#also dreamed up an episode of disenchantment. the Netflix show.

[bitegore]

Got to dream about being Erica last night, which was cool. Specifically in like, a no-Haven AU but when I finally got to break out all of the poisons, dose literally all the food, and start smashing people's heads in with crochet mallets, my GOD that shit was satisfying.

[wazafam]

Disenchantment has returned for a third season and its amazing ensemble of veteran voice actors has returned with it. The new season also boasts some impressive guest stars, who only appear for an episode or two, but have a major impact upon the story and setting.

Set in a fantasy realm that may also be the same reality as Futurama, Disenchantment centers around Princess Tabeanie, or Bean for short. A hard-drinking rebel who has little use for her father's ideas about marrying her off to secure an alliance with a neighboring nation, Bean feels that there's some great destiny awaiting her somewhere outside the gates of Dreamland. She's right, but she's also not too crazy about fulfilling that destiny, which involves paying a debt her mother's family owes Hell and having a crown screwed into her head.

Related: Netflix: The Best New TV Shows & Movies This Weekend (January 15)

Season 3 picks up right where season 2 ended, with Bean having escaped being burned at the stake as a witch by a mob of Dreamlanders only to find herself surrounded by an entirely different mob of Trogs: a race of stunted, sub-terrain cave dwellers, who are in league with Bean's treacherous mother, Queen Dagmar. Here's a rundown of all the returning cast of Disenchantment and the roles that they play, as well as all the guest stars with major roles in season 3.

The lead heroine of Disenchantment, Bean is not your typical tomboy princess who wants adventure in the great wide somewhere. She'd be much happier if she just had the freedom to get wasted and pick up whatever cute guys she could find at the tavern, but fate (and the rest of the world, it seems) have other plans for her. She is voiced by Abbi Jacobson, who is best known as the creator and star of Broad City. She can also be heard in Bojack Horseman as the voice of Todd's ex-girlfriend, Emily.

Luci is Bean's own personal demon, bonded to her for all eternity to push her to the path of wickedness. This proved to be a much easier job than Luci's masters in Hell had anticipated, and he soon began to slack off on his demonic duties to run a bar and contribute to the general wickedness of Dreamland as a whole. Luci is voiced by Eric André, who is perhaps most famous as the creator and host of The Eric André Show. He also voiced the hyena Azizi in The Lion King remake.

Too cynical for the world of elves and too naïve for the world of man, Elfo is a half-elf who isn't entirely sure where he belongs. He has found a place at Bean's side, but his crush on her is unrequited and the only other love he seems to find is in all the wrong places (very wrong, incredibly sick and filthy wrong places). Elfo is voiced by writer/actor Nat Faxon, who is probably best known for his collaborations with Jim Rash, such as The Descendants and The Way, Way Back. He also played a lead in the FX show Married and the Netflix comedy series Friends From College. More recently, he's provided the voice for Captain Underpants in The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants in Space and will be playing Han Solo in the upcoming Star Wars: Detours series.

Related: Netflix: Every Movie and TV Show Releasing In January 2021

  Absolute ruler of Dreamland and Bean's beloved (if begrudging) father, King Zøg starts season 3 in ill health and on the verge of losing his life along with his crown. Naturally Zøg being Zøg, he's more concerned about the hat than his health. He is voiced by animation legend John DiMaggio, who is well known to Futurama fans as the voice of Bender. He also provided the voice for Jake the Dog in Adventure Time, Dr. Drakken on Kim Possible, and even Marcus Fenix in the Gears of War video game series. Recently, he voiced Heidegger in the English dub of the Final Fantasy VII remake. He also voiced both King Shark and the demon Trigon in Justice League Dark: Apokolips War.

The second wife of Zøg, who abandoned him and Dreamland to seek a new life as Queen of the Pirates, Oona returns to Dreamland in Disenchantment season 3. She is voiced by Tress MacNeille, who has voiced multiple characters on both The Simpsons and Futurama, including Agnes Skinner and Mom (of Mom's Friendly Robot Corp.). MacNeille also provides the voices for Prince Derek and the Archdruidess who leads Dreamland's state religion. She is also beloved as the voice of Dot Warner from Animaniacs.

Heir to the throne of the neighboring kingdom of Bentwood, Prince Merkimer was intended to be Bean's second fiancée after the untimely impalement of his older brother. While the wedding was called off after he was turned into a talking pig, Merkimer continued to hang around the palace of Dreamland being sad and/or drunk. He is voiced by British comedian Matt Berry, who is famous for his appearances on The IT Crowd, Toast of London, and What We Do In The Shadows. He can currently be heard in The Watch, lending his voice to a magic sword named Wayne.

A torturer and executioner by trade, Stan is still a jovial man who does his job with a kind word and a craftsman's eye. He is voiced by British comedy legend Noel Fielding, who is well-known as one half of The Mighty Boosh and for playing Richmond in The IT Crowd. Viewers may recognize him as a co-presenter for The Great British Bake-Off. He also lent his voice to Balthazar in The LEGO Movie 2.

