Posts with tag FredArmisen
Posted Jul 21st 2008 12:42PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Saturday Night Live, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
Just wanted to post a quick report about yesterday's late-afternoon
Saturday Night Live panel. On the panel was (new TCA Career Achievement award winner) Lorne Michaels, Weekend Update anchor and co-head-writer Seth Meyers, and cast members Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg, Jason Sudeikis, Kristin Wiig, Will Forte, and Casey Wilson.
Given the comedy star power on stage, the panel was strangely unfunny. That's probably because Michaels answered most of the questions. Anyway, two pieces of news came out of this panel:
- SNL will run live 30-minute Thursday election specials in primetime starting October 9 and running until the election. The specials will feature Weekend Update but may also have sketches. There will also be a primetime "Presidential Bash" episode the night before the election.
- Michaels mentioned that Jimmy Fallon will air his show online for "five or six months" before it airs in Conan O'Brien's old timeslot, in order to give it a headstart in finding its creative legs. "We learned with Conan how brutal it was to find a show when it was on the air," he said.
Continue reading SNL's election coverage, and Jimmy Fallon will start online - TCA Report
Posted May 18th 2008 1:05PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Celebrities, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S33E12) To ensure a strong season finale,
Saturday Night Live made a very smart choice to go with Steve Carell. He is an incredible comedic performer and his first hosting stint went pretty well, so I wasn't surprised to see him pull it off again this time around. Actually, this picture is from the first time Carell hosted
. Is it weird that I've had it sitting on my desktop since then? Yes, probably. Anyway, the material was better than some of the other episodes', with a few spectacular highlights, including the hilarious digital short.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Steve Carell/Usher (season finale) - VIDEOS
Posted May 11th 2008 11:58AM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S33E11) I honestly was not worried about Shia LaBeouf delivering a less than stellar performance, as his
first stint on Saturday Night Live showed that he works well with the cast and is naturally very goofy. With a funny guy like this, one can only pray that the writers use him as much as possible and work super-hard to give him embarrassingly crazy sketches. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Again. The writing was okay, but it did not do LaBeouf justice. Also, there seemed to be a strange flow to the episode, as the energy of sketches would start dying halfway through and eventually end on a really weird line. Let's hope the writers aren't already losing steam. They still have a season finale!
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Shia LaBeouf/My Morning Jacket - VIDEOS
Posted Apr 13th 2008 12:26PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Video, The Daily Show, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S33E10) Considering the fact that Ashton Kutcher has hosted the show two times previous to this, I expected a lot more sketches that would let him cut loose and go crazy. We already know that he can be a decent host, and I felt like they didn't use him to his full potential. I also fully understand that I'm simultaneously talking about the importance of range and Ashton Kutcher of
That 70s Show and
Punk'd.
That said, this episode was mediocre, but at least it was consistently chuckle-worthy. There were only one or two sketches that were a bit painful to get through.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Ashton Kutcher/Gnarls Barkley - VIDEOS
Posted Apr 6th 2008 1:20PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Video, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S33E09) The weird thing about Christopher Walken's legendary
Saturday Night Live performances is that they all suck. Seriously, think about it. His delivery is jaunty and weird, and when he's not awkwardly staring into the middle distance, he's just glaring directly at the cue cards. All these elements combined should throw him in the realm of the crappiest hosts.
... And yet he consistently pulls it off and makes even the worst sketches absolutely brilliant. How is that? Walken is just inherently awesome, I suppose. It's really the only logical explanation. This episode in particular was very poorly written; I'm sure most of the sketches look absolutely pathetic transcribed on paper. However, Walken's aforementioned jaunty awesomeness made it one of the best episodes of the season. He's done it again, folks. I expect a second "
SNL: Best of Christopher Walken" DVD is in the works.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Christopher Walken/Panic! At the Disco - VIDEOS
Posted Mar 16th 2008 11:05AM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Episode Reviews
(S33E08) Cold Open: No surprise here, the first thing to get mocked was the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal. Bill Hader's impression was spot-on, as always, and Kristen Wiig did a great job as the pained Mrs. Spitzer. The overall skit was all right, but I wasn't too quick to get my hopes up. After all, the post-strike episodes haven't been too hot, with the last two being particularly hard to sit through, and I wasn't sure how
Superbad funnyman Jonah Hill would fare on live TV.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Jonah Hill/Mariah Carey - VIDEOS
Posted Mar 9th 2008 11:58AM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Episode Reviews
(S33E07) I was really hoping that this night would redeem
Saturday Night Live from the crappiness of
Ellen Page's episode, but, boy, was I disappointed. Usually, when an episode is weak, I just shrug it off, write a post about it, and move on. This time, I actually felt a bit of regret when it was over.
"I totally could have been using that time to clean my room," I thought. Obviously, I wasn't particularly fond of this one.
I haven't seen Amy Adams in much apart from
Talladega Nights and
Enchanted and, even though both of these films left me feeling like I could have been using the time to clean my room, I was all right with Adams. Unfortunately, she looked super nervous throughout the episode and sped through her lines so quickly that she would sometimes use really bizarre inflection.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Amy Adams/Vampire Weekend - VIDEOS
Posted Mar 3rd 2008 10:02AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Late Night, Saturday Night Live, Watercooler Talk, Celebrities
It wasn't April 1st so it couldn't be April Fool's Day. It was March 1st. Still, there she was, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton saying those famous words, "Live from New York, It's
Saturday Night Live."
