A.V. Club

Just in time for the premiere of Thor: The Dark World, Jimmy Kimmel has created a fake rom com-ified trailer for Thor Actually, a movie about a woman “looking for love in all the wrong places” and a bunch of other rom com clichés that seem especially silly when contrasted with Thor hitting stuff with a hammer. While Kimmel jokes this romantic take on Thor is sure to bring more women to the movie theaters, real life female fans seem much more interested in a certain brooding antagonist than a ...

Whatever Dodge is paying Will Ferrell for those Ron Burgundy ads he made for the 2014 Durango (complete with 0.1 cubic feet of glove box storage space), it's totally worth it. The approximately 70 spots he filmed with the help of the Funny Or Die crew—the ones currently being sprinkled across every conceivable form of media—are definitely moving some cars. AdAge reports that sales for the SUV were up 59 percent for the month of October, when the campaign was first unveiled, and up 50 percent ...

In the sort of official announcement that, like a planet made entirely of ice or dust, passes for genuine life in the endless void of Star Wars news, Disney and Lucasfilm have officially given Episode VII the release date of Dec. 18, 2015. Disney chairman Alan Horn said in a statement that the date would “not only anchor the popular holiday filmgoing season but also ensure our extraordinary filmmaking team has the time needed to deliver a sensational picture.” That latter point is already the...

“Scroll Down To Riker” is the best thing to happen to TNG fans since that supercut of Riker sitting down like a weirdo. Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation need only visit the website and do as the name says—scroll down—to watch Commander William T. Riker give a devilish smile alongside one of his more interesting lines from the show. Highlights include “What’s a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?” and “What about plain old basic sex?” The site’s creator w...

Norway is famous for its vibrant but dark metal scene, and Kvelertak is just about the most famous active band out of that culture right now. The group formed in 2007 and released its second album, Meir, earlier this year. The A.V. Club’s Jason Heller called that record, “another anthemic blitzkrieg of classic-rock hooks and blackened frenzy,” and said the band takes “the rudiments of vintage ’70s metal like Judas Priest and Scorpions, then drag[s] it through a minefield of bombast, harmony, ...

Prior to 1993, the Super Bowl halftime show had habitually consisted of university marching bands, cheery tributes to Disney, and (God help us all) corny singing group Up With People. The 1992 halftime show, for instance, was hosted by Olympic figure-skating champions Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano and featured hundreds of Minneapolis residents performing a chilly, achingly over-the-top, Vegas-style show with Gloria Estefan, all somehow tenuously tied to the theme “Winter Magic.” Sensing a ...

Sawbuck Gamer is our occasional roundup of free and cheap games ($10 or less). OodlegobsCreator: NitromePlatform: BrowserPrice: Free PBS Idea Channel recently produced a video arguing that the internet is, in essence, cats. Despite the weirdness of the claim, its basis is undeniable. It’s almost impossible to log on to your web services of choice without being overwhelmed by whiskered balls of fluff demanding your adoration. The folks at developer Nitrome have decided that enough (cats) is en...

Last week, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed’s widow, published a short but moving obit for the singer in her local newspaper, the East Hampton Star. This week, Rolling Stone is running yet another obit from Anderson. It’s much longer and that much more moving, detailing how Reed and Anderson met in Germany, fell in love, and learned to “feel sad without actually being said” through meditation. It details Reed’s illness and passing, which is all very sad, though Anderson writes that she is “so proud ...

Bored with encasing himself in giant blocks of ice, illusionist David Blaine will now immerse himself in the frozen stares of Kanye West and Harrison Ford for a special set to air on ABC in November. Titled Real Or Magic (Where did the question mark go??!), the 90-minute show finds Blaine returning to magic? (Now it’s over here!) after years of concentrating on stunts, with Blaine visiting the homes of famous people to practice close-up illusions with playing cards and other “ordinary objects...

Happy Endings alumni keep racking up new projects. Adam Pally—already having a big year in Iron Man 3, A.C.O.D., The To Do List, and other guest appearances on television—was recently upped from a recurring role to series regular on the second season of The Mindy Project, and, like his former co-star Casey Wilson, he’s getting in on the production side of television as well. Pally will co-executive produce a single-camera comedy at NBC from How I Met Your Mother writers Dan Gregor and Doug Ma...

