Is there anyone who doesn’t read Dilbert every day? Well, if you don’t, I present today’s Dilbert without further comment.
Tag Archives: comedy
And Sunday arrived in that usual Sunday arriving style
In which every paragraph is a segway.
Lovely fresh November morning. No rain yet although it looks like we might be in for some later. I’m not sure how it works but during October it’s always too cold to have the patio doors open, where-as in November there’s nothing better than sitting in the computer room with the door open enough for the crisp clean air to sneak in.
Because spending 7 hours at a craft exhibition wasn’t enough, the girls are all going to Hobbycraft in a bit, maybe it’s considered a suitable ‘warm down’ after the full on exhibition.
A friend of mine found a screen callibration bit on a THX DVD and mentioned it to me, so I may spend the time they’re out seeing if I can tune our screen any more. I’m quite happy with how it looks but there’s always that vague concern that you’ve picked some weird settings and pink skin is looking orange but you never noticed. Sunday’s just the kind of day for doing lazy LCD screen tuning I think.
John Scalzi wrote up a Quantum of Solace review, which I totally agree with. Despite the fact that I still don’t really know who John is (I just stalk his blog) I feel at least now I could share a pint of beer with him and have one topic to chat about that we agreed on 🙂 That’s the internet, bringing together people who don’t know each other and fooling them into thinking they do.
Mark wrote a blog update, which I really enjoyed, despite his implication that he shouldn’t write them too often. How am I supposed to live vicariously through other people if they don’t tell me what they’re doing?
We watched a comedy show on ITV last night, in honour of Prince Charles’ 60th birthday and some of the acts were really funny. One guy stood out, I’ve seen him before and really enjoyed his stuff. He’s Omid Djalili and you can check out his web site over here. He manages to poke fun at a lot of racial issues and particularly racial accents and still stay on the right side of the line (in my view) and is pretty funny. There’s some videos of him on the site, check them out.
Midnight Run
In a continuing theme of finding random films on Sky Movies that I’ve not seen yet, we watched Midnight Run last night. It’s a reasonably typical buddy-cop action comedy style movie from the late 80’s staring Robert De Niro. The story centres around De Niro’s character, an ex-Chicago cop turned bounty hunter, his history with the mob, and a bail bond collection he has to bring back before midnight in five days from the start of the flick.
The otherwise simple collection is complication by the involvement of several other factions. The FBI has an interest, the mob has an interest, De Niro’s ex-wife and family show up briefly, another bounty hunter is involved and the bail runner himself (an ex-mob accountant) clearly has some involvement. The single-threaded plot moves forward at a good pace to bring all these factions together at various moments and then again for the finale.
There’s no overt slapstick here, the comic moments come from the story, characters and the dialog. De Niro brings his usual weight to what could have been a pretty light role, adding depth and emotion to the main character. The supporting cast is pretty good, and I enjoyed Yaphet Kotto as the main FBI agent. The dialog between De Niro and Charles Grodin’s character (the ex-accountant) drives the story forward and makes up a good 50% of the on-screen action, so luckily it’s interesting and worth listening to.
Midnight Run is a better than average implementation of a common 80’s theme, standing above the others due in no small part to De Niro and the well written dialog.
The Incredibles
Well, what a thoroughly entertaining and all round excellent film. Amazing animation, funny characters, interesting story. I half intended to see this in the year it was released (2004) but as usual things got in the way, and since then it’s just never been the right moment or time.
I found myself laughing, crying and cheering in equal amounts, considering the characters on the screen are totally animated it’s impressive how much emotion they manage to generate.
There’s clearly not much to be said about the deep plot or the meeningful dialog, but this is an animated hero comedy for grown ups and it delivers. Go rent it. Watch it.
Superman meets Batman
Originally found at Topless Robot.
I think this covers why I’ve never really liked Superman as a Superhero, I mean, he’s just too good.
Clerks
Clerks arrived and we started our Kevin Smitheron by watching it this evening. It plays a little more like an extended sketch show than a movie, with varying parts of the day as individual sketches linked through some overall theme.
It’s certainly entertaining, and amusing, but it wasn’t belly laughing funny. There are clear moments where the actor’s either forget their lines, or stumble over their lines or just plainly adlib which give the movie a real ‘college project’ feel, but then considering the cost and the background it’s not surprising. There are real moments of pure quality cinema as well, with two-character sparring dialog that reminds me of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in a lot of ways (both 1994).
In general, I enjoyed it. I’m not sure it’s going to be a cult classic in this house, and we enjoyed Clerks II more (and that despite having never seen the first one), but maybe if we watch it a few more times we’ll get more into the swing and enjoy what’s going on around the image.
It’s cold outside
Hadn’t seen this anywhere until today,
… announced by Robert Llewellyn for Grant Naylor Productions this week at the UKTV seasonal press launch, the project is a short series of brand new specials to celebrate the 21st birthday of Red Dwarf.
Doug Naylor will be masterminding the four half-hour instalments, and the regular cast will all be reprising their iconic roles. They are being made by GNP for UKTV’s free-to-air channel, Dave – our new best friends!
Full details here. But basically, it’s 2 x half hour real new episodes with the original cast, 1 x half hour behind the scenes thing and 1 x half hour ‘clips’ show. Check the article for full info.
Clerks II
This is a deeply religious movie with strong moral overtones and an solid core of existential theory running through it. Our heroes must come to terms with their place in the world and learn how to stretch their own minds to release their inner sanctity. Once accomplished, only then will they realise the true nature of the universe and achieve everlasting happiness.
Or, it’s a rather amusing comedy from Kevin Smith about a couple of guys pushing burgers who discover friendship is stronger than a small fire, and that you should look at that which you take for granted for the love you so dearly need.
Funny, light-hearted, good natured and surreal in a Blues Brothers way, Clerks II was worth watching and has given me an appetite to check out Mr Smith’s other films.
Edit: I know right, you’re thinking omfg how can he NOT have seen any Kevin Smith movies? I know, so sue me. I’m fixing that right now, it was like, I knew they were there, but I just felt, I dunno, ok? right? is that clear?