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.

On the most recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, the gang performed the theme song! So that was pretty cool, huh?

jamesurbaniak:

J.D. Thirlwell conducts a live orchestral performance of music from “The Venture Brothers.” Greatest thing ever or greatest thing ever?

Mentioned before in these pages, but The Venture Brothers has excellent music, and check this out. (Slight typo from Mr. Urbaniak: it’s actually JG, not JD)

This song is “I’ll Be Your Man” by The Black Keys. Obviously it’s slightly shortened, but you get the gist. Now, no one ever accused Hung of not having any nudity on it. It is, after all, and HBO series (“Class + Ass = Emmys” — HBO), and the women characters get nude with some regularity. But considering that the series is about the size of its lead’s penis, it is sort of surprising that Thomas Jane never does full-frontal nudity, not even a short Dirk Diggler “I am a star. I’m a star, I’m a star, I’m a star. I am a big, bright, shining star. That’s right.” According to the show’s creators (Dmitry Lipkin and Colette Burson), that’s intentional:

Every woman who sees that penis thinks it is the perfect penis for her… Plato’s penis, the platonic penis…We haven’t shown it thus far because it’s in the mind for each woman who experiences it differently. … It’s the perfect penis for whoever encounters it.

Now, I don’t want to necessarily say this is bullshit, but it does seem to coincidentally result in the same rule you can find everywhere else on TV: female nudity is fine, male nudity is not. I don’t know if this is because most of the people who decide what gets on TV and what doesn’t are heterosexual men uncomfortable with their own sexuality OR if they just erroneously believe that is true of audiences (I’m inclined to believe the latter). But see the way Thomas Jane looks at you at the end of this sequence? Right into the camera? I guarantee if this show were about a woman this title sequence wouldn’t end that way.

Via (And he has more!)

This is the Japanese version of the theme song for 30 Rock. I don’t know the song being used here, but I do know that I love this sequence and it’s perfect and awesome. Enjoy!

Barely an update:
According to a commenter at SplitSider, the Japanese text on screen reads:
“The big hit throughout America! Winner of Emmys *and* Golden Globes!
Female television writer, struggling through life!
She’s confident when she’s producing live TV shows!
But, outside of work、she’s a somewhat timid heroine, facing challenges day after day, with no rehearsals!”
And the song might be called “Going All Night?” The end.

This is the excellent opening sequence of Archer. You can read all about its inception here, at the very-helpful site The Art of the Title. As you can probably tell, it’s another Saul Bass-inspired piece, like this and this. In fact, two of the Bass-inspired movie opening credits sequences I cited for Chuck are referred to as influences for Neal Holman, Archer’s art director. What ties this closer to Mad Men, though, is that this sequence is meant also to recall the era of Saul Bass sequences, as Archer takes place in a kind of 1960’s/present-hybrid. In that sense, it probably has the most in common with The Venture Bros, a sequence meant to recall that same era’s action cartoons. The Venture Bros too takes place in a sort-of hybrid between a bygone era and the present. And both are terrific series (Adam Reed, creator of Archer, worked primarily on Adult Swim shows before bringing Archer to FX).
This very much of-the-era song was written by Scott Sims and arranged and recorded by Dominik Hauser. This is what you should be humming when you’re sneaking around corners pretending to be a spy.

Portlandia is a new miniseries from IFC, co-created by Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney fame. Surprisingly, this song is not by Sleater-Kinney (if we were gonna use one of their songs, I’d go for “Banned from the End of the World.”). Instead, this song is “Feel it All Around” by Washed Out, who is a person and not a band. Here’s the full version:

And here is a song that “Feel it All Around” samples:

Washed Out is described by wikipedia as “chillwave,” which, if you wanted to make up a word to describe the Portland of Portlandia I’d say this is a fair one. It’s really hip and doesn’t rush its way to the end and also uses a piece of an old song because that’s cool too.

I am not from Portland. I was in the city only once, and under those circumstances I ended up having to hide a friend in a hotel bathroom for a matter of hours. I also went to Powell’s! This is all to say that I don’t know the city very well or intimately, but I’d bet that if you are from Portland, the opening images of the show conjure up the same positive feelings in you that this opening sequence does for me, showing me parts of a city I’ve spent considerable time in:

It clearly comes from a place of affection and some good-natured satire. If only How to Make it In America were satire.

Incidentally, here’s what Amelie Gillette of The AV Club (and currently a writer on The Office) had to say about Portlandia:

She’s referring to the opening number of the pilot episode, a great song called “Dream of the 90’s.” Here’s that number (“Stuff White People Like: The Song):

Shameless is yet another recent addition to Showtime’s slate. The song here is called “The Luck You Got” by The High Strung, and I think it’s meant to be ironic because the family on Shameless ISN’T lucky. They’re unlucky (because they’re poor). It’s a good song, though, even if it does sort of smack of the “wealthy people making shows about poor people” vibe (see also: anything that uses the song “Ain’t We Got Fun?”).

The title sequence, the real star of this post, was directed by Erin Sarofsky (she’s also responsible for the excellent title sequence for Community!). The DP was Adam Santelli and the Production Designer was Naomi Slodki. Sarofsky further describes the production details: 

Because this was a live action production, we designed and constructed the bathroom set, then shot the cast in Los Angeles using the RED ONE camera. 

Hey, Red Cameras! Everyone loves those, you know?

Writing on the sequence, Hitfix.com’s Alan Sepinwall said:

The sequence places a fixed eye on the lone bathroom shared by the sprawling Gallagher family. …  We watch Fiona and her brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors and everyone’s assorted boyfriends and girlfriends use the bathroom for both its intended purposes and many others, from sex to the toddler using the toilet to brush his teeth.

That’s “Shameless” in 30 seconds or less: messy, overcrowded, unapologetically frank and, at times, darkly funny.

Sepinwall isn’t wrong, for the most part. I love the messiness of this sequence; it definitely gets you into the tone of the show, for the most part. But I’d like to focus on the camera itself (the Red Camera, you may recall). Sarofsky refers to it as “slightly voyeuristic.” Sepinwall calls it a “fixed eye.” But Sepinwall’s wrong.

Watch the camera throughout the sequence. At a few points, it jerks a bit. There’s a jump cut, and the camera moves slightly. This actually gives the sequence even more of a documentary feel. It conjures up a story: This family has been given a camera with which to document their lives. As something of a prank, they set up the camera to tape their bathroom. But throughout the day, the kids borrow the camera to tape, you know, whatever. Someone has cut out everything that isn’t a shot of the bathroom. Hence, jump cuts and movement. This subtle kineticism, in my opinion, ADDS to the messy feel of the sequence. This may be a stretch, but watch it the way I described it. I’m kind of right, right?