Ghost in the Machine
Television
The Final Countdown.
Her? As you’ve likely already seen by now, the Arrested Development Season 4 Trailer has hit the Interweb, and Vulture has gone over it with a fine-toothed comb. Also, here’s a good site to bone up on the first three seasons’ in-jokes. Steve Holt!
Where Worlds Collide and Days Are Dark.
Onward to the next adventure: With the announcement that there’ll be no more xpacs, Kotaku‘s Kirk Hamilton says farewell to Skyrim. To be honest, I haven’t even started Skyrim yet. I borrowed my father’s copy many moons ago, but I’ve been daunted by the scope of the game — and afraid of the inevitable timesuck it will generate — since it came out. As Alan Sepinwall noted of the currently-unfolding Golden Age of Television, it seems to get harder and harder to keep up with all the great pop culture out there at the moment. Not enough time in the day.
You’re Blowing It, Campbell.
Ehrmagerd: Since everyone needs a laugh or two today, Mad Men and Community‘s Allison Brie re-creates favorite Internet memes. Given her two-show stardom, You Had One Job doesn’t work here. But doesn’t her cheesy name make Brie perfect for an Xhibit recursion? Yo dawg, I heard you liked Brie…
London Falling.
With that Douglas Adams-y pronouncement, Londonist offers a handy Google Map of all the places in London where Doctor Who has saved the city. “We’ve also, because we’re nice like that, colour coded them by which Doctor it was that defeated them.”
There’s No I in Teamocil…
Twilight of the Drug War?
More fruits from Californication: With public support for legalizing marijuana over 50% for the first time, and a new documentary, The House I Live In, once again calling attention to the many cruel absurdities of the Drug War — $1 trillion spent, 2.2 million in prison — signs suggest the ill-advised War on Drugs may finally be receding as a sacrosanct institution in Washington.
“For decades, the politics of the drug war were straightforward: Being tough could help at the polls and came with no political downside; being open to reform had few advantages, but would be used against a candidate on the campaign trail. That calculation is no longer so simple.”
Dad to Daleks, Mom to Muppets, Uncle to Many.
Got Your Back, Manatee.
A Song of Ice and Flynn.
Less than a fortnight before the first half of A Storm of Swords gets its close-up, HBO releases an extended trailer for Game of Thrones Season 3. Looks solid as usual, although biting Daft Punk from the very memorable Tron: Legacy teaser is an odd choice.
Of course, if this TRON-Tyrion mash-up whetted your appetite for GRRM retro-style — Thatcher! Jazzercise! Lipgloss! — look no further than Game of Thrones‘s mid-90′s-style credits, not unlike the Firefly one making the rounds awhile back.
At Least Homer Read It.
FWIW, this particular piece of awesome was drawn on commission by former Simpsons illustrator Gary Yap, who can be found on Etsy for custom works. He also apparently perused my Flickr feed and/or GitM for our look and general inspiration (Note the back of the book and Berk eyeing the Roomba.) I wonder if he made it as far as the shelves of old Simpsons toys, currently collecting dust and resale value in a Chesapeake, VA attic. In any case, very cool.
The High Cost of Deficit Hysteria.
It’s not just pandas and sea lions: Chris Good of ABC News lists fifty-seven terrible consequences America can expect from the looming sequestration, the deep automatic cuts resulting from the August 2011 debt ceiling deal that — unless action is taken — are set to go into effect on March 1st. Among the probable damage: 700,000 jobs lost. “With the House in recess and with Obama playing golf [with oilmen] over the weekend, a deal does not appear imminent.”
There’s a lot of back-and-forth going on in Washington right now about whose fault these lousy sequesters are. Clearly, the GOP loved the idea back when, and they’re the ones preventing any action on averting the cuts now. So make no mistake — if these deep and indiscriminate cuts go into effect, it’ll be because the GOP wants them. It’s the same reason they hold up disaster relief constantly, and are currently holding the US Postal Service hostage — Because they seem to get an ideological kick out of seeing Big Guvmint fail at its basic responsibilities.
That being said, let’s remember: The president handed House Republicans a loaded gun. It takes a very short-term view of things to forget how, throughout 2010, 2011, and 2012, President Obama actively fomented the deficit witchhunt, and continued to promote both Simpson-Bowles and a deadly Grand Bargain even as it became patently obvious that investment, spending, and economic growth should be the order of the day. (By the way: Not in the Simpson-Bowles package of deficit-defeating awesomeness? The corporate tax loophole that just made Erskine Bowles $114,000.)
In short, this lousy sequester is the GOP’s baby, yes. But it’s also the ultimate consequence of both parties trafficking in unresponsible hysteria over a phantom problem for years one end. Now the chickens have come home to roost, and our fragile economic recovery, weakened by several years without any serious stimulus, faces a real crisis. Let’s be clear: This crisis was not caused by the illusory danger of deficits, but because Republicans and the administration both, when the chips were down in August 2011, elided over basic economic sense and instead embraced the nonsense of austerity.
Update: The Story of the Sequester in GIF form, via AFSCME, and Sequestered Development, a not particularly inspired mash-up of Arrested Development and recent events.
Lucille Begins.
“Let’s go ahead and imagine the possibilities: Lucille during her Stuckey’s waitressing days! Facing off against young Lucille Austero! Performing the uncomfortable wink for the first time!” And let’s not forget the chicken dance. Kristen Wiig joins the Arrested Development reboot as young Lucille Bluth.
Still Scruffy-Looking.
FWIW, as a Star Wars kid, I’m mostly OK with this ginormous SW revival over at the Mouse. The prequel trilogy — especially Attack of the Clones — already broke the seal in terms of bringing bad Star Wars into the world. So, even if this all seems extremely commercialized even for a franchise that was always driven by toy sales, I’m still curious to see other diverse and talented filmmakers playing in the great sandbox Lucas made. But JJ Abrams? Eh. I already saw his Star Wars movie back when it was called Star Trek.
Without Chemicals, He Shakes.
If you’ve also been wondering how Agent Cooper has been faring in the Black Lodge after two decades — presuming you never got him out — the answer is: NOT WELL. (Also, I thought I was relatively well-versed in bizarre Internet memes, but this Harlem Shake business had to this point totally passed me by.)
Update: Harlem is not amused.
The Lion and the Mutants.
I get the feeling X:DFP is either going to be amazing or an overstuffed Last Stand-like disaster. Still, it’s yet another testament to just how decisively fanboys have won the culture war when they’re making a movie of one of the most iconic X-Men tales with both casts from the previous films — the McAvoy/Fassbender/Lawrence team of First Class and the Stewart/McKellen/Jackman team of the first three films. An ensemble movie and no mistake.
Update: Even more X-Men: Now Singer is teasing the return of Cyclops and Jean Grey.
Breaking Very Very Bad.
Mrs. Peel, We are Needed.
Before Mulder and Scully, there was Steed and Peel: In the AV Club, Noel Murray sings the praises of “The Avengers’ stylish, lascivious vision of Britishness. I’ll confess that Mrs. Peel remains one of my earliest and enduring fanboy crushes. “[T]he secret to The Avengers’ ribaldry was that it isn’t just about sex: It’s also about power. Gale and Peel didn’t just flummox men with their beauty; they also had brilliant minds, and they kicked gents’ posteriors, routinely.” (Images via Heather McLendon.)
Sail on, Sunjammer.
Popular Science previews the flight of NASA’s Sunjammer, set for launch in 2014. “The destination for Sunjammer is the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable spot way out there between us and our nearest star…Sunjammer will be carrying the cremated remains of various individuals, including Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry.”
Game of Bricks.
Best build some wildfire…A group of audacious (and bored) GRRM-enthusiasts recreate the entirety of King’s Landing in Minecraft. I’ve yet to try Minecraft, since quite frankly I’m afraid to court another gaming addiction. But everything I read about it makes it seem like it’s eventually going to be the online world described in the namedroppy but compulsively readable Ready Player One.
From Hell’s Heart…
After relying heavily on Star Wars for their first outing, J.J. Abrams and co. now borrow from the Dark Knight and the Nolanverse — especially the Inception button — to lend heft to the teaser for Star Trek: Into Darkness, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the new, still unidentified Big Bad. (Khan? Gary Mitchell? Garth of Izar? Smaug? Severus Gruber?) Eh, I’m in…but we just did the vengeance-upon-the Federation schtick with Eric Bana in the last movie.
The Way We Weir.
In Vanity Fair, an oral history of Freaks and Geeks. “We didn’t really have to be told we were being canceled. We watched the craft-service table: it started out with, like, cold cuts and delicious snacks, and it was reduced to half a thing of creamer and some Corn Pops by the end.“
And also in the same magazine, Paul Feig tells where everyone was headed for Season 2: “With his mom dating Coach Fredricks, Judd and I liked the idea of Bill slowly becoming a jock — that he turned out to be good at basketball and started to get into it, so that he was getting pulled a little more over to the jock side.”
Secrets of the Supercut.
“Many supercuts provide hard evidence of the existence of tropes long suspected but never quite proved: imperiled characters fretting that they have no cellphone signal; high-tech investigators asking their imaging software to “enhance“; action movie toughs girding for battle by announcing, “We’ve got company.” But what motivates the supercutter to slog through hours of footage to compile these minute observations? And what distinguishes the masters of the form?“
In Slate, old friend Seth Stevenson surveys the practice and methodology of supercuts. At the very least it’s both funny and instructive to see how many times, to take the example of ST:TNG, Worf gets denied and bad things happen to Geordi.
Back on his Rounds.
If you care, you’re already well aware of this. Nonetheless, The Doctor has returned as of September 1st. Above is the full Pond Life, the short Amy-and-Rory vignettes put up online before last week’s Asylum of the Daleks. Apparently, this season is going back in the direction of weekly standalone adventures, which I think is a welcome development — The past two season arcs (the time crack in the wall, the dead doctor in the desert) have been more than a little convoluted, imho.
The Hero We Deserve.
Twenty Years of Garmonbozia.
Twenty years after its opening, Grantland‘s Alex Pappademas takes another look at Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I never understood the hate this film received. (Then again, I also liked Peaks’ much-maligned second season.) Sure, it’s a bit all over the place, but there are impressionistic moments in Fire Walk With Me — the trapped Leland monkey, the picture-within-a-picture, the phantom Bowie — that still frighten me for reasons I find impossible to explain, much in the same way some of the third act bizarroland suicide stuff in Mulholland Drive — the blue box, the creepy homeless guy, the little tourists — seems to bypass my brain completely and just frazzles my spinal cord. And what’s not to like about Special Agent Chet Desmond?
The Caesar Beyond the Wall.
As revealed at Entertainment Weekly today, joining the rest of the new Game of Thrones casts members above — Diana Rigg? Awesome. — is HBO standby Ciaran Hinds as the King Beyond the Wall, Mance Rayder. Somebody on a fan board offered Robert Carlyle — who’s busy making a mint over on ABC’s Once Upon a Time — but Hinds is a great choice also, and a much more prominent actor than I suspected.
Earth, you are On Notice.
“Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twenty-first century came the great disillusionment.“
And we know exactly whose fault it is. In response to the 35-year-old “WOW signal“, we the people of Earth have apparently chosen as our herald Stephen Colbert, whose response above will be broadcast in the direction of its origin by National Geographic via the Arecibo radio telescope.
Hrm….isn’t the Mighty Colbert a bit too droll for alien intelligences? I fear this will set off a Douglas Adams-style miscommunication that will end very badly for all parties involved. Second, why would any alien race be able to make sense of Prometheus? There was no sense there to be had.
Caged Wisdom, Meet Sterling’s Gold.
hOw’S aNnIe?
“The good Dale is in the Lodge, and he can’t leave. Write it in your diary.” Since, two decades later, we never got a satisfactory resolution on Agent Cooper’s fate in the Black Lodge — although I guess it’s possible Ed Helms freed Annie from there during his epic Hangover — some enterprising soul has turned Dale’s attempted escape into a downloadable 8-bit game (available here, and here’s the source material.) Extra points for the 8-bit “Sycamore Trees.”
Game of Votes.
Still taking a break. Nonetheless, this was too on-the-nose not to share, for election 2012 is dark and full of terrors. Enjoy.
2011 in Film.
Ten days into the new year, it’s past time to knock out GitM’s best-of-2011 list. To be honest, last year’s movie crop was somewhat underwhelming, and as always, there are a few more gaps I’d love to have plugged first — Cedar Rapids, Margin Call, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Take Shelter, Warrior — but, for what I saw last year, here’s the best of ‘em…
[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006/2007/2008/2009/2010/The Oughts]
1. Midnight in Paris: Its wry take on the perils of nostalgia notwithstanding, my favorite film of 2011 didn’t aspire to be much more than a fun, low-key time at the movies. And that it was. One of the most carefree films in Woody Allen’s long and storied career, and featuring one of the best Woodster stand-ins in recent decades with Owen Wilson, Midnight in Paris was an amiable lark that entertained with a light touch and without resorting to the occasionally frantic enthusiasm of The Artist. In short, an unmitigated pleasure: In a so-so year for film, we’ll always have Paris.
2. Attack the Block: While this dubstep-fueled blend of sci-fi horror, Occupy London social commentary, and stoner humor may not be to everyone’s taste, Joe Cornish’s impressive debut was also a surprisingly fun movie and perhaps the purest adrenaline ride of the summer. In a year of big budget and often-suspect alien invasions, it was this lo-rent Block that best delivered the goods, bruv. Believe.
3. The Descendants: With carefully modulated performances from everyone involved, this well-observed dramedy about grief, infidelity, and family in Hawaii was Alexander Payne’s most humanistic film yet. And unlike, say, The King’s Speech or Shame, The Descendants for some reason never set off my usual annoyance with “poor little rich guy” tales — a testament to its emotional resonance.
4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: The Circus has been compromised: With great actors all over the place, Tomas Alfredson’s dark, circuitous and densely plotted adaptation of John Le Carre’s cloak-and-dagger novel, redolent of cigarettes, desperation, and Cold War paranoia, is the 2011 movie I’m most looking forward to revisiting in the future. Give Gary Oldman the Oscar already.
5. X-Men: First Class: In a better year, this movie would probably be hovering around the ten spot. But, in 2011 — a year that saw no shortage of superheroics at the multiplex — Matthew Vaughn’s Mad Men-era reboot of the X-Men universe was one of the more entertaining and successful-on-its-own-terms films to come down the pike, with James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, and especially Michael Fassbender adding ballast to the proceedings. To me once again, my X-Men.
6. Contagion: Ahem…sorry to cough a fine spray of phlegm all over the keyboard and mouse you’re currently using. Where was I? Ah yes, Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s highly creepy medical disaster movie, which carries all the more punch for being so grounded in daily reality. With Haywire and Magic Mike heading to theaters this year, hopefully Soderbergh will continue to postpone his much-publicized retirement, at least until the plague comes through.
7. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: Utilizing techniques honed at Pixar’s impressive animation stable, Brad Bird moved to the forefront of contemporary action directors and managed to revive both Tom Cruise’s waning career and a moribund franchise with this visceral and engaging thrill ride. This was easily the best pure action film of the year, or of the past several years, for that matter.
8. The Muppets: Overburdened with anachronistic 80′s nostalgia, yet leavened by a blissful infusion of Conchords — and, really, isn’t everything better with more Conchords? — Segal, Stoller, and Bobin’s heartfelt reintroduction of the Muppets was another very enjoyable evening out. I wasn’t much for the Walter framing device, but it was definitely grand to see Kermit, Fozzie, and the gang once more.
9. War Horse: Granted, putting animals in wartime peril is an easy way to get an audience emotionally invested. Still, Spielberg’s War Horse eventually overcame its early schmaltziness to become unexpectedly moving. And, if he’s up for more wartime shenanigans, perhaps Joey the wonder steed can get a cameo in Lincoln.
10. Hanna: When first putting this list together, I almost forgot this kinetic fairy tale, which, like Attack the Block, enjoys the benefit of a propulsive 21st-century score (here furnished by the Chemical Brothers.) One of the hidden gems of the spring.
11. Drive: I liked this Lynchian escapade less than a lot of critics. Its great opening scene aside, I found Drive to be all sleek surfaces and very little depth, and unfortunately the gorefest second-half never lives up to the meditative-samurai promise of the first hour. Still, the film looked great, and I look forward to seeing what director Nicholas Winding Refn comes up with next.
12. The Artist: There may not be much there there, and I wouldn’t pick it for Best Picture — but The Artist is a hard film to hate on. This is a movie that works overtime — and without the benefit of sound — to show you a good time.
13. Source Code: While it’s not nearly as layered or as satisfying as his first film, Moon, Duncan Jones’ Source Code is still a small, well-made Twilight Zone episode of a movie. And it shows Jones has the chops to stage more than one compelling science fiction tale — Hopefully, his next, as-yet-untitled sci-fi film will make it a trifecta.
14. Captain America and Thor: I have a sneaking suspicion Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (from which the pic above is taken) isn’t really going to work. Still, veteran hands Joe Johnston and Kenneth Branagh managed to conjure up surprisingly engaging films out of Cap and Thor respectively. In both cases, I had a better time than I had originally expected.
15. Jane Eyre: The first film on the list I didn’t actually see in the theater, Cary Fukunaga’s worthy retelling of the oft-filmed Charlotte Bronte novel succeeds mainly by playing up the Gothic horror elements of the story. It also enjoys some of the most lavish cinematography of the year (this side of The Tree of Life.)
16. Young Adult: Thanks in no small part to Charlize Theron’s praiseworthy turn as “that girl” from high school all thirty-something and curdled, Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman’s darkly funny tale of When Rom-Com Values Go Bad represents a career highlight for them both.
17. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn: Granted, I have a childhood fondness for Herge’s world that predisposed me to enjoy myself at this film — I have no idea how this flick plays for folks who’ve never heard of Captain Haddock or the Thompson Twins. But speaking for myself, I had a grand old time, and was glad to see that mo-cap is starting to move past the dead-eyed trough of the Uncanny Valley.
18. Crazy, Stupid, Love: A smart and tightly-written romantic comedy that I just caught on Netflix this past weekend. Crazy, Stupid, Love doesn’t break any new ground per se, but it’s still quite good for what it is — and given how terrible 21st century rom-coms can be, that is no small thing.
19. 50/50: Here’s another small-bore film that won’t light the world on fire. Still, Jonathan Levine’s cancer dramedy, thanks to Joseph Gordon-Levitt and work in the margins from Angelica Huston and Matt Frewer, works surprisingly well at straddling a delicate balance in tone between Apatowish bro-humor and Lifetime movie-of-the-week.
20. Bridesmaids: For better or worse, 2011 was a year in film that almost relentlessly looked backwards: From Midnight to Muppets to Hugo to The Artist, this was a year that wallowed in nostalgia for days gone by. (The future, it seems, brings either aliens or humanity-destroying plagues.) So, while Beginners, Win Win, The Trip, Hugo, or The Ides of March could’ve gone here, last spot goes to Paul Feig, Kristen Wiig, and Annie Mumolo’s funny, feminist reconception of the gross-out comedy. Let’s hope more mainstream films in years to come, comedies or otherwise, actually manage to pass the Bechdel test.
Most Disappointing: Had I more faith in Zack Snyder beforehand, this would go to his thoroughly terrible Sucker Punch, and, alas, the unfortunately botched Green Lantern came close to taking this spot as well. In the end, though, this goes to Jon Favreau’s misfire Cowboys and Aliens. Cowboys! Aliens! Daniel Craig! Harrison Ford! And yet, this one came out duller than dirt.
Worth Netflixing: The Adjustment Bureau, Beginners, The Conspirator, A Dangerous Method, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2, Hugo, The Ides of March, J. Edgar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Tree of Life, The Trip, Win Win
Don’t Bother: Battle: Los Angeles, Blue Valentine (2010), Friends with Benefits, Limitless, Meek’s Cutoff, Shame, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, Somewhere (2010), Super 8, Water for Elephants
Best Actor: Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; George Clooney, The Descendants; Michael Fassbender, Shame
Best Actress: Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Charlize Theron, Young Adult; Mia Wasikowska, Jane Eyre
Best Supporting Actor: Uggie, The Artist; Christopher Plummer, Beginners, Eric Bana, Hanna; Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Best Supporting Actress: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants; Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life, Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids, Cate Blanchett, Hanna
Unseen: 30 Minutes or Less, Albert Nobbs, Anonymous, Another Earth, Apollo 18, Arthur, Arthur Christmas, Atlas Shrugged, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas, Bad Teacher, Barney’s Version, Beastly, The Beaver, Bellflower, Biutiful, Carnage, Cars 2, Cedar Rapids, The Change-Up, Colombiana, Conan the Barbarian, Coriolanus, The Darkest Hour, The Debt, The Devil’s Double, The Dilemma, Dolphin Tale, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Dream House, Drive Angry, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, Everything Must Go, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Fast Five, Footloose, Fright Night, The Guard, The Hangover Pt 2, Happy Feet 2,The Help, Hesher, Horrible Bosses, I Am Number Four, Immortals, Incendies, In the Land of Blood and Honey, In Time, The Iron Lady, I Saw the Devil, Jack and Jill, Killer Elite, Kung Fu Panda 2, Larry Crowne, The Last Circus, Like Crazy, The Lincoln Lawyer, Margaret, Margin Call, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Mechanic, Melancholia, Moneyball, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, My Week with Marilyn, New Year’s Eve, Our Idiot Brother, Paranormal Activity 3, Pariah, Paul, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Priest, Puss in Boots, Rango, Real Steel, Red State, Rio, The Rum Diary, Sanctum, Scream 4, Sleeping Beauty, The Smurfs, Something Borrowed, Straw Dogs, Take Me Home Tonight, Take Shelter, The Thing, The Three Musketeers, Tower Heist, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, The Way Back, Warrior, We Bought a Zoo, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Winnie the Pooh, Your Highness, Zookeeper
- A Good Year For:
- Jessica Chastain (Coriolanus, The Debt, The Help, Take Shelter, Tree of Life)
- Electronica Soundtracks (Attack the Block, Drive, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hanna)
- Film History Buffs (The Artist, Hugo)
- Ryan Gosling (Crazy, Stupid, Love, Drive, Ides of March)
- Marvel (Captain America, Thor, X-Men: First Class)
- Michael Fassbender (A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, A Dangerous Method, Shame, X-Men: First Class)
- Tom Hiddleston (Midnight in Paris, Thor, War Horse)
- Parisian Nostalgia (Midnight in Paris, Hugo)
- Scene-Stealing Dogs (The Artist, Beginners, Tintin)
- The Sex Lives of Depressed People (Shame, Somewhere (2010))
- Emma Stone (Crazy, Stupid, Love, Friends with Benefits, The Help)
- A Bad Year For:
- Gimmicks to Fill the Seats (3D, Reserve Seating)
- Tom Hanks (Larry Crowne, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
- Missions in Budapest (MI: Ghost Protocol, Tinker Tailor)
- Movies starting with S (Shame, Sherlock 2, Sucker Punch, Super 8)
No hat, no stick, no pipe, not even a pocket handkerchief! How can one survive?
Kings Will Clash.
“My brother left no true-born heirs. By right and birth and blood, I do this day lay claim to the Iron Throne of Westeros. Let all true men declare their loyalty: The Iron Throne is mine by right. They will bend the knee or I will destroy them.” Well, Stannis talks a big game at least…(and note the three horn blasts from Storm of Swords.) From ten days ago, the Game of Thrones Season 2 trailer. The cold winds are rising, April 2012.
Men Must Have a Code.
“If I hear the music, I’m gonna dance.” It may be three years now since it went off the air, but the game remain the game, always: Every single epigram from The Wire in under three minutes. The world goin’ one way, people another yo.
Frog out of Time.
I have some issues with Jason Segal, Nick Stoller, and James Bobin’s fun, nostalgia-heavy reboot of The Muppets, which I’ll get to in a bit. But, before I put my critical hat on and not to bury the lede: For the most part, The Muppets works. It’s a sweet, good-natured, and really enjoyable Thanksgiving enterprise that hearkens back to the glories of the TV show and first three muppet films (The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppets Take Manhattan), as well as the days when Jim Henson (we still miss you) still walked among us. And it is, in short, a really good time.
Word has come down that Frank Oz and some of the other original muppeteers were unhappy with the film, but it’s hard to imagine a more honest and heartfelt tribute coming from Hollywood these days. Say what you will about the Segal-Stoller-Bobin version of The Muppet Show, it doesn’t feel at all like a Disney cash grab. (It’s also considerably more enjoyable than the Muppet book-movies of the nineties, like A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island.) And while frankly it’s still a bit jarring to note the changes in Kermit’s inflections and facial expressions since Henson’s passing, if you just think of him as a James Bond figure, now recast as Steve Whitmire, there’s a lot to like in this production.
The movie begins with the Apatowish-feeling introduction of a new muppet, Walter (Peter Linz), and his brother Gary (Jason Segal), two all-American kids growing up in the heartland — Smalltown, to be exact. (I presume Walter was adopted.) For obvious reasons, Walter becomes obsessed with the Muppets at a very early age, and so, when planning a trip to the Big City of Los Angeles with his longtime girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), Gary — to Mary’s mild consternation — offers to bring his brother along so he can visit the Muppet Studios. So far, so good. But on that fateful visit, Walter discovers that a nefarious oil man, Tex Richman (a hilarious, hip-hoppin’ Chris Cooper), is planning to buy the now-bedraggled studio in two weeks and destroy it, in order to get his hands on all the precious black gold pooled underneath. (In fact, he’s cut a deal with those classic one-percenters, Statler and Waldorf. Maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh.)
Naturally, Walter, Gary, and Mary track down the one-and-only Kermit the Frog — now living alone in a massive mansion bought by the since-estranged Miss Piggy — and inform him of Richman’s evil plan. To save the studio, Walter explains (having seen the contract), the Muppets will need to raise ten million dollars in the next fortnight. How can they do that? I know, let’s put on a show! And so Kermit and the team travel the world (by map) to get the band back together. As it happens, Fozzie has been working the Reno circuit with a tribute act called the Moopets (Dave Grohl, in an Animal costume, on drums.) Gonzo is a plumbing magnate, Bunsen Honeydew’s at CERN, Sam the Eagle at FOX News. But what of the porcine goddess? Can Kermit et al procure the talents of Miss Piggy once again after all these years? And, being optimistic has-beens in a harder, crueler entertainment world (the #1 show these days is Punch Teacher, hosted by Ken Jeong) where are the Muppets going to find some much-needed star wattage for their telethon? Maybe Animal made some friends in rehab…
That’s the basic gist, and for the most part The Muppets moves along with pop, fizzle, and verve — There are one-liners and sight gags piled into every corner of this film, and they usually stay true to the original wry-but-well-meaning Muppet brand of humor. Oh, yes, and there’s musical numbers too, as befitting a new Muppet movie. (They’re contributed by the Ernie of the Conchords, Bret McKenzie, and, even without FotC director Bobin providing the visuals, they’re all very Conchordian. (Consider lines like “a very manly muppet.”) Speaking of the songs, I do have a small quibble in that the humans — Jason Segal and Amy Adams — do almost all of the singing in this film. Shouldn’t the Muppets be taking point on the musical numbers most of the time?
Of course, it’d be hard for any new song to approach the timelessness of “The Rainbow Connection,” — In fact, Kermit and the gang actually sing “The Rainbow Connection” here late in the third act — which brings me to my main issue with The Muppets: It’s a total hipster nostalgia-fest, and it effectively turns the Muppet gang into Rocky Balboa or The Expendables — old, forgotten warhorses out for one more curtain call. Why not just let the Muppets continue on in another grand adventure? Do Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny ever worry about their contemporary cachet? Instead, Segal and Stoller have adopted an Almost Famous framing device — Walter’s desire to fit in/hang with his now out-of-date idols — that is almost suffocating at times in its Internet-era emo-hipsterishness. I mean, I grew up on and love the Muppets too, but does this film really have to be about some uber-fan’s feelings about them?
I’ll confess, it wasn’t just that I found the nostalgia cloying at times. More troublesome is the fact that the overwrought nostalgia here is tied to the wrong era. Time and again, this movie makes The Muppets seems like icons of the eighties, which I suppose is when young Segal, Stoller — and I — were into them. Here, Kermit et al sing along to (groan) Starship’s “We Built This City,” released 1985. They get a definitively eighties montage sequence, that is set up as such. Kermit has Cyndi Lauper in his rolodex (and, to be fair, President Carter.) They even have an ’80′s robot — which they continually call ’80′s Robot — driving them around from place to place, and offering people New Coke and Tab to boot.
But the problem is, The Muppets aren’t really products of the eighties at all. They’re seventies creations (and, really, Archie Bunker notwithstanding, isn’t Jim Henson one of the quintessentially seventies television icons?) Following on the beginning of Sesame Street in 1969, the Muppets appeared here and there throughout the early decade — including on Saturday Night Live — and got their own show in 1976, which ran until 1981. For that matter, The Muppet Movie came out in 1979. In 1984 — at best a year or two after what we now think of as “the eighties” coalesced — The Muppets Take Manhattan came out, effectively ending the Muppets’ participation in the decade (the exception being The Muppet Babies animated Saturday morning cartoon, whose theme song is still lodged in my head after all these years.)
The point being, The Muppets not only trafficks too much in nostalgia for my liking. It trafficks in a misplaced nostalgia that has more to do with the generation of the writers than with the actual Muppets themselves. Don’t get me wrong — Segal and Stoller do a lot right, this a very enjoyable evening at the movies, and you’ll be hard-pressed not to leave with a smile on your face. But the rewriting of history rankles — When you get right down to it, Generation Y shouldn’t misappropriate the legacy of Kermit and the gang any more than Tex Richman. Let the Muppets live their own time.
Half- and Half-Man Marathons.
To follow up on items mentioned here:
- Two weeks ago, I did in fact finish the Baltimore Half-Marathon: Total running time was 2 hours, 3 minutes, 35 seconds, so I clocked in at just under nine and a half minute miles. I’m totally fine with that, especially given that I only got in six weekend-warriorish weeks of training beforehand. And, other than not being able to walk so well for a day or two afterwards, no serious damage done – I may be up for another long race as early as December. (This is quite a contrast with my failed attempt to run the DC Cherry Blossom ten-miler earlier this year: Then, my feet fell apart. I’m now an enthusiastic convert to the Vibram toe-shoes.)
- Also, after a slog through A Feast of Crows in particular, I am now totally caught up with George R.R. Martin on A Song of Ice and Fire. And, well, there is a definite drop in quality after the first three books: Four and five are far more meandering (Martells and Tyrells? 1100 pages and Tyrion still hasn’t met up with Dany?) and repetitive (drink every time somebody says “words are wind“) than they need to be. Still, I’ve read worse: Count me in for Winds of Winter, if and when it ever drops. In the meantime, I’ll be ensconced in Steve Erikson’s ten-tome Malazan Book of the Fallen.
The Audacity of Sheeeee…
“Prometheus Bound. An ancient play, one of the oldest we have. About a simple man who was horrifically punished by the powers that be for the terrible crime of trying to bring light to the common people. In the words of…Ascyllius, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ I cannot tell you how much consolation I find in these slim pages.”
From a DCist story on Mayor Vince Gray’s recent woes, a Fairey-esque tribute to Maryland State Senator R. Clayton Davis of The Wire. I laughed.
Pinterested
Visions
Stories We Tell (4/10)
Currently Reading
Hidden Cities, Moses Gates
Omsbudsdog.
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