Totally Tracey Online Saturday, April 26, 2008
New home
Welcome to the
new home for the site and the blog -- rreini.org rather than
rreini.com.
The old provider was no longer meeting my needs, so I moved to a new
one. Unfortunately, they are making it difficult to impossible to move
my old domain name, so I've started using a slightly different one.
Most of the links should work, but if you find any that don't, please
let me know.
As a provider of thoughtful comedy and satire, though, Tracey is still tops on my list. Tomorrow's episode will be the last of the first season -- hard to believe. But it goes out on a winning note.
One more thing: in case you missed seeing Tracey on the Tonight Show last Friday night (18th) -- she wasn't listed on TiVo or on TV Guide, as she was a late addition -- the show is available for a limited time on Hulu.
As a provider of thoughtful comedy and satire, though, Tracey is still tops on my list. Tomorrow's episode will be the last of the first season -- hard to believe. But it goes out on a winning note.
One more thing: in case you missed seeing Tracey on the Tonight Show last Friday night (18th) -- she wasn't listed on TiVo or on TV Guide, as she was a late addition -- the show is available for a limited time on Hulu.
Labels: Hulu, Tonight Show
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Tracey on Tonight Show April 18
Thanks to surfing the
Web -- and the Late
Night TV Page -- I have confirmed that Tracey will be
appearing on the Tonight Show tomorrow night (April 18).
Labels: Late Night TV, Tonight Show
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
A few things
Well, three
episodes of State of
the Union have aired, and two more are left in this, its
first season. If it were up to me, there would have been more. But
consider that many comedy series in Britain run for just 6 episodes, so
this is in line with that. Still, I hope there will be a next season --
a longer next-season.
I wonder what SOTU characters are everyone's favorites? I find myself partial to musical pharmacist Padma Perkesh and commentator/blogger Arianna Huffington.
My main work right now is creating the episode guide and commentary for SOTU. But I'm also getting ready to move this site to a new location. There will be a lot of work involved in updating the pages to use the new location instead of this one. When that's done, I'll announce where you can find it.
Undoubtedly, many fans of Tracey are also fans of the late Kirsty MacColl. I'm reading the new biography of her written by her mother, Sun on the Water. Don't look for it in your bookstore unless you're in the UK, for it's not available in the US yet. Amazon.co.uk has it, if you want to brave the extortionate exchange rate between the pound and the dollar. I just received it this week and am reading about Kirsty's childhood. She was taken from us far too soon....
I wonder what SOTU characters are everyone's favorites? I find myself partial to musical pharmacist Padma Perkesh and commentator/blogger Arianna Huffington.
My main work right now is creating the episode guide and commentary for SOTU. But I'm also getting ready to move this site to a new location. There will be a lot of work involved in updating the pages to use the new location instead of this one. When that's done, I'll announce where you can find it.
Undoubtedly, many fans of Tracey are also fans of the late Kirsty MacColl. I'm reading the new biography of her written by her mother, Sun on the Water. Don't look for it in your bookstore unless you're in the UK, for it's not available in the US yet. Amazon.co.uk has it, if you want to brave the extortionate exchange rate between the pound and the dollar. I just received it this week and am reading about Kirsty's childhood. She was taken from us far too soon....
Labels: episode guide, Kirsty MacColl, State of the Union, Sun on the Water
Monday, April 07, 2008
SOTU Guide Updates Delayed
Thanks to a hard
drive crash this morning, my update to the State of the Union episode
guide for episode 2 was lost, so I'm going to have to rewrite it again
from scratch. That wasn't the only thing I lost, either, but I'll spare
you the details.
Labels: State of the Union
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Guide to SOTU started
Now that State of the Union
has begun, I can announce the beginning of my guide and
commentary to the program. Each week, as the episodes air,
I'll add to it. It's definitely a work in progress, so things may
change.
I also want to send out birthday greetings to Tracey's daughter Mabel, who is 22 today. It may seem hard to believe, but it is true.
I also want to send out birthday greetings to Tracey's daughter Mabel, who is 22 today. It may seem hard to believe, but it is true.
