Cynical Cinema

I needed to figure out what the big deal is with Dora The Explorer. This little cartoon girl has become so big that she can pre-empt playoff hockey games just by coming to town. Why? I watched the entire DVD, Dora The Explorer: Catch The Stars, which comes out tomorrow, July 29th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. And I still don’t get it. Dora barely does a show! I’m sitting there, watching, and I’m doing her show for her! I’m the one who has to show her where the stars are hiding. I’m the one who has to advise her as to which star to use and when. I’m the one who has to yell JUMP to help her get over the snowball! What good is she anyway? If she can’t do something simple, like explore, on her own, why would I help her out? She may well be an explorer, but Magellan she is not. HE could read a compass. All by himself.

The plot of Dora The Explorer: Catch The Stars concerns catching stars. In a star pocket. And Dora (with my help, I might add) has a “star pocket” in which to keep the stars she catches. The stars, you see, are floating around in the air. Near where Dora is. And if you jump in the air and clap your hands over your head, you will help her catch these stars. Although I must admit - she must be fairly competent - one time, I didn’t jump and clap my hands above my head. I was busy eating nachos. And she still managed to catch the star. So perhaps she is able to do some things for herself. But she has a lot of trouble seeing things. Basically, she is a blind explorer, which is the most dangerous kind of explorer to be. No matter what is happening on the screen, right beside her, I am still the one who has to point it out for her.

And that includes Swiper the Fox, who shows up to steal the star pocket. Swiper, it turns out is a kleptomaniac fox. Apparently, simply by saying “Swiper, no swiping!” three times, you can stop him from stealing stuff. When I watched this DVD, however, I was not fast enough and Swiper managed to steal the star pocket. Perhaps when you watch it, you will be fast enough. When you see Swiper pop up on screen, be ready - they only give you seven minutes of Dora being unable to see Swiper to prepare. If you ARE fast enough, and Swiper DOESN’T get the star pocket, it means that you will avoid having to watch the rest of the program. In my version, however, Swiper DID steal the star pocket. But, like most kleptos, Winona Ryder included, he does not steal things because he wants those things. He steals them because he just likes to steal. So instead of taking the star pocket and running off, he just tied it to a conveniently placed helium balloon, and let it drift off into oblivion. Then he cackled. Grr, I hate that Swiper!

So in my version of this DVD, the one where I didn’t prevent Swiper from taking the star pocket, Dora is forced to set off on a cross-world trek in order to track down the star pocket and put more stars into it. I think. She finds more stars, which she is able to capture even without a star pocket into which she can put them, and they each have a different ability. One is really bright, one is really loud, one is made of springs, and one is a shape-shifter. The bright one helps her find her way in the dark as she sails across the ocean. The loud one wakes up a sleeping whale that is unfortunately directly in the way of her boat. Which takes a long time, but is certainly faster than sailing around the whale would have been. The shape-shifter star does something else to help - I don’t remember what, I think I went for a smoke.

When I came back, my mind was absolutely blown. I had no idea how to take this at the time, and even now, I can’t fully wrap my mind around what transpired on Dora The Explorer. Please, leave comments with what you think this means, because I am truly still at a loss here. I walked back into the basement just in time to see Dora The Explorer, and her little boat, quite literally jumping a shark. (With my help, and the help of the made-of-springs star, of course. Springs also work on water. What?) And then, she jumped over a second shark. And then - this was the mind blowing part - she jumped a THIRD shark. What? I couldn’t believe it. I had to rewind and watch this again.

What was this? Was this some kind of bizarre joke? For those of you who don’t know, the phrase “jump the shark” is a reference to an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie literally jumped a shark, on waterskis. This was the moment when everyone realized Happy Days had passed it’s prime, and run it’s course. Ever since, the term “jumped the shark” has come to symbolize a TV show that should really no longer be on the air. So was this a wink to the adults watching? An inside joke among the animators? Or maybe they just didn’t know of the term’s significance, and they really just thought this was a good idea.

