BY KELLY CONABOY |
Kelly's Curated Internet: 'Broad City,' Bill Murray & the Breakfast Rebels
Also: a human version of Marge Simpson that will haunt your dreams.
Wow, the end of March! The end of March and we're all still huddled under blankets in our apartments, much too cold to even consider leaving the warmth of our computers. Luckily, we have a lot to keep us company this week: Facebook bought Oculus Rift, whatever that means; we reached the 30th anniversary of the day the Breakfast Club had Breakfast Detention together; Michael Bay introduced us to much larger turtles than we're used to; and much more!
- The trailer for the Michael Bay-produced reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released this week, and the updated Turtles — images of whom have been, until this point, fiercely protected — are, uh, much bigger than they used to be! Which was already, if you remember, much bigger than the size of a normal turtle!
- On Monday, BuzzFeed and confession-sharing app Whisper announced their new partnership, which will give Buzzfeed access to Whisper's content for possible articles. Jason Koebler, for Motherboard, worries that this is a step toward cutting actual human curators and writers out of the viral information-sharing equation altogether.
- "In the music business, Napster’s vision eventually became a reality. Today, with services like Spotify and Rdio, you can pay a monthly fee to listen to whatever you want, whenever you want. But in the movie and TV business, such a glorious future isn’t in the offing anytime soon." Farhad Manjoo, for The New York Times, on why streaming movie and television sites leave so much to be desired (and why that will be continue to be the case for the foreseeable future).
- You can listen to Mica Levi's full, unnerving score for Jonathan Glazer's marvelous looking Under the Skin over at Pitchfork.
- The Breakfast Club had detention 30 years ago this past Saturday. Maybe that will be a trivia question you'll be able to answer now, someday? "When did the Breakfast Club have detention?" "30 years ago from the day I saw that blog post!"
- I turn off my brain whenever I hear anyone talking about Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift, because it is somehow at once too scary and too boring for my sensibilities, but would you like to learn about it? By all means, learn about it!
- Speaking of, the acquisition caused Minecraft creator Markus Persson to back out of plans for a possible Oculus version of the game:
We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.
— Markus Persson (@notch) March 25, 2014
- While you're at it, you should peruse Sam Biddle's post-Rift comparison study, "Which Is More Terrifying: Google or Facebook?"
- Following the announcement of producer Robert Simonds’ direct distribution deal with the four largest movie theater chains in North America (AMC, Carmike, Cinemark, and Regal), Variety muses over what this sort of deal may mean for indie film producers and distributors.
- "He was a lucky man in every way." Actor James Rebhorn passed away earlier this week and wrote his own incredibly touching obituary, which you can read at his New Jersey church's website.
- Have a bunch of time that you need to quickly waste? "The Office Time Machine" is an exhaustive collection of the pop culture references seen on The Office, categorized by year.
- The Internet got word this week that the incredible and incredibly influential TV criticism blog Television Without Pity will be closing down, and its archives will be, very unfortunately, taken offline.
- "'New to New York. New shoes. There’s a connection there,' he said. He sipped the dregs of his juice and smiled. I thought it'd be the last time I ever saw him." Jen Choi, on the times her life has entwined with Bill Murray's.
- Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer's Broad City concluded its first excellent season on Comedy Central this week. Read about why it was so good, and watch it if you haven't! (And look at this New Yorker cartoon that mentions it!)
- And finally, here is a video of a human woman being turned into a terrifying human woman version of Marge Simpson. Okay, byeeee!