Fans of the Three Flavours Cornetto / Blood and Ice Cream film trilogy did a spit-take when Nick Frost revealed last month that production on the long-awaited third entry could start as early as this year. The news is especially poignant considering its been a little over ten years since Frost's first project with Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, the short-lived cult sitcom Spaced, went off the air in the UK. And although the trio went on to become international stars together with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and on their own in various other film projects, their work on Spaced, about two down-on-their-luck Londoners [...]
For this installment, we are going back to a classic: the 2004-2005 mindfuck that is Nighty Night. Julia Davis writes and stars as the most psychopathically awkward woman to ever grace a comedy. It’s British, of course, and focuses on the exploits of Jill Tyrell, narcissist for the ages, and her desperate attempts to win the love of the suburban dope next door while also savaging everything else.
In the Steve Coogan-produced show, Davis throttles the trope of unattractive leading protagonist to full on repulsive. She is actually attractive, in the sense that she wears thong underwear. She loves sex. But she also keeps bags of dog shit under [...]
In this weekly column, I’ll introduce you to the world of British comedy in the chronology of how I, an American anglophile, discovered it in my life. This week: High Spirits With Shirley Ghostman.
I am an absolute junkie for shitty paranormal reality shows. As a kid, I obsessed over any program that offered even a whiff of “real” occult incidents. I particularly remember watching Maury Povich or some other day-time chat show host interviewing a, “haunted” family from Connecticut (where I grew up!), who had demons tormenting them day and night. If it could happen to them, it could happen to me!
Ghosts fascinated me. Tarot, Ouija, [...]
In this weekly column, I’ll introduce you to the world of British comedy in the chronology of how I, an American anglophile, discovered it in my life. This week: Nathan Barley.
There used to be a time when the word, “hipster,” evoked the image of that lovable Seinfeld doofus, Kramer. But somewhere between the late 90’s and the mid aughts, the term, “hipster,” became the catch-all description for alternative minded young people.
And when I say, “alternative minded,” what I actually mean is obnoxiously self-centered, irony-steeped, trust-fund reliant, aggressively apathetic, faux-intellectual jerks. NYC’s East Village and Williamsburg, Brooklyn seemed to be its epicenter. However, those scenes more often [...]
