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Archive for the ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ Category

Douglas Coupland and Graham Romieu–Box of Pain Presents: Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (2011)

Posted in Canadian Content, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Death, Douglas Coupland, Family Guy, Graham Romieu, Morality, Short Books, Surreal, Violence, Yuck! on April 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

highlySOUNDTRACK: FAMILY GUY-“Everything is Better with a Bag of Weed” (2009).

familyguyI recently posted about the song “Me Ol’ Bamboo” from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  When I was looking it up, I discovered that Family Guy had created a song called “Everything is Better with a Bag of Weed” that is sung to the tune of “Me Ol’ Bamboo.”  And holy crap I nearly busted a gut laughing when I watched it.

Of all the weird songs to parody, this was a brilliant choice.  The song is catchy and fast paced and absurd and just adding these new lyrics has made it funnier and more absurd.  There’s even the same odd instrumental break which they animate as playing glass bottle with drumsticks and as far as I can tell that’s really what it is.

My o my, this is very funny indeed.

I can’t seem to embed the video here which is a shame, but by all means check it out here.

[READ: April 9, 2013] Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People

I have read most of Douglas Coupland’s work and I like him quite a bit.  But I have discovered from re-reading his books recently that he’s not exactly the author I thought he was.  And one thing is that he’s really not very funny.  Existential? Yes. Comically absurd?  Yes.  Funny?  Not so much.  So I was surprised to see that he made this book with the rather funny title.

I assume this book is supposed to be funny since the inside flap says “Seven pants-peeingly funny stories featuring seven evil characters you can’t help but love.”  And indeed, the premise is funny, the title is funny.  But the stories are really not funny at all.  Here’s the list of the seven stories: Donald the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box; Sandra, the Truly Dreadful Babysitter; Hans, the Weird Exchange Student; Brandon, the Action Figure with Issues; Cindy, the Terrible Role Model; Kevin, the Hobo Minivan with Extremely Low Morals; Mr. Fraser, the Undead Substitute Teacher.  Judging from the titles of the tales you may think there’s humor in them…a juice box as a main character?  But there’s something about them that falls flat. (more…)

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Dav Pilkey–Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot vs the Mecha-Monkeys from Mars (2002), Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot vs the Jurassic Jackrabbits from Jupiter (2002), Ricky Ricotta’s Might Robot vs the Stupid Stinkbugs from Saturn (2003)

Posted in Adventure, Boredom, Children's Books, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Dav Pilkey, Funny (ha ha), Mad Scientists, Musicals, T., Threats, Yuck! on March 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: “Me Ol’ Bamboo” (1968).

bamboo  rickymarsThis song comes from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the movie.  It is a strange little set piece in the early section of the film.  In terms of the movie it is utterly absurd: Caracticus Potts (Dick van Dyke) is looking to make some quick cash.  He heads to a carny circus (that has just popped up) with his crazy haircutting invention.  A brawny guy sits down and gets a terrible scalping.  Potts runs away through various parts of the circus and ultimately ends up in the chorus-line-type set up with a dozen or so guys getting ready to sing this song.

When the song starts Potts is able to follow the routine fairly well, although he’s always a step or two behind. But by the second verse he is now in charge of the song, singing extra lyrics and then doing a bit of a solo routine which the other guys then follow.  Now, I realize it’s a musical and as Clark asked the unasked question, “how do she know the song they sing when she is hearing it for the first time?” But even in the logic-defying world of musicals, shoehorning this set piece into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a stretch.

And yet, if you’ve been reading, you know we watched this weeks ago and I can’t get it out of my head.  The song (weird as it is being about a bamboo pole) is really catchy.  And the dance routine is, simply, amazing.  I don’t know much about Dick van Dyke’s performing skills, but man he knocks it out of the park.  And, more amazingly, there are some really long takes before they cut away.  And ensemble of 12 or so doing a very complicated routine for more than a few measures is really impressive.

The more I watch it, the more impressed I am and the more I understand why they shoehorned it in.  Check it out:

[READ: February 22, 2013] Ricky Ricotta Books 4-6

This is the second set of three Ricky Ricotta books.  They don’t vary all that much from the first three–Ricky and his Might Robot get in trouble, and then they save the day.  What I did like was that Pilkey adds some valiant assistants who add a new dimension to the rather simple story.

In Book 4 Ricky and his Robot are bored of playing hide and seek so they decide to go skateboarding   The Robot uses the Ricotta’s minivan as a skateboard and of course, he crushes it.  His parents hold them responsible for paying for it (which Ricky calculates will take 259 years).  Meanwhile on Mars, Major Monkey hates living on a cold, dead planet and he wants to take over Earth.  But he has been watching what’s been going on down there and he knows what happened to the three previous villains (I though that was a nice touch).  He also knows that the Mighty Robot has stopped all of their plans.  So he sends a decoy to distract the Robot.

The decoy says that Mars is in trouble so the Mighty Robot flies off to help.  But when he gets there he is trapped by Major Monkey’s ambush and he is stuck on Mars!  Then Major Monkey flies aback to Earth knowing no one can stop him. (more…)

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Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) [movie]

Posted in Adventure, Benny Hill, Cars, Children's Books, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Dick Van Dyke, Fantasy, Ian Fleming, Marriage (Happy), Roald Dahl, Threats on March 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[WATCHED: March 11, 2013] Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

ccbbAfter enjoying the audio book of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang so much we thought it would be fun to watch the movie–it’s one of the first times we’ve watched a movie after reading the book with the kids so we thought it would be fun to compare them.

This proved to be an awesome opportunity to show that books and movies can be a wee bit different.  Holy moley, about the only thing that the movie has in common with the book is (some of) the characters have the same name and that there’s a magical car.  Oh, and there’s candy involved.  Other than that, there’s really no resemblance whatsoever.

The screenplay to the movie was written by Roald Dahl, which explains some of the weirdness (child catcher, anyone?), And yes the movie producer’s real name is Albert Broccoli.  But seriously, someone read the book and said, hey, that car is cool, I’m going to take it and make something totally different with it.  Oh, and I know, it should be a musical!  Oh, and it should be two and a half hours long!   Oh and even though it’s set in England, it will star Dick van Dyke!  Oh, and instead of him having that crazy accent like in Mary Poppins, he’ll be American, even though his children and father will be British.

I was going to talk a bit about the movie, but that only seems doable by comparing it to the book.  In this handy table format. (more…)

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