Tagged: Robot Chicken

The Point Radio: ROBOT CHICKEN ROBOT CHICKEN Still Playing After All These Years

This week, it’s time for another ROBOT CHICKEN Holiday Special, plus the wrap up of another season of the Cartoon Network hit series. Show runners John Harvavtine and Matt Senrich talk about how much fun it still is playing with toys, plus Brooke Burns has a new trivia challenge TV show and a new co-star known as The Beast and she explains it all here with us.

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Nathan Fillion Takes to the Skies in ‘Green Lantern: Emerald Knights’

  • News
  • February 8, 2011

BURBANK, CA, (February 8, 2011) – Primetime television stars Nathan Fillion (Castle) and Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) lead a diverse array of performers as the voices behind Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, the
next entry in the popular, ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies. Building up to the release of the highly anticipated live action film, Green Lantern, in theatres June 17, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights arrives on Blu-Ray™, DVD, On Demand and for Download June 7 from Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros.
Animation.

Fillion provides the voice of the animated film’s central character Hal Jordan, the human Green Lantern assigned to Sector 2814 (which includes Earth). Fillion has starred in several primetime television series including Desperate Housewives, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He has also developed a popular
cult following as a pair of Joss Whedon’s heroic captains: Capt. Mal Reynolds in the space-western series Firefly and follow-up film, Serenity; and Captain Hammer in Whedon’s internet sensation Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  Fillion returns to the DC Universe after his successful turn as Steve Trevor in the animated film Wonder Woman, and has performed voice work on Justice League, Robot Chicken, The Venture Bros., and several Halo video games.

Moss gives voice to Arisia, a young recruit forced into her first mission on just her third day as a Green Lantern. Prior to starring as the ever-evolving Peggy Olson in AMC’s ground-breaking series Mad Men, Moss was featured on The West Wing, Invasion and Picket Fences. Moss has been active in voiceovers for animation with previous roles in
Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs, Freakazoid! and It’s Spring Training, Charlie Brown!.

The voice cast for the animated Green Lantern: Emerald Knights also features actor/spoken word artist Henry Rollins (Sons of Anarchy,  The Henry Rollins Show) as Kilowog, Jason Isaacs (the Harry Potter films) as Sinestro, legendary professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper (They Live) as Bolphunga, Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy) as Abin Sur, Kelly Hu (The Vampire Diaries) as Laira and Wade Williams (Prison Break) as Deegan. Radio Hall of Fame commentator/talk show host Michael Jackson voices the esteemed Guardian, Ganthet.
Bruce Timm is executive producer of Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. Directors are Lauren Montgomery, Jay Oliva and Christopher Berkeley.The full-length animated Green Lantern: Emerald Knights complements the Warner Bros. theatrical release of the highly anticipated live-action major motion picture Green Lantern,Green Lantern: Emerald Knights will be distributed by Warner Home Video as a Blu-Ray™ Combo Pack and 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, as well as single disc DVD. The film will also be available On Demand and for Download.

‘MAD’ Comes to Cartoon Network

  • News
  • September 10, 2010

alfred-3-2155511For those who missed it (including us, to be honest), on Labor Day, a funny thing happened; at 8:30 PM, Cartoon Network aired a ‘MAD‘  cartoon. And guess what? It wasn’t a one-time fluke! Our friends over at HeroComplex snagged the new animated sketch show’s producers Mark Marek (of Crank Yankers fame) and ‘Emmy winner’ Kevin Shinick (of Robot Chicken) and sat them down for an interview. For those who are too lazy to click that link and read their awesome interview, allow us to give you the 411:

The show is a 15 minute sketch cartoon show meant to carry the programming of Cartoon Network’s normal schedule to it’s [ironically bumpered] Adult Swim block of shows. Taking a ‘film festival’ approach to presentation, the MAD cartoon show will feature short cartoon sketches in a variety of styles. Mimicking the work and look of long time MAD contributors like Sergio Aragonés, the late Don Martin, and Al Jaffee, as well as including anything animated ranging from photo montages, flash animation, to stop motion sketches all in a single episode. Crediting the writing to “the Usual Gang of Idiots” means the material featured will provide wonderfully skewed takes on current events… targeting an audience that’ll range from the ‘kiddies about to say goodnight’ crowd to the ‘college frat kids just waking up’ demographic.

The show comes as a welcome surprise, as the last “MAD” penned show, Fox’s MADtv did little to take the real MAD brand to the masses. For those who tried to forget, we implore you to recoil in horror as you remember that the show provided the world with a sub-SNL quality sketch show with even more annoying repetitive characters (The UPS guy! Ms. Swan!), and literally no material ever gleaned from the pages of the long-running magazine. OK, that’s a bit of a lie. The show did feature a ‘Spy vs. Spy” cartoon, but it was cut after the second season, we assume because the average Fox viewer at the time was too confused by the high brow humor and subtle racial undertones of ‘Spy vs. Spy’.

