comedy – Cubilone's Dimension

EARWORM GARDEN // FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS — INNER CITY PRESSURE

1. Finally, some music that speaks of the real problems in life!
2. Flight of the Conchords are an actual band that existed before the series did! I never knew!
3. Have you actually watched the series? It’s just the most brilliantly funny show I’ve watched this side of Spaced.
4. Nice cover art.
5. It just came back to me: I recall driving back from… Nafplio, wasn’t it, with Daphne. We had En Lefko on (right?) and suddenly this started playing. We had watched the episode mere days before. Quite a moment of joy, there. Actually, in retrospect, I should have figured out then and there that they were an actual band…

HIGH FIDELITY

Watched this movie recommendation by fellow Spotter Marilena.

I, too, suggest you watch this 15-year-old movie. Especially if you like making lists, can relate to music geekery, can remember what it used to feel like burning mixtapes/audio CDs for people, have been recently, er… disengaged, and most importantly, if you could use some great laughs.

Spoiler

Jack Black too. Boy was I surprised when he appeared!

Soundtrack:

EARWORM GARDEN // TIM MINCHIN – THE FENCE

I’ve been thinking recently that we just don’t have enough comedian musicians, or musician comedians.

This is a song in defence of the fence, an anthem to ambivalence.

I discovered Tim Minchin through Toni, through Daphne. I don’t agree with his attacks on alternative medicine (I want to believe he’s still on the fence on that one himself, however unlikely) but overall I’m liking this guy more and more. Plus he’s Australian.

REVIEW: WRITING COMEDY: A GUIDE TO SCRIPTWRITING FOR TV, RADIO, FILM AND STAGE

Writing Comedy: A Guide to Scriptwriting for TV, Radio, Film and Stage by Ronald Wolfe

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Another book from the fresh batch of donated books to the English section of Sofia City Library.

This book from the early ’90s is a guide for anyone who would like to try their hand in writing scripts for comedy plays, shows, sitcoms, radio or stand-up comedy.

Most of the actors, writers and productions referenced are from that time, leaving out the comedy I’m familiar with (Monty Python and the work of their individual members; britcoms of the last 15 years), with the exceptions of Fawlty Towers, Blackadder and Alo Alo.

Some specific tips for individual formats, like the importance of the gag in the sitcom, or more general ones that can apply to all forms of comedy writing, I found particularly effective and insightful, e.g. always asking yourself what’s wrong in a given situation when writing the story, or where the conflict could come from which might produce the comedic effect. These ones I think I’ll remember down the road, in contrast to most of the rest of the book which chiefly had practical information, i.e. how to pitch your script to producers or make it in America, content which as little (?) as 20 years later seems terribly out-dated.

The relevant parts I thought made for good and motivating advice that made me want to try writing something serious even more, seeing how simple and straightforward some examples of funny writing in the book were. What I realise, however, is that it’s not a guide I need the most; it’s the dedication and motivation to sit down and just write, whatever that could be.

Still, I’ll remember the part about conflict.

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Kyle Cease

OK, it’s now safe to say that this guy gets in my favourite people club no sweat.

Review: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Four

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Four by Douglas Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was thinking of starting my review with a quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It would neatly go to display exactly why the probability of this book’s humour and insight into the ways of the universe actually existing are two to the power of two hundred and twenty-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against. You see, after coming in contact with the universe that sprung out from the genius that was Douglas Adams, your life gets torn into the period before having read H2G2 and after. It shapes your mind, it makes you think about the world in ways you never thought possible — or it makes you realise that this is exactly the way you used to look at the absurdness of the Universe, only life on this mostly harmless planet has made you think in mostly harmless ways yourself.

It’s such a yummy, well-mixed recipe of dead-pan, random, black, so-funny-because-it’s-so-true humours, all served with hearty amounts of insight you can’t help stuffing your face with the whole pot. There’s also a secret ingredient which talks to your philosophy loving side… It leaves you lighter as you laugh with lines so clever, a writer so talented and situations so bizarre you can hardly believe your eyes. It’s the hash brownie of scifi…

The only breaker for me was the characters as well as the plot. Both of them serve as little more than means to present the jokes. I get the meaning of the story is to be bizarre but at some points it went so overboard I had little idea of what was happening. The characters were also inconsistent and to some point interchangeable. Maybe that was Douglas Adams’s intention? I don’t know. But still, four books later, I have no clear view of the plot or of the characters, they’re blurs more than anything else. Which is a shame, for they were means for some pretty unique situations.

I thought that the first and second book were the best, with the third one having the strongest messages but the most confusing situations and plot. “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish” had its moments, especially between Arthur and Fenchurch but it was generally disappointing. I read however that Adams was forced to push through a deadline for the fourth book and was generally disappointed by the end result himself.

The Trilogy of Four is aptly named for my rating standards: I’m giving it a four overall because it didn’t maintain the stellar quality of the first two books throughout the series. I know I’m not finished. This is only my introduction to this extraordinary and hilarious world of not only The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy but Douglas Adams in general. Now I must play the game, read the rest of the books, see or hear the shows…

And to think I may had not read the books in the end because I hated the film…

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Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

This is one of the few times that watching a movie has actually made me want to write a thing or two here.

I was prejudiced against “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”. Ever since Mario told me of this “movie that has food falling from the sky”, I was very, very skeptical. I thought this movie would be a symbol of everything that’s wrong in our world. What a society creates to show to and entertain its children with, speaks wonders about what holds this society together. I thought watching this film would attack me with great and ugly revelations of this kind.

I decided to give this one a spin to see how right my prediction might have been (I rented it from Movieland. Hadn’t rented a movie for watching at home for months). Turns out I was both right and wrong.

This film is all about food falling down from the sky. Flint uses his invention not to help, let’s say, the poor places on Earth that have no food — not even his hometown’s famed sardines — but to raise the bar of his own community’s affluence, to feed every American on his island, that is to say, feed people hungry for all kinds of junk food. I saw lots of burgers, spaghetti, ice cream, eggs, hot dogs, meat, candy and similar examples of culinary exquisiteness but of course only little fruit or salad. You know, things that you can actually eat a lot of without getting sick or otherworldly fat. Things our parents always force us to eat to the point of torture only for us to discover the pleasures thereof with a minor delay of ca. 20 years.

All this I expected. I expected this movie to be all about junk food. But what I didn’t expect was the movie to actually be funny and good! It had excellent comedic timing, very smart one-liners, incredible visual gags, it was chock-full of double entendres (jokes the kiddies understand but with an extra layer of joke on top only the “grown-ups” will catch *wink*). It was, astonishingly for me, one of the best animated comedies I’ve seen, and not one I would imagine myself to have enjoyed 12 or 15 years ago. What’s even more interesting was that the whole “food falls from the sky” thing was a big double entendre all in itself. It contained a hidden message. The way the movie was presented made the “food falling from the sky” thing funny in film terms but totally unacceptable and irrational, dangerous in “real terms”. In other words, the film did criticise itself and the modern behaviours that were its source content but it only did so subtly and indirectly; brilliantly. The way people attack the food like maniacs, this crazy gleam in their eye; the way the mayor never seems to have had enough and keeps eating in his delusional binge… lots of tiny hints and easily missable jokes buried in there that get the point across. The way these people eat, munch, gobble up, what a part of their lives the rain becomes… This display of total obsession with food is in itself a comment, an attack to the culture that gave birth to the mere concept of this movie.

I expected others to had made the same observations as me, so I quickly hit IMDB to check up with other people’s opinions about the movie and see what their take was. I was shocked to discover that not only most people hadn’t noticed a single thing wrong about the whole film, they were insulting people that had actually made the same connections as me.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844471/board/

Alright check it out:
The town in the film is a characterization of America.

Science has allowed us to create an abundance of food (the water-food machine) but instead of using it to help the people who are starving we just use it to glorify our state, and over-eat.

Over the years portion sizes have gotten bigger and bigger (the “mutations”) as have americans waistlines (the mayor)

The food industry (the water-food machine in the atmosphere) has grown so powerful that it’s gotten out of hand and is defending itself against change, and elimination. But it’s become a monster and our food has begun to kill us because it’s no longer really food, but a strange “mutation” of it.

I found this pretty obvious, but no one else mentioned it.

Did you guys pick up on this?

The thread had few replies but mostly in agreement. However, one of the replies (the final one, to be exact), went like this:

Wow… english classes have really messed with peoples minds and caused them to try and find a hidden meaning behind everything. I believe you make a good point, but I think it was just a kids movie that was supposed to just entertain.

Most of the replies in this and whatever similar threads inviting people for a deeper discussion there was, were in a similar dismissive tone. People were saying that this film was pure entertainment! And just for kids! They were behaving to this film as if it was as I thought it would be before I had watched it: a cheap film for cheap laughs that pays no respect to the importance and gravity of its subject matter. But not as if not paying respect to food was a bad thing. “Man, it’s just food, chill”. Most people were really, honestly looking at it like that! I was appalled. Have a look at this thread of the same board as well (Meat is Murder). The level of intelligence shown within hits rock-bottom. Typical of IMDB boards, you might say. But in the end, IMDB boards are the minimum common denominator; if it’s discussed there, you could expect to have a similar discussion anywhere. IMDB boards capture the American zeitgeist perfectly. And it’s a sad, sad sight to behold.

If you’re wondering what the hell I might be talking about, a single sentence might be able to sum it up: Just imagine how people might have reacted to this movie during WWII. Or however entertaining a child (supposedly within this movie’s target group) dying of starvation might have found it.

cloudy003 — Me after I visited the IMDB boards for "Cloudy..."

This story taught me a few things concerning over- and underestimation. I’ll let you figure out the rest. And while you’re at it, watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, have a great laugh and maybe we can start our own discussion in the comments!

OK, perhaps THAT’s overestimating.