Christopher Beyer for EW
The number of walkouts during a recent Sundance showing of Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, was almost as funny as the vulgar abominations of comedy happening on screen.
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, known for their bizarre comedy sketch show Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job! on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, expanded their gallery of grotesques and non sequiturs to a feature-length movie, which made its debut here in Park City.
The surreal (to say the least) story follows Tim and Eric after they lose $1 billion on a movie starring a Johnny Depp lookalike, then have to take over an apocalyptic shopping mall full of hobos, wolves, and losers to earn back the money. Bloodshed, sadistic bathroom humor, and heavy-duty nincompoopery follow.
At least one couple storming out of the theater actually hollered back at the screen. Heidecker and Wareheim could barely contain their glee at a post-screening Q&A. “What’d he say?” Heidecker demanded. READ FULL STORY »
Craptastic or crap: How do you tell the difference?
In addition to assembling a fantastic list of perpetually rewatchable movies, many of the posters who joined in the party here the other day provided intriguing criteria for what makes a film addictive: Commenters celebrated the pleasures of comfort movies, noise movies, great movies, romantic movies, crying movies, cheesy movies, guilty-pleasure movies, and so-bad-they’re-good movies, among other categories.
It’s the so-bad-they’re-good subdivision I’m most interested in at the moment, an unintentional genre that I think of as relatively new–and just possibly dangerous. I mean, remember the genius cult TV creation Mystery Science Theater 3000? When stranded human Joel Robinson and his robot sidekicks Tom Servo and Crow (that’s them, above) were forced by evil scientists to watch bad movies, the accidental moviegoers were under no illusions that the stuff on the screen was craptastic–it was pretty recognizably crappy, and ripe for a running commentary that was the real point of the show.
“Craptasy” (did I make that word up?) assumes an ironic, READ FULL STORY »