Nobody truly sounds like Ravel but Ravel, and even he struggled to sound like Ravel; his oeuvre isn't that big because he was so painstaking in his work.

Bah. In a just world, Robert Stigwood would never have even met the Gibb brothers.

You mean John Farrar, writer of the hit singles "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "You're the One That I Want" (and also her 1980 hit "Magic" from Xanadu). But his contributions were balanced out by the awful tile song by Barry Gibb, sung by Frankie Valli. The film was doomed from the first minutes by that song. Any…

When I saw this in the theater (age 9) I had no idea how rare and unequaled the popularity of Batman was: Two prime-time episodes a week, and ratings good enough to get a full-length movie into theaters after only half a season on TV.

Well, technically that's true, but Take the Money and Run had a very different vibe. For example, it had a conventional musical score (by Marvin Hamlisch, who also did Bananas) and an offscreen narrator, and was full of scenes that couldn't have been in a "real" documentary, such as Virgil playing cello in the…

That could have been the negative influence of Shepherd, rather than (or in addition to) the absence of the positive influence of Platt. For example, Shepherd convinced Bogdanovich that she should sing, hence At Long Last Love.

The final season (1998-99) had some good stories and some excellent guest actors; I wouldn't exactly call it unwatchable. Bayliss, Giardello, Munch and Lewis were all still there, plus (for two episodes) "Kellerman, P.I." I admit I was repelled by any scenes featuring Shepherd, and the Mike Giardello stuff was awfully…

Not knowing anything about the recording artists or producer(s) involved, I first heard what turned out to be "Blurred Lines" on the radio a few years ago and immediately thought of "Got to Give It Up" because of exactly this - the intangible "feel," the laid-backness of the tempo and beat, the background chatter,…

There were two different sets of Schindelman illustrations of Oompa-Loompas, it turns out: black Africans (the original) and white "hippies." The latter were done for an early-1970s edition that also had corresponding minor changes in the text, such that now the Oompa-Loompas weren't specifically from Africa. See an…

Of course the book also made plain (at the end) that Willy Wonka, although energetic, was an old man, hence his desire to find someone to take over the factory - the whole purpose of the Golden Ticket contest. Neither of the two movie adaptations (so far) pays any attention to this.

Jerry Goldsmith's The Motion Picture score did interpolate a few measures of the main Courage theme (in a captain's-log scene after leaving Earth), but not the fanfare.

"I'll protect you, fair maiden!" (Sulu, as D'artagnan)
"Sorry, neither!"

Not true - Courage did some work on third-season episodes (mainly rearranging music he already wrote for season 1).

I remember when it was originally announced as a Simon & Garfunkel album to be titled Think Too Much (a title eventually used for two different tracks on Hearts and Bones, with "B" on side 1 and the up-tempo "A" kicking off side 2 - it's strange to think that very few college students today have any idea about "sides"…

Sure Hearts and Bones wasn't a sales success, but there are some songs on it that rank with his best work, especially the title track.

Worth the price if starfish & coffee is included.

As already mentioned by others, in the original 1966 version Max Mencken (played by the top-billed Jack Cassidy) was a Daily Planet columnist. The mad-scientist villain was Dr. Abner Sedgwick, who sings the song "Revenge." The Aguirre-Sacasa rewrite of recent years, I believe, changes Mencken into the villain and…

The new Star Trek movie isn't mentioned either in the story above or in the weekend estimates story at Box Office Mojo. Stats there show that Beyond, in the middle of its 4th week of domestic release, dropped about 60% from opening weekend to weekend 2, then another 60% from weekend 2 to 3, and then another 32% from…

Likewise Superman. No injuries as far as I know, but It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman (which I saw with my parents in 1966) was also a failure, lasting about 5 months before closing. At least that one was a musical comedy. One song has had a continued life: "You've Got Possibilities," originally sung by Linda…

I'd have to go with That Thing You Do! - pop culture about pop culture, if you will.