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Ricky Gervais Sings Elmo A Terrifying Lullaby (VIDEO)

2009-12-26T10:59:37Z

We wish Ricky Gervais could be a regular on "Sesame Street." This lullaby to Elmo, as well as his previous appearance, is reason enough to cast the British comedian full time.

With his celebrity status is called in question, Gervais rocks out the to the letter 'N,' scaring the hell out of Elmo in the process. Seriously, is there anyone else on television with a better rapport than these two?

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Bill Mann: TV Critic's Call: Here Are The Decade's 10 Best Series

2009-12-14T11:21:34Z

Usually at this time each year, my fellow TV critics across the nation assemble our Ten Best TV Shows of the Year lists. But this year, many are issuing their lists of Top 10 best shows of the decade about to end.

Here's this critic's holiday "gift" to readers - my Top 10 shows of the almost-past decade: (Note that many of these were on HBO, which hit its creative stride this decade before fading.)

1. The Sopranos. Great writing plus superb acting equals - ba da bing - uncommon excellence. Normally, I don't watch mob movies or shows. This one I couldn't miss. Adult entertainment at its best. Two staffers told me that producing scripts for this HBO Emmy-winning series was "a writer's dream."

2. Deadwood: This HBO wild-west anarchy drama, which ran, sadly, for far too few episodes, featured stellar performances (most notably, Ian McShane as the cynical boom-town overlord) and jaw-droppingly dense dialogue, almost Shakespearean in its tone and style. (That's not an overstatement, either. Rent it and see.)
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3. The Wire (HBO). Possibly TV's most compelling drama ever, and the fact that this extended story set in Baltimore's drug-saturated inner city didn't win Emmies is, well, criminal and possibly even racist. Another series one must rent, this feels as authentic as a slap in the face. Much more than a cop show, David Simon's masterwork also examined the brutal realities of urban politics and also, inner-city school blight.

4. The Colbert Report (Comedy Central): Currently my one won't-miss show, it combines bright, hip, first-rate comedy writing with a host who's ultra-smart and an unusually gifted physical comic. And no one else is talking about gun control (or Canada.)

5. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central): This acclaimed and informed faux newscast is a shade behind Colbert in quality - mostly because of annoying and untalented "correspondents" like Rob Corddry, Samantha Bee, and Rob Riggle. But Stewart does some great shtick, and he alone calls out cable news for its too-common excesses and biases. The Republicans and Fox News looneytoons have been comedy gold for Stewart.

6. Mad Men (AMC) Currently TV's standout drama, this stylish ad-agency workplace tale is the one show HBO never should have let get away. It could have perpetuated the proud brand name that's lost some lustre.

7. Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO) Currently TV's funniest show hands down, creator/star Larry David's neurotic daily adventures (Seinfeld's George Costanza is his alter ego) are where I first heard the term "teabagging," and where viewers have found TV's edgiest comedy for several years.

8. Extras (HBO) Rick Gervais' original The Office on BBC remains by far the best version. This, Gervais' follow-up Beeb series, examines in painful (but funny) detail the indignities and insecurities performers bear -- also, the dubious fame conferred by stardom in a dimbulb sitcom was fertile ground for this ultra-bright comedy frequented by big-name guest stars like Kate Winslet and David Bowie.

9. The Shield (FX): Michael Chiklis was brilliant and even scary at times as a pit-bull cop. Along with "The Wire," one of the best two police-centered shows ever.

10. The West Wing (NBC): About the only escape we had from the Bush White House for several long years, it was an understandable, welcome fantasy. Too bad the show went downhill so fast after 9-11 when it began taking itself (like M*A*S*H did) too seriously.

Honorable Mention: Countdown With Keith Olbermann (MSNBC); Weeds (Showtime); Fareed Zakaria GPS (CNN); The Office (BBC version).

Happy Holidays!

The 35 Funniest People Of The '00s (PHOTOS)

2009-12-10T07:59:02Z

Whatever we call the past 9 years -- the Naughts, the Aughts, the 2000s -- we can all agree it's been tumultuous at best. The only way we've stayed sane is by watching these people mock it all. Of course, there are some surprises on the list: Folks who made us laugh without trying, but they're no less laughable than those who make a career of comedy.

Gervais Warns Stars: You're In For Mockery At Golden Globes

2009-12-08T16:20:50Z

LOS ANGELES — Ricky Gervais said he plans to play it loose and off-the-cuff as host of next month's Golden Globes, with Frank Sinatra and his pals as role models.

"I want to host it a little bit more like someone from the Rat Pack would host," Gervais said.

Jonathan Tisch: Funny Business

2009-11-10T12:38:50Z

New York City can be a funny place. Last week the city was hilarious thanks to the sixth annual New York Comedy Festival, a week-long celebration of stand-up comedy founded by Caroline Hirsh and Andrew Fox. Some of the biggest names in the business like Steven Colbert, Dane Cook, Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Tracy Morgan, Andy Samberg, and many others, headlined at venues around the city from Avery Fisher Hall to Madison Square Garden.

Even lesser known comedians were in on the joke. Thursday night at Caroline's Comedy Club, owned by Caroline Hirsch and known as America's premier comedy nightclub located in the heart of Times Square, an unlikely group of comedians took the stage.

Caroline's hosted its 6th edition of David Moore's "Funny Business." The show was created by private equity investor and entrepreneur David Moore in 2003, in order to give business people the chance to prove they could be as witty as they are business savvy by performing stand-up alongside professional comics. That's right, business people. Certainly a gamble for a CEO to take on a heckler rather than a balance sheet, but a risk I was willing to take at the show's inception years ago and then again Thursday night. This time the comedic exploits would benefit The Mayor's Fund for NYC's Learn to Swim Program.

Joined that evening by Stephen Siegel, Chairman, Global Brokerage, CB Richard Ellis, Inc.; Stew Leonard, CEO, Stew Leonard's; and host David Moore, dubbed, "The World's Funniest CEO," I took center stage to a sold out crowd. I reminded myself that this would be easy if there were any truth to the saying, "comedy is just a funny way of being serious."

Of the four featured CEOs, I appeared last. In baseball, the fourth player in the batting order is of course "batting cleanup" and is usually the best hitter with the most power. However, I suspected Caroline's organized the CEO line-up alphabetically. My challenge was made even greater by the fact that I followed a professional comedian from SNL, Colin Quinn. Still I persevered and threw out my first joke.

"It's great to be here at the famous Caroline's Comedy Club as part of the 'Funny Business' night. Of course the stereotype is that CEOs aren't that funny, and I'm here tonight to prove that."

The audience laughed immediately (though I'm sure it helped that the room was packed with family, friends and colleagues). The entire week provided laughs for many New Yorkers and those visiting our city; and not just those who were kind enough to come to Caroline's to see my fellow comedians and me. In fact, it was another comedy show at The Town Hall on West 43rd Street that was likely the most important event presented by the New York Comedy Festival. It's called "Stand Up For Heroes."

"Stand Up For Heroes" is a unique evening of humor and tributes dedicated to our nation's injured service members, with proceeds benefiting the Bob Woodruff Family Fund. The night included special performances by Bruce Springsteen, Steven Colbert and others. All five living presidents sit on the event's Presidential Committee: President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, President George W. Bush, President William J. Clinton, President George H. W. Bush and President Jimmy Carter.

NBC's Brian Williams hosted a night that reminded New Yorkers, and many others, of the debt of gratitude we owe the men and women in uniform. The evening's comic relief fetched laughter and cheers. But perhaps the greatest measure of success for the New York Comedy Festival was that fact that it was the servicemen and women from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines who rightfully received the Festival's most thunderous and heartfelt applause.

Jonathan Tisch is Chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, Co-Chairman of the Board for Loews Corp. and host of television's Beyond the Boardroom with Jonathan Tisch.

Ricky Gervais Is Annoyed By Everything (VIDEO)

2009-11-07T06:53:21Z

Ricky Gervais is not a tolerant man--everything annoys him. He posits he'll end up like Howard Hughes, shutting the world out to avoid its germs. Gervais told David Letterman last night that he hates restaurants, whistling, and lateness--the latter because he can't believe people aren't rushing with excitement to see him.

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Brad Balfour: Q&A: Actress Jennifer Garner Is Treated to The Invention of Lying

2009-10-08T09:24:55Z

British comic Ricky Gervais has one kicky concept behind his directorial debut, The Invention of Lying. On an alternate earth, humanity lacks the capacity for lying so truth-telling is just telling. People may speak the truth, but have no sense of humor and no idea of fiction. As a result, they do reveal it all -- including how inflated their views of themselves can be.

As Mark Bellison (Gervais) struggles to survive at a mediocre television company, the pug-nosed, pudgy writer endures a rivalry with the better looking, more successful and far more arrogant Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe). Mark suffers through miserable dates his mother encourages him to go on. When he meets tall, gorgeous Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner) on one of those dates, he falls for her and she tells him that despite the fact they get along, and that he's a nice guy, she can't continue to see him -- let alone marry him -- because she's way too out of his league; she'll never have his children. Since he's just not up to her in looks or physique, their relationship has to remain platonic.

Whether you think the creator of the English, original version of The Office -- and star of Ghost Town -- is or isn't in her league, he's so frustrated by her refusal and other factors that when his mother is on her death bed he has a brainstorm and tells her one big lie -- the first -- that death is not the end of things. She will go to a nice place where everything is wonderful. Unfortunately, his comment is overheard by the nurses and doctors and his words are spread everywhere -- that he knows things no one else in the world knows.

Soon Bellison becomes an international phenomenon, making proclamations on the afterlife and just about everything else. He lies up a storm to help friends; lies to get money from the bank; cheats at the casino; and eventually, to win the affection of Anna. People start camping out on his lawn to learn more, so he develops a strangely familiar story about the "Man in the Sky," who does all these mystical things, and is kind and wonderful. When he pastes a set of rules on two pizza boxes and reads out his Commandments, we get the message.

Though The Invention of Lying falls flat in places by the time it ends, this fascinating idea show how Gervais is leading the charge to create comedy that requires more than an endurance for bodily function jokes and absurd R-rated sight gags.

The 38-year-old Garner -- wife of Ben Affleck, former star of the spy series Alias, and who was much drubbed when she played anti-heroine Elektra -- did a great job as the ingenuous Anna. The almost 5' 9" actress further enlightened me about Gervais, the film and the art of lying in the following exclusive one-on-one interview.

Q: Did it feel to you as if this movie was an episode of The Twilight Zone?

JG: I think that's what they were going for. So, yeah, it did feel like that, except that it was the funniest episode of The Twilight Zone that was ever invented.

Q: When you got this script, did you think of it as a science fiction idea or more of a parody?

JG: I liked the questions that it brought up. I liked the conversations that I felt would start. I thought that it was funny. Really, when I first read it, I just laughed out loud, and that's the most important thing. I loved the way my character was introduced. I loved the challenge of looking at a scene and thinking, 'I have to play this with no subtext, no irony, no sarcasm and just be as straightforward as I could possibly be.' I think that's a really interesting acting challenge.

It wasn't until I read it again and then thought about it a little more that I thought that. As soon as you read it or see it, you can't help but think about the world and think about all these advertisements that I see, one way or another, are lies. We're sold lies all the time and it's so much a part of our society. But we edit out [a lot] of what we can say. I like that the film is provocative in that way.

Q: Do you think this film has a British point of view or a British tone to it?

JG: I feel like it has Ricky's sensibility, but no, I feel it's pretty universal. Matt Robinson co-wrote and co-directed the script and the movie with Ricky. I think that they didn't really seem to have, "Oh, that's too British" or "You're trying to pull it to the American." There were a couple of references or words that of course you have to switch, but no, it does not seem British to me.

Q: It's got a great cast.

JG: There are some of the greatest comic talent alive and a lot of them are in this film, from Tina Fey to Louis C.K. to Christopher Guest...

Q: And Jonah Hill.

JG: You could go on and on and on. I signed on before all of those people. So I had the benefit of being on the film and hearing more and more about how great the cast was every day and how it was growing and growing. I felt like, "Wow, I signed onto this tiny independent movie, and now it's turned into this whole thing." It's just a lucky coincidence for me.

Q: And when they saw your name on it, did they jump onto it because you were signed already?

JG: [laughs] Yeah. I don't flatter myself to think that I was the draw there. I think that Ricky Gervais definitely has quite a following and is very, very respected.

Q: When Ricky asked you to be in the film, did you ask why he wasn't putting you into the British episodes of The Office?

JG: I do ask Ricky all the time why I haven't been invited to be on Extras or The Office or anything else. I bug him about it all the time and I'm still waiting. They're both done. They're speedy over there.

Q: You've done a lot of rom-com. What do you think of Gervais and his universe of humor? It's not the obvious humor, it's more realistic. Is there a trend towards this sort of comedy?

JG: I think there are a couple of different trends in humor. One is the Judd Apatow kind of humor of embarrassment [that's] humor of gross-out. Then there's the humor of embarrassment with reality, using real relationships and situations.

That's what Ricky does. I think part of what he does so well is that his humor is never mean spirited. It's very honest. He's very interested in what's honest, and he finds the truth to be the funniest. I loved working with him because he's so clear about what would make something funny, and he's always right. He's so funny and so incredibly good at what he does.

Q: Do you think Bellison deserved to get what he got in the ending?

