November 12, 2005

"Silvermania!"

Jesus is Magic "Even though she spent a year on Saturday Night Live early in her career... and has been in a dozen or so features (There's Something About Mary, School of Rock)... and has been a regular on Mr Show and Greg the Bunny, that two-minute bit may have been her 'big break.'" The LA CityBeat's Andy Klein talks with Sarah Silverman about The Aristocrats and, of course, Jesus is Magic.

Will Doig also chats her up; for Nerve.

Slate's David Edelstein: "When you get on Silverman's wavelength, you brace yourself for the joke - and then it swims up from behind, like the shark in Jaws, or it Jackie Chans you with some pretzel contortion you didn't think a human being (let alone a complacent princess) could execute."

Josh Tyson for Stop Smiling: "Why is it funny when she says that September 11th was just as devastating as the day she found out that her favorite coffee drink has 900 calories? Because her on-stage persona is rooted in contemporary Americana: It is a direct reflection of a populous up past our eyeballs in infotainment and duplicitous coddling, with a quickly-eroding sense of empathy and a severely itchy trigger finger."

Robert Newton at Cinematical: "Yes, the woman has balls - and riff on that all you want - but the fact is, she's funny, no matter how you feel you need to spin it."

AO Scott in the New York Times: "Ms Silverman is not smashing taboos so much as she is desperately searching for them."

JR Jones in the Chicago Reader: "[I]t's the most exciting stand-up performance I've seen in years, yet in all honesty I can't say it made me laugh that much."

Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times: "Her formula hardly ever varies and never fails: She says something terrible, and it immediately dawns on her that she's said something terrible. Then she tries to clear it up with something worse."

For Michael Rechtshaffen in the Hollywood Reporter, the musical numbers are "[c]onsiderably more miss than hit."

Online viewing tip #1. Silverman as host of Chapelle's Show, via Molly Priesmeyer at City Pages' Culture to Go.

Online viewing tip #2. Christina Ducklow at the San Francisco Chronicle's Culture Blog! revels in Channel101.com, "where you can see Sarah in the no-budget glory of a series called The Most Extraordinary Space Investigations.... (There's also a cancelled show called Laser Fart that has Jack Black in a couple as The Elegant Hunter.)"



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Posted by dwhudson at November 12, 2005 2:21 PM

Comments

it's so lonely being a silverman-hater.

Posted by: cynthia at November 14, 2005 11:36 AM

I doubt you're completely alone, Cynthia. Of course, I've seen reserved praise, concerned critique and so on, but I haven't seen severe dislike out there yet. But you can't be completely alone.

Myself, I missed Jesus is Magic at SXSW, blast it, but I'll freely admit that the clips I've seen have made me laugh. Sorry.

Posted by: David Hudson at November 14, 2005 1:33 PM

There was a great article on Silverman in the New Yorker a few weeks ago. Her act seems to upset people. Why is it that the same words,issuing as they might from the mouth of Jimmy Kimmel, don't seem nearly as jarring as when we hear them spoken by Sarah Silverman? It's something to ponder.

Posted by: Stacy at November 15, 2005 2:36 PM

I think if you go by the New Yorker profile, I could see people especially not "getting" her, or her act - though it was interesting... But I think she is all about what Stacy points to here, the "How can a cute girl say such filthy, awful things?" But the filthy part wouldn't matter if she wasn't clever, and funny. Matter of personal taste and mood, I suppose.

But c'mon, how can you say this is not funny (from the Nerve interview):

How do your parents feel about your act?
They totally love it. Sometimes my mom will have her opinions. Like there's this riff at the end of the movie, during the credits when they show that B-roll montage, where I'm looking at a picture of myself in this '60s costume and I say something like, "God, I look like Marlo Thomas if she'd just walked in on her father lying under a glass coffee table while someone's taking a shit on it." Because, you know, there's that rumor about Danny Thomas. And my mom begged me to take that out. She was like, "He was such a great man and he shouldn't be remembered that way! He opened a children's hospital!" And she's right, he was a great man and I totally don't want to contribute to him being reduced to just that one rumor, but what are you going to do? Also, I don't know if this is just coincidence, but at Canter's Deli in L.A., the Danny Thomas sandwich is number two on the menu.

Posted by: Craig P at November 18, 2005 2:39 PM

easy. it's not funny. and it's interesting that she is compared to her boyfriend jimmy kimmel here, because i always wondered if he writes her jokes. they are a man's jokes, written to entertain men. i don't actually believe that he writes them, but it's what i hate about her. she's a guy's girl, and she's speaking to/trying to turn on guys. plus the fact that she makes fun of her vanity doesn't change the fact that she is phenomenally vain.

Posted by: cynthia at December 2, 2005 8:50 PM

Who did she sleep with for her comedy central gig, My friends from high school made me lagugh more in 10 mins than she hasever made anyone i know laugh. Its almost as if the "Jews run the media" might be true, she seems autistic in some respect and tries to get things working that might make a 6 year old laugh.

Its sad they got rid of Late night with colin quinn, with some of the best comedians that are around, and replaced it with cra* like Sara Silverman.

Futhermore, Jimmy Kimmel has never been funny either, He was a "Man show" man, his comic insparations were all "standard man based" comedy, nothing that funny.

Posted by: irtechie at December 31, 2005 9:50 AM