Like most of the tv-blogging world, I’m catching up on last season’s Mad Men. I was always a fan of the show, but shit got busy around the middle of the second season, and I hadn’t had an opportunity to catch up until now. Or, to be more precise, I decided that I wanted to watch Season 3 with the rest of the world.
As I do this, I am reminded of what a true pleasure the titles sequence (created by Mark Gardner and Steve Fuller of Imaginary Forces) is. It perfectly captures the sexy cool of the show (and perhaps the era*) and features an abridged version of the song “A Beautiful Mine” by RJD2.
Titles:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRr-Fb5xQo]
I was excited to find the full version of the song used, but I was dissappointed to find that they exerpted all the cool parts and most of the rest is filler, or iterations of loops. Whatever, here it is:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdqwmvKeZWc]
*I’ll be the first person to praise the art direction and costumes, makeup and casting of the show, but part of me wonders (and I realize that this is paranoid) whether I’ll look back on this reconstruction of the ’60’s and see it as nothing but a product of our time. Like, the first time I saw Dirty Dancing, I didn’t even realize that it was supposed to be set in the ’60’s. It read like an ’80’s movie to me. Now, you’re right to say that Dirty Dancing didn’t take itself as seriously as Mad Men is, but still, it’s a thought that festers…