Wow, I didn't even know there were THAT many. Holy crapola! The fine folks over at Rotten Tomatoes are currently counting down the top 50 TV adaptations of all time, in honor of both Get Smart and Sex and the City. Before we mention a few, here's how they played it: "... these movies are remakes of TV series (i.e. Starsky and Hutch), mini-series (Pennies from Heaven), or sketches (The Blues Brothers). We've also included big-screen adaptations that utilize the series' principal cast members (the Star Trek movies, the Adam West Batman). We've omitted films that, despite having TV incarnations, are derived from other sources (thus, no Superman), but have included others (like The Addams Family) that are best remembered as TV shows." In other words ... they mean business.

Down toward the bottom, you have films like Strangers with Candy, The Rugrats Movie, Josie and the Pussycats and The Naked Gun 2 1/2. I won't reveal their number one pick, but the top ten includes memorable favorites like The Simpsons Movie, The Fugitive ("You find this man!"), Serenity and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

I'm just impressed they managed to throw together 50 half-decent TV-to-Movie adaptations. That, in and of itself, has to be worth some sort of Emmy nod (or would it be an Oscar nod?). Check out the entire list over at Rotten Tomatoes ... and let us know your favorites below.

Whether or not shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force or The Simpsons succeeded in translating their television dynamics to the big screen depends on your point of view, but the release of Speed Racer this weekend raises a more specific question about the viability of turning an animated series into a live action spectacle on the big screen. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Underdog both suggest how this goal can go wrong -- namely, by imploding on its absurd conceits. You may disagree with the inclusion of some of the following titles, all of which culled their material from animation, but it's fair to say that each of them takes its subject matter at face value, allowing the natural ingredients of the original sources to remain intact. Well, maybe not Super Mario Bros., but that one is a special case (fire away, if you must). Until somebody makes an Animaniacs movie with real actors, I'm sticking to this list.

1. Popeye (1980)

Robert Altman's offbeat ode to the famous Fleisher cartoon starring the spinach-eating strongman and his darling Olive Oil is the great misunderstood work of the director's career. Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall manage to bring utterly ridiculous characters into a realm of believability that you could never imagine when watching the show. Suddenly, Popeye made sense -- goofy, almost surreal sense, but sense nonetheless -- in the real world. Thanks to veteran adult cartoonist Jules Feiffer's screenplay and a soundtrack so catchy Paul Thomas Anderson borrowed from it twenty years later in Punch-Drunk Love, the classic status of Popeye can't be denied.

Tonight when I look across the river at the Empire State Building, it's lights will be yellow. No, it won't represent the U.S. Open (which usually gets "tennis ball yellow") or support for the troops (ala yellow ribbons). The yellow color will be in honor of The Simpsons Movie on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment. In the thirty years that the ESB has featured colored lights, this is the first time the colors have been a movie tie-in. And it's odd, because The Simpsons Movie doesn't really have anything to do with New York City. Nonetheless, Fox and its yellow-skinned family have taken over the city in a marketing blitz titled the "Simpson-izing of Manhattan." In addition to the ESB lights, there will be a Simpsons on Ice show at Bryant Park, yellow-jacketed street teams (handing out fliers for the DVD, I'm sure) and giant inflatable Homers. Unfortunately, there will be no specially designated street vendors selling Khlav Kalash and Crab Juice.

The event in general follows the city-wide stunts and activities planned in the past for Mission:Impossible III and Spider-Man 3, and hopefully won't be too annoying for actual New Yorkers, who should be able to ignore anything relating to movie-making or marketing in Manhattan these days. The only thing I hope for the sake of people working in Midtown is that those yellow-jacketed street teams aren't as aggressively obnoxious as the Spider-Man 3 flier guys (as if walking through Herald Square this time of year isn't trying enough). I also hope that the ESB doesn't make it a regular thing to lease out its lights to Hollywood -- unless the tied-in movie was at least shot in or has something to do with the Big Apple (for the lighting calendar go here).