Related: Disenchantment Season 2 Has Some Weird Game Of Thrones References

Still best known for playing the role of Michael Bolton in Office Space, David Herman went on to become one of the most prolific voice actors in Hollywood. He voices several characters in Disenchantment, the most notable being the Herald of Dreamland. He also provides the voices for Bean's uncle Jerry and the snarky spa attendant Chazz. He can also be heard as Mr. Frond in Bob's Burgers and Dmitry in Central Park.

Bean's mother and King Zøg's first wife, Dagmar is a wicked witch who has big plans for Bean involving some sort of prophecy. Season 3 will find her once again manipulating her daughter for her own sinister designs. Dagmar is voiced by Sharon Horgan, a comedian and voice actor who has appeared in several British sitcoms including Catastrophe and This Way Up. She provides the voices for Courtney Portnoy in Bojack Horseman and Kathleen in Bob's Burgers and also appeared in the movie Game Night

One of the most prolific voice actors in the business, Maurice LaMarche is perhaps most famous for his impression of Orson Welles, whom he played on both The Simpsons and Futurama. His voice was also dubbed over Vincent D'Onofrio's performance as Orson Wells in Tim Burton's biographical film Ed Wood. LaMarche's chief role on Disenchantment is the treacherous, three-eyed minister Odval, but he voices a number of supporting roles as well, such as the legendary demon hunter Big Jo.

Bunty is Bean's simple-minded, ever-pregnant maid. She is voiced by Lucy Montgomery, who will be familiar to many fans of British comedy. She appeared in the 2011 revival of Absolutely Fabulous, The Armstrong and Miller Show, Bellamy's People of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Tracy Breaks the Internet. She can also be heard on a number of children's programs, having lent her voice to both Thomas the Tank-Engine and Bob the Builder.

Related: All The Simpsons & Futurama Easter Eggs In Disenchantment Season 2 

The chief wizard of Dreamland ever since he was allowed to put stars on his dunce cap, Sorcerio is perhaps the most incompetent member of Dreamland's ruling council — a low bar to jump over. He is voiced by legendary voice actor Billy West, who is instantly recognizable to fans of Futurama as the voice of Fry, Zoidberg, Zapp Brannigan and Professor Farnsworth. West has provided several iconic voices over his long career, including the title characters from The Ren & Stimpy Show and Doug. West pulls quadruple-duty on Disenchantment as well, also providing the voices for the Jester, Sir Mertz, and the Elf King Rulo.

Season 3 of Disenchantment briefly finds Elfo confined to a freak show, where he befriends a sarcastic mermaid named Mora who has dreams of being an actress. Mora is voiced by Meredith Hagner, who might be recognized as Portia Davenport from Search Party. She also voiced Madison on Bob's Burgers.

Rich Fulcher as Sir Turbish - Best known for his work with Noel Fielding and Matt Berry on various projects, Rich Fulcher returns to voice the awkward but well meaning Sir Turbish.

Lauren Tom as Trixy - Well known to Futurama fans as the voice of Amy Wong, Lauren Tom lends her voice to Trixy: a female Torg who develops a truly disturbing attraction to Elfo.

Richard Ayoade as Alva - Best known as Maurice Moss from The IT Crowd, Richard Ayodae plays Alva, the mysterious man who essentially rules Steamland.

Phil LaMarr as God - Best known to Futurama fans as the voice of Hermes Conrad, Phil LaMarr returns as the voice of God, the chief deity of Disenchantment's cosmology.

More: Disenchantment: The Biggest Unanswered Questions After Season 2's Ending

Disenchantment Season 3 Cast & Character Guide: What The Voice Actors Look Like from https://ift.tt/3ikobqy

[cs-discourse]

Reccomendations (V long sorry 😅)

I offer you all some shows to watch instead of hAzBiN hOtEL:                         

Epithet Erased (On YT I think. - Animation style is a little hard to get used to, but I love the chars and story line. Wholesome fun.)

Brooklyn 99 ( Netflix - please remember that real cops are not like this, it is a fictitious portrayal - the actors themselves donated 100,000 $ to support protesters against cops. Enjoy it but watch it as the fiction it is. Be aware that it’s copaganda.)

She-ra ( Netflix- we stan that lgbtq representation)

Avatar the Last Airbender (Netflix - Most of you have prbly already seen it but uh. If you haven’t, it’s pretty good. Definitely a lighthearted semi childish show.)

Daria (Crave - We stan unique poc representation. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59kp45/daria-jodie-landon-suburban-black-girl) 

Adventure Time (Dailymotion -free- or Google Play - Just google best episodes and watch those ones. The ones with Marceline + PB are my personal faves.) 

Magic For Humans (Netflix - Basically an interesting magic show. Fun activity: when I watch this w/ other ppl we try to figure out how he did the tricks.) 

