Peepfest 2010

Posted on April 4, 2010 at 10:28 pm

I am besotted with the annual Washington Post Peeps contest, where artists and craftspeople and peep-lovers of all kinds are invited to create dioramas featuring the pink and yellow and blue marshmallow bunnies and chicks that are sold every spring for Easter baskets.
This year, there were more than 1100 entries. Be sure to take a look at the winner, “EEP,” inspired by the Pixar movie, “Up,” a floating house held aloft by peeps. And you will also enjoy the runners-up, especially the ones based on children’s books like “Madeline,” “Goodnight Moon” (with a quiet old peep whispering the peepish equivalent of “Hush”) and “Where the Wild Things Are” as well as peep-or-amas inspired by “Mad Men,” the balloon boy, Shaun White, “Avatar,” the viral video with the wedding party dance down the aisle, and Washington’s historic Snowapalooza. And of course there were entries featuring Washington’s most famous family is represented with peeparific displays of the White House vegetable garden, the President and his dog, Bo, and of course the infamous White House party crashers.
The Washington Post even has an iPhone app to show off the top peep contestants.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

More on Red-Band Trailers

Posted on March 29, 2010 at 9:50 am

Brooks Barnes writes in today’s New York Times about the increased accessibility of “red-band” trailers, movie previews that contain R-rated material.

Over the last two years, movie marketers have flooded the Web with R-rated video ads known as “red band” trailers. While most trailers are approved for broad audiences, the red-band variety typically features profanity, nudity or other material deemed inappropriate for children….he Web has proved extremely hospitable to them despite a difficult-to-enforce industry rule that restricts their release to sites that use age-verification tests.

Barnes describes what the MySpace executives call an “anomaly,” which made the controversial “Kick-Ass” trailer available without any age verification to ensure that it was only being seen by viewers 17 and older. John Phillips, chief executive of Aristotle, a maker of age verification technology, calls the MySpace security system “a ‘total joke,’ a ‘train wreck’ and a ‘continued embarrassment.'” MySpace counters that Aristotle’s system is also easy to fool. All of which means that the challenge for parents in protecting children from R-rated trailers with nudity, drug use, an 11-year-old shooting someone in the face and using extremely crude language and more is a little tougher — and even more important.

Is it Time for Another Captain America?

Posted on March 23, 2010 at 4:19 pm

This week’s announcement that Chris Evans (“The Fantastic Four”) will star in a new “Captain America” movie makes this the right moment to think about the history and meaning of the character. Never as iconic and popular as Superman or Batman, Captain America’s status has risen and fallen according to the political sentiments of the era. Unsurprisingly, he first appeared at a time of the most vibrant patriotism, the beginning of WWII. The character was Steve Rogers, a sickly young man who was given an experimental Super-Soldier Serum and “Vita-Ray” treatment that made him very strong and healthy in order to aid the United States war effort. His costume was inspired by the American flag. He has no superpowers but he carries a red, white, and blue indestructible shield. Captain America was often portrayed as fighting for the Allies and he was Marvel’s most popular hero during the war. captain america silver age.jpg
But his popularity waned in the Cold War era. His explicit Americanism did not fit either the complacence and materialism of the 1950’s or the Cold War concerns. He disappeared from comics until 1964. Interestingly, a character who appeared to be Captain America was featured in a comic book story starring the Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm (also played by Evans on screen). But that character turned out to be a villain in disguise. The unabashed pro-Americanism of the character did not fit well with the turbulence of the 1960’s and Captain America himself became so disillusioned with the government following Watergate that he took on another persona for a while. In another episode he led a protest against government oppression of superheroes that was a commentary on infringement of civil rights. The character has had many different iterations and the Steve Rogers alter ego has died and been brought back and been in suspended animation and been brought back as the Captain America identity has shifted as well for a while being taken over by Roger’s one-time sidekick. There is also a black Captain America named Isaiah Bradley, whose origin was explicitly inspired by the real-life Tuskegee experiments. He was injected with the serum before Rogers.
Chris Evans was one of the best things about the uneven “Fantastic Four” movies and I look forward to seeing where he takes this character.

NPR’s Romantic Comedy Don’t List

Posted on March 21, 2010 at 10:35 am

Linda Holmes of NPR’s great Monkey See blog has a list of tired cliches that should be barred from all future romantic comedies because they are not funny and they are not romantic. Not coincidentally, several are featured in the movie and even the trailer for the dreary mess, “The Bounty Hunter.” The romantic kidnapping, for example, which in the “Bounty Hunter” trailer has Gerard Butler tossing Jennifer Aniston into the trunk of his car. As Holmes says, this is not funny — it’s creepy. Holmes also wants to prohibit the winking references to Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy, the trashy best friend, the rain-soaked fights (take it inside, people), and punches in the crotch. Hear that, Hollywood?

World Premiere of ‘Wimpy Kid’ at Alexandria’s Riverside School

Posted on March 19, 2010 at 7:17 am

Alexandria, Virginia’s Riverside Elementary School hosted the World Premiere of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” thanks to a winning entry selected out of 5000 competing schools in a competition to host the premiere for their students.

The school safety patrols lined up on the playground to yell “I am a Wimpy Kid!”

The premiere event was held after school yesterday in conjunction with the National Education Association’s (NEA) “Read Across America” program, which focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources; the NEA has designated March as National Reading Month. NEA also sponsored the contest, along with 20th Century Fox, School Library Journal, and publisher Harry N. Abrams Inc. The School Library Journal hosted and facilitated the promotion, and Promethean presented the school with its ActivClassroom technology.

There was a full Hollywood-style red carpet with the school patrol kids providing security. I spoke to April Cage, the instructional coach who wrote the winning entry.

Author Jeff Kinney told me that the question he gets asked most often by kids is “What does ploopy mean?” It’s just a made-up word that his sister used to call him.

I asked Robert Capron about playing Rowley (note the Zooey Mama t-shirt!):

Director Thor Freudenthal talked about how happy he was to bring the movie to the Riverside school.

Zachary Gordon told me how lucky he felt to play Wimpy Kid Greg Heffley — and to go to a school that is the opposite of the one in the movie because it’s the kind of place where “if you fall everyone comes over to make sure you’re all right.”