This might be my favorite British TV show since The League of Gentlemen (Not that I’ve seen a lot since then. Though Peep Show was funny).
It’s going to start running on Comedy Central in April, and like League it also came from a live stage show and radio program. It’s somewhat akin to Flight of the Conchords since there are songs, and it focuses on a duo, one more handsome than the other.
Anyway, since it’s gone unmentioned here, and I desperately need to move those vomit-inducing Jerry Lewis clips down the queue, I thought I’d post this.
I’ve only seen the first two episodes of season one, but from that I’m betting it stays strong.
Unembeddable YouTube linkie here.
Saw
Vicky Christina Barcelona. Painfully bad.
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder. Maybe the best movie/episode of the whole show. Blows away the last 6 or 7 years of The Simpsons.
Revolutionary Road. A terribly directed movie. I saw Little Children just a few days after this, and it’s ten times better. Very disappointing.
Choke: Not funny, sexy, or offensive.
W. Just bad. Brolin is a decent mimic. But Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, and Cromwell are not handled well at all. Bad writing, bad editing…
Quantum of Solace I have mixed feelings. There were some outstanding action sequences. And Roman Polanski gives his best performance as a villain since Chinatown. What? Not Polanski?
Role Models: My expectations were low, and this exceeded them by a large degree. It’s very funny, Sean William Scott wasn’t terribly annoying, and Paul Rudd is just flat out funny.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley:An absolute delight for people who love to watch the Irish be tortured. I stopped watching half an hour in. Dayna stopped shortly thereafter when they started pulling out fingernails. I am sure it’s quite good.
The Return of the Living Dead Great 1980s horror comedy. “Send more cops” indeed.
The one and only Old Greg:
which of the conchords is more handsome than the other?
They’re both hot, Mel.
OK, I very much enjoyed Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It is minor Allen but far superior to most everything he’s done in the last fifteen years or so. There is not an annoying Woody “substitute” character (Vicky comes closest but the actor in no way attempts to mimic the thread-bare Woody schtick). A number of recognizable WA thematic threads make an appearance (the classic being the young woman who desires to express herself but worries – correctly – that she has no talent). Still, Woody takes a nice detour away from Bergman-esque noir to something resembling an Éric Rohmer comic talk-fest. I liked it.
Revolutionary Road. OK, I do not like the films of Sam Mendes so I’m going to argue this is his best film, and his work with actors is superb. Little Children is a far superior piece of filmmaking but it suffers from a horrible script. In RR Leo and Kate are fantastic, Michael Shannon burns a hole through the screen, Kathy Bates reminds us why she deserves to keep her Academy Award, and the film looks gorgeous without feeling forced (thank you Roger Deakins). This is dark, alienating and somewhat cliched material (accidental death by self-abortion? really?), but the adaptation works well (the way it weaves in and out of time) and the actors don’t shy away from the material. It’s far better than The Reader, which has its moments but suffers from another clumsy script. What I liked most about Daldry’s third feature is the way it narrows in on the furtive and taciturn ways in which childhood sexual abuse eats away at the soul. Winslet is good, but Ralph Fiennes’ subtle, heartbreaking work as an adult navigating the world as if he were a ghost is just too good for a film about a Nazi monster (Kate as the banality of evil writ large) who just wants to learn to read.
W.? Absolutely. The movie sucks.
Role Models? Yes. Very funny. Paul Rudd is hilarious.
I too did not care for the carefully aestheticized horrors of The Wind That Shakes the Barley. There was a conversation on this site a year or so ago where I was repeatedly told I was wrong, so I’m glad Mark has joined the dark side when it comes to that film. Troubles indeed!
And I’m with you as to the latest Bond caper as well. No joy to be found in any frame, though the Tosca sequence is kinda cool.
I was wondering why I took such a severe dislike to Woody Allen’s movie myself. I used to enjoy his romps through the morals and romantic tribulations of the casually wealthy. Now he bores and bothers me. I’ve skipped most of his movies since Small Time Crooks almost a decade ago. I guess I’d like it if in the middle of the second act, they realized Bernie Maddoff had taken every cent of their money.
And honestly I didn’t finish Revolutionary Road. I tried twice. It just felt fake and acted to me. I had no idea there was an abortion and death. And the scene of them meeting that was supposed to set up their romance failed for me. So I didn’t believe they ever were happy, or ever did share similar bohemian-like dreams to begin with. So everything after that also rang fake to me, including rebelling against the status quo.
Thanks for forcing me to give at least a modicum of thought to my brief dismissals.
I enjoyed Boosh‘s first season, now on Netflix.
I also watched ye olde Dana Carvey show, a short-lived sketch-comedy revue from 1996, which is rather painfully stuck in 1996, producing a weird kind of sadness/nostalgia at Carvey’s dead-on impersonation of Charles Grodin during his talk show — I’m not sure that impersonation was relevant and well-received in ’96, let alone now. And some gags/sketches are dull and go nowhere. And a few suggest the brilliance involved (Robert Smigel, Louis C.K., Charlie Kaufman on writing staff; Colbert & Carell among the cast): a throwaway bit where we see a tv set and hear the announcer noting Braveheart‘s win for best picture, and pan to a living room full of farm animals who are disgusted by the choice. Or, better yet, a recurrent bit called “Germans Saying Nice Things” where Carvey and Carell at their spittle-flecking loudest scream niceties …
Or, best of all, and probably the knife in the heart for the show’s long-term success, an opening sketch–the very first sketch of the show!–where Bill Clinton addresses the nation about the ’96 election, at first smirking then openly chuckling about his “competition,” and then talking about his own attempts to be more nurturing, and opening his shirt to reveal breasts, whereupon he suckles first a baby then some puppies and a few kittens….
i too was taken by surprise by how much i enjoyed role models. paul rudd is indeed a god, and who knew seann william scott could not be annoying? but the movie belongs to the little kid who plays ronnie. unless, of course, he’s a middle-aged russian midget.
i also like the mighty boosh, especially the running gag in which noel fielding is consistently mistaken for a woman. i’ve only seen the first season so far, but the second is queuing up on the dvr.
I concur. Role Models is good fun. Though isn’t Paul Rudd playing the same character in every movie he makes? Ronnie is great. He had me at the butt suck chipmunk ass butt song. I look forward to seeing the alternate version of this film in which the last act is devoted to him, not to Augie.