Labels: State of the Union
Saturday, March 29, 2008
One more day
At long last, the
day has nearly arrived. State
of the Union officially premieres tomorrow. The response
from the critics has been mixed; some really enjoy it, while others
were disappointed. One of the critics (or maybe it was a blogger)
observed that Tracey seems to be a polarizing performer, because people
either really like her and what she does, or they don't care for her
work at all. There may be some truth to that. It's pretty clear which
side of the divide I fall on :)
Thanks to Google search and all of the newspaper websites, I've been able to read scores of reviews from across North America. This was something that was all but impossible 21 years ago, back at the time when The Tracey Ullman Show premiered on Fox. It could have been done with difficulty; you would have had to go to a newsstand that sold out-of-town newspapers and bought as many as you wanted and could afford. It's much easier nowadays -- and less expensive too! But that newsstand might be out of business now....
Thanks to Google search and all of the newspaper websites, I've been able to read scores of reviews from across North America. This was something that was all but impossible 21 years ago, back at the time when The Tracey Ullman Show premiered on Fox. It could have been done with difficulty; you would have had to go to a newsstand that sold out-of-town newspapers and bought as many as you wanted and could afford. It's much easier nowadays -- and less expensive too! But that newsstand might be out of business now....
Labels: State of the Union, The Tracey Ullman Show
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A little bit of Fresh Air
In addition to
appearing on Tavis Smiley's PBS show last night (March 24), Tracey
stayed within the realm of public broadcasting by appearing on NPR's Fresh Air today.
She's been on Terry Gross's show at least 3 or 4 times in the past, and
her appearances have consistently been interesting and revelatory.
Things took a poignant turn today when, led along by Terry's questions,
she spoke of her father and how she was with him when he died. She was
6 at the time, and he was reading her a story. He'd had heart trouble
in the past and had a heart attack during that story. She went to get
her mother, but there was nothing that could be done. There is no doubt
in my mind that he would have been proud of his daughter's
accomplishments; even now, somewhere in the Afterlife, he is sure to be
looking on. I can't help but wonder, though, how things would have been
different had he lived longer. Would Tracey have been motivated to
develop her talents in the performing arts? Would she have become
acclaimed on two continents? Would she have married Allan and had Mabel
and Johnny? We'll never know.
Things weren't all serious today, though. We learned that she's no fan of American Idol and the vocal pyrotechnics that it encourages (it's indie rock for her) and points out that Simon Cowell isn't particularly mean; he's just British.
Things weren't all serious today, though. We learned that she's no fan of American Idol and the vocal pyrotechnics that it encourages (it's indie rock for her) and points out that Simon Cowell isn't particularly mean; he's just British.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
SOTU: A Review
Tracey Ullman
returns to comedic series television with a new series, Tracey Ullman’s State of the
Union (SOTU), on a new network (Showtime, after 14 years
with HBO) and with a slightly different approach to skewering the
foibles of Americans. It’s been nine years since her HBO series Tracey Takes On…
ended, and while she hasn’t been completely absent from the small
screen (two seasons of a fashion-related program and two comedy
specials for HBO), her voice has been missed. Now, emboldened by
becoming an American citizen in 2006, she’s back. Fans will not be
disappointed.
The premise of the series is simple. Each episode focuses on a day in the life of America as seen through the lives of its citizens and residents, both famous and unknown. Stock footage and linking narration (provided by Peter Strauss) take the viewer from one vignette to the next. In the course of a single typical episode, the story may flow from the dumping of a woman recovering from surgery on the street due to an inability to pay, to a TV reporter exposing such practices (and noting that the report would be great for her Emmy reel), to blogger Arianna Huffington wondering what to wear to the Bloggy Awards, to a pharmacist advising her elderly client about the side effects of his medication, to a soldier home from Iraq on furlough (a very short furlough) trying to see her son, and finally back to that woman who was dumped.
For those familiar with Tracey’s work from her previous American series The Tracey Ullman Show (Fox) and Tracey Takes On… (HBO), the vignettes are much shorter than a typical sketch on those series. This is a deliberate creative decision to appeal to the YouTube era of shorter attention spans. Some of the characters don’t need more time than this to have their stories told, but some could sustain longer sketches. None of the TTO characters appear in SOTU (although SOTU’s airport security guard Chantal Monticello is very similar to TTO’s airport security guard Sheneesha), but there is no reason why they couldn’t. There are musical numbers, chiefly Bollywood-style in the vignettes featuring Indian pharmacist Padma Prakesh (one of my favorites of the new characters).
Unlike her older American shows, though, SOTU features Tracey impersonating several famous people, among them Arianna Huffington, David Beckham, reporters Campbell Brown and Rita Cosby, Renee Zellweger, Cameron Diaz, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Dina Lohan (Lindsay’s mother) and Andy Rooney. Some of her targets may not care for the treatment they receive.
The inter-related nature of many of the vignettes recalls the interwoven nature of some of the TTO episodes such as Las Vegas, Hollywood and Road Rage, episodes which were and are among my favorites. The linking narration also helps to tie them together. Some of the vignettes work better than others, so if there’s one you don’t particularly care for, wait a minute or two for the next one.
The same spirit behind her previous series is present for this one, so those who didn’t care for her work in those will probably not care for her in this one, either. Diehard fans, though, will welcome her return, their only disappointment being that there are only five episodes in this first season. Let us hope that Showtime picks it up for a second season and beyond, for it will be worth it.
The premise of the series is simple. Each episode focuses on a day in the life of America as seen through the lives of its citizens and residents, both famous and unknown. Stock footage and linking narration (provided by Peter Strauss) take the viewer from one vignette to the next. In the course of a single typical episode, the story may flow from the dumping of a woman recovering from surgery on the street due to an inability to pay, to a TV reporter exposing such practices (and noting that the report would be great for her Emmy reel), to blogger Arianna Huffington wondering what to wear to the Bloggy Awards, to a pharmacist advising her elderly client about the side effects of his medication, to a soldier home from Iraq on furlough (a very short furlough) trying to see her son, and finally back to that woman who was dumped.
For those familiar with Tracey’s work from her previous American series The Tracey Ullman Show (Fox) and Tracey Takes On… (HBO), the vignettes are much shorter than a typical sketch on those series. This is a deliberate creative decision to appeal to the YouTube era of shorter attention spans. Some of the characters don’t need more time than this to have their stories told, but some could sustain longer sketches. None of the TTO characters appear in SOTU (although SOTU’s airport security guard Chantal Monticello is very similar to TTO’s airport security guard Sheneesha), but there is no reason why they couldn’t. There are musical numbers, chiefly Bollywood-style in the vignettes featuring Indian pharmacist Padma Prakesh (one of my favorites of the new characters).
Unlike her older American shows, though, SOTU features Tracey impersonating several famous people, among them Arianna Huffington, David Beckham, reporters Campbell Brown and Rita Cosby, Renee Zellweger, Cameron Diaz, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Dina Lohan (Lindsay’s mother) and Andy Rooney. Some of her targets may not care for the treatment they receive.
The inter-related nature of many of the vignettes recalls the interwoven nature of some of the TTO episodes such as Las Vegas, Hollywood and Road Rage, episodes which were and are among my favorites. The linking narration also helps to tie them together. Some of the vignettes work better than others, so if there’s one you don’t particularly care for, wait a minute or two for the next one.
The same spirit behind her previous series is present for this one, so those who didn’t care for her work in those will probably not care for her in this one, either. Diehard fans, though, will welcome her return, their only disappointment being that there are only five episodes in this first season. Let us hope that Showtime picks it up for a second season and beyond, for it will be worth it.
Labels: Showtime, State of the Union
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
More talk shows - and see SOTU now
Tracey was on The Early Show this
morning, but I didn't know about it until after it happened (the Tivo
listings didn't flag me). Fortunately, CBS News posted
the clip on the Web, so I was able to see her interview. I've
already summarized it in my talk
show appearances section of the site.
Tomorrow, she's going to be on The View, and then next Monday (24th) she'll be on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. And SOTU is premiering on the 30th... but if you have video on demand, you can see the first episode now. I have seen it, and I enjoyed it immensely. I'll hold off on further comment until after the episode officially premieres.
Tomorrow, she's going to be on The View, and then next Monday (24th) she'll be on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. And SOTU is premiering on the 30th... but if you have video on demand, you can see the first episode now. I have seen it, and I enjoyed it immensely. I'll hold off on further comment until after the episode officially premieres.
Labels: State of the Union, Tavis Smiley, The Early Show, The View
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Tracey on The View March 19
As the start date
for State of the Union
draws ever nearer, it's time to start checking the TV listings for talk
shows where Tracey may be appearing to promote the show. The first of
these will be The View
on March 19. Yippie! -- um, make that Whoopi!
Labels: State of the Union, The View
