If you aren’t caught up on this week’s episode of WALKING DEAD, then we got two words for you – SPOILER ALERT. We begin our talk with the most casualty and how this death veered away from the one seen in the comic, plus Tom Hanks (along with Halle Berry) help us figure out CLOUD ATLAS and DC piles on 52 new variant covers!
There’s been a lot happening on the NBC comedy, PARKS AND RECREATION including an out-of-the-blue marriage proposal. Co-creator & star, Amy Poehler catches up on all of it plus odds are Jamie Foxx will be Electro and more speculation on Disney and Star Wars.
Since the day DOCTOR NO exploded on the screen, the fates and fortunes of James Bond has been in the hands of the Brocceli Family, first with Albert “Cubby” Brocceli and now his daughter Barbara. We sat down with Barbara to talk about the rich history of Bond and how they work out each detail from tone of the story to the Bond Girls, even before the cameras roll – plus G4 gets overhauled and Arnold is CONAN again – really?
Robert Kirkman, the brain behind THE WALKING dead talks to us about the comics, the TV show – and if the two will ever meet. Or better yet, what about a WD movie? Plus ARGO‘s director-producer-star, Ben Affleck, explains why that film is generating so much Oscar buzz, and why Marvel is using A List talent on new B List books.
After two previous attempts, Matthew Perry has broken the alleged “FRIENDS Curse” and struck comedy gold again with NBC’s GO ON. Matthew shares the secret of mixing comedy and drama and making it all work. Plus Andrew Lincoln and Chandler Riggs tells us how the cast of WALKING DEAD reacts when one of their fellow stars meets their fate.
The third season of AMC’sTHE WALKING DEAD has struck, and we begin our extensive look at what waits ahead. To start, EP Glen Mazzera along with actors Steven Yeun and Andrew Lincoln tackle the time jump and how they managed to pick up the pace for the new episodes. Plus George Romero says he’s coming to Marvel, and those bumper stickers paid off – Agent Coulson DOES live.
We are losing some good shows this television season, not the least of which is NBC’s30 ROCK. We talk to Jack McBrayer (Kenneth) and EP Robert Carlocke about how they are making the exit graceful, plus Stan Lee is gonna sue somebody and CBS fires the first “cancelled” bullet.
Finally, the comic book store owner on TV that comic fans can respect (as compared to that guy on The Simpsons) gets some respect of his own as Kevin Sussman gets a regular gig on The Big Bang Theory. Deadline Hollywood has the details:
Leonard, Sheldon & Co. may be haning out at the comic book store more often next season. Kevin Sussman, who plays the comic book store manager Stuart, has been promoted to a regular for the upcoming sixth season of the hit CBS comedy. He has been recurring on the show since Season 2, appearing in 15 episodes so far. I hear Sussman’s deal is of the “7/13″ kind, meaning that he likely won’t be in every episode like Big Bang‘s core cast. This is the fourth promotion for a Big Bang recurring player, following similar upgrades for Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik, who now appear in virtually every episode, and Sara Gilbert, who left the series.
Stuart played a key part in the relationship between Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Bialik) as it was Stuart’s date with Amy that prompted Sheldon to make her his girlfriend. His character also was behind a bet that produced one of the most popular images from the show with the main gang dressed as Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Supergirl.
Prime time television in the 1950s and 1960s was packed with family situation comedies, including Hanna-Barbera’s takes on The Honeymooners in the form of The Flintstones and The Jetsons. By the dawn of the 1970s, those situation comedy tropes began to permeate Saturday morning cartoons as funny animal and super-heroic fare began to wane. Then there came Scooby-Doo, the first truly original and fresh concept in ages. The four meddlesome teens, their charismatic canine companion and van became the template for many imitators.
I can therefore imagine the brain trust at H-B trying to find new variations on the successful theme. The idea of combining elements a mystery solving family was a natural but how they ever settled on Charlie Chan and his dozen children remains an, ahem,. mystery.
The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan debuted in 1972 on CBS and was derived from Earl Derr Biggers literary sleuth, Charlie Chan. Based on Honolulu, Chan was modeled on real life detective Apana Biggers, and was introduced in 1926 but gained greatest fame in a series films featuring occidental actor Warner Oland.
Interestingly, there had not been a Chan movie or television series for quite some time by 1972 so one wonders how familiar the youthful target audience was with the character when the series arrived. Regardless, the sixteen episodes showcased the kids a lot more than they did Mr. Chan and the show featured one of the larger casts of regular characters even if the prose Chan Clan was an even dozen, for this show they trimmed that to ten. In prose and television, the mother is never mentioned.
The stories themselves are filled with harmless action, some mild humor, and plenty of chances for the cast to shine. You can see for yourself in the newly released The Amazing Chan Clan and the Chan Clan — The Complete Series from Warner Archive. For the record, the series is credited for being the first time Charlie Chan was performed by a genuine Chinese actor, Keye Luke, who played Number One Son in many of the earlier features. Other performers were also of Asian descent but were quickly recast when CBS deemed their accents difficult for the audience to comprehend (although you wonder if they actually tested this theory and we won’t know because the original stories were redubbed). Only Robert Ito, as Henry, and Brian Trochi as genius inventor Alan, remained.
Debbie Jue (Nancy), Jay Jay Jue (Flip), Leslie Juwai (Mimi), Leslie Kumamota (Anne), Virginia Ann Lee (Suzie), Michael Takamoto (Tom), Robin Toma (Scooter), and Stephen Wong (Stanley) were replaced, respectively, by Beverly Kushida, Gene Andrusco, Cherylene Lee (as Suzie and Mimi), Jodie Foster (yes, that one), John Gunn, Michael Morgan, and Lennie Weinrib. Don Messick was the required dog companion Chu Chu.
Each kid had a specialty in addition to a musical talent so they would perform a song in each episode, making for relatively simplified storytelling. The music was supervised by Don Kirshner (who else?) with vocals led by Ron Dante (carried over from The Archies). As for the cases, they mimicked the movies’ international flavor so Mr. Chan and the kids globetrotted after the Crown Jewels or visited Trinidad to find missing doubloons, or joining in for Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The cases were never the reason to watch the show, but instead to see the siblings interact and to find out what goofy new invention would come in handy. None of the songs ever made it to the Top 40 and are pretty forgettable.
If anything, this series is a curiosity from that transitional period between the Golden Age of Saturday morning fare and the watered down pabulum that denoted the ‘70s.
