Rachel

What movie could you watch over and over again without getting bored? For Walt Hickey of the statistics blog FiveThirtyEight, it's the 2009 film Star Trek. But that's just his personal taste. He conducted an online poll asking people to name the most rewatchable films of all time. Here are the top 10:

I certainly agree with the #1 pick. Star Wars never really gets old--especially Episode IV. I am a bit surprised with Gone with the Wind, though. Is it really that compelling?

-via Ace of Spades HQ

It’s the usual shenanigans at Brigham Young University. This intriguing item is from the police blotter of the BYU newspaper. Apparently, the students were professional level hide and seek players. -via reddit

Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany will co-star with Jake Gyllenhaal in Stronger

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Emmy-nominated “Orphan Black” actress Tatiana Maslany has entered negotiations to co-star with Jake Gyllenhaal in Lionsgate’s Boston Marathon bombing project titled Stronger, directed by David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express).

Based on the non-fiction survivor’s memoir of the same name by Jeff Bauman (with Bret Whitter), Stronger tells Bauman’s story of waiting for his girlfriend to cross the finish line on April 15, 2013 when two pressure cooker bombs exploded killing three and wounding 264. Bauman lost both his legs and became a key witness in the ensuing manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the former having been sentenced to death this past May.

Bauman’s story of recuperation and triumph is being adapted to the screen by writers John Pollono (Sex & Marriage) and Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter), and produced by Silver along with David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman of Mandeville Films.

There is no word on whether Maslany’s casting in Stronger infers that she is out of the running for Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode VIII, for which she did a chemistry read last weekend. 

(Photo credit: WENN)

The post Tatiana Maslany Joins Jake Gyllenhaal in Boston Bombing Film Stronger appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

It’s been a mixed bag of news for Showtime’s Twin Peaks revival lately. On the plus side, we have great new actors joining the cast, like Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgaard. On the down side, we lost the Log Lady herself, actress Catherine Coulson, who was due to return to the series in her iconic role, but passed away last week. Today’s news item is another mixed bag, so let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

It’s seem that in 2017, the town of Twin Peaks will have a new sheriff, as original series actor Michael Ontkean will not be returning to play the part of Sheriff Harry S. Truman. Ontkean was the right-hand-man to Kyle MacLachlan’s FBI Agent Dale Cooper, and in fact had second-billing in the show’s credits. The chemistry between he and MacLachlan was a vital part of the show’s appeal for many, so this is a pretty big bummer for fans. As for why Ontkean isn’t coming back, a source close to the actor said “Michael is fully retired from show business, and has been for many years.”

While that may be true, as of this past February, Ontkean was publicly looking for his old Harry Truman jacket on social media, or a replica of it, and other returning cast members said that series creators David Lynch and Mark Frost had coaxed Ontkean out of retirement for the new season. Obviously, something happened between then and now. What that something was remains a mystery.

On the plus side, Lynch and Frost have found a damn fine actor to replace Ontkean, as they’ve hired veteran character actor Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Heroes) to be the new Sheriff. Interestingly, Forster was supposed to play the part of Harry Truman way back in 1989, but prior commitments kept him from taking the part. (Lynch would later give him a small role in his film Mulholland Drive.)

What remains unclear is whether or not Forster is playing an all new character as Sheriff, or playing an older version of Harry Truman. If it’s the latter, it wouldn’t be Twin Peaks’ first recasting of a major role, as the part of Donna Hayward was recast for the film Fire Walk With Me when series actress Lara Flynn Boyle bowed out.

This Twin Peaks fan is hoping Forster is playing a new Sheriff, because although both Michael Ontkean and Robert Forster are very good actors, they have very different energies, and it would be hard to buy Forster as Harry for a lot of old school fans. The original show didn’t really leave any loose, dangling plot threads around the character of Harry Truman, so it would be easy enough to say that the character retired, moved away, or even passed away (it has been twenty five years after all.) But I trust that whatever David Lynch and Mark Frost have planned, they’ll find a way to make it work.

—

HT: TV Line

IMAGE: CBS Studios, LA Times

As an avid Jeopardy! viewer, one gets to see all kinds of odd ducks from the farthest corners of these United States. We have grown accustomed to Alex Trebek's beautifully stilted intros — "Darlene from Akron, Ohio, I hear you have an unusual collection of old keys?" — and untraditional trivia geniuses. But there's something deeply fascinating about the show's newest phenomenon, Matt Jackson.

A paralegal based in Washington, D.C, the 23-year-old Jackson (he auditioned when he was 22) has won just over $230,000 in eight appearances on the show, virtually destroying the competition each time. Nobody else comes close. 

The contestant has also provided the show with its most slow-building smile, which begins in a frown at the top of his introduction and crawls into a grin. He has repeated this, without fail, at the opening of each episode. 

