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What we learned from Maisie Williams's Reddit AMA

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Game of Thrones' own Arya Stark, alias Maisie Williams, made a splash on Reddit Friday with a brief but perkyAMA

Williams, who recently stated that she loved Reddit for its ability to eliminate trolling via the upvote function, received plenty of love herself when she showed up sporting a sleepy smile and a laid-back attitude for her first AMA on the website. 

Her fellow redditors were eager to know about her life outside of House Stark. The most pressing question for fans involved the upcoming film adaptation of breakout independent video game The Last of Us. Williams is the frontrunner to play the lead role of Ellie in the highly anticipated film. When asked if she had more confirmation, though, she hedged:

THE LAST OF US movie is in very early days. I have spoken to powerful people who are getting THE LAST OF US on its feet. And I'm hopeful that I can play Ellie in the future, but we'll all have to wait and see.

Sorry, gamers, you'll just have to wait a little longer for good news on that front. But Williams did confirm that she's a potential gamer herself. While she hasn't yet played the game on her own, she has watched an "insane" walkthrough of it. And she and her brothers are currently into popular survivalist horror game Amnesia: the Dark Descent, which will hopefully help her hone Arya's life-or-death instincts on the set of Game of Thrones.

The pint-sized 17-year-old also had plenty to say about her fellow actors on and off the set. Sophie Turner, who plays Stark sibling Sansa on the show, is "absolutely fantastic" according to Williams. "She's probably one of the funniest girls I know. And I'm so glad that I met her." Meanwhile, in true Arya form, if she could play any other character on the show, it would be Lena Headey's machiavellian Cersei. And of course, she has a huge crush on Pedro Pascal, who made all comers swoon as the show's resident bisexual heartthrob Oberyn Martell.

As for her sidekick Rory McCann, who plays the show's looming Hound, Williams had nothing but love. "I'd love to work with Rory again," she responded when asked about her hopes for the Hound's longevity given the notoriously short lifespans of characters on the show. 

At another moment, when asked a variant of Reddit's favorite AMA staple question, she responded:

I would love to fight 100 little duck-sized Hounds. Because I'd never in my life looked down on Rory, and that would be an interesting situation.

She also noted that McCann is occasionally gaseous and grumpy. "But I love 'im regardless." Awwww.

As for life off-set, Williams apparently loves dancing, gaming, math, and pepperoni pizza. Oh, and she's just as into that British baking show as everyone else is:

it's not much of a secret, but I really enjoy The Great British Bake-Off. It's like a competition show, but they all bake it, and it's very funny, because they all cry over techniques. Like if they get their cake wrong, they're just sobbing over a spongecake, and I find it hilarious.

Thanks for leaving us all with images of Arya Stark mocking the weak, Maisie.

Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) 


Kim Jong-il critiques the Oscars

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Thanks to a little film called The Interview, we already know that North Korea has passionate feelings about cinema. What if that passion was applied to critique the most recent batch of Oscar hopefuls, using Kim Jong-il’s own book on cinema as the guiding principles for success?

Wisecrack, the channel behind Earthling Cinema, applies Kim’s beliefs to the Oscar nominees to see how they stack up. Kim’s nuanced views include such things as, “in a film, the actors face, and the eyes in particular, should be made up well.” That bodes well for a repeat Oscar for Meryl Streep, whose transformation into a witch for Into The Woods is definitely in line with Kim Jong-il’s writing.

It’s apt that a channel that hosts a show devoted to explaining human cinema to aliens excels at using the world’s most alien society to clarify the Oscar race. But at least North Korea can rest easy knowing that Seth Rogan and James Franco are nowhere near the podium.

Screengrab via Wisecrack/YouTube

The 5 best crime webseries on YouTube

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If there is one genre that hasn't been fully exploited by the makers of webseries, it is that of crime. And there are clear reasons for this: the proliferation of crime in film has created a certain expectation for what it should look like on screen, and this portrayal is expensive; anything less and the results look cheap and hacky. So with the costs for obtaining specialized props and creating action scenes that avoid cheese beginning to mount, independent producers give up on their heist series and go back to their show about four twentysomethings talking and sharing a flat in Brooklyn.

But scarce as they may be, those that do dabble in the genre are out there, and when they don't overreach, they can actually be pretty good.

So here's a list of five series that deal with the lower reaches of society that won't be accused of stealing your time. Warning: For full enjoyment, you may have to brush up on your Hindi. 

1) Whitey

For those who already find the actual story of James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger to be almost unbelievable—FBI informant indicted for 19 murders and then on the lam for 16 years—this "fictionalized reality" may verge on ridiculous.

But if you persevere, you will not find the amateurish schlock-fest that you may expect. Instead Jeff Hennessy's Whitey is a "slightly embellished" but tightly scripted study of a man who for 12 years was second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

Oh, you say, but isn't there a Johnny Depp movie on the same guy coming out soon? Sure, we say, but wait for that at your peril. It looks just about as good as everything else Depp has done in the past five years.

2) Burt Paxton, Private Detective

If the way that BTK was caught teaches us anything—asking the police whether it was safe to taunt them via floppy disk and then leaving ID information in the metadata of a .doc file—it's that there is room for humor in even the most sickening of crimes.

Burt Grinstead's ham-fisted gumshoe thankfully doesn't usually have to deal with crimes on the scale of Dennis Rader's, but while he can't find a clue to save his life, he uses his powers of ratiocination to uncover puns in even the most unlikely places.

Lovers of Frank Drebin will know the show's arcs and zings intimately, and a well-meaning idiot is a stock character that anyone can enjoy. Sure, Grinstead's no Leslie Nielsen, but who is, or who ever could be?

3) Psych of a Psycho 

If you are able to put the irresponsibility of rashly diagnosing people (real or otherwise) with a mental disorder to the back of your mind, then there is plenty to like about this Vanity Fair series.

FBI Agent Candice DeLong (who worked on the Unabomber case) spends a few minutes analyzing the likes of fictional villains Michael Corleone, Walter White, and Frank Underwood, hoping to dig up some psychopathic tendencies. The title of the series robs it of any mystery concerning the diagnoses, but it's nevertheless always a thrill to watch a young Michael shooting both Sollozzo and McCluskey in the face

4) Necessary Evil

Central character Dan Murphy is billed as an "ex-Mob enforcer [who] spends his retirement killing the scum of the Earth," which quite succinctly sums up the central premise of the series: The two episodes produced so far feature a detailed torture session involving a pedophile. And while accusations against Necessary Evil concerning the glamorization of violence may be somewhat compelling, this series is more than just some teenager's wet revenge-porn dream.

It's also a neat examination of the legacy of a father's sins and a questioning of whether evil is born or created. Trust me, it's there—right under the guns, sadism, and babes.

5) The Regular Guys (C.E.K.R)

The producers of The Regular Guys (C.E.K.R stands for Call, Earn, Kill, Repeat) are calling it India's first crime webseries. And while it displays its influences in plain sight—the central characters are obsessed with "English" crime movies, and posters of Scarface and The Godfather are displayed prominently—it is still very much of its own place. The mysterious Azhar, for instance, is a dead-ringer for cricketing superstar Virat Kohli, and the best demonstration of his power has nothing to do with weapons and everything to do with his ability to go straight into bat at a pick-up game

That each episode features dozens of locations is testament to the energy of the producers; it has clearly been shot quickly and cleanly, and as such the action flows. But you sort of wish that they spent a little longer in the edit room, the sound being horrendous and no small obstacle to the show's enjoyment. Luckily it's subtitled though, so there's no great loss to turn off the Hindi and immerse yourself in probably the only webseries out there dealing with illegal Delhi call centers.

Screenshot via Necessary Evil/YouTube

Binge-watching could be linked to loneliness and depression

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BY BREE BROUWER 

You may want to hold off on pressing the “continue watching” button when it pops up during your favorite Netflix show. A new study from researchers at the University of Texas Austin have found lonely and depressed people are more likely to binge-watch television shows than those who aren’t.

The study, titled “A Bad Habit for Your Health? An Exploration of Psychological Factors for Binge-Watching Behavior,” was conducted and written by Yoon Hi Sung, Eun Yeon Kang, and Wei-Na Lee. These researchers surveyed 316 18- to 29-year-olds on how often they watched TV, how often they binged TV shows, and how often they felt lonely, depressed, or incapable of controlling their actions.

