Selling/Buying Nostalgia...

Biiiiig gopher...










Joe Johnston has gotten a lot of ink on this website lately...

With the 20th anniversary of "The Rocketeer" and his take on "Captain America" coming out next month, we've had more than normal to say about him. I mentioned in my earlier post about how it's be nice to see a sequel/reboot. Even an animated series would be nice. Apparently I'm not the only one thinking this. So I thought you might enjoy this bit of Rocketeer love from French animator John Banana.

Maybe a smart Suit could get an idea watching this...

Hat Tip to Cartoon Brew.

80's Reunion...

It seems that Hollywood's fascination with the Eighties is continuing...

But now it has moved beyond just remakes of 80's films to the culture. Particularly video games. I'm sure many of you saw the announcement that the classic arcade hit "Space Invaders" was being turned into a film. This follows on the news that a game based on "Missle Command" is being adapted. And we all know that "Tron Legacy" will be coming out late this year based on the 80's film about video games, which actually spawned an arcade game. This got me wondering what other games from that time period would be great or at least captivating enough for adapting into a film. Here's an incomplete list of films that Suits could/probably are going after.




Donkey Kong - The classic game that brought us Mario which has him rescuing the heroine from a giant gorilla. I'm sure Peter Jackson is salivating at doing this one.




Dig Dug - A little tunnel digger that is digging through caverns beneath the earth destroying little red monsters (Tomatoes) and fire breathing dragons (Fygars). I sense something Darren Aronofski would just love turning into a compelling story. Heck, he's already planned on "Robocop."




Joust - This tale of knights riding giant bird creatures among floating rocks brings to mind images of "Avatar" when thinking of the possibilities. But since Cameron is busy, how about Andrew Stanton once he finishes "John Carter of Mars?"




Robotron - Ironically, Disney sued Williams Electronics for the "Tron" part of the name. Apparently the Mouse's lawyers didn't know that tron was used before the 1982 by scientist and the world alike to discover things like, oh, electrons and such. How about Neill Blomkamp for this project?




Pac Man - Who can ever forget this lovable little guy? Imagine a bizarre film featuring this fellow running around a glowing room looking for food. Only one man should direct this. Terry Gilliam, your future awaits you.




Dragon's Lair - And bringing it back home to Disney territory, former Disney animator Don Bluth created this sensation about a knight named Dirk the Daring, who attempted to rescue a beautiful princess, Daphne, from the evil dragon Singe, who has locked Daphne in a ancient wizard's castle. Who else to direct this, but Don Bluth of course.




Defender - A lone fighter must protect his planets inhabitants while destroying an alien horde bent on control and domination. Steven Spielberg, call your agent. I think he has some news for you.




Asteroids - Out in an asteroid belt, a small spacecraft plots a course for its survival all while having to avoid hostile alien forces. Could this be any better a project for George Lucas? Oh wait, yes I forgot about that. Go back to the Ranch, George. We'll get someone like James McTeigue as a substitute.





Zaxxon - Another space fighter game where you're trying to move through behind enemy lines and destroy their bases. I sense another opportunity for Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams to work together!




Centipede - A distant traveler on a strange and exotic planet encounters strange and horrific insect like creatures that he/she has to destroy in order to survive. How about we get Rob Zombie to direct this one? It can't be as bad as his Halloween remakes can it? Can it?




Galaga - A space warship encounters an alien armada heading toward his home and has to destroy it all by himself. Could this be "The Last Starfighter" game adaptation? No, but it sounds like it. Let's call up Ronald Moore and have him work on this. He did an impressive adaption of "Battlestar Galactica" so why not this?




Castlevania - Simon Belmont, a descendant of the Belmont clan of vampire hunters, travels to the dark and foreboding fortress of Dracula, Castlevania. There he fights all the evils until he meets the famous vampire in a battle that apparently Von Helsing couldn't finish. Kind of like "Bram Stoker's Dracula" meets "Indiana Jones." Francis Ford Coppola could come out of his semi-retirement and do this one with his eyes closed.





Tempest - A bizarre world where you have to survive a gauntlet of creatures that come at you from strange dimensions. This seems opportune for a director such as David Lynch to pull off.




