Comedy

Spring Breakers

Harmony Korine's ludicrously bad drama about four girls gone wild on spring break

Incoherent, brash and self-consciously 'arthouse' in execution, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers is an intriguing cinematic spectacle: an awful film that seems aware – nay, aggressively boastful – of its own awfulness. It follows a quartet of…

The History of Future Folk

Charming but slight sci-fi music comedy in the vein of Flight of the Conchords

Cosmic-folk twosome Future Folk started life on the underground New York music scene, playing acoustic guitar-and-banjo tunes with sci-fi lyrics to crowds of bemused punters. The gentle whimsy and a focus on music rather than jokes puts their foot…

Chris Addison talks The Thick of It, The Look of Love and returning to stand-up

The baby-faced comic is in Scotland for the Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Were he not wholly spoken for, Chris Addison is the kind of genial, jovial, nice tall chap that a prospective suitor would happily introduce to their parents. But that doesn’t mean he will hold back when giving both barrels to certain scaremongers of…

Sanderson Jones brings his atheist church services to Glasgow

The innovative comedian is appearing as part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Sanderson Jones is one of stand-up’s great innovators, an irrepressible ideas man. Over a predictably faltering Skype connection, the strikingly tall, bearded, sometime face of the IKEA ads, admits to occasional gremlins during a tech-comedy gig the…

Rising star Wayne Mazadza on comedy competitions and sidestepping stereotypes

The Harare-born, Edinburgh-based comic is appearing at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Wayne Mazadza writes routines to surprise his fellow comedians, ‘with unpredictable punchlines, storylines with surreal endings that really bring justice to the set-up’. Fine-tuning them for up to six months, the Harare-born, Edinburgh-based comic…

10 years of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Joan Rivers, Kevin Bridges, Frankie Boyle and Sarah Millican among the highlights of the last decade

2003 The very first festival opens with Daniel Kitson on the same night the Iraq War starts. Kitson is delayed getting to the show as the centre of Glasgow is brought to a standstill by anti-war protests. The pilot festival sells about 20,000 tickets…

John Dies at the End

Self-conciously bizarre cult comedy offering from director Don Coscarelli

Penned by Senior Editor at Cracked.com David Wong (real name Jason Pargin), the 2009 novel John Dies at the End was a comedy-horror tornado of cultural references, paranormality and winking self-awareness. Cult filmmaker Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba…

Paul Merton, Harry Hill and more to appear at Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Jimmy Carr, Al Murray and Lucy Porter are some of the other famous faces attending

Paul Merton It’s the man who gave ad-libbing a half-decent name. Along with his Impro Chums, Mr Merton will be taking the daftest of audience suggestions and moulding them into precious gems of comedic gold. Just you watch. n King’s Theatre…

Vinyl

Clunky Welsh comedy starring Keith Allen and Phil Daniels as ageing punk rockers

This clunky punk rock comedy from Welsh filmmaker Sara Sugarman has its heart in the right place, but despite a decent ‘inspired by real events’ premise and some solid performances, it’s crippled by a half-baked script and a reliance upon…

Populaire

Immaculately styled French period romcom starring Déborah Francois and Romain Duris

This immaculately styled French period romantic comedy signals its pedigree with a colourful cartoon credit sequence reminiscent of cute and kookie Hollywood comedies circa the 1950s and 60s. And in fact, co-writer and director Régis Roinsard’s feature…

Run for Your Wife

Hopelessly dated and poorly executed comedy starring Danny Dyer

This comprehensively cack-handed adaptation of the long-running West End stage sex comedy will have all but the most thick of skin and dim of humour running from the cinema as though their very lives depended up on it. Co-director and screenwriter Ray…

I Give it a Year

Abysmal, humourless newlyweds comedy starring Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall and Anna Faris

Nat (Rose Byrne) is a shallow, uptight career girl. Josh (Rafe Spall) is an insensitive, laddish boor. For reasons we don’t glean, since it all happens during the opening credits, they get married, and proceed to be vile to one another, until, within…

Warm Bodies

Hollywood's stab at the zom-rom-com starts off well, but slides into Twilight-style storytelling