In what seems like a repeat of last year, the 2008 Annie Award nominations include a Pixar movie and a movie about penguins. The top contenders for the 2007 Annies, which recognize the best in animation, were Cars and Happy Feet. The former ended up winning the big award, Best Animated Feature. However, a couple weeks later it was Happy Feet that won the corresponding Oscar, so the Annies can not be looked at to predict the Academy's decision. In 2008, though, the two awards should actually match. The only real contender for both the Annie and the Oscar is Pixar's Ratatouille. There isn't much chance of this year's penguin movie, Surf's Up, winning either award. If there's any minor competition for Pixar, it's from Persepolis. The other two nominees for the Best Animated Feature Annie are Bee Movie and The Simpsons Movie.

Ratatouille was the leader in nominations at 13, while Surf's Up received the second highest amount with 10. In addition to the top award, the two films are competing in the categories for writing (also competing: Simpsons and Persepolis), storyboarding (also competing: TMNT; Meet the Robinsons; Bee Movie), production design (also competing: Beowulf), directing (also competing: Shrek the Third; Simpsons; Persepolis), character design (no other competitors), character animation (no other competitors, but Surf's Up received two mentions here) and animated effects (also competing: Spider-Man 3; Disney short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater; Ratatouille received two mentions here). One category that Bee Movie seriously missed is voice acting, which features three nominations for Ratatouille -- for Janeane Garofalo, Ian Holm and Patton Oswalt.

One thing that is interesting about the Annies is how the awards can be distributed to many different movies. Last year, Over the Hedge won the directing, storyboarding and character design categories, Flushed Away won in writing, voice acting, animated effects, character animation and production design categories and Happy Feet took away no awards. Then again, the year before, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit picked up ten trophies and then went on to pick up the Academy Award. So, the 2008 Annies could go any number of ways.

I think we all know that Ratatouille will win the 2008 Oscar for Best Animated Feature. So, do we really need to waste time nominating others? Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named 12 movies eligible for the award, a shortlist that will eventually be pared down to three finalists when the Oscar nominees are announced in January. Had there been at least 16 eligible animated films this year, the number of nominees would be five, but with only 12, the category will only see three contenders. What could they be? Certainly Ratatouille will be one of them, and it's my guess that Persepolis and Surf's Up (the Academy loves penguins) will be the ones to join the Disney/Pixar sure-thing. I'm on the fence about Beowulf, especially after reading Scott's praise this morning, but I think it has a good chance of eventually being disqualified from being nominated. There's some debate already about whether or not it is technically an animated film. Another movie I have doubts about is Alvin and the Chipmunks, which seems to be primarily live-action. Last year, Arthur and the Invisibles ended up out of the race due to its own matter of having too much live footage.

The full list of animated features: Ratatouille; Persepolis; Shrek the Third, which should be the first of its series to not get a nomination; The Simpsons Movie, which the Academy should deem too television for its award; Bee Movie, which would only get a nomination if the Academy needed Seinfeld to attend the ceremony -- and hopefully it doesn't; TMNT (aka Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles); Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters; Alvin and the Chipmunks; Beowulf; Meet the Robinsons; Surf's Up; and Tekkonkinkreet, a Japanese film by American director Michael Arias, which could be a dark horse if Persepolis wasn't the favorite for the necessary foreign animated selection. I'm not sure why Happily N'Ever After was excluded, but I guess it wouldn't have a chance anyway. What do you think should win, or at least make the nomination round?

If you saw the first Wall-E teaser trailer, you won't be missing anything by not watching the new trailer. At least, you won't miss anything that will be in the actual movie. However, the new teaser features a fresh sequence involving Wall-E's interaction with the Pixar logo. It's cute, it's funny and it makes you want to give hugs to a lamp and a robot, which is pretty silly but nonetheless the undeniable case. I've always had a thing for retooled logos involving the movie it accompanies (for example Ralph Wiggum singing along to the 20th Century Fox fanfare before The Simpsons Movie), and I've always had a thing for that little Pixar lamp ever since I saw that first animated short, and so obviously I absolutely love this clip. The rest of the trailer, well, that's kinda boring, but only because we've pretty much already seen it before.

