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The Sing-Off (2009)
A great concept that NBC/Sony can't seem to pin down
The Sing-Off is a unique competition featuring just vocal groups with no instrumental backup. High School choirs, traditional collegiate A Capella, do wop and street corner sounds are represented as well as their more modern descendants where the bass singer and beat-boxer are a dedicated rhythm section. Each episode has one or two themes (classic rock, guilty pleasures, etc.) that challenge the contestants to perform out of their comfort zones. Viewer voting is done for the penultimate episode only (except for the 2014 "special") and like all other TV talent shows the judges are not required to follow the public vote.
The music they make is almost always awesome, especially the opening numbers, where all the contestants sing as a single group, consistently brings the house down. The audio quality has also improved greatly with each season, especially the first, where they had trouble covering large groups and used less than ideal ear mounted microphones. By season 3 they had progressed to the point of producing an opening number with over 100 vocalists.
Since a good deal of the talent comes from within the tight-knit A Capella community there is a real camaraderie among the groups, giving it a more friendly feel than other "Idol" like shows. For instance, when they changed the titular "Sing-off" section to a back and forth "battle" during season 4, each pair of groups ended up collaborating to create combined arrangements that enhanced both groups performances.
The backgrounds of the 5 series winners (latin, gospel, electronica/club, country and collegiate are a good example of the diversity of both the contestants and the current A Capella scene.
Until 2014 the trio of judges had been anchored by Ben Folds and Shawn Stockman with Nicole Scherzinger serving mostly as comic relief for the first two seasons. In 2011 the middle chair was filled by Sara Bareilles and since the 2013 return, Jewel, both pros who have the musical chops to hold their own with the boys. The judges banter rarely feels forced and criticism only rarely strays away from the performance, usually for some lighthearted (and often corny) joking between the judges.
The third season was expanded from 5 to 11 weekly episodes with 16 groups and ran from September to December. After being canceled it returned after a year in its original holiday filler spot, albeit with some tinkering of the format. Despite the massive success of Season 3 winners Pentatonix, 2014 had only a single 2 hour holiday special episode with Patrick Stump trying his best to fill the anchor seat of missing judge Ben Folds.
Here's hoping that NBC/Sony will get their act together for 2015, otherwise The Sing-Off will only be remembered as Pentatonix's springboard to success.
Stargate: Atlantis (2004)
Science Fiction by Committee
Just before Stargate: Atlantis begins you hear the words "A Sci-Fi Channel Original Production". They could be sued for false advertising, since there is not one original thing in this production.
Stargate SG-1 was about to end and the producers didn't want to stop the money train. The answer, turn it into a franchise. The show's origin is as derivative as everything else surrounding it.
Strand a cast far from home with a strong, smart and pretty lady in charge. Kill off a few of the crew in the pilot episode to make room for a second group needing a new place to stay. Star Trek: Voyager or Stargate: Atlantis?
In the first regular episode a black cloud was terrorizing the complex until it was lured by a heroic crewman through the Stargate to a barren wasteland. I'd watched the exact same plot on Stargate SG-1 an hour earlier. If you are going to steal a plot, don't seal one from the show that's your lead in, let alone one airing the same night, that's just bad manners.
The characters are incredibly formulaic. From the nerdy scientist to the sexy alien girl, from the renegade pilot to the downright racist depiction of the comic Scotsman, there is not one ounce of originality in this show.
Instead of SG-1's body snatching Goa'uld you get the soul sucking "Wraith", alien vampires who harvest humans. H. G. Wells introduced the idea of humans as cattle in "The Time Machine" so I guess they were conceived as "Dracula meets the Morlocks". Long hair, Gothic makeup and clothes, and I bet they've got a standing order with the casting offices looking out for really tall anorexic actors. Maybe they're hoping for a crossover from Buffy and Anne Rice fans.
The Sci-Fi Channel will get their money's worth out of this, I'm sure. But since their track record for original productions is dismal and their treatment of successful properties even worse, I'm not expecting much from this show.
Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985)
A poorly animated and VERY blatant Star Wars rip-off
I was amazed at all the great reviews here. I couldn't get past the horrible animation and artwork. Maybe I was watching a bad transfer from the 3D version but everything animated seemed to shake and flicker. It looked like they rotoscoped the characters, because only they had the jitters, especially their heads. There were also constant obvious mistakes in the animation, things like body parts missing or incorrectly colored for a frame or two.
You could tell every time there was going to be a big special effect, because of the dirt suddenly appearing on the film (I guess they stole that from Star Wars too). The backgrounds lacked detail (the outdoor scenes at the beginning and the end were particularly poorly drawn) and the spaceships looked like origami paper airplanes. The character design was typical of the 1970's and 80's (a little better than He-Man or the Filmation Saturday morning cartoons of that era).
Symphony in Spinach (1948)
One of the best of the Famous/Paramount Popeye cartoons
This cartoon is unusual because there is almost no attempt to animate the character's mouths. The most likely explanation is that, for whatever reason, much of the dialog was ad-libbed during the recording sessions.
Max Fleischer's cartoon studio was one of the few that recorded the voices after a cartoon was animated, and Famous/Paramount continued this practice after they acquired the studio.
This was a major contribution to the character of Popeye because it allowed Jack Mercer to mutter additional lines that didn't require animation.
In this cartoon, all three actors' parts appear to have been done this way. Their mouths almost never move and the lines that are not synced are the funniest parts of the cartoon. It nearly overflows with musical puns like Bluto's "Don't B flat, babe, be natural!'
My Favorite Duck (1942)
When Daffy was still just a troublemaker
In this cartoon, Daffy hasn't "grown up" yet. He doesn't have the character flaws like greed and vanity we came to love; he's just a troublemaker, another tool for the artists to use to explore their craft.
And explore they do! Gravity, point of view, and finally, even the "reality" of the cartoon itself are discarded, each for precise comic effect, thirteen years before the classic `Duck Amuck' did it.
They even use music in unexpected ways. An often-missed gag revolves around the songs assigned to each character. For Porky, it's a peaceful "Moonlight Bay", an old song, even in the 1940's. Daffy sings the more current swing piece made popular by Cab Calloway, "Blues in the Night" (My Momma done told me, when I was in knee pants).
Each song helps to define the characters, so you don't think it's unusual for them to be singing as they go about their business, but Porky accidentally starts off Daffy's song, reacts, then corrects himself. "My Momma done told me ... nghhh! ... We were sailing along". He looks directly at us to register his annoyance as he realizes his mistake, just in time for us to realize we've been set up.
It's not only a hilarious cartoon; it's an example of animation stretching the limits of the medium as both an artistic and comedic exercise.
Now That Summer Is Gone (1938)
Film school in a cartoon
At first glance, this is a funny cartoon about the evils of gambling. It succeeds there entirely.
But in Frank Tashlin's hands, it becomes a lesson in cinematic techniques. He excelled at using animation the way a live action director would. Pick any cartoon he directed and you will find at least one shot that you would not expect in a cartoon. This cartoon is full of them.
Everything is there, from zooms, pans and trucks to double exposure, montage and POV shots. Even the use of light and shadow is very sophisticated for a six-minute `gag cartoon'
Some would say that animation is an unlimited medium that doesn't need to be tied down by the methods of another medium. And later animators would leave reality behind entirely. But, at a time when most animation was laid out as if their characters were on a theater stage, Tashlin broke through the imaginary proscenium arch and his colleges were both quick to learn his lessons and acknowledge the source.
Mr. Bean: The Animated Series (2002)
The worst thing to happen to animation since squigglevision
The character design is so poor and the sound recording so bad that if I hadn't seen the title I wouldn't have known who it was supposed to be. It also has a very claustrophobic feel to it, as if it had been filmed with a zoom lens. Like Father Ted, Mr. Bean is another British import that derives it's humor from characters so painfuuly stupid, that in any other setting they would be considered mentally disabled. With animation that looks like it was drawn by a child with a VERY wide magic marker and audio that sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom, the animated Mr. Bean is a perfect match to the least funny television character ever created.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
When is a series not a series?
The problem with Star Trek movies (and most other movies series) is a conflict in concept. Movies usually are about the most important thing that ever happens to the characters. Episodic TV is just what it says it is, an episode in the lives of the characters, formatted into three acts. This is what has been missing from most of the Star Trek movies.
If you save the world, universe, Federation, etc, every time you go out, it gets tedious quickly, and the creators think they have to top themselves each time out. Each new movie tries to be the pivotal point in one or more of the crews lives.
Star Trek movies have never been a series in original sense, but a simply a series of escalating threats for our heroes to conquer. This is great for James Bond movies, but it makes for boring SF. The only exception was Insurrection, where the threat to the Federation was internal, with political and social questions that came closer than any trek movie yet to the spirit of "Star Trek: The Next Generation". Maybe the disappointing response to Insurrection was partly responsible for the swing back to the more common type of story.
Being disabled, it is a great effort and expense for me to see a first run movie, so I must choose the ones that I see carefully. In researching the new Star Trek movie, I found the script for Nemesis several times on the net. Each rewrite I found got progressively worse. I was hoping that what I had read was a fake, but to my great disappointment, the screenplay they shot was nearly word for word the script I had found so poor. For the next trek movie, if there is one, I'll go with my judgment instead of wishful thinking.
If you are considering seeing Nemesis, wait for the broadcast premiere. It'll be free, and big budget effects, poor direction, and insipid screenplay notwithstanding, the commercials will almost make it feel like an episode of the old TV show. You can even swap channels and not worry that you'll miss anything important.
Crocodile Hunter (1996)
An Aussie nature show with a host who redefines exuberance.
The Crocodile Hunter is Steve Irwin, who spent his formative years relocating rogue crocodiles and roaming the outback of Australia. He runs a zoo with his wife Terry where he is as much of an attraction as the animals. He combines an outgoing and typically direct Aussie personality with a fearlessness that continually has me thinking, "I don't believe he just did that". One minute he's capturing a crocodile by jumping onto it's back with several of his "mates", the next he's picking up the third most venomous snake in the world BY THE TAIL. Add to that the rich "Down Under" slang and you have a unique show. Entertaining and funny while showing you things about wildlife you'd never see in a typical nature show.