Rachel

RANKED: Every Robert Zemeckis Movie

This week Paramount Pictures brings the release of Robert Zemeckis’s Allied, a World War II spy romance starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and as with any new Zemeckis film it’s a cause for celebration. With that in mind we’ve gone ahead and ranked every Robert Zemeckis movie, which was no easy task given how many out-and-out classics the man has made over his nearly four-decade career.

Perhaps best known for the Back to the Future trilogy as well as winning a Best Director Oscar for Forrest Gump, Zemeckis was a USC film school grad who got taken under the wing of Steven Spielberg right out of college. He co-wrote Spielberg’s 1941, then started a directing career where he specialized in comedy (Used Cars, Romancing the Stone). After the success of Back to the Future he began innovating with technology as when he blended live action with animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or integrated Tom Hanks into historical footage in Gump. In the 2000s he began a fascination with performance capture animation, which he explored over several films as both producer and director (Monster House, Polar Express). In recent years he’s gone back to making “real people” movies with a series of dramas including this week’s Allied, which involves a spy who marries another spy who may turn out to be a traitor.

Take a look at our ranking of every Robert Zemeckis movie in the gallery below, and let us know your own favorites in the comments section!

The post RANKED: Every Robert Zemeckis Movie appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life will be on Netflix very soon, and you're looking to binge the original episodes so you can fully immerse yourself in the nostalgia of what's to come. But it's impossible to watch all seven seasons between now and then, and let's be honest — do you really want to? There were some pretty rough patches in those 153 episodes. You can skip around and just pick your favorites, but that won't quite hit the spot, either. Much of the Gilmore satisfaction comes from the slow build, the gradually coalescing tensions and fissures. The best way to watch Gilmore Girls is not all at once, or in piecemeal, but rather, in carefully chosen batches.

To suit those needs, here are some manageable binge options to reacquaint yourself with the comforting fantasy world of Stars Hollow.

The Early Days (season 1, episodes 6 through 10)
The pilot episode is great, the bit when Rory gets hit by a deer is fun, but the following episodes are the best earliest encapsulation of the foundational Gilmore mythos. Episode six is Rory's birthday, and includes the first time Richard and Emily visit the Stars Hollow house. From there, you get pulled through Rory and Dean's first kiss, a solid Lorelai and Max buildup, one of the first real fights between Rory and Lorelai, and a temporary truce based on one of Richard's health crises. All that, plus a Stars Hollow reenactment of the Revolutionary War and Rory introducing her grandparents to frozen pizza.

The Birth of a Love Triangle (season 2, episodes 10 through 13)
The first episode of this batch, "The Bracebridge Dinner," introduces one the strangest and most beloved of all Stars Hollow events: there are costumes, there's antiquated language, there's Kirk being odd. "Bracebridge Dinner" also sets in motion several interesting interpersonal conflicts, especially between Emily and Richard, along with the brewing romantic tension with Jess, Dean, and Rory. Start with the dinner, and work your way up to another Stars Hollow classic — the charity picnic auction. Oh, Jess. That guy spells trouble.

The Peak Jess Era (season 2, episodes 19 through 22)
I'd argue that for every one of Rory's (terrible) boyfriends, Gilmore Girls is best when she's on the brink of getting together or breaking up with someone. These episodes are the strongest example of that dynamic, and they're also good evidence for how the show thrives when everything's about to fall apart. In "Teach Me Tonight," the seeds of the picnic auction finally bloom into Rory's infamous broken arm. From there, watch through the end of the season to get Lane's discovery of the drums, Lorelai's business-school graduation, Sookie and Jackson's wedding, and the brief hope of Christopher. If that weren't enough, it also has the world premiere of Kirk's independent film.  

The Best of Rory's Senior Year (season 3, episodes 5 through 9)
If you're motivated by the beautifully sad ending to season two, it's best to pick up the story here. The beginning of season three has a lot of delaying tactics before it gets back to the heart of things, but when it finally does, the show is gangbusters. The pinnacle of this batch of episodes is unquestionably the dance marathon episode "They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They," possibly the single best episode of the show's entire run. This lot will also introduce you to Rory's future at Yale, it'll give you Lorelai going on a date with Jon Hamm, and you'll finish up with the best Gilmore Thanksgiving episode and Sookie's drunken deep-fryer meltdown. Also: Dave Rygalski.

The Sentimental Period (season 3, episode 22 through season 4, episode 2)
There was a lot of concern about what Gilmore Girls would look like when Rory no longer lived at home, and how the show would negotiate her college years. The series reflects that anxiety within its main relationships, and for a lot of Gilmore fans, the best moments come when it doubles down (or triples down) on the sob-worthy sentimentality of it all. If that's you, begin with the season three finale, "Those Are Strings, Pinocchio," which features Rory's farewell to Chilton and her valedictorian speech in honor of her mother. It's worthy of an entire box of tissues just by itself. From there, launch yourself into Rory's slightly rocky move to Yale, then pour one out for poor, perpetually friend-zoned Marty.

The Reign of Emily Gilmore (season 4, episodes 14 through 16)
It's easy to get caught up in the Lorelai and Rory of it all, but Emily Gilmore steals every single scene she's in, and when Gilmore Girls gives her dramatic work to do, it will just knock you down sideways. Season four is more known for what comes at the end — we'll get there in a moment — but these episodes are some of the darkest and most gloriously raw moments we get from Emily, as she starts to pull away from Richard and copes with his mother's death and his emotional distance from her. "Scene in a Mall" is … well, phew.

When It Finally Happens (season 4, episodes 19 through 22)
Depending on how you feel about the Rory/Dean development, this run of episodes might be your favorite or they might be the worst. For me, the pleasure of finally getting somewhere in Luke and Lorelai's relationship outweighs the disappointment in Rory's narrative direction. But what really makes this sequence stand out is how Luke and Lorelai's big moment is threaded inside a classically Gilmore mess of glorious chaos. It's the opening of the Dragonfly Inn, it's Emily's separation from Richard, it's Jess's departure, it's Liz and T.J.'s wedding, it's Kirk's night terrors. It's pretty amazing. (Note: If you actually care about the mechanics of Lorelai's separation from Jason and the business deal with Richard, try starting at episode 18.)

The Rise of Logan (season 5, episodes 15 through 19)
Inevitably, Luke and Lorelai break up, Rory and Dean break up, and stuff gets pretty uneven for a while. This is one of the last batches where things between Lorelai and Luke still even out nicely — it's before the dark days of April Nardini — and where Rory can be drawn to Logan's rich-boy aesthetic before falling off the deep end of yacht-stealing and dissolution. This run is where things between Rory and Logan become serious, but before that can happen, Rory, Paris, and Lane get blasted on Founder's Day punch and complain about their love lives while everyone tours the freakish dioramas inside the old Twickum house.

