Looney Tunes finally goes to Vol. 3
After what seems to be a sizeable wait. Warner will be releasing a third 4-disc collection of Looney Tunes Golden Collection. The set will again contain a wealth of extras and shorts.
Disc 1: Bugs Bunny Classics will contain Hare Force, Hare Remover, Hare Tonic, A Hare Grows in Manhattan, Easter Yeggs, The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, Bowery Bugs, Homeless Hare, The Case of the Missing Hare, Acrobatty Bunny, Wackiki Wabbit, Hare Do, Rebel Rabbit, Hillbilly Hare and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!.
Disc 2: Hoolywood Caricatures and Paradies includes Daffy Duck in Hollywood, Hollywood Capers, The CooCoo Nut Grove, Porky’s Road Race, The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos, She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter, The Film Fan, Speaking of the Weather, Thugs with Dirty Mugs, Goofy Groceries, Swooner Crooner, Wideo Wabbit, The Honey-Mousers, The Last Hungry Cat and The Mouse That Jack Built.
Disc 3: Porky and the Pigs has I Haven’t Got a Hat, Porky’s Romance, Porky’s Party, Porky in Egypt, Porky and Teabiscuit, Pigs Is Pigs, Pigs in a Polka, Porky Pig’s Feat, Daffy Duck Slept Here, Bye, Bye Bluebeard, An Egg Scramble, Robin Hood Daffy, The Windblown Hare, Claws for Alarm and Rocket Squad.
Disc 4: All-Stars Cartoon Party features Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur, Super-Rabbit, Daffy Duck and Egghead, A Gruesome Twosome, Draftee Daffy, Falling Hare, Steal Wool, Birds Anonymous, No Barking, Rabbit Punch, An Itch in Time, Odor-able Kitty, Walky Talky Hawky, Gonzales’ Tamales and To Beep or Not to Beep.
Additional features include commentaries, rare shorts, docuemtaries, featurettes and an unaired pilot.
The DVD set arrives this coming Tuesday from Warner.
Another 'Lost' actor may face axe
Yet one more castaway is getting shipped off the island - permanently.
Several Internet sites are reporting another actor on ABC's hit TV saga Lost is getting axed Nov. 9 - the first episode to air in the highly competitive sweeps period.
Is it heroic doctor Jack (Matthew Fox)? Swaggering conman Sawyer (Josh Holloway)? Femme fatale Kate (Evangeline Lilly)?
We'll spare you the identity of the doomed character - if you want to find out who it is, you can go to aint-it-cool.com or a number of other websites - but we will say it's one of the original cast members.
This development, however alarming, isn't a complete shock.
After knocking off Boone (Ian Somerhalder) last year, the show's creators said they never want viewers to feel the characters are safe.
Mary Lou Finlay to retire from CBC
Mary Lou Finlay, host of As It Happens and one of Canada's best-known journalists, is retiring from the CBC.
Finlay, who has been with As It Happens for eight years, says she wants a change from the intensity of a daily program. She plans to continue working on her own projects.
"It's just the right time for me, even though it will be hard to leave. I've never loved a job more," she said in announcing her retirement on Thursday.
"As It Happens is a great program. The people I work with are smart, funny and committed, and so is our audience. But hosting this show demands a huge amount of energy. At this stage of my life, I need to make more room for other projects I'm interested in."
She first came to national attention in 1975, as co-host of CBC Television's Take 30. She hosted her own program, Finlay and Company, in 1976 and 1977, and then moved to CTV in 1978 to co-host and produce the award-winning lifestyle program Live It Up.
In 1981 she returned to CBC, joining Barbara Frum as co-host of CBC Television's nightly current affairs program The Journal. She produced documentaries and special reports for The Journal until 1988.
From 1988 to 1994, Finlay was host of Sunday Morning on CBC Radio. She hosted the weekly media watchdog program Now The Details from 1994 to 1997, and then became co-host of As It Happens.
"At As It Happens I have spoken to thousands of people and it's so wonderful to be able to do that and to have these wonderful people around me to work with," Finlay told CBC Arts Online.
Canadians will remember her interviews with a wide range of political and cultural figures including Timothy Findley and René Lévesque. She has brought her journalistic skill to such stories as the end of martial law in Poland, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Canada's struggle with Quebec's pursuit of sovereignty.
Finlay says she has hundreds of cherished memories of her career, from doing her first interviews to travelling on the job to joining the As It Happens crew.
"I have really loved travelling Canada, especially my three trips to the Arctic," she said. "You feel very privileged to travel in the Arctic."
Finlay was recipient of the Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.
Finlay retires Nov. 30. Although she will no longer be the regular voice on As It Happens, she plans to continue to contribute to CBC Radio on a freelance basis.
Nelly Tries 'Sweatsuit' On Again
Nelly has rounded up 14 highlights from his simultaneously released 2004 albums "Sweat" and "Suit" plus a handful of new songs for the appropriately named "Sweatsuit." Due Nov. 22 via Universal, the set is led by the fresh cuts "Grilz" featuring Paul Wall and Ali & Gipp, "Tired" featuring Avery Storm and "Nasty Girl" featuring Diddy, the late Notorious B.I.G. and Jagged Edge.
A video for "Grilz" is expected to be shot in Atlanta in the coming weeks. The Jermaine Dupri-produced track spotlights the trend of rappers outfitting their mouths with "grill pieces," of which Wall has emerged as major proponent.
Among the holdovers from "Sweat" and "Suit" are such hits as "Over and Over" featuring Tim McGraw and "My Place," which peaked at No. 3 and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively.
The new collection is also tipped to feature such collaborations as "She Don't Know My Name" with Snoop Dogg and Ronald Isley, "River Don't Runnn" with Murphy Lee and Stephen Marley and "Playa" with Mobb Deep and Missy Elliott.
"Suit" and "Sweat" debuted in the top two slots of The Billboard 200 last October. They have sold 4.3 million copies combined in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Van Halen Will Not Be The Next 'Rock Star' Band
Van Halen will not be taking INXS' lead by participating in a possible second season of the reality television series "Rock Star," according to the band's spokesperson.
MTV News erroneously reported Wednesday (SEE STORY BELOW) that a source close to the program claimed that if "Rock Star" does return for a second season, that the core Van Halen trio — Michael Anthony and brothers Alex and Eddie Van Halen — would be the band auditioning potential singers. The band flatly denies any involvement in the show.
MTV News had also previously reported that a spokesperson for Van Halen said the band had no comment regarding pending projects. However, that spokesperson was never asked specific questions regarding the group's hypothetical involvement with the "Rock Star" show; MTV News regrets the oversight.
Van Halen had been the subject of recent speculation concerning potential "Rock Star" second-season bands. The same rumors swirled about Alice in Chains, but a spokesperson for guitarist Jerry Cantrell scoffed at the notion the band would even consider appearing on the show.
Van Halen reportedly will front possible second season of Rock Star
CBS has yet to renew Rock Star, which found a lead singer for INXS during its first season. However, MTV reports that Van Halen is on board for a possible second season.
According to MTV.com, “a source close to the show claimed that the core Van Halen trio — brothers Alex and Eddie Van Halen and bassist Michael Anthony — will be auditioning potential frontmen and women for the show’s still-hypothetical second season.” Previously, the band was fronted by David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, and Gary Cherone.
MTV says that “if the series is added to next summer’s CBS lineup, expect to see Van Halen tapping into America’s rock and roll pipeline for a new singer.” It’s also possible the show could move to a different network if CBS rejects a second season.
Fey to Return to SNL's 'Weekend Update'
NEW YORK - Maternity leave is over for Tina Fey of "Saturday Night Live." She'll be back behind the "Weekend Update" anchor desk for this week's episode, her first show since giving birth to her daughter Alice on Sept. 10.
"I had to get back to work," Fey said. "NBC has me under contract; the baby and I have only a verbal agreement."
Horatio Sanz filled in for Fey on "Update" during her brief absence. Fey, 35, co-anchors the segment with Amy Poehler and has been head writer at "SNL" for five years. She and her husband, Jeff Richmond, have been married since 2001.
Saturday's show (11:30 p.m. EDT) features host Catherine Zeta-Jones and musical guest Franz Ferdinand.
Liz Phair gets flak for going commercial
When Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville came out in 1993, it was greeted as a revelation -- a uniquely intelligent, sexually honest female voice from the trenches of modern romantic warfare, wrapped in a bare-bones production. Soon, Phair became everyone's fantasy indie-rock queen.
