Television has evolved immensely in recent years. But can the networks keep up with each other? These articles cover everything from Game of Thrones to The Simpsons.
The UK film industry rarely commissions Black stories because they do not believe that our stories have an audience, and I find that astonishing. Black people are the drivers of culture, and we deserve to be represented. The only stories they seem to commission are the ones about gang violence to further perpetuate the falsehood that is Black on Black crime.
It is crucial that we explore alternative narratives to represent the multitude of nuanced Black experiences in our society. Being a womxn is one thing, being Black and British is another. My queerness adds another dimension to my identity. I am not Black before I am queer, I am not queer before I am Black, I am a queer Black British womxn.
This year, the Pulitzer Board’s announcement that Darnella Frazier — the teenager who filmed the killing of George Floyd — had won a special citation feels like a big moment, but not necessarily a celebratory one.
Floyd’s death is not something to celebrate, obviously, and despite the narrative of martyrdom and so-called sacrifice assigned to him posthumously, the horrifying truth is that he was murdered in front of a community. He did not choose to give up his life to change anything, and sadly in many ways, his death at the hands of police was just one part of the story.
Many Voices of Tim Curry (Wild Thornberrys / FernGully / Star Wars: The Clone Wars)
Tim Curry is an icon but I had no idea of the breadth of his voice acting. The Wild Thornberrys and FernGully I knew, but not Star Wars: The Clone Wars, TaleSpin, Tiny Toon Adventures, or Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? (amongst others).
Featuring the likes of Nicolas Cage in Adaptation, James Caan in Misery, Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and Gemma Arterton in Their Finest (one of, if not the only, woman in the supercut).
And related to typewriters in movies but unrelated to this supercut, there’s this 2017 blog post about typewriters in the movies, referencing some of the cuts in the video.
So booking.com, in collaboration with Superfly X is offering The FRIENDS™ Experience and a chance to stay overnight in Monica and Rachel’s apartment visit the place where Ross said “PIVOT!”, and relax on Joey and Chandler’s Barcaloungers.
As much as I loved the show and reference it frequently, I’m so over these Friends fan experiences. The show ended 17 years ago; it’s been off-air longer than it was on-air. And, yes, I know they’re doing a reunion series, and this is good for business but I’m tired. But I did realise one thing: the apartment decor was awful. Purple and yellow with a random assortment of furniture? What were they thinking? I guess that passed for decor in the 90s but looking at it now, it’s bad.
PushingUpRoses reviewed the episode of Creepshow where Bob Ross took on the Deadites from The Evil Dead. Kinda. It stars Ted Raimi and a host of other actors and it as looks weird and wonderful as you’d expect.
Back story – while listening to Gabriel Garzón-Montano’s Bombo Fabrika yesterday and one of the lines reminded me of something:
Oh my God, prophecy upon the bones
It was the “oh my god” part. But I couldn’t remember exactly what it reminded me of. The problem was the last time I heard it, I knew what it was. All I could muster from the depths of my memory was that it came from a song and it was something funny. Then it hit me 5 minutes ago:
“Oh my God, I was wrong!”
So I Googled that line and… I found it—Troy McClure’s rendition of Monkey Out of Me from his role in Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! in S07E19 of The Simpsons. This won’t mean anything to anyone else but I wanted to put it on the site for posterity and in case I forgot again.
BBC News - Virtual Studio Presentation (1993 -1999) Behind the Scenes (How Do They Do That?) 1997
I always wondered how they made the old glass shield thing on BBC News and, while browsing YouTube, I found this virtual studio tour from 1997. As someone in the comments said, this virtual set looks more futuristic than the red one BBC uses now.
I don’t believe in guilty pleasures but Catfish was a rare exception. Even though I know it’s predominately fake and mostly for clout-chasing, it was still wild, messy, dramatic and fun. Now we’re getting a UK version, co-hosted by Julie Adenuga, and she spoke to gal-dem’s Adwoa Darko about the show and romance.
The presenter wants viewers to watch the show through an empathetic lens. “Anyone I said ‘I’m hosting catfish, UK’ to, their first reaction was ‘oh my gosh, it’s gonna be so funny’. That’s their first reaction. And I look at them,” she says before pausing. “These are real emotions.” She also understands how the road to dating someone is often paved with half-truths as she’s had a few people lie to her about knowing her two brothers without knowing she’s related to them (“now you look like the biggest clown of all time”).
We all learnt the rules of the game from Nev: reverse Google image search people if you’re unsure, video call them, ignore people with only one picture because it’s 2021 and everyone has a camera phone. However, through working on the show Julie reveals she’s learnt a new one: “Tagged photos really became our friends. We’ve had profiles sometimes when we see they’ve got 2,000 followers and only one person has tagged you. What’s going on there?”
Bad times for Adwoa, though, who opened the interview with an admission: she had been catfished.
gal-dem: Lets start with the fact that I was catfished
Julie Adenuga: When did this happen?
I met this guy from Ghana right. I was thinking ‘rah we’re gonna do up Kente get ready’. He said he’s single and later he drops that he has kids and an ex-wife that has gone off and married somebody else, and the kids are in Ghana. We go on the date and this man is doing the most, he’s like toasting to us and I’m thinking ‘rah is this me yeah?’
My man Dom knocked it out of the park with his latest review of Them: Covenant, the newest Black torture porn horror series on Amazon Prime. As you can see from the above thumbnail, it’s trash. I’ve not watched it but I could tell it wasn’t for me just from the trailer and Dom confirmed many of my initial thoughts when he watched it for our sins.
It’s spoiler-heavy but I never planned to watch it so whatever. Even if you hadn’t planned to watch Them either, I implore you to watch the review anyway. Not least for its razor-sharp critiques on a lot of things regarding Black media and how some of it is made for white people to coax them out of their privileged world view (I guess?). As much as I loved Get Out and it helped me deal with a lot of personal demons, I fear that it has unintentionally awoken a beast that is white studios greenlighting Black horror because it’s seen as “diverse” to peddle Black torture narratives that just make Black people feel worse.
But those are my thoughts. Go listen to Dom’s and laugh your way through otherwise you’ll just cry. If you watched Them, what did you think? Let me (and Dom) know in the comments.
Hilarious Murder, She Wrote Supercut - My Favorite Jokes, Moments, and More!
At the end of last year, I discovered PushingUpRoses, a content creator who makes comedic introspective videos about various media including Murder, She Wrote, Golden Girls, Goosebumps, and the odd Let’s Play and retro PC game analysis. It gave me a lot of needed laughs and made me appreciate Murder, She Wrote all over again.
Before Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block of adult programming, there was Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite, launched in 1985. The programming block, which is still on the air today, caters for older audiences isn’t as loose as Adult Swim in terms of risqué content but it’s far from puritanical.
Back in 1999, there was a short called The Brady-Nixon Connection which looked at certain similarities between The Brady Bunch and President Nixon. In truth, there was no connection but it served as a unique way of promoting the show which aired in 1995, 1998–2003, and 2012.
Nail gun trick in sync - Penn & Teller are professionals
Every now and again, I fall down a Penn & Teller rabbit hole. They articulate the way magic works in a fun and engaging way and their famed nail gun trick is a fine example.
The basic premise of the trick involves Penn using a nail gun to flit between nailing a long block of wood and shooting it into his hand. But the trick lies in remembering when that’s safe to do so as a “magazine” of nails has gaps in it, at which the nail gun just shoots air—safe for a hand to withstand.
The video shows two examples of the trick synced together and it’s impressive how that even works. I can’t even put IKEA furniture together without making a mistake, let alone handing a nail gun without needing a hospital visit or a tetanus shot.
