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What We Do In The Shadows boasts a simple, sketch-comedy premise: It’s a mockumentary about vampires. That’s a funny idea, but it’s not necessarily an idea funny enough to sustain a feature-length film. Indeed, directors Jemaine Clement (Flight Of The Conchords) and Taika Waititi (Eagle Vs. Shark, Boy) originally made Shadows as a short nearly a decade ago, before their respective careers had taken off. Happily, though, they’ve realized quickly something that many sitcoms take a while to figure out: If the characters are distinctly realized, the jokes will mostly take care of themselves. The result is more often amusing than gut-busting, but it doesn’t wear out its welcome, and that’s fairly impressive in itself.

In theory, the documentary crew in Shadows is filming preparations for an annual monster shindig, the Unholy Masquerade. But that’s really just the flimsiest possible excuse for a ...

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Welcome to our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans, nagging questions, and whatever else we feel like talking about. No matter what the topic, we invite everyone in the comments to tell us: What Are You Playing This Weekend?

Ahoy hoy, Gameological compatriots! This weekend, I’m going to be spending some more time with The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD on Wii U, which I’ve been working on for the past month or so (partly in preparation of an upcoming For Our Consideration). As I’ve mentioned before, the GameCube was an integral part of my formative gaming years (I may be the baby among Gameological’s writers), so this has been a nostalgic experience for me. Even without the veil of happy memories, though, this spruced-up remake performs rather nicely and is, warts and all, just as satisfying to me now as ...

Built To Spill will release its eighth studio LP this April. There’s not much else that’s known yet about Untethered Moon, the group’s first album since 2009’s There Is No Enemy, as all we’ve got so far is the tracklist below. But the group is also touring behind it this spring, so it’s a safe assumption the band should be previewing some of that new material soon.

Untethered Moon track list

01 All Our Songs
02 Living Zoo
03 On the Way
04 Some Other Song
05 Never Be the Same
06 C.R.E.B.
07 Another Day
08 Horizon to Cliff
09 So
10 When I’m Blind

Built To Spill tour 2015
March 27—Treefort Music Festival—Boise, Idaho
April 10—Cellar Door—Visalia, California
April 11—SLO Brew—San Luis Obispo, California
April 12—Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival ...

Among the biggest mysteries of Serial, This American Life’s breakout true-crime spin-off, is why it became the most successful podcast in history. Its central murder-mystery was a shiny, new wheel, but not a reinvented one. No recent true-crime saga has saturated the public consciousness like Serial, perhaps due to its focus on one murder case over a span of weeks, its refusal to prescribe a conclusion, or its campfire-tale approachability. Whatever the reason Serial went stratospheric, HBO’s six-part documentary series The Jinx: The Life And Deaths Of Robert Durst is likely to benefit from the genre’s increased profile. It’s an impressively crafted, meticulously researched show. But as Serial proved, there’s no such thing as an approach to this kind of story that’s so conscientious as to avoid triggering moral and ethical land mines.

The Jinx invites comparisons to Serial, but Serial fans seeking a ...

Actor, weightlifter, and king of the stones Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, best known to Western audiences as Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane on HBO’s Game Of Thrones, has shattered yet another record in his terrifying quest to become the Earth’s strongest man. But unlike the rest, this record was 1,000 years old.

While competing at the World’s Strongest Viking competition (Norway’s stop on the qualifying tour to compete for the title of World’s Strongest Man), Björnsson broke through a record once described in ancient Icelandic sagas. According to Strongman Champion League promoter Ilkka Kinnunen, the feat, in which a participant must walk while carrying a massive, 1,250 pound log on their back, was once attempted by the legendary Icelander Ormur Stórólfsson, to middling-positive results. Stórólfsson did manage to carry the log for three steps, but then, according to Kinnunen, “His back broke under the enormous ...

In what would make a perfect setup for a dad joke, Captain Kirk, Don Draper, a lady Ghostbuster, and Jason Schwartzman have all walked into a bar, if by “a bar” you mean “the set of Netflix’s Wet Hot American Summer series.” Deadline reports that Chris Pine, Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, and, yes, Jason Schwartzman have joined the cast of the new, 8-episode Wet Hot, which takes place on the first day of Camp Firewood ’81. (The movie took place on the last day of camp.)

According to Deadline, Hamm will play a “secret spy,” Wiig the preppy counselor of a rival camp, Schwartzman the head boy’s camp counselor, and Pine will play a character described simply as “mysterious.” The quartet will be featured as recurring guest stars, with Michaela Watkins, John Slattery, Josh Charles, The Interview’s Randall Park, Jayma Mays, Lake Bell, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel ...