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Take the Money and Run

Take the Money and Run One of the things about subscribing to a movies-by-mail service like Zip.ca is that my obsessive tendencies in watching films can be catered to. So one of the things that I’m doing is going through and adding many older films and collections of films. One of the collections that I’m going through are the early films of Woody Allen and I started with Take the Money and Run, which was his first feature film that he wrote, directed and acted in from 1969. Done in mockumentary style, it’s filled with bits of Allen’s standup and elements that show up in his later work. There are some great sight gags, non-sequiturs and strange situations. At times there is a feeling similar to later comedies such as Airplane! While it is a comedy, the skill in the film is how the cast plays it completely straight which allows Allen to riff and inject jokes into the scenes. The film also features one of my all-time favourite comedy scenes where Allen gives a note to a bank teller who has trouble reading it. The absurdity builds as the teller calls other coworkers over to help him decipher the note as Allen patiently waits and tries to explain.
Structurally it’s more of a parody of prison and crime films, there are some nice moments between the characters that suggest elements that emerge in his later films. The film holds up very well with very few jokes that require a great deal of knowledge of the time. It’s fascinating (and very funny) to see the early work of a director after seeing much of their later work.

July 8, 2005 comedy, dvd, film, review, woodyallen

The Office Series 2

Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais I’ve watched a bit of the second series of The Office and I’m still impressed with it. It’s brilliantly written and performed and it is perched on a knife edge between comedy and pathos. It’s almost a bit painful to watch and it’s interesting to see how the popularity of the show may have altered how the actors and writers approached it. The second series kicks off with a funny little bit to let you know that things are back, but then it throws a few curves as David Brent’s new boss shows up and things just don’t go well for Brent with jokes going awry. What’s great is that any sympathy for Brent is undermined by his telling of a racist joke and how he tries to explain it. The Office is part of an increasingly growing subgenre of comedy that is painful at times to watch as you become invested in the characters. Curb Your Enthusiasm works in the same space as well as Ken Finkleman’s The Newsroom and his much more biting More Tears. What they seem to have in common is strong writing and casts that pull off the documentary feel which heightens drama as well as the comedy. I’ve only watched the first episode of the second series, but I looked at the amazing video diary by co-writer/directors Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais as well as the outtakes. One thing that I think always shows on the screen is how good a time people are having working on a show. The best shows are fun to work on. It looks as if working on The Office would have been great fun. I’m looking forward to more from Gervais and Merchant.

April 21, 2004 comedy, curbyourenthusiasm, dvd, moretears, review, rickygervais, stephenmerchant, thenewsroom, theoffice, tv

Mr. Show Season 3 DVD

I really like Mr. Show and when it was aired in Canada on The Comedy Network I taped as many as I could. But there were some gaps, but now in the age of DVD it is getting easier to get an entire series in a boxed set. The show had a tough time as the fans who were able to find the show loved it, but the people higher up in the production chain didn’t understand it so it was bumped around time slots on HBO and then was cancelled after 4 seasons. I finally got around to buying the third season DVDs since I read on Bob and David’s site that they just recorded the commentary tracks for the fourth season DVDs which could be out any time in the next year. HBO has an odd pattern of releasing DVDs of series. Some things come out fairly regularly, but other things take a long, long time. The third season of Mr. Show continues the sketch comedy series that linked all the sketches together (as Monty Python did). It’s biting and relatively timeless in how the comedy grows out of characters and situations and not directly from the news of the day.