The Fresh Prince (Netflix - A classic. Still know the theme song by heart.) 

Hilda or Kipo and the Wonderbeasts (Netflix - these two animated shows are new unique takes on fantasy adventures. ) 

IZombie ( Netflix - Basically a zombie detective, but better. Think Veronica Mars. -also a good detective show y'all should watch. *trigger warning: it’s a zombie murder show so it has some semi-realistic depictions of gore/brains.) 

Disenchantment ( Netflix -The closest thing to Hazbin on this list. An animated show with dark humour without being racist or homophobic. *some animated gore that some people might find triggering. It’s been a while since I watched so idk exactly what.) 

Final Space ( Netflix -like disenchantment, an animated show with an intended audience older than your average animation show. *again, animated gore.) 

Mods, if any of these shows are homophobic/racist/otherwise problematic -(ignoring B99 which is obvious copganda. Again: It’s fiction. Do not -I repeat, DO NOT- look at it as a real representation of cops. It’s not.)- please say so. We not here tryna recommend problematic shows. Or, if you have any other reccomendations?

ps: I’m Canadian, so some of these shows may not be on american Netflix, or some of the ones that aren’t may be on it. Idk. Stay safe y'all. Oof way too long submission finally over. 

-

if you like anime, here are things i watch:

blue exorcist - DEMONSSS (hulu and netflix im p sure)

scissor seven - its actually chinese animated, but its very well made and the production value goes up as the show goes on. i honestly rlly like the cliche anime backstory for the main char bc its also funny as hell (netflix)

saiki k - its like if one punch man was a teen who was also incredibly sarcastic. if you have adhd this shows p good for you too, it goes really fucking fast and you cant look away or youll miss something. its hilarious, go watch. (netflix)

also, some youtubers if youre feelin like that:

dream - minecraft youtuber, child friendly (not in the annoying way. just no cussing)!! hes like 5000 iq and holy shit his minecraft manhunts are insane. holds the mc speedrun world record POG. good coder, my fav youtuber right now.

hellfreezer - reading reddit stories youtuber. his voice is very nice, and videos are faily long. i use him as background noise when doing work.

TRO (the right opinion) - long commentary/rant videos on controversial topics/youtubers, like onision and yandere dev. sexy british voice ;)

mossbag - hollow knight lore and theories. i love hollow knight sm

penguinz0 - streams, commentaries, very short videos. one of the funniest men alive. absoultely incredicble. hes very quick witted and his insults make me scream laugh sometimes

joana ceddia - random life videos. full of personality! i love her honestly shes really chill but also gives off the energy of a thousand suns

pointcrow - gaming youtuber. makes a lot of insane challenge botw videos/zelda vids in general. he streams and then makes the videos.

jarvis johnson - makes videos like drew gooden/danny gonzalas do, but he is also a poc. his bids are entertaining and interesting!! i recommend greatly if you like shorter commentary videos.

.phe

my current faves are:

dorohedoro - anime about humans and wizards coexisting during a war against each other. the wizards hate the humans and curse them to experiment with their magic. all-powerful demons control the magic world behind the scenes. very graphic in regards to gore, some nudity on occasion. anime not finished adapting from manga.

hunter x hunter - anime about hunters who do just that-- go out into the world and hunt for whatever it is they want. examples include justice for their clan killed by genocide, a new family because the old one is a toxic group of assassins who believe you can’t have friends, friends to fill in for an absentee father, and a phd. somewhat graphic in regards to gore, especially so later on in the series. anime not finished adapting from manga.

what we do in the shadows - tv mockumentary series about vampires living in staten island. very funny but also VERY NSFW... lots of sexual references/content, gore and blood.

snowpiercer - tv fantasy series about the apocalypse in which the government fucked up and sent the world into a total deep freeze. 1001 train cars are all the life that remains on earth. VERY NSFW... sexual references/content, gore and blood. there’s also a movie adapted from the comic series by the iconic and incomparable bong joon ho on netflix which is good.

// Mod Peach

[ajduckie]

weeee 21 questions

hi friends i'm sorry i've been a bit mia, the idea of photographing and editing all the recolors I have done rn is overwhelming so I've just been playing w/ a new lil snow-elf witchy bb I created hehe 🧝🏻‍♀️

anyways i was tagged a few days ago by @herbalia, @poppysandplumbobs, and @mayusimsie hehe ty bbs 💛 so i'm finally getting around to doing this!

