Disney probably should have saved its Marvel acquisition news for this week’s big D23 Expo (”The Ultimate Disney Fan Experience”), because nothing announced at the event could possibly top it. Plus, many of us would rather now hear about Disney’s plans for the comic company’s film adaptations instead of plot details on Toy Story 3and Cars 2 and a title reveal for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbeaninstallment. The fact that Guillermo Del Toro’s secret “D” project ended up being just some animation production company rather than a Deadmanmovie doesn’t help fanboy reactions, either.
Still, I was glad to hear that the screening of the first 30 minutes of The Princess and the Frogwas well received. I’m also grateful for comedian Paul Scheer for this image of a robot Abe Lincoln. Although it’s probably just a relic from the Halls of Presidents exhibit at Disneyland, I’ll be dreaming tonight of the Lincoln film I wishSteven Spielberg would make.
Oh, and umm, any update on the next Muppet movie is obviously going to put a smile on my face. Presumably this is the Jason Segal project we’ve been excited about for 18 months now. And it’s title is: The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made. Hopefully this means Gonzo will be directing and that it will therefore be as silly as possible.
Check out the other film blog reactions to the D23 announcements after the jump:
We’ve still got awhile to wait for details on the full lineup, but last night SXSW announced that their opening night film. It’s I Love You, Man, a comedy starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segal and Rashida Jones, directed by John Hamburg. With that cast, it may sound like an Apatow thing, but it’s not; based on its IMDB listing, it actually looks like a more direct descendant of The State.
The film co-stars a couple of State guys, Thomas Lennon and Joe Lo Truglio (both now of Reno 911) and Hamburg directed several episodes of Stella, the sitcom version of the comedy act featuring State alumns Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter and David Wain. According to Scott Weinberg, who saw a cut of the film this part weekend at Harry Knowles’ Butt Numb-a-Thon, this “affable farce” is “just plain NICE” — which makes it sound a bit like Showalter’s 2005 directorial effort, The Baxter, in which Rudd also co-starred. It all comes full circle!
The last clip I posted, before taking a week off, was Muppet-related. And now, rather than digging through all the viral marketing and other cine-centric videos I’ve missed during my vacation, here is yet another clip that is Muppet-related. The video presents a year-old performance of “Count’s First Day of School” by The Dead Hensons, a Muppet cover band from the Bay Area. Unfortunately the group doesn’t appear to play too often (according to their website, after this May 2007 set, they only played twice again, in August 2007 and May 2008).
So why share this clip? Well, besides the obvious, that it’s important to note that a Muppet cover band is no less necessary or serious than any other cover band (IMHO, Paul Williams is one of the greatest songwriters alive), this is also a chance for me to recommend that Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller consider giving The Dead Hensons at least a cameo in their upcoming Muppet movie. If you’ve seen Segal and Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you might agree with me that this song is like a bridge between that film and the new Muppet movie, because Dead Hensons frontman Ryan Beebe is very Segal-esque (at least he appears so in this poor-quality clip) and this performance is kind of like the Dracula musical song from Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Here is a film from 1965 of a young Jim Henson and friends lampooning their process of making commercials for Wilson’s Meats. It only goes to show how far downhill the Muppets have come. And how much more mature they were in the beginning.
I present it to you now, because in anticipation of the next project from Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller (respectively thewriter and director of this week’s new release Forgetting Sarah Marshall), which happens to be a Muppets feature, I hope there is some pre-Muppet Moviestuff taken into consideration as possible inspiration.
This particular film is a sort of sequel to this other one, which features more actual Muppets on screen, but I kind of prefer the Monty Pythonesque feel of the one I’ve featured above. But definitely watch both.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Disney probably should have saved 
We’ve still got awhile to wait for details on the full lineup, but last night SXSW announced that their opening night film. It’s I Love You, Man, a comedy starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segal and Rashida Jones, directed by John Hamburg. With that cast, it may sound like an Apatow thing, but it’s not; based on its IMDB listing, it actually looks like a more direct descendant of The State.
