Marvel fans, here's your first substantive look at Paul Rudd doing work as Ant-Man in July's aptly titled Ant-Man. Spoiler: The trailer plays with the crippling cliches of superhero origin story movie transcriptions everywhere and it's an eye roll. The twist at the end of the trailer is... Rudd's jovial charm pausing for laughter.

Screemgrab via Marvel Entertainment/YouTube

Even Jay Leno gets pulled over by the cops.

Leno isn’t greedy, he loves sharing his cars with the rest of the world. His YouTubechannel produces some of the highest quality car reviews, interviews, and car talk anywhere on the Internet.

Chevrolet was nice enough to bring by the new Corvette Z06. When you have a car with 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque it’s hard not to feather the pedal a bit. It’s definitely a car designed for racing. Sadly, there isn’t footage of the interaction between Leno and the police. With the recent rumblings of cops being captured on camera, we’re not surprised they cut that part out.

There is some cool technology in the Z06 as well. The car has cameras in the front and can record your driving. It can then overlay data live and help you hone in your lap times. Chevrolet also likes to boast that you can throw that video up to your social media feeds. Maybe this is the beginning of cars uploading video directly to Vine. It also sounds like a nightmare for speedfreaks—now there will always be evidence of them speeding past red lights.

H/T Jalopnik | Screengrab via Jay Leno’s Garage/YouTube

Oh, what could’ve been.

Nicole Kidman came on the Tonight Show to promote Paddington Bear, but she preferred to talk about the last time she and Jimmy Fallon met instead. Years ago, when they were both single, she liked him and had a mutual friend connect them. Jimmy Fallon, however, was so oblivious to the whole thing that he only found out about it Tuesday night, as she told him the story.

“It was bad,” she said as Fallon hid under his desk in embarrassment.

The whole thing is worth watching, and at one point Fallon leaves the desk after she voices a theory she had as to why it didn’t work.

Screengrab via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/YouTube

According to the epicurean calendar, 2015 is the year of the cauliflower.

As many food pundits are proclaiming, the new slogan for the next 360-plus days is goodbye kale, hello brassica oleracea (a.k.a. cauliflower). Take those bitter green leafs and toss them in the compost heap; head to the farmer's market and stock up on multicolored heads of this kale cousin that is far more versatile than most cooks imagine.

Did you know that when you grind up, pulverize, or process raw or cooked cauliflower that the result is called rice? And those firm leaves that come with heads of this sulfur-rich vegetables are incredibly edible? Hang in there—we have the video to prove it.

Whether you are a long-time cauliflower lover, a recent convert, or someone who just wants to be on the 2015 foodie bandwagon, there is a recipe for you. Thanks to some YouTube curation, we offer 10 ways to celebrate the vegetable, called by some, one of the world’s healthiest.

The Halftime Treat

Yes, you can add buffalo sauce to pretty much anything and make it palatable. The famous spicy-hot sauce made famous by Buffalo’s Anchor Bar, is put to the test in this preparation of baked cauliflower later doused in a vegan-friendly red sauce. Come halftime, will your football fan friends enjoy this as much as a pretzel-crusted pizza? With enough seasonal beer, it might just do the trick come Super Bowl Sunday.

In the Raw

If your stove is on the fritz or you just enjoy giving your chompers a workout, raw food could be the way to go. Looking at cauliflower, the thought of eating it without steaming, baking, microwaving, or flash frying could be daunting. But this couscous recipe uses a food processor to reduce the white veggie into a rice-like texture. Adding carrots, cherry tomatoes, chopped parsley, and some good olive oil yields an appetizing salad that is perfect for those on gluten-free or vegan diets.

Going Caveman

Add meat to any cauliflower dish transforms it from veggie delight to paleo staple. While this clip spends a bit too much time promoting a paleo cookbook, it does lay out the simple way to make a fried rice (that’s processed cauliflower in case you aren't following along) that adds in meat and veggies to make it perfect for those who are followers of the caveman diet. In this clip, Jaden Hair uses bacon as the meat ingredient, but any sort of animal product would do.

As previously mentioned, it would be a pity to throw out those nasty-looking green leaves that seemingly hold the cauliflower heads in place. Aside from the fact they likely will wreck your garbage disposal, they have the same nutrients as the core of vegetable. The preparation used by AlkalineAnthea—using onions and garlic as a layer on top of the stalks—actually works well using other greens or stalks such as beet greens, kale, chard, or mustard greens.

