I Wish That I Had the Money for This

In honor (honour ?) of their 50th anniversary of their founding, Aardman animation studios is auctioning off some of their old puppets.

I want this so much.

Days into September, British claymation studio Aardman announced it’s teaming with PropStore to put old puppets up for sale.

No, the company’s not shutting down—it’s donig this to celebrate its upcoming 50th birthday. As such, nearly 250 items from almost all of its productions are for grabs. From classics like Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave to the more recent Robin Robin and Chicken Run 2, and the upcoming Shawn the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, there’s a breadth of boards, signed postes, and props to put down money on. (For those wondering, neither the Over the Garden Wall claymation special or 2027’s claymation Pokémon Tales series are represented amongst the collection.)

For the older Aardman fans, there’s even Morph, the 1977 series that marked the studio’s first-ever production. Those who remember it or its various followups can put down money on items from those, including original clay stop-motion puppets of the titular character and his best friend Chas.

I want this so much! 

 

Coyote vs. ACME Review (No Spoilers Except Revealing a Cameo)

A brief and explosive cameo



A promotional poster

---

Director	Dave Green
Writers	Samy Burch James Gunn Jeremy Slater
From a New Yorker article by	Ian Frazier
Cast
Will Forte	Kevin Avery
Lana Condor	Paige Avery
John Cena	Buddy Crane
Tone Bell	Sal Maltese
Martha Kelly	Dottie Jones
Luis Guzmán	Judge Troppogrosso
P.J. Byrne	Bill Pelicanos
John Early	Henry Heslop
Nancy Linehan Charles	Cherry
Kenneth Choi	Oscar Jeon
Ernie Vigil	Talon
Eric Bauza	Bugs Bunny Charlie Dog Daffy Duck Dr. Lorre Elmer Fudd Foghorn Leghorn Gossamer Porky Pig Road Runner Tweety
Candi Milo	Granny Miss Prissy Witch Hazel
Jim Cummings	Tasmanian Devil

First, the cameo.  It came from a 70 year old USAF veteran, the AIM-4 Falcon.

The round nose, triangular wings, and the tiny fins on the front are kind of a dead give-away.

I will not reveal the role that the missile took, except to say that it was sell acted and, "Energetic," pairing very nicely with their fellow actor in the scene.

A further note: my guess is that there are perhaps 100 other people in the united states who identified the missile.

I cannot speak to these other mil-pr0n geeks, but this makes me the least cool man in the world.

Of course, this is not a surprise.  My kids have been saying this for years.  

As to my movie review, I will take the approach that Michael Caine took with the Muppets, in a Muppet Christmas Carol,  and review all characters, both live action and animated as if they are all live actors.

First, let me state that this is a really good movie, funny, poignant, and at times laugh out loud. 

I think that it is better than Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and it is better while having to carry the enormous burden of Warner Brothers canon, which Roger Rabbit did not.

The technical production values are very high, but truth be told, this does not matter.  We are here for the dialogue, characters, and story.

There is a lot that I wanted to see that I did not see, not just more of some of the non Coyote and Roadrunner characters, but also, for example, a deeper dive into the law office staff, who seemed to have been worked through far more deeply than the there was addressed in the film.

I understand why this happened.

If we had seen more of Bugs Bunny as the classic trickster, and more of Daffy Duck duck being ……… well ……… daffy, along with a deeper dive into the law offices, the movie would likely have been about 4½ hours long, which would have been too long.

It was good at 1h 39m

Still, I'd like to see what ended up on the cutting room floor.

The basic plot was obvious to anyone who read the original New Yorker essay or saw the coming attractions, but it was executed quite well.

It was also laugh out loud funny, and quite touching, being an examination of friendships and obsessions. (Wile E. Coyote and obsession, now there is a surprise)

It was a bit less subversive than the original Looney Tunes, which did a job of communicating very different humor to the adults and the children in the audience.

I also think that it is kind of absurd that it got a PG rating.  It's Looney Tunes for f%$#'s sake!  Those anvils have a context!

As to the performances:  They were all good, and it was apparent that everyone involved was enjoying themselves, which is just plain fun to watch.

