Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2220

The Jackie and Laurie Show #52: Please Watch It

This week Jackie and Laurie talk about how every comic as one unwoke bit. Also, they agree that comedy is bigger than anything else for a comic, so significant others better know: if you date a comic, they are not gonna drop that joke you hate. Plus, some comics are still living in 1999.

Check out Laurie’s special “5 Jokes About My Dead Dad” out December 29th on SeeSo!

Comic of the Week: Aparna Nancherla @aparnapkin

Follow @jackiekashian and @anylaurie16 on Twitter!

Follow the show! @JackieandLaurie

Half Hour Happy Hour #108: Drunksmas Day 8

On the 8th day there was an Aussie… Maude Garrett stops by to tell us what’s really going on with those deadly dick seeking spiders.

Follow @HalfHourHappyHr and hosts @alisonhaislip, @alexalbrecht and Tom “Super Volcano” Krajewski on Twitter

DOCTOR WHO Gives Christmas a POW in ‘The Return of Doctor Mysterio’ (Review)

THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS FOR THE EPISODE. BE ADVISED.

If there ever were a year we needed both the Doctor and a superhero, 2016 is it. Perhaps fittingly, in the calendar year since the last episode of Doctor Who, so much utter garbage and needless darkness has taken hold, and not even the world of fiction could really make us feel happier, brighter, more hopeful (sorry, Rogue One). So on Christmas, with the sigh of “finally” exiting my body following 365 days without Peter Capaldi‘s Time Lord, we get “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” a light, funny, exciting, and most importantly hope-filled adventure.

Since it has been so long since new Doctor Who (save for the excellent old-new premiere of animated “Power of the Daleks“), let’s get everybody back up to speed: the Doctor is a millennia-old Time Lord with a blue box called a TARDIS that travels in time and sp– too far back? Okay. At the end of Series 9, Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor lost his companion Clara, spent millions of years trying to find her, found her and Gallifrey again, but ultimately had to forget her for the sake of the universe. Then, a mere couple weeks later, he reunited with River Song (and the Husbands of Her) only to be forced to spend a final 24-year-long day with her.

So that’s where the Doctor is at the beginning of “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” but it takes quite a while into the episode to see any outward signs. After accidentally bestowing a kid with super powers, the Doctor returns in after the kid is an adult (Justin Chatwin) who does double duty as a nanny and a superhero called the Ghost. The object of his affection/his employer is the savvy reporter Lucy (Charity Wakefield), who evidently can’t tell her nanny is the superhero (in a very funny reference to Superman’s Lois Lane). An alien invasion plot is there, because otherwise there’d be no show, and Nardole (Matt Lucas) returns because the Doctor needs someone to talk to, even if the BBC refused to say he was a pseudo-companion. (Probably because he’s an ACTUAL companion.)

What I hadn’t expected, though I absolutely should have, is that even though there are aliens and superheroes, Steven Moffat‘s seventh Christmas special is at its heart a rom-com. It’s all about a dork who gets superpowers, and acts like the heroes he reads about in comics, but can’t muster the courage to tell someone he’s in love with that he’s in love with them. It gives the Doctor the great position to kind of be the unqualified giver of love advice, resulting in a very funny line where Capaldi thanks the universe there’s someone worse at romance than he. While I think parts of Lucy’s character seem contrived and fall pretty close to Moffat’s usual writing of a tough and sexy woman–she just suddenly realizes her feelings, doing the Nicole Kidman thing from Batman Forever? Come on!–the ultimate center of the story is that you can’t see what’s literally right in front of your face, and don’t necessarily appreciate it until it’s almost gone for good. And that’s a nice, if seemingly naive, stance for these troubled times.