Finally, Elijah. Elijah has been “the nice brother” or “the honorable one” for so long that it's easy to forget how he was introduced—slapping a vampire's head off. He was, well, the ultimate badass. But he was that antagonist when he was in the service of Klaus, who was even nastier—and proximity to Klaus made Elijah redundant if he was evil. So he became the one who was capable of honor, forgiveness, loyalty, and most importantly, he loved his family. When he refused to kill Klaus at the en...

Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks are set to release a new album in early 2014. Wig Out At Jagbags—a jagbag being “a Chicago term” for “a jack-off or a blowhard,” according to the singer—should come out in the spring of next year on Matador, Malkmus’ longtime label. It’s the ex-Pavement frontman’s first record since 2011’s Mirror Traffic. (On a side note, Malkmus has now made more albums with The Jicks than he did with Pavement.) In an interview on Pitchfork, Malkmus said the record was recorded ...

It’s been over a year since the season two cliffhanger finale of Sherlock premiered on BBC, which has left many fans demanding why no one told them life was gonna be this way. In fact, it feels like they’re always stuck in second gear. Like it hasn’t been their day, their week, their month, or even their year. Thankfully the Internet has provided the Sherlock/Friends mash-up fans never knew they were missing. The reimagined Sherlock opening—set to The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There For You,” of c...

New York hijinks collective Improv Everywhere has translated five classic movies into real life over the past year or so, but the one the group launched today, Jurassic Park, is especially exciting to fans of 1993. The latest mini-movie finds a Jeep full of adventurers traversing Manhattan and Brooklyn looking for Jurassic Park. They eventually find it—or find a guy in a giant Velociraptor costume—in Prospect Park, much to the delight of kids and pedestrians everywhere. And while the faux-Joh...

Paul Simon and Sting are co-headlining a series of shows next spring, in what should be a night of generally pleasant rocking. The two icons of global pop fusion have joined gentle forces for the On Stage Together tour, which will feature both solo sets from Simon and Sting, as well as a joint collaborative performance from the duo. A full list of dates is below. Tickets for Paul Simon & Sting: On Stage Together go on sale to the general public starting next Tuesday, Nov. 12. Members of the a...

It's hard to believe, but Joan Jett has rocking for nearly 40 years. With The Runaways and later The Blackhearts, as a solo artist and a producer for bands like Bikini Kill, Jett has made an unmistakable mark on the rock landscape with iconic songs, none more unforgettable than the one that tracks the opening title sequence of Freaks And Geeks. Joan Jett And The Blackhearts’ latest album Unvarnished came out last month, and we’ve got a special giveaway in support of Jett’s new music: a black ...

It's difficult to imagine a less effective or more hilarious Human Resources Director than Archer’s Pam Poovey, the drift-racing, pot-smoking, ISIS resident gossip. In the run-up to the show’s fifth season, Floyd County Productions has assembled several extra videos featuring the ISIS team, including the Top Gun “Danger Zone” video last month. The clip that debuted at UPROXX today features production values eerily reminiscent of the Dharma Initiative orientation videos from Lost—with Dr. Krie...

She stalked the stage of Boulder’s Fox Theatre, her dress dingy and her feet bare. The name of her band was Cavity: two women and two men. Lorrie was the singer, a force of nature in thrift-store clothes and wild hair. “You think that you can touch me?” she snarled that night in the summer of 1993, her voice full of taunting animosity. “N-n-n-n-no-no, NO CAN DO.” It wasn’t a warning or even a proclamation as much as it was a simple statement of fact: Her body—her person—was not at your dispos...

We so enjoyed bringing you 1983 week a while back, we thought we'd throw a little bit of 1993 in your direction this week. Perhaps you already noticed our Windows Into 1993 Inventory or the chilling world of Aerosmith's "Cryin'." Well, there's more to come in the next few days, and you can find it all at once by clicking here. Next up, a 20-day siege of stories about 2003. (No, not really.) Below, please find the second-biggest hit of 1993. Read more <img src="http://d

In that recent rare interview Mental Floss did with Calvin And Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, the artist reiterated that he has “zero interest in animating Calving And Hobbes.” But that hasn’t stopped other artists from taking some liberties and making animated shorts with the characters. For example, animator Adam Brown just created a brief video with the beloved boy and his stuffed tiger. This time, the duo is dancing around together to some old-timey music. Despite Watterson’s wishes to ke...

