Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2044

Los Angeles Says Goodbye to Adam West By Lighting the Bat-Signal

Last weekend, Adam West passed away at the age of 88—but his legacy as TV’s first Batman will never be forgotten. On Thursday night, Los Angeles paid tribute to West’s portrayal of the Caped Crusader by transforming downtown LA into Gotham City.

In a ceremony hosted by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Chief Charlie Beck, the iconic Bat-signal was activated in front of a large crowd of West’s fans and admirers, who witnessed the world famous Bat silhouette as it appeared on the wall of City Hall. Chief Beck even jokingly admitted that lighting the Bat-signal was something he had always wanted to do. And can you blame him? We’d light it every night if we could!

Los Angeles City Hall lit the Bat Signal tonight in honor of Adam West.

Movie Music Magic Casts a Spell in SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY (Review)

Try to imagine your favorite film without its score. Not just undisputed classics like Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho or John Williams’ Jaws, but pretty much any movie you enjoy, be it large, small, foreign, domestic, silly, scary, or serious. A film’s score is like the human spine. If it’s not aligned correctly, the rest of the body suffers, often in constant and painful fashion. There are of course countless books, websites, and DVD featurettes that cover the essential nature of a movie’s music but score junkies have been lacking that one definitive documentary on the subject.

We can now rest just a little easier, because Matt Schrader’s Score: A Film Music Documentary is not only a feature-length documentary about the history, importance, and impact of film scores; it’s also the best-case scenario documentary about the history, importance, and impact of film scores. This is a film that’s clearly made by someone who loves their chosen subject matter, but is also smart enough to all but disappear and simply allow the musicians and filmmakers to share their stories. And that’s all you can really ask from a documentarian, whether they’re covering politics, history, important social issues, or good old movie music.

The film is refreshingly straightforward: 93 minutes with a stunning array of celebrated film composers and filmmakers as they offer everything from the history of music in cinema to their own personal composing styles, and all sorts of wonderfully fascinating anecdotes in between. Mr. Schrader utilizes film clips and archival material in fascinating fashion, but Score: A Film Music Documentary is at its very best when it plants a camera in front of great composers and lets them simply expound on the nature of their art.

Composers discussed and/or interviewed include Hans Zimmer, Randy Newman, Quincy Jones, Danny Elfman, Reznor & Ross, Christopher Young, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, and at least 60 more. We also get some key insights from non-composers like James Cameron, Leonard Maltin, Steven Spielberg, and the late Garry Marshall, but the bulk of Score is dedicated exclusively to the music-makers. Schrader and co-editor Kenny Holmes deserve a lot of praise for not only sifting through hours of interview material, but also for giving each composer a comparatively different theme. (In other words, it’s not a bunch of professionally similar people all saying the same things.) Aspiring composers should consider this film an absolute treasure trove of not only practical advice but also of straightforward no-bullshit wisdom.

For plain old movie geeks, however, Score: A Film Music Documentary is nothing short of an absolute delight. You’ll get all sorts of fascinating insights on the composer’s creative processes but you’ll also appreciate the film’s staunch and sincere affection for movie music. Not just the most famous tracks from the most celebrated musicians, but movie music in general, how it’s created, and how our beloved cinematic artform wouldn’t be half as special without it.

4.5 Melodious Burritos out of 5

Images: Gravitas Ventures

Jon Snow’s True Name Revealed? What This Means For GAME OF THRONES Season 7!

By the light of the seven, a new season of Game of Thrones is but a month away! And as the show heads into the endgame of George R.R. Martin‘s epic fantasy story, we’re finally going to get some follow up on the big revelation of the season six finale. We now know who Jon Snow’s parents are, but what we didn’t realize is that there may be more to what his intended name was. Today’s Nerdist News is examining what could be a major revelation for the penultimate Game of Thrones season.

There are potential spoilers ahead for GoT season 7. As in serious spoilers. This is not a drill, people! If you don’t want to know, then you should stop reading now.

Join guest host Amy Vorpahl, first of her name, as she lets us in on the secret of Jon Snow’s true identity. Fans have long speculated that Jon was the child of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. However, no one really put all that much stock into considering what his mother named him. Now, Empire Magazine has casually suggested that Bran Stark’s psychic time travel trip has unearthed an additional detail: Jon’s real name is Jaehaerys Targaryen.

“You know nothing, Jaehaerys Targaryen” doesn’t quite roll off of the tongue, does it? But that’s a name that has appeared before in GoT lore. The first Jaehaerys Targaryen was a beloved king who reached a peaceful accord with the Faith Militant for over five decades. He was also a dragon rider, which is another thing that fans have predicted for Jon. The second Jaehaerys was actually Jon’s grandfather, and he is the man who received “the prince that was promised” prophecy years ago. Jon’s very existence may be the fruition of that prophecy.

What do you think about the latest Jon Snow revelations? Draw your swords and let’s discuss in the comment section below!

Annapurna’s THE ARTFUL ESCAPE is One of E3’s Best Games (Preview)

Microsoft‘s 2017 E3 briefing on June 11 was a celebration of technology and gaming, with the Xbox One X console and big-name publishers getting a lot of screen time. But even with all the talk of teraflops, six-figure cars, and triple-A franchises during the presentation, a colorful trailer for a little-known indie title managed to stand out. The flash of the Annapurna Interactive logo was enough to garner our interest, but the brief trailer featuring a hipster-looking dude shredding on a glowing guitar sold us on The Artful Escape. Like all of the titles in Annapurna’s game line-up, this platformer is worth your attention.

You know when you’ve got a song stuck in your head and you can’t stop humming along to music that’s not there? The Artful Escape is sort of like that—ever since we played it at E3, we can’t stop thinking about it. As the trailer shows, Francis Vendetti is a rising folk star from a legacy family, and he’s struggling with figuring out what he wants while dealing with the world’s expectations for him. He’s whisked away to a bizarre, beautiful world, guided by a ghostly figure he seems to know. The level we played was dark and snowy, with sparkling trees and neon lights creating a stark contrast against the night sky. It’s really quite beautiful, every frame dripping with style. But the impeccable design sense doesn’t end with the visuals; The Artful Escape is meant to be heard as much as seen.

It may be a side-scrolling platformer, but it’s not like anything in the genre you’ve seen before. For starters, Francis isn’t content to simply run and jump, whipping out a glow-in-the-dark guitar and jamming at will. This allows him to “airwalk,” or basically float a bit after double-jumping. It’s necessary to clear some bottomless pits and reach higher ground, but more than once we were having so much fun rocking out, we completely forgot about the platforms and fell to our doom. One of the best parts of the demo was performing an impromptu concert by playing a sort of “Simon Says” with a giant snow creature. The ensuing electric notes and light show gave the whole thing a trippy vibe, like playing in a long-lost David Bowie album come to life.

The Artful Escape isn’t afraid to be absurd, and it’s glorious. At one point, the guitar was replaced by a glowing snowboard so Francis could propel down a mountain, because why not. The dialogue is silly but still meaningful. It’s impossible to play without grinning and bopping your head along to the music. And underneath all the neon sights and rocking sounds is a genuinely fun platformer that we can’t get out of our heads.

Annapurna Interactive isn’t releasing The Artful Escape until it’s “damn ready,” so we probably have a long wait in store for us before we can play it on Xbox One and PC. But like a favorite band on tour, we’ll be following this one wherever it goes.

Images: Annapurna Interactive

Lil Yachty Rapped about THE SIMPSONS on THE TONIGHT SHOW

According to a The Simpsons fan wiki, there are 3,442 characters who have ever appeared in the show over the course of its 600+ episodes. That is an absolute ton, and that means that in his Simpsons rap that featured 59 of them on last night’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Lil Yachty only mentioned 1.7 percent of them. Still, nobody has time to listen to a rap that has more characters than many real-life small towns have people, so all things considered, Yachty’s rap is super impressive.

