One Sensational Shot

Ramis and Murray complete their magnum opus...and them promptly fall out for the rest of their lives. We consider what makes Groundhog Day so special, for better and worse.

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In Issue 30 of The Evening Glass, Fletcher Walton is joined by comedy’s Aidan McCaffery to discuss Fletcher's recent extensive analysis of the streaming landscape – which you’ll find here - and Hollywood’s rejigged release slate for 2020 – our original preview of which you’ll find here. Plus, as ever, there’s digressions galore - into the cult of Red Dwarf, the Arnold Schwarzenegger School of Acting, and, surprisingly, Thom Yorke swearing in a fishbowl.

In Issue 29 of the The Evening Glass, Luke and Fletcher return to Luke's DVD A to Z for the first time in a year (a year!) to rewatch effervescent cult comedy BASEketball. Produced, directed and ostensibly written by spoof supremo David Zucker, it's equally a vehicle for its stars ascendant Trey Parker and Matt Stone in, amazingly, their third and, amazingly, last live action outing. Twenty-two years old next month, here in the UK its theatrical release was canceled - I remember reading Empire magazine's preemptive review that summer before the trail went dead for more than a year until it crawled out on video following a dismal performance in US cinemas ($7 million, barely scraping the box office top 150). Its reputation was thus born from Sky Moviemax, late night Channel 4, and rental tapes playing in the background of a hundred Sixth Form house parties.

The Evening Glass has long functioned as a clearinghouse of relative topicality for whatever Luke and I happened to like at the flicks or on TV that month. But it's always been our intention to expand into other areas of interest, as soon as we could come up with some witty names. There'll be One Sensational Sound, a repository for discussions of our musical tastes. The literary wing of the burgeoning criticism empire will, naturally, be labelled One Sensational Sentence. And we were all set to launch One Sensational Sprite this spring, but then I beat Luke best-three-out-of-five at Mario Kart and he announced his retirement from Nintendo effective immediately, so that was that.

A reluctantly single yuppie accidentally befriends the oddball who installed his cable. An over-the-hill male model is brainwashed into a political assassination. A band of pampered actors marooned in jungle begin to live their roles for real. Through these diverse premises, director Ben Stiller has sculpted accessibly silly Hollywood comedies that at the same time function as densely detailed, slyly subversive satires of a self-involved American culture at media overload. In the second edition of our 90s Comedian series, Luke and Fletcher step into The Electronic Labyrinth to reflect on the first two decades of Stiller's filmmaking, from his early shorts and sketch shows, through the relative success of Reality Bites and relative failure of The Cable Guy, past his now revered cult classic Zoolander, to his magnificent, go-for-broke masterwork, Tropic Thunder.

2012 was one hell of a time. Not only did we think the world wouldn't get much worse after the global economic crisis and the rise of international terrorism - but we also allowed ourselves to get excited about a beloved franchise being purchased by a huge corporation.

But, here we are - five movies in, a few TV shows (including a live action one) and a whole lot of fan chatter.

We wanted to allow the dust to settle after the release of 'The Rise of Skywalker' - so this isn't a review of that picture - but more of a discussion over a cold coffee about how we feel about creative filmmaking in the streaming age.

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Comedy's Aidan McCaffery is an apostate. He has renounced his longtime comic congregation, the London Metropolitan Elite Church of the Woke & Vegan Reading Room, and walks now the path of the born-again Leondensian. With his microphone a shepherd's crook, he will tend to a new flock among the earthy ribaldry and casual xenophobia of the working men's clubs of the North. His cancel culture card has itself been cancelled, cut into pieces and pressed upon the clacking tongues of the devoted, to be swallowed as sacrament. In its place, a membership with Cooplands Rewards and a set of vouchers to be enjoyed between 5 pm and 7 pm at any of Leeds City Centre's 12 Wetherspoons locations.

In Issue 28 of The Evening Glass, Luke and Fletcher reflect on their favourite festive films - from Dianne Jackson's The Snowman to Barry Levinson's Diner - before looking closely at one of the finest of them all, John Landis' Trading Places.

Do the Right Thing is a film about conflict and conversation. With preternatural vision and skill, director Spike Lee creates urban America in microcosm across a handful of larger-than-life Bed-Stuy blocks sweltering in the summer sun, and on those sidewalks and shopfronts presents a procession of discussions – between black and white, male and female, young and old, past and present, boyfriend and girlfriend, brother and sister, brother and brother, father and son, native and immigrant, have and have-not. Lee encourages us to follow each dialogue and recognise both sides. Then, in act of marvelous courage by the filmmakers, the viewer is given licence not to decide or conclude or offer a verdict, but to witness, consider and reflect. Spike expects us to think.

In this issue of The Electronic Labyrinth, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of perhaps the greatest Hollywood film in our lifetimes, Luke Littleboy and Fletcher Walton have a go at understanding how Spike and his team marshal the instruments of cinema to articulate these arguments within the community they've so vividly realised, as over the course of the hottest day of the year limitations in understanding threaten alliances and push us to crisis.

In the thirty-some years Luke, James and Fletcher have shared the planet, Hollywood has released no film better than Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. One Sensational Shot honours the 30th anniversary of that release with two new issues.