As each smile concludes its journey, Jackson holds up the number of shows he has logged in his streak.

He doesn't do witty banter, and cheeky questions from Trebek are often met with a stern look and a tilt of the head, as if to say, You are wasting my time, Host Man, let us move along so I can take more of your money.

The self-proclaimed son of a Jewish liberal mother and a black conservative father told Trebek he prepared for the show by listening to the Hamilton soundtrack and repeating "I'm not throwing away my shot" over and over. Far from humble, Jackson doesn't hide his satisfaction with a particularly impressive answer, and has even created a mini-catchphrase that he delivers with panache. 

If it has been a while since you've tuned into the game show, these next episodes would be a good time to reacquaint yourself. Jackson, as Trebek suggested in Tuesday's episode, might just be the one to break Ken Jennings's 74-game streak. 

Read more posts by Lucas Kavner

Filed Under: jeopardy! ,matt jackson jeopardy ,matt jackson

Supernatural is headed into its eleventh season on October 7. In that time, Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) have carried on their family business by facing countless monsters and demons—external and internal. Supernatural isn’t the bleakest show on television, but the premise is a more serious one. Still, the dialogue is peppered with humor, and occasionally, the writers go all out and tear down the fourth wall. It’s more than that; they ignore the existence of the fourth wall. They’ve spun whole episodes into entertaining meta, self-referencing affairs. Episodes like these:

“Hollywood Babylon”
In Season 2 of Supernatural, the Winchesters investigate a mysterious murder on the set of a horror movie called Hell Hazers II: The Reckoning. Dean takes on a job as a production assistant, and McG, a producer of Supernatural directs the fake movie. The actual McG appears in the episode while an actor playing a faux McG talks to the crew. The episode frequently references Eric Kripke’s (another producer on Supernatural) Boogeyman. My favorite part? When the brothers take a tour of the Warner Bros. lot and the guide mentions Gilmore Girls, Sam looks uncomfortable and leaves the tour (Padalecki had a recurring role on that series).

“Ghostfacers”
The third season sees the return of Harry Spengler and Ed Zeddmore. The duo works on a pilot for their low budget, unscripted reality show Ghostfacers. Their actions reference other series about paranormal investigators, and since it was the first episode of Supernatural filmed after the writer’s strike ended in 2008, it was a jab at the type of shows that could have aired if the situation hadn’t been resolved.

“The Monster at the End of This Book”
Things go extra meta in Season 4 when Sam and Dean discover the Supernatural books by Carver Edlund. They learn the series has been published for the last four years (as long as the show had aired at that point) and documents every event of their lives, and that the books have a passionate fan base. Like real Supernatural fans, there are Sam girls, Dean girls, and fans of slash fiction pairing the brothers. The Winchesters eventually learn Carver Edlund is the pen name for Chuck Shurley (Rob Benedict), a prophet of God. Because obviously. Also, the name Carver Edlund references two Supernatural writers/producers: Jeremy Carver and Ben Edlund.

“The French Mistake”
This sixth season episode blurs the lines so much that it’s almost confusing. Sam and Dean end up in an alternate reality on the set of Supernatural, but Sam and Dean think they’re still Sam and Dean and everyone on set calls them Jared and Jensen. They’re confused by locations such as Bobby’s house being fake sets, by Castiel being some Twitter-loving guy called Misha Collins, and by Sam/Jared being married to Ruby (Genevieve Padalecki). Whew.

“Fan Fiction”
Supernatural hit the 200 episode milestone in Season 10, and they celebrated in style. Remember those books by Chuck? An all girls school adapts them into not just a play, but a musical. Supernatural: The Musical attracts the attention of Dean and Sam because a teacher at the school goes missing. The musical references fans shipping Dean and Castiel, the bromance, emo scenes between the brothers–it’s basically a sweet and sincere love letter to the fandom.

This isn’t a complete list of every meta moment in Supernatural. Head to the comments and tell me about your favorites.

—

Images: The CW

As it turns out, having your product featured in a major motion picture doesn’t only pay off when the movie first heads to theaters, but it can reap promotional gold for years to come, if you play it right. To that end, Pepsi announced it’s offering a limited quantity of Pepsi Perfect on the day Marty McFly orders a Pepsi in Back to the Future: Part II — Oct. 21, 2015.

The collectible bottles will be filled with Pepsi made with real sugar, the company said in a press release, and will sell for $20.15 (get it?) per 16.9-oz bottle. But hey, it comes with a “special collectible case,” so there’s that. There will only be 6,500 available online to people in the U.S., which means fans will likely have to hover carefully over their computers/mobile devices for the moment the clock strikes midnight on that day.

