Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2227

A ROGUE ONE Character Is Coming to STAR WARS REBELS

Fans of the animated series Star Wars Rebels may have noticed a few references to that series in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; which we helpfully compiled here. And while we’re waiting for new episodes of Star Wars Rebels to return, it appears that one of the major characters of Rogue One will be making a big appearance on the show!

There are some spoilers ahead for Star Wars Rebels season 3! You’ve been warned!

Via Heroic Hollywood, the Twitter account for Rebel Reactions spotted a poster at a Toys R Us for the back half of Star Wars Rebels‘ third season that prominently features a younger Saw Gerrera, the role played by Forest Whitaker in Rogue One. The poster also includes Gerrera’s signature line: “Save the rebellion, save the dream.”

Looks like Saw Gerrera is coming to #StarWarsRebels soon! @CoffeeWthKenobi #RogueOne pic.twitter.com/MMYcwr2TN5

— Rebels Reactions (@RebelsReactions) December 17, 2016

Saw Gerrera made his debut on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, so it makes sense that his character would be the one to crossover from Rogue One in this series. Andrew Kishino voiced Gerrera on The Clone Wars, and it will be interesting to see if he reprises his role. The natural assumption is that Gerrera will join forces with the heroes of Rebels, but it’s more likely that we’ll see what caused the rift between Gerrera’s faction and the larger Rebel alliance that came to see him as a dangerous extremist.

Although the character model used in this poster doesn’t quite match Gerrera’s appearance in the Rogue One flashback sequence, it may not be out of the question to see a very young Jyn Erso on this season as well. But we’ll find out more when Star Wars Rebels season 3 resumes on January 7, 2017.

Are you excited to see a more direct crossover between Star Wars Rebels and Rogue One? Sound off in the comment section below!

Images: Lucasfilm

Let’s all be glad Forest Whitaker didn’t join this club….

STAR WARS Millennium Falcon Multi-Tool Can Fix Your Hunks of Junk

If you’re laughing at the irony of a pocket-sized multi-tool built to look like the Millennium Falcon, that’s completely understandable. The Falcon, the almighty she-beast of the galaxy that’ll make “point-five past light speed,” isn’t exactly known as a beacon of reliability. But in some sense naming a multi-tool after the Millennium Falcon makes total sense: She is, after all, a fixer-upper.

The Star Wars Millennium Falcon Multi-Tool Kit, which comes via io9 and is seen in more detail in the image gallery below, is one of ThinkGeek’s latest offerings, and includes, just like the real deal, plenty of surprises in her secret compartments. The Falcon itself is made of Die-cast zinc alloy, while the four hex keys and two screwdrivers (one Phillips head one Hammerhead Corve-errr flathead) are made out of carbon steel.

Perhaps the best part of this teeny weeny light freighter tool however, is the fact that its mandibles — the two prongs at the front of the ship used to push around cargo — double as an adjustable wrench. Which is important because when you work as a galactic smuggler, being flexible is a big part of the job.

All in all, it’s the perfect tool for Rebel mechanics, or maybe people who need to help their aunts build IKEA furniture (always on a Saturday! Or is that just me?).

What do you think about this Millennium Falcon pocket-sized multi-tool? Is this the perfect stocking stuffer, or are you digging the ThinkGeek “Archaeology Soap” more? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images: ThinkGeek

Weekend Earworms: Annoying Christmas Catchiness Of Retail Repeats

An estimated 92% of us experience earworms. Despite the annoying times we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things, ever. We here at Nerdist are dead set on bringing you those types of songs—even if only for the weekend. So shove this into your grey matter!

Hey there, dear reader! I’m sorry to have to do this, but I can’t be alone in having these next few songs stuck only in my head. The tunes I share today have a weird place in my heart and mind as a strange guilty pleasure. I find myself gravitating toward these every holiday season because they’re songs that I unwillingly know by heart and I find them impossible not to sing along to. All of them became hard-lined in my brain from years of working retail so I say this without exaggeration: I hate these songs. If only there were some sort of common phrase to sum up my, well, let’s call it relationship, with both hating and loving something.

Wham! – “Last Christmas”

This song causes what could be considered wartime flashbacks to my years in retail and actually combines multiple jobs into one terrible memory. Hearing the boys ‘o’ Wham sing about Christmases gone by, gifting vital organs, and the subsequent re-gifting of those organs brings me back to a combination of walking the aisles of Brook’s Pharmacy facing products on shelves and being yelled at by cell phone customers who I couldn’t help after they dropped their phones in slush puddles. Thankfully, the Jimmy Eat World version of the song helps me out of that funk a bit since it, at least, leads to listening to “Sweetness“.

