Mad News, September 10-16, 2009
The curse of the InStyle Wedding: Pray for Christina (h/t Basketcase Jackie).
There will be a Mad Men sketch on Leno on Friday night.
Talia Balsam (Mona Sterling) is in a new web series (thanks Basketcase Shelly).
Via Mad Men Footnotes, I found this vintage ad site, “beyond, deux.”
Self-Styled Siren doesn’t like Mad Men. Instead, she offers a bucketload of Mad Men-era film dramas she does like.
Bryan Batt returns as host for the Grand Auction at the annual Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Flea Market on September 27th, and will be at the celebrity table earlier in the afternoon.
Jon Hamm provides the big finish in a new ad for the Univeristy of Missouri.
Prop Master Discount Herbal Cigarettes claims to offer “high-quality, better-tasting herbal cigarettes in assorted flavors at the same price you’ve probably been paying for the ‘other’ brand” (thanks Basketcase SmilerG).
Paxti is described as “a handsome man of 29, with sloping brown-green eyes, a slightly receding hairline and a vague resemblance to the actor Mel Ferrer” in Jai-Alai: Fury at the Fronton! (Thanks Basketcase robustoman.)
Maggie Siff will be appearing Off-Broadway in Or,.
Dyna Moe’s “Sally Draper Cocktail Cheat Sheets” get a post at Babble’s Strollerderby blog.
Rich Sommer salutes craft services on set.
Funny or Die reimagines “MA Men” as set in modern-day Boston. (Language warning.)
Susan Michaels has PDF files of her interviews with Elisabeth Moss and Jared Harris (among others).
Sally Draper is not the only underage driver.
Gotcher funny Jon Hamm podcasts right here.
Alison Brie tells a handjob joke.
EW gives you their favorite Emmy snubs (including January Jones). Vote for your favorite.
Media Life polls media planners and buyers for their Emmy picks. According to the poll, Mad Men wins best drama and Elisabeth Moss and Jon Hamm take home their respective acting awards.
Speaking of Emmys, the broadcast will do more to introduce viewers to unfamiliar nominees (like Mad Men).
Add Cable 360 to your weekly Mad Men blog collection. This week, they are especially interested in camera angles.
The BBC references Mad Men in an article about advertising and product placement.
Palm Springs is a “Mad” world.
The Columbia Spectator thinks Mad Men is crap.
A design site lavishes attention on the mid-century stylings of The Best of Everything. Previously, we linked to a fashion site that also waxed poetic over the same film which, you may recall, features Joan Crawford’s eyebrows.
Per Basketcase jude, a gorgeous Mad Men fashion layout (PDF).
Basket of Kisses: The unofficial blog of AMC's Mad Men. Where all the cool kids meet & greet to talk about Don Draper, Janie Bryant, Christina Hendricks, Jon Hamm, Matthew Weiner, & subtexty things.
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September 16th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Also, the cast is rumored to be on Oprah some time next week. The show was shot earlier this month, and the audience wore period costume.
September 16th, 2009 at 9:44 am
New MW Q&A on The Daily Beast. Click on Image Gallery to read it.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/20...
September 16th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Joey McIntyre!
Squeal!
Sorry, showing my age.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:51 am
As a Columbia alum, I apologize for the clueless Columbia Spectator reviewer.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Ferget it melville – this is a person who thinks the show is supposed to be about the history of the advertising biz in the 1960s.
And ultimately, aren't ALL compelling stories about a few basic human themes and story arcs, telenovellas and great literature alike? The difference is in the telling. But either way, I don't care if Mad Men is 'crap' by a critic's standard, and I can see how someone watching it could be dumbfounded by the seemingly glacial pace of the plotline (James Wolcott, someone who's writing I admire, rips the show every week. I think he loves to hate it. I can't even figure out what another favorite blogger, Lance Mannion, thinks about it. I'm reminded of Peggy's comment "I can't figure out of you like me, or you don't like me…")
As Bert Cooper says "who cares?"
September 16th, 2009 at 11:08 am
god I hate that I can't edit all those typos. I look like a moron. Should have gone to Miss Deaver's Secretarial School.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:29 am
You can reduce anything to a telenovella. Truly. Casablanca: He drinks, she leaves one man for another, her husband is presumed dead but then isn't. A young woman is ready to sell her body to a smarmy but nice officer. Telenovella.
And indeed, it's also sexist: Women's concerns tend to be treated as tawdry, men's as important. Bridge on the River Kwai is Great Cinemaâ„¢ because it's about war and men. (And hey, Bridge on the River Kwai is great cinema, but it utterly fails the Bechdel Movie Test.)
September 16th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Thank you very much for the link and the traffic, despite my polite (I hope) dissent from fandom.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
You were very polite, Siren. The guy at the Columbia Spectator should take lessons from you.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Thanks, Deborah. By the way, I couldn't agree more with you here:
"Women’s concerns tend to be treated as tawdry, men’s as important."
Virginia Woolf nailed the same truth in A Room of One's Own: "This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room."
That's precisely why the films in my list, and other women's pictures, have been derided for so long. I suspect the Columbia gentleman would not give due appreciation to the great Douglas Sirk, either.
