Monday, September 10, 2007
CUE HEDWIG'S THEME: With two movies to go, the Harry Potter film franchise has passed James Bond and Star Wars as the biggest film franchise in history. $4.47 billion (and still counting on Order Of The Phoenix) worldwide ($1.47 billion domestic). (Bond is at $1.44 billion domestic, and Star Wars at $2.1 billion domestic, counting all re-releases/reissues.) Let's use this as an open thread to discuss the movies. Some suggested discussion points: Who'd you like to see direct Deathly Hallows (Alfonso Cuaron is probably a contender, but remember that Azkaban was the lowest grossing of the films in the U.S.)? Would you go see a "marathon" screening of all 7 in a row? (Likely starting early in the day and climaxing with a midnight show of Deathly Hallows.) What should the kids do with themselves now? Is Radcliffe making the right choices or the wrong ones?
THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS: P.T. Barnum towers over American popular culture, working in nearly every major medium and cultural form of the 19th century and wielding a breadth of influence unmatched until perhaps Walt Disney. Barnum presented and even performed in blackface minstrel shows, further popularizing that hugely successful format. He organized the triumphant American tour of opera singer Jenny Lind, a/k/a "The Swedish Nightingale," demonstrating the continuing fuzziness of highbrow/lowbrow boundaries in antebellum American culture. Later in his career, he reinvented the once-disreputable circus, re-imagining it as a family-friendly spectacle and showcasing the most famous elephant in history, Jumbo. He wrote a classic American autobiography, Struggles and Triumphs. He even served a term as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut -- though there is no proof to the rumor that he built the city's first jai-alai fronton.
But Barnum's most fascinating legacy came from his American Museum (brilliantly recreated online by CUNY's American Social History Project). Opened in 1842 and flourishing until its destruction by fires in 1865 and 1868, Barnum's American Museum cleverly mixed entertainment and uplift, sensationalism and moralism. In the showman's words, his museum offered "an encyclopedic synthesis of everything worth seeing in this curious world": natural history specimens, waxworks figures, historical paintings and dioramas, live animals, and random bizarre objects (most notoriously, the famous FeJee Mermaid, which was promoted like this but actually looked like this). And then there were the human oddities -- the "freaks," as they would later be called. Some, like Chang and Eng or Tom Thumb, were displayed because of their physical differences; others, like the supposed missing-link "What Is It?", fed on popular anxieties about race and evolution. Whatever the attraction, though, Barnum knew how to sell it. Even (or especially) when the exhibit was a hoax, Barnum's audiences actually enjoyed the "humbug." As he put it, "the public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived."
A century and a half later, much as we'd like to think that we're more sophisticated than Barnum's audiences, the popular fondness for hoaxes and freaks endures. Does this mean that we're still living in the Age of Barnum? Or did old Phineas simply tap into something deep within the human psyche, something far beyond any particular time or place? Share your own Barnumesque experiences with freaks, geeks, and hoaxes, and help us figure out whether a sucker is, indeed, still born every minute.
But Barnum's most fascinating legacy came from his American Museum (brilliantly recreated online by CUNY's American Social History Project). Opened in 1842 and flourishing until its destruction by fires in 1865 and 1868, Barnum's American Museum cleverly mixed entertainment and uplift, sensationalism and moralism. In the showman's words, his museum offered "an encyclopedic synthesis of everything worth seeing in this curious world": natural history specimens, waxworks figures, historical paintings and dioramas, live animals, and random bizarre objects (most notoriously, the famous FeJee Mermaid, which was promoted like this but actually looked like this). And then there were the human oddities -- the "freaks," as they would later be called. Some, like Chang and Eng or Tom Thumb, were displayed because of their physical differences; others, like the supposed missing-link "What Is It?", fed on popular anxieties about race and evolution. Whatever the attraction, though, Barnum knew how to sell it. Even (or especially) when the exhibit was a hoax, Barnum's audiences actually enjoyed the "humbug." As he put it, "the public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived."
