Episode 43: Cutting Edge — The guys shake down 4-year-old girls for bombs, stand up for childhood icon Bill Nye, and introduce a brand-new segment called Buzzsaw. Also, Chris tries not to succumb to the plague, Dave makes a major … Continue reading At the Buzzer (05/10/12)
Episode 42: White Trash — The guys talk about the penalties for elaborate lies, discuss the newest (and dumbest) teenage trend, and find themselves getting along surprisingly well in Buzz Off. Also, Chris is too big and too old for kids … Continue reading At the Buzzer (05/03/12)
Episode 41: Gym Class Zeroes — The guys welcome back special guest Jason Hagerty, discuss the finer points of a night club for pre-teens, and explain their imaginary celebrity status in Buzz Questions. Also, Chris plans a movie scene with Scarlett … Continue reading At the Buzzer (04/26/12)
Graduating from college comes with an overwhelming ennui that leads graduates to believe we are being utterly underutilized in a society that can’t appreciate our over-education. We’re entitled to everything because, after all, we know everything there is to know about life. Tiny Furniture, which won best narrative feature at SXSW 2010, is about learning that we actually don’t know anything except nobody else (including our successful friends and parents) knows anything either.
Dunham is Aura, a recent graduate from a prestigious liberal arts college who returns home to live in her mother’s shwanky loft in Tribeca, New York. She hates living at home, as it contains her artsy mother (Laurie Simmons) and her obnoxious younger sister (Grace Dunham), but knows the arrangement is only until she gets an apartment with her best college friend (Merritt Wever). Until then, it’s job hunting and catching up with peers, who all seem to have their lives on the road to being sorted out. Surrounded by the young, artistic and sardonic, Aura is forced to ponder whether she should be creating, reading, meeting people, or joining the work force regimen. In the meantime, she’d much rather sulk. Her only apparent modicum of comfort comes from Charlotte (Jemima Kirke), a childhood friend with a maybe-British accent who concerns herself with none of these details. Continue reading “Rack Focus Review: Tiny Furniture”
Episode 40: Dinner with Marty’s Kids — The guys talk about booby-trapped speed bumps, figure out the best items you could steal from a movie, and lay down the law in top-three lists in Buzzcut. Also, Chris plots to steal Dave’s … Continue reading At the Buzzer (04/19/12)
Cabin in the Woods is as smart as it thinks it is. The only reason it isn’t smarter is because its tongue is so self-satisfyingly planted in its cheek that you can practically see the smirks of producer/co-writer Joss Whedon and director/co-writer Drew Goddard on every frame. Horror films are perhaps the easiest to lampoon, but I don’t think the genre has ever quite been skewered this good. Continue reading “Rack Focus Review: Cabin in the Woods”
Detention jams as many ideas into its 90-minute run time as possible — including references to The Breakfast Club, the Disney Renaissance, the Saw franchise, David Cronenburg, Scream, Stephen King, the Backstreet Boys, Mean Girls, Nickelodeon, and lots of other pop trivia. Additionally, there is a time-traveling bear and a mutant fly-boy. The flick is also a jumbled mess, but mostly pretty fun in that live-action-cartoon-soaked-in-blood kind of way. Continue reading “Rack Focus Review: Detention”
Episode 39: Who Buys Soap in Boxes Anymore? — The guys return to normal after the April Fools episode, get on their pulpits for three issue-based Headlines, and run through a litany of reader responses in Buzz In. Also, Chris … Continue reading At the Buzzer (04/12/12)
Episode 38: April Fools Episode — The guys switch up roles, discuss the finer points of intergalactic fork bending, and put together the list of best floozles in Buzzkill. Also, Chris invents a new form of transportation called Haagen-Dash, Dave talks … Continue reading At the Buzzer (04/05/12)
Jeff, Who Lives at Home, which is written by Jay and Mark Duplass, is rather obsessed with signs — and by that, I actually mean M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. Both present their protagonists as witnesses to coincidences that, if paid their due attention, may ultimately prove to be an order to a seemingly listless universe. But this indie drama is smarter than the big-budget sci-fier it references, and indicates this self-awareness by placing these theories in the mouth of Jeff (Jason Segal), a 30-year-old stoner who does indeed live at home with his widowed mother.
Continue reading “Rack Focus Review: Jeff, Who Lives at Home”
Gray Areas 