by Bradshaw Crandell
This is from 1938. The artwork was done by Bradshaw Crandell, who did several covers for Cosmopolitan and who was one of the few artists of the era to actually get to sign their own work. On this cover, you can find his signature right underneath the hands holding the gun.
There’s nothing more romantic than learning how to shoot together.
“And not a minute too soon, baby.”
— Dr. Johnny Fever, American radio personality
Queen wrote two songs that are perfect for any championship sporting event. We Are The Champions, of course, is what the winners get to hear. Meanwhile, the losers get Another One Bites The Dust.
The song was written by Queen’s bassist, John Deacon. Deacon also ended up playing most of the instruments on the track. The band was initially reluctant to release the song as a single but changed their mind after Michael Jackson approached them after a show and told them that Another One Bites The Dust was their best song and that they had to release it as a single. They took Jackson’s advice and the rest is history.
This song came very close to appearing in Rocky III but when the band and the film’s producers couldn’t come to terms, Eye of the Tiger was instead used as the film’s theme song. It’s interesting to imagine how the scenes of Apollo training Rocky would have played out with Queen playing on the soundtrack.
If you play this song backwards, “another one bite the dust” sounds exactly like “You must smoke marijuana.” Apparently, this is just a coincidence. Fortunately, in the 80s, Tipper Gore was too busy going after hair metal to check Queen’s discography for hidden messages.
Enjoy!
What a long week!
Don’t get me wrong, it was a good week. As far as this site is concerned, I got a lot done. I’m most proud of the fact that I wrote about my 30 favorite films of 2020. I’m very happy about how that post worked out and I’m also proud of myself for watching enough good movies that it was actually very easy to come up with a credible list of 30. I’m proud of myself! Wait — did I already say that? See, that’s how tired I am. I’m repeating myself!
Speaking of being tired, I was going to write about how I deal with anxiety but, to be honest, anxiety will still be a thing a few weeks from now and hopefully, I won’t be exhausted while putting the finishing touches on my week in review. So, writing about anxiety can wait.
(Actually, the main way I deal with anxiety — and you’re going to think I’m lying but I’m not — is by putting on an old episode of Degrassi in the background. It calms me down. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen every episode so many times that I know exactly what’s coming. Part of the comfort of rewatching something is knowing that, no matter what might happen in the world, those old episodes are always going to be the same. It doesn’t have to be Degrassi. It could be music. It could be a beloved movie. It could be someone chanting from the Necronomicon. The familiar can be very helpful.)
For now, I just want to get some rest. And I want to let you know what I watched, read, and listened to last week!
Films I Watched:
Television Shows I Watched:
Books I Read:
Music To Which I Listened:
Live Tweets
Awards Season:
Best of 2020:
Trailers:
Links From Last Week:
News From Last Week:
Links From The Site:
More From Us:
Let’s just admit that the Super Bowl was weird this year.
I’m not talking about the game. To be honest, I could really hardly care less about the game. When it comes to winners and losers, I’m one of those people who wishes that both teams could win. I think the coach of the winning team should let the losing team score a touchdown so that no one’s feelings get hurt. I worry about concussions, broken ankles, and compound fractures. I can handle some of the most graphic zombie films ever made but football just freaks me the fug out.
Instead, I’m one of those people who watches for the commercials and this year, the commercials were odd. I guess that’s to be understood, all things considered. But even when you take into account the pandemic and the general sappiness of modern American culture, the commercials felt weak. There were a lot of inspirational commercials. Bruce Springsteen gave a two-minute monologue about America while sitting in a jeep. There was a Ford commercial about how we’re all in this together or something like that. The beer commercials were less surly and more cringey this year. There were a lot of commercials with celebrities where the whole joke seemed to be, “Hey, look! A celebrity!”
There were precious few commercials for any upcoming movies or TV shows. In fact, there were four. FOUR! Every previous year, I’ve worked myself to a beautiful exhaustion trying to keep up with all the movies being advertised during the big game. This year, I wrote a few — very few — words about Coming 2 America, Old, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Raya and the Last Dragon.
Anyway, with all that in mind — here are 6 commercials that I did enjoy. I don’t know if it’s right for me to say that any of these really qualify as a “favorite” because I really didn’t have any favorites this year. But, the important thing is that I enjoyed the commercials below.
6) Edgar Scissorhands — Cadillac
I guess Edward is dead or something? Because Edward’s definitely not in this commercial. I can only assume that he died or he moved to Paris and was later judged to be too problematic to be invited back to appear with his son. Well, regardless, this is a cute commercial. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a good commercial because people are going to remember Edgar on the bus more than they’re going to remember the Cadillac but still, it was nice.
5) Adam Levine Sets Up Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton — T-Mobile
But if not for the spotty network, Gwen and Blake never would have gotten together! Oh well. What matters is that Gwen and Blake are a cute couple.
4) Jason Alexander Hoodie — Tide
This was actually kind of a disturbing commercial but then again, I like the idea of clothing that screams at you.
3) Doritos — Flat Matthew McConaughey
It was weird enough to work.
2) Alexa — Michael B. Jordan
It was sexy enough to work.
This made my night. This ad was short. It wasn’t pretentious. It didn’t pretend that it was going to bring America together. It didn’t feature Bruce Springsteen doing his Kerouac imitation. Instead, it popped up for five seconds, it freaked a lot of people out, and it kind of gave the finger to the whole silly culture that’s sprung up around Super Bowl advertising. That was brilliant. (Considering that Reddit has now become the favorite scapegoat of the establishment, I applaud them for raising their profile as opposed to just meekly waiting for the storm to pass.)
Reddit wins the night! And, just in case the above video gets taken off of YouTube for some reason, here’s the ad:
Today was probably the most low-key Super Bowl Sunday is the history of the Shattered Lens.
The reasons for that are fairly obvious. The Super Bowl is tradition. It’s something that people look forward to as a sign of normalcy and continuity. Some people care about the game. Some people care about the commercials. But the main thing is that the Super Bowl is always there and it’s always a big deal. This year, though, was different.
For one thing, the commercials were different. Usually, we struggle to keep up with all of the movie advertisements but this year, there were only four to share. For another things, no one really had a team in the game. Jeff was excited about Tom Brady winning another Super Bowl. Leonard wanted anyone but Brady to win. But it’s not like anyone here at the TSL is a huge fan of either Kansas City or Tampa Bay.
So, it was a subdued Super Bowl Sunday. Everyone observed it in their own way:
In the end, the team that score the most points won so congratulations to them! Here’s hoping that next year’s Super Bowl’s commercials will be a little bit more memorable.
The Super Bowl just ended and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have won their 2nd Super Bowl! Tom Brady has won his seventh. Though the Chiefs scored first with a field goal, there was never really any doubt as to who was going to win the Lombardi Trophy. As soon as I saw Tom Brady’s face after the Chiefs got those three points, I knew he was going to be unstoppable.
The final score was 31 to 9. Though the Chiefs may have fallen short, Patrick Mahomes showed that he is the quarterback of the future. He’s scary good. He may not have won tonight but he’ll definitely get another chance to win his second super bowl.
For now, though, the Buccaneers are your Super Bowl champions and Tom Brady has added another chapter to an already amazing career. Congratulations, Tampa Bay!
We finally got another movie-related Super Bowl spot!
Here’s the Super Bowl promo for Coming 2 America!
Coming 2 America premiers on Prime on March 5th.
There haven’t been that many movie spots during this Super Bowl. It’s a shame but I guess it’s to be expected, given the current state of theaters and studios and everything else. During the first half, we saw trailers and commercials for Old, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and this very brief one for Raya and the Last Dragon:
It’s a short commercial but …. hey, it looks cute! I’ll watch it when it comes out.
Here’s the Super Bowl trailer for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will start streaming on Disney Plus on March 19th!
It’s Super Bowl Sunday and that means that we’ll be getting at least a few commercials for some upcoming films.
Like this one!
This is for M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, Old. Apparently, it’s about a beach where you age really quickly. The trailer somewhat optimistically promises that it will be in theaters this summer.
Through the Shattered Lens 