rules // answer 21 questions, then tag people that you want to get to know better

nickname // aj or duckie

zodiac // aries but apparently i'm more of a virgo

height // 5′7″

last thing searched // “lightroom presets”

favorite musicians // y’all i can’t answer this it completely depends on the genre, and i'm not gonna list 30+ artists here rn; for now, Russo is my definite favorite for live shows, and if you’re really interested in a more (still not totally) complete list of my top artists, leave me an ask or a dm and i’ll send it

if you had a time machine, would you go back in time or visit the future // wouldn't want to see the future, so i’d probably go back in time to check things out; wouldn’t wanna like be involved in life there tho bc ppl were horrible back then too 🙃

do you get asks? // every now and then

following // 84

would you rather be rich or famous? // wouldn’t mind being rich, would absolutely never want to be famous

amount of sleep each night // i need 8+ hours or i'm dead

what I’m wearing // big t-shirt

dream job // none, don’t want to be obligated to do anything in particular; but i'd like to spend my free time on: ceramics, illustration, graphic design, reading, painting, interior design, caring for lil bbs (human, canine, feline, whatever), gaming, and swimming. find me a job where I can do all these things and okie i'll get a job

dream trip // tbh most traveling stresses me out, but i really love san pedro, this island off the coast of belize so I'd go back there before anywhere else; rome was also really fun bc i’m an art history nerd and i worked on an excavation there so i'd like to go back there with family and show them everything 🤓 i like going back places multiple times, clearly

if you were an animal, what would you be? // i am an animal, humans are animals, tbh don’t think I'd wanna be a different animal bc humans treat the rest of the animals like shit and i don’t want to be treated like shit? but my favorite animals are elephants, lions, and giraffes 🌻

favorite books // harry potter hehe

favorite films // pulp fiction, mr and mrs smith (but i really can't watch anything with young brad pitt anymore bc his face reminds me of my ex), and tarzan

favorite tv shows // idk i don’t really get that into tv shows b/c the need to keep up with new seasons and episodes gives me anxiety so i just rewatch classics like the office and that 70′s show; oh but i did really like disenchantment on netflix and i've been meaning to watch the second season, but like i said, anxiety idk 🙃

favorite games // TS4 obvs, WoW (but I get hooked so I won’t let myself play anymore), and then GTA, red dead, and far cry on playstation

play any instruments? // guitar but i don’t really love it so i never play anymore

language(s) // english, some spanish

describe yourself as aesthetic // sleeeeeeepy

i feel like everyone has already been tagged bc i'm kinda late to the game getting this done? 

found some lovelies who haven’t! @rainyatmospheres @awildlili @sylph-sims @caterpillardempsey @itsaspaceproblem @klaatubaradaniikto have fun! 💛

[casualarsonist]

Disenchantment: Season 1

Matt Groening is an Ideas Man. Life in Hell, The Simpsons, Futurama, it’s not often that a single creative becomes the voice of more than one generation. And yet, his TV shows, at the height of their respective successes, were not identifiable by Groening’s direct influence so much as they were their fantastic team of writers. At their apex, Groening’s greatest successes were far bigger than Groening himself, and while he was adept at dreaming up the conceit and the characters of the worlds he created, it was on the back of the efforts of a fantastic writing team that his shows flourished. So while Groening’s typically warped and cynical worldview held his comic strip in good stead, his short-form, frame-by-frame method of joke-telling lacks the subtlety and nuance that a good story-writer can use to build to a punchline, or to thread its characters into the weave of its plot rather than just having them stick their heads through a door and utter a joke because it’s been five minutes and the egg-timer sitting by his computer has gone off. In saying that, his contribution here is in co-operation with one of The Simpson’s most acclaimed writers - Josh Weinstein - so I don’t really know where to start in trying to figure out exactly what happened in the production of Disenchantment to start it off on such a bad footing.

Disenchantment is a ‘Netflix Original’ - a brand I can’t help but instinctively flinch at the mere mention of. To be fair to Netflix, not all its releases under that title are trash - some are even straight-up excellent - but there are literally hundreds of Netflix Originals released all over the world, and when you have the money and ambition that Netflix has (or had) there’s going to be an inevitable temptation to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. After all, Netflix is the bastion of those willing to settle for cheap thrills, rom coms, and anything that will drown out the deafening sound of existential dread reverberating around the inside of their skulls. Not the most discerning audience, is what I’m saying. And to be fair to Disenchantment, Groening’s writing only appears credited in the first episode (even though the symptoms of that writing appear throughout to various degrees throughout the series). But when you’ve only got ten episodes to make your mark, and your appeal is in part trading on the pedigree of a back-catalogue of seminal shows such as The Simpsons and Futurama, the bar you’ve got to leap is going to be higher than usual. Which is why it’s so baffling that the opening episodes of Disenchantment are just. so. bad.

