Seth MacFarlane's Ted

Am I the only one unaware that the horror of Seth MacFarlane was encroaching onto the big screen?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGW5gpMU9yo

I laughed at a couple of spots in that trailer, but won't be suckered into actually going to see this.

i really, really want this to bomb and feel kinda bad about it

Liiiike...I don't think that Seth MacFarlane is inherently untalented or unfunny. I just think he's found a cynical and pandering and unfunny niche that he's apparently unwilling to swerve away from no matter how many separate projects the universe has seen fit to gift him with simultaneously.

I lol'ed at the name bit. He did a similar gag on Family Guy, but that kind of joke always gets me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErPsx8zdnX4

AM I the only one who still gets this guy mixed up with Todd McFarlane? The Ted/Todd axis is another blow to my head to further blur my vision.

Liiiike...I don't think that Seth MacFarlane is inherently untalented or unfunny. I just think he's found a cynical and pandering and unfunny niche that he's apparently unwilling to swerve away from no matter how many separate projects the universe has seen fit to gift him with simultaneously.

― Marty McBrundlefly (Deric W. Haircare), Monday, April 2, 2012 5:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm

0 laughs in that trailer

This is going to be so so awful. Kept seeing them shooting around Boston for this last year and a lot of it was done right where we used to live. Am tempted to see it just because of that but, yeah, I'm not going to. Mark W - WHY?!

The Happening whetted Wahlberg's appetite to become the next Nic Cage

Greg the Bunny / Wilfred / Unhappily Ever After

IT NEVER GETS TIRED

Unhappily Ever After was the most fucked show. and they made 100 episodes of it.

Liiiike...I don't think that Seth MacFarlane is inherently untalented or unfunny. I just think he's found a cynical and pandering and unfunny niche that he's apparently unwilling to swerve away from no matter how many separate projects the universe has seen fit to gift him with simultaneously.

― Marty McBrundlefly (Deric W. Haircare), Monday, April 2, 2012 5:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

exactly! I think Seth can be funny if he really tries. But I feel like way too many people have told him how funny he is for the last 10 years and he's starting to believe that just being there will make something hilarious. Case in point, the ridiculous number of scenes he does which are literally just him repeating some movie scene/internet meme word for word

I could seriously go a lifetime without hearing "How You Like Me Now" in another movie too, ffs

that fucking band has more money than Radiohead at this point

couldn't get through the trailer, but it occurred to me that a version minus the cgi and macfarlane's v/o would be some kind of bizarre masterpiece

kinda like this you mean?
http://www.flix66.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/The-Beaver-1.jpg

ha no i mean with just blank space and silence

oh, like this then
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1clcgsPAR1qz8z2ro1_500.png

how on earth is this not co-produced by kevin smith??

cos no one cares about Kevin Smith anymore and McFarlane is richer than god?

Yeah, I'm more surprised that it's being released by an actual studio. MacFarlane could probably Dino De Laurentiis the shit out of some movies if he wanted to (god help us all).

Thankfully I think he is too lazy a writer to want to do that.

that was kind of a rhetorical question

I am a big fan of Family Guy and American Dad and I have occasionally laughed at The Cleveland Show

this looks fucking terrible

American Dad is definitely alright, but I kinda suspect that's because MacFarlane doesn't do any of the actual writing (plus it rips off a show that actually is really, really funny, so at least they've got good source material)

The TED (talk) people must be pissed.

i wonder who wants to see this movie

mark wahlberg fans? idk, that's p much the only draw for me

the trailer made me think a lot about the apt he has, what job does he do? something sorta cool and creative probably, idk all these slacker movie characters with $150 t-shirts, what world do you live in?

i feel like this is like a remake of annie hall. i think it might be as good (or as bad) as annie hall!
wahlberg should really play the jerky bear though. he doesn't have enough range to pull off a zach braff type.

fuck Seth MacFarlane. I made an evil Teddy bear movie before he did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CQSTykRxE

Sue the bastard

American Dad is definitely alright, but I kinda suspect that's because MacFarlane doesn't do any of the actual writing (plus it rips off a show that actually is really, really funny, so at least they've got good source material)

― Estimate the percent chance that a whale has ever been to the moon? (frogbs), Tuesday, April 3, 2012 10:59 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

alf?

I'm referring to Sledge Hammer - most of the American Dad epsiodes i've seen have stolen a joke or two from the show

latebloomer, that was quite an enjoyable way to spend 7 minutes. Thanks!

wager there's more star trek refs than sledge hammer refs in any given mcfarlane spinoff.

hm... what if he did rewrites on the next abrams star trek movie...

yeah probably but in that case, people actually recognize what's a reference to Star Trek. nobody's heard of Sledge Hammer so it's pretty easy to just clip jokes from it.

but... it's pretty easy for them to clip jokes anyway... though I think they actually re-recorded daichee bell for that throwaway revenge of nerds joke. are you suggesting that they're trying to pass off sledge hammer jokes as wholly original material on a show that is 99% references?

i'm saying those parts aren't really framed as being references so i wouldn't expect an audience to recognize them. also I'm a sledge hammer stan so it probably bothers me more than it should.

are you gonna give examples?

there was that whole thing in Sledge Hammer where he lived with a fish that had been implanted with the brain and personality of a German man, that was pretty blatant

i saw whiney posting on this thread, which is the only reason why i clicked. y? bc i was excited to see what his contrarian take was going to be on a film that ilx would uniformly detest. it turns out he's just picking a fight with frogbs. disappointing.

there was that whole thing in Sledge Hammer where he lived with a fish that had been implanted with the brain and personality of a German man, that was pretty blatant

yes, by "clipping jokes" what I meant was "literally stole every element from, and in fact they are the same show"

well, since you haven't yet said which jokes were clipped from Sledge Hammer, some of us are helpfully trying to help you fill in blanks

is this movie going to have those seth mcfarlane jokes where nothing funny happens and keeps not happening for a very long time and i guess the joke is that eventually the awkward silence is supposed to be funny?

really the main character of the show is basically a carbon copy of Sledge, right down to the fact that he's an extreme misogynist, talks to his gun, showers with it, etc. maybe this is kind of disengenuous because Sledge Hammer was meant as a parody of Dirty Harry, so it's not really an original character itself, but I'd think anyone who's seen both shows would notice. it's basically a Homer Simpson/Peter Griffin thing, there are lines here and there that seem lifted from the other show, I can't remember many specific jokes on the show at all, but that's the thought I had on like a good half of his lines

The TED (talk) people must be pissed.

nah, they're probably still thrilled with their plum use in the new Alien flick viral marketing

there was that whole thing in Sledge Hammer where he lived with a fish that had been implanted with the brain and personality of a German man, that was pretty blatant

some of us are helpfully trying to help you fill in blanks

and you wonder why I'm kind of a cynic around here

must disagree about things not being framed as references, or at least more than any other element. german fish is no more passed off as an original character as the paul lynde alien. let's take the opposite angle -- is there anything on the show that is an original non-referential element?

anyway. back to the movie. I can totally see this being ruined by Seth's having a "this is an R-rated movie, I can say 'fuck' now!" attitude, further diluting the script of any cleverness whatsoever

The financial success of "Family Guy" has made it possible for him to do whatever he likes, and he has spent the past few years working his way through a bucket list of professional fantasies. In addition to writing and directing "Ted," he released a solo album of himself crooning American standards, which was nominated for a Grammy last year; he signed on to executive-produce a revival of "Cosmos," Carl Sagan's PBS series from the eighties about the origins of the universe; he agreed to oversee a reboot of "The Flintstones" (It's like being handed the keys to a very classic car," he says); and he wants to act.

well considering that this movie is set up to bomb and the Flintstones reboot is likely to last as long as the Geico Caveman show I'm kinda feeling MacFarlane's days of being a big shot are numbered

i think the flintstones thing is already off, actually

im sure ted is horrible but it will prob at least make its $ back

If future money were an issue, he could go the amanda palmer route and finance a TEDrilogy on kickstarter. In this new economy there is no stopping famous people from doing shitty things they want to do now.

I'm just kind of wondering who his audience is at this point; I know a lot of people who liked Family Guy at one point but pretty much nobody who does anymore, and the fact he's still voicing every character exactly the same way isn't helping. He's in post-"Good Luck Chuck" Dane Cook territory now.

if the high school where I teach is any indication, family guy is still big w teens

i am deeply disturbed + upset that this movie exists

i'm a little bewildered why people think that, that somehow this is beneath people's expectations for anyone involved in it.

Tedetheus

like if howard stern wanted to produce a CG movie about a farting cockroach who through a freak turn of events marries a brazilian supermodel, and the cockroach is played by Billy West and the supermodel is Cloris Leachman, i'd think, hm.. yeah that's about right.

I guess this is as close as we'll ever get to a Calvin & Hobbes movie (thank goodness).

There's an article about him in the new New Yorker that I haven't had a chance to read yet, it depresses me how popular he is.

the new yorker article is pretty boring all around. he comes off as annoying and dumb but it's not particularly salacious.

why is mark wahlberg in this movie

marky mark has a cameo in the new yorker piece, they accidentlaly run into him at a restaurant and he's just like "seth is a genius! he wrote a great script! i love this guy!" kinda representative of the article as a whole.

why is mark wahlberg in this movie

Because Patrick Swayze's dead?

pretty much all you need to know about this movie right here:

MacFarlane’s movie, “Ted,” which opens later this month, is an R-rated live-action comedy about a slacker named John (played by Mark Wahlberg), who is stuck living with the consequences of getting his boyhood wish—that his Teddy could talk. MacFarlane provides the voice of the pot-smoking, foul-mouthed Teddy bear. The movie hits all the usual MacFarlane marks, with a fusillade of jokes about white trash, Jews, anal sex, and handicapped people. The financial success of “Family Guy” has made it possible for MacFarlane to do whatever he likes.

mark wahlberg being in the happening is the weird (but great) choice, but him emoting against a stuffed bear is totally consonant with what he does.

the best part is that this dude fancies himself a classic crooner

"The Simpsons is a show that outclasses any number of live-action sitcoms, and it has never gotten any recognition", huh

He basically defends his choice of dating a bunch of D-listers by saying "I don't mind having someone who isn't an intellectual equal, I don't need to talk theoretical physics at the end of the day, I'd rather have someone whose company excites me", how can you even say a thing like that on the record

by believing it

Basically the man whose work compises 60% of the animated shows on prime time right now sits around wondering why people don't respect animation, really makes you think

he has a degree in theoretical physics?

here's the quote:

"It's exhausting dating several people at once. It gets tiresome, because people think they have you prematurely figured out. . . .I'm not somebody who has to go home and talk about theoretical physics at the end of a day when I've already been wringing my brain dry. I don't necessarily look for an intellectual equal. I'd rather have somebody whose company excites me. That's what my father had. My father and my mother were not—they were not intellectual equals by any means."

i kinda thought he was punching above his weight doing the carl sagan thing but if it turns out he's got the physics chops for it, then it could be really good. that quote still doesn't have enough context -- like it could be totally innocuous, or some terrible phrenology stratification camp thinking behind it.

in the context of everything else he says he really seems to have this "misunderstood genius" complex, he does defend his shows racist humor with the ol' standby "How can that be? Most of my writers are Jewish, that's just what they come up with!"

cant wait for the animated talking monkey(?) in Cosmos

i remember alex borstein once defended ms. swan character saying ms. swan was jewish. it was pretty funny.

