Happy Halloween!

Here's a strange little hiccup on the pop culture front: MICHAEL JACKSON'S GHOSTS (1996.) Everyone knows from THRILLER, even dancing convicts in China know THRILLER, but nobody knows this one; I only learned of it through one of Stephen King's column for Entertainment Weekly. Yes, he's the co-writer! If you're interested on how this scaaary mini-musical came to be, read here:

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20289166,00.html

I suspect the video's lack of popularity is due to the fact that it's incredibly self-indulgent, ham-fistedly scripted (I don't blame King), and tedious as hell at 40 minutes long, despite having little gem-like bits of wonder, terror, and dance scattered throughout. The Guinness Book of World Records pegs Michael Jackson's Ghosts as the Longest Music Video in history.

Fortunately, I found an edited-down music vid that manages to cover most of the really imaginative bits and makes its point in just under four minutes:

Hooray, brevity! That's pretty awesome! But if you really feel the need to see the whole thing, do a search on youtube for mjghostmovie1, they have five parts up, linked together. You know how MJ yells, "AAAaaaaauugh!" about halfway through? He does that over and over again for, like, ten minutes in the long version, and it gets old really really quick. So good luck with that. I'd love to see a 20+ minute version of the long film, done by an editor with a machete and an ear for music -- one of our own talented fannish vidders for choice! -- I think that's the optimum length for something like this.

Please note: the ringleader of the crowd of townspeople who have come to evict MJ's character from his castle due to their extreme prejudice against his extreme weirdness, the fellow who looks a bit like Keith Olbermann? He's Michael Jackson under a ton of makeup! Now *that's* a special effect!

Men in Black, the series. Better than the movie!

A new kiddie television channel called "The Hub" has popped up on our menu courtesy of Verizon Fios and, for once, it's a channel I'm actually interested in watching. I'm happy to say that it's already giving Nickelodeon's cartoon channel, Niktoons, and Cartoon Network a run for their money. For one thing, The Hub is running one of my all-time favorite animated series, Men in Black. MiB has the bestest, coolest opening sequence ever:

I feel more dangerous just for having watched that, even if it was a bit fuzzy.

I haven't read MiB comics yet, but apparently the animated TV series is a lot closer to the look and feel of the concept source than the movies were. The comic was a run of six issues; three by Aircel, three by Malibu, which was then bought out by Marvel. Marvel ran a few one-shots based directly off of the movie that were not part of the original run of the comic; the characters were drawn to look like Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.

I've read that MiB comics are quite hard-core in terms of violence; the code of the Men in Black is "by any means necessary" when protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe. The characters on the TV show ostensibly have the same code, but, per the usual kid-show morals, nobody ever really gets hurt, and of course nobody gets killed. In fact, the movie introduced a flashing device that wipes a citizen-who's-seen-too-much's memory, and the animated series went with that -- way less ordinary-citizen's blood spilled.

The TV series picks up where the first movie (not sure about that second movie) left off -- they even reference the first movie on the animated show by saying that it was funded to mislead the public. (Kinda like how Wormhole Extreme misleads the public about the Stargate project.)

The show was part of the much-missed "Kid's WB" line up. Great adverts.

Protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe! Bring the scooper!

Man, I really miss Kid's WB!