Though Religulous, like other anticipated fall films, has been screening for critics in New York (and, I assume, in LA) in advance of its official premiere in two weeks at the Toronto Film Festival, major outlets have thus far stuck to the presumed pre-festival embargo. But when your big Toronto premiere is screening for the public in (well, near) two major cities, how do you enforce an embargo on outlets with a mandate to run every commercial release through the critical mill?
In this case, I doubt Lionsgate put much effort into surpressing Variety’s early review of the Larry Charles/Bill Maher documentary, since it’s pretty much a flat-out rave. “[T]he particular intensity and seriousness of Maher’s project are nearly unprecedented,” Robert Koehler writes. “Indeed, its arrival shortly after the death of George Carlin — a profound influence on Maher’s standup act and politics — suggests the kind of film Carlin might have made in his prime.” More here.
Though it may be more appropriate to watch videos of his comedy routines, particularly of his classic “Seven Dirty Words” bit or his routine on death, this is a film blog, so I’m sharing a clip from … an animated television series. But it’s a cartoon spun-off from a movie, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which is probably Carlin’s most memorable film, so I find it worthy. Especially because Carlin reprised his role as Rufus.
The first season of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures actually featured the voices of Carlin, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, as Rufus, Ted and Bill, respectively. It wasn’t completely rare for cartoon spin-offs to retain the lead actors of the original movies/TV shows, and it’s not like any of the principals were too big for Saturday morning (Reeves didn’t really become a big star until a few years later), but in retrospect it at least seems surprising.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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