Movie fans who are in New York for Comic Con on Oct. 8 can also score a bottle of Pepsi Perfect in a variety of ways, one of which involves dressing up like Marty (puffy red vest or BTTF:PII jacket, blue jeans, white high-top sneakers, watch — required) and being one of the first 200 fans at the Pepsi Perfect Booth.

“Fans have always been a little crazy about it,” Lou Arbetter, PepsiCo’s senior director of marketing, told USA Today about the scene in the movie where a Pepsi Perfect is delivered to Marty via a pneumatic tube, “and so we wanted to take advantage of the fact that Marty travelled to the future, to this month, and wanted to actually come out with the product.”

Nobody likes to see the beach ball (aka pinwheel, aka the spinning pizza, aka spinning wait cursor) in OS X, but have you ever wondered why you see different ones from time to time? Or, when things get real weird, you’ll sometimes see a ticking watch? It turns out that the answer has to do with the app you’re working with.

Read more...

Sleepy Hollow’s back! Is that something we should care about? I just don’t know! I’ve been telling my colleagues at Tor.com that I expected this season to suck. I assumed the magic would be gone, and after all the last-minute deaths, narrative shifts, and the disappearance of Orlando Jones, I felt too jerked around to care anymore. But this Season 3 premiere seemed dedicated to getting back to basics, and strengthening the core relationships that were the whole reason the show became a surprise hit in the first place.

We open on a not-Katrina acting witchy in the woods. She imprisons Headless in a box after cooing sweet magical nothings at his horse. I think to myself, “That had better not be Pandora, show.”

Then we cut to Abbie taking a perp out with a garbage can lid in an unnamed city that looks bigger than Sleepy Hollow. I love it when SH tries to be a cop show. Abbie’s with the FBI now – has she already made it through training at Quantico – and she has a new older mentor who yells at her but then watches her admiringly when she’s not looking. This is promising.

But! This is Sleepy Hollow, dammit, and if we wanted a procedural we’d be on a different channel. Cut to: Abbie bailing Ichabod out of Immigration! ICHABOD’S HAIR IS GONE. Oh, and Katrina’s locket has turned black which means something icky has happened to Headless. And by the way, the Witnesses haven’t seen each other in nine months, while Ichabod was off mourning his old life, and Abbie was creating a new one. Abbie’s pretty pissed at Crane. Wait a second, why is Ichabod being detained by Immigration? Well, it seems there’s this 4,000 year old Sumerian tablet, and he didn’t declare it properly…

But let’s cut to the meat here. The Witnesses haven’t spoken in nine months. Abbie dismisses the idea that she’s a Witness, or that they’re partners, by saying that they defeated Moloch and succeeded in their mission. She got tired of waiting for Ichabod to return, hence Quantico and the FBI. Ichabod, meanwhile, feels utterly purposeless without Witnesshood, and to make matters worse, his entire (evil) family is dead. He spent the nine months going to his old ancestral land in Scotland, where he found a Sumerian tablet, handily titled “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” that he believes is the key to their next mission. Which launches Abbie back into denying that there is a mission.

The show is casting around, nakedly, openly, and onscreen, for a plot. They hang a lampshade on it by having Crane quite openly looking for a plot – a purpose for the Witnesses to get back to Witnessing. I have to admit that I’m so busy missing what this show could have been, that this feels like an echo of what the show could have been. But I’m trying to get on board again.

She’s in the middle of denying that they have a next mission when they get called to a crime scene.

It takes Ichabod only a few moments to declare that a demon did it, which means…JENNY!!! (YAAAYYYY!!!!) So now the core team is reassembled, researching demons, trading stories, it’s like old times. Jenny even assures everyone that she smuggled Irving and his family to safety. Ichabod and Jenny piece together a probable demon backstory: a red substance called cinnabar that Abbie found at the crime scene, plus the fact that the victims were literally paralyzed in fear, means that it was a yaoguai. Yaoguai were the “red devils” Ben Franklin talked about in his war journals: they looooove gunpowder and freeze their victims with terror. (So, was it released by not-Katrina? She was talking about fear quite a bit…)

In a few choice pieces of, um, Twistory, the phrase, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” was apparently Prescott’s order to people fighting the demons, not the redcoats, and Betsy Ross, whom we’ve already heard was liberated woman, was apparently also a super spy. Possibly even more beloved than Ichabod himself? And we get a fun flashback that proves that Ichabod did have a life before Katrina.

The show did a nice job of tying the two threads together, with Abbie going after the gangsters while Ichabod and Jenny attempt to tag team the demon. Because Abbie is not allowed to ever have friends, the demon kills her FBI boss in front of her, allowing the gangster to escape, which brings us to a surprisingly effective scene. The gangster, apparently having a mental breakdown from seeing a monster in real life, takes hostages and demands to talk to Abbie. She finds herself having to explain that monsters are real, while simultaneously justifying and accepting her new role as a Witness. Was Moloch thwarted? Yup. Has the Apocalypse been cancelled? Mostly. But the monsters themselves are still real, and until they’re taken care of the world will need people like Abbie, Jenny, and Crane to fight them.

