Insanity from Zanzibar19.com

We here at Zanzibar19 and creators of the SNOWMEN HUNTERS are longtime lovers/followers of Leo Laporte, the tech guru of TechTV (R.I.P.) and were in large part inspired to do the internet show thing based on Laporte's podcast evangilizing. Or is it Podcast?

This week, Laporte, over at his site TWiT.tv put for the idea of calling what we all do in online entertainment netcasting rather than podcasting.  As proud members of the TWIT army from the start, the SNOWMEN HUNTERS are with you here, Leo.

You would think shooting snowmen is the craziest thing a man could do. You would think a man marrying and making sweet, gentle love to a stick would really, really be as far as a man could go.

But in this week’s SNOWMEN HUNTERS, you’ll see just how far Sherman and Everett will go to get what they need to be he best damn snowmen killers in the world.

Brought to you by the fine, damaged people at Zanzibar19.com. We should be sorry, but we’re not.


C & R

Lately we’ve been buzzing with the fun of having our own mini-studio, punching out these SNOWMEN HUNTERS every week.

Yay, good for us. Whatever.

But as usually happens when you get a bit of success, your mind starts wandering towards the next head to mount on your wall. While we haven’t found that yet (other than more, crazier SNOWMEN HUNTERS episodes) we came across a hell of a headtrip.

It started as we thought about last week’s posting, about the SNL cast that is playing somehow, somewhere in the afterlife.

The SNL posting got us thinking about somehow bringing actors/directors from any era together for fantasy projects. We then remembered George Lucas talked a few years back about just this: At some point, the CGI engines which brought us the true, interesting fantasy acting of Gollum and King Kong (not just the misfires of Jar Jar) could eventually be used to resurrect Alec Guiness, River Phoenix, Natalie Wood, whoever. Grab an actor’s catalogue, every performance, picture, interview, voice-recording, plug it into a new script and POW: Now 1960s era William Shatner is the villain in the rebooted JAMES BOND series.

Try to tell us you didn’t just get a geekgasm.

Then it hit us: It’s only a matter of time before this process was used to remake the STAR WARS saga. Just try to tell us Lucas, the man who rewrote history (by CGIing Jabba the Hutt and having Greedo shoot first) wouldn’t jump at this. Or at least order his minions jump on this after he passed on.

Then it hit us again: The fine points of this technology will take a few years to develop, so when would this happen? Lucas is fond of reissuing tweaked versions on anniversaries (1997’s SPECIAL EDITIONS), so a better question is when could this happen? Wednesday, May 26, 2027, or the 50th Anniversary of STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE.

Dust off your countdown clocks. So stake-out your place in line now. It’s coming. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Of course that got us and our pals thinking about what/how we’d do it. Here’s what we’ve come up with. Totally useless, we know, but really interesting to contemplate.

STAR WARS 2027

Writer/Director: Peter Jackson (we’re sure they’ll eventually have director-bots too). We thought about what he said in remaking KING KONG: That he’d use the original as a ‘real historical document’ i.e. the core which would act as a skeleton around which he’d update/change/enhance, all while being faithful to the ‘reality’ of the original work.

Sean Penn (FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN era) as Anakin Skywalker
Rachel Weisz (ABOUT A BOY) as Padme Amidala
Vincent Price as The Emperor
Andy Serkis (Gollum in LORD OF THE RINGS) as Yoda
Sean Connery as Obi Wan Kenobi
Orlando Bloom (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN)as Luke Skywalker
Vivien Leigh (GONE WITH THE WIND) as Princess Leia
Burt Lancaster (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY) as Han Solo
Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca
Denzel Washington as Lando Calrissian
Christopher Walken as Count Dukoo
Lawrence Fishburne as Mace Windu
James Earl Jones as Darth Vader
Peter O'Toole (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) as Qui Gon Jinn
Errol Flynn (THE SEA HAWK) as Jango/Boba Fett/Clone Troopers

Hashing around this idea with our friend Scott Sleeper, he came up with an interesting list:

James Dean (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) as Anakin Skywalker
Sophie Marceau (THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH) as Padme Amidala
Boris Karloff (or maybe Robert England) as The Emperor
Frank Oz as Yoda
Russell Crowe as Obi Wan Kenobi
Hugh Jackman as Luke Skywalker
Katharine Hepburn as Princess Leia
Charlton Heston (PLANET OF THE APES) or Bruce Campbell (EVIL DEAD 2) (LOL!!) as Han Solo
Kevin Peter Hall (the Predator in PREDATOR) as Chewbacca
Lawrence Fishburne as Lando Calrissian
David Carradine (KUNG FU, KILL BILL) as Count Dukoo
Keith David (PITCH BLACK) as Mace Windu
James Earl Jones as Darth Vader
Jet Lee as Qui Gon Jinn

Yes, we’re geeks.