The Prodigal Daughter Returns (season 6, episodes 5 through 9)
If you're the sort of person who enjoyed the bits where Rory and Lorelai were really on the outs, then you probably know which other parts to watch in seasons five and six. But if you'd rather pick things up once there's a head of steam gathering for their reunion, start with "We've Got Magic to Do," when the first cracks start to show in Rory's new DAR lifestyle, and watch through "The Prodigal Daughter Returns," as Rory finally gets the ship righted again. "We've Got Magic to Do" is worth it for the Hollywood Canteen party and the righteous smackdown of Shira Huntzberger. And while you're waiting for Rory and Lorelai to make things right again, Taylor tries to rename all of the Stars Hollow streets.

The Last Episodes (season 7, episodes 19 through 22)
It's tempting to just draw a veil over the rest of season six and all of season seven. April Nardini. Lorelai marries Christopher. Rory gets a job, somehow, by just standing in lobbies. But if you want to remember how the series finished up — and from where the new Gilmore season will launch — start with episode 19, which gives us the first hint of Lorelai and Luke's post-Christopher truce. Rory stresses about her future, wonders about her relationship with Logan, and graduates from Yale. Lorelai does very drunken embarrassing karaoke. If nothing else, Richard and Emily sing a super-adorable Cole Porter number at Rory's graduation party, and she goes off to work on the Obama campaign. It was a simpler, more optimistic time.

Other great episodes worth hitting along the way:

• "Love, Daisies and Troubadours" (season 1, episode 21): Max proposes to Lorelai.
• "A Tale of Poes and Fire" (season 3, episode 17): The Independence Inn burns down.
• "The Festival of Living Art" (season 4, episode 7): One of Stars Hollow's most completely bizarre and elaborate traditions.
• "Friday Night's Alright for Fighting" (season 6, episode 13): A truly remarkable all-Gilmore family meltdown scene.
• "I Get a Sidekick Out of You" (season 6, episode 19): Lane and Zack get married!

Sabra has issued a voluntary recall of some varieties of its hummus. Yes, again. Is there nothing that 2016 won’t turn to ashes in our mouths?

Read more...

Outdoor outfitter REI is staying closed on Black Friday and encouraging customers and employees alike to spend the day enjoying the outdoors. Well, Patagonia, a company that has its own outdoorsy retail stores in addition to supplying REI, decided to do something different to work against commercialization of a shopping holiday: the company plans to donate all of its Black Friday sales to environmental charities.

Note that isn’t all of their Black Friday profits. It’s all of their sales. Patagonia’s own stores and website are included, not merchandise sold at other retailers.

The company donates 1% of its sales year-round to environmental causes, and not big names with big fundraising operations. CEO Rose Marcario explained in a blog post announcing the planned donation that the target will be “grassroots organizations” that work in local communities. “These are small groups, often underfunded and under the radar, who work on the front lines,” she wrote.

Patagonia also recently closed down for a cause: the company closed down all of its offices and stores on Election Day in the United States so employees would have a chance to go vote.

(via AdWeek)

We want to send you a copy of Beryl Evans’s Charlie the Choo-Choo, available November 22nd from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers!

Fans of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower will definitely want this picture book about a train engine and his devoted engineer.

Engineer Bob has a secret: His train engine, Charlie the Choo-Choo, is alive … and also his best friend. From celebrated author Beryl Evans and illustrator Ned Dameron comes a story about friendship, loyalty, and hard work.

Comment in the post to enter!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of 50 United States and D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec). To enter, comment on this post beginning at 1:30 PM Eastern Time (ET) on November 18th. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 PM ET on November 22nd. Void outside the United States and Canada and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

Richard Rankin (Roger Mackenzie) and Sophie Skelton (Brianna Randall) have returned to filming season three of Outlander.  They were seen today filming in the West End of Glasgow, Scotland.  Yesterday, we saw photos of the preparation of filming these scenes.  The scenes are being shot at Christmastime and are believed to be set in Boston.  This means Roger has crossed the pond to visit the Randall ladies.

More photos will be added as they become available.

Update: Caitriona Balfe showed up later to film also.  She is seen leaving the Boston home with luggage.  The 1960s hair is there.

Sophie Skelton is on set #outlander pic.twitter.com/70kOyNQvY4

— Iain (@Iainyoung43) November 18, 2016

Vintage yellow cab arrives #outlander pic.twitter.com/UFPKBTJ1Jv

— Iain (@Iainyoung43) November 18, 2016

Night cab for Claire #Outlander pic.twitter.com/ngq6NHZkjs

— Iain (@Iainyoung43) November 18, 2016

Taxi for ????? #outlander pic.twitter.com/sB7sHl9Eld

— Iain (@Iainyoung43) November 18, 2016

Catriona Balfe is in the street #outlander pic.twitter.com/BFR1mZ6Taz

— Iain (@Iainyoung43) November 18, 2016

.@Outlanderfans #outlander #jgssets @BarryWaldo It's beginning to look a lot like….. pic.twitter.com/k5aUtrMUmz

— JON GARY STEELE (@jongarysteele) November 17, 2016

Glasgow getting ready to become Christmas in Boston. #Outlander pic.twitter.com/rdKXZNK5x4

— Iain (@Iainyoung43) November 16, 2016

Claire's 1960's wig, washed,conditioned,set and now baking in the Wig oven! #outlander #makeupartist #1968 pic.twitter.com/Vw45vlC1O0

— AnitaAndersonMUA (@AnitAndersonMUA) November 18, 2016

Source: Evening Times, Daily Mail, respective Twitter accounts

Smartphones are ubiquitous. Everyone has one, and they come with all kinds of features. Some Android phones, though, apparently have an unwanted extra: a secret backdoor that sends all of your text messages to China.

Security contractors recently discovered the malware on some Android phone models, the New York Times reports.

The software comes preinstalled on the phone — this isn’t something users are accidentally downloading through misleading ads or the Google Play store. It’s written by the Shanghai Adups Technology Company, based in China.

Shanghai Adups says it runs the code on more than 700 million connected devices; one U.S.-based phone company, BLU Products, said it had found the code on 120,000 of its phones.

Folks who buy high-end, premium phones aren’t the ones at risk here; your current-generation Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel device is not the problem. Customers who buy lower-cost, lower-end Android smartphones — primarily lower-income consumers — are the ones being hit.

The Adups software sends the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, location information, and other data to servers in China, the NYT reports, and the existence of the software is not disclosed to users.

This glaring security hole is also unusual because it’s not a bug: the Adups software is working as intended. It’s meant to spy on users and phone home — it’s just that it’s meant to do so in China, and not in the U.S. In theory.

The CEO of BLU Products told the NYT, “It was obviously something that we were not aware of. We moved very quickly to correct it,” and added that Adups told him all the data from BLU customers had been destroyed.

The analytics firm that discovered the Adups firmware on American phones has taken its findings to the federal government and plans to release a full report this week.

Secret Backdoor in Some U.S. Phones Sent Data to China, Analysts Say [New York Times]

While fans are still recovering from Negan’s wrath on The Walking Dead, it seems we aren’t the only ones the event has shaken to core—it’s making waves all the way over to the Winchester boys of Supernatural.

See, way back on Supernatural season one, dad John Winchester was played by Negan himself, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It’s been 12 years since dear ol’ dad’s first appearance and fans have long been speculating that his whereabouts may have something to do with being out on the hunt for zombies.

