After five months of repeats (giving me a lot of time to check out many animation titles from Japan) and a one week delay thanks to Bin Laden's (censored), the new season of the Simpsons finally gets underway with the annual THOH special, which after two clunkers in a row, returns to its usual array of fun.
S P O I L E R
S P A C E
DYN's:
Mr. Burn's face on the high voltage sign? Marge's hair is in it's regular beehive form when the family sees the dead bodies? A Life in Hell rabbit among the rabbits going into the hole full of Trix? Lisa is eating Quaker Oats? The Simpsons have dinner between 6:05 and 6:10? In the picture of the family on Marge's nightstand, Maggie doesn't have a pacifier in her mouth? The Wailing Wall includes faces of various dead characters on the show (Maude Flanders, "Bleeding Gums" Murphy, Snowball)?
Refs:
The Flintstones -Homer and Marge dress as Fred and Wilma
Sex and the City -Title of First Story
Peter Pan -Tinkerbell being the Pixie in the Lucky Charms hole
Star Wars -Yoda as the priest in the gypsy and leprachaun's wedding
House of Wax -Title of Second Story
2001 -Pierce's "red eye" watching over the house
On Her Majesty's Secret Service -The James Bond actor Marge mentions only plays that role in this film
Harry Potter (see comments) -Plot (kids learning magic) -Springwarts (Hogwarts) -Harry Potter among the students in the class -The S crest on the school robes (possibly a ref to the crests of the fours houses of Hogwarts) -Montymort (Lord Voldemont) -Bart entering Montymort's lair via school bathroom (the Chamber of Secrets, a place where a large snakelie creature lives, is accessable via one of the girls' restroom in Hogwarts) -Invisibility Cloak
Led Zeppelin -"Head Zeppelin" spell
Mork and Mindy -Bart saying "Shazbat"
Comments:
Unless you've been living in a cave the last few years, you'd probably heard of the name Harry Potter. Created by J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter is a British boy who, on his eleventh birthday, discovers that his parents were wizards and that he is already famous for being the only person to survive an attack by Lord Voldemont, an evil wizard that killed his parents. The book series (which plans to be seven books long) centers around Harry and his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, as they attend Hogwarts school to become wizards while investigating the various mysteries of the school, most of them involving Lord Voldemont someway or another. The first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the UK), is already made into a film that will be released next week, with film production of the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, starting soon.
Joe Klemm