Saturday Night Live


  • Dupa

    So, I started watching Jimmy Fallon recently and SNL was mentioned, so I thought I'd check it out, being a huge dick in a box (:giggity:) trilogy fan.

    I stumbled upon a recent episode with McConaughey, but I couldn't get past the first 10 minutes, it was so unfunny and pathetic.

    Question: was it just a shitty episode, or is it always that shitty?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @kt_ said:

    Question: was it just a shitty episode, or is it always that shitty?

    SNL's been mostly shit for probably a decade. Probably longer.


  • Dupa

    @FrostCat said:

    SNL's been mostly shit for probably a decade. Probably long

    Tough luck, I was really counting on it. I thought that those few Lonely Islands videos I've seen were an indicator of SNL's level.


  • BINNED

    Jimmy Fallon show is more clown show, sometimes funny. If you want good and funny, try Stephen Colbert or John Oliver


  • Dupa

    Thanks, will try. And what about Letterman? He seems fun.

    Re Fallon: it is a clown show, but it's the right amount of clown for me. Sure, he's not a good interviewer, but his gags are funny as hell.


  • BINNED

    @kt_ said:

    And what about Letterman? He seems fun.

    I think the reason I do not enjoy Letterman is because his jokes are stuck in the past, and some require more historical/cultural context than I can understand or appreciate (me being ESL, with no interest in tabloids artists or sports).


  • Dupa

    @dse said:

    I do not enjoy Letterman

    But he's a good interviewer, right. At least it looks that way judging by YouTube clips?

    @dse said:

    with no interest in tabloids artists

    Yeah, that hits me so often, too. I think my only source of the little knowledge about them comes from South Park and the Simpsons. Well, now also Fallon, but he is fun to watch. The episode with Harrison Ford was awesome.

    Harrison Ford Demos His Star Wars Injury Using a Han Solo Doll – 04:01
    — The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon



  • The wtf is, here we have a licensed local show that is a clone of it, even with the cityscape background, and the band with one element that does random jokes.

    Our local clone is funny, and the jokes are more adapted to our location.

    We have Fallon on cable too, he is more clownish, but I like his show too.


  • Dupa

    @fbmac said:

    here we have a licensed local show that is a clone of it,

    Yeah, there are no good talk shows in Poland. Maybe except for one, an original, not licensed, but the guy running this is getting burnt out and he's seldom funny now.

    Apart from that, nothing. Literally nothing. Just some stupid clowns on YouTube, who can neither act, nor write a funny joke.



  • It must be hard to make jokes in perl


  • Dupa


  • BINNED

    @kt_ said:

    Well, now also Fallon, but he is fun to watch. The episode with Harrison Ford was awesome.

    It was a good showmanship. But if you silence all the laughter, there remains few lame jokes and an old man wrestling with a doll. If you are a big Harrison Ford fan, you just laugh because it is expected of you along with the audience.


  • Dupa

    @dse said:

    But if you silence all the laughter, there remains few lame jokes and an old man wrestling with a doll.

    No shit, Sherlock. And when you strip Star Wars of special effects all you get is a bunch of dressed up guys running around with sticks talking about lame quasi-religion.

    It's all about showmanship, so if you strip it, you get nothing.


  • BINNED

    @kt_ said:

    And when you strip Star Wars of special effects all you get is a bunch of dressed up guys running around with sticks talking about lame quasi-religion.

    Lord of the rings is a great movie, with an even greater story as a book. Star Wars is a great movie (at least for me) because it depicts the strongest form of tragedy (family murder), that is what makes those special effects ageless. I like the cinematography and beautiful pictures but if the story is crap (e.g. Twilight specially after the first) it is crappy a movie.

    @kt_ said:

    It's all about showmanship, so if you strip it, you get nothing.

    It does not have to be only showmanship. Jim Jefferies is a great clown, but you can read his jokes and still laugh.


  • Dupa

    @dse said:

    Lord of the rings is a great movie

    No, it's not. I keep hearing this and it really angers me!

    THE LORD OF THE RINGS IS AN AWFUL MOVIE!!!

    It's a dumbed down adaptation of a great story and watching it not as an another blockbuster, but Tolkien's story fucking hurts! It's full of lousy actors and a lot of plot holes made by a director of horror movies, who truly thinks like a one, so when, as Tolkien wrote about Galadriel, she became "tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful" his only idea to show this was to do fucking this:

    I.e. show a monster straight out of a class-B horror film.

    The Lord of the Rings surely has it's moments, cinematography is quite nice, but apart from that, it's a shitty film! So please, STOP SAYING THAT IT IS A GREAT FILM, WHEN IT'S A FUCKING ABOMINATION ONLY SLIGHTLY BETTER THAN THE HOBBIT.

    I'm not surprised that Christopher Tolkien hates Peter Jackson. He's a nice guy, but with Tolkien's work he was soooo out of his depth that someone should hit him between his eyes. Repeatedly.

    @dse said:

    It does not have to be only showmanship. Jim Jefferies is a great clown, but you can read his jokes and still laugh.

    It surely doesn't have to be only about showmanship, my point was that it can be and it can still be enjoyable. But I'll gladly check Jefferies out. 😄



  • @kt_ said:

    It's a dumbed down adaptation of a great story and watching it not as an another blockbuster, but Tolkien's story fucking hurts!

    Well at least it's not a fucking sausage-fest like the original story.

    But I agree the movies aren't that great. All three of them need at least 20 minutes cut, and the last one could cut the last half hour and lose nothing.

    @kt_ said:

    I'm not surprised that Christopher Tolkien hates Peter Jackson. He's a nice guy, but with Tolkien's work he was soooo out of his depth that someone should hit him between his eyes. Repeatedly.

    Yes, I mildly dislike a film adaptation, therefore physical violence. Sensible.

    Peter Jackson's real accomplishment, BTW, was somehow talking 20th Century Fox into giving him enough budget for 3 huge, long, sfx-heavy movies with nothing but a few mediocre indie horror titles to his name. The guy must be the best of all possible negotiators. Goddamned.


  • Dupa

    @blakeyrat said:

    Peter Jackson's real accomplishment, BTW, was somehow talking 20th Century Fox into giving him enough budget for 3 huge, long, sfx-heavy movies with nothing but a few mediocre indie horror titles to his name. The guy must be the best of all possible negotiators. Goddamned.

    QFT. What's also quite ironic is, that them giving him the money didn't really improve the level of his output, all it changes is that now he has not only a few but around a dozen mediocre titles, albeit quite profitable but still mediocre.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Well at least it's not a fucking sausage-fest like the original story.

    I don't think that Jackson's added any female characters. It's still a sausage-fest.

    @blakeyrat said:

    All three of them need at least 20 minutes cut, and the last one could cut the last half hour and lose nothing.

    I had the misfortune to watch the extended versions. 😦



  • i hate how they split it into 3 movies to milk the story

    a movie that ends with "continue" and i have to wait 1 year to see the next part

    then i know at least 2 movies that did it but there was no continuation, because they didnt do well in the box office. fuck this

    at least they removed tom bombadil


  • BINNED

    @fbmac said:

    i hate how they split it into 3 movies to milk the story

    I liked the LOTR book so much, that while watching it was just trying to cross-reference with the book. I am weird, I like long stories and movies that are based on long but great stories.
    Same is for game of thrones, I could enjoy extra bits but bastards changed the movie and I stopped watching it altogether.
    I hated that harry potter was not longer, going into more details and backstories 😆



  • each harry potter movie had a satisfying end except that one before the last


  • Dupa

    @fbmac said:

    at least they removed tom bombadil

    I actually liked Bombadil, but even if you don't care for Tom you have to admit, that the whole Old Wods, especially with the Willow story is great: suffocating, scary, simply great.

    @dse said:

    I hated that harry potter was not longer, going into more details and backstories 😆

    Yeah, and so they ended with almost solely action, action, action. One of the most thrilling things about the whole Potter series was when Rowling was describing life in Hogwarts, when the actual story has already started. So you want the story to advance, but you can't 'cause you're reading about Hogwarts and stuff and you're enjoying this, but you'd rather she sped up the story. It's all lost in the movies.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I've not read the Harry Potter books - I quite liked the films.

    I've not read the LOTR books either, but I didn't even make it to the end of the first film nor watch any of the other two.



  • dune was a great book, I didnt watch the movie but I heard it was awful



  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the best thing in that series.
    Stopped watching/reading after 4, though.


