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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Like Sands Through The Hourglass, So Are The Soaps Of Our Lives

It really is quite interesting the memories that can dwell so deeply inside a person's subconscious. Memories that were insignificant at the time that they occurred, but are suddenly brought back to the surface because of a particular event that happens.

I'd like to tell you a little story about my childhood and my family if you don't mind.

Years and years ago when my mother was a child, her family bought their very first television set. It was the first half of 1956. My mother had just turned ten years old the previous November. The television that my grandparents had bought for the family was nothing fancy. One of those black and white models with the rounded screen that looked no bigger than a standard computer monitor. At most, they could only get one or two channels, as that was all that they had back in 1956.

Still, it was a proud moment for my mom's family. With television becoming more and more popular every passing day, the fact that they had a television set gave them some security that things were looking up for them. My family never really had a whole lot of disposable income (on both sides of my family), so getting a television set was a big deal.

Almost immediately, my mother and my grandmother started watching daytime television whenever possible. Of course, my mother has school to attend at the time, so her daytime television viewing was limited, but my grandmother was a loyal fan of daytime television.

There's a reason why I wanted to be absolutely specific about the exact time when my grandparents got their first television set. In 1956 a brand new show debuted on CBS during the daytime television time slot that both my grandmother and mother used to watch religiously for years.



The program was a soap opera called As The World Turns. It debuted on television on April 2, 1956, and my grandmother watched the very first episode. It certainly wasn't the very first soap opera. Other soap operas such as Search For Tomorrow and The Guiding Light had been on the air for years (and in the case of The Guiding Light decades) before As The World Turns came along, but during the 1950s and 1960s, several more would be added to the daytime schedules of all three major networks.

Soap operas proved to be a very popular form of entertainment, especially towards a female audience (which made sense, given that most women during the 1950s stayed home during the daytime hours). During the 1950s, almost all of these soap operas were broadcast on television, but prior to this, many of them were broadcast on the radio. Many of these programs were sponsored and/or produced by companies that made soap products, such as Colgate-Palmolive, Lever Brothers, and Procter & Gamble (which explains why these programs were called soap operas).

Soap operas were an interesting show format. Unlike most prime time drama serials, which only lasted from September to May and aired a maximum of 25 episodes a season, soap operas ran consistently. Five days a week from Monday to Friday, a new episode would be produced with all new material. The shows were either centered around a couple of feuding families or a location in a community, and detailed the twists and turns that fell upon the people who starred in the series. Each day's events would flow into the next, with Friday episodes traditionally airing a 'cliffhanger' episode that would keep viewers on the edge of their seats until the following Monday, when the cliffhanger would (hopefully) be resolved.

In most cases, soap operas dealt with love and romance between couples, and certainly every daytime serial had a couple that people could root for or wanted to root for. These couples were often known as 'supercouples', and many of them immediately became fan favourites. Some well known soap opera supercouples included Victor and Nikki from The Young and the Restless, Josh and Reva from Guiding Light, Lily and Holden from As The World Turns, and Angie and Jesse from All My Children.



Perhaps one of the biggest supercouples of the entire daytime television genre was that of Luke and Laura, from General Hospital. Fans really seemed to gravitate towards the couple, even though when the couple got together, it wasn't under the greatest of circumstances (a drunken Luke had raped Laura). Regardless, the chemistry that the two had with each other seemed to register to viewers. The wedding between Luke and Laura aired on November 17, 1981, which also included a cameo from the late Elizabeth Taylor. That wedding ended up scoring huge ratings. An average of thirty million viewers tuned in to watch Luke and Laura say 'I Do', and to this day remains the highest rated episode of a soap opera ever.  Watch it below if you like.



Other topics that soap operas dealt with were fraud, affairs, crime, murder, and natural disasters. And just because a character was killed off didn't mean that they stayed dead. If you were to look at every soap opera that aired over the last thirty years, you'd be hard pressed to find one where they DIDN'T have a character come back to life after being declared dead. It was just one of the many tricks and trades that soap operas used. The storylines didn't have to make sense, or even be physically or medically possible. As long as the writing of the characters made sense, it could snow in the middle of August and viewers would buy it the characters made it believable.

For several decades, the American soap opera proved to be a very powerful force. With millions of viewers tuning in to see their 'stories' every weekday, advertisers cashed in by airing their commercials during each episode. Back in 1976, Time magazine described American daytime television as being 'television's richest market'. Because of the loyalty of fans who tuned in each day, added with the expansion of many daytime serials expanding from 30 minutes to 60 minutes, made daytime television more profitable to invest in than prime time series.

But that was during the 1970s. Something happened along the way that changed the course of daytime television into what it is today.

Just take a look at this. Twenty years ago for the 1991/1992 season, there were no less than eleven soap operas on the air.

CBS had The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, As The World Turns and Guiding Light.

ABC had Loving, All My Children, One Life To Live, and General Hospital.

NBC had Days Of Our Lives, Santa Barbara, and Another World.

As of September 22, 2011, only six remain. By the weekend, only five will continue airing. By early 2012, we'll only have four left.



