Pixar's Hit Parade

Pixar has been on a creative roll since they hit the scene. There has yet to be a bad Pixar movie...some are better than others (I'm not a big fan of Cars, for example, though I still find a lot of it entertaining.)

Toy Story 3...which I had sequel-wary concerns about...proved to be another gem...touching, funny, even a bit intense, and utterly charming (though, that said, I hope they don't push their luck by trying to make Toy Story 4...let it go and move on.)

Entertainment Weekly recently ranked Pixar's offerings...my list is different (see below)...yours will most probably be different too. It's all good...like I said there are no bad Pixar movies.

The Neverending Rainbow rankings:

1) Finding Nemo ("...fish are friends not food...")
2) The Incredibles
3) Up
4) Toy Story
5) Monsters, Inc.
6) Toy Story 3
7) Wall-E
8) Ratatouille
9) Toy Story 2
10) A Bug's Life
11) Cars

Next year's movie is scheduled to be Cars 2.

5 "Must See" Christmas Entertainments

And just like that it’s Christmastime again. Okay it took a year since the last time…but it doesn’t seem that long, does it? The season is a celebration…of the Christ child’s birth…of the wondrous bonds of love and friendship that inform our lives…of gifts given freely and accepted gratefully…of food and drink…of music (the subject of an upcoming entry)…and, in those rare down moments, of enjoying some of the classic entertainment of the season.

Now personally I don’t need to see yet another adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (if you’re so inclined pick one of the dozens of movies, plays, or “very special episodes” of TV shows and have at it.) I don’t need to sit through It’s a Wonderful Life again either (it’s a fine movie…probably a wee bit darker than you remember if you haven’t seen it in a while…but I’ve had that particular experience enough for the time being.)

There are Christmas entertainments that I can…and do…watch happily every year.

The five "must see" Xmas entertainments:

1) A Charlie Brown Christmas: still the gold standard of animated Christmas specials even after 40+ years.

2) Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas: not that over-stuffed movie from 2000 but the magical animated special with the voice of Boris Karloff and the unforgettable singing of Thurl Ravencroft (see the classic "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" below.)

3) A Christmas Story: the endearing and delightful trip down nostalgia lane with Ralphie and his quest for the best Xmas present in the whole wide world (a Red Ryder bb gun, natcherly :-)

4) Miracle on 34^th Street: the 1947 version with Edmund Gwenn and young Natalie Wood (the 1994 version is okay but it’s overlaid with a bit too much seriousness and cynicism when compared to the ’47 winner.) Avoid the colorized version this movie looks grand in black and white.

5) A Wish for Wings That Work: a personal favorite that wasn’t an especially big hit featuring Opus (the penguin from the great Bloom County comic strip) and his quest to be able to fly (with “help” from the ever-addled Bill the Cat.)

Those are 5 great ways to make you smile after a hard day of Christmas shopping (or while sitting around after that last slice of pumpkin pie has made walking not something you have much interest in…)

Astro Boy

When I was a youngster, Astro Boy was one of my favorite cartoons...every weekday afternoon I would come home from school (Menlo Avenue Elementary in Los Angeles) and watch it with rapt attention and glee. When I heard they were making a new movie I wasn't that interested (these things go so wrong so often) but after watching this clip I'm totally down with it (yeah, I know it's geeky but "the little child inside the man" (thanks, John) doesn't care about that one little bit...cool is cool :-)

Peanuts 1960's Collection

Looking back in abiding fondness I still smile at the things which delighted and informed and entertained me mightily when I was a child.

I still smile when I remember reading Dr. Seuss and Charlotte’s Web, Animal Farm and Greek mythology, The Mighty Avengers and Adventure Comics starring Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

I still smile remembering the joys that television could bring right into my living room: Star Trek and Batman…Lucy and Laugh-In…Mission Impossible and I Spy and Get Smart…Bonanza and Gunsmoke and Twilight Zone …and Charlie Brown.

