*Please note that this article is an opinion-editorial.

Well, this was a coincidence.

I’m a huge Disney nerd, and I happened to spend the day at both of the Disney parks in Southern California.  I’m sure I had somehow processed all this in my head at some point, but, being there today, I realized that Disney now owns three intellectual properties that were favorites of mine as a kid: Star Wars, Marvel Comics, and the Muppets.  Additionally, I was also a big Disney kid growing up, so when you also consider their own characters and stories, they’ve really got everything I loved as a kid all under one roof.  I don’t believe in getting too nostalgic about childhood and I’ve always found hyperbolic sentiments like “George Lucas raped my childhood” in relation to the Star Wars prequels to be genuinely stupid and short-sighted.  Having said that, there’s no question that Disney owns my childhood lock, stock, and barrel now. 

 

There was an interesting article recently in LA Weekly that spoke about the lack of long-term economic sustainability in Major League Baseball’s deals with local and cable television providers. According to the Weekly, over the past 30 years, the World Series has lost about 80% of its viewers. Regular season National Football League games routinely blow the Fall Classic out of the water in terms of Neilson ratings. One of the many factors contributing to baseball’s consistent demise in popularity is young people raised on mixed martial arts and the X Games who see the national pastime as slow, stodgy, and old-fashioned.

One of the nice things about being a film geek and living in Southern California is all of the great movie events that get staged here.  With that in mind, here’s a heads-up for movie fans living in the greater Los Angeles area.  On Wednesday, April 24, the American Film Institute will be presenting AFI Night at the Movies.  According to a press release, the evening “is an event of extraordinary scale with classic American films spanning five decades screening on a single night - each with an introduction by the film's star or filmmaker. Mystery, drama, romance, horror, science fiction, and animated family entertainment will all be represented.”

 

 

*Please note that this article is an opinion-editorial.

I was a high school teacher for ten years, and it had occurred to me once that developing and teaching a film studies course would be a good idea.  I did all my due diligence, developed a curriculum and syllabus, and arranged to meet with the school board to pitch my idea.  I was worried about one thing: frequently in the Midwest, it seems people don’t always realize the importance of studying the arts.  I was nervous the board wouldn’t see film as a legitimate thing to study.

 

For the first four or five seasons, I was a huge fan of the Keifer Sutherland series 24.  It was a great suspense thriller, but after a number of seasons, its formula began to be its undoing.  For instance, there was always a mole at CTU.  For a super-sensitive counter-terrorist organization, CTU was rife with moles.  It got to be kind of comical, especially when a guy posing as an IT repairman was able to just sneak into the place and wreak all kinds of sabotage. 

SPOILERS BELOW

 

My favorite part of Finding Nemo is the scene where Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) explains her short-term memory disorder to Marlin (Albert Brooks). “It runs in my family," she explains. “At least, I think it does . . . where are they?”

We’re about to find that out.

 

*Please note that this article is an opinion-editorial.

I can’t believe I’m writing this.

I really despise boy bands.  I especially hate calling them bands.  They’re not bands.  They’re singing groups made up of a collection of boys.  Bands play instruments.  Bands express themselves through the songs they write.  Singing groups made up of a collection of boys tend to have little control over their own music.  They’re not artists in any discernable way.  They just do what they’re handlers tell them to do.  The Rolling Stones are a band.  Green Day is a band.  The Black Keys are a band.  Hell, even Hanson was a band.

 

Last week, Justified pulled off one of the best episode they’ve ever done, as the Marshalls had to get very clever in order to usher the newly capture Drew Thompson out of a Gauntlet-style ambush.  Tough guys said tough things.  Patton Oswalt took a severe beating and killed a guy.  It was tremendous fun.

SPOILERS BELOW

 

That. Was. Awesome.

In the past two weeks on Justified, we’ve had the reveal of the season-long mystery of Drew Thompson’s identity and last week’s moving of the plot’s chessboard setting up the remaining three episodes.  The table was set for all kinds of shenanigans to go down in Harland County.  Last night’s edition didn’t disappoint.

 

$663, 087.

That’s the total right now, and I’ll give updates as I’m writing this. 

Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell announced this morning the genesis of a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to make a feature film based on the Veronica Mars series that ran for three seasons.  Like many geek properties (Joss Whedon was such a fan that he actually appears onscreen in one episode as a snooty rental car agent.), Veronica Mars was a show with a small audience with a honey badger-like ferocity.   I think many of us count ourselves as fans of TV shows that are constantly on the cancellation bubble.  I personally helped purchase boxloads of little plastic footballs that were sent to NBC to stave off the cancellation of Friday Night Lights.  Frequently, once our beloved show shuffles off the mortal coil, it goes through the litany of options before it’s really dead.  The creative team tries to find a home on another network.  And then, there’s the last dying gasps of trying to turn a failed TV show into a feature film.