Latest news with #DumbStarbucks
Forbes
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal is One of Many Genre-Defying Projects.
Nathan Fielder outside of his full-scale replica of Brooklyn's Alligator Lounge bar from The ... More Rehearsal on April 14, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO) Sometimes, art imitates life. And sometimes life is a movie. One that imitates life, which imitates art. In season two of HBO's hit comedy series The Rehearsal, comedian and performance artist Nathan Fielder blurs life, art, and TV. He uses his network resources to go big, examining plane crashes and how pilots communicate in the cockpit. Fielder, in typical fashion, takes hair brained ideas to the extreme. Often small details are inflated to comedic levels but prove tangential to the episode. The series, like his Comedy Central series Nathan For You, features Fielder playing a version of himself, working with real people and actors in a kaleidoscopic genre-bending performance art that might be described as quasi-investigative comedic documentary. Alexandra Tanner at The Point describes The Rehearsal: Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder of the Comedy Central show "Nathan For You" comes forward as the ... More brainchild of "Dumb Starbucks," a parody store that resembles a Starbucks with a green awning and mermaid logo, but with the word "Dumb" attached above the Starbucks sign. Starbucks Coffee spokeswoman, Laurel Harper says the store is not affiliated with Starbucks and, despite the humor, the store cannot use the Starbucks name. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) The art critic Dean Kissick in a column for Spike Art Magazine tries to make sense of the life-and-art collapse, As the world around us gets weirder, reality and fiction get ever closer. Here are eight more movies (and one book) for anyone interested in movies that incorporate polymathic combinations of art, film, fiction, and non-fiction. Secret Mall Apartment (2024), dir. Jeremy Workman In 2003, a group of eight artists in Providence, Rhode Island snuck into the local mall and set up a clandestine apartment inside an overlooked gap in the building's architecture. Led by artists Michael Townsend and Adriana Valdez Young, the crew spent four years hanging out in their clubhouse, right under the noses of mall security. With a small hidden camera, they documented their long-term art performance, using the quirks of the mall architecture to expand their joke into something deeply serious. Is it life or art? And is this a documentary or just a snapshot of their time spent deep within the 'nowhere space' of the mall? Pee Wee as Himself (2025), dir. Matt Wolf As a kid growing up, I didn't understand that Pee Wee Herman was played by Paul Reubens. The network TV show Pee Wee's Playhouse and the movie Pee Wee's Big Adventure both loomed large, but Paul Reubens, the comedian and artist behind the show, was a mystery. Reubens had purposely foregrounded his alter ego Pee Wee and hid himself from the public spotlight, making appearances on TV shows like The Tonight Show with David Letterman as the character. Pee Wee as Himself is an intimate portrait of Reubens, and sheds light on the man behind the character. The documentary draws on 40 hours of interviews with Reubens, who initiated the documentary while secretly battling cancer. It traces his start growing up in Sarasota, Florida around the circus performers of the The Ringling Brothers, which was headquartered there. It then shows the influence of Reubens's time in art school at CalArts and his experience with the improv group The Groundlings, where he worked with comedians such as Phil Hartman. The character of Pee Wee was an amalgamation of 1950s kids shows like The Shari Lewis Show and the the freneticism of the 1980s LA punk scene. All were swirled together to take performance and pop art into the mainstream in what Reubens described as 'live action cartoons.' Citizen Wiener (2024), dir. Daniel Robbins When the film industry (and everything else) shut down in 2020, actor Zack Wiener was living with his mom on New York City's Upper West Side. He decided to make a movie by running for city council, taking on Manhattan political stalwart Gale Brewer. With a real campaign staff of actors and his friends, he sets out on an extended Jackass-like adventure that is simultaneously sincere and completely ridiculous. (2025), dir. Peter Vack This fictional tale collapses the internet, theater, and the movie screen into a dystopian world where, with the creation of a world blurring online and offline, the three merge into a secret fourth thing. Rachel (Betsey Brown) is trapped in an advertising firm's experiment for which she is made to give user feedback about Mommy 6.0, a pop star. The film has been surrounded by controversy, as a group of New York's downtown art crowd gathered at the Daryl Roth Theatre to film several scenes, which most poignantly comment on what it means to be online today with pressures from both commercial forces and our peers. Videoheaven (2025), dir. Alex Ross Perry Taking the form of an academic essay, Alex Ross Perry's encyclopedic Videoheaven tells the story of the video store in popular culture. Rather than rely on simple nostalgia, the three-hour epic collage uses clips from mainstream and cult films to portray video stores as a third space and cultural touchpoint—sometimes positively, and sometimes less so. Like many academic essays, it can be at times overwhelming to follow both Maya Hawke's dense narration and the action in the associated clips. However, the movie ultimately tells a beautiful story of the video store's complex evolution from an underground portal to new worlds, to ubiquitous sterile corporate space, to zombified ruin. Videoheaven will be showing July 2-5 at IFC Center in New York, with wide release later this year. The Code (2025), dir. Eugene Kotlyarenko The Code is director Eugene Kotlyarenko's latest project. Set in the surreality of the Covid-19 pandemic, it utilizes a toolbelt of different cameras–from cell phones to spy sunglasses to surveillance cams–to construct a kaleidoscopic film. Celine (Dasha Nekrasova) and Jay (Peter Vack) are trying to repair their relationship. All the while, Celine makes a movie about it. Set in a rental house in the desert, the film weaves traditional movie shots, security cameras, phone cameras, screen recordings, and handheld 'documentary' footage, building a unique visual language that mirrors the layered story being told. Pavements (2024), dir. Alex Ross Perry Is it a documentary, a biopic, or a musical? And is it about music history, a reunion tour, or an exhibition? Yes. Alex Ross Perry's chaotic dive into the indie band Pavement follows them on a 2022 reunion tour and traces their history alongside their late spike in popularity. Instead of opting for the documentary format's neat combination of past and filming of the present, Perry serves up a maximalism that plays with reality, taking viewers through a chaotic reconstruction of Pavement's rise and fall via a Broadway style musical and biopic with Hollywood actors. For fans of the band, it is a nostalgic journey across the career of the genre-defining slacker rock band which made a deep impression on their generation. For those unfamiliar with Pavement, it is a wild, multi-angled glimpse of that angst-ridden era of rock music: the 1990s. It will be available for streaming on July 11 via Mubi. Bonus Book: Everything is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop (2025) by J. Hoberman J. Hoberman's expansive history of 1960s New York shows the range of creative experimentation and influence of the period. From artists Yayoi Kusama and Andy Warhol, to comedian Lenny Bruce and jazz musician Ornette Coleman, the explosion of creative output was tied directly to the social proximity of the neighborhoods—beginning with the Beats of the 1950s, and moving through Fluxus art movement, underground film, and everything in between. As cultural critic Mike Davis says on the book's jacket, 'J Hoberman is simply the best historian of that hallucinatory decade when politics imitated celluloid and movies invaded reality.' The Rehearsal wouldn't be possible without it.
