Urban Myths - Season 2
Urban Myths is a comedy drama that airs on Sky Arts, with each episode featuring a story surrounding famous figures that may or may not be true. Famous names such as Muhammad Ali, Bob Dylan and Cary Grant are just some of the notable celebrities that were featured in the first season which aired in early 2017.
Urban Myths - Season 2
Today marks the premiere of season 2 of Shudder's streaming docuseries "Cursed Films," which delves into the urban myths and legacies of movies that are supposedly haunted or bedeviled in some fashion. Far more than just a fact versus fiction investigation, each episode of "Cursed Films" provides useful historical and societal context for the motion pictures it explores. "Cursed Films" season 2 will include looks at "The Wizard of Oz," "Rosemary's Baby," "The Serpent and the Rainbow," Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece "Stalker," and the notorious "Cannibal Holocaust."
First off, what gave you the impetus to start this show? Hollywood has a storied legacy of grisly stories both rumored and proven. I recall first learning about the serial killer cameo in "The Exorcist" from an episode of "Forensic Files," which you also documented in season 1 of "Cursed Films."
This episode pulls the rug from under us and it wildly diverts course from a sweet little shipping cruise to something a little more action packed. This time focusing more on Reigen as he and Mob make their way to a nearby town to investigate its excess of urban legends.
After a confrontation with a red coated stalker who turns out to be a pervert who likes flashing people, in the form of a Street Fighter II parody, our tubby esper confronts an urban legend that turns out to be a little less fabricated than the rest.
This season one episode of the Sky comedy series depicts the moment boxing legend Muhammad Ali managed to talk a suicidal man down from a ninth-floor balcony. According to the Observer, the real-life incident took place in Los Angeles back in January 1981. Muhammed Ali is played by actor Noel Clarke, while Ali's manager Herbert Muhammed is played by Lucian Msamati and Danny John-Jules plays the legendary boxing promotor Don King.
The fifth episode of the second season follows the story of a young David Bowie and the T Rex lead singer, Marc Bolan, as they spend an afternoon together redecorating their manager's office in Soho, London. The "Life on Mars" singer is portrayed by Ordeal by Innocence actor Luke Treadaway, and Bolan is played by comedian Jack Whitehall.
Each episode of the fascinating series "The Greatest Mysteries of Humanity" examines precisely this question. The series follows scientists and hobby researchers alike. Archaeologists uncover ancient graves and go on underwater expeditions. The traces lead to ancient Egypt, to Attila, the barbaric king of the Huns or straight in the middle of the infamous Bermuda Triangle. From biblical stories to historical figures and modern urban legends. Where is the legendary Holy Grail located? Did the fabled Atlantis really exist? And are werewolves only pure fantasy creatures?
Filming for the first season took place between December 2019 and June 2020. It must be noted that production of the first season would have been impacted by the global pandemic, so filming for season 2 is unlikely to last half a year.
Over the years, many misconceptions and urban legends have sprung up within Transformers fandom, often resulting from such factors as fuzzy childhood memories, inaccurate catalog illustrations, and mistranslations of foreign material.
Some of these myths have since been mostly forgotten as the fandom moved on, but are being preserved here for historic purposes. Others still persist to this very day, and may even evolve into fully-fledged conspiracy theories.
The building blocks of The Dark Pictures are, of course, urban legends. Man Of Medan is directly based on the (admittedly, probably untrue) legend of the Ourang Medan ghost ship, while Little Hope and House Of Ashes took broader cues from the Salem witch trials and Mesopotamian mythology and folklore, respectively. In The Devil In Me, the series narrows its focus to the story of a single individual: H.H. Holmes, the man sometimes dubbed "America's first serial killer". In true Dark Pictures fashion, though, Holmes is almost as much a mythical figure as he is a verifiable historical person.
I was interested by the lack of supernatural themes in The Devil In Me, or at least in what I'd seen of the game so far. While you can't accuse the first three games in the anthology of sticking dogmatically to the idea that horror has to stem from something paranormal, there's always been some kind of otherworldly element driving the story. The Devil In Me takes its cues instead from a mix of slasher films and true crime, which feels like something of a departure, especially for a season finale. Why not wait until Season Two to change direction?
