Broad City

Broad City is a sitcom that originally began as a web series, but now airs on Comedy Central. It was created by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, who are the series' leads as well. The series revolves around the random adventures the two twenty-something women experience while living in New York City. Ilana and Abbi are vastly different in degree of motivation, but are still the best of friends. Ilana is very unmotivated at her job and takes breaks that last multiple hours. Abbi's dream is to be a personal trainer at a fitness center, but for now she is only a janitor.


Ilana and Abbi have a very interesting and close relationship; they are instigators of one another's habits (i.e. skipping work, smoking weed, etc.). Honestly, the show would be nothing without either of those characters. They play off one another so much that only having one of them would kill the whole vibe of the show.
Ilana and Lincoln's relationship also has an funny dynamic because he cares about her so much while she is just sort of boppin' around doing her own thing. They are very cute together but Ilana can't seem to see how perfect he is for her. Meanwhile, Abbi has a huge crush on her hot neighbor Jeremy, a hunky-yet-suave guy with a really cool beard. It seems like something is about to happen between the two of them but he ends up asking for a random favor. Abbi always ends up looking like a crazy person because of her friends/roommate's boyfriend acting like complete idiots in front of him. (I'm rooting for them hardcore).

Editing is a very important element of this show. There are a lot of quick cuts and zooms which make the show seem more real because we're seeing every reaction. Sound is also an important element; they use a lot of dramatic music to heighten humorous situations and it enhances the jokes a lot. The camerawork is kind of shaky overall, going with that "real life" feeling overall; I hear that in the second season they get a significantly better camera so the quality will definitely get better.

Broad City is quirky, inappropriate, and has very fast-paced humor. There are a lot of "what is going on" moments because many story arcs are kind of fantasy. For example, if Ilana and Abbi are stoned usually there will be a sequence where something ridiculous and unrealistic occurs. I highly recommend the show to anyone who likes Comedy Central shows.

"Pushing Daisies" Pilot

Mostly everyone I know has a list of TV shows they want to watch. One show that has been on my list probably since 2008 is Pushing Daisies, a quirky 42-minute program created by Bryan Fuller (creator of Hannibal) that only ran for two seasons. The show follows Ned (played by Lee Pace), a pie-maker who has the power to bring people back to life with his touch, but then he can never touch them again. He uses his power to solve crime mysteries by bringing victims back to life and asking them how they were killed. His partners include a private investigator, a waitress at the pie shop, and his "reborn" childhood sweetheart.

My immediate reaction to the pilot (aka "Pie-Lette") was pure amazement at the stunning art direction and production design. The whole feeling of the show is very fantasy-like and there is a consistency with how symmetrical each shot is. In a TVGuide interview, production designer Michael Wylie said, "my goal was a storybook come to life. I wanted everything to look almost like an illustration, which he did by concentrating on conflicting patterns in different colors, particularly reds and oranges, but no blues."
This ideal is conveyed right from the start (as displayed in the pictures below).

Ned's mother as she prepares a pie, shortly before she dies (and is revived by a younger Ned). A lot can be told by this single frame. It fits into the color scheme of reds, (the pie, mixing bowl; danger) oranges (kitchen table/hair; vibrance of her personality), in addition to yellows (shirt, wallpaper, curtains; illness[her brain aneurysm]) and greens (skirt, walls; impending doom). 

Waitress Olive Snook (played by Kristen Chenoweth) as she recommends pies to a customer. Once again we see the common color scheme of reds, oranges, yellows, and green (and even a bit of purple in there too!).

Voilá! There it is again--reds, yellows, oranges, and greens. (Thank you Michael Wylie).

The whole premise of the show is also very intriguing to me--I've never seen or heard of any other show like this one. From what I've seen so far, the characters are especially unique, which makes for a nice contrast between each of them. It seems as though a frustrating romance will blossom between Ned and his childhood sweetheart Charlotte "Chuck" Charles (played by Anna Friel), since he cannot touch her or she will die. This budding relationship is much to Olive's dismay since we see her flirting with Ned a lot in the first few minutes; she obviously likes him too.

Ned & Olive vs. Ned & Chuck (also note the symmetry of the frame in the picture on the right!!)

The dynamic between Ned and private investigator Emerson Cod (played by Chi McBride) is great because they are this duo who take on these cases and solve them in such a casual manner (because waking the dead for a minute isn't such a big deal, right?). I'm interested to see what other cases they take on in future episodes.

I am a big fan of quirky/art-sy shows and movies (hence my earlier posts about Big Eyes and The Skeleton Twins) so this show is a perfect fit for me. I'm definitely going to find some way to watch the rest of the series (it is not on Netflix, sadly) because the first episode really got me hooked.

Why Fantastic Mr. Fox is the Best Wes Anderson Movie...Ever

Wes Anderson is an enormously polarizing director. I know people who can't even sit through the first ten minutes of his films, and people who see them 10 times...in theaters. His work is quirky to say the least and his highly stylized films are products of complete creative control. Every single thing in the frame in a Wes Anderson film has been carefully thought out, color coordinated and placed with extreme care. This is perhaps what makes Fantastic Mr. Fox the best of his films, because he is able to control every single detail and movement through stop animation. It is the absolute peak of creative control. He doesn't even need to depend on actors to look the right way because he could physically create all the characters. If he wants a room full of golden hard cider, he doesn'tneed to create a life size one he can make one digitally or in miniature.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox is also amazing because many of the things that may have come off as pretentious or too quirky or weird in a live action film, come across perfectly in animation. Also the characters themselves are allowed to be strange caricatures of themselves because they're animals. For example, Mr. Fox would be a totally obnoxious character if he were played by George Clooney in the flesh, not just voice acted by him. But instead, he is a funny and strange character whom we can rally around.

This film has also succeeded in making a mature animated film that kids also enjoy. Based on the classic Roald Dahl book, Anderson makes complex characters with flaws and journeys, something that is not often found in animation, especially not the maturity part. By having the animals voice acted by famous actors, Anderson was able to entertain adults and by making the movie a delightful and funny movie, kids are entertained as well. He really helped to heighten the opinion of animated films, and please a large group of people.

Stop animation is so perfectly suited to Wes Anderson's style that I don't know why he doesn't use the medium more often. Many fans do not even consider Fantastic Mr. Fox when they are ranking Wes Anderson's best films, but for me it belongs at the top of this list. I don't think his style will ever be better captured than through an eccentric band of woodland animals stealing squabs and hard cider.