Sung, Kang, and Lee found a correlation between those participants who were more inclined to be lonely or depressed and binge-watching television episodes. These people tended to use bingeing as a way to distract them from negative feelings. Additionally, the UT Austin study linked certain cases of obesity and health problems, as well as a lack of self-control, to binge-watching TV.

Sung said in a release that even though some people see binge-watching as harmless (like 73% of Netflix subscribers do), he and his colleagues’ study “suggest that binge-watching should no longer be viewed this way.” 

“When binge-watching becomes rampant, viewers may start to neglect their work and their relationships with others,” explained Sung. “Even though people know they should not, they have difficulty resisting the desire to watch episodes continuously. Our research is a step toward exploring binge-watching as an important media and social phenomenon.”

Sung, Kang, and Lee will present their entire findings during the 65th Annual International Communication Association Conference taking place in Puerto Rico from May 21-25, 2015.

Photo via Wonderlane/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Key & Peele give us the Richard Sherman and Marshawn Lynch press conference we need

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Comedy duo Key & Peele have been nailing it with their Super Bowl pre-coverage, and their latest sketch is perhaps their most spot-on. 

Marshawn Lynch stole the spotlight during the NFL's Media Day and tried his hand at comedy with the won't-get-fined mantra, but fellow Seattle Seahawks teammate Richard Sherman has been in the spotlight a little less than last year. Enter Key & Peele. 

Yeah, they talk about the Oscars. What else would they talk about? 


Screengrab via Comedy Central/YouTube 



Black & Sexy TV wants to appeal to more than black audiences

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The name Black & Sexy TV, voiced online in a signature breathy style, says it all.

Actually, not quite. The endgame for the founders of this upstart media empire really has little to do with being either black or sexy. The mission for this entertainment hub is to take advantage of new models for content creation and distribution that favor creative minds with business acumen and a vision that focuses on market dominance.

Dennis Dortch and Numa Perrier, two of the four founders of Black & Sexy TV, explained the path that took him, along with partners Brian Ali Harding and Jeanine Daniels, from Hollywood filmmakers to media entrepreneurs currently in the process of creating a large slate of original programs.

In 2008, Dortch directed the film A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy, which performed well at the Sundance Film Festival and led to a distribution deal from Magnolia Pictures and a licensing deal with Showtime and Netflix. While commercially satisfying, Dortch told the Daily Dot the experience did not match his personal goals as an artist and businessman.

“When I made my way to Hollywood, I learned that the producers had a fixed set of priorities, but in my head, I had a different set of priorities,” Dortch said in a Skype interview.

With equal parts heart and head, Dortch, his partner Perrier (a frequent star in many of the network’s shows), and two additional colleagues set about going directly to their audience and launching a set of programs using Kickstarter campaigns, personal investments, and a shoestring-yet-professional-looking production approach. Dortch and Perrier’s Los Angeles home even doubled as a set for some of Black & Sexy TV’s earliest productions.

Among B&S’s webseries are Roomieloverfriends, Hello Cupid, That Guy, Becoming Nia, and That Guy, a film offered as a pay-per-view program. There also is Sexless, which launches this Valentine's Day, and is currently promoted in a series of mini webisodes. And, in a production/distribution deal with HBO, the company will take its show The Couple, which launched online in 2012, to the premium network’s 32 million viewers. That series stars Perrier and actor Desmond Faison.

While the Web shows are dominated by black actors, there is a universal appeal to the vast majority of the storylines. Becoming Nia, for example, is the story of a single mom struggling to raise a son while attempting to find work, maintain a personal life, and handle a relationship with her son’s father. For anyone who has tried to find love online, Hello Cupid is a familiar story, co-created by Ashley Blaine Featherson and starring Hayley Marie Norman, in which roommates swap photos in creating an online profile. With more than 103,000 YouTube subscribers, Black & Sexy TV is evolving as a reliable webseries factory.

As Dortch and Perrier explained, the journey from Sundance to digital success has required perseverance, but the growing fanbase has provided motivation. “It’s great to go directly to our audience and get validation,” Perrier said. “Once we started consistently putting out great content, we started developing a relationship with our audience that allowed us to feed off of one another.”

But, as Dortch added, as a business, in the early days “it was like selling out of the trunk of your car.” As milestones of progress, he pointed to successful crowdfunding campaigns, a successful pay-per-view launch in 2014, and the HBO deal. Creatively, the group’s star continues to rise with reports reports of representation by United Talent Agency.

If there is one confusing element to Black & Sexy’s approach, it is the crazy quilt of options for viewing its content. A number of series are available through YouTube, while others (with some overlap, as evident in Hello Cupid) are packaged for viewing via a pay-per-view platform operated by VHX. It is easy to imagine Black & Sexy as a standalone multiplatform channel, which would eliminate some of the current issues.

In discussing Black & Sexy as a programming force aimed primarily at black audiences, Dortch is firm in saying “there is no agenda” and that he and his colleagues only want to write about what they know. He also casts aside comparisons to Black Entertainment Television (BET), the 35-year-old cable network that targets black viewers.

“I’d rather think of us as a new HBO than a new BET,” Dortch said.

Screengrab via Black & Sexy TV/YouTube

A guide to Rob Gronkowski's best Internet moments

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With apologies to Marshawn Lynch, Tom Brady, and the Legion of Boom, only one man has captured the Internet's heart this Super Bowl season. That would be New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. He's done so with party buses, erotic fanfiction, and the most earnest personality this side of Chris Klein in American Pie

His mainstream moment is a long time coming, but before you dedicate Super Bowl Sunday to gawking at his feats of strength, the Daily Dot advises catching up with his body of work. It's one that includes jaw-dropping talent mixed with savant comedic chops. 

Where did this leviathan of a human being come from?

Buffalo, N.Y., basically. Since joining the NFL back in 2010, Gronk has been a fan favorite but also something of an Achilles-esque tragedy. Touted as the best TE in college football at the University of Arizona before the '09 season, a back surgery ended his junior season and his stock went south. That's why he's a Patriot—taken No. 42 overall in the draft, the perennial world-beaters had the luxury to wage a second-round draft pick on Gronk's upside as a 6'6'', 250-pound specimen. 

It paid immediate dividends with a monstrous rookie season. The good times kept rolling in 2011, wherein Gronk played a major mismatch-laden role in getting the Patriots to the Super Bowl.

But his first moment in the sun was not to be—prior to that Super Bowl, in the AFC Championship against Baltimore, Gronk suffered a nasty high ankle sprain. He played in the Super Bowl, but was a statistical non-factor in the game—the strained ligaments would later require surgery—and the Patriots lost to the New York Giants, 21-17.

In 2012, he broke his forearm and, upon returning toward the end of the season, re-injured it again. Without Gronk's difference-making presence, Baltimore defeated New England and went on to win the Super Bowl. By 2013, Gronk underwent a third and fourth surgery on his forearm, and another back surgery. He made his '13 debut in October, and played only six games before tearing his ACL and MCL in one dastardly tackle.

But this year he's been healthy as a horse. Life is good, the age of the Gronk is upon us, and he's ready to hit on TV hosts and reporters.

"What's one thing that people don't know about you?"

"I like to snuggle."

But hasn't he always been a rascal?

That's true, especially relative to his stoic team—one that prides itself on cold answers and NFL cliches in pressers. Here he is making fun of his quarterback, Brady, a notorious hard-ass.

But early in his pro career, Gronk was basically a Jersey Shore roommate on the wrong side of adorable. Here he is dancing shirtless in a Las Vegas club with a broken forearm.

He'd make racist jokes in a vacuum and got a pass because they weren't outwardly mean and he was perceived as a dumb jock anyway. He invited porn star Bibi Jones to hang out with his bros. When she arrived at his college-y apartment building, they were watching her movie, Babysitters 2. To Gronk's credit, he thought it'd be cool and funny (and not an irresponsible career choice) to document his hang with Jones by way of an infamous, since-deleted tweet.

But his most endearing early hit was in an interview with ESPN Deportes. Reporter John Sutcliffe asked him post-game: "You guys gotta celebrate though, right? Tequila, beer, a little bit of everything?"

His response was perfect: "Si... (searching for the words in Spanish) ...Yo soy fiesta."

Hey, wasn't Gronk instrumental to the rise of the Daily Dot's league-winning, Ramon Ramirez-led fantasy football team, the Yung Trap Lordz? 

