Director and actor Tharun Bhascker Dhaasyam’s new Telugu crime comedy ‘Keedaa Cola’ stars Brahmanandam, Rag Mayur, Chaitanya Rao, Raghu Ram and others 

Comedian Aparna Nancherla kicks off LiveWIRED with a refreshingly honest and self-deprecating exploration of the challenges of navigating the TikTok age as a comedian.

Comedian Josh Johnson sits down with WIRED Senior Writer Jason Parham for The Big Interview, breaking down his creative process, the modern world, and staying healthy and sane as a performer in the age of near-endless social media content.Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/josh-johnson-has-become-the-funniest-guy-on-the-internetDirector: Lisandro Perez-ReyDirector of Photography: Constantine EconomidesEditor: Cory Stevens; Louis LalireHost: Jason ParhamGuest: Josh JohnsonLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Brandon WhiteProduction Manager: Peter BrunetteProduction Coordinator: Rhyan LarkCamera Operator: Christopher EustecheGaffer: Vincent CotaSound Mixer: Gabe QuirogaProduction Assistant: Cerina ShippeyPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAssistant Editor: Justin Symonds

While the third season of FX's “The Bear” has already dropped, the trio won their second Emmys for its second, in which White's chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto attempts to turn his family's grungy Chicago sandwich shop into an elite restaurant

Telugu comedy actor Vennela Kishore to play the hero in director T.G. Keerthi Kumar’s spy action comedy ‘Chaari 111’

Actor-director Tharun Bhascker Dhaassyam’s Telugu crime comedy ‘Keeda Cola’, presented by Rana Daggubati, will arrive in theatres in November

Kapil Sharma reveals his professional secrets and tells us what to expect from his new show on Sony Entertainment Television

The newly-created U.S. Space Force has released its first recruitment video, CNET reports: In a video posted Wednesday to Twitter showing rockets, mission control-types rooms and U.S. Space Force members in spacesuits, a voice-over says, "maybe your purpose on this planet isn't on this planet." Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett said during a livestream Wednesday that so far recruitment hasn't been a problem for the Space Force. "There's been an avalanche of applicants." This sixth branch of the US military was established in December 2019 and will be operational by mid-2021. CNET notes the video appeared "a day after Netflix dropped a trailer for its upcoming comedy Space Force. And the leader of the U.S. Space Force says he's looking forward to the Netflix comedy co-created by Steve Carell. "The one piece of advice I'd give to Steve Carell is to get a haircut," Gen. Jay Raymond, the U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations, said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by the nonprofit Space Foundation. Raymond is bald, and joked that Steve Carell is "looking a little too shaggy if he wants to play the Space Force chief."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: Arts and Culture, North America, United States

Joanne and Gary, rival travel agents compete for their industry's top honor, the Globel Prize, while trying to address their clients' impossible demands in an Off-Broadway comedy that debuts this week, "Craving for Travel."

The 85-minute, two-actor, 30-character comedy was commissioned and produced by Jim Strong, president of the Dallas-based Strong Travel Services travel agency.

"Travel agents are always asked to do the impossible, and this play shows how that is done, from finding the impossible rooms to making dreams come true," Strong told the "Dallas Morning News." "I decided to bring it to life on stage as a comedy in New York."

From "Craving for Travel's" press release:

With their reputations on the line, travel agents Joanne and Gary will tackle any request, no matter how impossible, and any client, no matter how unreasonable. Full of overzealous travelers, overbooked flights, and hoteliers who are just over it, Craving for Travel reminds us why we travel-and everything that can happen when we do.

"Craving for Travel" opens Thursday at the Peter J. Sharp Theater, where it'll run through Feb. 9. Tickets are $32.50 and $49. They can be purchased at CravingForTravel.com, 212-279-4200 or the Ticket Central Box Office (416 W. 42nd St., 12-8 p.m. daily). More than half of the shows are already sold out.

Continue reading Off-Broadway Comedy 'Craving for Travel' Showcases Travel Agents Trying to do the Impossible

Off-Broadway Comedy 'Craving for Travel' Showcases Travel Agents Trying to do the Impossible originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 07 Jan 2014 10:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Billy Crystal, Tiffany Haddish, Kenan Thompson and Byron Allen are set to co-host Sunday's Feeding America Comedy Festival.

Some of the biggest names in comedy are coming together tonight on NBC for a Byron Allen-driven special to raise money for COVID-19 relief. The two-hour broadcast titled the “Feeding America Comedy Festival” will be co-hosted by Allen, Tiffany Haddish, Billy Crystal, and Kenan Thompson. The special will feature pre-recorded comedy segments from Kevin Hart, […]

"Bridget Jones's Baby"; Director: Sharon Maguire; Cast: Renee Zellwefer, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Emma Thompson, Sarah Solemani; Rating: ***

Actor and director Guruprasad's upcoming directorial has been titled Lockdown and will be shot during the quarantine time itself. The Sandalwood filmmaker is currently busy with the process of finalizing the production house for his unconventional venture.   A report published

Faced with financial issues, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater closed its Chelsea location in 2017.; Credit: Andrew Toth/Getty Images

Emma Bowman | NPR

When the Upright Citizens Brigade announced plans to permanently close its New York bases last week, comedy lost a beloved home. The scrappy, alternative comedy troupe that grew into a school and theater revolutionized improv in New York and beyond with its embrace of "Yes, and ..."

The New York institution incubated the talents of stars such as Kate McKinnon, Aziz Ansari, Chris Gethard, Donald Glover, Aubrey Plaza and many others in the comedy world. A pillar of longform improv, UCB teachings have been brought into countless comedy writers' rooms and are etched into many successful TV shows.

Four of the company's founding members, known as the "UCB4" — Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh and Ian Roberts — told staff in an email on April 21 that the organization couldn't afford to renew its leases on the group's two Manhattan locations: the UCB theater in Hell's Kitchen and a training center in the Garment District.

UCB also has two locations in Los Angeles where operations have been temporarily halted during the coronavirus outbreak, but there are currently no plans to close them.

Obits followed, marking the exit of UCB's physical presence in the city where it took off in the '90s, when the group turned a former strip club into its first theater.

"The guys that I came up with in New York at the UCB Theater — we made our bones there basically," said Rob Corddry, who went on to be a Daily Show correspondent and star in comedy films including Hot Tub Time Machine. "It's really sad. Sort of the end of an era."

The news comes a month after layoffs were announced at the group's New York and Los Angeles facilities in response to the coronavirus. A small number of staff were kept at training centers on both coasts.

But UCB was under financial strain long before the pandemic. Many UCBers cast the move as an example of an opaque, top-down decision-making that, over the years, they say has sowed distrust in UCB leadership among its members.

"The biggest issue with UCB was the lack of communication of the company and the owners to their employees," said Paris Adkins, a New York performer who was laid off from her administrative job with the company last month.

A previous round of layoffs took place at the end of 2018, mostly of New York employees. Adkins said the pandemic "is just the extenuating circumstance that put things over the edge."

As for the most recent closures, UCB's founders admitted to falling short of expectations.

"Look, we heard the community when they said, 'We're scared, too, and we want better communication,' " Amy Poehler told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview with the UCB4 after the announcement. "I think we did make mistakes, and we're trying to do better."

UCB has not responded to NPR's attempts to contact the organization.

Chris Renfro, an LA-based performer and show producer who relied on UCB as his main source of income, said that learning in March via a mass email that his 3-year career there had come to an end struck him as a betrayal of the values the UCB4 claimed to live by.

"UCB is about a community, it's about having each other's backs," he said, referencing the improv tradition UCB students learn of literally patting each other's backs and saying "Got your back."

"It felt like they had turned their backs on this massive community they had built up around them," he said. "So now there's a weird taste in a lot of peoples' mouths because of that."

According to a letter sent to staff addressing the layoffs, Poehler said she would pay for an additional month of health care for former full-time staff.

Much of the company's operations run on part-time staff, according to Adkins. She estimated that UCB cut a total of 45 New York-based employees across the city since last month.

Despite the community's frustrations, when the indefinite shutdown of the New York outposts turned definite, the tributes rolled in online.

Stephen Colbert, who studied at the peer improv hub Second City in Chicago before moving to New York, tweeted "I'll always be grateful" for the times he was roped in to perform with UCB during the '90s in the acclaimed sketch show mainstay Asssscat.

Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper added, "When I left Chicago, the people at UCB NY welcomed me, challenged me, and embodied the NY spirit of full commitment today because tomorrow you could run out of cash and life ships you back home."

Other dispatches on social media were less endearing.

Former students, many of whom shelled out several hundred dollars for improv classes, wrote about negative experiences and wasted money. Some revived longstanding criticism of the theater's policy to not pay its performers, unlike many of its improv peers.

Despite its problems, many felt a sense of community at UCB, Adkins said.

"I think people are grieving," she said. "It's pretty much my only community in New York and I think a lot of people feel that way. You don't get the support of a community like you do at UCB."

In an effort to financially support herself and her peers following the layoffs, Adkins started a GoFundMe page to raise money for New York staff. To date, the account has raised nearly $60,000. She's splitting the funds between staff members, who will receive a month's worth of pay. The rest will be divided among teachers who are in need, Adkins said.

In the THR interview, Amy Poehler assured the UCB community, "We're not leaving New York."

At least for the short-term, the company has moved both LA and New York classes online. For the long-term in New York, leadership has floated plans to return to the old days of renting other independent spaces to hold classes and performances.

Still, even some of its youngest members see the now-shuttered hubs as a piece of history.

"But that's replaceable and people are not," said former training center staff member Maicy Jo Schwartz, who began her UCB NY career in 2014.

Schwartz sees a silver lining.

"I wouldn't be surprised if in the future some people branch off and start their own theaters or their own training centers or their own underground improv and sketch, because New York is a perfect place to do that," she said. "And I do hope that the UCB4 — Amy, Matt, Matt and Ian — can be part of that and support that when there are future endeavors that their alumni take on."

NPR's Elizabeth Blair contributed to this story.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The hashtag has started to trend as academics compete for cooler-than-you tweets. But you probably haven't heard of it.

Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are looking for the funniest candid photos of animals just being themselves.

The 2017 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards winners have been announced, and this year's crop doesn't disappoint in the humor department.

Al Gore has the radical idea that more of our decisions should be made based on facts and reason.

Pandemonium and Mayhem on the streets with high octane over the top comedy superbly entertaining, with Jimmie Lee-The Jersey Outlaw

November 11th Red Carpet Fundraiser and Comedy Event Raises Awareness About Those Who Experienced a Loss to Breast Cancer

Pandemonium and Mayhem on the Streets with Jimmie Lee-The Jersey Outlaw at the center of the action. Its No Holds Barred, Uncanny and Unpredictable, with the best in comedy and is rated one of the best TV comedy shows now.

BEASLEY MEDIA GROUP Classic Rock WCSX/DETROIT's BIG JIM O'BRIEN (host of BIG JIM'S HOUSE in mornings) and former WCSX morning personality KEN CALVERT are hosting a telethon to … more

[IMAGE-1] Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story begins as its central marriage is coming to an end. Our two protagonists are fiercely independent, articulate, opinionated creative types: Charlie (Adam Driver) is the director of an avant-garde theater troupe in New York City; Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is an actress and one of his primary collaborators.…

Ever since Ghostbusters, the go-to tactic for supernatural comedy is to show characters experiencing remarkable, seemingly impossible things and yet reacting with the kind of mild bemusement you get watching someone successfully parallel park.…

The Spokane Comedy Club might be quiet right now, but there are still laughs to be had on Zoom, and not just from watching your co-workers try to navigate the online meeting platform. Saturday night, and again next Saturday, the comedy club is hosting Comedians Doing Comedy: A Virtual Comedy Show.…

The ability of political cartoonists to point out the absurdity of the news with a beautiful line and a pithy comment never ceases to amaze and they’ve been doing it for over 200 years as Comedy & Commentary at Mottisfont Abbey shows.

The comedy show 'Man with a Plan' gets the axe on CBS after four seasons while the drama series 'Tommy' is canceled by the TV network after airing the first season.

Richard Lutz takes his pew for the Ben Johnson classic that caustically sends up his fellow Londoners of 1610.

Joey Diaz takes us through the most important moments in the first 10 years of his comedy career. The story begins in 1989: Joey was fresh out of prison and living in a halfway house. From there he takes us on a journey through both the good and bad choices that he made, and how they impacted his life. 

Midlands’ oldest hospice rounds off fortieth anniversary with comedy gig.

This week on Open Air, KALW’s radio magazine for the performing arts, guest host Leah Garchik talks about the African-American Shakespeare Company's unique annual holiday offering of Cinderella , with AASC founder and executive director Sherri Young and lead actress Funmi Lola (pictured). Cinderella, the often told tale of a scullery maid determined to take her life into her own hands and make it better, runs for 4 performances, December 20-22 at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

Netfilx production company looking for several styles for 3 specific genres for TV shows in development for 2020.

*Sci-fi (teen drama / thriller set on earth)
*Police Procedural (drama / thriller set in the North of the US)
*Family Comedy (comedy / drama set in the midwest of US)

The opp is for several different pieces of music in various genres that fit the featured shows.

The CMI Music Group has been asked to find the music.

All styles of music and genres will be considered but also lyrical substance is important but they are also looking for top quality standout attention-grabbing songs.
THEY JUST NEED BE TOP SONGS!!

Please submit your best work, radio ready, mastered songs. You must own 100% copyright. Only songs with cleared samples. I will accept demos as I am also a music producer / studio owner so if the song is a 'no brainer' and has enough potential to fit the opp then I would consider re-cutting it for the client.

The CMI Music Group has worked closely with companies such as: Apple, Netflix, Honda, Reebok, Samsung, BBC, ABC, New Show Media, Massive Films, Rickety Shack films

Payouts and rights: If selected you will keep 100% of your rights, royalties and payments dependent on the amount of times the tracks are used. Payout is $4k-$8k dependent on usage and length of use.

If selected the songs will be passed to the company and they will have the final say, CMI Music Group will be on hand to help the artist all the way through the process with chosen artists (at no financial charge).

All songs submitted will be considered for all the others opps we have.

I am looking forward to hearing your music.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND US TRACKS TO OUR SOUNDCLOUD, EMAIL, LINKEDIN OR ANY SOCIAL MEDIA....Please?

- Alexander Johnston / CMI Music Group

Seattle indie rock stars Car Seat Headrest get a sonic makeover with its electro-charged new album “Making a Door Less Open,” dropping May 1.

Eleanor Wachtel revisits her 2000 conversation with comedian, satirist, doctor and stage director Jonathan Miller. He died on Nov. 27, 2019.

Comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short discuss comedy and their 30-year friendship ahead of their Australian tour.

The girl is good. Very good.

During the coronavirus pandemic, when most of us are staying at home, we’re going to spotlight products that you can enjoy from your couch, whether solo or in small groups, and leave out the rest. With that in mind, here are our picks for May 4-10, including the best deals we could find for each.

Co-written by Davidson and Apatow, the new film serves as the SNL star's first big screen spotlight.

Todd Montesi's Weekly Awesome Rock & Roll Comedy Showcase!

Todd Montesi's Weekly Awesome Rock & Roll Comedy Showcase!

Michael Fish & Phil Elam Perform Separate One-man Productions To Raise Money For Charity

These comedians applied their skills outside of the stage.

These comedians applied their skills outside of the stage.

How Capone went from crime to comedy.

How Capone went from crime to comedy.

You ain't messin' with my clique.