Posts by Danielle
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Ack! I am trying very hard to resist the temptation to read finale wrap-ups until our, erm, 'friends in America' finish sending us the episode... but realistically, I'll probably give in at some point today. I have no willpower.
Also: AJ's facial hair this season has been wonderfully horrendous.
-
Finally had time to watch this - I think it's great. However, I did almost immediately think 'hey, this kind of reminds me of that six-episode Tenacious D HBO series from 1999, that one I used to watch while stoned at two in the morning'. It's not that their songs sound the same or anything, and obviously no one's going to be as crazed as Jack Black was, but the 'tone' of the show is similar.
So, I am such a dorky nerd that I looked up all the credits for both shows on the IMDB and did, in fact, find at least one executive producer in common (Troy Miller), as well as several people who seem to have milled around in that general 'Mr Show with Bob and David'-esque soup for some years. In fact, most of the Conchords' producers worked on Mr Show, and Bob Odenkirk and David Cross co-wrote the Tenacious D series, and... well, it's pretty incestuous.
So I'm thinking that there will be some kind of audience for this. The people behind the scenes on this show have worked steadily in 'cult' comedy for over a decade now.
-
They discovered that the further south they travelled, the more negative the driver's reaction was to their hometown, verging on near hostility by the time they neared their destination.
I usually avoid that whole issue by saying 'I'm from Auckland and I'm very sorry' all in one breath. Then everyone laughs. Problem solved.
(My mother is from Invercargill.)
-
I'd be far happier if he dropped most of the correspondent reports (tiresome and painfully American, almost slapstick) and just focused on exposing the lies and interviewing
I don't agree with this. The whole point is that Jon plays bemused everyperson (ie us) to their overblown idiocy. The correspondents are, scarily enough, almost exactly like those on the 'real' news, so their 'painfulness' has a bit of a satiric zing to it as well.
When Colbert was a correspondent on the Daily Show, lo these many years ago, his loud abrasiveness was really much the same as it is on his own show now - in fact, I think most of the current correspondents are trying to fill Colbert's huge shoes. (With the exception of Samantha Bee, who is one of my favourite people ever. Oh, and yes, Dimitri. That little 'youth' intro for his segments always kills me.)
Besides: a) I don't know what 'painfully American' even means in this context and b) there's really nothing wrong with slapstick. It's a maligned comedic art form. Silent comedies are filled with it.
Agreed about America: The Book. It's fantastic. And weirdly informative! (And, um, available on bittorrent.)
-
Man. I grew up on the Shore and I live out west. I feel persecuted!
-
I think the ship has already sailed on the existence of a Jon Stewart cult. I am such a dorky fangirl about him.
One of the things I admire most about him is his ability to remain perfectly polite and approachable and funny during his interviews, yet still manage to ask reasonably tough questions. Tougher by miles than any 'real news' on US television. That's a really hard balance to strike on a show that's basically comedic, and he does it consistently.
(And he actually made me enjoy an episode of Oprah, for the twenty minutes he was on. *No one* can do that.)
-
Heh, I think Paul is one of the luckiest blokes on the planet to find himself up on stage with George and John and that other George at the controls.
Paul is undeniably a giant cheeseball, and he comes across in person as a fake and a poseur. This is unfortunate, because he has such gifts (which he often squanders). But the past few years I've been going through a Wings reassessment: patchy, yes, but way *less* patchy than the Lennon and Harrison stuff from the same period. And no one ever talks about his bass playing. The bass in that mid-period Beatles stuff is amazing. I love to listen to it. (On the other hand, when I saw him in 2002 or whenever it was, in Dallas, and dude came out during his encore of the execrable 'Freedom' waving a giant car-dealership-sized American flag... oh god. I wanted to beat him to death with a bag full of navel oranges. And I had even been moved to tears earlier in the show by his ukulele version of 'Something', in tribute to George. Damn you, Paul! Damn you straight to hell!)
Simon, I basically agree with your assessment of the Instant Karma album. However:
02 R.E.M. - "#9 Dream"
I was in the US last week and our rental car had satellite radio (immensely enjoyable! Little Stevie's Underground Garage is terrific), and this cover came on at some point: verily, it does not suck. I was surprised. Luckily, they dispensed with those 'Joooooooohhhhnnnnn' whispers...
-
Erm. Well after the ship has sailed, Deborah, I want to join the props-giving chorus. Your analysis of the different kinds of feminism was great. (Essentialism: incredibly annoying, yet in some ways inescapable? Discuss.)
(Parenthetically, the discussion about why women don't speak up in online political fora reminded me of something else, more trivial but sort of related. I always found being a female pop-music nerd a little annoying, at least until relatively recently. There seemed to be so few of us, and it would take so damn long for the guys in a music-related conversation to accept that a woman might conceivably know what she was talking about. The conversational problem wasn't usually that overt: you might have ended up being patronised or treated dismissively. This situation has, thankfully, changed considerably in the last decade, in real life and online. I'm not exactly sure why, though...)
-
I did see Festival Express, and really enjoyed it. The footage of the Canadian hippie kids was great. (I suppose this is no news to anyone, but man: those musicians could really, seriously drink. Whew. Wasn't there some story about leaping off the train at various stops along the way and buying in gazillions of dollars' worth of spirits, just to keep everyone on an even keel? No wonder it was financially disastrous...)
-
Wait a second. On page two of this thread, did Russell dis The Band along with Little Feat?
Sigh. That hurts me. :)
I am on the Ian MacDonald side of things Beatle-wise: Revolver manages all that fantastic soundscape stuff that Pepper does, but without quite so much of the self-indulgence.