While I wouldn't assume there's a vast amount of historical and social accuracy to "Hysteria," it's a lot of fun, and could definitely provide a viable moviegoing alternative for adult women eager to move on from "Iron Man" and "Captain America." Gyllenhaal's character, the crusading feminist and social worker Charlotte Dalrymple, who becomes the comic and romantic foil to Hugh Dancy's stuffy, stammering Granville, might be described as a supporting character who takes over the movie. Charlotte effectively becomes the modern viewer's window into the world of "Hysteria," insisting as a matter of course that women indeed enjoy sexual pleasure (but are often plagued with partners who don't know how to deliver it) and espousing then-outrageous views about women's right to vote, go to college, work outside the home and so on.

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But I feel pretty confident that even Moore would not make a movie about a laid-off worker who hits the road with a runaway teenage girl and goes on a killing spree aimed at right-wing talk-show hosts, obnoxious reality-TV subjects and people who talk on the phone in movie theaters. "God Bless America" is Goldthwait's fourth film as a writer-director -- I'm going clear back to "Shakes the Clown" in 1991, often described as the "'Citizen Kane' of alcoholic-clown movies" -- and it's definitely his most coherent and most consistently hilarious, perhaps because its canvas is so large and the world it depicts so insane. It plays a little like "Network" mixed with Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" mixed with "Natural Born Killers," and in the very first scene its main character, the depressed, divorced and soon-to-be unemployed Frank (Joel Murray), does something completely unforgivable.

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And as Marshall Eriksen, his character on "How I Met Your Mother," prepares for the birth of his first child with longtime love Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), Segel's film roles also seem to trend toward men who are ready to settle down -- well, except for the title character in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home," who never went anywhere in the first place. "The Muppets" ends with Segel popping the question, and "The Five-Year Engagement" begins with it, as his character Tom charmingly flubs an elaborate plan to propose to his girlfriend of a year, Violet (Emily Blunt), who of course says yes anyway.

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"This is what they pay you for, really," Black responded. "But then, on these little independent films, they don't really pay you. So why am I even doing this?"

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The brainchild of actor-writer Danny McBride, directors David Gordon Green and Jody Hill, and producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, "Eastbound & Down" has been the most consistently bizarre, hilarious and unique show on television. McBride’s portrayal is nuanced, absurd and deadly serious. In an episode two weeks ago, he emerged from the gutter of a bowling alley to deliver one of the most moving and honest speeches about parenthood and responsibility you are likely to see in American media. That it was delivered to his outrageous mother, Lily Tomlin, in concert with his scumbag father, Don Johnson, underlines the sheer talent and inventiveness that go into each episode.

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What is surprising is that Kirke considers herself a painter, not an actress, and had to be coerced to get in front of the camera. Kirke received her BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of design (you can see some of her oil portraits here). She met Lena Dunham at St. Ann’s high school in Brooklyn Heights and agreed to help her out with “Tiny Furniture” after college. She is also the mother of a toddler. (Full-disclosure: I first met Jemima because I occasionally baby-sat her daughter.)

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McKay is one of the kings of the American comedy world, not merely producing blockbuster films, but also helping shape TV franchises like “Eastbound and Down” and creating the website Funny or Die. His career has been defined by his work on projects that weave comedy together with social and political themes.

My interview with McKay will air in full this Tuesday on my weekday AM760 morning radio show. You can click here to stream the full interview live when it airs on Tuesday, or find it archived on the show’s podcast page after it airs. Here is an edited transcript of our discussion, which includes a look at the role of politics in comedy and some specific hints from McKay about what Ron Burgundy may end up doing in the “Anchorman” sequel.

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But as Jonathan Flynn, an alcoholic writer in Paul Weitz’s film “Being Flynn,” which continues opening in theaters today, he's won some critics back. The Boston Globe noted cheekily that this film offers the “now-rare sight of De Niro giving an actual performance.” The movie is based on a memoir by the writer Nick Flynn (played by Paul Dano), about his relationship with his father, Jonathan (De Niro), who abandoned his family and drifted through a life of homelessness and petty crime.

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For new initiates, a brief history: The Punch Brothers were formed six years ago, when mandolin prodigy Chris Thile decided he’d reached the end of the creative line with Nickel Creek, the Grammy-winning acoustic trio he’d joined when he was eight years old. (That’s not a typo.) He recruited a group of similarly fresh-faced virtuosos — Leftover Salmon banjoist Noam Pikelny, Infamous Stringdusters guitarist Chris Eldridge, fiddler Gabe Witcher, and bassist Greg Garrison — to help him record a four-movement, 40-minute “folk-formal” suite titled “The Blind Leaving the Blind”; before they wrestled that beast to the ground, they released in 2006 Thile’s solo album, "How to Grow a Woman From the Ground." (Garrison has since been replaced by Paul Kowert who, at age 25, is one of the few musicians in the world who can make the rest of the band feel old.)

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Recently on my weekday morning radio show on KKZN-AM760, I spoke with Thurston about the "post-racial" concept, how white people can honor Black History Month, how African-Americans can be a "black friend" to white folk, and many other topics that his book courageously addresses. What follows is an edited transcript of our discussion (you can find the full audio podcast here).

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"Life's Too Short," which begins next Sunday on HBO, is a mockumentary that follows Warwick Davis, a real-life showbiz dwarf with a very real small-man syndrome. Like David Brent on "The Office" and Andy Millman on "Extras," Davis suffers a mean case of self-delusion, even as his career tanks, his wife leaves him and a massive unpaid tax bill comes due. He compares himself to Martin Luther King Jr., while also talking about the importance of his dignity, all while falling out of his SUV or asking strangers to press doorbells he can't reach.

It's painfully and excruciatingly funny, yet in early episodes, at least, Davis is an extraordinarily likable Napoleon. In an interview last week, Gervais insisted that the show is not making fun of Davis or little people. And in a wide-ranging discussion that might surprise some after his controversial and sometimes mean turns hosting the Golden Globes, Gervais says that comedy and humanity can't be separated. "Comedy is about empathy," he says. "Comedy is about the blind spot, comedy is about rooting for them, comedy is about flawed characters."

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This will come as bad news to the small but persistent fan cult who harbor hopes of a Soul Coughing reunion. (And I might as well admit right now that I’m one of them.)

For a few years there back in the '90s, Soul Coughing was making the most interesting music on the planet, a sonic collage of Doughty’s downtown beat poetry and guitar riffs, the monstrous syncopation of bassist Sebastian Steinberg and drummer Yuval Gabay, and the zany sampling of Mark De Gli Antoni. Doughty called it “deep slacker jazz.” The critics, by and large, raved. But the band minted only a few minor hits before imploding.

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Fans of Delpy’s zany 2007 relationship comedy “2 Days in Paris” will already have a good idea what to expect here, but it really doesn’t matter whether you’ve seen the earlier movie. Jack, the American boyfriend played by Adam Goldberg in “2 Days in Paris,” has evidently moved on (leaving behind a young son), and Delpy’s character, Marion, is now shacking up with a Village Voice journalist and radio host named Mingus, who has a daughter of his own. (Rock even says the character is based on the prominent African-American journalists Nelson George and Elvis Mitchell.)

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Salon: Start by assessing the captain. Aren’t they supposed to go down with the ship?

John Maxtone-Graham: Captain Crunch? Where do I start? Not only did he make a series of hugely foolish piloting decisions, he left the ship well ahead of many passengers and crew. That is truly unheard of. For a captain to bug out and go ashore is just not done and that is going to brand him forever. He will likely go to prison before he ever goes to sea again.

He does come off as rather yellow. What should he have done?

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His debut, "The Age of Wire and String," reads like reference material -- a poetic manual, an encyclopedic list of objects, characters and concepts that Marcus simultaneously defines and undefines. His second book, "Notable American Women," is a collage of forms that includes correspondence, story segments, definitions, faux textbook passages, and chronologies, which collectively tell the story of a boy named Ben Marcus who lives in a community of "silentists" and endures pseudo-scientific experiments performed on him by his family.

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Echoes of Suzanne Vega’s bittersweet pop (“Empty Threat”), Victoria Williams’ quaint folk (“Chameleon/Comedian”) and Neko Case’s haunted antiquity (“Change the Sheets”) abound; however, "Voyageur" makes room for everything from lovely acoustic laments (the wrenching break-up sketch “House Full of Empty Rooms”) and fizzy power-pop (“Sidecar,” a dizzying ode to new love) to organ-burnished AM Gold (the seven-minute “For the Record”) and piano-driven solemnity (“A Soft Place to Land”). Most important, Edwards’ music has plenty of open space to breathe, which magnifies the small, biting truths of her observational lyrics. It's her first album since 2008's "Asking for Flowers," and during that time, Edwards' marriage to longtime collaborator Colin Cripps busted up. Now Vernon is helping her launch a new musical beginning as well.

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