Well one of the FG screenwriters did tweet this

http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/alecsulkin.jpg

it says If you want to feel better about this Earthquake in Japan, Google "Pearl Harbor Death Toll"

"How can that be? Most of my writers are Jewish"

but we've all used this excuse

The financial success of “Family Guy” has made it possible for MacFarlane to do whatever he likes.

http://i50.tinypic.com/wl4ndu.jpg

Rex Reed apparently had his fancy tickled by TED.

BTW:

I have never been a fan of the TV show, but among his other talents, Mr. MacFarlane has recently unveiled his secret passion for singing Broadway and movie show tunes and big-band jazz on a sensational new CD that has not left my player long enough to mix a fresh cosmo. His music is good, and there’s plenty of that, too. Whatever else you think of the movie, the soundtrack swings.

I'm just kind of wondering who his audience is at this point; I know a lot of people who liked Family Guy at one point but pretty much nobody who does anymore, and the fact he's still voicing every character exactly the same way isn't helping. He's in post-"Good Luck Chuck" Dane Cook territory now.

― frogbs, Thursday, June 14, 2012 1:12 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

i don't think that's right at all. it seems like for every person who finally gets sick of this guy's shows they pick up 2 more fans, for some horrible reason.

yeah basically every high schooler love the hell out of Family Guy.

Glenn Kenny likes this movie. Richard Brody doesn't.

it's big for the 12-18 age group but it's not exactly a "fan for life" thing

Grierson and Leitch didn't like it

1. Of the myriad problems with Ted, Seth MacFarlane's flaming, masturbating fart of a comedy, the biggest one is that the teddy bear at its center is neither cute nor funny. The movie thinks he's both. For the movie's promising central joke to work—that a boy's teddy bear comes to life and then grows up alongside him to be a rude south Boston fahhhhk yooooo mouth breather—you need there to be a legitimate cognitive dissonance between the bear and what he's saying, and you need to commit to the joke. (Bad Santa is funny because you're not supposed to like Bad Santa.) The bear exists in the universe of the movie for no other reason than the movie thinks it's funnier to have stale pop-culture riffs delivered from the mouth of an unconvincing CGI stuffed teddy bear—hey, guys, did you know that Jack and Jill is awful? Ted does! And he's not afraid to say it!—than from the mouth of a regular person. But the bear isn't even cute or inventively designed: He's just a damned bear. Ted never quite figures out what to do with the bear other than to turn him into Seth MacFarlane. The movie stopped thinking about its premise seconds after coming up with it.

kinda a condemnation of all Seth MacFarlane properties tbh

that excerpt has the ring of truthbomb.

Except Bad Santa isn't v funny.

Seth's thing for bears is reaching some breaking point.

pandemic OTM. Ackroyd's bit in "Trading Places" was better than that entire movie.

bad santa owns gtfo

The only thing that could get me to see this is if it was a real teddy bear acting against a totally CGI Mark Wahlberg. And even then, I wouldn't see it.

[insert gif of some kid prodding a piece of poo with a stick]

ebert gave it 4 stars

of course he did

3 1/2, but yeah...

somehow I feel like he's praising the worst parts about this movie

The laughs in "Ted" come largely through the teddy bear's dialogue. With an edgy Beantown accent and a potty mouth, Ted insults and offends everyone he comes into contact with, and sees Lori as a threat to his friendship with John. This despite his own pastimes, which include drugs, hookers, and as we later discover, a torrid early 1990s affair with absolutely the last female vocalist you could imagine having sex with a teddy bear — and I mean the last

MacFarlane seems unwilling to stop after the first payoff of a scene. He keeps embellishing. In Ted, he has an inexhaustible source of socially obnoxious behavior and language, and it's uncanny the way a teddy bear can get away with doing and saying things that we wouldn't necessarily accept from a human character. This is partly because Ted is a stand-up insult comedian trapped inside the body of a teddy bear.

susanna hoffs?

ebert gave it 4 stars

Is Mila Kunis naked in this or what.

so this is triumph the insult comic dog movie as voiced by Peter griffin

Man, the plot of this movie seems so familiar. "Drop Dead Fred" maybe? But I could have sworn there was something similar and similarly puerile.

Replace "teddy bear" with "overweight mid-20s slacker guy" and ask yourself again

chris tucker was pretty skinny in fridays...

I'm willing to bet Drop Dead Fred is much better than Ted.

much as i hate macfarlane, i'll take that bet

and as we later discover, a torrid early 1990s affair with absolutely the last female vocalist you could imagine having sex with a teddy bear — and I mean the last

if this was really edgy -- hologram whitney houston

ok google seems to reveal it was absolutely the first guess i thought of

who

drop dead fred wasn't puerile! it was a joyless meditation on childhood trauma / mental illness. puerile would have been a step up.

saw a preview for this yesterday before moonrise kingdom - it was at least 5 minutes long!
i really like mark wahlberg but this is, i just can't, it's over
also this forced me to think about teddy bear penis and sex mechanics and basically UGH WTFF NOOOO!!

i mean, who sees this preview and says yes, this is the movie for me

that's more of a rhetorical question; i don't really want to know the answer

a lot of people who aren't old enough to see R movies probably think a foul-mouthed, pot-smoking teddy bear is BEYOND hilarious

to be honest, in terms of premises for existing mark wahlberg movies, this is probably in the top 5.

drop dead fred wasn't puerile!

