Soda in a can is OK, but soda in a steak? That’s awesome.
Sweet and savory in one mind-blowing meatball. Get the recipe.
Made in heaven. Get the recipe.
Someone invented this and they deserve a medal. Get the recipe.
Give your chocolate cake an extra boost of caffeine. Get the recipe.
themoonblushbaker.blogspot.com.au
Podcast stars Ronna and Beverly talk Sandra Bullock, Woody Allen, “Chewie Edge-jew-i-for,” and why American Hustle may be overrated. BuzzFeed’s Jace Lacob, Kate Aurthur, and Adam B. Vary — guests on the latest Ronna and Beverly installment — survive the experience.
Courtesy of Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo
Adam promises never to mispronounce "quaaludes" again.
These looks are 10 years old and are still super chic today.
Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Which she accessorized nicely with her then-boyfriend Heath Ledger.
Vince Bucci / Getty Images
Vince Bucci / Getty Image
Vince Bucci / Getty Image
California has fought to stop runaway film and television production for more than four years now with a tax incentive program, but some say it’s not enough. The uphill battle to save California’s $17 billion-a-year industry.
The Walking Dead, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and The Good Wife are among the big-name productions that film outside California.
Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
LOS ANGELES — California has long been the destination for aspiring actors, but these days, you're likely to find entertainment industry hopefuls choosing Atlanta over Hollywood.
"I've met people who went to USC for film, and they're all coming here," actor Josh Waters, who moved to Atlanta last year, told BuzzFeed. "It seems like the same people who took the first train to L.A. are setting up shop in Wilmington (North Carolina) and places around here."
Waters grew up in Georgia but moved to California and began acting professionally in 2001. He booked roles as the "sidekick neighbor" on sitcoms, including playing "keg bro" in an episode of The O.C. in 2003, but as the years went on, the husband and father of two found it harder to find roles.
"Why don't we move to Georgia?" the 35-year-old remembered asking his wife. "There's so much going on there."
They moved in June.
California has been hemorrhaging film and television production for more than a decade now, but state leaders are hoping to stem their losses and woo production back with an expanded tax incentive program.
The migration of production began in the late '90s when Canada began offering incentives to lure studios away. By the early '00s, states like Louisiana began experimenting with their own. Today, there are only six states that don't.
California finally began offering incentives in 2009. "We must do everything in our power to stimulate the economy and put Californians back to work," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed the legislation, at the time. Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 and Naked Gun 4 were among the first projects to benefit.
"We were sort of later than most states," said Amy Lemisch, executive director of the California Film Commission. "If we want California to be considered a shooting location, we have to have incentives."
California currently offers $100 million in tax incentives annually. It's one of the largest sums offered by a state, but it still lags behind at least other four states, including New York, which has a $420 million annual cap, and Louisiana, which spent $218.4 million in 2012. Massachusetts and Georgia have also outspent California.
According to data of 41 states' annual caps of the most recent annual incentives obtained by BuzzFeed, California's $100 million hovers around 4% of the national total, a drop in the bucket. (Representatives from Florida and Kentucky's film offices did not respond to inquiries from BuzzFeed. A representative from Illinois film office said annual incentive data was not immediately available.)
Her is the only Academy Award nominee for Best Picture filmed in California. Scenes for Joaquin Phoenix's character's Los Angeles high-rise were filmed at the WaterMarke Tower downtown.
Warner Bros. Pictures
More than 250 film and television projects have benefitted from the program, but only one of the 41 big-budget feature films released in the past two years was shot exclusively in California:Star Trek Into Darkness. And among this year's Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, only Her was shot in the state.
"Right now we're getting our lunch handed to us by these other states," Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, a Pacoima, Calif., Democrat who co-sponsored legislation expanding incentives, said in a statement. "We simply can't sit by and watch this $17 billion a year sector of our economy continue to leave California."
The Expanded Film and Television Job Creation Act, introduced Tuesday, would offer a 25% credit for television shows relocating to California in the first year, expand the number of television shows that can apply for tax credits, and extend the state's tax incentive program for five years.
The legislation has the support of at least 59 additional lawmakers who had a hand in authoring it and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who called it a "prudent investment in the future of California's middle class," but proponents know there will be resistance to setting aside more money for Hollywood.
"In Sacramento, nothing is easy," said Assemblyman Mike Gatto, another co-sponsor. "There's a lot of people who are not necessarily on board yet."
When should you really buy your plane ticket?
Forty-eight years before “Saving Mr. Banks” hit theaters, Sidney Poitier presented Julie Andrews with an Academy Award for playing Mary Poppins. And she was very grateful to Walt Disney.
This was a slap in the face, considering she originally played Doolittle on Broadway and on London’s West End. The role went to Audrey Hepburn, instead.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
YouTube / Via youtube.com
YouTube / Via youtube.com
YouTube / Via youtube.com
Where there is no chance that anyone could say no!
