Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2177

Ommegang’s Newest GAME OF THRONES Beer Will Make You Declare Your House Loyalty

Whether you swear loyalty to the Starks, or you serve the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, or even if you’ve been secretly hoping that a Targaryen will retake the Iron Throne, there is one thing that can unite all of the Seven Kingdoms: Ommegang Brewery’s Game of Thrones beer, and the release of their latest brew is a call all of their bannermen will want to answer. One that won’t even require us to break a sacred vow to our favorite houses.

Today Ommegang and HBO announced the eighth addition to their line of Game of Thrones brews, the 9.0% ABV Bend the Knee Golden Ale, which they say has an “extreme drinkability” despite it’s “relatively high alcohol content.” Brewed with “pils malt and flaked oats,” along with three types of hops, they say it has a “subtle noble and floral hop contribution” along with the “the delicate flavors of honey.”

While Bend the Knee will be released on draft in select locations, it will come in three matte black, collectible 750ml bottles, which will be adorned with either the sigil of House Stark, House Lannister, or House Targaryen. The beer is exactly the same in all three, so you can simply choose which house you want to align with: the carpetbaggers that burn people with dragons, the greedy and ruthless monsters of the westerlands, or the noble, proud, and morally upstanding Northmen. (Guess which one I’m going to buy!)

Ommegang says the beer will be released around Memorial Day weekend, just in time for summer (which will help pass the wait until the later-than-normal season premiere), with a suggested retail price of $10.99 per bottle.

So even though an army of the dead is marching on the Wall while all of Westeros heads towards a massive battle between its Great Houses, at least we’ll have a new beer to enjoy while everything goes to seven hells.

What Game of Thrones beer from Ommegang has been your favorite so far? Which house bottle will you buy? Pour into our comments below and fill them up with your thoughts.

Images: Ommegang/HBO

Speaking of Next Season…

Super Bowl Spot for Alien Thriller LIFE Is Creepily Claustrophobic

Why do we gravitate toward stories that show us being attacked, eaten, or otherwise harassed by unknown alien life? It’s probably because the idea of malevolent aliens have stepped into the role of the monsters that still scare us. Years ago, humans were horrified by stories about vampires, werewolves, dragons, and other things that stayed in the shadows. These days, through the endless retelling of those stories and shedding of light into the darkest corners of the unknown world, we realize there’s no real reason to be scared. So, the things we were once afraid of can now have sex appeal, get us into basketball finals, and be trained for fun adventures. But we still need monsters and scary stories so where else is there to look? We still look into dark corners but it just so happens those are now in the endless reaches of unknown space. The new sci-fi alien thriller Life seems to have looked out there and found us something new to be scared of.

The latest trailer for the film, written by Deadpool co-writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, only shows us a bit more than previous trailers but manages to up our anxiety about what will play out during the film. What we know is that astronauts stumble upon some alien life and are initially elated by their discovery. That excitement, like most films with alien life, doesn’t last long when things immediately go south (or whatever the omnidirectional microgavity equivalent to south is).

We’re still unsure of what the final form of the alien will be as we don’t know if they’re going with The Thing‘s disguise model or something more akin to the Alien franchise. But what we are sure of is how terrifying it is to see the fear on the actors faces and how tight, claustrophobic, and purposely obstructed these shots appear to be. It seems we’re literally going to be faced with the fear each member of the crew experiences and have to wonder along with them as to what’s just out of their line of sight.

We’ll finally get some answers–and perhaps some new nightmares–when Life hits theaters March 24th 2017.

Are you psyched for this new film? Do vampires still scare you more than aliens? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Image: Columbia Pictures

LEGO Batman Is Super-Proud of His Wayne Manor on ‘Gotham Cribs’

We cannot get enough of  The Lego Batman Movie and our confidence that we’ll love it grows with every new glimpse of footage we see. One of the best parts of the first LEGO movie was Batman’s over-inflated ego and inability to keep his dual identities straight, and a whole movie of that sounds like perfection to us. Both of those qualities seem to be front and center in the new film, and they’re very apparent in this latest footage where Batman takes us through Wayne Manor à la the style of MTV Cribs.

In the clip, Manbruce Batwayne humblebrags us around Wayne Manor to show off everything he has. We get to see Batruce Wayneman’s grand ballroom with towering fireplaces, state of the art kitchen, extravagant dolphin-filled swimming pool, and a master bedroom fitted with an alarming amount of workout equipment. We’re then treated to a brief and unintentional look inside the Batcave as Robin and Alfred show up to further confuse Waynebat Bruceman and which identity he’s in at the moment.

What we love about the clip, other than Batman’s continual switches of identity in both costume and demeanor, is all the lovely LEGO eye candy. As with all LEGO animations, seeing the care put into how things are constructed (and with what pieces) is a major part of the fun. As is seeing the way animators deliberately construct things–let’s say–as naturally as possible. Nothing is particularly “perfect” in the LEGO world and it’s a joy to notice things like light shining through gaps in pieces that’s, in reality, completely deliberate in the animation process.

Those with keen eyes may also notice some of the very real art depicted in LEGO form on the walls of Wayne Manor. So far, we’ve spotted Joseph Ducreux’s self portrait, Whistler’s Mother, and Édouard Manet’s 1882 A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. We really hope those are replicas, though, because the real ones should be in LEGO versions of The Louvre,  Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Courtauld Gallery in London respectively.

What do you think of Gotham Cribs? Spot any other notable pieces of art? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Images: Warner Bros. Pictures

What’s going on with non-LEGO Batman?

24: LEGACY Has the Right Ingredients, but Bad Timing (Review)

24: Legacy has all the right ingredients to make it a hit with longtime 24 fans: a strong hero ready to save the day by any means necessary, a mole hunt inside of CTU, a snarky, funny agent to add comic relief to the tense day, high-octane action scenes, and an intriguing White House plot all woven together to make a gripping thriller told in real time. On the surface, that all sounds like the makings of a hit TV show. And the 24 revival really could have been great … but it’s not. And here’s the thing: it’s really not the fault of the writing, the acting, or anything about the show itself. 24: Legacy‘s downfall is simply the time in which it’s premiering.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: right now, our country is a mess, and that unfortunately causes you to view 24: Legacy with much more critical eyes. Where we are in the political climate highlights all of 24: Legacy‘s shortcomings in a truly horrible way. If the world were different, the flaws really wouldn’t seem so bad. But having the ruthless, violent, killing-machine villains be Islamic terrorists out for revenge on the Army Ranger squad that assassinated a terrorist sheikh feels like it only stokes the fire of how Muslims are currently being negatively portrayed in the media.

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Where the original 24 often came under fire for its portrayal of Muslims in a post-9/11 world, now it just seems like the show is leaning in to the harmful stereotypes being perpetuated in this “fake news” world. Maybe that wasn’t the intent of the writers, but again, it’s not their fault. How could they have known that one of our country’s most controversial executive orders would be issued only days before this revival premiered?

Unfortunately (which seems to be the word of this review!), the stereotypes don’t just end there. One of the Rangers being hunted is a homeless veteran suffering from PTSD, and instead of taking the time to responsibly tell his story of how his actions as a soldier led to him suffering from mental illness, immediately in the series premiere he’s painted as a corrupt bad guy. Our hero Eric Carter (Corey Hawkins) has an older brother who’s a gang leader, running drugs and guns in the inner-city. There’s even a plot with a Chechnyan sleeper cell in a high school, only adding to the fear of homegrown terrorism leaking into everyday, “safe” places like your science class or next door neighbor in suburbia.

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But like I said earlier, it’s not all bad. There is still the gripping tension that comes with the iconic ticking clock and split-screen transitions as the show moves in real-time. There’s the classic mole hunt in CTU, igniting paranoia in both the agents and viewers. Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) is back and plays a key role in the season.

Even the political plot woven into the CTU intrigue has a modern feminist update, as Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto) struggles with her promise to step down from acting head of CTU to help her husband, Latino Senator John Donovan (Jimmy Smits), to campaign for President of the United States. The hero at the center of the show is now a black man instead of a white man.