We don’t see it right away, but we do eventually see the toll the last few stories–and the years he spent with River that last day–have taken on him. He’s legitimately sad, and putting on a brave face only because he’s the Doctor. We even learn that he put Nardole back together just to have someone to talk to. (Sidenote: he must have given Nardole a bit of a mental pick-me-up because he’s much more capable and less thick than he was in “Husbands.”) The end of the episode, though, solidifies that maybe the Doctor’s more heartbroken at never seeing River again than we thought. However, his final little speech–delivered brilliantly as always by Capaldi–which tells that things end and are sad, but beginnings are a reason to be happy, speaks to the resilience, the pluck, the ultimate positivity of the character and the show, which is extremely Christmassy, even if the episode as a whole is not.

While not as sci-fi heavy as “Last Christmas” nor as rompy and heart-string-pulling as “The Husbands of River Song,” “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” is exactly the kind of adventure story we need for a Christmas Day. It tells us we don’t need superpowers or a mask and cape to be heroic, and that the bravest thing you can do is speak your mind and stand up to the bullies of this world. That’s what Doctor Who is, and I for one have badly needed it.

4 out of 5 heroic burritos

Images: BBC

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor and the resident Whovian for Nerdist. Follow him on Twitter!

Get a refresher on Doctor Who Series 9’s finale!

Singer George Michael Passes Away at Age 53

We are sad to report that 1980s pop music icon George Michael has died  at the age of 53 in the UK. Reports are saying the singer “passed away peacefully at home”. Thames Valley Police said South Central Ambulance Service attended a property in Goring in Oxfordshire at 13:42 GMT. Police say there were no suspicious circumstances involved.

In a statement, the star’s publicist said: “It is with great sadness that we can confirm our beloved son, brother and friend George passed away peacefully at home over the Christmas period. “The family would ask that their privacy be respected at this difficult and emotional time. There will be no further comment at this stage.”

George Michael first rose to fame at the dawn of the MTV age, as half of the pop duo Wham, along with his childhood best friend Andrew Ridgeley. After scoring several hits in the UK, Wham’s second album Make It Big did exactly that when released in 1984. Its first single, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”,  became a worldwide phenomenon, and the video remains one of the most iconic of the era, with its dancers wearing “Choose Life!” t-shirts. The shirts became a fashion statement in high schools and malls across America.

Other singles from the album like  “Careless Whisper” “Freedom”, and “Everything She Wants” were also smash hits for the duo. Michael’s duet with Aretha Franklin “I Knew You Were Waiting” was another huge single from this era. Wham’s single “Last Christmas” remains a holiday staple to this day, and chances are you’ve heard it more than once this season. It’s now a holiday classic and has been covered multiple times.

Wham broke up in 1986 at the peak of their fame, but George Michael’s solo album Faith hit in 1987, propelling him to even bigger heights of success that Wham ever did. The album spawned 6 Top 20 singles, including “I Want Your Sex”, “Faith”, “Father Figure”, “Monkey”, and “One More Try”,  the videos for which were in constant rotation on MTV. In 2012, the album was ranked number 472 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.  His follow up album, 1990’s Listen Without Prejudice, spawned the hit single “Freedom ’90”, but a dispute with his record label led to Michael not making many videos for the album, and it never became the phenomenon that Faith was.

Although Michael would release other albums over the course of his career, none would quite hit the heights of his peak years in the ’80s and early ’90s. Although he was gay, he kept his sexual orientation a secret until he was arrested in April 1998,  for “engaging in a lewd act” with an undercover male police officer in a public restroom  in Beverly Hills, California. In 2007, Michael said “that hiding his sexuality made him feel ‘fraudulent’, and his eventual outing, when he was arrested was “a subconsciously deliberate act.”

He released a single that poked fun at his circumstances with song and video for “Outside”, which, as the title suggest, was all about the joys of hooking up outdoors. The song ended up becoming a minor hit. But it showed that instead of running away in shame from what happened, Michael had a sense of humor about the whole thing. Once he was finally out of the closet, Michael embraced his status as a gay icon, and contributed to many LGBT causes.

In the last few years, Michael made headlines more for his various drug related arrests over any musical contributions. It’s unknown if his death has anything to do with that at this time, despite much speculation. George Michael’s music and persona figured prominently in this year’s comedy Keanu, which reminded many fans just how talented and amazing he was in his prime.

