Author: DOuG pRATt

Happiness Is …

peanuts
© UFS, Inc.

Here is today’s Peanuts comic strip reprint. Look at the self-satisfied expressions on the faces of Violet and Patty! Lucy was self-centered, and she tormented Charlie Brown, but these girls are out-and-out cruel.

Schulz & Brown.jpg
Charles Schulz with the real-life Charlie Brown

It’s no secret that Charles Schulz and his first wife, Joyce Halverson, had a rocky 20-year marriage. They divorced in 1972, and a year later Schulz married Jeannie Clyde. The characters Violet and Patty disappeared, and they were more-or-less replaced by Peppermint Patty and Marcie, who both liked Charlie Brown.

One of the few times Schulz ever publicly spoke of his first wife can be read in this interview. Schulz mentions a then-new biography about himself, written by Rheta Grimsley Johnson who was, at that time, the wife of cartoonist Jimmy Johnson.

Monsters and Madmen DVD

Monsters and Madmen

My appreciation of Criterion Collection home video goes back to its beginning, when Citizen Kane and King Kong were released on the old Laserdisc format. The discs included a commentary audio track, and extras such as trailers and production stills. These features are now taken for granted, but 20+ years ago they were exciting and ground-breaking.

Criterion specializes in releasing high-quality specialty videos for titles that are hard-to-find and/or haven’t been presented properly. Mike Dobbs has posted some interesting background on a new Criterion set of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies, including a couple that feature Bill Pratt, aka Boris Karloff. I’ll be looking for these cheesy classics on Netflix, but when will there be a Queen of Outer Space DVD?

Star Wars – Missing Minutes

Biggs and Luke

A long time ago, seeing bloopers and deleted scenes from movies was a rarity. But along came DVDs and it started to seem that scenes were being shot solely for the purpose of padding out supplementary material.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/FEB07/SW.flv 400 175]

This post will be nothing new to die-hard Star Wars fans, but here are a couple of scenes that didn’t make it into the release of the first movie, which is coming up fast on its 30th anniversary.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/FEB07/Anchorhead.flv 400 185]

Beastly Studio Trick

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/FEB07/BeautyBeast.flv 400 263]

After I played around with the audio speed for the Ross Bagdasarian posts and South Park, my sister wanted to hear a speed correction of Robbie Benson’s voice from Beauty and the Beast. There’s a video clip above, and below is the audio sped up by 15%. Not sure if that percentage is exactly right, but it sounds close enough.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/FEB07/BeautyBeast.mp3]