“The greatest show ever” or “overrated”? “Cynical” or “postmodern”?
→Tags: Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Comedy, TV, Personal, Edward Copeland on Film
EssayThe less-than-stellar Elektra Luxx fails to eliminate the bad taste left from the Election Day documentary 11/4/08:
→The director of 11/4/08 states that he enlisted the help of friends around the world to film their experiences on Election Day in order to “see what history looks like,” but you know how the saying goes: History is written by the winners.
Tags: SXSW, Documentary, Comedy, Political, The House Next Door
EssayIn my first report from this year’s SXSW, I look at Michel Gondry’s family documentary The Thorn in the Heart, Ivan Reitman’s early and terrible Cannibal Girls, and Crying with Laughter:
→Joey Frisk (a very capable Stephen McCole) is a fireball on the verge of flaming out.
Tags: SXSW, Comedy, Camp, Documentary, Michel Gondry, Ivan Reitman, The House Next Door
ReviewIt’s no tall order to write a tragedy set during the Great Depression, but I imagine it takes some restraint to write one where the era’s circumstances aren’t the immediate sources of distress.
→Tags: Woody Allen, Jeff Daniels, Comedy, Edward Copeland on Film
ReviewProbably the most famous thing about Woody Allen’s 1980 film Stardust Memories is the self-referential recurring joke of fans telling a filmmaker that they prefer his “earlier, funnier movies” to his more artistic efforts.
→Tags: Woody Allen, Comedy, Slapstick, Edward Copeland on Film
ReviewIt’s tempting to believe that nostalgia fuels most of the lasting appeal of The Muppet Movie as so many people literally grew up with these characters. I, however, watched the movie for the first time a few years ago as a nearly blank slate, enabling me to objectively see that, after 30 years, the film still captivates.
→Tags: Jim Henson, Comedy, Musical, Edward Copeland on Film
Essay→Each summer, a comedy or two come along hoping to carve for themselves a place among the upper echelon of modern comedies, the ones that last, that get quoted, that become a part of popular culture. Anchorman, Zoolander, Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad—these films forcefully grabbed us by the arm, stick a needle in, and injected themselves into our bloodstream.
Tags: Comedy, The Hangover, Forces of Geek
ReviewSunshine Cleaning gets its emotions and characters right, but feels the need to force them into specific situations. It leaves long stretches of story untouched, allowing the characters to be, exist, and reveal, only to intervene at somewhat critical points to steer the story in the direction it planned on going.
→Tags: Amy Adams, Comedy, Edward Copeland on Film
ReviewMany describe Manhattan as more of a love story between a man and his city than a traditional love story between a man and a woman. I disagree with that, as I feel the plot of Isaac and Mary and Tracy really is the story being told. However, I do interpret the film itself, and the way it was made, not as Isaac’s relationship with Manhattan, but the director’s.
→Tags: Woody Allen, Comedy, Romance, Edward Copeland on Film
Review“Small-time crooks” doesn’t even begin to describe the Notorious Newman Brothers. As two low-rent movie-quoting Italian-Canadian mobsters, they boast of drug deals and murders (including some in the little-known 4th and 5th degrees) but the reality around them contradicts; in one of the first moments we spend with them, they’re breaking into a neighborhood home.
→Tags: Butler Brothers, Uber-Indie, Comedy
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