Flavorwire

What Chris Rock's Selfie Project Can Teach Us About Racist Policing

By Sarah Seltzer on Apr 2, 2015 12:50pm

Chris Rock is taking a selfie every time he gets pulled over by the cops. Despite being one of the most successful... Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Guide to Indie Flicks to See in April

By Jason Bailey on Apr 2, 2015 1:30pm

If you’re in the (seemingly shrinking!) minority of people who don’t run salivating to the theater for movies where superhumans in fast cars defy the laws of gravity and physics, April is a pretty grim month for mainstream cinema. Between the Nicolas Sparks adaptation, the Paul Blart sequel, the chat-room horror movie, and the aforementioned sixth sequel to a warmed-over braindead Friedkin wannabe, it’s like looking like January all over again at the multiplex. So once again, it’s indies to the rescue; here are ten four-star limited releases to check out as spring rolls in. … Read More

Design

‘This Is Your Brain on Drugs': Stylish Posters Illustrate the Effects of Psychoactive Substances

By Judy Berman on Apr 2, 2015 9:00am

Though children of the ’80s will probably always conflate psychoactive chemicals with breakfast foods, your brain is nothing like an egg and drugs don’t fry it sunny-side up. Meaghan Li‘s This Is Your Brain on Drugs, a series of minimalist posters created for the designer’s psychology class, offer a much more evocative and aesthetically pleasing vision of substances’ effects. Click through for a selection of images from the project, which we spotted via Design Taxi. … Read More

Pop Culture

Talking Barbies, Passover Ice Cream and Absurdity in Indiana: Links You Need to See

By Ona Abelis on Apr 1, 2015 6:00pm

It’s been a doozy of a week in Indiana. In addition to facing nationwide backlash as multi-billion dollar corporations continue to scale down or phase out their businesses in the state (in response to the “Religious Freedom” Restoration Act that, in effect, legalizes discrimination against the LGBTQ community), the Hoosiers are likewise dealing with an HIV outbreak (also due to some shortsighted lawmaking) and, in the same stroke, have just become the first US state to sentence a woman to two decades of prison time for killing a fetus. Enough said—I’m moving my fantasy vacation to Pittsburgh. … Read More

Pop Culture

Staff Picks: Janelle Monae, The Rock, and Cheese Cleanses

By Moze Halperin on Apr 1, 2015 4:30pm

Need a great book to read, album to listen to, or TV show to get hooked on? The Flavorwire team is here to help: in this weekly feature, our editorial staffers recommend the cultural object or experience they’ve enjoyed most in the past seven days. Click through for our picks, and tell us what you’ve been loving in the comments. … Read More

Music

10 Albums You Need to Hear in April 2015

By Jillian Mapes and Shane Barnes on Apr 1, 2015 3:45pm

It feels like every month this year, I’ve found myself saying, “Damn, what a great crop of new music.” Next week, however, wins some kind of prize: five of the records on our recommended April listening will be out on Tuesday, with many of them — like the Mountain Goats’ Beat the Champ,… Read More

Media

Quiz: Conservative Thinkpiece or April Fools’ Joke Headline?

By Sarah Seltzer on Apr 1, 2015 3:15pm

April Fools’ Day on the Internet can be a minefield in these absurdist times. What’s a joke and what’s quotidian clickbait? What’s clever, dry, post-hipster satire and what’s April Fools-specific satire? For example: Are your friends mockingly imitating the people who are actually defending those racist tweets, or they actually applauding the racist tweets? Is a pizzeria really deigning to declare itself off-limits for gay weddings? We confess to being a bit bewildered ourselves, worried as to whether we’re going to click our way onto a virtual whoopee cushion, so we thought we’d offer a guide for navigating these stormy seas.

Look at the below headlines and determine whether each is an April Fools story or an actual conservative headline: … Read More

Television

10 TV Events to Look Out For in April

By Pilot Viruet on Apr 1, 2015 2:45pm

There are a handful of promising new shows premiering everywhere in April, from FX to Netflix to Showtime, and it’s also the month of our returning favorites on HBO (time for Game of Thrones to take over television and the Internet once again!). But let’s be honest, there’s only thing everyone will be talking about: the end of Mad Men. The second half of the seventh and final season begins this Sunday and, after only seven more episodes, the show will be off the air. Even if you’re not a Mad Men fan, April might be the year’s best month for… Read More

Comedy

Patton Oswalt, You’re Not Helping the Trevor Noah Situation

By Sarah Seltzer on Apr 1, 2015 2:15pm

Yesterday we pleaded with the Internet to use the Trevor Noah “old tweets” scandal to have a productive conversation about both what’s edgy vs. what’s just tired in comedy, and to what extent we should hold public figures responsible for their years-old social media posts. Throughout the day I saw some good responses about anti-Semitism, about comedy, and about forgiving ourselves for our past social media sins. … Read More

Comedy

How 10 of the Best Stand-Up Comedians Handle Hecklers

By Jason Bailey on Apr 1, 2015 1:30pm

If we learned anything about stand-up comedy last fall, it’s that when a Hannibal Buress video goes viral, you should probably watch it. This time, his YouTube hit isn’t going to end an icon’s career; it’s just an enormously entertaining three-minute destruction of a boorish heckler. Said hecklers have been the bane of many a comedian’s existence — drunken assholes, bachelorette party morons, and would-be comics have been mistaking stand-up for interactivity since the form began. So on this April Fools’ Day, we thought we’d take a look at how Buress and a few other comic greats handled these particular fools. … Read More

Books

Flavorwire Exclusive: Preview a Sci-Fi Murder Mystery from Russia’s Answer to Phillip K. Dick

By Jonathon Sturgeon on Apr 1, 2015 12:45pm

Maybe you’ve heard of the Arkady and Boris Strugatsky — the Brothers Strugatsky — as the science-fiction authors of the novels behind Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Aleksei German’s Hard to Be a God. Or maybe you haven’t. In case of the latter, you can find an introduction, of sorts, here. But to enjoy the below excerpt, from the great sci-fi mystery novel The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, you needn’t know that the Strugatsky Bros. are Russia’s answer to Theodore Sturgeon or Philip K. Dick. Nor do you need to know that their novels are enjoyed by contemporary novelists like Jeff VanderMeer and Jonathan Lethem. There isn’t much, in fact, that you need to know at all, except maybe how to read and laugh. … Read More