Last week was a pretty hectic one in the house of Branded, but hopefully the hard part has passed.  Anyway, I thought I'd take a moment to point to a fun interactive bloggery event that Branded in the 80s is going to be taking part in, the 2009 Spockcation road trip hosted by Charles over at his great Eclectorama!



Basically Charles is looking to find people in various states in America (and countries round the world) to play host to a Spock action figure, taking him out and snapping some pics around town.  Take Spock as a part of your own little away-team to your favorite hangouts or any places of note where he can get some choice tricorder readings, and then package him back up in his shuttle to be whisked off to another exotic local.   If you're interested in playing host, drop Charles a line via his site to work out the details…

**Updated**  Now it's more or less official that the Transformers cartoon is being re-released on DVD in June.  The Amazon listing went up, and there is better artwork floating around the internets.  Hopefully this bodes well for the rest of the series and G.I. Joe to boot!  I've also updated the big list of 80s cartoons as well...

Sigh, this is what I get for trying to play the system and be all proactive/penny pinching/business smart about my 80s cartoon collecting hobby.  Three years ago I managed to pick up four of the five out-of-print Rhino released Transformers DVD sets for $80 at a used DVD store.   I was ecstatic because when Rhino first started putting these out they were asking upwards of $60 per set, and they easily sell for almost $80 a piece on eBay.  Personally I think that's a bit much to ask for an 80s cartoon on DVD, so finding them at $20 a set was awesome.  Then the Transformers movie was re-released on DVD, and an ad in the special features announced that Sony was going to re-released the original cartoon on DVD.  This is where I fudged the bucket.  Basically I was looking at either picking up a used copy of the 1 set I needed to complete my set for around $80, or I could sell the 4 sets I had hoping to make $300-$400, pick-up the new sets for around $150, and I'd make a profit that I could put into Branded.  I bit the bullet and sold the 4 sets, and invested in a sticker collection, which eventually became great content for the Peel Here column.

Of course, then Sony backed out of releasing the cartoon, and it's been a gaping hole in my 80s cartoon collection ever since.  A week ago I really wanted to watch some of the old episodes again, and I was sitting on an unused Amazon giftcard, so I figured, what the hell, I'll pick up the out of print 1st season again.  I just got the set in hand yesterday afternoon, and guess what I find in my inbox this morning from TV Shows on DVD.com!?!

Release Date, Details & Possible Cover Art Found for The Complete 1st Season: 25th Anniversary Edition DVDs!



Damnit!  My timing couldn't have been worse.  Oh well, if this news pans out, hopefully we'll see the complete series released on DVD again in the near future, and maybe, just maybe we'll see some new releases for G.I. Joe (which still has yet to be fully released on DVD), Jem, and other Sunbow properties.  Le sigh.

I can't believe it took me 83 columns on sticker collecting to get around to posting some Knight Rider stickers.   I suppose the prowess of Hasselhoff does not compel me enough.  That's alright, I always used to watch the show for K.I.T.T. anyway.  Actually, I had a hard time finding any affordable Knight Rider stickers seeing as the Hoff is so ever-presently kitsch that his smiling mug will always jack up the value of KR memorabilia.  Recently while scanning eBay for the much coveted Color-Me Sticker sets, I ran across a nice little lot of KR stickers that was just too good to pass up.

Firs up is this sheet of foil K.I.T.T. stickers that didn't have a company name attached from 1982…



These feel a whole heck of a lot like the kind of kid's party favor stickers that come in packs of 20, and are usually found (if not in a place like Party City) in discount dollar stores.  Honestly, though the scan didn't come out all that well (an unfortunate side effect of the awesome luminescent foilosity of the sheet), I really like these.   In particular I like that they're drawings (though they do border on clip art), and that there's a distinct lack of the Hoff, which I take as a bold (yet most likely a licensing side-stepping and money saving) decision.  Anyway, I didn't find a lot of foil stickers to share on the site in general (except for the Lazer Blazers which really don't count) so this fills that gap nicely.

Next up we have yet another example of the Gordy International/Larami/Etc. puffy sticker collector sets that featured a big sheet of stickers as well as a nifty little collecting book to boot (this one released by Gordy in 1984.)



There's not a whole lot you can get wrong in a set like this as the show mainly featured Hasselhoff and K.I.T.T., which is reflected in the choice of screen shots from the series.  There's a nice one of the show's intro title screen (which is an image I always loved of Michael and K.I.T.T. racing across the desert at sunset), and you even get a little bit of Edward Mulhare as Devon.  My only gripe would have to be a distinct lack of Patricia McPherson's Bonnie, but that's just coming from my love of the strong female sidekicks in late 70s, early 80s TV (even the annoying ones like the reporter from the A-Team's first season.)  Also, I love the sweet action shot of Michael on the pay phone at the bottom of the sheet.   Riveting imagery!



