Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2148

“D’awwwww Yeah!” DJ Cats Spin an Adorable Tune

The reasons we love cats so much (besides never having to worry about getting a “cat sitter” when we go out for a night on the town, unlike you dog people), is that they provide us with so much: cats are soft and cuddly, they are always up for a nap, and they randomly refuse to eat their favorite food. Alright, admittedly the last one isn’t that strong, but we can now replace it with a new catacular skill: they can spin some sick tunes.

We came across this story of disc jockey felines at RocketNews24, and they belong to DJ Futoshi, who shared some short clips of his two cats giving it a go at their owners job. While the results are mixed, the reviews are the same for both: “awwwww.”

The first little guy didn’t so much spin the record as he did take it for a spin. We dub this track “Adorable.”

なんなら猫も回ってるからな pic.twitter.com/gDfmQ5jd3k

— DJ Futoshi(フトシ) (@dj_futoshi) February 27, 2017

But the other fella did come down with a case of cat scratch fever, because he actually managed to make that turntable into his very own scratching post.

猫が回しもするしな pic.twitter.com/WrRwZTWImq

— DJ Futoshi(フトシ) (@dj_futoshi) February 27, 2017

Awww.

Yeah.

Of course, watching these little guys got us to thinking about the best names for a feline DJ. Here’s what we came up with:

DJ Catty Jeff
Run-C.A.T.
Catboy Slim
Cat Punk
Grandcatster Flash

And our absolute favorite:

Deadmouse5

We wonder what the cats think of our suggestions.

起きたら足元で連なって寝てた pic.twitter.com/Y429EP72i0

— DJ Futoshi(フトシ) (@dj_futoshi) February 28, 2017

Oh, that’s right, sleeping cats are still the best kind of cats.

What’s your top name for a disc jockey cat? Scratch it out in our comments section below.

Featured Image: DJ Futoshi

Migrating Spider Crabs Attack an Octopus in Horrifying Feeding Frenzy

Fellow seafood lovers, what do you prefer: crab or octopus? What if we told you the crab had recently been dining on octopus? Trick question, because once you watch these migrating spider crabs tearing into an octopus, in a horror movie style feeding frenzy, you’ll never again desire seafood. Or the sea.

For the latest installment in our never-ending series, “The Ocean is &^%*ing Terrifying,” we have for you this incredible video shot by Chiharu Shimowada and shared on YouTube by Storyful News, which we first came across at Foodbeast.

This is from the annual migration that takes place in Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, Australia every year in late May/early June. “Thousands of these melon-sized crabs climb up out of the depths and, in the process, absolutely blanket the seafloor,” in what apparently leads to the violent death of any unfortunate octopus that happens to be in their way.

Based on what these crabs look like, we think it would be best if we didn’t get in their way either.

Reminder: always avoid the ocean.

The more we watch this video, the more we can’t stop thinking about how stupid anonymous henchmen are in martial arts movies, when they attack one at a time instead of en masse. You can’t let a regular old human with only four limbs beat you up individually, not when these crabs together can take on an octopus and its eight tentacles. And crabs can only move sideways!

So if any octopi are reading this, try only swimming north to south. Or moving to dry land.

What does this video remind you of? Migrate into our comments section below and tell us what you think.

Images: Storyful News/Chiharu Shimowada

GALAVANT to Save the Day With a Full Soundtrack Release (Finally)

Way back in days of old, there was a legend told about a hero known as Galavant, and that hero was the star of an ABC series that had its moment in the sun for two seasons in 2015 and 2016. The show from Dan Fogelman was a musical medieval comedy and featured music by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater. Galavant had wit, a tremendous cast, and memorable songs coming out of its ears. Though ABC and Hollywood Records released soundtracks for both seasons, they didn’t make every single song from the series available–much to the frustration of fans. That’s changing.

While talking with Alan Menken about his contributions to the live-action Beauty and the Beast, we learned a new, comprehensive edition of the Galavant soundtrack is in the works. The composer had just played me the Galavant theme song (complete with singing!) and said a two CD soundtrack with every song from Galavant is happening. That means we’ll finally get to play tunes like “Secret Mission” and “I Love You (As Much As Someone Like Me Can Love Anyone)” on repeat alongside our other favorites. Menken said he pushed to make the release happen and get all the music out there, to which I say, “Thank you.”

We’ve reached out to Hollywood Records and Disney to ask about an exact release date.

Which songs from Galavant do you listen to on repeat? I’m all about “Lords of the Sea.” It still makes me laugh out loud. Share your picks with me in the comments.

Featured Image: ABC

Scream at a Wall: DARKEST HOUR, HYBORIAN, ROZAMOV, and More

Wipe the blood from your teeth and get in the pit; it’s time for a recap of this week’s best hardcore, metal, and punk rock. It’s unseasonably warm out, so let’s get hot and heavy with some brutal jams. This week, we’ve got everything from grindcore to stoner rock to ’90s hardcore, so there’s a little something for everybody. Strap in, kiddies; it’s time to rock.

 

 

This is a bold statement, but Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora is definitely Darkest Hour’s best album to date. The Washington, D.C. heavy weights are at their rawest on this record, thanks in part to producer Kurt Ballou. Darkest Hour have always been a band of extremes; with their relentless speed and penchant for melodic, drawn-out guitar solos, they’ve always pushed their own limits. That’s all on display here, but there’s something more earnest and grounded about this recording; it’s a band finding themselves. Take, for instance, “Those Who Survived.” It’s a galloping metal number but it has shades of punk rock and hardcore laced throughout. And that drum sound! Ballou has definitely brought out the best in this band. Godless Prophets & The Migrant Flora is set to be released on March 1oth and we highly recommend you check it out. Darkest Hour deserve your full attention.

 

Hyborian’s “As Above, So Below” is a track that Baroness and Mastodon fans will love. It’s a riff-driven rocker that has just the right amount of crunch, melody, and gruff. They’ve released a video for the song, but it’s not much more than the dudes in the band just jamming out in what appears to be a garage. We won’t hold that against them, though, because this song is freaking killer and we’re banging our heads to hard to watch a video anyway. If you like metal made by scruffy dudes who look like they could fix your car just as easily as they could blaze through a Sabbath tune, Hyborian is the band for you.

(Metal Injection)

 

The slow, crushing doom of Rozamov is breathtaking. The band just released The Mortal Road and it is an album you truly have to experience. Thick and heavy, it hits like Times of Grace-era Neurosis, but with a bigger focus on rhythm and harmony. Rozamov hit all the right post-metal and doom notes, but they have an underlying groove that runs through the entire album. The Mortal Road is equal parts destructive and beautiful. It’s thunderous and catchy, mean and heartfelt. Give it a listen below and then pickup the a digital copy from the band’s bandcamp for a mere $5.

This Mortal Road by Rozamov

 

Crusades play a brand of hardcore that doesn’t come around enough anymore. These guys sound like the late ’90s /early 2000s. Shades of emo and post-hardcore weave into their songs producing a unique, vibrant sound. Driven by squealing guitars and blown-out vocals, Crusades are a band on the edge, pushing and pulling you throughout every track. It’s melodramatic, sure, but that’s a big part of what makes it work. There was time when calling something emo wasn’t an insult, and Crusades harken back to that day. It’s easy to imagine these guys opening up for peak AFI or Taking Back Sunday. Emotional and pure, Crusades are a killer act that reminds us it’s okay to wear your heart on your sleeve when you rock out.

This is a Sickness and Sickness will End by Crusades

 

We’ve expressed our fondness for the new Unearthly Trance record more than once. It’s a fantastic collection of sonic brutality that everyone should listen to, no doubt. In addition to all the praise we’ve heaped upon them, we wanted to direct your attention to this recently released music video, which is strangely hypnotic. It’s for the song “Into the Spiral” and you could say it’s uneventful, but that won’t stop it from drawing you in. The mixture of colors and landscapes punctuated by three cloaked figures unfolds like a weird fiction tale: slow, dark, and brimming with dread. Unearthly Trance is slowly becoming one of our favorite bands and it’s because of stuff like this. Too awesome.