In an effort to stimulate the economy and combat America’s unemployment rates, E! has acquired the rights to Saved By The Bell, with plans to air it in two-hour blocks on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. For those whose slipshod work ethic has long caused them to dawdle at home—rolling into the office well after 9, their lack of motivation allowing the U.S. to languish behind more industrious nations—a morning dose of 1990s teenagers whooping at terrible jokes should prove a galvanizing force i...

Yoko Ono’s always been a little puzzling, what with her commitment to art above all else, but her new video for “Bad Dancer” inspires head scratching for an entirely different reason. Somehow—definitely not because she used to be married to John Lennon—Ono managed to attract all sorts of New York celebrities to star in the clip, including Beastie Boys Mike D and Ad-Rock, This American Life host Ira Glass, Reggie Watts, Roberta Flack, Cibo Matto, and Roots drummer ?uestlove. All the guests get...

The inaugural YouTube Music Awards webcast took place this Sunday in New York, an event that combined the glamour and prestige of the Grammys with the dubious cultural relevance of the Grammys. YouTube has posted the winners on its site, allowing the users who decided the awards (by posting videos on their Facebooks and tweets and such) to offer their erudite comments on the results. Eminem was named artist of the year, perhaps because—as awards voter Eva MM points out in the comment threads—...

We Are Scientists’ new EP, Business Casual, dropped in mid-October and featured a Top Gun-caliber cover of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away.” The A.V. Club has the premiere of the accompanying video today, which the band says is available in higher resolution if you “huff paint before clicking ‘play.’” That’s probably not really necessary, but the video does include Lego reenactments of some signature Top Gun moments, so maybe ingesting some sort of drugs prior to viewing wouldn’t be the worst i...

SportsCenter commercials are perhaps ESPN’s funniest contribution to television, creating a dense fictional fantasyland out of the network’s Bristol, Connecticut offices. But one spot centered on remote contributor John Clayton revealed the supposedly buttoned up NFL analyst to be a devoted metalhead, with a long ponytail and a Slayer obsession. The band loved the ad when it saw it, so naturally when its tour rolled through Clayton's hometown of Seattle, the members took the opportunity to sn...

With J.J. Abrams busy directing, writing, and listening to people preemptively complain about Star Wars, Paramount has turned to director Joe Cornish to possibly take over the next Star Trek movie. Deadline reports that the Attack The Block director may lend his skills at staging alien battles against a gang of scrappy upstarts to the third chapter in the rebooted Star Trek series, continuing a trajectory that’s seen Cornish bounce from that low-budget breakout to more mainstream genre fare—l...

It’s very hard to let Saturday Night Live have its cake and eat it too. I can’t fault the show for opening as it did tonight. A bit of a furor had built up about the show’s un-diverse hiring this summer, exacerbated by Kenan Thompson’s interview with TV Guide where he said the show wasn’t finding black female comedians who “are ready” for the show, and later Lorne Michaels’ comment to AP that he’s aware of the issue and is sure the show will get more diverse sometime. Kerry Washington is the ...

Here’s the reason I think it’s sometimes better to have non-comedians as the guests on Comedy Bang! Bang! – it can lead to more structured bits for the interview portion. Not that I don’t enjoy watching Scott riff with Rainn Wilson or Bill Hader or whoever, but more and more, the celebrity guest has become the least interesting part of the show. That’s a testament to how strong the sketch writing has been in the second season, but the weird side effect is that when someone like Alba comes on,...

Beck will perform his sheet music LP, Song Reader, in its entirety for only the second time ever later this year. The singer, who’s releasing a new album in early 2014, will be joined by a number of collaborators on Nov. 24 at Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, including Jarvis Cocker, Jenny Lewis, Childish Gambino, Jack Black, Van Dyke Parks, and John C. Reilly. The L.A. Philharmonic—conducted by Beck’s father, David Campbell—will accompany them. Eyeglass company Warby Parker, for which ...

