I'd give the huggies to . . .

For generations, one question has been burning in the minds of heterosexual male Muppet fans - which female Muppet movie lead is the most attractive?

For years, there were only two contestants - Juliana Donald as sweet, adorable young Jenny in The Muppets Take Manhattan and Diana Rigg as high class hottie Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper. The debate was civil in those days, as the two groups largely remained separate. The Jenny guys hung out at their personal Pete's Luncheonette, while the Lady Holiday men strove to find a 17 Highbrow Street of their very own.


Since the fabled Muppet comeback of 1992, things have gotten more complicated as three new contestants have entered the ring - Meredith Braun as Scrooge's (literally) scene-stealing lost love Belle in The Muppet Christmas Carol, Joan Cusack as delightfully evil vixen Rachel Bitterman in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, and Ashanti as Dorothy Gale, the Kansas girl with big dreams in The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. The argument rages now more than ever, and only your input can help bring it to an end.


So, which human is the hottest? Has Lady Holiday won your love with expository dialogue? Would you let Jenny fill in your moustache? Perhaps Ms. Bitterman stole your heart and replaced it with Club Dot. Maybe you look forward to being an old man just so you can go back in time and sing a duet with Belle, or you wait outside for the tornado that will take you to Dorothy. Whoever you prefer, vote now so the debate can end peacefully. The owners of 17 Highbrow Street are getting a little tired of all the Lady Holiday fans hanging around.

Click here to cast your vote at the Tough Pigs Forum.

Ready to Lampoon

I’m gonna be honest with you, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched anything on PBS other than Sesame Street. I know there’s quality programming out there, but who has the time for “quality” TV when there’s great shows like Studio 60, The War at Home, and Punk’d to keep me busy?. Now that the regular TV season is over, I’ve taken notice of PBS once again. And their new commercial campaign, which they call “Ready To Learn,” is outta this world. I mean that in a wow-this-is-great kinda way and not a yip-yip-yip-uh-huh-uh-huh kinda way.

The commercials go back to what made shows like Sesame Street entertaining back in the day. They took an educational lesson in one hand, hilarious parody in the other hand, then began a round of applause. It’s like friggin’ chocolate and peanut butter over here! So while the child watching won’t get the Casablanca reference, they’ll still giggle over Grover’s shenanigans.

The commercials also show the latest collaboration between Sesame Street and Between the Lions. If you want to jump in my phone booth time machine, we can take a peek at the other times we’ve seen Theo, Cleo and the gang team up with their Sesame brethren.

Our first stop is 2001, in which Bert, Ernie, and Big Bird all appeared in a bird-themed episode of Between the Lions. The cameos were just brief enough to tease the idea that they would visit the lions’ library, yet so short that it makes the viewer wish he had Tivo.

Next up, 2002, when the Between the Lions gang teamed up with characters from the Muppets, Sesame Street, and Bear and the Big Blue House (as well as a shload of other characters and celebrities) for “We Are Family,” a video that promoted diversity and tolerance. Actually, I’m more amazed that they got characters from the Muppets, Sesame Street, and Bear in the same room at the same time. Rumor has it that they don’t get along so well after the Cookiegate incident of 1999.

Our last blast to the past is 2006, where PBS first began to produce “Ready To Learn” commercials. The only one that featured a BtL/Sesame crossover was an American Idol parody, featuring Ernie’s desperate attempt at rhyming on stage while being judged unscrupulously by BtL’s Theo, Emily Elizabeth from Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Oscar the Grouch. Other commercials featured a faux BtL family sitcom, a CSI parody starring Ernie and Bert, and a game show which featured the triumphant return of Guy Smiley, along with his constant contestant Cookie Monster.

While the last set of commercials featured television parodies, this year’s batch focuses on film parodies, old and new. And really old, and not-so-new-anymore.

First up is a ToughPigs favorite, the West Side Story parody. Theo and Ernie are leading two dangerous street gangs who may be tiny, but will rip your ear off if you look at them funny. Plus, they’ve got some wicked choreography. In all seriousness, I’m glad they didn’t rumble, because Ernie vs. a lion isn’t the fairest bout they could have had. I was a little thrown off by the Jet/Pet graffiti in that one scene, but I guess they were having a tough time rhyming “Shark” with anything. And a nice Great Muppet Caper-esque cameo by Oscar at the end. Totally unnecessary, which is one of the things that make the Muppets great.

