The "You know what?" thread

[D'Snowth]

I'm sick of bad actors somehow thinking they have what it takes to create/produce/run their own shows. Seriously, there's absolutely no need to Melissa McCarthy to start getting involved in things behind the camera - and for TV Land at that, where all of their original sitcoms automatically suck.

 

[D'Snowth]

We've often discussed the incompetence of the rating system in today's modern cinema, but heh, it strikes me as amusing that much of CollegeHumor's content is rated "TV-Y." I mean, that has to be a joke, right?

 

[minor muppetz]

I've seen the five released issues of the Back to the Future comic book side series Biff to the Future, and I feel like some of it contradicts things mentioned in Back to the Future part II.

Oh yeah, and this might contain spoilers for the Biff to the Future comics

Like in the movie, when Biff says he'll cut off the kids, he says that he'll have Dave's probation revoked. But in the comics, it's shown that Biff's people had Dave go missing (which I guess explains the deleted scene where he's apparently not welcome in the casino, though he's still in town). So Biff and Laraine are now aware he has probation despite being missing?

And it's also mentioned that Linda had credit card problems, yet in the comic, she gets sent to boarding school along with Marty. Though in Part II I guess she's graduated by then.

And Biff never actually says how he'll get Marty behind bars. He just mentions what'll happen to Dave and Linda, then says "as for Marty... well, how'd you like all three kids behind bars?" So is that to mean that he'll manipulate the legal system into having him arrested (and Loraine complies because she can't do anything about it), or had Marty actually done something that could get him arrested but Biff had arranged to keep him out of jail?

It's also interesting how in Biff to the Future, Doc managed to make a different kind of time machine in this time line, aware that he eventually makes a DeLorean time machine. I wonder if he was aware that time was changing, or if he figured that kind of time machine could be made quicker.

Maybe everything will make sense by the time issue 6 comes out. I can't wait to see it all wrapped up.

 

[mr3urious]

That's funny. I just saw a commercial for yet another re-release of Bambi on Blu-ray right when I was talking about it on the Mickey Mouse shorts thread.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

That's funny. I just saw a commercial for yet another re-release of Bambi on Blu-ray right when I was talking about it on the Mickey Mouse shorts thread.

Why another?

 

[mr3urious]

Why another?

That's just what Disney does until they toss it back into the non-existent "Disney Vault".

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

That's just what Disney does until they toss it back into the non-existent "Disney Vault".

It's all because the company is running out of ideas.

 

[Old Thunder]

If they were running out of ideas, we probably wouldn't be seeing so many movies and TV shows, would we now?

 

[D'Snowth]

But notice a majority of movies and TV shows are remakes, reboots, rehashes, sequels, prequels, cheapquels, sidequels, quelquels, spinoffs, and/or next-gens.

 

[minor muppetz]

For years, I've thought about how the majority of Oscar-winning Warner Bros. shorts, as well as the ones that were nominated, are not as great as many that were not even nominated. When it comes to the Oscar-winners, Birds Anonymous is really the only one that deserved it.

Speedy Gonzales is either my top favorite or second favorite of the winners, but that's more because it has Speedy Gonzales, and I say it's that high when ranking my favorites as an Oscar-winner, not as a WB or even a Speedy Gonzales short. There's a lot of other Speedy cartoons that I like a lot better. The cartoon itself is great, but I doubt I'd list it among my top five favorite Speedy cartoons. For Scent-Imental Reasons is one of the few Pepe le Pew cartoons I really like, but I'm not sure it really deserved that Oscar. I said that I doubt I'd list Speedy Gonzales among my top five favorite Speedy Gonzales cartoons, but I doubt I'd list For Scent-Imental Reasons among my top 25 favorite WB shorts... Unless I felt I needed to include a Pepe le Pew cartoon on the list (and even then, I think I'd be more likely to list Really Scent).