Full disclosure - I barely got half way through the first episode before I gave up with a groan and a roll of the eyes and turned it off. I even called it ‘Disenchanted’ seven times in this review before I realised I was getting the title wrong. Perhaps I was projecting. The only reason I watched the rest of the series was so I could write this review in good faith. Characters bounce from scenario to scenario in a chaotic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink fantasy world. The narrative almost invariably plays out in a ‘this happened, and then this happened, and then THIS happened’ format. Mediocre visual gags and one-liners are shoehorned into scenes with no care at to how relevant they are, or how they affect the pacing. Everything is overstated, lacking the finesse that the best episodes of The Simpsons or Futurama used to let their humour and emotion sneak up on the viewer and take them by surprise. It lacks the endearing characters, the contained and engaging storylines, and the genuine social commentary that both of its predecessors had.  And on top of all this the animation is really, really cheap, meaning that my first impression was that it was as amateurish in its visuals as it was in its script.

Growing pains can be a passing thing. The first season of the American Office was mostly trash, as was that of Parks and Rec, as were the first few seasons of The Simpsons, and while the entry point into Disenchantment reeks like a teenager’s bedroom, with time and distance from the first episode it does open up in two something more engaging. But that doesn’t absolve it of its sins, as the budgetary and temporal constraints of the ‘Netflix Original’ title have clearly failed to let this series grow large enough to support the wide creative team it needs to even entertain thoughts of approaching its predecessor’s quality. Everything about Disenchantment feels impermanent compared to its predecessors - from the meandering and indefinable conceit, to the clutch of thinly-written characters, to the cheap, badly-written, throwaway jokes…it all feels like it wasn’t made to last beyond the initial ten episodes. It feels like a draft copy.

Which is a real shame, because Disenchantment is a vehicle for an excellent cadre of modern comedians and performers who simply haven’t got much to work with. Abbi Jacobson and Eric Andre both came from better, more ground-breaking shows to play far-less interesting characters. ‘He’s a demon, BUT HE’S KINDA CUTE!’; ‘she’s a princess, BUT SHE’S ALSO A ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE REBEL!’ The best a character can hope to be in this series is a thing that is also another thing, otherwise, they’re Kissy, the promiscuous elf. Or Weirdo, the sex pest elf. Or Shocko, the elf that expresses shock, and is legitimately the only joke I laughed at in the first episode by virtue of the fact that it was just so dumb. Below even that rung lay the characters that exist only as vessels for shitty end-of-scene one-liners, like the guy who walks through the door after the King has threatened to decapitate anyone who looks at his daughter, saying ‘oh boy, did I look at HER!’ Ugh.

And when the jokes aren’t content to simply be bad, they straight-up don’t make sense - a perfect example of this being when the princess’ betrothed accidentally impales his head on a sword.

Let’s break it down:

- A prince drops the ring during his wedding ceremony, and when bending to pick it up accidentally impales his head on a sword. The joke being that a character is suddenly killed in an unexpected way. This is mildly amusing.

- A member of the court declares him dead. To which the prince replies with the garbled mess of a line: 'Ah, I think I’m alive. No, wait, never mind.’ He then slumps down dead. Aside from not being as funny as the first joke, in showing the price to be alive it undoes the punchline of the first joke. ‘Prince has an accident and lives’ is not funny. ‘Prince has an accident, seems to live, but doesn’t’ is also not funny.

- Finally, after two increasingly poor gags that both rely on the prince’s death to even be considered jokes at all, the scene moves on for around a minute before the prince opines the fact that no-one is helping him. Not only does this YET AGAIN render the two previous jokes moot (’Visibly alive man turns out to be alive’), it just plain doesn’t make any sense. The joke was that he died. Twice. Why would anyone be expected to help him? Did they forget to take this out of the script? Or did they just forsake consistency and the internal logic of their show so they could cram as many shit gags in as possible?

In two minutes we have three crappy bits that are all essentially the same joke, each one simultaneously worse than the last AND retroactively rendering the jokes before it less funny. To be honest, I’m kind of impressed. It’s almost the perfect, literal, anti-comedy. And it’s the norm, rather than the exception, for the first few episodes at least. Any time the show starts to get any steam up and you allow yourself to be invested, some kind of desperate, tone-deaf non sequitur swings in and ruins your mood. The best jokes in the series are either less-painful versions of this, or the occasional rare gem that is both unexpected AND YET makes sense for the scene. When the king laments that he can’t possibly lose anything else, and then his crown slips off his head and plunges over the railing of his tower, THAT’S funny. In the moment, I laughed out loud. And it’s not even that spectacular a joke. But it’s sadly among the best that Disenchantment can offer.  

I’ve got a real bone to pick with Netflix’s ‘Originals’. If you ever held hope that one day down the track the channel’s trashheap would be thinned out, or somehow transformed by the platform’s success, then one five-minute wade through the collection will convince you that this is a pipe-dream. It’s an endless sea of low-budget, thrown-together mediocrity that seriously suggests the person greenlighting these things needs to have their rubber stamp confiscated. Disenchantment grows on you, and by episode ten you might even find yourself a little bit invested. But big picture, the series is just another idea flung at a wall and failing to stick. The potential is there, I suppose, and I can only hope that the upwards momentum carries over to the newly-commissioned second season, but the low quality animation and poor execution just pulls the rug out from under it. Groening’s style is best suited to self-contained episodes that allow the writers to condense the humour; a ten-episode arc with a flimsy plot is not fertile ground for a style of show that needs time to find its feet and settle into the premise and the characters. And while it might amuse you if you hang around long enough, I don’t really feel like awarding points to a show for being kind of worth it eventually. Disenchantment simply doesn’t hold a candle to the best of Groening’s works.

