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?
Like Why We Laugh, Comedy Gold: The Hilarious Story of Canadian Comedy is an overview of a culture’s comedy. Comedy Gold is a 3-hour Canadian comedy extravaganza, originally aired over two nights on CBC in 2006. It features an incredible breadth of old [...]
Wearing too short madras pants and a cardigan sweater, national treasure Bill Murray explains the setting and plot of the next Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom. In the clip, Murray is either drunk or really great at pretending to be drunk. It's a much watch, regardless of your opinion of Mr. Anderson (Get it? Like The Matrix), for Murray's descriptions of his castmates alone: "Edward Norton. He does a lot of psycho work. He's playing against type." "Tilda Swinton's in this one too. She's tall, she's Scottish, she's pretty, she can do whatever she likes." Moonrise Kingdom comes out in select theatres this Friday, May 25th; hopefully, it's [...]
This is an exciting one. Sandra Bullock is set to play an uptight, grizzled FBI agent and Melissa McCarthy a zany Boston cop in a still untitled comedy.Parks & Recreation writer Kate Dippold wrote the script and Paul Fieg is signed on to direct. That is a mighty stacked line-up, with everyone perfectly fit for their roles. No word yet on when the film is supposed to be released but, whenever it is, it will surely be our favorite of that month or year or lifetime.
Morg-Freems is the third actor, joining Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas, added to Last Vegas, a movie about old bros going to Las Vegas (More like Bucket (filled with coins) List). Here's the surprising part: the film might be good. The movie was written by Dan Fogelman who wrote last year's very solid Crazy, Stupid, Love and John Turtletaub is set to direct, who beyond doing the National Treasure movies also directed the "classic" buddy comedy Cool Runnings. They're still looking for a fourth old bro so if you know any old people, send them to Hollywood. I'd like to suggest Rip Torn because he's kind of like [...]
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?
In my experience, a lot of comedy documentaries consciously try to avoid the stereotypes of documentary filmmaking, possibly as a way to emphasize the “outsiderness” of comedy. So Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy stands out as an old-fashioned documentary about [...]
Ray Romano and the gang are coming back this summer for their fourth(!!!!) round of frozen fun. Before you throw your (ro)manos in the air in disgust, know that The Simpsons' team might make the experience at least somewhat redeemable. As the clip above suggests, Maggie Simpson will be starring in a short film entitled The Longest Daycare that will play before Ice Age 4: Older and Colder. The movie premieres on July 13; I don't think anyone would complain if it just played 3-D version of this famous Simpsons scene:
Vulture has an interview with current Louie editor/Woody Allen's former editorSusan E. Morse. She discusses the similarities between the two brilliant comedians:
They’re very similar in the sense that they can write quickly, and if they see something isn’t working the way they envisioned it, they are both right there with a million alternative ways of expressing the same idea. There’s enormous flexibility there, and creativity, and that’s very helpful. Also, both are very open to discussion about things. I think that that’s not the way people on the outside view them, but when you’re working directly with them, they both really do want to hear what [...]
There were a lot of publicity stunts used to promote The Dictator, which made it apparent very early that people just didn't care that much about this movie. General Aladeen is not going to be the 2012's omnipresent Borat. And the lousy box office projections reflect this. The only thing that might have saved it was if it was so good that overwhelming critical fawning overshadowed all the negative opinion. So what did the critics have to say?
Just for some context, Borat was as much of critical smash as it was a box office one, garnering a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and 89 on Metacritic. Bruno faired much [...]
The beach party genre began in 1963 with the release of Beach Party by American International Pictures (the irony of the name presumably lost on the company). Largely inspired by Gidget and tropical Elvis Presley musicals, the genre grew as AIP and imitators released more films that centered on teens partying at the beach. And nothing else.
While the first film Beach Party was conflict-free, the sequels added villains who threatened to stop the teens’ beach partying, including jocks (Muscle Beach Party), land developers (Bikini Beach), Martians (Pajama Party), and ghosts (The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini). Every time, these outside forces are defeated. Although these films were intended as comedies, taking [...]
Alexander Payne, writer/director of such minor (not minor at all) films as The Descendants, Sideways, and Election, wants Will Forte to star in his next film, Nebraska, with Bruce Dern. Deadline reports the film is about "an alcoholic [Dern] on the downside of his life, who gets a sweepstakes letter in the mail and mistakenly thinks he’s struck it rich. He gets in a car to head down to claim his fortune, accompanied by his underachieving son [Forte]." It's an interesting pair, considering Dern has primarily worked as a character actor his entire career and Forte has never been in anything with this sort of heft (except all of [...]
Considering its subject matter and the fact that it earned less than $9 million domestically, it was really easy to make jokes about MacGruber bombing. However, ever since, the film has been developing quite the cult following, especially in the comedy community, because it's so gosh darn hilarious. Which is why the idea of a possible sequel is particularly exciting. Director Jorma Taccone told Screen Crush:
It would be me, Will and John [Solomon] writing it again. Every time I hang out with Will, we talk about all our cool ideas for the sequel. We have the idea for it and we have a title, but I won’t tell you [...]
Filming in September, The Angriest Man in Brooklyn is about a jerk patient who is mistakenly informed by his doctor that he only has 90 minutes to live. The patient tries to right a life's worth of wrongs, while the doctor tries to track him down and reveal his or her error. Sounds intense, right? Well, it's apparently supposed to be quite funny. Maybe the patient is also secretly a Genie, who besides thinking he's dying also does hilarious madcap impressions. Mila Kunis and Peter Dinklage will star alongside Williams. James Earl Jones and Melissa Leo will be in the film as well. They have yet to reveal [...]
Here's your first look at 'Hyde Park on Hudson,' the upcoming historical dramady that stars one Mr. Bill Murray as former president Franklin Roosevelt. Hitting theaters on December 7th, it tells the true story of "the high tension 1939 meeting between America's First Couple, the King and Queen of England — and the president's cousin and maybe-mistress." It looks pretty interesting; it's actually kind of strange to see Murray playing such a character rather than the various shades of himself we've seen him play in recent years. It also certainly looks to be more drama than comedy, with some wry moments of levity brought by Murray's mischievous president. Could this [...]
Max Greenfield will play Paul Rudd's younger brother in the David Wain romantic comedy satire, They Came Together. Earlier this year, Wain directed an episode of the New Girl so one can only assume he caught a look at Greenfield's thoroughly impressive Jewish abs and knew he had to cast him in one of his movies.
