Superbad

Just like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, Superbad starts off as a silly comedy before slowly transforming into a really sweet film, this time about male friendship and leaving boyhood behind.

Ocean’s Twelve

A bit dopey after the high water mark set by Ocean’s 11. They also squander some of their amazing backdrops — if you’re actually going to drop the crazy money to film at Lake Como, show us Lake Como!

Maude: Season One

Jenn, who is a big Bea Arthur fan (probably the only 30 year old who can say that), recently rented this DVD set from Netflix. It’s a bit dated, but still very funny stuff.

But, wow, how many spin-offs did All in the Family have? The Jeffersons, Maude, Good Times, Archie Bunker’s Place I knew, but Wikipedia also says there were three more. Norman Lear is like the Chris Claremont of sitcoms.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 1: The Long Way Home

I admit, I was nervous about Joss returning to Buffy. Not because I haven’t been eager for his return to the Buffyverse, far from it. But I didn’t really love Angel (too campy, too many cheap-looking sets, too much soap opera, too much focus on sunlit fantasy instead of gloomy horror) and didn’t know which Joss we were going to get here.

It turns out that Season 8 holds up to the best of the original series and is substantially better, in pacing, theme and tone, than the last few seasons. We jump forward in time (apparently about a year) from the 2003 end of the series, find out how much of what we thought we knew about Buffy’s fate from the final season of Angel was true and immediately plunge into a new saga that both spins out of what’s come before and stands alone as something new and different.

The dialogue is letter-perfect, as it should be, the art is almost perfect (Jeanty, strangely, can’t draw a recognizable Andrew, and it took a phone call sequence for me to figure out who he was supposed to be) and Joss uses the unlimited special effects of comics to give us otherworldly menaces with nary a rubber suit in sight.

The worst part of this TPB is that the wait for the next volume will be so long. But that’s a good problem to have.

Unreservedly recommended to fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Rilo Kiley: The Moneymaker

One of my favorite new songs of 2007, although it’s very different from their last album, which I loved. Perhaps unsurprisingly, iTunes isn’t selling a copy of the music video. (Apple seems a little strangely prudish at times about what they sell through their iTunes store.)

Here’s those lyrics:

You’ve got the money maker
You’ve got the money maker
This is your chance to make it
Out out out oh yeah
You’ll get out out out oh yeah

You’ve got the money maker
They showed the money to you
You showed them what you can do
Showed them your money
Make you get out out out oh yeah
You’ll get out out out oh yeah

You are the money maker
She wants to overtake you
You know you wanna make her
Show her your money maker
She said out out out oh yeah
She said out out out oh yeah
You get out out out oh yeah
You get out out out oh yeah

And deep in my hands
I will if you want me to

She is out out out oh yeah
She is out out out oh yeah
You get out out out oh yeah
You get out out out oh yeah