JG: I think he had earned it by then, certainly, because he's the kinder one. The interesting thing about Anna in the film is that she's the first woman to make a choice romantically.

In a world where women are driven by evolution and by the quest for the best genetics for their offspring, she's the first woman in this world who knows that something is different here. She's the first woman to say, 'No. I love this man. That's a good enough reason to be with him and have kids with him.'

Q: Both you and Ben [Affleck] have been leaning towards humor after you both started out in more serious roles. Do you find that you started to trade quips at home, reading each other the funny lines from your projects?

JG: Yeah, we'll tell each other the funny scenes or whatever. But as far as trading quips, I don't know if we actually are living the life of His Girl Friday or something like that. It's probably much more boring and banal than that.

Q: Right, but I just assume that he beats you out with the laughs. He's a smart and funny guy.

JG: Are you saying that you think he's funnier than I am? Are you challenging me, saying that you think that my husband would come up with the funnier quips than I would? Because I will tell you that is certainly not the case.

Q: Oops! Are you picking projects now that mix it up for you; are you trying to show different aspects of yourself? Where do you think you're going in your career?

JG: The whole point of being an actor is that you don't do the same thing every day. So I'm just interested always in finding something that feels like, "Oh, wait. I've never done this before. This is different. This will be a real challenge." Luckily, all different kinds of things have come my way and so I've been able to pick and choose.

Q: If you had your ideal choice, what would be the thing that you'd like to do next, the most contrasting thing to follow this up?

JG: I just want to do something that's good. Nothing has to come next. I would love to do a musical, but if that happens five years from now, I'm fine with that. I don't feel like, "I have to accomplish this right now." It's much more that I just love whatever it is that I do. I don't just say yes to everything.

What I'd love to see happen next is a film that my production company has been working on for a long time called Butter. It's this little movie that takes place in the world of butter carving at the Iowa State Fair. So if that could happen next I would be thrilled.

Q: Do you ever think that Ben should direct one of your projects or even cast you in one of his, or do you guys try to stay as far from that as possible because of the scheduling issues?

JG: Of course, I wish that he could direct everything. There's no one better. Scheduling is definitely a big factor for us. If we were both on the same set at the same time all day--our kids are too young for that, so it's something that doesn't come up right now. But who knows, maybe we'll revisit it in a few years.

Q: Do you find now with kids that your outlook on what you want to do in film has changed, either wanting to do family-friendly projects or going in the opposite direction?

JG: I don't really feel like I'm driven away from doing family stuff or towards it. I look at the scripts that come my way. I look at the script that we're developing in my production company. It's much more about finding something that I like to do than it is about some overall thing like, 'I better stay away from family movies' or 'I'd really like to do a family movie.' I mean, if a family movie came along and it was great, then I wouldn't care if I had no family or a family of ten kids, I'd still want to do it.

Q: But you're not inviting superhero costume films?

JG: Sure. If one came along, and it was great, I would suit right up.

Q: Which hero would you have in mind? Do you have a favorite?

JG: I don't know who she would be. It would have to surprise me. I don't have a particular favorite.

Q: Wonder Woman?

JG: Sure.

Q: Are you good at lying?

JG: I'm a horrible liar. I can exaggerate. I can definitely make a good story better, but as far as just telling a lie, not very good.

Q: So you would've been good for a world where no one lied?

JG: No, because I do think there's real value in a white lie to save someone's feelings.

Q: Are there some people that you'd like to tell the truth to, since it's perhaps a world in which you can't lie?

JG: Yeah, there are one or two that I'd like to get ahold of.

Q: What would you tell them?

JG: Wouldn't you love to know [laughs]?

Marshall Fine: Movie Review: The Invention of Lying

2009-10-01T07:22:46Z

Ricky Gervais is such a funny human being that I held out huge hope for The Invention of Lying, even after seeing a trailer that made it feel like an impossibly one-joke outing.

After all, the original Office is essentially a one-joke concept - and Extras was one joke, expanded into two. They rank as some of the funniest television ever created. So I'll never sell Gervais short; he always makes me laugh.

The problem of The Invention of Lying isn't the single joke - it's the lack of others to flesh it out - and, worse, a lack of comic focus. Gervais and co-writer/director Matthew Robinson create one premise, then seem to shift to something else - and then to something else again. But the conceptual problems are less troubling than the essential shortage of laughs.

The set-up seems simple enough: Gervais and Robinson create a world in which people only tell the truth. No one can tell a lie; no one even knows what a lie is or can imagine "saying something that isn't."

