Showbits

Actor Peter Graves died of a heart attack at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., on Sunday, just four days before his 84th birthday. (Story continues)

Mr. Graves had many film credits to his name, including spoofing his own gravitas as Capt. Clarence Oveur in the cult classic Airplane!, but he was perhaps best known for Mission: Impossible, in which he played team leader Jim Phelps, in both the original series (1967–1973) and the revival (1988–1990). His variety of roles demonstrated his talent for both drama and comedy, though his efforts at the former sometimes met with mixed success; It Conquered The World, The Beginning of the End, and Parts: The Clonus Horror were best suited to MST3K fodder. Nonetheless, he took his roles seriously and personally, to the point of expressing regret that Jon Voight's character in the 1996 Mission: Impossible film bore the same name with which Mr. Graves so closely identified.

To a great and memorable actor, I offer this fan memorial of the inestimable Mr. Graves, followed by one of his most dramatic moments:

(Hat tip to the Washington Post)

Art Clokey, creator of the stop-motion clay animation shows Gumby and Davey and Goliath, passed away this Friday. He was 88. The New York Times has the full obituary.

Though Davey and Goliath and its Lutheran values predate my childhood, I was a religious follower of Gumby, making the show a part of my morning ritual. Gumby's friendship with Pokey took them on the most fantastic adventures, though later characters Prickle, Goo, and Denali were sometimes a bit disturbing. Mr. Clokey's obituary taught me things even I didn't know about the character, such as the origin of his design — "Gumby’s asymmetrical head, resembling a rakish pompadour, was a tribute to [Art Clokey's] biological father's prominent cowlick" — and his popularity: more violent cartoons swayed viewers away from Gumby until Eddie Murphy's bawdy interpretation of the character on Saturday Night Live brought the fans back to the original. Who knew that a seemingly disparaging parody could have such a positive effect?

If parody can then be a tribute, then I offer the following MST3K as my contribution to Mr. Clokey's memorial. "Robot Rumpus" was Gumby's third episode, having debuted on The Howdy Doody Show in August 1956:

We are about to close what has been a difficult year for the acting community — not in terms of low box office sales or a lack of acting jobs, but due to the loss of many storied performers. Ed McMahon, Karl Malden, Dom DeLuise, Bea Arthur, Majel Roddenberry are among those who we lost.

As always, we here at Showbits send holiday greetings in a musical style perfected by the inhabitants of the Satellite of Love. I'd like to use that tradition to honor one of the great actors we lost this year, Patrick Swayze:

Tomorrow is America's Thanksgiving Day, on which we as a nation declare that nothing brings a people together like the communal devouring of a dead animal's burnt flesh. As a vegetarian, I believe there are better ways to use 46 million birds this holiday season. If we must exploit the animal, why not use turkeys' mathematical properties to address such burning scientific issues as these?

Happy American Thanksgiving, everyone!

I don't particularly care for horror films, as they often call for something disturbing to happen to a protagonist I'm supposed to care about. What sort of sadism would lead somebody to enjoy such a film?

Science has the answer. According to a recent article, "Horror film gene that makes some scream while others laugh", it's a matter of brain chemistry. The COMT gene weakens our ability to control our emotions: the more copies of the gene you have, the less your restraint, and the more affected you are by unpleasant pictures. In the study, participants with just one COMT gene (which is about half the population) "were able to keep their emotions in check far more readily", while just one COMT gene predisposed viewers to be "significantly more startled by frightening images than others."

The article doesn't live up to its headline before closing by saying other variables influence the situation — which seems obvious to me, and not on a neurochemical level. The horror genre features ample entrails and other viscera, and some moviemakers mistakenly use this visual device as a substitute for plot, tension, character development, and depth. As a result, we're presented with elementary storytelling awash in senseless violence, all masquerading as a horror film. For some people, likely reactions to such cinematic sludge are boredom or nausea; for others, it's laughter. The film may not have been designed to be a comedy, but it inadvertently is, and we can't help but derisively observe by how far the filmmakers missed their target.

Need proof? The Internet Movie Database classifies Manos: The Hands of Fate as horror. This representative of the genre is #9 on the IMDb's Worst 100 Films, voted there as a result of its popularity from being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Anyone who's ever seen Manos knows there's nothing to fear here.

Good comedy is hard to do; so is good horror. A failure at one can result in a success at the other — so long as you have the genes to appreciate it.

A boon previously alluded to by Joel Hodgson, creator of cult comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000, has come to pass: episodes of MST3K are now available for online purchase and viewing from iTunes. The selection consists of the same four episodes recently released in the 20th anniversary box set (link opens in iTunes). They're listed as movies, not TV shows, and are priced accordingly: $9.99 each, no rental option, with a running time of about 90 minutes and filesize of roughly one gigabyte. A single trailer promotes all four films and is an edited version of the promotion for the original tin:

MST3K: The Movie, which was re-released to DVD in 2008, is not (yet?) available via iTunes.

(Hat tip to Satellite News)

Tis the season to be thankful, and I count among my blessings my many friends, be they Calvinists, atheists, Methodists, humanists, Jews, or Hindus. We are a diverse lot, which is easy to notice in this season of festivals too numerous to count. And so, in Showbits' annual tradition, I call upon the talents of MST3K to wish everyone a happy holiday:

We can always count on MST3K to help us celebrate the holidays. Just as they always have a special Christmas message, today they help us dress up for Halloween:

It's hard for me to top the costume I wore to work four years ago… but every Halloween is a new opportunity. Perhaps this year I'll carve a Death Star jack-o'-lantern! (Hat tip to meancritter)