Fried Goodness

Foodies who consider themselves healthy eaters vacillate on the issue of eating fried foods. In the case of this recipe for cauliflower fritters, you could argue that the benefits of eating this healthy vegetable far outweighs any negative that comes from cooking in hot oil. Honestly, the “everything in moderation” principle applies here; the occasional sumptuous-looking (and tasting) vegetable fritter prepared using a healthy oil (let’s not start a debate here) will not set your diet back. My larger issue in this recipe is the use of a packaged dried salad dressing mix when those same ingredients (salt, pepper, etc.) in natural form are easy enough to find.

Faux Dough

To keep us healthy, I often marvel at the ingredients (dried mushrooms, for example) my wife will use to make a dough that contains as little regular flour as possible. While she has never gone to the extreme of using a fresh head of cauliflower to create the ultimate healthy pizza crust, this clip will go through the details of making this funky-looking but savory bread-like substance. While the video is thorough in its detailed instructions, we could do without the corny humor.

The Healthy Tortilla

Who could argue with this logic: if your tortilla shell/wrapper is gluten free and void of flour, you can load the innards with bacon, cheese, and all sorts of greasy goodness. Even if that premise doesn’t work, this video recipe for creating a cauliflower-based Mexican-food shell offers some interesting ideas that can be modified for different tastes. Again, instead of using packaged taco seasoning (as suggested here), you might want to use the mix courtesy of Alton Brown (of Food Network fame).

The Indian Staple

Those of us who are diehard diners of Indian cuisine know that cauliflower is a popular ingredient in a number of dishes such as aloo gobi. Aloo gobi is a spicy dish that marries potatoes with the veggie du jour along with a number of piquant spices. As someone who has made his fair share of Indian dishes at home, the beauty of the recipes is that they allow for a fair amount of experimentation. There’s no end to the amount of heat you can bring to Indian food and, in many cases, vegetables are somewhat interchangeable. If, for some unknown reason, your local grocer is out of cauliflower, you can use broccoli or even string beans as a substitute.

Pickle This

Pickles are in. From traditional cucumber-based pickles (the kind you find on the Lower East Side) to fermented celery, beets, radishes, squash, and all things in-between, novice home cooks are trying their hands at pickling. Indian pickles are a breed unto themselves as they employ such amazing spices as cumin, fenugreek, mustard seeds, and mustard oil. The recipes, such as the one here for pickled cauliflower and turnips, follow some of the same steps as other fermented morsels, but the twists—such as heating the veggies in oil and spices—yield some unexpectedly delicious flavors

The Greek Touch

In the cyclical diet-go-round, the Mediterranean Diet was once considered the ultimate eating style for maintaining a healthy heart. Rich in vegetables and olive oil, replicating the way folks in Greece, Crete, and other parts of Southern Europe dine is still followed by millions. This recipe using salt, herbs, and olive oil that is pure gold is simple yet the perfect accompaniment to any main course. Aside from some wonderfully aromatic components—such as fresh rosemary—the technique displayed by Diane Kochilas is a great tutorial for novice chefs. Kochilas, who runs a cooking school in Greece, has a way of slicing garlic that makes it almost liquify while cooking.

In case you are wondering what other trends are in store for 2015, the foodie calendar shows matcha tea, seaweed, foraged greens, and the continued craze for the use of probiotics (fermentation) in cooking. Fear not, it’s not all healthy stuff—according to the Washingtonian, happy hour fried chicken skins and white chocolate deserts are trendy.

To all of that, we say, bon appetit.

Photo via Muffet/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Another day, another development in the Cosby story. After months of silence, Phylicia Rashad, the beloved stage and TV actress who played mom Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show, has finally spoken out about the sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby. Unsurprisingly, she has a lot of feelings about it. Surprisingly, they're not so great.

At a lunch for the new movie Selma, Rashad told Roger Friedman of Showbiz 411 that she “love[s]” Cosby and continues to stand by him.

She told me that in the years she’s known him, she has never seen the behavior alleged by the women who say they were drugged and raped, or sexually harassed.

“Forget these women,” Rashad said. “What you’re seeing is the destruction of a legacy. And I think it’s orchestrated. I don’t know why or who’s doing it, but it’s the legacy. And it’s a legacy that is so important to the culture.”

Rashad had no interest in discussing former models Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson, two of Cosby’s highest-profile accusers.

“Oh, please,” she told Friedman when their names came up.

She did, however, have some kind words for Camille Cosby, who has continued to defend her husband over the past few months, even issuing a public statement urging the media to be skeptical of his accusers’ stories.

“This is a tough woman, a smart woman," Rashad said. "She’s no pushover."

Rashad added that Camille could not possibly have looked the other way if the allegations were true.

Perhaps most bizarrely, Rashad claimed that allegations against Cosby were part of a giant American conspiracy to keep The Cosby Show off the air.