Their spin on it, however, is not just that people only tell the truth - they offer it relentlessly and compulsively.

For the rest of this review, click HERE to reach my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com.

Jimmy Kimmel Strips In Front Of Ricky Gervais (VIDEO)

2009-09-30T11:25:52Z

Jimmy Kimmel gave guest Ricky Gervais a strange welcome last night as the host changed in his guest's dressing room. Of course the skit was planned but we're not sure the awkwardness and disgust Gervais exhibited weren't genuine...especially at the mention of "Little Jimmy."

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Ricky Gervais and Philip Seymour Hoffman Make a Deal

2009-09-25T13:18:59Z

Plus: Edward Norton must get stoned.

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Ricky Gervais: Successful Putz

2009-09-24T16:31:01Z

"In real life, I'm really cool."

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Ricky Gervais Plays 'C*ck Or Ball' Game (VIDEO)

2009-09-22T09:00:10Z

Ricky Gervais visited Conan Monday night and talked about a game called Offal Jim Jam that he invented while he was sitting around in old pajamas, playing with his balls through the holes in his pants.

"You can play it with you wife or girlfriend or mom, I don't know where you live," he said. "You pull out a little bit of skin, you don't give anything away and you go to your girlfriend, 'Cock or ball?'"

"What the HELL?" Conan shrieked.

"When I invented it I was so proud of myself and I did it on my girlfriend and she got it wrong!" Gervais said.

The British comedian also talked about his new movie, 'The Invention of Lying,' which opens October 2, and plastered Conan's hair to his head with water in order to take the worst possible picture of him.

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Ricky Gervais Must Host an Awards Show

2009-09-21T13:31:07Z

Couldn't they at least get him for the Tonys?

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Erica Abeel: TIFF Takeaway: America the Unbeautiful

2009-09-19T10:44:06Z

TIFF 2009 is the year America took it on the chin. In past fests, especially Cannes, we could usually thank Lars Von Trier for savaging the U.S. in such wicked parables as Dogville. But this time around it's mostly American filmmakers who find the amber waves have turned, well, brown.

At the same time the Americans have delivered razor-smart entertainments that double as spot-on reports about the zeitgeist.

The Joneses from first-time director Derrick Borte states its case against American consumerism like some fire and brimstone sermon. Meet the titular handsome family of four (Demi Moore, David Duchovny and their offspring, Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) as they take up residence in a spanking new McMansion in some gated enclave. It soon becomes creepily apparent we're dealing with a faux family that's been hired by a company to "sell" their big-ticket lifestyle to the neighbors and spur them to "keep up with the Joneses" by acquiring new tsotchkes. As poppy Duchovny puts it, "whoever dies with the most toys wins."

The Joneses also displays -- intentionally, one hopes -- the almost baroque ugliness of America's affluent interiors. You wonder how the set dressers assembled these furniture showrooms from hell. And you'd be hard pressed to find a normal face in the film. Demi Moore wears lipstick and mascara to bed; you focus less on her character than trying to ascertain her actual age -- the CGI work, boosted butt, and ironed fall of jet hair make it a challenge. Duchovny phones in his turn as the dadso, while Amber Heard should consider never accepting a role that requires her to wear a top. Yet despite a denouement you can predict fifteen minutes in, The Joneses offers an original morality tale about the American Dream gone rancid.

Of course Michael Moore's doc Capitalism: A Love Story is ahead of the pack in denouncing a system rigged to permit Wall Street and the bankers to rake in the shekels while the little guys spiral into poverty and die from lack of health care I was particularly gratified by the way Moore fingers Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs as key players in a shadow government calling the shots. And who cannot identify with Moore's efforts to storm the steel and glass citadels of power to get face time with the CEOs, while guards -- who identify with the oppressor, as Freud would have it -- shoo him away like a gnat? If only the Americans whose cause it advocates would see this essential piece of agitprop!

The Informant1 by Steven Soderbergh could almost stand as a sidebar to Capitalism. In it Soderbergh, continues to explore the values of America's corporate culture, conveyed in his films as no more a choice than the air we breathe. The Girlfriend Experience took a sardonic look at the sales ethos extended to personal relations, where even intimacy has been reduced to a commodity to be purchased like socks.

Based on the true life exposé by Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant! follows a chubbed-up Matt Damon as the prez of the bio-products division at agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. Driven by inscrutable motives, Damon cooperates with the FBI to expose a major price-fixing case against his employer. Soderbergh has become one of cinema's most astute social critics. Avoiding the earnestness of, say, Michael Mann's The Insider, Informant sidewinds its attack on corporate malfeasance using a larky score by Marvin Hamlisch and the hero's oddball voice-overs about everything from designer ties to the black noses of polar bears.

