Moovys

Monday, April 5, 2010

Up The Academy

Robert Downy (1980)

Boy, has it really been since November that I posted anything here? I've just been so busy with school and work that I sometimes didn't have time to watch any movies let alone blog them.

Anywho, I did get to see all 10 Best Picture nominees before Oscar night. I knew that The Hurt Locker would Sweep (yes even beat Avatar) but my personal pick for best picture was the Coen Bros. A Serious Man, the often confusing, very Jewish and darkly hilarious picture that has kept me thinking now months after seeing it.

In late breaking news, my wife let me get a Roku player! Now I'm able to sit in front of my TV and watch streaming movies from my couch. This is a great improvement from illegally downloading the movies, burning them to disc then watching on the DVD player. This way I save time and discs and as an added bonus the film makers get paid!

I've been watching a lot of MST3K on the thing as well as some great forgotten episodes of Amazing Stories. Last night I stumbled upon a movie that I had probably read about in the past but totally forgotten about. This film is call MAD Magazine Presents Up The Academy. This movie is bad, even by my standards. There are some funny gags but mostly they just fall flat. The story is basically a rehashing of Animal House set in a military school.

After the success of Animal House movie studios were looking to put popular humor magazines' names on all sorts of feature film projects. MAD editor in chief Bill Gaines ultimately passed on the original screenplay for this film stating that there were gags that were far too offensive. The script was retooled by some MAD writers and finally a script emerged that both sides agreed upon. However the studio went ahead and made the film from the original script without ever notifying Gaines or anyone else on the MAD staff. The film was ultimately a flop and MAD publicly disowned it and even parodied the film in the pages of its own magazine. When it came time for the film to be sold for home video and broadcast Gaines wanted his magazine's name off of it completely and ended up paying Warner Bros. $30,000 for them to do so. It wasn't until after Gaines's death and WB's eventual purchase of MAD that the original titles and creepy live action Alfred E. Newman were replaced.