And the winner is….

The Ropers, with a whopping 52% of the vote (as of this writing).

The Ropers was a short lived spinoff of the highly-rated late 70′s sitcom, Three’s Company, starring the late John Ritter, Suzanne Somers (until they fired her), and a then unknown (and now unknown)  Joyce DeWitt. The Ropers starred the late Norman Fell and the later Audra Lindley as Stanley and Helen Roper. The series was about the former landlords’ antics after they sold their apartment building and moved into a condominium (popular in the 1970s).  It was a HUGELY POPULAR success that lasted only one-and-one-half seasons before being cancelled, and the Ropers were never to be seen again…UNTIL SUMMER 2010!

Honestly, these results seem a little hard to believe. Did somebody stuff the ballot box?

Unfortunately, I think I’ve made just such a mistake.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year is playing on my TV right now and I am utterly confused. I was lucky enough to have seen the original High School Musical, but I never saw High School Musical 2. The first film ended with East High basketball team captain Troy and girlfriend Gabriella playing the leads in their high school musical (I’m guessing that’s where the film’s title came from), after mean girl Sharpay tries to sabotage Gabriella’s success. Now fast-forward to High School Musical 3: Troy is suddenly captain of East High’s basketball team;  he and girlfriend Gabriella are preparing to star in the spring musical and mean girl Sharpay is trying to sabotage Gabriella’s success.

Obviously, I missed some extremely significant plot developments that must have occurred in High School Musical 2, and now I simply can not follow the confusing, complicated plot of High School Musical 3. WHAT DID I MISS???!!!

How did Troy and Gabriella and the other sing-songy-dancey teens get from where they were in the original High School Musical to where they are now in High School Musical 3? Did Troy find out that Darth Vader is his father? (I don’t think he did because in High School Musical 3, the basketball coach is Troy’s father…talk about nepotism). Obviously, I won’t be able to follow the complex story in High School Musical 3 until the incredibly huge, missing gaps from High School Musical 2 are filled in for me.

The folks at Disney should warn viewers not to watch High School Musical 3 until AFTER they’ve seen High School Musical 2. That would be the fair and responsible thing to do, but NOOOOO!  I guess if I’m going to sit through the rest of High School Musical 3, I’ll have to imagineer the plot of High School Musical 2 all on my own. Thanks a lot, Walt!

I should have learned my lesson after watching Police Academy 6: City Under Siege without having seen Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. Don’t even get me started that one.  CON-FUS-ING!

This is like The Matrix all over again. Well actually, I didn’t have a problem with that one. I guess there are exceptions to every rule.

Will Ferrell‘s long awaited (or rather, endlessly promoted) Land of the Lost finally hit the big screen today, but I was lucky to get an advance screening at NBC’s Hulu.com. I was surprised they posted it for free, but since they did…

So let’s start with the opening sequence. Per the theme music, “Marshall, Will and Holly, on a routine expedition, met the greatest earthquake ever known. High on the rapids, it struck their tiny raft, and plunged them down a thousand feet below, to the land of the lost…to the land of the lost…to the land of the lost (I think they say it three times so that it really sinks in…THESE PEOPLE ARE IN THE LAND OF THE LOST!)”

Already I am confused. If they’re on an expedition, high on the rapids, what are they doing in a tiny rubber raft? Shouldn’t they be using a sturdier vessel? As rubber rafts go, this one seems to be at the very low end. Even for the very most basic, mundane expedition, let alone a “routine” expedition, I’d have taken a better boat…something that stands up to rapids or an earthquake…because you just never know.

And how were they lucky enough, after having plunged 1,000 feet below (and landing safely, with nary a scratch on any of them), to have lost none of their supplies? They still had their oars! In comparison, Niagara Falls drops only 173 feet, but I would bet that any boat that accidentally goes over the edge of the falls, loses its oars long BEFORE it crashes into the merciless rocks below and kills all the passengers on board (because that’s what would happen…there would be no survivors…harsh but true).

The most disturbing aspect of this film? There’s no sign of Will Ferrell anywhere. Supposedly, he plays “Rick Marshall,” but not according to these opening credits.

Huh? Who is Spencer Milligan? I think I’m starting to understand why this Land of The Lost was free.

Anyway, the story features Rick, a routine expeditionist who only wears khaki-colored clothes, making him look like the Orkin man (which brings back memories of a disturbing flying ant situation I recently experienced); and his kids, Will (not Ferrell) and Holly–bickering teens who have perfectly pressed clothes, clear complexions (no sign of sun damage) and neatly styled hair, despite living in a cave in the jungle among the Pakuni tribe (cave people) and some carnivorous dinosaurs…IN A CAVE, IN THE JUNGLE!

It turns out that the 2009 movie, Land of the Lost, is based on a little known, rarely seen 1974 Saturday morning TV series also called Land of the Lost. I did not know this. I was born in the early 60′s, and therefore could have no memory of such a program ever airing on any of the three networks that existed during the early 1970′s.

So I own the entire Land of the Lost series on DVD. It came in a commemorative retro lunchbox. My mom never let me have a lunchbox when I was a kid. I always had to carry my lunch in a brown paper bag, just like the poor kids. I didn’t realize until 30 years after she passed away that the reason she didn’t let me have a lunchbox had nothing to do with not wanting to flaunt our status; she just didn’t want to have to clean it everyday. Yeah…I wonder how she’d feel about the brown paper bags now, if she knew we have to recycle everything. I bet she’d be singing a different tune.

And that’s another 2009 summer blockbuster under my belt.

That being said, I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about the 1999 CGI film, Antz, featuring the voice of Sharon Stone, but I never saw it, so that’s out.  Instead, I’m going to talk about the first episode of the 1965 Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Atom Ant, and how it strangely parallels real life (or is it perpendicular?).

While researching flying ants on the internet, I learned that ants can lift as much as 10 times their own weight, and the title card for the Atom Ant cartoon shows him lifting a bar bell over his head…so that’s real.

This particular episode starts with a villain, Big Fats Dynamo (voiced by Allen Melvin, who played Sam the Butcher on The Brady Bunch), escaping from an Alcatraz-like prison, by simply bending open the bars of his cell with his bare hands and walking out. The Warden should be hung out to dry for the lousy security in the prison (which is ironic because Fats escapes in a laundry truck…it’s not clear where Fats was going in the truck, since it was already established that the prison is built on a rock in the middle of the ocean…A ROCK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN!).  When the Warden learns of Big Fats’ escape, he doesn’t contact the police…he sends a distress signal via radar to Atom Ant. That can’t be the appropriate protocol. Not real.

The narrator announces that the Warden’s signal has reached Atom Ant’s secret headquarters, which are clearly marked by a mailbox with the name Atom Ant printed on it in bold, black letters. Now maybe I’m not clear on the definition of secret headquarters, but this one doesn’t seem to be particularly secret.  Just the same, my wife and I spent a lot of time trying to locate where those flying ants were coming from, with no luck, so I assume ants do maintain secret headquarters. Real.

Atom Ant manages to fly (yes….FLY) to exactly where Big Fats is hiding. This is where the lines of fiction and reality become very blurred. Atom Ant doesn’t have wings, but was flying, yet out of all those ants in our bedroom that had wings, NONE of them were flying. Not real.

I didn’t mention that Big Fats brought along two accomplices. They are useless idiots. They don’t help Big Fats (who they only met two minutes before escaping, so its not like they owe him anything), but they don’t try to get away either, and Atom Ant isn’t even after them. That’s weird too, because they broke out of jail just like Big Fats. Not real.

Big Fats tries a number of tactics to stop Atom Ant, including spraying him with ant spray. It doesn’t work. I think this is real because we’ve contracted with a pest control service regularly for the last three years (we live in the forest) and yet we still have those pesky flying ants.  Real.

So Atom catches Big Fats, returns him to prison-rock, does some significant damage to a prison wall as he’s leaving, and then it’s over. The End.

I don’t think I’ll get a chance to see Star Trek this weekend either, but maybe I will manage to get a nap in.

I came across The Massacre on YouTube over the weekend and thought I’d take a look.  Produced in 1912, The Massacre was written and directed by D.W. Griffith (who must have been somebody, because the post office issued a 1975 Stamp in his honor, long before they started putting cartoon characters on stamps).

The Massacre goes like this: A freakish-looking army scout, whom I’ll call “Steve,”  abruptly proposes to a water-wading pioneer woman (let’s call her “Debbie”), suggesting she accompany him to “the New Country” (somewhere west of where they were at the time….now they call it California).  The look on Debbie’s face says that she thinks Steve’s idea is crappy at best (although I can’t be sure….it’s a silent movie). Not 30 seconds later (Steve was only 1/2 way through his proposal), another man on a horse (Chuck) shows up asking for water. Debbie (who either has highly questionable morals or low self-esteem) decides that Chuck the stranger is a better catch than Steve, who she’s known at least two minutes longer. Steve (yes…STEVE!) gives his blessing for Debbie to marry Chuck the thirsty stranger. THIS ALL HAPPENS IN THE FIRST SCENE!

We quickly learn that it wasn’t the thought of boarding a wagon train for California that repulsed Debbie…it was just the thought of marrying Steve…because Chuck manages to talk her into boarding the very same wagon train, WITH their new baby, but WITHOUT Chuck (I’m not clear where he went, but he’s out of the picture for the time being). Steve must really be a LOSER!

On a positive note, since this is a silent movie, the baby’s crying doesn’t keep Debbie awake at night, and let’s face it…it’d have to be an incredibly smooth wagon train ride for the baby NOT to be crying, a lot!

The wagon train, heading through dangerous country, is assigned a military escort for protection. You guessed it….It’s STEVE!  Anyway the entire wagon train gets massacred by a tribe a vengeful Indians (hence the film’s title). Steve manages to ensure the safety of Debbie and the baby, by hiding them under a pile of dead bodies (a result of the massacre), including his own. And then Chuck rides up on his horse and takes Debbie and the baby to the safety of the New Country. The End.

The Massacre was 30 minutes of silent torture. (Although there was music, I’m pretty sure that Beethoven, having died long before the invention of moving pictures, did not write his Fifth Symphony specifically for The Massacre). The good news is that it was ONLY 30 minutes. The NBC series, Wagon Train, ran for eight seasons, and still got cancelled before that train ever reached it’s final destination (that baby would have been crying into adulthood).  A massacre could have really helped to speed things along.

So I’m through with silent movies.

The formal assignment requires me to choose a blog topic from one of 7 or 8 predetermined categories. While I picked “movies,” anyone who knows me well knows that I am really more of a TV person than a movie person. As luck would have it, the dictionary that came with the MacBook on which I am now typing defines a movie as: “a story or event recorded by a camera as a set of moving images and shown in a theater or on television,” so I think I’m covered. While the title of this blog is “John’s thoughts on film,” expect me to cover the broader spectrum to which the subtitle refers—pictures that move.

And Happy 20th Anniversary to my friends, Brian and Samantha. Over the past 20 years, I’ve watched a lot of pictures that move with them.