It all started with a not-so-innocent tweet by Jensen Ackles, a.k.a. Dean Winchester, from the set of Supernatural; Ackles first casually placed a bat on the hood of the beloved family Impala, then came the tweet of Ackles holding said bat. Not just any bat, Negan’s barbed wire executioner, Lucille.

Hey @JDMorgan I found this in the trunk…can I try it out?. Don’t miss tonight’s episode. It’s a knockout! #Supernatural #walkingdead pic.twitter.com/N0VooufX5u

— Jensen Ackles (@JensenAckles) October 27, 2016

Fans on social media lost their minds at the idea of Papa Winchester hunting demonic beings—you know, the family business. (Though this version of Jeffrey Dean Morgan isn’t quite as heroic as Sam and Dean might hope he’d be.) The crazy fun idea of a show crossover only heightened when Morgan responded to Ackles’ tweet referencing Baby, the car that has been handed down through the Winchester generations. Maybe the Impala isn’t the only family heirloom after all.

Ackles responded, referencing Negan’s famous red scarf. Also let’s not forget that John Winchester’s origin story included a love of baseball on Supernatural. Eerie coincidence.

And then yet another JDM response. At this point fans were in a frenzy, watching the fanfic of their dreams play out on social media. And by fan frenzy I mean me, refreshing my feed, zombie-chomping at the bit to see what was going to happen next.

As two of my favorite fandoms continued their conversation, it seemed like this ongoing tête-à-tête could last forever. One would hope.

Then JDM dropped the bomb of all bombs. The ol’ Soylent Green twist. (Anyone else dying that he calls him kid?)

In the end, turns out Ackles and JDM’s conversation’s importance wasn’t lost on one of the key players in all of this, the magnificent Michael Cudlitz, who had a few choice words to say. The Walking Dead’s own dearly departed Abraham did us all a solid and chimed in with his two cents:

No word on what Glenn thinks of all this but he could be under a garbage can and unable to check his twitter. Dumpsters, am I right?

What do you think of this Winchester weapons report? Personally, it’s The Walking Dead Supernatural crossover of my dreams so let me know what you think in the comments below and tag @nerdist and @justjenn on twitter to share your thoughts!

Where will The Walking Dead go from here?

Spoilers ahead for Mark Frost’s new novel, The Secret History of Twin Peaks.

Throughout the course of Twin Peaks’s 30 episodes, David Lynch and Mark Frost crafted a series that was known equally for its anomalous plot and its damn fine coffee and cherry pie. What began with the seemingly normal murder case of homecoming queen Laura Palmer soon transformed into a narrative of a far more otherworldly, sinister nature. Along the way, we were able to get to know a bit about the various residents of the eccentric Northwestern town, although some of their backstories were never fully explored. In Frost’s new novel, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, out today, the series’ co-creator expands on the layered history of the town, going as far back as Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition to explain all of the mysteries that encompassed Peaks’s populace. Below, we've compiled 11 backstories about characters in the Twin Peaks universe that we now know more about.

Dr. Jacoby
Our favorite red-and-blue-glasses-wearing psychiatrist grew up in Hawaii with his family, opting to stay with his Army-serving father on the island after his parents divorced. (His mother and older brother moved to Twin Peaks, where his brother, Robert, became the long-serving star reporter of the town’s newspaper.) Dr. Jacoby himself moved to Twin Peaks many years later, in 1981, after the death of his mother, Leilani, and established a private practice and consulting residency at the local hospital; he also was interested in studying the Native American tribes in the region. In the 1970s and '80s, he published a series of highly controversial research articles and a book called The Eye of God: Sacred Psychology in the Aboriginal Mind, which “proposed a theory for the evolution of spirituality in early native people through the ritualistic use of psychotropic plant life by shamans or tribal healers,” after over a decade of conducting anthropological fieldwork. The book obtained quite a cult status — Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia praised it — despite being fiercely attacked by American medical boards for lacking scientific rigor.

The Log Lady
Born Margaret Coulson — a nice homage to the actress who portrayed her, the late Catherine Coulson — and later referred to as Margaret Lanterman, the Log Lady experienced an otherworldly occurrence in Twin Peaks when she was a third-grader. On a nature walk with her fellow classmates, chaperones, and teacher, she and two male students wandered off and disappeared into the town’s vast woods. Discovered 24 hours later by a group of Eagle Scouts, the three of them had no recollection of what happened and thought only a few minutes had gone by. Examined by a physician for a checkup, she had no complaints aside from thirst and hunger, although a mark of three thin symmetrical triangles was discovered on the back of her right knee. (Both boys had similar markings.) At the end of the checkup, she asked the physician whether “the owl was coming back.” As a youngster, she was described as fiercely intelligent, a little reserved, and an “early feminist,” and studied forestry at Washington State University.

When she was in her 30s, the Log Lady worked in the town library while spending most of her time raising money for the Sierra Club. What happened next is briefly mentioned in the show, but the novel expounds on it quite a bit — she met her husband, Sam Lanterman, at a local lumber yard. He was a burly man, a legendary lumberjack, and an all-around affable guy. A yearlong courtship “right out of the 19th century” ensued. He proposed to her, coincidentally, near the spot where she experienced the perplexing overnight encounter of her youth, and a wedding date was set for a year later. But as we know, tragedy struck. Following their nuptials, a thunderstorm swept through the area and a lightning strike up the mountain started a large fire that engulfed the woods. As the volunteer fire chief, Sam rushed out with other volunteers to attempt to stop the fire from spreading, but in a devastating end, he was the sole casualty of the fire. She never spoke of his death, and buried him two days later in a plot behind the house they’d been building together up the mountain. In a final, poignant anecdote, we’re given the story about how she discovered her precious log:

They say she went up to visit the Heart of the Forest again the next day. Although dozens of acres had burned around it, the small grove of sycamores there was still standing. Nearby, a magnificent old-growth Douglas fir had fallen during the conflagration. When Margaret came back down she carried a piece of that great tree with her, cradling it like a newborn babe. She knew exactly which part of the great creature to take — it told her as much, she said — and from that day on Margaret and her log were inseparable.

Josie Packard
Peaks’s resident femme fatale gets an even more bonkers backstory. She was born Li Chun Fung, and her father was a high-ranking “Red Pole” officer in a well-known drug triad, while her mother was a legendarily beautiful prostitute who died from a heroin overdose a few days after Josie was born. Raised and trained by her father to one day take over the family business, she studied criminality at an exclusive boarding school and started running her own drug and prostitution ring at 16. (She even went so far as to entrap and extort members of the school’s administration and faculty.) After graduating she founded her own fashion label in Hong Kong, which served as a convenient cover for her expansive cocaine sale-and-distribution system in the 1970s; in a few years, her ruthless empire covered every corner of the film, music, and entertainment industry in the territory. However, in 1980, Josie’s father was unexpectedly gunned down in his Guangzhou nightclub, and it was made to look like (presumably by a rival triad) that she carried out the killing. She was forced to flee and vanished without a trace, before popping up shortly thereafter under a new alias at a Hong Kong Trade Center event, where she met Andrew. She was working as a hostess and claimed to be an orphaned art and design student at a local university. He immediately fell in love with her, but when he impulsively proposed a few days later, she turned him down.