The set comes with the requisite laminated sticker collecting album, which now that I'm thinking about them, they'd make a nice collection in and of them selves.  I kind of which I'd kept the others that I managed to find.  Ah well…





Also, like the A-Team and Riptide sticker sets, the back of the packaging was reserved for a huge piece of line work that the kids were encouraged to color, and again, this line work forms the basis of the imagery in the next KR sticker set I'm about to talk a little bit about…



Unfortunately, the line work as it is, is sort of hard to color.   Damn that slick Michael Knight and his black pants, black leather jacket and black car!

As I mentioned, the artwork was cannibalized for the 1982 (though I'll bet it actually came out in '84) Dianmond Toymakers Knight Rider Color-Me sticker set…



I managed to get a decently clear shot of the packaging out of my new camera, so we can now see the included semi-mechanical crayon pencil (in all its chocolate scented glory!)  Again, the packaging on these is a little bootleg-esque, thought he KR set fares much better than the A-Team set from last week…



Again, much like the back of the packaging on the album & sticker set above, there's not a whole heck of a lot to color here, and even if you did want to color K.I.T.T. with the included crayons, you'd have to settle for blue or purple.  That's alright as I think a black crayon would end up looking rather absurd anyway turning the drawings into very boring silhouettes.

It's been a long road of on again/off again, but finally the Mysterious Cities of Gold is going to be released on DVD in America/Canada on April 7th!



If you're curious about my feelings on the show you can check out this previous post.   I just discovered today that the series is loosely based on a 1966 book by Scott O’Dell called The King's Fifth, which was itself in turn retooled into a Choose Your Own Adventure style book in the Time Machine Series (from the makers of CYOA) called Quest for the Cities of Gold.  Now I can't wait to read both of these…

If there's one thing that I lament about the film-going experience as I get older, it's that I move further and further away from the boy who used to watch movies with unquestioning wide-eyed amazement.  When I turned thirteen I started looking at film with a slightly more critical and as the years packed on with an increasingly cynical eye.   It's a very rare experience for me to walk into a film without the baggage of 20 odd years of cinema watching experience, comparing and contrasting to genre and style.  It's hard to not have a jaded outlook, in particular when I have any sort of vested interest in the material, and growing up a comic book collector during the 80s and 90s it's hard not to have such an interest in a film adaptation of the Watchmen.



More importantly, if this film accomplishes nothing else, it has made me question the point of adaptation in general.  I can't claim to completely understand it, but the yearning to see stories from various other media adapted into film is incredible for me.   As a pre-teen I couldn't think of anything more exciting than seeing the Lord of the Rings made into films.   As a comic collector I burned to see my favorite franchises turned into major motion pictures, and it's a feeling that's hard to shake to this day, especially in the wake of the Watchmen adaptation.  But when I stop and truly think about what adaptation requires, and what it ultimately offers, I have to wonder just how pointless it is.  What is the point of making a film like the Watchmen when I can read the comics the way they were intended to be taken in?  Is it to capture new readers of the comic, to hold up the greatness that a lot of us believe the Watchmen holds and force it on an audience that would only take a chance on it in the film medium?   Is it supposed to outshine the original?  As someone who has already experienced the story in its original form I have to say that no matter how spot on the film was, it would only ever be something that can come close to the original, but never supersede it.  The original, for what it is, has little in the way of flaws, and doesn’t need to be told any other way.  It can only ever be a much quicker way to experience the story, something that is antithetical to the original work.  If I wanted to get somebody to experience the story, I'd just give them the book.  At the end of the day, the Watchmen is a specific story that works as it was created and any adaptation would just pale in comparison.  It isn't something like Spiderman, which is an icon, a concept of a character that can be used to tell any number of stories.  For someone who is not intimately versed in super hero comics to catch the film, well I think they'd be missing the point of the story anyway.

When I walked out of screening with my wife, my first reaction was that the movie was all muffin top and no actual muffin, but let me back up a second.  All the beats were there in terms of story points, and visually the movie is stunning.  I had the same reaction that a lot of comic fans seem to be having with the flick in that it's amazing to see the characters from the comic leap to the screen picture perfect.  Again, even this reaction is because of the baggage I'm carrying from watching super hero movies for the last 30 years.  Up until the mid 90s it was very rare that a comic book character could be visually translated onto the screen with such faithfulness to the source material.  The Christopher Reeve Superman was good, but only about half right.  The Michael Keaton Batman, though special in his own right, was a bit off from the caped crusader in the comics.  When you get right down to it, the foam rubber Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the first live action film were some of the very first truly amazing visual translations of characters from comic to screen.  Over the past decade this has been a focus that filmmakers seem to increasingly nail on a consistent basis, and for a group of characters like the Watchmen to make the transition almost wholly intact, is incredible, if only because the source material isn’t ripe for adaptation.  For a movie studio to put as much time and money into the translation without the benefit of a huge merchandising machine in place in this day in age is wild.