Next we’ve got the Mission: Impossible spoof. Now, far be it for me to put down any production that features a full-bodied Cookie Monster puppet being dangled on a string, but come on, how old is this spoof? Not only was Mission: Impossible released in 1996, but the parody was already overused by 1999. Heck, even Fozzie Bear took a turn at being a suspended spy in a Muppet parodies calendar. In any case, the scene is still hilarious. That little guy on the screen is BtL’s Arty Smartypants, which is a fun name to say out loud. Go ahead, try it. And Cookie Monster shows a wide array of emotions, from frightened to anxious to content, all within a few seconds. Needless to say, his acting abilities were fueled by his need for one single cookie. Now that’s dedication!

Commercial #3 is a Casablanca parody, featuring Grover and BtL’s Cleo. Now, I don’t think I’ve seen Grover in black-and-white since Monsterpiece Theater’s “39 Stairs.” And he doesn’t let down here either. Though a love affair between a monster and a lion seems a little… unnatural, I completely buy the idea that Grover would get caught up in a rhyming game, well past his partner’s patience. And that look of accomplishment on his face at the end is simply priceless.

Finally, we’ve got my favorite, the Superman parody. The world has been begging for more of a Super Grover/Superman connection, other than the “Smarter than a speeding bullet” speech. And now that Superman Returns is a solid part of pop culture, it’s about time Super Grover takes full advantage of that. I’ve got a Super Grover toy next to a Superman toy on my shelf, both of which depict the character flying upward with a fist in the air. That right there makes me think that there’s a world of possibility for parody in Grover, and I’d love to see Sesame Workshop take full advantage of that.

So there you have it. Four new commercials and four wonderfully executed parodies. But this begs the question: if this is the kind of entertainment they can create with just a little bit more of a budget, why can’t we see a larger parody akin to this on the Street? Or better yet, on the big screen? Maybe once someone discovers the connection between Abby Cadabby and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate, a new world of parody will be opened to us.

Click here to discuss a spoof of this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Muppets What Could Have Been

Over at the ViewAskew.com message boards (insert Silly Bob/Charles Barklay joke here), writer Brian Lynch was asked about his script for a new Muppet movie that was bought by the Henson Company back in 1999 and never made. The movie was called "The Next Muppet Movie," which is already a much better sequel title than "Back to the Future II."

But don't take my word for it, take Levar Burton's, who said "But don't take my word for it." Here's Brian's words, spoiling away at a movie that was never made.

The name of it was THE NEXT MUPPET MOVIE, and it was the same universe as THE MUPPET MOVIE, only years and years later, and the Muppets were hugely successful and some were getting kind of spoiled. Kermit's trying to keep them together and he's stressing out.

Anyway, an evil Hollywood agent signs the Muppets and starts putting them in solo movies and TV shows (Gonzo is the next James Bond and the next Batman, the Electric Mayhem goes Marilyn Manson-y after Animal starts a solo rap career, that kinda thing).

Kermit has to pull together a makeshift band of Muppets (Robin, Rizzo, Pepe, Bean Bunny, Digit from THE JIM HENSON HOUR, etc.) to re-start the Muppet show.

Eventually Kermit figures out the Agent had an ulterior motive in breaking up the Muppets, goes to confront the Agent, gets kidnapped, and the original Muppets have to work with the newbies to save him. The ending involves a lot of Ninjas, a giant Elephant, a seven foot Kermit, and Gonzo saving the day by crashing through the skylight in his Batman gear.

The Agent runs away, the Muppets all come back together, everyone is happy...

...but at the very end, we see the Agent gets dropped off by a taxi, fully ready to try to break up a new group. As he walks away, we pan out and reveal he's on Sesame Street.

Cameos were from Pierce Brosnan, John Cleese, Mary Tyler Moore, Marilyn Manson, all the Sesame Street Characters, Mr. Rogers, the Teletubbies...it was epic.

I talked to Michael Keaton once who had read the script and wanted to meet me because of it. I asked him to play the agent if it ever got made, and he said that would be cool. I'm very sorry it didn't get made.

That's the most I've ever spoiled about it. It was like a purging.

Wow, lookit what we could have had! I'm sure Digit's agent is kicking himself now.