That's what I said: it wasn't, so it wasn't a template for "Ted." I was thinking of something else I can't think of.

harvey?

I'm pretty sure Ted is an amalgam of ALF and Space Jam and Chasing Amy

Maybe I'm thinking of Baby Herman from "Roger Rabbit?"

http://images.wikia.com/rogerrabbit/images/b/bf/Babyherman.jpg

Or as someone mentioned upthread, Wilfred, perhaps?

thinking this could be a funny movie and i should see it

so uh. is this getting good reviews?

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/29/pick_of_the_week_mark_wahlberg_and_his_foulmouthed_teddy_bear/

The ads have been successful in me caring about the fate of the character, ie, I happily envisage Ted being run over by a car and torn apart by dogs.

critics i like seem to like it, but it's hardly getting unanimous praise

Some people like Family Guy, too, but that show blows.

funny stuff on occasion in family guy

my main issue with Family Guy is that it's an endless fountain of hundreds of hours of something that's alright in small doses. which is to say I'm not particularly excited about Ted, but i'd much sooner watch it once than watch a half hour of FG every week.

"I was thinking of something else I can't think of."

http://cdn2.mamapop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/chucky-childs-play.jpg

http://www.badmovies.org/othermovies/gpk/gpk5.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_A7OUOMmzptE/TNtYHTd8dPI/AAAAAAAAE8I/dOKYygCnh3w/s1600/meet_the_feebles.jpg

all so creepy

Doing giant box office

boffo b.o.??

there was a line to see this at my theater tonight

two lines, in fact

the mayans predicted that.

no one ever went broke something something talking animal 80s reference

$50M+ at the box office this weekend or something? Now get ready for McFarlane movies to roll out as often as Disney cartoons do.

American Dad the Movie: American Rad

Just Guy, No Family

The Albuquerque Movie

end times

The Albuquerque Movie

wait, what?

maybe this was the template for Ted?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_O3F0fH5AGXQ/StK0CkhZWNI/AAAAAAAAHLs/psAOFxeuxAw/s400/Teddy-A.I.-Artificial+Intelligence+movie+toy+bear.jpg

ILX. Always informed, highly educated, and yet always wrong about everything. This is known as the "Lady Sov Rule."

lol yes

thx America, u stink at things besides picking presidents too

is the film bad, Morbs?

http://sustainablelifeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/snugglejj7.jpg

wahlberg should play a robot someday. or a human who keeps failing the voight kampf empathy test because he's a jerk, but he doesn't think he's a jerk, so it convinces him he's a robot.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/02/showbiz/movies/ted-magic-mike-box-office-ew/index.html

$54.1 million, to be precise

also, lol: ILX. Always informed, highly educated, and yet always wrong about everything. This is known as the "Lady Sov Rule."

lol

http://low.highindustrial.com/post/26541714084/maybe-im-old-fashioned-maybe-im-dead-inside

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, maybe I’m dead inside, but I like it when movies feel like movies. Ted is a sitcom Mercator-projected over the Indian burial ground of feature filmmaking, the restless spirits of cinema poltergeist-ing along the edges of its indifferently framed and perfunctorily lit shots.

Watching it I experienced this acute feeling of discomfort, practically of withdrawal, from comedy—maybe like what Oliver Stone was going for when he framed Mallory’s sexually-abused childhood in Natural Born Killers as a laugh-tracked Rodney Dangerfield vehicle.

I almost want to reanimate Pauline Kael’s corpse, accepting any metaphysical consequences thereof, just to see her reaction to the scene where a stuffed bear is the recipient of a simulated bukkake facial.

so the dumb grossout comedy is indifferently framed and perfunctorily lit, huh?

yeah MacFarlane's shtick has always been "we're lazy, but it's okay since we constantly reference how lazy we are"

to be fair the overwhelming majority of american cartoons and comics made in the last 20 years since The Simpsons are all unapologetically 'yeah the drawing sucks pay attention to the WORDS'

this is weird

Forget Gender, Try Geography: Magic Mike Scores in Red States, Ted in Blue

http://www.vulture.com/2012/07/ted-and-the-red-blue-state-divide.html

xp which are you talking about outside of the MacFarlane shows? IMO most animation in the last 20 years looks pretty good

Can't help thinking there's another word other than Geography they mean there, but I realise I've never seen these states from the air - they might be literally red and blue for all I know!

unless you mean like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the rest of the low-budget Adult Swim shows, but that's more a niche thing not "most animation"

Seth MacFarlane’s Movie Ted Causes Punch Line about Lou Gehrig’s Disease to Become Pop Culture Chatter on Twitter, Facebook

unless you mean like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the rest of the low-budget Adult Swim shows, but that's more a niche thing not "most animation"

― frogbs, Thursday, July 5, 2012 10:23 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

well, there are a lot more adult swim shows and stick figure web comics than there are pixar movies

Literally no animated TV shows have actually given a flying fuck about their animation since the Simpsons debuted except for Ren & Stimpy and Spongebob

Futurama is really gorgeous

Yeah, but that's sort of in the Simpsons universe, so

I'm sure someone more educated on kids shows than myself could come up with a number of counterexamples - a lot of the stuff I watched 15 years ago (such as Rocko's Modern Life and the Animaniacs) was done really well in retrospect. Hell even South Park which was the gold standard of bad animation now looks very nuanced and professional.

adventure time?

Literally no animated TV shows have actually given a flying fuck about their animation since the Simpsons debuted except for Ren & Stimpy and Spongebob

someone's never seen the infamous Highschool of the Dead bullet-time scene

i would quibble with how 'infamous' something probably few of us have ever heard of is but that's what whiney gets for saying something as absolute as 'literally no animated tv shows'

i think brad neely cares about his style of animation, even if i don't think it's particularly sophisticated.

off-topic, djp r u still watching deadman wonderland? i think i'm all caught up... or one ep behind.

hate to get all David Cross in here but I hate to see the word "literally" so grossly misused like that, have you Wiki'd the list of animated TV shows in the last 20 years, I bet even Whiney hasn't seen any more than 70% of them

I was originally going to say "lol US-centric" but figured the shellshocked googling would be funnier

Yes, I'm still watching Deadman Wonderland; I am worried that, as more things are explained, the tone will shift away from the disorienting nightmare that was making it so appealing in the first place, but so far there are enough demented things to continue to pique my interest (have you seen Hummingbird yet? if so, you're caught up)

itt, frogbs schooling me on gross misuse of words

Yeah, lol @ ME for being "US-centric" and not lol @ the dude bragging about his deep knowledge of japanese paedo cartoons shows

literally everyone who watches Japanese animation is a paedophile. i'm glad we've cleared that up. I'm going to email Wikipedia today!

my initial post that regrettably kicked off this whole exchange said "the overwhelming majority of american cartoons," i just assumed everyone was still implicitly talking about US stuff

"deep knowledge" = one show I stumbled across on Hulu and laughed my ass off at

xp even still, there's literally 15 new animated shows a year in America; I get that the "animation for adults" genre has resulted in a lot of what you're talking about, but animation for adults is something that really only got kicked off by the Simpsons, maybe they just assume that grown-ups wouldn't care about the animation

but animation for adults is something that really only got kicked off by the Simpsons,

or the Flintstones

I still get sick to my stomach thinking about the animation on Shut Up Shut Up or whatever that Arrested Develpomnet guys show was called.

there sure was a bunch of adult-oriented animation that came out in the wake of the Flintstones

Yes, I'm still watching Deadman Wonderland; I am worried that, as more things are explained, the tone will shift away from the disorienting nightmare that was making it so appealing in the first place, but so far there are enough demented things to continue to pique my interest (have you seen Hummingbird yet? if so, you're caught up)

i'm watching that ep now. i hadn't seen it yet. that insatiable hunger guy was terrifying!

anyway, Young Justice looks great and Green Lantern is super-stylized in a "love it or hate it" way but obviously a lot of thought and effort went into making it look the way it does, to be as serious as you can be when talking about the quality of animation

the Ben 10 shows have gotten progressively better with each iteration, too

xp: haha yeah, and he wasn't even threatening harm to anyone yet! His character design was very Gluttony-from-Fullmetal-Alchemist, I wonder if that's a Japanese trope/type for insatiably hungry dudes

also the stitches along the sides of his mouth from when, i'm imagining, he tried to eat something that didn't fit the regular size parameters

that could have been fallout from a spin of the body part wheel after losing a fight, too

or maybe it's tied to his Branch of Sin

there sure was a bunch of adult-oriented animation that came out in the wake of the Flintstones

― frogbs, Friday, July 6, 2012 10:14 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

if i hated you all as much as i hate frogbs i'd be looking for porn of, like, rosie from the jetsons to post right now

there sure was a bunch of adult-oriented animation that came out in the wake of the Flintstones

― frogbs, Friday, July 6, 2012 10:14 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Top Cat, Bullwinkle, et al all aired during primetime in the Flintstones wake; though they're not as "adult" as Family Guy I guess because theres no felching jokes

hahaha some dude

http://images11.yandy.com/Products/889904_Rosie_Jetsons_ccKO.jpg

would smash IN THE FUTURE

http://www.blog.cbdmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/rosie-the-robot.jpg

Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Top Cat, Bullwinkle, et al all aired during primetime in the Flintstones wake; though they're not as "adult" as Family Guy I guess because theres no felching jokes

Yes but I don't think that really led to what we have now; the Simpsons is pretty much directly responsible for most everything after. Correct me if I'm wrong but animation was in a decade-long (or longer) lull before then and I'd hardly compare the shows you mentioned to modern adult animation; those are all shows I stopped enjoying as much once I turned 13 or so

... which doesn't change the fact that they were not originally conceived as children's television programming; they were conceived as general family programming

i mean if you're looking for someone to blame for Capitol Critters, I guess you can blame the Simpsons, but they didn;t invent prime time animation frogdogg

oh god, i just had a flood of 20-year-old memories about both Capitol Critters and the Fred Willard-starring political puppet show D.C. Follies

this is all reminding me that i let my kids watch a couple episodes of that horrible cartoon where the cute animals all get murdered and cut up and bloody and i still feel terrible about it. that show is so not itchy and scratchy. i think they've forgotten all about it by now though. i mean they didn't have nightmares or anything but i felt like a really irresponsible parent.

Happy Tree Friends

i used to let them watch family guy and then i stopped letting them. they'll be plenty gross in a few years all on their own. no need to rush things.

If felching jokes are on prime time right now, I'm not looking forward to what I'm gonna have to explain to my kids in the future

I saw a Wahlberg interview recently where he talked about how he had never seen Family Guy when he got the script for Ted, so he sat down to watch an episode with his young children and see what it was all about

"when two people love each other very much, sometimes one wants to suck their own hot jizz out of the other's shit-chute."

