Reconsidering "The Great Muppet Caper"

When it comes to the Muppet theatrical movies they are hit or miss for me.

The Muppet Movie-A little slow, relies way to much on cameos but the good moments make it worth it. Also, a good origin movie, to this day we still have never gotten another "how the Muppets met" story (Muppet Babies doesn't count).

Muppets Take Manhattan-I loved this movie as a kid it has charm and some sad moments too. The ending is pointless but ok.

Muppets in Space-Awful

Muppet Christmas Carol & Treasure Island-I have no major issues they are both fine

The Muppets-Yeah, I had issues when it came out but overall not bad.

Muppets Most Wanted-Winner of the "trying way to hard" award

But wait, I missed one! Which? Well....

Of course!! The one movie I can't seem to remember!

Yeah for sone reason the second movie is the one black hole for these movies for me. If I saw it, I don't remember it. Of course, I know what it's about and have seen scenes from it over the years, but it raises the question-- Why did it either leave no impact when I saw it or not interest ne enough to check it out? I can't believe I didn't see a Muppet movie at 7 years old! Since this is the 40th anniversary of the movie I decided to finally watch it and see if I could find out what the issue is.

Top 10 Doug Walker's Biggest Failures

Ok let me make this clear, I am a Doug Walker aka Nostalgia Critic fan. I know a lot of people hate on him and that's fine. I get it. But while he is not perfect and made mistakes I am still a fan of his. For reasons I explained elsewhere he is a personal hero for me and so far at least I have heard nothing to make me change that opinion, That doesn't mean I ignore what has been said about his troubled productions, I just don't hold it against him (that asshat in charge of CA is the real creep imho, but I digress). We all make mistakes. If you disagree with me, no problem.

Anyway I got to thinking about his flops, which after 10+ years he's had his share of, and wondered what it was that made them a failure. So since I have done articles talking about his stuff that I love, let's discuss the stuff that isn't so good. From not so bad to really, really bad. And a few of these may be more personally bad than others which are almost unanimously regarded as flops. If you like any of these, just opinion. And again I am only judging these buy the finished product not the behind the scenes troubles.

Five Things I Liked in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"

This year is the 50th anniversary for Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. This is one of those movies everyone like, and has truly become an icon. It's just the right mix of drama, humor, and even some dark moments to make a really delightful film. Based of course on the Roald Dahl, this movie is always a must watch for me.

This movie was released in 1971 and was not instant hit. But has certainly become a classic since. Now normally when I do these I nitpick the good movies and praise the bad, but since we are celebrating a big anniversary let's give some love to this movie with five reasons why I love watching it over and over.

The Music & Sets

Ok I hate that song Charlie's mother sings as much as anyone. It slows down the whole movie so a character that will soon vanish from the movie can explain something we've already figured out. Yay. Putting that side, the music is well done. Of course the big song when they enter the candy room, and the Oompa Loompa songs which are done well. And the Candy Man song at the start. The style of the songs doesn't match the movie, at all, but they work. The sets were also well done even the home where the family lived. The chocolate room is still amazing fifty years later! And no I won't go into every scene because they are all good and we will be here all day.

Five Dumbest Characters from Justice League International

The Justice League of America has actually gone through various versions over the years. When you hear the name you think of the big names of DC Comics, coming together as a group. And yeah, they did that. Except there was a period of ten years when the team was, weird for lack of a better word. First came the Justice League "Detroit" era, which would have been find if the team had a different name. Much like how Batman spun off into Batman and the Outsiders that's what this strange version of the JLA should have been. 

Then came the Keith Giffen/Mark Maguire era, when Justice League International was the name. At least the heroes weren't lame no names but it wasn't the big tier names either. The series didn't start out as funny, just witty banter, but it become humorous after awhile. Sadly, to a point where the book was almost nothing but satire and jokes. 

Thankfully the book would get a relaunch with Dan Jurgens which helped get things on track, before the book was cancelled and Mark Waid returned the Justice League to full form. Before that, we had some real goofy things. So goofy, they were just plain stupid. Here are five characters introduced during that era that I just did not like. These are all examples from the 90's era, and of course just opinion here as always. 