Click here to talk about this article, which may never get made, on the ToughPigs forum!

The Sounds of Skeksis

This is the third in a three-part series of articles in which Tough Pigs contributors take a look at The Dark Crystal. The first installment can be found here and the second can be found here.


It’s true, folks. I was privy to the same viewing of The Dark Crystal as TP’s own Ryan and Michal. And boy, do I have a lot to say about my first time seeing The Dark Crystal in several years. Unfortunately, Ryan and Michal have done a pretty thorough job at giving us some good reviews in great detail. So I don’t have much more to say on the subject.

But have you ever known me to be at a loss for words?

Rather than rehash what’s said and done (more said than done), I will bring to you, our beloved ToughPig readers, a list of sounds heard in The Dark Crystal that drive me crazy.

The Narrator. Sure, Joseph O’Conor did a smashing job with his Shakespearean-trained voice, but when you’ve got an old British man talking to you for 5 minutes with nothing on the screen, it’s easy to fall asleep even before the plot even gets the chance to sedate you.

The Mystiks. The first time we see the Mystiks, they start their rousing rendition of “Twist and Shout.” And I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand a bad Beatles cover of an Isley Brothers cover of a Topnotes song. That, and it makes my eardrums vibrate and explode. So there’s that.

The Dying Emperor. SkekSo, the Skeksis Emperor, begins the movie by dying a horrible, painful death. In doing so, he screams a lot. And by a lot, I mean a helluva lot. Why couldn’t he have died quietly like his Mystik counterpart? Maybe so we could hear Jerry Nelson’s Scred voice just one last time. In abundance.

The Garthim. Here is my impression of a Garthim. CLICKITY CLICKITY CLICKITY CLICKITY CLICK. Now pretend I’m repeating that for an hour.

Augrah. Remember that ancient great-great-aunt you had to visit every year? And remember how her scratchy voice scared the bejeezus out of you? And then you had to give her a kiss right near that hairy mole on her face? Well guess what. She’s been reborn as Augrah. Merry Christmas.

Fizzgig. He’s a little ball of fur and teeth that likes to scream at the top of his lungs. Once I get past the fact that he’s too small to have full-sized lungs, all I wanted to do was punt the critter across Thra. Maybe it would have been a more enjoyable sound if we could hear it fading into the distance.

Skeksis eating. I’m sorry, nobody needs to hear the sounds of large, wrinkled monsters chowing down on dinner without using utensils. Thankfully, we weren’t subjected to the deleted scene after the meal featuring the Skeksis in the bathroom.

Jen’s Flute. It’s actually quite lovely. But I just wanted him to break into "Stairway to Heaven." Is that too much to ask?

Those two fancy-dressed Skesis. Near the end of the movie, after they see Jen and Kira, they scream “GELFLINGS! GELFLINGS!” And it’s loud. And high-pitched. And completely unnecessary. And it makes me want to die a death more crumbly than the Emperor.

Honorable mentions: The Emperor turning to dust, Augrah’s face, the nekkid Chamberlain. These sights are so hideously ugly, they seems to speak louder than the above sounds. Yipes.

You may have noticed that I neglected to mention the Chamberlain’s incessant whimpering. Well, other than the fact that I would only be pointing out the obvious, maybe I like the Chamberlain’s voice. And maybe I dream at night about him saying “Yes! Please! Hmmmm! Please!” Right, and maybe I like having night terrors at the mere thought of the Chamberlain calling my cell phone.

Thanks for tuning in to our three-part series on The Dark Crystal. We hope you had as much fun reading it as we did breaking it down into little pieces and crushing them with a meat tenderizer. And then we set it on fire. Goodnight everybody!

Click here to plug your ears and discuss this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Crystal Meh

This is the second in a three-part series of articles in which Tough Pigs contributors take a look at The Dark Crystal. The first installment can be found here.

Why, hello out there in TP-Land. My name is Michal. And I'm a Bad Muppet Fan.

Let me put that a little more elegantly. Until a few years ago, I had always considered myself to be a lover of Muppets - which, when I was little, meant watching the same eight episodes and two movies and listening to the same three records over and over and over again. Oh, and being able to answer the "I used to love those two old guys in the balcony! What were their names again?" question. In blissful ignorance of any realms beyond this basic Muppet diet, I quietly went about my childhood.

