Jesus As Action Hero

Coming in 2009 to a theater near you: Hollywood takes action hero Jesus to India.

Hollywood is to fill in the Bible's "missing years" with a story about Jesus as a wandering mystic who travelled across India, living in Buddhist monasteries and speaking out against the iniquities of the country's caste system.

Film producers have delved deep into revisionist scholarship to piece together what they say was Jesus's life between the ages of 13 and 30, a period untouched by the recognised gospels.

In other words, augment the fiction with more fiction.

What kind of movie will it be?

The film, which is due for release in 2009, sets out to be a fantasy action adventure and accounts for Jesus's life with the three wise men as his mentors.

Although the producers say the film will feature a "young and beautiful" princess, it is not clear whether Jesus is to have a love interest. The producers say they are hoping for commercial and spiritual gains.

(thanks m.c.)

Comedic Math

Two old movie excerpts with a common theme.

Abbott and Costello (with Shemp): 7 x 13 =28

Ma and Pa Kettle: 5 x 14 = 25

The Abbott and Costello clip is from their 1941 film, In the Navy. The Ma and Pa Kettle clip is from their 1951 film, Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm.

Grandpappy Amos

It was during the golden age of television. It aired from 1957 through 1963, and we were treated to 224 episodes: The Real McCoys.

The series revolved around the lives of a mountain family who originally hailed from West Virginia. The McCoys moved to California where they became dirt farmers. The family consisted of Grandpa Amos McCoy (the head of the family; Walter Brennan), his grandson Luke (Richard Crenna), Luke's new bride Kate (Kathleen Nolan), teenage sister Hassie (Lydia Reed), and 11-year-old brother Little Luke (Michael Winkelman).

The first two seasons are available on DVD.

The theme song was written by Harry Ruby -- who (along with Bert Kalmar) also wrote "A Kiss To Build A Dream On."

Want you to meet the family that's known as The Real McCoys
From West Vir-gi-nee they came to stay in sunny Cal-i-for-ni-ay
'Ole Grandpappy Amos and the girls and boys
Of the family known as The Real McCoys.

Today's trivia question: What key is the Real McCoy's them song in?

Judgment Day

Coming on NOVA: Judgment Day.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial is in many ways a hornet's nest. And we had to think long and hard before we decided to take it on. I think the real reason that we made that decision is because evolution is the foundation of the biological sciences. As Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the great biologists of the 20th century, once said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

In 2004, the Dover, Pennsylvania school board established a policy that science teachers would have to read a statement to biology students suggesting that there is an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design. Intelligent design, or ID, claims that certain features of life are too complex to have evolved naturally, and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The Dover high school science teachers refused to comply with the policy, refused to read the statement. And parents opposed to the school board's actions filed a lawsuit in federal court.

The trial that followed was fascinating. It was like a primer, like a biology textbook. Some of the nation's best biologists testified. When I began delving into the case, it was clear that both the trial and the issue were perfect subjects for NOVA.

Phillip Johnson, the "father of intelligent design," will be featured. I love this quote:

"If there were that great a commonality between chimps and humans, it ought to be relatively easy to breed chimps and come up with a human being, or by genetic engineering to change a chimp into a human. We ought to see humans occasionally being born to chimps or perhaps chimps born into human families."

Coping With The Writers Strike

This is Day 4 of the Writers Guild of America strike. Things could get very, very bad for America.

How are you coping?

Seinfeld Characters Today

Where are they now? The Seinfeld Characters.

I'm not talking about Elaine, George and Kramer. (Elaine has her Emmy, George is taping his next celebrity poker thing, and Kramer's starring in a buddy flick with imus.) I'm talking about the bit players. Where's Babu these days? Whatever happened to the Low Talker? Where the heck has the Soup Nazi been. These are the folks that made Seinfeld what it was, and why I still can't change the channel when someone says Bubble Boy. So what's everyone been up to?

For example, the Soup Nazi (Larry Thomas):

I don't know how many of these characters are based on real people (who knows, maybe all of them) but everyone knows the Manhattan soup man was the inspiration for the character, and Larry Thomas played him flawlessly. After Seinfeld, more TV roles followed, including General Hospital, CSI, Scrubs, and many more. This is funny...he seems to have the bad guy thing down, playing a Saddam lookalike on Arrested Development, and Osama Bin Laden in the upcoming flick Postal. Most people would be bummed about being typecast, but I get the feeling he's loving it.

Strike!