G'Nort

To be fair this character has stuck around and gotten better. I give credit to the creators for taking a character designed to be a joke and making something more of him. But he always bugged me. According to Hal Jordan G'Nort had no business being a GL, but he had an influential uncle who was in the Corps and pushed him through. G'Nort had heart but was a dumb screw up and talked weird, sort of the Jar Jar of the JLA. 

More “WTF??” Scary Scenes from Non-Scary Movies

When Halloween rolls around we like to talk about scary movies that we love. But what often gets overlooked are scary scenes from movies that were never meant to be scary. It can be a comedy or scifi or whatever else, but the movie is perfectly pleasant until one scene gives us 60 seconds of terror. Here are ten that scared me, and in the interest of full disclosure I did do a list similar to this nine years ago. However, that article omitted a lot of examples and had no video clips. And of course these are my choices, if you don't think these scenes were particularly scary than that's no problem. 

Superman III-Robo Woman

So here you have a movie which goes out of its way to say that it is a light comedy. It has goofy opening credit and of course Richard Pyor. Then as the last act finally gets going, tou get this out of nowhere moment where a woman is grabbed by the super computer and turned into a robot right in front of our eyes. I think it's the women's cries which make it scary, especially when she goes from begging for help to being subservient in the span of a millisecond. And those eyes!!

A (Brief) Look at Muppet Haunted Mansion

 

So I just watched the latest Muppet production which premiered on Disney+ a few weeks ago. Since it was a Halloween special, I had to check it out. And since it just premiered, I will keep this short and as spoiler free as I can. So what is the plot? Gonzo and Pepe accept a challenge to stay at a haunted mansion all night on Halloween. Yeah, that's about it. This special isn't really story heavy, things just kind of happen though it does try for character development toward the end. Does that mean it's bad? No but it could have been better, Pretty much every Muppet appears although most are just brief cameo's. The special does try to keep the Muppet spirit alive with homages to the Muppet Show, 4th wall jokes, and some songs. I thought the songs were unnecessary but they aren't bad. And they also did a great job with the Haunted Mansion, not only does it resemble the Disney ride but there are even lines of dialogue taken from the ride itself. You can feel them trying to be a traditional Muppet production but the creators still don't get why we loved the classic stuff. The end kind of meanders to its conclusion. Will Arnett is good and most of the cameo's are very fast and pointless. Except for Taraji Henson who comes into the story way to late and I didn't care about her at all. Another gripe is that the special continues the ongoing quest by the Muppet performers to elevate Pepe to top tier Muppet. For reasons that will forever escape me! And I continue to hate Matt Vogel's awful Kermit The Frog voice. It's just painful to listen to. All gripes aside, there is nothing really wrong with the special and it even manages some legitimately creepy imagery here and there. It's perfectly serviceable as a Muppet Halloween Special, especially compared to other Muppet productions I can name, throwing more than enough imagery and spooky atmosphere to make this a nice way to kill an hour at Halloween time. 

Five Comic Stories That Made Me Want to Read More

Ever get a trade paperback or maybe a back issue of a comic that you've never read, and when you finally did read it want to know more? This is something that a good comic will do, make you want to go back and read what you missed (or at vert least learn the backstory for what happened before and after). It's similar to catching a re0run on TV of some show who never watched and liking it so much you want to know more about this show you've discovered. Linkara points to "The Technis Imperative" as his example of this, and I can see why. 

Here are five issues and/or story lines that had a similar effect on me.

Justice League of America #257

I can't find where I talked about this before so if I did, sorry about that. This comic was my introduction to the DC universe proper. Until then I had kinda seen a few comics and of course Superfriends on TV, but this is the issue that got my attention. Is it a good issue? No, not really. It was the end of a story arc and I was totally lost. But the conclusion of the issue had Firestorm teasing the upcoming Legends mini-series. I wanted to know more. Who was this Firestorm? Who were these strange leaguers? Legends..what was that? This issue bought randomly by my mother when I was laid up opened the door for me to a new universe and is a prefect example of the adage "Every comic is someone's first"