Comedy has always been about cruelty to some extent — after all, the pratfall, the pie in the face, and the insult are three of the oldest and most reliable laugh-getters of all time, and they all involve robbing someone of their dignity for the amusement of others. But the notion of the prank as entertainment doesn’t have quite the same history; while funny stories that involved tricks played on others have been common enough through the history of literature, theater, and filmmaking, it wasn’t until Allen Funt created the TV series Candid Camera for the fledgling ABC network in 1948 that someone struck upon the idea of tricking someone into making a fool of themselves purely for the purposes of getting a laugh. Since then, the prank as folk art form has been firmly established. Ashton Kutcher dressed up Candid Camera in a trucker hat and an ironic ’70s rock band T-shirt, called it Punk’d, and made it a hit all over again.
It’s a Wednesday morning, and two Canadian heavy metal dudes are sitting in a conference room in the Viacom building in Los Angeles, talking to a bunch of reporters on a conference call at 9:00 a.m. Why would a self-respecting rock & roll band be up at such an ungodly hour so far away from home to do something so seemingly trivial? To promote their movie, of course.
The Canadians in question are Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner, respectively the lead guitarist/vocalist and drummer with the veteran Toronto metal band Anvil, and after years of toiling in obscurity fate finally cut them some serious breaks in 2009. Sacha Gervasi was a teenaged metal fan who struck up a friendship with Anvil when they toured England in the early 1980s. Gervasi spent a summer as a roadie for Anvil during a lengthy tour of Canada, when the band were at the peak of their popularity after releasing the groundbreaking 1982 album Metal For Metal. Gervasi went on to become a successful screenwriter, while Anvil’s career took a long, slow detour to nowhere thanks to bad record deals and uncomprehending management, though Kudlow and Reiner stubbornly refused to throw in the towel. In 2005, Gervasi reconnected with Kudlow and Reiner, who were blocking out plans for a low-budget European tour. Gervasi put together a camera crew, followed the band on tour, and in early 2008 Anvil! The Story of Anvil played to wildly enthusiastic audiences at the Sundance Film Festival.
We could all use a little pick me up as we head back into work after the Labor Day weekend, and one of the best shows on television is doing everything it can to help. Season 5 of NBC’s comedy The Office comes out on DVD today, and for those of us who have been Dunder Mifflin fanatics from the beginning, this five disc set doesn’t disappoint.
If you ever wanted to see a movie starring Ice-T as a talking mule who does a terrible Mr. T impression, farts, and wears bling, then sit back and get ready to be happy.
A lot of the releases this week are riding on particularly deceptive ad campaigns…
Slumdog Millionaire: Misleading stuff in the commercial: Upbeat pop music, a voiceover that instructs you to see the most “hopeful” film of the year, exclusive use of scenes from the Bollywood dance sequence at the very end of the movie. What the movie actually delivers: Torture, blinded beggar children. Also (get this): slums.
Seven Pounds: Misleading stuff in the commercial: The overall message that it’s the perfect movie for anyone who liked Pursuit of Happyness. What the movie actually delivers: Ridiculous use of a jellyfish.
Marley & Me: Misleading stuff in the commercial: Heartwarming talk about man’s best friend, wacky scenes of slapstick canine antics. What the movie actually delivers: The long, tragic, snot mopping process of a beloved family dog getting old, getting sick, and getting put to sleep.
Bonus points for noticing that the soundtrack bears weird resemblance to Yes. And for the extrapolation by the transitive property that Tom Cruise is gay.
Punisher: War Zone - Nobody could make any joke that’s half as funny as Peter Coffin’s excerpt of dialogue from the original script:
“Nice of you to stop by, Punisher.”
“Nice has nothing to do with it!”
Oh, burn.
Breaking Bad - Season 1: This show really takes me back to the days when I was negotiating meth sales with my own dying chemistry teacher. Though he didn’t have Bryan Cranston’s wholesome charm.
Martial arts fans live for those moments when the big blow transcends the screen, briefly taking our breath away and eliciting an involuntary gasp. Chocolate has a good handful of those sucker-punch moments, as well as about a dozen others that will have you reaching for the remote in an effort to figure out how they managed, for example, to show a guy falling off a three-story-high ledge and landing on the pavement below in one uninterrupted shot. Not only that, but it also features a female lead whose fighting skills nearly rival that of her predecessor Tony Jaa, and, from the look of things, single-handedly helped to keep Thai Emergency Room medicos employed as an endless parade of injured stuntmen filed in sporting shattered bones and open wounds. A rarity in the world of modern action and martial arts movies — where stuntmen are called in for the really serious shots — Chocolate aims to leave a mark by not pulling any punches; every jab, kick, knee to the face, or elbow to the skull looks like it genuinely hurt the performer on the receiving end, making it impossible to look away when the fists start flying.
Comedy has always been about cruelty to some extent — after all, the pratfall, the pie in the face, and the insult are three of the oldest and most reliable laugh-getters of all time, and they all involve robbing someone of their dignity for the amusement of others. But the notion of the prank as entertainment doesn’t have quite the same history; while funny stories that involved tricks played on others have been common enough through the history of literature, theater, and filmmaking, it wasn’t until Allen Funt created the TV series Candid Camera for the fledgling ABC network in 1948 that someone struck upon the idea of tricking someone into making a fool of themselves purely for the purposes of getting a laugh. Since then, the prank as folk art form has been firmly established. Ashton Kutcher dressed up Candid Camera in a trucker hat and an ironic ’70s rock band T-shirt, called it Punk’d, and made it a hit all over again.
It’s a Wednesday morning, and two Canadian heavy metal dudes are sitting in a conference room in the Viacom building in Los Angeles, talking to a bunch of reporters on a conference call at 9:00 a.m. Why would a self-respecting rock & roll band be up at such an ungodly hour so far away from home to do something so seemingly trivial? To promote their movie, of course. 
We could all use a little pick me up as we head back into work after the Labor Day weekend, and one of the best shows on television is doing everything it can to help. Season 5 of NBC’s comedy 
Martial arts fans live for those moments when the big blow transcends the screen, briefly taking our breath away and eliciting an involuntary gasp. 
