As some unknown force runs like a cosmic Bill Dozier across the multiverse…
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Update: Grayscale for it all probably helps sell the newsprint throwback vibe but part of the point was to emphasize tension in the mashup. Not to mention that color makes the episode title’s font more recognizable.
I was talking with a friend recently and this happened.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was not on last week, but will be on tonight — and with John Oliver. What are the odds, I ask you?
If you’re looking forward to it then you might be interested in Oliver’s chat with Ari Velshi on the subject “The Rigors of Laughter” [38:58] from December. Velshi is a correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC who serves on the board of The Philadelphia Citizen, which presented the interview as part of a day of programming “that brings the most innovative urban thinkers and global thought leaders together to share and discuss bold ideas”. Although neither gentleman was quite sure how to interpret the conversation’s title, it focused on Last Week’s process and purpose.
There wasn’t much in their exchange I hadn’t already heard or read, and Oliver isn’t
as engrossingly hyper-articulate as fellow Daily Show alum Stephen Colbert when he’s questioned in such a setting, but it was still fun seeing Oliver express his delight over the absurd expenditures of time, money, and other resources that his staff concocts.
I praised the pleasant surprise that was John Oliver’s hosting of The Daily Show
when Jon Stewart took a sabbatical last summer. And I was not alone. Many TV critics predicted that Oliver would be promoted from correspondent to host of his own show — probably someplace other than Comedy Central, since a third half-hour* of satirical news and punditry there wasn’t likely. That someplace turned out to be HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
I know that the above pic won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t both read Watchmen and seen Game of Thrones, but I’m guessing that a fair percentage of
this blog’s dedicated visitors meet those criteria.
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Ricky Gervais is hosting the Golden Globes ceremony again after all.
Last year there was foofaraw from some — including The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the Globes and was one of Gervais’ targets — about his barbed material being distastefully sharp. Many of the world’s most prominent humorists rose up to defend him. I was in the minority position, expressed in my writeup of last year’s telecast, of not minding the acerbity of the jokes but feeling a lack in their overall quality and even quantity; Gervais didn’t seem as sharp to me as usual (in terms of keenness of delivery, not pointedness of content) and he was AWOL for long stretches.
The bloody good news is that I was house-sitting this past week and caught up with
the current season of True Blood via HBO On Demand.
I’d just recently finished Season Two on DVD, and I was really bummed about having
to wait for a whole year to see where things went in Season Three (dodging spoilers all the while). As I’ve mentioned here before, True Blood is a pulpy kick.
