Jessica Walter (1941-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Showbiz lost another great this week as Jessica Walter passed away at 80 years of age. Her sensational and much-memed performance of smug, biting, privileged Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, will live forever but it was just a small portion of her long career...

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Two Handfuls of Link

• The Guardian Isabelle Huppert has really outdone herself with her answers in this new Q&A
• Variety Roseanne cancelled at ABC after Roseanne couldn't help herself and went on yet another round of racist remarks. Still, that's quite a move by ABC given the success and profitability of the show (and their past indifference to her statements). Corporations aren't really known for not letting money do the loudest talking.
• Variety interesting buiness related follow up: In the very recent upfronts ABC had basically built its whole Tuesday schedule around Roseanne as ratings savior. What will they do now?
• Slate an oral history of The Muppets
• Coming Soon Uma Thurman to star in Netflix's supernatural drama series Chambers. Let's hope she has better luck than Naomi Watts did with Gypsy.
• Pajiba Let's talk about Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Solo)

Much more after the jump including Jake Shears new song, George Takei exonerated, Interview magazine, Mean Girls album, a Spawn reboot, and what to do when stars disappoint us...

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Burning Questions: Can Binge Watching Hurt a Show?

Hello, dear readers. Michael C here to take a detour into TV blogging.

Is season four picking at the carcass of a once great show or just more greatness?

It has now been a full week since Netflix returned the Bluth family to us, which in Internet time means by this point I may as well writing about the final episode of MASH. By midweek the long awaited return of Arrested Development had already been watched, analyzed, celebrated, backlashed, and defended a few times over. [more...]

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Linking Spirit

Nostalgia Critic wonders if the film parody is dead. From Young Frankenstein to the Scary Movie movies it is a free fall plummet rather than a steady decline. Lots of clips to illustrate.
Cinema Blend The Muppet Movie is coming to BluRay for the first time
Marvel Thor The Dark World's official site is up 
Fast Design movie posters that reduce your favorite films to geometric shapes - some of these are awesome. Others I dont quite get.
"Fighting Spirits" check out this 5 minute animated short, a semifinalist for the 2012 Student Oscar, about rival ballerinas

Slate great magazine articles that inspired movies from Bling Ring to Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Coming Soon The Weinstein Co's buying spree continues unabated: Jane Got a Gun, Carol, Passengers, Suite Francaise, and The Young and Prodigious Spivet 

Off Cinema
Salon how "You are My Sunshine" became a children's classic 
i09 Joss Whedon's commencement address at Wesleyan "you are all going to die" 
Advocate an interview with Katee Sackhoff. I love her but unfortunately never see her in anything because of the very limited types of shows she appears on.
Slate engaging piece on how technology hindered Arrested Development's popularity in its first three seasons, a show ahead of its time

More Cannes?
Awards Daily two clips from the Cannes champ Blue is the Warmest Color
Ultra Culture excellent piece on the issue of "real sex" in filmmaking and how fake it all still is
Film Comment interesting discussion of the competition films at Cannes from several critics. I love the harsh discussion of Only God Forgives  or at least the parts of it I read (too many spoilers) and the notion that Ryan Gosling should never speak to Refn again. This makes me want to see the movie even more!

TM: It’s very fetishistic about all those aspects—the martial arts aspects, the Asian aspects, the notion of framing. It’s just a big wank frankly. And looking at it from a career point of view, he can get all the big actors he wants at this point because he’s famous and has this free rein. I think he needs to be careful about doing films like this. He needs to be smarter about his career and his script writing. 

JR: It does seem now that there’s a group of filmmakers, and Gaspar Noé is one of them, who are sort of writing fan letters to each other. Noé making films for Refn, etc. This little group of the “wild boys.”

Hee!

Arrested Memory

Michael Cera on the set of the new "Arrested Development"Matt here! The genius of Arrested Development is dependent on itself. Many viewers have commented on how the show becomes more and more impressive as it progresses – they’re right. Like many of the great television shows of the last decade (Mad Men and Breaking Bad, to name only two), Arrested Development uses memory to invoke thematic/narrative cohesion. Blue handprints on the wall aren’t funny by themselves. But through slow-cooked patience, little notes on the refridgerator and blue handprints on the wall become radically inventive comic nuggets. Instead of using self-reference to prove its own intelligence, the show twists audience awareness into a series of increasingly complex gags. I’m willing to submit that it’s the best example of 21^st Century television comedy along with Louie.

Arrested Development uses the intelligence and memory of its audience as an advantage. Aside from the prescient political commentary, the show builds jokes through both intra- and intertextuality. But they’re not just jokes. They point towards the show’s favorite theme – incest. The Bluth family’s constant swapping of precious bodily fluids is emphasized by the jokes that tend to procreate with themselves. MORE

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