From Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point:

Part of the appeal of Jim Henson and the Muppets to the show’s creators, in fact, was that in the 1960s Henson had been running a highly successful advertising shop. Many of the most famous Muppets were created for ad campaigns: Big Bird is really a variation of a seven-foot dragon created by Henson for La Choy commercials; Cookie Monster was a pitchman for Frito-Lay; Grover was used in promotional films for IBM. (Henson’s Muppet commercials from the 50s and 60s are hysterically funny but have a dark and edgy quality that understandably was absent from his Sesame Street work.) (p. 117, paperback edition)

WHERE CAN WE SEE THESE COMMERCIALS?

“You gonna bark all day, little bunny?“

The Smithsonian has sold first-refusal rights to its film archive to Showtime in a move that will probably destroy public access thereto for years to come. Via BoingBoing.

So the MPAA have decided to get on board with this online download thing for movies — sort of. Boing Boing details the utterly craptacular manner in which they’ve executed this notion. Key data points include “IE only downloads” and “twice the price of DVDs” and “DRMed out the wazoo.” It’s enough to make you think they’re trying to ensure the initiative’s failure, but we’re not sure they’re that smart.

Enjoy. Safe for work, unless you work for particularly huge jerks. If did those crazy tags all the kids use, this would be the only post ever tagged with “Jenna Jameson” and “wack-a-mole.”

My Attorney and I met up last evening and took in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. It’s a damned fine thing, and you should see it, too.

Heathen, we present you with The Muppet Matrix, a reshoot of the Matrix trailer using CGI Muppet characters. (Local copy; found on Screenhead.)

Specifically, they want their programming to be unrecordable by DVRs. Not because of piracy, but because they want to be able to charge you more to watch that episode you missed using their on-demand service.

This is why ideas like the Broadcast Flag must be strangled in their crib. It’s an affront to consumers and a blatant money grab by content producers. HBO is doing very well; they make some of the only TV worth watching, and are able to do so because people like the Heathen are willing to pay them directly to watch it (i.e., rather than being beholden to advertisers). We’re very sad to see that their point of view is no more progressive than the jackasses at the regular networks.

There is a new silent film of Call of Cthulu. Don’t miss the trailer.

King Kong: Yes.

RedStateUpdate reviews Brokeback Mountain. (Video)

Kylie Minogue, lingerie, and a velvet-colored mechanical bull. Trust us.

Patrick “Blue” Cranshaw, 1919 – 2005.

Bask in the beauty that is Grand Theft Auto: Lego City.

We thought we were about to watch a Law & Order rerun from the Tivo, but as it turns out, it’s some sort of Oak Ridge Boys Christmas Special, featuring occasional ice skating with Dorothy Hamill to the “no, we’re not dated at all” sounds of — and we’re not making this up — Mannheim Fucking Steamroller. It is apparently new, not a rerun.

It’s like Christmas Special Hell.

Saturday will mark Alec Baldwin’s 12th appearance on SNL. He’s tied with John Goodman for 2nd place at this point; Steve Martin still holds the record at 13.

“There are two types of hosts,” Mr. Baldwin said. “You either send up your own persona or you become part of the company. And if you become part of the company, you just make an ass of yourself. You do whatever they ask you to do.”

“Dear friend or relative or business associate…”

“Chupacabra: Dark Seas,” on SciFi. Synopsis: A chupacabra! On a cruise ship! With Giancarlo Esposito as a crazy scientist! And John Rhys-Davies as the captain!

It’s as if they’re going out of their way to make horrible film after horrible film over there. We’ve seen better student films. We’ve seen better films made by toddlers. We’ve seen better films made by chupacabras, or at least we theorize that primitive bloodsucking animals with no language or culture could not possibly do worse than this.

From the IMDB review of this goatsucker: “

By a stroke of sheer coincidence, a Marshall is on board, investigating some money that went missing from the ship’s safe. He’s posing as an insurance salesman (“Lady, I’m the best insurance you’ve got…”). Other scintillating characters include the captain (John Rhys-Davies, and sadly his dignity is the first victim of the film), his tae-bo instructor daughter …

No, we are not making this up.

Conan likes to play clips from “Walker, Texas Ranger.” This one, featuring a very young Haley Joel Osment, may hurt you. (Via MeFi)

We’re pretty sure this sums up why we’ll probably skip Aeon Flux on the big screen.

… then this Sony Brevia commercial is the high end of the remaining set. Blogland was all atwitter a few months back with stills of the shoot, which involved releasing an enormous number of multicolored superballs down hills in San Francisco. This is the finished product. It’s lovely, and is sullied by commerce only in the final seconds.

There’s a making-of video linked in one of JWZ’s entries above; it’s worth your time, too.

The climax of A View To a Kill, perhaps the worst EVAR James Bond film, involves an AXE FIGHT between villain-du-jour Zorin (Christopher Walken) and Bond (Moore) ON TOP OF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE.

The pinheads at Fox have cancelled Arrested Development despite its laundry list of awards and accolades. Cast member David Cross has a bit to say about it in this set outtake. (local copy.)

New York Doll tells the story of Arthur “Killer” Kane of the New York Dolls. Kane faded into obscurity, got sober, found religion, and was living quietly when Morrissey asked him to be part of a NYD reunion thirty-odd years later. (Via MeFi)

Warriors Action Figures are now available, which makes sense, as there’s a new DVD available as well as a game — from RockStar, even — coming soon.

The Shining, recut as a comedy. More about why here.

We do not, in fact, love Raymond.

Heathen Central has just recognized Napoleon Dynamite‘s Uncle Rico as the same actor who played “genius in the steam tunnels” Lazlo Holyfeld in Real Genius.

Steve Carell: One Funny Motherfucker.

In his years on “The Daily Show” Mr. Carell became known as the guy who was willing to do almost anything for a laugh, a marked contrast to his low-key demeanor when not performing. He once ate an entire tablespoon of Crisco — both in rehearsal and on the show — when ice cream or frosting would have worked just as well, just so he could enjoy Jon Stewart’s horrified on-camera reaction. He also famously did a takeoff on news correspondents who demonstrate the negative effects of alcohol. Instead of just pretending to get drunk, he consumed cocktail after cocktail and ended up screaming, howling and, eventually, throwing up in Mr. Colbert’s car. It’s a tradition he continued in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” in a chest-waxing scene that has audiences alternately wincing and laughing as chunks are ripped from his heavily-forested torso, leaving him red and, inevitably, bleeding.

We have Lindsey to thank for this one.

From CNN comes this, under the headline “New Mel Gibson film to be in Mayan”:

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — Actor-director Mel Gibson is well on his way to cornering a new niche market in Hollywood — movies written in exotic languages. A year after breaking box-office records with “The Passion of the Christ,” which was shot in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew, Gibson has struck a deal with the Walt Disney Co. to release his next picture in a Mayan dialect.

Edward Bunker, once the youngest inmate at San Quentin, passed away last Tuesday. He started writing while still inside, and his success therewith carried him to Hollywood; he is perhaps most famous for his role as Mr Blue in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 Reservoir Dogs.

Primer is the best $7,000 movie you’re likely to see this year; they certainly loved it at Sundance. Bullet pitch: garage-based tech startup guys attempting to manipulate gravity end up manipulating time. It’s quick (77 minutes), which is good, as you’ll probably want to watch it more than once.

Firefly lands at SciFi, which will show the original episodes in the right order, something Fox didn’t deign to do in the first place.

JWZ and Warren Ellis point us to this: Plug Pulled on Watchmen Movie.

Seven Minutes in Deadwood, via WFMU. Wholly and completely unsafe for anywhere; it’s an episode (1.10, “Mister Wu,” one of our favorites) of Deadwood with all the nonvulgar dialog removed.

We reckon the theory is that if this deoderant is good enough for Stunt City, it oughta do for you, too.

Here’s some Lessons learned from Revenge of the Sith. We particularly like “When the leader says ‘Everything’s fine, go wait on the LAVA PLANET,’ be suspicious.”

Tim and Carrie hit the big time.

A year ago, we pointed out that, well, Hollywood types tend to be evil goatfuckers. This is no surprise, of course, but the particular evil this time was the shelving of Paul Schrader’s prequel to The Exorcist, and the hiring of dismal hack Renny Harlin to complete the film.

Harlin’s version (Exorcist: The Beginning) came and went, and what critical notice it received was uniformly damning. It was, by all accounts, among the worst things ever committed to celluloid. And then something interesting happened.

The powers that be decided to release Schrader’s version, too. It’s called Dominion, and it opened last weekend. (Astute readers will recall that we suggested this might happen last year.)

Joey points out the Best. Headline. EVAR.

Ol’ Diz outdoes himself: David Mamet’s Rejected Dialog Work for “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith”.

(Which reminds us were were considering seeing the Alley’s version of Glengarry Glen Ross, but frankly why bother when there’s a version in New York with a cast to knock your socks off?)

This guy put together a video clip of the original Psycho shower scene and Van Sant’s 1998 shot for shot remake superimposed. Cool. (Local copy here; via jwz.)

We care, that is, enough to make you watch the final scene from Seven as performed by stuffed animals.

HBO has renewed the Wire for a fourth season.

Someone’s documented the Deadwood Fuck Count. (via)

Here’s a long interview with the creator of HBO’s Carnivale. After reading this, we totally need to rewatch the first season.

From the Washington Post:

Name-Calling in Its Purest Form
By Richard Leiby
Thursday, February 24, 2005; Page C03 You’re an Ashcroft! No, you’re the Ashcroft! Imagine hearing that exchange in a movie — you’d think that Hollywood had come up with a crazy new insult. Well, it turns out that some airline passengers watching the Oscar-nominated film “Sideways” on foreign flights are, in fact, hearing “Ashcroft” as a substitute for a certain seven-letter epithet commonly used to denote a human orifice. The Post’s Monte Reel, based in Buenos Aires, tells us he heard the former attorney general’s name substituted at least twice in “Sideways” dialogue when he watched the film earlier this week on an Aerolineas Argentinas flight to Lima, Peru. The movie was shown in English and the dubbing was done “in the actual voices of the actors,” Reel reports. Star Thomas Haden Church utters the A-word. Profanity is typically cut from in-flight movies to make them suitable for general audiences, but how did the studio come up with “Ashcroft”? Hoping for enlightenment yesterday, we queried Fox Searchlight Pictures, the studio behind “Sideways.” A spokeswoman initally e-mailed us to say she had “all the info” about dubbing, then failed to respond to our followup questions. Ashcroft did not return our phone message, but we’re certain he was busy and not just being an . . . WaPo

The Superfriends do Office Space.

The terribly ill-advised Hellblazer-inspired Constantine — starring Keanu Fucking Reeves, for the love of Mike — is getting decent reviews.

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