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Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Mickey Mouse? Banned? You must be kidding!
No, I’m not. Mickey Mouse, that ultra-safe, conservative, harmless, beloved, world-famous cartoon character was banned -in the United States, no less. Or, to be exact, one of his cartoons was. The Mickey Mouse cartoon The Shindig was officially banned in America. But why?
Well, for one, in a scene in The Shindig, Clarabelle Cow is shown in the stable reading a book entitled Three Weeks.
Soon her date, Horace Horsecollar, knocks on her door to pick her up. Clarabelle quickly dresses, therefore she was technically naked while reading the book.
It was reported by TIME magazine in 1931 that the state of Ohio banned The Shindig because it showed a cow’s udders. While TIME noted that many moviegoers didn’t min viewing Clarabelle Cow’s udders, many others were very offended. That was reason number one.
Reason number two is a bit more esoteric (although equally ridiculous).
The book Clarabelle was reading, Three Weeks, was a notorious book written by Elinor Glyn, a British novelist and screenwriter who pioneered women’s mass market erotic fiction. It was Elinor Glyn who coined the word “it” to mean “sex appeal.” This was considered very racy and suggestive by 1920s Middle-American standards.
Her book Three Weeks was declared obscene and banned in Canada in 1907. It was condemned by religious leaders in the United States. How it came to be included in the Walt Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon is a mystery to this day.
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While Toy Story 2 was in production, someone at Pixar accidentally typed in a command that erased the drives on which the animation files were stored. Most of the film vanished in 20 seconds.
A whole year of work. Just…gone.
This is the story of how Pixar employees rescued the movie.
-via io9
Want to know what two googly eyed chins thought about the blockbuster movie The Avengers? They loved it, and if you have a strange sense of humor you’ll love watching them talk about The Avengers, and other weird stuff, like a pair of real life chinigans.
Spoiler alert: the chins talk about something that happens within the first ten minutes of the film, so if you’re worried about going in to see the movie without knowing anything about it don’t watch. Otherwise, enjoy the madness review!
–via Best Week Ever
If you know and love the Back To The Future trilogy, but you’ve never understood how they filmed the hoverboard scene, or made a Delorean fly through the air, then this set of behind the scene photos might help.
Some are candid portraits, others show the crew hard at work getting the shot to look just right, and they all show the cast and crew having a genuinely good time filming the iconic trilogy.
And with 65 pics in this collection, it’s nerd-stalgia at its finest!
Link –via Geek Tyrant
Hollywood has given us lots of movies about drugs, drug dealers, and drug users. But they can’t use the real thing on the set: it’s expensive, illegal, and the actors would have died on the set of Blow or Scarface. Wired magazine looked up what movies and TV shows use to depict various drugs on film. Link -via Gizmodo
Sure everyone loves The Avengers right now, but for anyone in the nineties, Nicktoons will always hold a place in their heart. That’s why this mashup is just so delightful, it provides us with two great things that are even better when together -the ultimate mashup goal.
Link Via The Mary Sue
I’ve seen my share of case mods, but this one is seriously impressive. Of course, while it looks amazing, it also seems like a huge pain in the butt to actually use on a real basis. I mean, who has room for this thing on their desk?
Link Via Geekosystem
In the midst of Avengers mania we lost a seminal talent in children’s literature-Maurice Sendak, so DeviantARTist AgarthanGuide decided to pay tribute in a manner most befitting an ubergeek-by turning the Avengers into a parade of Wild Things!
I like that Black Widow is waving a banner that says “Shield!”, and all the detail that went into this piece, but where are the Hulk’s pants?
Link –via GeekTyrant
Back in 1984, Apple produced this video parody of the movie Ghostbusters to show at their company-wide sales meeting in Hawaii. Back then, their main competitor, IBM, was called “Big Blue,” so Apple aspired to be “Blue Busters.” Jobs and Wozniak appear briefly. -via The Daily What
If you’re having trouble getting around on your own these days, why not take a tip from Star Wars and get this sweet AT-AT styled walker?