Then in 2002, I fell in with the ultra-informed, hyper-detail-oriented, fabulously geeky online Muppet fan community, and discovered that I had much to learn. "You haven't seen Emmet Otter?" "You haven't seen Christmas Eve on Sesame Street?" "You've never heard of Esskay Meats?"

No, no, and no. In a way, it made discovering some of these productions as an adult uniquely satisfying. Wrapping myself in a blanket two summers ago and cheering as I watched David Bowie dancing with goblins for the first time might not have given me the same fuzzy feeling, had this scene sent me running to hide under the covers in 1986.

So when Ryan suggested that we Brooklyn-dwelling Tough Pigs hold a viewing of The Dark Crystal and subsequently each write a review for the website - myself as a first-time viewer, and Ryan and Joe having not watched the flick in years - I agreed. Perhaps my innocence would serve as an advantage, inoculating me against the debilitating boredom I'd heard had turned off so many young Muppet fans during their first DC viewing.

And so we begin. I had hoped to witness The Dark Crystal’s famed intricate designs and stunning visuals within the first few minutes of the film, but judging by the barren landscape echoing every so often with dull thunder, it was not to be.

The narrator, by way of introduction, chats about death for awhile. His monotonous drone, as the scene switches over from the bland desert to the castle interior where a gaggle of wrinkly, uninviting Skeksis shoot lasers at each other with their eyes (which was pretty much all I could gather from the opening scenes until I re-watched the beginning) goes something like this:

"Long ago, there was some sort of land before time. Then somebody shattered a mirror, and two species emerged. Note this bunch’s harsh, twisted bodies, and their harsh, twisted souls, and also their gruesome, off-putting facial features. Their species is dying; their emperor lies dying; their land lies dying. Oh, and there are only ten of this other species, which is also dying. Their dying emperor is dying. Would you like to hear any more about death? Because I could go on for hours."

Thanks, narrator. You’ve adequately prepared me not to root for anyone in this movie, with the possible exception of Fizzgig and Podlings. Maybe Kira, depending on the day. But as long as folks over two feet tall are the ones kicking the bucket, I'm not really sure where the intrigue comes in. In his definitive work The Dark Crystal vs. Entertainment, Danny already covered the lack of dialogue in the first five minutes, but neglected to enumerate the dry mentions of death (seven).

The movie tries its best to pique my interest – to throw in little tidbits that would engage someone with a longer attention span than mine. We’ve got the Mystics lifting their weary heads to numbly chant for their savior, which leads those of us watching at home to break into “Twist and Shout.” To restore our interest, the scenes cut back to the Mystics every so often, doddering along towards the castle. At about a dozen yards an hour, no wonder they’re dying out. They can barely be bothered to turn their heads when one of them up and vanishes. Ho-hum, they seem to say, as they glance over and bumble on.

We see much more of the clannish Skeksis, shouting and whimpering and shouting that they hate each other’s whimpers, at times almost suggesting comic relief, but never quite getting there – what with their blind adherence to archaic rules and bellowing hearty slogans like “Death to Gelflings!” and “TRIAL BY STONE!” They also harbor at least a couple of mysteries, namely: how do such spindly creatures carry around so much paraphernalia? Does the “TRIAL BY STONE!” scene make anyone else think of The Emperor’s New Clothes? Why do we have to watch their emperor disintegrate, when the Mystic emperor had the decency to just dematerialize? Will I ever get the Chamberlain’s voice out of my head? Please, yes, pleeeease?

About a half an hour in, I’m relieved to see a swamp, an environment that I know the makers of this movie can capably handle. They follow through, too, throwing in lots of the unexpected tidbits that make The Dark Crystal so famously visually captivating and sending me into Johnny Hart mode: trees got legs! Cave got jaws! Rocks and reeds… er, sentient!

In fact, until we come back around to discussing the Prophecy and the Great Conjunction and Journeys and other things that ought to begin with Capital Letters, I find a number of elements to enjoy. We’ve got a peaceful boat shot, seen over bulrushes and set to lulling music. Even the Skeksis interjecting with their messy feast (dessert got legs!) makes them appear deliciously villainous as they gobble down roast Nebrie.

Then there’s the happenin’ Podling party, featuring drinkers and dancers and banjo players and a hyperactive little red-haired Podling girl interrupting conversations. The scene also features Jen attempting to speak Podling, which could have made for a cute little comedic moment to exploit. But nothing comes of it, and soon we’re back to Capital Letter Events.