This could be tragic: Hollywood Writers Set Strike for Monday.

Film and TV writers prepared to go on strike Monday for the first time in two decades to break what has become a high-stakes stalemate with the world's largest media companies over profits from DVDs and programming on the Internet.

Writers Guild of America board members voted unanimously Friday to begin the strike at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time (3:01 a.m. EST) unless studios offered a more lucrative deal with a bigger cut from video sales and shows sold or streamed over the Web.

Imagine that you're the lead writer for "Everybody Hates Jimbob." You're working late Sunday night on a comedic masterpiece. The clock strikes midnight, and you're right in the middle of a joke. Do you finish the joke, or do you turn off the computer?

Talking Heads On Display

A job site for TV newscasters, weathercasters, sportscasters, etc: Collective Talent.

Toad probably knows this already, but Pittsburgh sportscaster Trenni Kusnierek is looking for a new job.

If you needed an AMS-certified broadcast meteorologist, Jerry Mathewson is your man. He used to work in Macon, Georgia, but it looks like he's been out of a job since August. He has the perfect weatherman face, and I'd certainly trust his forecasts.

(via Tom McMahon)

The History Channel?

In my entire life, I think I've watched a total of 15 minutes of the History Channel on TV.

For some reason, I had assumed that the History Channel was a credible source for information. Obviously, it's not. See Lost Book of Nostradamus. Why would they waste their time on something like this? The world has enough lunacy. Why add to it?

The Dark Side

I actually watched some non-baseball TV last night, and it wasn't even in highdef. It was on PBS: The Dark Side.

After 9/11, Vice President Richard Cheney seized the initiative. He pushed to expand executive power, transform America's intelligence agencies and bring the war on terror to Iraq. But first he had to take on George Tenet's CIA for control over intelligence.

Not much new information, but it was nice to see it all in a concise summary.

Dick's wife didn't like it, though: Lynne Cheney Falsely Attacks PBS Documentary As One-Sided,' ёPredictable,' And A Hit Job'.

While Cheney is complaining about Frontline's supposed "one-sided" report, she neglects to mention that neither Vice President Cheney nor his Chief of Staff David Addington agreed to be interviewed for the documentary. Their point of view is expressed, however, by former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer John Yoo, who had an integral hand in formulating the legal basis for Cheney's policies.

TV Music

Somebody compiled a whole bunch of TV Theme Songs.

You know, that Mighty Mouse song has real staying power. It still sounds good.

A Prairie Home Companion: The Movie

Last night we watched Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. I hadn't even heard of it, but Pamn brought it home from the library and said I might like it. I did! A great line-up of famous movie stars, plus some excellent music. I think this is one of those movies that you either love or hate.

In my entire life, the cumulative time I've listened to that radio show is probably less than 30 minutes. I checked out the Prairie Home Companion web site, and was surprised to discover that shows from 1996 through 2007 are archived (Real Music format). You can listen to them and skip past the silly banter. A quick glance at some of these shows revealed some great performer, such as Iris DeMent, Gillian Welch, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Mike Seeger, and even the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Today’s Sponsor

Today's edition of J-Walk Blog is brought to you by Noxzema Medicated Shave.

Toad, please feel free to critique this guy's shaving technique.

TV Turning Into Web

TV is emulating the Web -- at least the sites that fill every square inch with obnoxious ads. This is one of the reasons I can't stand to watch TV: As the Fall Season Arrives, TV Screens Get More Cluttered.

It discusses snipes -- ads that run in the bottom right of the screen during other programs. In many cases, the ad obscures things such as subtitles.

Snipes are just the latest effort by network executives to cram promotions onto television screens in the age of channel surfing, ad skipping and screen-based multitasking. At first, viewers may feel a slight jolt of pleasure at the sight of a new visual effect, they say, but over time the intrusions contribute to the sense that the screen is far more cluttered - not just with ads, but with news crawls and other streams of information.

For better or worse, viewers say, the additions are making the experience of watching television more closely mirror the feeling of using a computer.

That may be so, network executives say, but the extra content is here to stay. The snipes - not to be confused with bugs, those network logos that pop up in screen corners during shows - are important enough to the beleaguered television industry that the networks plan to tolerate the backlash.

America’s Favorite Racist

At Media Matters: O'Reilly surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurant and other New York restaurants.

Discussing his recent dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at the Harlem restaurant Sylvia's, Bill O'Reilly reported that he "couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." O'Reilly added: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.' "