The Guardian
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ruben Amorim and another painful episode of shock-and-awe tactics
In the often excruciating comedy mockumentary series Nathan For You, the show's creator, Nathan Fielder, tries to boost small businesses with his outlandish and ill-advised strategies. Highlights include instructing a mechanic to complete a polygraph test with each estimate, and helping a troubled mall Santa to sell discount photos at the height of summer. In the most memorable episode, 'Dumb Starbucks', Fielder's copyright-flouting rebrand of a local coffee shop actually becomes a viral hit. In Nathan For You, the ideas aren't necessarily bad, they're just … different. And if you're wondering why we're talking about this, it's because Ruben Amorim's Manchester United tenure is starting to feel like a particularly painful episode. Like the Nathan Fielder we see on screen, Amorim is an awkward character to pin down; diminutive and unassuming, he also appears entirely comfortable saying outrageous and damaging things. Seventy-seven days into a new, high-profile job he was practically forced to take, Amorim's strategy appears to be a simple one: rebuild Manchester United's status and self-worth by constantly pointing out how bad their players are, and how miserable his job is. Barely a week after arriving at Old Trafford, Amorim admitted it would take longer than his 2.5-year contract to get United winning a title – and he celebrated a three-game unbeaten start by vowing his team 'will be found out in some games'. Look, he wasn't wrong, was he? After the bold decision to field Casemiro and Christian Eriksen at the heart of an industrious 3-4-3 setup in defeat by Newcastle, Amorim gave his players a shot in the arm by telling them they were bad enough to be relegated. 'Our club needs a shock and we have to understand that,' he trilled. That didn't seem to get the message across, so Amorim spelled it out in simpler terms. 'We are the worst team maybe in the history of Manchester United,' he cheered after the home defeat to Brighton. 'Everybody here is underperforming.' Nobody is underperforming quite like Marcus Rashford, though. Amorim's approach to reviving the homegrown hero's drifting career has been interesting. A quiet word, an arm around the shoulder, or the kind of relentless public castigation that is probably quite triggering for Luke Shaw? Rashford was again left out of the squad for Sunday's 1-0 win at Fulham, with Amorim explaining that he would rather put goalkeeping coach Jorge Vital, actually 63, on the bench than 'a player that doesn't give the maximum every day,' naming Rashford by not naming him. United's penny-pinching industrialist overlord, Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is no stranger to dishing out some choice words. He doesn't care if you're Dan Ashworth, Sir Ben Ainslie or 250 modestly remunerated employees with bills to pay; if he doesn't really understand or care what it is you do, you're going through the Big Door Marked Do One, pronto. Still, even Big Sir Jim might baulk at the ongoing barrage of negativity his new head coach is directing at all concerned. Stranger still, Amorim's latest post-game beatdown – where he also quipped that his two months at United have made him feel 10 years older – came after a half-decent performance at Craven Cottage, albeit in a game played with an Antiques Roadshow level of intensity. Amorim's treatment of Rashford might just be his best way of ensuring there is a warm body he can bundle through Big Sir Jim's aforementioned Big Door before he is forced through it himself. Or maybe Amorim's shock-and-awe strategy, like Nathan Fielder's worst ideas, might actually end up working. On an emotional and tactical level it is impossible to salvage something positive from this. We were outclassed inside and outside. We didn't compete at the level that the players have. I am concerned about the feelings of our fans, and they need to know that we are with them' – Carlos Corberán gets that Gary Neville feeling, after watching Barcelona stick seven past Valencia. Listen up! It's Robyn Cowen, Barry Glendenning and the Football Weekly crew with the latest podcast looking back at the weekend that was. There are post-match interviews that stand out for one reason or another, and then there stands the utter lack of class that came over Ruben Amorim during his victorious post-match demonstration of how to guarantee with gusto that he will be meeting with United's transfer negotiation team bright and early Monday morning. 'Hi Ruben, we're actually trying to SELL Marcus on FOR VALUE and so if you could please not SLAG HIM OFF in public again that would be super great'' – Daniel Stauss. Am I the only one who had a good laugh at Iliman Ndiaye's seagull celebration when he scored? It shows a certain creativity which is what the game is crying out for these days. I was going to say that it Brightoned my day. But then at the same time this kind of thing does pose a few problems. How does one imitate a toffee, a cannon, a hammer? And what happens if QPR ever get back into the Premier League?' – Stephen Rankin. Send letters to Today's winners of our letter o' the day are … Stephen Rankin, who wins a copy of Football And How To Survive It, by Pat Nevin. You can buy a copy from Big Website's bookshop. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here. You've got to have a special kind of confidence or be a special sort of silly to celebrate early in professional sport. Tiger Woods' walk-off putt in the 2019 Presidents Cup and Kim Si-woo's similar antics last year, are the stuff of golfing infamy. But get it wrong, and celebrating early can also come back to bite you in the behind. Just ask Spanish race walker Laura García-Caro. So hats off to Yoane Wissa, who had just watched teammate Bryan Mbeumo miss a penalty at Palace, only for the spot-kick to be retaken for encroachment. So confident was Wissa that Mbeumo would dispatch the second penalty that the DR Congo international set off, jubilantly running arms aloft towards the Brentford fans, seconds before it was actually taken. When asked about Wissa's early celebration, Mbeumo explained it was down to their pair's friendship 'on and off the pitch'. The Cameroon forward, who has scored all 10 penalties in English football since taking his first in 2021, added: 'If one of us scores, then we are really happy for the other'. The PGMOL has said it is appalled by the 'abhorrent abuse', including death threats, Michael Oliver and his family received after his controversial decision to send off Arsenal's Myles Lewis-Skelly. 'The police are aware, and a number of investigations have commenced,' read a statement. Radja Nainggolan, who came out of retirement last week to sign for second-tier Lokeren in Belgium, has been arrested as part of an investigation into cocaine trafficking. 'The investigation concerns alleged facts of importation of cocaine from South America to Europe, via the port of Antwerp, and its redistribution in Belgium,' the Brussels prosecutor's office announced. Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been told by a fans' group that now is 'the worst possible time' to increase ticket prices amid the club's struggles on the pitch. He was also told some other choice things via the medium of blunt chants from the away end at Fulham on Sunday night. Meanwhile, the club have welcomed the announcement of government support for the project to regenerate the area around Old Trafford. 'There is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a landmark project,' cheered club suit Omar Berrada. Big Ange Postecoglou has admitted his Tottenham future is out of his hands, mate. 'Who knows?' the Australian replied after the flamin' 2-1 home defeat by Leicester. 'I have a group of staff that is really committed,' he added. 'I focus on that'. Morgan Whittaker has responded to Miron Muslic after the Plymouth head coach claimed the 24-year-old 'did not show up' in time to be selected for Argyle's 5-0 defeat to Burnley on Wednesday. Whittaker, who signed for Middlesbrough on Friday in a record sale for Plymouth, said: 'The backlash I have received due to the manager's post-match interview has been devastating to me', while clarifying the situation. 'I never refused to play against Burnley. It was agreed by myself and the manager that due to the bids on the table from both Burnley and Middlesbrough, I would not be up for selection'. And Newcastle's Miguel Almirón, formerly of Atlanta United, will almost certainly become Atlanta United's Miguel Almirón, formerly of Newcastle, after the Magpies accepted a bid of £9.5m for the 30-year-old. Count 'em! Six WSL talking points, including the question of whether Chelsea can become Invincibles. Oh, and there's 10 Premier League talking points for your reading pleasure, too. The tragic death of Brentford's technical director Rob Rowan at 28 in 2018 shocked the club and prompted them to help set up a thriving heart health charity. Ed Aarons has more. Jonathan Liew questions Arsenal's WSL ambitions and whether it is really the 'small details' that are leaving them adrift of Chelsea. Nicky Bandini on the Hollywood story of Como, Cesc Fàbregas, movie stars, Dennis Wise and nearly €80m in transfer fees. St Pauli and Hamburg is quite the departure from Lake Como, but no less enthralling. Here's Andy Brassell on why the club's latest win could help them keep a seat at Germany's top table. 'Maybe Eminem was right. You do only get one shot'. It's Barney Ronay on Manchester United and minimalism. And footballers you've heard of, including Chelsea's Christopher Nkunku, and footballers you've almost certainly haven't (Rosenborg's Sverre Nypan) feature in Monday's Rumours. Proof that b@ntz dates back a lot further than we think. Here's Teddy Sheringham winding up David Beckham on the Old Trafford substitutes' bench in April 2001, while Ole Gunnar Solskjær practises that concerned look that we would get to know so well when he eventually took on the impossible job at the club.