There were three more episodes on the DVD - Swiper stole Dora’s necklace and threw it on top of Star Mountain. Again, I was too slow to help, this time because I couldn’t stop mulling this amazing development in my mind. Then Dora had to wake up the sun, then Dora played hide-and-seek to win Senor Toucan’s trophy. But I really wasn’t paying attention. I mean, Dora couldn’t have jumped all those sharks without my help, yelling “jump!” and so forth. So…was I complicit in the joke? Was the joke on me? Was I making too big a deal out of something innocuous? Has Dora the Explorer, the TV show, actually jumped the shark? What was in my nachos?

After Dora The Explorer: Catch The Stars threw me for a total loop, I was a little resistant to the idea of watching her spin-off show, Go Diego Go! I am not sure whether it’s a genuine spin-off, it may well just be the same show created by the same people and animated by the same people and written by the same people. Basically, it is the exact same show. Diego is just Dora with a different haircut. It attempts to teach kids the same things that Dora does. Spanish, and…other stuff. But Dora comes off as merely a near-sighted explorer, which means that all I have to do while watching her show is point out the things she can’t see for her damn self.

With Diego, there is a lot more work involved. I have to crawl to make otters crawl. I have to jump to make them jump. I have to duck to avoid a mudball. I have to sing in Spanish to make a llama go up a hill. All of which means that Diego episodes have even less actual story than Dora, but far more participation. I’m not really helping Diego the way I help Dora, but rather I’m simply mimicking his actions. Which is way more work and far less rewarding. Adding more filler and less story to Diego is a series of supporting characters who each have their own theme songs. Like his backpack. It can rescue him from any situation, but first it sings a very long and obnoxious theme song. I guess assuming that he will not be caught by the puma in the meantime. Dora has a map that does the same thing, but at least it’s theme song is kinda catchy.

One more thing. Diego is constantly extolling the virtues of playing outside, being active, and reading books. What kind of TV marketing genius came up with that one? If kids read books and play outside, they aren’t watching TV! Your show is on TV! That’s just bad marketing. Go Diego Go: The Iguana Sing-A-Long comes out Tuesday, July 29th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

There have been 52 half-hour episodes of Transformers Cybertron, a Japanese animated Transformers program. All 52 of those episodes are now on DVD in the Transformers Cybertron Ultimate Collection, out today, July 22nd, from Paramount Home Entertainment. It’s one of those shows that has a lot of flashy colours and tough-guy posing, all with the Transformers. Very frenetic, very confusing, and every episode is almost exactly the same. The Transformers characters in this series are different from the ones we have come to know and love - no Bumblebee! But there is of course an Optimus Prime and a Megatron, there are Autobots and Decepticons, and of course everyone ends up on Earth.

The basic idea of the series is that the population of the Transformers’ home planet, Cybertron, is threatened by a black hole and evacuated, and all the Transformers are sent to Earth. In order to save their home planet (and also, of course, the Universe), the good-guy Autobots must find the five Cyber Planet Keys, which will give them enough power to stop the marauding black hole and save all of existence. But Megatron, the evil leader of the evil Decepticons, has the map that shows where the Cyber Planet Keys are located in the universe. We can only assume that if he were to get his hands on these artifacts, he would use them to destroy the universe and everything inside it. We really don’t know though. For all we know, he would use the massive power of the Cyber Planet Keys to open a successful car parts lot, and to finagle an invitation to the Playboy Mansion. Who knows?

All in all, this show is extremely confusing. I was constantly aware that the show had been translated from the Japanese, because the translation of certain words is…strange. Something I don’t understand though are the voices. These are mechanical transforming robot aliens from across the universe. Why are some of them Irish, others are hicks, others are British…it doesn’t make sense! And one of the characters really sounds like he’s voiced by Larry the Cable Guy. The theme song is one of the worst in TV history. It’s that old Transformers song, you know - “more than meets the eye…robots in disguise”, and so forth. But it’s updated for today’s world, which means it’s been given a cheesy R&B beat and hook, and there’s rap in it. Although, the rapper actually doesn’t say anything. He just says “Transformers! Transformers! Transformers! Transformers!” You would think they could have afforded a lyricist. I’m sure you don’t need Tupac to do your song, but this thing is as painful as that moment in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II when Vanilla Ice was “freestyling” on stage and started rapping “Go Ninja! Go Ninja! Go Ninja! Go Ninja!” for eleven minutes.

