The Billy Review

My interview with David Cunningham went online yesterday, have a read and come to his show! Tonight til Saturday

http://blog.sydneyfringe.com/david-cunninghams-evening-learning-humour-symposium/

Aaaallllrighty! I’ve just bought all my Fringe tickets (woop woop!) so here’s what I’ll be going to:

Wednesday 12th

David Cunningham’s Evening Learning Humour Symposium - 7pm

Kraegen Brothers: Poorly Supervised - 8:30pm

Ben & Hing Do Sketches At You for the Better Part of an Hour - 10pm

Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th

I’ll be volunteering at the Australian Dance Festival on Saturday and doing the bachata/street Latin workshop on Sunday as well as going to LDA Ball!

Thursday 20th

100 Years of Lizards - 7pm

Tom Walker Funemployable - 10pm

Friday 21st

James Colley vs His Own Stupid Brain - 7pm

The Bear Pack: Spinning Yarns Since 1846 - 10pm

Wednesday 26th

Bruce SpringSTEEN LIVE IN CONCERT - 7pm

Michael Hing: Occupy White People - 8:30pm

I’m Eating Peanut Butter in the Shower Because I’m Sad and You’re Not the Boss of Me (Alex Lee) - 10pm

Let me know if you’re going to be at any of these! :DD

It’s almost here! Time to sit down and sort out my timetable of attendance so I can minimise travel time and maximise fun times! :DD I’ll post up what I’m going to and when soon, give me a shout if you’ll be at anything I’m going to! So much excitement!

sodamnrelatable:

Little kids waiting in line:

‘Mommy I wanna be the first one to go in’

Me:

‘I’ve waiting 11 god damn years for this, I will be going in first’

via sodamnrelatable

Awwww yeeeeahh!

Here’s a link to the trailer: http://www.slashfilm.com/seven-psychopaths-trailer/

I am so incredibly excited for this movie oh my goodness look at that cast and the trailer (and the little doggy of course) ohhhh my goodness all the excitement! :DD

Will totally have a review up when I actually get to see it yay!

So I recently read The Great Gatsby for the first time, and I’m fully prepared to admit that I only got around to reading it because the movie is coming out soon and I wanted to make sure I’d read the book first, so thanks Baz Luhrmann for getting me off my lazy behind.

Now after reading it, I’m wondering why the hell anyone wants to make a movie of it. Not because of the storyline or anything like that, it’s pretty simple and quite easy to follow. No, my main issue with a film of this book is that half the value of the book, for me at least, is in the amazing way in which it is written, and that’s something that as far as I know is incredibly difficult to transfer to the screen. The language of the book itself is what made it really interesting for me, and also the perspective it is written from, and I feel like these really won’t be evident in a film version.

So yeah, while I am excited for the film because it will look amazing (judging by the trailer) and the casting of Carey Mulligan as Daisy is pretty spot on, I’m really not excited because I feel like it will be a dumbed down version of the book, reducing it from something with literary value to a purely plot- and character-based piece of art (not necessarily a bad thing, just not the same…)

I’ve recently seen a couple of movies that were relatively hyped before their release, so I figured I’d say something about them. Please excuse the fact that I didn’t write notes or anything so these are just personal impressions that I got from seeing these once.

Snow White and the Huntsman

I went into this a little bit sceptical, I really wasn’t sure if I’d like it at all but the rest of my family wanted to see it so I tagged along. I ended up, not loving it, but really enjoying it. I honestly thought most of the acting was outstanding, it was easy to see that everyone involved had really gotten into the spirit of it all, and because it was quite dark, not really aimed at a younger audience, they were really able to push the boundaries of being a little creepy. I think they were somewhat limited by script, there wasn’t really any dialogue that stood out or anything like that. Where the film was really strong, apart from great character acting, was the amazing CGI and locations. Most of the animation was really obvious but that didn’t actually ruin the experience for me very much, I thought the whole thing was really visually gorgeous and really enriched the story itself; it was a whole lot easier to suspend imagination when you could see the castle perched on its rocky crag that jutted out into the sea, waves breaking on the rock below etc etc (cliched yes, but it’s a fairytale, they don’t work without cliche!).

