Posted on July 28, 2012 at 11:55 am
The Heavy’s song, “How Ya Like Me Now” is quickly becoming the go-to song in trailers and movie soundtracks, sort of the new “I Feel Good.” This month, it appears in “Ted” and “The Watch.” Before that, it was in a Kia ad, “Entourage,” “Community,” “Horrible Bosses,” and the Mark Wahlberg movie, “The Fighter” (which led to a lawsuit). Here’s the original:
Posted on June 28, 2012 at 6:17 pm
It’s so wrong. But it is very funny.
Fans of Seth MacFarlane are familiar with the politically incorrect humor that has made him the world’s highest-paid television writer (“The Family Guy,” “American Dad,” “The Cleveland Show”) and a popular emcee at the raunchy Friar’s Club roasts. They should strap on their seat belts for his first movie, which takes full benefit of the R rating to include outrageous and offensive humor in every category plus a lot of pop culture references. Nothing is sacred here, except the need to make jokes about anything anyone has ever thought sacred. The “oh, no, he didn’t” factor may have them falling out of their seats. Or maybe just the laughter.
Mark Wahlberg, who deserves acting and good sportsmanship awards for this film, plays 35-year-old John, a guy who spends his life smoking weed with his talking teddy bear, Ted (voice of co-screenwriter MacFarlane). This is not a pull-the-string-hear-the-recording talking teddy bear. This is a teddy bear that talks because when John was a bullied, friendless eight-year-old, he made a Christmas wish that came true and promised Ted that they would be best friends for life.
John and Ted are very adult — as in “for adults only,” not as in “mature” when it comes to their pleasures and vocabulary but perpetually juvenile when it comes to things like responsibility and downright childish when it comes to thunderstorms. John’s one brush with actual adulthood is his relationship with Lori (Mila Kunis). He loves her dearly. She loves him, too, and does not mind that he has no education or ambition. But living with the bear is getting on her nerves, especially when she comes home to find him surrounded by hookers.
Most of the movie is repeated jokes about the incongruity of a cute teddy bear with a foul mouth and an flurry of pop culture references and surprise cameos. But some of them are truly hilarious, especially two people named Jones. If there was an Oscar for being a good sport, they’d both win.
(more…)
Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:00 am
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) was first known for its conferences, attracting extraordinary speakers who told the people lucky enough to be in the room amazing, thrilling, and inspiring stories about the latest discoveries in science and the arts. When those presentations became available online, they were wildly popular. I’ve posted some of them here, most recently “John Carter” director Andrew Stanton’s discussion of what makes a story.
TED is now taking the next step by beginning to develop materials for students and educators.
Viewed one way, it’s just the release on YouTube of a dozen short videos created for high school students and life-long learners. But we’re committed to growing this archive to hundreds of videos within a year, and I thought it would be helpful to jot down a few personal notes on why we’re doing this… …because there’s a right and a wrong way to interpret today’s launch.
The wrong way is to imagine that we believe this to be some kind of grand solution. “TED claims its new TED-Ed videos will transform education”! Er, no. We don’t.
The right way is to see this as our reaching out to teachers and saying: Can we help?
Step two, coming next month, will be a major new section of ted.com offering tools for teachers to amplify the educational value of videos.
Posted on March 10, 2012 at 8:00 am
Director Andrew Stanton wrote and directed Pixar favorites “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E.” This week’s release, “John Carter,” is his first live-action feature film. Here he tells the audience at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) about the clues to a good story.
Posted on April 6, 2011 at 5:12 pm
I’ll be posting an interview with Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) about his new movie on product placement soon. Here’s the talk he gave at TED about making a movie about product placement that was entirely funded by product placement. This is why the official name of the film is “POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Story Ever Sold.” And yes, onstage naming rights for this talk were sponsored too. Watch to find out from who and how much.
