Pages tagged “Arrested Development”

During a press junket for Universal's upcoming Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard told Maxim that the much-ballyhooed Arrested Development movie was, in fact, on its way to the silver screen.

For a period of 27 short months, TV was redeemed from all the cookie-cutter sit-coms and increasingly ridiculous reality shows that passed for network prime-time programming by the Bluth Family on Arrested Development. Since February 2005, we've had to rely on cameos from Bluths on other, less awesome TV shows (and in the case of Jeffrey Tambor's Twenty Good Years, much less awesome TV shows). Fortunately they've been many, especially lately:

20 Best TV Characters of the Past 20 Years

Today, we present the final four characters. Click here for #20-#17, here for #16-#13, here for #12-#9 and here for #8-#5.

Will Arnett is one of the funniest people around. But it's been sort of rough going for the Arrested Development vet these last few years. Blades of Glory? Semi-Pro? The Brothers Solomon? Come on! He can do better. Fox thinks so, too. Luckily, the network is putting its money where its mouth is, signing Arnett to a seven-figure deal to develop a sitcom.

The Arrested Development movie might be in limbo right now, but series creator Mitch Hurwitz will be putting his talents to good use with a planned remake of the cult classic Britcom Absolutely Fabulous.

Today, Matt Morris stopped by the studio at our Paste headquarters here in Decatur, Ga., around 11 a.m., followed an hour later by Joan Osborne (above), who played a powerful rendition of The Grateful Dead's "Brokedown Palace" as well as three of her originals. This feels about par for the course over the past few weeks, as our multi-media producer Kevin Keller has been working like a madman.

Memo to actors: if you find yourself starring in a show alongside Jerry O'Connell, don't expect to be employed for long. Mr. Rebecca Romijn (O'Connell de-Stamos'ed her) will find himself on the short-end of the sitcom stick for the second straight time, with Entertainment Weekly reporting Fox has decided to cancel his Do Not Disturb vehicle after just three episodes.

As reported in March, Michael Cera knew nothing about (and has no apparent interest in) a film adaptation of the TV show where he got his start, Arrested Development. After rumors started to swirl about interest in the project, star Jason Bateman confirmed talks about the film and went on the record with MTV saying that "we all want to do it...they are working on making a deal, probably as we speak."

Click above to watch a live at Paste performance of Arrested Development's classic hit "Tennessee."  Their new album, Since the Last Time, is available now from Vagabond Productions.

And also be sure to check out live performances of "I Know I'm Bad" and "Mr. Wendal" from the same session! 

Update: Jason Bateman dished yesterday on the status of the nearly-confirmed Arrested Development movie, bringing equal parts hope and despair:

"We all want to do it. All the actors want to do it, the writers want to do it, and the boss wants to do it. And they are working on making a deal, probably as we speak. But it's a long, sort of drawn-out, complicated business process. 'Arrested Development' is such a specific tone, it doesn't lend itself to mass appeal, as played out by the fact that it's canceled. So it has to be done for a price [...] So they have to shoot it for a small price, and we have to figure out if we can do it for that price. They're working it out, and hopefully we'll be able to know something in the next month."

Keep those balls in the air. Keep those balls in the air.

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Now the story of an amazing television show that got canceled, and the rabid fans who had no choice but to keep it all together. It's Arrested Development.

Someone take his juice box away; there's no stopping the man. Following his stint as Buster Bluth in the cult-comedy opus Arrested Development, Tony Hale became downright prolific, clawing out roles in a swathe of television shows and movies. It looks like he's dead set on continuing this workmanlike output, because it was recently announced by the Hollywood Reporter that Hale is set to join two different shows this fall, on two different networks.

Welcome to High Gravity, my new blog for daily nuggets of music, film and culture. I plan on using this space for quick, throughout-the-day updates on whatever comes across my desk or crosses my mind, from news about Thom Yorke making sure Prince's Coachella cover of "Creep" gets unblocked by YouTube or Liz Phair performing Exile in Guyville in its entirity (June 23rd at the Fillmore in San Francisco, 24th at The Vic Theatre in Chicago and 25th & 26th at the Hiro Ballroom in New York) to my own Top 10 lists, favorite new discoveries and, yes, beer recommendations.

My New Discovery of the Week
Johnny Flynn: Listening to 60-something entries for our Best of What's Next issue in September last week, the one that I keep going back to is Johnny Flynn. A bit Robyn Hitchcock, a bit Sixteen Horsepower, but with the exuberance of The Waterboys, this Londoner has won me as a fan. Only after visiting his MySpace page did I realize that I'd had his upcoming album sitting unlistened on my desk, courtesy of Lost Highway.

Best Sitcoms Since 1980
I don't have much of an opinion on sitcoms that predated me, so we'll go back to when I was nine. I'm curious to hear which ones you think I've overlooked, so let me know what rip-roaring laughs or laugh-tracks I've been missing. And before you say Taxi, just know that it debuted in 1978 (which is why I had to delete M*A*S*H, long may it rerun).

Party Like It's 1992
For better or worse, Arrested Development hasn't changed with the times

In a tiny dorm room with a beer-sticky floor, crammed with university-issued modular furniture, we did the Running Man and the Kid-n-Play to almost every song on Arrested Development’s debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in The Life of... It was 1992, and dressed in our oversized button-downs, cuffed sweatpants, scrunch socks and black loafers, we were addicted to the scratching, the sampling and the speechifying on songs like “Fishin’ 4 Religion,” “Tennessee” and “Mr. Wendal,” from a record that was at once accessible, impossibly fresh and deeply political.

But as our dance moves and questionable fashion choices eventually disappeared from view, so too did Arrested Development. The group turned out a less-than-stellar follow-up with Zingalamaduni in 1994, and then faded into foreign markets. Now, 13 years later, Atlanta-based conscience-rapper Speech and his modified band of merry men and women have returned with Since the Last Time.

A few of the tracks feature the kind of funky layering and message-heavy rapping that make me want to Roger Rabbit like a freshman fool. The others? They play like discards from that first, groundbreaking album.

Gone is longtime collaborator Headliner and guesting soul-singer Dionne Farris, though the album isn’t really weaker for it. Speech was always the draw, along with the slap-bass, hiphop beats, loaded lyrics and samples of old-timey harmonica, piano and gospel that adorned his songs. What’s missing here is the inventiveness of that first record. Arrested Development blazed a trail with 3 Years that was followed, in part, by fellow Atlantans Outkast. But now Arrested Development sounds like it’s imitating the artists it has influenced. “Inner City” is essentially a knockoff of the spitfire raps on OutKast’s “B.O.B.,” and “Down & Dirty” sounds a lot like the bouncy bop of “Hey Ya!”

Some would say it’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum; if Arrested Development pioneered this kind of music in 1992, maybe it still belongs to the band now. Supporting this argument are the new songs that take Speech’s original style and elevate it: “Miracles” amps up the creativity of 1992 track “Mama’s Always on Stage,” and there’s genius in the thumping drum intro of “Nobody Believes Me Anyway,” which gives way to a vocal hook that sounds like it came from an old soul LP. And “Sao Paulo”—with its intermittent whining guitars and a samba-meets-pop flavor—proves Arrested Development isn’t sleeping.

But other songs tread familiar territory without stacking up—particularly those where Speech’s preach-rap vocals overpower the light layers of instrumentation. There’s nothing particularly unique about the discussion of ethnic relations in “Sunshine,” where the narrator worries he’s betraying his race by being attracted to a white girl (all while a distracting hype-woman punctuates each line and calls out “uhoh” and “won’t you raise your hands”). “How Far Is Heaven?” borrows from, but doesn’t improve upon, the Los Lonely Boys tune. And on the album’s title track, Speech says his band is “a little slower, like Muhammad Ali.” Sadly, with Arrested Development lacking the charisma and charm of an Ali, such an admission is harder to swallow.

“It’s better to write for ourselves and have no public than to write for the public and have no self,” Speech lectures in “Stand.” Arrested Development seemed to achieve a happy medium with 3 Years. Not as much with Since the Last Time. Maybe next time?