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ANNCast - Late Night Chaos Rebellion

^Big reason I see the original being bad is because you had John Huston directing it. He is one of the greats,but that is a really bad fit for him considering the films he did.

The new Annie musical starring Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhané Wallis is pretty bad, but let’s be honest: Despite some decent show tunes, the show was pretty bad to begin with, so it’s not worth getting all righteous about the dumb changes.

I saw literally the first public performance (a preview) of Annie in the bicentennial summer of ’76 at the Goodspeed Opera House in Haddam, Connecticut. It was an embarrassing shambles — a saccharine distaff Oliver! — but even then I knew I’d be hearing that goddamn “Tomorrow” song for the rest of my life. The show got slicked up for Broadway and became a substantial hit, but apart from endless “Tomorrow” covers it bothered no one for a few years — until John Huston’s putrid 1982 movie with a baldy Albert Finney doing a Huston impression and Carol Burnett a two-hour drunk act. Leapin’ lizards, was the comic strip even good? It was certainly interesting. Harold Gray had the courage of his libertarian convictions (FDR was Daddy Warbucks’s nemesis), and Little Orphan Annie did her best to embody the American corporate-capitalist spirit, only accepting handouts from billionaire war profiteers. The strip ran a surprisingly long time before it was pronounced dead a few years ago, though the late, witty Jay Maeder (once of the New York Daily News) gave it a last dash of savoir faire.

Will kids like the movie? I honestly don't know. When I was a kid, I didn't much like movies about other kids, maybe because I was jealous (why does that kid get to ride a horse in the Derby?). The movie was promoted as a family entertainment, but was it really a family musical, even on the stage? I dunno. I think it was more of a product, a clever concoction of nostalgia, hard-sell sentiment, small children, and cute dogs. The movie is the same mixture as before. It's like some kind of dumb toy that doesn't do anything or go anywhere, but it is fun to watch as it spins mindlessly around and around.

You give the time stamp for various parts of the Podcast and you even recommend moving forward if one is not interested in the part about non anime movies. However the on site player no longer has a progress bar or any way I could find to determine where I was or to move forward or back. All it has is a start/pause button and a volume control that doesn't seem to work. It is possible that one of the other ways to access the podcast has the necessary controls, but I've never used them and see no reason why it should be necessary to leave the site to enjoy the podcast.

In this case the change is not for the better. I had to give up half way through as I am not interested in the non anime stuff and had no way to avoid it.

Hm, what browser are you on? We just switched to a new html5-friendly player, that could be causing some issue for you. It shows up as having a progress bar with a slider on my end, but it could be something happening with your specific setup.