The Simpsons Movie
 

- In today's NY Times, a BBC News interview with Matt Groening is cited. It says: "Matt Groening, creator of 'The Simpsons,' says the long-awaited film version of the popular television series will be deliberately 'imperfect,' BBC News reported. Mr. Groening said the movie was 'a tribute to the art of hand-drawn animation, which is basically disappearing.' He added that 'all the animated movies these days are computer-generated,' but that the 'Simpsons' film was being created in 'the old-fashioned, clumsy, 'erase it if you don't do it right' way.'"

- While we wait for the release later this month (we are waiting, right?) - you can check out the surprisingly good website and make your own personalized avatar.

Here's mine:

here's mine

Here's mine:

This is as close as I could get:

[IMG][url=http://imageshack.us]

It wouldn't let me save mine.

I downloaded mine as a jpg onto my computer, and it wasn't a valid jpg. oh well! nice site tho.

I had some problems and realized it was because I was blocking popups. Try unblocking popups. Even then it took a while.

That's weird... I could swear I posted mine. Well anyway, I couldn't decide, so I did two:

my eyes need diapers...

Thanks CP, that did the trick!

Here I am (or as close as I could get, anyway).

I did one of Bill... Hee! (Just don't tell him!)

almost lifelike

sadly

Haha... perfect!

These are all great! GC's is the spitting image!

I got strangled at work by Homer on Thursday - but nobody took a damn picture!

OMG! CJ and Bill are perfect!

I did one of me but I couldn't register. It came back with a message that read "Lisa, you've never been a Simpsons fan. No avatar for you!".

I'm feeling retarded... how do I get it to save to my computer? I get a message saying "when the dialog box opens, blah blah blah..." Where's my farking box?

ETA: Nevermind... I figured it out. Ugh.

I'm still working on mine. I didn't like the first one and didn't have time for a second. All in good time. :)

All of yours are fantastic! :)

Color me stupid but I can't figure out how to save either. In either Firefox or IE, with pop up blocker on and off.

The save icon just asks me to pick a character name. The down arrow thing just says what to do once the save dialog box opens which I can't make happen.

oddly enough I did the same. click the down arrow. the window that pops up that has


******************************************
jpg>download
WHEN THE DIALOG BOX OPENS, CHOOSE "SAVE"
******************************************
msn>download
1. WHEN....
******************************************

when you see that pop up, youre there.

click on the red text shown in my example above. its not actually red on the page.

you should see a downloading % bar appear. that should get you the full figure pic.
its at that point the regular windows "open, save, cancel" downloading dialog box comes up. save it to your desktop and viola

the other gets you an avatar like the one I have.

How do you go about adding an image to a post?

That's fantastic! I'm going to make one right now!

Yeah, as for saving the image, that was my problem. I didn't figure on clicking the words inside the pop up. I wish they'd been slightly more explicit with that, because it didn't make sense right away. The text underneath the heading implied that a pop up would... you know... pop up.

Tref, I just foisted the image onto my photobucket account.

There are two different ways to add an image. On top of the reply/post-making box, there's a little icon that looks like a square with a mountain in it. Click there and add the URL of where the picture is.

OR, you can add the image using: [*img]http://whatever.URL.you.want/picture.jpg[*/img]

(without the * of course)

With photobucket, there's even a box that says "IMG Code" You can just highlight all of that and copy it, then paste it here.

Good luck!

I got a sweet new avatar :cool:

It's like looking in a mirror.

I think you need to get a new mirror.

Finally got mine to save. I went through the right mechanics yesterday, but it kept returning an error.

This was really hard for me. Without the facial hair as a waypoint for my face anymore, I had no idea where to start. I think it came out pretty well, though.

As close as I have the patience for.

We should all put these :iSm: on our shirts and make a Springfield cult of iSm worshipers!

I made mine. The hair was the hardest part. I saved a few different versions to my computer, but I don't have an online host so I can't post it here. :(

You can just attach it to a post without having to host it. Scroll down to "Attach File" and click the "Manage Attachments" button.

Cool, thanks Kevy!

So who's coming to the big premiere in Springfield, VT? It's only a little over 2 hours drive from here.

Big Brother at work, once again, ruins my webfun. :(

Did VT actually win the contest? How did I not hear of this??

Mine downloads a file with a jpg extension onto my computer. When I try to open the jpg file with photobucket, photoImpact or even a web browser, it doesn't recognize that the file IS a jpeg.

Wierd.

I just heard it on the news this morning

Jubilant Vermont town hits a Homer

The whole story

"Hits a Homer". teehehe

BTW, mine--

I saw The Simpsons movie this evening at my trusty Glendale Theater. I thought it was great -- like one extra long, better then average, episode. I was surprised by the lack of surprises. Maybe all the tricks were used up on the TV show? Anyway, that is not a crime, especially with a film as funny as this one.

Anybody else see it?

Saw it tonight and thought it was great. The beginning is way too funny. I highly recommend it.

I saw The Simpsons Movie tonight and thought it was good. I wasn't blown away by it, but I liked it.
Loved the animation, loved Homer and really loved Spider Pig. :D

Problem with it was was that they had this film venue where they could have done something wild, shocking and controversial (like they used to) but they didn't.

A couple of swear words, Homer giving the finger and Bart's doodle.
Meh.

I guess they're just leaving the shocking stuff to South Park...

I laughed in places but there were a couple of stretches where not much happened.

No matter how many times I see The Simpsons on tv, DVD and now the movies, I never ever get tired of Homer. He's hysterical.
:)

I (and everyone I went with) felt the same way. It was really cute, but basically like a really long episode. There wasn't anything "extra" except better animation quality. There weren't any lines that anyone was instantly quoting after the movie (except of course for Spiderpig!!).

I totally recommend seeing it though.... there were parts that were totally hysterical!!!

"Why does everything I whip leave me?"

Attachment 142

Couldn't find a Commodore hat, grr.

:snap:

I just saw a great Simpsons episode! :D I was delighted that the movie was funny and had many of the qualities I have missed in the YEARS since I've watched the show. My rating - pleasantly surprised.

However, if you feel that you don't want to spend the cash to watch a Simpsons episode, you will probably feel ripped off. Me, I felt like I traveled back in time. :)

I guess I should be happy that it was as good as it could have been. The gags were funny, a far site better than the crap I've seen from the new TV episodes. But in the end, it just stood out to me as further evidence that the whole enterprise needed to die a decade ago. Sure, the jokes were funny, but they were just jokes, the movie had nothing to offer beyond that. Did the fact that they had the long running time to work with add anything? Nope, all they did was glue together a "Springfield's gonna blow up" episode, a "Bart looks somewhere else for a father figure" episode, and a "Lisa crusades for the environment and finds a guy" episode. Did being free from TV decency standards add anything? Hardly. A couple funny, but throw away moments. Yawn.

I'm glad I saw things that made me laugh. But I found the thing overall pretty forgettable.

When we went to see HP tonight, they actually had a uniformed security guard at the entrance to the theatre playing the Simpsons checking tickets :)

ETA: funny to read the diametrically opposite opinions of a husband and wife.

This is my current wallpaper on my laptop. I love it. I see new Springfieldians every time I look at it.

:)

Looks like 71.8 mil for Springfield this weekend.
:)

I wouldn't say diametrically opposed. We both laughed, we both agreed it was funny. I didn't expect anything but a long episode, and was satisfied. GD expected something worth spending the money on, something different from what you could see at home in 1994, and he was disappointed. My low expectations worked out for me ;)

But can you name all those lesser characters?

No.

:D

Where's Moe? I don't see him.

He's right near Sideshow Bob and Surly Duff.

Edit to add: I think it's Queasy Duff, actually.

Damn! How did I miss him? Thanks!

I can not wait to see it

No, I expected something as bad as the current TV episodes, and in that regard it exceeded my expectations. But "exceeded my expectations" is still a long way from "good". A string of good jokes makes not a good movie.

Oh, and I was completely entertained, and find that - with a Simpsons movie - a string of good jokes is all I want.

I found the first third of the film particularly strong ... particularly because it was consistently hysterical. The jokes stopped coming fast and furious after that, and the film settled into merely "good."


But two-thirds a good and one-third a great = damn fine Simpsons movie, as far as I'm concerned.

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. It was far better than I expected. The storyline is like an extended episode but that's to be expected, consider the show has been on the air for almost 20 years. Overall, I'm content.

:)

So it exceeded what you expected, yet you're still unhappy with it....remind me, why the heck did you want to see this film?

My expectations were pretty damned low, so exceeding them wasn't much of a task.

I hoped it would surprise me, and I had to know.

Was the South Park movie that much funnier than a good episode?


That seems to me the fairest comparison ... but I thing comparing any TV-show movie to its source TV show is fair game. In which case The Simpsons Movie is one of the best of the breed, imo.

It wasn't that I was looking for funnier than a good episode. I was looking for something that gave it a reason to exist as a movie at all. Something extra, something that pushed it beyond being just a long episode. Do I know what that something is? Hardly. Hell, after 17+ years of episodes, I'm hardly convinced such a thing exists. Double hell, after 17+ years of episodes, I'm downright certain that there's nothing left to even justify further TV episodes, let alone a movie. The characters have nowhere to go, everything they do is just rehash and caricature.

I thought the first 1/3 of the movie started out strongish, but it petered out quickly. By my math, it's 1/3 a good and 2/3 a poor = should-have-done-this-12-years-ago

In the case of South Park, yes I think they did a good job of moving it beyond just a long episode. Both in terms of the scale of the storyline and the scope of the character arcs. And most importantly, they did it long before they ran out of ideas.

I thought the South Park movie was a lot funnier than any episode that came before it.
They had a lot more freedom to do what they wanted to in the film. The unbleeped swearing was a big one.

I was talking to Chernabog about the SP movie in comparision to the Simpsons movie. The Simpsons creators should have pushed limits (you know, like they used to do) with the film but now they seem to leave it up to South Park to do that...

Well, I think Bart's skateboard ride pushed a limit, and did so with a nod to the iconic title sequence of show. But I admit there's nothing in the actual plot or character arcs that hasn't been done 17 times before.

Of course, my perspective is from someone for whom The Simpsons has only 10 seasons, and has been off my personal air for the last 8 years.



And by way of comparison points ... there have been plenty of TV-show movies I've enjoyed that did not go beyond any plots or character arcs covered on the free TV show.

And I conceded to "a couple funny but throw away moments" in an earlier post. Homer giving the bird was another. I reiterate my yawn.

I'm from nearly the same perspective. I perhaps watched one or two more seasons (which I surely did not enjoy), and have been sure to catch at least one or two episodes from each subsequent season, just to reaffirm my belief that the show continues to suck (and I have yet to be proven wrong). But the tired plot lines and character motivations they used in the movie would have been equally tired 8 years ago.

I'll reiterate that I didn't not enjoy it. It just didn't impress me.

Well, to each their own. The group I went with laughed from Ralphie's "da-da-da-daaaaaa!" pretty much until the credits rolled. I though that it WAS more than a string of jokes. Julie Kavner's VO for the wedding video scene was lovely and moving. I thought that it worked very well as stretched-out episode with interesting A, B and C storylines intertwined. And the quotes ("clap for Alaska, Lisa!" among them) were perfectly quotable.

The Simpsons, to me, has never tread the line that South Park does. And I'm OK with that. Where both are critical of society, one uses a subtle wit and one uses bombastic wit, and there's room for both. But I don't see how pushing the subtler one to a more bombastic place would stay true to the Simpsons' form. Bart's doodle was edgy relative to your standard episode (season 1-10.)

I must clarify, I wasn't looking for over-the-line edginess. Although I think that while Bart's doodle is edgy relative to early episodes, I don't think it (or anything in the movie) represents the same edginess relative to society that the early episodes did. But that's a whole other discussion.

What I mean by "more than just an episode" has more to do with actually creating something that matches the scale of the big screen on the whole. Boundary pushing is part of that, but only a small fraction.

To illustrate, I'll say that I think my favorite part was the opening bit. Not the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon itself per-se, but the self aware bit with Homer in the theater afterwards. That, far beyond anything else in the whole movie, showed a keen understanding of how to take the characters from the small screen and do something befitting the big screen. It used the medium in that beautifully self-aware, self-effacing way that The Simpsons once used television. But it peeked in the first 5 minutes and never returned to that. Boo-hiss I say.

That's not to say I wanted 90 minutes of Bart talking into the camera. But that opening got me all excited that they truly did something more than a 90 minute episode. So perhaps that's part of my perspective. In its first hit, it soared well beyond my expectations, and then very quickly plummeted back down to mediocre.

I think it's true that the edge wasn't quite there. Bart's doodle was edgy, yes, and damn funny after all they did to set the joke up (eg: getting all "Austin Powers" with it before hand to keep it blocked and then suddenly blocking everything but), however, the biting wit of the spoken word was no sharper. (However, true to form, I believe there was at least one anti-Disney joke tossed in ;))

I laughed at that joke but then I thought, 'Uh, isn't Fox led by someone evil, too?'
:D

Oh, they made fun of Fox. Remember that "ticker" at the bottom of the screen?

No, I hear you. I just found it odd for one evil corporation to call another evil corporation 'evil'.
:D

All's I know is, saying "Harry Plopper" out loud always brings a smile to my face! :D

I enjoyed it. It made me giggle. There were a couple things they can't do on TV, but for the most part a long episode. But that is all I expected. I thought it was a good story and had clever commentary.

I liked when they got to the Seattle train station. Marge, Lisa and Bart ducked to hide from the EPA people, but Maggie covered her eyes. If a baby can't see you, you can't see her, right?

Could that perhaps be more about the changing perspective of edginess in society compared to early Simpsons? Sure, Simpsons was considered edgy and a threat to family values by certain conservative folks in it's early days. However in the time since then it has actually been much more accepted as a depiction of a strong family bond. They may be disfunctional at times, but ultimately they have great love for one another. The characters haven't really changed, just people's perspectives of them.

We now live in a world full of things like South Park, Family Guy & the Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network. Many of these shows are edgy for the sake of being edgy. They actually try to be offensive to get their point across, if they even have one (SP usually does, FG not so much). I don't think Simpsons needs to adapt to fit in their world. If they did, they wouldn't be the Simpsons anymore.

I gladly concede that the movie was nearly as "great" as it could have been, but it was deffinitely "good" and very true to the characters. There were funny moments as well as some very touching family moments. It would have been nice to see some musical numbers though, because those are often my favorite episode moments.

Yes, that's exactly my point. When it started, they pushed boundaries, and as a result woke the nation up to some screwed up preconceived notions about family. But while as a nation we've certainly improved our perspective, it's a long way from being completely fixed. Just because the boundary has moved doesn't mean it can't be pushed further. The Simpsons are no longer doing that pushing. It may not even really be their place to anymore, but that to me is a definite detraction from my enjoyment of the show. It's an element that is glaringly missing and has lead to major stagnation of the characters.

I'll reiterate that I didn't think it was "bad". But I'm disappointed that after 18 years, with no TV budget restrictions, no deadlines, and a whole new media format to work with, they failed to muster the creative energy to come up with anything more than, "phew, that didn't suck." Baldercrap.

Please name 3 other TV show movies that went beyond 'whew, didn't suck.'


I admire your standard for success in this field, GD, and agree with it. It's just that, after 15 years or so of TV-to-movie adaptations, I think the goal must be loftier than is practical to achieve.

The Addams Family
The Untouchables
The Fugitive
Serenity
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Charlie's Angels (the first one, not the second one which is an all time worst)
The Brady Bunch Movie
George of the Jungle
Miami Vice
The first Mission: Impossible movie
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
The Naked Gun (again, the first one)

I know it is against the critical grain and definitely not as good as the TV show but I liked Maverick. If you count SNL skits I would add Blues Brothers and Wayne's World.

