WHILE IT’S STILL A LITTLE EARLY for me to do Christmas, any day that brings us something new from the Muppets is a great day. While I’m not much of a CeeLo fan, I do like that he’s brought the Muppets into his new Christmas song (“All I Need is Love”). What makes it even better is that it includes Walter, who joined the crew in their recent (and utterly wonderful) movie. Enjoy the music, and be sure to stick around for the credits.
Heads-up from the folks at Bleeding Cool.
FEW TV SERIALS DO ‘GOODBYE’ as well or as often as the BBC’s Doctor Who. It’s a built-in reality, with either Doctor or companions leaving every season or two. The midpoint of the current season ended with the farewell of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, who have been with the eleventh Doctor from the beginning. A few episodes before the couple’s exit, Rory’s father was introduced. Played perfectly by David Williams, Rory’s dad added some nice humor and humanity. Unfortunately, he was left out of any “goodbye scenarios” when Amy and Rory left. To make up for that, the BBC posted the script and sketches for the proposed “goodbye” scene, one that was sixty years in the making. Check it out, and try not to cry too much.
The Doctor returns sans Amy and Rory on Christmas Day. Hopefully, you already knew that.
THIS VIDEO may not say it all, but it certainly sings a lot.
Time to go find some Gummyberry Juice . . .
A SEEMINGLY BIG FAN of The Hobbit took some time to put together something awesome: a compilation of all of the promo material for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey that has been released just far. Some of the quality is a little different, and it attempts a chronological approach. Still, it’s seven minutes of awesomeness. (And I knew I was missing something when I missed the first half of this past week’s Survivor.) Enjoy!
And thanks to the folks at Nerdist for the heads-up.
WATCHING DOCTOR WHO AS A SINGLE GUY is always a bit unsettling. Ever since the show returned a few years ago, there’s been an emotional edge to the character rooted in his relational deficit, which becomes obvious whenever he loses a “companion.”
What’s the deficit? It’s most plain in some of the last things that Amy Pond communicated to him before she and Rory left the show: don’t be alone. Turns out that the first thing the biblical story calls “not good” is the true real danger in the Doctor’s life, not Daleks or the Master. His greatest threat is loneliness. It does things to him. How sad that a man who travels triumphant through all of time and space can be brought low by something so “simple.”
The recent “Children in Need” special (an annual thing in Britain) hints at the Doctor’s “dangerous place” as this year’s Christmas special looms. Check it out here. And be kind to those of us who all too often travel alone.
ONE OF THE NICE ADDITIONS to my Christmas traditions has been the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special. These “one-off” episodes are something of a long-standing thing in Britain (a few series over there get them), and the folks at BBC America have been kind to oblige the Doctor’s American fans the same treat.
BBC America recently released the trailer for this season’s special: The Snowmen. And yes, it has been pointed out before that the Doctor’s new adversaries look an awful lot like those found in Calvin and Hobbes. Regardless, I’m glad it’s not Daleks or Cybermen this time around.
So grab a mug of cocoa and don your favorite fez. Here’s the trailer with a quick intro by Matt Smith (the eleventh Doctor) and his new companion.
More on “The Great Detective” clip tomorrow.
IT WAS SOME TIME before I realized the cultural significance of Star Wars. The cultural phenomena of Star Wars I knew quite well: childhood’s evidence of speeder bikes and life-size lightsabers give me away on that account. But it wasn’t until the hubbub of Episode One that I started to hear talk of Star Wars in relation to its time period, it’s picture of good-versus-evil after years of 1970s cultural and political grey. Whatever my thoughts of Episode One ended up being, I tried to look at it through that same lens: how this movie might tell the story needed for our time. To me it was clear: evil wasn’t as obvious as it used to be. Evil had become, as it were, a phantom menace, the underhanded use of power and bureaucracy to achieve a bad end. That message, I fear, got swallowed up in a bad movie. That’s unfortunate.
So I really liked Sunjeev Bery’s recent Huffington Post article, “Saving Star Wars.” The article is, of course, in response to last week’s news of a Star Wars continuation. It’s a nice reminder as to why Star Wars was so successful in the first place (and part of why so many fans were so turned off in the second place). And he gets something about Star Wars and story very right, especially in what he hopes comes next. In thinking about writing the Star Wars mythology for today he asserts:
Multiple human societies are now in the midst of dramatic and diverse kinds of turmoil. At the risk of being grandiose, we need signs and stories to help us navigate the days ahead. We don’t all necessarily think we do, but we do.
Someone will soon make the movies that help us understand this global moment. As laughable as it now sounds, if those movies have the words “Star Wars” in the title, if they can credibly embed these issues in the Star Wars universe, they will achieve a status that rivals the original franchise.
Bery understands the potential of both story and Star Wars. And while neither has to preach and beat us over the head, they can nudge us into a better understanding of the world around us. Maybe that’s what made Lucas’s prequels so bad: maybe they do reflect the worst parts of our cultural story at that period of time. And while I’m sure I’m not the first fan to say this in the last week, maybe these new movies can give us at least a semblance of a refreshed and new sense of storytelling hope.
You can read the rest of the article here.
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY hits theaters next month! And even though theaters seem stuck with playing that very first trailer for the movie, other new bits are leaking out here and there. On Monday, Ain’t It Cool News posted a track from the movie’s Howard Shore-penned soundtrack. The track, “Radagast the Brown,” is a nice hint at some great music to come. Plus it’s a minor character I’m glad will get a good amount of screen-time.
UNTIL THE HOBBIT PREMIERES NEXT MONTH, here’s a nice little video from Air New Zealand. They seem to have a lock on Middle Earth travel and have made a surprisingly good airplane safety video. Even has a couple of nice cameos.
Thanks to Grantland.com, who posted this yesterday.
THE PEOPLE AT THE A.V. CLUB ARE RIGHT: it just isn’t Halloween without a new episode of Community. So it’s nice that the folks at NBC have put together a choose-your-own adventure style video connecting sections from all of the previous Community Halloween episodes. Smart idea that reflects a genius show with overly-committed fans (some would say). Check it out here, but be warned: Community can get more than a little weird.
Thanks to Relevant Magazine for the heads-up.
Space Enough, and Time 