Meanwhile, I find the others - Tweetie Pie, Knighty Knight Bugs, and So Much for So Little - which probably shouldn't really count here - to be good but not great. I especially question Knighty Knight Bugs being the one Oscar-winning Bugs Bunny cartoon because I feel I didn't see it much growing up (okay, I wouldn't be surprised if it heavily aired on The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, which I didn't see often because my local ABC station often aired local news on Saturday mornings instead, but it still seemed scarce to see it after Cartoon Network got the rights), not counting So Much for So Little I feel I've seen it on television the least out of all the Oscar-winners, and it used to be so under-represented on home video. It was included (mostly complete, just without the "that's all folks" card) in The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie and (also mostly complete, but I think significantly less complete) in Bugs Bunny's Easter Funnies, both of which have been released on multipel video formats multiple times, but otherwise it only got one VHS release (and Warner Home Video was a lot more "double dip heavy" in the 1990s), one laserdisc release, and I think one Blu-ray release. It has been released the most on DVD, though it took three volumes of the Golden Collection before it was released (and no audio commentary or special featurette about its Oscar win?).

When thinking about the many Oscar-nominated Looney Tunes shorts, especially when most of them aren't as good as many of the more iconic and celebrated shorts that were not nominated at all (such as Duck Amuck, What's Opera, Doc?, Duck Dodgers, Robin Hood Daffy, Show Biz Bugs, and a number of others), most of them were either one-shots, character debuts, or featured characters who had not yet been in many shorts. In fact, with the exception of So Much for So Little (which I've said shouldn't really be counted), all of the winners have major characters, whether they'd been around for a long time or would go on to have fairly large filmographies (though Pepe le Pew does have the shortest filmography of the Looney Tunes characters I consider "major"). Tweetie Pie was the first team-up between Sylvester and Tweety, they went on to become one of the company's best-known duos. For Scent-Imental Reason was the first Pepe le Pew cartoon to feature Penelope, while his first two shorts were a little different from the typical short (with him chasing after a male cat and a Chihuahua, both of whom purposely looked like skunks as opposed to it being an accident, though Penelope would sometimes put a stripe on herself on purpose, in addition to Odor of the Day being the most different of all Pepe le Pew cartoons, and some fans don't think the skunk was supposed to be Pepe), nearly all future Pepe cartoons would basically be the same (with Really Scent being the most different afterwards). Speedy Gonzales was the first team-up between Speedy and Sylvester, and many of their following team-ups would use the same basic plot as Speedy Gonzales, with some variation (maybe Sylvester is guarding something other than cheese, or maybe he's guarding a cheese ship instead of a factory, etc.), though Speedy did have a lot more distinctive plots after that than Pepe did.

And I think the Oscar wins boosted the careers. Out of all the really major characters, Daffy Duck is the only one who never appeared in an Oscar-nominated cartoon. Most of the other characters Oscar nominations came shortly after they made their debuts. I don't think any recurring characters with a really small number of cartoons appeared in any Oscar nominated toons. Who knows, maybe we would have gotten a lot more cartoons with characters like The Goofy Gophers, Hubie and Bertie, Marvin the Martian, Tasmanian Devil (maybe his second cartoon would have come sooner), or Charlie Dog if one of their first shorts were nominated.

I wonder if these Oscar-winners and nominees would be a case of the TV Tropes, err, trope entitled "Seinfeld is Unfunny". Perhaps those seeing them for the first time thought they were great, but then the characters got better as they copied the Oscar-nominated shorts, and the earlier ones are seen as not-as-good by comparison. If the characters barely continued after their Oscar-nominated cartoons, would the shorts be viewed as better by many fans (maybe I'm misthinking there)?

But while many of the Oscar-winners are not as great as many shorts that weren't nominated, I feel like none of them are overrated. I know there have been fans that have referred to such classics as What's Opera, Doc?, Hillbilly Hare, One Froggy Evening, Duck Amuck, Porky in Wackyland, and others as overrated, as well as overplayed (I used to think of What's Opera, Doc? as overrated, I still feel that way about Hillbilly Hare). And yet I don't think Ive seen people refer to the winners as overrated (well, if we wonder why For Scent-Imental Reasons won while Duck Amuck was never even nominated...). And it's not like the majority of those shorts were rarely broadcast, as most of them did get a lot of airplay, all of them have been released on video (including an entire set themed around Oscar winners and nominees), and most of them have been included in compilation films.