Home » Tag: cartoons

February 28th, 2008

Categories: Geek-Out Moment

duck_dogers Celebrating, immortalizing, and humiliating the classic sci-fi series Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, Looney Tunes classic Daffy Duck decided he too wanted to travel into space.  In the 1953 classic Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, Daffy Duck spits his way to idiotic heroics, with an ego even Captain Kirk would be over powered by.  One of the funniest Looney Tunes shorts ever, Duck Dogers has appeared in several sequels and his own series helping continue the lampooning sci-fi so deserves.

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January 20th, 2008

Categories: Geek-Out Moment

cartoon_watching There’s no school, yet by 8 a.m., children sat on their couches, wide awake, ready for hours of colorful heroes, fantastic characters, and a bizarre amount of homoeroticism.  Yes Saturday morning cartoons were the highlight of every child’s week, even more than taco night.  Armed with action figures, PJs, and sugary cereal, we’d sit in front of the TV from 8 till usually 12 watching classic cartoons like Looney Tunes, Super Friends, Muppet Babies, Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, He-Man, Transformers, and G.I. Joe to name a few.  Since the 1960s, TV networks and advertisers used Saturday mornings to target new toys and candy to impressionable young minds.  The popularity of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network have lessened Saturday morning’s popularity, spoiling the new generation with 24 hours of childish entertainment, but us mature folk remember the good ol’ days

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January 3rd, 2008

Categories: Geek-Out Moment

The catch phrase that ignited playgrounds around America. He-Man, the furry underwear wearing homoerotic fantasy of the 80s (yes, that one) features the soon-to-be muscle bound Prince Adam as Eternia’s most powerful protector. In classic child hood fashion, the “frail” and innocent Prince Adam turned into the rock hard abbed He-Man when he raised his sword above his head and screamed “By the Power of Greyskull, I have the power.” His scream echoed until his chest size expanded about 35 inches. Children tried to replicate this transformation with everything from plastic swords to broom sticks, but mostly we still looked and sounded like She-Ra.

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November 29th, 2007

Categories: Business models, Entertainment industry

South Park clips on SouthParkStudios.com, from MTV Networks Your favorite mountain town will be coming to your local website soon. MTV Networks will release every South Park clip ever on SouthParkStudios.com.

Following their successful model with Daily Show clips, MTV and Comedy Central aim to attract online video viewers to their own sites, rather than user-run sites like YouTube.

This is exciting news from a company originally slow in using the web for distribution. MTV and Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom is suing YouTube for $1 billion for copyright infringement for showing Viacom shows on the site. This move by Viacom shows the company is at least trying to provide an alternative to get their content, experimenting with new distribution methods rather than just forcing people to watch TV at specific times.

Though one thing concerns me, specifically the idea of MTV showing all South Park clips, not episodes. Does this mean every South Park episode will be broken up into short, digestible clips? If so, this is not ideal. The Daily Show benefits from being broken up as clips for the purpose of searching and sharing specific segments. South Park, however, is a full story and benefits from having the full context. Hopefully MTV will feature the full episodes, maybe in addition to clips. Though please do not include a commercial between every clip. I might have time to watch a full episode on your site, but I don’t need to sit through five 15 second commercials for Ford cars.

Either way, this is a nice step forward for big media conglomerates. Now if Viacom can just drop their stupid lawsuit, we’ll be all set.

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October 8th, 2007

Categories: Legal issues, Television

family_guy_need_a_jew It seems after Pinocchio got his wish, Jimmy Cricket went to law school. The owners of the song “When You Wish Upon a Star” are suing the television show Family Guy for damaging the “cultural treasure epitomizing the wonders of childhood.” In the episode “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein” Family Guy parodied the classic song as “I Need a Jew” when Peter Griffin tries to find a Jewish accountant to help him with his finances.

Okay, first, this is hilarious. The Bourne Co., owners of “When You Wish Upon a Star” apparently think the years of joyful memories this song has provided can be undone by a lone television episode. Frankly, I think that speaks more highly of Family Guy’s influence. Family Guy can make or break your reputation.

This episode has been pulled from the air because of anti-Semitic phrases.

“With its theme of wholesome hopefulness, the song has gained worldwide status as a classic. By associating Bourne’s song with such offensive lyrics and other content in the episode, defendants are harming the value of the song,” said CNN quoting the lawsuit.

This isn’t the first silly lawsuit against Family Guy. Actress Carol Burnett sued Family Guy for parodying her “charwoman” character from The Carol Burnett Show. The case was dismissed citing First Amendment protections; the same reason this case will obviously be thrown out.

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September 29th, 2007

Categories: Movies and music

Cracked.com has an uplifting sort of top 10 list of the best cartoons for kids. These cartoons, filled with cuddly animals and exciting superheroes, teach kids valuable lessons as well as entertain. But not all cartoons are so innocent. This top 10 list looks at the animated movies that will traumatize kids. And while there are some animated staples on this list, you will never guess what number one is. And after you see it, well, words cannot describe it.

(more…)

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September 28th, 2006

Categories: File-sharing, Geek living, Internet, Television

Memory and bandwith concerns aside, this is a new age in streaming video. The website DailyEpisodes.com offers the entire runs of the Simpsons, South Park, Futurama, Family Guy, and American Dad on fast streaming video in slightly better than poor quality. This barebones site with a slew of Google Ads makes impressive use of third-party video hosting to offer hundreds of gigabytes of video. Before getting into piracy concerns, this is quite impressive.

As for the piracy, this is a concern. The best file-sharing programs, like BitTorrent, can be cumbersome for the casual computer user. But these Dailymation hosted videoes are so simple to use, most people are apt to use it. In this sense, I would guess the site’s no-effort layout hurts the masses from visiting (helping to keep the media companies from finding out, possibly). But the simple fact this site can exist is as exciting as it is worrisome for the use of this technology.

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