John Cena as evil lawyer Buddy Crane is clearly the best performance in the film.  He chews the scenery with reckless abandon, and does extremely well both as a source of jokes and as a straight man without completely dominating the movie.  (Thing about Alan Rickman in Robin Hood, who made Kevin Costner look like Jerry Lewis)

Wile E. is great, true to form. His portrait as a person whose obsession is being opposed by the universe itself is as pure and focused as it was when he fell off that cliff ………and that cliff ……… and that cliff ………and that cliff in the original Warner Brothers shorts.

The Road Runner is good, but a little softer than in the original.  He is not taunting the Coyote (and everyone else in this movie) quite so much as he does in the original.  Good, but only an A, not an A+.

Will Forte gives a good solid performance as Kevin Avery, (I assume that the name is an homage to Tex Avery) but he's a little bit too earnest, particularly in the beginning.  As the character who changes the most, going from disillusioned cynic to crusader almost as obsessed as the coyote, he's just too nice and too engaged in the needs of his clients at the start.

The weakest performance was from Foghorn Leghorn.  He was OK, but given his role as a villain, arguably the boss villain, he lacked the menace and arrogance required for the role.

While his earlier performances never presented much in the way of menace, his arrogance is normally a bit more prominent.  

Also, Tweety's performance was a disappointment.  His character was in a bad place, but we don't see any of the ingenuity and brutality that has made Sylvester's life a living hell.

As to the legal machinations in the plot, it was well done, but I would have liked it to a bit more Perry Mason than it was. 

Of course, one does have to talk about the real villain in this movie, former Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zazlav, who canceled the release of the film in order to secure a tax write-off.

I won't go into detail on that whole matter, but Zazlav should be strapped into a chair and made to watch this movie on repeat for a full week without being allowed to close his eyes. 

You know the drill: 

 

I call it Kubricking.

"Convenience Fees," My Flabby White Hairy Ass!

I booked tickets to Coyote vs. Acme this afternoon, and it came with a 20% "Convenience Fee".

F%$# that, and f%$# AMC Theaters, without lube.

It's late, so I will do a full review the movie tomorrow.   

Short version:  See it.  It is Who Framed Roger Rabbit good.

Now Tim Curry

The actor known for Frankenfurter, Pennywise, Long John Silver, Wadsworth,Nigel Thornberry, Dr. Petrov, and many other roles has died at age 80.

Seriously, when is death coming for Trump? 

I Am So Going to See This

I know that I will probably be disappointed, because there is no way that this movie will meet my expectations.

I don't care.

I must see Coyote vs. Acme. 

Best Ad Blocker Software Ever

Someone has forked the popular antivirus software uBlock Origin and made tweaks to replace ads with "Glasses On" images from the John Carpenter movie They Live.

This is brilliant. 

A fork of uBlock Origin Lite doesn't just remove the ads from web pages; it replaces them with tiles containing slogans from John Carpenter's 1988 film They Live.

Published by Australian Dave Lawrence, the Chromium add-in (so it'll work in browsers such as Chrome and Edge) takes the uBlock Origin Lite content blocker (also known as uBO Lite) and tweaks it so that rather than simply hiding the ads, the ads are replaced with white boxes containing slogans from the movies. 

Lawrence listed them: "OBEY, CONSUME, WATCH TV, SLEEP, SUBMIT, CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WORK, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY." 

………

They Live is a science-fiction horror film in which the protagonist dons a pair of glasses that allow him to see the world as it truly is: run by ghoulish aliens using subliminal messaging to keep the population under control.

I would note that that They Live is a great movie, and great social commentary.  Watch it.

Meanwhile, I need to chew some bubblegum or kick ass. 

I Saw The Sheep Detectives Last Night

I was impressed by the the movie.

The concept is kind of silly, sheep that can talk to each other but not to humans solve a murder, but it's well played and does not take itself too seriously.

Additionally, the CGI seemed to be understated and well executed.

It's smart, funny, I laughed out loud, and genuinely surprised when the murderer was exposed.

It was definitely worth the price of admission, though, full disclosure, my eldest bought the tickets as a Mother's Day gift for Sharon*.

Our local theater now has a bar in the lobby, so you could drink beer and watch the movie, which seems to be to be a bad thing.

One of the rites of passage in my day was teenage movie-goers smuggling food and booze in.

