2017
It started as an idea…
Look fam, LOOK. Even the most diehard comic book and film fans can admit that the oversaturation is here. Comic book movies and TV shows pop up everywhere these days more than sympathetic essays on hate groups. Every week there’s an announcement, another obscure character getting a live action treatment. And look, we’re mostly here for it cuz the game watered down so much, there’s no longer pressure for us diehards to indulge everything that drops cuz it ain’t slowing down anyway.
But this shit right here? This shit right here my Avenger?!?! Nah fam, we bout to sit back, find the biggest wine glass you got in the cabinet in the living room that you weren’t allowed to go in as a kid, and drink all this good Infinity in.
First of all, this, this is how you do large scale action and consequence. This is what all-out war in the comic book universe should look like. Your shit shouldn’t be just decorated with lots of CG parademons with the color pallet from Ghostbusters II splashed on the backdrop. This shit look like the world is literally ending. STAKES Y’ALL. STAAAAAAKES. And everybody here, fam. Ayebody.
Banner seems to have come back after he was scared the Hulk straight jacked him for his consciousness. Black Widow Blonde Hair Don’t Care. Tony Stark hoodies up. Doctor “something in the temporal Strange for Some Change” back. Vision and Scarlett trying to get that Danielle Steel romance novel popping off. As the great philosopher and poet Lester Freamon once said, “All The Pieces Matter.”
But yo, these ain’t just pretty faces in the crowd, b. Real shit is actually happening. Peter Parker Spidey Sense is Finally in the Muthafuckin Building! Vision Getting Ran for His Jewels Doe?!?! Thanos just dropping stones in the gauntlet like they Pandora charms or some shit. Bucky Barns with two arms, lock and loading on the battlefield? Loki doing what Loki does and handing off the cube (to Thanos probably). But wait. WAIT.
“GET THIS MAN HIS SHEILD” – T’Challa Da Ruler
When the king speaks, you better listen to that shit! Here come Steve Rogers, lookin’ like he been working on a construction rig for the last year or so. Your boy lookin’ like he been in witness protection or whatever folks probably classified as domestic terrorists look like that been hiding out from the government. This shit too raw man.
I can’t take it. Actually nah, I’m here for ALL OF IT. And the kiss goodnight on this shit? Is that Okoye in the Vanguard? Is that her running with the Avengers up in this muthafucka?!?! AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH. Bast, deliver me.
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The post I Left My Cubicle To Watch ‘The Avengers: Infinity War’ Trailer in The Bathroom At Work and Regret Nothing appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
It started as an idea…
Look fam, LOOK. Even the most diehard comic book and film fans can admit that the oversaturation is here. Comic book movies and TV shows pop up everywhere these days more than sympathetic essays on hate groups. Every week there’s an announcement, another obscure character getting a live action treatment. And look, we’re mostly here for it cuz the game watered down so much, there’s no longer pressure for us diehards to indulge everything that drops cuz it ain’t slowing down anyway.
But this shit right here? This shit right here my Avenger?!?! Nah fam, we bout to sit back, find the biggest wine glass you got in the cabinet in the living room that you weren’t allowed to go in as a kid, and drink all this good Infinity in.
First of all, this, this is how you do large scale action and consequence. This is what all-out war in the comic book universe should look like. Your shit shouldn’t be just decorated with lots of CG parademons with the color pallet from Ghostbusters II splashed on the backdrop. This shit look like the world is literally ending. STAKES Y’ALL. STAAAAAAKES. And everybody here, fam. Ayebody.
Banner seems to have come back after he was scared the Hulk straight jacked him for his consciousness. Black Widow Blonde Hair Don’t Care. Tony Stark hoodies up. Doctor “something in the temporal Strange for Some Change” back. Vision and Scarlett trying to get that Danielle Steel romance novel popping off. As the great philosopher and poet Lester Freamon once said, “All The Pieces Matter.”
But yo, these ain’t just pretty faces in the crowd, b. Real shit is actually happening. Peter Parker Spidey Sense is Finally in the Muthafuckin Building! Vision Getting Ran for His Jewels Doe?!?! Thanos just dropping stones in the gauntlet like they Pandora charms or some shit. Bucky Barns with two arms, lock and loading on the battlefield? Loki doing what Loki does and handing off the cube (to Thanos probably). But wait. WAIT.