April 17, 2004 bobodenkirk, comedy, davidcross, dvd, montypython

David Cross: Let America Laugh

Let America Laugh DVD I guess that I was expecting more of a concert-type film and it took a bit of adjustment (a few minutes) but then I really got into Lance Bangs‘ road documentary Let America Laugh, which follows David Cross‘ recent tour supporting his comedy cd. Cross is half of Mr. Show (with the other half being Bob Odenkirk) and is a solid, intelligent independent comic. While Mr. Show was produced with HBO and Cross did a great HBO special in 1999, David Cross: The Pride is Back, that special hasn’t been released on VHS or DVD. Mr. Show was slowly released on DVD and the Mr. Show movie, Run Ronnie Run was finally released, but I have yet to see it and apparently it’s not the edit that the filmmakers would prefer to release. So that probably explains why Mr. Cross didn’t go the traditional route of many comedians and stay within the Time Warner AOL, etc, etc, etc world and make more stuff. One problem could be the difficulty in packaging Cross’ acerbic and politically charged material into a sitcom built around David and his quirky neighbours. So that’s probably why the fiercely independent comedian released his comedy CD, Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! on Sub Pop records.
Lance Bangs follows Cross around and does capture chunks of the stand-up, but what is more fascinating is how the documentary shows a great slice of life on the road. There is a lot of focus on the fans and people attending the shows. It’s a great view that gives you the sense of being with Cross as he tours around through the good and the bad. If I have to compare the film in a pitching, high-concept sort of way I would say that it’s a bit of a mix between Grant Gee‘s Meeting People is Easy and Christian Charles‘ Comedian. It’s a road movie that gives you a great slice of life as Cross tries to make people laugh across North America.

January 3, 2004 comedy, davidcross, dvd, film, lancebangs, mrshow, review

School of Rock

I’m a teacher of Screen Arts which is filmmaking, and that’s part of the entertainment industry, which is related to music. One of the great things about my job is that I get to teach cool, rock-star-like people who are creative and don’t always realize the abilities that they have. That’s why I identified with Jack Black‘s character in The School of Rock. The film is directed by Richard Linklater who first burst (or wandered) onto the scene with the rambling, but compelling film Slacker. Slacker is similar to his later film Waking Life and while Waking Life is amazing to look at, it rambles a bit too much and seems more like an essay than a film and lacks the feeling of Slacker. I haven’t obsessively followed Linklater’s films, but I really liked Before Sunrise and I was thinking that maybe I just didn’t like Linklater’s writing or the more heavily philosophical parts of it.

Seeing the trailer for The School of Rock and finding out that Linklater was directing made me think that it could be interesting. The film is built around Jack Black who has been stealing scenes in films such as High Fidelity, Enemy of the State and The Cable Guy. But I first really noticed Mr. Black as part of the cast of Mr. Show where he played a number of characters in the first and second season. Black has great comic timing and was good (but a bit too restrained) in Shallow Hal. In Orange County he played the stoner brother and Mike White, the writer of Orange County wrote The School of Rock for Black. The film allows Black to strike the right balance and he’s funny and solid too. Kind of like Robin Williams when he strikes the balance right in a film.

One of the rules in filmmaking is not to work with kids or animals, but they assemble a great supporting cast with the kids and there is a genuine chemistry with Black. It’s a goofy mistaken-identity film where everyone all learns a valuable lesson and it manages to be funny and sweet without being sappy. I thought that it would be funny and I was surprised by how much I liked it.

October 29, 2003 comedy, film, review, richardlinklater, schoolofrock

Intolerable Cruelty

I’m a big fan of Joel and Ethan Coen’s films. I’ve liked every one of them for different reasons and I’m always excited to see what they’ll do next. They are genre chameleons, similar to Kubrick, moving from noirish drama to slapstick comedy to tragedy and back again. With Intolerable Cruelty they tackle romantic comedy with a nod to older screwball comedies. Some of the reviews of the film were a bit lukewarm and I liked it more than those reviews. One of the neat things about the brothers is that they seem to mold the characters, look, style, tone, and plot together to fit the type of film that they are making. It’s fascinating to look at trailers for many of their films as it’s obvious that the studios have always faced challenges in marketing the films because they straddle so many boundaries. They also work with much of the same team every time which has got to be a lot of fun.

Intolerable Cruelty has some great performances from George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Jones has great comic timing and says so much with just a glance. The film itself is very funny and features some great scenes whose pleasure comes from the surprise of what is happening. As with all of their films, part of the pleasure is in meeting the characters that populate the film. I’m thinking that some of the disappointment amongst some critics is that it seems a little bit more restrained than other Coen brothers films and that could be due to the original script being written by others with Joel and Ethan doing a rewrite. But I had a lot of fun and laughed a lot and still love whatever they’ve done.

Many of the films that they’ve made are cut by them (as Roderick Jaynes) and this is the first one that they’ve cut digitally, using Final Cut Pro. An article on Apple’s web site goes into detail which is great for geeks like me. I love Final Cut Pro and it’s neat to see that Joel and Ethan Coen are using it too.

October 18, 2003 coenbrothers, comedy, ethancoen, film, intolerablecruelty, joelcoen, review

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