The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Piff The Magic Dragon may not have won America’s Got Talent, nor even advanced to the finals of AGT: Champions, but he revealed on Monday’s show that he’s already a winner. Just getting the AGT audition helped him stay in America, and since appearing on TV, his comedy/magic act has …
William Stephenson and I once shared 50 straight hours together inside The Comic Strip. Stephenson was hosting. I was live-blogging. We may have been the only folks in the joint to go stir-crazy and still keep a friendly sense of humor about the 50-hour stand-up comedy marathon that set a …
The Beast took years longer than expected to open, but the Upright Citizen Brigade’s theater in the East Village will close with relatively short notice. Time’s up in a month, after shows on Saturday, Feb. 9. UCB-NY Artistic Director Michael Hartney delivered the bad news via email late Wednesday. The …
Round one of AGT: The Champions aired Monday night on NBC, and if everything else proceeds as this did, we’ll see 10 all-stars perform each week, with one receiving a “golden buzzer” from the judges, one advancing thanks to votes from the audience, and the rest enjoying their brief time …
American TV audiences will finally get to hear Susan Boyle sing in primetime. Boyle is one of 50 acts from the Got Talent franchise worldwide, and the first phenomenon from it, to participate in the first-ever all-star edition for NBC, called America’s Got Talent: The Champions. The lineup also includes …
“Does this mean I get to accept it every year? But you know, my first love growing up was the movies. I’d see as many as six to eight films a week with my grandmother who raised me. And then later, when I was a teenager, we got our first …
If you think Donald Trump’s response to Saudi Arabia has been weak, then what do you make of Netflix? The streaming giant recently capitulated to the Saudi royals, pulling an episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj that questioned U.S. policy toward the Saudis after the murder of journalist Jamal …
You knew Stewart Robert Einstein by many other names. Officer Judy. Super Dave. Marty Funkhouser. However you knew him, Bob Einstein cemented his comedy legacy as part of a rich, funny family. Einstein died Jan. 2 at the age of 76, from leukemia. Bob didn’t initially want to get into comedy, …
The CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Showcase, a staple for 14 years, will begin a run of six shows starting Jan. 15 at the El Portal Theatre in Los Angeles with its cast for 2019. Written by past showcase performers, the variety revue is well-attended by industry execs, and seen as a …
At the end of the year, as we celebrate the best of the past 12 months, it’s good to remember just how much we loved in cinema came out of the first month’s granddaddy of independent film fests, Sundance. This January, we saw the premieres of Bo Burnham’s big-screen directorial …
