Salon.com > 10 year time capsule http://www.salon.com Tue, 21 May 2013 03:48:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 10 year time capsule: “Sex and the City” on aging gracefully http://www.salon.com/2011/06/01/10_year_capsule_satc_35/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/01/10_year_capsule_satc_35/#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:32:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/06/01/10_year_capsule_satc_35 June 3, 2001: Carrie Bradshaw and her three best friends hit HBO's run ... er ... airways once again, beginning the fourth season right as Sarah Jessica Parker's character was turning the big 3-5. "[It's] a landmark age for women," Parker said during an interview about the episode, (titled "The Agony and the Ex-Tacy," woof), "It makes her think about choices she makes and what she doesn't want to repeat."

But it wasn't just aging wombs that were being counted down on "Sex and the City." As they embarked on their fourth season, the show had definitely found itself a niche in women who both related and longed to live the lives of the lawyer, the writer, the sexpot, and the Connecticut princess in New York. But it was also an HBO show, straddled in a time slot right after "The Sopranos" and before a quirky new dramedy called "Six Feet Under" premiering that spring.  Over the years, these women would struggle to stay relevant; not only in the dog-eat-dog NYC where young waifs ruled supreme, but as television characters whose lives were just a tad more frivolous than the Soprano's or the Fishers'. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/01/10_year_capsule_satc_35/feed/ 12 10 year time capsule: Douglas Adams says goodbye http://www.salon.com/2011/05/24/douglas_adams_10_year_time_capsule/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/24/douglas_adams_10_year_time_capsule/#comments Tue, 24 May 2011 23:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/2011/05/24/douglas_adams_10_year_time_capsule  42. This was the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything," according to British science fiction writer Douglas Adams' serial, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Of course, those familiar with Adams' oeuvre know the problem with this answer, which is that no one can figure out what the question is. But what did it matter, when one was busy dealing with races of super-intelligent beings disguised as mice, lunk-headed Vogons, and all manner of outer-space bureaucrats?

Adams' writing beyond the Hitchhiker's series included episodes of "Dr. Who," "Monty Python" sketches, and "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency," all of which add up to make him something of a Gandalf figure to comedy nerds. It didn't hurt that Adams was a man of science, with an analogy of a giant sentient puddle to explain why he didn't think God existed.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/24/douglas_adams_10_year_time_capsule/feed/ 9 10 year time capsule: “West Wing” and the furies http://www.salon.com/2011/05/17/10_year_time_capsule_west_wing/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/17/10_year_time_capsule_west_wing/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 20:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/05/17/10_year_time_capsule_west_wing  The "West Wing" ended its second season with one of the most powerful scenes in the show's history, which is saying something for a program whose every line was spoken in Sorkin-ese. On May 16, 2001, "Two Cathedrals" aired to higher finale ratings than its blockbuster first season, as President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) attempted to come to grips with the death of a friend, the news of his multiple sclerosis becoming public, and the decision to run for reelection.

Suffice to say, it wasn't really one of those "walk with me" episodes, or one that featured a lot of smirky quips from Josh Lyman. Instead, "Two Cathedrals" felt more like Sorkin's infamous film scenes: concerned less with the rat-a-tat dialogue of everyday life than with those blood-and-thunder moments that so rarely happen in real life. When Martin Sheen confronts his God in the church after Mrs. Landingham's funeral, it was "West Wing's" "You can't handle the truth" moment; it was Alec Baldwin's "I am God" speech from "Malice."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/17/10_year_time_capsule_west_wing/feed/ 12 10 year time capsule: “Spider-Man” and the erasing of the World Trade Centers http://www.salon.com/2011/05/10/10_year_time_capsule_spiderman_wtc/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/10/10_year_time_capsule_spiderman_wtc/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 21:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/05/10/10_year_time_capsule_spiderman_wtc Ten years ago, the first trailer for the hotly anticipated comic-book film "Spider-Man" premiered in theaters. Even though it would be an entire year before Sam Raimi's adaptation would hit the big screen, you have to remember that back then, big-budget superhero movies weren't the summer tent poles they are now. "Superman" was still a trilogy from the '70s, "Batman" was a troubled Joel Schumacher franchise and Tony Stark barely blipped on anyone's radar. With all the new CGI technology and Raimi's patented directorial style ("Army of Darkness"!), getting ready for "Spider-Man" 12 months before audiences could see it didn't seem like a tease; it seemed like a glimpse of the future. Especially since the first trailer featured one of the most iconic uses of the New York architecture in recent cinema history.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/10/10_year_time_capsule_spiderman_wtc/feed/ 12 10 year time capsule: The (re)branding of country music http://www.salon.com/2011/05/03/10_years_time_capsule_country_music_awards/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/03/10_years_time_capsule_country_music_awards/#comments Tue, 03 May 2011 19:07:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/05/03/10_years_time_capsule_country_music_awards Country music has enjoyed a resurgence in the past decade, and while it may be a little derivative to give all the credit to the surge of patriotism that Americans felt post-9/11, consider this: In May 2001, the Country Music Association took heat from its fans when it officially changed its slogan to "Admit it. You love us."

The message was clear to anyone reading between the lines. If you liked country music back in the early part of the aughts, you hid that love, like a high-school girl who only listens to musicals. (Hey, I can relate.) The CMA even issued a statement, saying the quote was "a challenge to everyone who has ever connected with a country song or a specific artist but may not feel a current connection to the format as a whole or is reluctant to share their enjoyment of the music with others." Yikes.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/03/10_years_time_capsule_country_music_awards/feed/ 14 10 year time capsule: When reality TV took over http://www.salon.com/2011/04/26/10_year_time_capsule_writers_strike/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/26/10_year_time_capsule_writers_strike/#comments Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/04/26/10_year_time_capsule_writers_strike Ten years can go by in a heartbeat, or it can drag on for so long that you're looking back going, "What the hell was going on back then?"

Case in point: Talking about "Harry Potter" movies released in 2001 makes me feel old. Mention "Pearl Harbor" and "Survivor," however, and I'm like, "The early aughts were so weird! Was that really only 10 years ago?" Reading this old CNN article, I actually feel like I've unearthed a time capsule.

And you thought the hype for "Pearl Harbor" would be so loud by May 1 you wouldn't be able to hear yourself think. Instead, with summer's movie blockbuster season right around the corner, there's only one item for discussion in the hills of Hollywood on Tuesday: the pending writers strike.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/26/10_year_time_capsule_writers_strike/feed/ 14 10 year time capsule: How “The Producers” changed Broadway http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/10_year_time_capsule_the_producers/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/10_year_time_capsule_the_producers/#comments Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:08:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/04/19/10_year_time_capsule_the_producers Ten years ago today, "The Producers" opened on Broadway. The show starred Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in roles originated by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in Mel Brooks' 1968 film. The play wasn't just a success, it was a watershed moment in American theater, winning the most Tonys in history (15), spawning a movie based on the musical (which was already based on a movie … more on that later), and selling a record-breaking $3 million in tickets three days after opening.

Pretty strange for a story about two men trying to create a Broadway flop, right? But let's go back to a New York Times article about the show's box office records, from April 1, 2001, which inadvertently predicted the future in a terse meeting between then-Miramax producer Harvey Weinstein and Mel:

Mr. Weinstein told Mr. Brooks he wanted to turn the show into a movie. ''There already is a movie,'' Mr. Brooks countered. ''It's called 'The Producers.' ''

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/10_year_time_capsule_the_producers/feed/ 11 10 year time capsule: “Harry Potter” feeding frenzy leads to glutton punishment http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/10_year_time_capsule_harry_potter_greed/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/10_year_time_capsule_harry_potter_greed/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/04/12/10_year_time_capsule_harry_potter_greed In November 2001, J.K. Rowling's popular wizard series took cinematic form in the highly anticipated "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." How old does that make you feel, knowing that almost a decade later, they still haven't released the final half of the last H.P. book in theaters? A: very old.

But even before baby Daniel Radcliffe first appeared to American audiences with those tiny little glasses and that lightning-shaped scar, the world was very much aware of the magic of Harry Potter, thanks to the success of the books. The movie's upcoming release created a deafening buzz, and suddenly everyone was trying to get a piece of the multimillion-dollar enterprise. It became a kind of contest in greed between the studio, the book publisher and the fans themselves.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/10_year_time_capsule_harry_potter_greed/feed/ 16 10 year time capsule: When Tina Fey became a hot commodity http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/10_year_time_capsule_weekend_update/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/10_year_time_capsule_weekend_update/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:06:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/04/05/10_year_time_capsule_weekend_update

"If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs."

That was Tina Fey in 2004, talking to Virginia Heffernan in the New Yorker about how mean the writers of "Saturday Night Live" could be. At the time, how could readers have known what we know now -- thanks to the multiple glowing reviews of her new book "Bossypants" (excerpts of which appeared in the New Yorker) -- that the joke isn't about the mean-spirited humor of pushing the elderly, but the compunction of women to push each other down flights of stairs (or, even worse, to fall down on purpose) to prove that they can make it in the boys' club of comedy.

But let's back up to 2001: Tina was already head writer at "Saturday Night Live," the first woman Lorne Michaels had ever hired for that position. So, you know, score one for the ladies. This was also the year that Tina's crew won a Writer's Guild Award for their 25th Anniversary Special. Behind the scenes, Tina was killing it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/05/10_year_time_capsule_weekend_update/feed/ 5 10 year time capsule: “That’s My Bush!” http://www.salon.com/2011/03/29/10_year_time_capsule_thats_my_bush/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/29/10_year_time_capsule_thats_my_bush/#comments Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/29/10_year_time_capsule_thats_my_bush Say what you will about Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but those guys have had our number for a long time. Way before they were doing feel-good musicals on Broadway about Mormons in AIDS-stricken Uganda, when "South Park" was still mostly known for its Mr. Hanky scatological humor, the satiric duo had taken on a project for Comedy Central that would be unthinkable today: a half-hour sitcom about the president, whose famous catchphrase was "One of these days, Laura, I'm going to punch you in the face!"

Oh yes, welcome to the month that was "That's My Bush."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/29/10_year_time_capsule_thats_my_bush/feed/ 19 10 year time capsule: The puzzle movie hits made possible by DVD http://www.salon.com/2011/03/22/10_year_time_capsule_memento_donnie_darko_muholland_drive/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/22/10_year_time_capsule_memento_donnie_darko_muholland_drive/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:37:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/03/22/10_year_time_capsule_memento_donnie_darko_muholland_drive In 2001, DVD players outsold VCRs for the first time ever. I can't claim that this advent of home technology was the reason that "puzzle films" like Christopher Nolan's "Memento," David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" and Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" caught on, but it's a reasonably sound guess. With VCRs, you could watch a film at home, you could pause it, and you could rewind it. But DVDs were made to withstand intense scrutiny: high-res freeze-frames, replaying and jumping chapters, and of course those neat little bonus features that held the promise of providing supplemental material to the film.

Before "Memento" was released to the public on March 16, 2001, the most popular thriller mysteries of the past several years had been films like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Usual Suspects." Both great movies, sure, but both included clear expository endings to make sure the audiences understood what the hell they had just paid good money to see. But when Andy Klein wrote his definitive "Everything You Wanted to Know About 'Memento'" essay for Salon and created a numerical and alphabetical system to use to watch the scenes of the film in chronological order, it was only because DVDs had recently given us the ability to do so. As Andy says:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/22/10_year_time_capsule_memento_donnie_darko_muholland_drive/feed/ 20 10 year time capsule: Madonna inspires Tarantino http://www.salon.com/2011/03/15/10_year_time_capsule_madonna_lady_gaga/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/15/10_year_time_capsule_madonna_lady_gaga/#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/15/10_year_time_capsule_madonna_lady_gaga 10 Year Time Capsule is a regular feature in which we look at what was happening in pop culture exactly a decade ago.