September 16th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
"god I hate that I can’t edit all those typos. I look like a moron. Should have gone to Miss Deaver’s Secretarial School"
gypsy howell – I think it was Mark Twain, who once said something about it being a sign of a very narrow mind, to insist that a word can only be spelled one way!
September 16th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I'll check some of those films out on my Blockbuster Queue … but I might add another from 1960 "Strangers When We Meet" starring Kim Novak and Kirk Douglas about two suburbanites who have an affair. It is incredibly explicit considering the time it was made.
http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/s/stranger...
September 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Christopher Morris-Lent, the person who penned the Mad Men hit piece in the Columbia Spectator, makes the same mistake that Richard Gilbert did, on the recent WNPR podcast. Mad Men is not a documentary – it's a television drama.
Any one who doesn't get that it's a show about PEOPLE – shown in the context of a 1960s ad agency – isn't likely to appreciate the fast (or slow) developments each week, in the lives and times of the characters.
Of course, we live in a world of Twtter, where the expression of one's thoughts or ideas is limited to just 140 characters, so Mr. Morris-Lent's need for "instant gratification" and "short form plot payoffs", really isn't very surprising!
September 16th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I liked The Siren's list very much. Though I get angry at the anti-Mad Men critics who miss the point by saying "if I wanted to see something from the early 1960's, I'll watch an actual movie from then"(the worst offender being the Tom Shales piece from a few weeks ago), her list makes her point quite well: there were movies at the time that showed the turmoil and discontent roiling under the surface of the period.
Makes me wonder what Don ("I see everything") made of them. Did he dismiss them as soapy women's movies?
September 16th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Pic of Jon and Jan on Oprah:
http://blogs.amctv.com/mad-men/2009/09/oprah-winf...
September 16th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Melville, I didn't read the Shales piece (I'll look it up), but I am afraid I'm guilty as charged–I would indeed rather watch those movies than Mad Men. I definitely wouldn't call them a substitute for the series, though. That strikes me as a fundamental mistake; a period piece will never be like anything that was made during the period. The Best of Everything can no more sub for Mad Men than the original Public Enemy can sub for Bonnie and Clyde.
The series connection was more to say that I hope interest in the period will lead to these films getting a second look. It's been gratifying to have people come out in comments and proclaim the pleasure that these movies still give.
From my limited viewing, I think that Don would indeed wave off my entire list. But I'll bet Betty has seen every one, and brought extra hankies to Imitation of Life. The Drapers discussed at least one movie, The Best of Everything, and Nathaniel at The Film Experience did a post on that episode that made me wish I'd seen it.
http://filmexperience.blogspot.com/2009/08/mmm-jo...
@Aran — I am absolutely kicking myself BLUE over forgetting Strangers When We Meet. Some kind of brain short-circuit.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
@ The Siren #16
The Shales dismissal of Mad Men was in his online chat of August 25th:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/disc...
Bob Sassone gave the best rejoinder in his blog on August 28th:
http://bobsassone.typepad.com/bob_sassone/2009/08...
It took me a long time to gain an appreciation for the type of movies on your list. I was in college in the 1970's when I first started to read serious praise of Sirk movies and I didn't get it. To me, they were still soapy women's pics, no matter how much analysis I read. I don't when I started to change my opinion, but by the time Far From Heaven appeared, I had learned enough about the genre to love it. But I still tend to underrate them. I'll (unfairly) categorize something like The Young Philadelphians (my sister's favorite movie) as a Guilty Pleasure rather than a Good Movie. Old prejudices can die hard.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I do like Mad Men because it isn't plot-driven. But that's not the *only* reason I like it.
I also like CSI Miami, which would hardly rank among the culture snobs' top ten TV shows. Highbrow it is not.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Don has undoubtedly seen most of these pics. Not only does he see everything, he expenses it! And Don liked The Best of Everything better than Betty did.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Don likes movies. He probably finds something redeemable in the bad ones as well as the good.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:15 am
RIP Mary Travers
I'm sure Father Gill is saying prayer (or rockin' a tribute), if he's still around.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:09 am
The Siren: Betty is not the "hanky" type at all. You would know this if you actually watched Mad Men!
September 17th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Did you kids catch this one: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f26c4046b0/lex-l...
September 17th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I went to see My One and Only last night. Great fashion,cars, and period decor from 1953, but they used modern-sized martini glasses at the bar instead of the ones Don and Roger drank from during Oyster-gate. It was good but it wasn't a must see, so wait for the DVD.
Anyway, the "go get some food and then shut the eff up" reminder was clips of Mad Men with appropriate dialogue! It was a Clearview cinema so maybe they're owned by the same company as AMC?
September 21st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
http://www.lohud.com/flash/madmen/
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Sons of Anarchy just had a clever bit. The motorcycle club is now a partner is a porn company and they did a faux Mad Men scene with "Bobbie" beating "Don" with his shoe and then draining a liquor bottle and shoving the neck of said bottle up Don's posterior.
Maybe someone didn't like Don's hair pulling negotiation.