TVSquad

"Total (Lack of) Recall": Either the House Judiciary Committee loves talking about torture or they haven't been getting any answers during their hearings. Last week, they managed to pull John Ashcroft in for questioning, but they might as well have stayed at home. I can't look at John Ashcroft without thinking of "Let the eagle sooooar", so I'm glad that Jon Stewart brought it up. No mention of Robert Wexler's fantastic "I enjoy cocaine because it's a fun thing to do" from The Colbert Report, but we know everyone was thinking it.

We already have Land of the Lost coming to the big screen next year starring Will Ferrell. Now two more Sid and Marty Krofft creations might be on the way.

Apparently, the shows Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and H.R. Pufnstuf will be getting the big screen treatment as well. Knowing Hollywood, the CGI gurus are probably already working on new character designs that are hip and cool (although thankfully they didn't change the Sleestaks very much). Part of the appeal of the original 70's programs were the actors in the silly costumes, but I guess one must adapt to the times.

The original shows were very psychedelic and a product of the time. There are rumors that the Kroffts created them under the influence. I just have two questions: First, will the lead child actor in Sigmund and the Sea Monsters sing a solo at the end like Johnny Whitaker? Second, would I be able to appreciate the movies more if I watched them while stoned?

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.

This one caught me a little bit by surprise. If you had told me the Funny Or Die guys were getting a TV show, I would have guessed Comedy Central, TBS, VH1, or something like that. Instead, HBO has ponied up the dollars to buy a stake in the company. HBO's interest is believed to be less than 10% of the company, but it also comes with an order for ten half hour episodes.

The deal came about thanks to the relationship built when HBO worked with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay on the upcoming series Eastbound And Down. It went well enough that the network was looking for more projects to work on with the group. It's unclear just what form Funny Or Die will take on HBO. Ferrell talks about keeping their options open, suggesting that it could be "... anything from a funny offbeat talk show to a maybe more-traditional-type sitcom to a show with puppets". The only clue being that they want to keep the new show in the same family of comedy as what they have presented on the website. An example of that comedy is embedded, after the jump.

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...

Last week, The Office's Steve Carell attended WonderCon 2008, talking about his new movie Get Smart. The picture, which is based on the 1965 NBC (and later CBS) TV series of the same name, will be appearing in theaters around the country on June 20, 2008. While saying that he tried not to channel Don Adams's performance so he could bring something different to the role, in an IESB.net interview with Carell, he said that before he got the part of Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, of CONTROL, both Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell were considered. The film had actually been in development for nearly a decade. Steve recalled going to Warner Brothers for a reading about three years ago. "It was the most surreal moment, because I went in thinking I was just going to audition for a role. I didn't expect them to offer me the part of Maxwell Smart."

The best of the night so far. It starts off innocently enough with Troy Aikmen commenting on the action in the first quarter when Joe nods off and bangs his head on his mic. Queue music ("What is Love?") and we then get a montage of people across all industries nodding off at their jobs, at dinner, at awards shows, on game shows. I'm pretty sure that's Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J and Macy Gray nodding off while they were up for "Song of the Year." This keeps up until Diet Pepsi Max comes along on a mail cart and everyone starts doing "The Roxbury," or the head bopping made famous by Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell in the recurring SNL skits. The bit ends with Troy staring at Joe as Joe bops along. But the best part is after the blurbs about Diet Pepsi Max and the slogans, we get a quick shot of Chris Kattan shopping, yelling "Stop it!" to two girls doing the head bop.

NBC announced today that 90-minute "Best of" specials of Saturday Night Live will air throughout December. These special episodes, featuring sketches with Will Ferrell and Chris Farley to name just two, will air in primetime Saturdays from 9:30 to 11:00 p.m. ET/PT.

The first "Best of," to air on December 8, will be devoted to Will Ferrell's best work on the show. This episode will feature sketches of Craig the Spartan Spirit cheerleader, singing middle school teacher Marty Culp, along with Ferrell's portrayal of Alex Trebek on Celebrity Jeopardy and much more.

Universal Pictures has just signed Brad Silberling to direct the big screen version of the '70s cult hit Land of the Lost. Silberling joins Will Ferrell on the project which is set to start shooting in March.