Though directed by Canadian Jason Reitman, Up in the Air is based on a novel by American Walter Kirn. There's been much verbiage about this film -- probably the fest's big breakout and 2009's version of Slumdog Millionaire. Tellingly, though, Slumdog rewarded the underclass; this year you'd be hard put to find a happy ending.

In his third outing Reitman spotlights America's executioners who do the corporations' dirty work. The George Clooney character and his B-School sidekick are handsomely compensated to dump workers via video conferencing, while delivering nostrums about loss as an opportunity.

Borrowing a page from Balzac, in this film the environment and the heartless people it spawns are of a piece, like tidal pools crawling with crabs. Clooney, in fact, reps a successful adaptation to his milieu. While the detachment he brings to lowering the boom on employees is doubled by his avoidance of an intimate connection and any emotional turbulence. "We're two people who get turned on by elite status," says his girlfriend, which just about sums them up.

Other American films touch on corporate rot - or Yankee cluelessness -- in less direct ways. In Solitary Man, by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, Michael Douglas plays an aging exec in freefall. No longer king of the roost in business, this alpha male feels compelled to bed everything that walks. Note to the filmmakers: could a guy of 60 with heart trouble to boot really please all those frisky ladies? Constructed like a thriller, The Art of the Steal by Don Argott is an eye-opener about how charities and Philadelphia power brokers conspired to seize hold of the multi-billion dollar Barnes collection of art. The film's little guys fighting a corporate putsch to honor Barnes's bequest seem straight from the playbook of Michael Moore. Finally, even The Invention of Lying by Ricky Gervais presents the citizens of Anytown U.S.A as gullible Yahoos.

But even if American filmmakers blasted the home front, they showed great skill and panache, working closer to the zeitgeist than most of their competitors at TIFF. And though bleak is the new black, these films offer green shoots. Both Capitalism and Up in the Air celebrate individuals who stand up to corporate Goliaths and refuse to play America's executioner.

Love Lessons From 'The Office'

2009-09-17T10:00:27Z

Frankly, there are a number of love lessons to be gleaned from the employees at Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company. Here are our favorites.

Ricky Gervais Talks Prison Sex, Cakes, And Why He Likes Being Insulted (VIDEO)

2009-09-17T09:09:15Z

Ricky Gervias was Jon Stewart's guest last night, promoting his new film "The Invention of Lying," which takes place in a world of complete honesty. Stewart noted that Gervais is bombarded by insults in the film, to which Ricky responded, "I like being insulted, that's why I come on this show." Gervais also talked about his weight and unveiled a new plan to fight the obesity problem with differently sized doors.

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Erica Abeel: TIFF's Guilty Pleasures

2009-09-15T15:41:19Z

Over halfway through the fest and I"m vowing to subsist after I get home on seaweed and brown rice. There are only so many lobster mini tacos and BLT's made with Dungeness crab a critic can consume. These delicacies were on offer at a Vanity Fair party for "Tanner Hall," a boarding school, girls-gone-wild opus from Tatiana von Furstenberg (daughter of D) and Francesca Gregorini. For Graydon Carter, Canadian native son, they actually shut down a whole stretch of Cumberland Street so the guests could proceed unhassled to their event. At the party none of the guests I spoke to had actually seen the film, which seems more the rule around here than the exception.

I also can't help feeling that some of the screen fare has been less compelling than the closing rounds of the U.S. Open, with cussing' Serena and the mighty forehand that brought down Roger. Nor have many towering works been in evidence -- though I'm excepting from this judgment Michael Haneke's Cannes win, The White Ribbon, and other auteurist films that I plan to see in New York.

Instead, the past day's crop of films has ranged from moderately interesting to guilty pleasure. In the first group Ricky Gervais's The Invention of Lying mines a rich comic vein, yet loses traction with a puerile romantic entanglement. Gervais posits a parallel world in Anytown USA where everyone tells the truth. Even the signs are candid, as in A Cheap Motel for Intercourse with Near Stranger. But in a genius-like flash, chubby loser Mark Bellison (Gervais) discovers he can turn his love life and career around by fibbing. This extends to his job as a screenwriter at Lecture Films, which conceives cinema as a talking head delivering a history lesson. Mark amusingly creates the first contemporary screenplay, a gallimaufry about the 13th century and the Great Ninja War.