The Charlie Brown specials were “must see TV” for me each and every year…I knew them by heart but, in the days before VCRs and DVDs, I anxiously awaited there annual returns with sweet anticipation.

The Peanuts 1960’s Collection is a 2-DVD set chockfull of lovely nostalgia, eternal laughs, and pure wonderfulness. Collected here are the 6 Charlie Brown specials from the sixties all gloriously re-mastered (they look and sound just great) featuring the perennial holiday specials A Charlie Brown Christmas (maybe the best animated Christmas show ever) and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (with the faithful Linus and the love-struck Sally camped out in the “most sincere” pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come.)

The put upon, but ever resilient, Charlie Brown is, of course, at the heart of these shows (especially in the bittersweet charmer You’re in Love, Charlie Brown which centered on his crush on the unseen “Little Red Haired Girl”) but the ensemble of indelible characters…the wise and optimistic Linus, the bossy Lucy, the brassy Peppermint Patty, the piano virtuoso Schroeder, the assertive little sister Sally, and, of course, the irrepressible Snoopy (whose whimsical adventures and antics weave through all of the shows especially his showcase He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown.)

The great music by the amazing Vince Guaraldi is also an indelible part of the shows and his life is engagingly explored in the new 35-minute documentary, The Maestro of Menlo Park, that (along with downloads of 2 songs…”Baseball Theme” and “Happiness Is”…from the soundtrack of A Boy Names Charlie Brown) rounds out this charming collection that should bring smiles to the faces of children of all ages (even and especially old duffers like me.)

Hey Ya! Charlie Brown Style

There are some things from my childhood that continue to reverberate sweetly through my aging soul: Dr. Seuss and Charlotte’s Web, Greek mythology and super-hero comics, Motown and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the Charlie Brown specials (especially A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.)

Because of that, the mash-up video above…almost seamlessly matching images from the specials (most from Christmas) with OutKast’s insanely infectious “Hey Ya”…tickles the hell out of me (but then I am often easily amused.)

(FYI: This is the 400th Neverending Rainbow post. Yay! :-)

Monsters Vs. Aliens

Plot? Well, the title pretty much sums it up (I guess you could read some tolerance stuff in the subtext...but this isn't really a "subtext" kinda movie.) But that doesn't matter...Monsters Vs. Aliens is fast paced and beautifully rendered with enough slapstick and high-jinks to keep the kids happy and just enough jokes that will sail over the heads of the youngsters to keep the adults engaged (and stuff blows up...who doesn't like that? :-)

Keifer Sutherland is a hoot (and all but unrecognizable) voicing the the hard-bitten General W.R. Monger who has been keep the existence of monsters away from the public for 50 years, Stephen Colbert has a daffy turn as the clueless President, and Reese Witherspoon is at turns winsome, befuddled, and determined as Susan who is turned into a 50-foot woman ("Gigantica") after being exposed to a meteorite on her wedding day.

Hugh Laurie is grand as Dr. Cockroach, a mad scientist who turned himself into...well...a giant cockroach, Will Arnett is fine as the stalwart and prideful Missing Link, and Seth Rogen steals the show as the affable but brainless gelantious blob named Bob.

The movie wears its influences on its proverbial sleeve unabashedly...I saw winks to Star Wars, Men in Black, Independence Day, The Day the Earth Stood Still...and, of course, The Fly, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Blob... among others...but it does so with such charm, verve, cheekiness, and good nature that you just go with it.

In the vein of full disclosure I eschewed the 3-D version in favor of a regular 2-D showing...eyes as old as mine weren't meant to try to cope with 3-D for an hour and half...but I could see many of the shots that probably really popped in three dimensions.

Is this a great movie? Nah. But it's a heckuva lot of fun and what more do you want from a cartoon?

Wall-E

All Pixar movies are not created equal…some are better than others…but they all have been engaging, wonderfully crafted entertainments. Everyone who is a fan of their remarkable output will have their own personal favorites (I’m especially fond of Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Monsters Inc., for example.)