5/10

[investmart007]

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.  | Octavia Spencer brings hair mogul's story to Netflix

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/J0Z4kC

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.  | Octavia Spencer brings hair mogul's story to Netflix

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.  — A roundup of news from the Television Critics Association summer meeting, at which TV networks and streaming services are presenting details on upcoming programs.

SUCCESS STORY

Octavia Spencer is bringing the remarkable saga of black haircare mogul Madam C.J. Walker to television.

Netflix said that Spencer will produce and star in a limited series about the outsized life of Sarah Breedlove, who was known professionally as Walker.

The eight-episode drama is based on the book “On Her Own Ground” by A’Lelia Bundles and includes basketball star LeBron James as a producer.

Walker became one of America’s first self-made female millionaires by creating and marketing hair products for African-Americans at the turn of the 20th century.

Netflix said the series will detail the hostility, rivalries and tumultuous personal life that marked Walker’s life.

Spencer is an Oscar-winning actress whose credits include “The Shape of Water,” ”Hidden Figures” and “The Help.”

A release date for “Madam C.J. Walker” was not announced.

A PRINCESS, GROENING STYLE

Matt Groening said his new adult cartoon series “Disenchantment” has a feminist component that sets it apart from his previous shows.

Groening spoke to reporters about bringing fresh talent to the Netflix show that included the voice actors Abbi Jacobson and Eric Andre.

He also highlighted the differences between the new project and his previous work, the long-running Fox series “The Simpsons.”

“One of the reasons that ‘The Simpsons’ is what it is, is because of the time constraints,” he said. “In this show, we’re able to let it breathe a little more which I find gratifying.”

The series notably stands out as an adult cartoon with a female lead. It follows the misadventures of an alcoholic slacker princess named Princess Bean, voiced by “Broad City” star Abbi Jacobson, who has everything but a sense of purpose.

Joined by a personal demon named Luci, played by Andre, and a scruffy elf named Elfo (voiced by Nat Faxon), Bean creates mischief in the kingdom of Dreamland where she’s infamous for her careless antics.

Both Jacobson and Andre have a built a following with the hard-to-win young adult audience in their shows “Broad City” and “The Eric Andre Show.” The stars shared their stories of growing up watching “The Simpsons” and finding their place with Groening and Josh Weinstein, creators and producers of “Disenchantment.”

“Disenchantment” premieres Aug. 17 on Netflix.

MORE ‘MASTER’?

Netflix is standing by “Master of None” and Aziz Ansari despite a sexual-misconduct allegation against him earlier this year.

Cindy Holland, a programming executive for the streaming service, said there’s been thought given to a third season for the comedy starring and co-created by Ansari.

She added that Netflix would “certainly be happy” to make another “Master of None” season with Ansari, but didn’t commit to it or indicate what the production or release timeline might be. The show about a young, single actor in New York last aired in 2017.

The allegation that Ansari acted improperly on a date was published in January of this year by website Babe.net, which didn’t identify the accuser. The report sparked a public debate, with some saying the claim shed light on aggressive sexual behavior and others dismissing it as a bad date that should have remained private.

In a January statement, Ansari acknowledged that he apologized to a woman in 2017 when she told him about her discomfort during a sexual encounter in his apartment that he believed to be consensual.

THEIR BRAINS ON DRUGS

Jonah Hill and Emma Stone are starring in a new TV series that tackles sensitive issues of mental illness and the pharmaceutical industry.

The Netflix series, a black comedy titled “Maniac,” follows two participants of a murky late-stage pharmaceutical drug trial.

Hill plays a man diagnosed with schizophrenia, while Stone plays a woman fixated on broken relationships.

Both sign up to test a mysterious pill believed to cure anything about the mind, but things do not go as planned.

Cindy Holland, vice president of Netflix original series, announced that it would debut Sept. 21.

Holland called “Maniac” a “thought-provoking, fever dream of a show.”

The actors starred opposite each other in the 2007 teen comedy “Superbad.”