In Invention Gervais makes provocative points about hypocrisy as the glue of society, taking aim at the American propensity to blather the truth and let it all hang out. He won't win any plaudits from organized religion when Mark invents the the promise of an afterlife to console his dying mother, reading to a crowd of followers his revelations from the "man in the sky" from tablets composed of Pizza Hut boxes.

Trouble is, Mark's designs on Jennifer Garner mark a reversion to formulaic romcom. And I simply don't get the point, by the way, of actors like Garner. She's from Ingenue Central, acting-challenged, and could spend her time more productively just being Mrs. Ben. In general, all the American actresses in this year's TIFF lineup resemble generic perfect fembots, and you long for such signs of life as a little sag, bag, or wrinkle.

In the category of guilty pleasure count Oliver Parker's Dorian Gray -- though colleagues stumbled from the screening declaring it a dog. Parker has confected a rather literal adaptation of Oscar Wilde's famous novel about innocent young Dorian (Ben Barnes), who sells his soul to retain his youth and beauty. But a portrait of Dorian painted by an artist who desires his dishy model reflects the true putrefaction of Dorian's soul.

I enjoyed the tone of Gothic horror, set at the outset during the credits with putrefying letters and continued with miasmas swirling through the dark city and glittering dens of vice. I also seriously coveted the genteelly tattered English rugs gracing Dorian's mansion. As Henry, Dorian's instructor in corruption, Colin Firth has a ball with Wilde's famous epigrams ("The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it" and the like). But the CGI version of the monstrous portrait, complete with ghastly larvae spilling from the eyeballs, is cheesy and laughable -- nor can it compete with Wilde's verbal equivalent. The orgy scenes are not only silly -- male directors always manage to make this stuff a turnoff; maybe Parker should have hired an orgy choreographer. Most damning, Parker never teases out the homosexual subtext in a Victorian tale about love that dare not declare its name; never explores the idea that Henry orchestrates Dorian's corruption as a way of acting out his own desire.

Marshall Fine: Live from the Toronto Film Festival: Day 4

2009-09-14T07:36:35Z

Journalists are forever looking for themes that connect the movies in a film festival. Programmers, on the other hand, are always adamant that they don't purposely mix-and-match movies to create thematic resonance.

Still, any critic -- or English major, for that matter -- can string together a group of films within one lineup and find a common thread. You can do it with a whole festival -- or with a series of films within a festival.

Sunday in Toronto, for example, I happened to see three films back to back that offered powerful, sometimes disturbing ruminations on the idea of family. Two of the three focused on the ripple effect that comes from an unsuitable parent; the third dealt with the power of a parent's love to sustain, even when the world is ending.

But first, a digression: In trying to get to a 9:30 a.m. Sunday screening of Ricky Gervais' "The Invention of Lying," I headed for the subway at 8:45 -- only to find it locked, with a sign listing the starting time as 9:05. Now there's one of the big differences between Toronto and New York: New York is the city that never sleeps -- whereas Toronto, apparently, is the city that prefers to sleep late Sundays.

As it turned out, all that haste was wasted: The Gervais film was a huge disappointment. I'll have a full review when it opens in a couple of weeks -- but even as someone who has loved everything Gervais has done and thinks he's one of the funniest humans on the planet, I found myself growing impatient for actual laughs, which were dismayingly few and far between. End of digression.

My mini-family-centric film festival began with John Hillcoat's harrowing "The Road," a film that has drawn mixed reviews coming out of the Venice Film Festival. The chief knock on it? That it's downbeat and depressing.

How shocking -- given that it's based on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a father and son trying to survive a world-killing nuclear winter. I guess those critics were looking for a more cheerful post-apocalyptic tale.

In fact, Hillcoat's film is both faithful to and expands upon McCarthy's novel. But as the book did, it always returns to the father, played with fierce tenderness by Viggo Mortensen, and his efforts to keep his boy alive and get him to some safe place -- if such a place still exists. It's a performance that alternately smolders and flares, as Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee (as the boy) trudge through a gray, desolate landscape, trying to maintain their humanity and stay alive, while dodging others who have succumbed to the Darwinian imperative.

It's an important and a genuinely moving film, one that deserves a wide audience. Here's hoping that it finds one in the crowded award season of November, when it will be released.

Not all parents are as protective or nurturing as the father in "The Road." Consider Thea, a stage actress in Martin Zandvliet's "Applause," a stark Danish drama that thrives on her compelling performance.

For the rest of this post, click HERE to reach my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com.