That's right. Thanks to his injury history, anyone that gambled on Gronkowski in the second and third round of fantasy drafts in August was handsomely rewarded with a monstrous season worthy of first-round production. We all remember what happened next: On the back of Gronk, the Trap Lordz infamously buried Daily Dot managing editor Austin Powell, social media editor Evan Weiss, staff writer Patrick Howell O'Neill, and illustrator Jason Reed on the way to a historic title.

How did Gronk evolve into the lovable oaf that's hijacking the Super Bowl? 

My guess is that facing professional mortality and then thriving means more chances to be boisterous and happy. His handlers put him in a position to be less of a clueless bro, too. A photo shoot with kittens did wonders for his #brand.

The fact that he's a proudly Polish guy from Buffalo, N.Y., evokes Rust Belt values, a down-home edge, and a family-focused simplicity that you just don't get with, say, men in Silicon Valley or men of institutional privilege who attended the University of Virginia. During the Pats holiday party in December, he was the tree.

In November, he enjoyed his most quintessentially Gronk moment: a bulldozing touchdown followed by a sideline dance for the ages.

Wow, I can't wait to see what kind of stunts he pulls during the Super Bowl.

He's already firing on all cylinders. From an infamous game of Mortal Kombat to a reading of erotic fanfiction novella A Gronking to Remember, this Super Bowl is a bold cocktail brimming with his irrepressible aromatic bitters. Hell, one reporter conducted an insightful interview with his Twitter feed.

Two things are clear at this point. On Sunday, we'll hear Gronk roar...

And win or lose, he's driving back to Buffalo in the party bus that he bought from a church.

Photo via WEBN-TV/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The ultimate guide to stoned Netflix

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Netflix is the answer to many of life’s nagging questions: How can I kill the next couple of hours? Is there nothing good on cable? What do you want to do tonight, honey? But no idle domestic query can match the crippling force and sheer terror of the stoner’s dilemma:

I’m high as fuck right now—who’s going to entertain me?

If you’ve vaped a little too hard, Netflix’s endless cascade of titles can be overwhelming. Save your bloodshot eyes the trouble: we picked 16 of the finest 420-friendly TV shows and films on offer. But let’s consider Weeds and the Cheech and Chong movies too obvious to mention, OK? 

And no, you can’t stream stoner classics like The Big Lebowski, Half Baked, Easy Rider, Dazed and Confused, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Wet Hot American Summer, Friday, Super Troopers, or Caddyshack—sorry to harsh your buzz. Also, Doug Benson was once a jerk to my friend IRL, so you won’t find his one-trick schtick on this list. 

With those caveats, up, up, and away we go. 

1) Reefer Madness

This piece of anti-pot propaganda from 1936—now public domain—is ground zero for contemporary cannabis culture. Financed by an evidently hysterical church group and originally titled Tell Your Children (it’s also gone by The Burning Question, Dope Addict, Doped Youth, and Love Madness over the years), this sad attempt at stirring up a moral panic presents an implausible and horrendously acted tale in which marijuana is blamed for everything from premarital sex to burglary, rape, and murder. You know any movie that calls it “the burning weed with its roots in hell” is going to have you gasping for breath and packing another bowl.

2) An Idiot Abroad

U.K. comedian Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras, annoying arguments about atheism on Twitter) has built his middle career around the continued and ruthless psychological probing of an extraordinary ordinary man named Karl Pilkington, who went from being the producer of Gervais’ groundbreaking podcast to a beloved public personality. Watching the travel-as-torture series An Idiot Abroad—which will make you happy you never left your couch—it’s easy to see why: he’s a totally confounding mix of willed cultural ignorance and savant-level insight into the human condition. Or maybe he just has the hottest possible takes on things like no-frills restrooms in China: “I thought this was where they made the iPod!”

3) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas   

Any of Terry Gilliam’s dementedly surreal films fit the bill for those about to blaze: Brazil, 12 Monkeys, and Time Bandits have blown the minds of many a ganja guru. But for sheer precision of effect, this druggy opus can’t be beat. It puts any other attempt to drag Hunter S. Thompson onscreen to shame, and that’s saying something, considering Bill Murray once took his best shot. Acidheads agree that, giant lizards aside, the visuals (distorting faces, moving floors, explosions of light and color) match hallucinogenic experience to an uncanny degree. They’re so convincing, in fact, that a fan once told Gilliam he’d perfectly captured the feeling of tripping on a substance called Adrenochrome—which isn’t a psychedelic.     

4) Trailer Park Boys

No weed fiend could watch this Canadian mockumentary series without craving the high-grade dope grown by Ricky, a gun-toting, malapropism-spewing career convict who just wants his piece of the pie. He and pals Julian and Bubbles hatch one dimwitted criminal scheme after another, always under the influence, and usually to the consternation of legendarily drunk trailer park supervisor Jim Lahey, who will stop at nothing in his quest to have the trio incarcerated. The crown jewel is Don’t Legalize It, the show’s third and best feature film, which finds Ricky fighting the decriminalization of marijuana—a dire threat to his black-market business. A charmingly improvised, surprisingly heartfelt, and totally obscenity-laced satire of lower-class life in a first-world country.

5) Filth   

If there’s one thing stoners love as much as pot, it’s evidence that other drug addictions are much, much worse—and that’s where Irvine Welsh adaptations come in. You’ve already rewatched the thrillingly lurid Trainspotting as much as any sensible viewer can, so why not give this newer, slicker, and lesser-known movie a try? James McAvoy gets way greasy as a corrupt, coke-addled policeman in Edinburgh, Scotland, who launches a campaign of depraved harassment against almost everyone he’s ever met when the chance for a coveted promotion arises. Only connoisseurs of the blackest humor need apply.  

6) Pingu

Parents who spark a one-hitter before unwinding with the kids could do a hell of lot worse than this stop-action Swiss show about an anthropomorphic family of penguins that speak exclusively in gibberish. In fact, they can probably invent some weird subtext for all these Antarctic shenanigans. Or just marvel at the meticulous craftsmanship on display.      

7) Futurama

For every profound “what if” you’ve posed to your circle of friends as you wait for the joint to come back around, there’s an edifying Futurama plot. (There’s even a pair of episodes about the nature of wacky hypotheticals themselves.) Sure, this animated sci-fi series set on 31st-century Earth features a running side-gag about one character’s heroic weed intake, but the real draws are the ridiculous aliens, outlandish inventions, beer-swilling robots, exotic new planets, brain-dicing paradoxes, geeky Easter eggs, and—believe it or not—unparalleled emotional depth. Stoners will recognize one of their own in audience surrogate Fry, a slacker pizza delivery guy from the “Stupid Ages” (i.e., now) who wakes up a thousand years hence following a cryogenic mishap and pretty much just goes with the flow.           

8) Jackie Brown

No one of a certain age and predilection for THC has gone unexposed to the genre-hopping violence of Quentin Tarantino, but his sole adaptation (from Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch) is as airtight as he gets. The inimitable Pam Grier in the California noir’s title role is alone worth your attention, though what bong owner could resist Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro as a mismatched and terribly dressed criminal duo? Throw in a Chris Tucker cameo, a follow-the-money caper with plenty of twists and turns, and a bikini’d Bridget Fonda as Jackson’s pot-obsessed “surfer” girlfriend—you’ve got a recipe for a great night in.  

9) Twin Peaks

If you roll perfect spliffs but haven’t tried Twin Peaks, I don’t even know what to say.

10) Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

Arguably the Wayans brothers’ finest contribution to cinema, Don’t Be a Menace brilliantly remixes the symbols, tropes, and hamfisted moral messages—which Keenen Ivory Wayans pedantically identifies at every turn—of black ghetto dramas like Do the Right Thing and Boyz n the Hood. Along with the expected gang politics, broken families, breakdancing grandmas, drive-by shootings, and racial tensions, the slapstick parody pokes fun at social scenes defined by cheap malt liquor and chronic blunts. It includes the truest distillation of the stoner’s mindset I’ve ever come across, which I humbly present in YouTube form:     

11) The Inbetweeners

If getting high sometimes means embracing the lowest common denominator, then so be it. This British sitcom about four high school losers—a nerd, a spazz, a lovesick goober and a bona fide idiot—is as sophomoric as they come, and will have you spraying Mountain Dew from your nose. The English, you see, are far less squeamish when it comes to depicting adolescent sex, swearing, and drug use on TV, which makes this more of a companion piece to American Pie than… well, the failed American adaption of The Inbetweeners. The lads’ efforts to secure a bit of “puff,” as you may imagine, produces delightfully painful results.    