Let’s discuss the hero, (as briefly as possible) before we wrap up. What do we know about Jen, other than the anomaly of his bizarre nomenclature? Actually, no. Let's address this whole gender business right now. As Danny has previously mentioned, the gender politics here are more than a little skewed.

Kira and Aughra are the enigmatic, almost-otherworldly-in-their-
affinity-with-nature, vaguely sympathetic horned/winged beings. The note I scribbled about Aughra as soon as she appeared, for all her oddly placed vocal emphases, was "At least she's got personality." (The one I scribbled when Kira glided off the cliff was "Girl got wings!")

Jen is a wimpy male specimen with a girl's name, raised by the leader of the Mystics and yet completely unaware of all things mystical (particularly the prophecy which everyone seems to agree pertains to him), except for that one time when he remembers something about having a bath.

As some astute devotees of the forum discussion following Ryan’s Dark Crystal post may already have noted, I postulate that Jen is, in fact, a Disney Princess. No one denies that Gelflings are soft-spoken and pretty – but not so pretty as to be sexually threatening, which would damage their marketability – and surrounded by fantastical beasts and scenery. Much of the adventure simply happens to Jen without any interference from him as he meanders about the set, waiting for inspiration to come to his rescue. Although his character has no distinguishing characteristics beyond general mousiness, someone sees fit to hand him an enchanted crystal shard and make us watch a movie about it. And at the end of the movie, Jen waves the shard around and hey presto! All the UrSkeks have changed into white gowns.

Every time my media-saturated brain has witnessed another bumbling antihero made great by circumstances forcing him to rise to the occasion, I've had a character to watch. Jen is pleasant enough to look at; the engineering behind his design makes the casual viewer scratch a head or two. But he doesn't grow from a coward or a pickpocket into a bold or cunning hero. He starts out wide-eyed, and he remains wide-eyed until the end of the movie. For a split second he sounds brave as he and Kira progress towards the castle, but only because Kira utters an uncharacteristic line about being inexplicably afraid. Even his mistake of bailing from Aughra’s lair without rescuing her doesn’t teach him any lessons; Aughra lives anyway, and so does Jen’s naïveté.

So, to sum up:

Visuals: mostly intriguing, except when the species is too hideous to be redeemed even by novel design.

Plot: I think it had something to do with draining the viewer’s living essence, à la Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus.

The two females: mostly acceptable to watch.

Males (everyone else): either a wussy flautist, or a grotesque, Skeletor-like mass with a potentially unbearably grating voice, or a ponderous, plodding brontosaur.

This Bad Muppet Fan awards The Dark Crystal a rating of half an UrSkek (but I won’t tell you which half, or out of how many.) If the sequel features more Podling parties or Fizzgig tantrums, though, I’m in.

Agree? Disagree? Nebrie undercooked? Click here to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum.

I Don't Know; I've Never Gelfled

This is the first in a three-part series of articles in which Tough Pigs contributors take a look at The Dark Crystal.

I first saw The Dark Crystal during what must have been its first network TV broadcast. I was already a Jim Henson fan, so I was inclined to be enchanted by whatever he had up his crazy creative sleeve. I was also a lot more easily impressed in those days. For example, my favorite show on TV at the time was a Scrubbing Bubbles commercial. Now here was this movie The Dark Crystal: it had cool-looking puppets, it was created by Jim Henson, and it included a character who could remove her eyeball. With this formidable combination, I assumed for years that it must be a great film.

On joining the online Henson fan community, however, I was surprised to discover that there were those who weren't crazy about it. Reading the criticisms of the movie (such as the ones in this classic article by Tough Pigs founder Danny Horn), I had to concede that it was deeply flawed, so I changed my official position. The Dark Crystal was, in fact, stinky.

It's now been years since I last saw the film, so I wanted to give it another look and make a definitive decision, as a mature, discriminating viewer, albeit one who owns some Bert underwear. So I sat down to screen the movie with fellow Muppet fan Michal (who had never seen it) and fellow Muppet fan Joe (who also hadn't seen it in years). We poured ourselves a nice, cold glass of Podling essence, and stuck the thing in the VCR.

