Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2202

We Now Officially Know What Kind of Car Homer Simpson Drives

We’ve had The Simpsons in our lives since 1989, and for those 28 years, Homer has driven the same car (aside from a few exceptions because the show has done everything): That junky, boxy, pink sedan. It’s been one of them most recognizable vehicles in popular culture for the past few decades now, and yet, we haven’t known just what kind of vehicle it actually is, and while fans have tried, nobody’s been able to come up with a concrete answer.

Thankfully, the show itself has come through, as in the most recent episode, Pork and Burns, it’s revealed that the car is a 1986 Plymouth Junkerolla (via Jalopnik).

Previously, fans believed that the car was a 1973 Plymouth Valiant (although the show has previously said the car was made in Croatia from old Soviet tanks). Let’s compare the two:

We see the resemblance, but as the car-savvy folks at Jalopnik point out, the car being a 1986 Plymouth model makes sense as it does look a lot like a Plymouth Reliant (which by the way, is the same car driven by Principal Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). As they put it, “I remember these cars well, as one of my best friends in high school had a hand-me-down one, and I can confidently say they’re one of the saddest, most miserable boxes of crap you’d ever have the misfortune of driving, slowly and painfully. That means it’s the perfect platform for Homer’s car.”

Jalopnik goes on more about how and why this fictitious vehicle probably came about based on real-world cars and parts, so read up more on that here.

Images: Fox, The Truth About Cars

Watch the Nintendo Switch Stream Right Now

Today’s the big day, folks!  The big N will finally be revealing more juicy information about their next console, the Nintendo Switch, via The Nintendo Switch Presentation 2017. We got our first official look at the new hybrid hardware back in October with a three minute clip demonstrating how the machine is capable of evolving from a home console to a mobile platform simply by undocking the tablet-like device. But of course, that was only to whet your appetite for the futuristic gaming rig. Tonight is Nintendo’s first opportunity to really sell the Switch to everyone. The stream is set to kick off at 8 p.m. PST/ 11 p.m. ET this evening. Lucky for you fine peeps, you can watch it above when it goes live.

We suspect the stream will dive head first into the Switch’s specs, features, and finally reveal when we can expect the console to hit shelves. There will likely be a few game reveals as well with a Treehouse Live event scheduled for tomorrow at 6:30 a.m/9:30 a.m. that gives a more in-depth look at the upcoming titles featured in tonight’s presentation. As for the the console itself, we know that it can do that nifty transformation trick where it switched from a home console to a handheld. We also know that the tablet aspect is actually the console itself, and slides into the dock to stream your games to your TV.

If the mega-Japanese gaming company hits the right price point and reveals some sick launch titles, I suspect the hype for the Switch will grow exponentially. For a rundown of what we hope to see on the new hardware, check out this post right here.

What games do you expect Nintendo to reveal tonight? What price point would make you consider buying the Switch? Are there any hardware features you want to see implemented? Are you already set to pre-order the console no matter the stream tonight? Drop your thoughts in the comments section below!

Image: Nintendo

THE 100 Gets a Confusing New Season 4 Trailer, and More TV News

When it’s end times, that means it’s time to party, right? While the world may be ending on The 100, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the latest trailer The CW debuted online. Speaking of, FOX has also released new videos for the Prison Break revival and 24: Legacy, and Syfy’s The Magicians served up a magical first look at the dangerous world of Fillory. That’s only just a sampling of everything that happened on TV in the past day. Check out your daily TV-Cap below for all your TV news in one handy place.

It’s the end of the world as we know it. Fans of The 100 have become a hard and tough crew thanks to constantly having to say goodbye to their favorite characters in the most bloody, brutal way. The world is literally about to end in a nuclear meltdown on The CW’s post-apocalyptic-turned-pre-apocalyptic drama, so we’re already mentally preparing for a deadly season four. But when the network revealed the latest season four trailer, we were a little … well, confused is probably the right word. That’s because the way the video is cut together with the cheerful background music makes every kill, every ominous shot seem almost like a party. Check it out for yourself and let us know if you’re as confused as we are. February 1 can’t come soon enough! [Nerdist]

Not all superheroes wear capes. Who’s ready for another comic book series on TV? FOX is near a pilot order for action-adventure X-Men series from Burn Notice creator Matt Nix. According to Deadline, a pilot pickup is expected in the next week or two. The as-yet-untitled series is about two ordinary parents who discover their children possess mutant powers and are subsequently forced to go on the run from a hostile government. The family joins up with an underground network of mutants and must fight to survive.

Not your normal happily-ever-after. Our favorite witches and wizards on The Magicians may have found Fillory and become its royal rulers in season one, but their new job is not all it’s cracked up to be. As they’ll find out in season two, premiering January 25, Fillory may be more dangerous than the normal world. “Something is seriously wrong with this place. Magic is dying. And we can’t let that happen,” Penny says ominously in this new season two trailer. As if the Beast wasn’t enough of a problem for them to face. [The MarySue]

Batman’s back. Hey Gotham fans, has this winter hiatus been hard on you? It’s almost over: FOX’s DC Comics series returns this Monday, January 16. And now the network has set the spring return date as well! After another short run this winter, Gotham will return Monday, April 24 … and will possibly feature none other than iconic Batman baddie Ra’s al Ghul! The 100 villain Raymond J. Barry has been cast in a mysterious recurring role that sounds a lot like Ra’s, if you ask us. Check out the character description and tell us if we’re wrong. [Nerdist]

He’s baaaaack! Apparently you can’t keep a good meth dealer down. Breaking Bad baddie Gus Fring lives again on Better Call Saul … maybe. This new trailer is giving us hope that the fan-favorite character is going to show up on the prequel series. [Nerdist]

He’s no Jack Bauer. 24: Legacy is already doing its best to separate itself from all previous seasons of 24 by making its lead character pretty much the exact opposite of Jack Bauer. But let’s be real — that’s going to be difficult. Jack Bauer casts quite a long shadow. [Nerdist]

Thank you, Barry Allen. Did you know that without The Flash reuniting Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell then we’d never have a new season of Prison Break? Turns out that reminiscing on set of The CW’s superhero drama was what led the onscreen brothers to push for a revival of their fan-favorite FOX drama. What a time to be alive! [Nerdist]

What do you think of all of today’s TV news? Tweet me your thoughts and opinions at @SydneyBucksbaum!

Featured Image: The CW

BATMAN and THE FLASH Will Watch the WATCHMEN In New Crossover Storyline

The era of DC Rebirth began with the implication that the characters from Alan Moore‘s Watchmen existed in the realm of DC’s multiverse, and that one of the main characters from that classic story may have actually been responsible for the New 52. And somehow, the Comedian’s bloody button ended up in the Batcave wall. While we may have to wait for Geoff Johns’ comic book return for resolution to this plot, Batman and the Flash are taking matters into their own hands.

DC has revealed that the Batman and The Flash ongoing series are launching a four-part crossover storyline in April called “The Button.” According to DC’s description, “the two greatest detectives in the DC Universe unite to unravel the mystery behind a certain blood stained smiley face button stuck in the Batcave wall. However, what begins as a simple investigation soon turns deadly when the secrets of the button prove irresistible to an unwelcome third party, and it’s not who anyone suspects. This is a mystery woven throughout time, and the countdown starts here!”

There’s something everyone should consider about the button: neither Batman nor the Flash have any idea what it’s real significance is. The Comedian’s logo looks just like a smiley face to them, and they’re more interested in figuring out how it came to be in the Batcave. Since Doctor Manhattan has apparently been responsible for the changes in their history, he’s got to be considered the main suspect. However, it seems just as equally possible that the button was left by someone else who meant for Batman to find it. The question now is who would do that and why? Perhaps Doctor Manhattan isn’t the only God-like being playing games with the lives of the DC heroes.

“The Button” will run through Batman #21 & #22 and The Flash #21 & #22. Tom King and artist Jason Fabok will handle the Batman issues, while Joshua Williamson and artist Howard Porter will be the creative team on The Flash‘s contribution to the crossover. Each issue of the crossover will also have “special lenticular covers.”

