Comedy, Issue 642

Interview: Wes Anderson

The director talks about adapting Fantastic Mr. Fox for the big screen

Texan born director Wes Anderson is renowned for making highly detailed and idiosyncratic films populated with slightly neurotic, child-like characters (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited). Seeing him in person, you realise that he wouldn’t…

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Inspired take on the Dahl classic

Wes Anderson’s animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s much loved book is no straightforward children’s film. Wee ones might enjoy it to a degree, but they won’t get much of the typically arch humour and wanton eccentricities the filmmaker once again…

Hitlist: Comedy

A fortnight of laughs

Alun Cochrane The daydreaming Yorkshire lad who was born in Glasgow gives us the kind of blistering show that earned a mighty five stars from us in August. The Stand, Glasgow, Mon 26 Oct; The Stand, Edinburgh, Tue 27 Oct. Daniel Kitson He…

Starsuckers

Also out this fortnight is Chris Taking Liberties Atkins’ wonderfully mischievous documentary foray into the world of celebrity obsessed media. Atkins and his team hilariously illustrate just how easy it is to plant hoax celebrity stories with an…

National Lampoon’s Animal House

(15) 108min John Landis’ seminal 1978 frat house comedy on new digital print. Selected release from Tue 3 Nov.

Profile: Cristian Mungiu

A look at the award winning director before his latest work, Tales From the Golden Age

Name Cristian Mungiu Born 27 April 1968 Background The graduate of the Bucharest Film School became the first Romanian director to win the Palme d’Or with his abortion drama 4 months 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Before becoming a full-time director…

Playing Away

A 1980s sports comedy to transcend racial stereotypes

This is a very welcome reissue of Horace Pressure Ové’s 1987 comedy of race manners. When a West Indian cricket team from Brixton travels to a Suffolk village to play against the local team as the culmination of the village’s Third World Week, racial…

Tales of the Golden Age (Amintiri Din Epoca De Aur)

Affectionate Romanian cinema

Cristian Mungiu, the Palme D’Or winning Romanian filmmaker of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, would almost certainly find himself in contention with American communications magnate Harold S Geneen’s much quoted belief that ‘We must not be hampered by…

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

The jokes are out of gas

‘We’re not going to break the rules, we’re just going to bend them a little bit,’ announces ruthless car-salesman Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) as he and his crack team of ‘car mercenaries’ descend on the small Californian backwater of Temecula. Their…

Jennifer's Body

Winning horror comedy from Juno writer

When it was released in the US, the heterosexual males who ogled Megan Fox’s superstructure amid the heavy-metal chaos of two Transformers movies stayed away in droves from Jennifer’s Body, and it’s not hard to see why. Karyn Kusama’s visceral horror…

Simon Amstell

After a successful Fringe stint, the neurotic comedian returns

Simon Amstell is gifted. Gifted with the sort of comedy head-start that many aspiring stand-ups would swap vital organs for, that is. As a Jewish, gay, hapless, neurotic, slender whippet of a thing, with a tendency to stalk famous people he fancies, his…