When you're up on a pedestal, you have much farther to fall. Maybe that's why Phair's been getting such a hard time from the critics for changing her approach on her frankly commercial recent albums, 2003's Liz Phair and the new Somebody's Miracle, which feature co-writes with seasoned hitmakers and much slicker production.
"It's weird -- I didn't know I was running for office," the American singer joked recently in mid-tour.
"I think I represent a national debate over the state of our music scene, whether it should be purist or commercial, and I'm a pretty good target for people to vent their opinions on."
Interestingly, Phair's stripped-down acoustic tour this summer was warmly received, so maybe it's not her new songs -- which are less about a wild girl dating than a single mother looking for enduring love -- that are offensive, but their polished production.
"That's partially true," she said. "But it may also be a male-female thing. My label did some research to find out why the last album didn't sell as much as they wanted. And they found that women care about the words, and guys only care about the sound, and the pictures. And I'm all about the stories. I'm not a production person, really."
Exile was a song-by-song response to the Stones' Exile On Main Street, and Somebody's Miracle started out as a similar rejoinder to Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key Of Life before it got sidetracked.
"I spent a lot of time thinking about that," she said. "I'm a visual artist, so I don't approach music the same way other people do. And one of the things I find productive is to listen to someone else's great album and think about what I really respond to in it, and how I can measure up.
"Some of these songs were responses, but it became clear that I would have needed another year to finish it, and it costs a lot of money to be in the studio. I feel bad that I never got to finish it, but it helped me get back in touch with some of my strengths. It's always good to take a class and learn."
Phair has also learned from co-writing. "It's more fun than working on my own -- more of a lark," she said. "They're less me, but kinda fun that way. It's a nice break, like recess, or dressing up for a party and letting someone else do your hair and makeup."
The Couch Potato Report - October 20th, 2005
This week The Couch Potato Report features a batman, some zombies, a gladiator, and The Dude.
It is my belief that even people who don't consider themselves to be fans of comics and comic books, usually still have a favourite comic book character.
Whether it is "Garfield", "Peanuts", "Spider-man", "Andy Capp","Foxtrot", "House Of M", "New Avengers" or "Dennis The Menace", I think we all have a favourite comic book character.
For the past few weeks I have been reading "The Complete Far Side" and "The Complete Calvin And Hobbes" books, and I love both of those, and I have also always been a big fan of "Underdog" and "Bugs Bunny", but my favourite all-time cartoon character is still "Batman."
Throughout the years I have been able to enjoy Batman in comic books, television shows, and movies.
To this day the 1989 BATMAN movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader remains my favourite movie based on a comic book character.
However, that film is no longer the leader by a long shot. It now has a sidekick!
Batman was originally created and introduced by Bob Kane in 1939. At his inception, Batman was a dark character who walked the tightrope between hero and vigilante.
In the 1960s a campy TV series starring Adam West transformed the character into a silly-but-likable good guy in gray spandex.
Happily, Tim Burton gave Batman some of his edge back in his film, but that movie, and it's four sequels, focused more on the villains, and our hero was relegated to the position of supporting character.
After 1992's BATMAN RETURNS Burton gave up on the Batman film franchise and after the abysmal 1997 film BATMAN & ROBIN, directed by Joel Shumacher, the fans of the character gave up on him as well.
Batman has lived on in the comics since then, but as a movie character, he was dead.
Well, he was dead until the release of the film BATMAN BEGINS earlier this year.
For this new film director Christopher Nolan went back to the basics, throwing away the camp style of the TV show and the late 90's movies, and the dark and gothic elements of Tim Burton's vision.
The result is a film that has a great script, superb cast, and it tells how Bruce Wayne became Batman. It is the tale of how Batman begins, or began if you will.
It isn't necessarily a prequel to the 1989 film, but if you watch the two of them together, it sure can be.
Director Christopher Nolan and new Batman Christian Bale have given us a film that not only cements Batman's place as the most interesting comic book character, but they have once again made him one of the best superheroes in films as well!
BATMAN BEGINS has restarted the movie franchise and I, for one, hope that Nolan and Bale decide to team up for a second film!
If they do, who knows? Maybe I won't be able to proclaim Tim Burton's 1989 BATMAN movie as my favourite movie based on a comic book character any more.
However, I suppose that I will always proclaim THE BIG LEBOWSKI to be the best bowling movie ever!
Even though they are used now, when THE BIG LEBOWSKI was released in 1998 hardly anyone was using words like "best" or "classic" to describe it.
That is because the film was Joel and Ethan Coen's follow-up to the Academy Award winning film FARGO and since LEBOWSKI wasn't as unique or original as FARGO, it was deemed by many to be a disappointment and it quickly disappeared from theatres.
Since it appeared on video and DVD, however, it has gained the audience it so richly deserves!
Yes, it is about bowling, but THE BIG LEBOWSKI is so much more!
It is a film about a lazy, drug using underachiever named Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski who ends up in the middle of a kidnaping scheme.
The plot is secondary as the film has a laid back, loose charm that makes it easy to watch, and enjoy!
Jeff Bridges from SEABISCUIT and TIDELAND is "The Dude" and the supporting cast features Coen brothers regulars John Goodman, John Turturro and Steve Buscemi.
No, it wasn't a success in 1998, and the new COLLECTOR'S EDITION of THE BIG LEBOWSKI isn't going to sell 30 or 40 million copies either, but if you like great characters, hilarious dialogue, and bowling in your movies, then spend some time with THE BIG LEBOWSKI, or as some of us call him, "The Dude."
Or if that isn't your cup of tea, how about a zombie movie?
LAND OF THE DEAD sees director George A. Romero return to the zombie movie genre he invented back in 1968 with NIGH OF THE LIVING DEAD. LAND OF THE DEAD is Romero's fourth film in his zombie series, and his first since 1985's Day of the Dead.
In the series, and this film, the living dead have taken over the world, and the last humans are living in a city with lakes and walls protecting them as they try and stay alive.
LAND OF THE DEAD isn't as original and inventive as it could have been, but the cast of Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper and horror film favorite Asia Argento do a good job with the material they have been given.
LAND OF THE DEAD has nothing to offer people who aren't fans of zombie pictures, but it has enough to satisfy people who are fans of the genre until the next zombie flick comes along.
Let me digress from pontificating about the value of zombie pictures now and go
right to this week's "Leftover."
This week I invite you to serve yourself up the delicious EXTENDED EDITION of the Academy Award winning film GLADIATOR.
This new version includes 17 minutes of additional footage, and a three hour and twenty minute documentary about the film that includes some never-before-seen footage.
The extra 17 minutes don't make the film better or worse, they just allow the film to be more of a good thing.
Prior to a few weeks ago I hadn't watched GLADIATOR since it first came out in 2000. Some friends of mine love the film and one of them even named their son after the title character, but I never made the time to see it twice.
After watching the EXTENDED EDITION, I can honestly say that I won't take 5 years to come back to the film.
The original and this EXTENDED EDITION of GLADIATOR are impressive achievements.
Both the Extended Version and the original theatrical version of the film come in this new 3-disc set, plus there is an all-new audio commentary by director Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe and a great "Are you Not Entertained?" Trivia track.
The GLADIATOR - EXTENDED EDITION will definitely entertain you and it is available now at a store near you, along with LAND OF THE DEAD, THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION of THE BIG LEBOWSKI and the superb BATMAN BEGINS.
Coming up in the next Couch Potato Report
Is the box set for the TV show ALIAS - THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON and the movie version of the TV show BEWITCHED.
Herbie The Love Bug was seen in a new film this year, sadly, HERBIE: FULLY LOADED features too much Lindsay Lohan and not enough Dean Jones.
THE LOONEY TUNES - GOLDEN COLLECTION: VOLUME THREE is a 4-disc set that features sixty more of the most looneytic Looney Tunes ever unleashed on rabbit, duck, pig or humanity!
And then there are new Collector's Editions of THE WIZARD OF OZ and TITANIC coming out as well.
Plus, next week I will have two "Leftovers" for you, the SCTV - VOLUME 4 Box Set that features the episodes about CBC and the classic Disney animated film CINDERELLA.
I'm Dan Reynish. I'll have more on those, and some other releases, in seven days.
For now, that's this week's COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I'll see you back here next week on The Couch!