... which doesn't change the fact that they were not originally conceived as children's television programming; they were conceived as general family programming

what I'm saying is that if it wasn't for the Simpsons we wouldn't have Family Guy because of Johnny Quest. I think there's a big difference between those shows and what the Simpsons was. I didn't mean for people to read that I thought the Simpsons was LITERALLY the first adult-oriented TV animation, just that it was the one that set the template for everything after

are you still talking about that?

yeah, we've moved on to anime and describing felching to yr hypothetical children

what the hell, you guys are responding to me

or am I in an ILX time warp

anyway, we were grilling with neighbors on the 4th and I was somewhat shocked/surprised to find out that everyone in the room was super gung-ho eager about seeing Ted

like, ppl were cracking up at the horrible shit shown in the trailers purely on Seth McFarlane name recognition, it was baffling; I wanted to be all "what if this isn't American Dad McFarlane? what if it's Cleveland Show McFarlane?" but the burgers were awesome so I got over it

"when a man and a woman love each other and actually the man doesnt really love the woman as much and in fact probably hates women entirely, sometimes he'll punch her on the back of the neck so her vaginal muscles tighten up and he;ll have a better orgasm. Oh hey, American Dad is next"

American Dad stan getting haughty about acceptable McFarlane vs. unacceptable McFarlane is pretty rich

THAT BEAR IS HUMPING THE CASH REGISTER OH SHIT MAN THATS HILARIOUS HE WANTS TO GET LAID TO THAT SUPER HOT CHICK MAN HOLY CRAP HE'S JUST LIKE ME I GOTTA SEE THIS

"American Dad stan getting haughty about acceptable McFarlane vs. unacceptable McFarlane is pretty rich" sez the dude who watches Mike & Molly

http://ryanschultz.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/kaboom.jpg

guys, guys, you both watch an insane amount of new tv

Yes, the only acceptible MacFarlane show is the one he doesn't have anything to do with anymore (Whiney - I know he still does vocal work).

American Dad is the worst thing on television ever.

i saw a few episodes of Mike & Molly 2 years ago when it started, didn't know i'd be branded 4 lyfe

cursed return otm

American Dad is the worst thing on television ever.

― Porto for Pyros (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Friday, July 6, 2012 10:56 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Community was on TV at one point

you don't know that from personal experience, though

tbf to the people really psyched about ted, it's not like hollywood's giving them a lot of summer comedy alternatives at the moment

this is all turning into "posts vmic (television edition)"

American Dad USED to be the worst thing, it's okay now

american dad is the 7th most frequently mentioned tv show on my twitter feed

that's posts in someone else's character

i've mentioned this before but my dad took me to see richard pryor concert movie at the movies and i see by the wiki release date that it came out in january of 1979 so i would have been ten. kinda freaked me out. but i grew up in the 70's and t.v. was fucked back then and filled with horrible starski rape and t.v. movie dementia.

all i remember from t.v. in the 70's is malt shops and devil rape.

sid the science kid is a pretty ugly show. also all those shows on Quibo (or whatever it is called)

mike & molly is WAY worse than american dad!

it's pretty boring, not nearly as actively awful imo though

What made you want a CGI talking teddy bear in your first film?
All of my experience has been in animation, so I felt it would be good to include an animated element. But making Ted was also about finding a balance between that sort of sledgehammer-realism of modern comedy, at least in that Judd Apatow style, and capturing the style of comedy that I loved in the '80s, movies like Back to the Future and Ghostbusters. Those movies were funny for adults, but they also had an element of showmanship to them; there was an element of un-realism. It was always very well-balanced.

Ghostbusters is a movie that we looked to often during Ted’s production process, because it’s a movie that essentially takes place in the real world; New York City is presented as New York City and the characters are all very realistic, but there’s this one element that’s completely unrealistic. By keeping everything else very grounded, they earned that. You don’t have wacky characters in a wacky situation—you have grounded and real characters and one wacky situation for them to deal with.

I hope Ted establishes the modern version of what those ’80s movies accomplished: combining real characters with a fun, outrageous, summer comedy premise.

there's some amazing animation on some adult swim cartoons to be fair

does adult swim have cartoons anymore? i feel like every show they've put on the air the last 3 years is live action

"Ghostbusters was pretty good, but it would have been funnier if the ghosts would talk about prostitutes taking a dump on your carpet, because seriously, it's a ghost, who would expect that?"

off the top of my head, they currently have:

King of the Hill
Family Guy
American Dad
ATHF
Squidbillies
Metalocalypse
The Venture Brothers
The Boondocks
Bleach
Deadman Wonderland
Casshern Sins
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Cowboy Bebop

(as an aside, I really feel like Adventure Time, Regular Show and MAD wouldn't be too far out of place on Adult Swim)

I was surprised King of the Hill made it to Adult Swim, I wouldn't think much of their audience would really get that show

ok, finished that deadman ep. pretty dark, huh?

yeah, I really hope they can keep up the tone because this show is far exceeding my expectations

also I wish it was unbleeped

Literally no animated TV shows have actually given a flying fuck about their animation since the Simpsons debuted except for Ren & Stimpy and Spongebob

― some dude nights (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, July 6, 2012 6:39 AM (1 hour ago)

given the dire quality of the american television animation i grew up with in the 70s and early 80s, i'd have to say that the simpsons saved the genre. sure, some of it is garbage, but the best stuff's never been better. this is the golden age, and whiney's talking nonsense.

