Apologies for a lack of recent updates; as so often is the case, life and work conspired to keep me preoccupied last week, but here’s a look at what was happening while I wasn’t posting:

It seems like the Muppets are everywhere. During the past week alone they’ve appeared on WWE Raw (see previous post), The Hour and The Tonight Show (just to name a few shows) along with the covers of Wired Magazine and Entertainment Weekly.

The excellent Suspense Puppetry Festival just wrapped up in London. Gary Friedman was there and he’s been providing some coverage in his blog here and here.

Rick Lyon is reportedly developing a new puppet TV series called Roasters, that will feature celebrities and iconic figures being roasted by puppets (alas, the article link requires a subscription to Variety).

Puppets are also playing a role in the Occupy Wallstreet protests.

Remember Team Smithereen? It’s going back in to production with a new pilot and they’re looking for interns to help out. If you’re interested in learning about puppet fabrication, miniature model building, puppet wardrobe, digital animation, or prop fabrication contact Executive producer Don Asher for more information.

Orson Welles was well-known as a Muppet fan. He famously appears in a cameo at the end of The Muppet Movie and was once quoted saying “Sesame Street is the greatest thing that ever happened to television.” I had no idea though that Jim Henson and Frank Oz were Orson Welles’ quests on a TV pilot he shot in 1979. Of course, after some quick Googling I discovered that the good folks over at Muppet Wiki already knew that (they know everything about Muppets).

Video via The Muppetcast and We Love You So.

Bunraker is a new puppet comedy concept built around a Puppet-host named Fez Holden who introduces faux reality show clips featuring puppet “stars” like Jo “Supernanny” Frost, Chris Angel and Dogg the Bounty Hunter. It’s being envisioned as something that could be used for cable and network TV interstitials, web content and event theatrical shorts or a half-hour TV series.

So far three episodes have been posted online and I think they’re really funny and well done. They were directed by Rob Saunders; the puppeteer cast includes B.J. Guyer, Greg Manion and Christine Papalexis.

Tinseltown (see previous post) is a new TV project from the Jim Henson Company. It’s a puppet sitcom built around a homosexual couple – Bobby Vegan (a pig) and Samson Knight (a bull) – who they juggle work, relationships a 13-year-old human foster son named Foster and careers in Hollywood. The sitcom airs on the Logo Network in the U.S. which caters to gay audiences. Logo has limited availability in the U.S. though so for those that don’t get it on cable the pilot episode of Tinseltown is available to watch online.

You can read more about Tinseltown over at The Muppet Newsflash and Tough Pigs.

Spadasheo was a proposed Canadian puppet series for kids. A pilot/demo video for the show was shot back in 2001 and featured a great crew of twentysomething Canadian puppeteers including Jay Williams (see previous post), Mike Artelle, Kanja Chen and the über talented Marty Stelnick, among others. The series was never picked up, which was too bad because it had a lot of potential (disclosure: I worked on a few of the puppets for this and did some uncredited background/right arm puppeteering). It’s nice to finally see the pilot available to watch on the web!

The full pilot for The Big Magic Book (see previous post) is now available to watch online. There are a lot of very talented people behind this project, including a few names that should be familiar to PuppetVision readers; the fantastic looking puppets in the show were mostly built by Pasha Romanowski and the great-looking animated opening sequence was put together by Nate Pacheco, who also built a couple of the minor puppet characters. The sets looks great, the music is good and there’s a lot of high-energy fun and silliness throughout the entire episode.

Still, to me The Big Magic Book feels like a cake that’s been baked with a lot of great ingredients, but a recipe that isn’t quite there yet. The one thing the show really seems to need is a good story editor. There’s lots of great-looking characters, but there’s so many that it’s hard to get really invested in most of them. The show is really high energy, but almost to the point of being spastic. Also, the puppet voices are dubbed and it really shows (one of the quickest ways to create a disconnect between an audience and a puppet character is to use a canned or dubbed voice).

Still, it’s important to remember that this is a pilot and a work-in-progress and a really good one at that. Overall, I think that The Big Magic Book has tons of potential. You’ll need to go through the hassle of downloading and installing the Div/X web player to watch the pilot, but go take a look at The Big Magic Book and see what you think.

Update: Apparently the video has been pulled off the net. All that’s seen at the link now is a collection of Muppet videos. Too bad.

A trailer for The Big Magic Book is available on YouTube. As I mentioned in my last post about this project, there are some really talented people involved in this and it looks pretty promising. My only suggestion would be to just put the whole pilot online. Sites like YouTube are ideal for testing ideas to see whether they stick or not and if you end up generating a million or more views your project is going to look a heck of a lot more attractive to anyone you pitch it to. The rules of the game have changed and I don’t think it pays to keep your cards close to your chest the way it used to.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents. This looks like a lot of fun so best of luck to the gang at the Big Magic Book!

Muppet fan sites have been buzzing recently about a possible new Muppet series that is being developed by Disney. According to the reports, something called The 2007 Muppet Presentation Pilot was recently shot as a spec pilot (spec pilots are not commissioned by a network or channel and usually used as part of the proposal for a new series). The pilot was apparently directed by Bill Barretta and featured puppetry by most of the lead Muppet performers including Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Barretta, and Eric Jacobson. You can read more about the pilot at The Muppet Newsflash.

As exciting as I know this news will sound to Muppet fans, it comes from one or two anonymous sources and should probably be treated as rumour at this point until there is some sort of official announcement. It’s also important to remember that even if a pilot was shot there is no guarantee that there will be a series. Anybody remember America’s Next Muppet?

Last month the Travel Channel aired the pilot episode of Puppet Planet (not to be confused with John Kennedy’s great puppet making book), a new travel series hosted by three puppet characters. I haven’t seen the full episode yet, but a short clip has been posted on Google Video.