In fact, the rest of the series seems to be plagued with a similar lack of writers. Every single episode, Optimus Prime says “Transformers! Transform and Roll Out!” at least four times. Also, every time the Transformers are about to do anything - like go for a picnic, order pizza or watch Three’s Company, whatever it is they do - he yells “Transformers! Sound off!” And then each of the Autobots steps forward and yells their own name. This really takes up a lot of time, and it’s just irritating. Like, why are they doing this? Is it simply because some exec behind the scenes thinks it adds a bad-ass extra bit to the scenes where the colours are flashing and the Transformers are punching the air? I don’t get it. And I don’t get this show. At all.

Kung-Fu Panda is not a kids movie so much as it is a kung-fu movie.  For kids.  Jack Black is the voice of the panda, Po, who is a clumsy fat oaf with a passion for kung-fu.  He is a huge fan of the Furious Five, who are the great kung-fu fighters of his little village.  Each one represents a different style of kung-fu, styles which will be very familiar to any fan of the kung-fu genre of movies.  The crane (David Cross), the viper (Lucy Liu), the mantis (Seth Rogen), the monkey (Jackie Chan) and the tigress (Angelina Jolie).  The film opens with a dream Po is having, a scene out of so many kung-fu movies, where the bad guys show up in the restaurant where the hero is quietly eating his food, and soon he is forced to kick all of their asses, causing massive property damage to the restaurant.

 Of course, this is just Po’s dream - in reality, he is not a martial arts hero, he is an employee in his father’s noodle shop.  When he lies to his dad and says he was dreaming about noodles, his dad flies into a frenzy - his son has had the noodle dream!  He is ready to take over the noodle shop from his father!  (Another wonderful theme from so many kung-fu flicks.)  In reality though, Po wants to be in the kung-fu scene.  And when there is going to be a big ceremony to annoint the next “chosen one”, the martial artist to whom ultimate enlightenment will be given, he does everything he can to go watch.  Through a series of mishaps (most of them hilarious), he ends up in the arena, and actually looks to be the “chosen one” himself.  Of course, the choice of Po sparks controversy.  How can he be the chosen one when he’s a big fat clumsy panda with no kung-fu skills at all?

The master, Shifu (voiced by Dustin Hoffman), is very annoyed at the selection of Po as the chosen one.  He believes that his master Oogway (a tortoise) has become senile and chosen the wrong person (or…animal) to be the chosen one.  Oogway, by the way, is hilarious.  He dispenses this bizarre, cubicle-wall type wisdom that is incredibly cheesy, even for a kung-fu movie.  (”The past is history, the future is a mystery, and right now is a gift.  That is why they call it the present.”)  But it’s delievered so solemnly that it’s awfully funny.  Anyway, Shifu decides that he will do everything he can to get Po to quit, so one of the other students can claim the title of “dragon warrior”, and get a chance to read the “dragon scroll” and become the greatest martial artist in history.  But Po won’t be so easily dissuaded.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Tai-Lung (voice of Ian McShane), a snow leopard, has escaped from the massive prison that holds him captive.  Tai-Lung is the former disciple of Master Shifu, a kung-fu student who surpassed even his master in skill, but then went bad.  He tried to take the dragon scroll for himself, but was driven away and imprisoned by Shifu and Oogway.  He is now bent on returning to the temple, taking the dragon scroll, and exacting horrible revenge on all those who turned against him.  Only Po, of course, stands in his way.

Kung-Fu Panda is terrific because everything in the movie rings true in terms of actual kung-fu cinema.  References to other movies abound.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, Hero, Once Upon A Time In China, and many others.  The one film I think is most closely mirrored is Kung-Fu Hustle, a bonkers kung-fu comedy that is available on DVD now, with very similar themes.  The bad guy gets out of prison and comes to attack the good guy, who all of a sudden learns that he is the chosen one with crazy kung-fu skills…very similar movies, both extremely good.  And in terms of old classics, Kung-Fu Panda most closely resembles the Jackie Chan comedic martial arts classic Drunken Master, with the main difference being that Master Shifu is not drunk.  But substitute the booze in that movie with the food from this one, and you have many very similar scenes.