Pitfall! - Ok, this one didn't start out as an arcade game but it did become one later when Sega licensed it from Activision. It was a fun game when it came out in the 80's for the Atari and could prove to be a great film. If you're going to rip off Indy, then Pitfall Harry is the one you should do it with. Now, who is in between projects right now that could handle this? Steven Sommers perhaps?




Double Dragon - Billy Lee and his twin brother Jimmy (known as Hammer and Spike), fight through the gangland of the Black Warriors gang to rescue their mutual love interest Marian. Now this film screams of cheesy, 80's kung fu/karate films. Who better than Sam Firstenberg to direct and Golan-Globus to produce. Perfection. I wouldn't even know it was a new film.




Pole Position - A racing game? With fast, Formula One race cars and add in some hot girls and slick shiny action? Is there anyone out there besides me that can't imagine Michael Bay directing this? The film he was born to do!

Well, that's my list. And time to fess up. Of course some of these films would make great adaptions, while others would be a desecration at least and a challenge at best. I'll let you guess which ones are deserving of an actual good film and which ones would simply be giant hole through which money is dumped. Now that might make an interesting arcade game.

But just think how many quarters you'd have to drop in...

Innocence Lost, 1956...

Sometimes your life can hold treasures untold...

Take for example, Jeff Altman, who found a 16 mm film that his Grandfather took of Disneyland when it was a wee, one year old. Great stuff, and in color too.

Hat Tip to The Disney Blog.

When George Lucas Could Do No Wrong...

I Remember that time growing up when George Lucas was a god. He was this mythic film maker. He dove into my mind and pulled out the most wondrous things and then put them on the screen. This was before "Return of the Jedi" or even "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." This was the edgy, Avant-garde man whose name was golden. This was before I knew he was human. Before you could see his faults. Before "The Turn" that Honor talks about.

This is a short journey down that road. Into a past I still remember, from a present I wish to forget. Before he gave plaid a bad name.



THX-1138: Writer, Director, Producer.



American Graffiti: Director, Producer.



Star Wars: Writer, Producer, Director.



More American Graffitti: Story, Producer.



The Empire Strikes Back: Story, Producer, Executive Producer.



Kagemusha: Executive Producer.



Raiders of the Lost Ark: Story, Producer, Executive Producer.



Body Heat: Producer(uncredited)

Not to mention several other blockbusters which touched his influence in the late 70's and early 80's. But that was a different time. A different place than where we find ourselves today.

Odds & Ends, Bits & Piece 3: The Missing Links...

I thought we'd take this opportunity to explore some of what we missed in our last "OEBP" post...


Alain over at Disney and More has posted a huge collection of photos showing why Disneyland Paris is beautiful during Christmas. And don't forget to click over now that he's finally put up that article about TDL's Monsters Inc. ride. I'm sure you'll be impressed.

The guys over at Laughing Place have a great five page spread with photos from their newest issue of Tales From The Laughing Place Magazine. It's got some nice images and info on Disney's Animal Kingdom.

For those of you that love Uncle Scrooge and are fans of Ducktales then you might want to have a look at the original cartoon, "Scrooge McDuck and Money" that was done in the Sixties as the first animated outing of Carl Barks' legendary character. Part 1, Part 2.

And for those that are into such nostalgia and remember tuning in to watch the Wonderful World of Disney, here are several opening throughout the decades that bring back warm feelings...

A nice 60's opening to the WWOD when it was know as Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color is here.

An early 70's opening is the decade of confusion after the passing of Walt is here.

A late 80's opening when Michael Eisner could do no wrong is here and a late 80's/early 90's intro to the Disney Sunday Movie here.

An early 90's opening with the Mouse riding high from the Disney Afternoon and the expected opening of Euro Disneyland can be found here and here.

And speaking of the Disney Afternoon, here's that opening as well. Ahhh, for those early 90's days of Disney animation syndication!

And do you remember those early commercials for DCA? You know, the ones that were broadcast to show this new theme park that Disney had created for us? The one that couldn't fail because we would accept anything with the "Disney" name on it? No? Well if you haven't seen them they're here and here. Eisner and Pressler really had no clue, did they?

Oh, and if you ever checked out the early part of those VHS tapes(what are those?) in 2000 then you would have gotten to see this teaser for Disneyland's new sister park.

