Category: Television

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Laughing Matters: The Max Fischer Players

Dan Seeger

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. “She’s the smartest person in the world, general. I think we ought to listen to her.” I love this with an intensity I’ll never be able to truly convey. Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag. Continue reading Laughing Matters: The Max Fischer Players

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Laughing Matters: Louis C.K., “Of Course, But Maybe”

Dan Seeger

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Louis C.K. has talked openly and repeatedly about the way that George Carlin changed his career. It was Carlin’s practice of throwing out all his material once it was documented in one of his many HBO specials and then building an act anew that inspired C.K., making him go deeper and be smarter with his own work. So when C.K. signed on for his … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Louis C.K., “Of Course, But Maybe”

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That Championship Season: Community, Season Two

Dan Seeger

It is dizzyingly appropriate that Community was a television series that eventually got swamped by its own behind-the-scenes backstory. From early in its run, Dan Harmon’s creation discarded most of its nominal overtures to sitcom convention in favor of demolishing any and all familiar tropes. The most basic summary of the show indicated that it was about a study group at a struggling community college. In actuality, Community was a television show about television shows, so enthralled with the clicking gears of traditional narrative that cracked the shell right off the machine, peering excitedly inside. It makes sense. That’s where all … Continue reading That Championship Season: Community, Season Two

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Laughing Matters: Key & Peele, “‘Gremlins 2’ Brainstorm

Dan Seeger

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. I am sharing this today because at the moment I find something highly appealing about Jordan Peele — excuse me, I mean Star Magic Jackson, Jr. — engaging in a freewheeling brainstorming session for a movie, celebrating narrative elements that shouldn’t quite work but somehow do. As if, say, someone pitched a cross between Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Stepford Wives that was … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Key & Peele, “‘Gremlins 2’ Brainstorm

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The Art of the Sell: Coca-Cola, “It’s Beautiful”

Dan Seeger

These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art.  As the fragile flowers who cluster on the rightward side of the political spectrum spend today mulling over their precise naughty list rankings of companies who supposedly made unforgivable insinuations about the politics and character of noted second-place finisher Donald J. Trump, I will use this space to call attention to the artistry of an commercial that raised their collective ire, though it first aired three years ago and have been brought back plenty of instances ever … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: Coca-Cola, “It’s Beautiful”

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One for Friday: Randy Newman, “New Orleans Wins the War”

Dan Seeger

They started to party and they partied some more Cause New Orleans had won the war There are probably songs that should come to mind more quickly for me when I think of New Orleans — something steeped in the jazz, zydeco, or blues that serve as the city’s musical pulse. But, in truth, Randy Newman’s “New Orleans Wins the War” is the track that echoes up from my memory when I head out for another visit to the Crescent City. It’s probably because this was the first song about New Orleans that I truly embedded into my head — … Continue reading One for Friday: Randy Newman, “New Orleans Wins the War”

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Nine

Dan Seeger

There are movies that I love unreservedly, quoting them with the hopped-up reverence of a devoted Bible thumper. 13th is a movie that I wield. Since viewing Ava DuVernay’s exceptional documentary on — for starters — the perpetuation of black persecution through the establishment of a skewed judicial system and incarceration complex, I find myself continually referencing it in spirited debates about current affairs. I have operated in multiculturally mindful academia and engaged with leftward political commentary enough to be comfortably acquainted with notions of institutionalized oppression, so there’s little in 13th that is fully revelatory to me. But I … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Nine

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Now Playing: Elle

Dan Seeger

Though I’m going to go ahead and follow my usual practice of typing out a bunch of words, I think the ideal way to evaluate the new film Elle is with an artfully constructed infographic. This helpful guide would take individual moments from the film and measure whether their inner being is guided more by the aura of French cinema or by the ruddy instincts of director Paul Verhoeven. The scene in which a woman confronts the new, young lover of her ex-husband and the two of them conclude that, with the tension of an initial encounter out of the … Continue reading Now Playing: Elle

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Laughing Matters: Larry Wilmore on Martin Luther King Jr.

Dan Seeger

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. On this day that has been dominated by continuing discussions of the U.S. president elect’s infantile anger towards one of the undisputed heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and celebrity imbeciles offering condescending lectures on proper social discourse, I was reminded on one of Larry Wilmore’s more inspired contributions back in the day he was the “Senior Black Correspondent” on The Daily Show. And that was … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Larry Wilmore on Martin Luther King Jr.