I recently watched the Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis movie “The Campaign.” Zach Galifianakis is really growing on me as an actor.
Here are two videos with essentially the same conceit. A comedian talking about verbal comedy while engaging in physical comedy. Zach’s is more contemporary, while Van Dyke’s is more old school.
This week the complete films of Jacques Tati was released on blu-ray and DVD. You cannot study the history of film comedy and not know about Tati. He had a marvelous sense of humor, and a unique style of comedy. Here is an excellent analysis of some of his work.
PlayTime: Anatomy of a Gag from Criterion Collection on Vimeo.
I also recommend this post from Criterion films for further reading.
This is a great video about the characters in Big Hero 6. Each character simply enters and sits in a chair. By having them do the same thing, it is clear how different they are, and what is on their minds.
Ricky Gervais on the radio describing what he learned from Laurel and Hardy, and how he uses it in his work.
Shakes the Clown starred Bobcat Goldthwait, and billed itself as the “Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies.” It’s not that great a film. What I did like was the food chain of clowns. Top of the food chain were the rodeo clowns. Below them were the party clowns. And at the bottom were the mimes.
Robin Williams appears as an angry mime instructor and as always, he is great.