Comedian Moshe Kasher has signed a deal to develop an autobiographical half-hour comedy series for Showtime. The show would be based on the stand-up’s material and his book, 2012’s Kasher In The Rye: The True Tale Of A White Boy From Oakland Who Became A Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient… And Then Turned Sixteen, which chronicles Kasher’s upbringing in the '90s, including his struggles with religion, his deaf parents, and substance abuse. Kasher will write, executive produce, and star, th...

New York based Cardiknox has been bubbling under on the indie scene for a while, having landed two of its singles on the Hype Machine Top 10 earlier this year. The group’s just finished its new video for “Technicolor Dreaming,” though, and it’s premiering exclusively via The A.V. Club. The VHS-influenced clip blends the band’s lyrics with the hand-drawn movie poster art of years long past. It’s a little bit Fear Street, a little bit Adventures In Babysitting, and a lot watchable. Cardiknox wi...

Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix special, Buried Alive, is out today. For Halloween last night, though, Ansari dropped into New York City’s The Comedy Cellar dressed as Thomas The Tank Engine. While Ansari unfortunately doesn’t really have any Thomas The Tank Engine material ready in the clip below—not even a Ringo joke, Aziz?—it is kind of neat to see the crowd’s reaction go from total confusion to one of increasing pleasure. Bonus points for that Shining Time Station reference, too. Read more <a h...

Noted cut-up Lady Gaga will bring her comedy stylings to Saturday Night Live later this month. The singer and avant-garde icon will both host and act as the musical guest on the Nov. 16 episode of the show, bringing to the show her knack for inhabiting hilarious characters like "Lady Gaga," "Lady Gaga Wearing A Different Outfit," and sometimes even "Lady Gaga As A Man." The episode will mark Gaga’s third appearance as a musical guest on the show, but her first as the host. Her new record, Art...

Yesterday the decidedly un-groovy news came out that Evil Dead remake director Fede Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues were no longer attached to doing a sequel. But, as with so many stories of people departing a showbiz project, it turns out this one may have been a bit misconstrued. Alvarez took to Twitter last night to walk back Sayagues' statements, commenting to Bloody Disgusting that “stuff got lost in translation” with his co-writer. He explained that they’re “not actually making Evil...

Argentinean rock band Capsula released its latest record, Solar Secrets, earlier this year and will be touring this fall with Os Mutantes. In anticipation, The A.V. Club has the premiere of the group’s new video for “Dark Age,” a darkly psychedelic track perfect for your non-cheesy Halloween mix. Solar Secrets is the group’s worldwide debut, but the band has released a number of records in Europe and South America since its inception in the late ‘90s. Bowie pal Tony Visconti produced the reco...

David Bowie just dropped a new, totally freaky music video, just in time for Halloween. The clip is for James Murphy’s remix of “Love Is Lost” off Bowie’s latest, The Next Day, and cost just $13 to make. The totally eerie video was created by Bowie, his assistant, and a friend, and was shot in Bowie’s New York office with a number of puppets from Bowie’s collection, because of course he collects puppets. A deluxe, 3-disc edition of The Next Day is due out Nov. 5 on Columbia. Read more <a href...

Electronic artist James Blake has won the Mercury Prize, the annual award recognizing the best U.K. album of the year, as decided on by a panel of music critics, industry people, and other esteemed members of the British musical commonwealth. Blake’s Overgrown took top honor over odds-on favorites David Bowie and Arctic Monkeys, as well as a slate of viable contenders that included Jon Hopkins, Disclosure, Foals, and Savages. But just in case he was maybe feeling a little too proud of himself...

We told you before about Tim And Eric's Bedtime Stories, the Halloween special from the stars/creators of Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job. The half-hour pilot, which stars Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and Zach Galifianakis, will debut tomorrow at midnight on Adult Swim: It's about three goofs who stand to inherit some money—but only if they agree to live the rest of their lives in a haunted house. Based on the very funny promo below, there appears to be yelling and wigs. Rather than wai...

Bret McKenzie's hair helmet secret project likely hasn't seen much progress lately, as the comedian/musician seems to be pretty busy these days. Not only is he overseeing the music for the upcoming Muppets Most Wanted, and scripting a Labyrinth-like musical comedy with James Bobin, he's also now working on an animated series for Fox. The Flight Of The Conchords member is developing the cartoon—about a group of NASA employees working in an “almost-obsolete” space center in Boulder, Colorado—wi...