Kung-Fu Panda is definitely funny, and definitely kid-friendly, but it’s so much more than a silly kids movie.  It’s a solid, very well done kung-fu film.  And the resolution in the final scene is absolutely perfect.  I don’t think I’m giving too much away here - it is a kids’ movie after all - but Po defeats Tai-Lung in the end with a style that has been perfectly set up over the course of the rest of the film, with Master Shifu’s teachings, Oogway’s wisdom, and Po’s own proclivities.  The only difference between Kung-Fu Panda and a real kung-fu movie in this style is the fact that Master Shifu actually lives in the end.  Hey - after all, it IS a kids’ movie.

One of the phenomena from my own childhood, and that of my current family, that I have never fully understood, is Transformers. I kind of got it when my friends would play with their toys, and the thing would turn from a robot into a car, or a helicopter or a motorcycle or whatever it was. That was kind of neat. In a McDonalds toy-of-the-week sort of way. I never figured I could be entertained by something like that for more than a few hours. But then, some of my friends were into Transformers more than just for the toys. Transformers, for them, were a way of life. They watched the TV show, they eagerly anticipated the movie, they had all the characters, they wore “Down With Decepticons” T-Shirts. They ate Transformers breakfast cereal and brought Bumblebee Snack Cakes to school in their Optimus Prime fire-truck-shaped lunch boxes.

OK, I’m making large portions of this up, and many of these products may never have existed. And I have to say that because there are some people out there for whom the childhood of the eighties is not yet over, who are still obsessively excited about the whole Transformers concept, who have become the type of collector who makes an excellent central figure in movies such as 40-Year-Old-Virgin. And if they read this, and thought there really was a line of “Down With Decepticons” T-Shirts, they would spend the next three weeks online trying to find them, lose their jobs because they didn’t go to work, mortgage their houses in order to finance the T-Shirt purchase when they DID manage to find one, and then they would never find it and end up broken and destitute and living in an empty boxcar at the abandoned O-Train yard. And I don’t want that.

Alright, that was a lot of lead-up to this review, which will be far less interesting in substance. Transformers Animated: Transform and Roll Out is the first movie to come out of the Transformers Animated production. This is a TV series that was produced to capitalize on the revitalized market for Transformers watchers in the wake of the 2007 blockbuster movie. It’s produced by the Cartoon Network and involves the characters you would expect, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee chief among them. I think, although I’m not certain, that Transform and Roll Out is the first three episodes of the series crammed together in a 68-minute “movie”. There are three distinct portions to the film, the first being a battle in outer space between the Autobots (good guys) and the Decepticons (bad guys) over the All-Spark, a device that would give the Decepticons the ultimate power over the universe. The second involves the Autobots crashing into Earth, setting up in Detroit, and becoming heroes. And the third involves the Decepticons discovering the Autobots there and turning Detroit into a battle zone.

I am still not sure of a couple of things. The Autobots are the good guys, and they have the All-Spark, and must protect it at all costs against the bad guys, because if the Decepticons get their metallic hands on it they will control the world. So why don’t the Autobots simply use the device to defeat the Decepticons and institute their own benign rule over the universe? And why does Bumblebee have a name taken straight from an Earth creature, when these robots have never been to Earth and don’t even know what humans are? And why does he look vaguely like a cat? Frankly, I still, to this day, don’t understand the appeal of Transformers, to kids or to nerds. The series (and by extension this movie) is obnoxious. They take human expressions and cliches and update them with technological terms, as though that is supposed to be funny. “I’m not ready to go to the Well Of All Sparks yet”. Uuuuhhhh…