Speaking of whom…Ichabod offers to draw the yaoguai out while Jenny shoots him, but the demon overcomes them both, which leads to another return to form: a helpless Crane is rescued by crack shot Abbie, who arrives just in time to dust the demon, and then pulls Crane in for a welcome home hug. Reader, I’ll admit, I let myself get sucked into the hug. The show got me back…for a second. But then I remembered that Jenny’s unconscious in the other room, and I started yelling at them to go take her to a doctor.

So we wrapped up in a strange place. Abbie doesn’t have an immediate authority figure, as she did in the last two seasons, although I’m sure they’ll plug a new one in, and I’ll just keep pretending that whomever it is it’s actually Captain Irving in disguise. Jenny is working at a bar and trying to figure out how to make “Rogue Demon Hunter” look good on a CV. And our Witnesses have a brief encounter with this season’s Big Bad, the woman from the beginning of the show.

Pandora.

Ughhh dammit show…

 

Notes & Errata:

At the end of last season I wondered how they would restructure the show. They have, to all outward appearances, thwarted Moloch, Katrina and Henry are both gone (and barely mentioned), and there doesn’t seem to be a giant overarching plot to end the world. If this episode is any indication, they’re going to be bringing large threats from various cultures, and pairing them with a Monster of the Week.

I’ve always found SH‘s fast and loose approach to monsters interesting, but today we get a Sumerian adaptation of a classic Washington Irving tale, obscure Akkadian writing (which of course Crane can read) which is an early Semitic language, and thus not directly related to Sumerian, a problematic figure from classic Greek mythology, and a Taoist Chinese demon.

We have the Witnesses referred to as “Destroyers” on the aforementioned tablet…which can’t possibly be good. Plus, if there are seven years of Tribulations, and we’re only in year three, we’ll still get a few more seasons.

Does that make Pandora a Tribulation? Even though she’s from a different mythological system?

Was that seriously the Holy Grail that Jenny offhandedly tossed into a cardboard box?

Ichabod’s Struggles With Modernity!

Ichabod’s nightly communion with fellow Immigration detainee Jesus (“And I return to the question that echoes through my soul: Is my destiny to be naught but a ceaseless traveler, inexorably slouching my way through this mortal coil?”) which resulted in Jesus quoting Jay-Z, was a fantastic return to form, as was Ichabod saluting his fellow detainees at Immigration with a quote from Thomas Paine, and finally, his exchange of a chest-thump-peace-sign with Jesus.

But Highlight Of The Episode has to go to: Colonial Times Restaurant! We could have just spent the entire episode here. I really thought the show had exhausted Ichabod confronting our modern reinterpretation of history, but seeing him grab the poor host’s tri-corner hat and yank it around while yelling “The corner goes in the front! You’re not a pirate!” and then side-eye the Ben Franklin hydrocephalic bobblehead, only to admit that “at least they got something right,” was AMAZING.

But seriously show? You just tell us about Crane on a Plane? We want to see Crane on a Plane. Come on.

Abbie’s Struggles with… Anything?

Oh Abbie. Seriously, stop having mentors. Your entire life is watching older men you respect bleed out in front of you. If an older dude tries to act paternal toward you, run away! Quickly! Before he spontaneously combusts!

Final Thoughts!

The show ends with a callback to the Jay-Z gag. So in the end we’ve replaced “Sympathy for the Devil,” and all its epic promise of apocalypse and doom, with “Hard Knock Life,” which, in the show’s context, has become an anthem of keeping at the day-to-day drudgery of Witnessing and monster-hunting, even when your larger mission remains a mystery. Nice.

Leah Schnelbach wants to Witness the Witnesses! Please stay good, show. Come witness her tribulations on Twitter!

Where is your Cool Pope now, America? His PR game is undoubtedly on fleek, but he's still beholden to the same homophobic crap we know and love from the Catholic Church, the world's most powerful supporter of impunity for priestly pedophiles.

(more…)

The full Back to the Future trilogy will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime in October

Calling all Marty McFly fans – starting tomorrow, Thursday October 1st, 2015, the blockbuster Back to the Future trilogy will be available to stream or download on Amazon’s Prime Video. For the month of October, Prime members in the U.S. will have unlimited access to watch Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III, at no additional charge to their membership.

Back to the Future is one of the Top 50 movies of all time on IMDb and is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its debut this year. October 21, 2015 also marks the exact day Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, and his girlfriend Jennifer, played by Elisabeth Shue, time travel to, in the second installment, Back to the Future Part II.

