Here we go again.
It has been announced that the remake of the Beatles classic Yellow Submarine is in the works.Why or why do they insist on taking classics and and trashing them? Didn’t they learn their lesson with Willy Wonka, The Whiz, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and Charlotte’s Web? (just to name a few classics).

Yellow Submarine was magic on the screen back in 1968. Imagine how it looked to a generation that was used to seeing black and white television and experiencing the whole “make love not war” movement. It was also the year that Martin Luther King was assassinated. The movie came out at a time of great civil unrest, and it was a hit I mean a ray of yellow sunshine. *snicker*

In the movie, the playful rhymes of  the charachter Jeremy Hillary Boob PhD. (he was my favorite) pretty much summed up the premise behind Yellow Submarine, “Peace! Peace! Supplant the doom and the gloom! Turn off what is sour! Turn into a flower and BLOOM! BLOOM! BLOOM”

To me, Yellow Submarine was more than just a trippy animated flick. It was part of an entire movement of peace and love. Beatles classic songs like Nowhere Man and All You Need Is Love melded together with trippy animation into a sensory overload of psychedelic yumminess which was loved by many young and old.

But Yellow Submarine was not loved by all and many considered it just a drugged out cartoon. Take for instance this scathing review  (<<<click on the link) of  Yellow Submarine when it was re-released in 1999. The review was entitled “ Take a psychedelic journey to Nowhere land with the Beatles & the Nowhere Man where you’ll find nothing too pleasing without the help from your friends.” Needless to say of course I disagreed with that interview.

The original Yellow Submarine took two years to make, by 40 animators and 140 technical artists and had 14 different scripts. Now I know by today’s standards, those methods are now obsolete, and technology has improved by leaps and bounds, but I am not too privy of someone taking this classic and making it into a modern day mess either.

Sadly, Disney is doing the remake. Now don’t even get me started on Disney, with it’s mass marketing of clothing and toys made in their GLOBAL sweat shops, and other things I don’t care to get into. I just ask you to please do your homework before you support them!
Disney is also pairing up with Rob Zemeckis for this remake.

Now granted Zemeckis has some big  and successful films under his belt, he also did two movies that I just totally despise which were Forest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Two of the most annoying movies I ever had the displeasure of watching. Save me all the Forest Gump love  fest comments which I am sure I will get. I HATED the movie with a passion and had trouble getting through the whole thing and almost walked out. And if I hear “life is just like a box of chocolates” in that HORRIBLE fake accent that Hanks did one more time, I swear I am going to get the screaming Blue Meanies out.

In Yellow Submarine, the Captain of the Blue Meanies says to ”glove”, “A thing of beauty; destroy it forever!”

Is Disney going to be Yellow Submarine’s ”glove”?

Of course I know the original can never be destroyed. But sometimes another thing occurs when movies are remade. The younger audience thinks that the remake is the first one that was ever made and tend to think the real original is crap. This also happens with music today and it drives me totally NUTS! Grrrrrr! And no, Limp Bizkit was not the originator of the song ”Behind Blue Eyes“. Geez!

A lot of younger people also think if the movie is not in their face with special effects, then it just plain stinks. Perhaps that’s why Disney is going with 3-D animation to inhance it a much as posisble.

But…Disney has yet to acquire the rights to the Beatles songs thus far and one has to wonder if Michael Jackson’s recent death has anything to do with acquiring these songs.Why? Jackson’s estate happens to include the 4,000 song catalogue of  Beatle’s music which he purchased for 47.5 million back in 1985. But keep in mind, he owns the publishing rights for the songs. There is a difference in owning the publsihing rights and the performance rights. For a full explanation go here.  

A bit of history with Jackson and Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney. Jackson worked with McCartney on the song  Say Say Say and they did a video together for the song in 1984. Jackson also did The Girl Is Mine with McCartney in 1982. ( I won’t comment on the title or lyrics of that song, it’s just too easy).

Jackson was ironically advised by Paul McCartney. Sir Paul told Jackson more or less that buying music was a sound and lucrative investment. This advice was prior to the 1985 auction of the Beatles catalogue of songs. Jackson took Sir Paul’s advice and outbid both Paul McCartney AND John Lennon’s widow,Yoko Ono! 
Hey all you Jackson fans out there, how can you justify this dastardly move by Jackson? Huh?

