The State of Scary TV
‘The Returned’ and ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ join ‘The Walking Dead’ in offering high-quality horror.
August 15, 2013
Afternoon Links: Stephen Colbert Profiles Beloved, Kindhearted, America-Destroying Mayor Johnny Cummings
One of the best features of The Colbert Report is the “People Destroying America” segment, and the video above is a prime example. Johnny Cummings is the mayor (and hairdresser) of a small town in Kentucky called Vicco, and he’s openly gay (and openly awesome). His townsfolk love him, testifying to the Colbert reporters that […]
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Rembert Explains America: Among the Truckers in Utah
“You not gonna bring a gun with you?” The man shook his head and angrily gestured to the wall, so disgusted he could do nothing but violently sip from his 100-ounce travel mug like it was a drag from a cigarette. He said it to a room of seven, but no one responded. To my […]
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Here's How Dave Chappelle Might Be Making You Laugh These Days
The official return of Dave Chappelle is now upon us: The first date of the Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival, which Chappelle is co-headlining with Flight of the Conchords, is in Austin next Friday. So where’s the big splashy tell-all magazine profile to go with the comeback? Considering this is the famously private and happily […]
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Some Parents in L.A. Are Hiring Celebrity Yearbook Photographers, Because of Course They Are
Los Angeles — where Grantland HQ is located, if you didn’t know — is usually a perfectly nice place to live. The weather, the tacos, the daily chance of seeing Jay Leno jutting out of an antique car like Grimace from a Happy Meal toy as he drives himself to his last sad days of […]
Read moreGirls in Hoodies Podcast: Breaking Bad, Kendrick Lamar, Gaga, and Miley
It’s all about Internet beef today on the Hoodies pod, or at least beef with the Internet. From the overmemefication of Breaking Bad (or overevangelizing, for those of us still not hooked on the Blue) to the near-psychotic stan wars surrounding Lady Gaga and Katy Perry’s upcoming album releases, to fallout (?) from Kendrick Lamar’s […]
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The Overthought Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Recap: The Dance of Love
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo has become more than just a reality television show. It has become an important slice of modern American culture. Within each episode, there are many complex themes and hidden Easter eggs. This recap is intended to decipher the subtext of the show using the critical vessel of the recap. Here […]
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The Bridge Season 1, Episode 6 Recap: Throwing Money in the Fire in 'ID'
As we approach the halfway point of its debut season, The Bridge remains a very good show that tantalizingly flirts with greatness. “ID” excelled in all the ways previous episodes have: by crafting a dust-choked mood of dread and despair, by spending as much time scratching out the complicated pasts of the protagonists as it […]
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Why Orange Is The New Black Can't Lose Laura Prepon
Yesterday Buzzfeed reported that Laura Prepon, the owner of the most critically divisive eyebrows on Orange Is the New Black, was springing herself from women’s prison, returning for the second season only long enough to close the arc of Piper’s hot ex, Alex Vause. An hour and a half after the news had been posted […]
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Kate and Kim Raise Their Royal Babies Solo, and Other Sob Stories From This Week's Tabloids
Star Kate Middleton & Kim Kardashian Raising Children Alone: “They may seem to have it all, but with absent partners and no homes of their own, both Kate Duchess of Cambridge and Kim Kardashian are struggling with motherhood.” And their names both begin with K! Both ladies are “alone, as their international icon baby daddies, Prince […]
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August 14, 2013
Afternoon Links: The Internet for Kidz, in 1997
Yesterday, we began our links by chastising the Internet for all it’s done to impair our enjoyment of all other sacred media, so today let’s kiss and make nice. Go ahead and adjust your VCR tracking so as best to enjoy this guide to the Internet for kids, a nice 1997 vintage with a fizzy […]
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Do You Like Prince Movies? Podcast: Elysium and 'Tom Ford'
In Elysium, cyborg Matt Damon is out to stop the all-white wheel in the sky from turning. Plus: Who gets to use the N-Word? (Spoiler: Probably not you.) Listen to the podcast here: ESPN.com Podcenter. Subscribe to the Grantland Pop Culture on iTunes, and check out our podcasts page.
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Grading Prince's First 24 Hours on Twitter
If you were online last night and started to see an unusual number of tweets directed to “@3rdeyegirl,” I’m happy to report that the talk of the Twitter last night was not, in fact, a Stephan Jenkins stan gone viral, but the happy news that the Internet has finally been legitimized and can commence its […]
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YouTube Hall of Fame: Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey, reigning funnyman of your childhood/adolescence/actual adulthood, is back this week — almost unrecognizably — as Colonel Stars and Stripes in Kick Ass 2. It’s been a long time since those halcyon days when it seemed like there was at least one high-profile Carrey vehicle coming out every year, so let’s take a look […]
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Big Smart Objects: Drone Culture and Elysium
The Futurist is a periodic dispatch from the front lines of tomorrow — a gleefully wigged-out examination of science, science fiction, technology, culture, and all their lunatic fringes. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, we will think the unthinkable, do the undoable, and eff the ineffable. In the canonical 1970 Richard Matheson science fiction story, Button, Button, […]
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Q&A: Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan on I Hate Music, Not Breaking Up, and Keeping Things Fresh
Next Tuesday, Superchunk will release its 10th studio album, I Hate Music. The record arrives with relative quickness after 2010’s “comeback” LP, Majesty Shredding, which ended a nine-year hiatus for the beloved indie institution. During the break, guitarist Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance built the record label they founded in 1989 to put out […]
Read moreThe Fading Gigolo Trailer Brings All Your Woody Allen–John Turturro Fanfic to Life
It seems the world (me) has been asking for a buddy comedy starring John Turturro as a middle-aged prostitute and Woody Allen as his pimp nigh on forever. But our prayers have been answered at last, in the form of Turturro’s fifth directorial feature, Fading Gigolo. Turturro and Allen have been friends dating back to at […]
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