[Note: My own mention of “Sweetness” led to a listening tangent and it is now an hour and a half after I typed that last paragraph. So, hey. It worked]

The Waitresses – “Christmas Wrapping”

If there’s a hell and I go there [I’m probably going there], the droning non-singing of this song looped for eternity will be the soundtrack to my stay there. In fact, I’ll probably be stuck in the strip mall pharmacy I worked in as a teenager constantly having to straighten a messed up shelf of deodorant and wobbly off-balance band-aid boxes. Wait, did I say the song needed to be looped? It actually doesn’t since the song, as far as I can tell, goes on forever. SAX CHORUS! “Bwanna nah nah, Bwanna nah nah, Bwanna nah nah nah nah nah nah nah!”

Paul McCartney – “Wonderful Christmas Time”

“There’s siiiiimply, noooo way, that anyone likes this song!”

If you’ve worked retail, you probably hate this song more than most. I worked for a cell phone company for 10 years that, instead of using a radio like normal human beings, would require CDs of approved music to be looped throughout the day. This was normally fine during the year because we had a few dozen CDs to change out but during the holidays? Ten songs. On loop. All day. Every day. From Thanksgiving to New Years. “Wonderful Christmas Time” was the first track on that CD so it served as the harbinger of doom indicating everything was starting all over again.

Gayla Peevey – “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”

With this one I actually lean more toward love than hate basically because it’s such a happy and cuckoo-bananas song. I suppose it also has something to do with associating it with the best retail experience I’ve actually ever had, which was working in a liquor store. And I suppose that has something to do with the occasional sampling of the products. Especially during the holidays. It’s impressive that the song has had such staying power over the 60+ years since being recorded despite being wholly inaccurate to how vicious and bad-ass hippos actually are.

The song remains a fan favorite around the holidays and I think it may be due to it being an auditory palate cleanser of sorts between all the mellow, religious, or sappy holiday tunes. Plus, violent or not, a pet hippo would be stupendous. I’d ride him around town all the time.

What are your favorite love/hate holiday songs? Let’s annoy each other in the comments below!

Blake Rodgers writes for Nerdist from Chicago, IL where he lives happily with his Guinness World Record for High Fives. You can be his pal by following him on Twitter (@TheBlakeRodgers)

Image: The Ed Sullivan Show/CBS

JURASSIC WORLD’s Owen and Blue Get a New High End Statue

Jurassic World 2 may be over a year away, but two of the primary characters from Jurassic World are getting the high end statue treatment from Chronicle Collectibles: Owen Grady, and the raptor known as Blue.

Chronicle Collectibles has announced its new Jurassic World: Owen and Grady 1.9 scale statue that stands 12″ wide, 8.5″ tall, and 8.5″ deep. Along with that bit of news came several photographs that showed off the impeccable recreation of Chris Pratt‘s likeness and the Alpha of the velociraptor pack raised by Owen.

We have several addition images to share in our gallery below, as well as the following video.

As noted by Chronicle Collectibles, “The concept design for this piece came from a photo in Entertainment Weekly. The pose was decided after working closely with Universal and Industrial Light and Magic. The 3D sculpt work was provided by Dean Tolliver. Owen was painted by Nathan Eakins and Blue by Alex Alva.”

Potentially, Blue could return for the Jurassic World sequel, since she made it through the first film intact. But we kind of loved the way things ended between Owen and the surviving members of the pack. So if they don’t return, the ending still works.

The Owen and Blue statue is currently available for pre-order at Chronicle’s web site, and it will run $349 plus shipping, though there are also a few different payment plans to spread out the strain on your wallet. It’s estimated to ship sometime in the third quarter of 2017, so there should be enough time to save up before it comes out.

What did you think about this Jurassic World statue? Should the other raptors in the pack get their own? Let us know in the comment section below!

Images: Chronicle Collectibles

What’s Next for Jurassic World?

ALL IN THE FAMILY, THE JEFFERSONS, and GOOD TIMES May Be Rebooted by Sony

Next year, Norman Lear‘s One Day at a Time is getting rebooted at Netflix, with Lear attached as an executive producer and contributor. Now, three of Lear’s most popular sitcoms may also be up for a reboot, but with Lear’s scripts intact!

According to Variety, Sony is reportedly looking to revive All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times with brand new casts and the full support of Lear himself. The twist is that these won’t be modernized takes on the classic shows from the ’70s. Instead, Sony is looking to use the new casts to recreate episodes from the original runs as written by Lear. Essentially, Sony is viewing the recreations as “plays being mounted in new productions.”

In theory, that would also maintain the time period of each series, if the scripts aren’t brought up to date. Nor would these be open ended revivals like One Day at a Time; Sony wants to release the new editions of each series as a six-episode anthology miniseries. The report notes that this is separate from Lear’s previous attempt to revive All in the Family with a Latino family as the focus. Apparently, that eventually morphed into the One Day at a Time revival.

All three of these series were groundbreaking at the time for their willingness to address racism, sexism, and other social issues through the lens of Lear’s comedy. But these shows are very much of their time, and it’s going to be extremely difficult for anyone to step into the roles that Carroll O’Connor, Sherman Hemsley, and Jimmie Walker made famous. That said, Lear’s stories were worth telling, and if they can find a new audience through a new cast then it may ultimately be a good thing.

How do you feel about the potential revivals of Lear’s classic sitcoms? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: Sony Pictures Television

Nick Offerman Sipping Scotch Makes for the Ultimate NYE Countdown Clock

It feels a bit wrong to say too much about a man who says so little, but when Nick Offerman–you undoubtedly know him as Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation—sits down for an hour to stare at you right in the face with those eyes (the eyes of somebody’s who’s bored and familiar with the Devil) for a New Year’s Eve countdown video, well, something has to be said. And “Can you make me a table?” would probably be the wrong thing.

The above clip features everybody’s favorite Yoda-Lumberjack-Dirty-Harry combination sipping on a glass of “Single Malt Scotch Whisky” while he does nothing but keep his intense and disapproving gaze staring into your soul. The video, meant to be started at 10:59 p.m., which comes via That’s Nerdilicious, is somewhat of a companion piece to last year’s 45-minute clip of Offerman doing the exact same thing, except in front of a fire.

Officially, the video is one in a series produced by a partnership between Offerman–the “actor, author, woodworker, and Scotch enthusiast”–and “British multinational alcoholic beverages company” Diageo, a collaboration dubbed “My Tales of Whisky.” Even if this is technically Nick Offerman, however, we’re definitely watching Ron Swanson a lot of the time. (The videos are even stylized similarly to Parks and Recreation.)

The single (malt) best part of the video is, of course, when the clock ticks over at midnight and Offerman gets up on his chair and starts dancing and shaving his beard. Just kidding! He does absolutely nothing but sip his Scotch and presumably contemplate how inferior we are as humans.

What do you think about this hour-long Scotch and Offerman video? Will Ron Swanson be watching you celebrate the beginning of 2017? Let us know in the comments below!

Images: My Tales of Whisky Official

Casey Affleck Is Suitably Scummy in SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’S “Honest” Dunkin Donuts Ad

We’ve seen an entire YouTube empire crop up around the notion of snarky “Honest Trailers,” but what if commercials were more honest? Especially the ones that show “real customers”–I don’t know about you, but they never seem to talk to anybody resembling the real people I know. Admittedly, in Los Angeles, where Dunkin Donuts is a rare novelty, all the best and brightest do flock to stores as a trendy thing, but back east, where they’re everywhere? Maybe not so much.

Enter Casey Affleck. The acclaimed actor, who has settled out of court on two separate counts of harassment and intimidation, doesn’t talk about his past bad behavior under what are believed to be the terms of the deal, but in this Saturday Night Live sketch he’s basically playing exactly that version of himself he’s been accused by his critics of being: verbally abusive, self-righteous, and prone to even forcing others into situations they are decidedly not comfortable in. It’s a delicate line to play for SNL, but they deftly make the humor all about the unlikeliness that Dunkin would ever really interview the worst people who hang out in donut shops. And Affleck is scarily believable as that guy.

Now, can we get an honest commercial about certain fast food joints I won’t name here where the food goes right through you in 30 minutes or less? On second thoughts, maybe not–I don’t want the visuals of an actor as method as Affleck demonstrating the effect.

What honest commercials would you like to see next? Who’s the scariest guy you’ve ever seen at a donut joint? Let us discuss in comments.