I feel like AS's live action shows are better than the cartoons ... Tim & Eric, Delocated, Children's Hospital, Eric & Andre, etc. Exception being Xavier Renegade Angel. Seems like totally different audiences b/t that and things like Squidbillies and Metalocalpylse.

was gonna say, what american shows gave a flying fuck about their animation before the simpsons

sometimes I do worry because sometime in the past year I started laughing at Squidbillies

obv this is unacceptable but basically every time Granny says/does something it fucking slays me

also, I loved Tom Goes To The Mayor and I can't sit through 5 minutes of Tim & Eric

Eric Andre is fucking great, tho

i love a lot of the stuff that has come out for kids in recent times. i mean i'm really glad they made them cuz i watched a lot of that stuff with kids. i love the cable stuff a ton. and i like the animation. love flapjack and chowder and foster's home and backyardigans and lots of others. anything to make me forget the horror that is rugrats. hate that thing more than any other thing. even mike & molly!

i hoped my avoidance of the word "literally" wouldn't invite a pedantic response but seriously reruns of The King Of The Hill were not what i had in mind when i said Adult Swim's new shows are predominantly live action

lol if you don't want people to list cartoons Adult Swim shows, maybe avoid asking "does adult swim have cartoons anymore?"

"only a fool would not realize what i meant concerning Noah Wyle!"
"only a philistine would write what you wrote about TNT dramas!"

i qualified that immediately after with "i feel like every show they've put on the air the last 3 years is live action" and you still listed a bunch of old-ass shows that have been on forever

i mean you could've just said 'Deadman Wonderland and Casshern Sins'

ohio, il

incidentally i just saw a tie-in ad in which Ted promotes Axe hair product

FMA:B is new, too

there's also China, IL which has been renewed and Black Dynamite coming up later this month, plus these which either haven't been renewed or they let their syndication license expire:

Mary Shelley's Frankenhole
Mongo Wrestling Alliance
Titan Maximum
Durarara!!
Kekkaishi

also apparently they're going to show The Cleveland Show in 2013 (good luck USA)

moral oral >>> frankenhole, sadly

yeah Frankenhole is terrible

forget tv tropes, we found tv snopes

Seth MacFarlane's Terd

Did anyone here cop to seeing this yet?

surely someone reviewed it

more importantly, did armond white like it?

tried to watch a frankenhole ep abt killing the founding fathers, but hated it. possibly the least funny thing i've seen on AS? o wait, squidbillies...

I got dragged to see Ted last night. I don't like Family Guy, and it was definitely very similar in tone to Family Guy. Every reference to Flash Gordon just made me want to get up and go home and watch Flash Gordon.

Superjail has some really stunning art, and Metalocalypse isn't bad either.

i love metalocalypse art - esp when they put on the big concerts and then everything gets fucked up

Superjail really is a cool show. Dunno if I'd want to see more than a couple episodes but the animation really is something

has there ever been really pretty animation on US TV? I do agree that it's been trending towards barf, and mostly lazy barf, and even the good animation is of the 'beautiful barf' variety.

it would help if ppl would list examples of "good animation" because right now the working definition seems to be "anything not on US television"

there's this christian TV station that for some reason runs he-man and she-ra (because of its christian content?) and it was kind of shocking how much better the animation looked in comparison to contemporary cartoons.

I thought he-man was supposed to be super gay?

super gay for christ.

re: good cartoon exemplars -- compare the max fleischer superman to every other cartoon incarnation. i know the bruce timm batman stuff is supposed to be inspired by it, but they just look like cheaper, shoddier versions.

there's this christian TV station that for some reason runs he-man and she-ra (because of its christian content?) and it was kind of shocking how much better the animation looked in comparison to contemporary cartoons.

you're kidding right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Upc9uEtE0

og he-man had shitty animation.

re: good cartoon exemplars -- compare the max fleischer superman to every other cartoon incarnation. i know the bruce timm batman stuff is supposed to be inspired by it, but they just look like cheaper, shoddier versions.

that's unfair though. we're only talking about animation made for television here. so no fleischer stuff, no early WB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq1bLE9aiVU

watch out for the flying fuck given about animation pre-simpsons, green lantern!

i agree he-man is shitty but it feels like 10x more people put 10x more effort into it than say... that jonah hill cartoon.

"that's unfair though. we're only talking about animation made for television here. so no fleischer stuff"
we have decades of technology and advancements now -- if you wanted to make a pretty cartoon, would you want to work with fleischer's resources, or south park's (who apparently have supercomputer clusters)?

can we just accept that quality tv animation has always been the exception and not the rule?

what's interesting now is that the threshold for acceptable animation has gotten so low that i think you could probably make a network quality cartoon by paying someone $100-$1000 on deviantart or something.

i think the main difference is that animation has become popular beyond the "cheap bullshit to distract kids" niche. there's animated fare aimed at a number of different audiences. some is terrible, some is pretty great. i'm so fucking jealous that kids today get stuff like spongebob and adventure time. i got speed racer and captain caveman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUlfno9QTM

haven't seen this show, but i can't say my reaction to the trailer was "omg he-man was so much better made"

no part of you wished captain ca-ha-ha-ha-ha-haveman would come in and bonk everyone on the head?

el kabong maybe

one of the big differences between stuff like allen gregory and he-man is that allen gregory doesn't seem to have been drawn by anyone - at least not in the frame-by-frame sense that traditional cel animation depended on. instead, it seems to have been engineered or programmed. this leads a lot of people to denigrate modern digital animation as "lazy" or "cheap", but on the whole, i'm not sure it's any less creative, any less dependent on art, skill and effort. in fact, by freeing commercial animation from its reliance on armies of skilled draftsmen, it's arguably allowed it to become more experimental and varied.

i mean it definitely feels cold and distant to me in a way that like the Snorks doesn't. The appx two minutes of every Simpsons ep that looks real computer-y always makes my stomach turn.

my favorite american animated show of the 21st century is by far avatar (rufus and cyrus and i were all in awe of that show and it kinda changed our lives), but i don't know if you could call it beautiful or anything in comparison to japanese stuff. it was fine.

