Whatever Works (1 Viewer)

If you haven't seen Larry David's show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, you should. If you enjoy cringing and laughing at the same time (and who doesn't), there's nothing funnier.
 
Thanks for the tip. I haven't seen any of his shows. Which is the best season? And don't tell me "all of them"! ;)
 
start with season one, episode one of course! and watch until you've seen them all. excellent show...

and i've wanted to check out the woody allen/larry david collaboration since i saw the trailer a while back. i was worried it would be too much neurotic jew, but i'll definitely check it soon...
 
cirerita said:
Which is the best season? And don't tell me "all of them"! ;)
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It was pretty fully realized from the beginning, so the answer really is "all of them." But if you don't start at the beginning you won't know some of the back story in the later episodes. There is a thread of a story that runs through all the seasons, so James is right, it's best to start at the beginning. It became more finely tuned as it went along, but if you don't care for the first season, you won't care for any of them.

The show is mostly improvised. They work from a bare outline that David writes - a couple of pages. If you keep that in mind while you're watching it you can really appreciate how good all the actors are.
 
cirerita said:
Which is the best season?
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All of them.

If you only kind of like the first season you should stick with it... it gets better in the following seasons.

I think the funniest thing about the show is that, in spite of all of Larry's social faux pas', he's usually right. Like in the new season when he's walking down the street and passes a woman who says "Smile" as she goes by. Larry digests it for a second and then yells back at her "Mind your own business! How about that?"

Favorite episode: the one where he hires a street hooker so that he can use the car-pool lane to make it to a Dodgers game on time.
 
chronic said:
...he's walking down the street and passes a woman who says "Smile" as she goes by. Larry digests it for a second and then yells back at her "Mind your own business! How about that?"
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You could quote a thousand funny lines from that show, but that was a good one. I just laughed again reading it. Re-laughing, so to speak, which is very eco-friendly.

---

I can't get a line out of my head that cracked me up last night on 30 Rock. One of the writers tells Tracy that the guy who was the real-life inspiration for the arcade game Pac-Man has died, and Tracy says, "I will eat a bowl of cherries and some ghost meat in his honor."

"Some ghost meat"? Jesus christ, that's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time.
 
mjp said:
If you enjoy cringing and laughing at the same time (and who doesn't), there's nothing funnier.
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I'd say "The Office" (UK version) makes me cringe more. I'm not saying it's funnier, but it definitely is cringier. Some episodes almost make me physically ill.
If don't know wasn't there what would you put?
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the original The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm are both extremely cringeworthy and extremely funny.

and just looking at Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock makes me laugh.
 
cirerita said:
Not Allen's best movie, but it's not that bad. Actually, it works (kinda):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1178663/
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I just watched it last night. It was OK, but being both a huge Allen fan and David fan, I was expecting Manhattan meets Curb Your Enthusiasm, and got neither. Apparently the script is from the early 70s, when Zero Mostel was the lead Allen had in mind. I guess it's been in a drawer with his naked Soon-Yi pictures all this time.

I felt like a lot of the dialog was better suited to a play than a movie. Larry David is definitely best unscripted or when writing for others. It's definitley not Allen's most shining achievement either...you get the sense that he is kind of scrambling to make a lot of summaries of his overall artistic view but they kind of get jumbled together. The characters are over-the-top stereotypes, totally unbelievable, though the actors are good.

It's not a bad movie though. Just not as funny as Curb or as well-scripted as Allen's best.

james said:
i was worried it would be too much neurotic jew...
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
 
Ambreen said:
I haven't seen it but I believe it can't be worse than Vicky Cristina Blablablabla.

I'm nostalgic of the Diane Keaton era.
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Yeah I was beside myself with how disappointed I was in VCB. Way overbearing, pretentious, totally out of his element on that one. And the critics LOVED it, too! Yet Cassandra's Dream, which came before it, and was panned, I quite liked. Simple, fast moving, with a classic theme...well done.

There's no debating the Keaton era but I don't think he lost anything after she left. Some of his very best, most realized works are the mid-80s films with Farrow. Hell, I really can't say anything too bad about ANYTHING he's done but his Scarlet(t?) stuff is...about as inspired as cardboard. He called her his new muse...so, exactly.

I think he still has great stuff left to do, but it's a race against the clock now. Honestly, I think a lot of his hindrances aren't bad scripts, just piss-poor actors who are, sadly, the best of their (our) age.
 
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although this isn't his best film and borrows heavily from Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, I liked it very much.

but I'm a sucker for Woody Allen, even mediocre Woody Allen.
 

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