It's the visual culmination of years of trying to perfect the balance between pleasing the fans, logistics of production, and advances in technology.  The thing is that 30 years of super hero films have trained the audience that anything better than horrible is just fine with us.  So a picture perfect visual adaptation of the Watchmen isn't an aspect that the film can really rest its laurels on.   The other celebrated aspect to the film is the fact that it managed to keep enough of the tone and content to garner an R rating.  The original comics are unrelentingly "adult" in content; in particular when compared to the rest of the output from the publisher (DC comics) at the time it was published.   When you get right down to it, super hero comics are aimed at a young audience, and that was one of the conventions that the Watchmen sought to challenge.  The hurdle the movie is attempting to leap across is the fact that most films these days are specifically molded to appease the sensibilities of the largest possible audience, which is why most "adult" fare is targeted to a PG-13 crowd.  Show just enough to appease those with darker sensibilities, and hold back just enough so that the content is suitable for most teenagers, and bang, that mystically profitable age range is targeted.  Unfortunately, most uncompromised stories don't fit very easily into any sort of age specific category.  Life in general just doesn't fit into predetermined boxes all that well.  So the fact that the Watchmen is rated R, and a deservedly hard R, could be viewed as another accomplishment on the path to an uncompromised adaptation.  Again, though, a laurel not to be rested upon.   Side-stepping the mediocrity of the film industry, as admirable as it is, shouldn't be celebrated, it should be expected.  Even if it were, the violence and adult content in the Watchmen comics are not a selling point.  I think I'd have to philosophically side with Sam Peckinpah on this one and admit that these characteristics of the original comics are an abhorrent necessity in conveying the story.   It's not cool to watch Rorschach chain a child murderer to a hot water heater in a building he just set afire, giving him a hacksaw as a means to disfigure himself with the possibility of an uncertain escape.   It's not cool to watch as an inmate's throat is cut with a box cutter in order to get him out of the way of cell bars that need to be acetylene torched.   It's not cool watching a woman brutalized and half raped for character development; it's necessary to tell the story that Alan Moore set out to write, and it's there to disgust the reader.

So what's left?  Story, acting, tone (not just of the R rated variety, but in terms of overall plot and world), and execution (in terms of direction), this is where the film starts to fall apart for me.  It's been awhile since I've read the original comics, and after walking out of the screening I felt like a lot was left out, though I couldn't put my finger on exactly what.  I know of the fan gripes, that the Black Freighter comic-within-a-comic story was excised for the theatrical cut (to be released on DVD as a cartoon later this month, along with the possibility of be re-cut into the expanded edition of the Watchmen film on DVD), that the Newsstand and the relationship been the proprietor and the kid who reads the comic was left unexplored, the dropping of the prison psychiatrist's back story, and probably the most popular gripe, the alteration of the final sequence in the film and dropping of the giant squid Macguffin.  Those aspects didn’t bother me as I'm much more concerned with the core story, not all the little details.   I mean when you get right down to it, it would simply be impossible to include all the plot threads and details, there just isn't enough time to incorporate it all.   No, an adaptation from a long format to a short calls for cuts to be made, fat, no matter how interesting, to be trimmed for the core story to come through.  So does it?  I have to say yes.  All the "important" stuff is there, the dynamic between Rorschach and the rest of the Watchmen (and the rest of the world for that matter), Dr. Manhattan's abandonment and eventual rediscovery of humanity, the dissection and exploration of super heroes as saviors or gods, the futility of doing things the right way, and an expose on the dark depths to which humanity can find itself when it loses its way on the path to righteousness and moral right.  All of the landmark elements from the comic series are represented, yet the film still seems (at least to me) to lose its own way in the midst of adaptation.

There are a couple themes that seem to have been partially dropped, and an aspect to the original story that can't translate verbatim and possibly could have been redirected but wasn't.   First off, I don’t think the overall tone of the story was kept intact in the translation.  Reading the original comics isn't a fun beautiful experience on the whole.  I believe that many of the characters are drawn (both literally and stylistically) to be so ugly that it's hard to follow their stories without disgust.  In fact I think it's really hard to pick a character that as a reader you can truly get behind so that the focus isn't placed on watching that one character interact within the world created, but instead for the reader to be forced to watch all aspects of the world not unlike the social conditioning of Malcom Macdowell's character in A Clockwork Orange.  If there is a hero in the book it's the bond between Dan's Night Owl II and Rorschach.  Aspects of both characters are admirable, but neither is strong enough to carry the role of a hero for the story.  Back to the point, the world of the Watchmen is ugly and dark, it isn't polished, and when it appears to be it's just a thin veneer covering something rusty and broken.  Zach Synder made a conscious effort to adapt the material in such a way that this gritty ugliness is polished and beautiful to watch.  Scenes are set to overbearing music cues that are at once both too perfect and too pop for the good of the story.  The soundtrack is full of hit songs and memorable anthems and don't speak to the world of the film at all except in the most obvious and coincidental ways.  The one section in which this really worked for me was the opening credit sequence after the brutal murder of the Comedian, which is a couple minute montage set to Bob Dylan's The Times They are a-changin' (illustrating the formation and ultimate failure of the Minutemen super hero team, and their impact on society.)   It's heavy handed, but it works.