Will you go public, or get kicked out of your company? Find out below!
AP Photo/New York Stock Exchange
Whether you’re into suits, streetwear or a mix of both, these accounts have something for everyone.
You really shouldn’t have tried Craigslist.
Good news, Oscar completists: You can watch several of this year’s nominated films without getting off your couch. Now updated with six Best Picture nominees!
Nominated for: Documentary Feature
Where to watch it online: Google Play, iTunes, Sony Entertainment Network
The Weinstein Company
Nominated for: Documentary Feature
Where to watch it online: Google Play, iTunes, Netflix, Sony Entertainment Network, VUDU, YouTube
Drafthouse Films
Nominated for: Actress in a Leading Role (Cate Blanchett), Actress in a Supporting Role (Sally Hawkins), Original Screenplay
Where to watch it online: Amazon, iTunes, Redbox Instant, Sony Entertainment Network, VUDU
Sony Pictures Classics
Nominated for: Animated Feature Film
Where to watch it online: Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, VUDU,
20th Century Fox
Featuring perhaps the single happiest husky in the universe, a hilariously dead-on parody of Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love,” and amazingly cool GoPro footage of an abandoned pelican’s first flight.
We all know Seth Rogen as a comedian. But his mother-in-law suffers from Alzheimer's disease, and the speech he gave before a Senate hearing on Alzheimer's research this week was wonderfully heartfelt. (6:38)
youtube.com / Via buzzfeed.com
Because if you did these cat things, it would be really, really creepy. Come on, meeting new people isn't so bad! (1:16)
youtube.com / Via buzzfeed.com
“His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.”
Category: Best Original Song Score
Film: Let It Be (1971)
Won (Quincy Jones accepted the award on their behalf)
CBS / Via beatlols.tumblr.com
Category: Best Actress
Film: Lady Sings the Blues (1972)
Lost (To Liza Minnelli for Cabaret)
ABC / Via Youtube.com
Category: Scoring of a Musical Production
Film: Paris Blues (1961)
Lost (To Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin, and Irwin Kostal for West Side Story)
Category: Best Original Song ("I Just Called to Say I Love You")
Film: The Woman in Red (1984)
Won
ABC / Via sonicmoremusic.wordpress.com
On March 1, 1954, the U.S. detonated its largest nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll. Sixty years later, the U.S. continues the militarization of the area, and in exchange, Micronesians are allowed limited access to America.
The U.S. conducted at least 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958. The nuclear test conducted at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954, Operation Castle Bravo, remains the largest test ever conducted by the U.S. and yielded 15 megatons, almost 1,000 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Bravo vaporized two surrounding islets and sent a plume of highly radioactive debris floating over the lagoon and into the open water. Atolls downwind of Bikini, including Rongelap and Utirik, hadn't been informed of the tests but were showered with dangerously radioactive ash, which residents believed was snow — something they had never seen.
In the years following the test, people who were exposed burned from the radiation, became nauseous, developed thyroid problems, had loss of blood cells, and women who were pregnant miscarried. And decades after the bombings, the health problems persist with unusually high rates of birth defects and cancer among Micronesians.
Even today, the fallout impacts the environment, where it is remains unsafe to eat coconuts, other crops, and fish around these islands. As a consequence, most Bikinians have given up the dream of ever returning to their home, and many Micronesians have left their islands for America.
The anniversary of Operation Castle Bravo is a national day of mourning in the Marshall Islands.
Carl Mydans / Via digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu
Robert Kiste
Robert Kiste
March 1st is National Pig Day! Let’s celebrate by “awwwwing” at these beauties together.
I thought I had grown up and left role-playing games behind. But I couldn’t resist trying the highly hyped Bravely Default to see if I was ready to relapse.
Today, I am a modern, fully functional, city-dwelling adult. I write about food for a living, I own a comfortable sofa, I belong to a book club, and I spend too much money on alcohol. I live in Brooklyn.
It wasn't always a given that things would turn out this way. That's because, between the ages of 11 and 18, I was driven by a singular passion, one that people don't tend to associate with well-socialized teen girls: I spent hours and hours and hours of my life parked in front of a PlayStation, and then a PlayStation 2, immersed in various Japanese role-playing games. Final Fantasies; Chrono Chross; XenoSaga; Star Ocean, Shadow Hearts.
The works.
Understand: I was not the kind of gamer who would play for a casual hour on a Saturday and then wander off to do something normal. I was the kind of gamer who — barring outside intervention — would play until I was overcome with nauseous despair. The kind of gamer whose parents instituted weekly time limits so that my legs didn't fuse to the sofa. The kind of gamer who would play a game once, consult the internet to make sure that I'd rummaged through every corner and finished every sidequest, and then play the game a second (or third) time in order to write a psychotically granular game guide to upload to GameFAQs.com, a website of which I was a committed and highly active community member.