"Someone is determined to keep Bill Cosby off TV," she said. "And it’s worked. All his contracts have been canceled."

Indeed, Netflix and NBC did cancel plans to air a Bill Cosby sitcom and stand-up comedy special.

The Cosby Show, Rashad said, "represented America to the outside world. This was the American family. And now you’re seeing it being destroyed. Why?"

After reading Rashad's comments, many may be asking "Why?" for an entirely different reason.

H/T Showbiz 411 | Screengrab via AriseEntertainment360/YouTube

As the ball dropped and people bid adieu to the year the was 2014, folks around the world began examining their lives and figuring out how they can accomplish all their long-held goals in the new year. But save learning a new language or taking a trip to Europe for 2016, because this is the year you finally discover why your friends are still talking about Breaking Bad a year after it left the air.

Indeed, 2015 is all about getting in a passionate relationship with your Netflix queue and finding time to stream all the shows you’ve been putting off for so long. To help make this daunting task a little easier, we here at the Daily Dot have served up our recommendations for shows you need to stream—plus short primers on each series to make them far less confusing.

Previously, our staff compiled their recommendations for comedies you should be binge-watching in 2015, but it’s time to get serious about streaming, because the real meat of Netflix is lies in its drama selection. From meth-slinging chemistry teachers afflicted with cancer to sex-addicted ad executives from the 1960s, there’s something to satisfy any appetite. So stop procrastinating and get to watching, because you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. —Greg Seals

1) Black Mirror

2) Breaking Bad

3) Dexter

4) Firefly

Taking place in a future where the U.S. and China are the only two countries that expanded to space, the Western space opera (think Han Solo with an old-timey gun and cowboy boots) zeroes in on Mal, the captain of Serenity, and his crew as they run suspicious deliveries and drop-offs. They pick up River and Simon Tam, two siblings on the run from the ever-present (but rarely glimpsed) Alliance. It’s a mix of Western and Eastern cultures and manages to turn a few gender roles on its head along the way. (You also get a clear shot of Nathan Fillion’s rear end, which is never something to complain about.)

It’s also a good exercise in separating actors from the characters they play. Adam Baldwin plays fan favorite Jayne, but his viewpoints about Gamergate may have ruined Firefly for some long-time fans; he even coined the now-infamous name. —Michelle Jaworski

5) Friday Night Lights

Most astounding of all though, the show goes through a major overhaul in the second half of its run and somehow comes out even better than it was before. Which is probably because no matter whose storyline it’s covering, Friday Night Lights manages to cram more pathos, heartbreak, and triumph into any given episode than most other shows do into an entire season. And yes, it does that while never veering away from its central focus of small-town football.

Also, as far as the ensemble goes, this was the show that (re)introduced us to Michael B. Jordan and gave us the single best marriage in the history of television, that of Coach (Kyle Chandler) and Tami (Connie Britton) Taylor.

Always an underdog while it was on the air, Friday Night Lights is a testament to the lasting impact a show can have when allowed enough time to grow into its own. Again, know going in that you don’t have to like football to love the show, but that you will root for the characters through thick and thin. Oh, and remember: Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. —Chris Osterndorf

6) House of Cards

But don’t mistake this for just another political drama. This original piece of programming has wider implications. Thanks to all-star talent like Executive Producer David Fincher and an A-list cast helmed by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, this Netflix original hit proved that streaming services and their original content are changing the way people watch TV. —Greg Seals

7) Ken Burns: The Civil War

The nine-part, 680-minute documentary series is often considered Burns' best and is a great starting point for anyone looking to get into his films. When you're done with it, you'll find yourself listening to the soundtrack on the subway and getting far too emotional. Or even quoting a Southern general at the end of an article you wrote for the website you work for.

Note: If you want something shorter and a bit more fun, watch Burns' Prohibition (also on Netflix). —E.A. Weiss

8) Lost

At its core, Lost was about the characters: A bunch of strangers, linked by something too precise and too distinct to call just fate. Trapped on a mysterious tropical island together where a polar bear on the loose is the least of everyone’s worries; the show manages to tie in philosophical figures, time travel, the supernatural, the question of whether you can change future events from happening, life and death, and so many theories. It was weird and weirdly addictive, with people binge-watching before that phrase even entered our collective vernacular.

