IMPORT-Got the LOVE GURU from netflix knowing well that in all avenues it has been regarded as poo. And even by the trailer it was easy to tell why, too many of the same old gags from Austin Power's series. This movie took on the bad thing of having a movie serve a bunch of jokes rathe than having jokes serve the movie. Myers bits and jokes he came up with were first and foremost and whatever story he had was barely there. Honestly with comedy it mostly is, but still some story has to be the bones of it or it's hard to sustain interest. It was until 45 minutes in that the Guru came through with his personal want. There were parts that were hilarious, but then some stupid name joke would take it two steps back. Think Alauda Fagina from Powers, there was about 50 of those in this. I think if those were taken out it would have made this movie better. A lot of the roles went to unfunny people; Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake (he is not un-funny, but I dont think can make things on the page funnier), and Verne Troyer were all distractions. The most solid funny bits came from Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan along with the graphics department during the broadcasting portion of the hockey games. And the funniest overall is on the dvd extras with the two of them. 'how to do draw throbbing' made me laugh for four minutes and 34 seconds. Mike Myers is most likely a genius, a genius that does not work enough, and when he does throws himself to what he's doing. This sadly was far to close to a retread of Austin Powers, and every time a joke really hit is was followed by something punny which almost erased the funny parts from your mind.
SNL was hosted by James Franco this week,and I thought it would interesting because he seems to be able to do a lot as a actor. Well maybe the writers from SNL for the most part hadn't heard of him. A very lame pot sketch, did no one realize he just did a movie like that and your only changing it slightly. Agent 420? How did that slip through? I did like the Willem Dafoe sketch, it was funny weird and ended in a way sort of untypical. Also the Penny Marshall (but how many people 25 or under know who she is),and OJ trial sketch were funny. Franco did bring some acting chops to his characters ie the cougars sketch and the reporters sketch. Do they feel compelled to do a digital short every week now even if they don't have anything funny to show. And has the short portion been Bogarted by Sandberg, Akiva, and the other guy. I remember Forte,and Armesin being involved more before. Armesin was great as the American apparel guy on Weekend Update. And as for the Update portion I hope that with the transition of Poehler leaving they take a chance to change up the tone a bit. For too long it's been the anchors laughing at their own jokes, basically reading with no performance, and not holding any characters with their anchor people. I think the best Updates have been with Dennis Miller,Kevin Nealon, Ackroyd/Curtain and all of them kept straight faces and delivered the jokes. Maybe Dennis Miller smiled a bit, but I think Nealon did it best and the relationship of Ackroyd/Curtain brought so much more to the segment. I'm not Lorne in case you didn't notice though, or whoever is slowly taking over for him. One other large thing I noticed is that they don't have anything for Mcain yet. Darrell Hammond does a great impression but they don't have anything for the comedic character yet. Thankfully they are staying off the 'old' bandwagon. I'm guessing with the debates coming up something will present itself, and I expect SNL to find it first and best because that is what they should be doing. With great power, comes great responsibility. See what I did there--snl--franco--spiderman dialougue--back to snl. Grab a paper bag if your breath is taken away, and drink a glass of water. If you just shit your pants just go buy new pants.
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Spent the morning and day shooting some more scenes for the pilot. Working to fix exposition and certain jokes that needed to be set up. We had Matt Young, and Cate Friedman come out and spend part of their Saturdays for filming. I could write a whole seperate pilot or short just from those two characters. You don't know what I'm talking about so just trust me. Going from page to shooting then to editing has really been and educatinal experience in having an idea of how things on paper can work. Finding room for a bit of improv after doing what's on script, and really how much energy is needed for sitcom performance. Minimalistic really doesn't work all that well unless the material is that rich. I think we plugged up some holes, and found some more funny bits that we didn't even have on the page. And my hopes are now much higher for one bit we re-shot that wasn't working in our edit. It was probably the most fun to shoot yesterday and hopefully in fits in with the story and delivers. Hopefully soon we will have a teaser to show.
2 comments:
Little do you know that my generation and I love Penny Marshall
well i think u and i are the same generation. but think how many times laverne and shirley was on when we were kids, now think how much you've seen it in the last ten year. plus u are out of the focus group cuz ur from milwaukee and they probably play that on a big screen in the middle of downtown.
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