Looking at that (off the top of my head, there's probably more I'm missing) and considering my first reaction to hearing that a TV show is being turned into a movie I'm surprised at how often the effort is at least moderately successful.

And I'd add Bewitched (although I'm willing to admit that was because a "phew, that didn't suck" movie on an airplane is like gold) and, in the SNL sketch category, Ladies Man.

If it's possible to have kept a show funny for 10 seasons, it's possible to turn it into a good movie. But as Alex predicted before the movie came out, they stuck with the standard ruts the character franchise has fallen into over the last 8 years. They risked nothing and as a result gained nothing.

See: you couldn't name just three!

You are not alone on this. It was silly good fun.

Bewitched?!? Please tell me you're kidding!


Alex's list is much better, though The Addams Family was not based on a TV show (but rather, was based on material which also inspired a TV show)

I concur with about half of his list as to movies I thought were good, but none of them met the Ghoulish Delight standard of television trancendence, as far as I'm concerned.

(Well, perhaps Wrath of Khan ... but that was the second film ... not fair comparing it to the first Simpsons movie).



Ah well, it was nice to see a list of arguably decent TV-to-movie adaptations. I put The Simpsons Movie squarely on that list. To me, it was a whole lot better than "whew, didn't suck." I liked it.

The Brady Bunch Movie!

Serenity.

hmmmmmm I know there are more out there, I just can't think today.


Edit: Ack you already mentioned those, that is what I get for taking an hour to write a post @ work.

Like I said, I was on an airplane. And as airplane movies go, I was sufficiently entertained. I'm sure I wouldn't have had the same opinion below 10,000 feet.

One handicap that The Simpsons Movie suffers under, I'd say, is the fact that the TV show is still on the air, which must be horribly limiting (even in a TV show like The Simpsons where continuity isn't so important).

One common approach to these TV-to-movie adaptations is to spoof the source material (The Brady Bunch, Car 54 Where are You?, McHale's Navy). Another is to re-envision an artifact of the past into the modern day presentation (Charlie's Angels, S.W.A.T., The Mod Squad). A third would be to take the original as an inspiration and then just tell your own story (Maverick, The Addams Family, Mission: Impossible).

For The Simpsons Movie they can't really make too much fun of themselves and there is no temporal separation to offer up a different perspective. And having to return to the small screen in the fall it would be difficult to truly and completely shake up the Simpsons universe.

South Park managed to leap that hurdle.

Now I've taken to calling my parent's dog "Harry Plopper". I can't stop myself, it just makes me giggle.

TeeHee, I've been singing "Spider Pig" constantly.


Good points above, Ally. I think there's a fine line between exchanging our opinions and reasons for having them -and- justifying our opinions and defending them with defensiveness.

I think the exchange of our thought process behind opinions is interesting and lets us get to know each other better.


The defensiveness is, alas, a human reaction ... and perhaps I'm guilty as any in seeming somehow to challenge the reasonableness of opinions which differ from my own. I hope we (me included) can keep that kind of thing to a minimum ... but it's only human for it to creep up on us once in a while.

Well... Sort of. The Movie used the names and most of the relationships from the TV show. (The TV Uncle Fester was Morticia’s Uncle – Fester Frump - not Gomez’s brother.) In the original cartoons, none of the characters had names, and the relationships were only implied.

I hope I haven't come across as defensive. I'm not meaning to be. I don't consider anyone wrong for enjoying the movie. I myself enjoyed it to a point. I've just found it interesting to express why I feel it falls short of being worth my time to ever see again. The discussion has actually helped to solidify exactly what it was that I instinctively felt was missing, but wasn't really able to express upon leaving the theater.

2nd time as good as the 1st time.

We just saw this. Maddy's comment on exiting was "we should have gone to see hairspray". I didn't hate it but I'm meh about it.