May 5, 2020

An old-looking new ad for a new Jerry Seinfeld special — it caught my eye, so I deem it successful, if creepily weird.

Obviously reminiscent of posters for pop-culture nonsense from the 1960s (but I'm not sure quite what):



ADDED: The reviewer at New York Magazine says the first half is good and the second half is bad. This is from a description of the second half:
He has been married for 19 years, and it is exhausting. “Marriage,” Seinfeld says, “is two people trying to stay together without saying the words ‘I hate you.’” He imagines himself waking up every morning and standing in front of a Jeopardy! podium, trying and failing each day to match his wife’s level of petty animus. “‘I’ll take ‘Details of a Ten-Minute Conversation We Had at Three in the Morning Eight Years Ago,’” he envisions her saying, “and I would like to bet everything I have on that, Alex.” Women are the Übermenschen; men who try to take them on do so foolishly and with no hope of winning....

51 comments:

DrSquid said...

Bond 007 movies. Duh!

Tom T. said...

Secret agent parody comedies have themselves been done a thousand times. He's a funny guy, but the poster just looks tiresome.

Ann Althouse said...

"Secret agent parody comedies have themselves been done a thousand times."

The words that floated into my head were "Our Man Flint" — which is a secret agent parody comedies from 1966.

As for Bond, I think "Thunderball" had underwater stuff... if I remember correctly (from the actual time, when I thought that the James Bond stuff had worn out its welcome and gotten boring... little did I know).

Earnest Prole said...

Here, let me help.

Howard said...

It almost has a mad magazine vibe except the depiction of his countenance sucks they should have got Norman Mingo or Mort drucker type artists to do the face.

Mr. O. Possum said...

It's a take-off on the cover of Thunderball's movie soundtrack and possibly movie posters, too, that showed Connery in a scuba suit wielding a spear gun.

Shouting Thomas said...

I’m completely uninterested in being jovial about living under house arrest and suffering the revocation of my civil liberties.

How do I get the fucking government off my back?

That’s about it for me.

Howard said...

Thanks Ernest prole. Frank McCarthy was out of the old school the art student league and Pratt institute. You got to love that force perspective and generous use of complementary colors. He really does a great job of making Connery appear more rakish than he actually is in the movies.

John Borell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John Borell said...

Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld.

And how Sean Connery did it:

https://images.bonanzastatic.com/afu/images/6fb7/1237/c715_5707312851/dr-no-movie-poster-Italian.png

Bill Peschel said...

He should have gone with the classier National Lampoon poster.

https://powerpop.blogspot.com/2012/01/spy-in-house-of-love.html

(Note: This was from the fabulous "What if JFK had lived" issue in which Jackie died in Dallas and he ends up becoming a four-term president. There's plenty of alternative events such as getting us out of Vietnam, but liberating Northern Ireland from the British. It was a brilliantly imagined issue, and the artifacts cleverly conceived.)

Shouting Thomas said...

The State of Wisconsin has been shut down for two months over 339 fatalities.

Howard said...

Someone needs to be suckled this morning. I have no idea why he comes to a post-menopausal woman's website to do that.

Shouting Thomas said...

You fucking idiot, Howard.

You never had any use for freedom before the lockdown, coward.

This, “you’re a big baby for insisting on your freedom and rights” bit you’re doing is unbearably stupid.

You don’t deserve freedom.

CWJ said...

The before the opening credits scene of (I think) Goldfinger had Bond in a wetsuit planting explosives. He removed the suit after he finished revealing a tuxedo underneath. He even had a boutonnière to add to the tux.

donald said...

I have a big love of freedom and I wonder the same damned thing.

Lurker21 said...

Mad magazine did a parody of some 60s TV drama and called the episode "60 Minutes to Kill." It was exactly the kind of title you'd find on Mannix or some show like that. When I came across the magazine years later as an adult, I realized there was a pun in there. With Seinfeld, there's an added level of pun: comedians are always "killing" (good) or "dying" (bad).

Sometimes, it seems like there are more parodies in the spy genre than earnest non-parodic works. Bond essentially created modern spy movies, easily displacing earlier efforts, and the Bond films contained more than a little self-parody themselves.

Howard said...

You're right I don't deserve freedom. No one does. You have to take it like I drink your milkshake

narciso said...

the movie the rock, suggests an alternate scenario where James bond, called mason here, had been detained and held for 35 years, there's another novel series the money penny diaries that fills the gaps, between the novels, for example he's in cuba during the missile crisis,

Ann Althouse said...

"I’m completely uninterested in being jovial about living under house arrest and suffering the revocation of my civil liberties."

It's the Era of That's Not Funny.

Can't even laugh at Seinfeld now.

Ann Althouse said...

No laughing!

That's the ultimate lockdown.

narciso said...

in the American vein, you had howard hunt, who had been a time life writer, and an aide to ambassador harriman during the marshall plan, before moving on to mexico city, buckley was right out of yale, when he joined him as his associate, blackford oakes is his idealized version,

Michael said...

My sons and I laugh a lot about the gullibility of scared nation and about the model makers and solemn faced doctors who have gotten it all wrong from the start. Every day we share contradictory news articles and, our favorite, new information on the ultra long time the virus will be around. We have it all. A vaccine is around the corner, a vaccine is months away, a vaccine is never. These are not idiots making this up, these are the result of the thinking and back of the napkin “research” of the world’s science community.

So we actually live in very comical times if you let yourself think about it and look around. Mask on mask off.

Ken B said...

Good spotting with Our Man Flint. I hadn’t thought of that one, but it fits. Thunderball is the obvious one.

Howard said...

It must be rough Michael being a man that is no earthly idea how to deal with complex dangerous situations in real time. Fear uncertainty and doubt are all around. Go read Rudyard Kipling's if

Freeman Hunt said...

Reminds me of Bullit posters. Also, similar position to certain posters for You Only Live Twice.

Known Unknown said...

More recent spy spoof (starring Jean Dujardin, of The Aritist fame). The third OSS 117 is in post-production now.

Known Unknown said...

Well, here's the link I meant to put in the previous comment.

Fernandinande said...

It's a great take-off of the "A View to a Kill" poster.

J. Farmer said...

Speaking of spoofs, the details of the weekend amphibious assault against the Maduro regime are so ridiculous, they have to be true. An oddball ex-Green Beret peddling military experience and an upstart "private security" firm, a cringe worthy website for Silvercorp USA, a bad news bears of Venezuela army deserters squatting in Colombia, panhandling Uber drivers to fund a military coup. This story is going to be turned into a feature film.

rcocean said...

The flippers remind me of Thunderball. I think in the movie, Bond tears off his wetsuit and has a tuxedo underneath.

rcocean said...

Our Man flint was an excellent Bond parody but the series went on too long. Mel Brooks had the right idea, one movie to parody a genre, then move on.

rcocean said...

Thunderball made the mistake of having a big underwater fight scene. Boring. Just a bunch of guys in wet suits swimming very slowly and shooting arrows at each other. Mass fights scenes are bigger but not better. The best Bond fight scene is Odd Job vs. Bond in GOldfinger. Just two people.

mikee said...

Jerry is holding a microphone/handgun. He's gonna point it at his mouth. Hmmm.
Why do I think this show may be the equivalent of the Monty Python Contractual Obligation Album? At least we got the wonderful songs "I Love Traffic Lights" and "I Love Applesauce" from the Pythons. From Jerry we're apparently gonna get a suicide via microphone.

https://www.montypython.com/music_Monty%20Python's%20Contractual%20Obligation%20Album%20(1980)/14

Shouting Thomas said...

I sent you the link to my video on this subject, professor.

It's hilarious. 30 Days Stuck at Home.

You deep sixed it, as is your right.

My humor just happens to come out on the side of freedom.

mikee said...

Here's entertainment for you, provided under contractual obligation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbRyH6fkee0

CWJ said...

rcocean,

See my 7:59 comment upthread of yours. I could be wrong about Goldfinger, but it wasn't Thunderball. Thunderball's pre opening credits sequence had Bond in a jetpack.

David53 said...

The title points to another Bond movie, "A View to a Kill." That's when Bond saved Silicon Valley.

rehajm said...

Wetsuits with mask and flippers are funny.

tcrosse said...

That's gold, Jerry! That's gold!

Michael said...

Howard
Not as rough as being humorless. My son.

Eric said...

Thuderball Poster:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CeH0__8MM3c/Wbx7bGa4Y8I/AAAAAAACC28/K5ujZ5oTnekKDu5JbkaT-4SrN2UamzKWgCLcBGAs/s1600/Thunderball_jamesbondreview.filminspector.com_1.jpg

Bill Peschel said...

There's also "Spy" with Melissa McCarthy and Jude Law. That's in my top 10 of the funniest movies.

KellyM said...

The OSS films with Jean Dujardin are hilarious. I'm excited that there's a third one on the way.

The underwater fight scene was trotted out again in "For Your Eyes Only", if I recall correctly. And yes, they're boring.

narciso said...

Jason statham almost steals the show, with his parody of his hardboiled self,

Jim said...

Oh hell yes. I love my wife, but 17 years ago when we were dating I said I had a thing for Belinda Carlisle when Our Lips Are Sealed was playing. I WAS JOKING! I hear about this at least once a month.

Anne-I-Am said...

Well...my now ex-husband must have been the woman in our relationship then. He would pull out remarks I made a decade earlier (sometimes in anger, so therefore polemic) and toss them at me. "But YOU said!" And he wouldn't even get the details right.

The big one was when he came up behind me while I was doing dishes, with both our three young kids and several neighbor kids running amok in and out of the house, and put his hands down my pants. I vociferously objected. My point to him was that I didn't want to be groped when I was doing household chores--and that it was especially inappropriate with six or seven children under the age of eight underfoot.

For the next 10 years, he almost never initiated intimacy. When I would ask why, he would trot out, "You told me never to touch you."

I think he had hearing problems, among other things.

Derve Swanson said...

I don't think Seinfeld's brand of silly-little-nothing-man plays well in a pandemic. No matter how rich it makes him.

He is kind of the original American pajama boy, really.






Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
(Unless you like a bit of masculinity in your men...)

Derve Swanson said...

He's about due for a second wife about now, isn't he?
Some fine young thing in her late teens...
(It's Biblical like that, taking of the younger second wives.)

Bunkypotatohead said...

Seinfeld the man has never been particularly funny. Like Mary Tyler Moore, he surrounded himself with some great comic character actors, and had Larry David around to create the absurd scenarios for the TV show.

Jason Alexander actually did a better Larry David than David does.

Earnest Prole said...

I could be wrong about Goldfinger, but it wasn't Thunderball.

If you click through to my link upthread and scroll down, you'll see it's indeed Thunderball -- sorry, should have made that clear when I posted.