Next Monday, anyone fancy it?
OK, so I was sat right at the back for the Flight Of The Conchords gig last night, but it was still really good fun. The songs are great live (with the odd extra/alternative lyrics thrown in), and the banter between songs is brilliant.
Jermain and Bret are obviously very comfortable with just ad-libbing and riffing off each other, and it shows in their back and forth on stage. Yes, some of it is obviously semi-scripted, but when they just go off on random tangents it’s at its funniest. I particularly enjoyed a fairly long joke about whales trying to dial emergency services on a mobile phone, which was just surreal.
Their musical talents and range are astounding. They can go from ballads to electro to rock to hip-hop in the space of a couple of songs, each staggeringly funny and accurate spoofs of the genre. And it works in a massive arena too, which is something I wasn’t entirely expecting.
I still have “Too many dicks on the dancefloor” in my head today, which is a good sign.
Oh, and a word for Wembley Arena’s organisational skills: terrible. Yes, I know you used an alternative ticketing system for this particular night, in an effort to combat touting and re-selling, but please have more people on the doors to scan credit cards and let people in. The queues outside were just plain ridiculous, and pretty slow-moving.
Although it was a refreshing change to walk up Wembley Way without hordes of touts doing the old “Anyone got any tickets? I’ll buy or sell tickets, any tickets? Tickets? Tickets?” routine. They do my head in normally.
I’m off to see Flight Of The Conchords this evening, and excited does not even begin to describe how I’m feeling. The reviews of this tour have been solid, and I still smirk whilst replaying scenes from the TV show in my head.
This is going to be amazing.
The E4 Udderbelly venue is relocating to London for a few weeks ahead of its summer residency in Edinburgh, and has a line-up packed with comedy, music and dance acts. It’s on the south bank, near the London Eye, and you won’t miss it because it’s a giant purple upside-down cow… There’s some great comedians on, but I noticed Frisky & Mannish as I looked through the listings. I caught a brief part of their show last year in Edinburgh as part of a bigger cabaret night, and they were absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately their main show was sold out, and we didn’t get to see them when they did a few London dates last year. Thankfully, I’ve now booked tickets to go see them on 17th June at the Underbelly, and I highly recommend coming along. They’re basically a comedy-music act, tearing apart familiar songs and re-combining them in some of the funniest medleys you’re ever likely to encounter. Hugely musically talented, and really fucking funny to boot. I can’t wait.
I just got back from seeing Kick-Ass, and I’m still trying to figure out whether I really enjoyed it or was merely entertained. It’s one of those films which filled a gap of an evening, but isn’t really going to stick in the memory, I think.
The basic plot is pretty simple: a comic-book fan starts to think that he can be a superhero, albeit without any powers nor the financial back-up that Batman is. Of course, he gets in way over his head with some gangsters, which is hardly surprising given that he is a total geek.
That’s about as much as I can say without giving anything away, but suffice it to say that things get pretty damn violent and bloody.
But the violence is handled in somewhat of a comic book fashion, and it makes you laugh rather than wince. It helps that the beatings are handed out in a stylised manner with some one-liners that are very tongue-in-cheek. Still, if you’ve got a weak stomach this probably isn’t for you.
I thought the humour was very British, despite being set in America with a mostly American cast. This is no doubt because of the director, Matthew Vaughn, being English. He did Stardust too, which I thought was hugely British in style and humour, as well as being a producer on Guy Ritchie’s two early Brit-flicks: Lock Stock, and Snatch.
The editing of those two films is also evident here, with quick jump cuts left, right, and centre, as well as derivations into comic-book graphics and something of a video-game sequence. The violence is focused on and really brought into the foreground with a lot of slow-motion stunt work, complete with lashings of blood spurting everywhere.
It is genuinely funny in places, with some great over-acting where it needed to be, completing the aura of being a very sideways take on the whole superhero genre. Yes, it’s a piss-take of sorts, but it’s very fucking good at doing so.
Of course, it’s very silly too, and somewhat predictable given the limitations of the superhero film, but there are plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing. And if you’ve seen enough films or read enough comic books, you’ll recognise some nods and references, although these are usually turned on their heads.
It’s a good film, funny and violent in equal measures, and it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Oh, and there’s a healthy dose of bad language from the mouth of a young girl thrown in too.
I watched that Men Who Stare At Goats film over the weekend, and was thoroughly impressed. It is such a surreal, funny film, and I thought there were some great performances from George Clooney and Jeff Bridges.
It basically details a journalist discovering a secret army unit that used psychic powers instead of weapons, and then heading into Iraq with an ex-soldier to find them once more. It sounds like it could be deadly serious, but it’s played for laughs instead of drama.
Not to say that it’s in-your-face slapstick, but more of a subtle, situational humour. Clooney really does excel in this kind of role, playing the straight man with ever more silly words and actions. Bridges is the hippy leader of the unit, preaching free love and a whole lot of drugs, performing at exactly the right level of lackadaisical manner.
Ewan McGregor is probably the weakest of the lot, for me because of his slight inability to master an American accent. Too often when he is shouting or speaking quickly (which is a lot of the time) it slips back into a Scottish brogue. He’s still competent enough as the journalist out of his depth.
It is all a bit silly, but the strength of the acting in particular holds it all together. It hits just the right level of funny without becoming crass or too overdone, and is a damned good film.