It will make you the geekiest resident at the senior center, and a big hit with the Leias at bingo night. Cool hydraulic sound effects not included.
Link –via Geek Tyrant
The Ghostbusters tour of New York is a tribute to the classic film that showed us all we don’t need to be afraid of ghosts, or giant marshmallows for that matter.
A byproduct of Bleedingcool’s Patrick Willems relocating to the Big Apple, this fan film is as much a tribute to the city as it is a couple of geeks hamming it up on camera and re-enacting scenes from the film.
And they even have their own official tour musician, so if you’re a fan of the film you’re probably going to get a kick out of this vid. If not, expect a visit from Slimer while you sleep.
–via Nerd Bastards
The Avengers are such an iconic team of superheroes that it seems fitting for them to be celebrated by working them into an iconic painting.
Argentinian artist Julian Totino Tedesco shows his love for the classics and comic books with his piece The Birth Of Black Widow, which is based on Botticelli’s masterpiece The Birth Of Venus and was used as the alternate cover art for Fantastic Four #17.
Venus is cool and all, but Black Widow has a much higher body count, and a skin tight black suit to match.
Here's a cute idea from the blog Crafts by Amanda: a DIY Avengers bookmark using a bit of paint and jumbo craft sticks. I'm partial to the Hulk one: he just looks so irasicbly cute! Link - via Nerd Approved
Have you ever wondered why cars in horror movies never start the first time the ignition is cranked? Jason Torchinsky solved the mystery when he “was able to find this revealing diagram in the underpants of an unconscious key grip on my lawn.” Read all about it at Jalopnik. Link -via mental_floss
One of these days (I’m not holding my breath), Hollywood will produce a feature film about vice-presidential candidates in the 19th century, and the casting will be spot-on. That is, once the casting director gets hold of historical photos of politicians most of us haven’t ever seen. Or, in some cases, paintings. Shown here are John Breckinridge of Kentucky, who served vice-president under James Buchanan, and actor Matthew Perry. See eleven of the men who ran for vice-president and the actors they resemble at mental_floss. Link
Going to the movies should make you appreciate your mother even more, as monster mothers run rampant in fiction. Or even non-fiction. Of course, we consider things to be entertainment only if they are outside of your ordinary experience. If you fought with your mom over what to wear to the prom, consider Margaret White in the 1976 movie Carrie.
High school is tough enough, but Carrie’s strict, fundamentalist mother makes the experience a thousand times worse for the awkwardly shy teenager. The horrors of menstruation are taxing on poor Carrie, but her nutty mom adds to the teen’s anxiety by telling her stuff like, “Pimples are the Lord’s way of chastising you,” and, “I can see your dirty pillows.” Clearly Margaret White missed the memo that all little girls grow up. As if all this weren’t bad enough, Mrs. White haunts her daughter with just one sentence: “They’re all gonna laugh at you.” It’s every adolescent’s worst nightmare, and the words make Carrie go full-blown bonkers at the prom.
Flavorwire tells of ten movies in which mother isn’t always right -although she is terrifying because she thinks she is. Link -via Buzzfeed
If you enjoy Being Human, The Vampire Diaries or any other supernatural dramas, then you owe a debt of gratitude to Dark Shadows. That’s because it was the first show to bring supernatural elements into a drama format. Of course, if all you know about the series are the previews from the new movie, then you might be shocked to hear that it’s a drama at all. Since the new movie doesn’t seem like a great place to learn about this groundbreaking series, let’s take a look at the show and how it finally got mashed into the Tim Burton film coming out tomorrow.
For those interested in catching the series, don’t worry, this is a spoiler free zone.
