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Tag Archives: Death
The Simpsons Kills Off Maude, But Saves Ned in “Alone Again, Natura-Diddily”
The death of Maude Flanders on The Simpsons was a decision born of commerce, not of storytelling. A pay dispute between Fox and Maggie Roswell, who voiced Maude for the show’s first decade on the air, is the reason the series killed off Ned’s wife. And it shows.
As I discussed on The Simpsons Show Podcast, her death veers somewhere between “cartoon gag” and “afterthought.” In fairness, Maude was never one of the show’s most prominent or interesting characters. While one could fault the writers’ room for not fleshing her out more, particularly on a series where well-developed female characters are vastly outnumbered by their guy counterparts, the fact is that by the show’s eleventh year, all we really knew about Maude is that she was religious, provincial, and a bit of a stick in the mud.
Posted in Television, The Simpsons
Tagged Death, Episode Reviews, Maude Flanders, Ned Flanders, The Simpsons S11E14, The Simpsons Season 11
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The Only Two Deaths in Jurassic World That Mattered
Death is a currency in blockbuster films. Faceless henchman are wiped out indiscriminately. Nameless bystanders are consumed in explosions and buried in rubble. This is the loss of life that makes up the dark matter of the standard action flick — those deaths that are just out of sight or out of focus, but which are intended to give weight to the larger forces of the plot and the choices of the main characters.
Jurassic World embraced this summer movie season truism wholeheartedly. Scores of interchangeable soldiers in the film quickly turn into dinosaur cannon fodder, with little more than blurred security footage and a few ominous beeps to remember them by. Dozens of random park-goers are snatched up by winged dinosaurs in a prehistoric take on The Birds, but it’s always off in the distance, always just for a second, to where the most notable moment in the rabble is Jimmy Buffett shuffling indoors with a pair of margaritas.
But two deaths in Jurassic World stood out, and they were not necessarily the ones I might have predicted when I walked into the theater.
Posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Movies
Tagged CGI, Chris Pratt, Death, Dinosaurs, Jurassic Park, Movie Reviews
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Steve Jobs: It’s Hard to Mourn a Stranger
Steve Jobs died yesterday after a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.
It’s sad when a vibrant man dies of cancer at the age of fifty-six, whether he is the C.E.O. of a multi-billion dollar company or just somebody’s father. Steve Jobs is no exception. Whatever one’s feelings about his life or his work, another human being has passed, and that is worth a moment of pause.
But as I read the lionizing facebook statuses and the glowing retrospectives recounting Steve Jobs’s life, I am puzzled by the emotional attachment to this man with whom few us had any real connection. I did not know Steve Jobs. I have never met Steve Jobs. He has had hardly any impact on my life beyond the iPod I purchased a number of years ago. Though his passing gives me a brief instant of sad reflection, I am otherwise largely unaffected.
Apparently, I am in the minority. And it’s not the first time.
Posted in Other Art and Culture
Tagged Apple, Celebrity, Death, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Michael Jackson, Pixar, Steve Jobs
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