 

Chaotic and unabating, Artificial Brain’s “Synthesized Instinct” will grind you into dust. It’s the sound of robot armies disintegrating human flesh. It’s ugly and technical, a strange fusion of death metal and transcendent science fiction. Artificial Brain isn’t for everybody, but death metal that sounds like it’s being performed by mechanical minotaurs is something we can get behind. Check out the song below and enjoy cacophony of gore it brings into your mind.

 

That’s it for us this week. What new grindcore, punk rock, and metal are you looking forward to? What’s getting your blood pumping lately? Let us know in the comments.

Image: Darkest Hour

Gif: Fire and Ice/20th Century Fox

Benjamin Bailey writes for the Nerdist and can be found on Twitter talking about Godzilla, comic books, and hardcore music.

Hugh Jackman Wolverined So Hard in LOGAN That He Passed Out While Filming

Let it never be said that Hugh Jackman is not committed to his craft. After 17 years of playing Wolverine, Jackman is bidding the character adieu in Logan. The film, which may be my favorite of the entire X-Men franchise, features a raw, emotionally devastated version of the character who is grappling with loss in the worst way possible: alcohol, rage, and regret. That berserker rage, in particular, was something that Jackman really wanted to bring to the forefront of Logan, and showcase it in a way that had never been seen before in an X-Men film. However, Jackman does not possess Wolverine’s healing factor in real life, and he pushed himself so hard during one take that he actually blacked out. It’s a terrifying but true story that Jackman told me when I sat down with him at a New York City press day.

In addition to speaking with Jackman about Wolverine’s last hurrah, I spoke with Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, and director James Mangold about their touching, triumphant film. In particular, we spoke about the freedom afforded by an R rating to make a film that isn’t necessarily for everyone. The superhero swan song is unlike any other X-Men movie to date; while it owes a great deal to its predecessors, it feels like a mature, thoughtful, and grown-up take on the classic character. Jackman was ably aided and abetted by the best possible scene partner, the inimitable Stewart as Professor X, who plays a version of the kindly mutant leader with an increasingly fragile mental state. What results is unexpected emotional devastation and catharsis, the end result of spending more than half my life with these men portraying two of the most iconic characters and seeing their journeys come to a satisfying conclusion.

Logan is in theaters now. Read our review here, and watch our previous interview with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart reflecting on their first day on X-Men and their final day on Logan.

Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).

That DEADPOOL 2 Teaser in Front of LOGAN Has Arrived Online

Deadpool 2 may not have cast its Cable yet, or have even started shooting, but there was no way Fox was going to let Logan open without something extra for the fans. Rumors of a post-credits scene were just that, but a pre-movie bonus teaser? Well, here you go.

We won’t describe everything in it for you, except to express amazement and amusement that they procured the rights to a piece of music most definitely owned by a rival studio. We will say that the benefit of having this online is the ability to freeze-frame, which you may want to do quite a bit. Not only are there easter eggs in the trailer itself, but you can also finally read that big block of text at the end, which turns out to be a snarky, Deadpool-ish description of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

So we’re left asking why, exactly, Deadpool needs to change into his costume? Is his secret identity really that secret, considering he looks (to simplify the insult a bit) like an avocado? And where exactly does one find a phone booth these days? Also, does he really care about privacy, given the overall tone of his movie? And considering Logan is billed as Hugh Jackman’s final Wolverine movie, will the back-and-forth between Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman ever come to fruition on the big screen itself? So many questions.

That Firefly poster tho…

What are you wanting to see in the next Deadpool movie? Let us know in comments!

Image: Fox

What are the odds?