Image via mediafury [Flickr]
These days, the show is famous for its supernatural storylines, but nothing of that nature was present when the show was first pitched. It all started in 1965, when Dan Curtis had a dream about a mysterious young woman on a train. He pitched the idea to ABC, where it was quickly greenlit. Art Wallace was hired to create a story from Curtis’ dream and he came up with a tale about a young orphan, Victoria Winters, trying to discover her past in the strange town of Collinsport, Maine.
When the show premiered, it did fairly poorly both due to its use of mostly unknown actors and its long, drawn out storylines. Even as the show was struggling though, it was still innovative, being one of the first soaps to incorporate flashbacks and parallel time lines.
Six months into the show, things started to become more interesting when ghosts were introduced into the story. While it’s not all that rare for shows to use the supernatural these days, at the time, it was unprecedented and the show quickly increased in notoriety.
Okay, I have to get my hands on one of these awesome whiteboard shirts! However, I’m guessing it’s pretty hard to draw upside down, at least until your brain gets used to it.
Become a master like Phil Hansen, who quickly sketches 38 different portraits of cinematic badasses on his shirt, and you too can have the fame and critical acclaim afforded to those who keep the interwebs entertained. Yay for creativity!
The “classic” Disney animated films are considered to be those big ones produced before 1960. Sure, you’ve seen them all, but unless you’re of a certain age, you probably didn’t see them as first-run films. The challenge of this quiz from mental_floss is to recall how old each one actually is. You’ll be given a pair of movies, and you decide which one was released earlier.
Score: 100% (10 out of 10)
I, being old and having relatively young children, scored very well. Link
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
An actor playing Adolf Hitler -now that’s an interesting proposition. As anyone in Hollywood well knows, correct, precise casting can make or break a movie. So let’s imagine we’re doing a movie about Der Fuhrer. Who should we cast to play him?
Okay, the logical choice is painfully obvious, and actually ironic. Ironic only because the perfect actor to portray Adolf Hitler was, indeed, also the first American actor ever to play/satirize Der Fuhrer in a movie. Not to mention he was also a Jew. Hitler, okay, let’s see, a loud-mouthed, quick-tempered blowhard, an overbearing bully who enjoyed punishing those who didn’t follow his orders exactly. Does Moe Howard of the Three Stooges come to mind? Hmmm…
It was in January of 1940 that Moe and his two pals, those hilariously funny slapstick comics known the world over as the Three Stooges, made the very first movie satirizing Adolf Hitler and the then-growing Nazi movement in Germany and other countries. Nine months later, Charlie Chaplin came out with his more famous Hitler satire The Great Dictator. But I repeat, the Stooges were the historic first.
At the time the Stooges filmed You Nazty Spy! the United States was still very ambivalent about entering World War II. Isolationist sentiment ran rife across America and many feared making any film about Hitler and the Third Reich might stir up anti-Nazi feelings among the public. Many senators, such as Burton Wheeler and Geraldine Nye, were also severe isolationists who objected to any anti-Nazi movies on the grounds that they were propaganda designed to mobilize American fervor for war.
While the Three Stooges are often looked down upon by the “elites” and many film intellectuals, one must be fair and give them at least some credit for their courage in taking on the unpopular subject almost two full years before the U.S. entered World War II. The contemporary comparisons between certain segments of the American public and their widely diverse opinions on “offending our enemies” in 2012 are all too obvious.
You Natzy Spy!, the boys’ 44th short for Columbia Pictures, was Moe’s favorite Three Stooges short (pretty high praise, considering he appeared in 189 others). According to some sources, it was also Larry’s favorite Stooge short.
Moronika appears on a map in the later short I'll Never Heil Again.
Moe stars as Moe Hailstone, a small-time paperhanger, along with his buddies: Curly Gallstone and Larry Pebble (while Moe was obviously Hitler, Curly was Hermann Goering and Larry was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s two chief Nazi pals). The country of Moronica needs a dictator to take over and sway the angry masses into a more cooperative state.
