Bobcat Goldthwait - God Bless America

The fifth feature film from Bobcat Goldthwait follows Frank. (Joel Murray) A frustrated middle-aged man, who on losing his job and being diagnosed with terminal cancer, is pushed to go on a killing spree. The condition being that he'll only kill people that he believes deserve to die. He’s aided by 16 year old Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) who shares his dissatisfaction with the world.

It’s a controversial subject, the kind that Bobcat has become known for throughout his career. The film’s fairly limited release seems to have precluded it from any major press attention though, so maybe it’ll escape being blamed for any future high profile massacres.

Frank at often times seems to be a mouthpiece for Bobcat’s own frustrations with the world. There’s a long scene at the beginning where he talks of these things to a co-worker and it often sounds more like a ranty article than a dialogue between two people.

The thing’s that get Frank so angry include American Idol or X Factor type shows, MTV’s Sweet Sixteen, the abundance of social networking and iPhones, right wing Fox News editorial anchors.  Targets that the kind of person who’d see this film will probably sympathize with Frank in. (Well maybe not the iPhones) and of course these people become the targets of Frank and Roxy’s killings. It’s a fun idea although if it’s really intended as a satire and criticism of society, its targets are a bit shallow. The hosts and viewers of American Idol are blamed, but not really the producers. Essentially Frank’s targets come down to just people who are rude and inconsiderate. Which is still a good enough premise for a film, who doesn’t want to see teenagers that talk on their phones during a movie getting shot? But it is a step short if it's hoping to make a truly pointed critique of modern society.

What helps carry the film though is the dynamic between Frank and Roxy.  The issue of a middle aged man being friends with a 16 year old girl is handled very well. Frank flat out refuses to take any sexual interest in her, despite her questioning of how he sees her, he refuses to even comment. There’s a 'fuck you' given out to men who’ve married very young women in which Woody Allen is singled out, which seemed surprising to hear.

After a while the film starts to repeat itself. Bobcat has responded to this criticism of his work, claiming that he wants to fully explore the idea. This is valid up to a point, but after a while the film does seem to lose its momentum. Thankfully the story manages to find a direction to take it into the 3^rd act, eventually building towards a suitable climax.

Ultimately the strength of the film is in having something that’s angry, dark and funny that also has a genuine heart to it. It’s not a film about morality. Bobcat said rather astutely on a recent Comedy Bang Bang episode that murder is justified in serious action films, because according to some people’s morality those people deserved to die. But he doesn’t ever believe murder is right. It goes without saying that the murders performed by the two protagonists aren’t seen as moral by the film. Their actions aren't justified, but it’s not a film about the morality of these actions.

It is worth seeing though, and it’s also worth looking up Bobcat’s previous film, ‘World’s Greatest Dad.’ I can’t speak for the rest of his work, but I’ll certainly be interested in seeing the rest of his output on the strength of these two films.

Back into it with Veep episode 4

Okay time to get back into it. I seemingly didn’t find the time to write for this at all during my 3^rd year of university. Now that it's finished I should have a lot more time for it.  My aim now is to be a little more casual with this just to keep myself in the habit of writing more.  Then hopefully once it’s a habit, I can work on making it better. So here we are, a recap of Veep S1 E4.

This week’s Veep saw Selina making a racial blunder in which she unintentionally questioned the American heritage of a Chinese American war veteran after an interview in which she continued to talk while she was still on mic. It’s not the most original premise, but even though it’s a perfectly valid avenue of political to explore. Once again the shows premise of covering the vice president means it lacks a little dramatic tension. A vice presidential blunder is a bigger blunder than a ministerial blunder, but she’s not expendable, and there just isn’t the danger of her being fired.

Elsewhere we see the more lustful side to Selina, with her flirtatious chatter with a romantic interest. But these scenes feel a little awkwardly written. They’re obviously supposed to convey awkward phone sex chat, and that the characters aren’t that good at it, but it still feels a little stiffly written. The language isn’t quite as explicit as it should be.  There’s a slight ring of awkward Britishness in the writing of it. This episode was co-written by the other Will Smith, who plays posho tory Phil Smith in The Thick of It. A sort of right-wing Chris Addison (If such a term isn’t redundant) it might not be fair to bestow that judgment upon him, he probably isn’t really that close to his character. It’s hard to picture him writing convincing phone sex chatter. (Go on, try to picture it, you can’t can you?)

