Friends are there...

Last night, someone pointed out to me one of the wrongest wrong things I have ever had the misfortune to see. As misery deserves to be shared—or at least inflicted on anyone unfortunate enough to click the link—here it is: the trailer for Garfield: The Movie.

Anyone who's read even a smidgin of that comic strip that used to be good, decades ago, or seen the cartoons voiced by the late Lorenzo Music...will almost not recognize the big orange cat here...because it's not a cartoon movie. Alas for what CGI can be forced to do in the hands of hacks.

There is one amusing bit of irony about this, though: the CGI garfield is given voice by Bill Murray. Lorenzo Music did the voice of Bill Murray's character for the couple of seasons of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. I wonder if that was on the mind of the producers when they selected him for the part?

A couple of neat links...

To counterbalance the aforementioned Wrong Thing, here are a couple of really good Right Things.

First of all, Palm Digital Media is giving away an e-book a day until Christmas. Unlike their usual purchased ebooks, apparently you can only download them during the time they're out, not save them to your library...but hey, they're free. Today's title is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Reader software is free for Palm, Windows CE, Macintosh, and Windows (and the Windows reader also works on Linux via the magic of WINE). Check it out.

Second, thanks to mgrasso, I've found this rather lengthy and engaging essay that traces George Lucas's sources of inspiration for Star Wars...and then traces their sources of inspiration back as far as they'll go. As one might expect, it includes a detailed section on The Lord of the Rings.

Enjoy!

Phone Post

[Bad username or site: robotech_master' phonepostid='8 @ livejournal.com]