Transformers Animated: Transform and Roll Out has a couple of animated shorts in the special features. One is a bizarre scene where Optimus Prime gives a talk to a bunch of schoolchildren. Another is a two-minute scene where the motorcycle transformer crashes, and then punches Bumblebee. Just some bizarre pointless extras to a bizarre, pointless DVD. One thing of note on this volume - the voice of Optimus Prime is done by David Kaye, the same guy who does the Big Voice thing on CHEZ 106. You know that voice that does our promos and says “classic rock…CHEZ 106″? He’s Optimus Prime. And while I wouldn’t suggest that’s a reason to watch this, it isn’t a reason not to watch it…Transformers Animated: Transform and Roll Out comes out June 17th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

          When The Animation Show starts, the first character you see is Butthead.  The second is Beavis.  And while they are not involved in the show itself, and are merely hosting it, you get an idea of what the show is going to be right away.  As my Grade 8 science teacher, Mrs. Walsh, used to say - rude, crude, lewd and socially unacceptable.  The Animation Show Volume 3 is a series of sixteen short animated films, packaged together, that comes out June 3rd courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment. 

          The first short film is called “rabbit”, a bizarre but about two kids who seem intent on murdering small animals.  Everything in the short is labeled.  When they pass a tree, the word “tree” appears beside it.  When they eviscerate a sheep, you see the word “sheep”.  The proceedings are presided over by a tiny little golden “idol”, who has some sort of magic powers, turning a cage into a pie and things of that nature.  He seems to be the god which these children worship, and is convincing them to perpetrate these heinous acts.  And…that’s about it.  Eventually the kids get eaten by bugs.  It’s weird and creepy, but pretty effective. 

          The second one is a strange live-action style animated bit called “City Paradise” about a Japanese swimmer living in a big American city.  The third is called “Everything Will Be OK”, about a stick drawing named Bill and his life.  Again, weird, but it is hilarious and very smart.  I’d go through all the shorts, but there are sixteen and it would be boring.  So I’ll just say this.  Not all the shorts are crude, not all of them are offensive, and not all of them make sense.  In fact, most of them make little sense, but few of them are offensive.      Some of the highlights are “one d”, where the entire world goes about it’s business in one dimension, so sticks talk to sticks and they get into other sticks to drive them to work…all this amid an alien invasion.  Also fun is “learn self defense”, a very short bit about a guy learning self-defense through cheap shots.  Not very good, but fun. 

          Most of these short films are good, and although you get a certain amount of the violent and the belligerent and the profane, that isn’t really what the Animation Show is about.  Really, it’s about art.  Short films, almost by definition, are artsy.  Simply because people make them solely with the intention of creating something cool.  No one ever sees a short film, so you can do whatever you want with it - it isn’t like some major studio is backing you and you need to turn a profit.  I’d be surprised if any short, ever, turned a profit.  But I’m also too lazy to look it up and see if one has.  So this means that when watching The Animation Show, you’re watching stuff that was made by a film maker with the sole intention of doing what he or she wanted, not what he or she thought you wanted to watch.  And if you like actual art, and you’re interested in short bursts of artistic expression, that makes it a wonderful collection.  If not, you can skip this.  And go rent The Lion King again.

Alright Focus on the Family and like-minded Christians, I’m calling you out. You’re getting lazy. You spend so much time fighting against ambiguously gay television characters like Spongebob and Tinky-Winky, that you don’t have time for your own children. And why do you need to complain about these TV characters and movies like The Golden Compass? Because the only thing left to raise your children, what with all that time spent complaining, is the television. And you want to make sure that while being raised by that TV, your young impressionable boys don’t happen across the Teletubbies and all of a sudden start liking showtunes, lusting after Skeet Ulrich, and planning for a career as an interior decorator, or Kevin Fededline’s backup dancer. I know, I know, you COULD just spend time with them, making sure they watched only Christian-approved programming and maybe reading with them, but that seems like a lot of effort, doesn’t it? Better to write angry letters and volunteer at the latest Fred Phelps or anti-abortion rally, leaving your children in the care of (you hope) the VeggieTales.

So then what happens? Your kids are now addicted to cartoons and television. The only way to get through to them now is through other cartoons or possibly video games. And you want the to learn the bible, but they’re not going to be reading on their own or anything. So now, what, NOW what? Well, you hope that biblical stories get made into cartoons, so your kids can watch these cartoons and grow up to be just like you, and join you at the next Pat Robertson seminar. And lo and behold, here comes The Ten Commandments, the story of Moses, in cartoon form! And sure, you could always wait until Easter for the Charlton Heston movie to come on public access television, but then you would have to strap your children down with bungee cords and tape their eyelids open, because there’s no way they’re sitting through that one on their own.