THE LAST LAUGH Tries to Figure Out If Holocaust Jokes Are Ever Funny (Review)

When in doubt, open with a joke. That’s the route taken by Ferne Pearlstein’s The Last Laugh, which breaks the ice with a good-natured gag about the most amenable of subjects: Adolf Hitler. This particular quip, delivered in stereo by talking heads of Gilbert Gottfried and Rob Reiner, is hardly one of the more scandalizing of the documentary’s many–it involves two Jews staking out the führer’s house on a mission to assassinate him–but is also not the sort of yarn you’d spin in unfamiliar company. Other gags recited over the course of the feature veer edgier, but still make a case for their propriety when afforded the right time and place; others still test these bounds across the board, prompting critics to insist that such a devastating notion can never give way to comedy. So who’s right?

The Last Laugh spends its time hacking through the thick of that unnavigable grey haze, examining qualifiers like context and intent to determine if the indomitably tragic subject matter of the Holocaust can and should ever be joked about. The film enlists some of the world’s leading authorities in Jewish comedy, and on comedy in general, who fill out the wide margins of the discussion. We hear from comic icons like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner and contemporary provocateurs like Sarah Silverman and Jeffrey Ross, as well as The Simpsons‘ Harry Shearer and Seinfeld and Borat director Larry Charles, among a slew of others. All weigh in on questions of “too far,” each contributing a vantage point decidedly distinct from the last.

But perhaps the most intriguing perspective the movie spotlights is that of Renee Firestone, herself a Holocaust survivor whom The Last Laugh visits at home, accompanies to meet and relate with fellow survivors, and follows her back to the remains of the concentration camp that once imprisoned her. Though tethered personally to the tragedy in a way that the showcased comic minds aren’t, even Firestone is not without her own ethereal grey areas. No, she won’t laugh at Sarah Silverman’s shocking stand-up, but she will encourage her peers to trade in the dark shadows of the past for the joys of today.

The Last Laugh could conceivably stand to get even deeper (and darker) in its analysis, perhaps casting too wide a net to really dig to the core of any of its discussions. Still, comedy scholars and novices alike should delight in the exhumation of topics like Jerry Lewis’ never released film The Day the Clown Cried and the unaired Seinfeld episode about Elaine purchasing a gun. We hear polar opposite takes on the merits of Life is Beautiful and the shocking one-liners of the late Joan Rivers. And we get to watch Mel Brooks do a bit about Nazis mangling up his face with a roll of scotch tape. Tasteless? Funny? Somewhere in between? The Last Laugh lets you decide.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Images: The Film Collaborative/Journeyman Pictures, Comedy Central

LAVENDER Offers a Striking But Far From Shocking Thriller (Review)

Traumatic moments have the power to bend time, to freeze it, forcing us to feel trapped in that split-second that changes a life irreversibly, then seems to stretch on, tormenting us forever. So it’s fitting that such a moment–frozen and fraught–kicks off the psychological thriller Lavender, which follows an amnesiac down the rabbit hole to her long-repressed memories.

The film begins like a high-concept music video. On the dusty driveway outside a humble farmhouse, cops are gathered, expressions of shock on their frozen faces. The camera pushes us past them, inside the two-story family home to discover bodies draped in sheets stained red with blood. There are more policemen inside, they are bent over the corpses in static horror. All is still as we push on, the only sound a taunting tune from an unseen music box. Its song grows distorted and angry as it winds down, revealing the center of this chaos: a little girl, curled up, face speckled with blood, but alive, looking onto the carnage with an enigmatic expression.

This is Lavender co-writer/director Ed Gass-Donnelly‘s chilling and clever way to introduce audiences to the story of a photographer haunted by a past she can’t remember. In the next scene, the girl is fully grown with a family of her own, and Jane (Abbie Cornish) now chooses to freeze time, snapping photographs of abandoned houses for her art. But one fateful photo session unleashes ghosts who demand her return to the family farm. There, she must–at long last–face what went down that terrible day.

