A Depressed Whale

I usually like to give context, but I think this is self-explanatory. From the creative people at FilmCow.com.

Zombies, Demons, & Ugly Americans

Comedy Central is showing off the ugly side of America with their new series, Ugly Americans. The series comes from the mind of illustrator Devin Clark. It is about an alternate New York in which Mark Lilly (voiced by Matt Oberg) a human social worker, helps ordinary people as well as creatures from horror, fantasy, and sci-fi films, adapt to life in New York City.

In addition to Mark Lilly, the “Ugly Americans” cast features Randall Skeffington, Mark’s zombie roommate (voiced by Kurt Metzger), Callie Maggotbone, Mark’s demon boss and office fling (voiced by Natasha Leggero), Leonard Powers, an aging drunken wizard (voiced by Randy Pearlstein), Twayne, a terrorizing demonic bureaucrat (voiced by Michael-Leon Wooley) and Lt. Grimes (voiced by Larry Murphy), a law-enforcement officer who despises non-humans. Additional characters are voiced by Mike Britt, Devin Clark, Pete Holmes and Julie Klausner.

The series was developed and executive produced by David M. Stern, former writer of The Simpsons, The Wonder Years, and Monk. In an interview with TV.com, Stern discusses how he landed the gig as a head writer and his embarrassing stint as a production assistant on Mystic Pizza. The series is animated by Augenblick Studios, the same company that brought Superjail! to Adult Swim and animated segments to Nickelodeon’s Yo Gabba Gabba.

Ugly Americans will premiere tonight on Comedy Central at 10:30pm e/9:30 pm c, right after the premiere of South Park‘s 14th season. Watch a clip from the show by clicking below.

You can watch more clips and previews of Ugly Americans on the official website.

Photos: Comedy Central

X-men Origins: Wolverine, Should I stay or should I go?

Hello readers!  I am assuming that some of you are going to be seeing Wolverine this weekend, if you haven’t already.   I’m hearing very conflicting reviews and as previously stated I’m thinking of sitting this one out.  So those of you who are seeing this movie what did you think?  Is it any good?  Is it at least better than X3?  Please say it is, I’m not sure I could sit through another of those.   Let us know what you think in the comments. read more

Will Wonder Woman ever be ready for a close-up?

Wonder Woman made a big return last month in her own movie. Did anyone notice? Fans of the comic book heroine are devout, yet, the character’s mass appeal never seems to be actualized. Superman, Batman, Ironman, and even the Watchmen, have all made a splash on the big screen, but Wonder Woman never seems to be pushed to the A-list. Will the Amazonian princess be forever relegated to play sidekick to her male counterparts?

For the past 40 years, the Wonder Woman has had almost as many make-overs as Barbie. A change in appearance, abilities, and back story have created a character that seems as malleable as a folk tale. Its not without effort that the character hasn’t been given a big break. Baby boomers may recall Wonder Woman as played by Lynda Carter, with spinning transformation sequences and bullet-blocking abilities. Gen X’ers remember her as one of the few female characters featured in the Superfriends. Millennials know Wonder Woman from her role as naive and honorable Diana from Justice League. With each new introduction, the character took on changes to reflect the era, serving as a symbol of female empowerment. read more

Reinventing the Looney Tunes

Remember the Looney Tunes? If you’re old enough to remember when MTV aired music videos longer than six hours a day, sodas called Surge and Citra, and ABC actually programming a Saturday morning lineup rather than plucking repeats from their parent company’s established cable networks, then you might remember their original incarnations. You know, the crazy, borderline insane comedic characters from Warner Bros. before they got transformed into babies, sentai warriors, and, as Bugs Bunny himself said in the rarely seen ’90s short Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers, “pale stereotypes” of their former selves. becoming essentially Disney-fied pitchmen selling everything from frozen food and candies to theme parks and phone services. Though to be fair, in the past, they sold everything from useless pieces of plastic, cereals, vitamins, candies,  and fried chicken (I’m still trying to wrap my mind over the fact that Foghorn Leghorn was once a pitchman for Kentucky Fried Chicken), but they were still essentially Looney Tunes characters, and they were still on television. read more

The Problem with Prince Charming. I Blame Disney.

We are all used to the fairy tale wrap up at the end of Disney animated features.  Prince and princess kiss, and live happily ever after.  Do they really though?  How can this fairy tale magic work if the princess has only just met her liberator?

Disney has made a lot of money marketing their princesses, but their princes are boring, dull, and lifeless. The prince characters exist only to rescue the princess and become a last minute solution to poverty, abandonment, and loneliness.  The princess hardly knows a prince before she is carried away to his castle to spend the rest of her life with him.  What has she got herself into?  Some of the Disney princes don’t even have proper names and are only an archetype of a strong male savior, swooping in to save the day and validate the princess’s struggle.  Let’s look at the worst offenders:

Snow White and The Prince:  She doesn’t even properly meet him before she’s led to the woods by the huntsman and she goes into hiding.   Their only interaction is when he interrupts her singing to the doves and she runs away, probably in fear.  He sings to her briefly from below her balcony and that ends their brief courtship.  Though the fact that he hears her shrill piercing voice and is still interested, does give him points in his favor. read more

Cable TV Ala Carte: Who’s in Your Top Five?

Does anyone, who is not a coma victim, watch the Golf Channel?  Is anyone without insomnia watching HSN or QVC?  Isn’t the need to buy useless crap fulfilled by the Internet now?

There are at least 15 channels in everybody’s cable TV lineup that are completely useless. Admit it, for $60 a month, you are paying for a lot of content that you’ll never watch.  Ratings are sinking since the web has arrived. Ratings have even taken serious blows since the highly adopted use of TIVO and DVRs. Most people in the know don’t watch a talking head for 20 minutes to find out which mission critical toxin “might” be present in their cupboards. Anyone with half a brain knows that real content today is delivered on-demand and chosen to reflect your interests.

Gone are the days of spending a half an hour with your eyes glued a scrolling marquee on the lower portion of ESPN. Today you check your phone or ESPN’s own web site for the score.  Today you can use your computer or mobile phone and have all of of the day’s news fed directly to you.  So why are we still paying for cable as a complete service when we only want the programming we actually watch? read more

The Captain Planet Movie that Never Happened

Children of the 90′s know about ecology. The push for more science-aware programming such as Beakman’s World and Bill Nye the Science Guy brought the sciences alive for the 5-12 crowd. One of the biggest series of the earlier part of the decade was Captain Planet and the Planeteers.

Captain Planet was the brainchild of cable-mogul Ted Turner. The show aired globally on various affiliates and on TBS and Cartoon Network in the US. It combined action and adventure with a strong ecological message. I’m not sure if it was the lame puns or the green mullet, but the show has left its impression on pop culture. Love or hate it, Captain Planet brought concepts such as recycling and ecological ethics to the mainstream.

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