Recap August 5 - 9
Yeah, what he said. Well, another week’s gone by and we’ve got some more fascinating news to share with all of you!
Apple ASMR? More Like ASSMR!
Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave. We found out this week that Apple decided to jump on the ASMR bandwagon and unleash three atrocious videos onto its YouTube channel as part of their “Shot on iPhone” series of commercials. I do not use the term atrocity lightly here, what an absolute misfire from the marketing department. As you can tell, I just plain don’t get down with ASMR videos of any kind, but I can at least respect an individual who is savvy enough to make their living off of nothing more than scraping a sponge against a microphone. It’s weird, but hey, you make that guap any way you can. Now when a company hops on the hype train and tries capitalizing on a niche, I get a little pissy. I don’t think I would normally even be this offended by something like this, but if you look back at Apple’s fantastic advertising history, Jesus Christ was this a miss. We’re talking about a company who used to be trend setters, not followers. Just think back to the mid-2000’s iPod commercials, the ones with silhouettes dancing against a brightly colored background. Those commercials were so iconic that even your great-grandmother knew what an iPod was! To go from such classic advertisements to…this? Something about that doesn’t sit too well me. If you want to subject yourself to a very weird time, we’ve embedded the videos below. For the love of god Tim Cook, stop listening to Jony Ive and start listening to your gut.
Kool-aid’s ghoul-aid pop rocks!
Wait, what?! While scrolling through Instagram earlier this week, we noticed that Matt from Dinosaur Dracula broke some insane, Halloween Junk Food news - Kool-Aid is blessing us with brand new, Ghoul-Aid flavored popping candy! This is big win for a lot of us long time fans of both Halloween and sugar. Talk about something completely out of left field, but at the same time, something that makes SO much sense. I’m honestly surprised that it took this long for this product to come to fruition. Looking at the package, I can’t believe it wasn’t something something that was conjured up 25 years ago! Aside from the obvious tie-ins like freeze-pops, the next logical expansion for the Kool-Aid Man is the candy realm, and I can’t picture a candy better suited for the Kool-Aid flavor palette than Pop-Rocks. Between these and Zombie Skittles, Halloween 2019 is shaping up to be one hell of a year!
James Earl Jones signs on for Coming to America 2… Also There’s Going to be a Coming To America 2!
A random actor’s depiction of my face upon hearing this news
I saw a headline about James Earl Jones agreeing to reprise his role as King Jaffe in an upcoming sequel to the hit 1988 comedy Coming to America, Coming 2 America (yeah they went there), and I had to stop and process it for a second. The headline implied to me that this was just a known thing, Coming 2 America was on the way and I’ve just had my head buried in the sand this whole time… Well apparently I have since it had been announced back in 2017! Let me just say that Coming to America has always been my personal favorite Eddie Murphy movie (Trading Places is a very close second) since I first saw the made for cable version back in the day. I’ve watched it dozens of times and it still manages to not get old for me. Now I’m usually wary of these late-game sequels, but I’m feeling wishfully optimistic about this one. I haven’t heard much, obviously, but here’s what I was able to find out in the short time before writing this: The writers of the first film have been attached to the project, and most of the original cast is expected to reprise their roles including: Arsenio Hall, Shari Headley, John Amos, Paul Bates and (of course) James Earl Jones. Additional confirmed cast members include Leslie Jones, Rick Ross, and Wesley (SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY) Snipes. Here’s looking forward to seeing Zamunda in the 21st century!
Artist’s rendering of Zamunda in 2019
Irregarding BoysFeed
So the idea behind these BoysFeed segments is a simple one. Have you ever seen an article with a click bait title, then you start reading it only to find yourself constantly saying “Yeah, no shit.” and realizing half way through that it isn’t really an article? Instead of being informed or entertained it ends up being a filler piece who’s contents should be obvious to pretty much anyone who cares? Well BoysFeed is a segment to chronicle these as we find them and provide a little response as well. So without further ado…
BoysFeed Presents: Guillermo del Toro Says He's Done With Comic Book Movies
The reason this article is a big “Yeah, no shit." is simply because it should be obvious to any person who has followed Guillermo del Toro’s career that he hasn’t made a superhero film in over a decade, even then his “superhero” movies were more dark fantasy films (Hellboy1+2, and Blade 2), which are usually his bread and butter. The last one he did was Hellboy 2: The Golden Army back in 2008. Another reason this should be obvious is that Guillermo has a history of being signed on for or pitching projects involving major properties, being denied the opportunity to make said projects, and then going off and doing his own thing instead, which usually ends up being great anyway. Much respect there, by the way. Since superhero films are typically big budget moneymaking properties for these studios, they probably don’t allow for much wiggle room when it comes to creative control, taking risks, or just trying something different. All of this seems stand in direct conflict to Guillermo del Toro’s style. Anyway you can read the article by clicking here or on the title, but really you’re just gonna get like half way through and be thinking “Duh” the whole time.