AFOS Blog Rewind: Not everyone's a critic, which was why Fox's enormously funny The Critic didn't last

Last week, Uproxx posted a lengthy and enjoyable interview with longtime writing partners Al Jean and Mike Reiss about their short-lived but well-remembered creation, the '90s animated show The Critic. The show centered around Jay Sherman, a persnickety film critic nobody likes, except for Marty, Jay's 13-year-old son, and Margo, Jay's teenage foster sister, who both look up to Jay, and Jeremy Hawke, an easygoing Aussie B-movie star who considers Jay his best friend ever since he was the only critic who didn't trash his first movie. In the Uproxx article, Jean and Reiss recalled the main reason why The Critic lasted from only 1993 to 1995 (the new Fox network president at the time hated it) and the challenges of attempting to give Jay and the other Critic characters the same kind of revival Family Guy and Futurama experienced after they were cancelled by Fox too (three of The Critic's regular voice actors are no longer alive, and Reiss also points out that "Siskel and Ebert are dead and those kinds of shows don't exist anymore. Movie critics used to be all over TV and they used to wield great influence and they just don't"). So from March 18, 2008, here's a post about The Critic, originally posted under the title "'Now who wants to boogie with Baby '37?'"

This weekend, I was surprised to find an eight-hour ReelzChannel marathon of the short-lived animated series The Critic, James L. Brooks' second foray into animation after the success of The Simpsons. Created by Simpsons writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss, The Critic aired on ABC during its first season (1993-94) and then for its second and final season (1994-95), it went to die on Fox (where the show's "Hey! We're on Fox" gags were amusing, while on a non-Fox channel in reruns years later, uh... not so much). The show, which comes complete with Simpsonian catchphrases that never took off ("It stinks!," "Hotchie motchie!," the Chuck McCann-referencing "Hi guy!"), later enjoyed a cultish afterlife in webisode form and on both DVD and Comedy Central's animation lineup.

Salamat, Chan Is Missing

The following piece was written three years ago as an exclusive article for an aborted print compilation of both a webcomic I drew and several of the posts I've written for this blog, and all the posts that were going to be collected in the book were about lesser-known films I dig. I was going to put the book together by myself and self-publish it, but I ultimately decided not to publish it because I'm not exactly well-known, so no one would want to buy it. I even drew an illustration that would have accompanied the piece, which is a lengthy discussion of a favorite movie of mine, a pivotal work in the history of Asian American cinema that dropped in April 1982 in New York and then three months later in San Francisco.

I was too young to be interested in movies when Chan Is Missing hit the art-house circuit. The only movie I gave a shit about in 1982 was The Great Muppet Caper on HBO. Ten or 11 years later, my tastes in film had matured to the point where I was ready to tackle a black-and-white art-house oddity like Chan Is Missing. I first caught it on KQED, the perfect San Francisco station to watch--with no interruptions, although with lots of audio dropouts that removed the F-bombs--what I consider one of the best San Francisco films, much like how two of my other favorite films, Do the Right Thing and the recently Proopified 1974 Taking of Pelham One Two Three, are great New York films, and how another favorite film of mine, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, is a great L.A. film.

I've updated the piece about this 1982 classic a bit, and I'm unveiling it for the first time now because it's Asian Heritage Islander American Pacific Month or whatever it's being called this year.

Thank you, Chan Is Missing, for recognizing that there are actually Filipinos in San Francisco and for depicting Filipino characters who aren't maids, houseboys or sex slaves. Even though those characters--a philosophical Manilatown senior center manager named Presco (Presco Tabios) and the title figure's elderly friend Frankie (Frankie Alarcon)--don't get a lot of screen time in Chan Is Missing, the sequence they appear in is one of the film's most enjoyable sequences, and it's not just because I'm Filipino, and hey, it's an American film representing us flatteringly!

In director Wayne Wang's 1982 breakthrough film, which he shot in black and white on a $22,000 budget, Chinatown cabbie Jo (Wood Moy) and his nephew Steve (Marc Hayashi) are scouring the streets of San Francisco to track down their business partner Chan Hung, who mysteriously disappeared and took with him $4,000 that Jo and Steve need in order to start their own cab company. At one point, Chan's trail leads the amateur sleuths to a Manilatown senior center where Chan is a frequent visitor because he's a fan of the mariachi musicians who entertain the center's manong (elderly Filipino) regulars.

Wang takes a minute to drink in the laid-back atmosphere of the senior center where Chan, a recent immigrant who hasn't had the easiest time assimilating into American culture, felt accepted despite his different nationality. During the interlude, elderly couples are seen dancing to a recording of "Sabor a Mi" by Los Lobos (back when they were known as Los Lobos del Este de L.A.), and we see why Chan felt so at ease at the senior center.

The manongs' enthusiasm for dance and Latin music is infectious, and it's not an unnatural-looking enthusiasm like in that insipid early '90s Pepsi ad where elderly actors pretended to get their dance on to Young MC's "Bust a Move" while awkwardly using phrases they just learned on the set after the director played them a tape of a first-season episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air between takes. The fact that the Manilatown old-timers weren't actors--they were regulars at the actual Manilatown Senior Center, captured by Wang's camera--might have something to do with their natural-looking enthusiasm.

That documentary realism--Wang did location shooting in areas of San Francisco like Manilatown that Hollywood rarely ventures into--is a reason why I'm more taken with Wang's indie snapshot of Chinatown and Manilatown than with a product of the studio era with a similarly all-Asian American cast like the quaint, mostly confined-to-the-studio-backlot 1961 screen version of Flower Drum Song, which Chan Is Missing references in a charming closing montage that's accompanied by the original 1958 recording of "Grant Avenue."

While promoting his 2008 indie films A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Princess of Nebraska (Wang still makes indies when he's not directing Lifetime channel-friendly studio fare I'm not exactly dying to see), Wang told an interviewer from AsianWeek that he made Chan Is Missing as a response to previous examples of Asian American cinema. "Documentaries and fictional Asian American films were very seriously sort of talking about how we were discriminated against, and how difficult our history was, blah blah blah blah blah, in a way [that] was almost too serious. And almost like perhaps complaining about our experiences. Or trying to be too rah-rah about how positive we have to be," Wang said. "So Chan Is Missing was kinda looking at the complexity of Chinatown in a different way."

Chan Is Missing's impact on Asian American filmmakers or writers, whether they're Chinese or Filipino, is so immense that Wang's film is still being discussed and prodded and poked, primarily in Asian American film classes at universities, while those '70s films Wang was referring to are largely forgotten. It's also a film that--except for a couple of dated-sounding Chinese pop songs on the soundtrack, the occasional sight of poofy hair and the pronunciation of "FOB" (short for "Fresh Off the Boat") as "ef-oh-bee" instead of the presently more common "fob"--looks timeless. (Charles Burnett's similarly shot 1977 indie Killer of Sheep has that timeless quality too.) Sure, the Flower Drum Song movie has its charms (among them are Nancy Kwan's legs), but if I check out a clip from that movie, I know right away I'm watching something from 1961. Chan Is Missing is the Homicide: Life on the Street to Flower Drum Song's NYPD Blue: the scruffier and more improvisational and down-to-earth work that feels more alive and relevant than the better-known, mostly backlot-based and sometimes forced and self-conscious latter work.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (04/24/2013): Out There, Apollo Gauntlet, The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers and Dogsnack

This new collection of Michael Landon's memoirs will sell like hotcakes.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

It took me a few episodes to adjust to Out There's more gentle brand of humor--though 20th Century Fox Television co-produced the show, former South Park director Ryan Quincy's creation is far less brash and flashy than what I usually expect out of an animated series that's co-produced by Fox--but right when I feel like this cartoon about awkward adolescence in the '80s has started to gel, the show's 10-episode season on IFC concludes with "Ace's Wild." The season (or series) finale covers--in one whole episode--an arc that Freaks and Geeks, one of Out There's spiritual ancestors, would have explored with gawky Bill Haverchuck in the second season that Paul Feig and Judd Apatow never got to produce: what if Bill became a jock and began to spend more time with other jocks? Would his best friends Sam and Neal resent Bill and his new clique or would they remain loyal to Bill like Millie did with Lindsay even though she disapproved of Lindsay's new friends from the "freaks" crowd?

In "Ace's Wild," Chad, who's always longed to belong and not be so invisible to everyone else at school, is the one who falls in with a new crowd: the cool kids in charge of yearbook. Style-conscious yearbook editors Amy (Sarah Silverman) and Amber (Ellen Page) are so entertained by Chad's classroom doodle of their biology teacher reimagined as a walrus that they recruit him to draw similar caricatures for their yearbook. Chad recognizes that his best friend Chris is beginning to feel jealous about all the fun he's been having outside of class with the yearbook committee, so he makes sure Chris doesn't get left out of his new activities by persuading the aspiring daredevil to promote himself to the committee as a candidate for the yearbook's "Voice of the Wild Man" page.

Amy, Amber and an overly pretentious yearbook photographer named Cedric (Jason Schwartzman) are enraptured by Chris and snap several photos of his antics for the yearbook. But Chad realizes that Amy, Amber and Cedric aren't laughing with Chris. Instead, they're laughing at him and are intending to make him and many others around school--like the crying drunk girls at a popular clique's party whom Amy tries to capture photos of at one point--the laughingstock of the campus in the pages of their yearbook. The yearbook staff is basically the TMZ of Holford High School, before there was an Internet or a TMZ: they're a petty, shallow-as-fuck crew of parasites with no journalistic integrity whatsoever. All that's missing from the yearbook staff is an oddly conservative contempt for rap music.

Chad won't stand for the yearbook staff's treatment of Chris, so to get even, he and Chris secretly devise a prank that's their most elaborate and entertaining one yet. Meanwhile, in a B-story that ties into the finale's themes of plotting behind the scenes to help out someone who's been wronged and trying to improve one's social status, Jay wishes for a new bike for a BMX race he wants to participate in, but Wayne refuses to spend so much cash on a new bike. Rose, who was the youngest in a family of 12 kids and was always stuck with hand-me-downs that were given to her from her older siblings, sympathizes with her youngest son's dissatisfaction with receiving hand-me-downs from Chad like his old bike, so she secretly dives into her own savings and gets him the new bike.

But Jay's new ride is the ugliest thing on two wheels before this ride existed, and when Jay winds up in last place at the end of his first race, the spectators ridicule him, especially for his lame bike. Infuriated by their jeers, Rose takes to her garage late at night, demonstrates previously unseen body shop skills and pimps Jay's ride all by herself. In a great little twist, the badass refit--newly christened "the Black Rose"--doesn't improve Jay's speed overnight. He still ends up dead last in his next BMX race, but thanks to Rose's efforts, the other racers and the spectators are so impressed with the Black Rose's design that they ignore his lousy performance and want to pal around with him after the race. If there's any character on Out There who's evolved a bit over the season, it's Chad and Jay's previously unassuming church organist mom. Rose started out as a cipher whose lines consisted largely of typical June Cleaver-esque dialogue like "Here are your lunches, boys." She's been given a pulse in these last few episodes and has turned into the kind of mom every viewer wished they had: Paul Teutul Sr. in a pink housecoat.

The B-story expresses a tinge of sweetness that Out There has only occasionally shown because the show has primarily been about Chad and Chris' misery within the high school that Chris likens in "Ace's Wild" to a turd farm. If IFC doesn't renew Out There, I'm grateful for how all 10 episodes brought us a view of high school that I identify so much with and hasn't really been seen on a comedic series since the days of Freaks and Geeks and Daria: high school is unpleasant, largely boring and ultimately worthless, and as Chad observes in the final line of perhaps the entire series, which sums up so well both the episode and Out There as a whole, "Visibility is overrated. The people you give a shit about will always see you clearly."

Stray observations:
* Chad, on the artsy yearbook room: "I felt like I just walked into an exotic city, maybe Istanbul or Reno."

* Silverman's character crosses off half of the yearbook photo caption of a creepy classmate she dislikes and replaces it with a fake quote of him admitting to being a bedwetter, which is funny because the title of Silverman's 2010 autobiography is The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee.

* Chad: "Are you from England?" Cedric: "I wish. Morrissey would be the best dad."

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (04/17/2013): Archer, Out There, Apollo Gauntlet, Bob's Burgers and American Dad

The producers forced Jon Hamm to wear underwear during this role as well.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Damn. So Lana Kane is pregnant, via an unspecified sperm donor. Unlike Ray Gillette ending up confined to a wheelchair once again (by the way, a bunch of Sterling/Ray shippers somewhere must be having a field day over the tickling scene that causes Ray's re-crippling), I didn't see that one coming. However, thanks to all that time I spent in TV Clichés 101, when Lana started puking while heading off with the other agents to stop eco-terrorist Captain Murphy in the second half of "Sea Tunt," Archer's fourth-season finale, I knew right there she was with child. It explains her irritability and largely unspoken concern about settling down and having a life outside of ISIS in recent episodes. I appreciate how Archer creator Adam Reed didn't resort to having Lana spell out her concern in dialogue and chose to have her constantly interrupted before she could spell it out during those episodes. It shows how much Reed respects the audience's intelligence, unlike some other animated series showrunners (*cough*Ultimate Spider-Man writers*cough*).

Archer, Lana, Cecil and Ray discover that Murphy was faking his possession of nerve gas missiles, which makes him, along with Malory and Eugene Mirman's Cecil Tunt, one of several characters this season who concocted lies to get more money because they're broke. Killing off Murphy with a soda machine emblazoned with the last name of the late Harry Goz, the actor who voiced Murphy on Reed and Matt Thompson's Sealab 2021, is Reed and Thompson's twisted and oddly affecting way of both paying tribute to Goz and saying that not even Jon Hamm in the role of Murphy can compare to Goz.

The other revelation about Murphy--he doesn't have any personnel with him at Sealab--is Reed's clever way of working around the fact that Cartoon Network's legal department really did a number on Reed and prevented him from using all the other characters from Sealab. The absence of lewd and frequently nude Debbie DuPree, Sealab's precursor to Cheryl/Carol and Pam, is particularly glaring because she would have fit right in with the Archer universe. Maybe Reed should have emulated Murphy, Malory and Cecil and lied to trick Cartoon Network into giving him the rights to the other characters.

Despite the lack of those characters and the rather minimal screen time given to Mirman and Kristen Schaal in the second half, "Sea Tunt" is a satisfying season finale, thanks to the show's always terrific dialogue (especially when the agents argue over undercover personas and when Cyril frequently snipes at Lana because he's pissed that he's not her baby's father) and great character moments like Archer setting aside his usual asshole self for a second to let Lana know that he wants her to be a better mom than Malory was. Another thing I like about "Sea Tunt" is that it's given me an excuse to revisit one of the greatest--but way too short--TV themes of all time, performed by the indie pop band Calamine.



Memorable quotes:
* Murphy, as he dies: "Forgive my candor. I just felt my spleen slip out of what was my anus."

* Murphy's last words: "Crushed by an off-brand drink machine. Oh my God, just like that old gypsy woman sa--"

* Lana, as Archer lets himself drown Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio style to save her and her baby: "Okay, here it comes! You just gotta relax and let it go in your mouth!" Archer: "Phrasing!"

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (04/10/2013): Archer, Scooby-Doo!, Out There, Apollo Gauntlet and Do's & Don'ts

Some people just want to watch the gazebo burn. (Photo source: Archer Wiki)

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Jon Hamm's last animation guest shot had him voicing a talking toilet on Bob's Burgers, and in Archer's two-part "Sea Tunt" season finale, Hamm voices a character who's almost as bizarre as that toilet: Captain Murphy, one of many batshit crazy characters who populated Sealab 2021, Archer executive producers Adam Reed and Matt Thompson's Adult Swim show from the '00s. Here, Captain Murphy (the namesake of electronica/hip-hop producer Flying Lotus' masked alter ego as a rapper) is reimagined as an eco-terrorist who's plotting to attack Miami, New York City and the nation's capital with missiles tipped with nerve gas.

But the Mad Men star doesn't really get to do much in "Sea Tunt: Part I." The episode is more of a showcase for guest stars Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schaal, who get to interact with their Bob's Burgers co-star H. Jon Benjamin, and the entire regular cast (except for Lucky Yates as Krieger, who stays behind at ISIS Headquarters), and any episode that traps the entire cast in enclosed farcical situations that escalate into gory (or in other episodes, nudity-filled) chaos is always entertaining.

Instead of voicing their Bob's Burgers characters like John Roberts got to do in "Fugue and Riffs," Mirman voices Cecil Tunt, Cheryl/Carol's oceanographer/philanthropist brother, while Schaal plays Tiffy, Cecil's easily perturbed helicopter pilot and girlfriend. Malory turns to Cecil for one of his deep-sea vehicles, which will allow her and the agents to recover a hydrogen bomb inside a B-52 bomber that went down in the Bermuda Triangle in order to get a reward from the U.S. government. Of course, nothing goes as planned: the bomb turns out to be a hoax concocted by Cecil to get ISIS to stop Murphy, the lead scientist at Cecil's undersea research lab, from going through with his plan. The hoax is also a scheme for Cecil to obtain on record as many stories about his sister's insane behavior as he can from her co-workers so that he can get conservatorship over her to steal her inheritance and use it to fund his numerous philanthropies.

(Photo source: Archer Wiki)

"Sea Tunt: Part II" is bound to be a more impressive and chaotic half than "Part I," but this episode isn't too shabby, thanks to killer jokes about score music and Cheryl/Carol's sanity. When everyone reacts in shock to Cecil's bit of info about Murphy's nerve gas supply, lifelong pyromaniac Cheryl/Carol is the only one who's thrilled about the madness that's about to ensue. Her giddiness matches our own.

Stray observations:
* Malory: "We are going to beat the Russians!" Archer: "Give it up, folks! Mike Eruzione!" I knew watching that DVD rental of Miracle would pay off someday.

* Archer, after being introduced to Cecil: "Yeah, Rien Poortvliet just called. He wants you to pose for him. [Awkward silence.] Oh, c'mon, beloved illustrator of Gnomes? Jesus, read a coffee table book!"

* Pam references an '80s Stephen J. Cannell show that, for a change, is neither The A-Team nor The Greatest American Hero: "I assume you've got an epi-pen on this big Riptide-lookin' bastard?" I wouldn't be surprised if Archer or one of the other ISIS employees was a Renegade viewer back in the '90s.

(Photo source: Archer Wiki)

* Homer Simpson's eating noises used to make me instantly chuckle, but now I think Pam's eating noises while wolfing down vegan crab legs, courtesy of Amber Nash stuffing her face with cheese puffs, are funnier. Or maybe it's because they're paired up with the sight of Pam's face swelling up from soy allergies.

* Cheryl/Carol keeps hearing suspenseful score cues: "Just ignore it. It's non-diegetic." And later on: "Goddammit, shut up, John Williams!"

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (04/03/2013): Archer, Out There, Apollo Gauntlet, Animation Domination High-Def and Adventure Time

Louie Anderson should really avoid coffee before making a high dive.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Only on Archer will you see a lengthy comedic discussion of obscure European weapons like arquebuses and halberds (which, according to Archer, were made obsolete by arquebuses). It's what separates Archer from other spy comedies like Get Smart or the Austin Powers movies. What also separates the show from other spy comedies is its ballsiness--it doesn't give a shit whether you get some of its jokes or not--as well as the terrific character writing, which is on display in the coincidentally timely "Papal Chase," a fast-moving tour de farce that gives plenty of much-needed screen time this season to Woodhouse, Archer's long-suffering, smack-addicted butler (has George Coe been in poor health or something lately?). Woodhouse closely resembles the Pope (also voiced by Coe), so Archer uses him as a decoy to thwart an assassination attempt on the Pope's life.

Pam undertakes her first mission as a field agent and goes undercover as a nun, while Archer dons a cassock and seems to have based his priest disguise on old Weekend Update segments with Father Guido Sarducci. Sure, the ISIS HR lady aced the IFAAB (ISIS Field Agent Aptitude Battery), she's a capable fighter due to all those years of underground bare-knuckle boxing, she's amusingly nonplussed every time Woodhouse jabs a heroin needle in her neck and she's great at quickly picking up Italian phrases, but her field inexperience is evident during the mission, especially when she appears to have accidentally killed the Pope by dropping a giant mirror on top of his body while he's sleeping.

Speaking of dropping things, I wish we saw more mic drops from Pam throughout the season (I loved that "Wind Cries Mary" gag of Archer and Pam punctuating their sentences with mic drops) because the season's about to come to a close with a two-part finale that reportedly had Adam Reed treading carefully around Cartoon Network's legal department due to references to Sealab 2021, Reed's old Adult Swim show (like guest star Jon Hamm's role as Sealab's Captain Murphy). Towards the end of "The Papal Chase," Archer experiences a rare moment of genuine distress for one of the other agents when he sees Lana get shot in the arm (Pam's reaction to Archer not giving a shit about her shoulder bullet wound is classic Pam). Has Archer developed the kind of feelings for Lana that Sean Connery once described as "unselfish love, grown-up love" in the 1990 film version of The Russia House, and will the finale address it? Or will it be left abandoned like a halberd?

Stray observations:
* Pam, to an incredulous Archer regarding the Italian phrases she learned during the flight: "Who am I? Cypher? The gayest X-Man?" Archer: "Well, I dunno. Gambit looks like he knows his way around a pair of..."

* I'm more incredulous about Pam being so well-versed in X-Men and New Mutants comics. She always struck me as more of a Mark Millar kind of gal. I didn't know who Cypher was and had to Google him after the episode. As Don't Panic's "League of the Lame Superheroes" list says about Cypher's not-so-dynamic-looking superpower, "Imagine being surrounded by mutants who can fly, control the weather, set things on fire, or morph into other people, and you're just a slightly more charismatic version of Google Translate."

* "Pambit," Archer's nickname for Pam, resulted in an Archer fan drawing "Pambit." Ooh, ooh, somebody should draw "Nightkrieger." He would bamf every time he exits a room with "Smoke bomb!"

(Photo source: All Aboard the Cutie Muffin Fuck Wagon~)

* In addition to all the dialogue about Marvel mutants during "The Papal Chase," the loss of all of Archer's clothes--including his socks and shoes--during the gas tank explosion appears to be a joke about how Marvel characters like Hulk and Wolverine often emerge from explosions with most of their clothes torn off, yet the remainder of their threads somehow strategically cover their bathing suit areas.

* Cardinal Corelli (special guest star Rene Auberjonois): "Mio dio!" Archer: "I know, right? Trope alert!"

* Archer: "Goddammit, quit telling me what to do! I'm the goddamn agent-in-command!" Pope: "Figo! He really drops the G.D. bombs..."

* The parachute pants-clad Swiss Guard Commander: "Well... ISIS has a certain reputation." Archer: "Hey, whoa! Not cool, Payne Stewart."

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (03/27/2013): Archer, Out There, Apollo Gauntlet, Bob's Burgers and Adventure Time

Al suggests to his son-in-law Bob an idea for a burger, which he calls the Rusty Trombone Marrow Burger.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

When Mel Brooks and Buck Henry tried to pitch Get Smart to ABC in the mid-'60s, network executives found their pilot script to be too strange for their tastes and proposed to Brooks and Henry that they give Maxwell Smart a lovable dog to add more heart to the show. According to Time magazine in 1965, "Brooks and Henry went back and perversely put in a cowardly, mangy, wheezy dog that chased cars and bit strangers." Fang continued to bungle Max's directions for a few more episodes of Get Smart (which ended up on NBC after ABC considered the show to be too "un-American"--oh, conservative America and your idea of humor), until the writing staff (which, by this time, Brooks was no longer a part of) wrote the canine CONTROL agent out of the show because the producers fired the dog who played Fang for being equally uncooperative, just like how the new Broadway production of Breakfast at Tiffany's recently shitcanned a feline actor for being unruly on-stage.

This week, another spy comedy adds a dog to the proceedings, but with pukier, fartier and gorier results. In "Un Chien Tangerine," Archer sends Sterling and Lana on a mission in Morocco to extract an agent who turns out to be a giant, gun-hating dog named Kazak. His purpose is to transport on his collar microfilm that contains intel about "nukes in Pakistan or one of the -akistans." Archer, who's far kinder to animals than humans, gets the brilliant idea of feeding shitloads of kufta (Middle Eastern meatballs) to Kazak, who proceeds to frequently puke out the snack on Archer and Lana for the rest of the mission. When he's not blowing chunks, Kazak's farting up a shitstorm that's like a soundboard someone on the Web assembled out of each of the many different toots from the bean-eating scene in Brooks' Blazing Saddles.

The animation for Kazak is sublime and is the highlight of a story that's one of the more inessential ones on Archer this season, despite a climactic car chase that's probably one of the best action sequences in animation to ever involve a dog who gets to save the day by tearing apart human flesh. A far more interesting development takes place over at ISIS Headquarters, where debt-ridden Pam tries to talk Malory into making her a field agent after she aces the IFAAB (ISIS Field Agent Aptitude Battery) and overpowers Cyril, Ray and Krieger in the fighting portion of the IFAAB (and she does so naked, like Richard Roundtree in the training sequence in Shaft in Africa).

I'm dying to see Pam in the field because it's time to see another female ISIS agent in action, as well as a female agent who'd be more enthusiastic about the job than Lana has been lately (she seems to be considering getting married and settling down, as evidenced by the unspecified "decision" she was weighing in "The Honeymooners" and her thinking that Archer was going to propose to her at the end of "Un Chien Tangerine"). Is it me or is Lana's constant complaining during missions starting to get tiresome, as is the tendency to put her in situations in which she has to get rescued by Archer? We've seen enough bark from Lana this season. How about a little more bite?

Stray observations:
* Archer: "Didelphis virginiana! My second favorite animal with a prehensile..." Lana: "Tail." Archer: "Thanks, Brett Somers. Yes, a tail."

* My favorite sight gag in "Un Chien Tangerine" is a wordless payoff to a scene in which Malory tries to blow off a phone call from Lana and tells Cheryl/Carol to pretend she's not in the office, but Cheryl/Carol takes her literally, thinks Malory's really an apparition and checks her mirror to see if she's visible. During a later scene at Malory's office, Cheryl/Carol can be seen at her desk through Malory's door, slowly checking her mirror again.

* Pam, after being told by a less-than-thrilled Malory that she'll think about promoting her to agent: "Is that a real you'll think about it or a 'Pam, if your pig Leon wins a blue ribbon at the county fair, maybe we won't kill him and eat him for Easter dinner and render what's left into soap' you'll think about it?... Because I never really got over that."

* Archer to Kazak: "Okay, buddy, so here's the deal. A. Scrooch down! And B. Normally in this situation, I do a pit maneuver, but if I do, the truck will flip, and if Lana doesn't die, best case she's a quadriplegic and I marry her out of guilt. But after a few years of feeding tubes and colostomy bags, I start to resent her, and the night nurse is like Brazilian and 20." Kazak: "Rrrrrr..." Archer: "Don't judge me! I have needs, man!"

* Archer, deciding to spare a Moroccan thug's life: "Nah, guy's probably got nine wives and a jillion kids and... Holy shit, that's racist, Archer. What is wrong with you?"

***

Out There pokes gentle fun at Manic Pixie Dream Girls in "Enter Destiny," when Chad, who's been frustrated over his longtime crush Sharla swooning over a jock, falls for free-spirited Destiny (special guest star Selma Blair), his egg drop science project partner and the new girl in town. This Pat Benatar headband-wearing MPDG likes to snack on sugarcubes, reads Albert Camus' The Stranger and enjoys hanging out in abandoned roller skating rinks.

For a while, Chad thinks he has a shot with Destiny, but he pisses her off when he defends his little brother Jay from a bully named Tenebres (Flight of the Conchords member Jemaine Clement, the episode's other special guest star) and makes Jay's tormentor cry, only to discover that this bully who sounds like he was named after a Dario Argento giallo is Destiny's little brother. Out There takes this moment of triumph for Chad, who's rarely this assertive (or charitable towards Jay), and gleefully flushes the triumphant moment down the toilet with the reveal about Tenebres.

To apologize for their son's rough treatment of Tenebres, Wayne and Rose extend an olive branch to Destiny's equally artsy parents--Dad's a snooty poetry teacher named Babel (also voiced by Clement)--by inviting the family to their house for dinner. Here's the point where "Enter Destiny" goes from a bland episode about the quirky love interest that got away to a slightly amusing one that has some fun with how infantile most of these inane MPDG characters essentially are: at the awkward dinner between the Stevenses and Destiny's family, the episode takes this seemingly mature, Camus-reading teenage chick and unpeels her artsy layers until all that's left is a not-so-attractive girl who still throws temper tantrums in front of her parents like a four-year-old. Babel's refined demeanor also dissipates when he winds up in a fistfight with Wayne, while Tenebres remains an asshole who deserved to get roughed up by Chad.

But the biggest laugh in "Enter Destiny" belongs neither to Blair nor to Clement. It belongs to series cast member Pamela Adlon, who voices both Astoria, Babel's wife, and Martha, Chris' unpleasant lab partner (Joanie, Adlon's usual character, is absent in this episode). Martha grumbles only two lines to Chris, but the raspy voice Adlon came up with for Martha is the funniest part of "Enter Destiny." Adlon does more with a couple of gravelly, Nina Hagen-esque grunts than most celebrities do with some starring role they're phoning in during some lame DreamWorks Animation feature.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (03/13/2013): Bravest Warriors, Archer, Out There, Bob's Burgers and 5 Second Day

Here we see Archer at his latest assignment, which is to sabotage the making of yet another "Harlem Shake" video.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.


In "Catbug," Bravest Warriors concludes its first season with a nifty--as well as somewhat frustrating--cliffhanger involving the heroes' missing parents, who have been trapped for two years in another dimension, the See-Through Zone. The Warriors' animal sidekick Catbug (Sam Lavagnino), who's been jumping back and forth between dimensions, frequently brings the teens presents from their parents.

This time, Wallow receives peanut butter squares and the pocket-sized ponies that he used to raise as pets and are known as Pony Lords (a nod to the Bronies, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's male fans). As for Chris, he's given his baby pictures, Will Rogers commemorative stamps, a sinus irrigator and a note from his parents that they're still alive, while Danny is given an expired lottery ticket and a knife. His folks must adore him. My favorite gag in "Catbug" also involves Danny, and it's the sight of him cradling a chainsaw while asleep, so that he's ready to attack any interdimensional or extraterrestrial threat that shows up at the Warriors' Invisible Hideout.

Meanwhile, Beth, who's never received any sign from her parents that they're alive, is saddened to find she's wound up empty-handed once again. But as the brain of her cherished and super-intelligent pet horse (who's been in a catatonic state since she was six years old, due to the awe--and I assume mental stress--he experienced from discovering the meaning of the universe) points out in the finale's bizarre concluding voiceover, Beth isn't aware that she's received a gift greater than any of her friends' presents. It lies behind the locked door to the See-Through Zone that materialized in front of the Warriors after microbes that were embedded in their parents' gifts fused together--and here comes the mildly frustrating part--we have to wait until next season for the Warriors to unlock the door with a mysterious key that a note from the See-Through Zone refers to only as "Ralph Waldo Pickle Chips."

The "Paralyzed Horse's Log" is a doozy of a voiceover, and the horse's mind is voiced by '80s Transformers announcer Victor Caroli. He's a little older-sounding, but he's still the same ominous voice that let viewers know that the beef between the Autobots and Decepticons will be briefly squashed for more toy ads, during a show that was one big 22-minute toy ad. In addition to revealing that Bravest Warriors officially takes place in the 31st century, the horse's mind describes Beth's gift as "an octave of death" and "a tentacle of time." Beth's item might not even be a gift. Perhaps it brings about the end of the universe.

(Photo source: Bravest Warriors Wiki)

What about the Emotion Lord's cryptic hint to the Warriors that "It's always been Wankershim"? How does that--as well as all those visions of the future Chris briefly glimpsed--tie into this tentacle of time? And why am I glad this show is airing on Cartoon Hangover and not on a kids' cable channel where execs who are perplexed by the show's material decide to bounce it around the schedule so that viewers won't be able to find it and that gives the suits an excuse to cancel it?

***

I was dreading how Archer's "Coyote Lovely" episode would turn out when I first learned that it involved Archer ferrying a pack of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. "Oh great," I thought, "Archer turns into a white savior movie this week. I fucking hate those movies." Luckily, "Coyote Lovely" prevents itself from earnestly fawning over Archer like so many of those annoying movies do with their white heroes by letting Archer be Archer and having him totally Jack Burton his way through this cause he's taken up because of his hard-on for Mercedes Moreno (Carla Jimenez, who plays Rosa, Virginia's boss at the cleaning service, on Raising Hope), the lovely titular people-smuggler.

In other words, Archer's a buffoon--a la the memorably bumbling trucker protagonist from Big Trouble in Little China, perhaps the most enjoyable upending of white savior movies Hollywood never realized it made--for most of the episode, especially after he gets shot in the back by a pair of incompetent and gay border patrol agents (one of whom is voiced by Justified's Nick Searcy). Archer's life has to be saved by both a drunken veterinarian (Sons of Anarchy's Dayton Callie, another FX star guesting in this episode) and Mercedes, who, as the episode's twist ending revealed, arranged to be captured by Archer (who was assigned to apprehend her mother, the woman in charge of the coyote system) so that her feminine wiles could lure him into helping her get the Mexicans across the border.

Mercedes realizes that Archer is far from the ideal savior she expected. She becomes frustrated--like Lana, Cyril and Ray so often do in the field--with both Archer's boorishness ("You think I am some kind of whore?!" "No, but... Chuy, back me up here. Was there not, like, a cock-hungry vibe?") and the fact that working with this man-child from ISIS turns into babysitting (which Lana realizes her job at ISIS has basically turned into at one point during "Coyote Lovely"), but ultimately, Mercedes is won over by him.

Jimenez, Searcy and Callie are better guest voice actors than the slightly wooden Anthony Bourdain in "Live and Let Dine" last week, and their performances are highlights during "Coyote Lovely," in addition to the usual hilarious dialogue. The story of how Archer creator Adam Reed got Searcy and Callie involved in "Coyote Lovely," as told by co-executive producer Matt Thompson, is amusing as well, even though this story of recruitment doesn't feature a hot Latina flaunting her cleavage.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (02/27/2013): Bravest Warriors, Archer, Out There, Do's & Don'ts and Adventure Time

I keep misidentifying Out There as Over There, that Gulf War show that starred Sticky Fingaz from Onyx. What I really need to do before writing is... cram! Duh duh duh, duh duh duh. Let the boys be boys!

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

"Ultra Wankershim," the penultimate webisode of Bravest Warriors' first season and one of the series' strangest installments, marks the return of the enigmatic Emotion Lord (series showrunner Breehn Burns), a cross between a Jedi and a Time Lord. This older and nutty incarnation of Warriors leader Chris travels back to his past to witness the Dawning of Wankershim (also voiced by Burns), the moment in Martian history when Wankershim, the holographic elf from the Warriors' Holo-John who has evolved from hologram to actual lifeform, becomes so large and infinite in size that he absorbs all of humanity and the universe into his "Wankerbeing."

The Emotion Lord explains to the Warriors that the Dawning also brings about the end of the universe, but he's not allowed to divulge anything else about the future because doing so could damage the space-time continuum, so he can only help the Warriors to figure out how to save the future on their own. Chris becomes curious about his future with Beth, the fellow Warrior he has a crush on, so he gets his older self to teach him the Emotion Lords' power of seeing visions of future events. The few images of the future that Chris is able to briefly glimpse include the emergence of an evil version of Plum (Tara Strong), the alien mermaid chick who threw herself at Chris in "Gas Powered Stick," and Beth making out with a darkened stranger who appears to be Danny, Chris and Beth's fellow Warrior. Chris also inadvertently receives hints about a grim future for Beth when his older self starts to weep while staring at Beth. To keep himself from ruining space-time, the Emotion Lord makes himself vanish and departs with a phrase he's been repeatedly saying during his latest visit: "It's always been Wankershim."

"Ultra Wankershim" may sound like a somber installment that's concerned with advancing the show's mythology and is all business, but the episode doesn't forget to be funny and tosses in silly gags like a play on that old time-travelling term "paradox" and a Martian anchorperson (Maria Bamford) who oozes slime from her face when she speaks, a gross and amusing alien version of Albert Brooks' sweating scene in Broadcast News (except this anchor is unruffled while slime oozes out of her). This first season of Bravest Warriors may be a bit short, but the series compensates for the small amount of webisodes by featuring clever writing, as well as animation that exceeds what we usually expect out of a web series and is equal to the animation quality on series creator Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time. Bravest Warriors has seen the future of animation produced exclusively for the Internet, and it's not crude Flash animation with wonky sound quality anymore.

***

I knew at some point in Archer's current fourth season that the show would revisit the titular spy's curiosity about the identity of his dad, whose absence from his son's life was one of many reasons why Archer's such a screwed-up man-child. I just never expected the arc to resurface in "Once Bitten," while Archer's poisoned from a snake bite in the middle of a mission in fictional Turkmenistan and hallucinating sketchy and rudimentary flashbacks to his boyhood, with James Mason's Mr. Jordan character from Heaven Can Wait (special guest star Peter Serafinowicz) as his spirit guide. (In a couple of other Heaven Can Wait shout-outs, Archer is clad in Warren Beatty's football sweats from the film, and he finds himself playing Beatty's sax, which Archer clobbers Buck Henry's officious angel character in the head with. You can tell how young some Archer recappers are by their inability to notice the Heaven Can Wait references.)

Archer's mind reimagines his hazy memories about why he is the way he is as clips from '80s HBO fixtures like Beatty's 1978 hit movie and The Natural instead of reimagining them as something more typical of his obsessions, like The Cannonball Run or Gator (although his fevered dreams are full of gator imagery, which is connected to his fear of gators, but does the imagery also mean some part of him believes Burt Reynolds is his dad?). The material about both Archer's past and the mixed-up movie references in his poison-addled state ("What frickin' movie is this? What's next? Mr. Gower slaps me deaf? C'mon, you're all over the road here!") is easily the most entertaining part of "Once Bitten."

Several critics have found the plotting of "Once Bitten" to be flat and underwhelming (I'm not as underwhelmed by it), but even when the storyline may be sort of underwhelming, the dialogue on Archer is always golden:

* Malory: "Look, I don't want to sound racist, but..." Lana: "But you're gonna power through it."

* Archer to an injured Ray: "Are you shitting me? Bionic legs, and you lifted with your back?"

* Everyone's hatred of Lana, the agency's voice of reason, and her "self-righteous clomping" in "Once Bitten" seems to be building towards either a future office mutiny against Malory led by Lana, who questions Malory's actions in this episode, or the Truckasaurus-handed spy's departure from ISIS (and switch to ODIN?). Insane but sometimes lucid Cheryl/Carol's mini-monologue to Lana about the latter's self-loathing is so terrific (and is responsible for one of many excellently animated expressions from Lana this season) that I've included it word-for-word: "Please, if you really cared, you'd resign, but there's no way you ever will because you're just counting the days until, her face bloated and yellow from liver failure, she calls you to her deathbed and, in a croaky whisper, explains that Mr. Archer is totally incompetent and that you, the long-suffering Lana Kane, are the only one qualified to run ISIS, and you weep shameful tears because you know this terrible place is the only true love you will ever know... What? Oh my God, was I talking?"