My criticism may sound harsh, but I didn’t hate 24: Legacy. As I’m a huge fan of the show’s original run—Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is and always will be my hero—it was still enjoyable for me to dive back into this world. But no matter how many wins 24: Legacy can claim, the fact of the matter is that it’s premiering at a time when reality is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to politics and terrorism. Maybe there is still a way to make a 24 revival work for the world right now, but this certainly isn’t it.

Are you excited to see a new version of 24 in 24: Legacy? Disagree with my thoughts? Let me know! Tweet me @SydneyBucksbaum.

2 burritos out of 5

Images: FOX

24: Legacy premieres Sunday, Feb. 5 on FOX at approximately 10:30 p.m. ET or whenever the Super Bowl ends, so set those DVRs accordingly.

Toy Fair First Look: IRONHEART Takes Flight in Her First Diamond Select Diorama (Exclusive)

Toy Fair is just around the corner: that most wonderful time of the year when all the major toy companies we love showcase many of their wares for the years to come, in hopes of encouraging both retailer interest and media attention. We are more than happy to provide the latter, especially when it’s for something as cool as this. Riri Williams, at one time the new Iron Man, is now Ironheart, and her first ever piece of collectible merchandise is this PVC diorama by Diamond Select, which will be on display at their Toy Fair booth.

(Click images to enlarge.)

“Levitating above a technological base on a swirl of energy, Riri Williams wears her homemade Ironheart armor in this approximately 11-inch PVC sculpture.” The genius-level 15 year-old has been endorsed by Tony stark as a superhero, because of course he takes any type of inspiration as sincere flattery. Frankly, though, there are times we’d trust Ms. Williams more with our lives. Phil Jimenez sculpted this graceful statue, who looks a bit like she’s doing the Jupiter Ascending sky-surf (Yeah, some of us liked that movie. Unabashedly).

If you’re not at Toy Fair, you’ll have to wait until this summer to see Ironheart at your local comic or specialty retailer, and she’ll retail for around $45. That’s a bargain in exchange for a mighty ‘heart.

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Action figures have got to be next, right? And T-shirts for all genders at the Disney Store? We sure hope so. If this one sells, we’ll find out soon enough. Can your life use a little more Riri? Let us  know in comments below.

Images: Diamond Select

Get Inspired by Disney-Pixar Storybook Art (Exclusive)

If you’re a Pixar fan, there’s a high probability that you’ve tried to speak whale during a trip to the aquarium, yelled out “To infinity and beyond!” while driving on an open road, or maybe even thought about tying balloons to your house and flying away. And though we’ve watched these scenes play out time and again onscreen, we can see them take new form courtesy of Disney’s Magic of Storytelling.

For more than 80 years, Disney artists have transplanted the beauty of their films into the pages of books. Leading up to Disney Reads Day on February 4th, Disney is digging into their vault to reveal rarely seen storybook art from their Pixar archives. Nerdist is excited to share seven exclusive pieces inspired by the classic Disney-Pixar films Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Ratatouille, Cars, and UP.

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In these images you’ll see Lightning McQueen vrooming around the race track, while Woody, Jessie and Buzz tear through on a wild adventure. Marlin and Dory meet up with a few sharp-toothed friends, and Wall-E flies through space and enjoys a sunset with Eve. The Disney-Pixar animation shines through as Remy looks out over Paris rooftops and Carl Fredricksen’s balloon-powered house takes off into the sky.

If you’re inspired by these storybook pieces (I’m partial to detailed background, myself), fans are encouraged to post shelfies (a selfie photo with your favorite book or bookshelf) for a good cause. For each shelfie posted to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #MagicOfStorytelling, a book will be directed to an organization in need through First Book. From now through March 31, Disney will donate up to one million books to educators and children in low-income communities.

Check out the exclusive artwork in the gallery below.

Which Disney-Pixar art is your favorite? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to post your shelfie on social media to help encourage reading!