Are you excited to see more of the Watchmen characters in the DC Universe? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: DC Comics

How THE AMERICANS Keeps Current Events From Clouding the Cold War Drama

There’s no question that in our present political climate, The Americans is more topical than ever. But executive producers Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields prefer to keep their critically acclaimed FX drama as separate as they can from today’s news so as to preserve its period nature.

“We try to stay in a bubble because we don’t want anybody to ever feel the people doing this show were watching current events. You can’t do that with a period show. If it were a current show, then we could let them all in, but in a period show it has to feel totally separate,” Weisberg told a small group of reporters following a panel for season five at the Television Critics Association 2017 winter press tour.

But that doesn’t mean you won’t continue to see parallels between the Jennings’ ’80s and today. “The show being what the show is about, it’s in automatically,” he said, adding that there wasn’t really any prescience on his part when he created the series. “All the operations they’re being accused of running are operations we’ve been running on the show. That’s through no effort or genius of ours, that’s just if you do a show about Russian espionage and it’s in the news, it’s in your show.”

Naturally, though, it does feel a little bit satisfying to know that their work is extra-topical. “There’s something in a twisted way that’s kind of fun about seeing all this stuff in the headlines that we’re trafficking in all the time—in a very twisted way,” Weisberg said on the panel, “but on the other hand, as you all recall from when we sat here [at our first panel] many years ago, the initial idea of the show was really to say, ‘Hey, look, these people who we think of enemies are really just like us.’ That was a more peaceful time in U.S.-Russian relations and to see things have spiraled so out of control frankly just doesn’t feel so good.”

But the lessons in The Americans aren’t necessarily specifically about Russia. “It seems like what we were saying within the show may be more specifically relevant with regards to Russia, but that [is] coincidental because we thought we were saying it just with regards to a generic enemy,” Weisberg said later, “and how important it is to remember that our enemies are human, and that those cultures we believe are out to get us somehow are comprised of human beings who aren’t that different than we are, whether or not we agree with them. And it’s surprising to find that that’s people from Russia again, but that lives in the show as it is in the ’80s as it did before any of this happened.”

While the showrunners have been told that President Obama watches the show, they haven’t heard if President-Elect Donald Trump or Vladmir Putin have seen it. “But they can feel free to let us know if they’ve been watching and enjoying, that would be super cool too,” Fields said.

Speaking of the PEOTUS, he was a public figure in the 1980s—but don’t expect to see any old news footage of him on The Americans. “Ironically, if Donald Trump hadn’t become…the president-elect and soon-to-be president, we might’ve been able to do that,” Fields said. “Now, I can’t imagine—we can’t imagine—any way of doing that that wouldn’t seem absurdly self-conscious.”

But here’s what we will see in season five, which premieres March 7. The first episode introduces Elizabeth and Philip’s latest disguises, revisits Philip’s son, checks in on Oleg back in Russia, and gives plenty of insight into Paige’s journey as she grapples with the fact that her parents are Russian spies. And poor, neglected Henry gets a storyline this year too!

“We feel we’ve got a good Henry story cooking. After many years of being asked, ‘What about Henry? Why [aren’t you] doing anything with Henry, you idiots?’ And we always say we love Henry but the problem is more about finding space, and we found a little bit more space for Henry this year,” Weisberg said after the panel.

As for Paige, Holly Taylor says that her character’s journey might not see her become an operative any time soon. “It’s very hard for her to just start jumping on the bandwagon of killing people and putting them in a suitcase,” she joked on the panel.

The Americans returns to FX on March 7th. Are you looking forward to it? Let us know in the comments below,

Images: FX

Puck Soup #33: Erin Darke

Greg and Dave welcome actress Erin Darke to the podcast to talk about her beloved Detroit Red Wings and die-hard hockey fandom; how she converted boyfriend Daniel Radcliffe into a puckhead; and life tips for smuggling things into games. Plus, breaking down NHL All-Star snubs, debating the virtue of Jonathan Toews, modern players among the Top 100 of All-Time, is Alex Ovechkin traveled back in time to win Stanley Cups, Russian spying, Martin Short, our favorite condiments, Patrik Laine and much more. Sponsored by Seat Geek!

Follow @wyshynski, @davelozo and @PuckSoupPodcast on Twitter!

How THE FLASH Made PRISON BREAK’s Return Possible

Get ready to start deciphering Michael Scofield’s (Wentworth Miller) crazy riddles, puzzles and clues all over again, because almost 12 years after Prison Break first premiered, the FOX series is making its big return with an all-new season. The limited run event series is reuniting Scofield with his brother Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) and his longtime love Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies), plus his allies and enemies for one last adventure spanning the globe. Sure, Michael died at the end of season four, which ended back in 2009, but that won’t stop the showrunners from resurrecting the fan-favorite series with all the key players, himself including.

When clues surface that suggest a previously thought-to-be-dead Michael may be alive, his brother Lincoln reunites with Michael’s wife Sara to engineer the series’ biggest escape ever, as three of Fox River State Penitentiary’s most notorious escapees, Sucre (Amaury Nolasco), T-Bag (Robert Knepper) and C-Note (Rockmund Dunbar), are pulled back into the action. The FOX series has always been a hit both critically and in the ratings, but it actually took Miller and Purcell’s reunion onThe Flash to get talks of this rebooted Prison Break season going.

“That is where Dom and I had our reunion,” Miller said at the 2017 Winter Television Critics Association press tour. “We hadn’t seen each other for about five years. Suddenly we were back on set, talking about old times and out of that conversation came the idea of possibility of revisiting Prison Break.”

After Miller and Purcell put their weight behind their idea, creator/writer/executive producer Paul T. Scheuring helped make their dream a reality.

“The initial impetus came from Wentworth and Dominic and then trickled over to me,” Scheuring said. “In the new era of television, people are much more open to limited runs and event series. Knowing that and them coming to me saying, ‘Let’s do a limited run,’ I said, ‘That’s worth doing. Twenty-two episodes is not worth doing.’ We tell a very tight, close-ended story as to why Michael might possibly be alive. It took me back about 2500 years in literature but I found a reason why.”

The limited run was supposed to be 10 episodes in total, but wound up being only nine. “We had 15 weeks to shoot the whole thing and at the end of the day we just didn’t have enough time to shoot it all,” Scheuring said. “So two episodes became one.”

While the cast members are as excited as the fans are to return to these characters and this world, they promise it will offer up something new and isn’t just a continuation of the story from season four.

“There was a sense of risk-taking that I felt before, but you’ll really see in different episodes,” Knepper said. “This wasn’t a reboot, it was a rebirth. It felt great discovering things all over again.”

And speaking of different, Miller revealed that Michael’s going to look a little different on the outside this season, not to mention on the inside. “Different set of tattoos and they serve a slightly different purpose, that’s all I’ll say,” Miller said. “I’m not sure there’s any topping the original. This one, I think, stands on its own.”

Another major part of the show that will be different is Michael and Sara’s love story. For one, she thinks he’s been dead for seven years. For another, she is now married to someone new: a new character, Jacob Ness (Mark Feuerstein).

“I’m her guy now!” Feuerstein said with a laugh. “There’s no Michael.”

Callies added with a smile, “It’s an awkward situation.”

But according to Scheuering, Jacob isn’t just an obstacle in the way of Michael and Sara’s inevitable romantic reunion.

“I wouldn’t make it as simple as, ‘Tension ensues…,'” Scheuering said. “It’s too easy for Mark to be the foil because obviously the audience wants to see Michael and Sara together. It was critical that we have somebody that was potentially fallout from that, a noble character who finds himself, despite his own emotion and his own vested interest in the game, actually helping Sara to facilitate Michael’s escape. The noble part of his soul says, ‘I have to do the right thing and help this guy escape. But if I do that, I effectively might lose my wife too.’ We want to create those kinds of complexities within the narrative.”

Even if Jacob wasn’t in the picture, things wouldn’t be all sunshine and daisies for Michael and Sara if they were to come face-to-face after seven years.

“The question when that reunion comes, there’s a lot of water under the bridge, namely from Sara Scofield,” Callies said. “‘If you have been alive, why haven’t you raised our son? Where have you been? I almost died from grief and if you were there … ‘ Those are a lot of questions that make it unlikely that it would be a reunion where people run and fall into each other’s arms.”

As for returning fan-favorite villain T-Bag, he’s finally going to become whole again when he gets a bionic prosthetic hand. “It’s all based on real prosthetic technology,” Scheuering said. “There’s a reason within the narrative of why he gets it. It does have a dramatic reason for being on the show.”

And C-Note will have a completely new lifestyle when Lincoln seeks him out: he found faith.

“C-Note has been a chameleon from the very beginning,” Dunbar said. “C-Note has been on a hunt for happiness for quite some time. To find a lifestyle, to find his path in life has just been absolutely beautiful. Once Dominic’s character finds him and changes it all, he really needs to make a decision how far does he really want to go down this rabbit hole. He takes a journey and what you guys end up seeing is really beautiful.”

The new season of Prison Break returns Tuesday, April 4 at 9 p.m. on FOX. What are you most excited to see from the new season of Prison Break? Tweet me your thoughts and opinions at @SydneyBucksbaum!

Images: FOX

 

Brighten Your Day with HAMILTON’s Daveed Diggs Singing ‘Rubber Ducky’

Sometimes you just need a good pick-me-up and having the internet sure does help a lot with that. Without it, we might not have ever been aware that January 13 is National Rubber Ducky Day, nor that the Sesame Street YouTube Channel is already celebrating it in spectacular fashion.

By now, you’re likely on your… at least second viewing of Hamilton‘s Daveed Diggs breathing some new life into the song with some updated lyrics and a modern beat. And, if you’re anything like us, your face is probably starting to hurt from the ear-to-ear smile that’s not likely to go away when you realize that Sesame Street has complied an an entire rubber ducky series to brighten your day (week/month/year/rest of your life). Along with the updated version by Diggs, you can enjoy all sorts ducky-related tunes including classic renditions of the song by Bert or Little Richard, and even the reggae dance-hall tune “Do De Duckie.”

Hearing Diggs’ version with the new verses just makes us want this formula applied to all manner of Sesame tunes. We can’t even put a number on the amount of money we’d give to see Lin-Manuel Miranda rap through a song like “One of These Things is Not Like the Other” or, better yet, a modern version of the OG classic “Put Down the Duckie.” For real, Sesame Street; make… this… happen!

How will you be celebrating National Rubber Ducky Day? What other Sesame songs would you want to see performed by Hamilton actors? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Image: Sesame Street

Schlock & Awe: X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES

Sometimes you go in to watching a movie and, based on title, era, and/or director, you more or less have an idea of what the movie’s going to be. This is especially true of genre pictures made in the ’60s and ’70s, when a movie needed to be weird, or salacious (or a little bit trashy if they didn’t have the budget), in order to ensure that movie made money. So when I sat down to watch Roger Corman‘s 1963 movie X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, I said “Yep, I know what this will be to the letter.” Boy was I mistook. It’s weird, sure, but it’s also existential and metaphysical and deeply troubling—you know, a sci-fi movie from the early ’60s.

Roger Corman is an incredibly prolific filmmaker. On top of the over 400 films he’s produced, he’s directed almost 60 movies, and most of those were during an incredibly prolific period making cheapies for AIP between 1955 and 1970. At his peak, he was churning out around four movies per year. In 1963 alone, Corman had five movies released including two of his Edgar Allan Poe cycle. (That sounds like a lot, but in 1957, he had nine movies come out.) While working on such a short turnaround schedule and small budget, the chances for stinkers was high, which is why it’s especially impressive when a number of these movies ended up being great. X is certainly one of those.

Written by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes has a simple enough premise: Dr. James Xavier (Oscar-winner Ray Milland, who made a number of great movies for Corman) wants to help more people and using current X-Ray technology, he feels like he and other surgeons are actually missing what truly ails people. If he could see directly into a person without vivisecting them, he reckons hundreds of lives could be saved. He begins working on an experimental treatment where he drops radioactive liquid into his eyes in the hopes that it would allow him to look into the human body.

It works, to a degree, and he is able to see through people and he impresses his colleague and love interest Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana van der Vlis), though she worries about how much he’s using. His other colleague and friend Dr. Brant (Harold J. Stone) is equally worried. The problem with the effect on his eyes is that it’s wildly erratic. Sometimes he can see through a person’s torso, sometimes through walls, other times—in an obligatory scene of people doing ’60s dance crazes at a party—he can see through people’s clothes, like all those kids who sent away for X-Ray specs from the back of comic books wished would happen.

When the downside happens, though, it goes downhill fast. Dr. Xavier clashes with a superior about the best course of action on a surgical patient, despite X’s seeing the real problem. He loses his temper. Then, when Dr. Brant attempts to reverse the effects via hypodermic, X accidentally knocks his friend out the window to his death. Now a fugitive from the law, and unable to turn off the x-ray eyes, he ends up months later at a pier carnival as a “psychic” run by the shady con man Crane (Don Rickles, who is seriously great and skeevy in the movie) who wants X to use his “gift” to lure naive yokels into getting help for money. But X can’t help people, “I can only see!”

While the general idea for the movie sounds like—and was intended to be—pretty gimmicky, it begins to transcend that and get very heady, psychedelic, and metaphysical at a time when those things were still years away from being commonplace. At a certain point, X begins to say that he can’t sleep because he can always see through his eyelids. He has to wear increasingly thicker and darker sunglasses just to keep from going mad. He can see through cards at to cheat playing Blackjack but that’s only when wearing unfathomably thick lenses. He can see people’s skeletons and eventually says he can see into the dark center of the universe. It gets incredibly bleak.

Something I always admire, even if it doesn’t quite get pulled off, is when a writer’s ideas aren’t tamped down by budgetary constraints. On such a small budget, doing something so out-there means the visual effects in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes aren’t always the best, but I appreciate what they attempted. There’s weird ring effects used to show what he’s seeing, and eventually some multicolored distortions of footage and puppets of skeletons with different filters over them all to signify what having this kind of curse might look like. It doesn’t look great, and doesn’t even look like what x-rays look like, but I’m glad there wasn’t a call to lessen the story simply because the effects weren’t quite perfect.

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is easily one of the best Roger Corman movies I’ve seen, and it’s one that I think would be very well suited to a remake. Only minor changes would be needed for the screenplay, but after seeing the nutso visual effects in Doctor Strange, I’m fairly certain we could get all sorts of crazy images to properly convey seeing the literal center of the known universe. And even though Roger Corman’s 90 years old, and hasn’t directed a feature film since 1990, he should direct it. Because obviously, right? Anyway, check out the original.

Images: American International Pictures

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!

PENNY DREADFUL: THE AWAKING Comic Takes Us Beyond the Series Finale

Many fans of Victorian fiction and classic Gothic monsters were heartbroken when it turned out that last year’s third season of the drama Penny Dreadful on Showtime would turn out to be its last. Although the finale episode gave definitive conclusions to some of the characters, there were many, many plot threads that could have continued forward if the show’s creator John Logan had decided to keep going with the show.

While we won’t be getting a fourth season of the series anytime soon it seems, the folks at Titan Comics are continuing the story in a new comic book series from the creative team of the show’s co-executive producer Chris King as writer, with interior art from Jesús Hervás (Sons of Anarchy). Set six months after the series finale, the new comic book series is called Penny Dreadful: The Awaking

In this new comic book continuation, we find Josh Hartnett‘s character of Ethan Chandler unable to move on from the painful events of the show’s final episode. As he searches desperately for meaning in a world without his beloved Vanessa Ives, ancient words echo across the centuries, and he is called on once again to take up arms against the creatures crawling out of the night.

Titan Comics’ Penny Dreadful #1: The Awaking comes with six fantastic covers to collect from artists including; Stephen Mooney (Half Past Danger), Rob Davis (The Motherless Oven), Shane Pierce (Judge Dredd, Vikings), Louie De Martinis (Penny Dreadful prequel mini-series) and also two incredible connecting photo variant covers. Penny Dreadful #1: The Awaking hits comic stores and digital platforms on April 5, 2017. You can see all the cover images in our gallery below.

Are you excited to see the characters from Penny Dreadful get a proper continuation? Let us know your thoughts down below in the comments!

Images: Titan Comics