Saturday Night Showcase> The Legend Of The Lone Ranger

Consider this a minor bit of penance.

Finally Watched is an article series where I finally watch (hence the name) a movie I’ve always wanted to see but didn’t get the chance. I review why I wanted to see it and what I thought of it now that I finally succeeded in watching it. I still have a lot of those to review. However, there are two movies that came off the Finally Watched list partway watched because they turned out to be so bad I couldn’t finish them. One was M*A*S*H*, based on the novel by Richard Hooker & W.C. Heinz that did not live up to the show at all. While you can question if Hawkeye, Trapper, and Trapper’s TV replacement BJ were in the right on a case by case basis (I’m not sure the show did often enough but it still did at times), the movie version of Hawk and Trap really weren’t the best examples of human beings, as the movie became something closer to the sex romps of the period. You can read my attempt to review it for more.

The other was a movie that was part of my childhood because it was promoted in my Cheerios. I had the poster on my wall for a long time and the mailaway came with a certificate saying I was one of the good guys, a cheap badge, and a mask that never fit because eye masks didn’t work for me even before I started wearing glasses. I wasn’t even a big Lone Ranger fan. I knew of the show and maybe caught a rerun plus his and Tonto’s cameo on The Brady Kids (magic bird…long story), but a superhero cowboy? I found it interesting in concept anyway.

When I finally got to watch The Legend Of The Lone Ranger, I was something I shouldn’t be: bored. So bored I didn’t finish an hour of the movie and wrote about how and why I couldn’t get through the movie. In both cases, and I know I’m a rank amateur blog, it’s not very professional to do a partial review. So tonight is my penance as Shout Factory’s YouTube network has the full movie up. Perhaps you will have better luck than I did. In fact, while getting comments is probably my biggest challenge here at the Spotlight, I want you to tell me (please be honest) if you made it through the whole movie, what you thought of it, and whether or not I was justified in noping out before he even got the mask on. This is the movie that stopped Clayton Moore, the actor from the beloved TV series, to stop wearing the mask because the producers wanted this actor to be seen as the Lone Ranger, which is kind of insulting. I went over it in my semi-review. Let me know if you enjoyed.

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BW’s Saturday Article Link> The Fall Of A Fresh Prince

Will Smith used to be one of the golden kids of Hollywood, making a save-the-world movie at least once a year. The former hip-hop rapper was making it big with TV shows and movies…and then his star fell, culminating in becoming a meme after slapping Chris Rock on the Oscars. Brock Swinson at Cinematic Fanatic points out that his failings started long before the slap heard ’round the world. You’ll have to scroll down a few links before the article actually starts. Not sure why they post on the website that way. The email newsletter I understand, but not the article.

Doctor Who: 1963 BBC Reports & Notes> Concept Notes For “New SF Drama”

Our previous installments were technically 1962. Now we reach the year 1963, and the BBC hasn’t given up on science fiction even if the last two reports seemed to be trying to talk them out of it. Sydney Newman is now Head Of Drama at the British Broadcasting Company and he’s on board for creating a new science fiction story. We don’t have a name. We don’t even have character names. But we do have a concept!

Creating a television show is a long process of evolving ideas. We saw in the reviews of the Star Trek pitch and writer’s guide how the USS Yorktown under Captain Robert April because the USS Enterprise under James T. Kirk. This is when this series of articles should really start getting good for Doctor Who fans and I’m excited to get to this section finally.

I’ve only skimmed the article so I know they’re setting up the characters they want, but I’ll be going over the specifics as I read them. Return to this article series’ prologue to find out how to download all these notes (so I only have to fix one link if the site I got them from goes down) if you want to read along…though I usually just post the whole thing up anyway in this series. These reports are shorter than most of the guides I’ve reviewed. The first report only needed two articles and the last one just needed the one. How many will I need here? The sooner I get started the lower the odds I’ll need a second one.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Silver Streak Comics #1

So we have what looks a Native American (but I don’t think is) beating up Chinese while a giant monster is in the distance. 1939, people.

Silver Streak Comics #1

Your Guide Publications (December, 1939)

Here we are with a new publisher diving into the world of comics books. It will survive 23 issues on the newsstand, or at least that’s what Comic Book Plus has, with a few rescans of earlier issues to mess with their numbers. Will this be any good? It starts off with the history of the Tom-Tom drum (not to be confused with the Tom Tom Club) before we get into our stories. So let’s get into our stories. I’m hoping this isn’t just a collection of newspaper strips.