F%$#, I'm old. 

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Interesting Analysis

So,I came across this video about 80s SF movies that were considered duds when they came out and are now considered classics, or prophetic, or are at least cult classics.

They are Blade Runner, The Thing, Tron, Dune, Brazil, Big Trouble in Little China, RoboCop, They Live, Buckaroo Banzai, Videodrome, and Miracle Mile.

Notice anything interesting about this list?

I'll give you a hint, one director put out 3 of these 11 films, John Carpenter. (The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and They Live.) 

The Thing, which was largely panned upon its release, is now considered a masterpiece of the genre, and They Live is not viewed as prescient social commentary. 

Big Trouble in Little China, would probably make no one's list of great movies, but it's fun as hell and has a great following.

There a number of John Carpenter films that do nothing for me, Prince of Darkness and Christine come to mind, but his oeuvre figures predominantly in my top films list.

BTW, I'm pretty sure that the vid is AI slop, but the point stands.

I Would Have Paid to Hear Him Read a Phone Book

Actor Robert Duvall has died at the age of 85.

A marvelous and elegant actor who could convey with his eyes what might take another actor a soliloquy to convey.

He is my favorite John Watson, having played against Nicol Williamson's paranoid drug-addicted Sherlock Holmes in  The Seven Percent Solution.  (I always hated Nigel Bruce's buffoonish portrayal)

Also, go and watch The Judge, it's a great film.

Robert Duvall, who drew from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of acting craftsmanship to transform himself into a business-focused Mafia lawyer, a faded country singer, a cynical police detective, a bullying Marine pilot, a surfing-obsessed Vietnam commander, a mysterious Southern recluse and scores of other film, stage and television characters, died on Sunday. He was 95.

His death was announced in a statement by his wife, Luciana Duvall, who said he had died at home. She gave no other details. He had long lived on a sprawling horse farm in The Plains, in Fauquier County, Va., west of Washington.

There is a void in the theater world.

This is a Complete Mind-F%$#

I saw this on Zuck's monster.



I saw this movie with my pre-teen kids.

It's kind of shocking, and then I remember the specifics of the unexpurgated versions of Grimms' Fairy Tales, Snow White's stepmother is made to dance in red hot iron shoes until she drops dead, for example, and I realize that this is the norm, not the exception.

Deep Thought

Tim Curry did Muppet Treasure Island, the Muppets should do Rocky HorrowThe next Muppet movie should be a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

That is all. 

Robert Redford has Died

I've seen a lot of his films, and I always thought that he was a movie star with the soul of a character actor.  (Meant as a compliment) 

Also, I agree with Charlie Pierce's recommendation regarding the most timley of his oeuvre, it's The Candidate, though 3 Days of the Condor comes close.

I'll leave a discussion of his activism to others better equipped to discuss that.

He was 89. 

Damn.

Terence Stamp had died at the age of 87.

I remember him for his role as William Harcourt in the IMHO underrated movie Alien Nation, along with James Caan and Mandy Patinkin. 

He also chewed the scenery with the best of cinematic villains in the first two Christopher Reed Superman movies.

Always fun to watch. 

Skeet of the Day

From buying a paper for fun, to hyping his inept lover as performer, Jeff Bezos has gone full Citizen Kane.

[image or embed]

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) August 12, 2025 at 4:20 PM

Seriously, this is phunny as phuque.

It's also an INCREDIBLY accurate.

Full disclosure:  I have not actually seen Citizen Kane, but I am aware of its cultural significance, and I have (repeatedly) seen the clapping scene. 

I Was an Idiot When I Was 16

Don't watch this.

When I was 16, I saw some ads for a movie called Laserblast, a film now best known forthe screen debut of Eddie Deezen and it's showing as the season 7 finale of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

It came out in the Summer of 1978, and I had just turned 16 at the time, and for some reason, I really wanted to see it.

It was clearly a B-Movie, but something appealed to me.

It was out of the only theater that it was playing at in Portland, Oregon in a week, so I never saw it, until now. 

I was stationary bicycling and I got motion sickness.

It is really, REALLY, bad.

