Posted on August 18, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Flavorwire has a marvelous collection of video clips of television characters talking about books and how much they love to read. The shows include “Mad Men,” “Freaks and Geeks,” “South Park,” and “The Wire,” and books include The Great Gatsby
Posted on August 17, 2012 at 8:01 am
I was delighted to hear that Christopher Guest, the writer-director behind the improvisational mockumentaries “Best in Show,” “Waiting for Guffman,” and “This is Spinal Tap,” will be creating a new series for HBO, and even more delighted when I read in the New York Times that it will star Chris O’Dowd of “Bridesmaids” and “Pirate Radio.” Guest and Jim Piddock (the English-accented broadcaster who uneasily shares the microphone with Fred Willard in “Best in Show”) will write the series. HBO says: “Having recently lost his job and girlfriend, Tom has a rather unsure sense of his own identity. But when he inherits a mysterious box of belongings from a great aunt that he never met, he starts investigating his family lineage and uncovers a whole world of unusual stories and characters and a growing sense of who he is and who his real family are.” Sounds wonderful!
Posted on August 6, 2012 at 1:16 pm
I love the look on her face when she first tastes it!
Posted on August 5, 2012 at 8:00 am
Disney’s delightful animated series, “Doc McStuffins,” is about a little girl who is inspired by her doctor mother to open up a “clinic” for her stuffed animals and toys. That gives the show a chance to talk to kids about making healthy choices. Kids can interact with the show and learn more with online activities and coloring sheets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUjxjVNcLao&feature=relmfuWhat makes this series especially welcome is the race of the lead character — she is African-American. The New York Times noted:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecfuNfCvFM0&feature=relmfuDespite a surge in multicultural cartoons, like Nickelodeon’s “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan,” designed to introduce Mandarin vocabulary words to preschoolers, and 40 years after Bill Cosby’s “Fat Albert,” black cartoon characters in leading roles are still rare. It’s considered an on-screen risk to make your main character a member of a minority, even in this post-“Dora the Explorer” age. Networks want to attract the broadest possible audience, but the real peril is in the toy aisle. From a business perspective, Disney and its rivals ultimately make most of these shows in the hope that they spawn mass-appeal toy lines. White dolls are the proven formula.
Encouraged by the reaction to multicultural casting in its live-action shows (“A.N.T. Farm”), Disney figured it was a risk worth taking. The company also spotted a hole in the market. The last major preschool cartoon to have a black focus was Mr. Cosby’s “Little Bill,” which ended five years ago on Nickelodeon. Race may have factored into Disney’s thinking in other ways. “Doc McStuffins” is mostly designed to entertain, a minus for parents of preschoolers, who typically want educational components (like the way Dora teaches Spanish and problem solving). A positive message about racial diversity helps fix that problem, as do messages about health and hygiene.
