Grace & Frankie E4: "The Funeral"

Put on your finest black Willie Nelson T-shirt, cause we're going to a funeral!

abstew here continuing our coverage of Jane & Lily Grace and Frankie. After being separated from their recently gay (well, to our leading ladies at least) and recently shacked-up husbands, the gals must come face-to-face with their estranged spouses for the first time since the first episode. And because they're of a certain age, the gathering naturally happens at a funeral (it's like clubbing for retirees). And nothing says comedy quite like a funeral setting (unless it stars Hugh Grant and is preceded by 4 weddings) and this episode proves it by carrying some pretty heavy dramatic moments and a breakdown from Martin Sheen that shouldn't have made me laugh as much as it did (since he was actually going for heartfelt drama).

The episode begins with Grace interrupting Frankie's art class with ex-cons so that the two can get to the funeral of their mutual friend Larry before Sol and Robert arrive for their "coming out party".

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Curio: Mad Men Parting Gifts

Alexa here, shedding a tear for the loss of our beloved Mad Men. Possibly the biggest thrill of my life as an artist was when Christina Hendricks herself purchased a load of my Mad Men playing cards and postcards as gifts for the final days of filming. I don't know who exactly she gave them to, but some days I like to imagine that Jon Hamm is playing poker with something I once handled.  

Shameless plug: you can still buy them at my shop. 

One of the things I've loved the most about the show is how it has inspired so many people creatively, like the wild resurgence of Mid-century modern interior design, fashion, and visual art. One of my favorite offshoots was Dyna Moe's Mad Men Illustrated. Dyna, a New York illustrator, has created illustrations for every episode of the show's run, and was eventually commissioned by AMC to create the Mad Men Yourself app and the book Mad Men: The Illustrated World.  She is still doing illustrations for every episode; you can see them all on her tumblr.

More arts and crafts after the jump...

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You'll Believe A Frog Can Bike

Travel back in time with me to the late 70s. Superman (1978) birthed the modern superhero film with the instantly classic visual-effects spotlighting tagline "You'll believe a man can fly." If the internet had been around back then, it surely would have become a meme and been parodied ad infinitum. (Maybe it did in whatever form memes used to take?). The very next year The Muppet Movie (1979 - our year of the month!) could have used the tagline 

You'll believe a frog can bike. 

My movie memories are super spotty until the 1980s but I have a handful from the late 70s and this is one of them. My eyes going wide and little jaw dropping at the sight of Kermit the Frog on a bicycle. I must have been aware that my beloved Kermy -- stand down, Miss Piggy! --  was a puppet since being a puppeteer was the childhood career goal. So how was this possible; puppets don't have legs because people's hands go up their butts!

Happy National Bike to Work Week! 

The Muppet Wiki tells us how this was accomplished and the Muppets are on the brain since they'll be revived for primetime next season. Does this trailer sell you on a contemporary version? (On a scale of Yes No or Maybe So... I regret to inform that I'm not fully in the first column.) 

P.S. This trailer reminds us that Kermit is kind of an awful husband/boyfriend. Miss Piggy is the faithful one. He's the commitment-phobe. And yet she's always painted as the shallow one. Hmmm.

Q&A: Gene Kelly 1, Character X, and Best Actress 2: The Sequel

It's time to answer a dozen reader questions pulled from the last two "Ask Nathaniel" suggestion-box posts. Please to note that in the podcast this weekend, we answered a few already that were Ex Machina related and last night we teased you with an appetizer about the emotions of Inside Out and actors who best embody them.

Jumping right in...

BVR: Do you think audiences will ever flock to dramas again the way they used to years ago?

I hope so, all things being cyclical. It happens once in a while still. The Blind Side (2009) and American Sniper (2014) were both supersized hits in the way movie star dramas of the past have been when they've hit big. Unfortunately they both felt like anomalies and only that successful because they managed to get people who don't go to the movies into the movie theater. The problem today is obviously at least four-fold: TVs got larger, the amount of content exploded, theatrical windows shrunk, and the theaters, rather than stepping up their game to compete, actually made themselves less hospitable with smaller screens and tons of commercials.

Movie theater chains seem to be trying again but once you've lost a regular moviegoer, it's hard to restore their habit. What is next in terms of technological advances? Will we ever get fully three dimensional hologram-like movies you can walk around inside? And if we do, won't dramas be the favorite, rather than special effects pictures, for the 'choose your own proximity adventure' in terms of closeups of the actors? I imagine they'll be performed very much like straight plays for multiple cameras and since you're the one doing the editing, theater training will be important and superb acting could rise again to "favorite visual effect" dominance. 

Or did our recent sci-fi week warp my brain too much? This wasn't the answer you were looking for.

BROOKESBOY: Who will be the next winner of a second Best Actress prize?

More Questions and Answers -- a lot more -- after the jump

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Mad Men @ the Movies: "The Milk and Honey Route"

Lynn Lee on the penultimate episode of Mad Men...

As we get closer to the end of “Mad Men,” I’m growing increasingly confident it will stick the final landing.  There’s been a new energy and sense of direction offsetting the sadness of saying goodbye, and the penultimate episode, while packed with even more emotional bombshells, continued to bring what felt like natural closures to several major character arcs.  As with Joan from last week, even if we see Betty and Pete again, it seems unlikely the finale will contain any further major plot turns for them.

The biggest remaining question mark, not surprisingly, is still Don, the wandering soul of the show.  But let me start with the other two, because they are two of my favorites, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that they’ve spent most of the series’ run competing for the title of most-reviled major character on “Mad Men.”  

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