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- Gallery: A Guide to Hunting Found-Footage Monsters
- Meet the Second Season Cast of Game of Thrones!
- Comedy in a Post-9/11 World: What Did It Take to Get New York Laughing Again?
- Sunday Cute: Corgi Puppies Discover Grass
- In Memoriam
- Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren’t: ‘The Hands Resist Him’
- The Booth at the End is the Best Show You Aren’t Watching
| Gallery: A Guide to Hunting Found-Footage Monsters Posted: 11 Sep 2011 10:20 AM PDT
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| Meet the Second Season Cast of Game of Thrones! Posted: 11 Sep 2011 08:44 AM PDT
You'll notice that this isn't entirely comprehensive. This is intentional; rather than inundate you all with every last page and squire who will be joining the cast, we've focused mainly on the major players. Like dead king Robert Baratheon's (Mark Addy) brother Stannis. As a matter of fact, Stannis seems as good a place to start as any, so let's begin, shall we? Stannis Baratheon: Stephen Dillane Melisandre of Asshai: Carice van Houten Ser Davos Seaworth: Liam Cunningham Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| Comedy in a Post-9/11 World: What Did It Take to Get New York Laughing Again? Posted: 11 Sep 2011 08:04 AM PDT
They were right. Take Gilbert Gottfried, for instance. His tasteless humor has gotten him into trouble more than once, but the interesting thing to note is that even if it’s tasteless, it’s rarely– if ever– thoughtless. And in typical Gottfried fashion, he wanted to tell the first tasteless joke after 9/11, so he said, “to shock people out of their stupid.” So at a Friar’s Roast three weeks after the attacks, he told his audience, “I have to leave early tonight; I have to fly to LA. I couldn’t get a direct flight, though; we have to make a stop at the Empire State Building.” There was a giant gasp from the audience along with the sounds of shuffling and unrest, and one person even stood up and shouted, “Too soon.” But Gottfried went from that right into the now-famous Aristocrats joke– which lead to a big, huge, massive release of a laugh. Because of this, Gottfried is credited as being the first one to get the cathartic reaction the public needed in the wake of the attacks. WNYC’s Jim O’Grady went on a mission to investigate how 9/11 changed comedy. He interviewed countless comedians, among them Gottfried; and perhaps more importantly, he sat down at a roundtable with comedians John Fisch, Tom Shilue, Ophira Eisenberg, Jane Borden, and Ted Alexandro as the professional funnypeople discussed how they dealt with the nature of their work– making people laugh– in the aftermath of so tragic an event. Fisch remembered thinking, “When are going to do comedy again?”… and he told himself that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do it. Borden recollected heading down to the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theatre two days after the attacks, not for a show– the theatre was closed, of course– but so that a handful of regulars could get together and perform for each other. And it was hard: “It felt like it had been ages, but it had only been two days,” she said. Eisenberg remembered a punchline to a joke she had seen performed before 9/11 and thinking afterwards how weird it now seemed (and also that the poor comedian who had used it just lost his closer. Ouch). Shilue took a few months out to mourn. When he came back, though, he found that spoofing anything related to 9/11 was always going to offend somebody. He remembered a time that someone approached him after a show and told him it was great, but “9/11? Not funny.” His reaction was to ask what WASN’T funny about it. It WAS funny, he said, “because the audience was doubled over in laughter.” And interestingly, this point about always offending somebody is more or less true for ALL comedy. I remember one time in this strange, new, post-9/11 world that a couple of high school friends and I attempted to rent a movie together to watch in the common room of one of our dorms (I went to a half-day, half-boarding school). We spent far longer in the video store than we probably should have, largely because we were trying to find something politically correct. But you know what we decided? We decided that it wasn’t possible, and that no matter what we rented, we were probably going to offend someone– so we opted for something that was going to offend EVERYONE and got Airplane!. The members of the roundtable pointed out that it’s silly to think that comedy has no place in a world rife with tragedy. No, comedy is part of the healing process. When you can finally laugh at something, you know you’re going to be okay. Going back to Gottfried, the Master of Tastelessness told O’Grady, “Comedy and tragedy are roommates, so wherever tragedy it is, comedy is staring over its shoulder, sticking its tongue out.” And they’re right, all of them. Just because something terrible has happened doesn’t mean that comedy no longer has a place in the world. If anything, the greater the tragedy, the stronger the need for comedy. So go ahead. Mourn. Remember. Memorialize. But don’t forget to laugh a little, too. Catch Jim O’Grady’s roundtable over at Studio 360, and while you’re at it, take a listen to these related pieces at WNYC and The Takeaway. They might be just what you need. Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| Sunday Cute: Corgi Puppies Discover Grass Posted: 11 Sep 2011 07:04 AM PDT You know what’s awesome? Tiny, fat little corgi puppies discovering what grass is for the very first time. EVER. Highlights include: Lots of pudgy, uncoordinated corgi cuteness; several corgis trying to eat the camera; and one corgi running headlong into a fence. Enjoy. [Via Buzzfeed] Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| Posted: 11 Sep 2011 06:15 AM PDT |
| Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren’t: ‘The Hands Resist Him’ Posted: 10 Sep 2011 02:39 PM PDT
At 24" x 30", it is a large painting, and a peculiar one. It depicts a boy. The boy stands in front of a window. He is clad in shorts and a blue t-shirt. Beside him is a girl—though she looks more like a doll than a human—who holds an angular object in her hands. The window behind them both reveals that it is nighttime: A crescent moon hangs in a black sky. But it is what is reaching out of the darkness that is truly unsettling. Outside the window, a number of disembodied hands reach towards the window, some rapping on it, some pressing themselves against it, and some merely held up as though seeking recognition. The boy, however, does not see the hands. He faces the viewer head-on. The painting is called "THE HANDS RESIST HIM."
Where did the painting come from? That's something of a mystery. What we do know is that a family found it behind an old brewery, abandoned. They wondered what such an interesting piece of art was doing all on its lonesome, but they also thought the discovery to be a piece of good fortune; consequently, they took it home with them. After the painting had been in their home for a few days, the family's four-and-a-half-year-old daughter told her parents that the children in the painting were fighting. More disturbingly, she said that they were coming into the room during the night as well. The family did what any rational human with money to burn would do: They got a motion-activated camera and set it up in the room with the painting. After three nights, they took a look at the footage:
These two images appeared to the family to corroborate what their daughter had told them: The doll-girl in the painting seemed to be menacing the boy with the unidentified object in her hands, and the boy appeared to flee from her, exiting the painting in the process. So what's the owner of a haunted painting to do? Put it on eBay, of course. Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
| The Booth at the End is the Best Show You Aren’t Watching Posted: 10 Sep 2011 01:19 PM PDT
I know what you're thinking: You're thinking, if this Booth at the End thing is so great, why haven't I heard about it? Easy: It's a web series. But it's a web series of very high caliber, and it's available only on Hulu. You'll spot a lot of familiar faces in it: Detective Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) from Psych, Nina (Sarah Clarke) and George Mason (Xander Berkley) from 24, even Mary Lennox (Kate Maberly) from the 1993 film adaption of The Secret Garden (She grew up! Who knew?). And it's well worth your time. What's it about? That's both a simple question and a very, very complicated one. What makes it tricky is not giving away too much. So I'll give you this: In an unidentified town, there is a diner. In that diner, there is a man. The man sits all the way at the back of the diner, in the booth at the end. He wears a suit, and he carries a black, leather bound book. If you should find this man, and if you should tell him what it is that you want more than anything in the world, the man will consult his book, and he will make you a deal. What are the terms of the deal? The man will give you a task. Should you carry out this task, you will get what it is that you want. You cannot change your task once it has been given, but you can back out of the deal at any time. He asks only that you update him periodically on how you're faring with your task. There are a lot of things, however, that he doesn't tell you. And therein lies the challenge. The Booth at the End consists of 62 short episodes directed by Jessica Landaw and written by Christopher Kubasik, and when I say short, I do mean short. They're so short that they've been complied into five 22-minute episodes on Hulu. But it's this economy of storytelling that makes the show so intriguing, as well as so addicting. It comes in bite-sized bits, and it takes place only in the diner. When all you have to go on are what everyone recounts to the man during their updates, you become something of a detective, picking out moments, finding the important bits, and discarding the rest. But trust me: You won't discard much. It's sometimes described as a thriller; sometimes as a mystery; sometimes even as a piece of science fiction. But it isn't easily pigeonholed. It's all of these things, and at the same time, maybe it's none of them. But whatever it is, it's fascinating So go on. Head on over to Hulu. Give it a little bit of your time; the whole series won't take more than two hours to watch. You'll be glad that you did. Just in case you ever happen to come across the man yourself. Related posts: Post from: Crushable |
Have you been noticing the growing trend of found-footage films popping up in cinemas? Yeah, us too. What’s that? You want to hunt them down? Well, we think you’re crazy, but okay. Fine. Here’s a guide to the most commonly-found monsters in the found footage genre. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. If one of them eats you, it’s TOTALLY not our fault.
Back in July, we presented to you, Gentle Readers, our 
After 9/11, there was a prevailing sentiment that nothing was funny. Humor seemed meaningless: Many comedians thought, “Why am I telling jokes about x, y, and z when THIS just happened.” And many were of the opinion that this was the way it was going to be from then on– that humor has lost its place in our world, that we needed it less because 9/11 made us a “more serious people.” But some heard that, and they said “No.” And you know what?
Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren't is a series that explores modern urban legends, bringing you a new tale each week.
You probably haven't seen it. You probably haven't even heard of it. But The Booth at the End is a show that you need to watch. NOW.| You are subscribed to email updates from Crushable To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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