'The Simpsons' going live-action, briefly
NEW YORK (AP) — Ever wonder what Bart Simpson would look like in human form?
Sunday's episode of The Simpsons will also feature guest star Ricky Gervais. Here, Gervais' character, right shares a beer with Homer.
FOX
The longrunning animated Fox series The Simpsons is about to show you. The series will unveil a live-action opening sequence Sunday, 8 p.m. ET, a Fox spokeswoman announced Thursday. In it, the dysfunctional cartoon family — Bart, Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie — will be seen as they would appear in real life, played by lookalike actors.
"I'm just amazed there are people who want to be known for looking like the Simpsons," said Al Jean, the show's executive producer, in a statement.
A team from British network Sky One created and commissioned the live sequence, which apes the long-running series' memorable opening shots: Bart writing on the chalkboard, Homer pulling the nuclear rod out of his shirt and Maggie and Marge at the supermarket, a Fox spokeswoman said.
The Simpsons was recently renewed for two more seasons, its 18th and 19th.
21 comments:
Yeah, but we've seen this already!
It was on the web a couple months ago. It was great BTW.
I can't tell if this is the same thing or not. The one we watched previously was spot on except that the acrots did not look like the characters. You're probably right, it's the same thing. It's our curse for being on the pulse of pop culture!
It's a tough job, jpx, but someone's got to do it.
BTW (hijacking a thread yet again) I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying Halloween. What a great movie! It's just so well done; so well directed. Carpenter's advanced sense of spatial and geographical relationships is an incredibly powerful suspense tool. Jamie Lee Curtis stands out like a sore thumb as the only "actual" actor amongst all the kids, but so what. The wide-angle, widescreen steadicam "Kubrick Jr." photoraphy is fantastic too.
Interesting that directors like Carpenter and John Landis get absolutely no respect, when their work shows a visual sophistication that rivals that of "real" directors, combined with a very serious and sophisticated sense of the history of movies and storytelling, while complete hacks like Kevin Smith and Brett Ratner get all the success.
Unfortunately the lack of respect for Carpenter and the horror genre itself is an age-old problem. Aside from Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Shining, I’m hard pressed to think of other horror films that have been recognized for the art that they are.
Additionally, having gone through 6 Horrorthons I can say with some certainty that 95%+ of horror films fail to achieve their goal; the activation of sympathetic arousal. I’ve seen Halloween numerous times and I still experience goose bumps when Myers sits up in the background while Jamie Lee sits in the doorway whimpering (of course it has never made sense that she would stay in the house. Why did she send the kids off? Why didn’t she go with them?).
And that's why we have Horrorthon! Not to wallow in crap, but to elevate the proud few who...what's that...excuse me, my aid needs to whisper something in my ear.
Oh! Apparently we do it to wallow in crap, too. Righto.
Horrorthon 2006 is only 7 months away, woo-hoo!
Wait, that's still a long time.
Damn.
It's "Sturgeon's Law":
"Sure, 90% of science fiction is crap. That's because 90% of everything is crap."
This is a very interesting critical phenomenon I've noticed for years (more about sci-fi than horror because it's more my thing). You always have to weed through the crap to find the good stuff, even if you're talking about Netherlandish Renaissance painters or 1920s American fiction. The difference with fields like horror and sci-fi is that the critical armature that guides people in that weeding process is missing or is broken, so people only see the crap and don't know how to find the strands of gold in the muddy grass. Most people don't trust their own tastes or have been encouraged to think ironically about how the stuff they like is "just fun" or is "good/bad" or some nonsense like that. Ultimately the genre artists who most superficially resemble non-genre artists or are making a big show of "being better than" their genre get all the credit from the mainstream critical establishment. We've discussed Arthur C. Clarke and other examples of this.
This phenomenon is not only exhibited between the different films that make up a genre, but also within those film series themselves. Just look at Halloween. It's a low-budget little film but it packs a wallop because of good direction and a simplistic, kick-ass soundtrack. Now look at the 8 sequels that followed. I admit that I have a soft spot for Carpenter's Halloween II, but all of the sequels lose the essence of what made the original so great. Okay, I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, but I'm multi-tasking here!
You're making some sense.
