KermitTheFrog Tagged Articles at Cinematical

• Dody Goodman (1915-2008) - Comedienne, Actress - Played "Blanche", the principal's secretary in Grease and Grease 2 and Tom Hanks' absent-minded secretary in Splash and Splash, Too (in which Hanks was replaced by Todd Waring). She also appears in Silent Movie, Max Dugan Returns, Private Resort, Cool as Ice, Frozen Assets and Bedtime Story, and she had a recurring role in the Alvin and the Chipmunk cartoons, including the 1987 feature, The Chipmunk Adventure, providing her voice to the character of Miss Miller, adopted mother of the Chipettes. She died June 22 in Englewood, New Jersey. (AP)
  
• Sidney J. Bartholomew Jr. (c.1954-2008) - Production Designer, Writer, Director - Won an Emmy for his work on TV's Pee-Wee's Playhouse before collaborating on most of the Farrelly brothers' films, including There's Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber, Kingpin, Shallow Hal, Me, Myself and Irene, Stuck on You, The Heartbreak Kid, Say It Isn't So (produced by the Farrellys) and Osmosis Jones, in which he appears. He also co-wrote and directed the 2003 soccer comedy Just 4 Kicks, which starred Tom Arnold. He died June 15 in Los Angeles. (Variety)
• George Carlin (1937-2008) - Comedian, Actor - Appears in Dogma, Outrageous Fortune, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Jersey Girl, The Prince of Tides, Car Wash, Scary Movie 3, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, With Six You Get Egg Roll and the documentaries The Aristrocrats, F*ck, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and The N Word. He also voiced characters in Cars, Happily N'Ever After and Tarzan II. For info on his death, read William's full post.
• Cyd Charisse (1921-2008) - Actress, Dancer - Starred in Singin' in the Rain, Brigadoon, Party Girl, Ziegfeld Follies, The Band Wagon, It's Always Fair Weather, Two Weeks in Another Town, The Silencers and Silk Stockings. For info on her death, read my full post.

The Muppet Christmas Carol may be to the Muppets what Room Service is to the Marx Brothers. Neither is particularly good, especially in relation to the rest of the Muppet or Marx Brothers movies, but they can still be enjoyed immensely if you are a big enough fan of the Muppets or the Marxes. The films share two significant factors that aided in their surprisingly low quality. Each comedy "troupe" (if you can accept Kermit & Co. as a troupe) had recently suffered from a terrible disruption in their respective commands. Muppet Christmas Carol was the first Muppet movie produced after the death of Jim Henson, while Room Service was the first Marx Bros. movie to be filmed (fully) after the death of producer Irving Thalberg (though, of course, Thalberg was not the Bros.' creator like Henson was the Muppets'). And, most importantly, each is notable for having not been written for their "troupe"; instead the "troupe" was rather ill fittingly dropped into pre-existing stories.

In the case of The Muppet Christmas Carol, that pre-existing story is of course Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (umm, commonly known as simply A Christmas Carol). Unlike previous Muppet vehicles, such as The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan, this one focuses on a main character not played by a Muppet. Instead, Michael Caine portrays the lead, Ebenezer Scrooge, while the old favorites play minor supporting characters from Bob Crachit (Kermit) and his wife (Miss Piggy) to the narrators, Charles Dickens (Gonzo) and Rizzo the Rat (himself). Strangely the Christmas spirits aren't played by any of the star Muppets. In fact, only one of them is even technically a puppet: the Ghost of Christmas Present, which is a burly, redheaded body puppet (has an actor inside) with a Scottish accent.