The Point Radio: Christmas On COMMUNITY

There’s no argument that NBC’s COMMUNITY isn’t your traditional comedy. So it is a surprise that when they do a Christmas Episode – it isn’t quite traditional? Series regular Danny Pudi explains the episode you’ll be talking about next week, plus a sneak peek at Free Comic Book Day 2011 and good news for the heirs to the Jack Kirby estate. And be sure to stay on The Point via , RSS, MyPodcast.Comor Podbean! Follow us now on and ! Don’t forget that you can now enjoy THE POINT 24 hours a Day – 7 Days a week!. Updates on all parts of pop culture, special programming by some of your favorite personalities and the biggest variety of contemporary music on the net – plus there is a great round of new programs on the air including classic radio each night at 12mid (Eastern) on RETRO RADIO COMICMIX’s Mark Wheatley hitting the FREQUENCY every Saturday at 9pm and even the Editor-In-Chief of COMICMIX, Mike Gold, with his daily WEIRD SCENES and two full hours of insanity every Sunday (7pm ET) with WEIRD SOUNDS! CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE FOR FREE or go to GetThePointRadio for more including a connection for mobile phones including iPhone & Blackberrys.

Transcript

Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point where all parts of pop culture come together. What sitcom hasn't done? A traditional Christmas episode. Community from NBC has one coming, but it's not traditional. Plus a little sneak peek of what we can expect from free comic book day and some good news for the heirs of Jack Kirby. It's December 3rd of Friday and we get to the point right now. After some pretty non-traditional sitcom episodes,

NBC's Community has something different rolling for the Christmas season. It's an episode centering on the character Abbot, played by Danny Pooty, and well, we'll let him explain. It's pretty incredible. It was written by Dan Harmon and Dino Stamatopoulos and Dino has done some previous work with Stop Motion with Moro Oro and Frankenhole. I think the episode starts off sort of like a typical community episode. Cold Open, we're in the

cafeteria, Dean Pelton is over the speaker, and I think the only difference is that it's Stop Motion. I think Abbot notices it and he thinks it's a very special Christmas this year because he says that we've gone to a new medium with just Stop Motion. I think all the other characters then are a little bit like, okay, what's going on here, Abbot? But they come along on the ride for me and Abbot believes that the only way to figure

out why we're in Stop Motion is because he has to find the meaning of Christmas. And so they go on a journey and it's Abbot's journey and with the aid of Professor Duncan who decides that he needs to help in order to figure out what's going on in Abbot's mind and I guess he even says at some point in time, what emotional crisis did you go through to have this delusion? And Abbot's like, this is not a delusion. And then we go on this magical

journey through Winter Wonderland, including a trip down Gumdrop Road, which I've always wanted to go down, and a number of other places. And I think we all learn a little bit about the meaning of Christmas to us as a study group. And I think the really special thing about this episode is it starts in this place where something has triggered this, I guess, new perspective from Abbot because every year he has a special thing with his family

on Christmas, but something's a little bit different this year. And through it all with the study group's help, of course, at the very end, we all come together and we discover really the meaning of Christmas individually and as a group. And I guess, I think in true community fashion, there are moments of absurdity, but it's all really grounded in reality. And logical, and I think Dan and Dino really strove and found that in the writing. And the script

is really, really funny and really sharp, but also kind of goes to these places where I think with the stop motion, we're able to go a little bit further in terms of even the emotional depth and some of the sadness of the characters too. And yeah, I think it's going to rival Rudolph the Retino's right there for our generation. So going from visual comedy to, well, just voice comedy, was that a little different?

I guess I was a little nervous because I just kind of wanted to know what's this about and how to take it. And this is sort of an interesting and a different approach to a script because we're not really acting as a group in this one. We were going into a recording studio with the director and the writers and doing all this stuff in a voice over booth. So it's a little different because I'm not a voice over actor. I've never really done any voice

over work. So trying to convey some of that, some of the feelings and stuff, was definitely a little bit more challenging for me. And I was definitely nervous about that, just making sure that would happen. Because then what they did is take our voice over looping and then they animate the characters based on that. So that was a whole new experience and really fun for me too, though, because again, it was a new thing for us to do. But

then regarding the script itself, I just think it's perfect. There's so much beautiful stuff in there. I think it makes complete sense that this is sort of in coming out of Abed's point of view because the Koymation characters, I think the great thing about the writers and what they've been able to do is make it all come from a real honest place. I think coming from Abed, it sort of makes it natural. Like, of course, he watches Rudolph the Retino's

Reindeer every year. This makes sense that why not? Why can't his perspective be in this episode all stop motion? That's his, you know, Christmas. The Christmas episode of Community airs next Thursday, December 9th, and Danny will be back in a couple of days to tell us more about that and what's on tap in 2011 for this series as well right here.

It's Friday, December 3rd, 2010. Here's what's going on in pop culture. The federal court case between Marvel Entertainment and the estate of the late Jack Kirby moved forward a couple of inches this week. When a federal district court judge ruled that the core counterclaim in the litigation between Marvel and the Kirby airs can move forward, the Kirby estate has sent Marvel termination notices on the copyrights on many of the key works drawn by Kirby, including

the Fantastic Four and others. If Kirby was worked for hire, they say those notices would be invalid. If not, the Kirby estate can terminate Marvel's copyrights in those works. Right now that's still to be decided, but so far the judges said there is enough evidence here to let the case move forward on its own, at least for a while. Walking Dead winds up with a big episode this week and then it's going to be a dry spell

until we get more. But in the meantime, you'll be able to get the Walking Dead DVD, those first episodes. And of course, a bunch of extras as well. AMC has announced that this first season will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on the 8th of March. No word yet on just what extras will be included in the package. Dark Horse has released the list of all those digital comics they're planning on hitting the world with in January. Some of them include

some BPRD miniseries and Conan as well. The entire list is Conan 1-15, Empowered Volumes 1-3. First eight issues of Frey, Goon Volume 6 and several Hellboy miniseries of one shots that'll include that BPRD material. Also two Serenity miniseries, two Umbrella Academy miniseries and some Cull and Sala McKay material as well. Dark Horse is not through yet as far as the announcements go with this particular project. There's a way they're going to be

tying in the regular comic stores to this as well. That has not been revealed, but it's been rumored that they'll be creating original A-Page stories in the regular comics that'll tie into the digital ones as well. But again, lots more to come on this by the end of the year. Right now season five of Dexter doing pretty well on Showtime. A lot of people are crediting the series new showrunner, Chip Johansson, who came from 24 and so far it looks like

they're headed for a season six as well. Rumors are Showtime is about ready to announce another season for Dexter coming up very soon. More than likely before the windup of this particular season which is not that far away. Fans of science fiction classic writer Ray Bradbury get a couple of treats with the release of two new graphic novel adaptations of The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked this way comes. Each one with an introduction by

Bradbury. Both will be published by Hill and Wang and are set for release in the summer of 2011. Artwork will be by Dennis Calero who you know from the X-Men Noir book at Marvel. They'll be the regular trade paperback sizes plus it'll be a hardcover version as well. Trade paperbacks retail just under $18. The hardcover is for around $30 and again they'll be in comic stores in June of next year. The latest sales list for graphic novels

and bookstores is out again. This is not involving comic stores but your regular brick and mortars like well Barnes and Noble, Borders and those. The top ten includes at least three Walking Dead volumes including the Walking Dead Compendium. Scott Pilgrim pretty much in there too with the three different Scott Pilgrim graphic novels as well as Naruto from Viz and of course Serenity the Shepherd's Tale hardcover by Joss Whedon released not that long ago by Dark Horse. Number

one best-selling graphic novel and bookstores over the month Superman Earth One by G. Michael Straczynski and DC. Word started to league about some of the releases we can expect for next year's free comic book day by the way if you're marking it down it is May 7th of 2011. So far we know that A Entertainment will be doing a flip book with Kung Fu Panda and Richie Rich. Archie Comics has a new Betty and Veronica book as well. Boom doing a Darkwing Duck and Chippendale Rescue Rangers

flip book. Same format for Dark Horse flipping Star Wars the Clone Wars and Avatar the Last Air Bender as well. Marvel's got a Spider-Man release planned and right now the big questions are involving what's coming from image which will be something from Robert Kirkman but we're not sure what that is and DC totally up in the air. We have no idea what their release will be for free comic book day in 2011 but more info to come for sure over the next few weeks. Not unlike what's

being done with this year's Doctor Who special BBC America picks up the new season season 4 of Prime Evil on January 1st the same day that it debuts in the UK on the BBC. This one picks up about 12 months after season 3 concluded it'll be back for two seasons on BBC America and airs again on January 1st premiere episode at 9 p.m. Here's another one of those no further information known stories but it's too big just to pass on Mark Millar from Wanted and Kickass. Dave Gibbons from the

Watchmen both teaming up for a new comic book series and that's pretty much the story. No news yet on exactly what it'll be announcements are planned more than likely to coincide with some of the conventions in Europe in the UK over the next few weeks but again a Millar Gibbons comic well that's something to pay attention to. Looks like Fox and CBS are projected to be the winners of the November TV sweeps Fox and CBS tying for first place among the very coveted 18 to 49

age demo. ABC comes in third NBC hits fourth and Univision comes in fifth today. By the way it's the 10th consecutive November sweep win for CBS. Already time to start thinking about the Super Bowl it'll be on Fox of course in February with an extra special episode of Glee following and the entertainment this year will be the black-eyed peas last year was the who and television audiences were estimated to be at some 153 million viewers for the halftime show.

You human! You broken idiot! We're seeing signs of gold mines! You're heading for a breakdown why don't you pull yourself to pieces? This is my gold outside of the national deficit exactly when is 4.3 billion of something not enough? Now I've got heartaches by the number

we're running out of internet protocol addresses what that means to you is if you've moved or gone to school or something and you need to sign up for a new internet access you may get put on a waiting list I won't get overly technical here because I barely understand it myself but every server has its own address and there's only 4.3 billion IP addresses available at the current rate of consumption we should run out of IP addresses sometime this summer.

Lucky for the world as we know it there's a solution that should avoid this ethereal soylent green scenario new internet addresses will be longer although you probably won't even notice it it's pretty rare for you to have to type in your numeric IP address let alone anybody else's the lengthening allows for more than 340 quadrillion quadrillion slots that's 340 followed by 36 zeros and you know there's 12 commas in there somewhere will that be enough the eventuality that it may

not be makes my head spin this is my called on America's true pop culture channel get the point radio.com that was a wrap on our week we're back on Monday though with more and you know you could always catch pop culture and everything we do right here 24 hours a day at get the point radio.com listen for free on your mobile device or any computer anywhere you got a click we're waiting for you by the way don't forget our brand new lineup premieres with all sorts of great new

shows check out the full list of what we have to offer it get the point radio.com this podcast is cranked out twice every week by now the 10 media and give it a great websites like ComicMix.com and Michael Davis world.com you can catch us in the iTunes directory of course the podcast area under the point radio and two way communication we got that to get in touch anytime and listen and get the point radio.com have a great weekend see you right back here on Monday.