During this time, Josie bought protection from and enlisted the help of import-export specialist Thomas Eckhardt to escape to another country; also during this time, Thomas and Andrew met and became business acquaintances. Thomas thought Josie would be staying with him in a Hong Kong safe house until her official arrangements were settled, but he discovered she had run off to Twin Peaks to be with (and marry) Andrew. When Josie arrived in the town, she promptly accepted his second marriage proposal.

Catherine Martell (née Packard) and Pete Martell
Pete — winner of six straight Lumberjack of the Year awards at the Packard Mill — and Catherine — who was frequently described as a “Packard by name, a Medici by inclination” by the townspeople — attended school in Twin Peaks together but never socialized. They became reacquainted in 1958 at the town’s annual square dance during Lumberjack Days. Catherine had just returned home from completing her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College, and Pete, who had just won another Lumberjack of the Year title, asked Catherine for a celebratory waltz. (He apparently had had his eye on her romantically for quite some time, but had never acted on his feelings.) Sparks quickly flew, and Catherine ended up forgoing her plans to study in Europe to get engaged and married to Pete. Their romance faded sharply after the wedding, and as we know, a loveless arrangement ensued that included Catherine partaking of an enduring dalliance with Ben Horne.

Hank Jennings
Hank was an exemplary student-athlete growing up. He developed a keen interest in American literature, especially Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. He and Sheriff Truman were good friends, and the best players on Twin Peaks’s varsity football team, where they were the fullback and quarterback, respectively. He was thought to have a bright future ahead of him, but his first brush with the criminal underworld changed it all — when Peaks’s football team made it to the state finals and were moments away from scoring a game-winning touchdown, Hank unexpectedly lost grip of the football and dropped it. It was revealed that Jean Renault had paid him handsomely to fumble on purpose, and he continued to work for the Renault family in illegal capacities for the rest of his life. (It was during this time that he and Sheriff Truman severed their friendship.)

When not working for the Renaults, he also worked at the Double R Diner, where he was close to Norma. He courted her for many months before she accepted his proposal, and they married in an intimate ceremony before honeymooning elaborately in San Francisco and Los Angeles for a couple weeks. They settled in Twin Peaks, and Hank would make frequent, long trips abroad for “business” purposes, which quickly spurred a distant and loveless marriage between the two.

Norma Jennings (née Lindstrom)
Norma, described as a dazzling beauty in her youth, was head of the cheerleading squad and homecoming queen at Twin Peaks’s high school. She came from a modest family who lived on the shabbier side of town; her father, Marty, worked as a railroad employee for many years before changing course and opening the Double R Diner. She and Ed Hurley dated in high school, though their romance ended upon graduation. (More on that below.) She worked as a waitress at the Double R while attending a local community college, and, as outlined above, accepted Hank’s proposal and married him. As a newly married woman, she threw herself into finishing her college degree with the intention of becoming a nurse, but when her father was diagnosed with heart disease, she took over managing the Double R all on her own. She soon transformed the greasy spoon into a must-eat-at establishment that became famous for its coffee and cherry pie, even opening a small bakery next door that produced her mother’s pie recipes as a side business.

Ed Hurley
As a teenager, Ed was obsessed with cars, trucks, engines, and motorcycles, and was also deeply in love with Norma. Displaying a tendency to hesitate at crucial personal moments in his life, though, he never told her his feelings, and upon graduation he enlisted in the Army and headed out of town for basic training. Norma was also in love with him, but didn’t share her feelings either, and in the fall Ed left the States to begin a two-year hitch in Saigon. Hank — who had very briefly dated Norma in high school — took advantage of this, and went so far as to throw out every daily letter Ed sent Norma during his stint in Vietnam to make it seem like he didn’t care about her anymore.

When he returned home from the war to help raise his nephew James, he knew Norma was married, but he was still hopelessly in love. He took over running his father’s Gas Farm, where one day he met Nadine Goetz, who brought in her father’s large John Deere lawn mower for repairs. (Nadine attended high school with Ed, Norma, and Hank, but was a few years younger and a star gymnast; as a sophomore, she had had an “actual, honest-to-gosh nervous breakdown” and had to take a semester off to check into a mental hospital. At the time of meeting Ed, she was working as a seamstress in a nearby town.) They soon married, but shortly after their marriage ceremony, Ed accidentally shot Nadine in the left eye while on a bird-hunting trip with Sheriff Truman. This made her permanently lose vision in that eye, which gave her an “epiphany": to create a completely silent set of drape runners.

Andrew Packard
Andrew wasn’t always the hard-boiled businessman we know him to be. As an eager Boy Scout, “Andy” experienced a harrowing, terrifying few moments in the Ghostwood National Forest with his young troop and scoutmaster — Dwayne Milford, who became Twin Peaks’s long-term mayor — that made him question “the unknown.” Following a hike that damaged his and his fellow scouts’ compasses, a sudden thunderstorm and torrential rainstorm struck the forest, which required everyone to remain in their large tent. Volunteering to run and get water from the lake, he encountered an extremely tall man in the distance staring at him, like he was “lit from within.” When the troop awoke the next morning, a fresh set of footprints of immense proportions surrounded the campsite.

Later in life, Andrew served for many successful decades as the president of the Packard family business, and also held important roles in the local community, including the Rotary, the Chamber of Commerce, the Optimists Club, the Elk Lodge, and the Masonic Lodge. He managed to anticipate his wife Josie’s attempt to kill him in a "boating accident"; he created a new identity — Anton Walbrook — and moved to Hong Kong to discover the truth about her, where he remained for three years, plotting the perfect time for his revenge.

Carl Rodd
Carl appeared in the prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, as the owner of the Fat Trout Trailer Park, from which agent Chester Desmond mysteriously disappeared. He was one of the three elementary-school students — including the Log Lady — who vanished from their class’s nature walk, only to turn up unharmed 24 hours later. He, too, got a mark of three thin symmetrical triangles on the back of his right knee from the experience. After graduating from high school, he served in the Coast Guard as a boatswain’s mate during the early years of the Vietnam War. He went on to live an itinerant life, staying with the Native Aleut people in Alaska, serving as a tracker for hunting expeditions, and writing poetry and songs. He toyed with the idea of being a folksinger, and even performed stunts in a few mid-budget movies before returning to his hometown of Twin Peaks permanently, in the early 1980s. That’s when he became the co-owner and manager of the brand-new Fat Trout — he quickly became a favorite of the townspeople after he moved in. (So much so that the newspaper dedicated a frequent column to him, titled “Carl Said It.”)