Writing about Brass Eye a few minutes ago reminded me of this clip, which I just showed to the girlfriend in order to educate her about the brilliance of Brass Eye. It’s from the Drugs episode, and it shows how celebrities, and even a freakin’ Member of Parliament can be duped into doing material for an anti-drug campaigns.
Cake, you see, is a “made-up drug”. This didn’t stop the great and good from preaching to us about its dangers and effects, and the MP even went so far as to bring it up in Parliament! Epic win.
Oh, and this is nothing when compared to the similar tactic used in the Paedophile episode, which got one celebrity to state to camera that the average paedophile has more DNA in common “with a crab, than with you or I”. Utter, utter genius.
doctornecessiter asked: What are your favorite UK comedy television shows of all time? I know and love several, but I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what's available to me, and I'm always looking to expand my horizons. Advise and suggest!
Ooh, great question. I watch far too much TV, and I tend to watch a lot of comedy shows more than any other genre. Thankfully, British TV history is full of some fantastically funny programmes.
Probably my all-time favourite, which I know you know all about, is Peep Show. For those that haven’t seen it, it’s a tale of two early 30-something guys living together, but the twist is that the point of view is always first-person, with that person’s thoughts making up the narration. There’s usually a nice sarcasm between the guy’s thoughts and what he says out loud.
There’s a little-known show called Nighty Night which had a couple of series a few years ago. It’s darker than dark, with a gloriously disturbing main character. The supporting cast are great too, understated in performance and letting the writing speak for itself.
The Thick Of It is a wicked political satire, the series from which the film In The Loop was spawned. If you liked that, you’ll love this. It really does make you think that government operates like this.
Speaking of satire, both The Day Today and Brass Eye are incredibly cutting, almost vicious in the way they tear apart the media and British culture. The Brass Eye paedophile edition is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
Surrealism had its prime-time appearance too, in the shape of The League Of Gentlemen, which is utterly fucked up and far too funny. Admittedly, it became a little too reliant on catchphrases by the third series, but the first two are great.
We have a bit of a thing here for comedy news quizzes, usually highly topical and news-related. The best of the bunch is Have I Got News For You, particularly as one of the panellists is the editor of Private Eye magazine. I have a soft spot for 8 Out Of 10 Cats, whilst Mock The Week is more of an outright comedy show with the merest hint of news.
Harking back to the 80s, Blackadder is utter genius, although you’ll probably need to be up on your British history to get all of the jokes. Other classic comedy shows from that era include The Young Ones and Red Dwarf.
Oh, and one final suggestion is Marion & Geoff. It’s a one-man monologue show, but so clever and dark in its premise, barely revealing any details and forcing you to figure it out for yourself.
Americans, WATCH THIS SHOW. I can’t recommend this series enough. Definitely the funniest thing that British TV has produced in the last decade. The characters, the settings, the situations, the language, everything is just so British about it. Oh, and don’t worry Brits, we can watch it online at 4OD.
This is Jimmy Carr’s now somewhat infamous joke that he made a couple of weeks ago during one of his stand-up comedy shows. It caused a bit of media furore (inevitably) and I bring it up now because one of the guys I work with brought it up at lunchtime in the pub.
He said he was offended by this joke, and that it should not have been made. It’s not that it wasn’t funny (to him), but that it was offensive to the many servicemen and women who have given their lives and bodies for this country.
The media coverage of the joke has been along similar lines. The Metro rather predictably attempted to take the moral high ground, and quoted some people linked to military personnel who had lost limbs, or come back from Iraq/Afghanistan disfigured in other ways.
What struck me from reading that article is how pretty much every person said that the joke was offensive on the grounds of someone else being offended by it. Even the actual amputee said that he could take it in good humour, but that others wouldn’t be able to.
In general, it’s amazing just how often this kind of argument happens. It’s not that anyone is personally offended by a joke, a statement, an advertisement, a quote, a picture. It’s that they expect someone else to be offended.
We’re being offended by proxy!
I personally found the joke funny. I’m not the world’s biggest Jimmy Carr fan, and find a lot of his material formulaic and boring, but this was a genuinely original joke. It has that little tinge of being funny with a hint of “ooh, you shouldn’t say that” attached, and that’s what makes it even more funny.
The line is there: it’s between the mild feeling of someone saying something that probably is offensive to someone, somewhere, and being outright offensive to pretty much everyone. Comedy constantly approaches that line, and adjusts where that line sits.
That’s comedy’s aim, to make people laugh, and to challenge society’s perceived boundaries.
It’s not as if you can say something is not funny because it might offend someone. Hell, we all laughed at the various Michael Jackson jokes earlier this year, but no-one really paused and thought “hey, this guy has a family, a loving family, and maybe all of these jokes are offending them”. We carried on regardless.
And that’s the point: people have their own lines, over which they believe comedy shouldn’t cross. For some, it’s disabled servicemen. For others, the Royal Family. Because of these many, many different lines, it’s impossible to state that certain subjects are not suitable for comedy, or are off-limits.
I firmly believe that every single possible subject is suitable for comedy. It can be your choice to be offended, but it shouldn’t be possible to censor comedians from talking about certain subjects.
If they’re not funny, then fine, they’re bad comedians. They’re not bad comedians, nor unfunny, because they choose make jokes out of offensive situations.