As Fallon flips through flashcards like a spiritual sequel to Daniel Radcliffe’s cover of Blackalicious’ “Alphabet Aerobics,” Yachty checks off all the major characters and rattles off a bunch of clever lines in the process that reference some characters you may have forgotten about. For example:

“Flow so sick, someone call a doctor!

Hibbert is with it but Nick is awful,

Hi everybody, it’s Mr. McGreg,

With a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg!”

There are a couple stretches where Yachty is simply listing character names, but for the most part, the rap is a real success and shows that he (or whoever actually wrote these lyrics if not himself) is a real Simpsons head. His closing stanza is also a great mic drop moment:

“I got more lines than Bart with chalk,

I spit more lines than Maggie’s talked,

That’s 59 names with more to report, Bort

Until next time, ‘Eat my shorts!'”

Watch the video above, check out the full lyrics here, and for you, our creative readers, go ahead and fill the comments with your own lyrics about characters who didn’t make it into the song.

Featured image: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/YouTube

47 METERS DOWN is as Simple a Shark Movie as We’ve Seen in Ages (Review)

There’s something downright noble about the simplicity of 47 Meters Down. Since the dawn of the “shark genre”—yes, by now there are enough shark pictures that we can comfortably qualify the lot as a genre all its own—directors have been supplementing the dangers inherent in a face-off with one (or more) of these would-be killing machines of the sea with some narrative embroidery to make matters all the more menacing. Deep Blue Sea made its sharks hyper-intelligent; Shark Night upped the ante on its aquatic predators’ quantity and size; Sharknado, Sharktopus, and Ghost Shark—well, you know.

But in stark contrast to this collective, 47 Meters Down vies minimalist, both in terms of premise and aesthetic. Ostensibly committed to the parameters of a favorite exchange from its genre forebear—“You go inside the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water, shark’s in the water”—the film actually gets a better hold of some of the humane horrors lost in process of upgrading such shark movies to shark-movies-but-with-a-twist.

To be fair, 47 Meters Down does benefit from just a touch of garnish: American sisters Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt) aren’t just stuck in a cage in a shark-laden sea; they’re stuck in a cage at the bottom of a shark-laden sea after the doohickey keeping them tethered to the shark-sighting boat operated by one Matthew Modine breaks. As such, sharks are hardly the only issue in play: a dissipating oxygen supply, sporadically incurred bodily injuries, and the threat of those horrible, horrible bends all rear their ugly heads over the course of the film.

To be sure, each threat does supply its fair share of dread. If you’re not unnerved by the threat of bloodthirsty sharks, you’ll perhaps be wound up over the notion of nitrogen bubbles poisoning your brain from the inside out. An unpleasant thought, and one that is made to stick with you for the bulk of the girls’ imprisonment 150 feet below the surface.

Robbing 47 Meters Down of a good deal of the tension amounted by its collection of close-to-home dangers is the meager investment it earns in its central characters. Lisa and Kate, though devoted to one another’s well-being thanks to the bonds of blood, aren’t an especially interesting pair, and not much for getting your heart involved in what happens to them. In fact, the most—perhaps only—interesting thing about the duo is their function as a comment on human impudence.

47 Meters Down doesn’t seem to have too high an opinion of its bipedal characters. As American tourists in the film’s Mexican setting, Lisa and Kate are shown, if only subtly and slightly, to be beacons of disregard, while Modine’s first mate (Chris Johnson) angers the fates with an illicit chum bucket. Not simply cynical flourishes, choices like these lend to the movie’s fundamental simplicity. It’s not as though the sharks we meet are out for vengeance, or the conditions uniquely grim. The dangers in 47 Meters Down are standard, and made the more dangerous only thanks to the characters’ refusal to acknowledge them.

In other words, the horrors we get from 47 Meters Down are admirably raw. Perhaps not crafted with great sophistication, or demanding of your utmost investment, no. But considering the supernatural audacity that has befallen the dangers-of-the-deep genre over the past few decades, it’s kind of cool to see a film with such a tight focus on the normal.

Rating: 3 burritos

Images: Entertainment Studios

Michael Arbeiter is the East Coast Editor of Nerdist, and is desperately afraid of the ocean. Find Michael on Twitter @micarbeiter.

DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ Looks a Heck of a Lot Like Manga

If you’re like me, your head may still be spinning from the E3 announcement of Dragon Ball FighterZ. It’s always fun to play fighting games based on your favorite animated TV action shows, but getting to choose between players like Super Saiyan Goku and the villainous Frieza?! Now that levels up the fun.

One eagle-eyed Twitter user by the name of Mizumaki_7 (H/T Kotaku) noticed that the screenshots from the gameplay footage looked eerily similar to artwork from Akira Toriyama‘s original Dragon Ball manga. What follows is a side-by-shot comparison of scenes from the video game to panels from the manga.

原作の動きがなんぼでも見つかるわ

見てるだけで楽しすぎる pic.twitter.com/XRzhc4oDjD

— みずまき (@mizumaki_7) June 14, 2017

The translated tweet reads, “Original movement found how much is still done by just watching, too much fun.” The first image from Dragon Ball FighterZ shows Goku delivering a vicious uppercut kick to Cell from Dragonball Z‘s “Cell Saga.” Next, we see almost an identical black-and-white shot from inside the comic. A similar sequence is also shown between villain-turned-good-guy Vegeta and Cell:

ドラゴンボールファイターズ原作モーション発見報告その3

投げ技は有名どころを突いてきていいね！ pic.twitter.com/sTIZCTuOY7

— みずまき (@mizumaki_7) June 14, 2017

If that wasn’t enough accuracy for you, we’ve got you covered with even more striking imagery between fighters. We’re sticking with the “Cell Saga” and Cell putting a massive bearhug on Goku. However, you’ll notice the scene in the manga has Cell administering this maneuver on the young Gohan. Still, the scenes line up perfectly.

This slight change of scenery happens again with Majin Buu choking the life out of Frieza in the game, and Babidi in the manga. Other iconic scenes find Goku firing an energy blast into the air, Frieza delivering a brutal elbow shot, and a montage of many eye-catching battles from various points in the Dragonball Z saga.

ベジータの渾身の気弾を跳ね返した蹴りがラッシュ技らしきものの〆に使われてるってことは、超武闘伝みたく必殺技を弾いたりできないってことか pic.twitter.com/LHvI2HpARr

— みずまき (@mizumaki_7) June 14, 2017

ドラゴンボールファイターズのモーション元ネタ考察に誤りがあることに気づきました

このモーションは界王星でミニ元気玉を打った時のものです pic.twitter.com/vWrtAxKOpK

— みずまき (@mizumaki_7) June 15, 2017

この攻撃めっちゃ好きだから嬉しい pic.twitter.com/PQ0tW1eraD

— みずまき (@mizumaki_7) June 14, 2017

ドラゴンボールファイターズのモーションと元ネタ考察まとめてみたぞ！

他にも沢山あるが、続きはキミ自身の目で確かめてくれ！(昭和の攻略本並) pic.twitter.com/4SzAj4E8H9

— みずまき (@mizumaki_7) June 14, 2017

モーション元ネタ考察集第２弾完成しました！

発売が待ちきれないですね！#ドラゴンボールファイターズ #DragonBallFighterZ pic.twitter.com/HtRkqNLd2x

— みずまき (@mizumaki_7) June 15, 2017

What do you think of Dragon Ball FighterZ borrowing images from the manga? Let your voice be heard in the comments below!

Image Credit: Bandai Namco/Shueisha

Tim Adams is a freelance writer who loves comics and the TV and movies that feature them. Follow him on Twitter!

Is STAR WARS Episode 9 in Trouble?

Friends! Were you aware that every day we do a live talk show talking all about the day’s biggest pop culture and entertainment stories? Well we do! It’s called Nerdist News Talks Back and it’s a great deal of fun.

On today’s show, host Jessica Chobot welcomed Mothership writer and newly minted recording artist Amy Vorpahl and Nerdist’s very own social media manager/Teen Beat reporter Michelle Buchman to talk down E3’s indie games, Colin Trevorrow‘s critically disliked new movie, and Danny Elfman doing the score for another big comic book movie. It’s a heck of a lot to get through, but we’re champions, so we managed it!

First up was E3 2017. We’ve talked about the big games from the big developers; now it’s time to talk about the indies! The gang really liked Cuphead and Sea of Thieves but weren’t super jazzed about A Way Out.

Next up, things aren’t looking great for Star Wars: Episode IX—at least, if the reviews for director Colin Trevorrow’s latest are any indication. Jurassic World heavily split audiences, but Trevorrow’s latest movie, The Book of Henry, garnered pretty universally negative reviews following its premiere at Los Angeles Film Festival on Wednesday. Sooooo naturally, we’re a bit worried.

And finally, perhaps the greatest film composer who isn’t John Williams or Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman, is returning to the Bat-sphere to write the music for the upcoming Justice League movie. Our panelists talk about their favorite film scores, and what the music choice might mean for the movie.

You wanna watch the show live next time? Head to Nerdist’s YouTube and Alpha every weekday at 1:00pm PST and join in the ridiculous fun! And chime in with your own thoughts on the topics above in the comments below!

Image: Lucasfilm

Embrace the Mystery Box with STRANGER THINGS Limited Edition Crate

Stranger Things is all about the unknown and pulling back the curtain on the mysterious and otherworldly, so that kinda makes the Netflix series an ideal candidate for a mystery box. Loot Crate has jumped all over the opportunity with the Stranger Things Limited Edition Crate. The contents of the box are tightly under wraps, but we do know it will have six officially licensed items exclusive to the crate–including an apparel item and collectibles, plural.

All my parts are crossed for a Demogorgon toy of some kind. You can’t have enough Demogorgons.

You don’t have to make a trip to the Upside Down to get your order in. All you have to do to get the Stranger Things crate is visit Loot Crate. The package will ship in late October, which happens to coincide with the season two premiere of the series (it’s returning on October 31). The price is set at $59.99 plus shipping and handling, but the crate will include items valued at more than $111.

What sort of items do you hope to see in the Stranger Things box? Maybe a Choose Your Own Adventure sort of book starring the boys and Eleven, or maybe vinyl toys, or waffles? Okay, probably not waffles. Head to the comments and share your thoughts about what the box will include. Also, let us know about how you feel about learning about one or two items in the box are ahead of time. Do you consider reveals to be spoilers?

Images: Netflix, Loot Crate

GAME OF THRONES Re-Throned: “Mother’s Mercy” (S5, E10)

Winter is coming, but not soon enough. So to help pass the time until season seven of Game of Thrones, we’re doing a weekly re-watch of the series, episode-by-episode, with the knowledge of what’s to come and—therefore—more information about the unrevealed rich history of events that took place long before the story began. Be warned, though: that means this series is full of spoilers for every season, even beyond the episode itself. So if you haven’t watched all of the show yet immediately get on that and then come back and join us for Game of Thrones Re-Throned.

Because the next best thing to watching new episodes is re-watching old ones.

——

Season 5, Episode 10: “Mother’s Mercy”

Original Air Date: June 14th, 2015

Director: David Nutter

Written by: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Season five had its issues, but its fantastic finale was not among them. It’s loaded with monumental moments: the Boltons slaughter Stannis’s forces and Brienne kills him, a khalasar takes Daenerys, Sansa and Theon flee Winterfell, Arya brutally murders Meryn Trant and then Jaqen blinds her for it, Ellaria Sand poisons Myrcella, and Cersei takes her walk of shame.

Oh, and “for the Watch” brothers of the Night’s Watch assassinate their Lord Commander Jon Snow.

IT’S KIND OF A BIG DEAL.

