2028 - Louie: season four

This show continues to kick my ass.  Seriously, I might as well just start this with praise.  This is easily my favourite half-hour series of all time.  It blows me away with how wonderfully funny, honestly awkward and incredibly poignant it is.  This is one of the most unique shows there is, and it’s incredibly brave.  There was a big break between seasons, and given how fantastic this season was, I’m absolutely fine with it.  This season seemed to be about Louie’s relationship with women - with his ex’s, his daughters, and women he dates.  And it culminated in (SPOILER ALERT) he and Pamela Adlon starting to date and fall for one another.  I was so happy that it didn’t turn sour and that we’ll hopefully continue to see more of this relationship into the next season of the series.  This could have worked well as as series finale, but I need and want so much more!  I could go into great detail about all that I loved about this, my favourite season of my favourite half-hour series, but please just check it out for yourself.  If you trust my taste in stuff, trust this - Louie is worth your time.  My only complaint is that season 3 is not available yet on DVD/BluRay (please, oh please make it available - and season four).  Please watch this show.  It will make my heart happy.

2014 - Louie: season one (commentary)

I love this show with all I've got.  I broke down and bought the sets because I just can't imagine not having them (where's season 3 though?  Come on people!).  I'd heard a lot of great things about the commentary tracks for the episode, so I decided to burn through the entire thing - and he does a lot for this season - it's a bit of a blur, I'm not entirely sure he did every episode, but there's A LOT - and he goes into really great detail about how he works comedy, actors, and right down to tech stuff like his use of lenses, etc... if you're a film nerd or just a big fan of Louis CK in general then this is a must listen to! :)

1958 - American Hustle

I’ve heard a variety of things about this, and it was on my list to see but I wanted to make sure I caught it in the theatres.  Can I just admit to something out of the gate?  I love Amy Adams.  The intro to their characters (her and Christian Bale) with the duelling V/O as we watch them fall in love (and fall in love with them by proxy) is such an amazing and perfect set-up to get us into this story.  Bale is an amazing anti-hero.  There’s a long portion of the film where you’re not sure if you should be rooting for him or Cooper, and that’s a delightful way to experience a film like this.  The film is hard to describe - it’s essentially about two con artists who get forced to work with the FBI, and then it becomes a cat and mouse game of whose playing who.  The film is full of amazing performances by the previously mentioned, but also Louis CK has a fun little part, and Jennifer Laurence obliterates every single scene she’s in - she’s fantastic and worth all the praise.  

I think this film has been criticized as David O. Russell trying to be Scorcese, but I didn’t care.  I loved the feel of the film, and despite it feeling a bit long by the end, I really enjoyed it.  I love that it doesn’t paint the world as black and white.  The cast is in fine form.  It’s fun, it’s sexy, it’s a film well worth seeing.  It’s not going to change your life or the way you look at the world, but it’ll entertain you - or so I hope.  I liked it a lot and it could very well be my favourite David O. Russell film (though I’ve yet to see The Fighter).  Check it out pre-Oscars if you can!

1878 - Blue Jasmine

It's so exciting to see a Woody Allen film on opening night, especially in a city like Toronto.  The first screening I tried to attend was sold out - which actually made me happy :)

This film is the story of watching a woman unfold.  Her husband is a Madoff type.  Blanchette does an amazing job of unravelling the layers of this character whom could so easily be absolutely unlikable.  Cate's been getting the lion's share of the glory from this but Sally Hawkins and Bobby Carnivale are so great here as well.  

I think it's in pretty limited release, but if you're a Woody fan at all you should absolutely seek it out whilst still in theatres.  

