For Friday, four or five degrees of funny

Even if it still is the most unnecessary prequel/reimagining/or whatever of all time, director Marc Webb is certainly piling up an impressive cast for his take on "Spider-Man."

After making the beyond-perfect choice of Emma Stone to play Gwen Stacy and the perfectly adequate choice of Andrew Garfield from "The Social Network" to play Peter Parker himself, the movie has now somehow added Martin Sheen to play Uncle Ben and Sally Field as Aunt May. Is that enough prestige for you?

Webb has so far, however, made at least one mistake (beyond the studio's choice to fire Sam Raimi in the first place): Rather than the rumored Mia Waskikowska or any other young actress to play Mary Jane Watson, they're apparently just leaving the character out altogether. Bummer.

But enough about a movie that, even with that cast, I'm not sure I'll even be able to bring myself to see when this finally all comes together. As the headline makes clear, this was supposed to be all about the funny this morning, but it lost a little sheen when I found that the promised first episode of "Mid Morning Matters With Alan Partidge" is not yet available, even though it was promised for Nov. 5, and it is indeed already noon UK time on that very day. Keep an eye out for it some time later today here, and I guarantee you'll laugh out loud.

Instead, I have four clips delivering differing degrees of funny, pretty much in descending order, until the final one, which is pretty much just here as word of warning about the impending monstrosity. First up comes the first trailer I know of for the return of the Farrelly Brothers, on Feb. 25 with something called "Hall Pass." I can't remember the last time I bothered to see a Farrelly Brothers movie, but this one looks like it could be funny, and with a cast that includes Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis of "30 Rock," Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate and even veryfunnypeople JB Smoove and Stephen Merchant too, this one should at least be worth checking out. Watch trailer to find out just what a "Hall Pass" is.



Though I've yet to see the need to tune in to George Lopez's 11 p.m. show on TBS, and will have even less incentive to do once he moves to midnight starting Monday, if he's promoting the return of Conan O'Brien, I'm on board. This clip from Wednesday's show, in which CoCo makes an appearance to promote his return to late night Monday night at 11 p.m., is actually really funny once O'Brien lapses into his "native tongue," Spanish. After that comes William Shatner "singing" what is easily my favorite pop song of the moment, Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You," known to you kids who still listen to top 40 radio in its much more family-friendly form, "Forget You." Shatner's skewering of it is indeed pretty funny, but as a further bonus, I've included the original text only video from Cee Lo, so anyone who hasn't heard the original version of this can see just how incredibly entertaining it is in its very raw form. Enjoy.







As someone who plays with fonts for a living, I just don't think I'll ever get tired of watching that very clever video, and the song of course is pure gold. OK, remember that, at the outset today, I did warn you that the final clip is more a warning than anything else, because it certainly doesn't deliver any funny. It does, I suppose, finally answer the burning question of whether or not Martin Lawrence has even a drop of shame left with a thundering no. Without any further ado, and yes, really, here is indeed the trailer for something called "Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son." If you really want to know when this is coming out, you'll have to look it up yourself, because I really just can't bring myself to tell you. "Enjoy" the clip and have a fantastic weekend. Peace out.