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How Aphex Twin fans brought a rare ‘90s electronic album to the Internet

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Richard D. James, better known as electronic artist Aphex Twin, released a string of influential albums in the ‘90s. However, one album from 1994, recorded under the name Caustic Window, went unreleased until recently. Then his fans showed up on Kickstarter.

Back in April, a copy of the Caustic Window test pressing showed up on Discogs, with a price tag of $13,500. Members of electronic music forum We Are the Music Makers did a bit of signal-boosting and asked whether fans would be willing to pitch in $25 each to "buy" the album. Some 75 percent said yes.

A Houston fan named James E. Thomas then created a Kickstarter, in an effort to crowdfund the purchase of the album. According to the project's description, only four people were known to have copies of the Caustic Window album, including Richard D. James. After striking a deal with James’s label, Rephlex Records, and getting distribution rights, fans were asked to contribute $16 each towards the purchase. By early May, the project had raised more than $67,000.

The label had no plans to release the album, so it remains a digital-only release. The 15-track album is now up on YouTube to stream, and is currently up for bid on eBay, where it’s nearly reached the original asking price of $13,500. All backers will receive a digital copy of the album, though some said the YouTube version was up before they got their copy. Proceeds from the eBay sale will allegedly go to James, the label, and a yet-to-be-named charity.

Wu-Tang Clan fans were attempting something similar, in an effort to purchase and distribute the group’s new “secret” album. Has Kickstarter become the conduit for bringing rare or “lost” albums to a wider audience? Aphex Twin fans are already planning the next album in need of digital distribution. 

H/T The Verge |Photo via cheriorbit (CC BY 2.0) | remix by Jason Reed


OK Go's latest elaborate video is out, and it's bonkers

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It’s been two years since treadmill-loving rockers OK Go last released one of their elaborate, one-take videos. And judging from the complexity of their newest effort, “The Writing’s on the Wall,” they spent most of those two years holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, dreaming up ways to top past efforts like “Here It Goes Again” and “This Too Shall Pass.”

“The Writing’s on the Wall,” which reportedly took 50 takes to get right, uses a series of forced-perspective optical illusions to make it appear as if the band members are walking through solid objects, riding upside-down bicycles, and getting sliced in half by giant mirrors.

This is the first video from OK Go’s forthcoming fourth album, Hungry Ghosts, which is due out in October. The band is self-releasing the album and crowdfunding it via PledgeMusic, where fans can purchase anything from a signed vinyl copy for $40 to a private OK Go concert for $10,000.

Screengrab via OK Go/YouTube

Corridor Digital brings face-melting movie magic to YouTube

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Like so many great stories, Corridor Digital’s starts with Star Wars. In 2000, junior high friends Niko Pueringer and Sam Gorski set to work on a fan film shot in their Minnesota hometown.

Today, tucked among the distribution centers and brick warehouses of Los Angeles, Gorski and Peuringer live and work in Corridor Digital’s Studio 4 space—an enormous warehouse built specifically for production. Just a few doors down from long-time friend and frequent collaborator Brandon Laatsch, Gorski and Peuringer have not only made Los Angeles their home, but in 2010, set up residence on YouTube as well.

Gorski and Peuringer have been making special effects videos together since junior high school; following college, they were commissioned to make Dark Island, a low-budget monster film co-starring Laatsch. This opportunity led the two best friends and business partners to move to Los Angeles where they teamed up with fellow Minnesota transplant Jake Watson.

“Before we started YouTube, we were doing freelance visual effects. We spent all this time doing some really nice work and didn’t get to see it,” Peuringer explains. “What made YouTube really different was that we’d invest all this time and energy and blood and sweat into a piece, and right when it’s finished, right when we’re like, 'This shot is perfect,' [we can] hit that upload button and an hour later, everybody gets to see it for free. Easy, no fuss, no muss.”

Corridor Digital brings a unique style to the digital media space, producing high quality, video-game-inspired shorts with little to no budget. Over the course of their past four years on YouTube, the trio has garnered a loyal fanbase of over 2.9 million subscribers and produced such viral hits as “Minecraft: The Last Minecart,” “The Glitch,” and “Dubstep Guns.”

“We’re used to working with small crews, so we don’t need to necessarily reach out to a lot of people,” shares Gorski. “Everyone in the YouTube world, in our YouTube world anyways, you have to be good at everything to make this stuff because you can’t hire 10 people to do 10 different things; you have to do all 10 things yourself.”

“A good camera is the only tool that matters when it comes to this stuff,” Gorski says. “It’s all about taking those small steps. Are you recording with a good camera? If it’s a yes, then everything is easy from there.”

With each video, the Corridor Digital team makes their nonexistent budget look like a million bucks on screen. But in order to pursue the webseries and full-length features they’ve always dreamed of, Gorski, Peuringer, and Watson have turned to their fans for support. Last month, they launched their own Patreon campaign, which allows fans to pledge a certain amount of money to support each video. In return, fans receive tutorials, behind-the-scenes videos, and Google Hangouts with Gorski, Peuringer, and Watson. 