The question at hand: Is The Dark Crystal a masterpiece or a crapsterpiece? To ensure I was viewing the movie in the right state of mind, I invited my seven-year-old self to watch it with us, so I could get his less jaded take on things.

The film's opening moments do not bode well. It begins with a static shot of the Skeksis' ugly castle, as a narrator drones on drearily to fill us in on what’s been happening for the last thousand years. It was an "age of wonder," he tells us, but all we see is a model of a decrepit old castle in serious need of an extreme makeover. This is followed by more narration over a shot of the Skeksis all standing around staring at the titular crystal. At this point, Seven-Year-Old Ryan is already getting restless. "How long is this movie?" he asks, adding, "Can we watch Thundercats after this?"

The Skeksis, by the way, are U-G-L-Y. Seriously, they ain't got no alibi -- they're ugly. But they're supposed to be horrible villains, so it works for them. On the other end of the spectrum, we have those long-haired elderly gentlemen, the Mystics, whom we first see as they raise their voices in a ceremonial chorus of nine-part harmony. For some reason, Seven-Year-Old Ryan thinks this is absolutely hilarious. He laughs uproariously, then tries to imitate their call, although he doesn't quite hit the same low notes, and ended up sounding more eunuch than Mystic.

Shortly after, we're introduced to Jen, the Last Surviving Gelfling and our hero, who is about to embark on a very important journey to heal the crystal. Jen is just a little fellow, the kind of protagonist one expects to watch going through a character arc from weakling to warrior, learning all about courage and his own purpose along the way. But guess what? None of that happens.

Actually, there’s really just one problem with Jen: He’s boring, and he never does anything, and I don’t care about him. Okay, that’s more than one thing, but throughout the movie, Jen just kind of sits there and let things happen around him. He's the most passive central character this side of Where's Waldo. We never really get to know him, except for some inner monologues, in which we hear Jen thinking, "What am I doing here? Where am I supposed to go? Should I have packed a toothbrush?" Take the scene in which Aughra’s observatory (which, by the way, is a really awesome set) is attacked by Garthim, a roving gang of big mean beetles. Jen does not fight them off or attempt to protect Aughra, he just escapes… by falling out a window. As much as I like defenestration, it did not serve to make me like the guy.

I should note, however, that Seven-Year-Old Ryan doesn't seem to mind. He likes Jen well enough, although I don't think he'd ever dress as him for Halloween. And Seven-Year-Old Ryan remarks that "Jen" is a girl's name, so he probably got made fun of as a kid. I don't point out to him that there were no other Gelflings around to bully Jen because they had all been slaughtered by monsters.

Then there's a scene set in a marshy forest, a forest full of fanciful flora, fantastic fauna, and imagination. Dang, I wish "imagination" started with an "f"... I had some really great alliteration going there. Anyway, I think this is my favorite sequence of the film, even though it has little to do with the story. It's a plethora of dreamed-up critters that exist simply to show off what the brand spanking new Creature Shop could do, and I love it. Seven-Year-Old Ryan digs it too. He especially likes "the part where the big monster guy eats the little guy."

The forest is also where Jen and we encounter the film's female lead. As a character, she doesn't fare much better than Jen. Kira, the other Last Surviving Gelfling, is more of a device than a character, what with her wings and her Dr. Doolittle-style animal chat skills, and her ability to hotwire a Landstrider. Seven-Year-Old Ryan, by the way, loves the Landstriders, and expresses a wish that they were real animals so he could see them at the zoo.

We watch as Kira takes Jen to a high-energy celebration at the village of her adoptive family, the Podlings. Ain’t no party like a Podling party, ‘cause a Podling party don’t stop! That is, until the Garthim destroy the village and enslave everyone. (Which really puts a damper on the whole party... no one's in the mood for Pin the Tail on the Nebri anymore) Seven-Year-Old Ryan finds the Podlings funny, and asks me to make sure everyone knows he wasn't scared during the Garthim attack.

Then a bunch of other stuff happens... I don't remember the sequence of events exactly, but it probably involves the Chamberlain Skeksis squealing and some characters talking about the Prophecy over and over again. There really oughtta be a Dark Crystal drinking game, and I'd be surprised if there's not one out there somewhere.

I should mention Aughra, the sassy old broad who gives Jen the shard he needs to heal the crystal. She has more personality in her free-range eyeball than Jen and Kira have in their entire elfin bodies, and I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of her.