Greetings Snowman Army, and Zanzibar19 fans nearly everywhere...

A quick, sweet note from those of us slaving over the first season of SNOWMEN HUNTERS. You can now subscribe to us in iTunes. Right now the teaser trailer is there, but come September 6, you'll be able to get new episodes of SNOWMEN HUNTERS every Wednesday.

To subscribe, simply click over to Zanzibar19.com, and click on the iTunes subscribe button.

That is all for now... Watch This Space.

C & R

So we've been watching video-over-the-web grow for awhile now, and we couldn't be more excited about the next year or so. The promise of web video is finally paying off. As you may have read by now, we're betting our futures (well, part of them...) that quality, independently made TV-style entertainment will live and breath on the web. Sexy, isn't it, 'independently made, TV-style entertainment?' That kind of phrasing makes you want to rip your clothes off, huh? Thank God we make better shows than write late-night blog postings...

September 6 we're premiering our first show, SNOWMEN HUNTERS, at Zanzibar19.com. So we're stoked.

But enough about us (for now). We're here tonight to praise four fellow travelers. While watching the YouTube wave lift all boats, we've come to like four shows and feel the need to throw praise their say. Three you probably know, but the fourth is maybe the best of them all, and not nearly as famous as it deserves. . .

First, ASK A NINJA . These guys can do more with a wall and a ninja suit than most comedians can do with $60 million and a gang of ex-SNL writers. How is it some guy is making money doing NATIONAL LAMPOON'S DORM DAZE 2, and the Ninja is still shooting in his apartment? Well, that's the kind of injustice the web-video revolution will fix.

Second, SOUP OF THE DAY . . . This one premiered in May with three-episodes-a-week, (obviously, a show made by robot crews and edit-droids) and finished their season in July. It was a hell of a stunt to watch. The premise is simple: A guy is dating three sexy, accomplished women and must choose between them. Yes, yes, it's the kind of problem we all are familiar with, but what they do with it, and the fun improv stuff they pull off, shows a good web-based show will give you things network and even cable won't. They've broken up the show and are now having daily 3 minute episodes.

Third, CHAD VADER. Even while we're both geeks with toxic levels of nerd-based paint swimming in our blood, we make it a practice to steer clear of STAR WARS send-ups. We only need one Kevin Smith, thanks. But when we finally saw this one, damn it, it was funny. It also proved something we truly believe: Even a bad sounding idea can be great if you do it right. Vader as a day manager of a grocery store? Where's Carrot Top when you need to shoot him? But it was really, really good. And despite their recent undeserved cancellation at Channel 101, we hear they're making more episodes now. . .

Which brings us to the funniest, weirdest, wildest series we've seen in this new medium. If there were justice in this world or the next, these guys would be as big as ASK A NINJA . Not only is this the funniest thing we've seen this year, it's fearless. These guys know how to go farther than anyone, and why if you do that right, you're funnier than anyone.

Their show helped convince us the truly wild frontiers of comedy were here on the web, which is why we're going to make people laugh by shot gunning snowmen in the face. The title says it all: PUPPET RAPIST. These guys are gods.

I say again... PUPPET RAPIST. Go watch it. Then write them an email and thank them from us.

We thought the time had come to say some of this. See you with more news soon. . .

C & R

This one has me scratching my head. It is a ridiculous place to be in, but, well, here it is.

I've just come home from MIAMI VICE. I've had higher hopes than most it seems, given the greatness of Michael Mann has displayed all the way back to the days he sheparded VICE on TV. HEAT, THE INSIDER, COLLATERAL... I've actually been looking forward to this movie as more than the lame DUKES OF HAZARD class TV to movie exercises.

But my enjoyment of the film was gobsmacked by this weird fragility in all films: If one detail is off, the spell is broken. The detail here was Colin Farrell's scruffy/pretty hair and his mutton chop mustache. Is this a flimsy pretnese to kick a passable summer action film around? Yes. Can I help it? No, and it's driving me crazy. Wish I could forgive it, given my respect for Mann, but I cannot. There were whole scenes where I couldn't follow the rat-a-tat dialogue because I was distracted by the absurdity of Farrell's hair. It was like the zombie head of a 1978 truckdriver had been graphted onto Mann's lead. The action was good, the characters were terse and layered as you might expect, and the glossy coolness was as good as you'd expect from, well, the Mann. But I could enjoy almost none of it.

Can a movie be wrecked by a bad haircut? I guess it can, which surprises and irritates me because I'm not one of these nit-picker armchair Scorseses that piss on everything that rubs me the wrong way as bad filmmaking. I can see past a few bad, or even big, faults in a movie if the underlying quality is there. But, I'm telling you... You've got to see this hair.