“When it comes to the YouTube ecosystem, like the types of cameras and equipment we use, [they] would not be possible if we were just making money from YouTube ads,” Gorski says. “The Patreon page essentially allows us to work with everyone and pay them for their time and their value that they bring to the set.”

Along with their monthly shorts, Corridor Digital recently finished the writing phase for their next feature film, Tether, which will remain in development throughout 2014. They say their ideal future would involve transitioning into more full-length films but still taking the time to make regular content for the YouTube fans that have made the group’s dreams possible.

In the hopes of inspiring young filmmakers to make their dreams a reality on YouTube, Watson shares: “Before you go out and buy expensive camera, software, and equipment, and before you plan to execute a big production with actors and paid crew members, start small! See if you like the process of filmmaking and not just a glamorous idea of it. Study, study, study. Absorb. Go with a style you are passionate about and run with it.”

Just think: That's exactly what those couple of kids in Minnesota did almost 15 years ago.

Screengrab via Corridor Digital/YouTube

This YouTube star makes $4 million a year from playing video games

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In August, 2013, we reported that Felix Kjellberg, the Swedish video game YouTube user who goes by PewDiePie, ran the most subscribed-to channel on the service. He still holds that crown in June, 2014 with 27.7 million subscribers.

Now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, it has been revealed that Kjellberg is making $4 million a year from his videos. The WSJ article claims that Kjellberg, whose videos are a personal travelogue of his video game adventures, doesn’t have an entourage and avoids the spotlight.

Running a YouTube channel with 27.7 million subscribers sure doesn’t sound like running away from the spotlight! In case you're wondering what a PewDiePie video looks like, here’s Kjellberg’s Flappy Bird video, which went viral and played a role in the mobile game coming to everyone’s attention.

Warning: Kjellberg swears a lot while trying to learn the game, which went for anyone who tried to play Flappy Bird.

Screenshot via PewDiePie/YouTube

Behind the scenes of OK Go's must-see new video

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To pack four solid minutes of visual trickery into their new video, “The Writing’s on the Wall,” OK Go and their collaborators spent two months holed up in a Brooklyn warehouse, painstakingly building and painting the images that would become the video’s striking optical illusions. Inspired by the visually disorienting installations and photographs of artists like Felice Varini and Dan Tobin-Smith, OK Go frontman Damian Kulash enlisted directors Bob Partington (of the H2 Channel’s Thingamabob) and Aaron Duffy to help the band create a series of images in which nothing is as it seems.

From his home in Los Angeles, Kulash told the Daily Dot how the band’s latest single-shot video came into being.

How did you come up with the concept for the video?

Have you ever seen that Channel 4 British television ident from maybe five or 10 years ago? The camera rotates 90 degrees—that is, it tracks maybe 90 degrees, and the logo forms out of all these objects. I just remember seeing that, and that joy and wonder of watching something reveal itself out of nothing. I must have seen that maybe five years ago, and I always wanted to do a bigger, crazier version of that. It felt to me like the perfect playground for a video.

So we met Aaron and Bob, the other two directors, and we spent a couple of weeks going through every type of optical illusion we thought would work on film. We wanted to stay in this family of anamorphic illusions. Technically the gravity illusions and the mirror illusions aren’t really the same type—but they all felt based on the perspective of the viewer.

When you say “anamorphic illusion,” that’s the type of illusion where a group of objects looks different depending on what angle you’re viewing them from?

Yeah, or there’s a single perspective point that allows something to appear as a flat image, or to appear as an image at all. We kind of broke them down into different categories. There’s the ones where the space is painted in such a way that it suggests there’s another space there. Like the last shot in the video, where you see that wall that appears to run down the middle of the room, but it’s actually painted on the back of the room. There’s those kinds, and then there are the kinds where we built something out of objects that from one particular perspective flatten out. But the thing that holds them all together is that they only work from exactly one perspective point. It’s only when you move your eye to that one exact spot that suddenly this wondrous thing appears. 

When you’re assembling the objects that form these images, is it just a lot of trial and error? Or were you using 3D graphics software to map things out in advance?

Both. The first three things—the square, circle, and triangle—those were basically trial and error. We set up a projector in the position we wanted, projected that image on the wall and whatever objects were in front of it, and taped off what was left. Then we’d set up a camera in that exact position where the projector had just been, and just sit there filling it in. We’d have teams of three or four people go out and find a red object, attach it to a C-stand and try to figure out exactly what angle and what height and what depth it had to be at.

So those first three were mostly trial and error. The cubes, though—in the second verse, that field of nine cubes—we had drawn all that stuff out by hand, as an idea, but the only way to get the shapes exactly right was to preview it all in Maya. So yes, that was all 3D modeled beforehand and then exactingly cut to spec.

Was there one particular setup or shot that was especially difficult to get?

It’s a copout, but all of them. You really have to be within an eighth of an inch on all of them. The one that was the most time-consuming was the last shot, just because it’s a vast space that we were painting. And a lot of that image is actually on the ceiling, and it’s really complicated—there are pipes and tubes and rafters. We set up a projector from the same spot as the camera, and we had to keep the lights off in the room for almost a week as people traced out every little last line of that thing. It was an incredible amount of work that went into making that one image happen.

