Streaming ephemera

Gosling directs a movie, Community gets a second life, Bieber is roasted

Lost River 

Ryan Gosling—droopy-eyed star of the “Hey Girl” meme and possible insane person—made a movie. 

In “Lost River,” his debut as a writer and director, the Goz assembles a band of friends and former co-stars (Christina Hendricks, Ben Mendelsohn, Saoirse Ronan, Eva Mendes) along with cinematographer Benoit Debie to make the twisted thoughts and images floating in his brain a reality. Those images include: bicycles on fire, buildings on fire, retro-futuristic nightclubs, poor people being really poor, and Ben Mendelsohn dancing. 

With its fractured anti-narrative, evocative but often-empty imagery, hip synth score and not-very-well-hidden influences (references to David Lynch, Nicolas Winding Refn and Terrence Malick abound), the movie often feels like the self-conscious fever dream of a film student with an unlimited budget. And yet, it’s impossible to dismiss. Gosling establishes a tone that rides the line between stoner daydream and hellish nightmare, and he sustains it. If nothing else, he deserves props for using his A-list status to get Warner Bros to fund such a strange, aggressively uncommercial movie.
“Lost River” is available to rent through iTunes, Google Play and VOD.

Community 

NBC never knew what to do with “Community.” The meta-sitcom about a group of misfits attending a Colorado community college developed a fiercely loyal but small viewership. But despite years of trying to cultivate a larger audience, the show was just too weird and whimsical to flourish in the ratings-driven world of network television. Creator Dan Harmon was apparently such a pain in the ass that NBC fired him after season three—only to rehire him a year later when star Joel McHale led the cast in protesting Harmon’s absence. After a strong but under-watched fifth season, NBC had enough and pulled the plug. 

Luckily, Yahoo! stepped in and saved the show with a lucrative offer to make it the flagship series of its fledgling Screen streaming service. Season 6 premiered last month, and Yahoo! wisely opted to forgo the Netflix binge model and instead parse out episodes on a weekly basis, the old-fashioned way. 

The good news: The series is sharper than ever. Harmon and his team are clearly re-energized, perhaps due to the total creative freedom that came with the format switch. 

The bad news: Yahoo! is still, well, Yahoo! The Screen site is riddled with glitches—episodes will skip, freeze, then inexplicably jump ahead in time; the commercials occasionally fall into an endless loop; and my browser has crashed more than once during viewing. Like most Yahoo! problems, I’m guessing Netflix will be streaming 3-D holograms into our living rooms by the time Screen’s player is up to par. 

Still, it’s a minor annoyance that I’ll happily tolerate in exchange for Community’s resurrection. 

The Roast of Justin Bieber 

Comedy Central Roasts can be nasty affairs. There’s the infamous Chevy Chase chapter, in which the notoriously prickly comedian wore sunglasses and seemed to have a hard time rolling with the relentless assault on his character and career.

Then there’s the David Hasselhoff episode, when Whitney Cummings makes a really bad Magic Johnson joke.

I feel a certain amount of anxiety with each roast. Sometimes they’re benign and even endearing (The James Franco Roast); other times they’re just offensively unfunny (Donald Trump). Occasionally, the chemistry between the roasters will create something magically profane, gut-wrenching and hilarious (Charlie Sheen). 

The Roast of Justin Bieber belongs in the latter category. Bieber is the least interesting person onstage, eclipsed by a wildly disparate panel of roasters more interested in roasting each other than the man of the hour. Which is more than fine. Comedians like Natasha Leggero, Hannibal Buress and Pete Davidson joyfully trade barbs with a motley crew of pop culture oddballs—Ludacris, Martha Stewart, Shaquille O’Neal—before turning their arsenal on the Biebs with obligatory jokes about his arrest record and Selena Gomez. The jokes land more often than not, and part of the amusement is watching someone like Hannibal Buress openly express his disdain for Bieber while towing the line between funny and mean-spirited. Stream the roast at cc.com.

For more on all things culture from Joshua Kline, check out his roundtable with local musicians on Kendrick Lamar's latest album or his take on the latest standup comedy special from Louie CK.