Well, thank God for Christian Slater, Elliott Gould, Alfred Molina and Ben Kingsley, who have all provided their vocal talents to The Ten Commandments, (cartoon version), which came out May 13th courtesy of Alliance Films. This is one of those computer-generated “animated” movies where people kind of look like people, and kind of move like people, but they are mostly bald because animating hair would be that much more difficult. Again - lazy! Just because Yul Brynner was bald in 1956 doesn’t mean all ancient Egyptians were hairless, OK? Lazy, lazy, lazy. With The Ten Commandments, the story is already there. All you have to do is tell it in a cool, new way. But this movie hasn’t even done that. It’s just a cartoon remake, almost scene-for-scene, of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic! Down to the scene with the staffs and the snakes, and the slave labourers doing their thing, and the parting of the red sea while Moses stands facing it. That one is pretty much shot-for shot the same.

Which means that what we’re doing, in watching this film, is comparing it with Charlton Heston. And it comes up pretty darn short. Cheap, easy animation vs. a cast of thousands, with massive cinematography and epic storytelling? No contest. And Heston vs. Christian Slater? Come ON. Heston had the Moses voice. The deep, booming Moses voice. Christian Slater does not have that voice. In fact, he has a pretty sissy, weenie voice. Can you imagine, in a live action movie, Woody Allen playing Moses? That’s how this movie feels.

“Let my people go!”

“Umm…no.”

“OK, I’ll take my staff and I’ll leave.”

“Yeah, you’d best be going.”

And then there’s Alfred Molina, as Ramses, who calls for Moses like he’s William Shatner in The Wrath Of Khan. “Moooooosseeees!” “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!” And Elliott Gould as God may as well be…well…Woody Allen also.

So what it comes down to for me is this - why? Why make this movie at all? I wracked my brain long and hard before coming up with the laziness explanation. And I am fully aware, so don’t bother pointing it out, that the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments is more of a Jewish story than a Christian one. But I don’t see Jewish lobby groups complaining about Patrick Starfish. When I do, I will make fun of them as well. And this might not be the right forum for this, but…isn’t what Moses (and of course God) did to the Egyptian people…terrorism? The plagues - you can’t drink the water, it’s unsafe. The locusts have eaten your crops, so you can’t eat. Your civilians will die if you don’t…let God’s people go. We will kill all of the first born sons of Egypt. Yes. We will murder your innocent citizens if you don’t give us our independence. Umm…sound familiar? Perhaps in Palestine, the people might…OK. I was right, this is not the right forum for this. The Ten Commandments, stupid cartoon version, comes out tomorrow, May 13th, from Alliance Films.

Drawn Together is a show I’ve never cared to watch. Oh, I see the ads for it during the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and that Lewis Black Root of All Evil show. (Which are the only three shows I ever pay any attention on the Comedy Network.) But when I received Season 3 of Drawn Together on DVD from Paramount on May 13th, I felt that if they went to the trouble of sending it to me, I ought at the very least to give it a shot, and check it out. So it was with a little reluctance that I sat down to watch. This is a show about 8 cartoon characters who live together in a Big-Brother style show. The commercials show clips of the characters saying filthy things to each other and doing gay and lesbian stuff. But those commercials drastically undersell this show. They make it seem like there’s nothing to the show except penis and fart and gay sex jokes. And frankly, I have no interest in watching something like that. But this show is much, much better than just being politically incorrect. Saying swear words and showing creepy sex is not funny in and of itself.

But this show IS funny. Very funny. The addition of the gay jokes and lesbian jokes in this show, unlike those in The Big Gay Sketch Show, are added only to enhance comedic effect, and are thrown off merely as added political incorrectness. The sex jokes and swear words add terrific comedic effect to what is actually a very good show. The eight characters are each very funny in their own way, especially Ling Ling, the little Pokemon-looking guy who is always animated in the Japanese animation style, and wants to battle everyone and speaks Japanese.