How big was the crew?

I’d say maybe 60 to 100. There were a lot of volunteers who came in for a day or two just to help paint. But that last shot, where everybody comes running out from behind the columns? That’s basically the whole crew.

Why did you choose to shoot in New York, as opposed to in Los Angeles, where many of your other videos were shot?

The production company we wanted to work with is based in New York. I’ve wanted to make this idea as a video for many years, but you really have to find the right collaborators. These types of illusions, there’s a mix of so many different types of skills that I don’t know who else we would’ve gone to. 

One of my favorite shots in the whole video is something that looks at first like an amazing optical illusion, then you kind of tip your hand later on when we see Tim Nordwind only has half a beard. Did he really shave half his beard off for the shoot, or was the whole thing a fake beard?

Yeah, for three days he had half a beard. I mean, half of it was prosthetics, but half of it was real. 

That’s dedication to the cause, to walk around with half a beard for the whole shoot. 

Yeah, he’s a dedicated man. I was worried that he wouldn’t want to do it, but I shouldn’t have been, because he’s awesome. 

What was the camera that you used in the video? There’s a shot where we can see you holding it and it looks like a big steering wheel.

The camera’s a Panasonic GH4. It’s really a pretty incredible camera. It shoots 4K; the image quality is incredibly beautiful. And it’s tiny, which was super-important for this, because the band had to carry it around. That circle thing you see me holding is called a Fig Rig. It’s the world’s simplest and most ingenious technology: The farther away from the lens you hold a camera, the less any movement in your hand will affect it. You can still see it shake, because we’re not professional cameramen. 

Was part of the concept from the very beginning to have the band members operate the camera?

I can’t remember exactly when that entered the picture. But no, I don’t think that was part of the original thing. I think Aaron and Bob suggested it at some point. We were trying to solve this problem: that those images are really beautiful but really still. The whole point of [an anamorphic illusion] is that it’s flat and still. The original way that the band could be involved was by building them in front of you. The other way is by having us sort of be your tour guide through them

The thing we’re trying to do with our videos usually is give that gift of joy and wonder. That thing that just makes your day better. The reason we usually shoot things in one shot is so people won’t feel tricked; they’ll actually get a sense of what it was like to be there. So having us actually operate the camera and show you the camera rig in a mirror made it really feel like, “OK, I understand this.” And as you can see from the words written out in the video, the point of the video is those brief moments of understanding—like you know there’s a riddle and you can’t figure it out. Then for a second you do figure it out—and then it disappears again.

You’ve made so many of these amazing videos now. Do you start thinking about visuals for your music during the songwriting and recording process? Are the two things intertwined, or does the music still come first?

It’s absolutely music first. Solving the riddle of writing a good song is every bit as much of a challenge as solving the riddle of making a good video. The music very much stands on its own to us.

Screengrab via OK Go/YouTube

The scariest puppets on the Internet are crowdfunding a return to YouTube

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The prize for most disturbing Kickstarter video surely goes to Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.

British filmmakers Becky and Joe racked up over 20 million YouTube views with their first two Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared videos, which show a group of Sesame Street-style muppet characters learning about time and creativity. It sounds like pretty typical children’s TV fare, until you actually watch them and discover that Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is a surreal hellscape that no child should ever be allowed to watch.

Now, Becky & Joe have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund four new episodes for YouTube audiences, using a video that shows their muppet characters tied up in a basement and forced to read a ransom note. 

The series started life as a weird art project by a pair of indie filmmakers, but thanks to its viral success, it’s attracted a worldwide audience of people who draw fanart and dress up as the characters.

Along with being a pretty snarky satire of Kickstarter media projects (“Pay up or you’ll never see your faves again!”), the ransom video has evidently been successful. With one day to go, Becky & Joe have gone past their goal of $163,000, although unfortunately this cannot cushion the filmmaker from the risks and challenges listed on their Kickstarter page: “failure,” “death” and “nothingness.”

Photo via Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared/Kickstarter

'Game of Thrones' gets the 'Brady Bunch' mashup it's always needed

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The Game of Thronesopening credits still captivate audiences after four years, but there still could be somethig missing.

It’s no secret that Wil Wheaton is a fan. Last week he introduced the Hodoround with actor Kristian Nairn to his audience on The Wil Wheaton Project. He argued that as cool as the opening is, it lacks any information about the characters.

He fixed that for you: Cue the Brady Bunch theme. 

It probably isn’t a story any lovely people, and a lot of terrible things happen when these families all get together. But, if nothing else, it’ll make you realize just how many characters are still on Game of Thrones.

Photo via Wil Wheaton/YouTube

YouTube will force indie labels to join new streaming deal—or be blocked

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YouTube is set to start blocking videos from artists like Adele, Radiohead, and the Arctic Monkeys on its site after numerous independent labels refused to sign new licensing deals for an upcoming premium streaming service, according to a new report from Financial Times.

The blocking could even start “in a matter of days,” Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s head of content and business operations, said. This would be to make sure that all content would adhere to the new terms.

