NY <3 Bret and Jemaine. *SPOILERS!*

gezyka wrote:

blondesnotbombs wrote:

Bret AND Taika!!! :-* :-*

*swooooon*

hahaha, I <
3 Taika's mittens(?)...but not the shoes. " title="" border="0"/>

thedistantfuture wrote:I was going to say "
That's Taika,right!"
but since you're the Taika expert now I know it is " title="" border="0"/>

gezyka wrote:

thedistantfuture wrote:I was going to say "
That's Taika,right!"
but since you're the Taika expert now I know it is " title="" border="0"/>

I'd recognize that back side anywhere, girl! ;
)

[size=133:d6wdel8j]My Lovely Sugarlumps: An Advance Review of the First Three Episodes of "
Flight of the Conchords"
Season Two
Written by Jace | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 |

[size=100:d6wdel8j]HBO's deliciously absurd musical comedy Flight of the Conchords returns after a far-too-long hiatus between seasons due to the writers strike.

I had the opportunity last week to watch the first three episodes of Season Two of Flight of the Conchords, which launches January 18th on HBO, and like the title sequence's whale, I too soared away on a magical carpet of storytelling and imagination.

While the season premiere has been available online via various platforms for a few weeks now, I was particularly curious to check out the season's second and third episodes. Time has not dulled Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement's peculiar brand of off-kilter humor, fortunately, and they return after a seemingly endless break between seasons to engage in bizarro conversations about nothing in particular and perform more hysterical songs. (If you've seen their "
women's only toothpaste"
commercial advert in the season premiere, you know what I mean.) For fans of FotC, these fantastic episodes are the bee's knees and will leave you craving more Kiwi humor once the end credits roll.

So, what can you expect from Season Two of Flight of the Conchords? Let's discuss.

When we last saw Bret and Jemaine, they had been cast adrift after Murray (Rhys Darby) took on managing duties for a hot band (the Crazy Dogz). Forced to rely on their own skills, they're actually doing better without Murray than with him and manage to get a few gigs going (even if Bret is sans a shoe) and land a job writing and performing a jingle for that "
women's only toothpaste"
commercial. This being Flight of the Conchords, look for things to naturally settle back into an equilibrium by the end of the first episode as Bret and Jemaine find themselves in a bit of a legal situation and Murray is forced to (sort of) come to their rescue.

Later, look for the guys to take a gig at a local library (shush!) and Bret to form a rather, uh, motley gang in order to take back the streets, which leads to the funniest West Side Story parody ever on film. (Okay, it might be the only West Side Story parody ever, but that doesn't diminish just how hysterical their idea of gang warfare is.)

Meanwhile, Mel (Kristen Schaal) takes up painting and Brett purchases a second coffee mug causes major financial complications for the guys resulting in them losing their instruments and Jemaine having to prostitute himself in order to make ends meet. Which in turn leads to two hysterical new songs, one that's a send-up of The Police's Roxanne and the other which is entitled "
Sugarlumps,"
and which, over a week later, I still can't get out of my head.

Yes, it's already shaping up to be the sort of season where anything, and indeed everything, is possible. Flight of the Conchords has always been the type of series that could feature romantic entanglements, David Bowie impersonations, and ruminations on the trivialities of everyday life, from Mafia retaliations to unpaid electric bills, side-by-side. It's a topsy-turvy world that might seem terrifying were it not so painfully funny.

Season Two of Flight of the Conchords premieres Sunday, January 18th, at 10 pm ET/PT on HBO. Be sure to come back later this week for my interview with Flight of the Conchords co-star Kristen Schaal.

Amily wrote:It doesn't really reveal anything that we didn't already know.. don't be scared to read it Jess. " title="" border="0"/>

gezyka wrote:

Amily wrote:It doesn't really reveal anything that we didn't already know.. don't be scared to read it Jess. " title="" border="0"/>

Ok! *reading*

tanfastic wrote:... Love the library photo on the link (click on it and it enlarges ever so hugely). ...

[size=133:kvurfmma]Flight of the Conchords
[size=100:kvurfmma](Series -- HBO, Sun. Jan. 18, 10 p.m.)
By BRIAN LOWRY

[size=100:kvurfmma]Filmed in New York by Dakota Pictures and Comedy Arts Studio. Executive producers, Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie, James Bobin, Troy Miller, Stu Smiley;
co-executive producer, Tracey Baird;
producer, Anna Dokoza;
director, Bobin;
writers, Bobin, Clement, McKenzie.

