TV/Movies Megathread

[Savonarola]

 

Laurel and Hardy, and especially Chaplin, will always find an audience.  There's always someone who will get into classic movies and there are very few directors who weren't influenced by Chaplin.

[HVC]

Laurel and Hardy, and especially Chaplin, will always find an audience.  There's always someone who will get into classic movies and there are very few directors who weren't influenced by Chaplin.

Especially the likes of Woody Allen and Polanski

[Maladict]

Laurel and Hardy, and especially Chaplin, will always find an audience.  There's always someone who will get into classic movies and there are very few directors who weren't influenced by Chaplin.

Maybe that's part of the problem. Comedy works because of surprise, an incongruity or something unexpected. Old comedy doesn't surprise us anymore, unless you're young enough to have missed a lot of the comedy that was influenced by the classics.

[Zoupa]

Looks like an FX series...dunno how that translates to Canadian.

Hulu.

Looking into it, I can get if for $8/month with ads, or $18/month without. I think if it'd been $8 without  ads I might have sprung for it. Oh well. Might read the books again though - "decently written and relatively plausible historical fiction with plenty of action, some politics, and a little bit of romance" is one of my favourite comfort genres.

[Barrister]

Laurel and Hardy, and especially Chaplin, will always find an audience.  There's always someone who will get into classic movies and there are very few directors who weren't influenced by Chaplin.

Maybe that's part of the problem. Comedy works because of surprise, an incongruity or something unexpected. Old comedy doesn't surprise us anymore, unless you're young enough to have missed a lot of the comedy that was influenced by the classics.

Seriously Mal - have you actually ever sat down and watched old comedy?

Go track down a copy of the Marx Brothers Duck Soup.  Now that movie is 90 years old at this point.  At times the style can feel kind of old, but I guarantee you'll find it funny.

[frunk]

Seriously Mal - have you actually ever sat down and watched old comedy?

Go track down a copy of the Marx Brothers Duck Soup.  Now that movie is 90 years old at this point.  At times the style can feel kind of old, but I guarantee you'll find it funny.

I know Duck Soup is always the goto, but I think Night at the Opera might be more accessible.  It is closer to the hybrid comedy/drama that is popular now while losing none of the brilliance of the Marx Brothers (plus it has a much better ending).

[Josquius]

Thinking about image quality as the problem with old stuff - classic cartoons do tend to perform better where the age is less obvious.

Theres this 1940s Disney short, Figaros Bath time.
I think it's had a bit of mild remastering. And my eldest loves it.

Honestly I don't think this is just a problem with today's kids either. Traditionally it certainly takes a lot more effort for me to watch something black and white. It has to be really great and sold to me as something awesome.
As I've gotten older I think this has got worse and even stuff from the 80s if not Hollywood quality is a struggle.

[Maladict]

Seriously Mal - have you actually ever sat down and watched old comedy?

Go track down a copy of the Marx Brothers Duck Soup.  Now that movie is 90 years old at this point.  At times the style can feel kind of old, but I guarantee you'll find it funny.

I never said I don't enjoy the classics. I do find it funny but it has aged, if nothing else in the sense that I'm so familiar with the style that it doesnt hit me like, say, alternative comedy did in the 80s.

[Savonarola]

I know Duck Soup is always the goto, but I think Night at the Opera might be more accessible.  It is closer to the hybrid comedy/drama that is popular now while losing none of the brilliance of the Marx Brothers (plus it has a much better ending).

Eugene Thalberg insisted that their movies had to have a plot; so "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races" are their most accessible (funny) movies.  I agree those are the best places to start.  Their Paramount Movies (Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup) are wildly anarchic.  I think those are great, but they're like nothing else.

[grumbler]

I gotta disagree - the best comedy is timeless.

Go watch some Marx Brothers, or some classic Looney Tunes - that stuff will never not be funny.