With the passing of George Michael, that marks yet another of the major 1980s pop icons who have died prematurely. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, David Bowie are now all gone. It now seems Madonna, Janet Jackson and Cyndi Lauper are the last ones standing of the major pop music icons of similar stature who became famous during the MTV era. If anything, news of his passing has reminded fans that despite all of his personal problems, George Michael was a huge talent who will be missed by many fans all over the world.

Image: Sony Music Group

DOCTOR WHO Series 10 Trailer is a Christmas Miracle

It feels SO LONG since we’ve had any Doctor Who, and in truth it has been: 365 days since the last episode (“The Husbands of River Song“) and even longer since the last full slate of episodes. While we still have to wait for another extended run of adventures with Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor, we now finally have a trailer for 2017’s series 10, attached to this year’s Christmas special, “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” which has already aired in the UK. From the 50-second first look, it definitely seems like new companion Bill (Pearl Mackie) is in for some time-space shenanigans.

As per usual with the show under Steven Moffat‘s tenure (of which series 10 will be the last), there’s not a whole lot of context to really glean from the teaser, aside from Bill announcing that she serves chips seemingly at a university and she meets the Doctor as he’s standing in as a lecturer somewhere. I like the idea of Capaldi’s Doctor as a teacher of some sort, especially with all his chalkboard conjecturing in series 8. We also get several glimpses of Matt Lucas as Nardole, who is joining the cast as a semi-regular for most of this year, beginning with the Christmas special.

It does seem like there’s going to be an adventure with Daleks, even though portions of this trailer uses clips from that teaser short they made to introduce Bill, which I can’t imagine will actually end up being in an episode. But maybe I’m wrong! Who’s to say? Aside from them, the only possible monster/villain we really get a look at are a wet ghost-woman screaming, and a pair of robots with eerily calm faces. That’s enough for me!

Along with Moffat–who will write the premiere and the final three episodes–series 10 will also see scripts written by newcomer to the show, playwright Mike Bartlett, who has written episode “The Haunted Hub,” stories by returning new series writers Sarah Dollard (“Face the Raven“), Toby Whithouse (“Under the Lake/Before the Flood“), and Jamie Mathieson (“Flatline,” “The Girl Who Died“), and the one I’m most excited to watch, an episode written by Rona Munro, who penned the very last story broadcast of the classic series, “Survival” in 1989.

I’m beyond excited to see what the Doctor’s up to now, and really jazzed by the first new companion since 2012! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Image: BBC

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor and the resident Whovian for Nerdist. Follow him on Twitter!

SENSE8 Recap: “Christmas Special” Delivers Festive Feels for the Holidays

The Netflix original series Sense8 is back and in top form. There’s plenty to celebrate with our favorite cluster of sensates. And I couldn’t help but get the song “We are family” stuck in my head during the two-hour “Christmas Special” that dropped just in time for the holiday weekend. It  reaffirmed the importance of each of these unique characters to the series. So let’s talk about those strangers in our heads–heavy spoiler warning.

We reenter a world grounded in reality but dashed with the best bits and pieces of sci-fi on a TV series since The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sense8 premiered in 2015 and was created by J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) with the writer-director team of Lily and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix). Season two was announced earlier this year–with a sudden hiatus announcement from Lily Wachowski–but it’s felt like forever since we last got a chance to visit with everyone.

Season one introduced us to eight uniquely connected human beings: Will Gorski (Brian J. Smith), a police officer in Chicago; Riley Blue (Tuppence Middleton), an Icelandic DJ in London; Capheus (Aml Ameen ), a matatu driver in Nairobi; Sun Bak (Bae Doona) a businesswoman and underground kickboxer; Lito Rodriguez (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), a closeted Mexican actor; Kala Dandekar (Tina Desai), an Indian pharmacist in Mumbai; Wolfgang Bogdanow (Max Riemelt), a German safecracker; and Nomi Marks (Jamie Clayton), a transgender woman and hacktivist living in San Francisco.

