The Muppets (MC: 75, RT: 96%)

[Rulke]

only Muppets I love :D
.
.
.
.
nostalgia bomb!





I could keep going, but yeah, this thread is for new Muppets, I know, I know.

[Mjd]

Best move WWE has made.

Fozzie Bear doing guest commentary and trading jokes with Jerry Lawler.

I would watch 3 hours of that.

[6souls]

^ So I guess that's a fan made trailer, here's the final release trailer from Disney;

[6souls]

Clips

Spoiler: show

[Ksandra]

gotta admit, their advertising campaign has been amazing. They really don't want to let the Muppets go away and that makes the child in me very happy. ^^

[Anoat]

The Muppets from their appearance on WWE Monday Night Raw!

[6souls]

More clips

Spoiler: show

[Ksandra]

hahahaha creative.

[Loan]

Might take the family to this.. Heard a really good review on the radio this morning, and RT shows it as 36 Fresh and 0 Rotten.. It's still early, but might be a good thanksgiving weekend movie with the kids..

[6souls]

[Alderaan]

Just went and watched every Muppet movie again the last couple days. Forgot how awesome they were. Can't wait to see this.

[Ksandra]

Just got back from seeing this. Definitely worth it if you are a muppet fan. Segel (as I hoped) did an excellent job of creating a good muppet script. It's an insane nostalgia bomb to the old muppet show, so expect a lot of that.

I hope he ends up writing more for them.


[edit] came across this interview with Segel:

http://www.askmen.com/celebs/intervi...son-segal.html

Quick Bio
It seems that Jason Segel is everywhere these days, from movies like Bad Teacher to the long-running series How I Met Your Mother. Segel has come a long way since his bit part as the watermelon guy in that Jennifer Love-Hewitt movie Can't Hardly Wait, which most guys can hardly remember.

The very large and cuddly actor can credit much of his success to Judd Apatow, who featured Segel in television shows like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, and movies like Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Segel has become a major talent on his own, writing and producing movies like Get Him To The Greek and the upcoming return of Kermit the Frog in The Muppets, which opened on November 23rd.


Segel stars in Kermit's latest adventure as Gary, who, with the help of his puppet brother Walter and fiancee (Amy Adams), helps to reunite the Muppet gang to save their old theater. Segel brought Kermit and his new movie to Toronto, where he spoke to us about how the Muppets influenced him as a man.

Your characters in How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and even The Muppets movie are, to some extent, ladies men. I was wondering if you have any advice for men on how to deal with women.
Jason Segel : You know what really helps? Become super-famous. It really helps with the chicks. [Laughs]

No, I've always felt that the putting on a facade element might work in the short term but pretty soon you're going to have to reveal yourself. I go "reality forward" at the beginning -- to the point of it being weird. I have Muppets stuff all over my house. I'm not going to hide it in a closet and then suddenly reveal that I like it. If you're going to date me, you're going to have to deal with [the fact] that I'm a weird dude who loves puppets.

I say be yourself, as cliche as it sounds. Because, eventually, if you try to be Mr. Suave, you're just going to have to show that you're a liar.


What does Jason Segel do to become a better man?
JS : You can tell by looking at my body -- just constant exercise and giant glasses of whisky. [Laughs] No, I try to pursue my passions with vigor. I think that's a big one. One thing I am not is lazy. I'm after it, man. I'm always writing or acting or writing music and trying to do my thing.

The other thing is to be really nice to people. As cliched as it sounds, it’s a really big deal. It's why I love the Muppets. It really changes your life and the life of people around you. It chips away at how cynical the world has gotten. Even as a selfish tool it's incredibly helpful. When you’re nice to someone, it's very hard for them to be a jerk to you.


You really live by that. I saw you outside, being really nice to every little person that came along.
JS : Yeah. You have to be. And the big people.


You wrote the screenplay. You do a lot of writing. You are, as you said, multitalented.
JS : Just for the record, I never said that I'm multitalented!


What's your first memory of seeing the Muppets?
JS : I was a little too young for The Muppet Show. I was born in 1980, and I think it ended in 1981. But my mom is a weird comedy dork like me. She taped all the episodes of The Muppet Show on VHS so that when I became old enough, she showed them all to me and started my comedy education. Then she made me watch Harold and Maude and Being There when I was 10. It was intense. She sat me down and said, "You need to see this."


So, you worked with Kermit, who runs his own theater and puts together massive shows. What was it like to have two alpha males on set together?
Jason Segel : The great thing is that neither of us are alpha males. We are both very calm dudes. If anyone is alpha, it’s Miss Piggy.


Were you a little starstruck meeting Kermit for the first time?
JS : Well, I wrote it. So I had been anticipating it for a long time. It's been five years in the making. It was the first table read where I got really starstruck. I arrived and, to my surprise, they had brought all the puppets to do the table read. I thought it was just going to be the puppeteers doing the voices. I showed up, and Kermit and Piggy [were there]. The first time Kermit said a line that I wrote, I burst into tears. We had to stop the table read for a couple of minutes while a grown, 30-year-old man pulled it together just to complete his job.


What's one thing that you've learned from working with Kermit?
JS : There's a longevity that these guys have that is almost unexplainable. For 40 years, they have been the Muppets. I can't think of another comedy troupe that has been able to do that.

I think more than anything it's because they don’t make fun of people. There's something very pure about the Muppets. They don't get laughs at other people's expense. Comedy goes in cycles. But one thing that never goes out of style is niceness and purity. The Muppets have never lost that. And Kermit especially is just a wide-eyed, unblinking wonder. And he can't blink, which probably helps.


Was it difficult getting in a groove while acting alongside the Muppets?
JS : Surprisingly, the suspension of disbelief kicks in very early when you're around the puppets. Steve Whitmire is right there operating the puppet, but you find yourself very quickly just looking at Kermit. That part wasn’t a problem.

The problem for me was that puppeteers require monitors, because puppets don’t have working human eyes, so they have to see what's going on. The problem is I could see the monitors also, which I've never had before. I found myself watching the monitors, watching my own acting. That was the biggest challenge.


How did you achieve that balance between old Muppets nostalgia and contemporary humor?
JS : We really wanted the nostalgia factor, but you don’t want it to become a nostalgia fest. Kids have no context for nostalgia for the Muppets. So we had to create something where parents would remember what they loved so much about the Muppets as kids. Also, you have to do the story from scratch so that kids are properly introduced to the Muppets.


In all the incarnations of The Muppets, there's always this sense that they are not bending too hard to either kids or adults. Was that hard to write and film?
Jason Segel : The Muppets definitely set a special and unique tone. A couple other examples are The Simpsons and Pixar in general. A family can go, and no one is placating the other. Parents aren't watching Barney just trying to make it through it. Kids aren't sitting there bored out of their minds. When you watch Toy Story 3, kids are watching a movie about giving up their toys and parents are watching a movie about giving up their children. That's the magic they are able to achieve.

What I hope for this movie is that kids will love the movie and they'll think their parents are cool because their parents know who the Muppets are. The kids don't have to explain to [their parents] about the Muppets. I think there's something cool about that.


In creating that tone, were you in contact with Muppets veterans? What advice did they have for you?
JS : For the initial writing process, it was just [co-writer] Nicholas Stoller and me. Then when we met the puppeteers, they taught us all sorts of Muppet rules, which they've learned over 20 or 30 years. Gonzo is the original Gonzo. Steve Whitmire has been doing Kermit since Jim Henson died. There were intrinsic rules that I knew, like Muppets are never mean to anyone. But there were rules that I didn’t know.

In the early drafts of the script, Walter [Segel's hand and cloth costar] was a puppet. They said, "No, we never use the word puppet." Kermit is a frog. Miss Piggy is a pig. They are not puppets. As soon as you bring in the idea that these are puppets, you break the suspension of reality. So I had to rewrite it and make Walter my [character's] brother, which seems fine to me.


Now that you've accomplished a childhood dream by working with the Muppets, do you have anything to live for?
JS : This is definitely on the list of childhood dreams. There were really three of them: Be on David Letterman, which I did a few years ago; work with the Muppets, which I’ve done now; and host Saturday Night Live, which I'm doing next month. Those are my three childhood dreams getting knocked off.


Do you plan to work with the Muppets in the future?
JS : I am very manipulative in my writing. In my early draft, it ended with Kermit saying: [Segel in Kermit voice] "We're so happy that this worked out. We're going to be launching The Muppet Show again, starting on ABC this fall." And ABC was like, "All right, take it easy, kid. Let’s see how this goes.

SO, I guess maybe more Segel-muppet projects might be in the future.

I wonder if the muppet show could survive today. I remember that the Muppets Tonight didn't last very long, so it'd be interesting to see. Considering how bad television has gotten (like 1-2 good shows per channel it feels like), it definitely has a better shot.

[Ksandra]

MUPPETS EVERYWHERE! (as it should be)

[Pyro]

So, downloaded a copy of this and the picture was blurry and all the actors looked like puppets.

[Ksandra]

So, downloaded

Fuck you!

You're the reason why Twilight is selling more! (j/k)


Having spammed this thread in a bit, but since pyro posted, MOAR MUPPETS:



Also, apparently this is the video Segel/Kermit sent to Amy Adams to get her to join the movie:

[Pyro]

http://www.crushfragdestroy.com/2011...ith-communism/

Fox Accuses The Muppets Of Brainwashing Our Children With Communism

I normally try to keep Crush! Frag! Destroy! a fairly apolitical place, despite my personal political leanings, due to wanting to be as all-inclusive as possible. This, however, was too incredible to just pass up. Seriously.

File it under “Slow News Day” or just plain ol’ “Batshit Crazy,” but Fox Business Network’s “Follow The Money” must have been hurting for content when they decided to run this bit, invoking the specter of Joseph McCarthy by claiming that the recently released film The Muppets is teaching our children pro-Communist, anti-capitalist values. How so, you ask? Well, it’s because the movie’s primary antagonist is a human (not Muppet as host Eric Bolling keeps stating – nice fact checking, guys) oil tycoon named Tex Richman.

I really wish I were making this up. Just watch the clip already.

I don’t care if you’re a liberal, conservative or somewhere in-between–can we all just agree that these people are looking for reasons to be offended and divisive and get on with our day? Thanks.

And for those of you who’ve seen The Muppets, how do you feel about this? Did you come away from it with an overwhelming urge to smash the state or join Occupy Wall Street? Let us know in the comments below.

(That was a joke, by the way. Still, please do leave your comments…)