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By Associated Press

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: Avant-Garde Escape Strategies

[A Bewick’s wren perches motionlessly on a thin branch.] In 2017, Twin Peaks is an invigorated brand. It has awoken as if to a new life, walks and breathes more freely. It is viewed on laptops, tablets, phones, and smart televisions connected to Netflix, and it will soon be viewed on SHOWTIME. But how will Twin Peaks be viewed in the year 2117? On what devices? Will it be viewed at all, or will its exact content be experienced in some truncated, more immediate form, facilitated by body-altering technologies yet to be discovered? Who are the people who download Twin Peaks to their brains in the future? Where do they live? These are the kinds of questions SHOWTIME will have to answer in order to ensure the continued relevance of the reawakened, newly optimistic, and hungry Twin Peaks brand. Maybe those viewer-subjects live in a huddled condition, in what philosopher Peter Sloterdijk calls “ecological stress communes,” pressed inland and away from cultural centers now remembered and revered like ancestors, jostled about by resource scarcity, plagued by ridiculous fantasies of aliens and sea people punctuated by actual disaster, war, and collapse. Or maybe these troubles loom on their horizon. In the face of these real nightmares, do they dream of ending up in a place like Twin Peaks, of grappling with its fake demons? Maybe future Twin Peaks viewers see in it a refreshingly provincial vision of encompassing crisis. A town where a yellow light still means “slow down” resonates abstractly with them. They are absorbed by the dark forces stirred out of the brown-gray American forest, by the murder of the cocaine-addicted homecoming queen and secret prostitute. Maybe, naive to the reality of their own circumstances, they feel like Dale Cooper chasing after those elusive and idealized spirits. The X-Files at least has something like a vision of the future, where Twin Peaks only has a vision of the past, and a pretty abstruse one at that. The forces that will carry The X-Files and Twin Peaks together into the cruel future are similar, but not the same. The X-Files, in its simulation of a crackpot investigation motivated less by superstition than clandestine knowledge and bizarre technology, at least has something like a vision of the future, where Twin Peaks only has a vision of the past, and a pretty abstruse one at that. If, disingenuously, The X-Files sought to domesticate the demons split open by modern techniques of investigation, Twin Peaks was overcome by its monsters, disenchanted and reduced to an incomprehensible aesthetic litany. Where The X-Files resolved about a mystery per episode, Twin Peaks lacked satisfying answers. And while we don’t know how Twin Peaks will be viewed in the future, SHOWTIME is wise to bet on disenchantment, on unanswered questioning and the melting of things into dark, muddy pictures. --- [Three white plumes ascend from the smokestacks ahead.] You wake up from an unclear dream in the late afternoon. The year is 2011 or 2012. Your room is dark and warm. Your laptop is next to you, partly covered by sheets. Disoriented, you rub gunk out of your eyes. You were up late browsing Tumblr again. Your laptop screen opens upon your unrefreshed dashboard, where you had fallen asleep to a looping GIF of Laura Palmer’s freeze-framed VHS smile from “Pilot (Northwest Passage).” You “like” the post. Co-created by David Lynch, a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema known for such films as Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive, the show mixes Lynch’s unique brand of surrealism with a dated form of the primetime drama in a way that you’ve enjoyed since you were introduced to the show by friends on the internet. One of the many reasons you love Twin Peaks is that its characters feel like people you know in real life, even though everything else in the show feels very unfamiliar. Twin Peaks makes you nostalgic for a time you don’t remember and a place that doesn’t exist. Animation: Korey Daunhauer Twin Peaks makes you nostalgic for a time you don’t remember and a place that doesn’t exist. Before you knew who David Lynch was, you had seen Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic, an icon of ossified innocence. It would take Lynch and Mark Frost a while to notice, or to do anything about, the fact that Twin Peaks had taken about 20 years to strike the nerve it was always supposed to hit, the one in you. Maybe they were too cynical, too forward-thinking. They thought your parents would be like this. Or, more likely, the conversation they staged between the avant-garde and its supposed opposite traumatically fell through, revealing, eventually, the uncanny mixture obscured by those labels, which they never knew how to control. It took a while to work itself out. By eventually thickening the show with supernatural diversions and visually peculiar dream sequences, ultimately leaving many of its mysteries unsolved, Lynch and Frost created the perpetual conditions for a scrupulous, even paranoid viewing of Twin Peaks. The question is how the show’s visual language, founded upon a mostly-arbitrary complexity inherited equally from Lynch’s experimentalism and from the genre within which it is put to work, means anything at all after the fact of its disenchantment — aestheticized, separated from the ostensible movement toward resolution. Or, as Anamanaguchi’s Peter Berkman put it in a reply to a comment on one of his Facebook status updates, “the question is how that grammar has changed now that we can pause and dissect individual frames in and out of context.” You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and keep scrolling Tumblr. --- [Sparks fly from the grinding wheel as you move in for a closer look.] INT. GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL DINING AREA - MORNING Sunlight pours into the room from the right. DALE COOPER sips coffee, his tape recorder placed neatly in front of him on the table. COOPER Diane, the time is 8:05 A.M., I’m at the Great Northern Hotel. I’ve just awoke from a terrible and convoluted dream. I’m not sure how much of it was significant to the inquiry into Laura Palmer’s death and how much of it was fabricated by BOB for the purpose of diverting it; to be honest, I’m not even sure if BOB or the Black Lodge are real anymore. I don’t know if I care or if the outcome of the investigation is important to me. I feel terrible. I lied awake in bed for a few hours. I feel like I’m living in someone else’s bizarre fantasy. (He pauses.) I mean, I guess her dad did it? I live at this hotel now. BOBBY BRIGGS enters from the GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL LOBBY holding a football. BOBBY Hey, Coop! Catch! BOBBY throws COOPER the football. COOPER fails to catch the football and it hits his tape recorder, sending it flying into the mug of coffee. COOPER B-Bobby! I — AUDREY HORNE enters from the GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL LOBBY smoking a cigarette, holding an iPhone. AUDREY (puffing cigarette) “When the masses think, the intellectual dies.” –Antonio Negri --- [A massive log looms atop a dolly.] Was Twin Peaks an attempt to make the masses think, to think with the masses and to kill the intellectual, or to think of the masses? To create an intellectual picture of their supposed fears and superstitions, their vices and neuroses? First, there’s Cooper and his obsession with an idea of homespun authenticity, one of the show’s biggest memes. There’s also Harry S. Truman, the sheriff, well-intentioned and pragmatic; Bobby Briggs, the football star, surly and unpredictable; the show’s various tokens of the bumbling serendipity of small-town America (Andy the cop, Pete the loyal husband); and the town’s enigmas and obsessives (James the boyishly gilded biker, Leland Palmer, Lawrence the shrink, and Harold the shut-in). Then, there’s a group of female characters, beginning with Laura and growing to include Shelly Johnson, Donna Hayward, Audrey Horne, Norma Jennings, Josie Packard, Lucy Moran, and Catherine Martell, who are depicted at best as seriously or repeatedly traumatized and, at worst, as stupid or possessed by some unknown whim, complicit in their own undoing. Where the town of Twin Peaks is bottomless in its dark mythology, it is flat in other ways. The image of community in Twin Peaks is convincing, actually, because it is not realistic. It is a vision of the countryside native to the city and is nonetheless awkward in representing both. FBI agents and industrialists, the show’s main representatives of the latter, view the fixed category of “provincial values” with lust or disdain. The working assumption is that the city is a place that mystery and magic have abandoned in favor of particular backwaters. That urban coexistence is antithetical to wonder. Moby’s “Go,” the popular rave-inspired electronica single based on a sample of Angelo Badalamenti’s theme music for Twin Peaks, is both clearer about who it is talking to and more successful in its attempt to practice an inclusive form of mastery over its created public than the show itself. As I drive east on Phoenix’s Loop 202 away from the setting sun, “Go (Woodtick Mix)” fades into “Go (Soundtrack Mix),” a line of a hundred cars curving delicately to the returning, quantized “yeahs.” --- [A waterfall crashes.] Everybody needs an escape from the avant-garde. To think all of the time is difficult, and it seems better that one find some place of negotiation, where many people think more and few people think less. As an escape strategy, Twin Peaks faltered in its weirdness, its stubborn maintenance of a position among the few. It was, moreover, unrealistic in its concept of the many. Gesturing toward the avant-garde, it failed there most spectacularly; no matter the depth of the perennial ebb and flow of interest in Lynch’s work, it will always make complete sense to me that Fire Walk With Me was booed at Cannes. If Lynch’s murderous backwater is perfectly fitted to the fetishes and anxieties of today’s teenagers, it is only because they have many of the same fetishes and anxieties as their parents, who watched with baited breath until the questions and clues lost their impact. Lynch’s vision of provincial intrigue said more about the values and aesthetics of America’s cities than its towns, and it appeals to we who carry with us everywhere a version of what Lynch saw in the city. If Lynch’s murderous backwater is perfectly fitted to the fetishes and anxieties of today’s teenagers, it is only because they have many of the same fetishes and anxieties as their parents, who watched with baited breath until the questions and clues lost their impact. Today, Twin Peaks exists against the backdrop of a nostalgia cult. Millennials, lacking spiritual unity and drawn to promises of darkness, are fascinated. Resuscitated by the esoteric magic of the brandscape, will Twin Peaks really walk and breathe more freely, as if awoken to a new life, and find something like that original sense of purpose? Or will it lose its way again in the smoke and mirrors of a shoddily constructed model of the public? --- On this auspicious morning for Twin Peaks, you languish in your room, thinking of the past. Of dead memes, content dampened and wrapped in plastic. Sometimes you wish you could immaterialize, becoming the unfeeling aggregate of your social footprint. You dream of disappearing into a fog of blogwave, street style, spicy memes, or Twin Peaks. Other times, you feel surprisingly up to the task of remaining an aggregate of relations. Your mental image of your environment sometimes appears in the form of a monster you are working to vanquish. With an intoxicated discomfort like nausea, you realize that Laura never lived in a world, had a future. That the real mysteries were yours. --- [You approach a wooden sign on the right side of the road.] http://j.mp/2pXgudV