The Morning Watch: John Mulaney’s ‘SNL’ Auditions, The Seductive Satire of ‘Starship Troopers’ & More

John Mulaney SNL Auditions

The Morning Watch is a recurring feature that highlights a handful of noteworthy videos from around the web. They could be video essays, fanmade productions, featurettes, short films, hilarious sketches, or just anything that has to do with our favorite movies and TV shows.

In this edition, watch John Mulaney‘s many auditions for Saturday Night Live that didn’t get him the job. Plus, a video essay explores how Starship Troopers is so good at satirizing fascism that it almost goes over the audience’s head, and see how the storyboards for the opening sequence in Pixar’s Up compare to the final movie.

John Mulaney is hosting Saturday Night Live for the second time this weekend. But before he became a writer on the show, he actually auditioned to be a cast member no less than 44 times throughout the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. He has an impressive array of characters and impressions, unless of course you would like someone talented for the show.

Starship Troopers is a spectacular satire of war and all the mayhem that comes with it. Rife with propaganda and violent action, the movie so good at taking down militaristic fascism that it’s almost too much of a spectacle to convince people that war doesn’t deserve to be celebrated. This video essay from Wisecrack breaks down the film and its political philosophies thanks to director Paul Verhoeven.

The opening of Pixar‘s Up is one of the most beautiful sequences in recent memory. And now you can see how the final animated scenes in the film compare to the storyboards that informed the animators how to bring it to life. Sure, the storyboards are often crude, but they perfectly represent what ends up ultimately being animated on screen.

The post The Morning Watch: John Mulaney’s ‘SNL’ Auditions, The Seductive Satire of ‘Starship Troopers’ & More appeared first on /Film.