Super-Sized Random Crap

One of the best things about the Internet is that it allows you to dig up those random bits of media that would otherwise have you thinking “Was that real, or the product of some strange dream I had as a kid?” Over on the That Guy With the Glasses community blogs, JMShearer has posted an article on my personal favorite bit of weird nostalgia, Kidd Video. If you're not a child of the 80s and/or have never seen this series, go look it up on YouTube because it is some of the strangest WTF-ery you will ever witness. (Sadly, complications involving the rights for the music videos featured in the show mean the series will never see the light of DVD.) A couple years ago, I did a YouTube Caption of one of the weirder episodes. I'm thinking I may have to do another one.

The musicalization of mid-grade 90s movies continues with the announcement that Anything Goes and Nice Work If You Can Get It director Kathleen Marshall will stage an adaptation of the Drew Barrymore Cinderella-riff Ever After. I have a lingering fondness for the film, so I'm a bit more curious about this idea than I have been for other movies-turned-musicals lately. If they can write a decent score for it (which is a pretty big “if” given the recent track record for this sort of thing) it could be very good. Though thanks to the original trailer, the movie is inextricably linked with “Mummer's Dance” in my mind.

On the inverse of the movie-musical adaptation coin, a film version of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's farce Lucky Stiff has been announced, with Christopher Ashley directing and Jason Alexander playing a major role. I'm a bit (pleasantly) surprised by this news, as I didn't think this was a musical popular enough to catch Hollywood's attention. I don't know if it can adapt well to film—it's a very broad and frequently silly show (though in a good way), and will almost certainly invite comparisons to Weekend at Bernie's--but I would like to see them try. Maybe if they succeed, we can see a big-screen version of Ragtime...

As mentioned last week, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Gary Barlow have released their Diamond Jubilee tribute “Sing” today. The press release identifies the pair as “two of the UK's greatest living songwriters,” although the sub-”We Are the World” anthem they've produced would appear to contest that claim. Anyway, here's the video if you're curious, or if you just want to see African tribal children droning “Just sing” for what feels like ten minutes.

And just because it's so darn fun, here's the cast of Anything Goes lip synching to a One Direction song.