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‘AD/BC: A Rock Opera’: Brilliant ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ parody
12.09.2014
01:01 pm
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To list the principal talents of AD/BC: A Rock Opera, a 30-minute parody of 1970s religious rock and roll musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell (hell, throw in Hair as well), is to name a healthy portion of the people who have made British comedy so vital and bracing over the last 10 or 15 years. You’ll find the names Matt Berry, Richard Ayoade, Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding, Graham Linehan, Steve Coogan, Matt Lucas, and Rich Fulcher prominently displayed in the credits of The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Snuff Box, I’m Alan Partridge, Nighty Night, Little Britain, and Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy. Given that pedigree, the puzzle is why it’s not better known outside of Britain and hailed as a Christmas classic.
 

 
If you were for some reason obstinately holding the view that there wasn’t much overdone or mannered about the 1970s genre of religious rock musicals, let AD/BC serve as the ecstatic corrective. Berry and Ayoade’s narrative, which dates from 2004, is a played as a “straight” recreation of a 1978 rock opera focusing on on the “Innkeeper” in Bethlehem who owns the manger where Christ was born. (There’s a clever touch of an in-house network tag indicating that “AD/BC” was broadcast on December 19, 1978.) The plummy intro of composer “Tim Wynde” (Berry), who also plays the innkeeper, introduces us to “a man whom I always thought to be one of the more intriguing yet under-explored figures in this oft-recounted tale—in fact, one might immodestly call it ‘the greatest story never told.’” The innkeeper’s problem in life is that “running an inn is just mumbo and jive”—but no worries, there’s a gratuitous montage of actual 1970s B&B’s to explicate his lot.
 

 
The exquisite joke underlying it all is that the innkeeper’s story is dreadfully boring, so they have to gin up a plot about the innkeeper being threatened by “Tony Iscariot,” a rival hotel owner, played by “Roger Kingsman, from the Purple Explosion” (Barratt, sublime). Ayoade plays “Joseph Christ,” who in a campfire solo heavily influenced by CCR’s “Proud Mary” explains that his wife is pregnant, even though “Christ, I swear I never touched her / But she tells me everything’s all right.”
 

 
Indeed, just about everything in AD/BC is gorgeously, intentionally “over-” something: over-emphatic, over-done, over-ripe. It may be the most meticulously executed and lovingly observed parody since, well, Young Frankenstein. For those who suspect that it might be kind of a one-note gag, the glorious success of AD/BC lies in a thousand tiny details, a cut between scenes that is six frames too early, the sudden and unmotivated amplification of a lyric, the unabashed use of freeze frames and split screens, the anachronistic use of “Christ” as a malediction, the many puzzling cuts and transitions and wipes, the pandering and facile verses that tend to explain everything three times, the unbridled posturing by most every singer, the egregiously dated sexual attitudes (“time is a menstruous women, one cannot control her eddying currents…”), the oddly mis-sync’d vocal tracks, the occasional insertions of dialogue (unadjusted for pitch) between verses…..

TL;DR: AD/BC is a hilarious parody of Jesus Christ Superstar that has a half-dozen smashing songs and dozens of rib-tickling details. I’m tempted to just list the many, many delicious jokes buried in here, but it’s best you discover them for yourself—and best of all, it’s just in time for our weeks-long celebration of the birthday of… Our Lord.
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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12.09.2014
01:01 pm
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Richard Ayoade discusses a scene from his film ‘Submarine’
05.30.2011
01:40 pm
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Richard Metzger has already written a bit about Richard Ayoade’s feature-length directorial debut Submarine here on DM. Like Mr. Metzger, I too am a fan of Ayoade’s sly comedic gifts as displayed in the quirky Mighty Boosh, The IT Crowd and Man To Man. So Submarine is unmissable for me.

Ayoade analyzes a scene from Submarine.
 

 
Previously on DM: First Look: ‘Submarine’ the directorial debut of Richard Ayoade.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.30.2011
01:40 pm
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First Look: ‘Submarine’ the directorial debut of Richard Ayoade
02.08.2011
08:18 pm
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Here’s a first look at Submarine, the feature film directorial debut from Richard Ayoade (Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, Man to Man with Dean Learner, Nathan Barley, etc). The script was adapted by Ayoade from Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 coming of age novel about a teenage legend in his own mind.

This trailer looks great. I’m a big fan of Richard Ayoade’s smart comic talents and the reviews of Submarine have been stellar—The Telegraph called it “the most refreshing, urgent and original debut the British film industry has seen in years”—so I’m really looking forward to seeing it.

Richard Ayoade recently directed an upcoming episode of NBC’s Community.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.08.2011
08:18 pm
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Explore The IT Crowd’s basement!
07.14.2010
11:58 pm
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Via our friends at Nerdcore, here’s an extremely cool—and extremely detailed—panoramic fly-through of the set of the very delightful The IT Crowd television comedy. Walk in the footsteps of Moss, Roy and Jen! Check out all of their stuff!

It’s the middle of the new series and it’s even better than the last. This go ‘round, I have laughed myself senseless at Richard Ayoade’s Moss enthralling a bunch of idiotic businessmen with his D&D prowess and Moss’s ninja quiz show skills. And Matt Berry… what a comic genius! All I can say is this: I wish there was a drug I could take that would turn me into Douglas for just one day. One day. Is that too much to ask?

I also laughed heartily at the name of the rock group, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, a reference, of course, to the character in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, right? I made a mental note to email series creator Graham Linehan and tell him what a good chuckle I had at this great literary name he’d come up with, but before I did, I decided to Google Sweet Billy Pilgrim just in case. I’m glad I did as it actually is a real group! That would have been really embarrassing.

(Tara, being both from Ohio and a big Guided By Voices fan, wanted me to show you this particular zoom in on some of the details, hence the above screen grab)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.14.2010
11:58 pm
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