A very Muppety post

The Muppets
Film, 2011, dir. James Bobin

A totally charming movie that leaves you feeling good.  I don't know that it added anything to the franchise other than a new muppet, but it was endearing and nostalgic and funny and everything else you want it to be.  I dare you not to cry when Kermit plays "The Rainbow Connection."  And who doesn't love Jason Segel?  He and Amy Adams were both cute and appropriately Muppet-y enough to fit in with the puppets themselves.  The comic highlight for me was probably the cameo by Jim Parsons, although I also laughed out loud when James Carville appeared for no particular reason.


Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street
Nonfiction. Michael Davis, 2008

This is a good book and an interesting book but not the book I wanted it to be.  It would more aptly be subtitled The Complete History of the Origins of Sesame Street and a Glance at the Show Itself.  As you may have seen in an earlier post of mine, it takes about half the book to get to the point when Sesame Street is on the air.  This isn't, in principle, a bad thing; the show's brilliant creators deserve their time in the sun, and Davis tracks the show business beginnings of each.  Along the way, he captures some interesting anecdotes about the shows that influenced Sesame Street, including Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, and the puppet-centric show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.

It's a pleasant little thrill when the book finally does get to the show being on the air and you start to recognize the stories of beloved characters or songs from episodes you remember.  The book still focuses on the people behind the camera or under the puppets, though, so little time is spent on talking about the various episodes.  Thus entire decades are covered in one chapter.  The book misses out on some of the late history of the show, opting instead to follow its original characters through their retirement from the show, or, in many cases, the ends of their lives (Jim Henson, Joe Raposo, Northern Calloway, Dave Connell, Jon Stone, etc.)  This leaves you with a sort of depressing end to the otherwise triumphant story of one of the most important television shows in history.
I'd recommend this book if you're looking for a nonfiction read that's not too heavy and you have an interest in television production.  If you're just looking for a Muppet story, though, this is not your book.  Go see the aforementioned movie instead.

Friday roundup: Breaking Dawn, Matched, and more

Happy Friday, readers!  Here's an update on my reading and viewing life of late.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1
Film, 2011, dir. Bill Condon


Ooh steamy! No wait, his skin is icy cold.  Brr!

 Breaking Dawn was just what you would expect if you have seen the other movies and you are familiar with the story.  In case you have managed to avoid the media buzz (good job!), the plot is that Bella and Edward get married, consummate their passionate love, and end up with a vampire baby growing inside still-human Bella.  This makes Jacob (wolfy friend/third corner of love triangle) mad.  I imagine Taylor Lautner's in-character thoughts as something along the lines of "JACOB SMASH! RAWRRRRRRR!" (because he phases into his werewolf form when he gets really mad...)  This led to the most ridiculous scene in the movie--and trust me, that's saying something.  Jacob's pack of wolves can talk to each other mentally when they are in their wolf form, so there's a bunch of CGI-ed giant wolves on the screen growling at one another while the helpful captions let the rest of us in on the conversation.  This is backed by some truly dramatic score--nothing reinforces wolf drama like soaring violins.  Anyway!  Props to whoever did the makeup and CGI on Kristen Stewart, because that girl looked like the living dead for most of the movie (see, her life force is being soaked up by the demon baby because vampires are stronger than humans...leading Bella herself to drink blood...leading everyone in the theater to laugh uncomfortably because it's really gross to watch when her teeth get all red.)  The acting was meh, the writing was meh, the source material was terrible, but I still had fun!  Yayyyy Twilight.

Matched
YA Novel, Ally Condie, 2010

This is a kind of cool cover.
That is the only other nice thing I will say.

Matched is really not very good.  I saw some good reviews of it and I am puzzled.  I will give Ally Condie a little bit of credit for being a pretty good writer.  She puts together some nice images and turns of phrase from time to time.  However, the plot of this book is boring and derivative.  It's like The Giver and 1984 and Twilight all raised a dull child together.  Our heroine Cassia is repressed by her post-some-kind-of-apocalypse overlord government, and has to navigate the troubling waters of her budding rebellious spirit as she debates between the guy the Society "matched" her with (Xander) and the guy she secretly loves because he's dark and mysterious and has pretty eyes (Ky).  I was intensely irritated to find that the "matching ceremony" where people get assigned to their mates seems to be strictly heterosexual, and no other sexual preferences are even mentioned.  Cassia notes that you can opt out of the matching and be "a single" instead, but that doesn't really address the issue.  Anyway, on to other things that bother me. Cassia gets an illegal copy of Dylan Thomas's famous poem "Do not go gentle into that good night."  One thing that really grinds my gears about YA fiction is when a book latches onto a poem, book, symphony, etc. as an example of fine art and then smashes in our faces for the rest of the book (cf. If I Stay's classical music selection.)  That is what happens here, as Cassia adopts "I will not go gentle!" as an obnoxious refrain.  My biggest problem with this book, though, is my own fault--I listened to it on audiobook even though within five seconds I was terrified to find out that chipmunks have acquired the powers of speech and are recording audiobooks.  The girl reading the book just drove me nuts, and every time she used her "voices" for the characters (often) I felt annoyed with her.  Don't ask me why I kept listening--I dunno, I just did.  Actually, I guess it was because I was intrigued by the beginning of the book, before it was entirely clear that it would suck.  Oh well, it was free--did you know you can get audiobooks from the library!  Crazy!

The cover is misleadingly Oscar-centric.

I'm currently in the middle of a second underwhelming book (hard copy this time)--Street Gang by Michael Davis.  The cover promises to be the history of Sesame Street, which it is.  Sadly for me, I didn't read the rest of the summary, which clarifies that it mostly explores the histories of the various writers and producers who brought the show to life and how the idea came to be.  Thus I am about half way through and we haven't even gotten to the first episode being written yet.  I was really looking for more of a behind-the-scenes expose of what went down between Ernie and Elmo, you know?  Oh well.  I'll update again when I finish it. (To clarify, it's not a bad book, just kind of rambly.  I don't do a lot of nonfiction, so maybe I just have a short attention span.)

Oh, is Christina Hendricks in this show?

On TV, I've been watching my usual shows that are currently on air (How I Met Your Mother--decent, Glee--meh, The New Girl--hehe she's so awkward!, Community--ridiculous, Parks and Rec--my personal fave) and supplementing with Netflix streaming of Mad Men.  So far I'm about 10 episodes in, and I like it but I'm not sure I get what all the fuss is about.  It seems like a PERIOD PIECE where we are forced to appreciate every time they say "swell" or all light up a cig together.  But I do like well-drawn character dramas, in the end.

I'm going to see The Muppets this weekend, hooray!  I've heard many of you already saw and enjoyed it, but that won't stop me from opining on it at length next week!