Posts with tag SaturdayNightLive
Posted Jul 17th 2008 5:22PM by Kona Gallagher
Filed under: Saturday Night Live, The Office, Casting, Emmys, Reality-Free
Yesterday we reported that Amy Poehler had been offered
the lead on The Office spinoff (or
not-spinoff, as the case may be). Today,
Poehler herself is confirming the rumor. She tells the AP, "I can kind of confirm that I will be working in some capacity on that show," but goes on to say that "I don't really have any other details yet."
Poehler has been a castmember on
Saturday Night Live since 2001and is currently the co-host of Weekend Update. She will remain on
SNL through the fall, but with
her baby due in October and now this new show, her role in the second half of the season is up in the air.
It's been a big week for Poehler, who in addition to the new job offer, also received an Emmy nomination this morning for outstanding actress in a comedy series for her work on
SNL. Her husband,
Will Arnett, also scored an Emmy nod, for his guest appearance on NBC's
30 Rock.
Posted Jun 16th 2008 5:05AM by Paul Goebel
Filed under: TV on DVD, Ask TV Squad, Celebrities, Reality-Free
So this week, NBC aired The Best of Mike Meyers and it brought back a lot of memories for me. When I was in my twenties, Meyers was the man. Wayne, Dieter and Simon were some of my favorite topics to discuss on Sundays. More importantly, he was one of the few SNL alums to make the move to the big screen successfully.
For those of you who have been living in a cave, while wearing a blindfold with your hands over your ears, the special was clearly just a way for Meyers to promote his new film, The Love Guru. Even though, the movie looks like crap, it's nice to see Meyers making another try at a film franchise.
Continue reading Stump the King - Mike Myers
Posted Jun 3rd 2008 10:03AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Saturday Night Live, Reality-Free
One of the greatest -- and most resilient -- characters in the history of
Saturday Night Live is making a comeback. Or maybe he's just taking a paycheck.
Mr. Bill is the star of a new MasterCard debit card "Priceless" commercial. He's going to depict how even someone like Mr. Bill is tough enough to survive the rough financial times in which we live, just by using his MasterCard debit card.
The new 30-second commercials will begin airing on June 9, showing Mr. Bill as a typical guy heading in to work at the office. Naturally, along the commute, he stops for coffee and Mr. Hand scolds him accidentally. At the gym, he's catapulted off the treadmill. Later, an briefcase opens and launches him out the window. Naturally, through it all, Mr. Bill endures. Being made of clay has its pluses.
Continue reading Mr. Bill makes a comeback
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 May 7th 2008 7:04PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: Saturday Night Live, The Office, Reality-Free
With just two episodes left in the current season of
Saturday Night Live, fans are eagerly awaiting news about the final host. Yeah? No? Just me? All right.
Well, Me, good news! We knew Shia LaBoeuf and My Morning Jacket would be taking on the May 10 episode in what will most likely be another youthful crowd-pleaser, but here comes word that the final episode will be hosted
Steve Carell and musical guest Usher. Yeah, that ol' dream team. Both LaBoeuf and Carell will be on their second hosting stints and, if their first times were any indication, they will deliver strong performances. I mean, assuming the writing does justice to their comedic talent.
Continue reading LaBoeuf and Carell wrap up the SNL season
Posted Apr 28th 2008 8:06AM by Paul Goebel
Filed under: Ask TV Squad, Celebrities, Talk Show, Reality-Free
Now that Jimmy Fallon has been officially announced to replace Conan O' Brien I have a lot of questions. Will the show still tape in New York? Will he have a sidekick? Who will be his band leader? Will he constantly laugh at himself like he used to on Saturday Night Live?
I have always found him to be a very funny guy but when Fallon sat in for Dave Letterman, I have to admit, I was not impressed. He seemed to constantly be fighting with the need to be personable with his guests while still trying to be his ultra-hip self.
Continue reading Stump the King: Jimmy Fallon
Posted Apr 15th 2008 11:44AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Casting, Weeds, Reality-Free
One of the funniest guys in show business is coming to TV; and not just voices like he's done on
The Simpsons. E! News has reported that
Albert Brooks will appear in four episodes of Weeds for in the upcoming season. The Showtime comedy
returns with new episodes beginning June 16.
Albert Brooks -- whose real name is Albert Einstein (and his brother is comic Bob Einstein, aka Super Dave Osborne) -- has been making people laugh for nearly four decades. I distinctly remember his bits on
Love, American Style and his hilarious films on
Saturday Night Live circa 1975.
Continue reading Funnyman Albert Brooks cast on Weeds
Posted Apr 10th 2008 2:04PM by Jay Black
Filed under: Saturday Night Live, Watercooler Talk, Reality-Free
Slate magazine is running
an article regarding how weak most of what passes as political satire on television is. They quote heavily from Russell L. Peterson's new book
Strange Bedfellows: How Late Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke and also take some time to body-slam CNN's new comedy show,
Not Just Another Cable News Show (Wait.
What? CNN has a
new comedy show on it? I thought that was the thing Wolf Blitzer hosted every day. Are you telling me that's
not a comedy?)
Peterson's book, at first blush, seems to be another overly-alarmist, semi-academic attack on pop-culture -- Darrell Hammond is destroying democracy?
Really? -- that I usually just ignore. Well, maybe it's the Tylenol PM I took to ease the pain of being in Utica tonight, but after reading Slate's discussion of it, I started to come around to Peterson's way of thinking...
Continue reading Watercooler Talk: Is toothlesss TV political satire "endangering democracy"?
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 12th 2008 3:04PM by Anna Johns
Filed under: Saturday Night Live, Celebrities
In case you were tuning in to
Saturday Night Live this weekend for the music and not the...ahem...comedy, there's been a change in the schedule. Janet Jackson is evidently ill and has
canceled her appearance. She spent some time at Cedars Sinai hospital earlier this week due to a particularly nasty case of the flu. Mariah Carey will
take her place.
This makes me wonder whether people tune in to
SNL for the musical acts. I have to admit that I usually fast-forward through the musical performances. Maybe there is something about the sound on that stage, but performers rarely sound good. Or maybe it's just the performers themselves who only sound good on an album. I think I've tuned in to
SNL to see Barenaked Ladies perform and that's about it. Oh, and Beck is always pretty rad when he's on.
Does anybody watch
SNL just for the music?
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 8:03PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities
Jenna Fischer: This is one of those "I've arrived!" moments. Seriously. There's, like, little milestones... Like, being on David Letterman for the first time and then, like, being in
Vanity Fair.
Chelsea Handler: ... I knew I arrived when I got my period.
Everyone: [groans and laughter]
Yeah, I know how most of our male readers are. They like their ladies funny, smart, and painfully out of their league. Well, start lurking around the magazine stands, boys, because the upcoming
Vanity Fair has a new Annie Leibovitz photo spread featuring
some of the funniest ladies on the scene. The impressive list boasts Sandra Bernhard, Susie Essman, Tina Fey, Jenna Fischer, Chelsea Handler, Leslie Mann, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Amy Sedaris, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes, and Kristen Wiig, each of them doing very typical "Hollywood bad girl" things. I especially love Maya Rudolph's hair and how Silverman manages to do Amy Winehouse better than Amy Winehouse.
Continue reading Fine ladies of comedy in Vanity Fair
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 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
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