12) Microcosmos

Imagine the best possible nature documentary you might encounter on the Discovery Channel. Now take out all the commercial breaks and brand promotions. Strip away all the narration. Replace with some classical music. Zoom the camera lens about a thousand times closer, so that a field of short grass seems like a towering forest, while insects and other invertebrates loom like dinosaurs. This is the strangely hypnotic setting that the empirical French biology lesson Microcosmos plumbs for drama, exposing a miniature world underfoot that’s every bit as rich and dangerous as our own.   

13) Waking Life  

I can’t front: I kind of hate Richard Linklater’s entire oeuvre. That said, if you’re into pretentious and occasionally paranoid psychobabble, this prolonged exploration of lucid dreaming and free will should absolutely be your jam. Doesn’t hurt that the whole film is rotoscoped (a trippy animation technique Linklater would use again for A Scanner Darkly, his unsung masterpiece), untethering viewers from their standard ideas of space and time.

14) Peep Show

Spending your late twenties trapped with a shitty roommate is hard, but being stuck in your own head is worse. Follow the travails of the uptight Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) and born underachiever Jeremy Usbourne (Robert Webb) as they struggle with doomed romances, stalled careers, and the simmering desire to murder the fellow dysfunctional man-child with whom they share a cramped London flat—all of which play out from their POVs, with pitch-perfect interior monologue narration. It’s a claustrophobic saga of self-conscious lies and screamingly funny humiliations, most of which will ring familiar. This show is the textbook definition of “too real.”

15) It’s Such a Beautiful Day

Before “going viral” was a thing, animator Don Hertzfeldt’s Oscar-nominated indie short Rejected was a cult hit in every hotboxed college dorm room, titillating with outbursts of existential fear, genre-shattering effects, and uproarious non-sequiturs. This considerably bleaker feature-length effort is woven together from a trilogy of avant-garde scribblings he produced in the decade afterward, and it pulls no punches. For every giggling absurdity—a certain character “once strangled a rock in a fit of religious excitement”—there are at least ten brutal ruminations on death, disease, failure, and the loneliness of being alive. Not the lightest fare, to be sure, but for the smoker on a “spiritual journey,” there’s lots to untangle here.

16) The Twilight Zone

So you think Black Mirror is a hokey, awkward anthology of alternate realities, but you still can’t get enough? Then you’ll downright adore its Cold War inspiration. Odds are you’ve caught pieces of Twilight Zone marathons on TV over the years, but did you ever see the one where William Shatner is tormented by a gremlin (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”)? Or the one that stars Robert Redford as a friendly grim reaper (“Nothing in the Dark”)? Or the one where mannequins come to life as their department store closes (“The After Hours”)? There are plenty of duds scattered among the stone-cold classics, yet none are without a kind of goofy earnestness tailor-made to tickle a burnout’s beloved cynicism. Far out, dude.

Photo by cyclonebill/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed 


YouTube experiments with its own Super Bowl halftime show

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If you're only watching the Super Bowl for the ads, YouTube is hoping you'll double down with their interactive halftime programming centered around the creation of iconic and amusing faux commercials.

This year, YouTube Space L.A. is partnering with AdBlitz and the Collective Digital Studio to produce their own alternative halftime show featuring YouTube stars like Epic Meal Time's Harley Morenstein and Rhett of Rhett and Link, among others.

"As a home for creators at YouTube, AdBlitz is something we really appreciate," Liam Collins, head of YouTube Space L.A., told the Daily Dot. "It's a celebration of the creative and the people behind that creative. Even before we opened the Space, we helped out the AdBlitz team. This year as it was coming together we wanted to add a little bit more to it. In the Space, we love to experiment around content and do things that haven't been done before. So they said, let's try this experiment where we have our own halftime show tied to AdBlitz and celebrate the experience of making promotional videos and advertisements."

To achieve their goal, Morenstein has produced several lead-up videos where he learns the playbook of a successful Super Bowl ad, from talking babies to adorable animal friendships to hot women. He'll enlist YouTube friends during the live experience to take what he's learned and put it into action with stunts, music, and interactions with a live audience inside the studio or at home using the hashtag #AdBlitz.

It's a pretty safe bet that YouTube fans are invested in watching ad-based content, even if those ads are jokes. More than 6.3 million hours of Super Bowl ads were viewed last year on YouTube, enough time to fly from Phoenix to the moon and back 87,500 times, or listen to official halftime show performer Katy Perry's hit "Roar" 84 million times. For Collins, the YouTube halftime show is not a ploy to drive viewers away from the actual game and its advertisements, or counter-programming like the infamous Puppy Bowl. Collins wouldn't even characterize their show as counter-programming in the traditional sense.

"It's really meant for that viewer who has that appreciation or curiosity for YouTube, and is probably already watching the game and wants to take a few seconds off," he explained. "Or is on the second screen; the game is going and this will be complimentary to what they're doing already. We're trying to bring the audience even more experiences, instead of being where they have to choose one or the other programs."

The idea of complimentary programming is something YouTube Space L.A. supports, and while they champion other people's activities in the space— like the Young Turks' Game of Throneslive-reaction programming—their ultimate goal is not to be programmers, but inspiration for creators. 

"Our goal is to try and create a spark with creators who work here and let them take it and run with it," explained Collins. "More often when we do an event like this, we hope that others will borrow our idea and do this on our own. I'm sure we'll try stuff like this in the future, but more often than not we don't want to be the programmer. We want to show people that something cool can happen and inspire them to do it for themselves."

Fans can tune in to the live Super Bowl halftime show on the AdBlitz channel. While they're waiting, they can watch the best of real creative ads and teasers for upcoming ads, as well as the fake ones.

Screengrab via AdBlitz/YouTube

Justin Timberlake confirms baby news in the cutest way possible

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Justin Timberlake had more than one reason to celebrate yesterday. In addition to thanking followers for birthday wishes, he dropped a little news on Instagram


Yes, he and wife Jessica Biel are expecting their first child, and rumors of said offspring have been floating around since last fall. 

Timberlake also apparently took this selfie, which his boy or girl will gaze upon one day. Sources say Blue Ivy and the coming Timberlake-Biel child have already signed a record deal.  


Photo via J Vettorino/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

D'Angelo gets politically righteous with 'SNL' performance

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D'Angelo traveled his enigmatic brand of politically charged and densely beautiful neo-soul to Saturday Night Live last night. Performing alongside his band, the Vanguard, the man who wrote 2014's most acclaimed record—after a 14 year hiatus—was staunchly on message.

Paying bills, the first performance was a clunky version of radio single "Really Love," which is gorgeous but a way less interesting version of 1998's "Break Ups 2 Make Ups." Wearing a ridiculous fedora and boldly functional cape, D'Angelo's knack for turning out romantic leading man charisma was shaded awkwardly. He appeared out of his element.

But the night's moment of clarity belonged to performance No. 2, "The Charade," a lightly recorded gem that sounds like Dirty Mind-era Prince, with a #BlackLivesMatter edge. There were chalk outline theatrics and dramatic team T-shirts, but this wasn't overly melodramatic and laborious musical theater. D'Angelo let his team riff and the thing was righteously militant. This one started after midnight on the East Coast, making it a fitting start to Black History Month.

Screengrab via NBC

Handy 'activity pack' helps ladies make it through the Super Bowl

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The Super Bowl is rough, amirite, ladies? When we’re not serving our menfolk Buffalo wings and canapes, we’re basically just chilling in the kitchen, watching Gone with the Wind on TNT and waiting for the game to end. 

But this year, we no longer have to be stuck behind our IKEA kitchen islands, watching Vivien Leigh turn curtains into a dress yet again. We can play with the Totino’s Super Bowl Activity Pack, for football widows and grown women “ages 5 and up.”


In the sketch, featuringSNLs Vanessa Bayer as a frustrated housewife and host JK Simmons as her loutish husband, the Totino’s Super Bowl Activity Pack for women features “fun little puzzles and games to keep my mind active and busy” while she waits for her “hungry guys” to ask her to deliver more Totino’s pizza rolls. The puzzles and games include a spinning top, a word search, a connect-the-dots puzzle, and those little sticky hands you got in Frosted Flakes cereal boxes when you were growing up.

It’s a spot-on parody, particularly in light of all the ads you’ll see during the Super Bowl of those long-suffering wives with glued-on smiles, patiently serving their husbands in front of the TV. So happy Super Bowl Sunday, ladies. Just make sure you don’t think too hard during the word search jumble and hurt your little lady brains.

