lizlet = liz shannon miller online

cc-studios:

If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that we all love feel-good videos. Well, almost all of us. Welcome to Eff This Video, the column where Liz Shannon Miller explains to you why your favorite videos are some bullshit.

FUCK YOU, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D TEASER.

Fuck you.

THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID FUCK YOU. I mean, seriously? SERIOUSLY? A 30 SECOND TEASER? That’s all I get? GODDAMN IT, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D TEASER! I AM ONLY A HUMAN WOMAN!

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True story: I wrote this originally on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, the full-length trailer came out. Some editing was required.

I’ve been doing enough freelancing lately that it’s probably worth me doing a semi-regular roundup of what’s going on. So…

• On Sunday, for GigaOM, I used my TV nerd powers for good to look at the history of digital distribution resurrecting canceled television.
• For VideoInk last week, I shared some thoughts about Psy’s “Gentleman” and interviewed folks at Funny or Die about their parody biopic of Steve Jobs.
• This week: Contributed to VideoInk’s round-up of Amazon’s pilot slate, focusing on Zombieland and Betas.
• The latest Eff This Video for Comedy Central took on the ABC Family promo for Batman Begins.
• This week’s Liz Tells Frank unveiled the pilot of Lost Girl, which is pretty solid Canadian TV, I gotta say.
• And in case you missed it, Liz Tells Frank What Happened In: Volume 2 is available for sale from Amazon. Only $0.99! And I tell Frank about all seven seasons of The West Wing.

There are a few other things in the works but, I am, as always, available for birthdays, bar mitzvahs and other paying work.

I wrote a thing for [REDACTED] about “Help A Retta Out” last week, but it’s not going to run for various reasons. However, I did write some words, so why not let people read them? Enjoy.

There are some days when you look at the crap on Twitter and Tumblr and elsewhere and feel like giving up on life; days when social media feels like justification for the extinction of mankind. But then there are other days, when it really does seem like a force for good. Like, for example, turning sitcom stars into hockey fans.

The comedian Retta is probably best known for her hilarious work on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. But her Twitter feed is a hilarious stream of her thoughts, including occasional bouts of live-tweeting her favorite TV shows.

Retta’s live-tweeting of things is so legendary that not only was it written into an episode of Parks and Rec, but the official Twitter account of the LA Kings reached out to Retta to ask her to perform her services at a game:

@unforettable how could we persuade you to come to a LA hockey game and live tweet it?

— LA Kings (@LAKings)

March 27, 2013

Retta’s response:

.@lakings Hahaha. I’d love to but I don’t know jack a/b hockey. I’d just talk about who was cute on the sideline.#IsThereEvenASideline

— Retta (@unfoRETTAble)

March 27, 2013

And that’s where we might have left things, with Retta living in ignorance of hockey’s wonders, except for the efforts of enterprising fan Chanelle Berlin.

Just one day after those Tweets, Berlin created the Tumblr blog “Help a Retta Out”, which is devoted to explaining the sport of hockey to Retta. This ranges from basic explanations of the game’s rules, to profiling some of the attractive young lads who play the game.

For those not super-familiar with hockey (like myself), “Help a Retta Out” reveals that there’s surprising depth to be found in the sport and its players, thanks to bromances, pioneers and pancakes. Like the best of fans, Berlin nimbly communicates her enthusiasm for hockey, making it contagious.

Now, two weeks later, Retta is now thoroughly educated on the subject:

.@chanelleberlin OK finally reading some if your posts and there are helluh hotties on @lakings.#TheyCanGetIt#TricksWithSticks

— Retta (@unfoRETTAble)

April 10, 2013

And seems game to attend a game:

@amypop @lakings @chanelleberlin @theellenshow @nhl @youcanplayteam Lets do this!

— Retta (@unfoRETTAble)

April 11, 2013

What’s lovely about “Help A Retta Out” and the tweeting that’s surrounded it is how it’s broken down barriers, challenging the notion that the only people who might care about hockey are white men from Canada. It may not be saving the world, but it is bringing people together.

It is called Video Ink. I have so far written about data companies, which were fun to learn about, and reviewed Burning Love, which was fun to watch.

This whole “piecing together freelance assignments” thing has gotten slightly easier in my old age.

brightwalldarkroom:

by Liz Shannon Miller

Growing up female and a lover of movies, I’ve always been aware of the gender divide that exists in film culture; whether it’s biology or society, there are movies I adore that are not tolerated by my male counterparts, and vice versa. Sure, we all agree on the classics being classics. But when it comes to more guilty pleasures, there is some element of “women like this; men like this.”

Caddyshack is one of those movies—a movie I perceived as so aggressively male that I never bothered to watch it until just recently, assuming that, just like Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” I would walk into the fancy store and face the mean shopgirls because I simply wasn’t wanted there. There is probably a version of that metaphor for dudes; it maybe involves locker rooms? Or Brian’s Song? (Another movie I’ve never seen, because I was told it was for boys.)

Surprisingly, for a film that has very little use for women, I didn’t disllike Caddyshack…

But I did have some other problems. Yay for Bill Murray Week!