Prime Video will be the exclusive subscription streaming home for the three films – it is also the first time these films are available on a subscription streaming service, for unlimited viewing. Prime members can watch each film via the Amazon Video app for TVs, connected devices, mobile devices or online at Amazon.com/PrimeVideo.

The post Back to the Future Trilogy to Stream Exclusively on Amazon Prime in October appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

Grace Brett, 104, is part of a guerrilla crochet group called the Souter Stormers who yarn bombed landmarks in Selkirk, Ettrickbridge and Yarrow, Scotland. The installation was tied to an arts festival in the area. Video below.

“I liked seeing my work showing with everyone else and thought the town looked lovely," Brett said.

Her daughter Daphne, 74, added "She thinks it is funny to be called a street artist.”

More at the Daily Record.

https://youtu.be/sa5FCItlIzU

 

 

 

 

 

Vimeo user Michael Suich (TheMikeSwitch) has a dream, and it involves Robert Zemeckis’ much-obsessed-over Back To The Future trilogy. “I wanted,” he writes “to do a chronological edit of Back To The Future—meaning the order that Hill Valley experienced events.” Now, chronological fan edits are not strictly a new phenomenon. People have been tinkering with the timeline of Pulp Fiction for years, and there must be a few chronologically-ordered Memento cuts out there, too. But Back To The Future offers unique challenges to the fan editor, as its main two characters, Rick And Morty progenitors Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), take active steps to alter the space-time continuum, meaning that there are multiple, parallel versions of “reality” in the series. At one point in the middle of the trilogy, there are even multiple Docs and Martys running around the same version of 1955 Hill ...

Welcome back to Stay Tuned, Vulture's TV advice column. Each Wednesday, Margaret Lyons answers your questions about your various TV triumphs and woes. Need help? Have a theory? Want a recommendation? Submit a question! You can email staytuned@nymag.com, leave a comment, or tweet @margeincharge with the hashtag #staytuned.

One of my favorite things about TV is that because it's scripted, they get the chance to think of the best timely insults (and the occasional, "The jerk store called, and they're running out of you"s). I'm with you in loving shows where people genuinely like each other, but in my friendships, that often means ribbing each other. Obviously Veep is No. 1 in this genre, and The League (when it was good) will work in a pinch. What are some other great insult-humor shows? —Zach

It's not constant insult humor, but 30 Rock has some real gems — particularly from Jack Donaghy. I feel like I'm always sneaking in suggestions that people watch Cheers, regardless of the question, but honestly, Cheers has great one-line digs, especially from Carla. Silicon Valley has plenty of put-downs, as does It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and while it's more one-liners than straight-up zings, Archer might also fit the bill. Going further back, Rescue Me had billions of insults, as did House. Ryan Murphy loves insults, and Glee was full of them, as are many seasons of American Horror Story. (The upcoming Scream Queens is equally nasty.) Orange Is the New Black has some strong put-downs, as did Weeds during its Celia moments. Obviously, if you like Veep, The Thick of It and In the Loop will scratch a similar itch. Is it too obvious to say South Park? Because South Park is way up there, too. Finally, there are some really galling insults hurled on pretty much every episode of any Real Housewives show. "You're a slut pig" is untouchable.

Last week I started rewatching Scrubs. I knew it was a show I loved, but rewatching it is just reminding me how great it really is. It seems like everyone has collectively decided to forget that it was a great show. Why is it not on more "best of" lists? Is it because the world has seemed to sour on Zach Braff? (Which I don't understand, by the way.) I even recommended a watch to a friend of mine, and her only response was, "For some reason, I just hate Zach Braff." What gives with the lack of respect for Scrubs? —Kerrie

Hey! I love Scrubs! It might be my favorite no-respect show, so I feel your pain: It's a series I've recommended in Stay Tuned a lot, so I doubly feel your pain because people often scoff. Scrubs is great. (Though I will say the whole "calling a man a woman's name" thing wears me down.)

So why doesn't it get more cred? Part of it is timing: Scrubs debuted in 2001, which was not a great year for comedy debuts: Do you remember Off Centre? How about Men, Women & Dogs? Raising Dad? Bob Patterson? Maybe It's Me? Ellen DeGeneres's second sitcom, The Ellen Show? The late, great Undeclared debuted that season, too. The big new comedies from Scrubs' freshman class: Reba and According to Jim. You can't blame this on Americans not being ready to laugh or something after 9/11 either. These shows would have flopped anyway. Terrorism is not responsible for the failure of Emeril Lagassi's sitcom Emeril. America did that all by itself.

