After my previous post about the mainstreaming of horror characters, where I mentioned that somehow Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula had been made into mascots for children's breakfast cereals, I remembered that the third of the monster-mascot bunch, Boo Berry, had been presented as a Peter Lorre soundalike. Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre, who came to prominence as a child murderer in M. A reanimated corpse, a vampire and a child murderer -- part of this complete breakfast!

I watched Quarantine last night (I know, I know, I should have watched [REC] instead, sue me). I have a soft spot in my heart for zombie movies, and I've been thinking about them a lot lately for some reason. New Moon is a smash hit, through the roof, with its vampires and werewolves. Is it possible, I wonder, that one day there will be a supernatural romance between a teenage girl and a zombie? It seems implausible, but then let's step back and think about this for a moment.

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The protagonist of "The Revenge Society" is Phantom Limb, who has undergone a transformation since we last saw him. This is, of course, nothing unusual in the Venture-verse, "transformation" is one of the strongest themes of the show. Phantom Limb transforms in this episode, The Sovereign transforms several times, Red Mantle and Dragoon merge into one (with limited success). Sgt Hatred tries desperately to transform into a good father-figure for the benefit of Hank, and Rusty even continues his delicate transformation into a father-figure for Dean.

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Mad Men is the greatest show in the history of television, certainly the greatest hour-long drama.

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What does D-19 want? That's easy -- D-19 wants to be Dean. He's bound to be frustrated in his pursuit, because there's no way he can actually become Dean. Setting aside the fact that Dean isn't really "Dean," since "Dean" has been dead many times over.

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I just realized, not only does the wicked queen order a huntsman to kill Snow White, she orders him to bring back her heart in a box. Not only does she order the huntsman to bring back Snow White's heart in a box, she has a special fancy box built for exactly that purpose, on a moment's notice.

I'm trying to imagine the conversation between the wicked queen and the guy she hires to construct the box:

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My son Sam (8) has informed me that I am famous! A movie I co-wrote, Antz, is now in the Guiness Book of World Records, complete with poorly-scanned, over-saturated artwork. It was, apparently, the "first film with digital water." "The first movie to use computer software to simulate the properties of water was Dreamworks' Antz (USA, 1998)," says the text. "Prior to this, computer-generated fluid effects were drawn, frame by frame, using graphics programs. Realistic water effects require powerful, physics-based computer simulations -- at the time Antz was released, the only detailed studies of fluid dynamics were being carried out by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, researching the flow of particles after a nuclear strike." If those Los Alamos boys had thought to put some talking ants in their studies they might have had something.

Surprise of surprises, it's turning into a wonderful autumn at the movies. As a rule, I don't enjoy Wes Anderson's movies, but I thought Fantastic Mr. Fox was a hoot and a half. And it's very purely a Wes Anderson movie: a quirky guy set in a neurotic milieu triumphs through his quirkiness, all presented with a dry, self-aware wit. Normally, that kind of thing rubs me the wrong way but this movie bowled me over. Anderson should make more movies about talking animals.

2012 reminds me a lot of the night back in December of 1972 when my father packed us all into the car and took us to a late-night show of The Poseidon Adventure. I had just turned 11 and had never seen a "grown-up" movie before. The movie I can remember seeing in theaters before The Poseidon Adventure was The Aristocats.

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What does Hank want? Hank wants a father. Rusty is as close to a biological father as he'll ever get, but Rusty has no interest in acting the role of father to Hank (Dean, it turns out, is a different story). Hank loves and idolizes Brock, who is now gone, replaced by the obnoxious, overbearing Sgt Hatred. Hank states outright that Hatred is not his father, and he refers to Rusty as a "honky" (which, to be fair, he is).

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It is 1980. I'm in college. I'm taking a drama class. The class is taught by a guy in the drama department. When he's not teaching drama, he designs sets for the productions of whatever play the school is doing. Which means, in addition to attending classes, the class is required to attend all productions, so that they may then praise the instructor's work the following Monday.

I suffer through well-mounted, boring-as-all-get-out productions of The Shadow Box, The Country Wife and What the Butler Saw. The last production of the semester is an adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

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As the title suggests, "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel" is about, well, searching for fathers and steeling your heart. What does it mean to be a man? Are you a man when you kill your father, or when you find him? Does a father hold you back or complete you? Does a father make his son a man by nurturing him or making him fight on his own? And, in a moment of truth, can a man act? Is that what it means to be a man? Can you steel your heart enough to act? And, where do our notions of manhood, or action, come from?

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I blame Disney for marketing A Christmas Carol during the Halloween season. Sam (8) has gotten interested in scary movies, but he's gotten them all mixed up in his head, which is easy enough, I guess, since he hasn't seen any of them.

