Louis C.K. – SNL Monologue, 3/29/14

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/29/louis-ck-snl-monologue_n_5057239.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

The Sort-Of Enemy Of CA/A Babblers Is My Kinda Wanna-Be-Acquaintance But Not Really.

Toned down for network tv, of course.

Decent…and I LOVE his God joke that must have CA/A’s frothing at the mouth for the quick dismissiveness and then MOVING ON.

Highlights:
God’s judgement
women musings

Grade: C

11/7/16: FAIR USE: CRITICISM – Decent clip, as reviewed above.

Mr. Show – Episode 8 (If You’re Going to Write A Comedy Scene, You’re Going To Have Some Rat Feces In There)

D.C. sticks something small in his gf’s mouth.  Not bad.

Highlights:
child labor jokes
Rodrigo’s kneecaps (nice touch)
insane name-guy boss
Ben Stiller
more child labor jokes
ending

Lowlights:
pool-is-all sketch
spelling mistake
longgg show-exec sketch
longgg “new San Francisco” sketch

Mr. Show – Episode 6 (A Talking Junkie)

Ok…this is pretty d@mn mediocre.  Their worst yet.  D@mn!

If you view the entire show as a necessary lead-in to the last minute…it’s great!

Highlights:
Bob’s quick rap persona
box of black hildos
all-anal mountain bike
parts of ‘Rap The Musical!’
baby-Dave outro: easily the best part

Lowlights:
boring junkie sketch
red balloon
overdone quarters
really horrible unfunny song/reprise/reprise
interview sketch

Mr. Show – Episode 4 (Who Let You In?)

A CA/A’s dream episode.

The parts about religion that aren’t funny aren’t funny because they aren’t funny.  But to Cross, that apparently didn’t matter.

Imagining Cross’s GF reading this, reaction then: “Fck you!”

Imagining Cross’s GF one end-of-season later: “Let me in you Fcken prick!”

Highlights:
guitar ability version of health updates
unfortunate excretion-lack timing
acid flag flashback: collection of a$$holes

Lowlights:
Cross’s anti-religion stance coming through repeatedly and unfunnily (the second is KEY)
expert truck bit/song
ending

I know I’m not as smart or prestigious as Larry the Cable Guy, but maybe D.C. will come after me now in his…ummm…stand-up?  The only question: Will he use a chipmunk voice?  Oh, and who the fck’s in the audience?

Mr. Show – Episode 3 (We Regret To Inform You)

A very happy show.

Highlights:
dueling letters
gay porno film fade
some versions of “Third Wheel Legend” (shortest and longest esp.)
recurrent straight, NOT gay theme
bubblebrain
cute little firecracker threat

Lowlights:
gay porno film repetition/’Holy Grail’ rip
some versions of “Third Wheel Legend”

Mr. Show – Episode 2 (What To Think)

CA/A’s should love this for Marshall, the 13th Apostle. Which…isn’t bad.

But it IS actually funny at times.  More tasteless AND more funny than the first.

The pace is really manic…sketch/link/sketch/link with one-shots and deja vu moments.  It wouldn’t be so noteworthy/impressive if it wasn’t funny.  It’s also not surprising that it didn’t last very long.

The show, that is.

Highlights:
great anti-art intro
unrelenting homosexual cabal
insane sales pitch people
a few holes joke/musical

Mr. Show – Episode 1 (The Cry Of A Hungry Baby)

Mr. Show is a pretty good/ultra weird sketch comedy show.  I only remember it vaguely, but I think it’s worth watching again.

Result: limited thumbs up.  Bob and Dave are both talented and weird, so even when they’re relatively dull they’re not completely cliche-boring.

Highlights:
making the best of 4 won slaves
increasingly weird delaying tactics
conditions mockery

Human Revolution – Deus Ex (Youtube, short film by Moe Charif, 2014)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2Rx8YlSWY

Semi-hot goth/cyberpunk/”futuristic” chick in REALLY tight spandex. 

Ok, now for the 40-45 percent or so still with me…

Decent acting…decent “look” (i.e. real(istic)).

One REALLY good FX moment, featuring the chick.  Other (fairly) good ones too.

A little too much slo-mo.

5:25 – Layne Staley!!!

8:00-9:15 – too much action, bad acting.

*8:25-8:28 – Gummy hand…Thank you, Neopets!

9:15-End – Fairly interesting.

* = Exception.

Grade: D

4/5/14: I musta been in a really bad mood.  The chick in spandex rocks.  Grade: C+

Perished (Youtube Short Film, 2013)

The lead suffers from extreme overacting.  The rest suffer from redundancy. 

Sorry…I’ve got redundancy on the brain.

9:07-9:17:  He wants the upper berth, you get less air.
13:29-13:38:  Hamburger with a zipper.

Upped slightly for a fairly interesting ending.

Grade: D-

4/5/14: I like the nurse with the protective mask on (zombie)…nice touch.  But would it REALLY have cost that much to laminate/plasticize that license?  Grade: D

Tales From The Darkside – Pilot OR Episode 0 (Trick Or Treat)

Horrible.  How this got the show bought is beyond me.

It’s slow ALLLL the way through.  Cheeziness/cheezy music do remind me of Romero a bit (he…and I use the word liberally…”wrote” this).

And what a BLATANT ‘Creepshow’ ripoff.  You know, that one freaky/good movie segment.

Don’t miss the exciting “rotary phone re-re-re-dialing” scene.

Reviewed merely to get something new started.  Hopefully it gets better.

