DVD Review: What We Do in the Shadows - Seasons 1 & 2

What We Do in the Shadows – Seasons 1 & 2
(DVD What)

What We Do in the Shadows is a TV series on the FX cable network which premiered in 2019, and is inspired by a movie of the same title, which came out in 2014. The film was created by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi (who also starred in the movie) and the series continues under the creative eye of Clement. However, the setting has changed, as have the central characters. But the idea is still the same — an eclectic group of vampires have been living in the same house on Staten Island for hundreds of years, trying to blend into the local populace, but they’re completely out of touch with modern culture.

 

The central characters here are Nandor (Kayvan Novak), a former merciless warlord, Nadya (Natasha Demetriou), a lusty female vampire and her husband Laszlo (whom she made into a vampire centuries ago), who fancies himself some of a scientific experimenter. Also living in the house is Colin Robinson, a mild-mannered “energy vampire” who drains the psychic energy from his victims, usually by boring them to death in creative ways. Rounding out the cast of roommates is Guillermo, a former vampire killer (unbeknownst to his housemates) who has become a familiar (supposedly in thrall) to Nandor, who has promised to eventually turn Guillermo into a vampire if he serves the house in an almost slave-like capacity.

 

The story is told documentary-film-style, much like popular sitcoms The Office and Modern Family, where a film crew is constantly present, and the vampires and Guillermo, in addition to speaking amongst themselves, frequently do on camera interviews to comment on what is happening in wry and sardonic asides.

 

The humor is sharp, witty and often filled with the kind of unfiltered qualities that would have earned this series an “R” rating as film — lots of swearing and sexual humor. Most of the time, it is characters sitting around talking, interspersed with occasional field trips outside of their gothic mansion into “the real world”, and occasional violent bursts of bloody action — they are all vampires, after all. The series pokes fun at nearly every vampire trope imaginable, with our regulars meeting and interacting with other types of vampires from the worlds of pop culture (though not yet the “sparkly vampires” of Twilight). The pomposity of these centuries-old creatures thinking they are the height of culture and society, when they are literally decades if not centuries out of step with the world is where most the humor comes from — all three traditional vampires are proud to have been invited to a neighbor’s Superb Owl party (when it is actually a Super Bowl party), is an example.

 

What We Do in the Shadows has run now for five seasons on FX and streaming platforms as of 2023, but only the first two 10-episode seasons have been released to DVD and are in the libraries’ collection. Each 10-episode season is filled with stand-alone episodes but also has plot threads that last the entire season and come to a head in the season finale. The performances are all excellent, though in my opinion Matt Berry as Laszlo and Harvey Guillen as Guillermo steal the show in nearly all of their scenes, particularly Guillermo in his non-verbal facial reactions and glances at the camera as he deals with the actions and statements of the clueless but authoritarian vampires he has to care for.

 

What We Do in the Shadows is perfect for fans of comedic horror, as long as you don’t mind a lot of “adult content”, and for anyone who loves the mocumentary-film style of storytelling. Individual episodes themselves may vary in quality, but overall I’d say the first two seasons easily earn an overall “9” rating from me!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the original 2014 film What We Do in the Shadows,)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this series ) | ( official What We Do in the Shadows web page on the FX network )

 

Read Scott C.’s review of the 2014 film What We Do in the Shadows, in the November 2015 Staff Recommendations here on BookGuide!

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

DVD Review: Confess, Fletch

Confess, Fletch
(DVD Confess)

I’ll have to admit, the two 1980s Fletch movies starring Chevy Chase and I.M. Fletcher are among my “guilty pleasure” movie favorites. Chase is so over-the-top “wacky” as con man/investigative journalist Fletch in those two films that his comical performance kind of overwhelms the stories in Fletch (1985) and Fletch Lives (1989).

 

This new 2022 film, both starring and produced by Jon (Mad Men) Hamm, takes Gregory McDonald’s second Fletch novel, Confess Fletch (1976), and updates it to our modern era, but manages to keep much of the style and tone intact. Hamm is far more subtle than Chase was at bringing Fletch to life, but that works in his favor. He doesn’t need outrageous costumes or larger-than-life fake personalities to ingratiate Fletch with the characters he’s interacting with — his Fletch is simply slick and fast on the uptake. In this film, Fletch returns from Europe to find a dead woman in the luxury loft apartment he’s been leant by a friend. Fletch quickly becomes the #1 suspect in the eyes of the pair of homicide detectives investigating the case, and his efforts to locate a stolen art collection are hampered by his needs to come up with ways to shake his police tail.

 

Hamm is absolutely terrific in this, but he’s not the only one. Kyle MacLachlan is fun as a germophobic bad guy, Roy Wood Jr. and Ayden Mayeri as detectives “Slo Mo” Monroe and Griz provide a lot of comic relief, Lorenza Izzo as Fletch’s new Italian girlfriend, who sets the case in motion, is a firebrand, and Marcia Gay Harden (currently killing it on the CBS drama So Help Me Todd) is amusing as the Countess de Grassi.