In an unannounced and potentially savvy political move,
Senator Hillary Clinton, appeared on the NBC late night comedy and showed that she can laugh at herself. This surprise appearance, coupled with her agreeing to be on Monday's
Daily Show with Jon Stewart, can only help her in Tuesday's primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. It's pretty much desperation time for the Clinton candidacy and if Hillary wants to make it to the Denver convention with a chance to beat Barack Obama, she must win Texas and Ohio -- the big states -- decisively.
Continue reading It's Hillary, Live from New York, on SNL
Posted Mar 2nd 2008 10:02AM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Episode Reviews
(S33E06) Let me preface this entire review by saying that I've seen
Juno multiple times and greatly enjoyed each viewing. I think Ellen Page is a talented actress and
Juno would not have been as successful without her. I'm saying this because I'm worried that my review of this episode might make it look like I'm part of the online
Juno backlash.
Man, this was a terrible episode. The writing was weak, but Page's awkward performance(s) didn't help the situation. I found myself almost instantly annoyed with Page's voice. "There's going to be another hour and fifteen minutes of this?!" I thought during the monologue. It's like Page can't help but talk like a rough-around-the-edges teen in skinny jeans all the time. It makes me wonder if that's all she's going to be able to play in films. Perhaps she was just really nervous and it made he scream a lot. Either way, it totally made my ears want to bust out of my skull, home skillet. Honest to blog. Obviously.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Ellen Page/Wilco - VIDEOS
Posted Feb 29th 2008 11:01AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Video
In today's
Washington Post,
Saturday Night Live kingpin
Lorne Michaels defended his choice of Fred Armisen to play Barack Obama, starting with
last week's episode. After the much-publicized search for an Obama impersonator (or
Fauxbama, as some are calling it), Michaels decided on Armisen, who is of white and Asian origin. Armisen, who's talented enough to do excellent imitations of people ranging from Prince to Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, did a credible job playing Obama, a man who is somewhat hard to pin down, imitation-wise.
But some critics,
including the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan, have very bluntly wondered why an African-American didn't play Obama. "They couldn't find an African-American performer who was funny enough to play the junior senator from Illinois? They couldn't find one in New York? Not anywhere in the country?
Really?" wrote Ryan on her
Tribune blog.
Continue reading SNL's Michaels defends choice of Armisen as Obama - VIDEO
Posted Feb 24th 2008 1:14PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Video, Episode Reviews
(S33E05) Cold Open (CNN Democratic Debate): After seeing all those rumors about adding a new cast member to specifically play Barack Obama, I had resigned myself to seeing a new black guy. Hey, don't pretend you didn't think the same thing. In my mind, Fred Armisen never, ever entered into the equation, so imagine my surprise when Armisen popped up on screen next to Amy Poehler's Hillary Clinton and was immediately identifiable as Obama. It was the ears and the super-serious look of concern, I think.
This sketch was all about the some members of the "unbiased" media's blatant negligence of Clinton. Yeah, the content was all right, but I spent most of my time trying to figure out if I liked Armisen as Obama. He had the look down, but only part of it. Obama's frowny face was pretty spot-on, but what about his signature grin? And the voice didn't work at all. Perhaps this will improve with time, because I don't think it's likely that Armisen expected this new role and didn't have much time to intensely study Obama's voice and mannerisms before the end of the writers' strike.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Tina Fey/Carrie Underwood - VIDEOS
Posted Nov 4th 2007 12:21PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Episode Reviews
(S33E04) From Brian Williams' guest spots and cameos on
The Daily Show, I already knew he was a surprisingly funny guy. He has an incredibly dry delivery and that level of newsman integrity paired with any remotely dirty joke is absolutely hilarious. That said, I still was not sure how he would deal with a live show. After all, even the funniest of comedians or most polished of actors can fall flat on their face when pressured with the threat of no edits, no do-overs.
I am very happy to report that Mr. Brian Williams did a spectacular job. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up joining the ranks of hosting gods Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin some day. His performance was crisp and professional, and I'm sure people that only know him from his news program were caught completely off guard. Too bad the writing this week was below average.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Brian Williams/Feist
Posted Oct 14th 2007 3:02PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Saturday Night Live, Episode Reviews
(S33E03) "Amy Poehler: 1986": I thought that this was a great choice for a cold open! A young, big-haired Amy Poehler being visited by a magical poster version of Jon Bon Jovi? Fantastic. In general, it was really cute and made me feel a little better about Bon Jovi's hosting abilities. I mean, not that it really mattered because he barely appeared in this episode, not counting the musical performances. Hey, whatever it takes to promote
an album, right?
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Jon Bon Jovi/Foo Fighters - VIDEOS
Posted Feb 11th 2007 12:31PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, NBC, Late Night, OpEd, Saturday Night Live
(S32E13) I'm not very familiar with Forest Whitaker's work, but I'm well aware of his new-found status as one of the biggest actors in Hollywood. He recently won multiple awards for his performance in
The Last King of Scotland, so I knew that he could act. Whitaker didn't do such a spectacular job on
SNL. He was good, yeah, but not spectacular.
However, the writing this week was really something else. It was a lot weirder than usual, I thought. For the most part, I liked it. I see that they've cut down on a lot of the more formulaic recurring character sketches, which is a massive improvement. Plus, none of the those recurring sketches are accompanied shitty little theme songs! Remember the days of "Debbie Downer" and "Carol"? Thank goodness those are over.
Continue reading Saturday Night Live: Forest Whitaker/Keith Urban - VIDEOS
Giveaways reminder: Office, Eli Stone, Supernatural, South Park
Giveaway Thursday: Tickets to the New York Television Festival ... all of it!
I miss the media-friendly John McCain - VIDEOS