“GET THIS MAN HIS SHEILD” – T’Challa Da Ruler
When the king speaks, you better listen to that shit! Here come Steve Rogers, lookin’ like he been working on a construction rig for the last year or so. Your boy lookin’ like he been in witness protection or whatever folks probably classified as domestic terrorists look like that been hiding out from the government. This shit too raw man.
I can’t take it. Actually nah, I’m here for ALL OF IT. And the kiss goodnight on this shit? Is that Okoye in the Vanguard? Is that her running with the Avengers up in this muthafucka?!?! AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH. Bast, deliver me.
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The post I Left My Cubicle To Watch ‘The Avengers: Infinity War’ Trailer in The Bathroom At Work and Regret Nothing appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
Since the announcement of her engagement to British royal family member and unlikely heir to the throne—he’s sixth in line—Prince Harry, the microscope has been on Meghan Markle.
Every detail is being inspected about her life including her family life. She is the product of a white father and black mother—a social worker who lives in the mostly African American L.A. suburb of View Park-Windsor Hills (incidentally, one of the wealthiest black suburbs in the country).
(Meghan Markle. Image: Flickr/Genevieve)
In addition to her work as an actress, The Atlantic reports that Markle has been involved in several humanitarian efforts. She was a woman’s advocate at the United Nations and a global ambassador for World Vision.
Her Internet Entrepreneurial Endeavor
The soon-to-be royal was also an entrepreneur just like so many other millennials of color. She launched a lifestyle and wellness site; thetig.com. She recently shut the site down; however, using the internet archive site, The Wayback Machine, you can take a look at the content on the site to see what it was all about.
The site features fairly lightweight subject matter with articles such as “10 Reasons to Drink Kombucha,” “Chic New York Boutiques,” and “Tig Talks,”—which are interviews with influential people including Serena Williams.
(Image of Markle from her archived site)
But she gets serious, as well. In one post, “More Than an Other,” published March 2, 2016, she weighs in on being biracial:
What are you?’ A question I get asked every week of my life, often every day. ‘Well,’ I say, as I begin the verbal dance I know all too well. ‘I’m an actress, a writer, the Editor-in-Chief of my lifestyle brand The Tig, a pretty good cook and a firm believer in handwritten notes.’ A mouthful, yes, but one that paints a pretty solid picture of who I am. But here’s what happens: they smile and nod politely, maybe even chuckle, before getting to their point, ‘Right, but what are you? Where are your parents from?’ I knew it was coming, I always do. While I could say Pennsylvania and Ohio, and continue this proverbial two-step, I instead give them what they’re after: ‘My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I’m half black and half white.’
To describe something as being black and white means it is clearly defined. Yet when your ethnicity is black and white, the dichotomy is not that clear. In fact, it creates a grey area. Being biracial paints a blurred line that is equal parts staggering and illuminating. When I was asked by ELLE to share my story, I’ll be honest, I was scared. It’s easy to talk about which make-up I prefer, my favourite scene I’ve filmed, the rigmarole of ‘a day in the life’ and how much green juice I consume before a requisite Pilates class. And while I have dipped my toes into this on thetig.com, sharing small vignettes of my experiences as a biracial woman, today I am choosing to be braver, to go a bit deeper, and to share a much larger picture of that with you.
She goes on in the piece to discuss her mother being mistaken for her nanny in affluent areas of Los Angeles; a white dorm mate in school who assumed her parents weren’t together; and her difficulty getting acting jobs because, “I wasn’t black enough for the black roles and I wasn’t white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn’t book a job.”
Markle sums up her feelings as, “Just as black and white, when mixed, make grey, in many ways that’s what it did to my self-identity: it created a murky area of who I was, a haze around how people connected with me. I was grey. And who wants to be this indifferent colour, devoid of depth and stuck in the middle?”
It seems that Markle actually did a lot of the writing herself, signing off posts as “MM.” In what ostensibly looks to be the site’s first-ever post, “Welcome to the Tig” she explains the purpose of the blog:
“Cheers to frolicking, and revelry, to badass ladies & gents who inspire change, to finding the beauty in the unexpected, to sharing ideas, supporting the silliness, eating delicious food, living a life of wanderlust, and taking it all in—with class, unrelenting splendor, and a sense of humor. Cheers to an inspired lifestyle.”
Forget her ethnicity for a second: Could Markle be the first internet entrepreneur and blogger to ever marry into the royal family?
