F

Flavorwire

The Muppets

Television

Watch Jim Henson’s Original Pitch for ‘The Muppet Show’

By Caroline Stanley on

From where we’re sitting, it’s kind of hard to imagine there was a time when Jim Henson had to sell someone on the idea of The Muppet Show. Laughing Squid tipped us off to the puppeteer’s original network television pitch reel that he sent to CBS back in the early ’70s. “Small children will love the cute cuddly characters,” explains the Muppet anchorman. “Young people will love the fresh innovative comedy. College kids and intellectual eggheads will love the underlying symbolism of everything. Freaky long hair, dirty, cynical hippies will love our freaky long hair, dirty, cynical Muppets.” Click through to watch the clip, and let us know if it would have wooed your inner TV exec. … Read More

Film

Flavorpill’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to Flavorpill’s streaming movie guide, a new feature in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week, we’ve got some newly streaming indies, recent favorites soon to be remade and sequelized, and a couple of classics that have been on our minds as of late. Check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

Art

Portraits of Pop-Culture Soul Mates from Different Worlds

By Judy Berman on

Do you ever daydream of what would happen if your favorite pop-culture characters from entirely separate universes could meet? We have, predicting which television characters might be best friends in real life and doing some speculative matchmaking for gay and straight TV teens. So naturally we’re thrilled by Chris Gerringer’s I Know That Feel, Bro series, which pairs geek icons that share a common trait — Batman and Harry Potter, for instance, are “orphaned heroes,” while The Incredible Hulk and Kermit the Frog both know it isn’t easy being green. Click through for some of our favorite duos and visit Gerringer’s DeviantArt page to see a whole lot more. … Read More

Art

Fantastic Pop-Culture Mash-Ups of Famous Paintings

By Judy Berman on

Nothing will bring an artist Internet fame more quickly than a clever appropriation of pop culture. But although we see dozens — really, we’re not exaggerating — of gimmicky juxtapositions of high and low art every day, we’re really quite taken with Hillary White’s “pop-reinterpetations,” which we discovered via The Mary Sue. Inserting the Muppets in a familiar Rembrandt or Freddy Krueger in Van Gogh’s ubiquitous Café Terrace at Night, White shows both wit and skill, seamlessly integrating contemporary characters with centuries-old masterpieces. Click through to see some of our favorite remixes, and visit White’s website for more. … Read More

Pop Culture

Which Pop Culture-Inspired Nail Polish Line Is the Most Baffling?

By Victoria McNally on

Clearly, here at Flavorpill, we love nail art almost as much as we love pop culture, and we get especially enthusiastic when those two interests merge. So do other people, apparently, because it’s become incredibly trendy now for polish makers (especially OPI) to launch lines inspired by television, movies, books, and celebrity branding. Sometimes the mash-ups make sense; sometimes they really don’t. We’ve rounded up some of these nail polish lines and ranked them by how confused we are by their existence, after the jump. … Read More

Film

Watch The Muppets’ New Parody Trailer for ‘The Hunger Games’

By Caroline Stanley on

For a while there, we were totally spoiled and it seemed like that we were writing about a hilarious new Muppets parody trailer nearly every week. Then the movie itself hit theaters, and there was nothing new to look forward to — at least that’s what we thought. Today, thanks to the fact that the film is coming out on DVD and Blu-ray later this month, we have the Muppets’ send up of The Hunger Games — or rather, a bunch of existent footage cut up into a commercial that is pretending to be a parody. Not to sound like total ingrates here, but couldn’t they have at least given Miss Piggy a bow and arrow, some braids, and a Mockingjay pin? Instead all we get is Kermit quoting Gale, which just seems weird because he’s totally a Peeta. Click through to check out the clip for yourself, and let us know in the comments which Muppet you think would stand the best chance of surviving in the arena. We’re thinking either Animal or Pepe the King Prawn. … Read More

Film

Jason Segel Won’t Be Writing the Next Muppets Movie

By Caroline Stanley on

We’re not sure why the news exclusively reported by Vulture earlier today that Jason Segel won’t be collaborating with his original co-writer Nicholas Stoller on the sequel to The Muppets makes us so sad. He’s got plenty of good reasons — his role on How I Met Your Mother; a few new movies… Read More

Pop Culture

The Best Pop-Culture ‘Game of Thrones’ Mash-Ups

By Victoria McNally on

Yesterday brought us George R.R. Martin fans a little gift: some exciting new footage from the upcoming season of Game of Thrones. But with the premiere still over a month away, we thought you could probably use something more to hold you over until the new episodes begin and winter finally comes. Like Ben Wyatt in Parks and Recreation claimed, the show really is a “crossover hit,” and appearing in dozens of hilarious online mash-ups with other pop-culture genres and franchises. We’ve compiled some of the best for diehard fans after the jump. If you found one that we missed, let us know in the comments! … Read More

Film

Watch a Deleted Scene from ‘The Muppets’ Starring Bunsen and Beaker

By Caroline Stanley on

As we continue to process everything that happened during last night’s Academy Awards (we’re still trying to figure how that crazy Cirque du Soleil performance came about), I think it’s safe to say that we can all agree on one thing: the evening could have used a lot more Muppets action. So we’re grateful to the sharp-eyed editors over at i09 for tipping us off to this little gem: a deleted scene from the new Muppet movie that features two of our favorite characters — Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his meepy assistant Beaker — as well as a remote controlled bowling ball with a mind of its own. Look for more goodies like this one on The Muppets DVD and Blu-Ray, which both come out March 20th. … Read More

Film

Video Essay: “How to Pull the Perfect Movie Heist”

By Jason Bailey on

Tower Heist, Brett Ratner’s late-fall heist picture, is out this week on DVD, so our latest video essay takes a look at this durable genre via a step-by-step examination of how to put a big heist together — according to the movies, anyway. We grabbed pieces from over two dozen heist movies, from here and abroad, from the 1950s to the present, and put them together to show, in seven easy steps, how to pull that one big score. (Bonus points if it’s your last big one before retiring somewhere warm.)

We’ll show you how it’s done with the help of some of our favorite directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Michael Mann, John Frankenheimer, Bryan Singer, John Huston, David Mamet, Peter Yates, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jules Dassin, Sidney Lumet, John McTiernan, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz. And check out our all-star cast: Robert DeNiro, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, Marlon Brando, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, Michael Caine, Charlize Theron, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Keitel, Val Kilmer, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Steve Buscemi, Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Spacey, Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Liotta, Danny DeVito, Michael Madsen, Stellan Skarsgård, Tom Sizemore, Vincent Cassel, Owen Wilson, Joe Pesci, Luke Wilson, Sean Connery, Guy Pearce, George Segal, Sam Rockwell, Delroy Lindo, Seth Green, Sterling Hayden, Chris Penn, Mos Def, Lawrence Tierney, Jason Statham, Jean Reno, the Muppets, and many, many more. Find out “How to Pull the Perfect Movie Heist” after the jump. … Read More