* A barely conscious Archer (to Cyril and Ray), while reacting to the arrival of the fur-hatted Turks: "Hey, check it out, Fred and Barney, we're at the Water Buffalo Lodge!"

* Cyril to the Turks, whom he thinks want revenge for the camel he accidentally ran over with Archer's Jeep (in, as usual on this show, extremely gory fashion): "No, I had the right-of-way!"

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (01/16/2013): Bravest Warriors, Out There, Bob's Burgers, American Dad and Adventure Time

"Oh God, the ship's computer put Pluto Nash on a loop! Yellow alert!"

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Over on the YouTube (this must be how Mr. Burns refers to YouTube--as "the YouTube"--like when he tries to relate to his employees by talking about something he watched on "the DuMont" the other day), the Cartoon Hangover channel has been posting since November five-minute webisodes of Bravest Warriors, a terrific new sci-fi cartoon created by Adventure Time mastermind Pendleton Ward. The series follows the adventures--some action-y, others not-so-action-y--of 16-year-old space heroes Beth (Liliana Mumy, which is inspired casting because she's the daughter of Lost in Space's Bill Mumy), Chris (Alex Walsh), Danny (John Omohundro) and Wallow (Ian Jones-Quartey), who's someone we've never seen on Star Trek: a Samoan crew member.

Though Ward isn't as creatively involved with Bravest Warriors as he is on Adventure Time--showrunner Breehn Burns, who's written and directed every webisode so far, is really the main creative force here--the Cartoon Hangover series is full of many of the same elements that make Adventure Time a standout cartoon. Maria Bamford steals the show voicing a side character or two like she does over on Adventure Time, everyone has button eyes and speaks in slangy and bizarre dialogue like the denizens of Ooo do (although it's less stoned-sounding here) and the surreal, rubbery and brightly colored visuals are a feast for the eyes, just like on the other show. The surreal vibe distinguishes Bravest Warriors from slightly more straightforward sci-fi comedy shows like Futurama and Red Dwarf.

"Butter Lettuce," the funniest and most inventive Bravest Warriors installment so far, takes place entirely in a Holo-John, a futuristic bathroom that allows people to play 3-D video games while they're doing their biz. Because they're horny teens, Danny and Wallow mess around with the Holo-John to see what Beth (whose last name, by the way, is Tezuka, clearly a shout-out to Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion creator Osamu Tezuka) would be like if she were more sexed-up. They try to get Chris, who's too shy to act on his feelings for Beth, to join in on their type of fun, but the holo-fantasizing about Beth wearing Barbara Eden's I Dream of Jeannie outfit and Princess Leia's metal bikini weirds him out.

The guys aren't aware that Beth is just like them and has fantasies of her own that she's obsessed with too. So after trying not to get caught by an amusingly disheveled and barely awake Beth when she enters the Holo-John to brush her teeth, they wind up trapped inside her favorite holo-fantasy, a hilarious scenario that involves a spa full of sweaty male unicorn strippers, and are unprepared for the, uh, sweatiness of it all (although the perpetually laid-back Wallow seems to have no problem with it). During "Butter Lettuce," I couldn't help but notice that someone on the cartoon's staff must have remembered how creepy and pathetic most of the Star Trek: The Next Generation holodeck episodes were and decided to humorously comment on the creepiness of those episodes. ("Booby Trap," the one where LaForge seeks engineering advice from a holodeck version of a respected female scientist who dresses like the sister wife from Shameless and ends up wanting to bang her, is especially creepy. That episode is also proof that some of the TNG staff writers had some really fucked-up issues about men of color. The fact that the TNG cast is aware of that, like whenever they mention why TNG's "Code of Honor" planet-of-the-Africans episode was such an epic fail, is one reason to love that cast.)

Cartoon Hangover touts itself as "the home for cartoons that are too weird, wild and crazy for television," and without a prudish bunch of execs like the suits in charge of the non-Adult Swim half of Cartoon Network breathing down the animators' necks, Bravest Warriors gets to go places Adventure Time attempted to dip its toe in but got in trouble with CN for doing so (like when it hinted that Princess Bubblegum and Marceline were once more than just friends). The title characters are a little older than 14-year-old Finn, so sexuality is a huge part of their lives, and Bravest Warriors doesn't shy away from that, like in the latest webisode, "Gas Powered Stick," in which Danny and Wallow vie for the attention of Beth's hot best friend Plum (Tara Strong), but she's setting her sights on Chris, who would rather hook up with Beth.




"Gas Powered Stick" isn't as sharp as "Butter Lettuce" because it's a little more focused on teen drama, as Burns put it in the webisode's behind-the-scenes featurette. But fortunately, because this is a Pendleton Ward creation, the teen drama is leavened by offbeat humor that, in this case, involves a little teddy bear who speaks like a baritone-voiced Boondocks character (Michael Leon Wooley) and an X-ray vision superpower that Chris--and anyone else who's a 16-year-old kid--is eager to make use of, until it subjects him to unsexy sights he wasn't expecting to witness, like Beth shaving her armpits. I love how Bravest Warriors continually tries to ruin Chris' view of Beth as this perfect, idealized object of affection. It reminds me of a similar thing Ward has said he's been trying to do with the equally flawed Princess Bubblegum over on Adventure Time. He told io9 that "there's so many stereotypical girl characters, and the easiest thing to do is the opposite: girl power, making them extremely intelligent or extremely tough. I just want to make girls that are normal, just like Finn is normal."

I can't wait to see what else is normal about Beth on this show. For instance, what does her face look like when she drops the kids off at the pool?

***

The character design of IFC's Out There, which officially premieres on February 22, is completely--what else?--out-there. (A family of Totoro-faced humans? Button noses on everyone else?) But the show's themes of awkward adolescence and small-town boredom aren't so new and different, and while I wish "A Chris by Any Other Name," the school dance episode that IFC sneak-previewed after Portlandia last Friday, had more than just one or two genuinely funny scenes, there's enough interesting material in Out There's low-key, not-so-broadly-played and nearly melancholy take on coming-of-age humor to make the cartoon worth checking out each week when it begins in February.

Longtime South Park director and Out There creator Ryan Quincy voices Chad Stevens, an unassuming high-schooler in the small town of Holford and the eldest kid in the aforementioned Totoro-ish family. He's loyal to his new best friend Chris (Justin Roiland, a.k.a. the Earl of Lemongrab from Adventure Time), the class prankster, but he also might be starting to outgrow Chris' antics now that he's getting to know Sharla (Linda Cardellini), whom he has a crush on and is the opposite of Chris: well-behaved, respectful of authority and never getting into run-ins with bullies. Chad's younger brother Jay (Kate Micucci) is even more worshipful of Chris and constantly wants to join in on Chris' pranks and daredevil stunts (speaking of stunts, Chris has an Evel Knievel poster up on his bedroom wall, and both that and the famous Farrah Fawcett poster next to it are hints that this show is a '70s or '80s period piece).

The show is narrated by Chad, presumably when he's several years older, and while the voiceover narration isn't necessary, it's not as overbearing as Peter Parker's narration on Ultimate Spider-Man. There are a couple of left-field casting choices here that I find amusing: John DiMaggio takes a break from his usual party-animal voices (Bender, Jake, Tracy Morgan...) to play Chad and Jay's meek dad, while Micucci is voicing a little boy (and is great at it, like another Out There cast member, Pamela Adlon, was when she voiced Bobby on King of the Hill). The brief glimpse into her character Jay's silly imagination during "A Chris by Any Other Name" (which is the third episode, by the way, not the first) is one of the episode's few genuinely funny bits, and the peeks at his daydreams are something Out There will hopefully make more use of.

10 Best Original Song Oscar contenders on Spotify that don't suck (so that means neither of them will probably get nominated)

On December 11, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released its list of 75 original songs that are eligible for the Oscars' Best Original Song category. Only 32 percent of these potential nominees are on Spotify. Adele's "Skyfall," a song I've been streaming on AFOS and a Bond theme I've grown to better appreciate after realizing how well its lyrics tie into two of the film's key scenes involving Judi Dench's M, and the original songs from Django Unchained and Will Ferrell's all-Español Casa de Mi Padre are among the 68 percent that are inexplicably absent from Spotify.

Of the 32 percent, the following 10 tracks are the only potential nominees on Spotify that I like, which means neither of them will turn up in tomorrow morning's Oscar nod announcements because "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile aside, the Academy never nominates any original tunes I like. I must be the only film geek who doesn't care for the Oscars and is more interested in IFC's Spirit Awards, a far less up-its-own-ass and tedious movie award show. I really hope the NBA All-Star Game takes place during Oscar Weekend again this year. The All-Star Game festivities made for great Oscar counter-programming.

1. The Black Keys and RZA, "The Baddest Man Alive," The Man with the Iron Fists
2. Julie Fowlis, "Touch the Sky," Brave
3. Sunny Levine featuring Young Dad, "No Other Plans," Celeste & Jesse Forever
4. The Arcade Fire, "Abraham's Daughter," The Hunger Games
5. Beck, "Looking for a Sign," Jeff, Who Lives at Home
6. The Bootleggers featuring Emmylou Harris, "Cosmonaut," Lawless
7. Mychael Danna featuring Bombay Jayashri, "Pi's Lullaby," Life of Pi
8. The Crystal Method featuring Martha Reeves and The Funk Brothers, “I’m Not Leaving,” Re:Generation
9. Florence + the Machine, "Breath of Life," Snow White & the Huntsman
10. Jordin Sparks, "One Wing," Sparkle

Except for Life of Pi, I've seen neither of the films these songs hail from. That biopic starring Jessica Chastain as Lucy Lawless looks interesting.

March Madness March of the Day: "Baraat" from Monsoon Wedding by Mychael Danna

Today's "March Madness March of the Day" post is just going to be a bunch of quotes pasted together because I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Indian music and Punjabi culture, although when I saw Monsoon Wedding at a press screening in 2002, I found its Mychael Danna-penned opening title march's New Orleans brass band-style sound to be a tremendous way to kick off the film.

I'd also like to give a shout-out to Southern White DJ Whose Radio Show Used to Follow A Fistful of Soundtracks Back When AFOS Was a College Radio Show Ages Ago and Whose Name I've Since Forgotten. Your dumb and cruel ridicule of the Indian actresses who sang the Monsoon Wedding track "Mehndi/Madhorama Pencha" while I played it at the station was one of several things that made me realize it was time to leave terrestrial radio and turn AFOS into an Internet radio station, you racist piece of shit. Thanks, Hank or Toby or Enos or whatever the hell your name was.

Danna, whose name I haven't forgotten, described the roots of "Baraat" in a summary of the theme that I found on the blog of a musician who arranged a cover of "Baraat" for his wind band and even received Danna's blessing:

Baraat is the hindi word for the wedding procession of the bridegroom to the bride's village, with the groom on horseback, surrounded by his family and friends and musicians, singing and dancing with the joy of the occasion. Traditionally, the music that would accompany this noisy journey would be the exciting rhythm of the dhol drums. But since the time of the British military brass bands, the more affluent weddings use this strange yet typically Indian absorption of marching band instruments into Indian popular songs... musical proof that outside influences will come and go, but there will always be an India. This piece was written by me in that style for Mira Nair's film Monsoon Wedding.

An example of a baraat.

In a 2002 article for The Music Magazine, reviewer Surajit Bose outlined how "Baraat" forms the backbone of Danna's original score:

The liner notes [to the CD of Monsoon Wedding] reveal that Danna and his wife Aparna underwent a traditional North Indian marriage ceremony even as he was working on the music for Monsoon Wedding. Apparently this was mere serendipity, and not (alas) a symptom of Danna's fanatic devotion to researching his art. Nonetheless, Danna's first-hand familiarity with the traditional trombone-laden wedding orchestras is evident in the joyous and appropriately raucous Baraat, which serves as both the title music and the music of the baraat at the movie's eponymous close.

The melodic line established by Baraat is worked and reworked in various arrangements and at varying tempi throughout the movie, almost in the manner of a raga interpreted and reinterpreted over and over again to bring out its varied facets. Danna's creativity reveals itself in the dazzling array of orchestral arrangements, emotional effects, and musical affinities that emerge from the reworkings of a single melody...

The repetition begins to function not only as a background to the action, but also a comment on it...

The reimagining of the same melody over and over again has another, more tactical effect. Danna not only manages to relate the various characters and situations to each other, he also relates his own composition to the borrowings that pepper Monsoon Wedding. His recontextualizations of his own brand-new melody parallel the recontextualization of an old classic like "Mujhse pehlisi muhabbat". First off, Danna's own melody is credible as part of the story. The presence of a typical marriage brass band concoction like Baraat is natural enough given that the movie is, after all, about a wedding. But when that concoction recurs under various guises throughout the movie, it takes on a resonance beyond that of mere theme music. Just as with "Mujhse pehlisi muhabbat", something that could be taken for granted turns out on closer investigation to be meaningful in unexpected ways. So symbiotic is the relationship of music and action, that the music becomes the movie, as it were; the music is not a decorative add-on, but an integral part of the movie's shape, its texture and flow. It is, as Nair says, an "essential inclusion" into the life of the movie.