Comedy – Prairie Dog

Talkies

The is likely the final Talkies of the 2015-16 season. If you’re a fan of snakes, you’ll likely enjoy the offering that host Jayden Pfeifer has lined up — none other than the 1997 creepy-crawly classic Anaconda about a National Geographic crew who picks up a stranger in the Amazon and finds themselves having to deal with an unexpected menace.

Jon Voight, Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez star in the flick, which screens Tuesday June 28 at 7 p.m. at the RPL theatre. Admission is free with a donation to the Regina Food Bank. Here’s the trailer:

Talkies

As is typical with this popular comedy series hosted by Jayden Pfeifer, the movie that’s being screened is one of those “so bad it’s good” type flicks. In fact, it’s a bit of a cult classic.

Released in 1975, The Giant Spider Invasion is pretty much as the title describes, with a bunch of giant arachnids from space descending on a sleepy town in Wisconsin.

The screening goes at the RPL Theatre on Tuesday May 31 at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a donation to the Regina Food Bank. Here’s the trailer:

Talkies

The film that Jayden Pfeifer is screening at this instalment of his popular poke-fun-at-a-generally-lame movie series should be a hoot. I mean that literally, because the film is actually called Hoot. It was directed by Wil Shriner, and was released in 2006.

As you might imagine from the title, marijuana features prominently in the film, in which a group of hip Florida teenagers who hook up regularly to get baked decide to thwart a local land development when they realize it could put some endangered animal species at risk.

Hoot screens at the RPL Theatre on Tuesday April 26 at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a donation to the Regina Food Bank, and here’s the trailer:

Best Of The Winnipeg Comedy Festival

If you’d like some comedy to decompress after the recently concluded (and hotly contested) provincial election, Casino Regina has just what you need.

Hosted by Big Daddy Taz, the show, which goes Saturday April 9 at 8 p.m., features comics Peter White, Matt Nightingale and Tim Nutt. Tickets are $20/$25, and more information on the performers can be found on the Casino Regina website.

Here’s a short routine by Tim Nutt from the 2014 Ha!ifax ComedyFest:

Talkies

The next instalment in Jayden Pfeifer’s popular Talkies series goes Tuesday March 29 at the RPL Theatre at 7 p.m. If you plan on attending, you should bring your dancing shoes. That’s because the movie being mocked/screened is the 1983 sequel to the monster 1977 disco hit Saturday Night Fever.

Directed by Sylvester Stallone, Staying Alive sees John Travolta reprise his SNF role as the cocksure Brooklyn dancer Tony Manero. Only now Tony is living in a Manhattan flophouse while working as a dance instructor, and trying to make it as a dancer on Broadway.

Again, Talkies goes at the RPL Tuesday at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a donation to the Regina Food Bank. To get your dance muscles loosened up, here’s the trailer to ah, ha, ha, ha… Staying Alive

Jeremy Hotz

If you have yet to purchase tickets for this show by Canadian stand-up comic/actor Jeremy Hotz and are interested in attending you’ll have to act quickly as the show goes tonight at Conexus Arts Centre with curtain at 7:30 p.m.

Hotz has been in the entertainment business for around 20 years, and has done all sorts of gigs from Canadian and American TV shows and movies, to comedy festivals like Just For Laughs to guest appearances on Letterman and other talks shows. He’s even spent time as a staff writer on the Jon Stewart Show.

His show at Conexus tonight is subtitled International Man of Mystery. To give you a sense of what he’s like as a comic here’s a short clip from 2014 where he riffs on getting old:

Talkies

The movie being screened at this instalment of Jayden Pfeifer’s Talkies series is the sequel to the 1984 West German produced English language fairytale The NeverEnding Story. Imaginatively titled The NeverEnding Story 2: The Next Chapter, the sequel was released in 1990. That was the same year that the Berlin Wall was demolished, and West and East Germany were officially reunited after being divided in two in the aftermath of World War II.

Whereas the first movie received decent reviews and did well at the box office, the sequel bombed big-time. So if you plan on attending the screening you’ll doubtlessly find plenty of scenes to chuckle/cringe at.

Talkies goes Tuesday Feb. 23 at the RPL Theatre at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a donation to the Regina Food Bank. And here’s the trailer to The NeverEnding Story 2: The Next Chapter

Talkies

If you’ve got nothing on your plate tonight, consider dropping by the RPL Theatre for the first instalment of Talkies 2016. Host Jayden Pfeifer has definitely picked a winner, as the movie being screened is the 2000 Sci-Fi crapfest Battlefield Earth.

