This version was done Leo Moracchioli, a musician from Norway who has a band called Frog Leap. If you like his cover, check out some more stuff from him:
It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown first aired in 1966 and it has aired every year since. For 52 years, audiences have watched as Charlie Brown gets a rock, Snoopy flies his doghouse, and Linus and Sally spend the night in the pumpkin patch, waiting for the Great Pumpkin to show up. I watched it every year. Usually, I watch it twice.
Why has It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown withstood the test of time?
Some of it is the animation. Snoopy flying that doghouse makes me smile every time. So does Lucy and Linus searching for the perfect pumpkin and Charlie Brown’s messed up ghost costume. (How clumsy is Charlie Brown with a pair of scissors?) I love that, if you pay attention, you can actually see the rock getting tossed in Charlie Brown’s trick or treat bag.
Some of it is because we can relate to the characters. Who hasn’t done a happy dance when, like Charlie Brown getting an invitation to Violet’s party, they feel like they’ve finally been accepted?
But for me, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is all about faith.
It’s about Charlie Brown’s faith that Violet meant to invite him to her party. Even after Lucy tells him it had to have been a mistake, Charlie Brown still goes to the party. It’s about Charlie Brown’s faith that he’ll get candy. Even after he gets a rock at every house, he still keeps trying. He doesn’t give up.
It’s about Snoopy’s faith that he’ll defeat the Red Baron, even though World War I has long since ended and doghouses can’t actually fly. No matter how many times his doghouse is shot down, Snoopy keeps chasing his enemy.
And finally, it’s about Linus’s faith that some night, the Great Pumpkin will emerge from a sincere pumpkin patch and will bring toys to all the good children on Halloween night. It doesn’t matter that people laugh at him. It doesn’t matter that he might miss out on the chance to get candy. What matters is that Linus believes and nothing can shake that belief. Even when Sally abandons him, Linus stays in that pumpkin patch and waits.
And when the night passes without the Great Pumpkin showing up, Linus doesn’t give up. Instead, he says that he’ll find a new pumpkin patch next year and a new one after that. Linus will wait every year the Great Pumpkin because he has something more important than candy. He has faith.
And, every year, we’ll be right there waiting with him. Because even if we don’t believe in The Great Pumpkin, we do believe in Linus.
It’s all about faith.
It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown gets an encore airing tonight on CBS.
It’s just not Halloween without Frankenstein and his monster. This unholy duo have been frightening audiences in print, movies, and art for nearly 200 years. Below are just a few examples of Frankenstein and his monster through the ages:
Today we see the wide release of David Gordon-Green’s sequel to John Carpenter’s Halloween. A film that’s a direct sequel to the horror classic, David Gordon-Green was able to bring in John Carpenter himself to compose the film’s score just as he did for the original film.
This time around, Carpenter is accompanied this time around by his son, Cody Carpenter, and godson, Daniel Davies. So, we have three generations with the original Halloween in their DNA attempting to improve or, at the very least, not make the score to this official sequel sound like just a copy and paste of the original score.
I would say, after listening to the full score a couple times, that these trio have succeeded where others have failed in scoring the other films in the franchise. My favorite track from this new score has to be the one titled, “The Shape Returns.”
With more modern electronic and synthesizer equipment available for use, Carpenter and his helpers were able to take the main Halloween theme and give it a more modern, angrier and menacing (if that’s even possible) sound for “The Shape Returns.”
In this scene, Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy) explains not only the origins of Halloween but he also discusses how he’s going to make Halloween great again. This scene is probably the best in the film and it’s almost entirely due to O’Herlihy’s wonderfully menacing performance as Conal Cochran.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, we acknowledge the release of David Gordon Green’s Halloween with….
4 Shots From 4 Halloween Films
Halloween (1978, dir by John Carpenter)
Halloween III: Season of The Witch (1982, dir by Tommy Lee Wallace)
In this scene from the original Halloween, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) attempts, as best he can, to explain the unexplainable. I’ve always felt that Pleasence’s performance in the first film is extremely underrated. People always tend to concentrate on the scenes where he gets angry and yells or the later films where an obviously fragile Pleasence was clearly doing the best he could with poorly written material. But, to me, the heart of Pleasence’s performance (and the film itself) is to be found in this beautifully delivered and haunting monologue.