Along the way to the film’s big reveal, Jane’s precocious daughter whispers and wars with invisible playmates, warning her confused father (Diego Klattenhoff) of a mysterious beast. A dubious doctor’s (Justin Long) bizarre behavior sends Jane on a wild goose chase, and deep into a haystack maze. A long-estranged uncle (Dermot Mulroney) emerges to offer house keys and counsel, while mysterious presents, bound in red ribbon, trigger frightful flashbacks.

Regrettably, Lavender‘s strong start is also its high point. Beyond its unsettling intro, it steadily becomes a middling thriller.

Gass-Donnelly coaxes an eerie beauty out of the farmhouse setting. Jane’s stark white sun dress is set off against the green fields, and a red balloon feels miraculous and threatening within the careful staging of its discovery in a cornfield that seems at once beautiful and full of hidden threats. In these moments, the inventive helmer shows a playfulness with color and framing that makes the low-budget offering feel more like the glossier mid-budgeted studio offerings churned out in the late ’90s, the ones that all seemed to star Ashley Judd. Sadly, the story itself–crafted by Gass-Donnelly and Colin Frizzell–fizzles, failing to match the salacious surprises unveiled in sleek studio thrillers.

Promising ghosts, twists, and tragedy, Lavender has an intriguing jumping off point. But its journey becomes bogged down by clues that are ultimately arbitrary, offering no deeper meanings beyond being random props that bore witness to the crime. Likewise, Jane’s passion for photography loses relevance after the first act, and a subplot about her failing marriage is barely introduced before being abandoned entirely. The film’s climax does prove stomach-churningly disturbing, with Gass-Donnelly slowing the pacing to a purposefully cruel crawl, hearkening back to the torturous and tragedy-laced intro. But it’s also disappointingly predictable. If you think you’ve guessed it by the half-way point, you’re probably right.

Despite this underwhelming finale, the thriller might have fared better if its star power matched the caliber of Gass-Donnelly’s style. Sadly, Cornish gets lost too often staring into the mid-distance, and her onscreen husband offers plenty of brow furrowing and exasperation, but little else. These flat performances rob the film of the bit of oomph that might have made up what it lacks in storytelling. To their credit, Long and Mulroney try to bring some spark to the proceedings, one playing slickly suspicious, the other grizzled and gruff. But none of the performances offer the kind of carrying charisma to make Lavender standout from a pack of similar secret-laced stories.

2.5 out of 5 burritos

Images: Samuel Goldwyn Films

Fan Art Friday #106 – K-2SO, Scully, and More by Liana Kangas

Let’s celebrate the end of the work week with some art, shall we? Liana Kangas reached out to share her fan art with me and I was smitten faster than you can say ooh and aah. She takes characters she likes from pop culture and interprets them with her distinct style in dreamy watercolors. Look how dang snazzy Rogue One‘s K-2SO looks:

K-2SO (Rogue One)

I like this fan art. The captain said I had to. Just kidding: Cassian’s directives don’t sway me in any particular direction.

You can head on down to the gallery to be enchanted by more of Liana’s portraits. You’ll find Scully from The X-Files, Doctor Who‘s Tenth Doctor, and more. Keep up with her art on the regular by following Liana on Instagram, and if you want to see additional illustrations and maybe add some of them to your home, visit Liana on Etsy.

Do you create any sort of fan art? If so, I want to see it. Whether you focus on a specific fandom or pull inspiration from multiple stories and mediums, I’d like to highlight what you do. If you’re interested in being featured in a future edition of Fan Art Friday, get in touch with me at alratcliffe@yahoo.com with examples of your work. I’m not limited to traditional 2D art, so if you have crafts or bean art or whatever, share it. If you’re not an artist, feel free to email me with recommendations for Fan Art Friday!

Images: Liana Kangas

The Todd Glass Show #287: Graham Elwood

Todd is joined by the great Graham Elwood! Be sure to check out Ear Buds: The Podcast Documentary!

Like The Todd Glass Show on Facebook, follow @ToddGlass, Eric Ohlsen and Lyricist Joe on Twitter, buy his album Thin Pig and buy his book The Todd Glass Situation!