It's not the production values, they are what is to be expected from a 1970s Sci-Fi exploitation film, and the acting, which, while not stellar, is again about what is to be expected from 1970s Sci-Fi exploitation film, but the scripting and plotting is the worst that I have ever seen, and I've seen Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The plot was completely incoherent and the dialog was laughable.

The fact that I spent over 40 years regretting not having seen it is pathetic. 

To quote Roger Ebert, ""I hated this movie, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie, hated it. Hated every simpering, stupid, vacant audience insulting moment of it."

One of the Greats

Gene Hackman has died at age 95.

He could be and do almost anything as an actor.

The World Just Got a Lot Less Weird

This is a bad thing.

I am referring, of course to the the death of director David Lynch, who appears to have died of complications of emphysema.

He was a singular talent.

Would that the studio executives had not fucked with Dune (1984).

Quote of the Day

Who would have thought that anything could ever happen that would make you feel sorry for Andrew Lloyd Webber? Yet one’s heart can’t help but go out to the old luvvie, whose kitsch masterpiece was put through the wringer of Hollywood half-wittedness. The ordeal was so dire that he bought himself a Havanese puppy named Mojito as an emotional-support dog. When he explained in an email to an airline that they should make an exception to their no-dogs policy and let him travel with Mojito because of ‘what Hollywood did to my musical Cats’, he received the sympathetic reply ‘No doctor’s report required.’

—Literary Review On cinematic flops

Yeah, I do feel some sympathy for Webber over cats.

Normally, I Try Not to Concern Myself with the Political Opinions of Actors

Unless, of course, they run for office.

In particular, when actors attempt to juxtapose their performances with politics.

For every rule, there is an exception, and Joel Grey's relating his performance as the unnamed Emcee in Cabaret is a sterling example of such an exception.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with great musical theater, Cabaret is a retelling of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, largely through the experiences of a performer at a Berlin night club, the Kit Kat Club.

With all due respect to the performance of Liza Minnelli, along with a whole troupe of other talented actors, Joel Grey's performance was magnificent.  (He got an Oscar and a Tony)

He argues, and I agree, that the messages and the warnings of the play, have even more relevance today.  

I agree:

This past week marked 58 years since the opening night for the Broadway premiere of “Cabaret” in 1966. At the time, the country was in deep turmoil. Overseas, the Vietnam War was escalating, and at home, our most regressive forces were counterpunching against the progress demanded by the civil rights movement. The composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb and the playwright Joe Masteroff wrote “Cabaret” in collaboration with the director Harold Prince as a response to the era. The parallels between the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin as depicted in the show and the mounting tensions of the 1960s in America were both obvious and ominous.

This past week marked 58 years since the opening night for the Broadway premiere of “Cabaret” in 1966. At the time, the country was in deep turmoil. Overseas, the Vietnam War was escalating, and at home, our most regressive forces were counterpunching against the progress demanded by the civil rights movement. The composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb and the playwright Joe Masteroff wrote “Cabaret” in collaboration with the director Harold Prince as a response to the era. The parallels between the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin as depicted in the show and the mounting tensions of the 1960s in America were both obvious and ominous.

When we first performed it, in Boston, audiences gasped and recoiled. It was too offensive, too raw, too cruel. Producers fretted and the line was changed to “She isn’t a meeskite at all,” [Yiddish for very ugly] softening the blow, yes, but also the impact. I resented the change and would often, to the chagrin of stage management, “forget” to make the swap throughout that pre-Broadway run.

I’m hearing from friends in the current Broadway production of “Cabaret” that the line is once again getting an audible response, but of a different sort. On more than one occasion in the past two weeks — since the election — a small number of audience members have squealed with laughter at “She wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” In the late 1960s, we softened the line because the truth was too hard to hear. Today, it seems the line is playing exactly as the Nazi-sympathizing Emcee would have intended. 

Damn.  If this ain't history rhyming, I do not know what is.

 D

Damn!

NOOO!!!!

James Earl Jones has died at the age of 93.

It is impossible summarize his career, from his roll as Jack Jefferson in The Great White Hope, Lt Lothar Zogg in Dr. Strangelove, Darth Vader in Star Wars, the King in Coming to America, Admiral Greer in The Hunt for Red October,  Terence Mann in Field of Dreams, etc.

And then there was his voice.

We will not see his like any time soon.