US animated shows are in the model of sitcoms/sketch shows. those aren't exactly beautiful, either. it's all about setups and jokes ... don't need much for that.

we still have to watch the new avatar series.

like one of the best things to happen to children's animation in the digital era, imo, is the rise of good design. whether or not shows like the amazing world of gumball, my little pony and, i dunno, the cat in the hat knows a lot about that! are particularly well animated in the traditional sense, they look great. they at least know how to make a virtue of their limitations.

^ not that everything out there follows these examples

As computer-animated stuff goes, Star Wars: Clone Wars has a lot of good animation.

yeah kids shows are definitely looking better than adult shows right now.

I can't imagine how anyone can watch Archer's colorforms shouting "I'M GONNA DROP A DEUCE" [awkward pause... no punchline ever materializes]

the last season of Archer was them basically realizing they could say 'shit' as much as they want and doing so in every single scene

Archer is hilarious, fuiud

i loved watching oswald with my kids. could look at that show forever.

http://www.joannemackellar.com/designjournal/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/background_oswald.jpg

george shrinks too. for the retro appeal.

http://pbskids.org/georgeshrinks/fun/downloads/wallpapers/downloads_wallpaper08_800.jpg

yeah, it's sad how cruddy and stodgily "realistic" a lot of animation for adults is in comparison with kid's stuff, which is often beautiful.

http://images.wikia.com/youtubepoop/images/3/3f/Dr._Rabbit.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaMo4k7iG7s
the part at 1:01 just kills me.

i loved watching oswald with my kids. could look at that show forever.

otm, oswald is totally beautiful and hypnotic

Anime is, for the most part, where it's at.

anime seems to be equally ravaged by the crappening, though, but yeah i don't think there's ever been an anime as visually lazy as 12 oz mouse.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/07/comic-con-mad-mens-jon-hamm-on-american-dad-next-season-seth-macfarlane-says-flintstones-reboot-still-delayed/

Well the anticipation begins here, I guess.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/giuliani-didnt-appreciate-teds-911-joke.html

well it gone one laugh out of me i guess

lookin' kinda red these days

ok well i just skimmed this thread and didn't see anyone who actually saw the movie talk about it. I don't think family guy or american dad are very funny and so I never ever watch them. However, this movie was pretty funny and surprisingly touching. Also very good cgi special effects, more believable than anything else I've seen lately.

you mean you really believed the bear was fucking a lady?

lotta problems here but I laughed

watched last night. kinda liked it actually.

I mean, it's stupid and flawed and some of the jokes are rubbish, but sometimes you just don't care.

http://grantland.com/features/dumber-than-your-average-bear/

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/fuck-this-bear-ted-2-reviewed-1713853142

So, not only terrible and unfunny, but actively harmful to boot. Sounds about right.

https://twitter.com/KingImpulse/status/614443420027912192

The Dissolve review gets a star for used "forebear" in its review. The movie also gets a star. Like, one star.

I admittedly kinda chuckle @ some of the jokes in the tv ad for this

Most of the reviews say it has its moments, despite its innate horribleness.

https://twitter.com/KingImpulse/status/614443420027912192

I genuinely hate Seth MacFarlane's work as much as I hate Shawshank.

It's always fun to find out someone has you blocked on ILX.

how do you block people? I've never found a way to do that.

btw I was sure this film would get savaged by the critics, but oddly it's gotten some pretty kind reviews by folks i actually respect. i imagine it's benefited from the soft bigotry of low expectations or whatever.

https://twitter.com/KingImpulse/status/614443420027912192

well the first Ted got decent reviews, but since then he's gone from pre-Dogma Kevin Smith to post-Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back Kevin Smith, I didn't see a single positive review of that dumb Western where he casted himself as the lead

I watched the first one, mostly cuz it was on TV and I thought maybe there was a chance that it would be alright, the premises was funny and I figured it was possible MacFarlane had a ton of ideas for an R-rated comedy and was just getting bored making cartoons. But despite some funny moments it's really a poorly constructed movie in just about every way. After establishing for 70 minutes that the characters are all horrible and irredeemable it stages a really long scene where you're supposed to actually care about them, with no jokes whatsoever, and apparently the sequel is even worse in this respect, it's exactly the sort of movie that he loves to mock on every platform he's given

I guess what I'm trying to say is he should sit down and watch Super Troopers half a dozen times before attempting another movie

Wow I don't like the dude either but wanting him to commit suicide is pretty harsh.

it always seems so calculated when comics whose metier is gross-out humor decide to try for pathos. it's like they instantly run out of ideas and resort to the most banal and sentimental appeals. see also judd apatow.

also tangentially see all the insistence by dan harmon that "community" is really about emotions, man.

yeah and it's especially bad because most of these movies are about how a certain character needs to "grow up" or be a family man or whatever, yet they make their party-hard lifestyles look like the most fun thing ever, full of booze and drugs and gorgeous women and good jokes about things

and MacFarlane's even more inept with this than Apatow is, somehow

watched about 5 minutes of this new show and all I can say is it's a less funny TNG