It started when Ryan Drake, who runs the podcast with Allan Pellegrin, mentioned Coyne in a tweet. “I think it was around the time he joined Twitter,” Drake said. “I don’t think he knew how to use Twitter, and he accidentally followed me because I said something about him.” Several tweet conversations later, Coyne agreed […]
comedy
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Arthur
As “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” proved, he’s only good in small doses; as “Get Him to the Greek” proved, he’s downright grating in large ones. Taking over Dudley Moore’s iconic, Oscar-nominated title role, Brand seems not to have undergone any great stretch to portray a rich, spoiled, drunken, promiscuous man-child. We’re asked to laugh at his […]
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Take Me Home Tonight
It’s a tribute to the 80’s teen comedy , set in the latter part of that decade; it absolutely revels in those years, as the way-fun music video amid the extras attests. If not for its fresh-faced stars of today, the film could very well pass as a product of that era. Having a hand […]
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Call Me Bwana
Its flimsiest of plots posits that a moon probe has accidentally crash-landed among the dangerous Ekele tribe in Africa, and the Americans need to nab it before it falls into the hands of another nation. The U.S. government calls upon Matthew Merriwether (Hope), a published expert on the continent who claims to have shaken hands […]
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Bitter Coco
Last year’s debacle over “The Tonight Show” didn’t quite reach Shakespearean proportions, but you sure couldn’t tell it at the time. When Jay Leno left the hallowed television franchise for a stab at prime time, NBC gave the coveted late-night slot to Conan O’Brien, who had been patiently waiting in the latelate-night wings. Things did […]
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Ben Bailey: Road Rage … and Accidental Ornithology
And if you don’t, well, that’s the first thing he’s tell you — and tell you, and tell you — in “Ben Bailey: Road Rage … and Accidental Ornithology,” a one-hour stand-up comedy special whose title neither rolls off the tongue, nor yields much laughter. He has a pause-happy delivery that can grate as it slows […]
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Burning Palms
That’s a close-enough summation of “Burning Palms”; even then, the sleeper surprise offers many scoops of the unexpected. From the wonderfully devious mind of writer/director Christopher B. Landon (screenwriter of “Paranormal Activity 2” and “Disturbia,” and son of the late Michael Landon, who likely would be appalled) comes this anthology of five tales set in […]
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Hold On!
Like a certain mop-topped UK band who took America by storm a couple years earlier, the pointless but harmless vehicle finds Herman’s Hermits making a trip to America for a tour, and finding themselves mobbed everywhere they go. The “story,” as it were, is that their fans have lobbied hard to get a NASA rocket […]
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Barney’s Version
Playing 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday as part of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s “New Jewish Cinema” program, it’s a Canadian film based on Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel, detailing the entire adulthood of Barney Panofsky (Giamatti, “Win Win”), who, despite being wildly successful as a soap-opera producer, fails spectacularly in his personal life. It […]
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Meet Me in Las Vegas
Although no slouch as an actress, it was her fancy footwork that defined her, in roles from “Singin’ in the Rain” to “Brigadoon.” In that aspect, it’s difficult to separate the performer from the character she plays in the 1956 MGM musical “Meet Me in Las Vegas.” She plays Maria, a ballerina married to her […]