1765 - Louie: season three

If you've read my reviews of the past seasons of this series, this will come to no surprise to you.  Louie C.K. is my favourite comedian, and Louie is, hands down, my favourite comedy series currently on the air.  In terms of enjoyment this series is on a par with the films of Woody Allen for me.  The humour is often subtle, but it packs an honest punch and it makes you force a mirror onto yourself and your own life, but without ever being ridiculously heavy handed.
This season told much more of a straight story than the previous.  It would appear that Louis decided to tell a more fluid story of love and loss, aspiration, and reality.  SPOILERS AHEAD.  From meeting the girl of his dreams to watching her slip away in a terrible fashion, from being groomed for one of the top spots in his profession, to suffering in a moat of depression, this season was about Louie having to get out of his lonely funk and do something about himself.  And he's succeeded admirably. 
There is absolutely no other series like this on television and it's the kind of thing that would be just impossible to replicate.  It's unique because it allows one of the greatest entertainers of our generation to just go out there and tell the story he wants to tell.  Here's hoping they let him tell lots more.

1678 - Louis C.K.: Hilarious

I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I love this man.  This might be my favourite of his specials so far.  I love his stuff on perspective, how people bitch about stuff that doesn't matter, how they're so hard done by.  I think what I like about Louis is that the same stuff that annoys the hell out of him about people annoys the hell out of me as well.  We live in a time where people bitch about stuff just so they have something to talk about.  Everyone feels like they have to have a shitty day story.  Everything's great, but no body is happy.  He's got some amazing stuff on child raising in this volume that speaks to me in a way that makes me wonderfully uncomfortable.  I can't think of a single thing that he's said in this or any of his specials that I can't get behind entirely.  What Louis does that I don't see any other comic doing is that he calls people on their shit, I know that he's made me think twice about the way I act in some situations.  Louis is holding a mirror up to our society and saying "look how ridiculous you all are - are you aware of how you come off, how you're perceived?  It doesn't have to be this way…"
I can't recommend Louis CK or his comedy highly enough.  For me he's without a doubt my favourite comic, and I think the strongest one working today.  I'll watch anything he's part of without a second thought.  You should too.

1658 - Louie C.K.: Chewed Up

It was an early morning in my house.  Our newborn was not wanting to sleep so I took the little bundle of joy into the man-cave and as she dozed away in my arms I noticed that netflix had one of Louie's older specials, so I dove right the hell in!
I've seen a lot of this special over the years from clips here and there, a lot of them are on YouTube.  A lot of what I could say here I already said in the review I did yesterday for Louie's newest special.  Louie is my favorite stand-up because I think he speaks to me, and he represents me in a way that no other does.  In the way he talks about the horrible things that he thinks, the way he acts or doesn't act.  How he realizes how awesome it is to be a white male, to the way he worries about his children.  If there's a funnier, more thoughtful comedian working today please let me know, 'cause for my money, Louie is the tops.  I'll watch absolutely anything he does.

1657 - Louis C.K.: Live At The Beacon Theater

Readers of this blog will know that I've got a lot of love for Louie CK.  He is without a doubt my favorite stand-up, and he currently has what is probably my favorite television series.  As a creative force Louis CK is more or less untouchable right now and I for one sure as hell hope it stays that way.  He's a man who is unafraid to work his ass off - to throw away an entire years worth of material and start again each year from scratch.  He's a true professional. 
Before I get into the meat of this particular show, know that Louis himself put up all the money for the show, he paid the crew, the theatre, and to distribute it he's doing it himself through his website.  And how much does it cost?  $5. That's right, by going around the middle men he's giving it to us for a low, low price (probably the profit he'd make from it anyway... actually that's probably more than he'd make from it).  A lot of his professional friends have given him shit and said that doing it this way will make it easy for people to torrent, but Louie is trying to see if people are given something they want, at a fair price, from the artist them-self, if they'll be decent and buy it.  I sure as hell did.  So if you want to as well, here is the link right here.  Please don't steal it, it's so damn cheap. 
Now, for the special itself.  It's fantastic.  The style of it is exactly in keeping with Louie's show, and uses that as his credit bed.  The material he covers is stuff that makes me feel like he's walking around inside of my head.  If I were a stand-up, I would cover similar material to Louie, I probably just wouldn't do it as well.  He talks about a kid that's in his daughter's class that he absolutely hates, how his grandmother donated her body to science, and how men have no choice but to be dirty pigs.  It's a burden!  And what's amazing about Louie's style is that he does all this as if the stuff is just coming to him.  He seems like he's pulling it out of thin air, while you know that it's a heavily crafted act - this man knows how to play an audience and a joke, he's playing a violin making it look like it's a recorder.  There is so much skill and thought put into it that, like a magician, you never see how the trick works.
When talking about him with a co-worker today they said that Louie CK is on his way to becoming one of the greats.  I disagreed.  I think that he already is one.

1655 - Talking Funny

Ricky Gervais has a pretty great career at this point.  He's in a place where he can, more or less, do whatever he wants and more importantly do things that amuse him.  He even says that in this special, that he's not an every man, but there are enough people out there that respond to what he does, that he's able to be successful at it.  And here he's assembled some of the top comedy minds to talk with him for an HBO special.  Clever man, doing something he wants to do anyway and get paid for it.  So as you can see above he's with Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and my personal favorite of the group, Louis CK. 
For something that is really just four people sitting around talking this is a very very fast moving hour long special.  What I especially love about these four is how individually gifted they are, but how much they respect each other's opinions.  I love the different sides of the different topics.  I love listening to them and how they work their material and how much care and craft they put into it.
For any lover of comedy, and especially students of it, this is absolutely required viewing. 

1636 - Louie: season two

This could very well be my favorite show right now.  Louie is a show that is absolutely unlike any other.  There are moments of it that are a tad frustrating, and one could even argue indulgent, but I'll allow those moments because, at it's core, this is a show about how fucked up we all are, but how we can't help but keep trying.  For those who haven't been exposed to it's brilliance, Louie CK plays a version of himself the stand-up comic.  And no, it's not some bad imitation of Seinfeld.  The beauty of Louie is that it doesn't really have any kind of standard format or cast, outside of Louie CK himself.  We see regular people come and go, but this is a show about a man trying to figure out how he fits into a world that he loves and is frustrated by at every turn. 
It's a treat because each little sequence is us watching Louie try and make sense of his world, or play with the ideas inside of it.  From visiting a racist elderly relative, to getting concert tickets for his daughter from an enemy, to professing his love for someone who has absolutely no interest in him, it's a show that is fearless and honest and uncomfortable and real.  Few artist get to a place of freedom like Louis has with this series, and of those that do, I'm not sure any are as successful as getting their point across as he is.
If you start watching one new series, make it this one.  It's phenomenal. 

1621 - Louie: season one

I was late to this series, and I've got a whole other season to catch up on still.  But that's the best thing about discovering a new show that you love - that there's this treasure trove of goodness for you to just dive into - and that's exactly how I feel about this show.
It's hard to explain what this series is about.  For those that don't know Louis CK is a stand-up comic, and in my opinion, one of the most intelligent, hilarious, and heart-breaking that there is.  There is an emotion behind his comedy that just resonates with me - it's like listening to a kindred spirit.  A lot of his stuff is about family and things revolving around that - and his signature style is that he's a bit rough an inappropriate, but you know that it all comes from a place of love.
It's a difficult show in terms that there aren't really structured episodes - it became slightly more structured near the end of this season, but it's mostly watching Louie do some stand-up and then there are these scenes/skits/whatever-you-want-to-call them that help illustrate the point.  Those scenes are hilarious mostly because they come from a place of frightening honesty.  There is a level of comedy going on here that I think could make most comedy writers jealous.  It's pretty inspiring stuff, and you know that it all comes from a place in his life that's more often than not, painful. 
It's even more impressive to know how much work Louis puts into this show - he writes and directs each episode and edits a fair share of it as well.  I'm really excited to see the next season of this.  I'm even more excited knowing that it's network FX, is on it's way to Canada.  Here's hoping they're looking to make the same quality of show here.  If you're a fan of stand-up comedy, especially Louis CK's, then this is something that you don't want to miss.