(An excerpt from this, my magnum opus: "This is not (yet, and probably not ever) going to be big on specific strategies for beating bosses, etc. Those you can find in the excellent general walkthroughs written by other people, probably ones with more time on their hands than I have.") [Ed.: "more" time, lol.]
Once, in the crazed throes of a Final Fantasy X playthrough, I decided to type up checklists of every single monster I had to track down and beat, every item I had to find, and every super-powered weapon I had to trick out.
Reader, I printed out those lists and made a three-ring binder.
As with most of the questionable decisions I've made in my life, my journey into binder-compiling obsession began when I saw people cooler than me doing something, and wanted in. It was the fall of 1999. I was an 11-year-old in Harry Potter glasses, starting sixth grade and emerging from a period of dressing almost exclusively in head-to-toe polar fleece leisure suits. My older brother and his friend Hunter (who wore a bowl cut with real grace and upon whom I had a non-actionable crush) started meeting at our house after school to hang out and, often, play the newly released Final Fantasy VIII. And I was jealous.
Innocent, pre-Final Fantasy me in fifth grade.
Ariana Papier / facebook.com
I'd always liked watching my brother play video games, but most of them were too boring or too violent or too inherently dopey (bless you, Crash Bandicoot) to compel me to pick up a controller. This game, though, was a window onto a big, fantastic world populated by characters who seemed to have real motives and relationships, brought to life in legitimately beautiful ways. It was rich and cinematic and surprisingly adult, and my perfectionist brain was drawn to the game's measured pace and strategic framework. One of my limitations as a human is that I only like doing things I'm good at. And this was the kind of game, I realized, that I could be very good at.
I was, for years. I played Final Fantasy VIII until I practically had the whole thing memorized and pounced on each new installment in the series. My hobby, though, was private. It wasn't really something I talked about with anyone besides my brother and a handful of strangers on the internet. Eventually, I went to college, where I no longer had the option of segregating at-home geekdom from public conformity. I decided pretty quickly that explaining an RPG habit to potential friends was a lot more mortifying than playing the games was, at that point, actually fun. Something changed.
It's too pat to say that I loved JRPGs because they filled some chasm of teen loneliness or self-doubt. I was never a sad kid. I had friends I liked and a family I loved; I was proud of my grades; I played a mean clarinet solo. But I think I was always a little bit bored. And from the moment I got to college, I became, overnight, the opposite. That shit was four years of straight-up brochure-material personal growth. How could I justify spending an hour leveling up to beat a boss when I had a Nabokov novel to read before tomorrow's section, where I would be expected to dazzle real human beings with my piercing insight? Why would I spend the night alone with my TV when there were cute boys in the hallway to sit next to while they played guitar badly? I was BLOSSOMING, man. I felt like I was finally playing the hero in the real game, and I didn't need the pretend version anymore.
For the most part, that was that. I liked keeping my gamer past in my pocket as a kind of nerd cred card to flash when the occasion demanded it, and I'd wax nostalgic periodically. One summer when I was home from college I even fished my old PS2 out of the basement and rehabbed its wonky laser so I could revisit a few old favorites. But for about eight years now, I haven't so much as picked up a console controller.
Until, that is, I was asked to play a new JPRG on a professional basis. Almost a decade later, It turns out that the closeted RPG geek I was throughout my adolescence is still glued to a tiny screen somewhere inside me — and she couldn't turn down an offer like that. I wasn't sure if I'd outgrown those games forever, or if the fascination would start to bubble up again, and I wanted to find out.
“Whether it’s Russian or Ukrainian, the amount of bloodshed these places have endured … we simply can’t go back to the slaughter,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur says.
An armed serviceman stands near Russian army vehicles outside a Ukrainian border guard post in the Crimean town of Balaclava March 1, 2014.
Baz Ratner / Reuters
WASHINGTON — House Ukraine Caucus Co-Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur said Saturday that while she is concerned about the potential for bloodshed in Ukraine, she understood Russian military action.
On Saturday, Russia effectively invaded the ethnically diverse Crimean region of Ukraine. The Russian Parliament also granted Russian President Vladimir Putin the authority to use military action in the country.
"If I was President Putin, I would have worried with the collapse of the Party of Regions, about peace in the Crimea … I understand Russia's military posture. The United States has never been invaded the way Russia has," Kaptur said in an interview with BuzzFeed Saturday afternoon.
While other lawmakers like Sen. Chris Murphy see the invasion as the start of a broader effort to reassert Russia's Cold War influence over Eastern Europe, Kaptur — a Democratic congresswoman from Ohio and progressive champion — argues ethnic tensions in Crimea drove Putin to take drastic action.
