Reruns

I won't be blogging much for the next week or so, which is probably just as well: at a time like this, I don't think the world needs another new post about old movies or wacky TV shows.

Other bloggers bring in guest-bloggers when they are away; my guest-blogger is, well, me. Here are links to some older posts of mine that I still like, and are still as current as they ever were (which is to say, not current at all).

- "Bob McKimson". A post on the career of the most underrated Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies director. An addendum to the post can be found here, and this post discusses McKimson's style as an animator.

- I wrote two posts about Thackeray's Vanity Fair -- here and here -- in anticipation of a movie version that turned out to be a flop. Maybe they should have played more to my tastes and made the whole thing about Amelia Sedley.

- "Freakazoid!". The story of the origins and development of one of the strangest, funniest cartoon shows of the '90s. Also see my post on the rise and fall of "Pinky and the Brain".

- "Obscure Plays: The Star Spangled Girl". A post about one of Neil Simon's worst, yet most intriguing, plays.

- "Conrad L. Osborne: Best Opera Critic Ever". The WWW contains very few quotes from the work of Mr. Osborne, the brilliant critic of opera recordings for the late, great High Fidelity magazine. My post offers a few very brief selections from his amazing body of work. If you're at all interested in opera and/or singing, try to find old issues of High Fidelity at the library and look for C.L.O.'s reviews and essays. Also, my post on Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" includes some more quotes from C.L.O.

- "The Men Who Made the Boogaloo Electric" is a brief tribute to the insane '80s B-movie kings at Cannon Films. On a related note, I explain why Trading Places is The ultimate '80s movie.

- "Peanuts' Peak" offers yet another attempt to answer the question of when Peanuts jumped the shark.

- "Things that Suck: ROCKET ROBIN HOOD". I actually watched an episode of the thing before making fun of it. That's dedication.