The list of Community guest stars continues to grow with each passing day, as the show deals with the loss of Chevy Chase and the imminent departure of Donald Glover by recruiting enough famous people to fuse into one giant, celebrity Voltron to replace them. Before he becomes the torso, Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz will play “ultimate party animal” Preston Koogler, returning the favor to Dan Harmon for playing a “yurt clerk” on the last season of Arrested Development. And until...

Lewis Black had it right: Candy corn is an abomination of candy and corn, a waxen, despicable excuse for a foodstuff trotted out each year to dupe undiscerning eaters. This video for the Nerdist YouTube channel with the lovable and bumbling Jim O’Heir as an organic candy corn farmer is a grotesque perversion of the inexplicable enduring popularity of this Halloween candy. It's a fake commercial for Nathan's Valley, a company that's either a salad dressing or an Arrested Development housing su...

Just in time for Halloween, Slacktory put together a supercut of scenes where the monster, killer, or supernatural being appears right behind a victim or protagonist. The films range from all varieties of horror (Psycho, The Descent) to slashers (Friday The 13th, Part III, Halloween), to adventure (The Return Of The King, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest), to science fiction (Mission To Mars). Truly, every genre has liberally borrowed the technique—there’s even a clip from Scrooged....

The Jonas Brothers are now just actual brothers. The trio has dissolved its musical brotherhood “for now” and is embarking on a trio of (probably middling) solo projects. The JoBros broke the news to People, saying that the move came after Nick, the youngest, expressed that he was feeling “trapped” in the trio. Quoth Nick, “I needed to share my heart with my brothers.” The New Jersey-born Jonas Brothers rose to fame in 2005 with their Disney Channel show. They’ve sold millions upon millions o...

The Book Of Mormon actor Andrew Rannells appeared at the Tony Awards this year in a comedic number bemoaning the many cancelled TV series starring stage actors, along with Smash's Megan Hilty and Go On's Laura Benanti. But Rannells did make note that Girls would be returning, and now—with Christopher Abbott’s well-publicized departure from the show, along with the merciful cancellation of The New Normal—he's needed there more than ever. Deadline reports that Rannells will reprise his Girls ro...

Previously on the Entourage movie, Vince was doing the movie, then Vince was doing the movie, then Vince was doing the movie, then we did the movie, then life did the movie, then Vince wasn't doing the movie, then Vince was doing the movie, then Vince might not be doing the movie. On today's episode: OH YEAHHHHH.OH YEAHHHHHH. INT. LIFE It is a world where Jerry Ferrara is easily the WORST LOOKING. Every street corner is patrolled by a cop that is also a LINGERIE MODEL. Everything is SWEET, li...

Concluding years of being able to use the question of their possible casting as John Belushi as a euphemistic way of calling actors fat, Emile Hirsch has finally landed the role in Steve Conrad’s upcoming Belushi biopic. Hirsch was one of the names most recently said to be in the running, alongside Workaholics’ Adam Devine and even Joaquin Phoenix, but Hirsch eventually won out, taking on the role of the late comedian in a film that will cover the apex of his fame. Having previously lost 40 p...

Todrick Hall’s newest parody video, “Spell Block Tango,” celebrates Disney’s greatest villains through song. The former American Idol finalist has made a name for himself on YouTube, lampooning everything from Beauty And The Beast and Cinderella to Mean Girls. Hall’s latest video is not only a spot-on recreation of the “Cell Block Tango” from the 2002 Chicago film, it also cleverly weaves each villain’s story into the number and features some incredible dancing. Hall stars as Scar, alongside ...

Sesame Street continues to stay relevant to the pop culture discussion by appropriating prestige drama series for humorous educational sketches. The Mad Men parody is still a work of pure genius, as are Birdwalk Empire and Upside Downton Abbey. Now the educational program sets its sights on Homeland with Homelamb, a sketch about sheep secret agents trying to locate the Big Bad Wolf. Sheep Carrie is as hyperactive as ever, attempting to expose Agent Ba-a-a-rody as a wolf in disguise, refusing ...