christopher Lee is going to be playing the Ghost of Charlemagne in a concept album for a "symphonic metal" musical called "Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross." It seems that Christopher Lee is related to Charlemagne, although I don't know if that's why he's doing this CD. You can hear samples from the CD, which is set to come out on March 15 (although it isn't listed on Amazon), on its youtube page. Frankly, the music sounds pretty Transiberian Orchestra-ish to me, but that's probably because I have a limited reference pool when it comes to metal, even symphonic metal.

Fun With the IMDB Again

Once again, the IMDB has broken my brain. I was looking at the things Richard Horvitz (Daggett from Angry Beavers, Zim from Invader Zim) has done, and while I knew most of them (aside from a few "additional voices" credits), when I got to toward the end of the list, I just stopped cold. Why, you ask? Because he was Alpha 5 from the original Power Rangers series. And I honestly have no idea how to feel about that. At the moment it's ranging from "I can't believe it!" to "That makes so much sense now!" to "Is this really true?"

(Not relevant, but I would like to point out that it was my younger sister who was into Power Rangers, thus I saw a lot of it due to her.)

Black Adder Season One

My mother likes to say that there are only six actors in England, and they're all in everything. And there are times when I really start to believe it, like today, when I finished watching the first season of Black Adder (which I decided to check out both because there's hardly a page on TVtropes that doesn't mention it, and when you get to the third season, Hugh Laurie is in it).

Overall, I enjoyed the series, even if there wasn't any Hugh Laurie yet, but I couldn't help feeling that I'd get more of the jokes if I knew more about Middle Ages history. The DVD only has a few special features, but luckily for me, one of them is a few quick notes on some of the history as pertaining to certain episodes. Another is a "Who's Who" which gave a quick bio of a handful of the characters, spoken by Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick (and prefaces his entry with "This is the good one"), with a list of key TV and Film roles on the screen. Or rather, the titles they've been in, though not the actual role they played (the biggest are usually mentioned by Tony), so naturally I was rushing to the IMDB to flesh out a couple of them, such as Peter Cook, who played Richard III in the first episode, but was also in The Princess Bride as the Impressive Clergyman (I would not have guessed, seriously). And when I saw that Miriam Margolyes was in Little Shop of Horrors, you better believe I looked her up real quick. Turns out she was the nurse at the dentist's office, but along the way I learned that she was also Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter movies, as well as some voice acting work, such as Fly (the sheep dog) in Babe and The Matchmaker in Mulan.

The special features are rounded out with a sing-along of the ending theme, which was good for me, since I could only understand half of the lines, and there aren't any subtitles on the DVD, and a couple of trailers for other BBC series on DVD.

You know, before I knew what Black Adder was, and just heard the title tossed around as a show that people liked, I thought it was actually some kind of sci-fi mystery show. Probably because the title becomes Blackadder after the first season (which is technically called The Black Adder). It just gave me the image of a dimly lit set and strange happenings going on.

Late Night Video - Early Mel Brooks short

Watch this, it's funny. Of course, it's Mel Brooks, so that almost goes without saying. It's from 1963, which means that it was made before The Producers, just FYI.

Alice in Wonderland - Lots of Famous People

One of the mainstays of my childhood was the 1985 tv-movie of Alice in Wonderland, which my father taped when it first aired, and my sisters and I watched for years afterwards.  However, it had been quite a while since I last saw it, and after noticing it show up a few times while browsing through the IMDB, I checked out the whole cast list and realized that there were a ton of people in it who I had had no clue who they were when I was young, but I did know now.  So I decided to watch it again, especially since it's on DVD, with the intent of taking screenshots and writing up who I knew and how I knew them (as there are a few people in it that I only know from doing this).

Well, that was my original plan, only, in the process of taking the screenshots, I got a new DVD player program, and unbeknownst to me, every time the program was opened and screenshots were taken, it saved them under the same numbers, deleting the shots taken previously.  And since I watched the tv-movie in chunks, the majority of the screenshots I took from the first half were deleted.  But I didn't realize this until I'd already sent the disc back.  Now, I might have re-rented the disc and taken the shots again, but I also realized just how boring the entry I originally planned would have been.  I mean, it would have basically just been a fairly dry (and long) list of roles.  So instead, I say to you, go to the IMDB page for the tv-movie and see who's who for yourself.  Then, if you feel so inclined, give it a watch.

One thing I will say about this version of Alice in Wonderland is that it is very faithful to the books -- in parts.  There was one part toward the end of the second part where I thought the plot dragged terribly, but then I went back and reread the book, and it was almost word-for-word.  But there are also parts that are strangely unfaithful as well.  For instance, when Alice meets the Mock Turtle (played by Ringo Starr), he does not sing a song based on the three(!) pieces he had in the book, but an anthem to nonsense.  Also, this is one of those specials that thinks that what makes a musical a musical is that every character introduced gets a song.  Not that the songs are bad (I particularly like the Queen of Hearts' song), but it does get to be a bit much.

Jane Lynch is in it

Back before Camp Rock came out, I saw the soundtrack for Another Cinderella Story at Walmart and was intrigued by the logo.  Hoping for a musical with maybe some good songs, I put the movie in my Blockbuster queue and forgot about it until a week or so ago when it made it to the top (or rather, was the first 'available' movie near the top).  I mention Camp Rock because if I'd known who Selena Gomez was I probably wouldn't have bothered.  Despite that, the movie was not horrible, although it was not nearly as much of a musical as I thought it would be.  Le sigh...

Anyway, the real point of this post is about the stepmother character in the movie, Dominique.  About halfway through the movie, I had to run to the IMDB because I knew that I knew who she was, but I just couldn't place her.  Turns out that she's played by Jane Lynch.  At first glance, I didn't really recognize anything she had done (and she's done a ton of guest spots), but on the second time through, the sole thing I recognized her from suddenly leapt out at me: A Mighty Wind, where she played Laurie Bohner, the porn star turned folk singer. (Sidenote: I love A Mighty Wind.  If you haven't seen it, go watch it right now.)  I'm also partially amused to learn that she plays the mother in the new Holly Hobby DVDs.  So yeah, finding that out bumped my enjoyment of the movie up a level, and I even got the song that her character sang in her youth(?), Hold 4 U, off of iTunes.  'Cause Jane Lynch can definitely sing (another reason to go watch A Mighty Wind right now).

Eartha Kitt is Dead

I just heard that Eartha Kitt died earlier today of colon cancer.  She had 81 years of being awesome.  Seriously.  She was Catwoman on the 1960's Batman series, she was Yzma in The Emperor's New Groove, and even had a guest spot on The Magic School Bus series, among many other things.  And she sang "Santa Baby" better than any of the others.  Rest in peace, Ms. Kitt.