I Love Movies: A Podcast: A Taping: SSP Edition

This week: Doug Benson welcomed Sarah Silverman and Brian Posehn of The Sarah Silverman Program to his podcast taping. The three originated the famous Leonard Maltin Game, which was on deck as well as a spirited discussion of the summer movie season. The entire thing should be on iTunes shortly.

Oh, and it was awesome. We won't spoil it for you but will say that if you don't already subscribe to the podcast, consider doing so.

Also, Doug confirmed the show they taped in New York with Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Horation Sanz will be up on A Special Thing shortly-- but not on iTunes, as the sound quality reportedly blows. Heads-up, comedy fans!

Weekly Podcasts: Bobcat Edition

As we close out August, there's quite a bit to enjoy on your MP3 player this week. Here are our highlights.

• Last Saturday, the great I Love Movies podcast updated with Tom Arnold and Dax Shepard. If you only hear one collection of Tom Arnold stories this week, make it this one. (Seriously, it was great.)
  
• Last week The Adam Carolla Podcast welcomed guest Bobcat Goldthwait. Not only does he talk up World's Greatest Dad, but you also get a glimpse into his stand-up career and his on-again, off-again persona with what he refers to as "the Grover voice." Well worth a listen. Also appearing on another installment, Chris Hardwick and Gary Dell'abatte of the Howard Stern radio program. A good week for comedy fans.
  
• The August 25 installment of Fresh Air with Terry Gross has an interview with Mike Judge of King of the Hill, Office Space, and various other fame. The interview covers the September 13 finale of KOTH, confirmation of new episodes exclusive to syndication, and the upcoming film Extract. Very interesting stuff.
  

Weekly Podcasts: "August Is Boring, No?" Edition

So hey, nothing's exciting on TV or in the stores... so let's turn our directions to this week's highlights from the land of nice free podcasts, shall we?

• Comedy Death Ray Radio brought in Bob Odenkirk, Andy Dick, and the slightly less chatty Chelsea Peretti talk about all sorts of nonsense and play "Would You Rather," which is great. Also, "Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto" was played in this podcast along with other sketches and songs from Odenkirk and Dick, so it's basically a good time. Except the audio quality after the first 20 minutes is excessively spotty this week... although we have been informed this has been fixed.
  
• The Adam Carolla Podcast had Greg Fitzsimmons on Tuesday, in which you get to hear about a spat with Dave Navarro and how Adam Carolla ended up on the short-lived The Gong Show with Dave Attel. In the installment with Ron Livingston, you get to hear about the juicy origins of Swingers. Well, they're not all that juicy.
  
• If you missed it, the I Love Movies podcast from two weeks ago is still quite awesome as is the entire archive. If you're looking to fill up the silences between meetings, check out the recent Patton Oswalt/Adam Carolla episode. Another new installment will go live this weekend.
  
• Public Radio's The Sound of Young America had comedy by way of Rob Siegel, who spent a lot of time discussing comedy nerditry as well as Patton Oswalt's role in the new movie Big Fan. While not the funniest thing you'll hear this year, it's not often you hear people discussing the nuances of Oswalt unless he is in the room.
  
• NPR's Fresh Air has a show from today with Patton Oswalt and Rob Siegel. We have yet to review this material, but hey, Patton.
  

I Love Movies: A Podcast: A Taping: A Report

Note: the podcast described here is not yet available at press time. If you are from the future, however, you can ignore this disclaimer.

Hey kids, have you ever heard the I Love Movies podcast? It's the one with Doug Benson, various celebrities or funny folk, and a live studio audience, taped at Los Angeles' Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and oh yes-- it's totally free, assuming you're already in the Los Angeles area.

Tonight I had the fortune of finally getting to see a live recording, and it's just as delightful as the audio version, but now you get to get out of the house. Tonight's (yesterday's) guests were Adam Carolla (of the podcast and Loveline fame) and Patton Oswalt, who is Dionysus in our pantheon of comedy gods. Since you can hear the show for free we won't spoil it, but here are some useful tidbits for you if you ever plan on seeing a taping. (I guessed the first Leonard Maltin movie in 0 names so I feel like a genius now.)

- The show is totally free
- Doors open around 7:30 PM
- There were open seats after the show started, and yes, they let people come in during the middle of the show
- There are typically two shows a month
- If you're as cheap as I am you can drive up a few blocks and get a free parking spot (TAKE THAT VALET)

So if you're afraid that the show might be packed, at least this one wasn't. What kind of allergy people have to free entertainment, I am not sure. It's totally worth your time to go, even though the podcast is available, mostly so you can see the rickety-ass table and the collection of chairs and audio equipment which shows that every dime of ticket sales is going directly into the show's production.

But it's damn funny and getting to see Adam Carolla, Patton Oswalt, and Doug Benson talk about movies is a head-explode moment. The only thing that could have been cooler might have involved Neil Hamburger at a Doug Benson Interruption, and you know I'm crossing my fingers for that to happen.

Things to spend your money on that are not 'Year One'

So Harold Ramis' new comedy, Year One, opens today.

I went to see it, specifically to review it for this blog. As expected, as every critic has said, it was terrible. I did not laugh once. In fact, I spent most of the film thinking about leaving early.

Now, sometimes it's fun to write a bad review, especially when the bile flows easily. But Year One drained me. I have nothing to say about it except to tell you not to see it. It isn't worse than The Love Guru, but I'd sooner swallow a cyanide capsule than watch either film ever again, so I guess it doesn't matter in the end.

So, instead of going on and on about the utter failure of Year One, instead I will list the other, better things you can spend your time and money on this weekend.

1. The excellent Comedy and Everything Else podcast has not one but two shows out this week: an hour with Chris Hardwick, and then 2 hours with Patton Oswalt. Combined, these shows last a full 90 minutes longer than Year One, and contain approximately 200x the laughs.

2. And speaking of Patton, if you're in Los Angeles, The Silent Movie Theater is having Comedy Death Ray night tonight; Oswalt will be presenting God Told Me To, an exploitation flick from the 70's with Andy Kaufman. There will be beer and hot dogs, and the whole shebang starts at 8pm. Tickets are $14, which is about what you would pay to see Year One, except the odds that you will laugh at this event are astronomically higher than the odds that you will not want to kill yourself and everyone in your vicinity during a screening of Year One.

2. And speaking of Comedy and Everything Else, host Jimmy Dore's Comedy Central special, Citizen Jimmy, just popped up on Netflix's streaming service. So if you're a fan of the show and missed it, now's your chance to watch it from the comfort of your Xbox. Todd Glass makes a cameo appearance, too. Notably, the special is a bit old - it's from Summer 2008, so there's a ton of Bush material and some election stuff, which is incredibly dated, but still much, much funnier than anything in Year One.

3. And if you have Netflix Streaming, you can watch the entirety of the 10-episode borderline-brilliant, utterly hilarious original Starz series Party Down, a single-camera comedy which you will wind up watching in a single marathon session. It is good enough to alter your brain chemistry to where you will no longer be able to perceive the existence of Year One, meaning you will be able to go to the movie theater and you will not see it on the marquee. Which will be a blessed event.

4. Finally, a twist ending: you can take the $13.50 you would have spent on Year One, a comedy written and directed by Harold Ramis, and instead apply it to the purchase of his other mega-hyped project out this week, the Ghostbusters video game, which is a whole lot of fun and surprisingly funny for a video game. Ramis admitted recently in an interview that he and Dan Aykroyd didn't have much to do with the script, which might explain why it's actually funny and clever.