Well, let’s wash our minds of that dreck, and check out ‘MAD’ on Cartoon Network… Mondays at 8:30 CST. I mean, if the show is as good as we think it’ll be, dare we say it… “What, Me Worry?”

Check out Cartoon Network for a short sneak preview.

RIC MEYERS: Kung Fu Popeye

  • News
  • July 22, 2007

popeye-8114692I suppose I could have titled this pre-San Diego Comic Con installment “Popeye Hustle,” but I think that would’ve given the improper connotation. The new four-DVD boxed set from Warner – Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938 – (available July 31st) is anything but a hustle. And, in fact, the present column title is all the more apt because there’s some of the best kung-fu I’ve seen recently within these first sixty Popeye cartoons.

   

“Kung Fu” actually means “hard work,” not “martial arts,” but there’s a lot of both on display here – from the labor the Max (and Dave) Fleischer Studios lavished on these cartoons to the more than ample martial arts expended by the Sailor Man and all his antagonists (especially Bluto) in every minute of these more than three hundred and sixty animated minutes.

   

I say “more than,” because, in addition to the dozens of remastered black & white original cartoons, the set also includes two of the justifiably famous “two-reel” color mini-movies: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad (sic) the Sailor, and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves. If the Fleischer Studios had only made a feature length Popeye (as well as a feature version of their beautifully made Superman cartoons), they might have remained as eminent as the Disney Studio.

But this handsome, reverent, and exhilarating set will hopefully go a long way to returning them to their rightful pantheon, despite the hundreds of inferior Popeye cartoons made by other studios since 1941. These almost pristine (the remastering process retains the rough edges of the cartoons as they were originally released) nuggets of aggressive mayhem are a welcome blast of fresh air in the fog of politically correct nonsense, which elicits waves of nostalgic pleasure with each spinach swallow and successive bout of frenzied fisticuffs.

Popeye’s legendary theme song, and oft-repeated quotes of “I yam what I yam,” and “that’s all I can stand, I can’t stand no mores,” clearly marks him as an inspiration for Bugs Bunny’s later feistiness (not to mention “this calls for a little stragedy,” and “don’t go up dere, it’s dark”) — and the set’s extras make that ultra clear. To say that there’s a wealth of featurettes and pleasant surprises is putting it mildly. Each disc has at least two engrossing docs detailing Popeye’s (and animation’s) extraordinary history, voices, music, and characters, as well as audio commentaries and mini-docs that they call “Popumentaries.”

The icing on the cake are a whole bunch of other Fleischer Studio cartoons “From the Vaults” – that is, the era before the 1930s, when cartoons were just starting and fascination, if not delight, could be found in inventive silence. At first these ancient animations seem too crude to be bothered with, but watching the just-drawn likes of Koko the Clown dealing with an animated “live-action” fly soon leads to many minutes of amazed viewing. (more…)

Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Greasers?

harrison-ford-and-shia-labeouf-ride-a-motorcycle-filming-indiana-jones-fourHere’s a new picture of Harrison Ford and his on-screen son Shia Labeouf from next May’s unnamed fourth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise (working title: Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods). From the looks of it, the story seems to take place in the late 50s/early 60s and gives us an old and very gray Dr. Henry Jones Jr.

From what I’ve seen of this movie, and it hasn’t been much, I am looking less and less forward to its release next May. Thanks to our friends over at Splash News for the picture.

Sidenote: Could Shia look anymore like Seth Green? Do I smell a Robot Chicken crossover??

For a truly young Indiana Jones, May will also see box sets of completely remastered versions of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series plus major documentaries about the various historical figures who appear in the series. 15 episodes, each 90 minutes, with one featuring Harrison Ford in character.

REVIEW: Star Wars: Robot Chicken

232413440_d987de82e4-7698436Last night Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim premiered Star Wars: Robot Chicken. The half-hour edition of the popular stop motion cartoon show was entirely devoted to Star Wars gags. What separates this from countless issues of  Mad Magazine was the involvement of George Lucas himself. Lucas provides a sense of legitimacy and an acknowledgement that he is finally ready to laugh at his own creation.

Unfortunately, much like the prequel trilogy, maybe more could have been done if Lucas was less involved. The sketch featuring Lucas being saved from a mob of fans by a guy dressed as a tauntaun was by far the weakest in the entire show. I don’t know if this was a problem with the writers or with Lucas, but the sketch felt particularly flat.

The rest of the show was more successful. The highlight was a sketch in which Darth Vader explains a number of the more contrived coincidences in the series to a Mark-Hamil-voiced-Luke Skywalker. Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) was excellent as the voice of Emperor Palpatine in a number of bits, including one featuring a mama-joke contest between the Emperor and Luke.

