Tag Archives: Idina Menzel

Mar 07 2014
Leave a comment
Uncategorized

GrabBag – The Twitter Conference Call

The Oscars are over. They’ve been analyzed, re-analyzed, interpreted, and meme-ified. It’s time for a final wave goodbye in our rearview mirror. Today’s GrabBag has just a few last Oscar-related videos, and then moves on. What will we do with our time now?

  • The Impression Guys’ Academy Awards Special. Damn these guys are good!
  • Here’s a montage of every Academy Award Best Picture winner since Wings.
  • Apparently Captain Phillips’ Barkhad Abdi is broke. Here’s hoping his Oscar nomination (and BAFTA win) means more amazing roles to change that.
  • And of course, it seems I can’t have a GrabBag lately without another version of “Let It Go.” This time Idina Menzel joins Jimmy Fallon and The Roots on kids’ classroom instruments for a seriously awesome rendition.

Dane DeHaan as James Dean

  • Nicole Kidman plays actress-turned-Princess Grace Kelly in the new trailer for Grace of Monaco.
  • I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not very active on Twitter. I just haven’t found a lot of uses for it, personally, aside from sharing my blog posts. But it does have its purposes…

twitter conference call 1

twitter conference call 2

twitter conference call 3

  • Finally… It’s not at all “screen” related, but my beautiful fiancé defends her PhD dissertation this afternoon, and by tonight it’ll be official. Everybody wish her luck!!!

zoidberg - rich doctor

That’s it for today. Remember to join us every Friday for more GrabBag goodness!

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Mar 05 2014
7 Comments
Uncategorized

Memedown – The Oscars (2014)

The Memedown is a compilation of viral content on a particular subject or event, saved and posted here for… uhh, posterity (or something). It is by no means exhaustive. I guarantee I’ll only ever find a fraction of what’s out there. Think of it as a recap, of sorts, as filtered by the internet.

Welcome to the first edition of what I expect to be a reoccurring, if not exactly regular, series. When something grabs our collective attention, the internet spits out memes and other viral jokes, games, articles, etc. like a factory. These memes are largely forgotten within weeks, if not days, but that’s where The Screen Life comes in.

Today’s Memedown… The Oscars (2014)!

What better place to begin than the original Twitter-breaking selfie…

The Oscar Selfie

…which, of course, was bound to get reinterpreted…

Source: unknown

John Travolta’s bizarre mangling of Idina Menzel’s name…

…has been a source of endless confusion…

The hilariously weird moment has inspired everything from a new YouTube pronunciation guide…

…to a Travolta name generator [click here to Travoltify your own name], to a tweet from “Adele Dazeem” herself…

Source: unknown

Elsewhere, the internet had some fun with Dallas Buyers Club‘s Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto…

Source: unknown

And someone noticed Leto’s striking resemblance to another celebrity, of sorts…

Source: unknown

There’s a whole series of memes taken from Benedict Cumberbatch’s photobomb of U2.

Don’t forget about Good Guy Harvey Weinstein…

Honestly this Branjelina bit is pretty awful, and not least because the joke’s premise is a decade old at this point.

Source: unknown

Finally, it seems the biggest source of consternation for the denizens of Internetland is the still-empty-handed Leonardo DiCaprio. (There’s a very real possibility that some of these have been recycled from years past.)

Source: unknown

Source: unknown

Source: unknown

Source: unknown

Source: unknown

And it’s not just Oscars. There’s a whole series of “Bad Luck Leo” memes…

Source: unknown

Source: unknown

Source: unknown

Note: Sources linked where available. Several of these were discovered via Google Image Search. Original sources were not always readily apparent.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
Feb 13 2014
Leave a comment
Uncategorized

All 4 Song Nominees to Perform at the Oscars

It has just been confirmed: Karen O will perform her Oscar nominated “The Moon Song” from Her at this years awards. She marks the final piece of the puzzle, after recent announcements that her fellow nominees – U2 (“Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), Pharrell Williams (“Happy” from Despicable Me 2), and Idina Menzel (“Let It Go” from Frozen) – will all perform live at the show.

(Scroll down for embedded videos of all 4 songs.)

In recent years, The Oscars have been a bit wishy-washy when it comes to performing the songs during the ceremony. This year will mark the first time all the song nominees have been performed live at the show since 2011.

Of course it helps that the worst, most embarrassing nominee was disqualified. And there are only four remaining to eat into the runtime. And those four are all excellent songs by popular performers.

“Let It Go” is still the prohibitive frontrunner, but it’s win is by no means as assured as it seemed a few months, or even weeks, ago. U2 picked up the Golden Globe, and they have the power of Bono and expert campaigner Harvey Weinstein behind them. Meanwhile, Pharrell Williams just picked up a handful of Grammys and has been campaigning super hard. “Happy” is practically everywhere these days.

Even Karen O has a few angles on the race: Voters could easily opt to show the movie some love in this category where competition might be stiffer elsewhere. As frontwoman for the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, she carries the full weight of the quirky/indie/hipster demographic. And if the more obvious choices split the vote, “The Moon Song” could easily slip in.

Still, “Let It Go” is the most likely. Not only is it actually the best of the nominees, it’s the kind of song the category was meant for: integral to both the film’s story and overall theme. Not to mention, it marks a triumphant return to form for Disney.

Here, for your listening pleasure, are all the songs…

Tagged , , , , , , ,