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It was 25 years ago that Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Predator met and fought in the jungle. Since that time, the fires of hatred that burned between them subsided. They recently met at the Stan Winston School of Character Arts and made peace. Good for them. It will make their upcoming shooting of Kindergarten Cop II so much easier.
Link -via Geekosystem | Photo: unknown
What are the odds that 007 would survive? Gordon Stanger noted each time that someone took a shot at Bond and crunched the numbers. In New Scientist, he writes:
There is some ambiguity over how many gunshots have been fired at James Bond because, in many gunfights, it is not clear who the shots are aimed at. However, by my reckoning, in the 22 Bond films to date, there have been at least 4662 shots fired at our hero. A static well-aimed shot would almost certainly have proved lethal, but assuming all 4662 were “on the run”, the probability of a single fatal shot is about 5 per cent. That is, the chance of a single shot missing is 0.95, and hence the probability of all shots missing is 0.954662 or 1.4 × 10-104, which is as close to zero as makes no difference.
Link -via Say Uncle | Image: United Artists
Right after "walking away from an explosion without looking back," the three point landing is de rigueur for any self-respecting science fiction and fantasy movies. My 18-year-old self said "awesome!" whereas my 38-year-old self said "ouch, my knee!"
See if you can identify all of the movies in this supercut by Duncan Robson: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Ridley Scott’s prequel Prometheus comes out next month, so prepare yourself by revisiting the original Alien movies. Or maybe just the first couple of them. Go look at a collection of photographs taken on the set of the first film -and you’ll get to see the actor who is inside this Alien Queen costume. Link
True lovers of Back to the Future are certain to recognized and appreciate this classic line that George McFly delivers while trying to impress his future wife. Seriously ladies, could you really resist an adorably nerdy guy like George? I don’t know that I could.
Link Via Laughing Squid
If The Avengers was a stage play in 1887 rather than a movie in 2012, then the Black Widow would still be just as sexy…just in a completely different way. So would Princess Leia, Cat Woman, Wonder Woman and Red Sonia. Depending on where you stand on historical lingerie, you may, or may not, prefer these antique versions (I personally do). Needless to say, some of the pictures are a touch risque although none of them feature nudity or anything too raunchy.
With Avengers fever sweeping through movie theaters across the globe, it’s time for yet another Avengers related post-now with cute side-by-side comparisons!
Here are eight dogs that resemble the cast of The Avengers and they’re pretty much spot on, especially the cocker spaniel-Scarlett Johansson resemblance. Is there a sequel with an all canine cast in the works?
Howdy, Neatoramanauts! Our pals over at Hasbro sent us this nifty Battleship box and you know what this means: let's play The Mystery Box game!
As many people already know the content of the box (a bit of Googling will yield the answer), we will only be awarding prizes to the funniest and most imaginative guesses.
Here are the contest rules:
1. Guess the funniest and wildest thing you can imagine is inside the
Battleship Mystery Box - one item guess per comment, please.
2. With each comment, please enter a NeatoShop
item you'd fancy (anything in stock, $25 or less). May we suggest the
Cthulhu
Bottle Opener or things from the Funny
T-shirt, Gifts
for Geeks and Zombie
Shop?
3 . You can enter as many guesses as you'd like, but they have to be in
separate comments.
4. Incomplete entries forfeits the prize.
Funniest guesses will win a random assortment of items inside the Mystery Box and NeatoShop items (one per winner). Good luck!
If the movie The Avengers were made with animals instead of human actors, we’ve already found the perfect cast. They even come with their own adorable costumes! Pictured here is Nick Fury (or is it Nick Furry?) played not by Samuel L. Jackson, but by a sweet Boston Terrier. See the rest at Buzzfeed. Link
Happy Star Wars Day! As a Star Wars Day gift, Mark Anderson of Andertoons gives you a quick tutorial on how to draw R2D2. Leave one on your refrigerator for the holiday, or decorate a note to someone and say “May the fourth be with you!” Link -Thanks, Mark!
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