Unfortunately, there are too many sequences that follow during the next hour or so that keep up this absurd music video-like quality to the film so that the world of the Watchmen isn't given a chance to breath on its own.  It's suffocating, and in the end the obvious tone to the music is what informs the tone of the scene, not really what's playing out before your eyes.  At its most inhibiting, the music can completely tear you out of the film you're watching and put the viewer in the mindset of other films.  The flash back sequence of a 70 foot tall Dr. Manhattan obliterating Vietcong troops set to Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries is such an obvious reference to Apocalypse Now that it borders on pretentious ("You'all like crazy overblown scenes from films about the war in Vietnam?  Well here's a crazy overblown scene about the war in Vietnam, set to the music from that original example!")

The cinematography itself is also so pretty and picture perfect that it does nothing but damage the tone of the story being told.  Everything is so rich and colorful, every movement of the characters is so choreographed and precise that it's a wonder to behold, awe inspiring really.  But honestly, I don't think this is what we're supposed to be feeling while watching the film or reading the story.  I think the blame doesn't necessarily fall with the director so much as the source material which is being adapted.   If there is an obvious downfall of the comic book medium it's in the limitations with which the storytellers and artists have to tell a story.  The medium emulates life, but it's forced to take snapshots of movement and moments, and begs the reader to read between the panels.  Comic pages end up looking like a collection of all the most perfect moments imaginable in a story, but by nature it almost has to be (where film doesn't.)  Also, during the 80s (in particular) mainstream comics were still on the precipice of achieving a more realistic coloring style and were still shackled by the garish color conventions that printing had to offer at the time.  Where the film takes these cues and relishes in them, is when I believe it becomes a misinterpretation of the limitations of the medium.  It has to be very difficult as an artist to keep yourself from picking the absolutely perfect moments to draw in a comic.  Aesthetically specking this is process an artist normally goes through to make interesting and pleasing artwork.   To a degree this can translate to film in general, but it's only one choice of many to convey particular moods and tone.   For whatever beauty there is in the grittiness and violence in the original Watchmen comic, in the picture perfect snapshots of moments and it's vividly colored world, I think it has to be weighed against how unsettling it was when taken in context of practically every other super hero comic being published at the time.  This beautifully rendered chaos becomes ugly in this comparison.

As for the path not taken with the adaptation (that I alluded to above), another key factor of the original comics are their deconstruction of the super hero mythos within comics in general.  This deconstruction just doesn't translate well to film because there are too many factors to take into consideration for an audience not steeped in comic history, and it's too meta (for lack of a better term.)  It won't work for people who aren't steeped in these conventions because the concepts aren't novel to the history of cinema (which obviously wasn't a concern of Moore when writing the comic.)  Cinephiles and the majority of film goers have been inundated with truly realistic depictions of flawed heroism and the dangers of getting behind anti heroes,a nd honestly I don't think that audience distinguishes all that much between a character's chosen occupation.  Flawed cop or caped crusader, it's all the same to most people.  I believe there was a chance to redirect this deconstruction at a more clearly defined target, the super hero film as a genre in particular.  Sure, the content of this deconstruction would deviate some from the Watchmen source material, but the heart and soul of one of that source material's original aims would be kept intact.  I truly think that as a piece of "important" literature, the Watchmen's interpretation of the super hero ladden world is one if it's crowing acheivements. 

Getting back to the misplaced tone of the film, there are distinct choices to portray certain aspects to the story in a much more grandiose manner that mar the tone.  There is little super heroic fighting in the original comics for instance, and when Synder adapted the material he chose to heighten these moments, turning them into exactly what the original comics were intending to deconstruct and downplay.   Watching Silk Spectre II and Night Owl make an assault on a street gang or a maximum security prison is like watching all of the horribly unrealistic action that is common to films such as the Matrix, X-Men, and Ghost Rider (not to mention that the methodology and consequences of the violence is increased.)  These non-super powered characters are doing truly unrealistic and super powered things like punching through concrete, and throwing people clear across rooms.  Watching Rorschach scale the side of a building evokes the feeling one gets when watching Spiderman do the same thing, and that is a terrible misinterpretation of what the Watchmen is all about.