H/T Uproxxx | Screengrab via SNL/Hulu

This might be the most glamourous Waffle House double date ever

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If there was one celebrity couple you could go on a double date with, who would it be? Jay and Bey? The President and the First Lady? Anna Faris and Chris Pratt? Or my personal favorite, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall (on account of I am ancient and very uncool)?

While you probably won’t be breaking bread and chugging martinis with any of the aforementioned couples anytime soon, you can comfort yourself with photos of Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s soon-to-be-historic Waffle House double date with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, which they documented on Instagram so us plebes could live vicariously through them.

Apparently, the celebrity couples arrived in Phoenix, Ariz., well in advance of the Super Bowl. But instead of eating too many wings and knocking back a few Heinekens at a local bar, which is how most of us pregame, Legend and Teigen attended the National Football League Honors show, then met up with West and Kardashian at what Legend called “la casa de waffle.” They were then generous enough to post the evidence of this momentous occasion. 


Next time, y’all better make some more room in the booth, ‘cause I’m totally gonna be fifth-wheeling this shit.

H/T MTV.com | Photo via Kim Kardashian/Instagram

The 10 most ridiculous Super Bowl bets

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Yes, I do remember Super Bowl I, Jan. 15, 1967.

I watched the Green Bay Packers (Bart Starr, Vince Lombardi) clobber the Kansas City Chiefs (nee the AFL’s Dallas Texans) 35-10 sitting at the bar during my sister’s sweet 16. What I remember most is that the Packers were such an overwhelming favorite no gambler in his right mind would put money on the game. Would fans line up to bet whether Green Bay’s Max McGee would play the game sober? Not sure sports gaming was up to that challenge 48 years ago.

For Super Bowl XLIX, the sky (not to mention imagination) is the limit when it comes to what’s known as proposition betting. Prop betting can range from the minutia of on-the-field action—who will score the first touchdown—to the more obscure, odd, and unrelated events that surround the big game. Prop bets can include outside tie-ins, such as scores from other sporting events matched against Super Bowl stats, or anything non-sporting that happens from the singing of the national anthem through halftime and even post-game.

While online betting is for the most part illegal in the United States, many of the online gambling sites are located offshore in such places as Panama to circumvent the long arm of the law. The folks that run these businesses clearly have a lot of time on their hands given the creativity they put into some of these prop wagers. Consider these:

1) How long will it take Idina Menzel to sing the national anthem? 

Over/Under: 2 minutes, 1 second

This one is easy. Menzel is a Broadway star who also starred in the TV series Glee. Singers who are keen to take to the stage like to milk their performances for what they are worth. Under two minutes? I think we’ll be lucky if she is done warbling by the end of Q1.

2) What color will Bill Belichick's hoodie be?

Clearly this is one of those “who cares” kind of wagers. One way of predicting is to find out where he is staying in Phoenix and see how much the hotel charges for laundry. If it’s more than $2, he’ll wear whatever he did on Media Day.

3) Who will be shown more on TV during the game?

Robert Kraft -200; Paul Allen +150.

Another fairly easy one, but difficult for those not at the game or without access to multiple camera angles. Whichever of these two billionaires has more A-list celeb in their suite is the winner. Based on that, Kraft is the favorite; Allen will more than likely have a lot of dull fellow tech geeks with him. If he has his buddy Bill Gates with him, I’d lean in his direction.

4) The amount of points scored by Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat against the rushing attempts by Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch

For this one, we have math on our side. Bosch is averaging 21.3 points per game. On Feb. 1, the Heat play the Boston Celtics, who are 25th out of 30 NBA teams in team defense. We can add a few points to Bosh’s totals and make it 25. Beast Mode averaged just under 18 rushing attempts per game through his previous 18 games, and the New England Patriots were seventh in team rushing defense for the past season. Since we are talking attempts, and not yards, the edge goes to Bosh.

However... if the Seahawks fall behind, they are more likely to pass, which could limit the number of times Russell Wilson hands Lynch the ball.

5) Color of Gatorade thrown on the winning coach?

Orange is the favorite at 3/2, followed by yellow (5/2), clear/water (3/1), blue (13/2), red (15/2), and green (12/1). 

If I’m a betting man, I’d go with red, given the prominence of red at University of Phoenix Stadium (home of the Arizona Cardinals). I’d rather bet on who delivers the Gatorade shower—if the Pats win, that’s easy... it will be Gronk. If the Seahawks win, my money is on Lynch. For the ‘Hawks running back, anything to get him out of doing a postgame interview.

6) Will we see cleavage from Katy Perry at halftime?

Perry showing cleavage is -500. Full coverage is +350.

It's likely, but the rest of the wardrobe gets tricky: Pants are at +300, shorts at +225, and a dress/skirt combination is -175. She'll probably wind up in pants after a few wardrobe changes during the performance, so I think a dress is a comfortable guess.

7) The Groundhog Day Parlay 

Punxsutawney Phil sees shadow + Patriots win the Super Bowl: 5/2 
Punxsutawney Phil does not see shadow + Patriots win the Super Bowl: 11/5 
Punxsutawney Phil sees shadow + Seahawks win the Super Bowl: 11/4 
Punxsutawney Phil does not see shadow + Seahawks win the Super Bowl: 12/5

I like the Seahawks to win this game for a number of reasons, so immediately I'm looking at the bottom chunk of this parlay. For his part, Punxsutawney Phil has predicted a long winter five of the last seven years by seeing his shadow and returning to his hole. I'm riding those trends.

8) How many viewers will the game have? 

Over/Under: 113 million

The Seahawks and Denver Broncos drew 111 million people last year. The hype leading up to the game involved Peyton Manning's star power and how both teams would react to playing in the comparatively chilly Northeast. This year's actual game opened with slightly cheaper seats, but the #DeflateGate hype is a reverberating narrative that makes it universal must-see TV—plus the game should be far closer than the 43-8 snoozefest of last year. Go over.

9) How many times will "deflated balls" be referred to during the game?

Over/Under: 3 mentions

The networks will want to move the narrative past this story, and I don't see air pressure affecting the on-the-field game script. America loves betting the over, but here's a good place to go against the grain. Under.

10) Will Marshawn Lynch grab his crotch after scoring a TD in the game?

It's unlikely that he does this. Even if Lynch scoreshardly a guarantee—he's under the gun for all sorts of fines should he grab his package on such a global stage. But I believe in magic.

Photo via Artlee/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Super Bowl XLIX: Live GIF edition

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Welcome to our ongoing Super Bowl XLIX coverage. We're going to assume you're comfortably settled in, watching the game with friends and nachos. But look to our live feed below for richly flavored instant GIFs from the action, coupled with the essential information needed to process the big one between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. Game on.

Forgemind ArchiMedia/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed


Retrojam makes a mixtape of all the songs you listened to as a kid

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There’s always that one song that defines who you were at any point in life. Especially in the formative elementary through high school years, some jams take you back to the time you first held hands while roller skating, or the night your crush never asked you to the school dance.

Now there’s a way for you to relive those memories, and not just with one song. Retrojam takes you on a walk down memory lane by providing you with the mixtapes you most likely would have listened to throughout the years.

The website asks you to enter your age, then provides a 24-song playlist of the most popular tracks from first grade until four years after high school graduation—for some, that would coincide with college, a life filled with dormitories and really terrible food.

The playlists are geared toward the U.S. education system, and as one commenter noted on Retrojam’s Product Hunt post, the developers used the school year, which can span two different years, not the album’s actual released date, as the data they pulled.

My playlists were surprisingly accurate, though I was stunned to see that Spice Girls didn’t make my third-grade playlist, considering the all-girl U.K. group took up more space in my heart than literally any boy band ever.

Clicking on each track provides a shareable link to the song from your past. It also provides quick links for listening to it on Spotify or downloading on iTunes.

We asked a few other staffers to share in the nostalgia. Daily Dot managing editor Austin Powell's 2003 senior-year playlist was heavy on Beyoncé and 50 Cent, naturally. 


Tech editor Molly McHugh's 1999 sixth-grade playlist reminded us that Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana collaborated once. Also, never forget Destiny's Child's "Bills, Bills, Bills." Staff writer EJ Dickson's 2001 sixth-grade list reminded us of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me." Weekend editor Audra Schroeder's 1995 sophomore-year mixtape included Take That's "Back for Good" and Oasis' "Wonderwall." 

