Category: Television

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Laughing Matters: Bruce McCulloch, “Daves I Know”

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. Having spent the past several days swinging wildly between obsessive tracking of political news and happy but tense viewings of postseason baseball, I need a soul and spirit cleanser. And this will do, nicely. Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag. Continue reading Laughing Matters: Bruce McCulloch, “Daves I Know”

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The Art of the Sell: “I’m a Cub Fan and I’m a Bud Man”

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.  “1984 was just the start/ We’re gonna bring a pennant to this park.” When I was trudging through my teen-aged years, I spent my summers watching WGN. In the days before cities had devoted sports superstations, practically every game played by the Chicago Cubs aired on one of the first local television stations that had the foresight to get themselves a place on the highly limited cable channel lineups coast to coast, especially in nearby Wisconsin. Folks … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “I’m a Cub Fan and I’m a Bud Man”

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That Championship Season: Braindead, Season One

Dan Seeger

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has one particular expression that she delivers better than just about anyone else with an up-to-date SAG card among their personal belongings. Her wide eyes narrow a telling fraction as she surveys some bit of madness in front of her, skepticism and a whirring intellect operating in tandem as she sorts through the cognitive dissonance. Every subtle signal of her face shows that she’s graciously, warily pausing to give reality a chance to admit to the slipstream prank it’s trying to pull. Then, with a little exhale of emotion, she visibly accepts the upending of the plausible … Continue reading That Championship Season: Braindead, Season One

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Laughing Matters: Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic”

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. When I was a kid, Saturday nights were a sketch comedy goldmine. At least one robust vein is obvious: the programming night is right there in the title. Saturday Night Live endured some complicated seasons during the nineteen-eighties, but it was also the decade that saw the likes of Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest pass through Studio 8H, and all … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic”

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Laughing Matters: The Simpsons, “Talkin’ Softball”

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. This one is shared in tribute to the Rough Diamonds, the softball team that I’ve spent the summer watching, inspired to do so, as you might expect, by highly personal reasons. Among other things, watching the games helped me realize that sitting on bleachers and quoting The Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat,” especially the parts involving Darryl Strawberry, is an evergreen entertainment. “Homer at … Continue reading Laughing Matters: The Simpsons, “Talkin’ Softball”

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The Art of the Sell: Freedom Rock

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.  When I was in college, I wasn’t exact smooth with the ladies. I was fervently devoted to the things which stirred my soul, and none of them — college rock, comic books, movies, comedy, baseball, politics, spiteful modern novels — exactly tagged me as a “catch.” While I considered myself lucky to find a cadre of pals who supported my dorkish ways, that mutual support occasionally compounded the problem. That preamble brings us to the sad tale of … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: Freedom Rock

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That Championship Season: Togetherness, Season One

Dan Seeger

I don’t think the term “mumblecore” is flung around very much any more, but there was a time, not so long ago, it was tediously unavoidable in discussions about independent film. It supposedly described a certain kind of tone — ramshackle, understated, empathetic, wry — that was ubiquitous in the offerings from United States directors that had a home in art house theaters before the occasional Sundance-born bonanza twisted independent cinema into something more eager and rambunctious. Those who derided the mini-movement (in which almost no associated filmmaker actually claimed membership) fairly identified a lack of narrative discipline as a … Continue reading That Championship Season: Togetherness, Season One

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Laughing Matters: Key & Peele, “Ray Parker, Jr. Theme Songs”

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. There’s obviously an admirable surplus of material from the sketch comedy series Key & Peele that is engaged in the most significant political and social concerns of the current era. Much as I admire that, my true weakness when it comes to the collaborative work of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele is for their jabs at the entertainment business. I find that material to be … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Key & Peele, “Ray Parker, Jr. Theme Songs”

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Top Ten Television, 2015-2016 season

Dan Seeger

Tomorrow morning, Anthony Anderson and Lauren Graham will take to a podium in North Hollywood and announce at least of portion of the hefty list of Emmy nominees, celebrating (ostensibly) the best in television programming for the past year or so, doggedly sticking to model that pretends the traditional broadcast season running from September to May is still reflective of how this part of the entertainment field operates. Around these here digital parts, it is tradition for me to  weigh in with my highly compromised top ten in television on the eve of that announcement. I begin with an acknowledgement of fallibility because it is … Continue reading Top Ten Television, 2015-2016 season

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My Writers: Joss Whedon

Dan Seeger

I was dismissive of Joss Whedon at first, needlessly so. And I probably should have known better. My first exposure — knowingly anyway — to Whedon’s writing was with the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which arrived with the excited promise of flinty ingenuity. It delivered far less, and Whedon was easy to dismiss as another breathlessly celebrated Hollywood wunderkind who didn’t have that much to contribute beyond a couple hooky notions. The nineties were lousy with those. As opposed to now, there weren’t a fleet of entertainment reporters prepared to dutifully transcribe Whedon’s complaints about how his original conception … Continue reading My Writers: Joss Whedon