Overall, the show worked the best when it was contained within the universe, albeit one with a lot more jokes, the Late Night with Zuckuss sketch (featuring the voice of Conan O’Brien) scored, as did the Ponda Baba segment.

The more it felt like they were winking at the audience the less it worked for me; another lowlight was the sketch featuring a Jedi President Bush fighting Sith Abraham Lincoln.

The best possible outcome of this would be increased exposure for Robot Chicken, Adult Swim’s gem, with its third season set to begin in under two months. With the Family Guy season premiere bringing another high profile Star Wars parody our way I’m interested to see if they can match this effort by Seth Green and the staff at Robot Chicken, the way Family Guy has been going it won’t be easy.

Star Wars: Robot Chicken can be watched for free (for at least the time being) at adultswim.com

Star Wars graduates Harvard

  • News
  • June 18, 2007

For those who didn’t get enough Star Wars on last night’s Robot Chicken, via SlashDot, "Harvard University celebrated its 356th Commencement on Thursday. It is tradition… to have an undergraduate deliver a Latin Salutatory address. This year’s speaker, Charles Joseph McNamara, delivered an address all about Star Wars in Latin!"  Here’s the video for those of you who are into this sort of thing and have RealPlayer.

According to SlashDot, McNamara "apparently doesn’t like Star Wars that much, but it’s still awesome."  The oration begins about a minute into the video.

JOHN OSTRANDER: That’s A TV Wrap, Part 2

  • News
  • June 14, 2007

ostrander100-8664663A couple of weeks ago I did a wrap-up of my opinions of some of the TV I watched this past season. I held back on two shows because they hadn’t yet ended their seasons or their runs and others were cut because the column was getting too blamed long. So I’m going to try to finish up and include some shows that finished their “seasons” a while back but are about to start new seasons this summer. Looking back is a way of looking forward. First, however, a quick look at two shows among my faves and that are linked.

The Daily Show/The Colbert Report. These two almost have to be discussed together. The “fake news show” and the fake news commentary show. I have to admit I watch the Daily Show more often than The Colbert Report. While I admire the latter, Colbert’s persona – a terrific send-up of right wing on air demagogues – gets a little hard for me to watch at times. It’s right on the money.

What I love about The Daily Show is there is a sense of moral outrage and while a lot of it is aimed at the Bush Administration – justifiably – a lot also goes right at the media itself. It’s a serious show that makes use of comedy and makes me laugh out loud more often than not. Jon Stewart is brilliant on a consistent basis and his gang of reporters – while not overall the best the series has had – has some truly shameless members like Samantha Bee.

Stephen Colbert was the “star reporter” for a long time on The Daily Show until they launched his spin-off show, The Colbert Report, a send-up of Bill O’Reilly and all the other right-wing, self-important blowhards doing commentary on TV and radio. I admire the show tremendously; so much of it falls on Colbert. Given the nature of the show, there isn’t a cast of “reporters” that he can fall back on. And there are truly gonzo moments that pop up, such as Colbert’s guitar showdown or the green screen challenge that featured Stephen with a lightsaber and invited viewers to finish it and submit their offerings. George Lucas himself came on the show as one of the two finalists – and lost. It’s just that some nights I’m just not in the mood. It’s me, Stephen, not you.

who-infinite-quest-7532991Doctor Who. This is no-brainer for me. I’m a long time fan and the new series brought me right in again. Christopher Eccleston did a fabulous job in Season One and now David Tennant is just as good in a different way as the latest incarnation of our time/space traveling hero. It’s not that every episode is brilliant or that every concept is the best; that was never the attraction. But for all the fact that the Doctor is a Time Lord from an alien planet, the show remains one of the most human of S/F shows and consistently celebrates humanity. I love it.

Eureka. I also love this show. The concept is that there is this small town in the Pacific Northwest which is the home for some of the most brilliant scientific minds in the country who live and work in a safe, supportive, small town environment. Rural weirdness ensues. Think The X-Files meets Mayberry RFD. The local garage mechanic also happens to be a genius-grade engineer. The new town sheriff is a regular guy, a U.S. Marshall who happened to come on the town and helped with one of their problems. The fact that he is just a normal Joe with no more scientific background than the rest of us makes him the perfect alter-ego for the audience who are also new to the place and, probably, not world class brains (I’m not). Colin Ferguson plays Sheriff Jack Carter; he has a deft comedic timing, along with being a good looking guy, that makes him not only a great lead but a solid anchor for the weirdness that goes on around him. The show combines humor, well thought out science fiction ideas, characterizations that take surprising twists and is, overall, terrifically well written. It attracted more viewers than anything other series on SciFi and the new season starts in July. (more…)

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