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Top Simpsons moment

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Jude
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Posted: Fri 27 Jul , 2007 12:33 pm
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A slightly less enthusiastic review (warning: contains minor spoilers )
The Ottawa Citizen wrote:
Simpsons okely-dokely; Movie starts off with a bang, but then -- d'oh! -- it fades

The Simpsons Movie *** 1/2

Starring: The voices of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer

Directed by: David Silverman

Rating: PG

Playing at: AMC, Barrhaven, Coliseum, Empire 7, Orléans, SilverCity, South Keys, StarCité

- - -

In The Simpsons Movie, Homer Simpson adopts a pig on which he lavishes more affection than he does on his son Bart. He stores the animal's poop in a backyard silo labelled Pig Crap (Marge: "He filled the whole silo in two days?" Homer: "Well, I helped"), then dumps it into Springfield Lake, precipitating an environmental disaster that threatens the very existence of his hometown.

This, then, is The Simpsons -- for 18 glorious years, a showcase of a special recipe of one part social commentary (Mmmmmm. Social commentary.) to two parts (D'oh!) idiocy, with a dash of self-reference. There's a scene where Homer holds the pig so it can put hoofprints on the ceiling and sings, "Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig, he does whatever a Spider-Pig does," to the tune of Spider-Man. It's gloriously moronic and it encapsulates the genius of Homer: cultural acuity with a lobotomy. Homer brings to selfish life a stupidity so playful it stands both as satire and, well, stupidity.

He is all Three Stooges rolled into one, but with doughnuts.

Homer (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) comes from a long tradition of half-assed TV husbands, while his wife Marge (Julie Kavner) is also a figure out of the Great American sitcom, the long-suffering mate, albeit with blue hair and a rather blue libido as well. I interviewed Kavner once and asked her what it was that kept Homer and Marge together. "I think that the sex is phenomenal," she replied in her distinctive adenoidal wheeze.

Together with their children -- underachieving Bart (Nancy Cartwright), overachieving Lisa (Yeardley Smith), and forgotten baby Maggie -- The Simpsons provide a vehicle for a subversive social satire that has made it television's smartest comedy, although, like much in life, it isn't as good as it once was. The Simpsons Movie restores the glory, at least in its opening section, and then fades. It has a big-screen scope, but a small-screen heart: in the approximate words of the show's Comic Book Guy, 'Like the Longest. Episode. Ever.'

It is also, at least for the first 45 minutes, "Like the Funniest. Episode. Ever," but you can feel the air go out of the film in the second half.

It's a mystery how a movie starring Homer Simpson can run out of gas, but there you go. After President Arnold Schwarzenegger (Harry Shearer) declares an emergency in Springfield and covers the town with a dome, the plot seems to lose its way and falls back on some of the ordinary gags and characters from recent years of the TV show: the slack-jawed yokel (Hank Azaria), or the trip out of town to be educated by the Wise Indigenous Person.

Along with broader scope, a more detailed animation and some racier sight gags (Bart has a nude scene) than the TV series, The Simpsons Movie comes with a more explicit emotion. The program has always been based on a loving notion of family, but on TV it came with more self-awareness. It served to soften what is essentially a caustic picture of American life -- its central character, after all, is an alcoholic idiot who works at a nuclear power plant -- but in the movie the sentiment is more overt, as if a film audience needs reassurance. When Homer and Marge have a tender love scene, or Ned Flanders (Shearer again) gives Bart lessons in fatherhood, the sentiment subverts the subversion.

In the end, though, The Simpsons Movie gives us much of what we love about the characters, and if there is not enough of some of them, there is something of most of them. It has the chaotic, handmade feeling that gives the show its roughshod appeal, and more laughs than anything else in the theatres this summer. This isn't stupidity at its best, perhaps, but as Flanders would say, it's okely-dokely.

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yovargas
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Posted: Fri 27 Jul , 2007 12:58 pm
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Does anybody still watch the current episodes? As I've said before, to me, the show has sucked since Season 8 so for me this movie is about a decade too late.


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Alatar
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Posted: Fri 27 Jul , 2007 1:02 pm
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I don't personally, but many people I know do. I find it hard to believe it could have gone from genius to rubbish, at least based on the friends I know who are fans. Maybe its not as good as it was, I don't know, but it has a very good shot at still being one of the best things on TV even at its weakest.

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Jude
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Posted: Fri 27 Jul , 2007 1:49 pm
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I'm getting all my Simpsons viewing from DVD's, and I'm over a decade behind. Like Alatar, I have trouble believing that it's total rubbish, but I'll have to see it for myself.

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yovargas
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Posted: Fri 27 Jul , 2007 2:03 pm
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What season are you up to, Jude?


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Jude
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Posted: Fri 27 Jul , 2007 2:05 pm
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Still only season 5. I've discovered this version of season 6 with proper packaging, so I'll probably order it when I have some spare money.

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Jude
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Posted: Sat 28 Jul , 2007 3:38 pm
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I have ordered season 6 - I figured that by the time it comes in I'll have some money to spare. :D

Anyone seen the movie yet?

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oldtoby
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Posted: Sat 28 Jul , 2007 8:43 pm
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Yes,

it was :damnfunny: :damnfunny: :LMAO: :LMAO: :LMAO: :LMAO: :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup :lol: :lol: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

go see it...NOW


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vison
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Posted: Fri 03 Aug , 2007 4:07 am
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Saw it. Loved it. Could have been better. But man, oh man, it could have been worse!!!!! Some wonderful bits.

Only.

Only.

What happened to that bloody pig?

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yovargas
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Posted: Sun 19 Aug , 2007 12:03 am
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Hey Jude, look here:

The Simpsons - The Complete Sixth Season

Looks like fox finely came to their senses and released the box set. :cool:


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Jude
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Posted: Sun 19 Aug , 2007 12:54 am
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Yes, if you look earlier in this page, you'll see that I've already discovered that and ordered it. :poke:

But thanks anyway. :Wooper:

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yovargas
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Posted: Sun 19 Aug , 2007 1:19 am
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Well, jeez, I can't be expected to remember what happened a whole 20 days ago!
So, like, where is it and stuff? Shouldn't it have arrived by now?


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Jude
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Posted: Sun 19 Aug , 2007 4:24 am
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Good point - it's been three weeks. I'll phone the shop tomorrow and find out.

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Iavas_Saar
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Posted: Tue 21 Aug , 2007 1:28 am
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Belated movie review - this was Simpsons on good form, but not the climax of 20 years worth of great TV I was hoping for. I laughed a lot, but somehow it just felt like 3 good TV episodes strung together, rather than a movie.

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Jude
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Posted: Thu 26 Jun , 2008 11:22 pm
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*E*V*E*N*S*T*A*R*
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Posted: Fri 27 Jun , 2008 12:29 am
I've cried a thousand oceans, and I would cry a thousand more if that's what it takes to sail you home.
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Oh, Jude. lol




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Jude
Post subject: Re: Top Simpsons moment
Posted: Tue 21 Oct , 2008 5:47 pm
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Season 11 has come out on DVD It's available in two versions:

cheap cruddy packaging
good boxed packaging

Reading some of the customer reviews, it looks like the so-called "collectible" packaging is well-nigh universally despised:
Quote:
Fire whoever is designing these boxes

I thought the Homer Head box was the pinnacle of stupid in this series, but this one takes the grand prize as the absolute worst DVD packaging I have ever seen. The discs are imprisoned in incredibly tight cardboard sleeves. It is impossible to get the discs out without either bending the cardboard artwork, getting your finger prints on the bottom of the disc, or scraping the disc across the cardboard in a desperate bid to remove and watch them. The whole travesty is then folded up tight, accordion-style. Unfolding the packaging simply makes the discs impossible to remove. You have to jam your fingers into the folded version and hope you don't ruin the disc just trying to get it out.
Quote:
I'm done. I'd rate this zero stars if I could.

For many years, I have been happy to pre-order my Simpsons DVDs months and months in advance. When Fox decided to put season 6 in the stupid "collectible" boxes I wasn't happy, but they seemed to learn their lesson and made replacement "boxes" available for season 6 and had regular boxes available for each subsequent season. For some reason, when the new season was announced at Amazon only the special edition packaging was available and it wasn't clearly identified as a special edition. So once again, I received a crappy box that won't fit with my other DVDs on the shelf. I'm sending it back and would like to order the regular box, but for some reason Fox and Amazon has seen fit to charge $7 more for the non-special edition package. Nice try. It looks like my personal collection of Simpsons DVDs is only making it up to season 10. You should take better care of your customers.
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You can't see the dvd's, they're difficult to get out without scratching up the dvd or bending the box...just terrible.
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And they're trying to discourage people from downloading?!
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Great show, terrible packaging!
Quote:
A Total "D'Oh" in Packaging

I am w/the many others who have given this review a One Star due to packaging alone. Don't get me wrong ... I love The Simpsons! All the episodes are GREAT (and they are all new to me seeing that I haven't actually watched television since the mid 90s). But this packaging SUCKS!! I ordered from Amazon to get my season nice and early because I needed a new season fix! Little did I know that this box was one of the dreaded HEAD BOXES that don't fit in w/the other "normal" DVD boxes. I picked up a "normal" box set from Target and my Amazon HEAD box will be given as a gift. Another thing that SUCKS is how the DVDs are stored w/in the box itself (head or no head). They are just shoved in the cardboard without anything to protect them from getting scratched. Mine were already scratched when I got them. How cheap can you get? Recap: The episodes of Season 11 ROCK! The packaging SUCKS!!!!!!
Hello, DVD manufacturers, the people have spoken! Are you paying attention? :poke:

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*E*V*E*N*S*T*A*R*
Post subject: Re: Top Simpsons moment
Posted: Tue 21 Oct , 2008 7:18 pm
I've cried a thousand oceans, and I would cry a thousand more if that's what it takes to sail you home.
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Aww, that's a shame. The artwork looked really nice but I would hate having to touch the underside of the disc to get it out of the packaging like that.

I don't think I have a lot of boxed sets. A fair number of tv seasons on DVD though. Sometimes you just want it as dressed down as possible, other times you want a little work put into it. And most of the time you don't really notice it either way unless it's particularly annoying :P or really excellent. The best packaging I've ever seen is for the first season of Fraggle Rock. Couldn't find any photos of it, but it opens like a book and everything is so easy to handle, plus there's great stories and episode summaries. I spent lots of time looking through it and don't often do that.




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Jude
Post subject: Re: Top Simpsons moment
Posted: Mon 01 Dec , 2008 4:26 pm
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Update: I've got season 6 and am loving it.

How retro is that?

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yovargas
Post subject: Re: Top Simpsons moment
Posted: Tue 02 Dec , 2008 11:09 pm
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Than you should totally know about Aunt Helga!! :D :D :D :D :D


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