Sir Paul and Yoko must have been a tad hot under the collar to say the least. If Jackson had any scruples, ESPECIALLY for the fact that he was also in the music industry, he would of let McCartney keep the publishing rights to his own songs that HE wrote with Lennon and not outbid him in the first place. But then again who knows what McCartney would of done with the songs either. Or even Yoko for that  matter. Maybe it was a good thing that Sir Paul didn’t get the songs? Sir Paul’s ex-wife, the money grubbing Heather Mills, never signed a pre-nup and the songs  may have ended up as being partly hers. GASP!
That money grubbing biotch got WAY too much from Sir Paul as far as I am concerned. At least she is out of the picture now. But when will you ever learn Sir Paul?

So what has happened with some of these songs over the years? Let’s jump back to the 1987 Nike commercial using the Beatles Revolution song. Capital Records owed the performance rights and was paid $250,000. Michael Jackson owned the publishing rights, (meaning use of the words and music) and he was paid for use of the song. Which was later followed by others like All You You Need is Love, which was used for a Luv’s Diaper commercial, and a version of the Beatles song Help, which was used in a car commercial in 1985 . Son Julian Lennon, son of John, lent his voice to When I’m 64 for an Allstate commercial and  let’s not forget Target’s use of Hello- Goodbye for their TV commercials. Egad!

The Beatles song collection saga continued on….. and in 1995, Sony paid Jackson 95 million and merged with ATV, to form Sony/ATV Publishing which was a 50/50 joint venture. So it is probably safe to say that Jackson’s estate includes HALF of the publishing rights to the Beatles songs. 

But there may be a silver lining in this dark cloud, well sort of.
Supposedly Jackson left the 4,000 Beatles songs to McCartney in his will. Rumor has it that Jackson felt remorse about his failed relationship with Sir Paul, and thought this was a way to make amends. Too bad Jackson didn’t do this YEARS ago, so he could of actually made amends in person with Sir Paul, rather than from the grave. So Sir Paul may end up with the publsihing rights to half of his own songs in the end. Just plain sad. *shakes head* But I guess it is better than nothing.
Sadly, Sony/ATV doesn’t need permission from surviving Beatles or heirs to license the songs. Damn you Jackson! And Damn you Sony!
So it’s still up in the air as to whether this remake of Yellow Submarine will eventually get the rights to use these songs.

So getting back to this movie remake.
The NY Times called the original a 2-D CARTOON and they also mentioned two of the movies I despise by Zemeckis.
From the NY Times :

More than 40 years after Old Fred fired up the titular vehicle of “Yellow Submarine” and used it to round up four Liverpool lads who would defend Pepperland from the Blue Meanies, Disney is preparing a remake of the Beatles’ 1968 animated movie, Variety reported.

The original film was a traditional (if thoroughly trippy) 2-D cartoon directed by George Dunning and designed by Heinz Edelmann, in which the Beatles appeared only in a live-action segment tacked on at the end. The planned remake, to be directed by Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”), will be a 3-D animated feature that would use the performance-capture technology seen in Mr. Zemeckis’s “Beowulf” and his coming remake of “A Christmas Carol.”

The Variety report said that Disney was still seeking to obtain rights to the Beatles songs used in the original “Yellow Submarine” film, including the title song and tracks like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The remake is being planned for a 2012 release.

No casting was announced for the motion-capture remake, though the project does call to mind Paul McCartney’s recent remarks to Daniel Radosh in The New York Times Magazine: “In 10 years’ time you’ll be standing there, and you will be Paul McCartney. You know that, don’t you?”

Fact: Many people didn’t realize that the voices used in the original Yellow Submarine where not those of the actual Beatles. I never knew that myself. The Beatles only appeared at the very end of the movie as themselves.

Yellow Submarine had it’s fair share of merchandising back in the day to say the least, and it continues today. The Beatles had more merchandise than any other band in history. There were Yellow Submarine pop up books, calenders, Blue Meanie Halloween costumes, Goebel figurines and even Huffy Bikes jumped on the YS band wagon in 1968 and came out with a girls YS yellow bicycle complete with movie graphics right on the seat which I found on a Beatles memorabilia website.

Of course all this stuff had a huge resurgence in 1999 when they re-released the movie for the 30thyear Anniversary. Today you can still buy Yellow Submarine merchandise in all shapes and forms from neck ties to purses, to t-shirts to wallies to stick on your walls. They also came out with new YS Beatles figurines in the 90’s and again in 2000. Even the Cirque du Soleil has a show called LOVE dedicated to the music of the Beatles. I am sure Disney will jump on the merchandising band wagon and will have their little workers slaving away making sure that there is enough Yellow Submarine Onesies and Jeremy Hillary Boob lunch boxes. And don’t forget Yellow Submarine Happy Meals complete with plastic figures which will end up in landfills and stay there for all eternity. Oh wait that s right, Disney dumped McDonald’s back in 2006. Maybe Burger King then? *snicker*

OK, I know I am being cynical, and maybe I am too sentimental about movies being remade and the “old days”. So I decided to check myself, and I went through the list of movie remakes on Wikipedia, but I still found myself rooting for the original versions. Even really early movies like Mighty Joe Young which came out in 1949. I still found myself favoring the original over the remake. (ironically Disney did a remake and they also did  an animated version of course, they make me sick).

Films like Little Shop Of Horrors? DEFINITELY the original. Who can deny the greatness of the cameo by a very young and loony Jack Nicholson in the original? You can’t.
Even though some of these original movies were sheer cornball and the filming techniques were primitive, but that was part of what made the originals so great. They had a lot less to work with back then, but yet the movies were still phenomenal.

That is why I wish they would just leave the classics alone. You can’t reproduce living in the era when these original movies came out or the way people felt when they first saw the original Yellow Submarine. Many people may be annoyed by the remaking of Yellow Submarine. And I can’t speak for the hard core Beatles buffs. Maybe some will be unhappy and some will embrace the new movie with the hopes of a whole new generation of yougins’ buying Beatles music once again and helping to continue the Beatles legacy. I myself do not support Disney, so I will not be catching this particular flick.

But at the very least, let’s just hope that this new release does the original Yellow Submarine some justice and more importantly let’s hope it sends the same message as the original.
Which of course was:

What a great day, I get to mention Amy, crack AND vagina in the same sentence. Actually, if you think about it, can you even mention Amy WITHOUT mentioning crack? Not lately.

Last week, stories emerged stating Amy Winehouse was offered $2 million dollars to perform at a private concert for Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Why? Because when you have billions of dollars, sometimes it’s fun to gamble with it, and these days, expecting perpetual crackhead Amy Winehouse to show up on time and perform anything other than a circus act with three rings, is some serious odds NOT in your favor.

Rush and Malloy have the scoopage:

Winehouse took the bait [$2 mill]. She can use the cash, according to British reports, which claim she’s been paying veteran inmates at a British jail to look after her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, while he awaits his assault trial.)

Tattooed Amy managed to get on a plane in London. But, a source tells us, when she arrived in Moscow “she was in no condition to appear.”

Word is party organizers talked about finding a replacement to sing, but felt there wasn’t enough time.

Winehouse was due to take the stage at 10:30 p.m. at The Garage, the gallery of Abramovich’s 25-year-old love interest, Dasha Zhukova. The singer’s handlers “spent two hours trying to pull her together,” says the insider.

Around 12:30 a.m., Winehouse finally appeared, wobbling onto the stage down a red carpet lined with red lights, which guided her like a damaged aircraft down a runway.

Between restorative sips of Coke, Winehouse puffed on cigarettes, flung her lighter into the audience and tugged on her little dress, revealing to stageside fans that she wasn’t wearing underwear.

“I heard that her singing was a little sloppy,” says the source, who caught up with the gallery crowd later at The Most, the hot Moscow club where the after-party was held. “But she still put on a terrific show.”

If someone wanted to pay me $2 million to show up, caterwaul for a hour or so and flash my vagina, count me in. Except the vagina part, the caterwauling though, that’s a given. I can’t imagine, given Amy’s recent history of poor performances, Mr. Abramovich was expecting a genuine performance from Winehouse.

Also, just a side note, did she really have to go commando? If her weave and face look that messy and untidy, can you imagine what the parts we DON’T see look like?

*shudders*

You learn something new every day!

In his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore made the decision to not use actual footage of collapsing ice shelves in Antartica, but instead to use special-effects shots created for the movie The Day After Tomorrow:

Al Gore’s “traveling global warming show,” the award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” includes a long flyover shot of majestic Antarctic ice shelves. But this shot was first seen in the 2004 blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow.” Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.

Karen Goulekas, the special effects supervisor for “The Day After Tomorrow” said the shot is a digital image. She was glad Al Gore used it in the documentary since “It is one hell of a shot.” Both movies use the shot to convincingly portray global warming, but it is left to the audience to decide if this created image can both entertain and educate us about our changing planet.

Wait, what was that again?  Styrofoam?

Well, it’s fake but accurate, you might say. “Just because Big Al manipulated my emotions with spectacular Hollywood fakery doesn’t mean we’re not ALL GONNA DIE FROM GLOBAL WARMING!!!” If you really believe that, there’s no point in arguing with you. But you’ll have to forgive me for laughing at the look on your face when you find out what the effects guys used to make all those “glaciers”:

Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.

That’s right, Styrofoam! You know, the evil, evil stuff that’s being banned all over the place because it’s destroying the environment. Wonder what the studio did with it when they were done with their dumb movie? Five hundred years from now, will the last few survivors of the human race stumble upon those beautifully sculpted glaciers, completely intact, in some forgotten landfill?

Uhm…mmmmkay.  I ain’t sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

hattip Deceiver

We just aren’t sure what it is that’s broken.

For one thing, I’m not crazy about the animation.  Yes, I know it’s supposed to be anime, which I don’t have a problem with.  But this brings to mind comparisons with Aeon Flux, and that particular style just isn’t my thing.  If they’re trying to make Brit sexy in this vid, I don’t think they succeeded.  Anime Brit breaks into a building where a dual anime Brit is being held in some sort of cryogenic state, along the way kicking some anime butt.  But I don’t get it…she kisses the glass holding back her twin self?  She kills the baddie with what, her sex appeal?  He self-destructs because she broke his…ice?  Too confusing.  In short, they made anime Brit do all the things real-life Brit can’t (or won’t) do any more in videos.

So let’s move on to the song.  First, what is it with starting songs with spoken lyrics?  She already tried that in “Gimme More”.  Basically, the song is about, you guessed it, sex.  She spends the song breathily panting about how ”You ain’t gotta be scared/We’re grown now” and “Can you rise to the occasion/I’m patiently waiting…I can’t get enough/So let me get it up.”  It’s techno pop, the sort of thing clubs ought to eat up, but that will seem hopelessly dated in a few years (Rick Astley, anyone?).  Then again, this album wasn’t made to stand the test of time, but to earn some bucks.  In that, it’s probably succeeding.

It takes longer than a few weeks to animate a video, so maybe she just wasn’t capable, interested in, or together enough to make a video for this song.  Jive has to make their money back on this CD some way, so an animated video was undoubtedly the next best thing.

The song is very much about Britney taking control of a sexual encounter, and I wonder if it is a metaphor for her wishing to take control of her life.  I know the song was written, recorded, and produced a long time ago, but she also took steps a while back to cut herself off from everyone who had previously helped her and took “control” of her own life.  Or it could just be another generic song about sex.

It’s not horrible…it’s just not all that great.  Meh.  However, if you like it, more power to ya.

Break the Ice

Rush and Malloy are reporting that Jake Gyllenhaal is slated to reprise the role of  DC comic superhero Captain Marvel of “Shazam!” fame, from the popular 70’s kid’s show of the same name.  This Captain Marvel is not to be confused with Marvel Comics “Captain Marvel.”  Due to copyright and trademark issues, DC Comics can’t market under the Captain Marvel name, so Shazam and Captain Marvel have become synonmous in the DC world.

If true, Gyllenhaal will be reprising the role of Captain Marvel for New Line, whose alter-ego is radio reporter Billy Batson. Billy, a young man, would obtain his super powers from the wizard Shazam, which would transform him through a bolt of lightening into an adult with the powers of six legendary figures. How cool is that?!

The article states that New Line is ready to spend $200 million on the film and director Peter Segal hopes to quickly “nab” Gyllenhaal before Sam Raimi does for the continued adventures of Spider-Man.  There is speculation that Maguire is ready to retire his role in the Spider-Man movies, despite his oddly huge popularity playing the webbed hero.  Maybe he’s just sick of looking at the Kikster.  He wouldn’t be alone.

Come to think of it, didn’t Jake once date Kirsten Dunst?  Very interesting.  Moving on…
But wait, there’s more…

Superman, Wonderwoman, Aquaman, Batman and the Flash are set to star side by side in a live-action film. Warner Brothers, drooling at the prospects of capitalizing on the popularity of comic book heroes on the silver screen, have greenlighted the project.

I think I just dropped a deuce in my pants. Can you imagine all that superheroness in one movie? We just bought the sleek and newly redone Justice League Seasons One and Two for my son. But seeing how he’s three and not old enough to appreciate the dark, brooding and sophisticated modern superheroes, I am the only one who is willing to watch them. Something about the vague lesbian nature of Wonderwomen makes me slightly uncomfortable.

Speaking of which, there is something very familiar about that Super Friends logo. Doesn’t GLAAD have that same logo? If not, they should totally borrow it. Look at them – all super-inclusive and whatnot. Heroes of all shapes, sizes, gender, species. Every damn color in the superhero rainbow.

Since I am total dork and have a son OBSESSED with superheroes, whether of the Marvel or DC variety, you know our asses will be all over it when it comes out.

I wonder if they will do a live action of the Ambiguously Gay Duo? Wait, wasn’t that called Broke Back Mountain?