It’s a bit overwhelming at first to meet so many main characters at once, but trust me–in those twelve episodes, you experience a well-crafted blend of emotions. The grander schemes of catharsis and recovery from this collective hit all the right spots with the “Christmas Special”–like when Sun is released from solitary confinement and is embraced by her cellmates; or when Lito, his mother, Hernando, and Dani experience a rush of true love and acceptance together despite all the negativity around them. It’s so refreshing to see these characters express gratitude and joy for small wins in humanity–not everyone’s a psychotic government agent or rude college student.

There wasn’t much extra character development to add here–aside from introducing the new face of Capheus moving forward, Toby Onwumere (solid performance; looking forward to more from him BTW). And for a “Christmas Special” there wasn’t really a need for complex character building. These two hours felt more like a festive revisit to the Sense8 world for any wandering newcomers. And it serves as a stark reminder to fans about what hangs in the balance for the eight–it closes just as Wolfie escapes another deadly mob fight, with creepy Whispers breathing down Will’s neck and Nomi continuing to dodge Agent Bendix who’s legit hunting her and Amanita. The threat of death and devastation is very real for everyone

I still can’t quite put my finger on a certain angel-like sensate, though–yeah, I’m talking about Angelica (Daryl Hannah), the departed cluster mother. She looms and glows in the background here, but I’m still waiting for some more context regarding her appearances. Here’s hoping season two will delivery more Angelica closure. More Jonas (Naveen Andrews) “explains it all” moments wouldn’t hurt either!

Visually, everything keeps getting better! Filming on location across the globe continued in this special with some great shots in particular of Iceland and San Francisco. And in its apparent trademark, we’re gifted once again with some awesome musical moments. Two in particular were everything: a wild sensate orgy to celebrate their shared birthday (truest quote: “We exist because of sex”) and a touching Christmas celebration paired with a rendition of the late Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” that included the talented San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus (I’m not crying… you’re crying!).

Really the biggest takeaway from any “Christmas Special” of the TV variety has to be love. And Sense8 delivers all the love in the form of eight hyper-connected humans, emotionally and physically relying on one another in an increasingly hostile, dangerous world. It also succeeded in reigniting some hype for season two next year. Leave us with your love for the sensates! Let us know what you think will happen in season two!

Images: Netflix

Half Hour Happy Hour #107: Drunksmas Day 7

Drunksmas is getting real people… day 7 and it’s all about a “Fist Fight” with director Richie Keen.

Follow @HalfHourHappyHr and hosts @alisonhaislip, @alexalbrecht and Tom “Super Volcano” Krajewski on Twitter

A NASA Historian Talks HIDDEN FIGURES and John Glenn’s Legacy

Ever notice how in every period movie about prejudice or bigotry, there’s always that one good white guy who goes out of his way to fight oppression and make things right? You know, you’ve got Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, Brad Pitt’s character in 12 Years a Slave, Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained… seriously, the list goes on and on.

Well, Hidden Figures, the upcoming biopic about the black women who worked at NASA during the Space Race, has one of those white guys, too. This time, though, it’s a name everyone knows: John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth in 1962. Throughout the movie he goes out of his way to be kind to the pool of black mathematicians, and while it’s ridiculously charming (thanks in no small part to Glenn Powell’s performance), it definitely had me walking out of my screening wondering if the real John Glenn was really that woke in real life.

As it turns out, he was! Just ask NASA’s chief historian Bill Barry, who worked director with the creators of Hidden Figures — and who walked out of his screening impressed with the incredible level of true-to-life detail that the movie captured. I sat down with him at a press junket in New York City, along with astronaut Stephanie Wilson and NASA engineer Dr. Sheila Nash-Stevenson, and he told us all a great story about a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-moment in the movie that speaks to John Glenn’s real life status as a full-on social justice warrior.

How hyped are you to check out Hidden Figures when it finally hits theaters? Let us know in the comments below!

Image: 20th Century Fox

Katherine Waterson on Who Has More Fantastic Beasts: J.K. Rowling Or Ridley Scott?

If there’s one thing Katherine Waterston’s gotten really good at lately, it’s working with creatures that don’t actually exist. Case in point: she starred alongside everything from nifflers to murtlaps while playing Tina Goldstein in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, this year, and next summer she’ll take on a brand new species of xenomorph in Alien: Covenant.

Of course, working with the alien nightmares who’ve been terrifying us since 1979 isn’t quite the same thing as hanging out adorable billywigs and bowtruckles. So while at a press event for the 2017 Fox Showcase earlier this month, we put Waterston to the ultimate test: who’s got the most “fantastic” beasts, J.K. Rowling or Ridley Scott? (Remember, “fantastic” doesn’t have to mean “friendly and cuddly and definitely won’t even think about eating you.” These are Ollivander’s “terrible but great” rules of language that we’re working with here, to keep it in the Harry Potter family.)

Personally, I think good ol’ J.K.’s got Ridley beat. I mean, at least there’s more variety of beasties in the wizarding world, right? They’re not all murderous scaly monstrosities that bust their way out of your body–some of them have feathers! But Katherine had a much, much harder time deciding between the two, which makes sense considering how closely she’s worked with them both. Still, somebody should probably have her checked out for some kind of Xenomorph Stockholm Syndrome. Just in case.

Which beasts do you think are more fantastic? Let us know in the comments!

Image: 20th Century Fox

And in case you missed the Alien Covenant trailer, here it is:

ALIEN Auteur Ridley Scott Proves Female Protagonists Can Make Money

I don’t know about you all, but every time I see somebody complain about how science fiction is not a place for capable female protagonists, I wish I could shake them and yell, “What about the Alien movies?” After all, director Ridley Scott didn’t just usher in one of the most influential science fiction franchises of all time — he put a woman slap dang in the center of it.

Scott has since kept up the female-led Alien tradition, first with Noomi Rapace in Prometheus and now with Katherine Waterston in the upcoming Alien: Covenent. And while Waterston’s character, Daniels, has a few more leading-lady contemporaries than Ripley did, she owes her existence in part to the financial success of Sigourney Weaver’s iconic heroine.

Speaking with Nerdist at a recent press event in New York City, Waterston was happy to point out just what she thinks modern Hollywood has learned from Scott’s success. “They probably learned from it by seeing how much money those films made, you know?,” she said. “I remember when, I guess it was for Blue Jasmine when Cate Blanchett won [the Oscar], she said, ‘See? I won this thing and also people went to see this movie, so take note.’ That’s the big concern, of course, is if we put women in the movie, will people go to see it? Will they make any money? These people have invested money, it makes sense they want to get it back.”

“Ridley’s been showing for a very long time that that’s not an issue,” she added. “If you tell good stories, people will come. I’m sure that the telling of these stories and the success of them over the years, not just in the Alien franchise but with Thelma and Louise and other films he’s made with women in central roles, it must have educated some bigwigs in Hollywood about what’s possible. I think he deserves a huge amount of credit.”

It’s true that female-led films have become a little more commonplace than they were even ten years ago, and heroines like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Elsa and Anna in Frozen are leading the way with their billion-dollar-grossing movies. But we can’t rest on our laurels just yet, fellow cinephiles, because the industry still hasn’t achieved gender parity. According to the annual “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” study conducted by Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, women only made up about 22% of protagonists in 2015 — and that’s hardly close to equal yet. 

Still, at least directors like Ridley Scott are fighting the good fight and bringing us as many badass women as they can. Let’s hope others continue to learn from his example — and that Alien: Covenant makes huge bank at the box office to prove him right once again.

How do you think Hollywood can continue to learn from Ridley Scott’s example? Let us know in the comments below!

Image: Fox/Patrick Lewis – StarPix