To Dust (dir. Shawn Snyder) “Isn’t that sweet,” I thought when I picked up my mother’s dropped pocket calendar. So many dates had names on them. Mom doesn’t want to[…]
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Focus on Robert Altman: Three Takes on Popeye
Unassimilated weirdness is typical of Popeye – even in its soundtrack, where goofy “boing” effects are used to accompany ordinary, unheroic movement. Sweethaven’s anthem, the Harry Nilsson song “Everything Is[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
No One Gets In Alive! Kicking Down Doors with the Marx Brothers
The Brothers don’t enter into sanctimonious class systems, organizational institutions, or drawing rooms to assimilate and enjoy the fruits of its privileges either; they gain access, enact a savage modus[…]
Comedy · Comics · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
Watch It Again! Batman: The Movie (1966)
The recent passing of Adam West – who made Batman his own despite the many higher-profile claimants to the cape – reminds us of the feature film based on the witty TV[…]
Marathon Season: Arrested Development 4
(this is a) breakthrough in the way media is delivered, solidifying the idea that the voice of the fans can revive just about anything, and introducing the full season ‘back-to-back’ marathon as the new ideal form of immersive simulacratic experience.
Bridesmaids Revisited
Last summer, in the midst of the The Hangover 2‘s disappointingly massive success, another comedy came along, which went on to become something of a triumph of box office girlpower,[…]
The Inspector’s Speech
Featuring Andrea and Steve Martin. Comic geniuses. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUMhA8Ye3x8] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j-b0kP7Cf8] If the scene in which Steve Martin as Inspector Clousseau attempts to learn English pronunciation (bottom) bears more than a passing resemblance[…]
Hot Tube Time Machine – Fun, but Repeating on Itself
When asked about the John Hughes films in a recent NY Times interview, John Cusack played the highbrow card. Besides Sixteen Candles, in which he had a minor role, Cusack[…]
Apatow and Agnostic Comedy
I recently screened Judd Apatow’s Funny People (the latest in a long list of theatrical releases that the blogosphere has loved to “ehhh” about) with a group of friends, and[…]
Meta-Meta-Sketch Comedy?
Post-modern sketch comedy is, by nature, repellent. This is by no means a new phenomenon: Monty Python had cops projectile-vomiting into their caps over crunchy frog when most of today’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · TV & Streaming
Year of the Comedienne
2008, the year of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, has also been the year of the comic actress in television and film. It’s not that comic actresses haven’t always been[…]
The Commodification of Anna Faris
Anna Faris in Smiley Face (above) and The House Bunny (below). I first noticed Anna Faris in the Scary Movie franchise in which she parodied, among other things, Neve Campbell’s[…]