News of YouTube Music Pass, an ad-free subscription service, first came out last year, but the Google-owned company is pushing ahead despite not having some of music’s biggest artists after Amazon launched a new music-streaming service for Prime members last week looking to compete with Spotify.

For a monthly fee, you would be able to watch or listen to music without any advertisements on any devices, even when you aren’t connected to the Internet.

So far, around 95 percent of the music industry—the three big record labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music, along with a number of smaller labels—have signed the new licensing deals. The remaining labels, which includes XL Recordings and Domino Records, are reportedly trying to hold out for a better deal.

Some of the labels have turned to the European Union to intervene, and the trade body for independent music labels Impala argues that YouTube is using its position of power and its audience reach to force the smaller labels into accepting less-than-ideal terms that could hurt many smaller artists from getting any exposure on the site.

YouTube seems to be willing to move ahead, regardless of whether those smaller companies sign the new licensing agreement.

“While we wish that we had a 100 percent success rate, we understand that is not likely an achievable goal and therefore it is our responsibility to our users and the industry to launch the enhanced music experience,” Kyncl told the Financial Times.

When asked for comment, a YouTube spokesman confirmed to Gizmodo the Financial Times story.

"Our goal is to continue making YouTube an amazing music experience, both as a global platform for fans and artists to connect, and as a revenue source for the music industry. We're adding subscription-based features for music on YouTube with this in mind — to bring our music partners new revenue streams in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars YouTube already generates for them each year. We are excited that hundreds of major and independent labels are already partnering with us."

So just in case there's no last-minute solution, you might get your Adele fix while you still can.

H/T The Verge | Photo via AdeleVEVO/YouTube


Watch Kevin Hart lose his s**t on a roller coaster with Jimmy Fallon

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Kevin Hart is confronting his fears, but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna like it.

The actor absolutely hates roller coasters, so while he went on The Tonight Show in Orlando, Jimmy Fallon took him to ride Universal Studios’ Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit. It went just about as well as you’d expect with Hart looking absolutely terrified.

Even after lots of screaming, clammy hands, and an incident with a bug, Fallon’s ever the cheerful one. Hart, on the other hand, started getting nervous at just the mere mention of roller coasters.

He probably won’t be going to another theme park anytime soon.

H/T Gawker | Photo via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/YouTube

I can't stop watching this magic pool vine

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I couldn’t know, when I started griping about how it would get up to 90ºF in New York today, that a bit of wizardry on Vine would be just the refreshment I needed. Call it a summer miracle.

You ready for this?

If you ever manage to tear yourself away from this infatuating loop, Business Insider helped to break it down, bit by bit. All it takes is some clever angles, the ability to smoothly stop and start filming while remaining perfectly still, and a kid who likes to practice his dive.

Still, we prefer to believe there was some manner of witchcraft involved, as with many of Christian Leonard’s previous sleight-of-Vine tricks, often commissioned by brands.

It’s just a matter of time before this dude figures out how to mount an act in Vegas.

Photo via Christian Leonard/Vine

Taylor Swift fans are getting Instagram comments from their idol

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After almost eight years of fans fawning over Taylor Swift, the singer is turning it around and giving her attention back to her fans—specifically, her 9.5 million Instagram followers. 

Between her bestselling albums, cosmetics contracts, and ever-evolving list of famous hookups, she has managed to amass a rabid fanbase of (mostly) teenage girls who relate to her sugary country pop lyrics.

But over the past few months, Swift has been leaving personal, heartfelt, and sometimes funny comments on fan photos she has been tagged in on the mobile social media platform, and fans are taking notice, screenshotting the comments and posting them all over Twitter and Tumblr as proof Swift is showing them Instagram love.

That love comes in the form of get well wishes,

congratulations,

inspirational messages,

shopping humor,

and, most of all, appreciation:

http://cdn0.dailydot.com/uploaded/images/original/2014/6/18/screen_shot_2014-06-18_at_6.57.32_am.png

http://cdn0.dailydot.com/uploaded/images/original/2014/6/18/screen_shot_2014-06-18_at_6.57.57_am.png

http://cdn0.dailydot.com/uploaded/images/original/2014/6/18/screen_shot_2014-06-18_at_6.57.42_am.png

Swift has sang and written her way into the hearts of millions, all of whom seem glad to know she hasn’t forgotten the people who helped get her to the top, and that she’s living up to what she’s best known for—writing to her many loves.

H/T Washington Post | Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Lizzy Caplan settles the 'debate' about female comedians once and for all

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To call the question of whether women can be funny a “debate” implies that we’ve yet to arrive at an answer, when of course we have: Many of the planet’sfinestcomedians are female.

But until Hollywood wraps its collective, cocaine-addled consciousness around that self-evident fact, we’re stuck in a media landscape where few of the fun film and TV roles are written for ladies—and actresses in the business of making people laugh will continue to mock or satirize the entertainment industry’s casual sexism. Most recently, Lizzy Caplan leveled a devastatingly deadpan critique on Comedy! Bang! Bang!, turning this tired gender dynamic on its head.  

Flash Animation

As usual, I’m tempted to ask Caplan to marry me—distracting penis or no—but wouldn’t feel comfortable objectifying her that way. I’ll settle for yet another rewatch of Party Down instead.

H/T Nerve | Photo via IFC

George R.R. Martin makes a cameo on 'Gay of Thrones'

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This isn’t your average Game of Thrones recap.

For the past couple of seasons, Funny or Die has made the corresponding Gay of Thrones, a recap show from the LGBT perspective focused around a hairstylist breaking things down for his clients while using names like “Brother D” and “Munch Munch” for the characters whose names he can’t remember. The entire thing is worth watching, especially now that the show is on hiatus between seasons.

They got Alfie Allen on last year, but this time around they finally got George R.R. Martin, who wrote the booksGame of Thrones is based on, to lend a helping hand after recapping everything that happened in the finale. Not only does he go full-on Princess Bride, he can finally voice what he thinks of the entitled book fans—something he similarly did recently on Robot Chicken.

Nobody’s safe in this story—not even your favorite recappers.

Photo via Funny or Die

Chelsea Handler talk show coming to Netflix in 2016

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Chelsea Handler is set to helm the first talk show on Netflix. But don’t get too excited: It’s not going to be streaming until early 2016.

Earlier this month Handler revealed that she had a "proper new exciting project" that presumably would no longer have her pandering to the Biebers and Kardashians of the world.

The deal with Netflix is not just for the talk show; it also includes stand-up specials, beginning with her current tour, Uganda Be Kidding Me, as well as four exclusive new docu-comedy specials in 2015. These specials, the Wall Street Journalreports, will "featur[e] her efforts to gain a better understanding of subjects such as Nascar, politics, Silicon Valley and the NBA draft." 

As is to be expected, there are few details available about the talk show other than that it will have an "updated format," that will "encompass Chelsea's unfiltered opinions on topical entertainment and cultural issues, as well as her signature guest interviews," and will be distributed on Netflix's global network. Whatever the format of Handler’s show, however, this is seemingly a stunning move by Netflix to further encroach on the domain of broadcast television.

“If I was going to continue working in this industry, I knew I had to do something outside the box to keep myself interested,” Handler said in a statement. “I wanted to sit with the cool kids at lunch, so I approached Netflix to make sure they were as cool as I thought they were, and when I confirmed my suspicions, like with any other future lover, I made my move.”

Handler’s current gig, Chelsea Lately, will end on Aug. 26 after a seven-year run.

Photo by David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 3.0)

In week 2, Mario Batali breathes life into 'High Road' Hulu webseries

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After the first episode of Hulu’s new webseries The High Road With Mario Batali, we confess we had more than a few questions—not least of which was: Will this get better? Now, we might have an answer.

Viewers have to wonder: Why is it shot in black-and-white? I suspect it’s to elevate Batali’s conversations with celebrities; exchanges that were possibly interesting in their full form but after editing, amount to little more than glib 20-second soundbites in various black-and-white NYC locales. It's ostensibly meant to tell us that this isn’t Batali the chef that you are watching but Batali the facilitator of discussion—and that this discussion is more important than the tasty stuff you were expecting to see.

Which might be fair enough if the program wasn’t ultimately food tourism after all. But it is, and that is frustrating. Do they not realize that now, on top of being unable to taste or smell anything, we can now barely see the food? At a shuffleboard club in Brooklyn, Batali and his first guest George Stephanopoulos are brought a platter of black-and-white snacks that, for all we know, is a selection of dice and piano keys. The two make all the right noises, but it’s like listening to a dinner party through a wall; robbed of that vital sense, we feel removed from their experience. Hell, you can’t even pick out Batali’s trademark orange Crocs

This denial of its foodie heart is also to blame for the show’s odd first guest. Why else launch with a pair that don’t seem particularly interested in each other unless you want to make a futile point that this isn’t about food? As they travel around on a double-decker tour bus, Batali works hard to look interested in answers to questions like “what’s next for news?” and “what’s next for George Stephanopoulos?” while his subject smiles but has a look in his eyes as if he’d rather be elsewhere.

It’s a misstep, and one that is highlighted by the delight that is the second episode featuring chef Gabrielle Hamilton. The change in Batali’s demeanor is stark—suddenly, as he grasps he is on the same wavelength as someone, his eyes are a-twinklin’ and he re-emerges with that great, garrulous, and generous charm that booked this gig in the first place. It doesn’t matter that you can barely make out the oysters that he and Hamilton slurp at each other in the whispering gallery at Grand Central; their enjoyment is contagious. 

“That’s the dirtiest thing I’ve ever done in public … I’m clutching my pearls,” squeals Hamilton in mock mortification. “I’m swallowing mine,” replies Batali cheekily.

Moments like this bode well for the rest of this weekly, 12-part series (as well as Dailymotion’s upcoming Feedback Kitchen). The future guest list is mostly from outside the food sphere (although it seems Anthony Bourdain, Frank Bruni, and Rachael Ray will be making appearances), but if the focus remains on Batali’s passion, then stand by to watch him sparkle.

