behind

14 Nov

The Queen’s Gambit: The Real History Behind Beth’s Green Pills

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This article contains spoilers for The Queen’s Gambit. Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit dramatizes the unprecedented rise of (fictional) chess prodigy Elizabeth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) through the grandmaster ranks of chess champions in the 1950s and ‘60s. But as with other prestige television series, there is a dark side to this savant’s talents: While she possesses a natural affinity for complex and creative chess moves, Beth is also constrained by her growing drug addiction, which she believes allows her to prevail in so many harrowing chess matches.  Even before she touches a pawn for the first time, these little green tranquilizer…

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10 Nov

Andrew Scott Reveals His Dark Materials’ Chilling Behind-the-Scenes Secret: Show Tunes

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His Dark Materials is the Dune of the TV world, which is to say: extremely selfish with its cast. As if His Dark Materials didn’t already have more than its fair share of charismatic talent in Season 1, they’ve gone ahead and added Andrew Scott to Season 2 of the epic fantasy series as Colonel John Parry. (Scott’s Fleabag boss and co-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge will be voicing his character’s daemon, which, again: let other shows have some talent, would you?) I jest, of course. It’s been one of 2020’s few joys to see the second season of this show come…

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06 Nov

Link Tank: The Stories Behind 11 Iconic TV Show Theme Songs

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From The Sopranos to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, check out the stories behind the iconic theme songs for these eleven shows. “Whether it’s a wordy epic that chronicles the show’s backstory or an orchestral piece that lends itself to lyrical parody, a good theme song can augment a TV show’s popularity and even sometimes outlive it. But there’s no clear path to creating—or even just choosing—the perfect track.” Read more at Mental Floss. Sam Wilson may still be able to suit up as Captain America in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. “At the end of Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame,…

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04 Nov

The Behind the Scenes Casting Drama That Reshaped Forgetting Sarah Marshall

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Judd Apatow-produced rom-com Forgetting Sarah Marshall is beloved by many, and managed to create so many incredible comedy moments with a cast who seemed happy to take a leap of faith with writer and star Jason Segel in that particular stage of their careers. Along with Segel, director Nicholas Stoller cast Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Jason Bateman and more in the tale of a jilted boyfriend who is struggling to get over his famous ex, but Segel had written the special part of insufferable rock star Aldous Snow for his close friend Charlie Hunnam,…

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24 Oct

Animal Kingdom: Disney+ Takes Viewers Behind The Scenes of The Park

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Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida, has a gigantic zoo covering 580 acres called Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, a new series on Disney+, gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the adventures of caring for the over 5000 animals at the park. With over 300 species, the park hosts a small army of staff to care for the animals. Den of Geek had the opportunity to talk to a couple of those caregivers to get an idea of what viewers will see on the show and what Disney Magic brings to the zoo experience. “The…

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22 Oct

Rebecca: Leaving Hitchcock Behind for Something Darker

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This article contains spoilers for the film and book versions of Rebecca. Leave it to Ben Wheatley to remake Alfred Hitchcock. The younger British filmmaking iconoclast has been nothing if not provocative with his filmography so far, which includes the disturbing horror-crime hybrid Kill List (2011), the serial killer black comedy Sightseers (2012), the psychedelic, very weird A Field in England (2014), and the unsettling dystopian nightmare, High-Rise (2015). But with Rebecca he takes on not just a classic Hitchcock film, but the master’s sole Best Picture winner. Why not, right? We’re being facetious, of course. Wheatley’s version of Rebecca…

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18 Oct

Behind the Scenes on Inside No. 9’s Most Terrifying Episode

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Warning: contains spoilers for Inside No. 9 ‘The Harrowing’ “It was ‘WTF!? Oh my God! I’m not going to sleep! Why did you do that to me?!’” The moment the credits rolled on Inside No. 9’s series one finale ‘The Harrowing’, director David Kerr was deluged with messages. “People were very responsive,” he laughs. “We’d gone for something bold that was properly horrible and would haunt them. There’s not much out there that scares a horror fan because they’ve seen it all so many times. That’s the challenge. You want to hit people with a visceral, palpable gut punch that they…

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14 Oct

The Boys Season 2 Unveils the Daddy Issues Behind the Toxic Masculinity

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This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 2. Most male monsters in fiction are made by women. Or, at least, it’s women who tend to get the disproportionate share of the blame when their creations turn out to be significantly less than civilized (perhaps because, historically, most of them were written by men). The most famous examples of murderer-moulding mothers are probably Norma Bates, Cersei Lannister, Olivia Soprano and, of course, Mrs. McAllister (momma raised a real little trap-setting psycho there). In real life, too, serial killers like Ed Kemper, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Dennis Nilsen were all…

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14 Oct

Lake Mungo: the Lingering Mystery Behind One of Australia’s Scariest Horror Films

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Contains spoilers for the movie Lake Mungo. “We were thinking it’d be nice if we could make a film that was kind of a curiosity, but if you saw it years from now you wouldn’t know anything about where it came from.” This quote from a 2009 interview with Lake Mungo director Joel Anderson proved to be strangely prescient. Anderson was speaking ahead of the film’s screening at the Brisbane Film Festival – the movie had already premiered at the Sydney Film Festival, played South by Southwest in the US, and would go on to tour several more festivals before…

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03 Oct

Ratched: The Real History Behind the Show’s Medical Procedures

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This Ratched article contains spoilers. Ken Kesey’s classic 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has received a fashionable yet twisted facelift in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series, Ratched. With this Sarah Paulson-starring series, the American Horror Story creator follows through on his reputation of gruesome twists and jaw-dropping turns. Ratched forms an interpretation of Nurse Ratched from Kesey’s novel, giving her a backstory that features a clandestine mission and the creation of a monster. Mildred Ratched’s glamorous exterior along with her paradoxical doting behavior towards patients belies her dark side. Nurse Ratched rules the hospital with an iron fist…

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16 Sep

The Real Martial Arts Behind Cobra Kai and The Karate Kid

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When The Karate Kid premiered in 1984, new students rushed to enroll in Karate Dojos across the nation. However, for anyone aspiring to learn the true ways of Miyagi-Do—or Cobra Kai as the case may be—Dojos weren’t propounding deck sanding and fence painting as part of their curriculum. There are many different styles of Karate. Fans wondered which style Daniel and Johnny were really doing. Now that Netflix has picked up Cobra Kai from YouTube Red, a whole new crop of fans has discovered the show and the question has come up again: What type of Karate do they practice…

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28 Aug

The Garden Left Behind

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The Garden Left Behind traces the relationship between Tina, a young Mexican trans woman, and Eliana, her grandmother, as they navigate Tina's transition and struggle to build a life for themselves as undocumented immigrants in New York City.Rated: Not RatedRelease Date: Aug 28, 2020

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20 Aug

Darkman’s Behind-the-Scenes Struggles with Universal Revealed by Filmmakers

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A groundbreaking entry in the superhero cinema genre, 1990’s Darkman is celebrating its 30th anniversary. While the dark horse hit of a film served as a mainstream breakthrough for Evil Dead horror maestro Sam Raimi and a key headlining gig for star Liam Neeson, it was also the culmination of much behind-the-scenes friction between studio Universal and the filmmakers, who, on this occasion, shed some intriguing light on the experience. Members of the cast and crew of Darkman participated in an oral history interview with THR commemorating the film’s big 3-0; a conversation that proved revelatory regarding a fateful act…

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19 Aug

Halo Infinite Report Details Troubling Behind the Scenes Development

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A new report from Thurott reveals new details of what has been described as Halo Infinite‘s “turbulent” development process. The report cites “multiple people familiar with the development efforts behind 343” who help outline how Halo Infinite‘s development troubles seemingly date back to the earliest days of the project. While some suspected that Halo Infinite may be in some trouble when it was announced that the game’s original creative director, Tim Longo, left the company last year, this report suggests that Long’s decision to leave was really just the result of various issues that had been happening behind the scenes…

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24 Jul

Sherlock 10th Anniversary: Behind the Scenes Set Secrets

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Two chairs. A fireplace. 17 steps leading up from the ground floor. On the mantelpiece, letters pierced by a knife, cigars hidden in a coal scuttle and tobacco concealed inside the toe of a Persian slipper… Sir Arthur Conan Doyle provided a few compass points from which set designers on screen adaptations of his Sherlock Holmes stories could work when creating their 221B Baker Street. The rest takes imagination, artistry, a storyteller’s eye and , in the case of BBC One’s Sherlock, the odd bit of mischief. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sherlock’s arrival on the BBC, production designer…

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21 Jul

Tenet: Could Christopher Nolan’s Movie Leave the U.S. Behind?

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Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is delayed. Again. In a media narrative that’s depressingly familiar during the coronavirus pandemic, a major blockbuster was forced to move once more when Warner Bros. pushed Tenet off its scheduled Aug. 12 release to dates unknown. This was, of course, the responsible choice due to the recent skyrocketing of COVID-19 infection rates in the United States. But it also marks the third time Nolan and WB were thwarted in reviving the theatrical moviegoing experience. Yet despite the seeming inevitability of major studios abandoning movie theaters for potentially the rest of 2020, Warner Bros. has signaled it…

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16 Jul

Dr DisRespect Says He Still Doesn’t Know Reason Behind Twitch Ban

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Three weeks after being banned from Twitch, Guy Beahm, who is better known as the uber-popular streamer Dr DisRespect, is finally speaking out about his suspension. Unfortunately, the reasons behind the Twitch ban, the most high-profile suspension of a streamer ever by the service, remain unknown. In his first interview since the ban, Beahm explained that he still doesn’t know why he was kicked off Twitch. “I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety,” Beahm told TheWashington Post. “You know, my wife and I both, this is our livelihood. We worked really hard to get to this point.…

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10 Jul

The Real UFO Influences Behind Skyman

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Daniel Myrick, the co-director and writer of the 1999 indie classic, The Blair Witch Project, has a new fictional documentary dealing with a subject he says he has a passion for, alien abduction. It’s called Skyman and it’s available on VOD and playing in drive-in theaters now. “I’ve always been fascinated with the subject matter,” Myrick tells Den of Geek. “When I was growing up in the late seventies and early eighties, everything from UFOs to Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Bermuda Triangle, and the zeitgeists in those days, and sort of inspired me as a preteen to kind of start…

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01 Jul

Lost: Damon Lindelof Reveals Behind the Scenes Battles With Network

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Lost showrunner Damon Lindelof took a lot of flack from both critics and fans of the mystery drama series during its six seasons on the air, culminating in an all-out online rage-a-thon after it bowed in 2010 with a divisive finale. Generally, it’s felt the screenwriter has ‘redeemed’ himself over the last six years on TV, turning in three acclaimed seasons of The Leftovers with Tom Perrotta, and one hell of a spectacular spin on Watchmen during the final months of 2019. Now that he’s got some perspective, it seems it’s a little easier for Lindelof to look back on…

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29 May

UFO Mysteries: Who Are The Key Figures Behind The Pentagon Release?

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This article is presented by: Talk of the “unidentified” was once relegated to backchannels, joked about in tabloids, and kept shrouded in mystery by government agencies. But recently the UFO phenomenon has come to the forefront of national news. Headlines are ablaze with news about three UFO videos released by the U.S. Navy. While it is true that these videos have been made available for download by the Department of Defense (DOD), the videos themselves began making waves back in 2017. One of them has been online since 2007. However, perhaps more surprisingly, the Navy admitted that the objects in…

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