On the other hand we do now have this kind of lazy comedy that relies on making lots of topical references.  Which I mean yes, it can be funny, but dates itself incredibly quickly.

This is only true if you consider slapstick to be "the best comedy."  That's not true for me.  I think that John Oliver's stuff is much funnier than Laurel and Hardy, but Oliver's stuff won't age well because it is so topical.  I don't, however, consider comedians like Oliver to be "lazy" s you claim.  They may be different and not to your taste, but your sneering at them just makes you look bad, not them. 

[Sophie Scholl]

Since classic comedy has already been defended, I'll just chime in that I loved Pseudolus and Aristophanes in particular when I read them in college for a "Greek and Roman Comedy in Translation" class. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum makes use of a lot of the ancient tropes to good effect as well as a lot of early film comedy ones in a slightly more modern film. It is a personal favorite of mine. 

[Barrister]

I gotta disagree - the best comedy is timeless.

Go watch some Marx Brothers, or some classic Looney Tunes - that stuff will never not be funny.

On the other hand we do now have this kind of lazy comedy that relies on making lots of topical references.  Which I mean yes, it can be funny, but dates itself incredibly quickly.

This is only true if you consider slapstick to be "the best comedy."  That's not true for me.  I think that John Oliver's stuff is much funnier than Laurel and Hardy, but Oliver's stuff won't age well because it is so topical.  I don't, however, consider comedians like Oliver to be "lazy" s you claim.  They may be different and not to your taste, but your sneering at them just makes you look bad, not them. 

John Oliver is an interesting cat, as he (along with John Stewart before him) try to ride this line between news and comedy.  He's very successful, I've watched some of his monologues on youtube and enjoyed them.

But despite your sneering at my supposed sneering, I think I'll stand by my take - if you're looking for the best comedy, that's not it.  Something that is going to age so quickly may well be entertaining in the moment, but is also kind of easy.

When I talked about topical humour, I was actually though thinking more of like Seth McFarlane's humour on Family Guy and the like.  Again, a very popular show, and he's obviously much funnier than I am.  But again - relies on a lot of topical references and ages incredibly quickly.

GOing back to Marx brothers - they relied on slapstick in part - but they were a group act.  They did several different kinds of homour in their movies.  Some lands more successfully than others, for sure.  But Groucho for example wasn't doing slapstick.

[Jacob]

Is longer lasting and (potentially) universal "better" than ephemeral and highly tuned to a very specific context?

I agree that they're different, but I'm not sure I'll agree that one category of humour is objectively better. What matters is 1: execution (and there's plenty of weakly executed examples of both types), and 2: relevance to the audience. But just because a comedy or joke is not relevant to you (due to time or cultural awareness, or for other reasons), doesn't mean it isn't good.

[Jacob]

Another dimension is that humour is often a bit transgressive (if of nothing else, at least transgressive of expectations). Therefore humour is often used to reinforce in-groups and out-groups, or to redefine them. Similarly it can be used to reinforce or attack social hierarchies.

Humour where that is the primary purpose tends to be context specific and of the moment (because that's when those social hierarchies and groups matter the most), rather than universal. Sometimes that form of humour eschews being funny or clever in pursuit of it's social goals. I will agree that that kind of humour tends to be less genuinely funny if you don't agree with the goals, but that's typically because being genuinely funny is not really the point.

[crazy canuck]

Is longer lasting and (potentially) universal "better" than ephemeral and highly tuned to a very specific context?

I agree that they're different, but I'm not sure I'll agree that one category of humour is objectively better. What matters is 1: execution (and there's plenty of weakly executed examples of both types), and 2: relevance to the audience. But just because a comedy or joke is not relevant to you (due to time or cultural awareness, or for other reasons), doesn't mean it isn't good.

As an example, Who's on First only works if you know baseball.  It is one of my favourite bits of all time but that is because I know the cultural norms that underpin the comedy.

Slapstick comedy may be the exception, but I am in agreement with Grumbler that slapstick is not the height of humour.