I can live with "some". We've tried to develop a top 10 list of horror films for years, but it gets bogged down in all the mini-genres within the genre (e.g., devil worship, zombies, slashers, Asian, etc).
I just realized something: My personal list of the "best" horror movies corresponds with the mainstream opinion: Exorcist, Shining, Halloween, Psycho etc. Does this indicate my naivité in the genre?
In other words, I'm smart enough about sci-fi to realize that Starship Troopers is brilliant even though it looks like complete junk to the non-initiated (the people who mindlessly praise A. I.) So are there lots of horror movies that are the equivalent of Starship Troopers that I've missed?
Since the answer is obviously "yes," I guess this means I'll have to go through all the past Horrorthon comments or I have to wait for you guys to make that list.
The only recent example of a great horror film for me has been The Ring. I still experience goose bumps if I even think about certain scenes from that creep-fest.
Damn, now I'm all goose-bumpy.
Ringu is crap though.
That's an interesting question, Jordan, but my quick answer is that the flicks that get the mainstream props are, for the most part, the ones that stand out among us genre-heads as well. You've already assimilated The Ring, which is the most notable 21st century achievement. There are probably a few sleepers you might want to check out. The Others springs to mind.
Oh yeah, and Basket Case. You gotta see Basket Case.
(Don't see Basket Case.)
I'm so glad you guys both cheerfully violate the "foreign original is obviously better" edict. It's just such nonsense. "Of course" "Hollywood" will "wreck" the movie, say a bunch of naifs.
I had a friend in college who was an incredibly talented rock guitarist. He could do Van Halen-speed solos. He argued against fretless bass by simply saying, "I like frets!" and argued against atonal music by saying, "I like tones!"
And me? "I like Hollywood!"
My favorite part of "The Ring" is the first five minutes, because there you see Gore Verbinski's incredible visual skill. No other movie he's made looks anything like that. The first shot of the house is incredible, and the whole bedroom sequence keeps up the pace because it's so dark. Somehow the bedroom and the rest of the house are illuminated by all these lamps we can see -- overhead lights and bright table lamps -- and the house is full of cheerful modern appliances and a cute novelty beside clock and a britta pitcher of water and all these nice suburban touches, and yet it's as murky and unsettling as a tomb. The longer the camera stays in that house the more unsettling and frightening it is, and yet it's all done without any conventional scare images; just that Verbinski photography that seems to be sucking all the light out of the image.
What makes the opening of The Ring work for me is Verbinski's bait and switch, which leads you to believe that you're just watching another paint-by-numbers teen slasher. Only in the very last second (ESPECIALLY IF YOU FRAME BY FRAME IT TO SEE THE MELTING FACE)do you realize that you're in for something different. The word that always springs to mind for me when discussing The Ring is "dread". It never lets up. You never feel safe.
The "Hollywood ending" would've been to have the credits roll once Summara is "rescued" from the well. The image of Summara crawling out of the television set will haunt me to the end of my time here.
shudder.
Misspelling her name won't keep you safe, you know. She knows you're talking about her.
Drifting back to the long-lost topic, I posted that picture because it looked old and creepy. All the stills I found of the actual opening were crap.
You know, I looked up her name and saw it spelled a few different ways!
I remember on my second viewing, realizing "THAT's why he's got a wooden platform in the middle of his loft -- so they can do the effect at the end."
Another cool thing to do in The Ring is one of my favorite movie pasttimes: look for the act breaks. Nearly all movies divide into three or usually four acts; a good director is 100% aware of this at all times and handles the filmmaking appropriately.
The Ring has great act breaks. Act I ends with the tape. If you concentrate on the five minutes leading up to it (the drive; the card trick; tracking in on the tape, and, especially, the sunset and the leaves) you can see Verbinski making sure you understand that we're approaching a momentous part of the story. When the tape is over, the sun has set and the rain has come, and we crane up as Rachel dashes aimlessly out into the rain.
Act II ends with the first drive to the Horse Farm, involving one of the most complex CGI shots in the movie, in which the camera moves past the (always 100% digital) lighthouse and over the road and then uses some trees to hide the transition into the "real" shot of Rachel approaching the farm's dirt road. The music cue here totally tells you that it's an act break.
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