Mar. 26, 2015
Using Shock and Violence for Comedy’s Sake in ‘Wild Tales’ Oscar Best Foreign Language film nominee Wild Tales, directed by Argentine filmmaker Damián Szifron, is an anthology of six short films […]
Feb. 26, 2015
How ‘Parks and Rec’ Transcended its Mockumentary Roots NBC’s Parks and Recreation ended its seven-season run Tuesday night and will go down as undoubtedly my favorite sitcom of its era. Created as a […]
Feb. 5, 2015
Looking at the Comedy-ish Movies That Premiered at Sundance This Year Sundance 2015, the unofficial film industry new year marker, has come and gone, leaving in its wake as usual a pile of must-see titles, […]
Jan. 15, 2015
How Chris Rock Made the Personal Impersonal in ‘Top Five’ I have been a big fan of Chris Rock’s since I was young. “No Sex (in the Champagne Room)” was one of the first comedy things I listened to in […]
Dec. 25, 2014
The Best Comedy Directors of 2014 As this column wraps up its first full year, I present the 1st Annual 2014 Comedy Film School Awards. These awards are determined by a voting […]
Nov. 20, 2014
‘High Maintenance’ and the Art of the Audience Surrogate With the release of three new episodes last week, High Maintenance went from the one web series you need to be watching to the one web series […]
Oct. 30, 2014
How Adam McKay Directs at the Top of His Intelligence Adam McKay’s path to becoming a director began as a notoriously mischievous improvisor under the tutelage of guru Del Close in Chicago, then […]
Oct. 9, 2014
The Subtle Brilliance of Jill Soloway’s ‘Transparent’ Transparent, Amazon’s foray into the Netflix-infested waters of quality internet binge watching, is deservedly the most critically-lauded show […]
Sept. 18, 2014
What Does it Mean to Direct an Adam Sandler Movie? The Adam Sandler assembly line began production in 1995 with Billy Madison and has since churned out over 20 films under the Happy Madison […]
Aug. 28, 2014
Is ‘Modern Family’ Really the Best-Directed Comedy on TV? On Monday night, Gail Mancuso took home the Emmy for “Outstanding Direction for a Comedy Series” for her work the Modern Family season five […]
Aug. 14, 2014
How Richard Linklater Uses Naturalism to Find Comedy Richard Linklater is having what can probably be considered the most visible period of his career with the release of his highly anticipated […]
July 31, 2014
How ‘Nathan for You’ Brilliantly Blows Up Reality TV Popularized by The Office in the early 2000s, the “mockumentary” format has become the common TV style choice to tell loose, location-based, […]
July 10, 2014
‘Annie Hall’ and Woody Allen’s Experimental Visual Film Style The prospect of writing about Woody Allen has loomed large over my writing since the inception of this column last year for many reasons. […]
June 26, 2014
David Wain and His Parodies of Exuberance There are many ways to go about parodying a form, however from Mel Brooks’ smug send-ups to Nathan Fielder’s biting critique of the types of […]
June 5, 2014
How the Visual Direction of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton Inform […] Many of those with whom I interact on the internet have sent me this fantastic video essay by Tony Zhou in which he eviscerates the experience […]
May 22, 2014
How Nicholas Stoller Grounds ‘Neighbors’, ‘Get Him to the Greek’, and His […] Early in Neighbors, a new comedy by Nicholas Stoller, Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne), stuck in their carefully planned adult home with […]
May 1, 2014
David Gordon Green and the Serious Foundations of His Comedies If, in the year 2007, a reader wanted content on the films of David Gordon Green, a comedy website would hardly have been their first stop. At […]
Apr. 17, 2014
Does FX’s ‘Fargo’ Keep the Original’s Darkness While Losing the Comedy? Many words have been written this week about Tuesday’s premiere of the FX eponymous miniseries adaptation of Fargo, particularly in regards to […]
Mar. 27, 2014
The Duplass Brothers and Bringing the Lo-Fi Mumblecore Aesthetic to […] With the recent mainstream indie success of Mumblecore pioneers Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies and Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, it seems […]
Mar. 13, 2014
Applying the Auteur Theory to Kevin Smith In the early ‘90s American Indie boom, auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh emerged into the zeitgeist with personal, […]
Feb. 27, 2014
How ‘The Lego Movie’ Manages to Keep a Bunch of Plates Spinning All at Once While you certainly don’t need me to tell you that the number one movie in the country three weeks running is a success, The Lego Movie seems […]
Feb. 13, 2014
How ‘Family Guy’ Gets the Comedic Cutaway So Wrong By now, the cutaway has become a television comedy staple, allowing programs to reveal information, flashback, build on a joke, or […]
Jan. 23, 2014
The Evolution of ‘SNL’s Pretaped Sketches and Digital Shorts Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island were not the first to produce pre-recorded material for Saturday Night Live. The show has a long tradition […]
Jan. 9, 2014
How Lena Dunham’s Directing Style Makes ‘Girls’ More Emotionally Resonant […] At some point in the last two years it became a legal requirement in the United States to have an opinion about Lena Dunham. So, here is mine: […]
Dec. 12, 2013
Mel Brooks and His Wonderful Rejection of Subtlety Back in a time when our primary source of film-watching outside the movie theatre involved a trip to a video store, it was much harder to be a […]
Nov. 27, 2013
Paul Feig, ‘Bridesmaids’, and Comedy with a ‘Feminine Sensibility’ Starting with the creation of his breakout sitcom, Freaks and Geeks, and the lead character of Lindsay Weir, Paul Feig has said publicly and […]
Nov. 14, 2013
How Director Peter Atencio Acts as the Unsung, Essential Third Member of […] In addition to being one of the most consistently funny sketch shows on TV, Key and Peele is also praised for its highly stylized, cinematic […]
Oct. 31, 2013
The Auteur Theory of Judd Apatow More than any modern day comedy director, Judd Apatow can be considered an auteur.
Auteur Theory, first written about by Francois Truffaut in […]
Oct. 17, 2013
How Louis CK’s Directing Style Helps Him Translate His Standup to the […] Louis C.K. is a filmmaker.
That is not to undermine his world-class abilities as a writer and performer, but rather to emphasize the role his […]