Corey

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Today is National Tap Dance Day! You might think tap is an obsolete form of dance, but the troupe Syncopated Ladies puts a modern twist to their routines.

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Here they dance to Prince’s song “When Doves Cry.” They dance in perfect rhythm with very little repetition in the routine. This had to take some real work to learn.

Want to see more tap? Check out these 12 famous tap dance routines.

Some people watch Game of Thrones regularly, some wait to binge-watch, others just don’t care. Then there’s me, who follows the story only by reading all the spoilers on Monday. I know someday I might have time to watch the entire series, but then again, maybe not. In other words, I read all the spoilers so you don't have to. A list of funny images spawned by Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode at Uproxx is definitely full of spoilers, but if you watched it, they are darn clever. The image above is the least spoilery of them. You can check out the lulz from previous episodes, too.

Some actors get stuck playing the same kind of characters over and over again, typecast and trapped in a role loop that ultimately tanks their career.

On the other hand, many big name actors rise to the top because they're such good character actors, able to embody any role they're hired to play.

They are the actors who keep our eyes glued to the screen, the stars who inspired artist Prasad Bhat to create these colorful career spanning caricature GIFs.

Prasad creates these fun pieces in Illustrator, spending a lot of time getting the caricature just right before dressing up his cartoon cast in the iconic costumes from their most famous roles.

See 10+ GIFs Summing Up Famous Actors' Careers here

I've owned, used, and abused a lot of USB car chargers over the years. They all do more or less the same thing, and most look nearly identical to every other car charger on the market. When Nonda contacted me asking if I was interested in taking a look at their ZUS dual port car charger ($30), I almost deleted the message.

With a max output of 2.4A per outlet (ideal for Apple products), the charger sports decent charging speeds, but with no Qualcomm Quick Charge technology or Nexus Rapid Charge support, I didn't think it was worth my time to review.

Review: The Nonda ZUS Car Charger Is The Charger James Bond Would Use If He Had Trouble Remembering Where He Parked was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Tacocat covers Katy Perry’s “Roar”

Choosing Katy Perry’s “Roar” from the A.V. Undercover list probably wasn’t much of a choice at all for Tacocat. After all, a minor corner of the internet blew up when Perry’s Super Bowl halftime show used a now-famous shark as a backup dancer—a shark that was strikingly similar to one Tacocat used in a video for their song “Crimson Wave.” But the members of Tacocat weren’t mad—they just wanted Perry to come over and hang out.

More at avclub.com

Hey Arnold! creator forced by internet to deny there was anilingus in his cartoon

Earlier this week, a Vine started going around showing what was supposedly a very NSFW scene from Hey Arnold! in which a couple seen through a window behind Helga and Arnold appear to be, as one Twitter user put it, “eatin ass” in a very vigorous fashion

And yet, unsurprisingly, that’s totally not what’s going on in the scene, according to Hey Arnold! creator Craig Bartlett. In an e-mail exchange with The A.V. Club, Bartlett said he became aware of the scandalous clip earlier this week.

Most importantly, there’s nothing sexual or nefarious going on in the clip, at least according to Bartlett. “The scene is from ‘Arnold’s Thanksgiving,’” Barlett says, “and the kids are leaving Mr. Simmons’ apartment, where his family is arguing at the table. That’s Uncle Chuck eating a turkey with his hands. I assure you it was never intended to be what the guy tweeted it was.” That’s it. Case closed. Despite what your dirty mind may have seen, there’s not sexual imagery buried in every children’s cartoon.

More at avclub.com

Scientists at the Florida Institute of Technology recently captured a beautiful lightning storm using a new high speed camera.

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There has been some pretty crazy stuff happening on Game of Thrones this season. If you haven’t watched this past weekend’s episode yet, you’re missing out on one of the biggest revelations of the series, as well as the shocking origin story of one of the most beloved character’s on the show. That’s all we’ll say just in case you’ve fallen a little behind and haven’t checked out our latest weekly episode recap.

However, nothing that has happened in Westeros this season is crazier than this trailer mash-up that just hit the web. What if the newest character addition to Game of Thrones was Martin Lawrence, as seen in the fantasy comedy Black Knight? Thanks to some clever editing, the results are pretty entertaining. Watch the Game of Thrones Black Knight mash-up below.

Here’s the great Game of Thrones parody from PizzaPartyFX:

It’s the reaction shots in the footage from Game of Thrones that sells this mash-up the best. Plus, the footage from Black Knight has been tweaked just enough that aesthetically, it fits perfectly with the HBO series.