In 2001, Madonna needed to prove she could still shock the world. After all, she was no longer a material girl: She was a 43-year-old material woman, married to a British director and with a couple of kids to call her own (or other, equally ridiculous names). And as Baby Jane and Norma Desmond knew, there's nothing punk rock about a former star aging bitterly in her giant mansion.

So in 2001, Madonna picked herself up, brushed off her last two pop albums, and went on tour for the first time in two decades. The Drowned World tour didn't play to her hits from "Ray of Light" or "Music" and seemed less about pleasing her fans than proving something to herself. As Catherine McHugh wrote in her review of a performance, titled "Madonna's Dark Side":

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/15/10_year_time_capsule_madonna_lady_gaga/feed/ 12 10 year time capsule: When Michael Jackson spoke out about abuse http://www.salon.com/2011/03/08/10_year_time_capsule_michael_jackson_oxford_invincible/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/08/10_year_time_capsule_michael_jackson_oxford_invincible/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:32:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/08/10_year_time_capsule_michael_jackson_oxford_invincible Ten years ago yesterday, Michael Jackson cried in front of an auditorium of Oxford students. "Childhood has become the great casualty of modern-day living," Jackson said in a speech to the British university's debating chambers. "My father was scared of human emotion. He never said I love you while looking me straight in the eye, he never played a game with me. But despite my earlier denials, I am forced to admit that he must have loved me."

Michael Jackson speaking out for kids' rights struck his American audiences as a little odd, since it had been less than a decade since the King of Pop settled out of court with the family of a child who accused him of molestation. But he hadn't completely fallen from grace yet: It would still be another year till Michael put his own child's life in danger by dangling him out of a window. It would be the year after that, in 2003, that Michael would be hit with his second child abuse scandal.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/08/10_year_time_capsule_michael_jackson_oxford_invincible/feed/ 33 10-Year Time Capsule: When Napster changed the music industry http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/10_year_time_capsule_napster_shawn_fanning/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/10_year_time_capsule_napster_shawn_fanning/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/02/23/10_year_time_capsule_napster_shawn_fanning The first song I ever downloaded off Napster was "What You Own," one of the lesser-known duets from the rock opera "Rent" that I spent my formative middle- and high-school years obsessed with. Although it didn't have the staying power of, say, "Seasons of Love" or even "Take Me or Leave Me" (featured in last week's episode of "Glee"), I loved the harmony of Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal as Mark and Roger. But the song was oddly nostalgic, too, because listening to it in 2000, when Napster first came on my suburban radar, was a staunch reminder of how proudly pre-aughts "Rent" was.

Lyrics from "What You Own":

"You're living in America

At the end of the millennium

You're living in America

Where it's like the twilight zone

And when you're living in America

At the end of the millennium

You're what you own."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/10_year_time_capsule_napster_shawn_fanning/feed/ 24 10-year time capsule: When “The X-Files” changed TV fandom http://www.salon.com/2011/02/16/x_files_per_manum_time_capsule/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/16/x_files_per_manum_time_capsule/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:24:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/02/16/x_files_per_manum_time_capsule Every week, we'll open up the time capsule to evaluate the pop culture phenomena of exactly 10 years ago. Today, we look at "The X-Files," not the highest rated show of February 2001 (that would be "Survivor"), but the one that continued to dominate the cultural imagination and pointed the way for where scripted TV was headed -- especially the strange, intense symbiotic relationship between shows and their fans.

"Die X-Files Die!" reads the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, summing up the Internet consensus about creator Chris Carter's hit Fox show, which was currently in its eighth season and clinging onto the ratings despite the lack of David Duchovny (who had taken time off to mope about the size of his paycheck). Agent Scully was paired off with a new partner when Mulder went missing, and the bad guy from "Terminator 2" was suddenly a good guy, Special Agent John Doggett. But if putting Robert Patrick in the cast was an attempt to please the sci-fi super fans out there, it wasn't working.

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