Tom Hanks recreates photo of Bill Murray that people thought was him

Posted on by gestenger94

Last month, the Internet was gripped in a controversy to rival that of The Dress of 2015. An old image of Bill Murray mimicking the crying baby in front of him surfaced, but people weren’t convinced the celeb in the picture was actually a Ghostbuster. Some noted that the wailing man looked more like Tom Hanks than Mr. Murray, and the debate ran rampant even in the face of fact checking. Well, now Mr. Hanks himself has stepped forward to confirm it is not him in the photo, and he proved it by showing what it would look like if it were.

Appearing on The Graham Norton show, Hanks gamely recreated the photo with help of fellow guests Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gemma Arterton. The trio did a remarkable job getting themselves in just about the same positions as the Murray and the fans in the original, with Gordon-Levitt making full use of his babyface features. Check out the side-by-side above, and watch it all unfold below. (The comparison begins at the 2:45 mark, but watching the three actors debate which are their best sides is also pretty amusing.)

Juju on that Beat: the power of music memes

Posted on by gestenger94

Viral videos are pushing songs such as Harlem Shake and Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) into the charts. Now, record labels are looking to commodify trending tracks and the artists behind them

It took several months, and a little help from some dancing clowns, for Juju on that Beat to become a viral meme. It started off as the TZ Anthem Challenge, in which kids had to replicate the dance moves performed in a video clip made by 15-year-old Zay Hilfigerrr, set to music that he had co-written. By the end of this summer, everyone from seven-year-olds in snapback caps to teenage girls in sumo suits had filmed themselves taking up the challenge. And it took Atlantic Records just five days to turn TZ Anthem into Juju on that Beat, a tune that could make both them and the song’s creators a whole lot of money.

The song, which borrows its beat from Crime Mob’s Knuck If You Buck and whose chorus is a series of playful dance instructions, was written in a few idle moments by Hilfigerrr and 17-year-old Zayion McCall. “Juju on that beat, Juju on that beat,” its hook demands, using a term the pair made up after taking inspiration from recently coined dance moves like the whip and nae nae. “Now slide, drop / Hit dem folks, don’t stop, aye … / Running man on that beat.” They uploaded the song to YouTube with an accompanying dance video, where it caught the attention of Fresh the Clowns, a dance troupe from Detroit with an impressive social media following. Once their version of the dance began to gain traction, high-school junior Hannah Talliere followed suit with a video tweet that has since between retweeted more than 260,000 times. From there, the song and the challenge blew up.

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Kele Okereke: ‘Tenderness is important’

Posted on by gestenger94

The Bloc Party frontman on masculinity, his magpie eye for musical influences and the lessons of impending fatherhood

You’re appearing at the Being a Man festival at the Southbank Centre later this month to talk about masculinity and the creative process. Has it stoked up any thoughts?

Being a gay man, I have a slightly complicated relationship to the idea of masculinity. If I think about masculinity, I think about assertiveness, machismo and aggression, which I don’t relate to so well. From an early age, boys are told that it’s better to conceal what they’re feeling and present a rough, tough exterior. I’ve never really subscribed to that.

Do you let your emotions come to the surface?

Yes. I think the last time I cried was about a month ago.

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