However, for an episode with so many major, game (of thrones) changing scenes, it’s the quietest one that stands out now, when Jon and Sam talk about what it will take to defeat the White Walkers.

Jon tells Sam about what happened at Hardhome, and gives a chilling description of what they face. “He raised his hand and they all stood up at once, tens of thousands of them—the biggest army in the world,” says Jon. When Sam asks what he is going to do, Jon answers, “I’m gonna hope they don’t learn how to climb the wall.”

It’s a funny line, but after seeing how the wights ran off a cliff like lemmings at Hardhome, only to get right up and attack, it’s not impossible to imagine they could pile up their bodies at the Wall to create a sort of zombie ramp. (Yes, like in World War Z.)

Sam mentions the dragonglass he found at the Fist of the First Men—which he used to kill a White Walker—but explains it was lost at Hardhome. “No one’s ever getting that back, now,” says Jon, “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, unless we had a mountain of it.” Hmm…

As for the other known method to kill a White Walker—with a Valyrian steel sword like Jon did with Longclaw—the Lord Commanders says there are “not enough” of them in Westeros. The exact number of those magical swords is unknown, but as we discussed in History of Thrones Tyrion thinks there might be 200 in the Seven Kingdoms. Definitely not enough.

It’s this desperation that makes Jon consent to Sam’s request to become a maester. The two hope that Sam might be able to find answers in the Citadel’s giant library. But we don’t need dusty old books to find them, because there are two potential solutions already in Westeros—and they just so happen to both be at Dragonstone in season seven.

Earlier in season five, before Hardhome, Stannis asked Sam about killing a White Walker, and Sam told him he used a dagger made of dragonglass to do it. “We have it in Dragonstone,” says Stannis. So the cache lost at Hardhome wasn’t the only available dragonglass, and even though we don’t know how much of it can be found there it’s easy to imagine there is enough to give the living a fighting chance. The giant army of the dead might be in the tens of thousands, but the White Walkers themselves are much smaller (at least as far as we’ve been shown so far), and they are the ones the dragonglass is needed for.

But season seven will find a potentially far more devastating weapon of mass White Walker destruction at Dragonstone, where Daenerys Targaryen has taken residence—her three dragons.

Valyrian steel is special because it was forged with magic in dragon flame, so while we don’t know for certain that a fire-breathing dragon can kill a White Walker, there’s excellent reason to think it can and will. Who needs Valyrian steel swords when you can just bathe blue-eyed ice demons in flame?

Of course, nothing is ever easy in this world, and in this very episode we see why there is no guarantee dragons will come through when you need them.

The Valyrians were said to use magic to control their dragons, a skill that Daenerys does not possess. Drogon saved her from the attack in the arena in Meereen, but here he ignores her pleas to bring her back, instead opting to rest from his wounds. His obstinance makes her leave to find food and that results in her being captured by the khalasar.

Dragons have an independent streak and are just as likely to do what they want as they are to obey, even when it comes to the commands of their mother. We can theorize about Jon or Tyrion becoming dragonriders, but even if that happens why would we think they’d have more control over their dragons then Daenerys has over Drogon?

Even if Bran were to warg into one of them, another popular theory, he can only control one at a time. Will one dragon be enough?

And that doesn’t even factor in how we don’t know for sure if dragon flame will be reliable when dragons fly in the bitter cold that follows the White Walkers wherever they go. If ice and fire are two sides of the same coin, why wouldn’t extreme cold hurt the dragons as much as their flames hurt the White Walkers?

If that proves to be the case, and a dragon falls victim in the Great War, what happens if it is resurrected when the Night King raises his arm? A whole mountain range of dragonglass and a million Valyrian steel swords probably wouldn’t be much help then.

Sam should probably do a lot of reading at the Citadel. Including any books about how to defeat a zombie ramp.

But what do you think? Are dragons, Valyrian steel swords, and dragonglass enough to defeat the White Walkers? Or will they need another method? Fly into our comments below and let us know.

Images: HBO