While directors like Spielberg, Tarantino, and Visionary Zack Snyder have been quickly denying they would ever make a Star War, other famed directors that haven't been so preemptively dismissive remain possibilities we can still pretend would somehow do this. So Team Coco has done just that, imagining how iconic, easily-parodied directors like Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, Michael Moore, and a few others might tackle the franchise in a recent series of videos you can watch below. Auteur clichés!
A photo of Jason Bateman standing around the Conan backstage? Yes, it is basically just that, but according to Conan O'Brien, it's apparently also the first official photo to emerge from the new season of Arrested Development, so take it in slowly. The re-appearance of Andy Richter (and presumably his fake brothers) has already been confirmed, as has the addition of Conan as himself, so this really doesn't give us any big clues about the new season. But still: it's a look at new Arrested Development, right? We are going to Netflick this so hard.
From TeamCoco, here's a pretty informative video showing how maybe Rush Limbaugh is on to something with his whole Bane/Bain Dark Knight Rises conspiracy theory. May we one day find the evidence to prove Batman Forever's "Kissed by a Rose" was a similarly one-letter-off political reference, there to make 1996 Presidential candidate Ross Perot feel undeniably sensual.
A few days ago, Conan O'Brien discovered that Chinese talk show host Da Peng ripped off the opening for Conan almost shot for shot. Word got way to Da Peng that Conan found out about it and they responded in the only way a strange Chinese talk show knows how: weirdness. Well being the super cool cat that Conan O'Brien is, he responded to their response the only way he knows how: more weirdness. Check out the clip after the jump, along with the original clip from a few days ago.
Going where even Etsy hasn't dared to go (yet), Conan O'Brien last night celebrated the beginning of Hanukkah with a tradition sure to catch on among orthodox scientific sadists: the Human Centipede Menorah, a equal reminder of when the menorah's oil miraculously stretched across three days and of when a deranged German surgeon miraculously stretched a single digestive tract across three unsuspecting tourists. It's a mitzv-ugh! Here's the video:
TV news time, guys. Firstly: questions about just how Sex and the City's protagonist was so good at identifying shopping deals and pun opportunities will soon be answered with the CW's The Carrie Diaries, a new series that will tell the unnecessary origin story of notorious Manhattan asshole Carrie Bradshaw. First discussed a month ago as a potential way to get more name-brand shoe dialogue on television, the show comes from Gossip Girl executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, and will be based on Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell's book of the same name. HBO series creator Darren Star and Sarah Jessica Parker are not involved, but thanks to a deal that will allow the CW show "to incorporate characters [and] traits," don't worry, Carrie can still have a disproportionately long, cadaverous face and whatever other traits you may have noticed if you were somehow able to look past that.
Second: French studio Guamont is developing a Hannibal Lecter television series, said to focus on the serial cannibal's earlier years and interactions with FBI agent Will Graham. The Hannibal Lecter character has, of course, already appeared in at least five films, but hey, Zooey Deschanel is doing television on Fox now, so why not Hannibal Lecter? Maybe he and Graham could share an apartment in Brooklyn.
Finally: now that Conan O'Brien and TBS give passing high-fives in the hallway, the cable network has bought Conaco's pilot for a half-hour multi-camera sitcom centering on a family man who quits his job and returns to his hometown, where he reconnects with his former best friend. In the interest of maintaining continuity across the TBS lineup, assumedly that former best friend will be Tyler Perry's someone.
While Jay Leno's 2010 return to The Tonight Show gave a nation's dads back their Headlines to fall asleep to, NBC's fickleness created a media fiasco and left Conan O'Brien without a job and unable to work on television for nearly a year. In the face of such adversity, O'Brien--not about to lose his cred as our greatest purveyor of ursine self-pleasure--quickly organized a 30-city tour, all the time being followed by the camera of Leprechaun 2 director Rodman Flender, who assembled the footage into a feature documentary. Here's the trailer for that:
Before he goes up directly against your local news, sports, and weather with his new 11 o'clock show on TBS, Conan O'Brien is giving his talkie program a soft open with an online-only "show zero" preview you can watch Monday, November 1 on YouTube, Facebook, and the official TeamCoco site. A TV show on the Internet!? Now I've seen everything!
Here's a hand-crafted, Michel Gondry-ish promo for it:
Also, an orchestra plays. It's sort of like that old Jay Leno Show promo where Jay drove around a sports car and gave smug grins to the camera, except with explosives, fireworks, and popcorn kernels. And entertaining, rather than whatever Jay Leno just driving around a car is.