Images: Disney

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Get New Dancing Groot and Comic-Based Figures

Toy retailers were nervous and cautious when it came to the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, not knowing whether the weirdest Marvel Studios movie thus far was going to be as solid a hit as those featuring familiar heroes. As a result, many of us collectors failed to even complete the team or build Groot when–ironically–the Iron Man figure Hasbro added to the toy line as a “sure thing” ended up clogging the pegs, while Rocket Raccoon sold out immediately. There’ll be no such chaos this time: now that popular culture and fandom have embraced the Guardians completely, you can expect a galaxy’s worth of toys to invade your favorite retailers. We’ve already seen the first wave of Hasbro Marvel Legends, and wondered why Baby Groot wasn’t included, but now we see some of the bigger plans for that particular character, namely an 11.5″ dancing figure who can be preordered starting Feb. 15th.

(Nice of them to wait until after Valentine’s Day, so your significant other won’t be jealous of all the time you spend playing with it.)

Baby Groot features light-up eyes and sounds, namely an audio clip of “Come a Little Bit Closer” that he can dance to. Prefer your own soundtrack? He’ll dance to just about anything. Yes, even [insert name of artist or band you think “isn’t real music” here]. He retails for around $34.99, and batteries are included.

Also coming at the end of this month are comic-based figures of the core five Guardians from Diamond Select, allowing you to preorder and/or grab the whole team at once. Seen first at Toyark, Groot, Drax, Star-Lord, and a Rocket/Gamora two-pack come in the comic outfits that most closely resemble their movie counterparts, and feature multiple accessories like interchangeable hands, alternate heads, and interlocking base diorama pieces. Each figure has 16 points of articulation, though it should be noted that some of these early images are prototypes and don’t all showcase the final full poseability.

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Considering that Diamond usually only ships out one Marvel figure at a time, this is a rare chance to not have to worry whether or not initial sales justify making all the key characters. So come and get your toy love.

Check out more images of Baby Groot and the Diamond Select figures in our gallery below. Are you gonna make like Benicio del Toro and try to be a collector of them all? Let us know in comments.

Images: Hasbro and Diamond Select Toys

Not All Quadcopters Need Rotors; This One Flies With Magnets

There’s been an incredible proliferation of drones and quadcopters that aim to take over the skies, but all of them have use blades or balloons in order to fight the pull of gravity. In his latest video, Derek Muller, host of the YouTube channel Veritasium, takes a look at another, less obvious, method for getting things off the ground: spinning magnets.

Muller, the science edutainer who’s explored everything from new ways of thinking about quantum mechanics to how to burn off arm hair with lasers, looks at an Electromagnetic Levitation Quadcopter in his latest video, as well as how the principles it demonstrates may be used by future transportation technologies like the hyperloop.

The quadcopter is shown off by Casey Handmer, a “levitation engineer” from Hyperloop One, as well as a seated man who apparently can’t stop giggling at the wonder that is electromagnetism. (Hyperloop One, you may recall, is the company that nailed its proof-of-concept test for the new type of transportation back in May of 2016.)

In the clip above, Muller breaks down how Handmer’s EM quadcopter works, and it all comes down to magnetic fields. Muller notes that the 105-pound contraption is able to lift itself into the air thanks to the electromagnetic interaction between four spinning magnet arrays and a sheet of copper.

“Any time a conductor experiences a changing magnetic field, electric currents are induced in it, which create a magnetic field to oppose that change,” Muller says, “and in this case, the spinning magnetics induce currents in the copper sheet.”

Muller describes this particular configuration of magnets, known as a Halbach Array, at around minute three in the video.

Muller brings up the issue of two north magnets repelling each other and falling off so to speak, but Handmer notes that that doesn’t happen in the case of the Electromagnetic Levitation Quadcopter because “the magnetic fields that are induced in the copper sheet are a mirror image of the applied magnetic field [the one produced by the spinning magnets]” and that the effect happens fast enough that the current induced in the copper sheet simply follows around the spinning magnets.

Although we probably won’t see any EM quadcopters shooting spectacular aerial footage any time soon, this demonstration does show how electromagnetic levitation may lead to super fast transportation, which would be so perfect for a new network of underground tunnels…

What are your thoughts on this beastly magnetic floater? Let us know in the comments below!

