Fresh

News, announcements and other observations from across the entertainment industry

The End of Adorkable: New Girl Grows Up

Meghan Lewit shares some spot-on analysis of New Girl and how the show and cast have found their voice over this first season.

The show, which was initially presented as a standard-issue sitcom about young people sharing an improbably large loft, has become more perceptive in other ways as well. Comedies about attractive groups of urbanites—like the granddaddy of them all, Friends, or even the more grounded How I Met Your Mother—tend to gloss over the economic hardships and crippling self-doubt of youth as fleeting plot points. But New Girl is firmly entrenched in its characters’ neuroses and regularly tackles the thorny question of what happens when the trappings of young adulthood (sharing an apartment with multiple roommates, toiling at low-wage jobs, eschewing health insurance), stop being fun and become a little bit depressing/embarrassing.

I could never really relate to shows like Friends—or any others where young, witty people just hang out and be young and witty—but I can totally relate to the frustration and awkwardness of maneuvering through adult life while not quite feeling like an adult yourself. The feeling is more common that one might expect, and I think it’s telling that New Girl seems to hit that sweet spot for so many viewers.

More at The Atlantic

Andreas Illiger and the dream of flying

Andreas Illiger, on sudden success, what the future holds and the inspiration for his one-man iOS hit Tiny Wings:

The main idea was to make a game about the dream of flying. When I was a child I dreamed about flying. I crafted planes, jumped from the roof of our house with my aircraft. The funny thing is that I am afraid of heights so I don’t fly even nowadays. I also wanted to fill the game with positive emotions. There are many destructive and negative games so I wanted to figure out if it is possible to make a game which makes you feel happy. That was the great aspect of the success, I think. I received a lot of feedback from people who said the game touched them.

Consider me one of them.

via Flow Studio blog

HBO erases The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen’s celebrated novel, adapted by the critically adored Noam Baumbach, produced by heavy-hitter Scott Rudin, acted by an all-star cast of Chris Cooper, Dianne Wiest, Ewan McGregor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans and Greta Gerwig, on HBO, a network that cares nothing about ratings. Seems like a sure thing, right? Apparently not, as the network has passed on the highly-anticipated pilot The Corrections. Given the collapse of David Milch and Michael Mann’s Luck with a cast including Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte gave them pause.

Holy streaming SModimations, Batman!

I’m probably late to this party, but I just discovered that a collection of SModimations (animated vignettes from the early days of SModcast) are now available on Netflix’s streaming service.

Listeners of the Smith/Mosier podcast will probably already be familiar with bits like “Aquatic Justice”, “Forgeticus” and “Avatarded”, but at about an hour total, I found a few segments that I’d somehow missed. If Kevin Smith’s brand of humor is your bag, they’re just as crude and just as hilarious. Plus, newer installments are now a part of The SModco Cartoon Show, but you probably knew that already.

Cannes lineup announced, strongest competition in years

The preliminary lineup for this year’s Cannes Film Festival was announced today and it’s the strongest slate in years. The big contender from the US of A is obviously Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, which is to this movie nerd’s knowledge the first time Anderson has gone to the world’s most prestigious film festival. Also competing are new films from David Cronenberg, John Hillcoat (The Proposition), Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James…), Lee Daniels (Precious) and past Palme d’Or winners Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach and Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days).

It’s worth noting that all of these heavyweights are competing at Cannes. More often that not, big world premieres by internationally-acclaimed geniuses at Cannes are screened out of competition to protect them from bad buzz and embarrassing losses (look at what happened to poor Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales after its disastrous Cannes debut).