With every new revelation at the projects visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro COULD have made but didn’t, a new poison-tipped arrow gets shot into our movie-loving hearts. From At the Mountains of Madness to Justice League Dark to The Haunted Mansion (and, oh yeah, The Hobbit), we still marvel at what our alternate universe Blu-ray shelves might have looked like if things had gone a different way. But according to a new interview with The New York Times, del Toro admits that, out of all the projects he’s turned down, the one he now regrets is helming the Universal Monsters universe.
Del Toro has always maintained that saying “no” to offers is a way for a filmmaker working within the studios to keep some modicum of power over their own work. In the past, he’d been offered things like Thor, I Am Legend, and Man of Steel, and he even turned down Pacific Rim Uprising, a sequel to his own damn movie, in order to make The Shape of Water (which, honestly, good call). Still, in 2007, he was offered the reins to Universal’s entire classic monsters range and he wishes he’d said yes.
I’ve said no to things that are enormous and I’ve never looked back, you know? The only time I repent I didn’t do something was in 2007, when Universal in an incredibly gentle and beautiful manner said do you want to take over the Monster Universe? And they gave me the reins of several properties, and I didn’t do it. That I repent. So this is a confessional moment, I repent. That’s the only thing.
After the utter botchery of Universal’s Dark Universe–started and ended with this summer’s snooze The Mummy (my review)–we were incredibly bummed, since classic Gothic monster movies could have been excellent. But the notion of these movies coming from Mr. Monster himself, and the fact that we could have had them 10 years ago, AND the fact that we didn’t and won’t get them, is almost too much to take.
Del Toro’s cinema has always had an affinity for the monster in movies like Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Hellboy, and The Shape of Water is maybe the apex of this ideal. As much as we love del Toro’s original ideas, seeing him tackle Frankenstein or The Creature from the Black Lagoon would have been, to quote an emoji, *Pizza Chef*.
But alack and alas. Here’s to what might have been.
Images: Fox Searchlight/Criterion/Universal
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He is the writer of 200 reviews of weird or obscure genre films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!
Get hyped on the latest news!
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- The possibility that Justice League gave Ben Affleck his exit from playing Batman!
Writer: James Tynion IV / Artist: Riley Rossmo / DC Comics
This. Is. Greatness. Batman Who Laughs is the story I’ve been waiting for from DC. This shit was a concerto, a real team effort, and everybody involved gets a shoutout for this one. Welcome to SPOILER CITY, POPULATION: ANYONE READING PAST THIS LINE
Batman Who Laughs gets it right. The concept is brilliant: what if Batman becomes The Joker? The writing is sharp. A tip of the fitted cap to James Tynion IV for taking this very edgy idea and giving it words. The work of turning The Dark Knight into The Clown Prince of Crime takes a monumental effort, this book delivers on all fronts. The aesthetic is dark, like, an oil spill in a public pool dark. The delivery is on point and razor-edged.
We literally get to watch The Joker’s grandest scheme play out in front of us. Batman Who Laughs jumps off with The Joker in the act of traumatizing all of Gotham. Not the usual trite or cliché musing, but truly damaging the city’s psyche. Batman is incapacitated, helplessly watching as Joker kills the parents of only children families. With a gun. At point-blank range. While having them stand in line to be shot!
This is one hell of an issue
Straight savagery! This is ‘the joke that goes too far’. The one that pushes Batman to take Joker’s life, and in a beautiful twist infects Batman with extra potent Joker toxin. It all hits the fan after that, and Bruce just racks up all the bodies. All of them. Gotham denizens, Justice Leaguers, errbody getting this work. Batman Who Laughs turns the known mythos on its head and spins it.
There is a synchronized effort by the staff to create a blended Batman/Joker presentation. Lead artist Riley Rossmo blesses us with an awesome BTAS-inspired Joker and more stylized mouths than you can shake a stick at. The cover art is a gaggle of evil Robins on leashes, held by Batman! If Bruce had a record deal with Ruff Ryders, this would be his XXL cover. Props to Jason Fabok and Brad Anderson for that nightmare fodder.
Batman Who Laughs serves up a salient story supported by great visuals! Ivan Plascencia’s colors jump off the page, and the panels are so cleverly placed that Rossmo deserves an award off the bat. The use of dialogue to move this plot forward hinged heavily on the lettering and Tom Napolitano handled that masterfully.
9 pieces of Black Kryptonite out of 10
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