Pop Culturista

The Hobbit Presented as a BBC Weather ReportThe Shipping Forecast is a thrice-daily broadcast on BBC Radio reporting about weather conditions near the British Isles. In 2015, this gentleman from Tolkien's homeland summarized The Hobbit in the form of this broadcast, including the cadence of the presenters.

An Honest Trailer for Dune: Part TwoThe audience consensus is that Dune: Part Two is an even better movie than Dune. It made all kinds of money in theaters, then went to streaming a mere month after its premiere, which just illustrates our modern lack of attention and patience. So what does Screen Junkies think of Dune: Part Two? You get the idea that they really liked it. This Honest Trailer doesn't pick apart the filmmaking as drastically as they do with most movies, but does go deep into the really insane universe of Dune. You have to admit it is a weird place. Dune: Part Two is currently available on demand from several streaming services for $25 and will be released on Blu-ray next month.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees for 2024Eight new inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced Sunday evening. They are: Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J. Blige, A Tribe Called Quest, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton and Kool & the Gang. This will be the second induction for Ozzy Osbourne, and he was included with Black Sabbath's induction in 2006. The criteria for induction into the Hall of Fame is that 25 years have passed since the artist's first album, and each is selected by a panel of hundreds of worldwide experts determining the "influence and significance of the artists' contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll."The official induction ceremony will be held on October 19 in Cleveland, Ohio. It will not be broadcast live, but will stream the next day and will be broadcast at a later date. Read about other musical artists who will receive awards at that time and who did not make the cut this year at The Hollywood Reporter. -via Fark (Image credit: Raph_PH) 

The Teaser Trailer for One Hundred Years of SolitudeOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez is considered one of the greatest novels of all time. It is long, epic, complex, and written in a prose that borders on poetry. Although it was first published in 1967, it was never adapted to the screen, mainly because García Márquez (who died in 2014) never sold the rights to the story, but also because the story of seven generations of a family was considered unadaptable. But Netflix is taking a crack at it, with a 16-episode television miniseries in Spanish. We don't have a release date yet, but those who have read the book fear that in the hands of Netflix, it will pale in comparison to the novel at best, and prove a disaster at the worst. They warn us that we should all read the book before seeing the series. -via Nag on the Lake

Anime Girl Sampling Music Is Wonderfully BizarreI’m a serious anime fan, so I’m about 90% confident that this video is perfectly fine. I can’t speak Japanese, but I’ve picked up enough of the language from watching subtitled anime to recognize “oni-chan”, which is the familial form of address for a big brother and “senpai”, which is way to address someone of senior rank, often a student in a higher grade than oneself.Otherwise, all I know for sure is that musician Yuri Umemoto is a true artist who can take a sample piece of dialogue and use it on an electric piano to create an oddly compelling composition. That’s most of anime anyway: oddly compelling.-via Threatening Music Notation

The Real Story Behind What Jennifer DidThe documentary What Jennifer Did debuted on April 10 and is the number one movie on Netflix this week. The story involves Jennifer Pan, who hired a hitman to take out her parents in Ontario in 2010. Whether or not you've seen the documentary yet, you'll want to read a rundown of the case here, with a look into the possible motives behind Jennifer's actions. But you still don't have the whole story. The movie ends with the news that Jennifer and her three co-defendants (one is deceased) had their murder convictions thrown out in 2023 and are awaiting retrial! What? The grounds for the appeal that overturned the trial results, which leads to an odd coda in the story, are some pretty arcane legal points that Vox details for us. They are still in prison, as the conviction for the attempted murder of her father, who survived the attack with permanent injuries, was not overturned.