Does edgy humor uplift the downtrodden, or use their misery as a crutch for easy jokes? The Last Laugh may not offer any definitive answers but it does provide enough well thought out arguments, sharp insights, to spark conversations.
So I’d gone over to my cousin’s house to see his new puppy and, as he and I are often wont to do, we got to talking about movies and TV and the like. The conversation drifted around to movies we liked but our kids didn’t. “I have Blazing Saddles (1974),” he said, nodding at …
Did the “Baghead” scene in Django Unchained (2012) feel at all familiar? It was total Mel Brooks. We’ve seen bumbling baddies arguing with one another in the desert before. Blazing Saddles (1974), one of the cinematic funnyman’s best, shot a hole in westerns and racism with one bullet. While the majority of Quentin Tarantino films …
Hitler: The Comedy Years Jacques Peretti UK, 2007 In 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain asked the BBC to gather their best comedy writers to create satirical caricatures to delegitimize and discompose Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler. With a diminutive stature, ludicrous hair and a literal comedic moustache, Hitler became instant ‘comedy gold’, and in Hitler: …
This Is Sodom Directed by Adam Sanderson and Muli Segev Written by Muli Segev, David Lifshitz and Asaf Shalmon Israel, 2010 At an arranged marriage, a Rabbi tries to break the ice by telling a joke. “Why was the first man the happiest?” he asks. No one answers. “Because he didn’t have a mother-in-law!” No …