'Ted' coming this summer. (2012)*

The "Thunder Buddies" song is a thing of genius. It will be stuck in my head for days now.

 

I'm not sure what that poster was referring to, but the TV series Puppets Who Kill from about 10 years ago featured among its cast a sociopathic bear. In fact, the first thing I thought of when seeing the ads for Ted was PWK, in part because the bear character in PWK (Buttons) is a sex maniac. I haven't seen Ted yet, though I'll probably rent the dvd/blu-ray after it's released. And while I cannot give PWK a two-thumbs up rating, certain episodes were particularly funny.

 

I was kind of surprised about the Norah Jones cameo.

Not so much that she was featured singing in a concert, but she was given some lines... that were more shocking (to me) than anything else in the movie.

 

You had me at "litigiously cruel" and "wincing". Now I must see this!

 

I thought she was very funny and was pretty good at acting (for what it was).

 

It's a brilliant idea...a turn on the classic "be careful what you wish for..." adage.

 

Without giving away too much, there is a scene in the film which integrates Ted into an old TV show...does anyone know who it was that Ted "replaced"?

 

Emmanuel Lewis?

 

I don't know for sure, but I'm going to have to assume it was a child actor.

 

Oh, yeah -- we were screamin' laughing during some of that stuff. Way, way over the line... but funny. Patrick Stewart's opening and closing narration has among the most biting, hilarious lines of the entire film.

The Johnny Carson clip was good (and technically great), but it does make me reflect: if Ted was famous for a couple of years as a live teddy bear, you'd think he could get a better job than a minimum-wage bag boy at a supermarket -- maybe as a commercial spokesman, or opening shopping centers, touring state fairs, or something. (Like the remaining members of Different Strokes.)

 

I was thinking "Celebrity Apprentice" or some other reality show...

 

Exactly. Hell, put the bear on Dancing with the Stars. Or at the rate he was going, Celebrity Rehab.

 

I saw it today with my wife and she actually liked it quite a bit...laughed more than I did...but I enjoyed it as well...Some of you guys go to watch these things with some skewed sense of where in the cinematography universe this film fits into...

For what it aimed and achieved, I say Bravo/

 

I love Ted's expression during the picture-taking scene where he's copping a feel. heh.

 

I thought it was pretty doggone funny.
It's a total Family Guy episode. I was nearly in tears during the lotion sequence at the supermarket.

 

That was funny, and the trailer stopped at the first joke, the red band trailer stopped at the second joke and the movie just kept on going. My girlfriend and I thought the movie could actually have a raunchier version once it comes out on home video. We shall see.

 

I'd seen the red band trailer so I thought I knew where the Joke was finally going but it went one step further, and nearly made me choke on my Dr Pepper laughing in the process.

 

What's a "red band trailer"? Honest question.

 

A "red band trailer" is one that's "approved for restricted audiences only" and can only be run with R-rated films in the theater. You tend to see them more online or on video than on the big screen. They're allowed to have edgier content, and are preceded by a text screen with a red background, rather than the usual green.

 

I love Red-band trailers. When I worked in the trailer post business some years ago, we referred to these as the "funny, entertaining" trailers, and the PG-13 trailers as the "boring, censored" trailers.



Just once, I want to see somebody make a Red-band trailer of a PG-rated movie.

 

Um, but if the movie is rated PG, where do you expect the explicit material for the red-band trailer to come from? Outtakes? New stuff shot exclusively for a red-band trailer that won't actually be in the movie itself? That would be… interesting, I'll give you that.

 

Actually, I've worked on movies that were heavily R-rated throughout production, and then at the last minute, the studio demanded a lot of cuts that made it a PG-13. Later on, what went out on DVD (and in some cases, Blu-ray) was an "unrated" edition that was essentially an R. Sometimes, less than :20 seconds was the only difference between the theatrical and unrated edition; other times, it was 100 different cuts, just a few frames here, a shot here, a line of dialog there.

I was being facetious about an R-rated trailer for a PG-13 movie, but it could theoretically be done. There have been some pretty edgy trailers for movies "that have not yet been rated."

 

Wow. I have never seen that before.

Never heard of the "Red-band trailer" term either.

When did they start doing that? I know it's been a while since I last saw an R-rated movie in the theater. I think the last one was in '99 - and it was for The Matrix.

That's what happens when you have kids as my first born was old enough to go to movies soon after. Toy Story 2 being his first that same year. And it's pretty much been those kinds of movies ever since - reaching into PG-13 only in the last few years.

 

I've known about Red Band trailers since the early 90s, but have only seen maybe one or two in a theater, usually played before R-rated indie or arthouse films, rarely in a mainstream theater.

 

Norm MacDonald's "Dirty Work" started out like this apparently.

Production and Release

In his first appearance on The Howard Stern Show on September 18, 2008,[9] Chevy Chase discussed the film's production and release with Artie Lange.[10] According to Chase, he was impressed by the original script's raunchy, R-rated, "over the top" tone (particularly a filmed but ultimately cut gag involving Macdonald and Lange delivering donuts that had been photographed around their genitals)[10] and, Lange related, went so far as to beg Macdonald not to allow any changes—to "keep it funny." Lange said the studio insisted on a PG-13 rating and moved the film's release from February to June, where it fared poorly against blockbusters like Godzilla.[11]

Bob Saget has gone on record of willing to do a reedit of the film if the studio comes around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MQaXo1hWQw

Go to 12:07 mark to listen in!