It’s the references to pop culture, however, which make this show so funny. There are a lot of nerdy, predictable references, like Star Wars, The Terminator, and Transformers. And there are also a lot of nerdy, unpredictable references. Like the Cronenberg movie Crash, Rocky III, Charlie’s Angels, and of course, Big Brother itself. Big Brother, the incredibly painful and horrible bottom-of-the-cultural-barrel TV reality show, provides a surprising amount of material and great moments for Drawn Together. Moments where the characters address the camera directly are some of the best. And the scene where the disembodied Big Brother House Voice comes over the loudspeaker and tells the characters that today’s challenge is to compete against the Peanuts gang in a spelling bee for the chance to win…an Applebee’s gift certificate! Very funny stuff.

Season Three of Drawn Together is hilarious. I can’t, unfortunately, compare it to Seasons One and Two. I have not seen those. Because I have been put off by the irritating commercials. It’s too bad a show that is actually good puts all the childish and lousy and stupid bits into their commercials. And then, the worst movies in the world put the best moments and three good jokes they have into their trailers. Don’t be deceived by trailers. Most of the summer “blockbusters” this year will likely suck. And don’t pay too much attention to the ones on TV either. And check out Drawn Together. Season Three comes out on DVD tomorrow, Tuesday May 13th, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.

There is a conventional wisdom surrounding movies, music and art in general that states certain people are not cut out to make that art. Traditionally, those who suck at making movies and music and the rest of it are from two areas. Either the hard-core Republican-type right wingers, or the hard-core Christian evangelist types. Of course, very often these people are one and the same. Of course there are exceptions, and please don’t write in listing every one of those exceptions. I am aware of them. Alice Cooper, for example, is a Republican. One way to look at this is documentary movies - compare right-wing biased documentaries with left-wing biased documentaries. Michael Moore stuff, anti-war in Iraq stuff, pro-pot stuff. Now, name me one right-wing documentary you know of. Just one. GO ahead, name it. Well, they’ve been made, but they are not well done, and no one has heard of them. Perhaps the most famous is FahrenHype 9/11, a movie seen by fully 3 percent of the number of people who have seen Fahreheit 9/11.

Perhaps the man who proves this rule best, Republican-wise, is Jack Abramoff. As a movie producer in the 80s, he managed to get a neo-con, anti-commie, ridiculous film made. It was called Red Scorpion, and it starred Dolph Lundgren, and it was staggeringly bad. He followed this up with Red Scorpion 2, released in 1994. Then, he joined the George W. Bush team, and along with Tom DeLay, he managed to extort, steal, embezzle and misappropriate millions and millions of dollars from, among other groups, the native American tribes of the U.S. He also inspired dozens of jokes, both good ones and bad ones. If Abram helped you off a horse, would you help Jack Abramoff? And so forth.

And the Christians? Two words. Christian rock. Does that make you cringe just a little? Yeah, me too. Scott Stapp, why have you forsaken us? However, rules were made to be broken, and there is at least one Christian production team that does good work. They are called Big Idea Productions, and they are the fiercely pro-Christian, pro-God company behind the Veggie Tales. And you know what? They are good. In some cases, they are absolutely great! I grabbed the Veggie Tales series from Alliance Atlantis because our eight-year-old loves them. At first, I was awfully leery about this stuff - evangelical, pro-God songs? Christian values crammed into the faces of kids? It scared me a bit. Then I started watching. And I found myself laughing. Actually laughing. So much so that when the latest shipment of DVDs arrived, our 8-year-old was not even here, and I still opened them up and started watching them. By myself.

The double feature DVD is Very Silly Songs, and the Ultimate Silly Songs. Which is the best part of Veggie Tales. Their songs are very, very good. Although the wisdom of creating a 2-DVD package, each DVD being song-related, is debatable when there are five songs repeated from one disc to the next. Why bother? Couldn’t you fit all that on one disc, rather than making two? In the end, you get about fifteen songs. Which brings me to complaint number two. MY favourite Veggie Tales song is not on here! The one about the ball that was kicked into the tree, and it bounced in to the gated community? Hilarious. Gated community. Haha. There are still some comedic gems here though, that kids will love and adults will, hopefully, with an open mind, find quite amusing. Songs like I Love My Lips and The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.

