Every year Ashens reviews a couple Advent calendar. This year is Star Trek and Doctor Who, featuring boxes shaped like the TARDIS and a Borg Cube.



Day One features a Fizzbin deck!


It's sad how rudimentary Ashen's knowledge of Trek is. But hey, he knows more than I will ever know about British 8-bit computers, so I guess we're even.

oldie but goody: an AI programme that judges your spotify listening habits

How Bad Is Your Streaming Music?

Solving a 21X21X21 Rubik's Cube.


A cube this size is patently ridiculous.


I keep my old 3X3X3 around mostly as a souvenir and talisman, not as an actual toy. As it turns out I'm not very good at Rubik's Cubes.

liminal spaces:

Airports always make me feel

Someone reproduced the clock tower from Zelda Majora's Mask using craft materials.


Crafting miniatures is something I like to watch, but would never have the patience to do myself.

Today we have a roundup of Christmas Carol adaptations that I've never seen before.



1971 animated Alastair Sim



I'm not sure how to feel about this one. I don't want to throw too much mud at a classic, so I'll just say that too much attention was paid to inconsequential things (especially the detail in the art) and not enough on the important things (especially the pacing and rhythm of the dialogue).



1997 animated Tim Curry



Sadly I've seen too many cartoons voiced by Tim Curry, so his voice doesn't sound like "Scrooge", it sounds like his standard cartoon voice as heard in Mighty Ducks, Mighty Max, Gargoyles, or the Story of Santa Claus.



That being said, this is a competent version, even if the dog annoyed me at times.


1982 animated Ron Haddrick



This one has details often overlooked in adaptations.



One of my interests is the history of animation, and while I'm hardly an expert, it's fun to try to judge when a cartoon was made by the style. This one screams 1970s to me.



1954 live-action Fredric March



The musical interludes are a bit much. It's also odd to hear "Santa Claus" and "Kris Kringle" instead of "Father Christmas" for this setting. Furthermore, "Kris Kringle" was still in a transitory phase at this point in history (1843), you'd be more likely to use "Christkind".



Even so, it's a competent version.



1969 animated Ron Haddrick


Definitely a different sort of adaptation. The animation reminds me of the contemporary Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table.



1970 live-action Albert Finney


Turning this material into a musical rarely succeeds (Muppets aside, of course). You see, unless the director and composer are very careful about meshing the numbers and the plot, you get abrupt emotional shifts. And this story can't afford to have those, the emotional journey is supposed to be seamless.

apparently grimes references the 1988 novel player of games in her latest song?

kotaku

As a followup to the Christmas Carol roundup...


The Disney Christmas Carol record that was later remade as Mickey's Christmas Carol


I've known about this for awhile, but never heard it.



Alan Young is great as usual, but whoever did Mickey was awful (as it turns out it was also Alan Young). This was during the limbo between Jimmy MacDonald and Wayne Allwine as the voice of Mickey. Alan Young also voiced Merlin/Ghost of Christmas Past, which was another bad performance. The original voice for Merlin, Karl Swenson, died in 1978, four years after this record. I wonder if he was unavailable or Disney was just being cheap (probably the latter).



The musical numbers are unnecessary.



Scrooge's muddling of the syllables in words seems like an odd trait for the character. That's Willie the Giant's job.


Walker Edmiston did a valiant job as Willie the Giant, but he'll never match Billy Gilbert.


Overall, it's a valiant effort at telling the story, but it falls short in so many ways.

since this brad neely song is stuck in my head:

whopper and a forty

Trailer for the new David Tennant version of Around the World in 80 Days.


ATWIED is one of my favorite classics, although I admit that I've read children's abridgements more than the original version. The Jackie Chan version never appealed to me, the plot seemed to have as much to do with the original story as the Robert Downey Jr. version of Doctor Doolittle did with that original story.



Meaningless aside: why can't anyone do the story of Doctor Doolittle properly? It's not that hard. Studios focus on the "talks to animals" part to the detriment of the actual story. Which is always Doolittle doing his best to help people no matter the cost or risk.



As for the Pierce Brosnan version of 80 Days, I thought he was rather stiff. Phileas Fogg may be methodical and unwilling to get close to people, but that doesn't equal "stiff."

Musical Hell presents the Drew Barrymore Babes in Toyland


Hey, I prefer the original Annette Funicello version too, but this movie still has a soft spot in my heart. Is it hokey? Yes. Are the songs a little stiff (despite being from Leslie Bricusse of Doctor Doolittle and Willy Wonka fame)? Yes. Do I care? No. This movie has heart, and sometimes that's enough.


(And the Amazing Thing I Learned Today is that the version I know is heavily cut down from the original, which you can now see on YouTube here).

a really rare animal:

capylope

Facebook Meme Roundup!


Who would win in a fight? Hawkeye or Legolas?


I have to note that it says "fight", not shoots better or farther. Odds are Legolas would win in an archery contest, but Hawkeye would win in an actual fight.


A Christmas tree halfway through a Portal portal


I thought about blue and orange portals for a second. I've never played the game, but I thought that one was exclusively "in" and one was exclusively "out", but I guess not. I am bothered that the two portals don't have the same diameter.


How all starships meet each other with the bridges pointing up


Look, I'm a fan of the "buttered toast always lands butter-side down" thing as much as anyone, but this just seems a little ridiculous. The galactic poles are clearly established, so it shouldn't be too hard to tell the computer to keep the axis of the saucer parallel to them in a certain direction.

a friend released a book on his covers for Doctor Who:

Timeslides

oof so netflix canceled cowboy bebop?

Change(dot)org

Bing Crosby sings "Good King Wenceslas"


GKW is one of my favorites of the more obscure Christmas Carols.

Today's Star Trek Advent Calendar entry is a bottle opener in the shape of a Cochrane delta.


What amuses me the most is that Ashens consistently holds it backwards. The narrow leg is on the right, dude!

Here's my Star Trek: Enterprise commission for Alain Gruetter:

Xindi-Insectoids and Aquatics

Someone remade the overworld from the first Legend of Zelda in 3D.


This sort of stuff amazes me.

A fan documentary about the development of Superman the Animated Series.


And the amazing thing that I learned today was that early designs for Brainiac were based on Ruk from TOS!