I want this to be an actual movie, IMMEDIATELY. This short, put together by the celebri-sponsored team over at Funny or Die, consists of some of the best comics currently working. A slightly embellished telling of the Weird One’s life which paints the picture of an alcoholic Al overcoming adversity and his own demons with the help of his parents, his lover, Madonna, and, of course, Dr. Demento. Weird Al deserves an awesome send up on a monthly basis for his contributions to all that is funny funny ha-ha, so seeing Patton Oswalt, Paul Scheer, Olivia Wilde, Gary Cole, Aaron Paul, and Eric Appel produce this and slap it on Funny or Die made my day. h, and, of course, Al gets in on the fun, himself. Click below for fun times!
College Humor has yet to fail me. This directory of what the leading movies of 2009 SHOULD HAVE been called is extremely true to form, even if some of them are a bit disheartening. (As much as I loved Up in the Air, College Humor could not be any more dead-on). Click below for the listtttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!
…Kind of. There has been much contention over who would become the mightiest of all Avengers over the last few months. Rumors have been swirling that run the gamut from John Krasinski (Jim of The Office) all the way to Channing Tatum (G.I. Joe). Very little headway has been made and it all has felt like a great, big round-robin of sorts with the casting. Collider was where I first heard the news today, however, that Chris Evans (The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four franchise) has been offered the role as The First Avenger by Marvel Mouse. Interestingly, Evans has yet to accept the offer, and may even hesitate to do so. The agreement locks the actor who will portray Cap down to a three picture deal ON TOP OF an Avengers flick, as well as multiple possible appearances in smaller Marvel vehicles, as well. This is a fairly overwhelming amount of commitment for a role that has been rumored to only be worth $300,000, initially. And while the argument that $300,000 is a lot for playing a dress-up IS well-heard on this blogsite, allow me to remind you that Marvel looks to make GANGBUSTERS on this franchise. This flick, if done right, could easily put up Spider-Man numbers and Marvel is fully aware. So the concept of being locked down for the next five to ten years of your life for a less than standard sum may not be all that glamourous to Mr. Evans. (Granted, this writer would actually PAY to play one of his super hero childhood heroes, but I digress). With Hugo Weaving attached as The Red Skull, I can’t say at all that I’m disappointed with this casting news. As a matter of fact, I have quite a bit of faith in Evans over the other pile of names that have been slung around over the past month. This, of course, is because I was taught a lesson after bitching incessantly for months about Heath Ledger being cast as The Joker. And we all saw how that worked out.
Sony and I rarely see eye to eye. And with this latest development, they continue to strain our relationship. Accorfing to Collider, working off of a story from Vulture (that’s right, folks! You got it here THIRD! WOO HOO!) it would appear that Columbia wants Ivan Reitman to step off of the newest installment in the Ghostbusters line. Columbia apparently isn’t completely sold on Reitman’s ability to further the franchise and deliver on the twenty-years-in-the-making THIRD installment of the movie that made proton packs a household name (at least it is in THIS household). To even move the project forward, four of the integral members of the first production, Murray, Akroyd, Ramis, and Reitman all must agree to the production before action can be taken. I love this clause and I wish it was upheld more often in film. Sequels made without the originator’s approval have frequently failed to inspire anything more than pure drivel. But, this deal makes the project in itself all the more suspect. Even when everyone had stated that they were signed on and excited before, Murray seemed lackluster about the whole process, at best. He had publically made statements likening his enthusiasm for a third ghostbusters to his enthusiasm for the second Garfield film. This recent development involving Reitman being politely asked to step away from the project makes me wonder how in the world the project will get off the ground, with Reitman being needed to give the go ahead to a project he’s being asked NOT to direct. Meanwhile, this can’t create much confidense in Bill Murray for the franchise, as he already seemed tediously signed on out of a general respect for his co-workers more than anything else. With Reitman out of the loop, Murray may see the writing on the wall, become all the more disenfranchised, back up his lot and leave. And, to be honest, it would be the remedy to the ensuing storm that I have seen on the horizon since this project was announced. This has always sounded, to me, like a studio-contrived attempt to suck more money out of the franchise in a point in Hollywood history where sequels, prequels, and reboots have been proven to be financially viable in lieu of original content. After the success of the soul-crushing Indiana Jones 4 release, studios have had no reason not to go back and revisit twenty year old franchises with large fanbases (see: cash money). The sooner this whole debacle falls apart, the better we will all be.
I’ve got problems with this list, BIG problems. That being said, however, what this list does at least do is compile an overarching docket of comedians who are currently winning at Hollywooding. I’ll let you follow the link to see the list for yourself, but some of my gripes are:
*Spoilers ahead (if you actually care about spoiling a Top 25 list)*
Mostly they have to do with placement rather than actually being put ON this list. I understand the rationale behind LISTING all of these actors, but the stack-ranking involved has left me baffled. For Instance, I have no idea why Elizabeth Banks is #14 on this list, ahead of Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais, and Ken Jeong. Granted, she was in Role Models and Zack and Miri, and has played a couple of laughs for the Apatow gang in the past, but can ANYONE give me a reason that she should be ahead of the incredibly talented and devoted people behind her who have been creating and performing in comedy for years? To further bitch, how is Anna Faris even farther up the list at #11? Funny in the Scary Movies, yes, and pretty good in Observe and Report, but how far have we ACTUALLY seen her stretch? She has adequately portrayed slapstick-ditzy and train-wreck-of-humanity, to great laughs. That’s basically it. And now that I mention it, I think I’m going to copyright both of those…
In addition to ranking wrong, I feel that this list is labelled wrong, as well. This list is compiled of strictly Film and Television actors, nowhere on this list can producers, stand-ups, or late-night personalities be found, all of which, I would argue, constitute “Funny People Working in Hollywood.” My notable ommissions would include Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Judd Apatow, Eddie Izzard, Craig Ferguson, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Chelsea Handler, Jo Koy, Loni Love, Josh Wolf, Guy Branum, Whitney Cummings, The It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Gang of writers, producers, and actors, and the list could go ON AND ON AND ON AND ON…
To wrap up, I feel that the most egregious error comes with placing Paul Rudd at #1. I’m certain that there are some die-hards out there that will greatly take offense to that, but let’s face it, Rudd is our generation’s leading straight-man. An important position for comedy, sure, but his range is CERTAINLY no greater than that of Bill Murray, Sacha Baron Cohen, Steve Carrell, and Tina Fey, just to name some of the accompanying members of the list.
Technology is RAPIDLY changing our everyday lives, and it is no more prevalent than in the realm of entertainment. As technology becomes more and more advanced, one would think that the need for liver interaction and community would be completely eradicated in exchange for the glossied, hyper-air-brushed, pristine world that film, video, and new media can give us through editing and cinematography. I’m not even adverse to this direction, but the simple fact is that it is not completely accurate. I was on Current.com the other day when I watched their episode of Vanguard (an EXCELLENT documentary program, btw) which was on Porn 2.0. The intent was purely research, OF COURSE…*ahem*…Anyways, the creator of Kink.com (I know, it’s hard to keep a straight face for ME, I can’t imagine how you guys reading this are doing it) which is one of the leading pornographic hubs which has embraced the digital age, said that piracy and the rampant availability of content on the internet was DESTROYING their profits, so they knew that they had to turn to different strategies of entertainment to retain customers and continue to be viable enough to draw out a buck from the everyday consumer. Ironically, the format that Kink has decided to go with is that of developing their live community. Kink has invested in developing a sense of communion amongst viewers that can only be established by presenting live, original, exclusive content to their paying customers, which additionally provides an outlet for group interaction.
As creepy and far-fetched as the above trist may have seemed, it has been festering in my mind the last few days and became even MORE apparent when I found this video online of someone messing with others on Chat Roulette. For those who don’t know, Chatroulette.com is a site where you interact with other webcammers on a totally random basis. You have no idea who you will get and you can skip to the next person at any given time. Kind of like speed dating only with even LESS commitment. The overwhelming complaint of Chatroulette is that it is almost entirely comprised of lonely guys looking to show off their packages. This, however, opens the doors wide open to an entirely different, improvisational use for the site and further makes me wonder if live performance is, in fact, not dead, but simply being reformatted to fit the newest parameters of our digital society. Check out the video below and give Pianochatimprov some HUGE support on the Youtubes. He deserves it!
I have some incredibly talented friends. Some insanely, ridiculously creative and talented friends. In a list of posts that I want to entitle “Friends of Shwayblog,” or FOS, for short, I want to compile a list of my closest friends on teh intranets that continually make me look more and more juvenile with their immense outpouring of work. First, allow me to introduce the most multi-talented man on the internet and good friend of mine, Dante Ross! Dante’s personal blog site, Dantania, contains basically every form of creative content you can imagine. For starters, Dante writes some of the best, most elaborate fiction I have ever read. And the rate of output that he manages to produce content is staggering. I have an incredibly hard time just keeping up reading it all, which is an incredibly good thing. I would rather be inundated with content than busy waiting a month for the asshole webmaster of a site to update his posts (see: Shwayblog). But getting back to the boy’s fiction, Johnny Panic! is what I’m currently working my way through and it’s an AMAZING introduction into the world that Mr. Ross is able to so seamlessly paint with nothing more than words.
In addition to his writings which do, in fact, span from the fictional all the way to the most endearlingly candid of nonfictional works, Dante is also an artist in the most traditional sense of the word. His skills with a traditional brush make me blush (Look, the creativity is rubbing off on me!) as he has an INCREDIBLY talented eye that manages to precisely reproduce whatever his mind can dream up. Unfortunately, whenever I attempt to reproduce what my mind has imagined, I either get stick figures, or a lawsuit. And while his drawings are exceptional, his short films show even another side to this Rubik’s Cube of a man. Dante’s one-man films never come off as such because he plays each and every of however many parts he can possibly dream up. Doommates is one of my all-time favorite series in which Dante chronicles the life he occupies sharing an apartment with Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, Death, and the always-fabulous, Pretty Ricky. Living Room Wrestling is another awesome webisode that Dante has formed and maintained with a wealth of characters that consist of mostly he, himself, and…uh…him…eh, that just doesn’t seem like the correct form. Anyways…keep an eye out for the very talented and attractive young man named The White Shadow in Living Room Wrestling. To say that I have never seen a greater wrestler in all my days, would be an understatement. Plus, his dapper looks are strikingly familiar to my own…
At this point, one would obvioulsy infer that we had come to the very end of the laundry list of features that litter the Kingdom of Dantania. Of course, one would be very wrong. IN FURTHER ADDITION to everything listed above, Dante is also an avid podcaster and radio personality. His personal podcast, Rosscast, spans the topics of ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING and is ridicu-fyingly entertaining. Going through the archive of Rosscasts is a favorite pasttime of mine, and it’s a great reminder of all the hot-button issues of the day, with Dante’s stamp of either approval or FAIL across the front. Dante also contributes his smooth jazzy voice to Canadian wrestling cast, The O Show (No correlation to Oprah Winfrey…YET!).
So, in short, Dante Ross is both a close friend of mine and also a fueling source of my depression (In a good way). Everytime I feel as though I have accomplished something with this here internet game, I look at Dante’s incredibly diverse and lovely portfolio and feel all that more insufficient and lazy. I’m sure that at some point I have left out the 38 OTHER endeavors that he undertakes at any one, given time, like saving Alaskan baby seals, or screenwriting under the pseudonym “Tina Fey,” (Ironically, Dante IS also a screenwriter and VERY adept at film). Way to make the rest of us look bad Mr. Ross.