  • BINNED

    @kt_ said:

    One of the most thrilling things about the whole Potter series was when Rowling was describing life in Hogwarts, when the actual story has already started.

    Many details too, like the story behind the portraits, ghosts, ... there are many details that the movie could not include. Maybe a series can.

    @loopback0 said:

    I've not read the Harry Potter books

    Woww! The book is a master piece, the movie is good but the book is just unworldly. A magical world that makes sense within its set of rules.

    @loopback0 said:

    I've not read the LOTR books either, but I didn't even make it to the end of the first film nor watch any of the other two.

    That explains. The book is really some imaginary historical events. Watching the movie without reading the book is boring as hell, and would not make sense.


  • Dupa

    @aliceif said:

    Stopped watching/reading after 4, though.

    The last one is quite nice. But

    @aliceif said:

    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the best thing in that series.

    Unfortunately it was directed by Columbus, so the movie is not even half as good as the book.

    @fbmac said:

    dune was a great book, I didnt watch the movie but I heard it was awful

    It's a shame that Jodorowsky didn't finish his movie.

    Still, when it comes to great fantasy books, the Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin is one of the greatest. I don't think that there was another author from this genre as versatile as she was.



  • @fbmac said:

    each harry potter movie had a satisfying end except that one before the last

    Fun fact: The last two Harry Potter movies were supposed to be a single movie, but rather than cutting out things to reduce the runtime to something reasonable, they split it into two movies.

    Granted, the last Harry Potter book is close to 800 pages long.


  • Dupa

    @powerlord said:

    Granted, the last Harry Potter book is close to 800 pages long.

    Yeah, when watching the series recently I had this thought with each movie: it should've been made into two parts. Up until the last one, when I thought it should've made into at least three. Maybe this would allow them to do the last Dumbledor scene it's justice.


  • BINNED

    Gawd I'd pay anything for a tv series.



  • but the first of the ending movies was boring as hell



  • I do wonder how long it will be until Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will be turned into either a book or movie.



  • @fbmac said:

    dune was a great book, I didnt watch the movie but I heard it was awful

    You heard wrong, it's fucking AMAZING.

    It doesn't have much to do with the book, but it's fucking AMAZING.

    (I assume you're talking about the David Lynch version from the 80s and not the newer one.)


  • Dupa

    @blakeyrat said:

    David Lynch version from the 80s

    This is the one with MacLachlan? He's a great actor.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    You heard wrong, it's fucking AMAZING.

    It doesn't have much to do with the book, but it's fucking AMAZING.

    (I assume you're talking about the David Lynch version from the 80s and not the newer one.)

    The theatrical version cut out way too much stuff for it to make any sense to someone who hadn't read the book. You really need the Irulan narration to fill in the blanks. And of course, if you did read the book, you have to let go of certain things and enjoy the movie for what it is. Which I agree, is pretty awesome.

    Though they mangled a lot of Dune stuff, they really got the atmosphere and costumes right. Or at least awesome. Making the Bene Gesserits bald was weird, but I guess served a purpose in the movie.



  • Right; if you watch it, watch the longest cut available. (Which IIRC is nearly 6 hours.) Lynch wanted to make several movies, his studio said no, he filmed several movies' worth of footage anyway.



  • What, where do I get this 6h version?



  • If you want to actually laugh at SNL, find the Chris Farley collection somewhere. Also, most of the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches are good. IMO there's not much else worth laughing at from SNL.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    +1 to anything anyone's said about SNL

    • It is horribly unfunny 90% of the time
    • 10% of the time is absolute comedy classic cold tehshitz!

    Your best bet is to find a curated collection of sketches. Any of the "Best Of..." or things like "An SNL Christmas Collection". Either official or fan curated. If there's a particular group or comedian you like, search for those.

    The really talented ones tend to strike out on their own, or die.


  • FoxDev

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    comedy classic cold

    /me imagines a sketch where all the actors are obviously horribly affected by the common cold and going through tissues at the rate of about one every ten seconds per person.



  • Once upon a time, SNL was funny every single week, every single sketch. Then along came Charles Rocket.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @fbmac said:

    i hate how they split it into 3 movies to milk the story

    You think it was bad when they did it to LOTR, imagine how much worse The Hobbit was.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @da_Doctah said:

    Once upon a time, SNL was funny every single week, every single sketch. Then along came Charles Rocket.