Jemaine - Jemaine Clement
Bret - Bret McKenzie
Murray - Rhys Darby
Mel - Kristen Schaal
Doug - David Costabile
Dave - Arj Barker

Younger-skewing than most HBO fare, "
Flight of the Conchords"
remains a rare bird -- a musical-comedy that fluctuates between being wildly clever and merely odd. Fortunately, the second season discovers the show's struggling duo in fine form, generating enough moments of genuine whimsy to sustain its cult status and add a much-coveted demographic patch to the pay channel's programming quilt.

The three episodes previewed find stars Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie again wrestling with the indignities of aspiring musical stardom, from being neglected by their addled manager (Rhys Darby, coming off a scene-stealing turn in the movie "
Yes Man"
) to being courted to create a jingle for a toothpaste commercial. Any qualms about selling out are quickly banished after a smarmy exec states that doing so will make them "
so rich you'll be shiiting money."


Mostly, though, the show kind of meanders along -- much like its aimless protagonists -- until characters burst into the absurd, goofy, ambitious musical numbers. This season, that includes a "
West Side Story"
send-up, and later a veiled tribute to "
Midnight Cowboy"
when the pair is forced to sell their guitars and contemplate male prostitution in order to buy them back.

Those references will likely elude part of the audience -- as will a bit where the native New Zealanders must endure abuse from snotty Australians, which will probably yield much bigger howls several time-zones away. Yet unlike HBO's ho-hum Kiwi import "
Summer Heights High,"
"
Conchords"
manages to be dryly funny in a way that bridges cultural borders. And while the Smothers Brothers combined music and comedy in near-equal measure several decades ago, few acts since have mixed the two quite this well.

Because young men are such a coveted demo, slacker TV comedies abound, but even the few promising ones (FX's "
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
comes to mind) have difficulty sustaining a credible level of quality. Although this series isn't for everybody, it's the kind of solid single HBO can use while waiting for a new batch of heavy hitters to arrive;
it's a refreshing favorite within the YouTube quadrant that won't leave their elders muttering about the crap those damn kids watch.

Camera, Patrick Stewart;
production designer, Dan Butts;
editor, Steven Rasch;
casting, Cindy Tolan. RUNNING TIME: 30 MIN.

chloe wrote:I thought Summer Heights High was Australian . . . ???

[size=133:16h9vy8s]Sepinwall on TV: 'Flight of the Conchords' & 'Big Love' reviews
by Alan Sepinwall/The Star-Ledger
Thursday January 15, 2009, 2:00 AM

[size=100:16h9vy8s]Is HBO's delightful "
Flight of the Conchords"
a musical with jokes, or a comedy with songs? Based on the first few episodes of the show's second season - where the laughs are big, but the musical numbers seem smaller - I'd have to say it's the latter.

Flight of the Conchords - the band - began as a hybrid of gags and tunes by a pair of New Zealand friends, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, who knew they weren't talented to make it as straight musicians, but could spice up the act with witty banter and odd lyrics.

By the time they turned their act into an HBO series - they play poorer, dumber versions of themselves, with Rhys Darby as their clueless manager, Murray - they had not only perfected their comic timing, but had turned into excellent musical mimics. The show's first season was a hilarious mix of strange, deadpan humor (when Bret runs away from a mugging, he assumes Jemaine is dead and rents out his half of the apartment) and joyful tunes in various genres (folk, hip-hop, reggae, glam rock).

The problem is that the first season exhausted virtually all of the band's back catalog, with the exception of a handful of songs that wouldn't fit on the show under any circumstances. And as the new season begins, it becomes clear that gags are easier to write in abundance than gag lyrics.

The non-melodic portions of the show are still a scream, taking place in a world whose logic - or whose characters' logic - doesn't function quite the way you'd expect.

Bret and Jemaine discuss women's interests while brainstorming for a toothpaste commercial, and Jemaine explains that while his father was an activist for women's rights, his mother wasn't, because "
Dad wouldn't allow that."
The boys remain so destitute that they have to share a single cup, and when Bret splurges for a $2.79 second cup so he and Jemaine can drink tea at the same time, it sets off a chain reaction that brings them both into tremendous financial and legal peril. Murray, whose day job is at the New Zealand consulate, reads them a scathing review in the consulate newsletter of one of their gigs, then explains that he wrote it himself.

In the early going, though, the songs aren't up to par. Great song parody makes you laugh at the same time it makes you bop your head to what's a very catchy tune, and I can only think of one song out of the half-dozen or so featured in the first three episodes that I'd ever need to hear again, or that would work out of context of the episodes.

That one is called "
Sugar Lumps,"
and provides Jemaine a chance to boast of what a ladies man we all know he isn't. (One of the more printable lyrics: "
My dungarees make them hung-ary."
)

"
Sugar Lumps"
is clever and amusing, and bouncy enough to give me hope that the guys were just in a songwriting slump at the start of the season. And their other antics (and the endearing obliviousness of Darby as Murray) would make "
Flight of the Conchords"
worth watching even if it went music-free.

But the first season was a great comedy with something extra, and I'm waiting for the extra to come back full-time.

[size=133:p2zhpwbt]Flight of the Conchords
by Jimmy Newlin
Posted: January 13, 2009

[size=100:p2zhpwbt]A fair number, if not the bulk, of the plotlines and songs from the first season of HBO's sleeper hit Flight of the Conchords were pulled from the eponymous duo's BBC radio series and stage show (the songs were then churned out yet again for an EP and full-length album on Sub Pop last year). So the arrival of a new season of the series will mark an end to wondering whether or not the titular Kiwis (played by Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie) have more to their act than the glorious "
Albi the Racist Dragon"
and "
Robots (The Humans Are Dead)."
For devotees, both obsessive and otherwise, the second season will seem well worth the wait, as Conchords continues, against all odds and expectations, to make the show's mélange of Wes Anderson-infused visuals and Office-style deadpan feel remarkably fresh.

Of course, the Conchords approach differs from Anderson's films and Ricky Gervais's masterpiece when it ventures into the Conchords's elaborate fantasy sequences, where visions of music videos dance in their heads. The season premiere's jingle for a women-only toothpaste (called Femident, natch) seems to have already become a fan fave, and Clement's mash-up of the filthy and the adorable with a sleazy hip-hop ode to his package, "
Sugarlumps,"
in the second episode will probably be loved as much as the first season's "
Business Time."
For my money, though, the best tune so far is not sung by the group at all, but by their cheerfully pathetic and woebegone manager Murray (Rhys Darby), who operatically bellows "
Rejected"
at the New York skyline with a surprising—and surprisingly effective—straight-forwardness.

If there is a fault to the Conchords's songs, it's that they tend to drift a little too far into Weird Al-style parody. Last season's dead-on homage to the Pet Shop Boys, "
Inner City Pressure,"
was a delight because, well, the world had been crying out for a Pet Shop Boys spoof—whether it knew it or not. But a British reggae jam from the second episode of this season that urges Clement not to become a prostitute sounds more or less exactly like the Police's "
Roxanne."
Like a West Side Story spoof called "
Stay Cool, Bret"
that pops up in the third episode, it's too obvious.

And the group's songs are never quite as funny as the moments of quiet lunacy that these perpetually poker-faced country mice stumble into episode after episode. Take the second episode, "
The New Cup,"
in which McKenzie's purchase of a teacup for $2.79 manages to completely bankrupt the band. Clement's turning to prostitution leads to an inevitable Midnight Cowboy spoof that, despite recalling similar episodes of Seinfeld, American Dad, and Futurama, still brings the laughs. But the episode's truly sidesplitting moment is not when Clement-the-whore explains his rules to a Jane ("
No laughing"
), but when he describes the "
Cup Roster"
to McKenzie: "
I use it from 11 till one, then you use it from one till three. Then we give the cup a rest."


The duo's knack for a peculiarly modest zaniness is shared with the brilliant supporting cast: Darby's Murray is like David Brent without the ill will, intrepidly sticking to protocol even when he's living out of his car, and Kristen Schaal continues to delight as Mel, the group's sole fan/stalker. Guest stars drop by, but like with last season's appearances by Todd Barry and Aziz Ansari, the cameos are refreshingly B-list and low-key. Seymour Cassel and Greg Proops are not going to steal the show from Clement and McKenzie's Keaton-esque blank faces. As it is in rock n' roll, so it is in comedy: Quiet is the new loud.

[size=100:w6bhb5tu]... Future episodes involve Jermaine becoming a gigolo to help pay the bills (the best line is when he calls a former girlfriend and says that since he is now a prostitute, could she pay him for the sex they had years ago) and Bret (aka Rhymenocerous) forming his own gang after dissing other rappers in a unbelievably lame rap ("
Eminem is not very good,"
"
Snoop Dog is not very good"
), including great send-ups of tragic gangsta rap with "
I've Got Hurt Feelings"
and of "
West Side Story."
It's so funny and so well-done on so many levels, I hope you give it a try.

[size=100:sq9z8dm6]AudioJT: Go time... Fox lot... Doing an interview for a movie called Romona? Never heard of it... Later it's Flight of the Concords.. Yeah!.

mattsingley: @AudioJT what are you doing with Flight of the Conchords toay? An interview?

AudioJT: @MattSingley Yeah I think it's a Behind the Scenes shoot this afternoon in a recording studio... I'll know more later

[size=100:f9xyap96]While I love Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, the real breakout stars of their HBO series are Murray, played by Rhys Darby, and the Conchords' stalker/number one fan, Mel, played with pitch perfect precision by New York-based comedian Kristen Schaal.

Flight of the Conchords is set to return to HBO on Sunday with a second season of what Schaal promises are "
madcap adventures."
I caught up with the baby-voiced comedian last month to discuss Mel, why Matthew Weiner made her put her cigarette down while filming the Mad Men pilot, her comedic influences, and what character she'd most like to play on 30 Rock.

Televisionary: What it is like working with Bret and Jemaine and the writers of Flight of the Conchords? How involved are you in coming up with any storylines for the show involving Mel?

Kristen Schaal: Pretty involved, but they come up with amazing ideas and they are great to collaborate with, so I can say, I don't think Mel would do that and they'll change it. They're really good about it. And sometimes they'll come up with some really mean things to do to Mel and I'll say, can't you do something else to Mel? But they'll still keep it in. (Laughs)

Q: Can you give me an example of when you actually did put your foot down and tell the writers that what they had written was too mean to do to Mel?

Schaal: Well, I thought it was really mean [in Season One] when they brought their girlfriends to her house. (Laughs) I thought that was really mean. But they did it anyway because it made for good comedy.

Q: One thing that people are constantly wondering is: are you in anyway similar to Mel? Or are you completely different?

Schaal: Well, I like to think we are completely different. But I mean we both talk the same--

Q: And you look the same.

Schaal: (Laughs) Oh, yeah, that's right! Those two things but we don't dress the same, that is for sure. I am obviously very different than Mel. I am actually really waiting for someone to ask me, have you ever stalked anyone or been obsessed with anything? And I just want to be, like, yeah that's how I got this job. (Laughs) We're very different. Mel is just a character, obviously. I don't want to jump either of their bones, personally. That's going to be hard for them to take! (Laughs)

Q: In Season One of Flight of the Conchords, we got to see Murray sing. In Season Two, will we get to see Mel sing?

Schaal: Yes, yes. She gets her own song... and her own video. It's really good. And that's another thing that I got to have a lot of input into, the song. It's really exciting. It's about dreams. ...

[size=100:gvf75ind][size=100:gvf75ind][size=100:gvf75ind][size=100:gvf75ind][size=100:gvf75ind][size=100:gvf75ind]The first episode has been available for viewing at Funnyordie.com for a few weeks now, so let's jump into the second one. After Bret bankrupts the band by buying a cup for $2.49, the guys are forced to turn to prostitution to make ends meet. This venture, as usual, is less than successful. Along the way, their manager, Murray, falls victim to a Nigerian email scam, further depleting their funds and forcing them to perform shows armed only with air guitars.

The episode contains two seriously composed but entirely ludicrous songs. The first is a Timbaland-style production about how sexy Bret and Jemaine's dangling "
sugar lumps"
are, and the second is a reggae riff on 'Roxanne' with reaffirming lyrics like, "
You don't have to be a prostitute/You can say no to being a man ho."

drunkagain wrote:[size=133:oobkbkpo]... their manager, Murray, falls victim to a Nigerian email scam...