Photo via Lance Cheung/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 2.0)


Disney's 'Into the Woods' sucks all the fun out of the classic

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It was always inevitable that a Disney adaptation of the beloved Sondheim musical Into the Woods would suffer from, well, Disneyfication.

But if reports surfacing from a recent private talk Sondheim gave in New York are accurate, it sounds like the film is shaping up to be an, erm, giant-sized disaster. 

Hang on to your hats, musical lovers. The word from the living legend himself is that Disney's version of Into the Woods is excising much of what made it the complicated adult fairy tale we all know and love—including at least one pivotal musical number, lots of implied and overt sexual activity, and one major character spoiler.

GIF by Aja Romano

Read on for the details, and obviously for spoilers. (Though if you've gone the last 28 years without seeing Into the Woods at least once, the more fool you.)

As first reported by the New Yorker, Sondheim said in a recent master class for drama teachers that Disney has jettisoned many of the second-act complications that make Into the Woods unique in the wide pantheon of fairy tale retellings. According to Sondheim, Disney has decided not to kill off Rapunzel, a decision which necessitated Sondheim and librettist James Lapine, over protests, having to write a new song in order to facilitate one of the show's major plot points.

"You will find in the movie that Rapunzel does not get killed, and the prince does not sleep with the [Baker's Wife]," Playbillreported.  "But Disney said, 'we don't want Rapunzel to die,' so we replotted it. I won't tell you what happens, but we wrote a new song to cover it."

In the stage version of the musical, Rapunzel is crushed by an invading giant in a moment that brings reality crashing down upon the ensemble cast of characters as well as the audience. We can only speculate that now the movie will most likely involve Rapunzel exiting pursued by a giant only to resurface later to sing a convenient anthem of independence that will motivate her surrogate mother, the witch, to do what she does next. This would be functional, but hardly as satisfying or as difficult to deal with, as the original. And of course that's the whole point.

But that's not the only thing Disney is cutting. Sondheim also stated, reportedly to accompanying outcries of dismay from the audience, that the pivotal Act 2 number between Cinderella's Prince and the Baker's Wife, "Any Moment," is also cut.

"The song is cut," he said. "I'm sorry, I should say, it's probably cut."

For perspective, "Any Moment" is one of two interconnected and mutually showstopping numbers to feature the Baker's Wife. It's hard to imagine Into the Woods without "Any Moment." It's crucial to the Baker's Wife's character development—a role for which original cast member Joanna Gleason won a Tony. Additionally, it's thematically one of the most important songs of the show, the event that solidifies the titular "woods" as the metaphorical place where juvenile fantasy and fairy tale meet and collide with adult consequences. And since "Any Moment" later connects with "Moments in the Woods," both leading to a major plot spoiler, it's hard to understand how the movie version will move from Point A to Point B. 

Plus, it's just a crying shame to lose lines like, "Any moment we could be crushed / don't feel rushed" and "Life is often so unpleasant / you must know that as a peasant / best to take the moment present / as a present for the moment."

And that's not the end of the Disney, what were you thinking? madness. Sondheim also hinted that the film would be toning down much of the blatant sexual overtones of Red Riding Hood's entire character arc, which would inevitably mean that the innuendo and metaphor-laden musical numbers "Hello, Little Girl," and "I Know Things Now" would have to be severely edited if not cut altogether.

Since the Red Riding Hood fable has never not been a sexual metaphor, it's hard to know what Disney executives were expecting. But perhaps in its eagerness to expand its foray into subversive fairy tales, the Mouse got ahead of itself.

In recent years, Disney's love of fairy tales has turned postmodern. The studio has been popping out subversions of fairy tale tropes right and left in the 21st century, from its mega-hit Frozen to its hybrid fairy tale free-for-all ABC series Once Upon a TimeAs it's turned more postmodern, it's also turned, surprisingly and frequently, more adult. To some degree, it has Sondheim to thank for this: After all, Sondheim and Steven Schwartz, the composer who would pen the musical Wicked along with several Disney films, worked side by side on Broadway for decades. Schwartz's groundbreaking and disturbing musical number "Hellfire" from Hunchback of Notre Dame borrowed much in terms of concept and structure from a very similar number that Sondheim used in Sweeney Todd.  

And there's no other phrase than "blatant ripoff" for Disney's attempt to homage the witch from Into the Woods in its 2010 film Tangled. Not only are they both different versions of the same character, but Tangled's version, Mother Gothel, looks and acts very similar to Bernadette Peters' witch from Into the Woods:

Tangled's witch was voiced in her musical numbers by famed Sondheim musical star Donna Murphy (Passion), and both Tangled and Into the Woods purport to show a more complicated version of the classic Rapunzel myth, with its dark themes and surrogate family dysfunction.

Perhaps most tellingly, both versions specifically portray the witch as being obsessed with obtaining ageless beauty. This is a theme that does not appear in the original versions of the myth, but one which Sondheim explicitly invented and associated with the witch in Into the Woods.

But if you look closely, Tangled's use of the Rapunzel/witch dynamic shows exactly how ill-prepared Disney was to handle Into the Woods with care. In Into the Woods, the entire point of the mother-daughter relationship between the Witch and Rapunzel is that it's real. The witch's love for Rapunzel trumps any of her other motivations, causing her to sing, in the end, that she'd rather have her original "claws and a hump" over the pain of losing her daughter.