Based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, who is best known out of literary circles for being the found of Scientology, the movie was the pet project of one of the movement’s most famous adherents John Travolta.

Battlefield Earth is set in the year 3000, where humanity has been enslaved for centuries by a bunch of evil aliens called Psychlos. It was a critical and box office disaster, and went on to receive a then-record nine Golden Raspberries as the worst movie of 2000.

The screening goes tonight at the RPL at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a donation to the Regina Food Bank. And to close, here’s the Battlefield Earth trailer:

https://youtu.be/h0R_FR9pD2k

Talkies

It’s the holidays, so it should come as no surprise that the movie Jayden Pfeifer has chosen to mock in this edition of Talkies has a wrestling theme.

Okay, it actually has a Christmas theme. But the star is Hulk Hogan, so you can bet there will be some wrestling-style mayhem mixed in.

Santa With Muscles is the film’s name, and it was made in 1996. I won’t spoil things for the Talkies crowd out there by revealing any more about the movie, other than to note that a pre-teen Mila Kunis is in the cast.

Talkies goes Tuesday Dec. 29 at 7 p.m. at the RPL Theatre. Admission is free with the donation of a non-perishable item to the Regina Food Bank. And to whet your appetite, here’s the trailer:

Awesome Aussie PSAs

A trio of hilariously surreal public service announcements have surfaced courtesy the Australian state of New South Wales that are supposed to be aimed at warning young people about the dangers of smoking marijuana.

Apparently, indulging in the demon weed will cause you to grow fur all over your body, develop long sharp claws and be rendered mute outside of emitting the odd morose bellow like a constipated conservative.

Truly frightening, they are. And I’m sure they’re going to be massively effective in scaring Aussie youth away from cannabis. If you haven’t seen them yet, here they are in all their glory:

Red Hot Riot

If you’re a fan of the dude who received the Best Comic nod in our recent Best of Regina you’ll be pleased to know that he’ll be hosting another of his Red Hot Riot variety shows at the Artesian on Friday Dec. 18.

This RHH is subtitled “Comfort and Joy”, and as befits the season, it will have a fair bit of holiday content. Joining Jayden Pfeifer on stage to perform sketches and other comedy bits will be Tom Hill, Adam Paisley, Kris Alvarez, Warren Bates, Tess Degenstein and Jon Neher.

Musical guest is Megan Nash. In October, I posted video of Nash doing a solo acoustic version of her song “Deer Head”. If you’d like to check it out, click the link. Doors for Red Hot Riot: Comfort and Joy are at 7 p.m. at the Artesian, with the show at 8 p.m., and tickets are $15.

Brent Butt

You’ve got two chances to catch Brett Butt at Casino Regina as in addition to tonight’s show, he’ll be on stage again on Saturday night.

Last year at this time Butt was just gearing up for the premier of the long-awaited Corner Gas movie. I’m not sure what he’s been up to lately, but if you catch one of his two shows he’ll perhaps bring you up to speed.

Tickets for both nights are $25/$30, and the chuckles should start some time around 8 p.m. Last time I checked the Casino Regina website tickets were listed as “limited availability”. So if you’re interested in going you better get on it.

Here’s a short clip from 2013 from the Halifax Comedy Fest where Butt riffs on middle age.

Derek Edwards

Edwards is the second high profile Timmins-born Canadian entertainer to come through town in the last six weeks after you know who. He’s been plying his trade since the late 1980s, and on Friday Nov. 27 he’ll be in town to do a stand-up show at the University of Regina Theatre.

Edwards’ tour is subtitled Baloney & Wine, and according to advance publicity he’s focussing his comedic lance on the quirks and foibles of daily life.

The show goes at 7:30 p.m. at University Theatre, and ticket information can be found on the Conexus Arts Centre website. To give you a sense of what to expect, here’s a short routine from a few years ago on a moose theme

Kevin Hart

Reputed to be the shortest male stand up comic in history*, Kevin Hart has been active in show business as a writer and performer since 1999.

He was raised by a single mother on the north end of Philadelphia, and gravitated to comedy at an early age. Some of his acting credits include Scary Movie, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Little Fockers, Get Hard and the spoof TV series Real Husbands of Hollywood.

On Wednesday Nov. 18 Hart is in town to perform as part of his What Now? Tour. The show goes at Brandt Centre at 7 p.m. Tickets range from $49.50-$125, and more information can be found on the Brandt Centre website.

And here’s some video of a recent appearance by Hart on Conan where he speaks about his experience filming Get Hard with Will Ferrell

*Okay, I just made that up. Although at 5’4″ Hart is on the short end of the stature spectrum

Just For Laughs 2015

Every year around this time, Just For Laughs has a comedy tour that hits Regina. This year is no exception. Doing the host honours is TV personality and stand-up Gerry Dee, and guest comics include Cristela Alonzo, Robert Kelly and Graham Chittenden.

The tour is subtitled “The Relationship Edition”, so I assume many of the jokes will riff on the comedic trials and tribulations of people trying (or not trying, as the case may be) to make relationships work.

The show goes Tuesday Nov. 10 at Conexus Arts Centre at 7:30 p.m. You can find ticket information on the CAC website, and to give you a sneak peek here’s a routine from 2014 by Alonzo in which the Dallas Cowboys feature prominently

Talkies

With Halloween looming, Jayden Pfeifer, the host of this popular cheese-infused comedic film screening, is stealing a page from our own Shane Hnetka and his annual 31 Days of Horror and screening the 1987 horror comedy The Monster Squad.

For anyone who’s yet to see it, I won’t give too much of the plot away, other than to say that it involves a group of kids who take on a group of classic monsters from the Universal Studios stable led by Count D himself.

The screening goes tonight at Central Library Theatre at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a food bank donation. To whet your appetite, here’s the trailer

Bo Burnham

Stand-up, musical satire, hip hop, acting and poetry writing are some of the creative disciplines that 25 year-old American comic Bo Burnham has dabbled in. Does that make him a jack of all trades, master of none? Or is he one of those rare individuals with a sufficiently well-stocked arsenal of talents that allows him to span a broad spectrum of the performing arts?

You can find out when Burnham is in town Tuesday Oct. 27 to do a show at Conexus Arts Centre. Curtain is at 8 p.m., and tickets are $45. You can find out more on the CAC website, and to give you a sense of what Burnham is like as a performer here’s a routine from 2014 called “Brain Split”

An Evening With Martin Short

Last month, veteran Canadian comic Norm Macdonald sold out a show at Casino Regina. Last I checked, Short hadn’t managed that trick — but that was a couple of months ago, and at that point tickets were described as “limited availability” on the casino website, so I imagine he’s matched Macdonald in selling out the room.

Last November, Short released a memoir called I Must Say. The title references a catch-phrase of one of his more memorable characters Ed Grimley which Short debuted on SCTV before moving to Saturday Night Live. Judging by the billing for this show, the audience can expect a mix of stand-up, performances in character and reminiscences about Short’s 30 plus year career in show business.

An Evening With Martin Short goes Saturday Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. To close, here’s a segment from Jimmy Kimmel in February where Short speaks about his memoir

Hitchhikers Improv

Last spring, the University of Regina student newspaper The Carillon did a profile on this local improv group. They’ve already kicked off their 2015-16 season with two shows in September, but there’s still plenty of improv fun to come.

The performances are held at the Artesian, with doors at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for high school students.

Your next chance to see the troupe is Tuesday Oct. 6, After that, there’s shows on Oct. 27; Nov. 17; Dec. 1; Dec. 15; Jan. 12; Jan. 26; Feb. 16; March 1; March 15; April 5; April 19; May 3; and the season will culminate with the Hitchhikers Improv Festival May 17-19.

Norm Macdonald

If you don’t have your tickets for this show by the veteran Canadian comic at Casino Regina on Saturday, you’re too late because it’s sold out.

For close to 30 years, Macdonald has worked in the entertainment industry. In addition to his career as a stand-up, he’s got a host of TV and movie laurels to his credit — most famously on Saturday Night Live in the mid-90s, but also on The Drew Carey Show and NewsRadio, along with The Norm Show from 1999-2001.

A few years ago, Comedy Central ranked Macdonald #83 in its 100 top comics of all time. And when David Letterman signed off on May 15, he recruited Macdonald to be the final stand-up act. So overall, a pretty solid career.

Opening the show is fellow Canadian comic Stevie Ray Fromstein who goes by the Twitter handle: the Holy Atheist and had been known to engage fundamentalist Christians in debates about creation and evolution.

To close, here’s an appearance Macdonald made on Conan O’Brien in July that also featured celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay