As David Simon’s Show Me a Hero nears the end of its mini-run (with its sixth and final episode airing on August 30), assorted publications are starting to focus on specific elements that helped the show so seemingly realistically reproduce late 80s/early 90s Yonkers. The Atlantic published a feature on graphic designer and former graffiti artist Chris Capuozzo, who was hired by the Hero team to paint period-specific graffiti on the show’s set. Capuozzo’s wife, Denise, is a photographer, and it turns out she’d actually extensively captured “life in everyday Yonkers” in the late 80s. Through using her photos as guidelines and enlisting the support of “a group of individuals who were involved in graffiti in the area during that era,” Capuozzo, Atlantic writer Steven Heller explains, “helps set a foundation for the drama that makes the events portrayed even more compelling.” Meanwhile, writing for Grantland, Chris Ryan discusses the eight Bruce Springsteen songs heard in the miniseries’ first four episodes, explaining that “it would be pretty easy to say,” of Oscar Isaac’s mayor character, “‘1980s, working-class guy … SPRINGSTEEN,’ but the music serves a greater creative purpose than that.” He claims that in a large-scale, plot-driven story, “Springsteen’s music isn’t just providing Wasicsko’s musical identity, it’s providing his emotional identity.”
In discussing TV “heroes,” it’s impossible not to also think back to the reign of TV’s best eventual villain, Walter White. Though he became a complete embodiment of evil, the last couple of episodes saw him attempting redemption…ultimately, via a somewhat ridiculous contraption. Earlier this summer, MythBusters took on the spinning, trunk-hidden machine-gun thingamajig White White constructs to save the day in the series finale. Now, Discovery has shared the video on Youtube. And, as far as power, and the ability to use it for the greater bad (peeing on things, fighting with security guards, fighting with Orlando Bloom, releasing music, etc.) go, another widely known and feared figure is getting attention today. Yes, Justin Bieber did the last of the things on that list of grievances today: he’s released the new, Skrillex-produced song, “What do You Mean?” And it’s actually pretty good. If this has imbued you with a newfound desire to “beliebe,” lucky you — he’ll be doing a week-long residency on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in September.
Far more interesting, though, is Le1f’s new, surrealist video for his track, “Koi,” the first single off his upcoming LP, Riot Boi. Paper Mag featured the video, and writes that it “sees Le1f and friends voguing on the beach while Dali-esque chrome orbs, fish, lips and googly eyes float in the background.” Even more directly referencing Dalí is the new video game, Back to Bed, which The Creators Project says “serves as a fully-immersive platformer in which you don’t just study, read, or admire surrealism, but actually get to experience it in action.”