PUPPETS, POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE

Check out my review, on Phoenix Magazine online, of The Happytime Murders...

...as well as my rundown of the current crop of TV commercials for Arizona political candidates.

Have a great weekend everybody!

THE BEAR, THE FROG, THE PIG AND HER LOVER

Having been out of town for the screening of Muppets Most Wanted, I didn’t catch up with the film until The Wife, The Kid and I took in a matinee this past weekend.

Like all Muppets flicks, it certainly has funny moments, but it seemed oddly overlong and overambitious, with an unnecessarily complicated caper-thriller plot. Some of the songs by Bret McKenzie were good, but there were too many of them, too, and none were home-runs. The human stars are Ricky Gervais and Ty Burrell, neither of whom get enough to do, and Tina Fey, who sings surprisingly pretilly as a gulag commandant.

Half Price Books is running a literary sidekick bracket to coincide with March Madness. Neat idea, but some of their candidates don’t seem quite right to me, notably Pepper Potts from the Ironman comics—shouldn’t a love interest automatically disqualify a character from sidekick status?

INSCREDIBLE

RIP to Muppet performer Jerry Nelson, passed on late last week at 78. Since Nelson has already been rightly celebrated as the voice of Count Von Count…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s note one of his less-remembered characters, the fanged, scaly, amorous Scred, from the Land of Gorch…

…part of the cast of the Muppet’s short-lived tenure on the first season of Saturday Night Live. Here he is singing "I Got You, Babe" with Lily Tomlin.

RIP also to Steve Franken, aka Chatsworth Osborne Jr. from Dobie Gillis, among many other roles, passed on at 80.

BESTIES

The 2012 Oscar nomination were announced this morning. I was particularly delighted by the nomination of “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets for best song.

RIP to Joe Paterno, passed on at 85. It’s hard not to see something classically tragic in his fall—shortly after being celebrated as the most successful NCAA Division 1 coach ever, he was disgraced & fired in about a week, & dead two months later. This doesn’t strike me as a fate worse than, say, having no one seem to give a shit when you get raped by an old man at the age of ten. But it’s still a shocking twist.

RIP also to powerhouse Etta James, passed on at 73.