Nana nana nana nana BATMAN!

Now that is one hell of a teaser. During San Diego's ComicCon (A platform for huge movie announcements- mostly comic book related) and through a website apparently run by the man himself, Joker was looking for a new henchman. To see what happened on the day, read the police report. They took viral marketing to a new level. Over a hundred people dressed as Joker were seen travelling from place to place on a treasure hunt of sorts. They were given directions such as receiving a balloon from a clown in a park after giving a password ("Why so serious?") and then pop the balloon to get a card inside which led to another street. There you'd find a boy holding a weapon. What was the weapon? Why, a bat of course. And it all led to the teaser, a new image of the Joker with Maggie Gyllenhaal and someone picked to be his henchman in the movie.

Some people disagree with the casting of Heath Ledger as the Joker. Some people would say that Jack Nicholson nailed the character and that he shouldn't be replaced. Some people are idiots. They've never read the comics that the series is based on and they don't understand that he's supposed to be off-the-wall crazy and kills for the fun of it. I'm sure that Heath will pull it off even though it sounds like he's impersonating Hugh Laurie raspy American accent in "House" and then trying to do Mark Hamill's manic laugh from the cartoon series. On the right, I made a mock up of what Hugh Laurie would look like in the same make up . He's known to dress up.

The Dark Knight is out on July 18th 2008. A trailer is promised for December. I'll have Comic Con 2007 summed up in one mega post tomorrow. By the way, in case you wanted to know, Kapow! Zowie! Whack-eth! were all used in the old 60's Batman TV show. But did you know how often? Now you do.

Meet the Furry Grim Reaper

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. Nursing home staffers aren't concerned with explaining Oscar, so long as he gives families a better chance at saying goodbye to the dying. Read more here.

I'm hoping to see the Simpsons Movie tomorrow morning hoping (foolishly) that the cinema will be child free at 11.30am. I've high hopes for this film. It's make or break time for me and the Simpsons (as I've already posted). The signs are looking good on Metacritic. It should have an average score of 82/100 because I don't care what Empire say. It's only them being controversial ass bandits. My reason for posting a picture of Bartman: apparently, there will be a new Dark Knight trailer screened before the film in a few days after it's premier at the ComicCon festival sometime soon.

In other comic related news, how about this for an example of chronic diarrhoea in article form? An idiot, who goes by the name of Sarah Churchwell (a senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia, apparently) posted an article on guardian.co.uk describing Heroes as "a myth about power, made by a country in the midst of a serious identity crisis". Pants, I say. First of all, she based all of this on seeing the first two episodes of a 23 part series which aired on BBC2 last night.

She goes to great lengths trying to find the symbolism behind the heroes stories including the loveable Hiro ("geddit?" haha- well spotted you jackass) only to come up with "Enamoured with superiority but worried about elitism, this is a story in which hitherto ordinary people discover that being special may not be all it's cracked up to be". Ya think? A man is on the verge of exploding and you think he might like the up side of that? Oh, that's right. Two episodes.

She might as well have written "The characters seem real, but when I reach out to touch them, I am stopped by the plastic cover of this television box set . I am perplexed by this." The comments made on the article are pretty spot on in most cases. Except the guy who thinks it's all very Harry Potter even though he hasn't seen the show and only managed to read the first book of seven.

All the great TV intros of my childhood

Another day, another huge Youtube list. Today, I've come up with a list of all the good TV show intros that I can think of. Most of them are programs that started and finished around the time I would watch them but some are repeats that Sky One based their schedules on (Happy Days, Family Ties etc). There's a lot there and goes to showhow crappy today's TV is. Part 2 is coming tomorrow, hopefully. It takes a lot of time to do these things. Includes all the "The" shows and stuff. Yes, stuff. Be excited.

Click on the show title to see it's wikipedia entry and the link beside it to see the intro. Here are the first 50 out of 100:

01. Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog -Intro
02. Aladdin -Intro
03. Alvin and the Chipmunks -Intro
04. Animaniacs -Intro
05. Are You Afraid of the Dark? -Intro
06. Babar The Elephant -Intro
07. Back To The Future: Animated Series -Intro
08. Bananaman -Intro
09. Batman: The Animated Series -Intro
10. Big Wolf On Campus -Intro
11. Biker Mice From Mars -Intro
12. Bosco -Intro
13. Buffy The Vampire Slayer -Intro
14. Califonia Dreams -Intro
15. Captain Planet -Intro
16. CatDog -Intro
17. Cheers -Intro
18. Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers -Intro
19. Clarissa Explains It All -Intro
20. Count Duckula -Intro
21. Cow & Chicken -Intro
22. Crystal Maze -Intro
23. Darkwing Duck -Intro
24. Dinosaurs -Intro
25. Dogtanian -Intro
26. Doug -Intro
27. Ducktales -Intro
28. Early Edition -Intro
29. Earthworm Jim -Intro
30. Eerie Indiana -Intro
31. Family Ties -Intro
32. Fraggle Rock -Intro
33. Freakazoid -Intro
34. Freaks And Geeks -Intro
35. Friends -Intro
36. Garfield And Friends -Intro
37. Goosebumps -Intro
38. Gummi Bears -Intro
39. Hang Time -Intro
40. Happy Days -Intro
41. Hey Arnold -Intro
42. Home Improvement -Intro
43. Hulk -Intro
44. Inspector Gadget -Intro
45. James Bond Jr. -Intro
46. Johnny Bravo -Intro
47. Kenan and Kel -Intro
48. Knight Rider -Intro
49. Live & Kicking -Intro
50. Lois And Clark -Intro

More great TV intros of my childhood

I decided to post this one before part one only to make sense in list form. Yes, I have seen all of these and no, I'm not blind yet. Anyways, here's the rest:

51. Looney Tunes -Intro
52. M.A.S.K -Intro
53. Mighty Max -Intro
54. Mork and Mindy -Intro
55. Muppet Babies -Intro
56. Mr Benn -Intro
57. Peanuts -Intro
58. Perfect Strangers -Intro
59. Pinky And The Brain -Intro
60. Pokemon -Intro
61. Popeye -Intro
62. Quantum Leap -Intro
63. ReBoot -Intro (Oh, Yes!)
64. Ren and Stimpy -Intro
65. Rocko's Modern Life -Intro
66. Round The Twist -Intro
67. Rugrats -Intro
68. Sabrina The Teenage Witch -Intro
69. Saved by the Bell -Intro
70. Scooby Doo -Intro
71. Sesame Street -Intro
72. Sienfeld -Intro
73. Spider-Man -Intro
74. Superman -Intro
75. Superted -Intro
76. TaleSpin -Intro
77. TazMania -Intro
78. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -Intro
79. The A-Team -Intro
80. The Girl From Tomorrow -Intro
81. The Greatest American Hero -Intro (only for the theme tune)
82. The Flinstones -Intro
83. The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air-Intro
84. The Mask -Intro
85. The Muppets Tonight -Intro
86. The Raccoons -Intro
87. The Real Ghostbusters -Intro
88. The Simpsons -Intro (A great one)
89. The Smurfs -Intro
90. The Tick -Intro
91. The Wonder Years -Intro
92. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles -Intro
93. Thunderbirds -Intro
94. Tiny Toons Adventures -Intro
95. Tom & Jerry Kids -Intro
96. Transformers -Intro
97. Where's Wally? -Intro
98. Wonder Years -Intro
99. X-Men -Intro
100. Yogi Bear -Intro

If any of these bring back any fond memories, I'd advise searching all youtube for some classic clips of all these shows. It's amazing that you can find any moment in TV history that you can possibly think about. Oh yeah, it's totally illegal but then again, what isn't? To see full episodes of classic TV shows visit the equally-illegal TV links.

The Darjeeling Limited trailer (woohoo!)

One of my favourite directors, Wes Anderson, who hasn't gone wrong (yet) has a new movie trailer out today. It's called "The Darjeeling Limited" which to me right now, is everything but memorable. I'm a huge fan his other work: Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic (with Steve Zissou). What's different about this film is that it's a story about your typical dysfunctional family who are having some bonding and communication problems but in India.

It's plot synopsis goes a little something like this: "An emotional comedy about three brothers re-forging family bonds. The eldest, played by Wilson, hopes to reconnect with his two younger siblings by taking them on a train trip across the vibrant and sensual landscape of India". Unfortunately, it's not out until early 2008 but we have Natalie Portman to wait for. Click here for the high definition trailer cos dat's how we playas do.

His next project is equally exciting: Roahl Dahl's "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". Cool beans, if were to you ask for me for my professional opinion. *Sweet Bonus* Watch the original 1994 Bottle Rocket short film here.