A century and a half later, much as we'd like to think that we're more sophisticated than Barnum's audiences, the popular fondness for hoaxes and freaks endures. Does this mean that we're still living in the Age of Barnum? Or did old Phineas simply tap into something deep within the human psyche, something far beyond any particular time or place? Share your own Barnumesque experiences with freaks, geeks, and hoaxes, and help us figure out whether a sucker is, indeed, still born every minute.
FEATURING WILLIAM HUNG AND HIS HUNG JURY: There is a massive billboard in Times Square, as well as many subway ads, for the upcoming TV show Jury Duty, in which (according to the website) "Celebrity Jurors Deliberate REAL Small Claims Cases." Of course, "Celebrity" is used loosely, with the touted "jurors" including Bruce Vilanch, Jm J Bullock, Dawn Wells, and Shadoe Stevens. Is it wrong that I'm still holding out for Mock Trial With J. Reinhold?
ARCHEOLOGY IS THE SEARCH FOR FACTS, NOT TRUTH: We can complain that nothing interesting happened on the VMA's, but we did get an official title for Indiana Jones 4 out of Shia LeBeouf--Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Here's the "official logo." No idea what "crystal skull" Dr. Jones and his cohorts will be seeking, but you bet I'll be there.
GIMME, GIMME LESS: I saw enough of last night's MTV Video Music Awards to confirm that way out of the network's target demographic at this point. I guess I'm supposed to know who Fall Out Boy is by this point, and I think I saw them mentioned in Blender once, but, wow, am I old.
(As is Ms. Spears, who now stands barely months away from playing eight shows a week in Tunica and Branson, the less said about her lethargic, pathetic "performance" the better. And was she so desperate for a "comeback" that she couldn't get a pledge from MTV that she wouldn't be immediately followed by five minutes of Sarah Silverman just eviscerating her?)
Oh, for the good old days, when the VMAs mattered, or you could at least see a good performance, a memorable one or a halfway-decent spectacle, or at least see a guy get hit in the head with his own falling guitar (4:00 in).
(As is Ms. Spears, who now stands barely months away from playing eight shows a week in Tunica and Branson, the less said about her lethargic, pathetic "performance" the better. And was she so desperate for a "comeback" that she couldn't get a pledge from MTV that she wouldn't be immediately followed by five minutes of Sarah Silverman just eviscerating her?)
Oh, for the good old days, when the VMAs mattered, or you could at least see a good performance, a memorable one or a halfway-decent spectacle, or at least see a guy get hit in the head with his own falling guitar (4:00 in).
Sunday, September 9, 2007
THE AWARDS WERE GIVEN IN A SPECIAL BOX AT WAIST LEVEL: Last night, the Creative Arts Emmys were presented (a/k/a: all those categories that usually no one cares about). Winners included a number of ALOTT5MA faves and focuses (foci?), including:
- Friday Night Lights (Outstanding Casting For A Drama Series)
- Elaine Stritch (Outstanding Guest Actress/Comedy, 30 Rock)
- House (the episode with the really, really, obsese guy who dies of cancer, for prosthetic makeup)
- TAR (for reality program editing and cinematography)
- Dexter (for main title design and editing)
- HIMYM (outstanding art direction, for three episodes, including the ones with the quietly vanished blue horn)
- Wade Robson and Mia Michaels (choreography)
- Timberlake, Samberg, et al. (outstanding original song, "D**k in a Box")
- South Park (outstanding animated program, "Make Love, Not Warcraft")
- Battlestar Galactica (outstanding visual effects)
- Rome (cinematography, art design, hairstyling)
- Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (outstanding guest actor, drama, John Goodman)
- Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List (Best Reality Program, distinguished from Best Reality: Competition Program, over Penn & Teller: B******t and Crying and Hugging Time With Ty Pennington)
- Spike Lee (outstanding director, nonfiction programming, for When the Levees Broke)
Some inexplicables (Stanley Tucci beating Martin Landau and Beau Bridges for Guest Actor/Comedy, Leslie Caron beating Kate Burton for Guest Actress/Drama, The Tudors beating 30 Rock for theme music) but a pretty good series of awards.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)