Pages tagged “The Simpsons”

It's fashionable to lament the state of the TV theme song. Gone are the days when a show's whole premise was summed up in musical verse before every episode. Now we have Lost and it's single chord. And though I actually like Lost's simple spooky chime and have recently highlighted the 12 Best TV Theme Songs From Current Shows, there's no denying we're past the golden age of the TV show theme song. Take a look at the following list, and let me know where I'm wrong. I've included music without words, but I skipped over shows that used already popularized tunes like "The William Tell Overture" from The Lone Ranger and "Stand" from Get a Life.

40. The Rockford Files - Mike Post and Peter Carpeneter
You might not know the names of Post and Carpenter, but between them they composed theme music for a mind-boggling number of shows including CHiPs, Magnum P.I., The A-Team, Hunter, Hill Street Blues, The Greatest American Hero, Doogie Howser M.D., Quantum Leap and Remington Steele. If you're in your 30s, you can claim all you want that Prince provided the soundtrack to your childhood—but it was really Mike Post.

Next Monday we'll look at the Best TV Theme Songs of All Time. But while we lament the lack of a Cheers or M*A*S*H or Sanford & Son theme song in today's TV landscape, we've picked our 12 favorite theme songs from TV shows that are still in production. In the era of TiVo, the little ditties opening today's shows seem to be littler and dittier than their predecessors (I guess if people are going to fast forward through them anyway, why spend the effort?). But here are 12 that make us put down that remote:

[note: Sesame Street would have made this list until I realized they've pretty much ruined it.]

12. Friday Night Lights - W.G. "Snuffy" Walden
Veteran TV composer W.G. "Snuffy" Walden has scored music for a long list of TV shows, including thirtysomething, The Wonder Years, Roseanne, Ellen, My So-Called Life, Felicity and all three of Aaron Sorkin's masterpieces. For FNL, I just hope the former Windham Hill journeyman is sharing his royalty check with Explosions in the Sky, whose "Your Hand in Mind" featured prominently in the film the show was based on. The style and melody sound like a more accessible version of the Texas post-rockers' atmospheric riffing. Still, it's a great opening to a show that's not just for the booster-club set. [Thanks, Spencer, for the correction. And thanks, subversiveIRONY, for this YouTube mash-up with Coach.]

20 Best TV Characters of the Past 20 Years

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

Don't have a cow, man. The cast of The Simpsons and 20th Century Fox have finally worked out a new deal that will put an and to the  multiple-month production delay. The major Springfieldians are now officially signed on for four more years of the show. Take that, Shelbyville!

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).

Another book on the meaning of Marge

Make extra room on the bookshelf for another cultural-studies analysis on the significance of The Simpsons. Tim Delaney aims to show how Springfield is relevant to contemporary culture, and with this easy target, I guess he succeeds.

But his approach reads like a cross between a middle-school sociology textbook (here’s a definition of “extreme sports”) and an encyclopedia of sober plot summaries sorted by societal characteristic (here are episodes that feature skateboarding).

For a beginning student of both the show and sociology, Delaney’s book may be an approachable starting point. For the rest of us, Simpsonology lacks the fanboy minutia and obsessive analysis to reveal the show’s larger meanings—if there really are any.

After all, The Simpsons’ biggest accomplishment is that it has kept us laughing for 19 seasons and more than 400 shows. As Homer once said, “Oh Marge, cartoons don’t have any deep meaning. They’re just stupid drawings that give you a cheap laugh.”

Director: David Silverman
Writers: Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti
Starring: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria
Studio/Running Time: Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 87 min.

Coming after 18 seasons, it’s impossible to view The Simpsons Movie without having some context. Even if you don’t own a television, it’s likely that sometime during the past two decades you visited a house that does and probably caught an episode. And for those of us who own every Simpsons DVD set, have made frequent visits to the newly renovated Kwik-E-Marts and haven’t missed an episode’s release since the mid-90s, there’s no way of hiding the apprehension. Will it redeem the post-Mike Scully-becomes-show-runner seasons or add to the downward spiral?

The main plot, once the film gets around to it, concerns Springfield getting stuck in an impenetrable glass bubble due to its environmental problems. Almost needless to say, Homer is the source for this mess and the Simpsons become town pariahs, narrowly escaping a lynch mob out for literal lynching and ultimately causing the family to move to Alaska. As convoluted as this may sound, it’s far simpler than many episodes of the actual show and feels undeniably logical within the movie’s framework. Despite its strong political undertones, these issues fail to dominate the film in the way they tend to for South Park; instead this is The Simpsons where what matters is family and the relationships within it.

Translating the television show to film is almost seamless, and though sometimes the framing feels a bit less than cinematic overall the look is clean and precise. Like the last few seasons the film is animated by computers, which makes it look a bit like Futurama at times, especially during the more effects-driven shots. While this looks good, it’s still not quite as comfortable and human as the old cell-based method, though it was almost certainly a necessity for the project.

Most importantly, the film is undeniably funny—you can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s not as great as “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” or “Bart Sells His Soul,” but it’s as good as one of the lesser episodes from those seasons when the show could do no wrong (aka David Mirkin through Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein in charge). In fact, because the film’s length allowed the writers to tone down the pacing, it almost feels like an old episode at times. While there’s still occasional forced jokes and a few gags that The Simpsons itself has used before, the whole thing feels like a switch in form was just what the series needed to get kicked into gear again.

The answer to whether the film should be seen comes even before it begins in earnest, when Ralph Wiggum stands on the 20th Century Fox logo and sings along with its theme. From its very first frame the movie is through and through The Simpsons and its creators have taken the time and care to make this worth a trip to the theater rather than waiting for another syndicated rerun to come on. When the film ended, it was hard to believe that more than 22 minutes had passed by.

In the latest of an ongoing series of Simpsons-related publicity stunts, Springfield, Vermont has been selected as the winner of The Simpsons Movie Hometown Movie Challenge. Fourteen Springfields around the nation competed for the prize by submitting a short film exhibiting the city’s “Simpson Spirit,” which depending on how its interpreted could mean either their immense fandom or their propensity towards nuclear meltdowns and poorly constructed monorails. The winning Springfield beat out its competitors with a video recreating the film’s opening and a short skit about donuts, giving it 15,367 votes out of 109,582 total cast on USAToday.com. This won it a premiere on July 21st, six days before the film’s full release. All of the runner ups will be given a screening on the 26th as a consolation prize.

This follows up on the film’s 7/11 to Kwik-E-Mart conversion a couple weeks ago, as well as giving British critics a screening of the film’s first ten minutes to create even more buzz (cola pun not intended) around the movie. Still to come: new action figures, a phone by Samsung, and a special edition xbox 360. The only element still missing is, of course, the film itself. Let’s all remember those golden seasons from 1993-1999 and cross our fingers.

Related links:
The winning video
The Simpsons Movie website
Early impressions on the film from the Guardian

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