Ricky Gervais: How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall? (VIDEO)

2009-08-18T16:09:37Z

In a promo for the upcoming New York Comedy Festival, Ricky Gervais takes a profanity-laced stab at the age-old question: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Ricky Gervais from NY Comedy Festival on Vimeo.

New York Comedy Festival: The Top Nine Reasons to Attend the New York Comedy Festival

2009-08-12T10:44:11Z

9. Patton Oswalt is even more endearing live than as a computer-animated, chef hat-wearing, talking rat.

8. You've always heard that Tracy Morgan is a lunatic on stage, but you've never experienced it for yourself.

7. "Wait, isn't Bill Burr the white guy from the Chappelle Show? And isn't Mike Epps the black guy from The Hangover? I love racial typecasting!"

6. Between Italian comedians Artie Lange and Mike Birbiglia, you'll feel like you're in one, big Olive Garden commercial.

5. For the ladies: Bill Maher does social commentary. For the guys: Chicks dig social commentary.

4. Liking Dane Cook is retro-kitschy-cool right now. Plus the guy has some pretty good new material.

3. You were too embarrassed to buy tickets to Justin Timberlake, but you spend long nights agonizing over missing Andy Samberg do "Dick in a Box" live.

2. You can finally see why all your jerk friends prefer Ricky Gervais' British Office to the American version.

1. The New York Comedy Festival has got the best lineup of performers and venues this side of the Hudson River, the East River, or really any river.

New York Comedy Festival Announces Line-Up: Andy Samberg, Artie Lange, Bill Maher, And Tracy Morgan To Perform

2009-08-12T09:53:57Z

The New York Comedy Festival announced a tentative line-up today that adds Dane Cook, Mike Birbiglia and more to an already venerable list of stand-ups scheduled to appear. The festival, now in its sixth year, is the largest of its kind in the United States.

November 4
"STAND UP FOR HEROES" a special benefit presented by NYCF and the Bob Woodruff Foundation at Town Hall

November 5
DANE COOK "Dane Cook and Friends" at Madison Square Garden, 7:00pm
RICKY GERVAIS "Out of England II" at Carnegie Hall, 8:00pm
MIKE BIRBIGLIA "I'm in the Future Also" at Town Hall, 8:00pm

November 6
BILL BURR "Let It Go" at Town Hall, 8:00pm
TRACY MORGAN "Tracy Morgan's Hard Knock Life" at Carnegie Hall, 8:00pm
ARTIE LANGE "Artie Lange Live" at Beacon Theatre, 7:30pm

November 7
MIKE EPPS "The Mike Epps Is Rottin' in the Apple Comedy Show" at Beacon Theatre, 8:00pm
PATTON OSWALT "Patton Oswalt Live" at Town Hall, 8:00pm
THE PALEY CENTER FOR MEDIA - PANELS TBA, 2:00pm and 5:00pm

November 8
BILL MAHER "An Evening with Bill Maher" at Avery Fisher Hall, 7:00pm
ANDY SAMBERG "Andy Samberg and Friends Live from Town Hall" at Town Hall, 8:00pm

FOR TICKETS
Please visit www.nycomedyfestival.com to purchase tickets to all NYCF shows.

Ricky Gervais: I Can't Stand Brit Comedy; America's Is Better

2009-07-06T19:26:27Z

In a scathing attack he also claimed American comedy is more sophisticated than home-grown attempts at humor.

Ricky Gervais Works to Temper Expectations for His New Film

2009-07-01T12:21:04Z

"If you compare it to serious works of genius it will not fair that well."

Read more: Ricky Gervais, Home News

Ricky Gervais Takes Another Crack at Film Stardom in The Invention of Lying

2009-06-29T17:13:44Z

It kind of looks like 'Liar Liar,' only in reverse.

Read more: Ricky Gervais, Home News

Gervais, Morgan, Maher To Headline New York Comedy Festival

2009-06-17T16:40:32Z

NEW YORK -- Ricky Gervais (Ger-VASE') Tracy Morgan and Bill Maher (MAR') will headline the sixth annual New York Comedy Festival.

Organizers announced Wednesday that Gervais and Morgan will perform at Carnegie Hall and Maher will play Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Specific dates for the performances weren't announced; the festival will be held Nov. 4-8.

Gervais said that it was an honor to headline the festival and to play Carnegie Hall, which he noted was near his apartment.

Said Gervais: "I can walk to work. I won't walk, obviously. I'll take a limo. But I could walk if I had to."

More performers will later be announced for the festival, which expects to showcase more than 150 comedians.

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On the Net:

http://www.nycomedyfestival.com