Douglas Milford
Perhaps most interestingly, the novel reveals that Douglas was one of the most important figures in 20th-century otherworldly American history. (“Dougie” only appears in a few episodes of the series, where he dies in his bed of a heart attack the day after marrying Lana Budding.) As a scoutmaster in his youth, he encountered a “walking owl as tall as a man” and a “giant” in the Ghostwood National Forest, in nearly the same exact spot as Andrew did a few months later. This prompted him to enlist in the U.S. Air Force. He went on to have a long career — over 50 years — in the Air Force and military, which he left ranked as a highly revered lieutenant colonel. His accomplishments and the top-secret projects he worked on are far too extensive to list in their entirety, but he specifically dealt with government cases of an extraterrestrial or metaphysical nature. To name a few: He worked directly on the Roswell UFO incident; the Maury Island incident; Project Blue Book; and even visited a vast Florida military installation with President Richard Nixon and Jackie Gleason, where Nixon showed him and the famed entertainer a bona fide alien life-form. It survived the Roswell crash, and had a “grayish-greenish-white spiny back” with a “small and pale” figure.

Before Nixon was impeached, he had obtained funds for a secret program for Douglas to run, which was set up in untraceable offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Established in 1983, the program, called the Listening Post Alpha (“LPA”), had the goal of searching for intelligent life around Twin Peaks and the entire Northwest. It operated completely off the books of any official government or military oversight. Douglas handpicked Major Briggs to help run its day-to-day operations.

Major Garland Briggs
Douglas hired Major Briggs for the confidential LPA program, who at the time was a young officer stationed at the Fairchild Air Force Base in nearby Spokane, with his wife and son, Bobby. (The LPA and its large, secluded building in the mountains were outwardly said to have been built to help the local airport upgrade its runways, communications, and security system to modern standards.) Originally, Major Briggs thought he was hired for a Strategic Defense Initiative job, but once Douglas shared the true intentions of the mission with him a few months later, he immediately agreed to continue working on the program. Douglas said he picked Major Briggs because of his background in structural engineering and architecture, and also because he experienced (and anonymously reported) a UFO sighting while co-piloting an aircraft in western Montana in 1979. When Douglas died, at the age of 80, Major Briggs continued to run the program on his own.

Almonds, peanuts, pretzels, peanut butter — if none of those chocolate-covered candies get your sweet tooth tingling, Mars is hoping its newest variety of M&M’s will: caramel covered with milk chocolate and of course coated in a candy shell.

The newest addition to the M&M’s lineup will hit shelves in late May 2017, Mars says. It’s gonna look like this inside, in case you wondered what caramel is:

However did the company think of such a combination? Oh yeah, it’s pretty darn common in the candy world.

“Chocolate and caramel is such a popular flavor combination, especially with the fans of M&M’s,” explains Tanya Berman, Brand Director, M&M’S Brand. “In our research, our fans were enthusiastic at the possibility of a Caramel variant and we can’t wait for them to try the perfect balance of soft caramel and delicious M&M’S chocolate this spring.”

Mars announced earlier this year, which happens to be M&M’s 75th anniversary, that it would be focusing on innovation: it’s planning to transition to all natural colors over the next five years, Business Insider notes, announced new GMO-related labels, and said it would be developing new flavors. Caramel M&M’s, for example.

Snapchat didn't revolutionize the world of social media apps, nor did it give us a bunch of amazing features we hadn't seen before.

But the app has made some silly dreams come true- like the dream of giving your baby a beard. Not your idea of fun? Maybe it's a dad thing.

Snapchat lets dads apply a filter beard to their unsuspecting infants while shooting videos and pics on their phones, and yet, as the dad in this video from AFV found out, Snapchat filters aren't programmed to handle sneezes.

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid

Sing us a song of a lass that is bold and chances are she’ll be wearing a bit of tartan sass… at least if her name is Claire Randall Fraser and she’s a time-traveling nurse from World War II England that’s found herself transported back to 1740s Scotland. Yes, of course we are talking about Starz’s adaptation of the epic Diana Gabaldon novel series Outlander. And now you can wear your love of the story on your sleeve—literally!—as Hot Topic and Torrid have teamed up to bring a bit of the Highland’s Jacobite culture to 2016.

 

 

[Photo Credit: IMAXTree]

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Photo by Feltthink

Istanbul-based fiber artist Sabri Tunca of Feltthink can vividly recall the first time he ever encountered felt. Then a woodworker, Sabri stumbled across a felt hat by chance at a local shop in 2008. “It impressed me so much,” he recalls. “I just fell in love with the material.” A naturally curious person — “I always wonder how something is made” — Sabri struck out online to learn more. Armed with a handful of tutorials, he felted his first creation: a green hat of his own. “It looked a little weird and was a bit too small, but I liked it,” he says. Before he knew it, Sabri was neglecting woodworking in favor of felting small figurines and soap covers, selling the items to local boutiques. When one of his customers requested a felt hat, Sabri obliged, happily returning to the form that first captivated him. “It just grew and grew from there,” he explains. “To this day, I’m still making hats.”

Read on learn more about Sabri’s creative process and Halloween plans, and shop Feltthink’s whimsical line here.

You were instantly enamored with felt. What continues to draw you to it?

Felt is so malleable, like fabric Play-Doh! It offers so much opportunity to make whatever you want, and it’s wearable, so the possibilities are endless: You can be anything. It’s a great chance to escape your boring reality.

I also really enjoy the process of working with felt — I think it makes you more relaxed. It’s like meditation for me. Felting allows me to express my imagination in a free and natural way.

What brought you to Etsy?

I spent a lot of time searching for things on Etsy before I started selling, so it was always in the back of my mind. Then one day my friends and I decided to take some of my hats and go to a nearby park here in Istanbul. We took a bunch of photos and afterwards I realized I could put them online — that’s when I opened my shop on Etsy. People responded with really nice messages, and it just evolved from there.

Today Etsy is a big portion of my sales. My products are sold here in local shops, but Etsy allows me to reach customers all over the world, outside of just Turkey. If I didn’t have that access, it would be really hard for me. This is my full-time job.

Your hats are so unique. Would you say you have a typical customer?

I don’t know if I do. So many different kinds of people buy my hats — I work with fashion designers, I make hats for children, and sometimes for festival goers, too. In general, I’d say it’s people with a sense of humor.

My customers are always sending me happy messages, and they’ll share amazing photos of my hats in different places around the world. It’s so nice to share those moments with them — it gives me the courage to keep making. I feel lucky.

Tell me about your creative process.

Sometimes I start with a sketch, and sometimes I just dive into the materials. It changes every time, depending on how I feel in the moment.

Usually, I start by making a mold out of plastic and bubble wrap. Then I take the felt and cover the mold in different layers, and apply hot water and soap. After it’s wet, I start pressing down, gently at first, making sure to always change directions so the hat keeps its shape. In time, the fibers start to hook together and get stronger. The process is pretty repetitive, but eventually it gets hard, like a sculpture. It just takes time. Then I transfer the hat onto another mold for sizing, and that’s where it dries. Once it’s dry, it holds the shape.

Over time, I’ve improved my process through trial and error. I’ve stumbled, but it’s allowed me to experiment and try a lot of different techniques — I think that’s the best way to learn.

What’s your favorite part of the process?