Tomorrow marks the last airdate of the 41-year-old soap opera, All My Children. One Life To Live is slated to go off the air a few months later, in January 2012. While deals have been made to bring both All My Children and One Life To Live online so viewers can still watch, it could take months for such projects to be greenlighted. By January 2012, The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days Of Our Lives, and General Hospital will be the only soap operas still airing on television.

What happened? Well, lots of things.



I told you the story earlier about how my grandmother and mother grew up watching the soap opera As The World Turns. For many, many years, As The World Turns was their all-time favourite of all the soap operas. My grandmother watched the show religiously until she passed away in 1991. My mother was one of those viewers that watched As The World Turns from the beginning of the program to the very end, with the show going off the air in September 2010. To a lesser extent, my older sister watched soap operas as well, only my sister's favourite show during her teen years was Guiding Light (which went off the air in September 2009).

That's how many people got hooked on soap operas. It became a form of entertainment that mothers and daughters could watch together. In fact, a reported 30% of soap opera viewers are male, so some mothers and sons used to watch the 'stories' together.



(CONFESSION TIME: I got addicted to the soap opera 'Loving' when I was 11 and sick with the flu one week, and I still catch the odd episode of The Young and the Restless thanks to some college roommates getting me hooked on it.)

This was commonplace for about the first three decades of soap opera production. By the mid-1980s, however, more women started to head back to the workforce, and therefore were not home often enough to devote time to watching soap operas as much as they used to. Newer generations of viewers found it harder to keep up with the storylines, and the trials and tribulations of all of the different characters in the show.



The recent trend of creating reality programs such as Jersey Shore and Keeping Up With The Kardashians could also be to blame for the decline of soap opera viewership. With reality shows having a production cost much lower than that of daytime soap operas, some viewers turned to these shows to satisfy their need for dramatic programming. Add to that the rise of cable channels and more choices of programming for people to choose from, and this was another factor behind the decline of modern day soap operas.

Certainly these are all factors that have eroded the ratings for daytime dramas, but I thought I would ask another source about why they thought soaps were fast becoming a lost genre.

I asked my mother. Would you like to know what she said?

She said that while she remained loyal to As The World Turns until the day it was cancelled, she did say that the last two years of the show were a bit unwatchable. She said that the writing of such programs went downhill considerably and that the quality of the storylines was not as good as it had been. The stories jumped all over the place, and stories were more plot-based than character-based. Once I heard her opinion, it caused me to have an opinion of my own.

I always have said myself that some of the best stories I have read were character driven. In a lot of cases, especially for soap operas that were around in the 1970s, many of these shows relied on casting strong lead characters rather than plot devices. Characters were developed in such a way that the audience could either love them, hate them, or love to hate them. The more the audience reacted to a soap opera character, the better.

Certainly there have been some memorable characters on soap operas over the years. One of which comes from the soap opera that will be ending its run on network television.



Although my family hardly ever watched ABC soap operas (they were mostly a CBS soap opera family), they have heard of Susan Lucci. She played Erica Kane on the soap opera All My Children since the show's debut in 1970, and to say that her character hadn't been through a lot would be an understatement. With her having more marriages than Elizabeth Taylor, having two daughters with their own emotional baggage, and even going up against a giant bear, she definitely has that character appeal that soap viewers loved.

And, no, I'm not kidding about the bear. Here's proof.



As it turned out, Susan Lucci's professional career was a bit of a soap opera in itself. Her work was always considered to be some of the best in the genre, and it was enough for her to be nominated for the Daytime Emmy award for Best Actress. She kept getting nominated and nominated, but yet she never won.

That is until 1999, when Susan Lucci's nineteenth nomination proved to be the one that won her the award. The standing ovation that she received as she went to collect her award seemed to last forever, and you could see the joy in her eyes as she finally accepted her long-awaited award.



Regardless of whether Susan Lucci continues with the web-format of All My Children or not (last reports state she will not), she has made enough of a name for herself that people couldn't possibly forget her or the character she played.



One could also say the same about Kim Zimmer, who played Reva Shayne for two separate stints on Guiding Light.  Reva was one of those people who were thought to be dead, but came back to life.  Twice.  She went through people trying to kill her, being a princess of an island nation, and she was even cloned!  But mostly she was known as being the real vamp of the show, and as this scene from 1984 shows, viewers could find something to identify with in this real 'tart with a heart' character.



Loud.  Brash.  Easy.  Those were all words to describe Reva.  Yet, in that scene she was still that insecure young woman who wanted desperately to be loved and respected for who she was and not for what favours she could do.  She was a character that many probably wouldn't care for on the streets, but resonated a deep chord in viewers, who could maybe identify with the frustrations she was going through.  Characters who could instill such powerful emotions in viewers made for great television.

It's easy to dismiss a soap opera as being mindless fluff filled with romance and love scenes, but it was more than that. With over 200 new episodes filmed each year, the writers were challenged with coming up with new material every day, and actors had to memorize dozens of pages of dialogue a week. 



Many famous actors and actresses got their big breaks on soap operas. Certainly, you have big named actors and actresses who have starred on soaps. Ryan Phillipe was on One Life To Live, and both Meg Ryan and Julianne Moore starred on As The World Turns (Moore actually returned to the show just before it went off the air).

Other actors and actresses who have made it big since their soap days include Kelly Ripa, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mark Consuelos, Eva LaRue, Michael Weatherly, Allison Janney, Marg Helgenberger, Eva Longoria, Morgan Fairchild, Taye Diggs, and the late Christopher Reeve, just to name a few.

Some already established actors and actresses have made cameo appearances or have had recurring roles in soap operas recently. I already mentioned Elizabeth Taylor as having made a cameo appearance on General Hospital, but recently, James Franco has shot a couple of appearances on that same show. Betty White appeared on a few episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful a couple of years ago. The Young and the Restless have had many guest stars playing themselves appearing on the show over their 38-year history. After doing some research, I know that Jewel, Katy Perry, and Il Divo have all appeared as guests on the show.



I think that while soap operas have struggled in recent years, there is still an audience for them. The Young and the Restless have been number one in the ratings since the late 1980s, and The Bold and the Beautiful is the most syndicated soap opera shown today, with the program airing in 42 countries alone. Still, with more soaps shutting down production year by year, the road back will be an incredibly rocky one.

A soap opera in itself, really. 

And as we bid farewell to All My Children from network television, at least for fans of that show, and the other ones that were cancelled, the memories will live on even if the genre is currently on life-support.




Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Wednesday Afterschool Cartoons: Jem And The Holograms

When I was a child growing up in Ontario, Canada, I was lucky enough to have been born during a time in which cartoon shows didn't just air on Saturday mornings.

Whenever school ended for the day (usually around a quarter to three in the afternoon), all one had to do was turn on YTV to see a whole block of animated programming right up until the six o'clock news.

It really was a great time to be a kid. Lots of shows and cartoons for boys and girls to view.

So I figured that I would use this opportunity to talk about a show that was designed for girls, marketed for girls, and where the stars were all girls.

And you know what? I think there's a lot that this show can teach the men reading this blog as well.

It really wasn't until I rediscovered this show recently on video-sharing sites that the show really did share a ton of valuable lessons for both males and females. Men and women could really learn a lot from this cartoon. There were episodes that dealt with the subjects of teenage runaways, drug abuse, and illiteracy, and the whole cartoon series was based on the concept of four young women running a foster home that the parents of two of the women started up. These four women would later form a girl group that would have a string of hit singles, and where profits for each album went towards the maintenance of the house, as well as taking care of the dozens of girls who lived at the home.



Jem debuted on television in October 1985, four years after the debut of MTV. Like MTV, Jem blended together animated music video clips with storylines. It was considered to be a wild idea at first, but when the show debuted, it immediately garnered a lot of success.  People all over the world tuned in to see the adventures of Jem and the Holograms. Although the series ended in May 1988, cable channels still air the show today, and the show could still be considered as relevant as it was back in the 1980s. In fact, Christy Marx (the creator of the show) has said that she would like to bring the show back with all new episodes, though nothing has come out of these negotiations as of September 2011.



The main storyline of Jem details the creation of the all-girl group Jem and the Holograms and their rise to stardom, but there were other key details that held the show together.

The show began at the funeral of Emmett Benton, the CEO/owner of Starlight Records, and head of the Starlight House (a home for orphaned girls that his late wife Jacqui founded). When Emmett passed away, the responsibilities of managing Starlight House fell on his eldest daughter, Jerrica. As for the future of Starlight Records, it was left to both Jerrica and Emmett's business partner, Eric Raymond. But when Eric Raymond tells Jerrica that he wants full control of Starlight Records to promote his new band, The Misfits, Jerrica is left feeling betrayed.

At the same time, Starlight House is falling apart. With help from Rio (Jerrica's on-off love interest), as well as her younger sister Kimber, Jerrica does the best she can to keep the house going. Her childhood friends, Aja and Shana (who were two of the first girls living at Starlight House) also pitched in to help, and some of the younger girls started up an 'Honour Jar' to help buy a new refrigerator for the home. Still, money is tight at the house to keep up with the repairs, and Jerrica knows that something had to be done.  But with Eric refusing to let Jerrica take money out of the Starlight Records bank vaults to fix up the house, Jerrica was unsure of what to do.

So when Jerrica receives a present of red star earrings, at first, nothing is made of it. But during a thunderstorm, a strange event occurs. A purple haired woman (who appears as a holographic image) suddenly appears inside of Jerrica's bedroom and tells her to follow the instructions in the earring box. Shocked, Jerrica, Kimber, Aja, and Shana decide to follow the instructions to the Starlight Drive-In, an abandoned movie theater. After the woman instructs Aja to drive through the wall, everyone believes it to be a really ridiculous idea.  Still, Jerrica convinces Aja to drive straight ahead.  When they do, they find that the wall is not real, and upon entering find themselves face to face with a gigantic computer with buttons and synthesizers attached to it.  This happens to be the 'home' of the mystery woman.



The woman's name is Synergy, and she happens to be a super-computer that Emmett Benton designed.  Synergy could create images of objects, change a person's appearance and conjure up a double of someone by using holographic illusions.  Jerrica's red earrings acted as a communication device between herself and Synergy, and she could use the earrings to transform from Jerrica to Jem no matter where she was in the world.   

In addition, Jerrica discovers that her father had also left her dozens of other gifts, including a full wardrobe of clothes, musical instruments, and a brand new car.

Basically, her father had left her a Price Is Right showcase.

As it turned out though, Jerrica ended up coming up with a brilliant idea. What if they used the gifts that Emmett had left them to their advantage? With the clothes and musical instruments, they could definitely pull off the look of an all-girl group, and play like one as well.  Kimber played piano as a young girl, Aja could play the guitar, and Shana was a master with the percussion instruments.  In addition, Jerrica and Kimber's mother was a singer and songwriter, so music definitely was in their genes.  The idea of forming a band was almost a natural thing for the girls to do. 

But the band needed some sort of edge to stand out in a crowd. Having plain Jane nice girl Jerrica Benton as the frontwoman of a band would not qualify. The band needed a lead singer that was wild. A lead singer that was full of charisma. A lead singer that could dress the part. A lead singer that wasn't afraid of anything.



By day, she was Jerrica Benton. By night, she was Jem, the pink-haired, glamourous lead singer of the Holograms.

And they made their debut just as Eric Raymond was promoting his band 'The Misfits' in a Battle of the Bands contest.



Needless to say, Eric was not impressed that the crowd seemed to favour the Holograms instead of the Misfits. The Misfits were even more angry, as they didn't like having to compete (especially since Eric had rigged the contest to ensure the Misfits would win for publicity purposes).



The Misfits were comprised of Pizzazz (the spoiled rotten lead singer), Roxy (the tough-as-nails, no-nonsense gal), and Stormer (the sensitive songwriter of the group who unlike her band members was genuinely kind and appreciative towards other people). They saw Jem and the Holograms as a major threat, though they'd never admit their own insecurities. They were too proud to admit those. Still, the sudden appearance of Jem and the Holograms must have had some impact on Eric, because Eric immediately felt threatened.

And Eric didn't even realize that Jem and Jerrica Benton were one in the same.

It was here that Jem had decided to issue Eric and the Misfits a challenge. A redo of the Battle of the Bands competition between the Holograms and the Misfits.  A competition that was not rigged. With a wealthy benefactor backing the competition, the prizes were huge. A brand new mansion, a movie contract, and full control of Starlight Records. This was a prize that the Holograms definitely needed because with Jerrica in control of Starlight Records, they could then use all the profits to repair Starlight House and take care of the Starlight girls.

Their road to stardom was rough enough being a brand new band just starting out. But Eric made their battle all that much worse. He hired thugs to break into Starlight House to intimidate Jerrica into withdrawing from the contest. But in the struggle, the Starlight House caught fire and burned to the ground. While everyone in the house escaped injury, they were left homeless as a result, making the stakes even higher. They had to win at all costs, or the future of the Starlight girls and Starlight Records would be bleak.



Certainly, the road to success was a rough one. Jerrica had to deal with Kimber not feeling like a part of the group, as well as pranks and tricks caused by the Misfits to keep Jem and the others away from even performing at the event. Luckily, Jem and the Holograms make it in time, and win the contest, securing the mansion for the Starlight girls to live in, as well as control of Starlight Records.

There was one other prize that was offered. The chance to star in their own music-themed movie project. And that happens to be the episode that I actually want to talk about in this blog, because it really is a great episode. While the episode does a great job in showing how good can triumph over evil, it also provides a wonderful life lesson for all to take in.

Although I have found the three parts for this 90-minute episode, I am unable to actually post them onto the blog itself. What I can do is provide the links to each of these three parts. The episode itself is entitled Starbright, but each section is split up. We have Falling Star, Colliding Stars, and finally Rising Star. I'll wait until you watch each part. Go ahead. I'll go grab something to eat while you watch.

Have you watched it yet? Good. I'm under the assumption that you have. Even if you don't we'll discuss it anyway.


Everything was going well for the Holograms. They had everything set in place for the movie, and with help from their new friend 'Video', they were well on their way to having success with their movie.

That is until Pizzazz and the rest of the Misfits got jealous of all the attention that the Holograms were given, and she decided to use her father's money to buy the movie studio where the movie was being filmed and produced.

This meant that Eric and the Misfits forced their way into starring in the Jem movie, despite the fact that the Holograms had won the prize fair and square. To say that Jem and the Holograms were very angry with the Misfits was an understatement. Nevertheless, they attempted to make it work.

Unfortunately, the Misfits acted like real divas. They wanted more scenes than the Holograms, and they were determined to take over the production. With Eric justifying their nasty behaviour, it wasn't long before the director of the film walked off the project. That made Eric take over the whole direction of the movie, which caused even more friction between the Holograms and the Misfits.