Images: Veritasium

This Swedish Brewery Created the Ultimate Shower Beer

There are two groups of people in the world: the first group are the unfortunate few who have never enjoyed a “shower beer,” which, in case you don’t know, is literally just a beer that you drink while taking a shower, and the second group are people who have experienced true nirvana. For reasons that are almost impossible to explain, shower beers are just the best. The absolute best.

And they are about to get even better.

That’s because the Swedish brewery PangPang has teamed up with the Snask Creative Agency to officially bring the world Shower Beer, a handmade “sweet but strong pale ale.” With it’s higher-than-average 10% alcohol content and smaller bottle size, Shower Beer is meant to maximize the shower drinking experience by giving you more punch in less volume, since steam, hot water, and various body cleaning liquids do not exactly make beer taste better.

We first learned about this very important contribution to mankind at Tasting Table, and the way they conditioned this beer for enjoying when you shampoo your hair is by making the size of the glass bottle only 16 centiliters (that works out to about 5.4 ounces), which is obviously much smaller than a normal beer.

Which means some of us will need to take three or four them into the shower with us.

But if you’re wondering what the hell you are supposed to do with only five ounces of beer, these are meant to be imbibed when you are pre-gaming, according to its creators. “It’s meant to kickstart your night in four sips in the shower,” says Snask. That is ideal for those of you that are always running late, because this way you can get yourself clean at the same time you start to get yourself plastered. (We’re just joking, don’t do anything stupid; drink responsibly, especially if you’re in a slippery place like a shower.)

Of course, despite how much I fully endorse improving the shower beer experience, and no matter how much I want need to get my hands on these, there’s one obvious, major problem with this product: it comes in a glass bottle. Taking glass into your hot, wet, soapy bathtub? That’s an amateur move, like something we’d expect from someone trying their first shower beer on New Year’s Eve.

Those worries didn’t stop the first batch from completely selling out immediately though (dang it), but don’t worry, a second batch is already being made (woohoo!), so keep your eye out for when those go on sale.

Although, now that mankind has worked towards making the already wonderful experience of a shower beer even better, we would really like someone to work on the “cold bathroom tile floor where we foolishly try to have one more drink at the end of the night” beer.

That is the beer we really need to improve.

Do you want to drink one of these beers while you’re rinsing off in the shower, or does the glass bottle get you all in a lather? Crack open a cold one and hop into our comments section below to tell us what you think.

Images: Snask Creative Agency

Slow-Mo Video of an Internal Combustion Engine is a Spectacular Dance of Flame

Every day, upwards of 1 billion vehicles are out there chugging along on the world’s roads, and almost all of them utilize internal combustion engines (ICEs) to create the force that turns their wheels. And even though fully electric vehicles will hopefully start to outnumber ICE vehicles sometime soon, it’s still downright thrilling to watch a literal explosion do mechanical work. Especially super slow-mo work.

SmarterEveryDay’s Destin Sandlin went to Cinnaminson, New Jersey (mmmmmm Cinnaminson buns) for his most recent video to visit with the team behind the YouTube Channel 805RoadKing. Why? Because they have an internal combustion engine with a see-through cap. And when a see-through internal combustion engine meets a super slow-mo camera, magical things happen.

What Sandlin is showing in super slow-mo is how a four-stroke engine works. The strokes of the engine are the four different phases of a mechanical/chemical process that amounts to a continuous up-and-down motion that’s transformed into forward motion by a series of gears so that your car, truck, or SHERP ATV can move forward.

Sandlin provides a super clear diagram of the four strokes, which includes the intake stroke, the compression stroke, the power stroke, and the exhaust stroke:

What’s absolutely mind-blowing is that inside an ICE vehicle, which may have anywhere from 1 to 16 cylinders, this process is going on hundreds of times a second. In the case of something like the Ariel Atom, a full four-stroke cycle can happen something like 5,300 times a minute, which is half of the Atom’s 10,600 rpm redline. (The rpm number is halved because two revolutions of the vehicle’s crankshaft equals one full stroke cycle.)

What do you think about the magical mechanical process that is internal combustion engines? Are you going to think about the cacophony of explosions underneath the hood of your car differently now? Let us know in the comments below!

Images: SmarterEveryDay