I buy only white felt, and then I dye it myself. I love the dyeing process because it’s so colorful — creating the colors is my favorite part of my job. I really enjoy experimenting and mixing all the different pigments together. I love seeing how the colors look together — I lose myself in them. Sometimes I just want to make one color, but it never happens. It’s like my hands won’t allow it.

Do you have a most popular item? How did it come to be?

I think my best seller is probably Black Madness, which started out as a completely different hat. Originally it was very colorful, but after I finished it one of my friends asked me why I didn’t make it in black. I gave it a shot, and the black version turned out to be incredibly popular. It just goes to show how people can add to your process by giving you new ideas and inspiration. I love when that happens.

Halloween is just around the corner, and I imagine your hats get incorporated into tons of fun costumes. Any favorites, or big costume plans for yourself this year?

I make a witch hat, which I like, and I also make a lot of custom hats for people — customers have some crazy ideas! I really like making custom orders because it’s an opportunity to try something different, which always excites me.

As for myself, I don’t know what I’m going to be for Halloween this year. I have so many different ideas in my mind, but I don’t really like to make plans. I like to go with the flow.

What does the future hold for Feltthink?

I like what I’m doing, and I feel like I’m already meeting my goals. I’d like to meet more people, witness more beautiful moments, and make more hats, but if everything just keeps going on this way, it’s enough for me.

Follow Feltthink on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Studio photographs by Mahmoud Gaballah.

Shop Feltthink

 

My name is Katie, and I work on the Communications Team at Etsy. I'm a native New Yorker, passionate about words, food, and Iowa.

The post Featured Shop: Feltthink appeared first on Etsy Blog.

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Debut Collection for Christian Dior makes a feminist statement.

 

For more discussion on style, check out our Fashion & Beauty forum, darling. 

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

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The University of Kansas Libraries seeks a knowledgeable, enthusiastic and innovative individual to articulate and execute a vision for enhancing resource access and discovery in the evolving world of diverse library collections and digital scholarship. The Metadata Librarian provides leadership … Continue reading →

Editor’s Note: this review is spoiler-free! Enjoy!

Gosh, you guys: why do us nerds have to be the finger on the pulse of a nation? After the mainstream realized we were right about comic books and superheroes and anti-heroes, it seems they’ve found the next one of our interests to obsess upon: time travel. With the success of series like Outlander, Doctor Who, 12 Monkeys, and even Rick and Morty, it seems like more traditional networks are getting hip to the idea of skipping in and around time, with NBC coming out with their own version of time travel adventure on TV: Timeless, which premieres on Monday, October 3 at 10 p.m..

First thing’s first: this is popcorn television, where bombastic goofiness is the name of the game, and entertainment definitely wins over the science of it. If you’re looking for really complicated, riveting time travel: go watch 12 Monkeys or Rick and Morty. Do your mom and aunt and grandparents want to watch something together as a family? Throw this on and worry not about anyone being able to follow along (or a bunch of Rick’s burping grossing everyone out). Your family will no doubt love series stars Abigail Spencer, Matt Lanter, and Malcolm Barrett—and they’ll definitely LOVE ER‘s Goran Visnjic showing up, tackling big bad duties this season. It also features a veritable smorgasbord of fantastic character actors in supporting roles, including Paterson Joseph, Sakina Jaffrey, and Claudia Doumit. You’ll find quickly that showrunners Eric Kripke (Supernatural) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield) have nailed the freewheeling tone of this procedural.

The show centers around three unwitting time travelers—history buff Lucy (Spencer), former soldier Wyatt (Lanter), and scientist Rufus (Barrett)—as they are tasked with catching a mysterious bad guy named Garcia Flynn, a man hellbent on changing the past, seemingly for the worse. Perhaps the most surprisingly notable thing about the Timeless pilot is its unwillingness to disregard Rufus’ race and the effect that it would have on the people in the eras they visit. Because, duh. But also, given this a network show, it’s about time.

Identity has never been network TV’s favorite thing to dissect, traditionally shying away from discussing race, sex, or gender in any fashion beyond the throwaway joke or a schmaltzy afterschool special-type moment. Despite the mind-bogglingness of not addressing things that actively affect the way a person operates in the world, it’s traditionally been so much easier (and more palatable to a wider—read: whiter—audience) to eschew the discussion altogether, as if the world wouldn’t push back against “otherness.” But here’s the thing: if you’re going back to the past, it better freakin’ act like the past. Though it remains to be seen if Timeless will use Rufus to become a one-note comic relief/social commentary, we’re hopeful that a particularly mysterious subplot with him will turn that bit around some more. And good on NBC/Kripke/Ryan for at least trying, if nothing else.

The show zigs and zags with a boundless sort of enthusiasm that’s easy to like, an interesting juxtaposition to the myriad other time travel shows that seem to take the rules of defying physics as we currently know it. But that’s what makes it so enjoyable: it’s not as serious as 12 Monkeys or intricate as Doctor Who. It’s a Quantum Leap for a modern time—and sometimes that’s exactly what you need. More than anything, Timeless is the exact sort of historical time travel caper you’d want and expect from a network studio (even if it feels like something that would’ve probably done a bit better for them several years ago, before time travel became the new “it” conceit for television). It’s big, audacious, isn’t bogged down by the theoretical physics of traveling through time, and full of nostalgia-laced fun.

3 out of 5 burritos from the past:

Images: NBC

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Alicia Lutes is the Managing Editor of Nerdist and creator/co-host of Fangirling. Find her on Twitter if you’re into that sorta thing.

I’m barreling down Interstate 35 just south of Austin, Texas in a sand-colored 1969 BMW 1600, headed for a long weekend of questionable choices and hazy recollections on South Padre Island. I had only owned the car, my first old BMW, for six months or so, and I was still getting to know the eccentricities, but the tinge of burning oil seemed a bit distinct among the other odors that come with a car that had been on the road a full decade before I was born.

Read more...

It’s a big day in Outlander news.  Outlander, specifically war-torn Jamie (Sam Heughan), graces the cover of Entertainment Weekly for the second time.  Woohoo!

If that is not enough, below are the first official photos from season three, specifically the first episode.  Outlander may be making us wait a while for season three, but at least they are keeping us entertained.  The photos show Jaime, Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies), and Claire (Caitriona Balfe).  What do we think about the Claire photo?  It looks like a dream sequence.

Here is what showrunner Ronald D. Moore had to say about season three in relation to showing Culloden.

“It just felt like for the TV show, we’ve been promising this for a while and it just felt like we should have something,” executive producer Ronald D. Moore tells EW of the conflict that was first teased in the season 2 finale between the French-backed highlanders and the British army. “We should give the audience some sense of what happened on that moor.”

“We’re playing it out more,” promises Moore, who says the epic shoot in Scotland in August was “easily one of our biggest set pieces.”

We will definitely have the whole EW Outlander feature up when it is released, but if you don’t subscribe and had a hard time finding the first sexy issue, buy a copy here.

“Tobias [Menzies] and I love doing the battle scenes,” says Sam Heughan. “It felt very intense, very emotional for both characters. Something they both have been seeking.”