Yes, some of the Veggie Tales songs are preachy and irritating. But most of them are well done and not crazy God-centric, and those are very good. It proves that rules are made to be broken, and Christian producers can be just as good as atheist Golden Compass-type producers. Also out on DVD are actual Veggie Tales episodes such as Larry-Boy and the Rumour Weed, and Madame Blueberry, of which Madame Blueberry is the superior DVD. But the silly songs are the way to go. Christian movies can be good (the Ten Commandments), Christian music can be good (Handel’s Messiah) and Republicans can be cool too (Alice Cooper). I am leaving out Ted Nugent here, because although he has made some great music in his life, he is a class-one, Grade-A nutjob.

There is a video that hit stores on Tuesday - it is the first Family Guy episode of the year, the hour-long Star Wars episode, and it is great. Now, of course, an hour-long episode really means 48 minutes, but with the bonus features on the disc, it is well over an hour in total, most of it terrific. The bonus features include a conversation between Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and George Lucas, who is clearly one of his idols. Also, there is a featurette that plays every Family Guy Star Wars reference from the TV show up until this point. Also hilarious stuff. Clearly, the guys who do this TV show are bigger Star Wars nerds than anyone I know. Except for Dave Taylor, who has forty-one different copies of the trilogy, on DVD, VHS, Beta, reel-to-reel, slide show, and laser disc, among other formats. He also has eleven copies of the John Williams soundtrack, on CD, tape, 8-track, vinyl, and some formats I was not even aware had been invented yet.

But although I make fun of Dave every time I visit his place and sit among the shelves of Bob Fett action figures and Millenium Falcon commemorative cereal boxes, he is not alone. Not by a long shot. These people are out there. And they are otherwise normal in the rest of their lives, unlike the Star Trek geeks and the Lord of the Rings wackjobs and the Mr. Belvedere afficionados. This is because Star Wars holds a certain place in the hearts and minds (ooh, went all George W for a second there) of just about every single human being born after 1957. I, for one, was born about a year after the release of Star Wars. And yet it was still an integral part of my pop culture innundation throughout my life, so much so that even as a half-assed fan of the original series, I still know many lines, names, scenarios and moments from that original trilogy. In fact, the first movie has to be more familiar to the general population of the world than any other movie by far.

Which is why it’s the perfect pop culture spoof for a show such as Family Guy. For the purposes of this review, I will go ahead and assume that everyone, by now, is at least aware of Family Guy. (If not, watch it. It is the best comedy show on TV.) And Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest is what they do at their best. It is basically the entire Star Wars movie, condensed (easily, I might add) to 48 minutes, and featuring the cast of Family Guy in place of the characters in the film. The lines are basically lifted straight from the dialogue of the original movie, which seems lazy at first, but when the dialogue spins off, it becomes brilliant. The scenes where they poke fun of holes in the Star Wars plot are dead-on. The best one comes when Darth Vader is advised that the Death Star is 99.99 percent impregnable, except for this one two-metre wide hole which, if you fire a torpedo into it, would blow up the entire space station. He suggests perhaps covering that hole with plywood or something, but is voted down on the grounds of aesthetics.

Not content to simply lampoon the Star Wars phenomenon itself, Seth MacFarlane manages to get numerous other fantastic pop culture references into the movie - Judd Nelson shows up to deliver one line from The Breakfast Club. Rush Limbaugh voices himself as a right-wing bigot on Tatooine talk radio. Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo show up to deliver two lines from National Lampoon’s vacation. There are also references to Simply Red, Tupac Shakur, Redd Foxx, and dozens more, almost all of them fantastic. In the end, the familiarity we all have with Star Wars gives Family Guy license to do whatever they want within that framework, and that works beautifully. Blue Harvest is well worth purchasing, for the Family Guy fan, the Star Wars fan, or anyone who enjoys a 40-minute belly laugh.