"We had partnerships, pairs of games," explains McDonald, "And we've twisted them around a bit for Season Two, changed the order a bit [...] so it was always kind of in our head that this would be a chance for us to reinvigorate at the end of the season."
Though I have my complaints, the series still manages to be the best horror show on the air right now, and it is certainly worth your time as it offers frights and character work that are surprisingly strong. Despite a few missteps, No-End House is a delight that, while not as strong as the first season, is the perfect show for the beginning of the Halloween season.
The second season of American Horror Stories has found stronger footing than the first. Except for the barf-bag meandering of Season 2, Episode 4, "Milkmaids," it has stuck to strong scripts and solid execution to deliver reliable scares week after week. And it has done so in part by getting back to basics. Beyond a generally unifying theme of pro-feminist stories, each episode concentrates on the task at hand rather than getting bogged down in world-building excess.
Season 2, Episode 5, "Bloody Mary" gets the season back on track after the "Milkmaids" misfire, largely by staying self-contained and sticking with an old standby. The title refers to the traditional campfire story about summoning an evil spirit in the mirror. The episode puts its own spin on the notion, and in the process illustrates the formula by which the second season has thrived.
The origins of the Bloody Mary story are lost to time, and have undergone a number of variations as urban legends often do. The name likely stems from Mary I, Queen of England in the 16th Century who burned hundreds of Protestant dissidents at the stake in an effort to return her nation to Catholicism. According to the story, whoever wishes to invoke the spirit must stare into a mirror in a darkened room and chant the name "Bloody Mary" a specified number of times. The spirit appears and murders them, shows them chilling versions of the future, or similar horrors, depending on the precise version of the story.
As with most of the rest of the season, "Bloody Mary" serves as an homage to an earlier horror classic. In this case it's the Candyman franchise, which shares both its central gimmick of chanting in the mirror and its focus on racism at the root of its horrors. The episode touches on those in quieter ways, as the four girls deal with the realities of discrimination in seeking a better future for themselves. The Bloody Mary in the mirror isn't Mary Worth, but rather an ex-slave who killed her for her wicked ways, and she exists to test their souls rather than destroy them. As with Candyman, a successor takes up the mantle as a means of keeping their stories alive as much as terrorizing teenagers at slumber parties.
Urban legends have been a common theme this season, as well as the feminist overtones that have set the pace in previous episodes. "Bloody Mary" never deviates from those parameters, but it also stays self-contained, while also revealing a corner of the famous legend that hasn't been expressed before. It's a sign not only of the new season's improved focus, but the way it can adapt seemingly well-known ghost stories into scary pieces of fun. The remaining episodes of American Horror Stories would be well-advised to follow that example.
I have always loved the beginning and end of Grey's Anatomy where meredith talks. They usually have insightful thoughts so I thought i would start writing them down as I went through the seasons. I'm going to start at the first episode and just keep going :)
Design: Prospective radiographic cohort study of seasonal chocolate figurines, supplemented by anonymous 5-item questionnaire survey of belief in the re-wrapping myth (Generic Risk Items Noted by Chocolate consumers in Health care settings; GRINCH).
Results: Expert examiners clearly distinguished the WBCT images of chocolate Easter Bunnies and Santa Clauses; the mean difference in CRS was 84.2 points (95% CI, 78.5-90.0 points), with excellent inter-observer agreement (mean intra-class correlation coefficient, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.99-1.00). A total of 214 survey participants (43%) disagreed and 145 (29%) agreed with the proposition that seasonal chocolate figurines are re-packaged and re-sold the following season.
Conclusion: Although about one-third of our survey respondents did not rule out the possibility of seasonal sweets being re-used, WBCT imaging found no similarity between chocolate foil-wrapped Easter and Christmas figurines, providing solid evidence against this urban myth. Chocolate Santa Clauses are unlikely to pose a significant threat to hospital food hygiene requirements.
The Hook, or The Hookman, is an urban legend about a killer with a pirate-like hook for a hand attacking a couple in a parked car. The story is thought to date from at least the mid-1950s, and gained significant attention when it was reprinted in the advice column Dear Abby in 1960. It has since become a morality archetype in popular culture, and has been referenced in various horror films. 041b061a72