Stewart's 'America' offers textbook laughs
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As Jon Stewart tells it, he and his staff of 13 writers at The Daily Show  were looking for a project."Life was too balanced," he says with a straight face. "It was too good for us."They considered a "roads project, a civic improvement," but when they looked around their offices in Manhattan, "we mostly had computers."So they wrote a book.America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (Warner, &#36;24.95) will be published Monday after nine months of checking a few facts and making up a lot more. (Related story: Daily Show is a no-stump zone)Just as his TV show on Comedy Central is a parody of a news show, the book is a graphic-heavy parody of a textbook. Chapters include "Congress: Quagmire of Freedom," "The Media: Democracy's Valiant Vulgarians" and "The Rest of the World: International House of Horrors."The foreword is by Thomas "TJ" Jefferson, who inquires in a postscript: "Is it true Halle Berry is once again single?"Stewart's favorite part?"I like the ending," which offers a Certificate of Completion, qualifying readers to "practice, participate in, or found a democracy."Too often, he says, "you finish a book and ask, 'What's in it for me beyond self-improvement?' Our book gives you a certificate in nation-building. ... If you just smash together the basic ideas, you're bound to wind up with something better than North Korea."Stewart wants to be known as a comedian, even though The Daily Show was voted best news show by TV critics this summer. He dismisses praise from journalists such as Eric Alterman, media critic for The Nation, who recently wrote that Daily Show offers "a truer picture than ... the Sunday-morning gabfests and cable food fights."Stewart, 41, says, "It's more a sign of frustration with the information people are receiving than a sign of our entrepreneurial spirit of journalism. ... It's a '(expletive) you' to real news, not a 'hallelujah' for our fake news."The book mocks both President Bush, "hurdling the lowered bar," and Democrat John Kerry, "monogrammed for greatness." But Stewart acknowledges that The Daily Show delivers more jokes at the expense of Republicans."They're in power," he says. "Comedians in biblical times did more Goliath jokes. The David stuff didn't fly."He says he worries less about being partisan than being boring, strident or redundant, "the death of comedy."Stewart's appearance at a booksellers' convention in June, which featured former president Bill Clinton, won rave reviews. Publishers Weekly said Stewart "out-Clintoned that other guy," prompting his publisher to boost the first printing of America from 500,000 copies to 700,000.
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With Team America, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have an amusing and surpisingly conservative take on the world
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Sometimes Trey Parker and Matt Stone are trying to make you laugh, and sometimes they're trying to make you squirm. The "South Park" creators do all of the above with their new film, "Team America: World Police," which narrowly avoided an NC-17 rating by trimming a hardcore sex scene &#151; between puppets.
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Do watch the movie for Grant and his hillarious antics.
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It was a very good year for American performers at the Edinburgh fringe festival, with audiences particularly receptive to shows that criticized elements of American society.
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The new season of ÂNip/TuckÂ tries to restore the showÂs balance of farce and melodrama, charting the full range of human vanities to produce humor and pathos in equal measure, not merely a freak show.
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David O. Russell's high-wire comedy captures liberal-left despair with astonishingly good humor: it's "Fahrenheit 9/11" for the screwball set.
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In following a famously acerbic actorâs travels with a group of stand-up comics, âVince Vaughnâs Wild West Comedy Showâ reveals his earnest side.
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"What's funnier than real-life experience?" Alexander Payne asks. That question easily could serve as the motto for the director who set "Election" in a real high school with authentic real students and plopped an au naturel Kathy Bates into a hot tub for "About Schmidt."
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In an elegaic night for network television, the Emmys on Sunday honored HBO&#39;s &quot;Angels in America&quot; and &quot;The Sopranos,&quot; Comedy Central&#39;s Jon Stewart and gave major comedy awards to actors on comedies that have stopped production.
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Political satirist Jon Stewart's  mock look at a political science college textbook "America (the  Book), a Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction," was named on  Sunday the book of the year by Publishers Weekly, the trade  publication of the book industry.
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The film has its genuinely hilarious moments.
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Yes, it is v. funny. It&#39;s just not v. clever. And clever is what made the original Bridget Jones movie such a hoot: The smarty moments (remember the Salman Rushdie cameo?
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â27 Dressesâ makes the point that modern American weddings are all pretty much alike. The same could be said about modern American romantic comedies.
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In this deeply funny play, Horton Footeâs authorial gaze is focused with satiric sharpness while retaining its elegiac sense of lifeâs transience.
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Billing David O. Russell&#39;s new film I Heart Huckabees as &quot;an existential comedy&quot; is fairly problematic: After all, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus weren&#39;t exactly laugh riots.
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It may be a bit, um, premature to say so, but Judd Apatowâs âKnocked Upâ strikes me as an instant classic, a comedy that captures the sexual confusion and moral ambivalence of our moment.