The app only goes back as far as 1950, so you likely won’t be able to see what your great-grandmother listened to on the gramophone. But it is fun to find out what parents or friends were listening to when they were in high school. And remember why that one particular song made it seem like you were on top of the world. 

H/T Noisey | Photo by John Grado/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Seahawks fan keeping 'Back-To-Back Champions' tattoo after team's loss

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For all of its grand, all-consuming importance, the Super Bowl really is a transitory spectacle. After the game is over and the legions of arm-chair quarterbacks have picked apart every call, after the sweat-soaked shark costumes are hosed out and a fleet of despondent Microsoft execs have pointed their private jets back toward the Pacific Northwest, what will be left to stand the test of time?

Sure, Tom Brady gets another ring to toss in his junk drawer, but he'll likely forget it ever existed pretty soon. There's only one thing about the Super Bowl that's truly forever: this Seahawks fan's tattoo.

It looks like one Seattle booster made a prediction about the Super Bowl's final score that didn't quite pan out.

After the game, he naturally experienced some regret.

However, he eventually came to terms with it.

Keeping the tattoo was the right decision. Not just as a reminder about counting one's chickens before they're hatched, but also as proof that the real value in anything, especially professional sports, is the journey rather than the destination. What lasts in life isn't wins or losses, but the memory of the excitement of a perfectly executed long bomb or a brilliant interception. We watch the Super Bowl for the drive down the field, not the touchdown dance in the end zone. 

Actually, it's for the commercials. We mostly just watch for the commercials.

H/T SB Nation | Photo by Philip Robertson/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The Chris Evans–Chris Pratt Super Bowl charity bet ended in the best way possible

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We’re sure to be talking about the final minute of Super Bowl XLIX for weeks to come, but in the game pitting superhero against superhero—doubling as a possible preview of Captain America: Civil War—everyone wins.

The Chris Evans/Chris Pratt wager came to an end once the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl, demonstrating that you should probably never bet against Captain America—or rather Evans, the Chris who plays him. Who else would win but the only one besides Thor who could make Mjölnir move?

It’s the stunning conclusion to a nearly two-week trash-talking bet and a standoff between Evans and Pratt in the name of charity. As Patriots and Seahawks fans respectively, they laid down the law of the land in advance of the big game: the loser had to visit the winning city’s children’s hospital dressed up as his Marvel character. Someone even made T-shirts.

But on the big day, they were both in good smiles and good cheer. And, as people quickly found out, they were watching the game together in Glendale, Ariz.

They had plenty to be excited about: Jurassic World, a night out enjoying a game of football, giving us a taste of what it might be like for Captain America and Star-Lord to meet...you get the idea.

For Pratt and his fellow Seahawks fans, it turned out to be a good game—at least until that interception in the final minute. For Evans and the Patriots fans, that was the last-second miracle they were hoping for. Pratt accepted defeat with grace and pledged that he would visit Christopher’s Haven in Boston as his Guardian of the Galaxy character, bringing yet another Chris into the Marvel family.

Even though Evans won, he announced in a state of euphoria that Seattle Children’s would be getting a special visit from a costumed hero as well—as well as plenty of photos and video for the rest of us.

Will Captain America and Star-Lord ever meet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Maybe not. But soon, they will meet somewhere even better: at a real-life children's hospital.

Photo via AnnaKFaris/Twitter

3 webseries every New Yorker will understand

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If you live amidst the glitz and grime of New York City, you know the ups and downs of big-city living. Everyday interactions are often laced with menace and oddball strangers are just a subway ride away. Yes, life in New York City can be harrowing, but it makes for great stories. And the madness is rife with hilarity when you’re the audience and not the victim.

Here are three webseries that will help you laugh away the blues.

1) Doorman

Chris Russell’s Doorman follows the days and nights of a New York City doorman as he navigates dour luxury apartment dwellers, mysterious big tippers, and arrogant drivers.

Based on Russell’s blog, the series echoes Louis C.K.’s mix of empathy and existential dread. The doorman is more than a doorman—he’s a human being with hopes and aspirations, and a healthy heap of self-loathing.

“You are a writer,” a date exclaims when he takes out his notebook. “Yeah,” he replies. “And it’s all garbage.”



2) Neighbors

Anyone who’s dashed down the hall or fumbled for a key to avoid an interaction with an aggravating neighbor will appreciate Jackie Jennings’ Neighbors.

Each episode features a new neighbor who comes bearing bizarre demands. A vegan requests cruelty-free cooking (she claims she can smell the chicken Jackie’s been cooking), a grown man proposes Girl Scout cookie sales—minus the pesky Girl Scouts—and a recent transplant from California doesn’t understand why East Coasters don’t kiss each other hello.

Jennings is hilarious as the overly polite smiler who can’t quite close the door on the revolving cast of weirdos.



3)Roommates Making a Web Series About Roommates Living in New York City: The Web Series

Ever thought, “Hey I could make a webseries,” or befriended an aspiring creative? Ian Stroud’s wickedly clever Roommates Making a Web Series About Roommates Living in New York: The Web Series sends up the ridiculous notion that daily apartment living equals automatic comic genius.

Stroud created the series with real-life roommates Matthew Starr and Brady O’Callahan, and the trio expertly mimics novices who cannot see the ho-humness of their ideas. The giddy pitch meetings between Starr and O’Callahan are an absolute riot.



Screengrab via Doorman Show/YouTube

Diving into the worst-rated movies on IMDb

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Just before Christmas, Kirk Cameron's holiday film Saving Christmas got the best gift ever: After some coordinated trolling on Cameron's part, it was bestowed the title of worst movie on IMDb and rocketed to the No. 1 spot on its bottom 100 chart, where it still sits. 

We got curious. What else was down there? 

So we took a deep dive into IMDb's bowels (roughly the bottom 20 worst movies) to see how bad it really smells. Enter at your own risk. —Audra Schroeder 

Birdemic: Shock and Terror 

Poor, poor James Nguyen. Perhaps someone told him he was destined to be the next Alfred Hitchcock—and he took it a little too literally. Sadly, his claim to fame, Birdemic: Shock and Terror, is not even a fraction of the masterpiece that Hitchcock's The Birds is.

Typically, a bad movie has horrible acting and an unbelievable story. While Birdemic is no exception, it also has something we haven't seen since the science-fiction flicks of the ’50s: really bad special effects. The “birds” are so absurdly and obviously superimposed into every scene that their presence would have been more believable if a highly visible crew member was wandering around with stuffed birds on sticks. Maybe everyone in the small California coastal towns was running from the “birds” because they were terrified that horrible special effects still existed in movies in 2008. —Mike Fenn

Gunday

If a sequel to Slumdog Millionaire was produced by Michael Bay and co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Baz Luhrmann, the result might be something like Bollywood’s Gunday. It’s over two hours long, looks exuberantly expensive (especially the dance numbers), and features very cheesy fights (including one in which the two male leads rip each other’s shirts off and fight in slow motion). The funny thing is, this isn’t really a bad movie. It might even be the best movie to play at bars. 

The reason for its IMDb score lies in its first 20 minutes, during which the eventual Kings of Calcutta are mere children running guns for a gold-hearted criminal who's taken them in from the streets. This segment establishes that the country of Bangladesh was founded as a result of the war between India and Pakistan, ignoring the fact that its independence was due to a nine-month war waged by Bangladeshis. Bangladesh was not fond of this omission and waged a brand new war: a 4chan-esque battle of voting. And that’s why a movie with a 100 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes (albeit from only five critics) has an 8 percent rating from audiences. Until Saving Christmas came along, it was the worst-rated film on IMDb. —Joey Keeton

The Hottie and the Nottie

I’m tempted to blame this film’s IMDb placement on branding. With a title like The Hottie and the Nottie, it’s practically begging for people to downvote it, especially once you factor in the presence of Paris Hilton. Not that it isn’t terrible, but it’s nothing compared to the spiritual agony of watching the other Hilton movie on this list, National Lampoon’s Pledge This!

I can’t quite figure out the target audience for The Hottie and the Nottie. The dorky male lead and blatant misogyny imply that it’s aimed at a frat-boy crowd, but it also portrays all men as shallow creeps. If anything, the women come out better than the men, although the main storyline relies on the idea that the titular Nottie is so unfuckable that one guy literally jumps into the ocean to avoid her. (In reality she’s an attractive actress in a wig and false teeth, with what may be the only depiction of female leg hair I’ve ever seen in a Hollywood movie.)

