'Ted 2' is here now, and his voice will be in August
You may remember that "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, whose foul-mouthed teddy bear comedy "Ted 2" hits theaters Friday, hosted the Oscars in 2013 - and that he turned a lot of people off with his line-crossing humor. But many were surprised to learn that the man who gives voice to Stewie Griffin can also carry a tune, and he'll be doing just that on Friday, Aug. 21, at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park.
Accompanied by the Ravinia Festival Orchestra and conductor (and film composer) Joel McNeely, MacFarlane can be expected to sing pop and jazz standards. His 2011 debut album, "Music is Better Than Words," featured some of his favorites from the '40s and '50s.
Tickets for the Ravinia concert are still available at ravinia.org. Pavilion seats are $45-$55, lawn tickets are $33. There will be a video screen on the lawn.
Indominus Rex, brought to you by ...
Verizon Wireless, Samsung, Pandora, Mercedes, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville.
Those are just a few of the corporate entities name-checked in the monster hit "Jurassic World," which is breaking box-office records and breaking new ground in product placement.
I thought I'd seen it all when the two-minute trailer for last summer's "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" showed off eight corporate logos, but Chris Pratt's dinosaur thriller found a perfectly plausible way to have its cake and eat it too. The film's theme-park setting is a natural for product placement, and the screenplay by director Colin Trevorrow and three others mines that fact for jokes - the filmmakers roll their eyes at the synergy, but they also reap all the benefits!
"Jurassic World" is shameless, yes, but acknowledges it. I was much more bothered earlier this summer when Disney's "Tomorrowland," an optimistic sci-fi adventure that asks its audience to make the world a better place, placed a Chevrolet logo in its closing scenes, suggesting that the carmakers at Mickey's corporate partner were among the brightest hopes for humanity. (Dann Gire was bothered by even more branding in his review.) Something that cynical has no place in the hopeful conclusion of a movie about defeating cynicism, but then again you could argue that the movie itself is an act of product placement.
Product placement is an inescapable fact of today's entertainment landscape, but there are smart ways to do it. Trevorrow found one, and I hope others can learn from it.
• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald copy editor. You can follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.