The Definitive Guide to Comedy
New Faces is decidedly different this year in Montreal. Perhaps it’s due to the Amazon Prime Video camera crews following the aspiring stand-up comedians around Just For Laughs. Yep. Mais bien sur. C’est vrai. C’est très certainement! Pardon my French. In recent years, I’ve gone out of my way to …
Chris Redd experienced a breakout summer in 2016, first as a scene-stealer in the The Lonely Island’s movie Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, then as a New Face at Montreal’s Just For Laughs, and finally as an almost-hire at Saturday Night Live. My bad on that almost part. (Understatement) Except …
Double Threat may be one of my favorite shows/concepts at Just For Laughs. It’s so named because you get to see two stand-up comedians on the up-and-up perform back-to-back half-hour sets, typically in a setting that showcases them at their most pure selves, and intimately enough so you really feel …
In his Netflix special, Act Happy, Todd Glass unveiled The Todd Glass Band to add more weapons to his comedy arsenal. Glass uses them to great effect, especially in a live setting such as his showcase all this week in Montreal for Just For Laughs, as not only a talented …
When Sacha Baron Cohen first burst onto the scene with Ali G, Borat and Bruno on British television in 2000 (and then HBO in 2003), you have to remember what America was then. No social media. No hyper-awareness. When he filmed Borat, he could still fool most of the people …
A decade ago, W. Kamau Bell promised to end racism in an hour, titling his touring one-man show that to bring the audience in and leave them laughing. We’re not laughing so much now in 2018, when racism remains an American problem by its own birth and historical circumstances. Nevertheless, …
I made a point not to go back and look at my review of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette from when I saw it live onstage in New York City just a few months ago, either before, during or after watching the version she filmed for Netflix back in Sydney. Now I …
Aptly titled. Oh, you want more? Fine. Steve Martin Short fits even better. But An Evening You Will Forget For The Rest of Your Life definitely fits the bill, as I sit here a month and a half later and cannot tell you much of what transpired, even if I do …
I’ve read more than one thinkpiece (please don’t try that at home or anywhere else, for that matter) that compared Hannah Gadsby’s brilliant one-woman show, Nanette, to Tig Notaro’s performance at Largo when she first revealed she had cancer. All of which only makes me appreciate Notaro’s own 2018 Netflix …
I can’t tell you how many acquaintances of mine have asked me about Ali Wong in the past couple of years. No, wait. Actually, I can tell you how many. ALL OF THEM. Wong burst into the mainstream as the first comedian to become an “overnight sensation” thanks to Netflix …