    This has literally never been true in the history of molecules.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @FrostCat said:

    @fbmac said:
    i hate how they split it into 3 movies to milk the story

    You think it was bad when they did it to LOTR, imagine how much worse The Hobbit was.

    I'm honestly shocked we didn't get:

    Peter Jackon's: The Lord of The Rings: The Hobbit: Part 3: Battle Of The Five Armies: Part 1


  • Dupa

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    Your best bet is to find a curated collection of sketches. Any of the "Best Of..." or things like "An SNL Christmas Collection". Either official or fan curated. If there's a particular group or comedian you like, search for those.

    The really talented ones tend to strike out on their own, or die.

    Yeah, I think I'll start with researching Lonely Island.

    OTOH, I was really hoping for a whole series, so I could just push play, laugh for an hour and then go back to my sad and lonely life. But no such luck.

    What's really funny, is that there's this group on YouTube, SMBC Theater and they're funny actually, stupid and amateurish but funny. Then I watched SNL and it's got worse acting, unfunny jokes, but hey! it's produced much better.


  • Dupa

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    Peter Jackon's: The Lord of The Rings: The Hobbit: Part 3: Battle Of The Five Armies: Part 1

    You forgot part's title: Peter Jackon's: The Lord of The Rings: The Hobbit: Part 3: Battle Of The Five Armies: Part 1: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.


  • Dupa

    @mott555 said:

    If you want to actually laugh at SNL, find the Chris Farley collection somewhere. Also, most of the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches are good. IMO there's not much else worth laughing at from SNL.

    Thanks, I'll gladly check it out.

    It still saddens me, though, that I have to weed through a lot of shit to get to the acceptable parts. 😦


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @kt_ said:

    OTOH, I was really hoping for a whole series, so I could just push play, laugh for an hour and then go back to my sad and lonely life. But no such luck.

    SNL's been on the air, non-stop, since 1975-- 41 seasons and counting. Each episode is 90 minutes (though there's a fuckton of commercials-- I wouldn't be surprised if that's only 45 minutes on air). There's 794 episodes-- so you're looking at about 25 days STRAIGHT non-stop of watching to see the whole series.

    NBC are absolute monsters when it comes to even an iota of footage on YouTube. I think they're terrified that if people can watch just the bits they like, they'll never tune into the actual show. Which is, in some ways, true.

    Official releases are sporadic at best. Maybe some seasons are on DVD, but certainly aren't in print any more. There's a double-fuckton of "best of" and "themed" DVDs that have been pumped out over the years.

    Seriously, your best bet would be to either:

    1. Pirate the entire run-- make sure you have several hundred GB of space and bandwidth at the ready-- and binge watch
    2. As #1, except then grab some curated guides and hunt down specific episodes with sketches people recommend. You'll get to experience an entire episode, while also knowing you'll see at least one good sketch
    3. Pirate people's curated favorite episodes / sketches. These may or may not be DVD rips.

  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    You'll get to experience an entire episode,

    Usually the funny stuff is at the beginning. The end usually sucks, though that's also where they can sometimes get really weird, and occasionally something like that is actually really funny. But then I haven't regularly watched the show in a couple of decades.



  • @kt_ said:

    You forgot part's title: Peter Jackon's: The Lord of The Rings: The Hobbit: Part 3: Battle Of The Five Armies: Part 1: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

    : Electric Boogaloo


    My buddies in college used to joke that Unreal 2 should have been named Unreal 2: Nali Madness. But alas, they didn't have any Nali in it at all.


  • Dupa

    I think I'll go with #2, if I do it at all. There were so many nice suggestions in this thread that I'm not sure if I want to struggle with SNL.

    The real shame is, that we used to have some great comedy shows here in Poland, just a few decades ago, and so they aren't now available anywhere (probably apart from the archives of public TV).

    @boomzilla said:

    Usually the funny stuff is at the beginning.

    Man, do they suck, then. I've seen only the beginning of the McConaughey-Adele episode and I couldn't bear it.

    @blakeyrat said:

    But alas, they didn't have any Nali in it at all.

    I stupidly have no fucking idea what a Nali is, by then again I haven't played Unreal.

    @blakeyrat said:

    : Electric Boogaloo

    : Worse-Than-Alice-in-Wonderland 3D


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