“It felt like everyone was really desperate to get into this battle,” says Heughan. “This is a big part of our culture and our history.”

“For the first few episodes, we’re going to show the parallel journeys that Jamie and Claire took during their 20 years apart from one another,” explains Caitriona Balfe.

Source: EW (1), EW (2)

For the next three weeks, Vulture is holding our annual pop-culture bracket. In 2015, we battled it out for the best high-school TV show; this year, we're determining the greatest couple on television in the past 30 years. Each day, a different writer will be charged with picking the winner of a round of the bracket, until New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz judges the finals on October 14. After you read, be sure to visit Vulture's Facebook page to vote on which show you think should advance.

A famous and extremely wise hip-hop song by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock once said that it takes two to make a thing go right and, additionally, that it takes two to make it out of sight. Those statements — technically sampled by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two” from the 1972 Lyn Collins track “Think (About It)” — are true in life, and they are also true in television. 

As any obsessive 'shipper can tell you, the budding romances, saucy flirtations, and marriages both rocky and solid are what often solidify our love affairs with our favorite shows. I mean sure, yeah, I want to go where everybody knows my name. But my ass used to show up promptly at Cheers every Thursday night because I needed to know what was happening with Sam and Diane. The very best TV couples elicit loyalty, passionate feelings, angry tweets when either member of said couple does something inconsiderate, and a lifelong belief that, despite all real-life evidence to the contrary, the actors playing them are probably actually married. (Coach and Tami Taylor: not real people and not actually married. But also completely real people and so, so married, right?) That’s why this year's Vulture bracket pops an important question: Who is the best television couple of the modern era?

Before that question can be officially posed and answered, some terms must be established. For the purposes of this bracket, we defined the modern era as to include first-run TV from the past 30 years, in part because we agreed that the modern television couple was born in the 1980s, thanks primarily to the arrival of Sam and Diane on Cheers and Maddie and David on Moonlighting, the first twosomes to inspire hard-core 'shipping before people were using that term.

Now, what does “best” mean? It does not mean the healthiest or cutest or most likely to stay together for all time, even after their show gets canceled. We’re looking to honor the TV couple that is, (a) most culturally significant, i.e., the couple that feels most important to television and had the most impact on how other TV couples would be written and received; (b) most memorable (does anyone, anywhere in the world, not know Marge and Homer Simpson?); and (c) most beloved. We realize it’s possible to be in love with more than one awesome TV pair. But what we’re asking you, and our team of judges, to do is commit to one relationship.

In order to level the playing field and also make this competition easier to seed, we’ve organized it into two parts: There are eight “Will they or won’t they?” couples, those of the non-betrothed, make-up-and-break-up variety, and eight “married” ones, where spouses and life partners are located. (A couple had to be married at the start of the show in order to qualify for the "married" division.) To spice things up a little — because, you know, all relationships need that occasionally — we’ve also added two play-in games. For those who aren’t March Madness junkies and remain unfamiliar with the play-in concept: We’ve reserved slots for two shows — Friends and Buffy the Vampire Slayer — but before they make it to round one, we'll have the memorable couples within those shows face off. Will it be Ross and Rachel or Monica and Chandler? Buffy and Angel or Buffy and Spike or Tara and Willow? Our play-in rounds will determine which couple will go to the Big Dance.

As you might imagine, deciding which 16 duos to include out of all the couples from three decades' worth of television was incredibly difficult. We considered a lot of factors, including historical significance, cultural longevity, depth of fanbase, and variety, in terms of the types of shows represented and the types of relationships (i.e., gay couples as well as straight ones). Basically, we had a meeting. We talked. Things got heated. And then we dumped a lot of people. Olivia and Fitz from Scandal got cut because we felt like that relationship has gone off the rails. Joey and Pacey/Joey and Dawson was almost a play-in game, but we felt the other '90s teen show from the WB on our list — Buffy — gave us more enduring pairs. We axed Big and Carrie from Sex and the City because we didn’t like the way that relationship turned into a fairy-tale romance. Mulder and Scully were on the bubble, but we needed to get this down to 16. They're an unforgettable duo, there's no question. But the other pairings excited us just a little bit more. That may not be fair, but breakups are often unfair. Mulder, Scully: It’s not you, it’s us. It’s definitely us.

There are still plenty of great TV couples in the sea, and, more specifically, in this bracket. So we do hope you’ll join us over the next three weeks, when each day, one of our judges will render a verdict on a different couple vs. couple scuffle until we reach the championship round, to be decided by Dr. Love himself, New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz. At the same time, Vulture readers — including the lovers and the fighters — are encouraged to visit facebook.com/vulture daily to weigh in on their favorite couples so we can see how your feelings stack up against ours. There will also be tons of essays, lists, and assorted TV couple-related content arriving on Vulture throughout this very important selection process, so keep your eyes and hearts open to that.

Now it’s time to pay tribute to the flirters, the perpetrators of sexual tension, the ones who gave into their feelings and ruined the whole damn show because of it, and the spouses who stayed happily married, thereby convincing us that maybe romance isn’t dead after all. Let’s get together, just you and me, and celebrate TV love.

Remember how, earlier this summer, a hacker claimed be selling, credentials for at least 200 million Yahoo accounts? Well, unfortunately for hundreds of millions of Yahoo users, and the company itself, the hack appears to be legitimate — and bad.

Tech site Recode reports this morning that Yahoo is expected to confirm the massive data breach this week.

Sources “close to the situation” did not confirm to Recode the exact extent of the breach, other than to say it is indeed hundreds of millions of user accounts.

Those sources noted to Recode that the breach is indeed widespread and serious, and likely to result in government investigations and legal actions.

About the 200 million estimate, one source told Recode, “It’s as bad as that. Worse, really,” which is not good news for anyone, but is especially bad for Verizon, which is in the midst of acquiring Yahoo in a $4.8 billion transaction.

As Recode points out, the sheer scale of the breach is staggering, and the legal liabilities that could result from it are equally huge. In short, shareholders may well freak out.

Yahoo did not return Recode’s request for comment, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Yahoo is expected to confirm massive data breach, impacting hundreds of millions of users [Recode]

Autumn officially arrives this week. The leaves will change from green to shades of gold, brown, and red as they tumble to the ground. For many, that means it’s time to plan yet another fall color tour of New England to witness the splendor first hand. Does that sound a little staid, a bit dull, a tad predictable, strictly for squares? Well, it need not be. Adventurous travelers can add a little spice to their itinerary simply by visiting cities with such suggestive names as Bangor, Felchville, and Essex. Doesn’t that sound more interesting already? That last one had “sex” right in the name, so it must be a fun place to visit, right? Even if these places are way out of the way, it’s worth the drive simply for the giggles provided by the welcoming signs at the city limits. These and other marvelously filthy sounding ...

