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Our favourite film watched at MIFF this year was Jessica Leski’s joyous Australian-made documentary, I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story. Via Screen Daily:

This isn’t an uncritical look at fandom, however, but an informative, empathetic, engaging and accessible exploration of the role that it has played in the lives of four Australian and American women aged between 16 and 64. And, at a time when the darker side of pop culture worship is all too evident, it offers a welcome reminder of fandom’s cathartic role and positive influence.

The sugary, feel-good messaging crooned by picture-perfect male-fronted bands is just one of the topics Leski explores (many of the biggest hits feature in the film, and will have the documentary’s in-built audience singing along as they’re watching). I Used to Be Normal’s title actually stems from a comment made by the youngest of the film’s subjects, Long Island-based One Direction fan Elif, who cries that her life didn’t always revolve around the British group. Her stereotypical hysterical teen passion leads to viral videos, a growing divide from her non-Directioner friends and the disapproval of her strict Turkish immigrant parents.

In what becomes the documentary’s most candid and illuminating thread, Leski revisits Elif as she matures from an energetic high-schooler to a melancholy young woman. At the beginning of the film she’s devoted to the five stars she calls “the boys” and talks if she knows them personally. By its end, she’s grappling with the harsh truth that pop song-peddled dreams don’t always become a reality, and that idolising a band isn’t the only thing that can hurt.

The documentary draws comparable thoughtful insights out of its other central figures stressing how, as much as boy band devotees can and do unite, they’re each individual fans with their own passions, problems and perspectives. Sydney brand strategist Dara came to a realisation about her sexuality and identity when she became loud and proud about her lingering Take That love as an adult, and her specific affinity for Gary Barlow. San Francisco journalist Sadia’s fondness for the Backstreet Boys provided an outlet for the hormonal stirrings a young Muslim girl couldn’t otherwise indulge. And while Melbourne TV producer Susan can remember the mania when the Beatles came to town in the ‘60s, and has a treasure trove of memorabilia to prove it, she also recalls how the fab four’s tracks helped her weather five decades of ups and downs.

For substance beyond the personal recollections, Dara gives a Boy Band 101 lesson, a task she approaches with the utmost seriousness — whiteboard at the ready and meticulous breakdown of the marketing forces at play in crafting and promoting the ideal group. Elsewhere, Sadia touches upon the nastier side of fandom courtesy of her youthful animosity not only for Backstreet rivals ‘NSYNC, but their followers.

The screening we watched was its last MIFF session, on a Saturday night, and it was sold out. The audience was mostly women of varying ages, many of whom had supported the film’s kickstarter (interesting tidbit from the Q&A: The Backstreet Boys had also given money to the kickstarter!). You could tell who the boyband fans were in the audience by the shrieks. Most bizarre part of the film was, in fact, a clip involving the Backstreet Boys and a cruise: possibly one of the weirdest clips I’ve seen in cinema this year. We were wondering whether the film would touch on boyband culture in other countries, such as the (in)famous kpop phenomenon in Korea, but for a Kickstarted film we supposed it probably wasn’t possible on the budget.

The film’s gone into wide release after MIFF — catch it if you can!

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— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) August 14, 2018

A jump scare ad for the upcoming The Nun film got banned from YouTube after a tweet warning about its effect on people went viral. Via The Independent:

The video – which was intended to promote a film called The Nun – looked innocent enough when it began. It was mostly dark and meant to look like the volume of the phone was being adjusted up and down.

But anyone watching for long enough would see a horrifying jumpscare appear. Now YouTube says that the ad is too scary and that it will not be shown to anyone anymore.

The video first came to many people’s attention because of a tweet warning users that it could come up. The post was shared 140,000 times. YouTube’s content policy explicit outlaws ads that are likely to scare the people who see them.

“We value diversity and respect for others, and we strive to avoid offending or shocking users with ads, websites, or apps that are inappropriate for our ad network,” it reads, and says that it will not allow “promotions that are likely to shock or scare.”

Important thing to note for future preroll ads, especially the unskippable ones. In the meantime, the full-length trailer for the Nun is still out there, which has a jump scare of its own. And we’re sure the publicity over the banned ad was probably worth it for the marketing of the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjGWmTH7C6g

The internet-famous, inestimable Chuck Norris is overshadowed by a truck in this hilarious Toyota ad for the new Toyota Tacoma. Via Motor1:

Chuck Norris and his famous beard star in a new ad for the Toyota Tacoma. With just his autograph on the fender, the midsized pickup takes on Norris’ strengths as an action movie star. The Tacoma is famous for its strength as an off-roader but don’t ever expect it to be tough enough to spawn a meme as famous as Chuck Norris Facts, like “Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.”

Once Norris’ signature is on the truck, the Tacoma can leap into action. It starts out be doing donuts where the tire marks draw a picture of his face. Then, the Toyota starts helping people. First, it saves a park ranger by shooting a rope out of the center of the grille, and Toyota feels the need to display the message, “Magic winch not available.” Later, the pickup saves a falling construction worker and gets a kid’s football out of a tree. When not saving lives, the Tacoma is surfing, dancing, winning at chess, and getting into a street fight.

At the end, we see that Norris’ agent has replaced the actor with the Tacoma. Keep an eye at the background for a Tacoma Thunder poster that cleverly evokes the art from the VHS covers for many of Norris’ action movies in the 1980s.

A behind the scenes video shows the surprising source behind Viserion’s undead roar on Game of Thrones — it was made out of fans’ cries. Via Gizmodo:

Viserion’s resurrection as the icy plaything of the Night King in Game of Thrones’ season seven finale left us with many questions over the last year or so… mainly because we’ve had over a year of waiting for more Thrones, and have even more left to go.

So we’re gonna pass that time by wondering about ice-fire breath, dragon physics, and yes, what bizarre sounds go into making something so impossibly fantastical sound real. Including remembering that Viserion’s undead wails during his horrifying return at the end of the last season included the cries of some extremely drunk Game of Thrones fans.

Thrones sound designer Paula Fairfield already revealed that delightful tidbit to Vanity Fair in the wake of last year’s monumental season finale. But one of the fans that actually helped form the crowd of drunken screaming used for Viserion’s cries — an attendee, alongside Fairfield, of the Burlington Bar in Chicago’s regular Game of Thrones viewing parties — recently spoke to Winter is Coming about how the bizarre scenario came about. And it sounds like it was a lot of fun.

Free Solo is a documentary about free soloist climber Alex Honnold as he attempts to climb the 3,200ft El Capitan in Yosemite National Park… without a rope. Alex Honnold previously appeared in the Atlantic:

Why do you do this?

This refers to climbing thousands of feet in the air, alone, with no harness, rope, or other safety equipment. Few professional climbers have risked “free soloing,” as it is known in the climbing community. Many of them have died trying. But Honnold climbs longer and more difficult routes than anyone previously thought possible—extraterrestrially named routes like Cosmic Debris, Astroman, and Heaven. He also climbs them in record time.

“I get really tired of answering those questions over and over again,” Honnold says. But you can’t blame those who ask the questions: fans, friends, me, any rational, thinking, nonsuicidal human being. These are the obvious questions and also the ultimate ones. Why is it not enough to be one of the best climbers in the world? Why remove the protection? It’s as if Tom Brady declined to use pads and a helmet, or Serena Williams played a Grand Slam tournament in which the penalty for losing a set was beheading.

At its most elite levels, climbing is already staggeringly dangerous. Falling boulders, frayed belay ropes, avalanches, broken carabiners and bolts—Rock and Ice magazine keeps a running tally of accidents. Recent entries include: “Bolt Breaks, Climber Falls to Death”; “Impaled by a Quickdraw”; “Earthquake, Avalanche, 21 Dead on Everest.” Honnold’s free soloing has brought him wealth and international recognition, but neither of these prizes seems to be his central motivation.

Jonah Stands Up is a short film about New Orleans artist Jonah Bascle, in contemplation of his mortality. It’s a profile documentary by Hannah Engelson. Via Short of the Week:

From it’s fly-on-the-wall observational footage to its hand-crafted animation segments, the best thing about Hannah Engelson’s profile documentary Jonah Stands Up is how unpolished it feels. That might seem like backhanded praise, but in an online documentary landscape that is dominated by polish but seriously lacking in heart, Engelson’s film stands out. This definitely isn’t your highly refined profile doc, but, honestly, it’s kind of great that it isn’t. Those sort of shorts are a dime a dozen nowadays: slick, staff-picked, and forgettable.

Rather, Engelson’s film feels all the more human because of its scrappy feel. It’s a terrific, honest exploration of a bright, funny guy, whose life was dominated by the shadow of his impending demise. It doesn’t seem like the stuff made for laughs, but Jonah, as a character, manages to straddle the line: funny and weird one minute, sad and existential the next. It’s the rare film that might make you both laugh out loud and cry over the course of its sixteen minutes.

Operating mostly as a crew of one, Engelson’s small scale production was actually an asset, affording her the opportunity to capture moments that feel intimate and honest (such as the scene in the doctor’s office). We see Jonah at his silliest and most subversive, and also, his most vulnerable. Although it’s often the story setup for a bad Hollywood movie (i.e. what would you do if you knew you were going to die?), the film never leans into the cliché beats you might expect. Rather, it earns its moments. After all, here is a young man who is facing death head on, and the quiet reserve which he handles that is inspiring.

Does a Black Hole make a sound? Scientists working with the Chandra X-ray Observatory may have detected a true occurrence of sound in space. Via Gizmodo:

Everyone knows there is no sound in space. After all, a sound wave requires a medium, like air or water, to travel through, and space is mostly a vacuum. But in studying a nearby galaxy cluster, astronomers detected a true occurrence of sound in space—and in this case, the incredibly deep sound was coming from a black hole.

Scientists working with the Chandra X-ray Observatory were perplexed by the lack of star formation in the Perseus Cluster, a group of galaxies about 250 million light-years from Earth. The gas throughout the cluster was somehow remaining hot, rather than cooling and creating stars. Something was delivering energy to this gas, but what?

In 2002, Chandra scientists found an unexpected clue to this mystery—and it was coming from a super-massive black hole. Somehow, the black hole was emitting sound waves. In the fifth episode of “Sound Mysteries,” we explore the case of the black hole’s song, and how it might be key to understanding some of the largest structures in the universe.

Never heard of Chandra before? Here’s a brief history:

Since its launch on July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory has been NASA’s flagship mission for X-ray astronomy, taking its place in the fleet of “Great Observatories.”

This ad explores how Maneybhanjang, ‘the place where all roads meet’ deep in the Himalayas, is known as the Land of Land Rovers. Via Yahoo News:

Land Rover has visited a remote village in West Bengal that uses a fleet of its classic models for daily transportation.

Maneybhanjang in India, has become so renowned for its usage of the classic off-roader that it has become known as the ‘Land of Land Rovers’.

The village’s fleet dates back as far as 1957. A 31km journey to Sandakphu often undertaken by residents features tough gradients, rocky paths and poor weather. In most other vehicles the route in impassable, however the town’s fleet of Land Rovers manage to complete it on a close to daily basis.

The hilltop village sits at an altitude of 3,636 metres, and overlooks the Himalayas. Land Rover is celebrating 70 years since the original car made its debut at the 1948 Amsterdam Motor Show.

The company has been marking the year with a series of event, parades and restorations – back in January it commenced the restoration of one of three pre-production Land Rovers shown at the 1948 show. After 20 years left languishing in Wales, it spent some time left unfinished in a garden. It was then discovered in its location just outside Solihull, following which the team at Jaguar Land Rover Classic spent several months researching its history before commencing the restoration.

Leading Lady Parts is a short film from the BBC written and directed by Jessica Swale, starring people like Emilia Clarke, for the #TimesUp era. Via the LA Times:

Significant discussions and changes have emerged from the Time’s Up movement, both in the U.S. and in the U.K., but this week brings the first artistic work directly generated by the group’s activism. Rebel Park Productions, a new company led by British actress Gemma Arterton, has released an eight-minute comedic short film titled “Leading Lady Parts,” in which several well-known actresses help address issues of gender inequality.

Written and directed by Jessica Swale and produced by Rebel Park, which is composed of Arterton and producers Jessica Malik and Jessica Parker, “Leading Lady Parts” premiered Monday night on BBC4 in the U.K. and is now available globally on YouTube. The idea to make a creative statement arose after Arterton attended several meetings for Time’s Up earlier this year.

“It was just women in a room, chatting — we felt everything was very serious,” the actress says. “There were really big issues being spoken about. We felt it would be fantastic to do something light-hearted and more comical that got the message out without beating anyone over the head. There was a room filled with all these creative, beautiful women and what better way to make a difference … than all coming together and making something?”

She adds, “It’s one of the best things to come out of the Time’s Up meetings for me personally: Meeting people I would never usually meet. For example, Felicity Jones. I had this meeting in my house and Felicity came and she was the one [who] suggested ‘Why don’t we do something together?’ That was a very heartening thing.”

Blizzard is still the king of cinematics. And yes, surprisingly or not, their still hugely popular, money-printing game World of Warcraft is still running. Via Windows Central:

World of Warcraft’s (WoW) next big expansion “Battle for Azeroth” launches on August 13th (or 14th, depending on territory), and it’s waving goodbye to the previous expansion “Legion” with a bang.

With the demonic Burning Legion defeated, World of Warcraft’s mortal races are once again turning on each other, this time, to fight over an emerging resource known as Azerite, the very lifeblood of the planet itself.

Earlier this week, players were treated to some time-limited story quests that detail the destruction of Teldrassil, the home of one of Warcraft’s most iconic races, the Night Elves. The burning of Teldrassil has proven controversial with players, as it seems to indicate the Horde’s current leader, Sylvanas Windrunner, is slipping into true villain territory. It seems that players aren’t the only ones strained by Sylvanas’ actions.

Blizzard is well-known for its insane cinematics, which are built and produced with industry-leading visuals. This latest one precedes the coming war for the Undercity, the home of the Horde’s Forsaken faction, as the Alliance seek vengeance for the destruction of Teldrassil.

Battle for Azeroth is going to be a huge expansion, adding two new island continents. Kul Tiras is filled with pirates and nautical legends, while Zandalar, is a primal continent filled with deep jungles, gigantic dinosaurs, and oppressive deserts. Battle for Azeroth places a new emphasis on the war between Alliance and Horde players, with new game modes and PvP opportunities, while offering up new PvE threats as the world recovers from the Burning Legion’s invasion.