So Scrubs was already swimming in an awkward school of fish. But it also didn't fit in with the shows that were already on the air: Its lead-in its first season was Frasier. Frasier is a wonderful show, one I admire and revere, but those two don't go together very well. It aired between Friends and Will & Grace, which is as plumb a spot as exists, except single-camera comedies and multi-camera comedies rarely pair well together because the single-camera comedy always winds up feeling small somehow in comparison. (That smallness is actually intimacy, which is essential.) Then NBC started to bottom out, and Scrubs bounced around the schedule a bit. It aired after Father of the Pride in 2004; that was that computer-animated Sigfried and Roy show, if you remember. It also aired as a lead-in for Committed, which barely lasted 13 episodes. Joey and Teachers? Those aren't helping anyone. By the time Scrubs got paired with The Office — correct! finally! — NBC had had enough. Then ABC picked it up, and it aired after a reality series called Homeland Security USA. Until it changed time slots again. It finished out its run with its own rerun as a lead-in. Scrubs got the shaft from NBC and ABC in terms of scheduling, and it never had the same time slot for more than season. That taints its legacy, making it seem like an also-ran, even though it was terrific. Punch for punch, Scrubs gives The Office a run for its money.

As for Braff, some people just don't like him. That's true for all of us, but I think he gets hated on extra-hard because he winds up serving as a clearinghouse for our culture's deep discomfort with the concept of celebrity; on the one hand, we want access and intimacy, but we also want a performance of superiority, something to aspire to. We want them to continue earning their keep through output, but also lament all the chances they're given over someone less famous. We want them to be rich, but also very humble and discreet about it. It's fine if you hate Garden State, but there are plenty of movies much, much worse than that. Humanity is mostly garbage, I guess. I also remind skeptics that Braff didn't write Scrubs, so it is possible both to enjoy the series and dislike his screenwriting.

Staring down the barrel of Hulu Plus just for The Mindy Project. What else is in there to ease paying for another service? —Alice (@deliciousnicity)

So technically Hulu got rid of "Hulu Plus," but I feel you. If you like Mindy, you might like Difficult People, which is darker and more disdainful than TMP but shares some of its pop inclinations. (Its creator and star is former Vulture contributor Julie Klausner.) It's less marathon-able than Mindy, and way less hopeful, but it's also edgier and more committed to its deal. It's called Difficult People, so you don't get to act surprised when its leads are … difficult. It's easier to forget that Mindy can be outrageous sometimes.

The Hotwives of Las Vegas might also appeal to you. Think of it as the Real Housewives equivalent of Burning Love:  Yeah, it'll be funnier the more familiar you are with the source material, but I can say as someone who largely avoids and loathes Real Housewives, I still find Hotwives enjoyable.

In totally different veins, I love both The Wrong Mans and Behind the Mask. Mans is a British action-comedy, sort of a hybrid of Chuck and The Office. If you enjoy James Corden, then the fact that he's a co-creator and co-star of the show should be a selling point. If you still don't know who James Corden is, he's the one who took over for Craig Ferguson. Behind the Mask is a doc series about mascots; season one was surprisingly charming, and season two is more of the same. (Remember a "This American Life" episode about a high-school student who loved being her school's mascot? She's in season two.)

Outside of its originals, you should watch Fargo, Party Down, Ugly Betty, My So-Called Life, Absolutely Fabulous, The Profit, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Bridge (Scandi version), Hindsight, and Steven Universe. Some of these shows are also available elsewhere, but more episodes are on Hulu than other outlets. (For example, there are 35 eps of Steven Universe on Hulu and 14 on Cartoon Network's site.) There are other shows, too, particularly foreign-language soaps, but those are the first ten I thought of.

Read more posts by Margaret Lyons

Filed Under: stay tuned ,tv ,scrubs ,hulu

Do you need your huh moment today? In its list of the best 100 TV shows, The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting fact: NBC originally wanted Bill Cosby, who was the biggest comedian at the time, to play the womanizing bartender Sam Malone on Cheers. "We declined because it would have meant doing the Bill Cosby Show," said co-creator Les Charles. Of course, Ted Danson would eventually go on to play the part, and Cosby would get his own show, The Cosby Show. It was a boon for Cheers, too, which was critically acclaimed but had bad ratings. "We were worried because the ratings were so dismal, but The Cosby Show premiered, and it lifted the whole night," said George Wendt, who played Norm. Whatever the case, aren't you glad you can still watch Cheers without second-guessing yourself?

Read more posts by E. Alex Jung

Filed Under: what could have been ,tv ,cheers ,bill cosby

It can be hard to love exercise , but there’s now more reason to start finding ways to enjoy it the same way you enjoy playing a video game, going shopping, or petting your dog. Why? Because doing so could help you make more healthier food choices.

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Here's how someone—or, in many cases, someone's parents or grandparents—becomes wealthy enough to buy an NFL franchise.