Meanwhile, the Misfits continued to wreak havoc. Spreading lies about Jem and the Holograms to the make-up artists who worked on the set was bad enough. When the Misfits ended up taking over entire musical production numbers, the stress of having to deal with them proved to be the last straw for Jem and the others to take, and they walked off the set along with Video.

Fate had other ideas, however, and something would happen back at Starlight House that would make the Holograms reconsider their choice. Ba Nee, one of the Starlight girls was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition that if untreated would leave her completely blind before she reached her tenth birthday. There was a laser procedure that could end up saving Ba Nee's vision, but with the procedure costing a quarter of a million dollars, Jerrica knew that she would have to have Jem and the Holograms come back to film the movie, since Eric had previously drained the majority of money that Starlight Records had to promote the Misfits prior to Jerrica taking over.


So back to the production they went, where Eric and the Misfits delighted in making their jobs a living nightmare. When the word got out about the band only coming back to get the money to pay for Ba Nee's operation, Stormer at least showed some concern for the little girl. Pizzazz, Roxy, and Eric, not so much. This just made them even more obnoxious to deal with. By forcing Jem to take part in stunts without the proper safety precautions, and mistreating key staff members, their attitudes proved too hard to handle, and more staffers walked off the project because of it.

Despite all this, the project went on, and one of the film's scenes allowed Kimber to share screen time with the egotistical lead actor of the movie, Nick Mann. Although Nick acted no better than the Misfits, Kimber had a mad crush on him, and looked forward to the experience. The scene was quite a dangerous one to film, but with both Nick and Kimber having stunt doubles, it was supposed to have gone off without a hitch.

Unfortunately, the Misfits, along with a woman named Clash (who happened to be the cousin of Video) ended up distracting the special effects technician long enough to set off the explosives prematurely, putting Kimber in serious danger. Luckily, Nick's stunt double, Jeff, ended up saving Kimber's life in the nick of time, but this serious stunt caused Jem and the Holograms to walk off the project for a second time (and caused Kimber to rethink her feelings about Nick in the process).

This time, most of the crew joined Jem and the Holograms in walking off set, having had enough of the diva attitudes of the Misfits, as well as Eric.

The Misfits continued to wreak havoc on their own project, complaining about everything. They hated their make-up, they hated the costumes, they hated the set design. And the remaining staff members hated them and walked away from them, leaving them to try and splice together the footage they had to work with. Eric on the other hand had his own worries, especially after Video managed to get a video tape of Jem's accident to all of the studio unions (no thanks to Clash), causing a slew of fines to be added to the production costs.

As a result, the Misfits movie ended up being way over budget, and the finished project didn't really make much sense. Think of it as being ten steps below Spice World.

That's what selfishness can do. The Misfits were only interested in making a movie to get fame, and to overshadow the Holograms, and as a result were left with a project without any heart, soul, or staying power.

Jem and the Holograms on the other hand, showed just what a little respect and kindness could do. When all the staff members from the Misfits movie walked off, they agreed to help Jem and the Holograms film their own lower-budget movie. Jerrica owed it to Ba Nee to get the money needed to pay for her operation, and she really believed that a movie about a girl-group making it big was a message that could really strike a chord with their target audience.

And everyone was behind the Holograms all the way. They even agreed to work for free to see that the project went ahead as planned. The staff believed in the values and ethics that Jem and the Holograms had to give it their all...all because they treated them with the dignity, respect, and professionalism that they deserved.

The end result? A film that had heart and character. A film that was so good that people wanted to see it again and again. It didn't take long for the group to raise the money to pay for Ba Nee's operation, and one of the first things that Jerrica did was make sure that the Starlight girls got an advanced screening of the film.

You notice the difference here? The Misfits went about it the wrong way, and acted rather selfishly, and their end result wasn't worth the money they had spent. Jem and the Holograms, on the other hand, kept it simple, and treated their staff very well. They showed that they cared about the production, and had a very good reason for bringing the project forward.

Because they were people who cared.



People who care are people who share.  People who give so other people can live.

And really, isn't that a positive message that both girls and boys can take with them through life?



Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Tuesday Night At The Movies: Honey, I Shrunk The Kids

One thing that I was always known for in my grade school years was my obscenely tall frame (well, that, plus my chubbiness, but that is another issue altogether).

For many years, I was usually either the tallest or second-tallest kid in the entire class. And I was mostly okay with that. Nobody could make short jokes at my expense since hardly anyone in the class was my height. Certainly as we approached adulthood, many of them caught up to my height, but for those few years, I always seemed to stick out in a crowd because of my height.

I admit that maybe there were a couple of instances where I wished that I could have blended in more with my classmates, at least sizewise. Sometimes it wasn't always such a good thing to be so tall. I was always the prime target for gym class dodge ball games, and sometimes it was a bit annoying to have to be called 'big guy' all the time. Maybe it would have been nice to have been a smaller size so that I wouldn't stick out so long.

That was the case until 1989 when a particular Disney movie was released, and after seeing it, it made me reconsider my thoughts.