And I have nothing bad to say about Kira’s pet fuzzball Fizzgig, who is clearly the R2-D2 of The Dark Crystal -- he’s a loyal companion to the main characters, the audience can’t understand what he says, and he jumps in at an important juncture to save the day. Fizzgig, a living Koosh ball, is also the most Muppetlike of the film’s characters, which is perhaps not unrelated to his being the most lovable. Seven-Year-Old Ryan is fascinated by Aughra, and likes Fizzgig, who reminds him of his friend Chad's dog, whose name is Crackers.

Meanwhile, some other boring stuff happens, and then Jen and Kira heal the crystal, la de da de da. The End, and everyone's happy. But here’s a question: At the end of the movie, when the Skeksis and Mytics are amalgamated to become the UrSkeks, the UrSkek spokesman reveals that they were the ones who broke the crystal in the first place. Why? What did they think was going to happen? Were they trying to make some money by selling crystal paperweights or earrings, or shard toothpicks? I realize that all we need to know at the start of the film is that the crystal done got broke, but on this viewing I kept wondering who thought slicing the crystal would be a good idea. And although it's great that the crystal is healed, what happens if someone accidentally chips or scrapes it? I suppose everyone's SOL for another 1000 years.

I once explained my position on The Dark Crystal by saying it would best be viewed with the dialogue removed, and after a careful re-viewing I stand by that. The musical score is great, the visuals are striking, the technical aspects are amazing, and I really have to hand it to Jim Henson, character designer Brian Froud, and their whole crew for making some seriously ugly puppets. When you create all your actors from scratch, it would be easy to make them all cute and licensable, but these creatures really look like… creatures.

Ultimately, though, that doesn’t make up for the shallow story and uninteresting characters. Seven-Year-Old Ryan, on the other hand, said the movie was really cool, although when I asked him whether he thought it was better than Labyrinth, he said no. When I asked him if it was better than the Jim Henson Company's fantasy fim Mirrormask, he reminded me that he's from 1988 and Mirrormask hasn't been made yet.

As for me, I'd have to rate the movie about a half-star higher today than I would have a week ago, but it’s still not A Good Movie. Have you ever read an old fairy tale from, like, 15^th century Europe? They’re full of magic and fantastic creatures and epic journeys, but the storytelling is simplistic, and by the end of the proceedings nobody has changed or learned anything. The Dark Crystal is like that. It’s a beautiful, ornate, hand-carved frame, but the painting inside is just a bunch of stick figures.

Say, that was a pretty good metaphor. I wonder if I just came up with that, or ripped it off from somewhere else?

In the end, Seven-Year-Old Ryan and Contemporary Ryan agree whole-heartedly on one thing: Aughra’s detachable eye is rad.

Click here to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum! And come back Wednesday to read another Tough Pigs contributor's take on The Dark Crystal!

Year of the Muppet

Wouldn't you like to spend every day of 2008 looking at pictures of Muppets? I know I would. Though you've got to have a little variety in your life. That's why there's brand new calendars coming out for 2008 featuring all things Muppety. Which is good, because I doubt my 2007 calendars will stand the test of time.

First up is your basic Muppet calendar, featuring everyone's favorite character poses. You've got your embarassed Fozzie, Animal wearing sunglasses, flathead Kermit, and "I dunno" Statler and Waldorf. While there's nothing new or original, it's still not a bad looking calendar. But for the Muppet fan, it just might not be enough.

There's also a Fraggle Rock calendar coming out. We haven't seen the art yet, but it's a good guess that it'll be more production promos from the show. Wouldn't it be nice to have some new Fraggle art? Ah well, beggars can't be choosers. Especially when Mokey actually makes it onto the cover this time.


Last up is the page-a-day calendar featuring the Muppets. To my knowledge, there's never been a page-a-day calendar with Muppets before. So, for the Muppet fan who just can't commit to one picture for 30 days, now you can have a fresh pictures, trivia, jokes and quotes every single day. Unless you're lazy like me, and then you can see the same day for about 2 weeks at a time. Meanwhile, your boss will wonder why you haven't shown up to work.


No word on Sesame Street calendars yet, but if history proves right, we're bound to get one or two for next year. The above three calendars are now available for preorder on Amazon.com.

Click here to count the days to 2008 on the ToughPigs forum.