13 schoolyards, Author at Australian Tumbleweeds - Page 95 of 115
Great Comedy Mysteries of the 21st Century #17: The Wedding Party
So back in 2010 the opening night film at the Melbourne International Film Festival was Australian big-screen comedy The Wedding Party, in which Josh Lawson agrees to a fake marriage with Isabel Lucas even though he’s deeply in love with Kestie Morassi. Wait, we mean those actors play characters who’re doing all that, the actors... Read More »
A Presumption of Shared Humanity
If you’re going to be a comedian, you have to make a choice: do you make comedy designed to appeal to the masses, or do you follow your heart? On the one hand, appealing to the masses seems like the smart way to achieve mass appeal but idiots will call you a sell-out; on the... Read More »
July 2012: A New Golden Age?
It might be hard to spot from beneath the cloud of gloom and despair that hangs over the Australian televised comedy scene, but at the moment we have two – count ’em – decent local comedy programs currently airing on Australian free-to-air television. We’ll spare you the suspense: we mean Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell... Read More »
What’s So Funny About the Future of Australian Comedy?
For a few years now – well, it feels like years at least – we’ve been complaining / warning that Australian television likes everything about comedy but the making-people-laugh stuff. Of course, who listens to what we have to say? And so it has come to pass that in a few short weeks (July 25th)... Read More »
Thinking About Political Comedy?
Here’s a question: when exactly did Australian political comedy go soft? Put another way, when Shaun Micallef, cuddly game-show host and master of light-hearted surrealism, can moderately startle at least one of the hard-boiled Tumbleweeds team by confusing John Howard’s biography with Mein Kampf and making a Tony Abbott joke based on not quite calling... Read More »
The Plummeting Value of the Euro
Hamish and Andy are back! And why shouldn’t they be? Yes, their 2011 show Gap Year didn’t quite deliver the kind of gangbuster figures Nine was no doubt hoping for, but it’s not like they soiled the rug with Live From Planet Earth numbers either. Whatever you think of them as comedians, having them back... Read More »
Vale Agony Aunts
It’s taken us a little while to get around to farewelling Agony Aunts because… well, to be honest, we thought we’d already done it. Turns out we just thought we had – in fact it was Agony Uncles we’d given a good kicking to on the way out. Easy mistake to make really, seeing as... Read More »
Vale Laid 2
By the time you read this Laid will have vanished from our screens forever and we’re not really sure how we’re going to cope. Remember what life was like early in 2010, before Laid started on the ABC? Remember how – you’ll laugh to remember this – we all thought that a comedy was meant... Read More »
Rebel Without Applause
Now that she’s a big Hollywood star – appearing in the now-in-cinemas What to Expect When You’re Expecting for one thing – it’s sometimes hard to remember that Rebel Wilson was also solely responsible for perhaps one of the most pointless “comedy” series ever shown on Australian television: Bogan Pride. A leaden, cripplingly unfunny show... Read More »
Got the Love, Got the Love
Ben Pobjie would be the first to tell you he isn’t a TV critic. Rather, he’s just a guy with an opinion about television and who really cares what he thinks because everyone’s opinions are equally valid and it’s just television anyway, right? Let’s pause to salute the Fairfax press for giving someone with such... Read More »