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:

Justin Gaston, an underwear model is dating Miley Cyrus, who is apparently an underwear model in training. Gaston is 20 while Miley, star of Disney’s tween show Hannah Montana, is 15. I was pretty concerned about this relationship and the age difference, but after seeing these pictures, ehh, what’s to worry about? Clearly this guy’s mental age is in the 12-year old range.

Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley’s father, seems to have lost his way in his parental responsibility and continues to show poor judgment in regards to his daughter. Not only has he done nothing about the continuous leaks of Miley doing her own amateur underwear modeling, but he even participated in the promoting of his daughter in scandalous photos and questionable decisions.

And of course, he totally approves of Miley’s new boyfriend, the 20-year old underwear model, Justin Gaston. From the SFGate:

Miley Cyrus’ protective father, Billy Ray, has given the pop star’s “guy pal” Justin Gaston the seal of.

The 15-year-old has been linked to 20-year-old Gaston — a former contestant on reality TV show “Nashville Star” — for several weeks, and he joined her dad onstage to perform at Miley’s Disneyland party on Sunday.

All parties have denied Gaston is romancing the underage star, but he has won over Billy Ray.

He tells “Access Hollywood,” “He actually reminds me a lot of myself when I was 20 years old and I was living and searching for the dream.

“He’s got a great heart and soul, and a lot of determination. I think that’s the true measure of a man, is when you measure his heart.”

Was that supposed to be irony describing Billy Ray as “protective”? It wasn’t lost on me.

As for the “true measure of a man,” it could also be said that it can be found in how well a man looks after his precious children, and in this case I’d say Billy Ray Cyrus falls in the “very small, flacid” range. If I ain’t being too subtle.

Hollywood is like a the Bermuda Triangle, people enter with decent morals and good intentions only to get sucked into a magical vortex of senseless whoring and depravity.

Oh, and clearly the Disney Channel is run by the devil.

Johnny Depp is going to be one busy, busy guy for the next few years, and he’s going to have to make more room on his shelf for all the hats (no pun intended) he’s going to have to wear.  News is that he’s signed on to play both Tonto and the Mad Hatter in two Disney films:

Stepping into the iconic role of the Mad Hatter, Depp joins previously announced 18-year-old newcomer Mia Wasikowska, who has been chosen to play Alice. The 3-D “Alice in Wonderland” will reunite one of the most successful director-actor duos of the last few decades for the seventh time; Depp has previously collaborated with Burton on everything from “Edward Scissorhands” to “Sweeney Todd.”

[...] Depp will hit the screen opposite an unnamed kemo sabe for a 21st century re-imagining of “The Lone Ranger,” as previously announced by super-producer Bruckheimer. For a brief period of time, some news outlets believed that Depp would be playing the heroic cowboy — but this morning, the actor’s reps insisted that he’d been cast as the Ranger’s long-suffering, fiercely loyal Native American sidekick, Tonto. Depp, who has said in interviews that he has some Cherokee and Navajo in his blood, previously portrayed an American Indian in the 1997 film “The Brave.”

Plus, as announced Thursday morning, he will reprise his famous (and possibly his favorite) role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the popular Pirates franchise:

According to “Variety,” Depp has signed on for a fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film, returning to the franchise that has earned a combined $2.6 billion at the box office. Although he previously hinted that he’d be open to setting sail again in his most iconic role, it is largely believed that it will be a solo journey, as “Pirates” co-stars [Orlando] Bloom and Keira Knightley have insisted they’re finished with the franchise. Last year’s “At World’s End” concluded with Sparrow setting sail for the Fountain of Youth, likely hinting at the adventure soon to come.

Ah, too big for their britches now, are they?  Now that they’ve got a taste of celebrity, they want to move on from the vehicle that made them famous?  Too good to make another little pirate movie now?  Oh well, let ‘em go.  Neither Orlando nor Keira will ever be as big as Johnny Depp, mainly because they aren’t as nice.  They also don’t realize that you dance with the one who brung ya.

Johnny doesn’t need the money that Captain Jack Sparrow can bring in and he’s got more fame than you can shake a cutlass at.  He does it because he loves the role, plain and simple.  Isn’t that one of the best things a person can accomplish…find something they love and can afford to keep doing?

Things are far from rosy in Hannah Montanaland.  In what seems to be the personification of the phrase, “biting the hand that feeds you,” rumor has it that Miley Cyrus and dad Billy Ray are doing everything they can to get Miley fired from her hit Disney show:

Our spies on the set tell us Miley has bragged that she will get fired, making it clear she wants to focus on singing and not the show. For his part, Billy Ray has also made it clear that there is more money in singing than a Disney cable show. As a result, the father-daughter team has been showing up to the set ridiculously late, stalling production and infuriating cast and crew. [...]

Sources tell us Billy Ray has told people on the set that he and Miley will do 12 more episodes and then they are out. Disney was so pissed they called his agent, railing that Billy Ray and Miley were ingrates. Disney insisted that Billy Ray and Miley not only finish the 24 episode season — but Disney was adding six more episodes.