Overall I would watch this again, it was a lovely film with some amazing actors and characters (standouts for me: Charlize Theron was just amazing as always, KStew did a really good job with a character who could have been really limiting, the guys who played the dwarves were great). Go see it if you like that kind of CGI-fantasy type movie, don’t see it if you find it hard to suspend your disbelief/don’t like the actors in it/just aren’t into fairytales, because it’s still pretty standard for the genre and doesn’t break many boundaries in that respect.

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Em: Ok so the show is called Funemployable. What’s it about?

Tom: It’s about growing up. I’ve realised that I haven’t done much of it since I got out of high school and really have a lot just a lot due, really fast. So it’s kind of supposed to be about growing up and also pugs and whatever I think is funny.

E: Was this brought on by you graduating and having to get into the real world, find a job and that sort of stuff?

T: I graduated uni this year with a bachelor of arts, which is essentially nothing. It’s just a time sink and I got a little piece of paper at the end of it. So now, with my newfound education in English, and I didn’t do anything at uni, I didn’t read a book in full past first year. And I wrote about Ulysses, I wrote about amazing books and I felt incredibly guilty for it, I just didn’t care. Now I need to work out what I should actually do next, as a full functioning adult. I kind of had this realisation that there’s not this switch moment when you’re like “ah I’m an adult now, now I can handle responsibilities!” It’s something you actually do and think about, it sucks.

E: Where do pugs come in to it?

T: Oh pugs just are the best.

E: So they’re just cool, you just like pugs?

T: Yeah, I don’t  know, I kind of sat down one day and was like “I wanna write five minutes about pugs” and that’s kind of the set that got me to the state finals of Raw this year, but it was just a stupid thing of…cos I just find them funny. They are horrible, waddling, overbred dogs, who shouldn’t be! Like, you look at a pug and you’re like “that was once a wolf”. At some point down the family tree, one of those leaves was a wolf. And now it’s like, I dunno, a brain dog. It just looks like a foldy little thing, huffing and puffing about, as it goes. Uuuggh.

E: And the pug farm?

T: The pug farm was excellent! For my photo shoot, I emailed this lady, and I was like “Hey I was wondering if you and your number one pug farm in Australia were free anytime soon, I’m a comedian just starting out and I literally just want a lot of pugs.” And she was like ‘I’m not doing anything Monday.” So I went over there, and the sound of twenty pugs all barking at once as we rang the doorbell, was like the first time it hit me, that amount of dogs all concentrated in such a small area.

E: Pretty intense?

T: It was so intense. You think that’s intense, just listen to the sound of twenty of them all running around at once *snuffling noise*like, that many noses struggling to work. That many dogs more excited than they’ve ever been in their lives, it was just wonderful.

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On Saturday night a couple of friends and I hit up the Factory Theatre in Marrickville to see the Axis of Awesome. It was a preview of the new material they’ll be playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so I won’t be going into any detail, just to avoid giving anything away. What I will say, is that I liked the set a lot, and I thought there was a lot of material in it that was quite polished, especially when you realise that the show in its current form has only really been worked on for about 6 months.

There was, as usual, a wide range of topics covered, which would pretty much cater to most senses of humour. A few current phenomena were so accurately depicted that I was doubled over in my seat, laughing so much I couldn’t breathe. Other songs didn’t appeal as much to my sense of humour, but were still generally well received. Fans of cultural references definitely won’t be disappointed.

The set felt short at about an hour of material, but found a nice balance between intellectual observations about the world, and plain silliness complete with ridiculous costumes. Overall, an excellent show that I hope the audiences at Edinburgh will appreciate as much as we did on the night.

So I realised after P52 last night that due to my door duties and associated stuff, I only really see about two-thirds of the show. Unfortunately, that means I can’t really blog about them because most of the time I’ve no idea what’s happened :P

That being said, I’ll still be going to other shows over the next couple of months so I’ll try to blog about all of them if I can (next up is Axis of Awesome on the 14th, so excited!).

To make up for the lack of P52 reviews, I’ll give y’all updates on upcoming shows/performers etc instead :) So, next Wednesday is Storyclub yaaaaaay! I’m awaiting news of the final lineup but it should be rather awesome, so come!

illy-billy:

Sooo I’m going to be moving my reviews and things to a separate blog, just makes it easier to manage and that way you can see them all in one place without the clutter of the rest of my wackiness :P

Here’s the link! http://thebillyreview.tumblr.com/ Chuck me a follow if you’d like to know about all the great things (mostly comedy) happening in Sydney!