One of our Canadian readers, Ben, periodically sends me presents. I’ve shared some of these with you in the past. I got two more from him yesterday “from the filthy bowels of the internet.” Once again, these are too cool to keep to myself.

The first is a Pingu. I didn’t know what a Pingu was. Now I know. Pingu was a British-Swiss stop-motion claymated television series created by Otmar Gutmann. The show was about a family of anthropomorphic penguins at the South Pole. The series ran from 1986 to 1998, and then again from 2004 to 2005. But Pingu is not dead. A dude named Lee Hardcastle continues to make Pingu’s for his YouTube channel.

Last week, Hardcastle uploaded a Pingu re-make of John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece, The Thing. This was Ben’s first present to me yesterday. If you’re a fan of that movie, as I am, it’s a blast to watch, because Hardcastle succeeds in boiling down the plot of the movie into about two minutes, and the claymation effects he uses are ingenious. It won’t mean nearly as much if you’re not familiar with The Thing, but you might still like it.

And speaking of The Thing, there was a “prequel” movie that came out late last year (also called The Thing) telling the story of what happened at the Norwegian base in Antarctica leading up to the events that began the Carpenter movie. Did anyone see that prequel? Is it any good? As for the second present . . . Continue reading »