The premise is that our dweeby protagonist is unlucky in love and decides to track down his childhood crush, the Hottie. She seems inexplicably receptive to his advances but won’t date him until her ugly best friend gets laid. After various revolting attempts to either seduce the Hottie or get the Nottie out of the way, Nate falls for the Nottie instead—but only after she’s had a makeover, obviously.

Offensive and nonsensical on many levels, but not much worse than your average shitty rom-com. And the friendship between the Hottie and the Nottie is kind of sweet, in its way. —Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

Disaster Movie

I'm going to make the world's most obvious joke and say that Disaster Movie is actually a pretty accurate description. The film was part of the crop of ultra-lame, make-it-stop parody films of the early 2000s, a hellish parade that included fare like Superhero Movie, Date Movie, and pretty much every Scary Movie installment after the third film.

The D-list cast is all here, including Matt Lanter, Carmen Electra, Tony Cox, and even Kim Kardashian. Together, they attempt to parody blockbuster Hollywood flicks they would have never been considered for, most notably Kung Fu Panda and the first few Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk). Unlike the successful disaster movie parody Airplane!, it's a very safe bet that you won't catch Internet geeks quoting Disaster Movie nonstop 30 years from now. —Mike Fenn

Going Overboard 

This movie opens with Adam Sandler explaining that it’s a zero-budget project that only exists due to access to a cruise ship. It’s a funny, fourth-wall-breaking joke until it becomes apparent that it’s not a joke. 

Many of the 4:3 aspect frames feature a vignette from terrible camera lenses, most scenes play out from static angles with no cuts, the sound is horrible, and the film’s production value is just total shit. But there’s some charm in this story of a cruise ship waiter with dreams of becoming a comedian, and Sandler’s gusto in a project that was obviously dead before the camera started rolling is really quite admirable. It also has very early performances from Peter Berg, Billy Zane, and Billy Bob Thornton, whose brief appearance is so good that it’s jarring. 

Overall, the actors seem to have no illusions that they’re making a good film—they’re in what might be the last real screwball comedy, a cheap movie filled with ’80s keyboard music and hair that really has no business existing by 1989, and use the opportunity to go for broke and give absolutely insane performances. While the production value is nearly impossible to get past, Going Overboard really is hiding a fun movie in it somewhere. —Joey Keeton

Turks in Space

Turks in Space is a sequel/homage to a notorious 1982 Turkish film called Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, or The Man Who Saved the World. Known for its use of unauthorized footage from Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek, as well as the soundtrack from Indiana JonesDünyayı Kurtaran Adam has become a cult hit. Although it’s known as the “Turkish Star Wars,” the story remains on Earth, focusing on a middle-aged martial arts fighter with the dubious power of being able to split things (rocks, people) in half. Over the course of the film, the frumpy Turkish Bruce Lee battles a host of werewolves, mummies, aliens, and a weird-looking bear, mainly by doing trampoline jumps over their heads.

Needless to say, the 2006 sequel, Son of the Man Who Saved the World, had a lot to live down to. Since the Turkish Star Wars never actually made it to outer space, it must have seemed like a no-brainer to set its follow-up there—this time focusing on the frumpy martial arts fighter’s equally frumpy middle-aged son. The titular son is a beleaguered spaceship commander who loses one of his crew members, Dirkman, whose name comprises 80 percent of the movie dialogue. The ostensible hunt to retrieve Dirkman from the wilds of space leads to an inaction-filled plot where crew members bicker while standing around a lot.  

But Turks in Space doesn’t repeat the past; there's no B-footage from other movies superimposed over an incomprehensible plot. Here, the plot drips with scripted homages to both Star Wars and Star Trek. In one scene, two villains hilariously hop around a spaceship like they’re in a Kris Kross video while holding light sabers and glaring at each other.

Turks in Space is a clear parody, as self-aware as Spaceballs or any one of the many other space opera parodies dotting our universe. It’s also repetitive, unfunny, and boring, which leads us to ponder the question: If a movie is trying to be bad, does it really belong here on the bottom 100 list? Should it be rewarded for its efforts? Apparently the 11,000 IMDb users who claim to have sat through this snorefest in its entirety think so. —Aja Romano

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2

The conceptual goldmine that is Baby Geniuses’ premise (that all babies can speak to each other in a highly intelligent manner until they grow out of it around the age of 3) was too vast to walk away from after a single film, therefore prompting a sequel to continue the story by vaguely mentioning one of its characters and making Scott Baio play his son. 

Baio and his wife, Vanessa Angel, run a daycare, which is the perfect place to set a movie with talking babies. The babies basically sit around looking confused and indifferent while CGI work shoddily matches their mouths to dubbed lines. One of these babies tells the others a story about an evil soldier that ran an orphanage for vaguely insidious reasons in East Berlin during the Cold War. He ran a tight, gloomy ship there, until a 5-year-old named Kahuna attacked the compound and freed all the orphans. Kahuna’s a special kid because, despite his age, he can still speak baby-language. He also drinks glowing green steroid juice that makes him strong enough to fight henchmen with ease. Think this is weird? It gets better. 

The evil soldier is played by Jon Voight. After the baby tells the Kahuna story, Jon Voight—in a huge coincidence—shows up at the daycare for a big press announcement: His company’s new children’s programming network is about to debut on TVs nationwide. Kahuna shows up, too, because he’s been tracking Voight for the past 50 years, and it turns out he hasn’t aged. (This is explained, if that matters.) He’s gotten pretty good at whatever it is he does in the years following the Cold War: He has a Batman-meets-Wonka cave that is easily one of the creepiest sets to ever hit celluloid, and has a direct line to George W. Bush and Whoopi Goldberg. Surprisingly, the ending boasts a twist that is mind-blowingly awesome. So there’s that. —Joey Keeton

Manos: The Hands of Fate

Manos: The Hands of Fate could easily battle Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Room for the coveted title of “the Citizen Kane of bad movies." It was one of the many selections the good old MST3K guys latched onto and mocked nearly every frame of, thus restoring its prominence.

In Manos, a family's peaceful drive through Texas takes a turn for the worse when they're captured by a group of polygamist cult members. The cult members hold the family hostage and torture them with everything from atrocious editing to lame special effects to casting a spell that makes their words not quite match up with their mouths. —Mike Fenn

Final Justice

Final Justice earns its place on this list through its popular MST3K treatment, as well as its sheer dogged determination to bore the viewer to death. Created and helmed by Greydon Clark, otherwise infamous for producing cult bad film Hobgoblins (also in the bottom 100), Final Justice features Joe Don Baker as an overweight, overlooked Southern cop. It also features Rossano Brazzi as a stereotypical Mafia don, along with a doldrum-inducing carnival scene and the world’s worst and longest buildup to a gunfight ever. The plot is an unsuccessful attempt to make JDB look cool and competent while attempting to capture a fugitive, battle a band of incompetent Mafiosi, and something something Texas pride. As a bonus, it’s partially filmed in Malta, though mostly that just leaves us wondering what Malta ever did to deserve this. —Aja Romano

Pledge This!

A hideous nightmare of college movie cliches, softcore porn, and sub-American Pie jokes. Paris Hilton stars as a sorority bitch queen who has to take in a group of unsuitable pledges for “diversity” purposes. These misfit freshmen include a middle-aged nymphomaniac with a botched boob job, a fat girl who gets stuck in a toilet, and a South Asian racist caricature named Poo Poo. Almost every scene consists of unfunny gross-out humor, gratuitous nudity, or Paris Hilton delivering stilted dialogue without even vaguely attempting to act.

After making it through The Hottie and the Nottie with minimal discomfort, I had evidently lulled myself into a false sense of security. It seemed almost insulting for Pledge This! to have a “happy” ending of any kind, since it spent the previous 90 minutes trying to convince me that humanity is doomed and all college kids should be vented into space.

The only possible reason I can imagine anyone wanting to see this is if they were a teenage boy in 2006 who had no other access to images of naked women. —Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

Space Mutiny

There’s a lot to love about Space Mutiny, though not appearing on that list is its nonsensical plot about an alien spaceship takeover, which somehow happens simultaneously with an insurrection of evil crew members (the titular mutiny). There's the awkwardly blatant chemistry between the two leads, Reb Brown and Cisse Cameron, who fell in love while filming, got married, and are still together today. There’s set-chewing on all sides, most notably Actor’s Studio cofounder Cameron Mitchell, who can’t quite decide whether he’s playing a space commander or Santa Claus. When you’re not gawking at everyone’s giant ’80s hair, you can enjoy the hilarious faux-futuristic bumper car fights in which characters race each other around a warehouse in Zambonis.

