The Definitive Guide to Comedy
The Last Laugh opens with a quote onscreen from the noted non-comedian, German novelist Heinrich Mann, who wrote: “Whoever has cried enough, laughs.” Mann fled Nazi Germany while Hitler’s soldiers burned his books in public. The documentary then cuts to a Nazi-uniformed figure skater, then to present day. Yes, this is …
After Henry Phillips released his semi-autobiographical movie, Punching the Clown, in 2010, Showtime expressed interest in developing a companion series. That series never came to fruition. But the awkwardness of that failure inspired Phillips and Gregori Viens to co-write and direct a sequel. Originally titled And Punching the Clown when …
Jim Norton has released stand-up specials on HBO and EPIX, and now in 2017 joins the growing list of comedians moving to Netflix in 2017 with his fourth hour, Mouthful of Shame. Here’s the intro to my review of this hour, via Decider: There’s nothing you can say about Jim …
I wrote up eight thoughts worth sharing and exploring while watching Jerrod Carmichael’s new hour of stand-up, 8, on HBO. Bo Burnham directed Carmichael in 8 for HBO, which made for some interesting and special choices, from the formal dress code and setting of putting young people in the Masonic …
Amy Schumer’s stand-up specials have jumped from Comedy Central — the network that showcased her rise from roasts to Inside Amy Schumer — to HBO and now Netflix. Because how can Comedy Central compete with Netflix at this point? But that’s beside the point of this review. Schumer calls her …
This is the second time already in 2017 that I’ve had the chance to take another look at a comedian I saw onstage the year before in their Off-Broadway run of a show. First came Neal Brennan’s 3 Mics. And now comes Mike Birbiglia’s Thank God For Jokes on Netflix. …
Trevor Noah is off this week from his Comedy Central gig — The Daily Show is airing best-of packages instead. But there’s a new hour from Noah on Netflix, Afraid of the Dark, filmed this past November (the weekend before the election, in fact, during the New York Comedy Festival), …
Hard work, determination and an honestly funny outlook on life pays off. Just ask Roy Wood Jr., or rather, watch Wood’s first stand-up hour special, Father Figure, on Comedy Central. After a two-decade climb through comedy clubs and radio stations across the South and later, across America, through a finalist finish …
Katherine Ryan is only the second stand-up comedian from the United Kingdom granted an official Netflix comedy special, and she’s actually Canadian. So winner winner, cheeky sinner! I wrote about Katherine Ryan: In Trouble for my friends at Decider, and here’s the topical lede… Twenty minutes into her first stand-up …
If you thought Nick Cannon and NBC were on the outs last week, then you didn’t actually watch Cannon’s newest stand-up special for Showtime, which premiered Friday night. You can read my review on Decider, where he replaced the N in NBC with the N-word, and said all the things …