Wall-E, the newest Pixar gem, doesn’t rank up with the best of their movies but it is a charmer nevertheless. In the future Earth is such a garbage dump that the people have long since abandoned it for generations of pampered life about gigantic space luxury liners leaving robots to clean up the mess. 700 years later only one intrepid little robot, Wall-E (“Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class”), is dutifully working on the daunting task with a seeming indestructible cockroach as his only companion and a treasured videotape of the musical Hello Dolly as his favorite entertainment.

Wall-E’s routine…collecting and compacting garbage into cubes and collecting bits of stuff he finds interesting…is turned upside down by the arrival of Eve (“Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator”), a sleek robot from the Axiom, one of the aforementioned luxury liners, tasked with looking for signs of life on Earth. Wall-E has indeed found such a sign and the action shifts to outer space as he tags along with the ship taking Eve back to the Axiom (which is run by robots and computers leaving the humans as pudgy, pampered people who don’t think, walk, or do much of anything for themselves.)

The visuals are, as is par for the course with Pixar offerings, dazzling and the story…romance and action with a dose of fairly heavy-handed social commentary (the mega-corporation which left trash all over the Earth and which runs the luxury liners is a not so subtle allusion to Wal-Mart)…zips along nicely.

Wall-E and Eve have limited vocabularies and there is almost no dialogue in the first half-hour or so but it is still very easy to follow the story; in the Sunday morning showing I went to there were a lot of small children and none of them got bored or restless watching the movie.

Wall-E is a grand little entertainment as is Presto, the hilarious short (a Bugs Bunny-esque battle of wills between a magician and his rabbit) that precedes the main feature…all in all, yet another winner for Pixar.

Simpsons Judging American Idol

My girl Lisa does a killer Paula Abdul :-)

Pop Culture News and Notes

Actually, South Park’s Chef should be saying “Goodbye, children” as Isaac Hayes, the legendary soul man who has been the voice of the character on the iconoclastic cartoon from the beginning, has quit the show due to religious concerns.

Hayes, one of the many celebrity members of the Church of Scientology, apparently took umbrage with having his religion skewered during a November episode (poking fun at other notable Scientologists like John Travolta and Tom Cruise.)

“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," Hayes is quoted as saying.

South Park co-creator Matt Stone dismisses that explanation. "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology... He has no problem - and he's cashed plenty of checks - with our show making fun of Christians."

Guess it’s not so funny when your ox is being gored, is it Isaac?

The Incredibles DVD

I'm so jazzed. I loved this movie in the theater and I love it almost as much on DVD. Some of the experience is lost on TV (at least for those of us who don't have big honking flat screen doo dads :-) because portions of this delightful animated adventure features widescreen action that filled the movie screen to grand, eye-popping effect...but it's a minor quibble because at its heart this movie is about the characters (spandex-clad super-heroes and super-villains that they be) and their amazing, fantastic, bittersweet, grandly heroic, utterly human lives and this DVD showcases that wonderfully.

I haven't explored all of the generous bonus features of the 2-disc set yet (I just got the thing from my good pals at Costco online) but the short cartoon I have seen..."Jack Jack Attack"...is a hoot (and it fills in some continuity from the movie featuring the youngest Incredible and his harried, ditzy babysitter.)

So cool.

Loonatics

Some things just ain't right. Warner Brothers is "updating" some of the classic Looney Tunes characters...Bugs, Daffy, Taz, Roadrunner, Wile E., and (relative newcomer) Babs...into the "edgy" futuristic super-hero types you see above. Not cool. (Yeah, I'm an unyielding traditionalist/grumpy old fogey about some things...and I'm okay with that.)

"Loonatics" (working title) is scheduled to debut this fall.

Thank the universe that the classic Looney Tunes cartoons are being given the deluxe DVD treatment they deserve (two great collections thus far)...kids (of all ages) deserve to be able enjoy and appreciate the real deal and not this marketing department/focus group/"wouldn't it be cool if..." pretender to the throne.

(And yes, I know...it's only a cartoon and it probably will not work and it's not the end of the world if it does...I just had to have my say and now I have and I'm done :-)