Parks, Recreation & Libraries Director (Roseville Public Library and the City of Roseville, California)
The City of Roseville, CA Parks, Recreation & Libraries Director Position Advertisement The City of Roseville, CA (approximate population 128,382) is located in Placer County along the eastern edge of the Sacramento Valley, at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills.  The City of Roseville’s is now seeking a Parks, Recreation & Libraries Director.  If you want to work in a community that values and celebrates the work of Parks, Recreation & Libraries, this might be the job for you.  Our mission is to enhance lives and the community by providing exceptional experiences.  We accomplish this by providing a variety and programs, services and facilities for the community. The successful Parks, Recreation & Libraries Director is a creative visionary who can identify opportunities to leverage available resources to get things done. A typical candidate will possess a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university and have seven years of increasingly responsible experience in parks, recreation and/or library administration, including three years of administrative/management responsibility.  A CPRP (Certified Park and Recreation Professional) certification is desirable.  Possession of a valid California driver’s license is also required. The annual salary range for is $134,751 to $180,580; placement within the range is dependent upon qualifications and experience. If you are interested in this outstanding opportunity, please apply online at www.roseville.ca.us/jobs.  Please contact Human Resources at (916) 774-5475 should you have any questions.  The final filing date is October 5, 2015.

There’s a great book out there called The Guide to Troubled Birds, which adds snarky/creepy text to flowery wallpaper next to pictures of very serious avian faces.

But it turns out that doing the same thing with Star Trek characters is way better.

Tumblr user magnass is responsible for this amazing crossover. Here are just a few of our favorites:

You can find the rest over at their Tumblr!

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If you're a fan of Tintin comics and of Hergé (Georges Remi), this is one book you’ll want to own. Nothing “comic book” or throw away about this beautifully produced volume.

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Quentin Tarantino has spent most of 2015 making a movie of his own, so he hasn't had time for many other ones: “I didn’t see anything this year,” he told me in our interview for New York's Fall Preview issue. “I loved The Kingsman. I really liked It Follows.” The latter, David Robert Mitchell's thriller about a young woman who contracts a sexually transmitted curse that has her pursued by a slow-walking supernatural villain that assumes random human forms, features “the best premise I've seen in a horror film in a long, long, long time,” says Tarantino. “It's one of those movies that’s so good that you start getting mad at it for not being great. The fact that he didn't take it all the way makes me not just disappointed but almost a little angry.” So, how would Tarantino have made It Follows better? Allow him to explain—and then stick around for a few more bonus questions and answers from our interview that didn't quite make the print edition, including Tarantino on what he's reading, his plans for retirement, and who he's not friending on Facebook. (And if you haven't already, be sure to check out our full interview here.)

How could It Follows have been great? Would you have done something differently?
He [writer-director David Robert Mitchell] could have kept his mythology straight. He broke his mythology left, right, and center. We see how the bad guys are: They're never casual. They're never just hanging around. They've always got that one look, and they always just progressively move toward you. Yet in the movie theater, the guy thinks he sees the woman in the yellow dress, and the girl goes, “What woman?” Then he realizes that it's the follower. So he doesn't realize it's the follower upon just looking at her? She’s just standing in the doorway of the theater, smiling at him, and he doesn’t immediately notice her? You would think that he, of anybody, would know how to spot those things as soon as possible. We spotted them among the extras.

The movie keeps on doing things like that, not holding on to the rules that it sets up. Like, okay, you can shoot the bad guys in the head, but that just works for ten seconds? Well, that doesn't make any fucking sense. What's up with that? And then, all of a sudden, the things are aggressive and they're picking up appliances and throwing them at people? Now they're strategizing? That's never been part of it before. I don't buy that the thing is getting clever when they lower him into the pool. They're not clever.

Also, there’s the gorgeously handsome geeky boy — and everyone's supposed to be ignoring that he's gorgeous, because that’s what you do in movies — that kid obviously has no problem having sex with her and putting the thing on his trail. He's completely down with that idea. So wouldn't it have been a good idea for her to fuck that guy before she went into the pool, so then at least two people could see the thing? It’s not like she'd have been tricking him into it. It’s what I would've done.

Are there any filmmakers you don't think get enough respect?
When people in America talk about the great writer-director auteurs, they don't talk about Pedro Almodóvar enough. For 30 years, he has dwarfed almost all of his American peers. He went through a slightly weak period around the time of Kika and All About My Mother. I didn't get Broken Embraces, but it was still okay. But the things he's been doing the last seven years, he's been on a magnificent roll. He's a fantastic director. His scripts are wonderful, and he's just money in the bank. And he's so specific, but as opposed to a lot of these specific art-film directors that you're going to get tired of, like Wong Kar-wai, you never get tired of Almodóvar. Because as much as he has these recognizable elements, it never just seems like the same movie over and over again.

I loved The Skin I Live In.
That was him doing a horror film, and it was fucking amazing. I totally got the impression that — and I'm fairly sure I'm right about this — Pedro was watching The Human Centipede and thinking, You know, I know how to do this. I could do something really special with this. And that was The Skin I Live In.

What have you been reading lately?
I just finished Five Came Back, by Mark Harris. I think Mark Harris may be the best film writer ever, when it comes to these historical, slightly critical books that he does. They're fantastic. Pictures at a Revolution is probably one of the best books I've ever read in my life. I really wasn't into the subject matter, but because he wrote it, I decided I'd give it a shot. I brought Five Came Back and that Harper Lee book with me when I went to Prague, and I ended up voraciously reading his book. I actually have a lot of those war documentaries at home, so I came back and watched the Why We Fight series and The Memphis Belle. It got me on a big William Wyler kick, too.

You’ve talked about making a sci-fi movie. What would it be like?
I’m not really interested in doing a sci-fi film, but there’s one thing in particular that I would be interested in. I can’t tell you what it is, though, because I would literally be telling you exactly what it is. And then I wouldn’t be able to do it, because everyone would talk about it, because it is one thing in particular. It might be science-fiction, but it wouldn’t involve spaceships.

You haven’t made a movie set in the present since Death Proof in 2007. Is modern life not that inspiring?
No, it's not that. I would really like to do a movie set in the present. It just keeps working out that that’s not the case. I do feel that I need to do at least one more Western — I think you need to make three Westerns to call yourself a Western director. But it would be really great to do another movie where a TV’s on in the background, or somebody turns on a radio, and then I can score my scene that way, and then turn it off when I want the music to stop. Or they get into a car and drive for a while, and I can actually do a little montage of them driving to some cool song. That would be really great. I haven’t done that in a long time, and I’m really looking forward to it.

In Django Unchained, the villains were slave owners. In Inglourious Basterds, they were Nazis. If you were to make a similar movie in 2015, who would the bad guys be?
Those two movies are very specific and kind of stand alone from the rest of my filmography, so that question is jumping from the assumption that it would be something cut into that mode. I think it would be something closer to either Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, or Pulp Fiction, or something even realer than that. 

Ennio Morricone wrote the score for Hateful Eight. How does it sound?
It's horrible. What do you expect me to say?

Well, I'm excited about it. Yours is the first Western he’s scored since 1975.
I know, and I'm not going to say shit about it. You'll hear it when you see it. It's absolutely abysmal.

Is Morricone bringing back his whistler for this one?
No. There’s no whistling in this score. That guy is still alive, though.

This is the first time one of your movies has had a score. Does that mean there won't be any pop songs on the soundtrack?
I didn’t say that. 

Film directors like Steven Soderbergh and Cary Fukunaga have defected to TV. You’ve been making noise about doing a mini-series. Are you jealous about what directors can do in that medium now?
No, I’m not jealous at all. I’m in a lucky situation. However, no writer-directors have taken that mini-series format and really done what could be done. You don’t have any writer-directors that write all six episodes, and then direct all six episodes. You have a guy like Soderbergh or Fukunaga who directs everything, or you have somebody like Aaron Sorkin who writes everything, but you don’t have the guy who does everything. If ever there’s been a chance for somebody to truly do a filmed novel, it’s in this area. I always write these movies that are far too big for any paying customer to sit down and watch from beginning to end, and so I always have this big novel that I have to adapt into a movie as I go. So to actually be able to take one of my stories and just do it as long as it is, the completely unfiltered manuscript, that sounds really, really exciting. And unless we can turn back the tide on digital projection in movie theaters, then I might as well go to television.

How serious are you about retiring when you're 60?
Well, if film goes away, I might not even make it to 60, so we’ll see.

What would you do in retirement? 
It would probably be split between working writing novels, writing film criticism, and writing and directing theater.

Theater? Have you seen any good plays lately?
Not really, but that’s because I haven’t gone to the theater a lot. The last big play I saw was — I just happened to be in New York — the revival of You Can't Take It With You. 

Do you spend much time on the internet?
Not really. Like everybody else, I'll get on the internet, and the next thing I know I'm clicking on something, and clicking on something else, and clicking on something else, but it's not like I have websites that I check. It's not like I check the Huffington Post every week, or I check — this is an old reference — Ain’t It Cool News, or The Daily Beast. I don't do that. I’m definitely not on Twitter. I do have a Facebook page and Facebook friends. It’s a lot of fun, especially if you don't just start friending people you don't know. I got into Facebook late, and I think if you get into Facebook late, you tend to use it the right way, as opposed to the people who got into it sooner and friended everybody and now have a thousand friends. I keep it at about 80 or so, and they're all people I know. Just because I do a movie doesn't mean I friend everybody in it.

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Filed Under: quentin tarantino ,it follows ,the hateful eight ,movies ,tarantino week