Dude Kills With the ‘Family Matters’ Theme on ‘Idol’ | Warming Glow
Nailed it.
New Girl premiered last night. Here is the full theme song, written and performed by Zooey Deschanel, which you may know to be one of my favorite things (series stars performing theme songs, not Zooey Deschanel, though I like her a lot, sorry). What do you guys think of the show?
Remember what we discussed yesterday? Here’s something cribbing pretty heavily from it. What’s kind of extra sweet about this is it uses footage of the cast in their youth, long before (probably) they were characters on a show. (A similar thing was done - though I can’t find a video of it online - over the closing credits of the movie Knocked Up, with baby pictures of the cast and a few cast members with their own babies.) This kind of thing, though we know psychologically it’s actually the actors, establishes a world for us - these are the characters in their youth. This show’s continuity stretches backward in time forever.
The song, Forever Young by Bob Dylan, is a fantastic blessing, and one I have heard at no small number of Bar ‘n’ Bat Mitzvahs of the children of hippies. It’s not a reminder to stay actually young, but to always keep the adventurous, curious, and generous spirit that youth at its best can mean. A fully appropriate song for a show about three generations of a family watching each other grow.
I was thinking about posting a different thing today, then I realized I wanted to reference this, so I figured I’ll post that other thing later and this today.
Full disclosure: I did not grow up in the 1960s. I was not alive during the 1960s. When I watched The Wonder Years, I watched it with my dad, who had grown up during the 1960s. Now, when I hear “A Little Help from My Friends” as sung by Joe Cocker, or see The Wonder Years on TV, I feel an urge to call upstairs to my dad: “Daddy! The Wonder Years is on!” and have him drop what he’s doing and run down to watch with me. I live 3,000 miles away from him now, and almost never watch the show anymore, and have begun to primarily think of Fred Savage as a prolific and talented television director (whom I met once, and to whom I handed his keys!) rather than as a confused suburban kid trying to establish something concrete when everything around him was changing rapidly. If there’s anything that has ever understood what it means to watch these opening credits, it is surely the greatest three-and-a-half minutes of television ever (I might stand by this, actually):
This song is written by Richard File and Wendy Rae Fowler, and performed by their band, We Fell To Earth. With the song and the visuals, especially the way light is used, this kind of feels like a commercial for a luxury car. Of course, AMC is no stranger to luxury car ads:
(Incidentally, the music in Slattery’s ad is a remix of a song by Massive Attack)
But most car commercials don’t have cutaways to a dead body - in fact, even Twin Peaks’ opening sequence didn’t have cutaways to a dead body (the comparisons have been made). But Twin Peaks and car commercials aside, the shot of Mireille Enos driving around Seattle reminds me mostly of this (and a little bit this).
It took me a while to realize it, but this season of the United States of Tara has not been using its theme song, which I think is kind of a travesty.
This sequence was directed by Jamie Caliri, whom you may remember as the director of Marcy Playground’s video for “Sex and Candy.” And honestly, the parallels are pretty interesting. Watch:
Caliri-as-auteur has some interest in barren, forbidding, and dream-like landscapes, with single heads rising out of the ground. Everything, including interior shots, looks delicate and handmade, seemingly a child’s fully-realized fashioning of a fantasy.
In the case of Tara, the setup is a pop-up book about Tara’s alters. The ones established at the beginning of the series (Alice, T, and Buck) make appearances doing what they do, but it’s not until the last moment that we see Tara herself - not just not altered, but it is also our first glimpse of her face. This is kind of a strong reveal, as Toni Collette’s face is what makes the show. To watch Toni Collette as Tara transition between alters is a weekly face-acting lesson (is face-acting a thing?). To make a show where the bulk of the ensemble is played by a single actor (be quiet, Tracy Ullman) you need someone who can not just play all the characters but can also demonstrate when she’s transitioning. You either get Anna Deveare Smith or you get Toni Collette, and Anna Deveare Smith is busy.
The song is by The Polyphonic Spree, who as far as I can tell are incapable of making music that’s downbeat. The song’s complaint that “this mess is getting high” is preceded by its own solution: to “open up the skies.” The world can either make space for us or not, but we’re not going to change to fit its dimensions (this is visualized in Tara’s head’s enormous expansion out of a house that can’t contain her at the end of the video). Even though sometimes (especially at this point in the third season) it doesn’t always feel this way, we will be just fine. The second season finale, when this family unit realizes that they can live through their dysfunctions, is kind of emblematic of that. They should really bring back this sequence (even though Tara’s alters have increased in number since it was produced). It’s so good.
Update! Apparently the show was just canceled. Bummer.