It's clearly not as good as this animated Conan madness, nor as good as this also-madness, but this TBS promo for Conan's upcoming talk show is still good enough to place third on my list of Conan animations, which I'm from now on calling Conanimations. So how about giving it a watch?
Though, now that I think about it, wouldn't it have made more sense to just film Conan making smug faces while driving one of his awesome cars that has the airtime of the show pasted on the side?
TBS, the station that has played Wedding Crashers more times than Earth's combined frat house DVD players, has signed Conan O'Brien to host an hour-long show to begin in November. The Hollywood Reporter explains:
"In three months I've gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I'm headed to basic cable," O'Brien said. "My plan is working perfectly."
O'Brien's show will serve as a lead-in for George Lopez's late-night show "Lopez Tonight," which will move to midnight. TBS said talks began in earnest just last week after Lopez called O'Brien to ask him to join the network.
"I can't think of anything better than doing my show with Conan as my lead-in," Lopez said. "It's the beginning of a new era in late-night comedy."
Tweeted O'Brien: "The good news: I will be doing a show on TBS starting in November! The bad news: I'll be playing Rudy on the all new 'Cosby Show.'
At last, I can finally spend an evening lazily staring at reruns of Seinfeld and The Office and progress straight into Conan without all the burden of having to hitting the channel up button a few times. If this is only a partial win for Team Coco, it's still a full victory for lethargy.
After watching that claymation Evil Dead remake, I was reminded of those stop-motion Christmas specials Late Night with Conan O'Brien made and briefly looked around the internet shelves for them. I didn't see them, but I did find this better thing: a wide-eyed Conan O'Brien effigy awkwardly replicating all of the host's trademark physical gags as he responds to unheard sounds on his starkly-lit stage. It's most likely the nightmare Conan had every night during the whole Tonight Show uproar, and now you can experience it yourself:
If you're one of the chumps left furious at those of us who got tickets to Conan O'Brien's upcoming live tour, don't lose hope: you still might get to see this thing. Deadline NY has revealed a feature-length documentary of the betrayed host's Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour is in early talks, with Media Rights Capital already offering to finance.
Disappointingly, the article gives no mention of plans for the film to be shot in 3-D. You'd think that if Hannah Montana and Bono are going to be shoved at me in three dimensions, a 3-D Masturbating Bear would be a gimme. Honestly, if IMAX 3-D wasn't invented expressly for viewing of dangling, slapping ursine genitalia, then what the fuck's the point?
On his final day as host of The Tonight Show, departing hero Conan O'Brien mentioned that if HBO decides to make a The Late Shift 2, he'd like fellow red-head Tilda Swinton to play his part. So, logically, when Movieline caught up with the translucent-skinned actress at Sundance, they decided to ask her how she'd feel about playing the tall-haired comedian:
“I’ve heard about Conan!” Swinton said excitedly when I broached the subject. “I’m so thrilled.”
So would she be willing to take on the challenge of playing him? After all, Swinton has bent genders onscreen before, as anyone who’s seen her 1992 film Orlando would know.
“I would just be only too happy,” she beamed. “Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.”
Sounds good. But who's going to play Kimmel so that he can play Jay?
What better way to explain the ongoing late night television conflict than with a Chinese computer animation that looks like it was made for a malpractice attorney commercial in 1998? Clearly there is no better way. So enjoy this two-minute short starring CGI Jay Leno, CGI Ogre Conan O'Brien, CGI NBC President Jeff Zucker, CGI Jimmy Kimmel, and CGI Dr. Drew/Bespectacled Bill Clinton (Letterman). It actually lays out the situation pretty logically until the point where everyone turns into superhero parodies and starts killing each other with lens flares.
We finally have a replacement for Johnny Carson: Jay Leno has signed on to host The Tonight Show! Who could have figured he would beat longtime Late Night host David Letterman out for the job? Anyway, in other hot 1992 news, George H. W. Bush just became the first U.S. President to address the Australian Parliament, the Washington Redskins defeated the Buffalo Bills 37–24 at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Nirvana's Nevermind album just went to #1 in the US Billboard 200 chart, establishing the widespread popularity of the grunge movement of the 1990s!
I can't wait to see how things pan out for the young, ginger hotshot I hear is taking over for the departing Letterman...
