Word: shows
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Henson's firm, Henson Associates?known somewhat alarmingly as HA!? will become the Disney organization of what remains of the 20th century. Maybe so; the Muppets have just finished making an $8 million film in Hollywood, called The Muppet Movie, which chronicles their journey from the boondocks to show business glory. Another film is under discussion; an astonishing variety of Muppet toys and other artifacts, including arm puppets, fills the stores; a theme amusement park of the Disneyland sort has been talked of; Muppets have been visible in TV commercials and in guest appearances on such varied offerings...
...most convincing reason for taking notice of the Muppets, however, is that they are funny. In fact, with Laugh-In long gone, theirs is, give or take Saturday Night Live, the funniest show on television. This year the Muppets won an Emmy Award as TV's "outstanding comedy, variety or musical series." A gentle but consistent satirical breeze blows through The Muppet Show and saves Jim Henson's creatures from the grisly danger of being too lovable. Mostly the satire turns inward, joshing show business (the assumption that frames the series is that the Muppets are members of a theatrical...
...Muppet Show opens, always, with a knock at a dressing-room door. Scooter, the company's errand boy, sticks his head inside to announce curtain time. He is a human boy caricatured, and thus is a representative of one of the show's three main species. Human Muppets are featured players: Floyd, the supremely groovy guitarist; Janice, his girlfriend; Zoot, the blue-faced sax player who has seen it all; Animal, the out-of-control drummer who must be chained to the wall; Crazy Harry, the special-effects man who is fond of explosions; the incomprehensible and meatball-brained Swedish...
...weekly guest star: Raquel Welch, for instance, looking scholarly in spectacles as she practices Shakespeare. Scooter guesses that she has decided to change her image, and he says that this is fine; she doesn't need to wear any of those scanty, revealing costumes on The Muppet Show...
When The Muppet Show began, Miss Piggy was a nobody, a mere member of the porker chorus. In less than three years, by a dazzling combination of talent, beauty and physical violence?when batting her eyelashes doesn't bring surrender, she lashes out with a karate chop?she has become a star. Her finest moments now may be when she plays the ingenue role in the show's arrestingly torpid "Pigs in Space" series, a send-up that is funny because it assumes, correctly, that the viewer is very bored by astronauts. Aboard the spaceship Swinetrek, she is every...