Space Mutiny has the distinction of being one of the most popular MST3K treatments, due primarily to a famous riff in which the MST3K crew (now the Rifftrax crew) ascribe an increasingly ridiculous roster of nicknames to Reb Brown’s character, due to his gigantic musclebound manliness. But don’t just watch it for Flint Ironstag, Big McLargeHuge, Blast Hardcheese, or Thick McRunFast; watch it because this is actually, all told, a genuinely fun movie. And the actors are clearly having the time of their lives. Space Mutiny is less a terrible movie and more like a terrible movie’s batty, cheek-pinching uncle. —Aja Romano

Daniel der Zauberer 

You’ve no idea how hard we tried to find a version of Daniel der Zauberer, widely considered the worst German movie ever made, with English subtitles. Evidently no studio considered it worth the effort to translate this cheapo grotesquerie about real-life pop singer Daniel Küblböck—who was voted the most annoying personality of 2003 in a tabloid TV channel poll and naturally stars as himself—becoming the target of multiple assassination plots. 

Illegal streaming sites couldn’t help us either, and searching the anglicized title, Daniel the Wizard, brought up nothing but talk show clips of Daniel Radcliffe. So we watched a fair amount of the (high definition!) original on YouTube and had a hell of a time sussing out what this nightmarish stew of magic, ghosts, androgyny, murder, and Deutschland sucht den Superstar performances from Küblböck (third-place winner of that American Idol-style show’s first season) could possibly signify. All we can really tell you is that there are 12-year-olds on Vine with a better sense of composition. A sampling of what German-speaking commenters said:  

“A film spewed out like shit.”

“A single-Smurf uprising, this film.”

“I had to stop after 25 minutes.”

“I find rather sad how many people had to work on it.”

“Daniel is the first person I would just shoot in the face on sight.”

In fairness, we’re pretty sure someone said that last thing about Charles Foster Kane, too. —Miles Klee

House of the Dead

If there’s one takeaway from House of the Dead, it’s that you should never continue listening to stories that begin, “It all started when I came here for a rave.” HotD opens with a truly inexplicable credit sequence featuring incomprehensible, blurry graphics designed like a Tron-ish take on a DOS game about killing zombies circa 1982. 

The problem? House of the Dead was released in 2003. Directed by an indefatigable Uwe Boll, who can’t decide whether he’s homaging Resident Evil or Lake Placid, House of the Dead is as an attempt to serve as a prequel to Sega’s popular first-person shooter franchise of the same name. The film tries its hardest to be edgy and immediately comes off looking like that one drunk kid at the frat party who tried to dive off the roof into the pool and cracked his balls on the sidewalk instead.

One of HotD’s big mysteries is that multiple dude writers worked on the script, which means multiple dudes listened to lines like “I got me an island of cash right here” and “We’re gonna groove to some funky tunes all night long” and decided they sounded cool. The San Juan Islands aren’t exactly where you’d expect to find Spanish curses and zombie graveyards, much less zombies who swim, make no noise, run super-fast, and randomly turn into terrible clips from the actual House of the Dead video games. But no B-movie worth its salt ever let logic stop it from dedicating two-thirds of its run time to topless girls, sluggish action sequences, and non sequitur animated pop-up moments of zombies getting killed. 

In terms of plot, HotD is basically Jurassic Park where the dinos are the undead skeleton crew from Pirates of the Caribbean and “man’s inexorable need to tamper with science” is “the college dude’s inexorable need to get laid at a party.” So, basically, it’s a generic copy of every other teen horror flick. —Aja Romano

Who’s Your Caddy?

When famous rapper C-Note—inexplicably portrayed by OutKast's Big Boi—is turned down by a pre-conviction Jeffrey Jones for membership to the insanely racist Carolina Pines country club, he buys property extending onto the course’s 17th hole to stir things up. After making a music video on his property with Lil Wayne, his membership is granted—the stunt is just far too black, and Jones is forced to buckle. After that, there’s still 60 minutes of movie left for stuff like farting and Hummer golf carts on rims. 

While farting is undeniably funny 100 percent of the time, the movie largely feels like white executives using a cynical formula to pull in a black audience by poorly rewriting Caddyshack. Pulling in $5 million at the box office, it ended up pulling in nobody at all. Except for Bill Clinton

Unfortunately for Big Boi, the movie's biggest problem is C-Note himself, a character whose sole purpose is to show that rappers can be class acts (which is, of course, treated as shocking), and that results in the character being excruciatingly boring. Maybe there was a different version of this script, one that made C-Note more fun—other characters seem to insinuate that he’s quite the partying ladies man, but he seems more like a wealthy schoolteacher who wandered in from an episode of Touched by an Angel. Lavell CrawfordBreaking Bad’s Huell—gets some time to shine, though, and Terry Crews proves, in a tragically brief appearance, that it’s impossible for him to not be awesome. —Joey Keeton

Invasion of the Neptune Men 

I’ve often wondered how I’d feel about Plan 9 From Outer Space if Ed Wood hadn’t become such an iconic figure, and now Invasion of the Neptune Men has provided the answer. Since it comes to us from Japan, we don’t really know anything about the film’s director, or anybody involved whatsoever, and this provides an opportunity for a truly vacuum-sealed appraisal of the film… although “film” might not be the right word for Neptune Men

It seems more like a rogue Japanese experiment, some half-mad attempt at creating, for reasons we’ll never know, the most obnoxious film of all time. It shamelessly combines an omnipresent group of nameless children that are inexplicably close to every plot development, a massive library of annoying sound effects, air battles with relentlessly looped footage that are confusing and seemingly never-ending, stock footage from a film released a year before it (and documentary footage from World War II, which results in a baffling shot of a Hitler banner exploding), and its Japanese dialogue track is dubbed over by American actors who are evidently being directed to just “finish their lines ASAP so everybody can get back to drinking.” 

Even with these ingredients mixed in, there’s something great about the Neptunians, who look the offspring of upside-down blenders and early attempts at vibrators, and their metal-Nerf-dart mothership that has a goofy clown face on the front. It’s a rare film to run across in the wild, but it’s available with the MST3K treatment, which is probably the only way it should ever be viewed in the first place. —Joey Keeton 

Crossover 

Incredible to consider that of all the lousy things comprising this sorry excuse for an inner-city streetball flick—the shameless product placement, the vile depiction of women as materialist skanks, the laughable ease with which the bad guys are vanquished, the softcore porno soundtrack—the camera work somehow stands out as the worst. Honestly, it's like someone messing around on Final Cut for the very first time. 

But if you don’t get whiplash from all the chopped-up zooming and gratuitous slo-mo (turns out layups are no less boring inside the Matrix), you’ll still have to contend with bizarre non-narrative exchanges like “I gotta go to the bathroom”/“Go pinch that loaf, dawg!” The cherry on top is a sadly competent performance from Mr. Entertainment himself, Wayne Brady, whose slick and conniving agent-turned-underground-basketball-kingpin is as irrelevant to the hackneyed plot as he is unintimidating. Be sure to stick around after the final victory, achieved before an ecstatic crowd of maybe 17 people, for the laziest “where are they now” sequence in film, courtesy of a minor character who gets voiceover privileges to spare the audience the trouble of reading and the director the headache of shooting an actual resolution. 

In an alternate universe, Crossover could have been something on par with Step Up 2: The Streets, all clubby flash and cheap sentiment, but instead it’s a $6 million brick. —Miles Klee

Saving Christmas

Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas rocketed to the top of IMDb’s worst list as a result of its creator’s obnoxiousness.

Cameron, previously the star of Growing Pains and some of the Left Behind movies, made Saving Christmas as a way to share his evangelical views on Christmas. Mostly, that means a lot of sentimental fluff and pseudo-historical links between modern holiday traditions and the Bible.

Saving Christmas opened to universally negative reviews, but instead of accepting his fate, Cameron decided to fight back by getting his fans to post positive audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. For a while it worked, but it didn’t take long for trolls to show up and start posting comments like, “so bad my contacts jumped out of my eyes and into the fireplace.” Its abysmal IMDb rating followed soon after.

Sadly, we couldn’t find a copy to judge for ourselves, but even the trailer was nauseating enough. —Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

Screengrab via Saving Christmas

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