Honey, I Shrunk The Kids was released in theaters nationwide on June 23, 1989, and the movie starred Rick Moranis, Marcia Strassman, and Matt Frewer. The film did very well financially, making over $220 million worldwide, and spawning two sequels (one released in theaters, one direct-to-video).

The movie detailed the adventures of four children who were accidentally shrunk down in size to no bigger than a quarter of an inch tall, and their struggle to get back to normal size.



Wayne Szalinski (Moranis) is a struggling inventor, desperately trying to come up with a successful invention, much to the annoyance of his wife Diane (Strassman). They have two children together. Amy (Amy O'Neill) is their teenage daughter who is addicted to rock music and shopping, while Nick (Robert Oliveri) wants to be an inventor/scientist just like his father.



The Szalinski's next door neighbours are the Thompsons. Russ Thompson Sr. (Frewer) gets increasingly annoyed by Wayne's inventions, and dismisses the Szalinski family as being one of the weirdest families he's ever laid eyes on. He and his wife Mae have two children of their own. Ron (Jared Rushton), a teenage boy who loves baseball and loves picking on Nick Szalinski), and Russ Jr. (Thomas Wilson Brown), the Thompson's older son who appears to have a crush on Amy.



One fateful day, Ron is playing baseball in his backyard and accidentally hits a baseball through the attic window of the Szalinski home. The baseball manages to hit one of Wayne's inventions, a shrink ray that hadn't been perfected yet (rather than shrinking things, it made them explode). Ron, Russ, Nick, and Amy head upstairs to the attic so Ron can retrieve their ball, not realizing that the ball had turned the machine on. The positive was that the ball ended up blocking one of the laser beams, so the machine wasn't powerful enough to make the kids explode. But it did shrink them, Wayne's thinking couch, and a nearby chair to miniature size.



As if this situation wasn't bad enough, Wayne comes home after a very bad day at work, and takes out his frustration on his machine. To the horror of the shrunken children, Wayne destroys the shrink ray and the pieces scatter all over the floor. Afterwards, Wayne grabs a broom and dustpan and cleans up the mess he made, not even aware of the fact that he was sweeping up the four children right into the trash. The kids were bagged, tagged, and left out in the backyard.

The kids manage to find a way out of the trash bag, and find themselves in the middle of their backyard, which greatly resembles an oversized jungle of weeds, grass, and flowers. The task for the kids now was to get back home. However, being small in size, what normally would have taken a few seconds would now take several hours. They decide to climb up a flower stem in order to see just how far away the house was from where they were, almost getting attacked by a gigantic bee in the process. During the struggle with the bee, Nick and Russ end up separated from Amy and Ron.

As all this is going on, Wayne discovers the remains of what was left of his thinking couch (he accidentally stepped on it while he was cleaning up the attic). He then comes to the grave realization that he accidentally shrunk his own children, who had not been seen for several hours by this point. He informs his wife about this development (which she does not take well at all, but then again, how would you react if you were told that your children accidentally got shrunk?), and then decide to tell the neighbours, who are also worried about where their children might be.

Not realizing that their children were just a few feet away.

Wayne decides to check out in the backyard in order to find his children (who ended up reuniting with each other after the bee incident). Unfortunately, while he searched for the children, he accidentally turns on the sprinkler system, causing Amy to almost drown. Luckily for Amy, Russ saves her life by giving her CPR. Afterwards, the group decides to try and find their way back home. Along the way they find a meal in a gigantic cookie, they sleep inside a Lego block, and they encounter a friendly ant (whom Ron gives the name of Antie) who helps them travel at a much faster rate of speed. Sadly, along the way, the kids are attacked by a scorpion who has every intention of killing them, and Antie ends up making the ultimate sacrifice to save them.



An act of heroism and selflessness if ever I saw one.

It certainly makes one take a second glance at things that may seem insignificant at first look, doesn't it?

I guess in this case, it is all a matter of perspective. On any given day to those kids, they may not have thought anything of a small ant. It was only after they shrunk down to smaller than an ant that they realized just how much they owed their lives to their ant friend.

I guess that's the whole point to why I wanted to talk about this movie in general, and how it kind of relates to my opening paragraph. Certainly my size growing up was much bigger than that of my classmates, but it didn't really define who I was as a person. It was just one characteristic that in the long run didn't really matter. It didn't matter how small or how tall a person really was. All that mattered is the skills that a person had.

Now, I know I promised that I would not reveal any ending of a Monday Matinee, and I still stand by this position.



Seeing as how this is a Tuesday though, I suppose I could let some secrets slip if you haven't seen this movie yet. Obviously, I let it slip that this movie had two sequels, so it's a given that somehow all four kids get back to normal size. But how they get that way is an adventure and a half.

I know I'll never look at a bowl of Cheerios quite the same way again.


Monday, September 19, 2011

Just Another Arcade Monday: Super Mario Kart

I'm going to begin this blog entry by making a confession.

I am a far better driver on arcade games than I am in real life.

It's absolutely true. Whenever I play any sort of video game that has to do with any form of simulated driving, I can usually figure my way around the various courses and do fairly well. I may even end up winning a particular race or two, or beat a time trial.

I just only wish I could translate my stellar driving abilities from video games to the real world. But, alas, my absolute fear of driving has mostly given me feelings of paralysis behind the wheel.

I was just shy of my 30th birthday when I got my learner's permit to drive...basically, just a few months ago. It was one of the hardest and most frightening decisions for me to make personally, but I knew that I had to do it. For one, I needed a valid source of identification, since I was tired of having to show three separate pieces of ID trying to confirm that I was who I was all the time. Getting a license definitely put an end to that problem.

But secondly, I realized that it was all about looking fear in the eyes, and I knew that if I had any shot of making it big in this world, learning how to drive would probably be an asset.

My biggest problem with learning to drive is twofold. I don't nearly have enough skills behind the wheel to feel comfortable on the road. I reckon I could get those skills if I could find someone patient and understanding to sit in the passenger seat with me as I drive, because I have learned the hard way that family members are too high-strung.

But the very fact that I do have my learner's permit is a good first step, and I would think that most people would agree that I'm beginning to come out of my shell.

That being said, is it wrong for me to admit that I wish that driving a car on the highways was as simple as using a joystick to control a pixelated car across a screen?

Of course, anyone who HAS driven a car on the roads before knows that it isn't NEARLY that easy. A little more fun, but not easy.

In fact, I would like to dedicate this blog entry to one of my all-time favourite driving simulation games of all time. I would rent this game at the video store at least once a month, and although I never actually owned the original game, I did end up purchasing the Nintendo DS version, which I admittedly still play today.



The date was September 1, 1992. By this date, the Super Mario franchise had grown considerably. With the first three Nintendo games selling millions of copies worldwide, and Super Mario World helping the Super Nintendo skyrocket in sales, the Nintendo company knew that it had a winning representative. But, how to keep Mario relevant in a rapidly changing gaming world, Nintendo had to come up with some new, fresh ideas to keep people from losing interest.

Hence the idea of Super Mario Kart.



Super Mario Kart was a racing game starring Mario and his friends (and enemies). Representing the good guys were Mario, of course, but you could also play as Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, and Toad. Coincidentally, you could also play as three bad guys. Bowser and a Koopa Troopa were able to drive cars as well. Donkey Kong Jr. also made an appearance as one of the drivers.



Otherwise, the game was set in various areas around the setting of Super Mario World. You had courses in Bowser's Castle, Vanilla Lake, Chocolate Island, Ghost Houses, and Donut Plains. Each one provided a different challenge that drivers would have to overcome. On the Chocolate Island courses, you would have to contend with mud pools (which I always liked to say were melted pools of chocolate sauce). In Vanilla Lake, you had to deal with icy road conditions as well as thin ice that would make your cars sink to the bottom of the frozen lake. And, well...there's other courses that would make your head spin.

But fear not. There are ways in which one could overcome those obstacles.

For the real thing that made the game fun to play was the various objects one could use to dispatch your racing companions so that you could zoom ahead of them.

See, unlike respected race car sports like soap box derbies, the Indy 500, and NASCAR, this game actually encouraged you to cheat.

All one had to do was drive over top of one of the question mark blocks that would pave each course (which was a nice little throwback to the original video game series), and they would get a special item.



Some of the items benefitted the players themselves. Mushrooms would give them a speed boost, while starmen would make the racer invincible. Really, nothing that much different from the item uses in the Mario series.

There were a dozen items that could be used to cause a lot of havoc towards your opponents.

The most common item that could be used are banana peels, which are used to make racers spin out of control. Other items included two different coloured turtle shells. Green ones could be shot at racers, but weren't very accurate. If you happened to get a red shell, then they acted as homing beacons, which automatically aimed towards the racer directly in front of them. In later Mario Kart sequels, a third shell would be added. If one were to get a winged blue shell, the shell would go after the racer in the pole position and cause some serious damage.

Believe me. As the courses grew harder, those items would prove to be a major asset. You'll be glad you have them.

Particularly with one multi-coloured race track in particular.



On every version of Super Mario Kart, there happens to be a track called 'Rainbow Road'. On the surface, they are the most beautiful looking courses in the whole game with brilliant shades of colour and twists and turns.



But don't let their beauty fool you. All of those courses will have you wanting to throw your controller through your television screens. For Rainbow Road is the ultimate test of your skills, and you'll need to have mastered all your driving skills in order to make it through.

I guess if I were to compare my own driving skills, that final road test would essentially be my own version of Rainbow Road, only with a lot less sheen and colour. For Mario and his friends to actually make it to Rainbow Road, they would have had to have performed some stellar driving skills, and earn their way to that place.

Just as one day, I'll have to do the same.

But I know that if I can overcome my fears, my Rainbow Road will be in my future very soon.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

A Sunday Across The Pond With Paddington Bear

NOTE:  In case you're wondering why this Sunday doesn't have a jukebox inside it, read yesterday's entry, and you'll see why.  Don't worry, the jukebox returns next week!

I would make a safe assumption to say that everyone has owned a teddy bear at one point in their lifetimes. Some may have a collection of teddy bears that run into the hundreds, while others only had one bear that they have held onto for years and years.