If you’re at all a fan of the original Fletch novels by McDonald, you should appreciate this new film. Here’s hoping it was successful enough to inspire another!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the two earlier Fletch movies, starring Chevy Chase Fletch and Fletch Lives, or any of the eleven Fletch novels by Gregory McDonald, published between 1974 and 1994 — the earliest are the best.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

DVD Review: An American Pickle

An American Pickle
(DVD American)

An American Pickle is an odd little film was made for the cable channel “MAX” (formerly HBO Max) but was also released to DVD in 2020. Comic actor Seth Rogan, who has certainly been in his fair share of quirky comedies during his career, appears in two roles. He plays Hershel Greenbaum, an immigrant worker from the early 1900s, and his descendant Ben Greenbaum, an app developer, in the modern era. The quirk here is that Hershel and Ben get to interact with each other. Hershel, working in a pickle factory, falls into a vat of brine and is accidentally entombed therein, only to be taken out 100 years later perfectly preserved but missing his old life and uncertain how to fit into modern times, even with the help of his nebbishy distant relative.

 

When a small conflict drives a wedge between the two Greenbaums, Hershel strikes out on his own, establishing his own pickle-making enterprise (though ignoring dozens of health code violations along the way), and Ben ends up trying to sabotage Hershel’s efforts by manipulating social media. The conflict between the two Greenbaum men grows to ridiculously comic proportions. But the charm of this bizarre little film is seeing how they can eventually mend fences and find some common ground.

 

The technical tricks used to have both characters appear in the same scenes, interacting with each other, are marvelous. And Seth Rogan, who I’ve never been much of a fan of in his previous films, gives an excellent performance in each of these overblown roles. For what is essentially a “fish out of water” comedy poking fun at contemporary social mores, this movie had some surprisingly emotional scenes and unexpected depth.

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

DVD/Movie Review: My Favorite Brunette and The Cat and the Canary starring Bob Hope

My Favorite Brunette and The Cat and the Canary
starring Bob Hope (DVD My)

While recently working on the comedic play “The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940” at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, I was inspired to watch two classic Bob Hope comedy dramas, which served as inspiration for that wacky mystery/farce play.

 

My Favorite Brunette (1947) featured Hope as mild-mannered children’s photographer Ronnie Jackson, who envies the private eye who operates out of the office next door to his. When that P.I. is absent, Ronnie ends up taking one of his cases, after misrepresenting himself, and soon finds himself up to his armpits in thugs, femmes fatales, and gun-toting goons. Because the film opens with Ronnie being led to the executioner’s chamber on Death Row and relating his adventures in flashback, we now that things didn’t go his way. That’s what you get for pretending to be something you’re not!

 

The Cat and the Canary (1939) is a more direct thematic predecessor of “The Music Comedy Murders of 1940”, with Hope as Wally Campbell, one of several people named in the will of an eccentric man who died 10 years earlier. The will requires that all the people named in it must journey to the swampy estate in the Bayou, where the man used to live. The primary heiress, Joyce Norman (played by frequent Hope co-star Paulette Goddard) must live for a week in the estate, without being driven insane, in order to fully inherit.

 

This triggers a madcap series of wacky events, involving hidden doorways and passageways, creepy spooks, other jealous relatives, a woman who may or may not be a witch, and maybe even paranormal hijinks.

 

Both films are classic comedian Bob Hope at his wimpy, sarcastic, snarky, break-the-fourth-wall best. Anyone who’s ever seen and enjoyed Hope and his friend Bing Crosby in their series of “The Road to…” movies will definitely enjoy both of these films. The libraries own My Favorite Brunette on DVD. The Cat and the Canary is available to borrow on DVD through our InterLibrary Loan service, but it is also available to watch for free on YouTube (with commercial interruptions). Both movies are short — under 90 minutes each!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the stage play The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for My Favorite Brunette ) | ( Internet Movie Database entry for The Cat and the Canary )

 

See the booklist page for the Lincoln Community Playhouse: The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 here on BookGuide, for additional similar items!

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

New Lincoln Community Playhouse booklist on BookGuide for The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940

The 1987 mystery-comedy-farce The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 is currently on stage (May 5-14, 2023) at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, neighbor to the Lincoln City Libraries' own Gere Branch Library. As we usually do, a new booklist was created to accompany a book display at the Gere Branch, featuring books that should appeal to fans of funny bit of mayhem.

The booklist includes book books and DVDs/Streaming videos that are similar in nature to the style of this play. But it also includes personal recommendations from the various cast and crew members who are involved in putting on this particular production. This booklist includes a little history of this play, plus descriptive blurbs and catalog hotlinks for each of the included books and DVDs.

You can "check out"this comedic booklist at the following hotlinks:

The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940

DVD Review: Ghosts: Season One (US)

Ghosts: Season One
(hopefully on order soon!)

Ghosts is a half-hour comedy airing on the CBS network, which premiered in 2021 and is currently in its second season (with a 3rd already ordered). It is an Americanized version of a British show with the same name, which premiered in 2019 and is currently in its fifth season in the UK.

 

I encountered the US version first, though I’ve since watched the first season of the UK version on DVD, in the libraries’ collection. They both have their own strong points, but I’ll have to admit, I like the American version better.