In other movie news, Zachary Quinto (who plays Sylar in the brilliant Heroes) has been going around publicly campaigning for the role of young Spock in the upcoming JJ Abrams Star Trek XI film. Apparently JJ was more than just interested and it's now reported that Quinto’s deal with Paramount is pretty much a done deal.

There's going to be a hell of a lot of comic book related news in the next few days at Comic-Con International. I'm seriously looking foward to The Dark Knight trailer, Watchmen movie (which already has a rumoured cast), Ironman (cast and full suit!), Stardust, Lost Season 4, Superman Doomsday (?), Indiana Jones 4 and more. Oh yeah, Cloverfield too. Hopefully, they'll pick a good proper title. I'd hate for it to be called "Monstrous" or something. That would be really stupid. Oh, wait.

Tell us about yourself: Part 1

I really don't like the blogspot format for descibing myself so I wanted to go through some interview questions I found here with some questions I want to answer thrown in there for good measure. Better late than never, right? I mean, there are only 3 people who know what Monscooch means.

While searching for interview questions I came across some strange but true instances of job interview behaviours. It shows how bat-shit loco some people are and how funny it is to me because I'm not one of them.

What is your name?

Pedro Monscooch is ainm dom. It's not my real name (shock, horror) but an alias of mine I once used to sneak into a friend's class party and pass myself off as a Spanish genius who doesn't need to show up to class. Ever. I'm that good at Business Studies or whatever it was.

If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you be?

Chuck Norris.

If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play the lead role as you?

I'd make it in the same style as the new Bob Dylan movie and have 5 different actors play me. There would be Keifer Sutherland, Macaulay Culkin, Ryan Tubridy, and since Bob Dylan has Cate Blanchett, I'll have one of the Jessicas. Alba, Beil, Simpson, Rabbitt... it's all the same to me.

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

I'd have a mish-mash of different superhero powers. I'd have Spiderman's webslinging ability, Wolverine's claws, Superman's x-ray vision, Mr Fantastic's Invisible Woman and Batman's pointy ears.

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?

"And Why Not" is already taken so I might go for "Money, Monkeys, Whiskey & Women: The Pedro Monscooch Story".

If you had to be shipwrecked on a deserted island, but all your human needs - such as food and water - were taken care of, what two items would you want to have with you?

A jetpack to fly off it and some Polar Bear repellent just in case of a random attack. I saw it happen in this TV show so it must be true.

If you had six months with no obligations or financial constraints, what would you do with the time?

I'd go travelling for all six of those months. There's a whole checklist of places I'd love to go and visit. It pretty much consists of the seven modern wonders of the world. And Legoland.

If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?

Same as above, probably. But with more crying on everyone else's part.

If you had a song you wanted played at your funeral, what would it be?

I know that most priests are against anything but hymns and all that so I'd go all out and have a whole cheesy medley made up from this play list: "You can't always get what you want"- The Rolling Stones, "Dead Presidents" - Jay-Z, "Wake Up"- Arcade Fire from the album Funeral, "Stayin Alive" - BeeGees, "Death Of A Supernaturalist"- Divine Comedy, "Live & Let Die" Paul McCartney & Wings, and topped off by "Monkey Gone To Heaven" by the Pixies.

If you could have dinner with anyone from history, who would it be?

John Lennon would be an obvious choice. Leonardo Da Vinci, Mister Jesus of the Christ family, Elvis Presley, Alexander The Great (to see how great he really is)... although most of them would probably need a translator so I'd have to settle for Elisha Cuthbert. Sure, why not.

The second half of this interview is to be continued...

Song Of The Week 3

Justice - "D.A.N.C.E"

I've only heard it for the first time last week and can't get it out of my head. Both the song which just screams Superhappyfunjoyjoy (it's a word) but the video is amazing too. I want every single one of those T-shirts. Apparently it's been out for 2 months but I never heard it through all the repeatings and variations of Umbrella-ella-ella-ay-ay-ay.

I'm telling you: stop playing Rihanna's damn "Umbrella" and it'll stop raining. It's not a coincidence that it's been raining non-stop while Rihanna was at number one. I've also noticed "Rihanna - Umbrella" is a clever anagram of "Banal Rain? Me Hurl!" and "Brain Manure Hall". At least with her new "song" there's hopefully no chance of her 8 weeks at number one feat being repeated. Although, with a nation crazy about the latest musical fads, it wouldn't suprise me to have yet another awful song top the charts. Oh look, friggin' Fergie at number 1. I give up.