In May, 1977, NBC premiered a [very] short-lived satirical science fiction series created by Buck Henry – one of the duo behind Get Smart. The series was called Quark and it ran for seven weeks before it was unceremoniously cancelled. The series was based around a United Galactic Sanitation Patrol vessel captained by Adam Quark […]
Tag: Comedy
DVD REVIEW: Desperate Housewives, Season 4: Sizzling Secrets Edition
Last season’s addition of two new couples [one gay] to the inhabitants of Wisteria Lane sparked a season of television that ranked right up with the first season’s deliriously/deliciously funny first year. Of course, one member of one couple was a former resident of Wisteria Lane who was returning after a dozen years. Katherine [Dana […]
MOVIE REVIEW – Ghost Town
Ghost Town is one of those rare romantic type comedies that doesn’t fall prey to the over use of clichés or sappy sweetness. It remains smart, funny and sometimes bitingly sarcastic. The premise of Ghost Town falls somewhere between the elements of the recent ‘Over My Dead Body’ and the older ‘Heart and Souls’ and […]
MANGA: COWA! Something Completely Different From The Creator of Dragon Ball Z
Akira Toriyama is best known for the manga/anime series Dragon Ball Z, but he has done a good deal more. One of his most entertaining is COWA!, the tale of a half-vampire/half-werekoala named Paifu and his friends as they seek a cure for Monster Flu – a disease that affects ghosts, were-beings, vampires and all […]
MOVIE REVIEW: Tropic Thunder: Apocalypse When?
Tropic Thunder may well be the most [deliberately] politically incorrect film I’ve ever seen – and one of the funniest. The fake trailers alone are worth the price of admission! Ben Stiller’s film takes aim at every level of Hollyweird culture, from trailers to fraudulent writers to explosive studio executives – and is on target […]
MOVIE REVIEW: Pineapple Express: The Apatow Comedy Factory Narrowly Averts Disaster!
Seth Rogen may have used his action sequences in Pineapple Express to audition for his upcoming The Green Hornet, but despite action sequences choreographed for humor as well as thrills, his earnestness in them almost takes deflates the good-natured stoner buddy comedy that Pineapple Express really is. Dale Denton [Rogen] is a process server who […]
MOVIE REVIEW: Swing Vote is a Thought-Provoking Little Dramedy!
Touchstone’s Swing Vote is a political fable on the value of the individual vote; a tale of reversed roles in a dysfunctional family, and the best thing Kevin Costner has done in a decade. The plot revolves around one vote being ruined because of mechanical failure – and the courting of the supposed caster of […]
Music Review: Christopher Titus: Norman Rockwell is Bleeding!
There are stand up comics who make a career out of other people’s pain; comics who make careers out of their own pain, and comics who make a career out of the story of their lives. Christopher Titus does all three [though in fairness, the other people’s pain comes from the members of his family, […]
TELEVISION: Psych Returns With Big Surprises For Shawn!
When the third season premiere of Psych [USA, Fridays, 10/9C] airs this evening, pseudo-psychic Shawn Spencer [James Roday] is going to be thrown for a loop in ways he never anticipated. First, off, his best and partner in the Psych detective agency, Gus [Dule´ Hill] is basically given the choice of staying with the agency […]
MOVIE REVIEW: Hellboy II: The Golden Army Is Glorious Fun!
Although technically not a superhero movie, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is one of the most beautifully visual films of this or any other year. It’s also a combination of a lot of genres: comic book movie, action flick, fairytale, horror story, eco-fable, romantic drama, pulpy noir, FX flick. The thing is, because of writer/director […]
MOVIE REVIEW” WALL*E Is Simply Dazzling!
With an A-story that features the love story between WALL*E [Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class] and EVE [Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator], and a B-story that involves humanity’s possible return to a post-apocalyptic Earth, WALL*E is more than a bit of a gamble on PIXAR’s part. Neither WALL*E nor EVE has a large vocabulary [at […]