X more days 'til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

[here_inmyhead]

The family's discovered unopened presents sent from seven years ago from the Dolans and my late Grandma Ag. :o Here's what I got:

- A hairbrush and a set of hair ties.
- A pink short-sleeved sweater-like shirt that fits me perfectly. :o
- Chicago: Original Broadway Cast (Holy shit, and I still haven't even seen the movie)
- A pretty lilac journal (96-lined pages)

I know my 16th birthday's long been over, but... thanks Grandma Ag. ;;

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Executive Meddling hadn't gotten in the way of making certain movies? Did you think how awesome it would've been to watch The Spirit as an animated movie directed by Brad Bird? If Thief and the Cobbler* had been finished on time and released uncut? If Ralph Bakshi had made that animated horror film he wanted instead of That-Godawful-Atrocity-That-I-Hate-That-Should-Burn-In-Fucking-Hell-It-Does-Not-Deserve-Breathing-Space-And-Makes-Me-Spit-Vile-When-I-Mention-Its-Name aka Cool World?

Or if you're just a film fan who likes to ponder the "What if"s. What if the roles of Carrie Fisher and Sissy Spacek were switched between Star Wars and Carrie, and Carrie Fisher played Carrie White?

That's just what Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt is about. It's the most interesting short story I've read in a long time. :o You can also listen to the podcast/audiobook version here. Found it via one of comments on the 80's Dan Halloween III episode at Brad's site. :o

*I don't think it's a great movie, even with the Recobbled Cut, I'm just using it as an example.

Comments

[amelia-seyroon.livejournal.com]

Lauren Faust was lucky she had a lot of freedom with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. That is, before she stepped down as executive producer. ;A;

And if not for executive meddling, maybe Mike and Bryan could have confirmed what had happened to Ursa during the finale. ;A:

But you have me curious with Thief and the Cobbler, what was the issue with that? I haven't seen it in YEARS.

[insanepurin.livejournal.com]

Get ready for a looooooooooooooooooong story. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thief_and_the_Cobbler)

Part of its fall also has to do with Richard Williams being a HUMONGOUS perfectionist. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RichardWilliams) When animators were working on the "Thief-using-the-pole-to-steal-the-balls" scene, he had them redo drawings from scratch because they didn't draw the pole right rather than just erase and fix the lines.

You can watch the Recobbled Cut here. (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=18B0CA620B61D076#)

[amelia-seyroon.livejournal.com]

I have all night here in the office. |D;

Sheesh. I had no idea. o.o

[insanepurin.livejournal.com]

I was really surprised when I looked up the movie, too. I just remembered this movie I was interested in that showed up as a commercial on one of my VHS tapes, being confused it had different titles ("'Arabian Night' is now 'Thief and the Cobbler'? Ehhh?") and... I did not expect the Wiki entry to be huge as it was, haha. XD

[amelia-seyroon.livejournal.com]

Princess Yum Yum was ngggggggggh, so beautiful. *_* She looked like Jasmine. I wanna watch this movie again!

Now I'm remembering The King and I, which I never had the chance to see.

[dioschorium.livejournal.com]

That story was brilliant. Thank you for linking to it. I'm the kind of guy who gives a great deal of thought to the quantum states of fiction (the "what if"s, as you call them).

Star Wars is a series that continues to fascinate me with its myriad of unused possibilities. "Impossible Dreams" mentioned that Return of the Jedi once had David Lynch attached to direct, but honestly, the entire story could have been about the paths that the Star Wars series never took. I like to pretend that the original trilogy is all that exists, as do many people. However, what if there had never been any sequels to the original, as Lucas planned when he was first drafting the narrative? (By that, I don't mean that the revelations and character development in the finished products--Lucas' false claim of a "five-hour movie"--were there from the beginning; I mean that the movie was meant to be a single film, a simple, sincere improvement on early twentieth-century space fantasies: no more, no less, no sequels. The movie expanded into a series after the original became wildly successful.) What if the cast was mostly Japanese? What if everyone was a robot? What if Luke had two younger brothers? What if Luke were a woman? What if Darth Vader were just a thug who toadied for the villain who was actually significant? What if the droids were humans? What if Leia were more of a classic princess, with long, flowing locks instead of a cinnamon bun-style hairdo? What if Han Solo were a big green alien married to a female mammalian monster? What if Jabba the Hutt were a humanoid pirate? What if C-3PO were a sleazy con bot, or what if he appeared to be androgynous but was still definitely male? All these ideas and a multitude of others were proposed in all seriousness as the original Star Wars was being developed. The first film (Episode IV) barely edges out as my favorite of the original trilogy for that reason; it has the longest and most spellbinding history behind it. Choosing among them is difficult, but if I could watch only one entry in the series for the rest of my life, I would select Episode IV.

And then there's Pokémon. Did you know that the concept was initially called Capsule Monsters before someone originated the idea of keeping the monsters in one's pocket? Also, Clefairy was going to be the anime mascot, but Pikachu was already more popular among fans of the games. Perhaps most interestingly, the first-generation games were going to have 190 Pokémon rather than 151. In their places reside various iterations of Missingno.

Can you tell that I would love and cherish a book about the programming and concepts of the original Pokémon games? Anyway, I just wanted to share this information with you.