It's amazing what can happen over seven years, ain't it?

Well, that was nice. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to do some Christmas shopping...

Beyond The Black Hole...

Continually bankrupt of original ideas, Hollywood continues it unstoppable revisionist vandalizing by going where it has already gone before this summer with J.J. Abrams' borderline sacrilegious "reboot" (or is it "re-imagining?") of Star Trek. But with everything in history rapidly being remade (generally for the worse), Tinseltown may be reaching deep into its cache of franchises to plunder. I normally despise remakes but if there was one movie that I think would be ripe for a remake it's Disney's The Black Hole.

I first saw The Black Hole in the theater the same week as Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 and both films were disturbingly creepy to this 6 year-old boy. Sure, The Black Hole was Disney's attempt to ride the Star Wars wave by including kid-friendly robots, a pair of two-dimensional space cowboys, and a gratuitous lack of scientific accuracy, but what struck me most was the film's eerily gothic production design and tone courtesy of Peter Ellenshaw and a dark cerebral ending that was perhaps not just the fact that it was the first PG rated film the studio put out commercially but also the ballsiest kids movie Disney ever made. It's imaginatively rich with imagery and metaphor, the kind that evokes the ending to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The mad scientist Doctor Hans Reinhardt climbs into the "shell" of his infernal machine Maximillian (Maximillian Shell... get it?) in order to survive in a domain of hell that awaits him and his minions of labotomized drones as foreshadowed early in the film by Ernest Borgnine's throwaway line "it looks like something right out of Dante's Inferno." It's their destiny, purgatory, yet there is a chasm of Gothic glass windows accompanied by angelic choir and a brilliant wash of white light spills over the frame as our heroic crew of the Palomino emerge from a white hole into a new unexplored universe. The narrative of the film makes it unclear whether these are literally interpretations of heaven and hell and themes of eternal damnation and salvation of the soul or the thoughts of the crew as the pass through it. According to Peter Ellenshaw, an alternate ending was conceived but never shot that would have involved a slow panning out from Michelangelo's The Creation from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Kate's face would be seen in the background of the painting, implying that the crew experienced the beginning of time and would end with Kate looking up at the painting, suggesting that the Palomino crew eventually returned safely to Earth.

If the Black Hole were remade today, the ending would undoubtedly be changed. There is no way the studio would put out such an esoterically ambiguous, if not subversively cerebral commercial film targeted primarily at children. They would demand that everything be summarily explained and accessible to conventional audiences. That might be beneficial for a remake whose tone would invariably take on a much more serious scientific prose. Let's face it, the fantasy comic-book approach just wouldn't work now in the 21st century, even though the film itself takes place in the not-too-distant 22nd. Since 1979, scientists have learned much more about the physics of black holes from what was theoretically speculated at the time. Audiences are much more educated now and can grasp complex theoretical paradigms of science fiction. There's an opportunity here to do a serious exploration about an expedition to the edge of a black hole and beyond.

Interestingly, Whitman Comics made a "sequel" of sorts called "Beyond The Black Hole" following its comic book adaptation of the film which began where the film left off with the crew of the Palomino having emerged into another universe and investigates a nearby planet. What they discover is similar to the plot of Star Trek's "Mirror, Mirror" universe. They have entered a parallel universe where doppelgangers of themselves exist and events are unusually familiar under a radically different set of circumstances. It was an interesting read for children curious to know more about this unexplained universe following the events of the film's ambiguous conclusion and served no other purpose than to entertain an explanation of sorts for those who felt they needed one. The comic concluded with an unresolved cliffhanger and the text: "Trapped in another universe with no way to get home, Dan, Charlie, Kate an Vincent await their fate Beyond the Black Hole. Join us next time in Issue #5" with the intention to develop an ongoing series of adventures in this alternate universe but, alas, issue #5 never came to be.

The Black Hole was the last of the "old-school" visual effects films to be produced by Disney. Three years later, Harrison Ellenshaw, Peter Ellenshaw's son, would help usher in the digital age of visual effects with the groundbreaking computer generated fantasy Tron. Disney is already prepping Tr2n for a sequel in 2010. Now is the perfect opportunity to revisit The Black Hole to bring it up to date and give it the epic science-fiction makeover that it deserves.