‘Circus’, A PBS Documentary Showing The Inner Workings of a Forgotten Art Form

Bobby and I have been watching an amazing documentary we found courtesy of PBS by way of Netflix: Circus. It sounded kind of like a silly premise for a documentary, just following a group of circus performers around as they perform, but once you watch this, you will be hooked into these remarkable people’s lives. Not only is the show so full of rich human stories, it also delves into many lost performance styles like trapeze, juggling, wire walking, clowning, and even dog training. Many of the performers shown have been born into families of international circus performers, who haven’t lived a life outside of the ring for generations.

The six part documentary follows New York’s Big Apple Circus during their 2008 season. You get a glimpse into the mechanics of how a circus works from the setup of the one ring Big Apple is known for to the planning of acts and, sometimes, cutting of acts. The production value of the series is really, really high and is everything that a reality television producer hopes for but never accomplishes: capturing truly special people doing truly special things and documenting them as they are–not as how you think they are. The documentary is doesn’t hold anything back and is quite beautiful.

The video above is the trailer for the series and is, admittedly, a little cheesy because of the music. However, it does give you a look into the series and how Big Apple’s circus conducts itself. You can catch the documentary on Netflix Instant Watch, which demands you clear six nights in a row so you can watch the documentary all the way through.

KYLE

Notes On America’s Funniest Home Videos

This may very well be the strangest post ever entered onto The Fox Is Black, but I wanted to take some time to speak about a show which I regard as the best show on television: America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Yeah, yeah, yeah: it’s cheesy, it’s very nineties, it’s incredibly crass, and is as low brow as it gets. I recently caught a few episodes this past weekend and was glued to the television for an hour before going to bed. The show is an easy, early reality show formula: viewers send in their caught-on-tape funnies to Bob Saget (later John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes and, currently, Tom Bergeron), viewers watch strung together videos, and the top three are awarded (small) amounts of cash. The show has been on the air since 1989 and just ended its 21st season three weeks ago.

What makes this show so impressive to me is that it was–and still is–proto-YouTube. Based off of a lot of caught-on-tape formats, AFV is one of the only shows to capitalize on the five second to five minute user generated video with incredible success. Like YouTube, the funniest videos aren’t the staged ones but rather the ones that celebrate schadenfreude or things that are silly-cute. Things like “David After Dentist” or “Keyboard Cat” would have been huge hits on AFV, but–instead–have found great lives on the Internet. One would think that YouTube would have already killed off AFV, yet the show seems to still be kicking it and reinventing the wheel (although the wheel is very, very cheesy).

Continue reading Notes On America’s Funniest Home Videos…

Comedy Central Gets A Serious Logo Upgrade

Yesterday, Comedy Central released a brand new logo and in my opinion, have done a really great job. Rebranding has become a hot new topic for people interested in design, and for better or worse, is being scrutinized more and more. Their old logo has been in use since they want on the air in 1991 and hasn’t changed in its near 20 year history. The thing is, it’s been pretty goofy looking this whole time, definitely having a dated late 80′s/early 90′s vibe. The logo was like a word bubble with a city popping out of it, totally awkward though I’m guessing was intended to have a comedy club vibe to it. Thankfully the folks in charge have taken an entirely new direction with the brand, simplifying things immensely.

The new logo was created by thelab who created a riff on the ubiquitous copyright symbol. It’s elegant in it’s simplicity which might be an odd work to use but when you have to represent a multitude of programs having an agnostic design like this makes a lot of sense. I thought the choice of font was nice though the upside-down ‘Central’ seems a bit silly to me. Nonetheless, I have no problem reading or identifying the brand, so it doesn’t hurt.

My first impression was slightly negative, but after watching the video showing the new branding in motion it made a lot more sense. You’re probably not going to see many static images of the logo anyhow so I feel like the rebrand should be judged mainly on the video.

What are your thoughts about the rebrand?

Bobby

Banksy Does ‘The Simpsons’

I’m posting this tonight because all of your co-workers will be asking you if you saw this, so consider yourself covered. Earlier tonight The Simpsons aired a special opening segment that was put together by none other than Banksy who decided to take a jab at 20th Century Fox and their production methods. It’s pretty funny that they let Banksy do this but still kind of a weird move, in my opinion. I wont’ ruin anything here, watch and get a chuckle.

Update:The New York Times talks to The Simpsons executive producer Al Jean about the stunt. Click here to read it.

Bobby

Trailer for AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’

To say that AMC is leading the pack in innovative television programming that might be an understatement, this coming from a guy who doesn’t even watch TV. But with their successes with Mad Men, Breaking Bad and now Rubicon the network is certainly making some great decisions with it’s original content. So the fact that they’re turning The Walking Dead, one of the finest comic books out there, in a series is amazing.

I’ve been reading The Walking Dead for a while now, I even posted about it a couple years ago, and it’s definitely a top notch story. Where you might think it’s just a standard zombie story it’s actually a human drama that just happens to have a bunch of dead folks walking around. The real dangers of their world are the people they run into, not knowing their stories, their experiences and their motivations.

The trailer looks extremely hopeful, the zombies are totally creepy and the environments they’re running around in don’t look fake or CGI. Could this be a Battlestar Galactica for zombie fans?

Bobby