Here's a new red band trailer for the upcoming comedy The Kings of Summer, which features Nick Offerman yelling at a teenager about masturbating and saying "fuck you" to a police officer. What else could you possibly want from a movie?
With Bill Hader poised to leave Saturday Night Live after tomorrow's season finale, don't expect him to try to turn his most popular character from the show into a movie. Hader tells GQ, "There's no emotional through line. Sometimes people say to me 'I want a Stefon movie' and I'm like, you think you want a Stefon movie but then you'll see the poster for it and think, 'Wait, I don't want this.'" If only Bill Hader had been on the show during the '90s, when all of SNL's most popular characters got turned into movies, then he probably could have been pressured into making a Stefon movie and satisfying you [...]
After eight seasons as a cast member, Bill Hader is leaving Saturday Night Live. Hader tells The NY Times, "It was a hard decision, but it has to happen at some point. It got to a point where I said, 'Maybe it’s just time to go.'" In the Times announcement, Lorne Michaels recalls a young Bill Hader reminding him of Dan Aykroyd. "In terms of intelligence and talent, he was in that same tradition. He was so completely committed to the art of it and enough a student of it that there’s something strikingly original. He didn't explode onto the air, but gradually he found his voice, and [...]
Denmark's finest comedians are taking the reins of Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie. Variety reports that Baron Cohen has hired Danish duo Casper Christensen and Frank Hvam, who wrote and starred in the cult hit comedy Klown (or Klovn in Denmark) and the TV series of the same name upon which the movie was based, to write his upcoming film The Lesbian. Announced last year, The Lesbian is a starring vehicle for Baron Cohen based on Hong Kong billionaire Cecil Chao, who offered $64 million to any man who could convince his lesbian daughter to marry him so she wouldn't marry her longtime girlfriend. You know, [...]
Adam Scott may be the new face of the Hot Tub Time Machine franchise. When a sequel to the 2010 time travel comedy was announced in January, stars Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke were onboard but leading man John Cusack was not. Now, The Wrap reports that Parks and Recreation and Party Down star Adam Scott is in negotiations to play the sequel's lead character, a totally different character from Cusack's. Hot Tub Time Machine director Steve Pink is returning and co-writing the script with Corddry, who didn't have a hand in writing the original. Although John Cusack was fine in the original, Adam Scott [...]
It’s no secret that sometimes comedy is taken a bit too seriously. Comedy obsessives love not just the jokes, but the mechanics and emotions of the comedy world. There are a raft of comedy documentaries exploring comedy and comedians, but do they really have anything significant to add to the discussion? This series looks at comedy documentaries and whether they’re interesting, insightful, and possibly even…funny?
Right now would seem like an ideal time to release The Arrested Development Documentary Project. In the midst of an almost dizzying amount of excitement about the fourth season of Arrested Development, premiering May 26 on Netflix, the show has gotten more press and [...]
Living comedy legend Martin Short is set to star in his first movie in several years, and it's a pretty prestigious one. The Wrap reports that Short has been cast in Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie Inherent Vice, an adaptation of the 2009 Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as pothead private eye Doc Sportello, who's investigating the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend. Short joins a supporting cast that also includes Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, and Reese Witherspoon. Short's small role in the movie is being kept under wraps. He recently starred in Mulaney, SNL writer/stand-up John Mulaney's Lorne Michaels-produced sitcom that [...]
Old School stars Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn are set to reunite. Paramount announced yesterday that the duo will be starring alongside each other in Daddy's Home, a project Ferrell has been attached to for over three years. The movie follows "a mild-mannered radio executive (Ferrell) who strives to become the best stepdad ever to his wife’s two children, but complications ensue when their freewheeling, freeloading real father (Vaughn) arrives, forcing stepdad to compete for the affection of the kids."
Ferrell originally signed on to play the other part in 2010 with Ed Helms cast as the wimpy stepdad. Helms is no longer involved in Daddy's Home, which is being [...]
Maybe the most satisfying part of making comedy (as opposed to dramas or action movies or movies where teenagers kill each other in a weird tournament for some reason) is that you can listen to your audience’s laughter to gauge if you’ve succeeded or not. If they laugh, you’ve succeeded — it’s that simple. Accordingly, there’s very little more uncomfortable to a comedian than a completely silent audience — and conversely, there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a crowd screaming with laughter at a joke that you’ve labored over for months.
In that way, The Exquisite Corpse Project has been really successful (much to our tremendous relief), and [...]
It needs to have a cute, little kid who is always outsmarting the grown-ups. There. That's it. That's what's going to make your movie stand above the rest: a little kid — a cute, little kid — and he has to be clever and cute, and, most importantly, he must outsmart the grown-ups. That's what the audience wants, and that's what you will give them.
Here's why this is going to work. Let's say you've got this other guy in your movie, this uptight accountant-type. A real square peg who's always bringing the mood down with his lectures and polo shirt. He thinks he's going to spend all of [...]
Here's the first official image from Larry David's new HBO movie Clear History, in which Larry David looks to be pretty much unrecognizable next to a normal-looking Jon Hamm. Entertainment Weekly has a teaser trailer and reports that the film, written by and starring David, will be premiering on HBO sometime this August. David plays a former marketing exec whose life falls apart after his boss makes millions off of their electric car company, and he's backed up by an eclectic supporting cast that includes Jon Hamm, Bill Hader, Philip Baker Hall, Kate Hudson, Michael Keaton, Danny McBride, Eva Mendes, Amy Ryan, and J.B. Smoove. If Clear History [...]
Saturday Night Live alum Will Forte is set to take a rare dramatic turn in Nebraska, a new movie directed by Oscar-winner Alexander Payne that's set to debut at the Cannes Film Festival in France this week. Here's the first clip from the movie, which also features Bruce Dern and Stacy Keach. Nebraska is in black-and-white and the clip features French subtitles, so don't say I didn't warn those of you who hate black-and-white/other languages.
Iron Man 3 raked in a ton of cash this weekend and officially kicked off the 2013 summer movie season, which is set to contain an unusually high amount of comedies. From blockbuster sequels like The Hangover III and Grown Ups 2 to indie fare like Michael Cera's psychedelic drug movie Crystal Fairy and Joss Whedon's Shakespeare adaptation, this year's summer movie season has a wide variety of comedies to offer. Your best bets this time around look like Bridesmaids director Paul Feig's Sandra Bullock-Melissa McCarthy buddy cop movie The Heat and two dueling apocalypse comedies, This Is the End from Seth Rogen and Company and The World's End [...]
It's been six long years since Hot Fuzz, the last movie Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright made together, but that wait is almost over as their new movie The World's End is coming out August 23rd. Starring Pegg and Nick Frost as some friends on an apocalyptic pub crawl, it looks to have everything you expect from a Wright/Pegg venture, including that patented fence gag.
