Welcome back to Trailer Happy Hour, where we’re really just marking time until the next time a member of The State has to fend off some Hitler-loving, knife-wielding piles of felt. It’s a pretty easy beat, honestly, since that particular set of stars almost never al—
Oscar presenters are totally hit and miss. You can ruin a beautiful Star Wars lineup like Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac, and Kelly Marie Tran by making them tell BB-8 jokes. You can have Matthew McConaughey having a deer-in-the-headlights moment as he tensely rattles off facts about editing. Or you can have Lupita Nyong’o…
“Hot diggity dog.”
First off, let’s hear it for the Judge. The fact that Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani were going to throw themselves on the mercy of this weirdo universe’s all-seeing arbiter of Good and Bad Place placement set off a flurry of dream casting guessing games. And while the suggestions on my Twitter feed (Amy Poehler…
The advent of streaming services may have mixed results for the experience of watching movies, but at the very least it may have turned movies like The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature into less of an environmental blight. Twenty-five years ago, a low-rent sequel to a low-rent cartoon that made a bit of kiddie cash as a…
With the summer winding down, we might as well look ahead to the programming that will provide cold comfort during the winter months. Fox is previewing its lineup today at the TCA summer press tour, with forthcoming panels on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Gifted, Empire, and more. Amid the updates about more adult-oriented…
There’s a fine line between being a parody of something and just being an actual thing, and Fred Armisen and Bill Hader may have crossed it with “Final Transmission,” their latest Documentary Now! episode. Built around an extensive parody of the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, the episode involved coming…
Documentary Now!’s attention to detail produces a lot of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visual gags, the type that reward a quick finger on the “pause” button. And while that’s also true of tonight’s episode, “Final Transmission,” the show’s most recent film-nerd Easter egg also rewards a pair of sharp ears. Or a few spins…
No two episodes of Documentary Now! are truly alike, but “Final Transmission” especially stands on its own in terms of style and process, the only Documentary Now! installment that was predominantly filmed in front of a live audience. To really understand the amount of detail and precision that went into getting this…
There’s an oft-repeated Lorne Michaels adage about Saturday Night Live: “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. It goes on because it’s 11:30.” A similar sentiment was in the air on a Thursday night this past July, as another Michaels production was about to take the stage at the Mission Playhouse in San Gabriel,…
When Idiocracy was released in 2006, it didn’t make much of an impact upon the world. In fact, most people didn’t even know it existed. 20th Century Fox had a contractual obligation to release Mike Judge’s follow-up to Office Space, but they pretty much just tucked it away. After being sat on for more than a year, it…
It’s been another rough week for the world, and sometimes it feels like there’s no other kind anymore. But then other times, you come across a video of two talented women singing a pretty song while they turn little butter tubs into musical instruments, and it seems like humanity can still turn out okay. For me, this…
Maya Rudolph and Martin Short have had long and varied careers in show business, which means they have any number of famous friends to rope into appearing on their new variety show, Maya And Marty. They’ve already featured Tom Hanks, Larry David, and Miley Cyrus, as well as Saturday Night Live company members old and…
Tonight marks the debut of Maya And Marty, NBC’s latest attempt to drag the rotting corpse of the televised variety show back onto this mortal coil for some singing-and-shambling fun. Starring Saturday Night Live alums Maya Rudolph and Martin Short, the series is a spiritual sequel to Rudolph’s variety special from…
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Tuesday, May 31. All times are Eastern.
If you appreciate the finer (read: funnier) things in life, then you likely spent part of last summer watching IFC’s miniseries, The Spoils Before Dying. The six-episode comedy was “adapted” from reclusive “author” Eric Jonrosh’s (Will Ferrell) “acclaimed novel” about a 1950s musician who gets caught up in a dangerous…
Americans have worried about the extent to which life has imitated the art of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy pretty much since the satire premiered in 2006, which was three years after Jackass’ Steve-O stapled his scrotum to his leg onstage. But with sentient Simpsons gag Donald Trump out there confusing convenience with…
Falling in love sure is fun, what with the meet-cutes, the spirited conversations in Washington Square Park, and the passionate nightgown removals. Unfortunately, though, the person you fall in love with sometimes turns out to be a bit of a stuffy, self-absorbed jackass played by Ethan Hawke. That’s what happens to…
The most recent three episodes of The Grinder have played off of a joke that essentially blows up the premise of the series: Dean is trying to divorce himself from his character Mitchard Grinder, and in the process he is becoming more Stewart-esque, while Stewart is conversely becoming more Dean-like. It’s a pretty…
Refusing to learn the lessons divined from the still-steaming entrails of Neil Patrick Harris’ Best Time Ever, NBC has given a green light to Maya And Marty In Manhattan, the long-threatened variety show from Maya Rudolph and Martin Short. The series—which comes after the two worked together for a musical revue on the …