Hear ye, hear ye, a royal decree: The King and Queen of Hollywood have abdicated! Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt — the former couple known as Brangelina and now known as the destroyers of true love — are no more. On Monday, Jolie filed for divorce from her husband, ending a decade-plus reign that spawned several little princes and princesses. Long live ... nothing! Everything's dead. Before the royal funeral procession commences, we as a kingdom must first predict who will be their rightful heirs. R.I.P., Brangelina, there's a new crop of A-list celebrity couples now coming for your crowns. Below, we assess their odds at ascending to Brad and Angie's throne.

Next in Line: Beyoncé and Jay Z

Length of Relationship: 8 years married; together since at least 2002
Odds in Their Favor: Together, they're a billionaire couple. Even independently, they're unstoppable. Bey and Hov are also maybe the most-watched husband and wife of our time, and they don't even have a reality show. (Imagine.) They also have a little princess of their own — born of one of the most-documented pregnancies ever — who's just started making red carpet appearances. We've seen their relationship evolve from the early 2000s to what it is now (that's a longer lifespan than Brangelina), at the height of their stardom so far.
Odds Against: Lemonade.

Second to the Crown: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West

Length of Relationship: 2 years married; together since 2012; unknowingly in love for at least a decade
Odds in Their Favor: They've already got a legendary ship name (Kimye), so that's sorted. Not to mention a fairy-tale wedding, two of the most adorable kids on the planet (suck it, Jolie-Pitts), and they'll never lack for drama.
Odds Against: People hate them.

So Close: Chrissy Teigen and John Legend

Length of Relationship: 3 years married; together since 2007
Odds in Their Favor: They redefine #relationshipgoals. Also, hello, baby Luna!
Odds Against: They just need a bit more time — and maybe a few more music videos — to cement their A-list-couple status.

The Rest of the Royal Court

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner
Length of Relationship: 11 years married
Odds in Their Favor: Sure, yes, lately Bennifer 2.0 has been looking a lot like a car crash in slow motion now that they've put the brakes on their divorce proceedings. But try to remember a simpler time when Ben and Jen were just two kids in love on the set of a superhero movie. Just watch the exact moment she fell for him; that spark's still gotta be somewhere in Affleck's lighter.
Odds Against: They're basically in the middle of a divorce.

Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn
Length of Relationship: 33 years as partners
Odds in Their Favor: Just when you think they're gonna tie the knot or fall apart, these two pillars of unwedded bliss just keep on truckin' as is. Their love will outlast us all, together or not.
Odds Against: They're not exactly the talk of the town.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith
Length of Relationship: 19 years married
Odds in Their Favor: Have you seen their children, Willow and Jaden? They're cool as hell.
Odds Against: Is America ready to bow down to a not-exactly-polyamorous relationship? For the sake of our Angelina Jolie throuple fanfic, god, we hope so.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick
Length of Relationship: 19 years married
Odds in Their Favor: SJP is already technically a queen.
Odds Against: They're kind of a yawn, sorry. Have they ever both stood out on a red carpet? Nah.

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson
Length of Relationship: 28 years married
Odds in Their Favor: They're Hollywood romance royalty. Just look at 'em!
Odds Against: If it hasn't happened yet, it's probably never gonna happen.

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi
Length of Relationship: 8 years married
Odds in Their Favor: It's about time the gold standard of love wasn't so damn heteronormative.
Odds Against: Too low-key.

Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy
Length of Relationship: 19 years married
Odds in Their Favor: Adorable on any red carpet and quite the powerhouse couple, but ...
Odds Against: ... alas, just not high-profile enough.

Courtney B. Vance and Angela Bassett
Length of Relationship: 19 years married
Odds in Their Favor: He's got the hottest chick in the game wearing his chain. And she's Angela Bassett, so.
Odds Against: Sometimes we forget they're a couple.

Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan
Length of Relationship: 7 years married
Odds in Their Favor: They basically turned their love story into a franchise, you can't beat that. They're also not afraid of a striptease!
Odds Against: They're on uneven levels of fame.

Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz
Length of relationship: 6 years married
Odds in Their Favor: Oh c'mon, just look at them. They bickered in Vicky Cristina Barcelona with more passion than a Mr. & Mrs. Smith sex scene.
Odds Against: They don't seem all that interested in the crown, judging by the lack of public appearances. 

Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman
Length of Relationship: 34 years married
Odds in Their Favor: They recovered from a shocking separation, a show of faith in long-lasting love that this kingdom desperately needs right now.
Odds Against: Again, they did just recently separate.

John Krasinski and Emily Blunt
Length of Relationship: 6 years married
Odds in Their Favor: They're an international couple, so that right there is a strong sign of unity. Plus, have you seen the way they look at each other? We'd all melt.
Odds Against: They're still mid-ascent in their individual careers.

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel
Length of Relationship: 4 years married
Odds in Their Favor: They really know how to work that homebody aesthetic.
Odds Against: It would just feel like a troll.

Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis
Length of Relationship: 5 years as partners (three engaged)
Odds in Their Favor: Just think how chill this kingdom would be under their rule.
Odds Against: They're maybe too chill.

Chris Pratt and Anna Faris
Length of Relationship: 7 years married
Odds in Their Favor: He's like a goofball Brad Pitt, and she might as well be a funnier Jennifer Aniston. That marriage didn't work either, but this one's (hopefully) built to last. Also, their son is too precious not to be adored like a Jolie-Pitt kid.
Odds Against: They're seriously lacking in the drama department (good for them, but lame for us).

Already Semi-Royalty

Barack and Michelle Obama
Length of Relationship: 24 years married
Odds in Their Favor: If America had a monarchy, they'd already be sitting on the throne. Also, Barack and Michelle are the prototype of black love; so much so that there's a film about their first date. Brangelina's first date technically happened while filming, so they're even!
Odds Against: You know what? They're only the president and First Lady for a few more months. Nothing's left to stop them from A-list domination after that!

After four seasons of playing nearly a dozen characters in one series, Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany received her well-deserved Emmy award for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series. This was her second nomination for playing Sarah Manning, Cosima Niehaus, Alison Hendrix, Helena, Rachel Duncan, Beth Childs, and the rest of the Clone Club. (And her win apparently broke the internet.)

It’s also exciting since Orphan Black will be wrapping up its run next season. An emotional Maslany read her speech off her cell phone, ending with the pronouncement that “I feel so lucky to be on a show that puts women at the center.”

She expounded on that line backstage: “It’s become a real point of pride for all of us on this show. The response after the first season was so much positivity in terms of representation and the way that young girls were seeing themselves portrayed on screen; the LGBT community, as well, really reached out and supported us. It’s been a really connecting thing in terms of the fans and has become something we feel responsible in continuing to tell those stories. It’s also a joy; like I was saying, the same thing with the challenge of doing the show, there is an immense challenge in getting to tell women’s stories that we don’t normally see.”

BBC America, which has a great handle on the mix of serious drama and wtf-ness it takes to market Orphan Black, put out this short but sweet congratulations to Maslany:

Orphan Black wasn’t the only genre series to have a win at the Emmys: Rami Malek won Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Mr. Robot; Game of Thrones picked up Best Drama Series, as well as the awards for writing and directing, breaking the record for most awarded series; and Sherlock‘s “The Abominable Bride” won Best TV Movie. Check out the full list of winners here.