The Vicar Of Dibley

Impossible for me to watch (again) and “rank” or even really review these properly.

Dawn French is good, as usual…but she’s just as good in every episode, and every episode is pretty much the same.  If you’re looking for something to become AMAZINGLY familiar with, to sort of “feel” a part of (And yes, I know the feeling) then this isn’t bad at all…quite good, actually.

But if you’re looking to laugh, go elsewhere.  This is more occasionally mildly amusing.  The recurring characters have no depth, just a basic theme that is belabored every episode.  You’ll feel right at home pretty quickly if you want something inoffensive to watch and/or fall asleep to.

It’s a program version of Python’s ‘Pictures Of Other People’s Lives’, where you hang them up and then pretend they’re a part of YOUR life.  Not to denigrate watchers or the show itself…that’s just plainly WHAT (and all that) it is. 

Think low-key dramedy…so low-key that you feel without French providing SOME humor it would just float away.

Tales From The Crypt – Episode 92 (Ear Today…Gone Tomorrow)

Dig that cat, he’s…oh, nevermind.

A safecracker with hearing loss regains his abilities after a rather odd operation.  Then it’s a bit of a test for him.  Kinda cheezy but also fairly interesting, until the end – which seems to go ON and ON and ON…

Da End.

Caldera (Evan Viera short film, 2012)

CGI short film with lots of intriguing, pretty, even (some) beautiful images.  With music to match, yet.  No dialogue, but see ‘Avatar’.

It’s got a bit of an (original on MTV version) ‘Aeon Flux’ feel to it…you don’t really know WTF is going on, but it almost doesn’t matter.

Open to interpretation, I suppose.  Which is good…maybe making you think.  Then again, if you don’t WANT to try to figure it out, here’s a summary from the director:

SPOILER ALERT…

“CALDERA is inspired by my father’s struggle with schizoaffective disorder. In states of delusion, my father has danced on the rings of Saturn, spoken with angels, and fled from his demons. He has lived both a fantastical and haunting life, but one that’s invisible to the most of us. In our differing understanding of reality, we blindly mandate his medication, assimilate him to our marginalizing culture, and entirely misinterpret him for all he is worth. CALDERA aims to not only venerate my father, but all brilliant minds forged in the haunted depths of psychosis.”

Grade: B-

The Most Beautiful Thing (Cameron Covell Short Film, 2012)

It’s also probably one of the most predictable things.

A cute HS romance with a happy ending. 

If you like predictable and sweet, you should watch it.  Personally, I find it a little too much of the first.  But the believable (well-acted) sweetness makes it somewhat interesting.

Grade: C+

Tales From The Crypt – Episode 67 (Only Skin Deep)

Good beginning, promising…and the rest is surprisingly unbroken.

A few things I’m curious about, but…that at least means it’s decent.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t give a sh1t.

Vaguely reminds me of ‘Lo’ (not as good, without the romance or depth). 

And being reminded…(see last review).

Night Of The Living Bread (1990)

DEFINITELY a specialty bread…starring in a short (thank God) film.

If you hated ‘Night’ for its cheeziness more than you liked it for its everything-else, you MIGHT like this unbelievably obvious comedy-free parody of it.

Only apparent use, to me: A palette-cleanser before any other zombie feature to make you feel better about the quality of said feature.

Grade: F

Stay Living (3 Short Films plus Intro, YouTube 2013)

A shameless set of commercials for something you don’t need.

And, mixed in, there’s some zombies, some characters with no personality, and lots of butt shots.

Unfortunate that this entire series wastes the 2 or 3 sorta-clever ideas (total) it has by pimping them out to a “Crocodile” Dundee phone sex ad.

Grade: F

Deadly Cinema (2003-2005)

Really horrible acting and poor-at-best writing make up the “sketches” in between the horrible movies. 

The “star”, Jami Deadly, is as bad as all the rest of the cast.  She’s got a sort of a wanna-be Elvira, wanna-be Crypt Keeper mixture going on.

It’s like going to a local club for sketch comedy on a bad night.  And if you watch more than one of these just to make sure it wasn’t a temporary blip…well let’s say, very kindly, that you’re a very trusting and also very desperate soul.

I only watched the host segments, and only a few of them.  So, take it as an incomplete…but mainly take it as “So bad from what I saw that I’m gonna switch to ‘Manos'”

DO NOT be fooled by people who compare this to MST3K, or even Elvira.  Or Joe Bob Briggs.  Or anyone currently on the air that doesn’t suck.  It’s DULL…and it only got life, IMPO, because people were jonesing for some MST3K.

Tales From The Crypt – Episode 32 (Easel Kill Ya)

Tim Roth stars in this one as a REALLY creepy painter.  Good acting by him…decent theory…well done.  I particularly like the “cops with dogs” scene that Roth TRIES to stay calm about.  Cuz they KNEW, man…they could smell it.

I still prefer ‘A Maid On A Night Out Winding A Grandfather’s Clock With Her Left Hand’.  Not to mention Michelangelo’s ‘Two Muscular Guys Touching Fingers’.  And, of COURSE, ‘Dogs Playing Poker’.

Tales From The Crypt – Episode 24 (The Secret)

12 year old orphan is adopted by a weird couple with an extra guy along for the ride.  Good buildup, somewhat disappointing ending. 

Larry Drake (Dr. Giggles) plays the normal one of the three adults. I KNOW, right?

Curly describes their house: “This ain’t a bad lookin’ dump…”
Moe concurs: “Reminds me of the penthouse we were thrown out of.”