Saturday Morning Cartoons

Looking for something to do this Saturday morning? How about kicking it old school? I’m talking elementary school style. The Kosmos, the coffee house / art space located at 1715 Fifth Street NW, launched Kosmic Toonage earlier this month. This free, nostalgic cartoon program runs on the venue’s big screen every Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon. And if that’s not enough to get you out of bed, they’re offering bowls of sugary-delicious cereal for just $1.50. Of course, they also sell coffee, tea, breakfast burritos, bagels and more. But that’s not really in the spirit of the event, is it? Pull up a couch, eat a bowl of Lucky Charms, watch some “Popeye the Sailor Man” ... and feel free to wear your pajamas! Log on to www.thekosmos.org for details.

Myth understandings

Remake fever strikes again in the form of Clash of the Titans, a (semi-)big budget retooling of the 1981 myth adventure starring Harry Hamlin. The saving grace here is that the original isn’t particularly beloved. It was the swan song of special effects king Ray Harryhausen, and the stop-motion style of animation he perfected in films like 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was starting to show its age by the early ’80s. Now, the effects have all been replaced with today’s big trend: computer animation—and 3D computer animation at that!

You got commercials in my TV show! You got TV show in my commercials!

The entertainment industry has always tried to marry business and pleasure. In the early days of television, Fred Flintstone used to hawk Winston cigarettes during commercial breaks in “The Flintstones.” (No, really.) Corporations have long conspired to slip their products into popular entertainment—from the car James Bond is driving to the sunglasses Tom Cruise is sporting. Often, these “product placement” deals involve large sums of money, which helps offset the spiraling cost of movie and television production. (Which explains how Budweiser, Corvette, Jack Daniels and Nokia all found their way into last summer’s futuristic Star Trek.)

Week in Sloth

The Week in Sloth