Lost started in a pre-Twitter world, but it would’ve easily thrived on social media, and it remained a heated debate once people started to talk about it there. And more than four years after the final episode aired, people are still debating the ending. —Michelle Jaworski

9) Mad Men

Aside from being an award-winning drama, the show is a visual feast, with set dressings and costumes so perfectly assembled you’ll want to reach for an ashtray and a pack of Lucky Strikes. With only seven episodes left till Madison Avenue’s infamous Sterling Cooper and Partners close their doors, now is the perfect time to catch up. —Greg Seals

10) The West Wing

By the end of it all, you’ll want to be best friends with CJ, fight with Toby, make out with Josh, hug Leo, and, of course, get a history lesson from President Bartlet. The West Wing will make you want to quit your job and join a think tank, or at the very least, vote in the next election. It will also help erase the memory of Sorkin’s ill-advised The Newsroom. Now log in and watch: it’s your civic duty. —Marisa Kabas

11) Twin Peaks

Screengrab via IGN/YouTube

Rule 34 is one of the Internet's most famous aphorisms: If something exists, someone else will make a porn out of it. The rule has produced hilarious results at times, but it has also run afoul of basic decency, such as when people make porn parodies of things like war or famine. Unfortunately, we can now add high-profile sexual assault allegations to the list of terrible Rule 34 applications.

Not the Cosbys XXX: Puddin’ My Dick Where It Don’t Belong, which will be released on DVD on Jan. 21, is an NSFW treatment of The Cosby Show by porn-parody director Will Ryder. It's also a blatant attempt to capitalize on the sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby, which gained new traction in recent months as numerous women (now almost two dozen in total) came forward to accuse the TV star.

"We had a lot of fun making the first two Huxtable porn movies so it's shocking when somebody as beloved as Bill Cosby is in the bull's-eye of such horrific accusations," Ryder told adult-film-industry magazine Xbiz, "but we felt a need to bring some levity to this situation because that's what we do."

"Fans of Cliff Huxtable and Bill Cosby," Ryder added, "will love our new movie."

It seems both impossible and unwise to attempt to bring levity to a “situation” that involves more than 20 women saying they were drugged and sexually assaulted. Nonetheless, basic decency having eluded him, Ryder produced Puddin’ My Dick Where It Don’t Belong, the third movie in the Not the Cosbys XXX trilogy. Detroit comedian Thomas Ward, who bears a striking resemblance to Cosby, plays the actor-turned-alleged-rapist.

 A synopsis for 2013’s Not The Cosbys XXX 2 reads as follows:

“With Denise enjoying college life, Cliff lets Theo intern at his gynecology office unaware he accepted a part-time job at a XXX peepshow which leads to hilarious sexual adventures as Cliff & Claire attempt to maintain control of the Huxtable house. Sandra, Denise, Vanessa, Rudy, Theo & Cockroach run wild as crazy pussy eating and hot sex make this one hell of a XXX spoof of the 1980s TV show.”

It’s unclear if Puddin’ My Dick Where It Don’t Belong will actually attempt to recreate the sexual assault allegations against Cosby, or if it'll just ruin your childhood by showing Theo and Denise having a threeway with Cockroach.

Either way, it wouldn't be the first time that porn tried to stay relevant by ripping a story from the headlines to utterly tasteless effect. Case in point: Bang Bros’ XXX “I Can’t Breathe” “parody.”

Memo to porn directors: Lay off the insulting attempts at social commentary and stick to 10-minute, narrative-free blowjob clips instead.

H/T Xbiz | Screengrab via SitcumsOnline/YouTube

The Dowager certainly wouldn’t approve of this.

For some reason, Entertainment Weekly had Downton Abbey stars Laura Carmichael, Lesley Nicol, and Phyllis Logan (Lady Edith Crawley, Mrs. Patmore, and Mrs. Hughes, respectively) come together and play a rousing game of Cards Against Humanity. The characters have been met with plenty of shocking revelations during the show’s five seasons, but for the prim and proper Crawleys and their servants, this colorful language might be even worse.

We know full well how dark and twisted CAH can quickly get, but this game manages to stay more on the tame side thanks to the luck of the draw. Still, there’s something to be said about a bunch of people laughing at “Farting and walking away” and “Bitches” as answers. They know what you want to hear.

Marvel's first Netflix show, Daredevil, finally has a release date. The series will come out on April 10, three weeks before Avengers: Age of Ultroncomes out in the U.S.

Daredevil is the first of Marvel's five Defenders shows on Netflix, all of which take place in Hell's Kitchen, New York. It stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a lawyer who develops heightened senses as a result of being blinded as a child.

Along with the release date, Marvel also released a new image from the show, along with a "motion poster" teaser. (Yes, "motion posters" are a thing now, along with teaser-for-a-teaser Vine clips.)

The "teaser" is more like an animated GIF with some audio on top, but we can probably expect a real trailer soon. April isn't so far away.