Thankfully, Game of Thrones isn’t the kind of show that’s going to overstay its welcome to the point that they’ll have to employ ridiculous gimmicks like this. It won’t turn into Family Matters where Steve Urkel goes to space or anything stupid like that. Though there are some fans who are a little upset/disappointed in the most recent revelation on the show. It’s a real gamechanger (no pun intended), and it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out as the show continues.

The post LOL: ‘Game of Thrones’ Gets a Visit from Martin Lawrence as the ‘Black Knight’ appeared first on /Film.

For many children of the 90s, their first experience with X-Men came in the form of the animated series that aired Saturday mornings on FOX. Plenty of those kids still view that adaptation of the comic as the definitive version of the X-Men, even moreso than the big screen franchise that has been playing out over the past 16 years.

So with X-Men: Apocalypse hitting theaters this weekend, there’s no better time to take aim at X-Men: The Animated Series with an Honest Trailer. But this particular installment pays plenty of compliments where they’re due. Watch the video after the jump.

Here’s the X-Men animated series Honest Trailer from Screen Junkies:

Even though the cartoon version of the X-Men isn’t without some cheesiness from the 90s, as the Honest Trailer points out, they handled the Dark Phoenix storyline and Wolverine’s origins better than X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine did. Plus, their costumes have always been far better than the leather body suits we’ve seen the X-Men wearing for years now. However, I’m not sure I agree with the bold claim that the series as a whole is better than the movie.

X-Men: The Animated Series tackled some pretty intense material for a Saturday morning cartoon, and it had a lot more substance than most animated comic book series have today. While it’s funny to see that the X-Men had so many stereotypes among them while fighting prejudice against mutants, the real treat is seeing the 90s in all their glory, from Cyclops’ “not” joke to a then-topical Saturday Night Live reference.

The post ‘X-Men: The Animated Series’ Honest Trailer: Return to the Era of Super Soakers & Pizza Bagels appeared first on /Film.

From Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein to Spaceballs and The Producers, legendary filmmaker Mel Brooks has been responsible for some of the most beloved movies ever made. And unsurprisingly, at various points in his career, he has discussed the making of almost all his films. Except for one—the lone dud in his canon—a film so bad The New York Times declared it “an embarrassment,” and which Brooks has never publicly discussed: Solarbabies. Well, at least not until now. Because last week, on behalf of the How Did This Get Made? podcast, I spoke with Brooks at length to try and figure out how (the hell) did this get made?

Going into the interview, I expected to hear tales of unforeseen calamity and production run amok. But what I didn’t expect—and what became the prevailing thread of our conversation—was the enormous personal toll that Solarbabies had on Brooks.

How Did This Get Made is a companion to the podcast How Did This Get Made with Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas and June Diane Raphael which focuses on movies This regular feature is written by Blake J. Harris, who you might know as the writer of the book Console Wars, soon to be a motion picture produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. You can listen to the Mel Brooks edition of the HDTGM podcast here. 

How bad did things actually get? And what, exactly, went wrong?

To find out what Mel Brooks had to say about Solarbabies, you can download our special episode of How Did This Get Made? or read the transcript below.

Mel Brooks: Hello, hello, hello!

Blake Harris: Hey, Mr. Brooks! How are you?

Mel Brooks: Hello, is this Blake Harris?

Blake Harris: It is. How’s it going?

Mel Brooks: Okay. What do you want to know? What are you doing? Explain where Solarbabies fits into your plan.

Blake Harris: Sure. So there is a podcast called How Did This Get Made. It’s very popular, where they talk about movies—typically unsuccessful movies—and one of them was Solarbabies.

Mel Brooks: I like that. I like that! Typically unsuccessful movies. I’ve got so many I could throw your way.

Blake Harris: [laughter]

Mel Brooks: Blake, listen. I’m going to tell you an incredible story. I’ll give you everything, but first I’d like to tell you the whole arc. It’s a great story and you’re lucky that you called me because you’ll never hear a story like this again in the history of cinema.

Blake Harris: I feel lucky already.

Mel Brooks: You ready?

Blake Harris: Yeah…

Mel Brooks: A woman worked for me in publicity for Brooksfilms. Her name was Irene Walzer. And she had a lot of energy and she was very smart, but she wanted to produce. So together with another guy called Jack Frost—you won’t believe it—they brought me a project. Now the project was actually brought to them by a guy by the name of Jonathan Sanger.

Blake Harris: Okay.

Mel Brooks: Jonathan Sanger had done a lot of stuff with me, for me, basically he produced The Elephant Man for Brooksfilms, so he really had a lot of wonderful credits…so I trusted Jonathan, I trusted his taste. There were a couple of guys who wrote the script, one was Walon Green and the other was Douglas Anthony Metrov. They came up with a very good, really interesting script. This all happened in 1986, okay? So Irene Walzer and Jack Frost, they did their homework and said they thought they could make this; and Frost had done other movies, so I trusted him, even though Irene Walzer was a newcomer to producing, I figured with her energy, and her brains, between the two of them it could be a wonderful movie. And I okayed the cast of Solarbabies, which was wonderful. It was, in the lead, this young guy, unknown, Jason Patric. I believed in him, he later became a star. Jami Gertz, she became a star. Richard Jordan, who was wonderful. Lukas Haas, who became a star. James Le Gros, Adrian Pasdar and the great award-winning Charlie Durning. So I said this is a great cast, and I said to them [Walzer and Frost], “You’re going to make this movie for five million bucks? All in?” And they said, “Yes, it can be done. If we can do it in Spain.”

Blake Harris: Why was Spain a cheaper alternative?

Mel Brooks: Because you didn’t have to worry about unions…

Blake Harris: Okay, okay.

Mel Brooks: Jack Frost said we could buy all the transport, we could buy the trucks, sell them back and actually make a profit. It was a real great bill of goods that I was sold, okay?

Blake Harris: [laughing]

Mel Brooks: Five million? I said, “Okay.” I said I don’t have to go to a bank for this. I’ll just get a couple of partners. You know, I’ll just ask a couple of guys I know who invest in movies and blah, blah, blah. We’ll all put in money and together we can do it. So that’s what I did. And I friend of mine that I trusted, who actually directed To Be or Not to Be—a wonderful movie—and actually directed Springtime for Hitler, did all the choreography for that movie. He was a choreographer/director, his name was Alan Johnson. A very talented guy and a good friend. And I figured what the hell. He loved the story and the casting, so I said this is going to be good. It’s going to be good. Last, final words…you never heard from me again [that] this is going to be good. So they go to Spain and I give them a half a million dollars. To start, you know, looking around finding places to shoot, hiring a Spanish cameraman and whatever. And then they needed another half a million. Okay. So before anything happened, there goes the first million. Boom. Alright, they’ve got four million left to shoot a lovely sci-fi movie, with good characters and with very little (I thought) post-production…so I said fine. Fine. They start shooting and it starts raining. It never rained in Spain before. The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains? No, they don’t. They fall only in that place in Spain that they picked for their location.

Blake Harris: Oh my gosh.

Mel Brooks: Alright, so the movie cost another million. So now they’re up to roughly two-and-a-half million out of the five, and we have no real footage yet. Okay. Maybe it’s gonna cost six. Okay, I’ll raise the extra money, no problem. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Okay, a couple of weeks go by and they need another million because I don’t know. It’s transportation, it’s the film, it’s printing, it’s editing, ugh. I said, “Okay.” So before we had maybe a thousand feet of film—which, you know, boils down to, like, maybe twenty feet out of a thousand is ever good for a movie—they’ve used up the $5 million.

Blake Harris: Oh my god.

Mel Brooks: So the choice was, I said, okay this has been a disaster. Why don’t I just call everybody back home? Thank you. So I called my partners and they said look, they liked the hundred feet of film. They’re ready to put in a little bit more money. Okay. So we all put in a little more money and they start filming. Some of the stuff is really interesting and good; some of it’s just terrible, it’s dreadful. It’s just dopey. So I call Alan and Alan says, “There’s a little bit of a, I don’t know, a little bit of revolution here. They’re against some of the things that I’ve said.” So I go over there, I fly over to Spain…

Blake Harris: Oh man, oh man…

Mel Brooks: Yeah, I scream at them. I say, “LISTEN TO THE DIRECTOR OR ELSE YOU’RE ALL FIRED, WE’LL GET ANOTHER CAST.” I really lay down the law and they all promise to listen. Alan calls me later and he says, “Okay, they’re listening.”  [after a thoughtful pause] Maybe they shouldn’t have listened, I don’t know.

Blake Harris: [laughter]

Mel Brooks: I’m not sure whether they should have listened. So here we are, we’re up to $8 million, those guys are broke. I’m not going to stick my hand in my pocket anymore. So I go to Morgan—it’s a bank, Morgan Guaranty. I show them some of the footage, and they know some of the movies I’ve made—Young Frankenstein, I’ve made Blazing Saddles personally—so they know I’ve done very well. So they loan me $5 million just on, you know…and the $5 million is used up in the next 10 days. In bad shooting, in mistakes, the wrong film, discoloration. So I go back to Morgan, and now we’re into $13 million. This is a $5 million movie! This is a great comedy, you know? This mis-film in Spain.

Blake Harris: It is.

Continue Reading Mel Brooks Interview >>

The post How Did This Get Made: A Conversation with Mel Brooks, Executive Producer Of ‘Solarbabies’ appeared first on /Film.

Drink up and be somebody

I get it

Lee Crutchley

I asked my 3yo daughter to guess the names of 80s and 90s @WWE wrestlers pic.twitter.com/KXC8xrKgpT

— Sean Leahy (@thepunningman) December 2, 2015

Children’s book author Sean Leahy introduced his three-year-old daughter to the world of professional wrestling a few months ago. He asked her to name wrestlers from the Golden Age of wrestling in the US, the ‘80s and ‘90s. She came up with some gems! The last two made it clear that eight is enough of this game.

I asked my 3yo daughter to guess the names of some more 80s and 90s wrestlers pic.twitter.com/vR4B4OuVby

— Sean Leahy (@thepunningman) May 19, 2016

He tried it again this month. Yeah, it’s obvious that there was some creative license taken between daughter and father and Twitter, but the end results are still funny. These names are at least as good as the nicknames they got from the WWF, and more memorable to those outside the wrestling world. -via With Spandex

It’s the senior talent show at the high school. The entire student body has already sat through singers, musicians, and drama students with amazing talent that they’ve seen dozens of times before. Then this guy steps up. He has one talent, and he wrings all the drama he can out of it.

(YouTube link)

Well, to be honest, he probably has other talents. Like showmanship, and making a lot of friends. How else would you draw a standing ovation for tossing a water bottle? The other question is, how long did he train to master this maneuver? -via Viral Viral Videos

When people need new clothes they usually head to the store (or online) and purchase items that look right with the right price.

It has become the norm to care less about the quality of clothing because people think it's hard to tell whether a garment is high quality, and impossible to tell when you can't see the clothes in person.

But if you read these 14 Expert Ways To Tell If Clothes Are Well Made Or Super Cheap you'll learn how to grade clothing like a pro!

In person you can apply the pull test (stretch the garment and see if it easily snaps back into shape), the scrunch test (ball up clothing and see if it wrinkles easily) and hold the fabric up to the light to see how thin it is.

Looking at clothes online? You can grade clothing visually based on a few things- exposed zippers are a sign of cheapness while patterns that match at the seams are a sign of quality.

And when in doubt about durability check for fabric content, because natural fibers such as wool, cotton and silk are more durable than synthetics.

Read 14 Expert Ways To Tell If Clothes Are Well-Made Or Super Cheap here

You’d be hard pressed to come up with a more ’90s moment than the end of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. Well, at least until this week, when attendees of the premiere for the latest Turtles movie sequel did a little time travel for a reunion of stars not seen since that seminal 1991 movie.

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Captain America is one straight-laced sir, but the guy who plays him in the Marvel films, Chris Evans, is a strangeoid, a goofball and, when he's feeling particularly squirrely during an interview, a bit of a sicko.

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Now nobody's expecting Chris to act like Cap in Civil War, but the more you see of Chris the more it seems like he's trying to get himself recast as the Joker in the next Batman movie.

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It's refreshing to see someone famous acting like a total maniac for reasons other than to get out of a contract or get on TMZ, but Chris is so *on* all the time he may just be off his meds...

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-Via BuzzFeed

Earlier today, the freshmen class at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis performed the annual ritual that ends their time as plebes. Every spring, the class rushes to “climb Mount Herndon,” meaning to scale the 21-foot-tall Herndon Monument, which is covered in grease for the occasion. The goal is to remove a "dixie cup" plebe hat on top and replace it with an upperclassmen’s hat.

The plebes first try to remove as much grease as possible, becoming covered with grease themselves. That makes climbing the monument, or each other, quite difficult. Today’s climb took one hour, 12 minutes, and 30 seconds. The cap at the top was removed with a thrown projectile, but it still had to be replaced. Chris Bianchi, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, finally placed a hat at the top, ending the grueling mission.

 

And there was much jubilation. See a video report of the climb at WBAL-TV. See more pictures in the Naval Academy’s Flickr album.

Lyft, the definitely-not-a-taxi service that is not Uber, is adding a useful feature: scheduled rides. This means exactly what you think, giving the option to call for a, well, Lyft for some future time. With that said, you probably can't use scheduled rides just yet as it is currently being piloted in San Francisco.

Assuming Lyft does roll it out to their other markets this summer as they say they will in their announcement, there will be some guidelines.

Lyft Announces Scheduled Rides, Soon Users Will Be Able To Plan Their Trips Ahead Of Time was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The Martian, Onur Kurnaz