In this scene, we see that Dr. Loomis is himself a victim of Michael Myers. Spending the last fifteen years with Michael has left Loomis shaken and obviously doubting everything that he once believed. Whenever I watch both Halloween and its sequel, I always feel very bad for Dr. Loomis. Not only did he have to spend 15 years with a soulless psychopath but, once Michael escapes, he has to deal with everyone blaming him for it. Dr. Loomis was literally the only person who saw Michael for what he was.
Once upon a time, there were two shows about women who could speak with the dead.
One show ran from 2005 to 2011. It starred a future Oscar winner and, over the course of its run, it was nominated for a bunch of Emmys. It may have never been a huge hit but it received decent ratings and, even more importantly, it was a critically acclaimed. The show claimed to be based on fact and it took a low-key, procedural approach to its stories.
The second show ran from 2005 to 2010 and it starred a multiple Golden Globe nominee and it was never nominated for any major Emmys. (The first season, however, did receive a Teen Choice nomination.) Like the first show, it was never exactly a big hit, though it did have a loyal audience. Whereas the first show was acclaimed by critics, the second show was routinely dismissed. If the first show was subdued and low-key, this second show took the exact opposite approach.
The first show was called Medium.
The second show was called Ghost Whisperer.
I watched both of them and I can tell you that both had their strengths and their weaknesses. Medium was, at time, genuinely creepy and Patricia Arquette gave an admirably serious performance. At the same time, the show was often so serious that it was a bit of a drag to watch. You may have believed that Arquette could talk to the dead but you never really bought into the idea that they would want to talk to her or anyone else on the show. In short, Medium was good but it wasn’t much fun.
Ghost Whisperer, on the other hand…
Listen, I’m not even going to pretend that Ghost Whisperer was a great show. It was a frequently silly and over-the-top show. Jennifer Love Hewitt played Melinda Gordon, who lived in Grandview, New York and who owned an antique shop called — I kid you not — Same As It Never Was Antiques. The dead would come to Melinda because they still had feelings that needed to be resolved on Earth before they could cross over into the afterlife. Sometimes the ghosts were in denial. Sometimes they were rude, violent, and scary. Sometimes they were just mildly quirky. But they always ended up happy that Melinda was able to find a way for them to move on. Over the course of five seasons, the show developed both the quirkiness of the town and the mythology behind the ghosts themselves. We learned about the Watchers and the Shadows and the Shinies and the Book of Changes. We also learned a bit about Melinda’s history. Season 3 ended with Melinda helping her deceased father go into the light and you better believe I cried.
If Medium was an often dour, somber, and deliberately frumpy show, Ghost Whisperer was bright, fun, and unapologetically glamorous. While poor Patricia Arquette always seemed to be carrying the entire weight of the world on her shoulders, Jennifer Love Hewitt always appeared to be having a blast playing Melinda. While she may not have been as good as an actress as Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt always brought just enough natural enthusiasm to the role that she could make even the most hackneyed of dialogue believable. When I looked over some of the reviews of Ghost Whisperer’s first season, the immediate thing that I noticed was that many of the critics (in particular, the male critics) were obsessed with pointing out that Jennifer Love Hewitt was continually dressed and filmed in such a way to emphasize her breasts, as if there’s some sort of crime in being proud of what you have. But for me, as someone who shares the struggle of trying to find cute clothes for big boobs, it was empowering that Melinda didn’t hide her body, her personality, or her beliefs. As played by Hewitt, Melinda was confident, outspoken, and unapologetic. Yes, she dressed a certain way. Yes, she looked a certain way. Yes, she believed that she could help ghosts cross over. And if anyone had a problem with it, so what? Melinda was a role model who never really got her due. If I ever find myself speaking to ghosts, I hope that I handle it half as well as Melinda did.
Ghost Whisperer ended in 2010 and Medium ended in 2011. Medium may have been nominated for more awards but guess which one I’ll always make a point to watch in syndication?