 

A young couple, Samantha (“Sam”) and Jay discover that she has inherited a run-down country estate, after a distant relative of Sam’s recently passed. They take possession of the property and decide to invest their life savings into renovating the crumbling building and turning it into a Bed & Breakfast. This doesn’t sit well with the building’s current occupants — a group of ghosts of people who’ve died on the property during many different eras in history, from a Norse Viking, to a sensitive but sarcastic Native American, to the wife of a robber baron, an American revolutionary soldier, a Prohibition-era singer, a drugged out 70’s hippie chick, a boy scout trooper leader from the 80s, and a 90s Wall Street prodigy. (There’s also a headless biker, but he shows up only occasionally). Each of these ghosts appears as they did at the time of their death — the troop leader has an arrow through his neck, and the 90s yuppie is pants-less.

 

In the premiere episode, Samantha has an accident on the stairs, suffers a near-death experience, and subsequently can see and hear (and talk with) all of the ghosts, much to the consternation of her husband but to the relief of all the ghosts — who can finally communicate with the world of the “Living”. The humor of the series then stems from the experiences of Sam and Jay as they try to ready Woodstone Mansion as a B&B, versus the ghosts, who grudgingly acknowledge that their “lives” must change if the mansion is to remain a home to them. There’s a terrific cast of supporting characters, both ghosts and living people, that all of these regulars interact with, including Mark Linn-Baker (“Perfect Strangers”) and Kathy Greenwood (“Whose Line is it Anyway?”) as Sam and Jay’s stuffy next-door neighbors.

 

All of the ghost characters are fabulous, and during the course of the first season, each of them is given an episode that tells their background story, very much “humanizing” them. Sam’s ability to see ghosts is not limited to just the mansion, as she now sees ghosts wherever she goes, including the ghost of her late mother, in a special first-season episode. Performances are excellent across the board, but especially from Rose McIver as Sam and Utkarsh Ambudkar as Jay. I have a personal fondness for Richie Moriarty as perpetually cheerful punctured troop leader Pete Martino, and Brandon Scott Jones as Captain Isaac Higgintoot, who can’t believe his former rival, Alexander Hamilton achieved such fame in life! The writing features snappy dialog, and can verge between extremely comical, to emotional and poignant.

 

I really can’t recommend Ghosts highly enough, and if you haven’t tried it already, this first season DVD set (18 episodes) is a great place to start. Then, watch the first season (only 6 episodes) of the UK version to compare and contrast. Many of the same comic writers who produced the UK version are also involved in the production of the US version.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Ghosts: Series One, or the old classic, Topper.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this series ) | ( official Ghosts page on the CBS web site )

 

See Scott C.’s review of the first season of the UK version of Ghosts, in the May 2022 Staff Recommendations here on BookGuide!

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

DVD Review: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
starring Nicolas Cage (DVD Unbearable)

Nicholas Cage plays himself in this comedy/action-adventure. Cage is broke — to be frank — and agrees to go to a super fan’s birthday party in exchange for a large fee. The problem is this super fan — “Javi” played by Pedro Pascal — isn’t just a regular fan, he’s also being watched by the CIA. The CIA decides to recruit Cage to see if he can locate a missing person supposedly kidnapped by Javi’s organization. Javi is enamored by Cage and spends the whole time trying to get him to work with him on a screenplay. It makes for an entertaining film.

I wasn’t sure what to think based on the premise but actually it was very funny. If you’re Nicholas Cage fan it’s a must-watch because there are SO many references to his previous works and Pedro Pascal really gets a chance to show off his comedic skills.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Gone in 60 Seconds, Con Air are just a couple of the movies referenced in this one — really any Nicholas Cage action movie would be good. Being John Malkovich is one that’s an actor playing himself in a satire way.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film ) | ( official The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent web site )

 

Recommended by Carrie R.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: We Had a Little Real Estate Problem by Kliph Nesteroff

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans in Comedy

by Kliph Nesteroff (970.1 Nes)

 

During Native American Heritage Month in November (also known as National American Indian History Month and National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month) I started reading this collection of present-time vignettes and documented history on the role and experiences of indigenous American Indians in comedy culture and humor traditions. The subtitle is “The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy.” As fascinating as it is, and having been unaware of most of it, it is an equally tragic and disheartening story. Yet, it is unfailingly hopeful and inspiring, too. You have no doubt heard of Will Rogers, and possibly Charlie Hill and Alexander Posey, or Williams & Ree. There are many other Native/First Peoples comedians, both amateur and professional, who are or were out there doing their thing — including native/Native Nebraskan Larry Omaha! This extensively researched and well-crafted work explores the day-to-day struggles and successes of a variety of funny, smart, adaptable, determined Native Americans who aspire to be the next (long overdue) Will Rogers or simply to be recognized as a great comedian first of all and indigenous person second.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The 1491s comedy troupe, Native American Comedy Slam (LOLflix series on Youtube), Will Rogers: A Biography by Ben Yagoda, or The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff.)

 

( publisher’s official We Had a Little Real Estate Problem web page ) | ( official Kliph Nesteroff Twitter feed )

 

Recommended by Becky W.C.
Walt Branch Library

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!