If 2014 belonged to any music video, it was easily Sia’s “Chandelier.” The art-house take on the singer’s summer anthem, which featured Dance Moms prodigy Maddie Ziegler prancing around in an apartment that looked like it was ripe with tetanus, inspired countless reinterpretations and parodies.

Everyone from Jimmy Kimmel to Lena Dunham donned a blonde bob and tried their best to duplicate Ryan Heffington’s unique choreography. From a Star Wars parody to a shot-for-shot recreation as punishment for losing a fantasy football bet, people couldn’t stop dancing to this track in 2014.

But never one to rest on her laurels, Sia has followed up her Grammy-nominated music video with one that is equally as head-scratching, avant-garde, and animalistic. 

Wednesday, the songstress dropped her music video for “Elastic Heart,” which found Ziegler and her flesh-colored leotard squaring off in a large cage against actor turned performance artist Shia LaBeouf. Directed by Sia and Daniel Askill, the choreography can only be described as part Dances With Wolves and part feral-child-finally-accepts-love. 

This one you're just gonna have to watch for yourself. 

Screengrab via SiaVEVO/YouTube

Freelance animator Evelien Lohbeck's short film Deskloop connects the actual desktop with the computer world, as the computer fan kicks off a domino chain of floppy disks, circles back to the world of the computer, and ends with a CD-ROM ejection that reveals the credits.

The only downside to this amazing video is it puts doubt in your head that all the amazing Rube Goldberg videos you've seen before are in fact clever animations. 

Update 1:49 PT: When reached for comment on the inspiration behind the video, Lohbeck told The Daily Dot, "I am very fascinated by the border/boundary between reality and fantasy. Playing with the expectation of the audience inspires my work. In this film I wanted to mix the physical world with the digital world by using a chain reaction of real objects and taken over into the digital world/desktop."

H/T Incredible Things | Screengrab via Evelien Lohbeck/YouTube

In the age of the Internet, proposals have become more than just an intimate expression of love, they’ve become a game of viral one-upsmanship. From lipdubs to flashmobs, fiancés have proved time and time again that they will stop at nothing to make sure their question-popping moment is more original than the last. But no matter how much thought you put into your Lego Star Wars proposal, there’s just no way to top what you’re about to see.

That’s because Angelo Piccini pulled one right out of the ol’ Nicholas Sparks playbook and recreated an iconic scene from The Notebook to ask for his girlfriend’s hand in marriage. 

Soon after, family and friends emerged from hiding to help pop the question with signs he had prepared. Of course the answer was a resounding "Yes!"

If that hasn't got you ugly crying by now, we excerpted Piccini's speech to melt your heart just a little more. 

I've tried to recreate a dream for you. When we are together, everything is possible. Together everything is doable. I did this because when I met you one year ago, more or less, my life changed. Everything became more beautiful and after so much time, I fell overwhelmingly in love.

Sorry fellas, between a Notebook-themed proposal and a man pouring his heart out in Italian, you just don't stand a chance. 

H/T Us Weekly | Screengrab via TheOneRomance/YouTube

 “This story really hits home for anyone who, day in and day out, mocks political, social, and religious figures,” O’Brien said. While Americans tend to take the right to satire “for granted,” the host said that today’s tragedy “reminds us, very viscerally, that it’s a right some people are inexplicably forced to die for.” 

“All of us here are terribly sad for the families of those victims, for the people of France, and for anyone in the world tonight who now has to think twice before making a joke,” he added. “It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

With that, he did his best to transition back into the jokes.

Photo via Bob Howard/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

America's funniest people are back to host the Golden Globes for a third time this weekend, and, according to them, they have no plans to keep any of the jokes fresh, instead just pulling from bits from the past.

"We're going to show a 20-minute montage of the jokes that worked, and then we're going to come out at the end," explained Amy Poehler. 

Poehler and co-host Tina Fey revealed their "plans" in a funny new promo video for the awards, airing Sunday, Jan. 11 at 8pm ET. They promise to approach it differently this year. 

"As god as my witness, I'm not going to dope this year," Fey joked. "I'm going to do this one clean."

Screengrab via NBC/YouTube

Like Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart opened his show Wednesday by addressing the Paris shooting at the office of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people.

The shooters killed a number of employees who were involved with satirizing religion in the magazine, particularly of Islam and the prophet Muhammad, and as a man of comedy and satire, he left the jokes off the table as he called out the senselessness of it all.

“I know very few people go into comedy as an act of courage, mainly because it shouldn’t have to be like that,” Stewart said. “It shouldn’t be an act of courage; it should be taken as established law. But those guys at Hebdo had it. And they were killed for their cartoons.”

Screengrab via The Daily Show/Comedy Central

Love them or hate them, prank videos are ubiquitous. They may be painfully elaborate, idiotically simple, or even sweetly playful, but above all, prank videos are void of meaning. If you click play on a prank video, you likely are not anticipating a heartfelt lesson in social justice.

But in this case, you’ll get just that.

When prank company PrankDial enlisted T.J. Misny and Jason Park to create a holiday video, the duo created a prank of epic proportions, pranking the CEO of the company, and anyone who dares to click the play button on their obliquely titled video.

The video does indeed feature a prank, but it also features inspiring stories from struggling New Yorkers who help Misny and Park prank the CEO by accepting cash gifts from the budget he gave them to create the video.

The pranksters include Shawanna Vaughn, a legally blind woman living in the Bronx who is determined to keep giving back to her community; Buya Jammeh, a journalist from Gambia, who is separated from his family while living in political exile in the US; and Reconnect Cafe in Bed Stuy, a space dedicated to engaging young people at risk for violence within the community.

Misny, whose directorial credits include Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong and Broad City: I Heart New York, spoke to the Daily Dot about the anarchy of pranks, taking risks, and creating content in a clickbait culture.

Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired the video?

My friend, Jay Park, had this connection with the company PrankDial. He said, “Look, PrankDial wants to shoot something with you. And immediately [I wanted] to capture the fun and the anarchy of a prank. I don’t look at myself as a prankster—I don’t pull pranks on a regular basis. [But] what’s fun about [pranks] is there’s a possibility of failure—something can go wrong. You don’t know what the reaction’s going to be. And the only thing that I could think of that would capture that rift was to target the CEO, [Fahim Saleh], to show that PrankDial is a unique, forward thinking company.

[We thought], why don’t we just use the budget to surprise him in some way? Right after that, the idea of incorporating a charitable effort seemed like a no brainer because we’re also going to sort of prank the audience. When you see the link on the PrankDial page, you’re not expecting to learn about social justice, so that seemed like a great trojan horse.

We’re going to give you a Gambian refugee, at risk youths in Bed Stuy and how they’re trying to change the social dialogue, and we’re going to tell you about people who are struggling and giving back to their community.

How does the clickbait culture of Web content influence your work?

I think it influences it in a major way. Making film content for the Web, you are competing against every movie, every television show, every photograph that’s ever been taken. I’m competing with all of my heroes and all of my peers. Everything that’s ever been made is my competition. Whereas, years ago, you would be making something for TV and you’d be competing against three major networks.

I’m always thinking about what’s relevant and what will keep people watching.

The thing is—and I’m guilty of this too as a viewer—I always think, 'Is this full thing going to be worth my time?'

You’re always like 'my time is so valuable,' and it’s kind of perverse because you’re always ready to move away from what you’re experiencing now to experience something better.

So would you say you’re using that culture to motivate you to make higher quality or more visually appealing content?

It can be a positive thing in some ways because [creators] make things extra dense and [we] make things look extra sharp to stand out against the competition. You have to find ways through writing or performance to get the audience to trust you, or they’re going to move on to something else.

Film is a visual medium so [making things look good] is not something new, but I try to pretend I’m not making things for the Web. The Web is not the minor leagues anymore. I think there was a time when people who were creating and financing videos would say, “It’s okay. You don’t have to execute on the highest level, because it’s just for the Web.” But I think in the last year or so, it’s become clear that the only way to reach people on the Web is to do your best work and make things as if you were making them for the big screen or TV.

Your videos tend have high production value and look very polished. Do you think, amidst all the saturated content that’s available, people get excited about sleeker-looking content?

I think even if people aren’t tech savvy—or even if they can’t pinpoint what’s different—I think there’s something subconscious that occurs when people feel that something is well-considered. I feel, as a creator, if you really take care about what you’re doing, and you care about your writing and your performances, that’s going to translate and come across as something that’s of value.

I’ve been using the Arri Alexa and not all creators have access to that [equipment], but you can still achieve that with your writing. If you take care and you have something witty or striking or unusual to say, that’s the tool you have to get people to say, “I trust you. Okay, three minutes I’ll stay with you and watch this thing.”

Which can seem like a long time…

Yeah. It’s almost a lot to ask someone. Or in the case of the PrankDial video, we’re asking you for seven minutes, but I hope that in seven minutes we can make you laugh and think about the world and surprise you a few times.

Oh really? It didn’t feel that long.

That is my favorite compliment, when people say, 'I didn’t think it was that long.'

This video seems like it really captures the dichotomy of humor and seriousness that can be found in your work. What’s your take on how it turned out?

What’s tricky about this particular prank video is that nothing in that video was staged, so committing to this idea with no way of turning back was a new challenge.

I hope it doesn’t come across as sounding like I’m so pleased with myself, but I’m really happy with the attention this video is getting. It was a pretty massive risk to be given a substantial budget and say, 'We’re going to do something totally different and hope it’s going to connect with people.'

I’m maybe more proud of this than anything else I’ve done because it is that anarchic humor that I love, and the stories we’re telling really matter. In the past I’ve combined dramatic and comedic elements, but it’s been rewarding to combine extremes of absurd humor and social justice, in a format where people might not expect an emotional story.

Screengrab via PrankDial/Youtube

As excited as Marvel fan may be about Ant-Man, Conan O’Brien worries that the trailer may give away the film’s ending.

In the rush to give fans as many trailers and teaser trailers as possible, there’s a fine balance between teasing a plot point and just flat-out spoiling it for unsuspecting viewers. And given the trailer, Ant-Man might end up being as short as eight minutes—at least with Conan's comic additions. 

Ant-Mansets the stage for yet another origin story, but it might’ve revealed something else entirely. Things are pretty dangerous for an ant-sized man, but the villains he faces are the least of his worries. 

Screengrab via Marvel Entertainment/YouTube

The Intercept is continuing its coverage of the case at the heart of the hit podcast Serial. Yesterday, the website published an interview with Kevin Urick, the Maryland prosecutor who led the case against Adnan Syed, the young man convicted of murdering his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee.

In contrast to the website's interviews with Jay Wilds, the case's key witness, this conversation received a long preamble with much invective against Sarah Koenig’s reporting and against the podcast as a whole. While the interview with Wilds showed little preference for or against the podcast on the part of reporter Natasha Vargas-Cooper, the follow-up with Urick was openly and aggressively critical of the show. The result reads as strangely antagonistic for fans of the show, who are the very obvious target audience for The Intercept's reporting.

Vargas-Cooper paints those who choose to doubt Syed’s guilt as generally foolish in contrast to Urick.

Reddit may have its doubts. Sarah Koenig, creator of the wildly popular “Serial” podcast, may have her doubts. Those who rightly question the fairness of the notoriously biased American justice system may have their doubts.

But Urick, who prosecuted the case in 2000, remains certain that Adnan Syed is a murderer—and 15 years later, no new facts have emerged to change this conclusion.

She goes on to dismiss the extensive research that Koenig and her staff undertook to produce the show as trivial, due to a lack of new evidence.

When a jury of 12 people comes back with a guilty verdict in two hours, you’d think that rejecting their decision would require fresh evidence. Yet the show did not produce new evidence, and mostly repeated prior claims, such as an unconfirmed alibi, charges of incompetence against Adnan’s deceased lawyer, and allegations that information derived from cellphone records is unreliable.

Had “Serial” accepted the jury’s conclusion—that Adnan strangled a teenage girl —there would be no storyline, no general interest in the case, and hence no audience. So, Koenig dismissed the decision of the 12 jurors who heard the case, and even though she found nothing that would exonerate Syed, she shifted the burden of proof back onto the state.

Urick's words echo this tone. He says that the case was “run-of-the-mill” and attacks Koenig’s reporting.

Koenig’s presentation of the cellphone evidence is designed to try to implant doubts by sleight of hand rather than to accurately portray what we had and how we presented it.

Urick says that the case was solid because “the cellphone records corroborated so much of Jay [Wilds]’s story.” He dismisses, however, the relevance of Wilds’ own shifting and dubious narrative, including the conflicting narrative he offered in his recent interview with The Intercept. It makes for a confusing argument—the case was strong because the cellphone records support what Wilds said, in spite of the fact that what Wilds said is now, according to Wilds, not what occurred.

The Intercept, best known for its work documenting the NSA records leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013, identifies its mission as follows: "We believe the prime value of journalism is its power to impose transparency, and thus accountability, on the most powerful governmental and corporate bodies.” If this is the case, why is the site attacking Koenig, who made painstaking efforts to remain neutral, and giving such privilege to Urick's account of a case that he won?

Where are the tougher questions? Or, at the very least, why isn't the tone of this reporting neutral?

The interview ends with a preview of what is next: "The DNA evidence, jury polling, Jay’s attorney, Urick’s reaction to 'Serial,' and more." The tease is reminiscent of the very thing of which Vargas-Cooper and Urick accuse Koenig: a sensationalist tactic to attract the largest possible audience.

Update 12:46pm CT, Jan. 8: The Serial team has provided a statement in response to Urick's allegations via Twitter:

Photo via Casey Feisler/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

On paper, God Particles should be a grating, insufferable slog to sit through. Each of its four episodes follows a different millennial in the days leading up to the Large Hadron Collider being turned on and the Higgs Boson—sometimes nicknamed the “God particle”—possibly being discovered, which may or may not end the world. It’s a shoestring-budget production, from a creative team with no prior credits, that feels inspired by a combination of Lars von Trier and P.T. Anderson. The sum of those factors should result in derivative, student film garbage.

So it’s a very pleasant surprise when the last episode wraps and the series resonates as something genuinely fulfilling, subtle, and unique. It’s also gorgeous.

The series's main conceit—powering up the LHC for the first time—proves to be an excellent backdrop to measure the elusive concept of millennial angst. The event was the modern version of putting the Sputnik into orbit, albeit a bit tougher to understand; the implications of sending the first man-made device into Earth’s orbit were simple to grasp and get excited about, whereas the implications of high-speed particle collisions were not, which is probably why a rumor went around that the LHC might destroy the world, or the universe, or at least something integral to the existence of a tomorrow.

Everybody remembers somebody telling them that “the world might end” in the leadup to the LHC’s first test, and while there’s nothing new to the fear of new technology destroying all of existence—it’s a fear of the unknown that’s common to all humanity—the reactions to the LHC rumor contained something that felt unique to this generation: Even the people that thought the rumor was legitimate still wanted the damn thing turned on without delay.

The characters of God Particles react to the potential world’s end in one of two ways: either by shrugging it off entirely or by quietly yearning for it to happen. They’re all in their 20s or early 30s, and when they all come together in the final episode, it’s due to serendipitous connections through work, affairs, and AA meetings. For all but one of them, the world ending means either no more working, never having to face the consequences of an extramarital fling, or not having to abstain from alcohol anymore. After all, what’s a better excuse than the world ending for ditching the 12 steps and getting hammered on vodka?

The headlining characters are strongly defined, and, within their eight-ish minutes that they’re each allotted, they garner equal amounts of pity, sympathy, and disdain. Rue (Zoe Chao) is an alcoholic who’s unhappy with her menial job and thought she’d be somewhere better at this point in her life. Saul (Daniel Nemes) is a recovering heroin addict who’s low on money and on the verge of throwing away a healthy relationship for a shot at a former one. Allie (Carissa Cash) is a self-absorbed prescription cough syrup enthusiast who hasn’t had sex with her husband in six months. Jill (Claire Kaplan) is nine months pregnant and appears to be the character most determined to progress through life in a traditional sense, which is utterly grating to everybody around her. They're all far richer than those descriptions, but going more in-depth would spoil discovering the better parts as the series unrolls.  

It’s not uncommon for a creative team to put out a limited webseries and then walk away from the industry, and I very much hope that God Particles generates enough attention to encourage this one to keep going. Writer/director Leland Montgomery shows enormous promise in directing nuanced performances and staging conversations in engaging ways, and he weaves a compelling and atmospheric narrative where 99 percent of beginning filmmakers would create something pretentious and boring. Cinematographer/editor Spencer Devlin Howard makes the series ooze with production value despite very little money (the budget is estimated at $15,000 on IMDb). He maintains a bright, primary color palette throughout the 30-minute running time, and his floating but deliberate frame makes conversations feel organic and captivating. It's a good use of both the strengths of shooting with light digital cameras and the classical fundamentals of film. He knows his toolbox well, and, when he wants to really hit you over the head with a stunning image, he does so brilliantly. 

God Particles should make for an excellent business card for Montgomery and Howard as they move forward in the film industry, but here’s hoping that they get another shot at a personal project in the future. It would be fascinating to see them tackle a full 90-minute feature, and the breadth of this series shows that Montgomery could certainly pen one (with more money, he probably could have done so, compellingly, with this project). There’s nothing cooler than catching a talented team’s work early in their career, and sitting down with God Particles is good chance to try and do that. All four episodes are free, so the only investment required is a little bit of time, and they can all be viewed on the series’s website.

Screengrab via Leland Montgomery/Vimeo

As if we needed yet another reason to be swooning over Chris Evans.

He wasn’t up for the Favorite TV Icon Award during Wednesday’s People’s Choice Awards broadcast, but he was stationed fairly close to Betty White when Ellen DeGeneres announced her as the winner. The act of chivalry that came next appeared to be instinctual for him as he helped the 93-year-old actress walk up the stage to accept her award.

Yet again, Evans has failed to convince us that he’s notactually Captain America.

“When Melissa McCarthy came up on stage and said she’d stay with us as long as you let her—well, you’ve abused the privilege with me,” she said.

H/T Uproxx | Screengrab via peopleschoice/YouTube