Sure, the title character of Wall-E looks like a cross between E.T. and Johnny 5, but who cares? I don't know about you, but I love E.T., and Johnny 5 is also pretty cool when Ally Sheedy isn't around. So, what's the problem? Personally, I'm really looking forward to this next Pixar movie, especially after reading that director Andrew Stanton considers it to be like "R2-D2: The Movie," because it doesn't really feature any dialogue. Basically it's going to be a beautiful, computer-animated silent film. Despite my intense hatred for Cars, I have faith that Pixar will keep on producing brilliant family entertainment, and when Wall-E opens next summer, you can bet I'll be seeing it. Am I really the only who can't wait? It sure feels that way.

Pretty much everyone I've talked to felt exactly the same way after seeing The Simpsons Movie -- relieved that they didn't blow it, a lot of laughs, but it wasn't quite the earth-shattering event we'd been dreaming of since we were kids. The film was measurably better than the current episodes, but not up to the show's heyday of seasons 1 - 10. Still, I don't think anyone could argue that the film is a rock solid comedy, and that was more than enough to make it stand out in the dreary summer season we just sludged through. But do I really need to revisit the movie? After reading the details on the DVD, that answer might be "yes." Releasing here on December 18th, The Simpsons Movie DVD looks to be quite d'oh-lightful.

Most intriguing are the two commentary tracks. One track will feature James L. Brooks (a hero of mine), Matt Groening, Al Jean, Mike Scully, David Silverman, Dan Castellaneta (voice of Homer and many other characters), and Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa). The other will be a directors' commentary by Silverman, Mike B. Anderson, Steven Dean Moore and Rich Moore. There will also be deleted scenes, though not as many as I was expecting considering all the versions the movie went through on its way to release. These include: an alternate ending, something called "Sausage Truck," and additional work from Albert Brooks as Russ Cargill - whom I would argue stole the film. He certainly delivered its funniest line: "Rats can't be trapped this easily. You're trapped like...carrots." You also get Homer's amusing Tonight Show monologue, the Simpsons judging American Idol, and alternate character designs by the directors and Groening. Oh, and on DVD you can pause all the hardcore full-frontal Bart action!

Four words: Best. Simpsons. Episode. Ever.

Heading into The Simpsons Movie I'll admit that it would've been pretty tough to find someone more skeptical than I was. For me (as well as a lot of people), the long-running television series had lost its touch in the past few years. South Park and Family Guy were continually pushing the animated boundaries as far as content goes, and The Simpsons had become the Roger Clemens of television. It was old, sure -- way passed its prime, maybe -- but it still managed to toss a gem every once in awhile. And that's why we continued to watch; some of us in awe that the show had survived a cluttered marketplace long enough to be prepping a 19th season, while others simply watched because Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the rest of Springfield still brought smiles to their faces, regardless of how old, stale and regurgitated the gags had become.

I remember The Simpsons Movie myth stretching all the way back to my school days. Somehow someone caught wind that they were thinking about a movie; at the time, the big rumor was that Bart would lose his virginity to an older woman. Remember that? But it wasn't until a few years ago that The Simpsons Movie became a reality. In the meantime, both South Park and Family Guy (The Simpsons greatest competition) were already putting out movies, with the former breaking ground on the big screen and the latter on DVD. Yet when both of those films began to lose their thunder halfway through, I became convinced it would be impossible for The Simpsons -- let alone any half-hour television cartoon -- to deliver an hour and a half full of high-quality entertainment. Thus, a heated argument amongst hardcore fans ensued: Would The Simpsons surprise everyone? Or would they look like suckers for risking a stellar 19-year career on a film that was bound to go down in a massive ball of flames? Thankfully, The Simpsons Movie proved 19 years was well worth the wait.

Adam Sandler's latest, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry surprised me a bit last week. I figured Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix would hold the number one spot for a second week, but I stand corrected. Here's how the numbers looked:
1. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: $34,775,000
2. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: $32,185,000
3. Hairspray: $27,800,000
4. Transformers: $20,506,000
5. Ratatouille: $11,000,000

I only see one clear blockbuster this week as the long awaited Simpsons movie finally hits. The rest make for an eclectic mix of golf, gourmet cooking, and stripping. Here's what we've got:

The Simpsons Movie
What's It All About: America's first family of TV animation leaps to the big screen.
Why It Might Do Well: Studies show that audiences enjoy seeing a bald dude with yellow skin doing really stupid stuff. The show has been on the air since 1989 with no end in sight, so there's an audience there. Additionally, I have two words: Spider-pig.
Why It Might Not Do Well: If the folks from Shelbyville manage to swipe all the prints before they make it to theaters, or if Mr. Burns releases the hounds on opening night there could be a problem. Otherwise, I think this one will do pretty well.
Number of Theaters: 3,800
Prediction: $65 $65 million

I Know Who Killed Me
What's It All About: Lindsay Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, a young woman who is mutilated by a serial killer but still manages to escape, though now she believes herself to be another person entirely.
Why It Might Do Well: They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, so perhaps Ms. Lohan's recent troubles with the law will count in the film's favor. (Hey, it could happen). Also, there's currently no competition in the psychological thriller department.
Why It Might Not Do Well: On the other hand, the public may be sick of this whole "starlets out of control" thing and just stay home to read the new Harry Potter book.
Number of Theaters: 1,200
Prediction: $6.5 million

No Reservations
What's It All About: Catherine Zeta Jones stars as a chef who suddenly finds herself caring for her late sister's daughter.
Why It Might Do Well: The presence of Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin as the little girl will probably attract Little Miss Sunshine fans.
Why It Might Not Do Well: None of Jones's films have ever left much of an impression on me. Yes, she's gorgeous, but I remember her for those cell phone commercials more than anything.
Number of Theaters: 2,300
Prediction: $8 million

Who's Your Caddy
What's It All About: A rap mogul named C-Note (Big Boi) tries to join a stuffy country club. Merriment and golf ensue.
Why It Might Do Well: Well, anything is possible.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Does the world really need a modern take on Caddy Shack?
Number of Theaters: 1,000
Prediction: $4 million

My method of prediction for this week involves looking for box office results in the bottoms of a series of beer bottles. Patience is required, but if you look long enough you can find just about anything there.
1. The Simpsons Movie
2. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
4. Hairspray
5. Transformers

Last Week's Prediction Ranking
1. Chris: 16
1. Lostpicks: 16
2. Evan: 11
2. Gregory Rubinstein: 11
2. Bradley Thom: 11
2. Mario: 11
3. borrachopictures: 9
3. Chris: 9
4. Matt: 7
4. Matt: 7
4. Anna07: 7
4. Brad: 7
4. Bubba8193: 7
4. Ray: 7
5. JR: 5

If you haven't yet joined in on our weekly box office prediction competition, then what the heck are you waiting for? Fabulous prizes most definitely do NOT await the winner, but the bragging rights are top notch. Don't forget to post your prediction for the top five films in the comments section below. One point for every top five movie correctly named, two points for every correct placement, and one extra point for the top movie.

Have you always dreamed of landing a guest spot on The Simpsons? Have you wondered what you would look like as a resident of Springfield? Well, thanks to the glorious thing that is movie marketing, you can now create your own Simpsons character (based on you or someone you know) and show it off to all those people who claim you don't have a lot of time on your hands. Interested? Oh, I know you are. To play, you can either head on over to the official The Simpsons Movie website (where they allow you to create your own avatar -- see me to the right of your screen) or the Burger King Simpsons site (where they allow you to upload a pic of yourself which you can then alter once in Simpsons mode).

I thought I'd like the Burger King site better (since you can use a pre-existing photo of yourself), but the one I created on The Simpsons Movie website came out a tad closer to what I actually look like. Just picture sideburns, a little scruff and bit more roundish physique. That's not to say the Burger King one won't work -- I guess it just depends on the picture you provide (they ask for a close-up shot). In case you've been living under a rock, they've been promoting the hell out of this movie. Earlier this month, a handful of 7-Elevens were converted to Kwik-E-Marts, while a flurry of Simpsons-related products hit shelves in thousands of stores across the country. (I managed to pick up some Buzz Cola, although it was a tad too sweet for my taste). On top of the 7-Eleven thing, a contest was also held featuring all of the U.S towns named Springfield. Basically, each town had to submit a video saying why they should be chosen to host The Simpsons Movie premiere. In the end, Springfield, Vermont won (check out all the submitted videos here). All this talk, I bet you're dying to see the movie already. Well, fear not, we only have to wait two more weeks -- The Simpsons Movie arrives in theaters on July 27.

[via JoBlo]