If podcasts aren’t your thing, this may be the podcast to convince you otherwise. Dana Carvey and David Spade are the hosts of Fly on the Wall, a retrospective comedy tour back to the original years of Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. It picks through a handful of the late night comedy show’s best casts and hosts for a lighthearted chat, for anyone who wants to burst out laughing for one full hour each week. Twelve episodes are already ready and waiting for you right now. Featured guests so far include 15+ time SNL host Tom Hanks, original Not Ready for Prime Time player Laraine Newman, cast members Chris Rock, Jon Lovitz, Darrell Hammond, Weekend Update host and senior writer Tina Fey, former SNL writers Conan O’Brien and Sarah Silverman, and former SNL hosts Rob Lowe, Johnny Knoxville, and Jon Hamm.
I think they are just terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.
Since–like everyone else–actors are unable to do their jobs until the risk of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, many have offered up some of their time over the past 120 to 150 days to provide fans with extra interviews, table reads (like the Community table read we discussed here at borg), and comic-cons at home, creating some content for the fan base we wouldn’t have otherwise had access to without this strange new normal of sheltering at home, social distancing, and masks. If you don’t subscribe to or know what Quibi is, you may have missed the latest–an ensemble of actors from popular to more obscure re-enacting scenes from Rob Reiner’s fan-favorite fantasy, comedy, and romance, The Princess Bride.
The style is all intentionally low budget–think of the kind of backyard films you might have made as a kid, and in fact, the film is called Home Movie: The Princess Bride. But it’s great fun, all filmed with quarantine safety rules in place (those filming together were already living together), and the kind of thing any classic film fan base would be overjoyed to see created. The best part is learning who had actual historical costumes in their closet to work with (Mad Men man Jon Hamm had a Renaissance shirt in his closet, as did comedic actors Neil Patrick Harris and David Spade, and Rogue One’s Diego Luna), those who didn’t, and who might be better actors than you’ve given them credit for.
For years it seemed like new Christmas classics were few and far between. It usually takes some time for a movie to gain “classic” status, and that itself is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Early on audiences stamped the label on Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas. You have your A Charlie Brown Christmas, your How the Grinch Stole Christmas,Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and a bevy of Rankin & Bass stop-motion animated shows like Frosty the Snowman. Then more modern fare came along, like A Christmas Story, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Elf. Oh, and we can’t forget Die Hard. All stamped with an anvil as “classics.” If you want to see more movies from cinema history, check out the Turner Movie Classics book Christmas in the Movies, reviewed last year here at borg.
Putting aside the modern made for TV movies, if you’re younger, you may count as a classic something like The Polar Express, with Tom Hanks. It’s that kind of recent film category where you can add in Netflix’s new movie–its first animated feature, Klaus. Both of these movies are animated in interesting ways that will keep you entertained simply from a visual perspective, Klaus from its unique lighting and color choices and a strong Spanish comic art style (as seen in Dog Mendonça and PizzaBoy). They also share a certain traditional storybook look, and their tales also look back to nostalgia for their ideas. Klaus is another origin story take on Santa Claus. Audiences have seen this many times, including in the not to be missed films Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (featuring the voices of Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, and Keenan Wynn) and in books like L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and more recently, the brilliant Santa: My Life and Times, with artwork by Bill Sienkiewicz (we reviewed it here).
Spain’s Sergio Pablos directed Klaus intentionally stepping away from modern Disney-style CGI animation to traditional hand-drawn art, so it looks more like Disney’s top technical achievement, the Oscar-winning Beauty and the Beast from 1991, and less like The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The story is cute, and contrasting with the traditional visual style, is the inclusion of humorous dialogue told by voice talents famously known for being snarky. We follow a postman named Jesper, who couldn’t look or sound more like David Spade, actually voiced by Jason Schwartzman. Jesper is a non-achiever, and his father sends him to a distant Scandinavian town to learn to be successful at his job. The town ends up like a lawless town out of the Old West. His job is to get people to use the mail service again. Along the way he runs into a Hatfield-McCoy conflict, with one part voiced by Joan Cusack, and an old man with a house full of toys named Klaus, voiced by J.K. Simmons.
Today we have three previews for coming theatrical releases of the comedy variety. Two of them hail from two of the most financially successful former Saturday Night Live cast members, and one a coming-of-age zombie flick full of young actors. Are they all dumb comedies, or will any of them break through the pack and be worth the ticket price?
The first film comes from Adam Sandler’s production company and will be a Netflix release. It’s a Western comedy–a rare genre appearance for audiences–with a large cast that might make you think of big cast pieces of years past like Airplane! Along with Sandler, The Ridiculous 6 stars Steve Buscemi, Terry Crews, Norm MacDonald, Danny Trejo, Will Forte, Luke Wilson, Steve Zahn, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Chris Parnell, John Turturro, Jon Lovitz, and Vanilla Ice. That’s a lot of former SNL cast members!
The stars of the hilarious comedy The Other Guys are back. Will Farrell, the most successful SNL actor since Eddie Murphy, and along with Sandler one of the big three of the box office grossing SNL elite shares billing again with one of our favorite actors, the versatile Mark Wahlberg, in Daddy’s Home. Farrell is a step-dad and must contend with his wife’s tougher and cooler ex-husband, played by Wahlberg. This is the film widely reported on earlier this year where Farrell and crew broke in on an actual basketball game and seemingly drunk Farrell beaned a dance group gal in the face (no worries, she was a stunt woman in on the gag). Definitely one for the Farrell and Wahlberg fans out there.
Finally, The Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is the latest zombie flick. It’s a comedy and coming of age movie, but also seems like it has a bit of Steven Spielberg’s Super 8 meets American Pie. Definitely a strange entry, it features a slate of young actors including Arnold’s son Patrick Schwarzenegger, plus comedic actors Cloris Leachman and David Koechner.
Nothing is more infuriating than the untimely deaths of people who make you laugh. John Belushi. John Candy. Phil Hartman. Robin Williams. A new documentary by Spike takes a look at another one of these comedic gems, the life and death of the explosive personality that was Chris Farley, one of the funniest comedians to ever hail from that elite squad of comics who made their fame via their work on Saturday Night Live.
Clips of the comedian’s best work from SNL and movies like Tommy Boy and Coneheads are interspersed with interviews of Farley’s friends and family in I Am Chris Farley, giving us some insight into what made this guy tick, including those who knew him the best: David Spade, Dan Aykroyd, Lorne Michaels, Adam Sandler, Jay Mohr, Bob Odenkirk, Molly Shannon, Tom Arnold, and his brother Kevin.
Farley followed in the footsteps of two of his own idols, Belushi and Candy, dying too early at the age of 33 back in 1997 from a drug overdose. What can we learn from Farley’s death? What pressure was Farley under, and how did such a quick rise in fame cause Farley to fall just as fast? Could anyone have helped him along the way? Here’s the trailer for the new documentary I Am Chris Farley:
