Results tagged “comedy”

       

Recently "Tale of 4 Cities" launched it's weekly dinner "theater" series, a Thursday cabaret evening with the vision to impart a bit of "Le Gai Paris" into Shanghai´s nightlife scene. The problem is, if you're looking for actual "theater," the show invariably will seem like it doesn't fit. It's a drag show, pure and simple - and a charming one full of social potential - so you might as well just call it by its proper name and put it in its proper genre.

Funny.

On an average Saturday night, the funniest thing about Racks in Xintiandi is that they charge 98RMB+ an hour for pool when most other bars let you play for free. This weekend however a former organiser of "Chopschticks" is bringing in some hot comedy talent from NYC to amuse the suckers.

And now a diversion away from the earthquake news. After playing around with the actual performance date, the Asphodèles Theatre Company from Lyon, France, will perform a unique show this Thursday at Fuzhou Rd's Tianchan Yifu Theatre. Under the tag "Harlequin's trip to China," the show is part of the French and Chinese Cultural Festival called "Croisements."

So if you’ve ever fancied travelling from I’m a hot dashing dinosaur (Shanghai Indoor Stadium) to Thoroughly Hawaiian Satanists (Shanghai South Railway Station) to Drab Penguin (Nanpu Bridge) now is your chance!

We attended the Chicago Improv All-Stars show at Henry's last night ... and we enjoyed ourselves. It kind of had the feel of a theme party at a friend's house (assuming that friend was very popular, brewed their own beer, had a very large living room with poorly placed pillars, was bad at training their staff and charged guests RMB 280 at the door). If you have ever seen an episode of Whose Line...

See the Chicago Improv All-Stars!

We weren't really keen on seeing any version of Lust, Caution, but after finally giving in and ponying up the cash at the local theater (stupid, we know), we watched the sanitized version. Our impression of the movie, sans steamy sex, was that this movie wasn't really all that it was hyped up to be. However, given that about half an hour was taken out, we suspected that we didn't just get a child-friendly film—we...

More than a dozen prominent Singapore celebrities have come out in support of a new parliamentary petition to repeal Section 377A in the city-state's Penal Code which outlaws “acts of gross indecency” between men by appearing in a Youtube video uploaded recently.

Tonight, for those of you who can speak Chinese or French, there is a play at the Shanghai Arts Center that we strongly recommend you to watch. It takes place at the Shanghai Drama Arts Center until July 22.

Comic Paul Merton has recently been touring China, making a light hearted documentary that is currently being aired on Channel Five in the UK. If the few clips we have seen are anything to go by, then this follows the best tradition of whimsical British travelogues such as Louis Theroux's Wild Weekend.

Shanghaiist reader Matt points out this passage from a recent New York Times Magazine profile of American comedian Rob Corddry:

Has the destruction of Wujiang Lu got you down? Need a quick picker-upper? If so, you might think about heading down to Henry's Brewery & Grill for a nice dose of comedy to turn that frown upside down. Does Henry's sound familiar to you, oh dearest reader? That's because it will also be the host of Shanghaiist next Happy Hour. Okay, that's enough self-promoting. This isn't the first time there's been some stand-up comedy on...

Xinhua reports:

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost.

We were checking something on Alexa's traffic ranking page today and we noticed a collection of country links. We hadn't seen this before so we decided to check out the most popular websites in China. Alexa says, "This list refers to the most popular sites among users in the country, not sites hosted in the country," but it's important to note that Alexa's traffic ranking, while widely used, are definitely not without controversy. According to Alexa, "Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users." Shanghaiist is not an Alexa Toolbar user — we can't be, because we are not Windows users, and if we were, we wouldn't use Internet Explorer. So, you see the numbers are a little skewed, but for China they might be pretty accurate, since everyone uses Windows and IE. Although we have no clue how many Chinese internet users use the Alexa Toolbar. Anyway, here's the Top 10:

Thanks Fergus!

At least that's what celeb writer Yu Qiuyu (余秋雨) said at a recent public function. From Slate Indiaenews.com we found this report:

There's been a media blackout of the Fringe Festival, and though we don't understand why, they told us that some government official said there is something wrong with their performance license (yeah right, take a wild guess why someone would say this and later flash green light for the festival).

But back to Bing Feng Tea House: The blogger answers his question this way:

Our late night web prowl, in between reading ever-gripping SEC filings, turned up this little gem, WingKong.net. If by some miracle you recognize the reference, pat yourself on the back for being a true trivia buff as well as a great fan of American cinematography. The film in question, an 80’s classic is Big Trouble in Little China (The Wing Kong Exchange is home to the arch evil-doer Lo’Pan), starring Kurt Russel and yes, Kim Cattrall, burning up the big screen long before her Sex and the City Days.

With the release of its first joint-venture film in China, Warner Bros. is taking an aggressive and (we believe) unique approach in trying to minimize the effect piracy has on the release. Could it actually be working?

The 18-minute original short film is of course a spoof, a form made popular earlier in the year by The Steam Bun Massacre, a brilliant parody of the movie 无极/The Promise.

Is anyone in Shanghai doing similarly fun, interesting, creative and well-made video shorts? Shanghaiist wants to know. Email us at info at shanghaiist.com.

San Francisco is proud host of a new reality show called How to Get the Guy that's unfortunately not a descendant of Will and Grace, Queer Eye, The L Word, American Idol etc. Also a biodefence lab is coming to the East Bay and SFist teaches wine pairing.

If only this superbly flamboyant chap was currently appearing in Germany. The video has absolutely nothing at all to do with Shanghai or China ... but rules get thrown out the window during the World Cup.

Brits will all be well aware of Baddiel and Skinner, and Frank Skinner (not the musician) is one of this Shanghaiist's favourite stand up comedians (here's an interview he did with the Backstreet Boys and here's what he thinks is his finest moment).

Not our words!

Without question, the award for "Comedy News of the Week" goes to ... The Cat-Burglar Monkey! Oh he doesn't burgle cats, it's just ... we'll let China Daily do the writing: