My guess is that Chuck has strict instructions not to interrupt the “Barbers’ Picnic”.
Also, Barbers’ Picnic is my new band name and probably one of the activities in the parlor cabinet in the hotel on Widow’s Bay.
Did you think I’d segue from Peanuts’ currently syndicated repeats into talk of The Pitt instead?
The record that won its namesake 2001’s Grammy for Best New Artist, I Am Shelby Lynne wasn’t actually her first album but her sixth.
The National Cartoonists Society held its 72nd annual Reuben Awards dinner
on Saturday, May 26th, in Philadelphia.
Glen Keane was crowned Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year — a prize known
simply as The Reuben — for his 2017 short film “Dear Basketball”. Past winners include Walt Kelly, Mort Drucker, Bill Watterson, Milton Caniff, and Will Eisner. It appears to be the first time the top award has been given for work in animation.
I’ll wager that most of you are familiar with James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, a
— really, the — standout feature of his brief tenure as host of The Late Late Show on CBS. You’ve probably already seen its latest installment, in which Corden drives around Manhattan with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Audra MacDonald, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Jane Krakowski. So you don’t need me to link to it.
But I just did anyway.
What follows are some thoughts on nostalgia and how it may blur critical assessment, prompted by yesterday’s post on this year’s Oscars show.
I’d like to preface them with a quote from an interview that Stefan Blitz (now founder/editor-in-chief of Forces of Geek) and I conducted with comics writer Brian Michael Bendis back in 2001 for my magazine Comicology. After I stopped myself literally in the middle of referring to Stefan as a DVD connoisseur, Stefan made my point for me — by admitting that he owned the 1983 movie Krull.
“You know what’s funny about that movie?” said Bendis. “I remember seeing that
movie [at 15] with my mom and my brother, and sitting in the movie theater having
my first realization that movies could suck.”
As you might’ve heard, the Oscars are tonight.
The big show starts at 8:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. PT on ABC — whose Go site has a complete list of nominees. If you’re into seeing Oscar hopefuls, presenters, and other celebrities on the red carpet, you’ll want to check those good ol’ local listings.
I’ll probably pass on a review of the show; then again, I’ve thought that before and yet — after a bout of Oscars poetry in 2009, when the blog was all of a few days old — I ended up doing post-Oscars posts in 2010, 2011, and 2012.
This post is currently down for maintenance.
Last Saturday morning the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards ceremony was held, airing that night on IFC. Seth Rogen hosted and past host John Waters served as Voice of God.
I started this writeup a week ago, but it petered out because no video was online yet and life distractions were abundant.
Rogen smartly referenced Brett Ratner’s Oscars controversy by asking if anyone was really surprised that Ratner showed himself to be a “horrible bigot”. It was a double zing — he’s a creep and we should’ve figured — as well as a singularly nifty way of pointing out that the (rightful) disapproval of Ratner’s usage of a gay slur had a whiff of the double standard about it, since bad behavior in Hollywoodland tends to be tolerated among the successful until it becomes news that puts authority in a difficult position.
He went on to say that Ratner would’ve been better off producing the Grammys than the Oscars, since “you could literally beat the $#!% out of a nominee and they ask you to perform twice” — a reference to the Chris Brown / Rihanna situation, which took a turn for the WTF recently when news came that the two were collaborating on a new track.
I also liked Rogen’s line that Drive “made Jews look so scary, I thought Mel Gibson directed it” and his comment about the star of Martha Marcy May Marlene: “I learned there’s a whole other Olsen this year. Where were they hiding her? She’s the best one!”
I’m sure that the world doesn’t need another Oscars analysis. And while that hasn’t stopped me the past couple of years, real-life concerns have me too distracted right now to forge ahead with any prolonged insight; neither my head nor my heart is in the game.
Billy Crystal’s return as host was more triumphant in terms of his professionalism
than of rollicking humor, which may be what the doctor ordered. There was some good, yet not much bad or ugly — mostly things were perfectly fine but unremarkable, unless that was just my personal mood — and it’s the controversy, the unexpected, the WTF moments where quick-minded emcees (with backstage writers at the ready for good measure) like Crystal shine. I noticed and appreciated his ease at moving the show along, perhaps due to the particular contrast with recent hosts, while at the same time wishing for wittier material.
My dislikes, although they were mild, include...
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I stated at the end of yesterday’s post that any write-up of this year’s Golden Globes telecast would be short and scattershot. Here’s me trying to make good on that claim. For a more in-depth reflection on many of the Globes’ quirks, see my write-up from last year.
Overall, Ricky Gervais as host was once again fine if hardly stellar. Most of his
barbs didn’t have the bite that I think he wanted them to, as he — and NBC, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — seemed to promote his return this year as a
go-for-broke train wreck waiting to happen, which is quite a silly thing. Gervais was, y’know, invited back. Of course he comes with a certain amount of edginess, but he’s a professional and there must have been negotiations and he knows how far he can push it. This isn’t an accidentally “tweeted” nude photo; it’s three hours of prime-time network programming on a Sunday night. We can all feign anticipated shock only so far.
The Oscars brain-trust was ostensibly going for a fresher, younger feel in tapping James Franco and Anne Hathaway to host the 83rd annual ceremony. So naturally the big hits in the Kodak Theatre on Sunday night included 62-year-old repeat emcee Billy Crystal, a frisky but stroke-impaired 94-year-old Kirk Douglas, 73-year-old Original Screenplay winner David Seidler, the 1953 avatar of the late Bob Hope, and James Franco’s grandmother.
James Franco’s Grandmother is my new band name, by the way.
The 2011 Golden Globes was a live show hosted by Ricky Gervais, populated by celebs drunk on camaraderie, self-congratulation, and in some cases even alcohol. Hard for a pop-culture maven to pass up.
So I did watch this year’s telecast, albeit (due to a migraine) not in real time. Which is just as well since there’s plenty to fast-forward through — film clips, ads, folks walking to the stage. And like other gluttons for punditry I found it, perhaps appropriately for a show affiliated with The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.
Gervais was off to a running start with jokes about Charlie Sheen, the HFPA’s WTF nominations for the apparently totally mediocre film The Tourist, and other hot-button topics. His material felt rushed, though, bereft of the breathing room and segues that usually make his stand-up and talk-show appearances feel so compellingly relaxed; even when Gervais cracks himself up, which is frequently, it’s acceptable because he acts as if he’s just realizing what he’s saying as he says it. I’d hoped for redemption later in the evening, but Gervais popped up rarely and not for very long, less to comment on the proceedings — a shame, as the Greek-chorus element of hosts who choose to embrace that aspect of their duties can be the best part of the Oscars and the Emmys — than to get in some would-be zingers at the few presenters he announced by mentioning their more infamous or obscure endeavors or highlighting the disparities of a given duo. His overall contribution, while certainly not abysmal, was a bit like that old Catskills joke about the food: It wasn’t particularly good... and the portions were small.
Picking up where I left off yesterday…
Image © 2010 and characters TM Bryan Lee O’Malley.
“Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation” is a flashback to events not depicted in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The short video first aired as part of Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s late-night block, when SPVTW opened back in August. Michael Cera and Alison Pill reprise their roles from the live-action feature, voicing the title character and high-school girlfriend Kim Pine. It was produced by the production company Titmouse and is visually based on creator Bryan Lee O’Malley’s art in the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels.
So the ballyhooed face-off between Avatar and The Hurt Locker — two very different movies about soldiers dealing with crucial, only-man-for-the-job missions — finally came to a head last night at The 82nd Annual Academy Awards.
Yes, I know it’s Monday night (or maybe later).
I’d hoped to “live-blog” during the Emmys but the Internet connection was down.
Still, I took notes, fleshed them out during commercials, and have since edited them into a review — in the spirit of Bests & Worsts or Cheers & Jeers, accompanied by certain exclamations I realized were recurring from my fingertips. So here, late and surely redundant to countless other postmortems in cyberspace, are my 2009
Emmys Yays, Heys, Hmms, & Huhs.
Hey! I’m just one letter off the Tetragrammaton.
The Opening
Yay! Neil Patrick Harris is already enjoyably smooth yet arch. It took me a few lines
to figure out that he was doing the faux-newsreel voiceover himself. And the white tux jacket is a bold yet winning choice.
I fall into the sliver of my generation who doesn’t have Doogie Howser nostalgia, by
the way. That series was on during my college years, when TV viewing was mostly limited to SNL, the news — just a few things going on like the Gulf War, the Clarence Thomas hearings, a couple of Presidential elections, the Rodney King riots, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union — and weekly indulgence in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I think the adult NPH is a real hoot, though, on How I
Met Your Mother and in general from what I’ve seen of him.
Hmm… The song was a bit wan at the outset. And it’s hard for one guy, not hoofing
it much (partly ’cause he’s singing live, I think, so points on that score), to roam a huge stage minus a visible band or backup dancers and not look small. He ended strong and that staccato rundown of the various channels rocked, but some backing vocals might have made it sound meatier.
Hey! Jon Hamm is a very handsome man.
Hmm… So who does have quality opening montages nowadays, theme-song or
not? I watch approximately two sitcoms, 30 Rock and HIMYM, both of which oddly enough feature quick titles with vocals but no words — good ones, too, although 30 Rock’s is best skipped if you’re viewing episodes in succession on DVD. I don’t follow Desperate Housewives any more, but its original credits sequence was imaginative
and nicely executed. The recently departed Battlestar Galactica had an excellent theme. Big Love and True Blood, which I catch up on via disc, use actual songs quite effectively. Mad Men’s opening probably gets the gold right now for its music and visuals; I wouldn’t think of fast-forwarding past.
The CMT Music Awards show last week opened with a laugh-out-loud — or at least grin-really-wide — collaboration between T-Pain, who even talks in vocoder, and Taylor Swift called “Thug Story”. [1:30]
EW.com is holding an Oscars poetry contest.
You’re supposed to be able to enter via the PopWatch blog, where you can also read
the poem from a 16-year-old reader that launched the challenge, but as of yet there isn’t a link for that. I sent in the following by E-mail.
A Free Verse
Meditation
On the Oscars
I liked Dave Letterman
Call me crazy
He’s certainly better than
Some we’ve had host
But I realize that most
Folks
Want someone squarer
Star power of Jim Carrey
Temperament of Jim Lehrer
Jon Stewart worked for me
So did Ellen
(Tho’ both were better on the Emmys
Which went to hell in
A proverbial handbasket
This year
No fear
The producers will realize
That more is less
But I digress)