The original Saturday morning series told the story of explorer Rick Marshall who, while on a "routine expedition" with his children (for some reason) Will and Holly, fell through a fault in the Earth and ended up in a prehistoric world filled with dinosaurs, cavemen and evil lizard creatures known as sleestaks. Here's a little known fact, the "good" sleestak, Enik was played by NBA pro Bill Laimbeer.

Here's yet another funny video from Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's video site, FunnyOrDie.com. This short piece was written and directed by Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and features Willem Dafoe, Andy Richter and Will Ferrell as office workers who have a special procedure performed on themselves that initially seems like a good idea, with major regrets occurring later. I can't go into too much detail without ruining the video for you, so skip to the bottom of this post and watch it.

Richter and Ferrell are always funny, but it's also nice to see a "serious" actor like Dafoe really putting himself into something this silly. Even though he's the only non-comedian in the whole short, he's by far the best part. Someone should give that man more comedic roles, like in The Last Temptation of Christ. That movie was hilarious.

Last September, Brett told you about a new HBO pilot being created for HBO called P.E. Well, that pilot is still happening, but now it's called East Bound and Down. The plot remains the same, though: a washed-up professional baseball player winds up back in his Southern hometown and becomes a substitute gym teacher.

The new comedy comes from actor Will Ferrell and his writing partner Adam McKay's Gary Sanchez Productions. The men previously worked on Saturday Night Live together and later on the films Anchorman and Talladega Nights. Newcomer Danny R. McBride (who also co-created the series and wrote the script along with Jody Hill and Ben Best) will star as Kenny, the pitiful pitcher, along with Katy Mixon, John Hawkes and Andrew Daly. Mixon plays Kenny's former high school girlfriend, who is now engaged to the principal (Andrew Daly). Kenny's brother will be played by Hawkes.

Sid and Marty Krofft created some of the oddest and most memorable characters for children's television and enhanced many acid trips for those same children's older siblings.

Of course, the brothers couldn't have been on drugs themselves considering all the work that went into productions like H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost (not to mention countless other productions like Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, D.C. Follies and Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters). Marty Krofft spoke about that and a bunch of other things in a recent appearance on the Sound of Young America. You can listen to the interview here.

It's a great interview, especially if you grew up with these shows. Krofft also talks about the new Land of the Lost movie, which, as I mentioned before, does not yet have a director attached to it. Will Ferrell, however, has been cast in the lead role.

Will Ferrell has yet another video up on his Funny or Die comedy video site. You should skip down to the bottom of this post right now and watch the video (after the jump) without reading the next paragraph, because I'm going to talk about the short and I don't want to ruin it for you.

Okay, did you watch it? Good.

What did you think? I thought it was mildly amusing, but not nearly as funny as The Landlord, and besides, Charles Schulz did essentially this same gag with Snoopy's doghouse over forty years ago. I suppose the fact that's it's a portable toilet makes it funnier than say, a cardboard box, but still, it's not his best work. I'm not sure if I would vote this "Funny" or "Die." Is there a button for "Knock Unconscious for a Few Minutes?"

I did laugh at the text at the end telling us how they now live in an ATM kiosk. At least they're moving up in the world.

(S05E16) After watching this episode the first thing that came to mind was the scene from the season four episode "Jungle Love" where Stewie traveled across the country to slap Will Ferrell. I'm starting to get the feeling that Seth MacFarlane, or someone at Family Guy central, could use some Griffin family negative reinforcement.

I'm speaking of the chicken fight scene. Well, scene isn't really appropriate. Segment would be more apt I suppose. I'm generally one that enjoys when shows reference back to things they have done in the past. Things like Chris' roommate at Morningwood being the son of James Bottomtooth from "Brian Goes Back To College" are great. But there are only 22 minutes per episode. Taking a quarter of that for the chicken fight is just ridiculous.

Hello, everyone. Are you enjoying your Saturday? That's great. Here's some funny videos I found:

First of all, our own Paul Goebel is doing a series of funny vlogs for NBC's DotComedy as The Remote Controller. He's already predicted the demise of FOX's Drive before anyone else. Will he use his Nostradamus-like skills to make even more chilling predictions? Who knows?

Have you been watching Human Giant on MTV? You should, it's a damn funny show. Check out this sketch of one of the most intense job interview you'll ever witness. It'll make you "put on your marshmallow pants and hit the boo-hoo button."