Having already deprived vampires of any real bite and declawed werewolves into the bargain, Hollywood now turns its attention to zombies and attempts to tap into their sensitive side with zom-rom-com Warm Bodies. The result, while not quite dead on…

Movie 43

A sloppily slung together anthology film starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet

Movie 43 is as star-studded as it is puerile and therein lies its solitary appeal. With directors including Peter Farrelly, Brett Ratner and Elizabeth Banks, it’s an anthology that’s sloppily slung together, combining spectacular immaturity with…

Spring culture preview 2013

Nick Evans: Solar Eyes Evans' forthcoming solo show features a new set of his striking amorphic white plaster sculptures. The most ambitious is a large architectural complex which mimics the geometry of an Aztec temple. Evans' fascination with motifs…

Glasgow Film Festival 2013: Programme highlights

Including The Place Beyond the Pines, Aftershock and Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing

Simon Munnery: Fylm-Makker A new, highly inventive live show from comedian Simon Munnery. Getting its first outing at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Fylm-Makker now comes to Glasgow as part of a UK-wide tour. It’s an innovative mix of music, animation…

Comedian Milton Jones discusses one liners vs longer routines

The Mock the Week regular is 'drawn to brevity'

There’s clearly a genuine art to getting a set-up and punchline out the way in the shortest time possible. Not for those gagsmiths the long, shaggy tales which go one way then the other, stopping off for a diversion or two and finally, hopefully…

The Alternative Comedy Experience

Stewart Lee curates a series of alternative comedians, but offers little discussion on the genre

Stewart Lee is not sure that he and Comedy Central will have the same hopes for his curated 12-part show. The comic sees it as being similar to a ‘slightly under-attended Tuesday night at an arts centre’; Comedy Central’s ambitions remain unclarified…

5 things you might not know about Russell Kane

The flamboyant comic fell into stand-up, takes note of his reviews and has authored a novel

1 Kane admits that getting into stand-up wasn’t exactly the result of a lifelong burning passion. He googled ‘stand-up London’, phoned the first number he saw and got himself an open spot. He describes his move into comedy as ‘apathetic drifting’. 2…

Nick Revell, author and satirist, on his return to comedy

A comic-turned-author has had to relearn the rules of engagement for his return to stand-up

Nick Revell is a survivor. As one of the acts who was around at the start of the thing we call alternative comedy, he has flitted in and out of love with stand-up, but the fact that he is still kicking gags around and fleeing across the country in…

Profile: Ben Lewin, director of The Sessions

The film is inspired by poet and journalist Mark O'Brien's experiences with a sex surrogate

Born Poland, 1946. Raised in Melbourne, Australia. Background In 1971 Lewin quit his job as a barrister to study filmmaking at the National Film and Television School in England. Lewin’s work to date includes Ally McBeal and the films Georgia and…

Stuart Goldsmith on his comedy heroes

The kipper-juggling comic idolises Simon Munnery, Anthony Livingspace and Harry Hill

Simon Munnery is like a soothsayer, who peers into another dimension of comedy, and reports back to the real world. I wish I could spend five minutes seeing the universe from his extraordinary perspective, which I imagine is a bit like Photoshop but for…

Grabbers

A contrived, one-note sci-fi horror comedy in which a community stays drunk to repel an alien attack

In Grabbers, an interplanetary invasion of earth can potentially be foiled, not by the fighting spirit of the human race, but due to the aversion of the aliens to drinking blood contaminated by alcohol. It’s a situation which forces the inhabitants of a…

Playing For Keeps

A rigidly formulaic and shamelessly sentimental romcom starring Gerard Butler

Gerard Butler has fared pretty badly when it comes to tackling romantic comedies (if you dare recall The Ugly Truth and PS I Love You) and his latest film doesn’t improve on his record. A predictable tale of redemption, Playing for Keeps is a…

Pitch Perfect

A surprisingly smart take on the potentially clichéd 'songs & starlets' material

While the Glee concert movie proved to be a surprise flop last year, the idea of packaging up chart songs and glamorous teenage starlets has been a Hollywood trope since the advent of sound. The latest effort, Pitch Perfect, is a simple enough piece of…