Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2327

This POKÉMON Cycling Music Remix is the Best Song You’ll Hear Today

The Pokémon games are full of iconic music, but perhaps no compositions are more whimsical than the jingles that play when you’re riding your bike. Remember your first trip down Pokémon Red and Blue’s Cycling Road, how free and alive you felt? Although the music is timeless, producer Grimecraft decided to bring the track, and that feeling, into modern times with an EDM, dubstep-y remix that is beautifully busy.

Game music record label GameChops just released a video for the song, and it incorporates clips from the shows and games, as well as some original footage, from Curse Gamepedia, that shows some “deal with it” glasses falling on Ash as he defies the laws of physics and dances on his bike like it’s a stable platform. All in all, it’s an entertaining take on the original song, even if Ash does one-handed pushups on his handle bars as his feet float in the air behind him.

While the video is new, the song is not. It’s been out since 2013, when Grimecraft released it as part of POKÉP, a concept album mixtape that features other Pokémon-centric electronic compositions that includes thematic elements you might recognize from other songs in the series.

Check out the absurd and delightful video above, and if you really dig the song, great news: It can be yours, totally for free! It, and the rest of the POKÉP, can be downloaded free of charge from Grimecraft’s Bandcamp, so obviously head here and scoop that up.

Image: The Pokémon Company

HARRY POTTER is up to All Sorts of Trouble as a ’90s Sitcom

A boy wizard just learning how to use–and abuse–his new powers finds himself in all sorts of crazy trouble when he and his two best friends run amok at their school of magic. Harry Potter is the newest member of the TGIF family this fall, Fridays on ABC right after Family Matters.

That would have totally worked, right? A young wizard and an entire world of magic would have been more believable than any of the crap Steve Urkel pulled using “science,” so this opening credits sequence imagining Harry Potter as a ’90s sitcom doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. Heck, we think it would have made for a pretty fun show, just with the madcap, zany issues facing young wizards as the primary conflict, and not to so much with the murdering, evil Voldemort as the antagonist. He was awful, but we’re pretty sure Urkel never killed anyone.

Though we did always wonder why Aunt Rachel suddenly disappeared without explanation…

We came across this trailer mashup at Tastefully Offensive, and it was made by the folks at Comedy Central UK, who also picture Hagrid playing a big role (intentional!) on the show, with Dumbledore, “Severus” Snape, and Professor “Minerva” McGonagall all getting a title sequence billing, along with Dobby, played by–who else–himself.

Our bet though is that by season 2 someone would have realized they needed a theme song with lyrics. I mean, a great theme song singlehandedly kept Step by Step on the air for so many years.

What other characters from the wizarding world of Harry Potter would have made for good guest appearances if this had been a ’90s sitcom? Use your wands and do some fantasy casting in our comments below.

Image: Warner Bros.

This STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS Special Effects Reel Is Pure Movie Magic

You can draw a line in the sand between one era of special visual effects and the other by the success of George Lucas‘ original Star Wars, which advanced the art of special effects by leaps and bounds all in the space of a single movie. And along with that movie came the advent of George Lucas’ effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, which went on to innovate special effects for the next forty years. If a special effects-driven blockbuster caused a ripple in popular culture over the past four decades, there is at least a 50/50 chance ILM had something to do with it. And they’re still innovating, as their impressive work in The Force Awakens shows.

Now, the folks at ILM have released a special VFX breakdown for The Force Awakens (first spotted at io9). In the video, which you can view above, you see the painstaking amount of detail that went into creating every rivet and gear for an abandoned and crashed Imperial Star Destroyer on Jakku, or the trench on Starkiller Base. And for fans out there who embraced The Force Awakens as a return to the classic “puppets and models” way of making Star Wars films, well… although Episode VII used more on-location shoots and models than the prequels, this VFX reel shows just how much CGI went into the making of this movie. CGI isn’t evil,  folks. It’s all about how you use it.

What do you think of ILM’s amazing work on The Force Awakens? And does this video just make you even more impatient for Rogue One‘s release in December? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Image: Lucasfilm

ARQ Looks Like the Gritty Time Travel Movie We’ve Always Wanted

When it comes to repeated-day time travel movies, the two pillars in our book are Harold Ramis‘ Groundhog Day and Doug Liman‘s Edge of Tomorrow (we refuse to use its revised title). One is a comedic character study, the other is an alien invasion action epic, but they both explore the idea of getting a billion do-overs that seemingly only one person realizes is happening. Netflix’s new original film ARQ looks to take the concept in a decidedly more stripped-down, thriller-based take on the subject matter.

The movie stars The Flash‘s Robbie Amell and Jessica Jones‘ Rachael Taylor as a couple who are forced to live the same day on repeat thanks to a strange device called an ARQ that creates clean reusable energy (and also creates a time fissure) and a group of masked kidnappers that want to steal it. Every time Amell dies, the day starts over again…but maybe it’s not only he who can start remembering things. The cast list is very small, and the whole thing appears to take place in a couple very confined locations. Just our speed!

The film is written and directed by Orphan Black writer Tony Elliot and it feels like exactly the kind of project that Netflix wants to cultivate, what with the success of Stranger Things and their upcoming season of Black Mirror. I’m getting definite Primer and 12 Monkeys vibes, as well as the fantastic Spanish movie Timecrimes and The X-Files episode “Monday” which was a standout of the later seasons. Some good pedigree on all fronts. We can’t wait for September 16!

Let us know your thoughts on new sci-fi splendor in the comments below!

Remember that time Will Smith and his kid had to find Earth?

Image: Netflix

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find more of his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

This STRANGER THINGS A Cappella Cover is Really Eerie

As part of Stranger Things‘ march towards pop culture dominance, the opening theme song by Survive has been covered many times this summer, including a heavy metal version and a mash up with the theme of Twin Peaks. Now it’s time for coffee, contemplation, and an a cappella cover of this summer’s breakout series.

Via Tastefully Offensive, comedy group The Warp Zone has released their Stranger Things a cappella cover in their signature style. And that means cosplay! For your viewing and listening enjoyment, Ryan Tellez dressed up as Mike Wheeler, alongside David Odom as the malevolent Dr. Martin Brenner; Michael Schroeder as Dustin Henderson; Brian Fisher as Chief Jim Hopper; and Michael Davis as the Eggo-loving, superpowered badass little girl, Eleven.

“We all got sucked into the Netflix TV show Stranger Things recently and absolutely fell in love with the soundtrack,” wrote the group on their YouTube page. “The ’80s inspired synth music is a wonderful nostalgia throwback. So, we decided to sing the eerie yet beautiful theme song from Stranger Things a cappella!”

The Warp Zone has previously released several memorable a capella covers, including the themes from Daredevil, Batman: The Animated Series, Jurassic Park, and Mortal Kombat. Their YouTube channel is also regularly updated with new covers and comedy skits, so you should definitely check it out by clicking on this link.

What did you think about The Warp Zone’s latest cover? Head into the Upside-Down and share your thoughts in the comment section below! Of course, we will also accept blinking Christmas lights as an appropriate response.

Image: Netflix

Legendary Missing DOCTOR WHO Story to Be Restored Using Animation

In a number of ways, the fervor over Doctor Who has taken a distinct downturn since the 50th anniversary. Even with the Peter Capaldi years being (arguably) some of the best they’ve done yet, the excitement over the show, and specifically the classic series, has tapered off distinctly. With all of the existing episodes released on DVD, and no missing episodes found since the gargantuan haul of nine 1967-1968 episodes in 2013, the classic series pool has been rather stagnant. So, as a classic series fan, I was particularly bummed, but today the BBC have announced an exciting addition: the lost 1966 serial “The Power of the Daleks” is being reconstructed using animation.

The news comes amid weeks of speculation on social media regarding whether the six part serial had been found or would indeed be animated. At just after midnight Greenwich Time, the BBC announced it would not only be releasing an animated version of the story, but they would be releasing it 50 years to the minute that it was first broadcast, being at 5:50pm on November 5th (remember, remember that date!). The serial will be available digitally via BBC’s online shop and then on DVD in the UK on Monday, November 21. In the U.S., the serial will broadcast on BBC America on November 12, then it will hit iTunes and other online retailers, before getting a DVD release sometime soon thereafter. Mark your calendars accordingly.

“The Power of the Daleks” is one of the most legendary missing stories in the history of the series. It’s the first to feature Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and it saw the first of his two run-ins with the evil Daleks. In this one, the Daleks pretend to be the servants of a group of scientists living on the planet Vulcan and only the Doctor — who seems to his companions Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills) to be very distinctly not the Doctor — can convince them otherwise. The producer and director for the project is Charles Norton, with character designs from acclaimed comic book artists Martin Geraghty and Adrian Salmon.

This is not the first time animation has been used to replace or reconstruct missing episodes of Doctor Who. There have been several releases where one or two episodes of a 4, 6, or 8 episode serial have been recreated using black-and-white animation of varying styles. However, this is the first time the procedure is being done for an entire story, where zero film elements exist and only the off-air audio (recorded by loyal fans at the time) remains intact. “The Power of the Daleks” was aired only once, for six weeks beginning November 5, 1966, and was lost to time following the massive 1974 wiping of the BBC archives. Though many episodes have been recovered from foreign sales markets through the years, 97 episodes are still missing, presumed lost forever.

While the announcement of the animation being commissioned all but solidifies that “The Power of the Daleks” has not and will never be found, this does open the door, should this release do well, to more such animated reconstructions of wholly missing stories. I’m very open to the idea; my DVD shelf longs to be full of sweet ’60s Doctor Who!

Are you excited about this development? Which other stories would you like to see restored? (My hopes are for “The Myth Makers” and “The Evil of the Daleks”!) Let us know in the comments below!

Image: BBC

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

Get Your First Look at Genndy Tartakovsky’s Luke Cage Comic, CAGE #1

Sweet Christmas, it’s a good time to be a Luke Cage fan. Case in point, CAGE!, a new series from Marvel Comics that is being handled by none other than Genndy Tartakovsky. You know, the guy who brought us Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Laboratory. Yes, that Genndy Tartakovsky (how many Genndy Tartakovskys do you know?). He’s not only writing this new series, but he’s handling some of the art duties as well, which means this book is sure to look and feel like nothing else on the stands. So, to recap: Luke Cage fans are getting a Netflix series, we’ve got an awesome Power Man and Iron Fist comic, and now we’re getting a new series from Genndy freaking Tartakovsky?! What a time to be alive.

We’ve got a preview below and it’s pretty clear this is not a current day Luke Cage story. Genndy Tartakovsky is doing a period piece of sorts, so this is Luke Cage in a very ’70s looking Marvel Universe. Even the tag line, “Dig It!” brings forth imagery of a different time in America. It’ll be interesting to see if this is a retelling of Cage’s origin and wether or not the book involves run ins with other Marvel NYC mainstays. Perhaps Tartakovsky will inspire a whole line of ultra groovy Marvel books. Time will tell on that one, but we’re content just reading the adventures of Luke Cage in a crime-ridden New York City. That’s fine with us.

Tartakovsky writing a comic series is awesome news and certainly something to be excited about. That said, we’re most thrilled that he is also drawing this bad boy. His art is unmistakable, truly one of a kind stuff. You can tell just from these preview pages that Tartakovsky brings an insane amount of energy and vibrance to the pages. He even plays with the medium and layouts, like the moment when Luke Cage literally kicks into another panel to smash a dude’s face. It’s cool stuff and the sort of thing that makes us so, so excited to see Tartakovsky cut loose in the Marvel Universe. Remember how awesome the stuff he did with Star Wars was? It was really awesome.

CAGE! #1 is hitting comic shops on October 5th, so get pumped and go pre-order this monster. It’s written and drawn by Genndy Tartakovsky, people! Peep the preview below and then let us know how stoked you are in the comments below. Dig it.

Image: Marvel Comics

This Video Explains the Fascinating History of the Comic Book Font

Comic Sans might be the most hated font of all time, but that doesn’t make its history any fascinating. No matter how we feel about it, the font used for text in comic books is surely iconic… which is strange, considering the face that for a long time, the words in comic books were handwritten. So how, then, were they still able to achieve such a distinct visual identity?

First, a brief history lesson from the video above, which takes an educational look at this topic. Aside from writers and illustrators, comic books were also created with the help of letterers, whose job it was to place dialogue bubbles and handwrite the words. Artie Simek and Sam Rosen were the two masters of the trade in the ’60s, and their craft was really closer to calligraphy than it was standard writing. The short and wide lettering was born from a need for legibility in small spaces on cheap paper.

Here’s a test you can do now to prove the effectiveness of the comic book font: Open a word processor on your computer, and type a string of text twice, once in a standard font like Times New Roman, and once in Comic Sans. Now, shrink those both down to a small, small size, and you’ll find that Comic Sans is far easier to read than virtually any font you put it against. Why? The square-ish letters are less prone to distortion, and the consistent stroke width (how all the lines of a letter are the same width) means fewer details get lost as the font gets smaller and smaller.

There’s a truly interesting history behind the font, so watch a video above and gain a new appreciation for a typeface that has unjustly been the butt of jokes for years.

Featured image: Dave Banks

Take a Tour of the World’s Deadliest Garden

A stroll through a stately and well-manicured English garden sounds absolutely divine doesn’t it? The bright sun, the buzzing bees, the budding flowers, the Brugmansia plants that cause migraine headaches, dry mouth, diarrhea, hallucinations, and rapid-onset eye paralysis before finally killing you in a “terrifying” way. No, wait… that would be a walk through Alnwick Castle’s “Poison Garden”: a.k.a. the deadliest garden on Earth.

Great Big Story, a New York-based “video network dedicated to the untold, the overlooked and the flat-out amazing” recently took a tour of Alnwick’s Poison Garden led by, apparently, the British Walter White. (Which totally makes sense considering what that man could do with a little Lily of the Valley.) What they found behind gates adorned with big skulls and crossbones and warnings that read “THESE PLANTS CAN KILL,” was everything from foxglove—which can kill you—to Strychnos nux-vomica—which can also definitely kill you.

The Poison Garden was added to Alnwick’s other gardens in 2005, and is the brainchild of the Duchess of Northumberland. The Duchess told the Smithsonian that she thought about adding an apothecary’s garden at first, but then settled on the exact opposite concept believing that it would engage children more to learn about poison, sickness, and death. Also, for good measure, she has included good ol’ cannabis and cocoa plants, because if you can’t hook ’em with learning about horrid eye paralysis-death, then you may as well try a couple of lessons about weed and cocaine.

One of the most stunning facts that Trevor Jones, the Head Gardener and Walter White lookalike, points out in the video is the fact that these poisonous plants are “very very common plants… and a lot of them are grown in many people’s gardens.” So the next time you spot somebody tending their plot and think oh how quaint, remember: Brugmansia.

What did you think was most memorable about this tour through the deadliest garden on Earth? Did you love that plant that could kill you, or that other plant that could really kill you? Let us know in the comments below!

Images: Great Big Story

This 20-Minute M.C. Escher Documentary Will Tickle Your Senses

Prepare to heighten all of your visual perceptions–a 20-mintue documentary from 1971 about the legendary graphic artist M.C. Escher is online and you can check it out above. Directed by Dutch filmmaker Han van Gelder, Adventures in Perception is as in depth as one could get today to the process behind such iconic works as the trippy (pun-intended) stairways in “Relativity” (1953) and those mighty morphing frog-bird creatures in “Verbum” (1942).

Via Laughing Squid, this resurfaced documentary isn’t new stuff but it sure is old school cool. It was released one year before Maurits Cornelis Escher’s death for a European program called “Living Art The Netherlands.” Much like fellow artist Salvador Dali, M.C. Escher has always been an interesting guy. He was part mathematician, architect, and scientist, living in the wild world of modern art. During his life, Escher made an impressive total of 448 lithographs, woodcuts, and wood engravings and over 2000 drawings and sketches. Our favorite Escher quote from this documentary sums up his entire career: “This name, artist, I’ve always been very suspicious of it. I don’t actually know what that means. I don’t even know what art is. I do know what science is. But I’m no scientist.”

In the first half of Adventures in Perception the camera zooms in and out of the countless constructions Escher pieced together which form his now iconic tessellations in monochromatic patterns. A dissonant modern score by Felix Visser plays in the background, making it feel like an IRL VHS version of the video game Fez. The second half of the documentary is super zany featuring quote after quote of Escher statements played over live demonstrations of the artist at work. You can learn more about M.C. Escher at the Official Website provided by The M.C. Escher Foundation. What are your favorite artworks by Escher? Let us know below!

Image: Lucasfilm