Comedy
Ranking John Carpenter: Every Movie from Worst to Best
Dark streets, empty lawns, singing trees, and the nauseating pulse of synths — you’re watching a John Carpenter film. Chances are the Master of Horror was responsible for a few of your earliest childhood nightmares. He’s more or less the Ray Bradbury of filmmaking, an underrated visionary who can conjure up a brand of fear that’s both out of this world and within your reach. Six years after returning to the synthesizer for 2015’s Lost Themes, the Master of Horror is back for more with its second sequel: Lost Themes III: Alive After Death. Once again, Carpenter is working alongside his son Cody Carpenter and his godson Daniel Davies, a collaboration that’s only grown stronger with time. “We’ve matured,” Carpenter has confidently expressed. In celebration, we’ve resurrected this original bre...
Sacha Baron Cohen Says He’s Done Playing Borat
The saga of Borat Margaret Sagdiyev has come to a very nice end. In a new profile in Variety, Sacha Baron Cohen said he’s finished with his most famous creation, and that the fictional Kazakh journalist is now “locked away in the cupboard.” The character had been retired once before, after the release of the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The satire of Borat is based in surprise. People thought they were talking to a second-rate journalist from a sparsely populated country, and so they didn’t mind sharing their racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism. After the movie became a box office sensation, Cohen thought he’d lost the element of surprise. He began to change his mind in 2018. First, the rise of white nationali...
Chris Rock to Release “Extended Cut” of Netflix Special Tamborine
When Chris Rock released his Netflix stand-up special Tamborine in 2018, he managed to garner a whopping 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes — a rare accomplishment for a film, never mind a comedy routine. Now, Rock is treating fans to even more of those critically lauded jokes with Chris Rock: Total Blackout, The Tamborine Extended Cut, which hits the streamer next week. The Tamborine Extended Cut boasts 27 minutes of previously unreleased footage from Rock’s original Grammy-nominated special. The new clips — which include never-before-seen jokes, behind-the-scenes footage, and various interviews — will touch on race, fatherhood, and politics. Because they’re interwoven throughout the stand-up special, Netflix is calling it a repackaged “remix” of the initial release. To hype up the extended cu...
Dave Chappelle to Turn Former Fire Station Into Comedy Club
They say the best jokes hit close to home, and now Dave Chappelle is taking that literally. According to Yellow Springs News, the famed comedian has purchased a former fire station in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and received approval to transform the space into a combination comedy club and restaurant. Chappelle’s roots in the area go back to his childhood, when his father worked as a professor at nearby Antioch College. Then, over the summer, he hosted a socially-distanced, outdoor standup series in the township’s Wirrig Pavilion. Now, he’s proving that the college town is more than just a place to ride out quarantine with the announcement of his new club. The price of the sale is not public, but the fire station was originally listed for $400,000, and the township of Yellow Springs has be...
Kristen Wiig’s SNL Return Stresses an Uncertain Future for Character Actors
When Kristen Wiig hit the stage to deliver her monologue this past weekend on Saturday Night Live, she said it felt like coming home. She reiterated this point at the end of the show, during the goodnights. In between, she backed up her statements by comfortably re-settling into the rhythms of the show, and reviving two of her many recurring characters: Sue, the woman who can’t handle surprises; and Mindy Gracin, the addled stage star who appears on the game show Secret Word. Wiig still stands among the most beloved centerpiece stars of SNL this millennium, and this week’s episode underlined a major reason why, at least in terms of the popular consciousness: She originated a lot of recurring characters on the show. So many, in fact, that she can reprise two second-string ones like Mindy Gr...
John Mulaney Enters Rehab for Cocaine and Alcohol Abuse
John Mulaney has checked into rehab for cocaine and alcohol abuse. According to Page Six and PEOPLE, the 38-year-old comedian entered a facility in Pennsylvania this past weekend. Mulaney has long been open about his history with substance abuse. In an interview with Esquire last year, he said he began drinking and experimenting with drugs at age 13. He first became sober at the age of 23. During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier this month, Mulaney admitted that the quarantine had negatively impacted his mental well-being, and he sought to find structure by going to work for his friend Seth Meyers. “I really needed a job. I like having a boss and having assignments to do,” Mulaney explained to Kimmel. “When I’m in charge of something… not so much the best thing. I wanted to ...
SNL’s Colin Jost Was Forced to Read a Joke About His Own Wife Scarlett Johansson’s Poor Casting Decisions
As has become tradition for Saturday Night Live’s Christmas show, Weekend Update co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che carve out a segment to read jokes they’ve written for each other without seeing them beforehand. It typically manifests in some hilariously cringe moments, like when Jost is forced to read jokes that make him look like a racist asshole. For tonight’s episode, however, Che actually got Jost to roast his own wife. In recent years, Scarlett Johansson has twice faced criticism for taking on roles she had no business playing. In 2017, she starred in an adaptation of the Japanese manga Ghost in the Shell. The following year, she was cast to play a transgender man in a film called Rub and Tug, but ultimately dropped out of the project amidst backlash...
Johnny Brennan on the Origins of the First Jerky Boys Album in 20 Years: “It’s a Whole Different Game Today”
Something about being kept away from typical entertainment outlets this year led to a surge in nostalgia content. Pop culture reunions grew from one-off virtual gatherings to fully-scripted streamable events. That made it somewhat fortuitous that 2020 happened to be the year Johnny Brennan decided to return with his classic prank project The Jerky Boys. Brennan recently released the first Jerky Boys album in 20 years, a long-demanded effort that’s been met with the warmest of welcomes by fans. All the favorites like Sol, Frank, and the rest are back, alongside new characters ringing up everyone from Social Security scammers to iRobot customer service reps to college admissions offices. Speaking with Brennan over the phone — where he does his best work, after all — the comedian and voice ac...
HBO Max Also Pulls Chappelle’s Show at Dave Chappelle’s Request
Last month, Netflix removed Chappelle’s Show from their service at the behest of Dave Chappelle himself. The beloved comedian has now asked HBO Max to pull the iconic sketch series from their library, and they’re granting his request. In a lengthy Instagram video posted in late November, Chappelle explained that because of the contract he signed with ViacomCBS back when the show was made in the mid-2000s — years before streaming services even existed — he actually doesn’t see a penny of the money that ViacomCBS receives when it licenses the show out to companies like Netflix and HBO Max. “They [ViacomCBS] didn’t have to pay me because I signed the contract,” Chappelle said in the clip, which compiles footage from recent stand-up gigs. “But is that right? I found out that these people were ...
Sundance Film Festival Announces 2021 Virtual Lineup
The Sundance Film Festival will continue in 2021 and returns with a new upgrade amidst the ensuing pandemic. For the first time ever, the entire festival will take place digitally through “a feature-rich, Sundance-built online platform” in conjunction with in-person festivities that will air through Satellite Screens across the country from January 28th to February 3rd, 2021 “Togetherness has been an animating principle here at the Sundance Institute as we’ve worked to reimagine the Festival for 2021, because there is no Sundance without our community,” said Sundance Institute Founder and President Robert Redford. “Under Tabitha’s leadership, we’ve forged a new collective vision: one that honors the spirit and tradition of these invigorating yearly gatherings in Utah, while making roo...
Top 25 Films of 2020
Our Annual Report continues as we reveal the Top 25 Films of 2020. Stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles in the days and weeks to come about the best music, film, and TV of the year. If you’ve missed any part of our Annual Report, you can check out all the coverage here. Going to the movies ain’t like it used to be, right? What an understatement. With theaters shuttered up and movie chains filing for bankruptcy, one might argue it’s been a pretty crap year for cinema. Financially speaking, they’re not wrong. But, art is a funny thing. It has a way of enduring even the most arduous obstacles — you know, that whole Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park, “life finds a way” bit — and this year was a testament to that truth. Art had no issue finding a proper stage. That stage, as fate...
The Jerky Boys on the Current PC Culture
Kyle Meredith With… The Jerky Boys Listen via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | Stitcher | Radio Public | RSS The Jerky Boys mastermind Johnny Brennan talks with Kyle Meredith about the infamous prank caller’s first album in over 20 years. Brennan, who also voices Mort Goldman in Family Guy, goes deep on what made the fictional characters resonate so much during their ’90s peak, getting Seth McFarlane’s seal of approval on the newest collection, and being an influence throughout National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The man behind Sol Rosenberg and Frank Rizzo also discusses knowing how to work his caller, developing new characters, being recognized on the phone, and the current PC culture. Kyle Meredith With… is an ...