Some of the more interesting dynamic shifts in the episode came from Dan and Amy, who seem to have come to a kind of truce in their working relationship. They’re more comfortable and unguarded about each other’s personal life around each-other. Amy even seems to greatly impress Dan, in her ability to sell some of her soul to a pair of racist, boorish ex-senators during a dinner, which they’re recruiting for the clean jobs committee.

They’re portrayal though did feel like American politics through a very British lens. Not that the senators enthusiasm for Ribs, anti-Mexican, anti-immigration sentiment is untrue and something you wouldn’t get from American writers, but again, it didn’t seem to have the same finesse and research behind it as episodes with Armando’s name on the writing credits.

Archive Game Review

Yeah I can go back to writing about a random old game if I want, this isn't just about comedy and podcasts. Also I realize Playstation 2 and Gamecube era, isn't really "archive" but I wasn't handed a nes and sega when I was 1 so I don't have much familiarity with that era of gaming.

Killer 7 is a game that defies genre categorization, combining action, puzzles and on-rail shooter elements and the most obtuse control scheme. It reduces your exploration of levels so that you hold a button to run up and down corridors, and you occasionally come to intersections that lead to other branching paths. The majority of the combat has you fighting the 'heaven smiles.' When you explore an area you may hear a sinister laugh, you then have to hold a button down taking you into first person mode,  you press a button to scan the area, and this reveals where the creatures you fight are hiding. They then slowly walk towards you and detonate themselves if they contact you. So you have to take them down before they reach you, they also have random weak spots, where if you hit them there you get “thick blood” which you can use for upgrades. In a way it’s an even more sinister take on resident evil’s combat and fairly remarkable subject matter for the time as the enemies  are essentially zombie-like suicide bombers.

The protagonist is an assassin with multiple personalities, except that these appear to be actual separate living people with their own lives, but seem somehow to be absorbed under the lead assassin Harman Smith, the older wheelchair bound assassin. These multiple personalities are often used for solving puzzles; you have to use a certain character in certain situations. There’s also other puzzles that share some similarities with early Resident Evil puzzles, but tend to be slightly more complex with a darker twist on them.

It’s worth admitting that the gameplay itself is full of flaws, it can be dull and frustrating and it just seems so impenetrable that it wouldn’t be surprising if someone were to give up on it. I myself gave up on it early into the game and then picked it up again, and eventually it just seemed to come together. The initially frustrating elements just become a standard you get used to, it’s just an investment that requires a little more effort on your part, but eventually it seems to pay off, because the complex  finger movements you make becomes all the more satisfying because you feel cooler for doing it.

The look of the game adds to the sense of cool as well, opting for a cell shaded noir-esque comic book, with an overly-stylised direction and editing style. When in 3rd person mode the camera angles all add to the visual design, opting for consistency within the look, even to the point where it isn’t always as practical from a gameplay perspective. Yet I can kind of forgive it for that.

You can’t talk about this game without taking the story into account; the problem is though I’d be hard pressed to say if it’s actually a good story, because I still don’t think I could explain what it actually means.

A lot of the elements don’t quite feel like they’re connecting in any way, there’s an overarching theme of the ‘heaven smiles’ terrorists, war brewing between the United States and Japan, but along the way you’re wrangled up various other stories, So you have levels for instance set in a restaurant, a Texan cult community, an area where you fight against a power ranger style team. These don’t often have a very clear connection from level to level, but it has just enough logic to it that in its creators head at least it probably makes sense.

So I’ve written 550 words, and I still don’t feel like I’ve made clear what the gameplay entails, why the story is so intriguing, I haven’t mentioned characters like Samantha, Harman’s abusive maid, Iwazaru the man in the gimp suit who offers you advice while suspended from the ceiling, or Travis, the ghost of the Killer 7’s first victim that talks to you about… well various stuff. I haven’t even mentioned the weird backwards talking vocal style some of the characters speak to you in. There are just too many baffling and incongruous elements that I can talk about in the game without spoiling things too much.

 It was released in 2005 on PlayStation 2 and GameCube and it’s quite remarkable how looking back now how much more experimental games could be then, now experimental, innovative games seem to have been downsized to quirky, budget PSN games and you just don’t seem to get mad big budget games like this anymore.

Podmess

In an idea in no way ripped off from The Onion A.V Club’s Podmass section

I give you Podmess:  A recap of the podcasts I’ve listened to in the last week.

25th July - 31st July

The Apple Sisters

A more high-concept podcast, three sisters who have a cabaret act in 1943 are given their own radio show. It certainly limits the ability to do any topical material which makes it unique among podcasts, and at only 20 minutes it has a tighter more scripted focus though certainly it is also heavily ad-libbed. This week the sister’s guests are The Banana Brothers who turn out to be pretty well developed characters in their own right for only having this one time appearance. This show does seem like it can only go so far with getting repetitious, but this episode certainly manages to keep things fresh.

Comedy Bang Bang

I’ve waxed lyrical on here before about Comedy Bang Bang. This week’s episode puts together David Wain, Ken Marino of Children’s Hospital and Paul Rudd of many Judd Apatow Movies.  The episode is largely themed around the movie Wet Hot American Summer, which is a bit of a cult success, but it’s a bit of niche episode, unusual in that there are no characters, but the dynamic between the guests is enjoyable as they clearly know each other well and the highlight of the episode is the rap contest. It's a very old improv game but one that’s new to Comedy Bang Bang. I was very tentative that they were using such an old game but in these circumstances it turned out great.

The Best Show on WFMU

Tom Scharpling host a weekly live radio show in New Jersey, featuring regular callers, many comedian guests and often semi-scripted phone conversations with Jon Wurster. On this occasion Tom has two co-hosts - regular callers to the show Laurie and Geneva. It’s a nice concept that fans of the show could be allowed to be involved to this extent on occasions. It makes for a slightly shambolic but fun episode. A running joke lately has been Tom’s running paranoia about where the episode will be placed in The A.V club’s weekly podcast review section. Here he threatens to sue them 80 million dollars if they review the episode. Well they reviewed it anyway but placed it at the top so who knows what’ll happen there.

Best Show Gems

Best Show Gems is a highlights reel of some of the best snippets of The Best Show.  Usually featuring a Jon Wurster call. This week Wurster is a lawyer calling on behalf of Robbie Robertson of The Band claiming to be placing a lawsuit against Tom for remarks he made against The Band. Tom then threatens to counter-sue for which the lawyer offers to represent Tom. This goes on to a long spiel of all the various double lawsuits and the various shady practices the lawyer is involved with. As is typical for the show it's a great concept that’s allowed to explore all sorts of directions, a strong episode as ever.

Who Charted

Howard Kramer and Kulap Vilaysack (wife of Comedy Bang Bang host Scott Aukerman) host this podcast that’s has various top 5 chat rundowns that allows a single guest to delve into discussion about that and other topics. Even without a very interesting guest Howard and Kulap’s rapport makes for enjoyable listening, but it’s a lot better when there’s a good guest having fun with the concept and this week Bob Odenkirk is fantastic on it. It features some enjoyable stories on his career, he makes some superb commentary on the movie clips, and has utter contempt for some of the mawkish songs on display of the UK singles chart.

How Was Your Week

Julie Klausner is one of the few female podcaster’s around, she’s a great storyteller and very engaging to listen to, it’s always remarkable how long she’s able to carry much of the podcast on her own. This week has one of the best female comedians around in Maria Bamford; she’s got a truly unique comedic mind and is very charming in discussing some of thoughts and anxieties.

WTF with Marc Maron

The live episode departs from the norm, rather than the very personal discussions Marc usually gets into with his guests, here Marc interviews various guest in a more comedic setting. The highlight being the earlier mentioned Tom Scharpling. Tom has a great ability for making fun of Marc though they don't have much experience together they make a really strong podcast, the episode was recorded shortly after Maron had appeared on The Best Show which also shows evidence of their skill when working together. Other fun is had where Wyatt Cenac takes issue with Marc because unlike many other comedians, they don’t have any issue’s with each other and Wyatt suspects the only reason Marc doesn’t treat him badly is because he’s black.

Greg Proops – The Smartest Man in the World

The Proopcast has become one of my favourite podcasts and one of the most impressive as Greg essentially performs an entirely new hour every week in front of an audience. It’s not as honed as stand-up, but it comes from a much more personal place, and is also more topical in its nature and he also takes questions from the audience. If you only knew him from Whose Line is it Anyway you won’t quite have any idea what he’s capable of. He’s a fascinatingly intelligent and well-read man able to pick through the huge depths of his knowledge and articulate himself brilliantly. This episode features stories of being at comedy festivals, tales of working with people from whose line is it anyway. Then later gets onto some territory he’s travelled before, namely his anger over the tax cuts for the rich, while the poor are charged more but he’s always entertaining when ranting about this.

Doug Loves Movies

Doug Benson hosts this podcast usually taking place in front of a live audience which changes the dynamic slightly as there’s a higher energy to the podcast and the guests perform more. The podcast usually gets away from the topic of movies, before he and his guests play “The Leonard Maltin game” In which guests compete to guess the name of a movie from hearing members of the cast in reverse in order and based on a few clues from Leonard’s reviews. Though this week’s was a studio bound episode which creates a different dynamic and feels more like any other podcast.

Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio

Pretty much the only British podcast I listen to. Sorry we’re just not as good as the Americans at that or television the moment, I wish I could say otherwise. Frank usually has two co-anchors in Emily Dean and Alan Cochrane though this latest episode featured Steve Williams in his place. The co-hosts don’t usually add much themselves but they allow Frank to springboard into some fantastic one-liners and stories and this week even the subject of the difference between pelican, toucan and belisha beacon crossings is very entertaining.

American TV Roundup Part 2

Jon Benjamin Has a Van

Jon Benjamin, first known to me as the voice of Ben Katz on Dr Katz and later Coach McGuirk on Home Movies has been getting busier lately. Popping up in more cameo’s including appearances on Family Guy and Parks and Recreation and is now starring in Bob’s Burgers and Archer. He hadn’t done a huge amount of live-action work until now but in this series he's proved himself to have a very funny screen presence to match his voice.

The show is a combination of quicker sketches/prank segments mixed with a longer short film narrative piece that makes up the bulk of the show. These have all been pretty good for the most part; the most interesting one featured a story in which the show’s sound man is kidnapped meaning the show plays out with no sound for several minutes. It was genuinely experimental and audience-alienating television so good on Comedy Central for allowing them to do it.

The general conceit of the show seems a little loose, the idea seems to be that Jon Benjamin is an investigative reporter, but it doesn’t quite stick to the idea, there are moments where it’s not quite clear if we’re supposed to believe in the reality that he’s always being filmed by his production crew, but of course there’s other times where he’s filmed talking to his production crew, so there isn’t quite a consistent logic, but it‘s not too much of a problem.

Ugly Americans

Ugly Americans follows the life of Mark Lilley, a social worker at the department of integration. The show takes places in a warped version of Manhattan inhabited by zombies, monsters, demons, mythological creatures and various anthropomorphic species.

Mark is a kind of stereotypical woolly-liberal, much of the humour derives from his naivety, hypocrisy or at his struggles to push a righteous agenda despite attempts by many to crush him. He has a relationship with Callie his superior at work, a half woman- half demon hybrid, their relationship seems to survive in spite of their conflicting moral viewpoints.

He also lives with Randall a zombie, who only became a zombie as part of a failed attempt to impress a woman. As a zombie he’s had to learn to curb his desire for human flesh, though if given the opportunity it seems he’d be very happy to eat Mark. He’s unemployed, and is generally a slacker that just does odd jobs to pay his rent to Mark.

The show has quite a few parallels with Futurama in how a lot of its humour emanates from the concept of different species living together in a city; it’s a metaphor in some ways for immigration. It’s generally got some darker and dirtier subject matter than futurama, with more callous main characters, but there’s still some warmth to them in spite of their at times incredible selfishness.

American TV Roundup Part 1

So we’ve entered into the new season of some great American cable tv shows being back on the air here are some of my favourites.

Louie

The show took a little while for me to warm to, it seemed like it wasn’t quite sure if it was supposed to be narrative driven or if was a series of vignettes or sketches, and it just didn’t seem to be that funny. In fact I’d been a little disappointed because years before Louis C.K had made a noble attempt to show there was still potential in the format for the traditional, studio audience sitcom with Lucky Louie. It did this at a time when it was the height of un-fashion and people thought all comedy had to be like The Office, so it was cancelled after a season and was slightly misunderstood. It’s amazing that in some cases people still don’t quite grasp the difference between a show with a studio audience and a show canned laughter.

So what was needed was for me to get this show was for me to change my expectations and approach. It's best just to see each episode as its own self-contained short film or pair of short films, with Louie’s stand-up commenting on the themes of the episode. Once I got over that, my enjoyment of the show increased exponentially.

The tone varies from episode to episode with some taking on a more light-hearted approach and other being more dark and dramatic. On the whole it should be seen as a series about the isolation and alienation of a comedian and single father living in New York with some comedic, surrealist and dramatic elements. Louis C.K Writes, Stars, Acts, Edits and I’m sure does various other bits of production work on the show. It’s become a cliché  to say this, but it’s a true “auteur” project and probably the most idiosyncratic show on television at the moment.

Children’s Hospital

Starting out as an internet series the show then made the glamorous transfer to late night cable television. As creator Rob Corddry put it, the show was in a low stakes bidding war between comedy central and adult swim. As it turned out adult swim offered them slightly more creative freedom which was more important than money.

Even before the switch to television the show managed to look fantastic considering it was so cheaply made. Now in its 3^rd series the cast has become increasingly impressive with some of the best American comics and television stars popping up throughout the course of the show.

The show itself started out as a parody of various Hospital drama’s, its approach is similar in some ways to that of Airplane and other Zucker & Abrahams films. Despite the lack of much character or story consistency (which the show has commented upon) the series has also managed to build up its own running jokes over the course of the series; for example that the hospital is located in Brazil and everything about the show seems to contradict this idea until in a recent episode where two of the characters walked through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. You’ve got to love pointlessly expensive and time consuming jokes like that.

The show also frequently plays with its own format almost every week; it might parody a different genre, do a mockumentary episode or do an episode of the show set in the 70’s. 

Comedy Bang Bang

Podcasts are one of that strange phenomenon’s that the internet throws up, to those familiar with them, they can take up hours and hours of your week and inspire slavish routine obsession with them, but mention them to anyone else and you’ll get the reaction “What’s a podcast?”

 When I unthinkingly mentioned them in a class I got this very question and the best response I could instinctively give was they’re like pre-recorded radio shows on the internet that you download.

Of course they can be anything you want them to be as there’s no real set medium, no rules and regulations they’re bound by, So in a way its independent radio.

Comedy Bang Bang (formerly comedy death ray radio) has, over time become my favourite weekly comedy show of any medium. It’s hosted by Scott Aukerman who’s probably known best for his work on Mr Show. If you wanted to give it a description that wouldn’t quite be accurate, but would give you a good enough idea of the content; you could say it was like an American Monty Python for the 90’s. Although actually it was a lot better than that sounds.

 Guests from the world of comedy are invited on, the usual format is to have one or two people to talk about their work, and then another comedian comes on as a character but still with the conceit that it’s an interview show.  Along the way they’ll often have games such as “would you rather” “who said it” or just general improve scenarios. Despite how this may sound they usually end up subverting the usual clichés of improvised comedy. In the case of “would you rather” Listeners are asked to provide “would you rather” scenarios and the guests are then invited to ask further questions of this scenario. This is where it really excels as Scott’s responses usually twist around the original premise of the question by adding additional information that defeats the point of the original question entirely. And what’s great here is then you have guest appearing as themselves and characters bouncing off each other in creating surreal dialogue and ideas that spiral out of control.

There are many favourite characters on the show; Paul F. Tompkins is one former Mr Show alumni whom I rate highly in his own right as a stand-up, but his character work and rapport with Scott Aukerman on this show seems to have been a revelation. He usually appears performing warped portrayals of Ice T, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Buddy Velastro aka Cake Boss. (I assumed cake boss was a fictional character at first, but as it turns out it’s from a reality show about a chef who has to make unusually shaped cakes for his clients, and he’s always in a race against the clock to have it ready on time.) Other noteworthy guests are James Adomian for his performances as Huell Howser and Jesse Ventura he also made a superb one time appearance as Christopher Hitchens. I’m always endeared to Americans that can actually do British Accents that avoid the most obvious clichés of sounding like they’re in Dickensian London. Andy Daly and Nick Kroll also have a whole range of their  own original creations and Seth Morris has a character of Bob Ducca, who plays Scott Aukerman’s fictional ex-stepfather. He always brings something unique by putting more pressure on Scott to be more active in the scenarios rather than just asking the questions. He himself has a newly launched short daily podcast on Earwolf.com where you can download comedy bang bang and many other podcasts.   A mention should also go to Jon Daly for his one-time character of Bill Cosby Bukowski. A strange combination of – as you may have guessed Bill Cosby and  Poet Charles Bukowski. It’s an inspired idea that works best of all when the character is probed by Scott.

You never quite know what you’re going to get each week but whether it’s just a pleasant comedy discussion programme or hilarious character-driven comedy it’s a delight to listen to. In over 100 episodes (of which tend to be around 75 minutes) I could probably count the number of bad episodes on one hand and even those still have their moments.