That’s Entertainment
In 2009, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to sit down for a TV talk show interview, on The Tonight Show. Big deal. First Ladies of the United States have been showing up on TV for years—and on sitcoms to boot.
Meet “Sleepwalker,” the latest thing to roll out of the studio of Tony Matelli. The New York artist created the eerily lifelike sculpture for an exhibition at Wellesley College’s Davis Art Museum. Sleepwalker is more than a little unsettling, clad only in a pair of underwear and with his arms outstretched, as if sleepwalking.
Real life converges with TV, and vice versa.
In 1982, Burger King created a TV first—it became the first fast food chain to directly attack the competition, by name, in a commercial. The ad featured a cute, four-year-old actress, addressing the camera and stating that McDonald’s burgers were “20 percent smaller” than Burger King’s. McDonald’s sued Burger King for defamation and the case was settled out of court. The four-year-old actress—actually made to testify in the suit—went on to a successful career, first on the soap All My Children, and then as the star of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her name: Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Impress (or annoy) your friends at your Oscars party this weekend with these fun facts.
Anaheim has Disneyland. South Dakota has Wall Drug. Þingeyjarsveit has a toilet. You may not have heard of this remote municipality in northeastern Iceland, but its home to one of the world’s most unusual tourist attractions. Those willing to make the trek will find the Krafla Toilet along a desolate stretch of highway that leads to the local Krafla power station.
Some of the most beloved and popular songs were written for and first appeared in movies, even if the movie itself has been completely forgotten (e.g. you probably know “Lullaby of Broadway,” but probably don’t remember Gold Diggers of 1935). The Academy Awards recognizes movie music with the Best Song prize. In retrospect, sometimes the right song wasn’t always given the Oscar. Here are some songs that should have won Oscars.
You’ve seen The LEGO Movie—Now Enjoy These Amazing LEGO Facts.“Everything is awesome” about this article.
The list of individual awards handed out at the Academy Awards can change. Here are several categories at the Oscars that no longer exist.
Trivia about the hall of fame of pop and rock, ahead of the induction ceremony in a few weeks.
Besides hosting The Tonight Show, what do Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon have in common? A failed movie career.
Leno was one of the most popular stand-up comedians in America in the 1970s and ’80s, eventually earning a spot as one of Johnny Carson’s permanent substitutes for when the longtime Tonight Show host took one of his many vacations or contractually obligated days off. Leno took over The Tonight Show for good when Carson retired in 1992. That was a lucky break for Leno—outside of The Tonight Show and standup, his side career as a film actor was dead in the water.
Shirley Temple Black, passed away last night. She was an uplifting light during difficult years in US history. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said during the depression that “as long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” In her memory, we look back at some facts about her life.
Fifty years ago, The Beatles landed in the United States and their fame has never left. The Beatles were the first, the best, or the most at a lot of things, but even within the band, there were singular achievements.
On February 9, 1964, Beatlemania took the U.S. by storm—that’s the night the Beatles played for the first time on the top-rated The Ed Sullivan Show. Here’s a look at that iconic episode, which aired 50 years ago this week.
The Ed Sullivan Show was a variety show, and the Beatles were one of the first times the show had booked a rock n’ roll act. The rest of the show’s running time was filled with the usual array of Sullivan performers: comedians, performances from a Broadway musical, and even a magician.
Why were these Academy Award winners and nominees so unlikely? Because they’d never done any acting before that one big role.
Jennifer Hudson
Hudson auditioned for the 2004 season of American Idol, having spent a few months as a singer in a stage show on a cruise ship. She ultimately finished the reality competition in seventh place, but in 2006 she was cast as Effie in the 2006 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls. Playing a founding member of a ‘60s girl group who’s later kicked out of the act, Hudson was cast for her ability to belt out the show’s signature song, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” It was the first professional acting of Hudson’s life, but the performance won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Musicians often write songs about other musicians—the Commodores’ “Night Shift” is about Jackie Wilson, for example. And sometimes, the musicians who had songs written about them cover those very songs.
• The Barenaked Ladies’ hit “Brian Wilson” isn’t the most respectful song about the songwriter and major creative force behind the Beach Boys. The song references Wilson’s period in the ‘70s when agoraphobia, drug addiction, and obesity kept him housebound. The chorus of “Brian Wilson” is: “lying in bed / just like Brian Wilson did.” Still, Wilson thought “Brian Wilson” was a pretty good song. When he began recording music and touring again in the 1990s, he made the song part of his set list. A version appears on his 2000 live album Live at the Roxy Theatre.
Movies cost a lot of money—
it’s expensive to build sets, pay actors, and occasionally, a single prop.
The purse
The films of Woody Allen earn critical acclaim, but they are usually modest commercial hits, with subsequently small production budgets. Allen’s latest, Blue Jasmine, is about a wealthy woman forced to live modestly after her husband is imprisoned for financial crimes. The one vestige of Jasmine’s (Cate Blanchett) formerly glamorous life is a tan purse.
As Dungeon & Dragons turns 40 years old, here is a look back at
the history of how this game came to be.
ROLLING THE DICE
Gary Gygax (pronounced GHEE-Gax) was an insurance underwriter living in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in the late 1960s. He made his living calculating the probabilities that an individual seeking to buy insurance would become sick or disabled or die, and he used these estimates to set the premiums and payouts on the policies he reviewed. Every policy was like a roll of the dice: If Gygax calculated correctly, the individual received sufficient coverage at a fair price, and the insurance company had a good shot at earning a fair profit. If he was incorrect, either the individual or the insurance company would lose.
A demonym is a word used to describe the residents or natives of a place: New Yorkers, Oregonians, or Japanese, for example. Most demonyms are logical and straightforward, as in those examples. Here are some “irregular demonyms,” that, due to grammar, language, or local preference, are a little bit strange.