Real mature.  Looks like my local Wal-Mart will soon be full of crying prepubescents, weeping as the employees tear down the tired old Hannah Montana displays and put the merchandise in boxes to ship off to Big Lots.  With any luck, that is.  If they start playing Best Of Both Worlds on the televisions in there again this Christmas season, I may be forced to beat one to death with a curtain rod.  I don’t know which is worse…her singing spots or the Fruit Of The Loom ads that are in constant rotation during the holidays.  But I digress.

On this week’s very special episode of Hannah Montana, we see if pouting and a tantrum gets you what you want!

She issued a statement, which is your basic deny, deny, deny:

“I am fully committed to Hannah Montana. It’s what gave me this amazing opportunity to reach out to so many people,” Cyrus tells PEOPLE, adding, “I couldn’t do it alone. We have an amazing cast that is so supportive, including my dad who has been there for me every step of the way.”

Of course, Miley has indicated previous to this that she’s kind of over the whole Hannah Montana gig anyway, so I can totally understand she and her father acting like a couple of spoiled brats who want their own way:

To the dismay of her young fans, the 15-year-old star has signalled that the next season is probably the last.

Cyrus has been playing her pop star alter ego since the age of 11 and is keen to take her career in a more mature direction.

“We’re thinking this is our last season,” the teenager told E! News, explaining that working on the show has been tiring: “I just think we did a lot of episodes. We basically did two seasons in one season last year. Usually people would do one season that would be 16 episodes, and we did almost 30 episodes.”

Disney could not confirm or deny whether the show will end after this series. “We start production on the third series of Hannah Montana on August 4 and have an option for a fourth season beyond that. We look forward to the Hannah Montana feature film coming to a theatre near you in spring 2009,” a spokesman said.

A little side road here…in the same article, she tells of some rules her mother laid down for her concerning dating:

Her ideal man would be “a 16-year-old version of [Coldplay's Chris Martin]” – her mother does not allow her to date anyone over the age of 17.

“It’s seventeen, tops. Eighteen is just a little too old. It’s kind of illegal,” Cyrus conceded.  [emphasis mine]

Reeeeeally now.

The date on this article was July 28, 2008, barely two months ago.  Yet, just this month she was snapped coming out of church with a 20-year-old underwear model named Justin Gaston, who also happened to be on her daddy’s television show Nashville Star.  Forget trying to win a competition…just ”make friends” [wink wink] with a famous guy’s daughter.

On Sunday, Justin Gaston, a model and aspiring country singer, attended church in Pasadena, Calif., with the Hannah Montana star and her family. Later that night, he hit Disney’s Concert for Hope where Cyrus performed with the Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato.

According to Cyrus’s rep, Gaston, 20, is “a friend from Nashville.” He met Cyrus, 15, earlier this year when he was a contestant on Nashville Star, hosted by her father, Billy Ray. Adds Gaston’s rep, Allen Osborne, “He’s visiting L.A. for the week.”

A source close to Miley says, “They’ve been spending a lot of time together while he’s in town.”

Miley’s 16th birthday isn’t until November 23.

My guess is that little Miley is growing up now, and doesn’t want to be associated with a kiddie network any longer.  It’s worked thus far for the stars of HSM, but not for Miley…she’s got bigger fish to fry!

To be non-snarky for a minute, I think Billy Ray and his wife Tish need to worry less about how much money Miley can bring in, and a lot more about what she does in her spare time with cameras, cell phones, and email accounts…not to mention what professional photographers can do to her.  But then again, perhaps they can’t see the forest for the dollar signs.

Of course, it’s all just rumors and hearsay and I’m sure absolutely not one iota of it is true.  Oh no.  But I can dream, can’t I?  In a world without Hannah Montana, how long will it be until the next teen poptart comes along?  Everybody is replaceable.

I wonder if she knows Jamie Lynn Spears?

Oh how I wish the stain on my memory of the rock band Staind could be removed. While my wish won’t come entirely true, at least Staind won’t be joining the ranks of bands like U2, Dave Matthews Band and Metallica according to this Yahoo News Story.

Apparently if Staind’s destined-to-suck new album, The Progress of Illusion had hit #1 on the charts, they along with the aforementioned rock bands would be in the prestigious group of acts to have 4 No. 1 charting albums in a row.

Why So Glum Boys?

Which could have only meant that we’d have even more Staind music in mind-numbing repetition on the radio. They don’t make enough pills to wash down that kind of hell.

But hey, back to the Jonas Brothers. Apparently, the three mop-topped brothers from Jersey have topped the charts with their latest album, A Little Bit Longer, keeping the dreams of the pseudo-angst rockers at bay — not to mention, the raging migraine that awaited me.

My kids love those cute Jonas Brothers and their radio-friendly music, and so far all three boys have kept their clothes on, unlike so many of the Disney manufactured processed sugar out there today.

As much as this kind of music isn’t really my cup of tea, it’s a positive sign we are moving away from derivative rock like Staind. Perhaps once the teeny boppers move on to something else, the music industry can look inwards and figure out why Disney is making them look like amateurs and we can bring back the kind of energy that’s been missing since Nirvana shook things up in the 90’s.

While we are at it, can we throw in the other source of auditory hell which causes me nothing but anguish: Nickelback? I’d be ever so appreciative.

Thus begins the nasty emails…..sigh.