In 1986, when postmodern fairy tales like Into the Woods were few and far between, the Witch's modern identity crisis and basic humanity was an incredibly unexpected and complicating factor that contributed to the musical's ultimate moral message that "Witches can be right / giants can be good / you decide what's right / you decide what's good."

In Tangled, this nuance and level of complexity is nonexistent. Mother Gothel is ultimately just as shallow and one-dimensional as her obsession with beauty would appear, and while she goes through the motions of having a complicated relationship with her daughter, it's all an act to help her attain her true goal of eternal beauty.

Without the ability or willingness to explore complex relationships between mother and older teenage daughter, Disney ultimately falls back on the convenient moral platitudes it's been using in its animated films for decades: The evil witch is always an evil witch; the older woman who seeks to be sexy is always, unfailingly, a villain; and surrogate family bonds are ultimately superficial compared to real family bonds. 

Ultimately, Tangled's homage to Into the Woods turned out to be no homage at all, and revealed a distinct lack of understanding for the importance of Into the Woods's at times heavy-handed but crucial reliance on choices that lead to serious consequences.

And ultimately, it seems fans who were expecting Disney to take a more complicated approach to its actual adaptation of Into the Woods than it did to Tangled are in for a major disappointment.

For now, your best shot at seeing the magic of Sondheim on film, consequences and complexity intact, is still the Great Performances filming of the original Broadway cast, which is luckily currently available on Netflix.

Photo via janessajaye.com

Mariana Abramovic's London performance shuns our connected world

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I was caressed by a world-renowned artist last week.

Breathe,” she murmured as she stroked my shoulders, “relax and breathe out.” Her hands lingered on my back for a minute before drifting away, leaving me seated, eyes closed, surrounded by strangers in the middle of the Serpentine Gallery.

I was at a performance of 512 Hours, the new exhibition from legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic, at the central London gallery.

Abramovic has produced what she claims is her purest, most “radical” performance piece yet, drawing in the audience to directly participate in the creation of a work that questions the line between art and space. What this means in practice is that she’s spending three months in an empty art gallery telling visitors to do whatever she likes—and thanks to the pulling power of her name, people are literally queuing up outside the door to play a part in her surreal bestiary.

Technology is strictly forbidden—phones, cameras and recording devices of all kinds are to be left in lockers, leaving visitors free of tech’s distractions, free from connection to the outside world, free to immerse themselves in the performance. (If they ignore the official cameramen recording everything.) “Our life is so busy now,” the Serbian-born artist has said. “Because of all the technology our concentration is a disaster case. Life is short, art should be longer.”

Upon entering, a black-clad assistant gestured to me. Taking my hand, we treaded silently around the gallery, slowing to an ever-more sluggish pace, before reaching a total standstill. I was bidden to be seated, where I was to stare at a yellow sheet of paper on the wall for—well, for as long as I could manage. Each wall of the main room had different colours: red, green and blue, too—and compliant visitors perched in front of them, gazing into the uniform technicolor emptiness.

Elsewhere, visitors had been asked (commanded? No-one ever said no) to engage in other activities: Some slumped in chairs, wrapped in blankets; some walked around the gallery backwards, navigating their paths with hand mirrors; other still stood dead still, eyes closed, facing the walls.

Though the show was spartan in the extreme—beyond the occasional chair, and the colored squares, the gallery was stripped totally bare—the Guardian reports there is “the promise of furniture to come.”

The performance entails elements of voyeurism, and probably deliberately: There is no meaningful boundary between spectator and participant, visitor and artwork—you are invited to observe and be observed by others. Uneasiness creeps in at times, as you stare intrusively at immobile strangers conforming to Abramovic’s will—or they stare at you.

Since the 1970's, Abramovic has been exploring the relationship between audience and performance. She’s increasingly known as the “grandmother of performance art.” If you’ve ever been subjected to trite second-year art student’s performance piece, chances are it was inspired by her legitimately revolutionary work.

In Rhythm 0, performed in 1974, Abramovic presented herself to her audience with a table of objects in front of her, totally at their mercy. Her clothes were torn, she was stabbed with rose thorns. One visitor even loaded the gun provided and pointed it to her head before being stopped by another. When Shia LaBeouf let people read mean tweets to him in his February 2014 “performance,” #IAMSORRY, it was nothing but a pale imitation of this.

Back at the performance, some seemed to take things one stage further, apparently unbidden—sitting prone with the colorful sheets pulled over their heads, or standing bent over as if trying to touch their toes, for twenty minutes or more at a time. Had they been asked to do this, or were they doing it of their own volition?

The weird scene raised a range of questions. Was this artistic performance, or performative? Did visitors acquiesce to Abramovic’s every request because of the power of the piece, or because of her prestige? Was the significance of her name creating a weight of expectation that shaped the subsequent spectacle? And did it matter?

Whatever your thoughts on the art itself, Abramovic’s unwavering commitment to what she calls her most “radical” work ever must be respected. The artist is—at 67—working intensively, 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 3 months straight.