"It was not unexpected. I view, and I'm sure the Russians do, [Crimea] as their rear flank … [and] we seem to be in between leaders right now," Kaptur said, explaining that the collapse of Ukraine's government last week has led to upheaval throughout the country, including Crimea, where the Party of Regions had maintained peace between Tartars, ethnic Russians, and other groups in Crimea. "The Party of Regions kept it civil … some group had to step in to mediate that, and at the moment it appears to be Russian troops," the Ohio Democrat said.
"I don't know what other choices there were … it's one of those situations where things got out of control quickly."
In an emailed follow-up comment, Kaptur emphasized a broad international response to instability in Ukraine, and on Russia's military intervention in Crimea.
"I did not mention that Russia does not control territorial waters of the Black Sea," she said in the email. "That means working with the government of Ukraine, official delegations of international diplomatic leaders could arrive through the Black Sea, engage in fair handed assessments of the current situation, and negotiate through the Ukrainian government deescalation of the current intervention crisis to protect Ukraine's integrity, recognize Russia's longstanding interests in its fleet's access, and move toward peaceful resolution of the Crimean situation to avoid bloodshed."
Russia has used the potential for ethnic violence as its official reason for invading Ukraine, although there appears to be no independent evidence that Tartars and ethnic Russians have engaged in any significant violence, and most U.S. officials view those claims as a thin pretense.
Kaptur's grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine, where her great uncle was persecuted by Soviet authorities and imprisoned in a gulag for 20 years. Kaptur, who has regularly travelled to Ukraine since 1973, said she and other lawmakers have reached out to Russian officials urging them to find a quick and peaceful solution, and acknowledged that economic sanctions — including freezing Russian assets or those of export customers — may be necessary. "We have to keep these options open," Kaptur said.
But Kaptur said she hopes it does not come to that, and that the international community can find a way forward. "Where has the United Nations been" she questioned, adding that "the world community should rise to the occasion" and help protect Ukraine.
Kaptur said her overriding concern is avoiding another tragedy in Ukraine, which has seen repeated violent invasions and internal outbursts for more than a century.
"Whether it's Russian or Ukrainian, the amount of bloodshed these places have endured … we simply can't go back to the slaughter," Kaptur said.
In a rare interview, Hayao Miyazaki talks about why his latest movie The Wind Rises — which is opening with an English-language version in the U.S. this weekend — is also his last.
Ken Ishii / Getty Images; Studio Ghibli
When The Simpsons paid tribute to animation legend Hayao Miyazaki in January, the video quickly went viral, becoming the third most viewed Simpsons clip on YouTube ever, with nearly 10 million views.
Miyazaki, however, was not one of them.
"Unfortunately, I haven't seen that," the 73-year-old filmmaker told BuzzFeed earlier this month, in a video call conducted with a Japanese translator. "Actually, I don't watch that much TV," he added with a laugh. "I don't know how to use the internet, as well. Someone gave me an electronic dictionary, and I'm just trying to find out how to use it right now."
Anyone familiar with Miyazaki's astonishing body of work will recognize in that answer one of the central themes of his films: the tension between a simpler way of life — where one looks up words in old fashioned dictionaries — and the relentless drive of technological progress. That theme is malevolently present in Miyazaki's medieval fantasy Princess Mononoke, the first of his films that most Americans saw in a movie theater when it opened in a limited release in 1999. That theme is woven into the fanciful world of Spirited Away, which won an Academy Award in 2002 for Best Animated Feature Film, and is the highest grossing film of all time in Japan. And that theme is even front and center in one of Miyazaki's earliest features, 1984's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an adaptation of one of his popular manga comic books.
The Wind Rises.
Walt Disney Pictures & Studio Ghibli
It is a theme that is most heartbreakingly present in Miyazaki's latest feature animated film, The Wind Rises — which, he announced last fall, is also his last. A historical epic based largely on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineering genius behind Japan's deadly Zero fighter plane in World War II, the film's elegiac tone certainly makes for a fitting culmination to Miyazaki's 50-year career. (The film, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, opens in the U.S. today in limited release, with an English-language dub featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Mae Whitman, and Mandy Patinkin.) It wasn't until Miyazaki had completed the film, however, that he says he realized he would retire from feature filmmaking.
"I really felt that this was the maximum that I could give to produce an animated film," he said. "The work of animation is building up bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar. I felt I wouldn't be able to put [up] another brick."
Miyazaki has announced his retirement before, only to return to his animation company Studio Ghibli to make another feature (or three). But this time, his resolve feels permanent. And with so much of today's feature animation created using the cutting-edge perfection of computers, it's impossible not to wonder who, if anyone, will take pencil to paper to create animated films with as much bewitching — and popular — imagination. Ironically, it's exactly Miyazaki's singular devotion to his craft that has led him to leave it behind.
These pugs will restore your faith in humanity.