I will say that incongruous to my feelings on the adaptation above, I loved the change in the ending of the film.  Whereas the giant-squid-alien Macguffins that are used as a doomsday device/deterrent in the original comics are a terribly interesting way of bringing the final outcome of the story to fruition, I am completely blown away by the poetry Snyder managed to squeeze out of the new destructive device.  Having Ozymandias trick Dr. Manhattan into building devices that would emulate his powers of atom level disintegration under the guise of generating a free source of energy is genius.  When the "bombs" go off vaporizing many major cities in the world, both putting into play Ozymandias' ultimate goal of world peace through banding together against a common foe, and framing Manhattan for this destruction in the process (by using his power's signature and instrumenting a portion of his loss in humanity and eventual exile from Earth), Snyder effectivly turns Jon Osterman into God, the ultimate deterrent for war.  Synder taking such a stab at Christianity is so much in the vein of what Moore was doing with the original Watchmen comics that it almost makes up for the fast and loose way he handled the build up to the reveal of the story, almost.

I also have to say that again, adaptation issues aside, a good majority of the characters do translate well to screen.  Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach is amazing (though a tad too emotional when compared to his monotone print counterpart), more so when not wearing the mask.  Patrick wilson's Night Owl manages to capture the essence of the original character, at some times more convincingly than int he comics.  Some don't fare so well though, particularly Malin Åkerman as Laurie Jupiter.  Her portrayal of the character is too strong and confident, she's played as a sex bomb and doesn't seem to be the same broken down dependent character from the original comics.

All in all I still just have to wonder what the point of the whole experience was.

As an FYI, I finally got around to updating the massive list of 80s cartoons available on DVD in the Region 1 area.  The list is up to 151 sets covering 65 cartoons (and live action puppet shows like the Muppets, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street and the Electric Company.)  I'm sure there are a few out there that I'm missing, so if there are any holes or anything that anyone spots, please drop me a line.

Included in the update are sets for Denver the Last Dinosaur (Vol. 2), Drak Pack, Smurfs (Volumes 2 & 3), Garbage Pail Kids (granted the show never aired in the US, but the episodes were made and finally released), Mysterious Cities of Gold, Saber Rider & the Star Sheriffs, Pound Puppies, Silverhawks (Vol. 1), Strawberry Shortcake, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Season 7, Vol. 1, 2, 3, & 4), and Vehicle Voltron (Vol. 1, 2, & 3.)   Again, if you're thinking of picking up any of these sets though Amazon, please follow the links provided on the list as every purchase helps keep Branded running (and up to date on new 80s cartoon DVDs sets!)   Okay, end shilly post now.

Since it's been about 4 months since I've posted a Peel Here sticker column I figure it's about time for a new one.  Just over two years ago I mentioned a set of stickers called Color Me Stickers that I was really looking forward to sharing on the site, but I just couldn't find an affordable example.   I've since rectified this, and as an addendum to that early Peel Here column I present some of the oddest stickers yet, the 1983 A-Team Color Me Sticker set from Diamond Toymakers…



This set, which is similar to the Craft Master Stain-A-Sticker sets that I also talked about a couple years ago, is basically like one of those gaudy black felt color-you-own-poster sets that you can usually find in discount drug stores on the toy aisle.  The stickers themselves are glorified puffy stickers with a fuzzy felt-like finish applied, and an included set of crayons to color the stickers as you saw fit.   I'm assuming that the patented fuzzy finish is included to help the crayon colors take to the sticker's surface easier, but I bet it ends up looking kind of funky…



Unfortunately the scanner had a hard time getting a pristine clear image of the stickers because of said fuzzy finish, but you get the idea.  On the one hand, I'm surprised that I haven't seen more of these types of craft sticker sets when scouring ebay for Peel Here content, but on the other, I can totally see how parents would have hated this sort of thing.  Not only will the stickers end up potentially stuck all over the house, but you're also giving a kid a set of crayons to color them, the walls, and any other surface that needs a little splash of color.  I suppose it's easier to focus a child attention at coloring inside a coloring book, and giving them a little bit more of a free rein with coloring stickers.

All in all I like the balance of the chosen images on the sheet of stickers, just Mr. T heavy enough to please the fans, but not neglecting the rest of the cast, including their awesome battle van.  What I found a little weird was that the artwork on these stickers was lifted from the packaging on another company's set of A-Team stickers!  Released in the same year by Larami was a set of puffy stickers and a collecting book that came packaged together and on the back of that package was a picture that the company encouraged kids to color, which I thought was an interesting way of using up a bunch of free space.   I wonder if they ever realized that Diamond Toymakers swiped these drawings for their own sticker products?!?  Heck, it might just be the same company, but judging from the bootleg quality of the packaging on the Diamond Color Me stickers, I have to assume their not related.   Ah well, all's fair in love and TV show merchandising I guess.

I ended up fudging the bucket on getting a picture of the included crayons as I have a new digital camera and I haven't quite figured it out yet.  All the pictures I've taken are just slightly blurry, enough so that it can bring on a small headache trying to focus on the image, so I thought I'd spare you pain.   Basically the crayon set is one of those all in one plastic pencil deals, much like the analog mechanical pencils that were huge in the 80s (the ones that had about ten little chunks of lead mounted on small pieces of white plastic that filled the barrel of the pencil and were popped out the front when they were mostly gone, and then reinserted into the back to push a new lead forward.)  The crayons, like the package states, are chocolate-scented, and have aged surprisingly well.  I'm still on the fence about the potentiality of a chocolate-scented Mr. T sticker being a bit racist, but it's a weird enough concept that I'll let it slide.



Diamond Toymakers also brought us a bevy of other Color Me Sticker sets as you can see from the package above, including various Jim Henson brands as well as Knight Rider (which I've also secured for the next Peel Here column), and my all new coveted sticker item, Blue Thunder!  I do love me some awesome attack helicopters, and it makes me wonder why Diamond chose to go after the rights to that R-rated flick instead of its TV friendly counterpart Airwolf.

Though I don't partake in them all that often, I have to say that I've been fascinated with fast food restaurants ever since I was a kid.   I think my interest stems from the fact that my parents hardly ever took me out to them (with the exception of Long John Silvers that is), so when ever I did find myself standing under the golden arches (as a fer instance) it was exciting.  Add to this the allure of meals constructed specifically for kids, and the tantalizingness (should be a word) was pretty darn high.  In the last few years the heated competition between the various franchises has led to some interesting and weird menu items, as well as some odd market strategies.  In fact in the last month the whole recession frenzy has seemed to kick this into high gear.

This past February while the wife and I were in Florida on vacation we stumbled into a local Steak 'n Shake at a particularly opportune time as that location's manager was giving his entire crew a dressing down/pep talk for the coming year.  Actually the whole experience of having this crew meeting right next to our table was just as awkward as it was exciting to overhear some insider SnS secrets.   Between coming down on the employees for wearing slightly off-white dress shirts and crooked bow ties, the manager shared some interesting facts that I never really thought about, foremost of which was that Steak 'n Shake was going to debut a new fried fish sandwich during Lent to try and draw in the Friday-meat-fasting religious sect.  I suppose it makes perfect sense, but I never thought of a fast food chain debating the merits of arranging their menu according to religious convictions in order to squeeze out a little more profit.  In the same breath the manager also remarked on how this was going to be a banner time for the franchise as it was a anniversary year and that there were going to be a ton of coupons for months to come.  I have to wonder if there will be fish sandwich coupons, and if so are they going to be geared towards a Friday redemption?

Also discussed during the meeting were other new menu items and the one that I thought was kind of weird were mini-steakburgers.   From the way the manager described them, the mini-steakburgers were going to be the equivalent of White Castle or Krystal burgers, only fried with hand formed patties (instead of steamed & pre-formed.)  Talking it over later that morning with my wife I had to wonder why the chain decided to take a shot at a couple of franchises that didn't really seem to be competitors, but we came to the conclusion that it was probably not so much that as it was a way for them to horn in on the whole $1 menu craze that's been reshaping the overall menus at most fast food places in the last decade.   In fact I remember when Steak 'n Shakes first started popping up in our area back in '93-'94, and the one complaint that I kept hearing was how expensive they were compared to other burger joints.

Of course in a weird coincidence (or is it?) on the way home from vacation, we stopped at a Burger King in north Florida and low and behold the hot new menu item were the new BK Burger Shots!  More mini burgers (and mini breakfast sandwiches to boot) from another chain that didn't seem to need to compete with Krystal and White Castle, and one that has been doing the $1 menu thing for awhile.  What is it about small food right now that is so attractive to fast food chains?  I was mentioning the Burger Shots to a friend the other day and he seemed to remember Burger King having a similar promotion back in the 80s that he was obsessed with.  Basically he loved getting small food as a kid just for the novelty of it.



I have to wonder how long it's going to be before McDonald's gets into the mini hamburger business?  I thought they already had as I decided to swing by my local house-that-Ronald-built, and saw that the double cheeseburger had been replaced on the dollar menu by the mysterious McDouble.  I was surprised to see the regular double cheeseburger back on the regular menu for $0.19 more, so I hit the internets to investigate.  Turns out the McDouble is practically the same burger, only with one slice of American cheese instead of two (according to mcchronicles.blogspot.com.)  Again, I have to wonder what the strategy is in a case like this.  How does offering the same burger twice on the menu, one being a square of cheese heavier granted, score you more profit?  I suppose a million McDoubles = a million slices of cheese saved.  What does a cubic mile of fast food grade processed American cheese go for these days?


VS.


Also, I hesitate to link to the McDonald's site as it's loud and obnoxious, but I'm intrigued by the weird cartoon skits on the dollar menu portion of the website.  Is that H. Jon Benjamin doing voice work for them?

I've been trying to think how other fast food joints have tried to finagle the public into picking up their weird new menu items, and I came up with the following list of stuff that I think has been strange:

The half pound meat and potato burrito at Taco Bell (for some reason potatoes stuffed into tacos and burritos just repulses me…)


The square breakfast biscuits at Wendy's…


Speaking of breakfast, the all-in-one combo cups at Krystal seem pretty gross…


The Arby's Roastburgers (which are just roast beef sandwiches with lettuce & tomato, and slathered with a miscellaneous "roasted burger" sauce…)


…and the new Popeye's value menu items, including a red beans and rice wrap, or the deluxe loaded chicken wrap (read red beans and rice with a chicken strip.)


Any other weird Fast Food menu items mystify you guys?

Hello all, sure has been awhile huh?  Guess it's about time I updated the blog and brought it into the new year, though I haven't been completely neglecting the site as you can see from the slight facelift I've given it.  I'm still pretty dense when it comes to website construction, so I've been slowly tinkering with the code in hopes of getting this place shaped up into a slightly less messy place to visit.  Call it pre-spring cleaning, except all the content is staying put, I just took some time to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls.  If nothing else, there is no fear of stabbing yourself accidentally on the old horribly sharp and generic header I used to have…



Anyway, on to the topic of conversation I wanted to get to today, the remake/reboot of Friday the 13th, which I saw this past weekend with my wife.   Granted it's not on DVD yet, but it will be so I figured the best place to store it on Branded would be in the Buried column.  It was sort of a weird experience as we decided to catch an evening screening (we typically only hit the theater before noon on the weekends to take advantage of the half price tickets at our local AMC), and we don't usually watch horror flicks in the theater since my wife really isn't partial.  She bit the bullet though as we had a free ticket courtesy of the pretty interesting Friday the 13th DVD documentary His Name was Jason.  I was expecting the place to be crowded as it was a Saturday night and we were seeing a relatively popular flick, but our screening was only about 1/4th full.  I was also hoping to have a decent audience as it's always more fun to see certain flicks (like comedies and horror movies) with a bunch of people who get into the screening, but we were plagued from the audience from hell.  Through the entire running time of the film the teenagers that were in the room with us kept playing musical chairs.  The ones that weren't seat hopping kept getting up to leave for five minutes at a time before stomping back in.  Needless to say it was hard to get into the movie what with all of the ADD addled kids about.

As for the film itself, I was sort of happily surprised and disappointed all at the same time.  I'm not a diehard Jason fanatic, and though I love plodding through the first 8 Friday films from time to time, I'm not particularly bothered by the idea of a remake or reboot, or whatever they hell they want to call this new flick.  In fact the one thing I kept reading going in was that the new movie squishes aspects of the first four Friday films into one plot, which seemed like a good idea and it boded well for the idea that the filmmakers might ditch the horrible 40+ minute lead up most of the originals employed.  I mean when you get right down to it not that many people are probably watching a slasher film for good character and plot development, at least not a series like the Friday films.  Actually, I think character development is a great place to start talking about the new flick.

If there is one thing that I don't envy about the process that sequel and remake writers/directors must go through, it's the balancing act between giving the audience what it’s looking for while also trying to put an interesting spin on an old story or concept.  I mean how many times can we see Jason kill a bunch of camp counselors before it gets boring?  In particular when dealing with a weirdly iconic character like Jason Voorhees, how do you paint him from a different angle?  He started out as a deformed "mostly-drowned" child/hallucination, shifted into a fully grow potato sack wearing inbreed hillbilly, took a side step into hockey mask stealing stalker, and eventually graduated into becoming an undying soulless zombie maniac (do we even need to envoke his cyborg years?)   He's been mother obsessed, self obsessed, Corey Feldman obsessed, a disgruntled pawn of Freddy Kruger, and yes, okay, he was even shot into space.  What's interesting to me is that throughout all of this Jason has managed to stay pretty static character-wise.  Sure, he's put into new situations from time to time, taken a stroll through Times Square, spent some time as a demon worm, an even been a guest on the Arsenio Hall show, but he's pretty much the exact same mute coveralls-wearing lovable mug.   The Jason I grew up with took the concept of Michael Meyers from the first Halloween film and brought it to a whole new level.  He is the boogie man, a mostly faceless killer who acts out of pure fanatic revenge at first and later on out of a meaningless impulse.   He's not of this world; he lives in the shadows and pops up totally unexpected from out of no where with an almost teleportation-like quality.   He serves at the ultimate punishment and the consequences of walking the wrong path, and he has no needs.  Hunger doesn't deter him, money won't stop him, and he won't even bat an unleveled eye at a half naked woman.  So as a part of the filmmaking team for the new flick, how do you deal with the character's iconic status?   Where do you deviate, what past character traits to you pay homage to or resurrect?

Well in the case of the new film, the creators decided to develop Jason's character, enough so that the new incarnation only resembles the tried and true icon.  Underneath the hockey mask is a new Jason, one that I personally don't care all that much about.  The problem I have is that the new Jason thinks too much.   He's painted as a monster with plans and day to day rituals, a man with needs, preferences, and dare I say it feelings!  The filmmakers have made him the worst kind of being, a human being.   In the new flick Jason has an underground labyrinth home base; a series of dugout tunnels where he keeps an odd assortment of baubles and junk.   I don't know about any of you, but the Jason I grew up with has no time to amass a collection of anything, even disturbing rotting junk.  The new Jason is so won over by the sight of a girl who looks enough like his mother that he not only hesitates in killing her, but he abducts her, keeping her captive in said underground lair.  On the surface this isn't all that beyond the scope, but when you stop to think about it for even a minute it flies in the face of what the character is capable of.  Hostages kept for any length of time need to be fed, they need water, and they need a place to poop for crying out loud!

On top of this the filmmakers have instilled an odd intent into the new Jason, leading him to set traps for his victims, keeping them pinned down so that he can come back to them later.   The new Jason isn't the unstoppable force of nature he used to be, but more of a plotting, scheming, opportunist.   I guess in my mind, when you're dealing with a character as iconic as Jason (yet not as old-as-the-hills like say Santa Claus), it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to humanize him.  Though I haven't seen it, I think Rob Zombie did something similar with his iteration of Michael Myers from his Halloween remake.  I don't need to identify with Jason as a character, I just need to be poop-in-my-pants scared of him or rooting him on as he kills annoying kids.  Even though I think the intent of making the character (in the new flick) relate-able was to up the disturbing factor, it just didn't work for me.

Part of the problem for me is Jason's antihero status from the original series of films.  Though the first film is 98% without the character, it's set up in such a way where the viewer doesn't really bond with the camp counselors, not to mention the fact that so many of the kill scenes are shot from the first person perspective of the killer.  It trains us to anticipate and eventually begin to enjoy the slaughter.  In the third film the main characters take on such underdeveloped stereotypical roles, that they serve as nothing more than lambs to the slaughter, deaths we just can't wait to see soon enough.   By the fifth film we're no longer watching for plot, and by the seventh Jason might as well be playing King Ghidorah to Tina Shepard's Godzilla!   What I'm getting at is that half of the fun of Jason is rooting for him (or against him in either Part 7 or Freddy Vs. Jason), and it's really hard to get behind his character in the new flick because he's more real, and well, to be blatantly obvious, he's killing people.  I know how stupid that sounds, but think about it for a minute.  As viewers, do we ever root for the three psychos in Last House on the Left?  Do we really want to see Laurie Strode lose to Michael in Halloween?  Do we really want to see the demon Pazuzu for Regan to masturbate/stab herself with a cross in the Exorcist?  Hell no.  But we do want to see Jason slaughter a bunch of braindead kids, and in order for this dynamic to work, I think his character needs to be as inhuman as possible (to the extent of making him a zombie in the later films.)

By this point I'm sure you're asking yourself how I could have simultaneously been happily surprised with the flick.  I guess my biggest fear going into the film was that it was directed by Marcus Nispel, the same guy who brought us my least favorite horror film of all time, the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  I don't really want to get into that flick, but I will say that I absolutely adore the original film, and the remake missed the point of its predecessor completely.  I don't particularly care for the trend in modern horror of making the genre so damn mean.  Be it torture porn (Saw, Hostel, et al), or flicks like Severance (that take interesting and fun characters, let you get to know them for 40-50 minutes, and then force you to see them killed in a sadistic and just downright mean fashion), I just have a hard time relating to this generation's horror.   I expected the new Friday the 13th to be just more of the same, and I was completely surprised by how well Mr. Nispel nailed the tone of the original series.  There's a little bit more of each of the trademarked elements for sure (more T&A, more annoying characters, more gore, etc.), but it really works as a whole.  Believe it or not, even for the faux-Jason, the film is fun to watch.  Go figure.  I wish I had more to say about it, but it's really just refreshing to see a flick like this and enjoy myself in this day and age.