As far as my own experiences with teddy bears go, I did own my share of them over the years. As of now, I currently only have two. One was given to me as a gift by a neighbour friend who passed away a couple of years ago. The other one was given to me as a 'Get Well Soon' gift by my niece when I was recovering from a health scare a few months ago.

Over my childhood though, I reckon that I have had several stuffed bears in my lifetime. I already told you thew story about how I received Good Luck Bear as a Christmas present, but I imagine that at some point, I had gone through dozens of bears, and that each one of them had some significance in my life.

As it turns out, a teddy bear turned out have such an impact on one man that it ended up changing his life forever.

The story takes place in London, on December 24, 1956. A young man was walking around Paddington Station, glancing at nearby shops surrounding the area. He happened to pass by one particular store where there were several things available for sale. Inside this store was a particular shelf where something immediately caught his eye.

A lone teddy bear, sat on the shelf.

A teddy bear that the young man thought would make a fantastic Christmas present for his wife.

After the Christmas holidays ended, the young man kept thinking about that lonely bear sitting on the shelf. He thought, and thought, and somehow came up with the idea that he could write a story about the bear. Over the next ten days, he worked hard on the story, and by the end of the tenth day, he had composed a book about the bear.

It was quite a heartwarming tale, really. At Paddington railway station in London, a family happens to come across the bear, who is sitting at the station with a suitcase and a note attached to him reading 'Please look after this bear'.

The family happens to be the Brown family, comprised of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and their two children Jonathan and Judy. And, after hearing the tale of the poor bear, about how his aunt Lucy was too old to look after him anymore, the family decided to take him in, calling him by the same name as that of the station they found him in.



And that is how Paddington Bear came to be.

The man who bought his wife the teddy bear for Christmas was Michael Bond, the creator of Paddington Bear. And the story that he wrote about Paddington became his first published work.



A Bear Called Paddington was released on October 13, 1958, and ten more books about the bear followed over the years, with the most recent Paddington Bear book released in 2008. A few years later, in 1972, a company by the name of Gabrielle Designs came up with the prototype of the Paddington Bear stuffed toy (complete with the signature trenchcoat and hat, plus Wellington boots to keep the bear standing upright). It eventually became one of the biggest selling toys of the 1970s in the United Kingdom.

The book series became so popular that in 1975, they were adapted into film shorts. Below is a clip of the very first episode of the series, which was based on the very first book in the Paddington series.



So now that you know how Paddington came to be, it's quite interesting to note the parallels between how the Brown family came to adopt Paddington Bear, and how Michael Bond ended up giving the bear that inspired the Paddington series to his wife.

In the case of Paddington Bear, he was found all alone in the middle of Paddington Station by the Brown family, who immediately decided to take him in. Which if you think about it wasn't that much different from how Michael Bond found the bear. Like Paddington, the bear he bought was the only one on the shelf, and when he bought the bear, he was giving it a home too.

I remember having fond memories of watching Paddington Bear on television when I was growing up, and I absolutely remember wanting my own Paddington Bear. Unfortunately, I never did get one. I did however have the next best thing.

When I was in elementary school, every year (usually around the first week of June), our school library would often go through their entire collection of books and purge some of the ones that were basically on their last legs. Pages torn, bindings coming unglued, covers so wrinkled that they were on the verge of falling off. New books were ordered to replace those ones that were deemed too unworthy to be checked out of the library.

However, the library's loss was the student body's gain. For every June, they would have a used book sale in the library of the school. For mere pocket change, we could buy some of these used books and magazines for our own collections. Sure, they were past their best before date, but that didn't mean that the stories on the inside weren't any good.

Anyways, I think I must have been in the fifth or sixth grade or something like that when I went to that particular book sale. There were dozens and dozens of books that were for sale, and it seemed like depending on what gender you were, certain books got snapped up quicker than others. The boys in my class bought up old issues of Sports Illustrated magazines and books about cars, trucks, and other modes of transportation. The girls snapped up as many issues of Seventeen magazine as they could, as well as fighting over the dog-eared copies of the Sweet Valley High series that occasionally popped up at those sales.

I was not one to follow along with the crowd back then.

All I was interested in was looking for a book that sounded interesting and that I could read and re-read over and over again.



It was there that I found a copy of A Bear Called Paddington. The above cover is the same exact one that was on this copy (only picture it with faded colours and a torn bottom right hand corner.

The pages inside were all there, and I must have spent hours reading all of the stories and mishaps that Paddington got himself into.

Paddington was a friendly, polite bear from Peru who happened to have a voracious appetite for marmalade, and although he often got into trouble with his many adventures, he really did mean well. Reading about how Paddington would go shopping at the Portobello Road markets and how he was respected by the shopkeepers and market vendors.  How Mr. Gruber would take Paddington on special outings in town.  Those stories just made me love the bear even more. It was a great thing to see Paddington adjust to life at the Brown household because the family took a chance and invited the bear into their lives.

Well, kind of like I invited Paddington into my life by picking up that used book at that book sale.