Entries Tagged 'TV' ↓

I’ve just gotta shout out actor Kim Fields, above. She’s perhaps best known for playing “Tootie,” in the popular 1970s TV show, The Facts of Life.

She turned 40, beautifully, yesterday, May 12th.

Happy birthday, gurl!

Yet, “Rapper’s Delight” isn’t the best aspect of “Cog,” a 2-minute Honda commercial, produced by Nike stalwarts Wieden + Kennedy, which aired in the UK during 2003. That would be its sheer visual inventiveness and luscious backstory, one of filmmakers going to insane limits to create a vision that, until the moment the lights go dark, only exists inside their heads.

I recently discovered this spot while doing research on Rube Goldberg machines…and I was looking those up as an aspect of some religious writing I’m doing…which is, I should say here, what I’ve always loved about the net and, certainly by extension, Wikipedia: Its serendipitous nature, and that, following it, you never end up where you started or expected…that being, I think you’ll agree, what this advertisement is about, too.

At MEDIA ASSASSIN, we work to make our heds particularly catcy, but, in this instance, need any more be said? It’s Crispin Glover on Happy Days!

I know what you’re thinking: Crispin Hellion Glover, the actor whose note-perfect George McFly in 1985’s Back To The Future broke him out—and whose subsequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and in the ratfest remake Willard (here, he sings Michael Jackson’s “Ben”) weirded audiences out—was on Happy Days?

Yep. In November 1983, the seventh episode of the 11th and final season—long after Happy Days had both literally and figuratively jumped the shark in September, 1977—Glover appeared as truant Roach in the series’ “Vocational Education” piece.

Crispin Glover! Not even the fact that he’s sharing the scene with noted “series killer” Ted McGinley as Roger, the school principal, dilutes the joy of this.

Now, the world don’t move! To the beat of just one drum
What might be right for you, may not be right for some….

To folks familiar with cheesy sitcoms from the late ’70s and early ’80s, the theme music to Diff’rent Strokes is so well-known that merely reading its lyrics, above, not to mention hearing its earnest strains, is enough to trigger soppy memories of the show’s early opening visuals. There, each week, good-hearted millionaire Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain) would escort his new charges, brothers Arnold (Gary Coleman) and Willis (Todd Bridges), above, from a basketball game in the hood, past the wonders of late 20th century New York, to his luxurious apartment building, all in his chaufferred limousine.

Indeed, the gentle innocence and curiosity of children, coupled with the wizened kindness of their doting patron, is what makes UK YouTuber MontyPropps’ “Disturbing Strokes” so unsettling. By switching the spirited soundtrack to a mysterious, mood-laden instrumental, then slightly desaturating the colors in the footage, Propps turns the classic intro into something vaguely hinting at pederasty. By the time Arnold and Willis look up at the towering, phallic structure Drummond calls home, giving only furtive backwards glances as he leads them inside, if nothing else, you’ll believe, as said one poster on Propps’ YouTube channel, that, in film, there is truly no such thing as “incidental music.”

Black people frequently accuse white people of treating us as though we all look alike. So, when one hears of a Black person having been wrongly convicted in a case of mistaken identity, particularly in as tragic a context as sexual assault, one is usually prepared to write it off as another instance of said Caucasian arrogance, taken to grave ends.

In the 1984 case of Jennifer Thompson, 22, however, raped in Burlington NC while attending college, I can actually see why, in a photo lineup, she mistakenly and tragically identified Ronald Cotton, above left, as her assailant. (She confused him with Bobby Poole, above right, her actual rapist, but whose picture was not part of the grouping.)

Can you say doppelgänger? The duo don’t even look like they’re related. They look, at least, like before and after pictures of the same man, taken a year or two apart.

The close physical resemblance of these two men plays, as well, another unexpected role in this two-part feature from last night’s 60 Minutes. If you missed it, check out the transcript, or ogle part 1, then part 2 of the episode via online video.

In a move aimed “to show the hidden beauties of Afghan youth,” Afghan entrepreneurs are creating a TV show for the country that’s been likened to Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model, here in the U.S.

Afghan Model will be produced by Emrooz TV, a new channel in that country, privately owned by parliament member Najib Kabuli. As reported by Reuters,

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Pepsi sure ran whole hog with their “Choice of a New Generation” campaign, back in the ’80s. But nothing demonstrates the level at which they were feeling themselves more than this award-winning, 1985 commercial, “Archaeology,” directed by ad great Joe Pytka.

Take a gander at it: Nearly 25 years later, the payoff is still one of the best disses ever in corporate marketing. (Plus, the shuttle, departing overhead, is pure visual magic, the cherry on top, the ping! in the overture.) It would be some sweet writing if I could end this paragraph’s first sentence by saying, “…and a blow from which Coca-Cola never recovered.” In truth, Coke still kicks Pepsi’s behind up and down the street.

I may like nothing less than any film or video where Black people teach white people how to dance, or to otherwise be cool.

That said, I can kind of bear the otherwise talented Vicki Lawrence (Mama’s Family) in this clip from The Carol Burnett Show, above, because there’s just not a lot of high-quality footage around of the Jackson 5 performing their hot, often-less-heralded semi-single, “Body Language (Do the Love Dance).”

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What’s the ShamWow! Guy smoking?

I’ve never been a huge Mary J. Blige fan. But I’m utterly moved by, and can’t stop watching, her new Chevy Traverse commercial, above.

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