Great TED Talks illuminate an idea. Sometimes, they do it while making you laugh. These talks will bring a smile to your face. Please note: Vigorous debate ensued among our staff about which talks to include. So we hope you’ll find something for every sense of humor.
In last Saturday’s show, during a sketch called “39 cents,” the late-night comedy group took aim at Western charities that collect donations for Africa, lampooning them via a character named Charles Daniels, who serves as a generic stand-in for celebrity figureheads the world over.
“Hello, I’m Charles Daniels,” opens Bill Hader, the actor who plays the character in the skit, as soft piano music plays in the background. “For years we’ve been taking you to villages like this, and showing you the heartbreak of families whose only mistake was being born poor.”
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Justin Lowe interviews 31-year-old writer-director Justin Simien on his journey to produce “Dear White People” due to hit nationwide theaters on October 24, 2014. Already, the film’s various samplings circulating social media is causing the necessary buzz to go blockbuster. But is this all buzz and no bear? We’ll see next week.
Excerpt:
When you’re writing and directing a satire like Dear White People, how do you blend narrative content and social commentary so that they effectively inform one another?
For me, the thing that I always try to do is to decide very early on what it is the movie’s about at its core. If a scene that says a bunch of things I want it to say can’t hang on the core of the film, then it doesn’t belong there. For me, I felt like the film was really just about the conflict between a person’s identity and their true selves. Everything that happened in a scene has to hang on that conflict and specifically has to hang on that conflict in relation to the arc of the four main characters.
A time machine, allowing our hero, Black Archaeologist, to visit great moments in black history, is invented. It’s called , The Way Black In Time Machine.
Here’s Your Sign – Christmas Edition by Bill Engvall set to Computerized Christmas Lights with Light-O-Rama controllers. For more information, check out MississippiChristmas.com
i am OTHER:
Executive Producer – Pharrell Williams
General Manager – Caron Veazey
Creative Director – Mimi Valdés
Executive Producer – Robin Frank
Producer – Bethany Gould
DoP/Editor – Gabriel Stanley
Assistant Producer – Alexandra DePersia
Digital Marketing – Aviva Yael