CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Black Mirror Season 5 Out June 5!

The fifth season of Black Mirror is coming out in 3 weeks, on June 5th, on Netflix! The season will consist of (only) 3 episodes but will star bug names such as Miley Cyrus, Anthony Mackie (who will also be appearing in another Netflix show, season 2 of Altered Carbon) and Anthony Scott (from Big Little Lies and Parks and Recreation).

#RF18 T-Shirt NowNot Available!

Nike announced a t-shirt celebrating Roger Federer's 18th grand slam singles win at the 2017 Australian Open but it looks like it now sold out.

I want one of these! Surely these will become a best-seller if they sell these at all the other major tournaments?

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: FFRF Full Page NYT Ad On First Amendment

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a full page ad in tomorrow's New York Times (in honor of Bill of Rights day) with the provocative(?) headline "Don't Let The Religious Right Trump The First Amendment" with a picture of Indiana Governor (and Vice-President Elect) Mike Pence and a portrait of Founding Father (former President) James Madison. The advertisement also includes the statement "The framers of our secular constitution knew the only wall we need is between church and state." MadProfessah is a proud member of FFRF so I am happy to publicize this effort of promoting "free-thinking."

hat/tip to Friendly Atheist

Game of Thrones: Another Teaser For Season 6 (Starts Sunday 4/24 9pm!)

There is a new trailer for the new season (#6) of HBO's Game of Thrones, which starts on Sunday April 24th at 9pm. There are new reports that this season may be the last "full" season of 10 hours, with the producers saying that they think they have about 13 episodes of story left. The television show has progressed further in telling the story in George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Ice and Fire books than the author has. Season 5 ended with some events that happened in Book 5 A Dance with Dragons and Book 6, The Winds of Winter is nowhere to be seen, although Martin claims that he is working hard on it.

I'm very excited that Season 6 is beginning this weekend!

WATCH: Trailer for Stonewall Movie (In Theaters September 25)

The new movie Stonewall depicting the 1969 riots (which are widely viewed as the spark that ignited the modern LGBT rights movement) had its first official trailer released yesterday. The movie is directed by openly gay Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) and written by Jon Robin Baitz. It will open nationwide on September 25, 2015.

Multiple Posters For Christopher Nolan's Interstellar

Longtime followers of this blog will know that I am a big time fanboy of director Christopher Nolan. I named Inception my favorite film of 2010 and greatly enjoyed his take on the Batman mythos. The fact that he has a brand new original film coming out on November 7th starring Matthew McConnaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway and Sr Michael Caine is incredibly exciting to me and I have been blogging about developments such as the release of the first and second official trailers for the film. Interstellar is my most anticipated film release of 2014, followed by David Fincher's Gone Girl (October 3rd) and then probably The Imitation Game (November 21) followed closely by The Theory of Everything (November 7). I'm sure it's just a coincidence these last centered around the lives of heroic mathematicians!

With less than 6 weeks before the film comes out, not one but three new official posters for the film were released late last week! I have posted them above. They all look amazing, to me, although I think I have a slight preference for the one with the water. What about you?

WATCH: Trailer #4 For Season 4 of Game of Thrones

The new season of HBO's Game of Thrones begins in 2 weeks, on Sunday April April 6! Watch the 4th trailer that has been released, or check out the other trailers (Trailer #3, Trailer #2 and Trailer #1).
This season should be great!!

Game Of Thrones Season 4: Trailer #3!

Season 4 of HBO's Game of Thrones starts Sunday April 6th. Here is the third trailer for the season, which I suspect will be the best season of the show, since it is basically covering all the best parts of Book 3, A Storm of Swords (except for the infamous Red Wedding scene, of course).

WATCH: Trailer for Season 4 of Game of Thrones

The new season of HBO's Game of Thrones starts in 10 weeks (on Sunday April 6, 2014) and the first trailer for it is out! Last season, I blogged my thoughts about every episode of Seasoon 3, and I fully intend to do so again for Season 4. Get excited!!

WATCH: 1st Trailer for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar

The first teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar was released yesterday, and already has well over 1 million views on YouTube. The film stars Matthew McConnaughey (Dallas Buyers Club), Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) and Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises, Les Miserables). Sir Michael Caine makes an appearance, as well, of course, as he does in almost all of Nolan's films.

Nolan's Inception was my favorite movie of 2010 and is one of my favorite movies of all time. To say I am looking forward to November 7, 2014 is an understatement!

The short description of Interstellar is "A group of explorers make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage."

Get excited!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Atheists Respond To Times Square Billboard

Last week I blogged about billboards that chide atheists with the message "Thank God You're Wrong." This week comes word that the atheists are responding with their own message, by  advertising in the same spot in New York City's Times Square.

Their ad says "OMG, there is no God!" and features a picture of Julia Sweeney, a former castmember of Saturday Night Live and playwright. It looks like this:

To me this is not a very effective response. I suspect that Sweeney donated the money for the advertisement to FFRF but I think they should have used the opportunity to communicate a more specific message about why godlessness make sense. There are many examples of effective atheist billboards to choose from. (One of my favorites is "God is an imaginary friend.")

Regardless, it's good to see FFRF having the wherewithal to respond to the initial religious provocation.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

NY-18: Openly Gay Congressional Candidate Sean Eldridge Announces

Sean Eldridge is the male spouse of Chris Hughes, the openly gay co-founder of Facebook who bought The New Republic last year and was the architect behind Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign website BarackObama.com in 2007. Eldridge has been rumored to want to run for Congress from New York State for quite awhile. Eldridge is 27 years old and probably best known in LGBT circles as the former Political Director of Freedom To Marry, the campaign to win the freedom to marry nationwide

Bizarrely, if elected, he would be the second, not the first openly gay guy named Sean who is a Congressman from New York. Sean Patrick Maloney was elected in 2012 to represent the 18th Congressional District of New York. There are currently 7 openly LGBT members of Congress, 6 in the U.S. House and Wisconsin's U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.

This week Eldridge indeed announced that he is running to represent the 18th Congressional District of New York, in a curious video where he mentions his family (but not the fact that he is married to a man) and touts his supports for abortion rights and small business. It's not clear if this would count as "straight-washing" but it does appear a little odd to this openly gay viewer.

Then again maybe we are now living in a world where the fact that you are gay will not be brought up or of interest to the general public during a political campaign. I seriously doubt it. After all, he is running against a Republican incumbent Congressman (named Chris Gibson).

With his husband's hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal Eldridge should be able to make the race for the 19th District competitive, at the very least.

Hat/tip to BuzzFeed

WATCH: New Episodes of Homeland Starting 09/29/13

One of the best shows on television is Homeland. It won the Emmy award for Best Drama Series and is up for that award for its second season as well (competing against the third season of my favorite show Game of Thrones for that honor). Homeland will be returning for its third season on September 29th. It airs weekly on Showtime.

Homeland is actually third on my list of favorite shows last year, behind Game of Thrones and Walking Dead. I would say that both Walking Dead and Homeland had less successful seasons than the seasons before. For 2013, I would probably put The Good Wife ahead of Walking Dead with Game of Thrones as the clear favorite to keep the top spot. This trailer for the third season of Homeland looks encouraging though!

LOOK: Openly Gay Man Running for Mayor of Seattle

Openly gay state senator Ed Murray is running to become the next mayor of the great city of Seattle, Washington. Watch his first ad, which features his husband and also includes him taking credit for writing "Washington's marriage equality law."

You know things are going our way when politicians are using winning battles for gay rights to help get them elected to higher office!

Trailer for The Desolation of Smaug Is Out!

As I mentioned yesterday, the first trailer for the second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, has been released worldwide today.

hat/tip to Wonder Man

WATCH: Trailer for Ender's Game

The trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of the classic book Ender's Game has been released. The movie has an amah-zing cast, with Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield (as Ender), Abigail Breslin (as his sister Valentine), Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis and Ben Kingsley.

My feelings towards this movie are quite ambivalent. The book is a personal favorite, but the author, Orson Scott Card is a raving bigot, a heterosexual supremacist ne plus ultra, who has explicitly called for the violent overthrow of the United States government because of marriage equality as well as the criminalization of homosexuality nationwide.

The fact that there will finally be a movie adaptation of one of the seminal novels of science fiction is usually a cause for celebration but since Card is such an execrable person it raises the dilemma of the ethical question of how to consume content by awful people.

So, my current position is that I definitely wat to see the movie but I don't want to have a red cent go to Card. Is that possible? Any suggestions?

WATCH: Trailer for Next Star Trek Movie

The third trailer for the new Star Trek movie directed by JJ Abrams indicates that Star Trek Into Darkness will be one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Abrams did a good reboot of the Star Trek franchise with his 2009 film (see my A- review) but the plot was a mess and Eric Bana was somewhat disappointing as the villain. Chris Pine (Kirk), openly gay Zachary Quinto (Spock) and Zoe Saldana (Uhuru) were well-cast and quite good, asare John Cho as Sulu and Simon Pegg as Scotty.

Hopefully in his second at bat, Abrams will be able to use his cast in the service of a good story and exciting entertainment. Hot British actor Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) joins the cast as the villain.

Check out the trailer!

WATCH: Trailer for Man of Steel

Definitely on my short list of anticipated films for summer 2013 would be Man of Steel directed by Zach Snyder (the man who brought us the bloody but homoerotic 300) produced by my favorite director Christopher Nolan.

The reboot of the Superman franchise stars the stunning Henry Cavill as Clark Kent, Russell Crowe as his biological father and Kevin Costner as his adoptive father. Amy Adams plays Lios Lane;  Man of Steel is being released on June 14, 2013.  The third trailer is out now and is approaching 5 million views in just a few days.

WATCH: Trailer for Elysium

One of my most anticipated movies of summer 2013 is Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. Blomkanp's made his film debut in 2009 with the amazing District 9 (see my A review). Elysium starts Academy Award winners Matt Damon and Jodie Foster (guess who gets top billing?) in another dystopian view of Earth's future. The richest 1% of the planet live on an orbiting space station with everything while the rest of humanity lives on earth, which is ravaged by disease and environmental desolation. Watch the trailer yourself and get excited!

Last year my most anticipated summer movie was Ridley Scott's Prometheus (see my B/B+ review) which ended up under-whelming. That said, I have seen it three times, and it's currently airing on HBO.

WATCH: Trailer for HBO's Liberace bio-pic

HBO's much anticipated bio-pic about Liberace and his "live-in lover" Scott Thorson called Behind The Candelabra will be aired on Sunday May 26. The trailer looks like the film will go into the intimate details of their lives together. It has the participation of multiple Oscar-winners: Steven Soderbergh, Michael Douglas, Matt Damon. The rest of the cast is stellar: Rob Lowe, Dan Aykroyd and Debbie Reynolds are in the film also.

Hat/tip to TowleRoad