@randytayler I will pay you $1 for that cure!!!

@jettek The Jimmy John’s sandwich place is open until the wee hours of the morning, isn’t it? It is during SXSW, anyway.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but political humor can be tricky. Comedy is entirely subjective anyway, and introducing politics into it just makes it more likely that one person will laugh while another doesn’t find it funny (or, in some rare and tragic cases, even realize you were trying to be funny).

No one feels the brunt of the rancorous political season worse than the candidates themselves, and that’s why it’s happy-making to watch these clips from last night’s annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City. In election years, the two presidential candidates traditionally are invited to speak at this event, and it’s become a sort of “roast,” where they can crack wise at one another’s expense all in the spirit of good fun.

McCain’s segment is broken into two parts, followed by Obama’s in one. It does my heart good to see them not only making some very good, very clever jokes (they had speechwriters, of course), but to also see them laughing at each other’s jabs. It looks like honest laughter, too, not the fake kind you do because you have to. Like I’ve always said, a good joke is a good joke, regardless of who the target is.

And they’re both funny! They make fun of themselves, of their public images, and each other. Why can’t McCain be this loose and energized in general? His routine here is snappy, animated and smooth. Obama is more deadpan and doesn’t have quite as polished a delivery as McCain. As for the overall quality of the jokes themselves, I’ll call it a draw.

Here are the videos, after the jump.

Continue reading…

Friday means one thing and one thing only: new movies! Also, starting at sundown, the Jewish sabbath. So I guess two things. Well, one and a half, since the sabbath thing doesn’t happen until tonight. Friday means mostly one thing, and that one thing is new movies. (Sorry, Jewish people.)

Speaking of Jews, Anne Hathaway — is she Jewish? Her character is, anyway — stars in “Rachel Getting Married,” an exceedingly well-acted drama about a woman who gets out of rehab just in time for her sister’s wedding. Good times!

Then you have “Max Payne,” a video-game-based movie that continues the genre’s perfect record of every single video-game-based movie being bad. (You’re thinking the first “Resident Evil” was an exception, but you’re mistaken.) My review is at Cinematical.

At Film.com, I’ve reviewed “Sex Drive,” a derivative but often very funny raunchy teen comedy.

I wish I had thought of referring to “The Secret Life of Bees” as “Oprah’s Book Club: The Movie,” but someone online beat me to it. Anyway, it’s a pretty generic, albeit well-meaning, drama set in 1964 in South Carolina.

Finally, Oliver Stone’s “W.” opens today having been screened in just about every other major and semi-major market except Portland. We have no idea why. The reason Lionsgate gave us, that it had to do with “market size,” was an obvious falsehood, given that it screened in many markets smaller than us. I’ll have a review this weekend. If nothing else, I’m pretty sure it will wind up being the shortest title of the year.

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