It all began with a commercial for Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights, which featured a 20-something guy walking into a deserted, decrepit theater lobby. He's menaced by the doll from Saw, then Chucky from Child's Play, then finally a guy in a pig mask, also from Saw. The pig-mask guy has a blade that shoots out from his sleeve and the commercial ends with the pig-mask guy (presumably) slashing the throat of the 20-something guy.

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I now tweet every now and then. I can't guarantee I'll tweet anything interesting, but I do tweet.

The premiere of Season 4 of The Venture Bros snuck up on me -- I've been immersed in a screenplay polish deadline and have not been paying attention to whatever mountain of promotion I'm sure was out there.

Mr. Urbaniak was kind enough to direct my attention to the online presentation. When I watched it, I seriously thought there was something wrong with the website. This episode is far too weird to absorb quickly, this may take a day or two for me to process. Mr Urbaniak explains: "Yeah, the Brock story runs forward from after the Season 3 finale to the present and the Venture family story runs backwards from the present to after Season 3 finale. Crazy kids."

I was up for the gig writing the screenplay for Where the Wild Things Are a million years ago, when the project was at Universal. I had mixed feelings about taking on the project, because the book is so slim, and so primal, so, well, "wild," that I knew no studio would spend $100 million doing it properly. Where the Wild Things Are should be weird, intense, edgy and deeply personal, the exact opposite of what i knew a studio wanted out of a four-quadrant hit.

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Sam (8), immediately after seeing Where the Wild Things Are:

"Do you think this is the greatest movie ever made, or is that Jurassic Park?"

UPDATE: My wife Sara tells me that Sam is not, in fact, a fan of the book Where the Wild Things Are.  (This doesn't surprise me, I wasn't either when I was his age.)  His actual quote: "I mean, the book is one thing, but this!"  The fact that the movie now threatens to knock no less than Jurassic Park off his best-of list makes the movie's achievement that much more impressive.

UPDATE: Sam and his friend Rahi (7) have proclaimed Where the Wild Things Are "the best movie ever made in the history of everything."

Bala and Z?  Or -- Marx and Engels??

A well-meaning friend of mine saw today that Antz, a movie I co-wrote a long, long time ago, was recently named the 27th-best animated movie of all time by Time Out London! Yippee! That means I beat The Secret of NIMH! Take that, Porco Rosso! Better luck next time, Persepolis!

Let's see what this prestigious arbiter of cultural taste has to say about this 27th-best animated movie of all time, a movie into which I, yay verily, poured into which my heart and soul! Hmm...

"...a drab and hamfisted Marxist allegory rammed down your throat...‘Antz’ may boast a great array of vocal talent, but it spends too much time pitching gags over the kiddies’ heads and flogging its adult credentials to ever get down to basics and actually entertain. Cartoons, of course, aren’t just for children, but ‘Antz’, in falling back on kid-friendly by-the-numbers cartoon plotting, plunges between the stools of satire and slapstick." ALD

Ah. So, it's not very good at all then. "Dreary Whining" is ALD's final decree. Geez, I never felt sorry for The Secret of NIMH before, but to think that it's somehow worse than "dreary whining," that must be quite a sad movie indeed.

"ALD"'s point, of course, is that Antz sucks in comparison to A Bug's Life, which, well, if that's his or her opinion, I've read harsher. If one hates Antz, why put it on the list at all? Or, if you feel a special need to vent spleen upon a movie that blows it, run a special side-column about animated movies you hate.

But the reason I bring your attention to this folly is the idea that Jeffrey Katzenberg, the producer of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, a man who was once described as "Satan" by a friend of mine because of his extreme capitalistic views, would make the first CGI-animated movie from Dreamworks a "hamfisted Marxist allegory." Mr. Katzenberg, let me assure the reader, can be described in many terms, but "Marxist" is not one of them. Not once in any of our story meetings was Mr. Katzenberg ever moved to utter the following: "No, no, no, no, no! Don't you get it?! It's a Marxist Allegory, and we've got to ram it down the audience's throat!!  After all, we're a major Hollywood studio!!"

If you have not done so already, for heaven's sake go see the new Coen Bros movie as soon as time allows.  My time is short at the moment for discussion, and I don't want to spoil any of this altogether astonishing movie, which I believe is the Coens best, which is saying a lot.  In a time when American film seems to be getting worse and worse, the Coens keep getting better and better.  This is their most fully realized, most deeply felt, most openly profound, most deeply mysterious movie.

Analysis of this complex screenplay will have to wait for the DVD release, but I welcome readers to discuss the movie under the fold.  There will be, no doubt, spoilers within, so those who haven't seen it should probably not venture beyond the link.

So, as Act II begins, Barry has gone from being the not-particularly-distinguished son of a dead almost-lawyer to being the daring challenger to an English officer and gentleman to being a well-to-do fugitive to being an impoverished fugitive. With nowhere to turn and unable to get home, what can a penniless Irish lad do?

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