[Read along with me here]

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BW’s Daily Video(s)> The Many TARDIS Police Box Props In CG

Three videos, because the first and third ones are under seven minutes and the middle video just under five. From We Travel By Night we have a look at the various props Doctor Who used for the Police Box guise of the Doctor’s TARDIS. Yes, we’re getting extra geeky today. The first video covers the original TV series.

The second video covers the out of continuity Peter Cushing movies that were based on what little was agreed upon in the writing room (and some that weren’t like the Doctor’s origin) and the TV movie that sadly didn’t give us Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor with a full run outside of Big Finish, but thankfully is still canon.

The final video covers the revival series up to the video’s posting date (May 14,2022, but that’s not counting final rendering of the video). So it only goes as far as the Chris Chibnall shows with Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor.

If you’re curious, I did post their previous videos on the history of the Police Box and TARDIS versus the actual Police Box in the past. The channel also has videos going over the consoles in separate short videos, which I might use in the future.

Fox Kids Spider-Man Returns…in a comic without the show’s head writer

The 1990s Spider-Man from Fox Kids and Saban Entertainment, often referred to as Spider-Man: The Animated Series despite two of the previous three shows with Spider-Man alone in the title ALSO being animated, is my favorite adaptation of Peter Parker and company. It’s too bad “neogenics” didn’t become retconned into the comic origin, though the effect the symbiote had on Peter was, most reinterpretations of the characters were spot-on (why is every so afraid to do Electro properly and what was with Doctor Octopus’ outfit?), and the only thing keeping Christopher Daniel Barnes from being my favorite Peter is Spider-Man Unlimited breaking out Rino Romano. Remember, this isn’t the show I grew up on. I’m an 80s kid. I had reruns of the first cartoon (we never got the 80s cartoon in my area) and Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends on NBC, plus USA Network would do a marathon of the US live-action series (the one without the robot) every Thanksgiving. I miss “Spidermania”.

The show unfortunately ended on a cliffhanger thanks to Sony being a pain in the butt when they got the media license that I assumed was just the movies, but I hear this is what got Spider-Man replaced with Spider-Man Unlimited, which was the better animated show with the best Peter but went in some odd directions to avoid Sony’s issues, a stunt Sony pulled again with getting Peter into the proper MCU. In the show, Peter marries Mary Jane Watson, but it turns out to be a clone created in the manner of Hydro-Man as part of his obsession with MJ. This also would have set up the cartoon’s own version of the Clone Saga (bullet dodged, I guess), but before then the real MJ had fallen through a portal into another dimension. Peter’s quest to find her was interrupted by Madame Web insisting he work with Spider-Men of other realities, with her promise to help find MJ once the multiverse was saved. As Peter leaves on his quest, the show ended.

Fans have always wanted to know how Peter rescues Mary Jane, though I guess today would be the question of if he did. My head cannon has him crossing over to the DCAU for an animated version of a Superman/Spider-Man crossover because I really want an animated Superman/Spider-Man crossover with Tim Daly and Christopher Barnes resuming their roles. I don’t care if they’re alternate comic companies by alternate animation studios both owned by alternate media super conglomerates, if the comics can do crossovers again, I can dream! Well, I’m not getting that, but Spider-Man ’94, a four issue miniseries inspired by the X-Men’s animated return and the cameo with the show’s cast in the finale, does promise to answer whatever happened to Mary Jane Watson.

Except the show’s head writer, John Semper Jr., is not returning.

I certainly have nothing against J.M. DeMatteis. Dude wrote my favorite of the Spider-Man and Batman crossovers and some really good Spider-Man stories. Semper even says DeMatteis did some work for him but I couldn’t find evidence of him writing an episode (or rather Google AI didn’t and looking at the Marvel Database didn’t turn any up). He didn’t even work on the tie-in comic to the show. I see this going…iffy.

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“Yesterday’s” Comic> Fracture #1

Reality punching again? What did reality do to these people to get punched so often?

Fracture #1

Action Lab Comics (July, 2011)

WRITER: Shawn Gabborin

ARTIST: Chad Cicconi

COLORIST/LETTERER: Dave Dwonch

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