Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.


Tag: humour

This is the ‘John Oliver thing’ I was referring to previously: an acerbic takedown of WWE’s dodgy labour practices for the week that’s in it. #video

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This is very niche, but my kind of niche. #video

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Requiem For A Dog

A24 responds to viewers’ complaints about the treatment of dogs in its films. (The complainers, they’re not wrong.) #link

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The 100 greatest comedies of all time, according to BBC Culture

I have quibbles with this list. Billy Wilder made funnier films than Some Like It Hot, for one, and in general the selection is top heavy with the kinds of films one might feel they ought to rate. But shuffle the deck, cutting out the Woody Allens (Annie Hall excepted, they’re simply not funny — I mean, besides the obvious), and maybe sequestering the early-20th-century works, and you’ve got yourself a decent pot luck. #link

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Bill Wurtz covers the history of the entire world in under 20 minutes. [c/o Kottke.org] #video

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Southpaw Regional Wrestling

So this is a nice surprise: an insider-ish parody of 1980s territorial wrestling by the current WWE roster, and one that gets the tone mostly right, being more affectionate than mean-spirited. The gags don’t always land but it’s funnier than it has any right to be. #link

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Santa Clarita Diet

Drew Barrymore in Santa Clarita Diet

Just piping up to recommend Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix, if you haven’t seen it already.

Think a mildly gore-splattered Desperate Housewives with the sensibility of 30 Rock. If that floats your boat, give it a couple of episodes to get going and find its tone; by the third, you’ll know.

For me, it’s all in the combination of great writing — especially in the fleshed-out characters and relationships — and spot-on casting. You can’t go wrong with Drew Barrymore, though Timothy Olyphant is the real standout. Who knew he had such a gift for comedy?

Anyway, if Netflix keeps doing shows as entertaining as this, it’ll make the subscription worth keeping.

More…

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The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy

Modern 'American' comedy, as the compilers make clear in their intro, which is a shame because British comedy of a certain era has been just as influential on American humour than their own legacy. #link

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Dwarf In A Crate

From this Quietus review by the ineffable Mr Agreeable of Future Days, a new book on the history of Krautrock, comes this choice paragraph:

Popol Vuh, soundtracker to the f***ing movies of Herzog! Well, there was a f***ing cinematic genius, as anyone whose slept through one of his f***ing movies will tell you – immortal classics steeped in one-finger drone music such as Dwarf In A Crate, The Man Who Mistook Himself For A Character, Straspulia (Or The Glass Hammer), The Enigma That Wasn’t, Slide Slowly Through Mud, The Wrath Of Paying Audiences, Plosnek, Bosnek and Nonek (A Trilogy) or his unmade sci-fi movie Spacewaster, all of them starring Klaus f***ing Kinski as a c***!

If this blog is for anything, it’s for posting gems like that.

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