I followed a link the other day to the 10 Most Insane, Child-Warping Moments of ’80s Cartoons.  Pretty funny stuff there.  I’d also like to direct your attention to this list of the 10 Star Wars Toys that Unintentionally Look Like Other Celebrities.  (It’s worth your while if only so that you, too, can be stunned by the resemblance of General Riekaan — from The Empire Strikes Back — to Senator John Kerry!!)

I’ve just discovered a phenomenal web-comic called Let’s Be Friends Again.  It’s mostly about comic books.  I love it to death, and it’s well worth your precious time, so check it out.

Have you seen this ten-minute fan-made live-action G.I. Joe film, Battle For the Serpent Stone?  I’m a big proponent of fan-films, and this one is of pretty high quality.  It’s quite an achievement — take a look.

Here’s a link to an terrific interview with IDW Comics editor Scott Dunbier, discussing his work in putting out the gorgeous new hardcover Bloom County: The Complete Library, Volume One (1980-1982), the first of five books that will collect every single strip (many of which have never before been collected) of Berkeley Breathed’s masterpiece comic strip.  I lust after this collection, and very much hope that Mr. Dunbier is able to move forward with collections of Outland and Opus as well.

This is a great story about an annoying movie theatre patron.  I wish there was a theatre like The Alamo Drafthouse here in Boston, because I would be more than happy to spend an enormous amount of money watching movies there and nowhere else.  I am sick to death of having my enjoyment of a movie interrupted by some jackass talking, texting, or some other such nonsense.

Harvard University is offering a class on The Wire??? Sign me up!!

I never believed it would happen, but filming on the two-film adaptation of The Hobbit is coming closer and closer to getting underway.  Click here for an interesting interview with director Guillermo del Toro with some updates on how things are progressing.

Despite my renewed appreciation for the final run of episodes of Battlestar Galactica, this hilarious evisceration of the plot points in the last 45 minutes of the finale is impossible to argue with.

Here’s a terrific list of one fellow’s Top 15 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.  It’s an interesting list.  I absolutely adore episodes such as “Over The Edge,” “Mad Love,” “Robin’s Reckoning,” and “Heart of Ice,” and I was also pleased to see some lesser-known gems like “The Ultimate Thrill” and “Growing Pains” make the cut.  (However, while “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” and “The Clock King” are solid episodes, I definitely wouldn’t count them among the series’ 15 best.)  I posted my own best-of episode list for Batman: The Animated Series last year, so click here to read my selections!

The great Battlestar Galactica saga comes to an end, tomorrow.  I am trying to be brave!  In preparation, I have been thinking about some of my favorite series finales.  Click here to see numbers 10-6.

5.  Arrested Development — “Development, Arrested” — Cut down before its time, creator Mitch Hurwitz and co. at least had enough notice to be able to craft a fantastic finale.  Structured to echo the events of the pilot (I love it when series finales bring things full circle like that), it’s another momentous party-boat ride for the Bluth Clan.  Young George Michael confronts his feelings about his cousin Maeby (Michael:  ”How long has this been going on?”  George Michael: “I don’t know… about 53 weeks?”).  Lindsay stresses about getting older (”I’m going to be 40 in three years!”  Michael:  ”You know, being twins, our birthdays are pretty close to one another…”).  Tobias… well, remains Tobias (”Perhaps I should call the hot cops and tell them to come up with something more nautically themed.  Hot Sailors.  Better yet, hot se–” Michael, interrupting: “I like hot sailors!”  Tobias: “Me too.”).  And many, many long-running jokes are revisited (”Ann.”  ”Her?”  – “That was a freebie” — “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake” — “Annyong!”)  You might have noticed yesterday in part 1 of this list that I focused a lot on the final scene as the true measure of a series finale’s worth.  No surprise, the geniuses behind this show bring it all home in a note-perfect epilogue, in which Maeby attempts to sell the Bluth family story to Ron Howard (who was, of course, the narrator of the show for its entire run).  Says Howard: “I don’t see this as a series.  Maybe… a movie?”  We can only hope!!

4.  The Wire — “-30-” – As the fifth and final season of The Wire unfolded, I was petrified as to what would happen, in the end, to all of the beloved, damaged characters on this take-no-prisoners show.  Would ANYONE get a happy ending?? Somehow this finale managed to bring proper closure to almost every member of this amazing, one-of-a-kind sprawling ensemble cast.  Without breaking from the tough, down-beat tone of the series, I still felt throughly satisfied with where everyone wound up — quite a feat.  This episode is filled with all of the intensity and emotion that made this series such a powerhouse.  In particular, the Irish wake for one of our good friends was a profoundly effecting scene.  And the finale montage of life in Baltimore?  Phenomenal.  Makes one want to watch the entire series through again.

3.  Quantum Leap — “Mirror Image” – To be honest, while I really enjoy Quantum Leap, I can’t say that I’m an enormous fan.  I’m sure I haven’t seen every episode.  I know the finale was controversial, but I have to say, it is by FAR my favorite episode of the series, and one that I have found myself revisiting many times.  Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) leaps into a strange bar… and discovers that rather than leaping into someone else’s body, he seems to actually be himself, on the day of his birth.  The bartender (Bruce McGill) who may or may not be God gives Sam some answers about his leaping and offers him a momentous choice.  The closing words of the episode, written across a black screen, give us one of the saddest endings of a TV series that I have ever encountered: “Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.”  Brutal, and yet, somehow — perfect.

2.  Star Trek: The Next Generation — “All Good Things…” – As with the Quantum Leap finale, this final episode of Next Gen stands as one of the finest of the entire run of the series.  Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) finds himself moving backwards and forwards through time — living parallel lives in the past (just a few days before the series’ pilot episode, “Encounter at Farpoint”), the present, and the future.  Providing us with a poignant look back at the characters as they were when the show began and intriguing hints as to where they might all wind up, “All Good Things…” is also a sci-fi brain-puzzle of the best kind as the viewer races along with Picard to solve the mystery of the paradox that, apparently, threatens humanity’s very existence.  A return visit from Q, who was the main villain of the pilot, also provides us with a nice bookend to the start of the show — and he gets to deliver some of the episode’s best lines.  Also, there is some slam-bang action with the three-nacelled Big E in the future.  Finally, it all comes down to a marvelously written and performed final scene, as Picard finally joins the rest of his command crew — his family — in their regular game of poker.  ”Nothing’s wild… and the sky’s the limit.”

1.  Babylon 5 — “Sleeping in Light” — I wasn’t a fan of B5 when it originally aired.  I only discovered it when it was re-run in syndication on the Sci-Fi channel a few years after it ended.  I have seen the show through in its entirety three times now, and while it has its flaws (and I still prefer Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when it comes to my favorite sci-fi show set on a space station), I have tremendous respect for the achievements of J. Michael Straczynski and the rest of his team on the creation of their “novel for television.”  Without question, the series’ finest hour is this, its final episode.  I am not embarrassed to admit that each of the three times that I have watched “Sleeping in Light” it has reduced me to a sobbing mess.  In this episode, twenty years have passed since the events of the series, and Captain John Sheriden summons his friends together for one last time before his death.  There is no action in this finale, no sci-fi shoot-’em-ups, just potent emotion and a sad, somber meditation on life and death.  The episode is a masterpiece of writing and acting, with so many powerful scenes and moments: The toast at Sheriden’s dinner in which everyone names their absent friends; the simple act of Delenn turning towards the empty spot in her bed; Ivanova’s voice-over line: “but I never saw him again in my lifetime.”  I get a little chill just typing that.  Not just a satisfactory ending to the show, “Sleeping in Light” almost feels to me as the story that the entire series has been building to — it’s reason for being.  It is a masterpiece.

So there you have it!  Ronald D. Moore, show-runner of the new Battlestar Galactica, was a key player in two of the finales on this list — that of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  Will he and his team give us a finale to BSG that deserves a place on this list?  Or will the entire thing turn out to be the fever dream of a young, autistic Zak Adama?  We’ll see!!  I’ll be back here on Monday with my thoughts.

And maybe next week I’ll also post my thoughts on some of the WORST series finales that I’ve ever seen…?  Could be fun!

Just a quick note today.   In yesterday’s blog I referred to what I called “The Wire Effect.”   And what do I read this morning?   Amy Adams – so terrific in The Wire as well as in Gone Baby Gone – is set to appear in the season finale of The Office.

I can’t wait!   Here’s hoping all of the other amazing actors from The Wire continue to get work…

So my wife Steph and I were watching Gone Baby Gone last week, and I must confess that we both let out a bit of a squeal at a certain moment during the flick.   No, it wasn’t during the nail-biting quarry shoot-out in the middle of the film.   No, it wasn’t during scene with the Jamaican.   And no, it wasn’t during the devastating moment of choice that forms the crux of the end of the film.   All of those moments are terrific, don’t get me wrong – Gone Baby Gone is one of my favorite movies from last year.

But the moment where Steph and I really sat up and took notice was during the funeral scene, when Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) catches the eye of a police offer who he knows.   Steph and I looked at each other.   “Is that…OMAR???”

And indeed it was.   Michael K. Williams, who has basically one scene in Gone Baby Gone (but it’s a doozy — the steakhouse meal with Patrick), is the same actor who portrayed the shotgun-carrying, drug-dealer-murdering, criminal-with-a-code Omar Little for five amazing seasons on HBO’s The Wire.

And this is what I refer to as The Wire Effect – the phenomenon on which one is so in love with the characters in a beloved TV show that you sit up and take notice whenever they appear elsewhere.   Part of the reason we were watching Gone Baby Gone in the first place was because, after watching Amy Ryan on The Wire, Steph and I wanted to see her performance in GBG again (since the first time we saw the flick was before we’d ever seen The Wire).   I love Lost – but I lost it even more this season when Lance Reddick (Lt. Cedric Daniels on The Wire) appeared briefly as the mysterious “assembler of freighter folk.”   Heck, I even got excited by The Sarah Connor Chronicles when I saw Andre Royo (“Bubbles”) appear on that show as a resistance fighter (in a tiny role that was a sad waste of his enormous talents).

This has happened to me with other shows.   I got very excited when Alexander Siddig, who played Dr. Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (by far my favorite of the Star Trek series) appeared last season on 24.   (And I was very very annoyed when he was unceremoniously killed off-screen after only a few episodes.)   And a grin always appears on my face whenever I see an alumna of the late, great Arrested Development like Jason Bateman or Michael Cera or Will Arnett.   (He’ll always be GOB Bluth to me!)

Here are five more DVDs (continuing my list from yesterday) that I loved loved loved this winter, when the pleasant caress of new TV shows had been denied me:

VI.   Eastern Promises — I have seen this movie 3 times now since it came out last year, and I enjoy it more every time.  (And I liked it quite a lot the FIRST time I saw it!)  Viggo Mortensen gives an amazing you-just-can’t-look-away performance as the deadly Russian Nikolai, whose path crosses with a midwife named Anna (Naomi Watts).  And let’s not forget the amazing Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is as amazing as he always is.  (I must admit, though, that I’m such a geek that whenever he’s on screen, in this or any other movie, I always hear him in the back of my head saying: “not even zey…can stop ze future.”  X-Philes know what I’m talking about…)

VII.  House of Games: The Criterion Collection – A terrific new DVD of the first film that David Mamet directed (from his own script).  I’m a big Mamet fan.  There are some flaws in the story, sure…and I’ve never been, as a viewer, quite fooled by the central con of this flick.  But the simple joys of watching the great performers (Joe Mantegna, Rickey Jay, the late great J.T. Walsh, among others) mouth Mamet’s rat-tat-tat tough-guy dialogue is more than enough for me.

VIII.  Volver – Pretty surprising for a sci-fi nut like myself, but I found myself completely swept up by Pedro Almodovar’s story about the intersecting lives of various women in Madrid.  Penelope Cruz is spectacular.

IX.  The Best of the Dick Cavett Show: Stand-Up Comedians – This DVD set contains several notable episodes from the great Dick Cavett’s 1970’s talk-show, in which he engages guests in fascinating hour or hour-and-a-half long (really!!) conversations about their lives and work.  This set focuses on his interviews with stand-up comedians such as Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Carol Burnett, and many others.  I love the Daily Show and all of today’s late-night talk shows, but after watching these incredibly in-depth interviews its hard to take any of today’s five-minutes-then-you’re out “interviews” seriously.  This is the way it should be done.  If you have any interest whatsoever in stand up comedy, you need to track down these DVDs.

X.  The Wire – My sister got me the 1st season set for my birthday earlier in the year – and my wife and I promptly devoured the entire 5 seasons of the show.  Truly one of the greatest TV shows ever made.  I’ll discuss this in greater depth at a later date, but for now, let me just say that I have never seen a more compelling examination of the state of the American city (in the show’s case, Baltimore).  The enormous ensemble of actors, slowly developed over the run of the show, will never be equaled.  For years I’d heard people sing the praises of the show.  Now count me in amongst the choir.  Genius.