The contemporary art world is an ugly place. Distorted by monstrous, multi-million dollar price tags, historic works are rapidly becoming an asset class traded on the basis of absurd speculation rather than any real merit. Britons are lucky enough to enjoy free art galleries and museums throughout the capital, but owning a piece of art history is, for 99.9 percent of people, an impossible dream.

In this context, Abramovic’s utterly transient work, with no accompanying merchandising, memorabilia or even publicly taken photos to memorialise it, is oddly appealing. It may have been the artist’s celebrity that drew the queues from 5.45am, but the her vision has managed to produce a work that is both reliant and upon and belonging to the people—like nothing else today.

I ended up spending two hours at the gallery, much of it sitting with my eyes closed, without really meaning to. I reemerged onto Hyde park and the glorious sunshine disorientated, and slightly anxious about all my missed cellphone notifications—but certainly not dissatisfied.

512 Hours runs at the Serpentine Gallery, London from now until the August 25, 2014.

Photo via Manfred Werner / Tsui / Wikimedia Commons (CC 3.0)

'Hunger Games' propaganda posters tease plot of new movie

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The Hunger Games’ viral marketing site is back in business, now with a beautiful photoshoot of Panem propaganda icons.

Capitol Couture is a fashion magazine from the Hunger Games’ image-obsessed dystopian Capitol, offering exclusives on Hunger Games tributes and strange new fashion trends in the city. Their latest effort is a series of photos titled “One Panem,” showcasing a “hero” from each one of the oppressed and often poverty-stricken districts.

With the next Hunger Games movie introducing a fully-fledged rebellion against the Capitol, this photoshoot is evidently meant to be propaganda, trying to get citizens to stay proud of their own district’s role in supporting the Capitol.

We in the Capitol strive to create a secure, harmonious environment,” reads the blurb for tech District 3’s hero, Fibre Bissette. “Your infinite contributions enable us to make that goal a reality. Never forget how your superior deeds keep our wonderful country grounded. Never forget how your programming provides a link to Panem’s history. Never forget the significance your work has engineered.”

The photos range from fashion shoot to Norman Rockwell-esque scenes of patriotic strength, especially for the districts who focus on manual labour. The overall look is like a vintage Life magazine photo spread, even down to the red rectangular logo in the corner of each photo.

Tellingly, Katniss Everdeen’s district isn’t represented by a “hero” who shows pride in their work and patriotism, but a 6-year-old girl who “channels her hope and optimism toward Panem’s peaceful future.” Ominous stuff, particularly when you read on to discover that “No citizen is too young to support the constructive efforts of the Mining District, and in turn, the gallant efforts of Panem.”

Photo via Capitol Couture

GoPro captures the moment a record-breaking car jump goes horribly wrong

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The GoPro camera, being engineered for extreme action, has brought us images from the furthest limits of human experience. But the genre’s latest eye-popping video captures more than just a crazy stunt—in fact, it shows us the face of a man sure that he’s about to die.

“When I woke up the morning of jump day, I called my wife and told her that I had a bad feeling,” said pro skier and rally driver Guerlain Chicherit of his attempt to break the record for the longest ramp car jump. “I’ve traveled the world for motorsports and seen hundreds of crashes: multiple-car pileups at high speeds, race cars rolling end over end, sometimes on fire.” 

As it happened, Chicherit’s dark premonition was accurate, and he suffered a spectacular wreck, miraculously emerging with no more than minor injuries. The fateful run begins at the seven-minute mark in the clip below, and it’s a nail-biter all the way through.

Despite the close call, Chicherit is likely to try the jump again, which he’d promised to do so long as his vehicle was still “in one piece” after a failed attempt. We’ll go ahead and assume that’s a figure of speech. 

Photo via GoPro/YouTube

'Saved by the Bell' is getting its own Lifetime movie

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As the wave of '90s nostalgiacontinues to knock us down as we attempt to get back up again, another favorite is getting the spit-and-polish treatment: Saved by the Bell.

Yesterday, it was announced the early ‘90s Saturday morning sitcom that gave the world Jessie Spano’s diet pill freakout would be getting a Lifetime movie subtly titled, The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story, which will air Sept. 1.

The show’s original casting director found 2014 equivalents to the show’s '90s cast, including stars of Supernatural and Degrassi: The Next Generation, in order to tell the “unauthorized” story, which is sourced from actor Dustin Diamond’s scandalous tell-all, Behind the Bell. Diamond, who played Screech on the show, allegedly regrets writing that book and claims it was full of inaccuracies, but that apparently hasn’t stopped an unauthorized movie from being made out of it.

The Behind the Music approach to the show’s relationships and rumors will likely prohibit it from getting too scandalous. This is, after all, a Lifetime production. 

Lifetime is also responsible for the upcoming Aaliyah biopic. Somehow the channel has managed to evolve by continuing to live in the '90s.

I wrote a fan letter to Mark-Paul Gosselaar in the early '90s and got an autographed photo back, so I’m not going to lie—I’m sort of excited for this.

Photo via Sergei Backlakov/Lifetime

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