|In these days and nights of rain and gloom, we need some humor in our lives. So consider these recent releases: The DVD “Harry Shearer: Now You See
It” ($19.98) and a CD, “Harry Shearer: Dropping Anchors.”
A satirist and an impressionist, Shearer is probably best known as Spinal Tap bass player Derek Smalls and the voice of Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders and newscaster Kent Brockman on “The Simpsons.”
And, as one can see and hear on Shearer’s recently released DVD and CD, he’s also Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan; TV news types Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters, Mike Wallace and Ted Koppel; magician David Copperfield; and sportscaster Curt Gowdy.
For his DVD collection, Shearer has gone into his vault and released for the first time some of his best sketches from “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With David Letterman,” his own hour-long HBO special and other TV shows.
All of the material on the “Now You See It” DVD is from the 1980s and early ’90s, but, like “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984), time hasn’t eroded its humor.
The best sketch is the first: In the hilarious “SNL” film short, “Men’s Synchronized Swimming” from 1984, Shearer co- stars with Martin Short as brothers who are training for the 1988 Olympics in synchronized swimming. Their only problems are that 1) they’re men, and synchronized swimming is a women-only sport; 2) they’re inept, because, as Short’s life- jacket-wearing character says, “I don’t swim”; and 3) they’re doing horrible routines choreographed by Christopher Guest, doing his Corky St. Clair character a dozen years before he reached full flower in 1996’s “Waiting for Guffman.”
Another winner from “SNL” in 1984 features Shearer as Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” doing an investigation of a sleazy businessman – Martin Short, again – producing inferior knockoffs of novelty items.
From Shearer’s 1988 “The Magic of Live Special” on HBO comes a sendup of Michael Jackson and plastic surgery, and Shearer as a Barry Manilow-type singer. Shearer plays Richard Nixon as a guest on a TV talk show/infomercial called “Astounding Innovations,” and takes on a wide assortment of characters at a TV syndication convention in “It’s Just TV,” from 1985.
The CD is more narrowly concentrated on television’s network anchors and somewhat more current than the DVD. Shearer does a very funny Dan Rather as he gets ready to leave CBS in “Bad Days at Black Rock: Dan Packs Up.” In two sketches, he pokes fun at Ted Koppel’s troubles with ABC following its purchase by Disney.
Blazing Mel Brooks
Measured on a laughs-per-minute scale, few comedy filmmakers can keep up with Mel Brooks. His shotgun approach to moviemaking spreads comedy buckshot all over the place, and most of the pellets hit the funny bone. Brooks wrote, produced, directed and appears in most of the films included in “The Mel Brooks Box Set Collection” (eight discs, Fox Home Entertainment, $99.98).
“Blazing Saddles” (1974), “Young Frankenstein” (also ’74) and “High Anxiety” (1977) are the best of the eight movies included here, though there are memorable comedic moments in “History of the World Part I” (1981), “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” (1993), “To Be or Not to Be” (1983), “Silent Movie” (1976) and “The Twelve Chairs” (1970) that will always provoke a laugh. Who can forget Moses in “History of the World,” played by Brooks himself, receiving the 15 Commandments from God?
The only Brooks films not included are the original “The Producers” (already available in a two-disc DVD), “Spaceballs,” “Life Stinks” and “Dracula: Dead and Loving It.”
For Gene Wilder fans
In “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” his terrific movies with Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder plays good and decent men who are thrust into difficult circumstances, with very funny results. Wilder continues with this theme in three new movies just out on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment.
“The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” (1975): With the gifted Madeline Kahn serving as his comic foil and romantic interest, Wilder, making his directorial debut, stars as the jealously competitive younger sibling of the great detective who finally gets a big case of his own. Wilder provides an audio commentary on the DVD.
“Silver Streak” (1976): In this Hitchcock sendup directed by Arthur Hiller, Wilder teams up with Richard Pryor for the first time. (They later worked together on “Stir Crazy,” “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” and “Another You.”) Small-time crook Pryor comes to the aid of Wilder’s George Caldwell after Caldwell gets thrown off a train where he had been romancing the secretary (Jill Clayburgh) of a murderer.
“The World’s Greatest Lover” (1977): Wilder plays a Milwaukee baker named Rudy Hickman who travels to Hollywood to bring back his wife (Carol Kane) after she has run off with movie heartthrob Rudolph Valentino. Wilder, who also directs, does an audio commentary.