Image: NBC

 

Functional LEGO SUPER MARIO Piranha Plant Is Snappiness Squared

JK Brickworks, the mind-blowingly creative LEGO builder behind creations like this “Tales from the LEGO Crypt” pop-up book and this LEGO egg-decorating robot, has just turned his skilled hands and keen eye for design toward perhaps one of the most iconic baddies in video game history: the Piranha Plant from Super Mario Bros.

The Piranha Plant, which is technically a tall “triffid-like” plant that looks a lot like a video game version of the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, has plagued players’ attempts at successfully jumping onto pipes since the dawn of Nintendo. And in their latest iteration, in Super Mario Run—the mobile game that was downloaded five million times in its first day–the Piranha Plants are just as annoying as ever.

The LEGO build of the Piranha Plant, on the other hand, is simply awesome. It seems that all of JK Brickworks’ work involves relatively complex mechanical components, and the Piranha Plant is no exception.

Soon. pic.twitter.com/pxRyZDJ5OS

— Jason Allemann (@jasonallemann) December 8, 2016

Using a piston system that turns the rotational motion of a crank into an up-and-down motion, JK has built a mechanism that both extends and retracts as well as closes and opens up. It should be noted that—gasp!—the build does include a non-standard connection: But when a build is this pretty, nothing about it is standard anyway.

What do you think about this little LEGO Piranha Plant contraption? Do you love the brickwork on the base of that pipe? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images: JK Brickworks

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt Tell Us About PASSENGERS and Their Robot Bartender

Next week, X-Men prequel trilogy and The Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence is teaming up with Guardians of the Galaxy‘s leading man, Chris Pratt for Passengers, a new sci-fi film that is one of the few big budget movies this year that isn’t a sequel or based upon a comic book, a novel, a video game, or a TV show. And when senior editor Dan Casey recently caught up with Lawrence and Pratt, they told him that it was the originality of the script and the concept that brought them together in Passengers.

“You’ll know when you see the movie, and as the story unfolds, how original and compelling, and thought provoking it is,” said Pratt. “You’ll know why we would read this script and want to do this movie. But the idea that it is original and it’s not part of anything else…it doesn’t fit under the umbrella of some comic books or previous titles. That made it really exciting.”

Without giving away too many spoilers about the film, Pratt and Lawrence’s characters will largely be alone on the Starship Avalon. Therefore, one of the only companions they have other than each other is Arthur, a robotic butler played by Michael Sheen. “What I loved is that there is a kind of tradition of British sounding robots in space that really mess things up for humans,” said Sheen. “I like taking my place in that pantheon.” Sheen also dropped some interesting allusions between Passengers and The Shining.

Later in the video, Lawrence and Pratt told us about the brutal shooting schedule for this film, before Dan “exploded our whole movie,” according to Lawrence. You can watch the entire interview above, and Passengers will be out in theaters on December 21.

What did you think about our interviews with the cast of Passengers? Embark on a journey to the comment section below!

Image: Nerdist

Woody Harrelson Will Star in a Live, One-Take Movie

In the first season of HBO’s True Detective, it was Woody Harrelson‘s co-star, Matthew McConaughey who was featured in the stunning and complex continuous-take scene that became one of the series’ signature moments. Now, Harrelson is going to go even further with his next movie, which will be shot in a single continuous take while being broadcast live in theaters across the nation!

Via Entertainment Weekly, Harrelson is writing, directing, and starring in Lost in London, an ambitious “soul-searching” 100-minute comedy that will be filmed in 14 locations in London with a cast of 30 people including Owen Wilson and Willie Nelson. “No one has ever shot a movie and live broadcast it into cinemas at the same time,” said Harrelson in the teaser video before adding “No one’s ever been that stupid…until now.”

Harrelson told EW that the inspiration for this film was a 2002 incident in London where he broke an ashtray in a cab and ended up spending the night in jail. “If that hadn’t happened I never would have thought to do this,” said Harrelson. “That was when I spent a night in jail here in London. But in this film, the whole night starts bad and keeps getting progressively worse. At the time, in real life, it was completely unfunny. But then later I thought about it later and I said, ‘There’s comedy in this.’” Harrelson also mentioned that he’s recruited Nigel Willoughby to be the cinematographer, after long admiring Willoughby’s work on The Magdalene Sisters, Downton Abbey, and Penny Dreadful.

Lost In London will be broadcast into select theaters by Fathom Events on Thursday, January 19, 2017, while he’s filming it. That means we won’t have to wait long to see if Harrelson’s experiment is a success. And we won’t hold him to his promise about jumping into the Thames!

What do you think about Harrelson’s live movie adventure? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

Image: HBO