Crash Test
Crash Test is a live show at UCB hosted by Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel that usually features your typical UCB names and a bunch of people that also appear in Children's Hospital and the like. Huebel and Scheer took that show, put it on a bus that drove around Los Angeles and taped it for this special that's available for $3.99 on Vimeo On Demand. If you get a chance to check it out, it's pretty funny. If you watch the trailer and read the names on the poster, that's exactly what you're getting. There isn't some game changing twist or special appearance aside from maybe how some of these actors make their entrances. Scheer and Huebel host the show with the audience all on the bus, playing off each other and things they see on the street. They parody Star Maps tours. They give an earpiece to one of the audience members and make him do weird things on Hollywood Boulevard. Tom Lennon and Ben Garant show up as security guards at the Paramount lot. Natasha Legerro does five minutes of stand up. There's nothing cynical to note about any of this. It's fun and enjoyable. Toward the end, Earl Sweatshirt performs a song from the first album, so chances are this was recorded a while ago. The credits show there's another one coming in the near future.
Dear White People
It's hard to watch a trailer for a movie called "Dear White People" done in the way it was for this movie and not think the entire movie isn't literally just a laundry list of dos and don'ts for white people. I've been on a pretty anti-white people stance for some time now, but making that a movie didn't interest me as a moviegoer. It turns out that idea is buried here in what is still a movie with a story and characters (...obviously). The movie part is okay. It probably focuses on too many characters. On one hand doing that establishes how there's no single black identity, but the stories get convoluted and uninteresting, the dialogue at times a little too self-congratulatory. The culmination of the movie, and likely the entire purpose of this movie's existence, shows a fraternity throwing a blackface party with all its white members. During the credits, actual photos of real life events that resemble this one, are shown. The movie, itself, probably isn't that great but the realization that this still is a huge problem even for people aware of the racial climate we're in is a worthwhile one.
Best In Show
I literally knew nothing about this movie and watched it randomly on Labor Day. Best In Show was directed by Christopher Guest and written by Guest and Eugene Levy. It's a mockumentary style movie about a Westminster-style dog show. The movie starts off pretty slow and considering it came out in 2000, it felt very dated, especially 20 or so years after one of Guest's best Spinal Tap. I almost stopped paying attention to it. Once we get to the actual show, I was cracking up. Literally everything the announcer, played by Fred Willard, says is hysterical. There are all sorts of one liners that I could not stop laughing at. When I went to Chicago earlier this year, I went to the Second City theater and they have pictures of all the alumni that went on to do bigger things. Most of the cast of this movie is part of the Second City family. It's just really hard for me to not be bothered by the fact that literally the entire cast is white. And the movie came out in 2000?
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