Have you ever heard the one about Chewbacca driving Darth Vader to the polls on election day in Ukraine and getting arrested?
Of course you haven’t. That’d be a nonsensical joke.
But it really happened. In Odessa, Ukraine, a man in a Chewie costume (driving a man in a Vader costume) was arrested by police after he refused to provide identification. Quartz reported that he was arrested for “illegally campaigning on election day”…for Darth Vader, and had earlier been dragged from a polling location for it; “Darth Vader,” is, as The Guardian explains, technically a Ukrainian presidential candidate.
Not everyone wants to get dressed up, though — neither for elections nor for Halloween. New Yorkers, do you feel like doing something spooky this week, without actually going to or as a haunted… anything? The Creators Project has a neat list of “spooky” art shows going on around the city this week. Come for the Bushwick maze filled with Circus Peanuts, stay for the brunch-time screening of Dario Argento’s Deep Red.
While we’re on the topic of scary movies… Would you be interested in animated horror film with Pixar-y intelligence and attention to detail? Of course you would, which is why you should watch the above trailer for La Noria, an animated short horror film from animator Carlos Baena. A Pixar and ILM vet, Baena worked on Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Toy Story 3, so the film is directly descended from modern animated film royalty. /Film has the full scoop on the film, which is currently seeking funding on Indiegogo. If funded, Baena wrote that the film will be finished in 2016.
While discussing Indian representation in Hollywood, Aziz Ansari revealed he refused to do an Indian accent when asked to do while auditioning for a part in Transformers. The topic came up while Ansari discussed his new, semi-autobiographical show Master of None at Entertainment Weekly ‘s EW Fest in New York Saturday. Apparently Ansari’s heritage — and Hollywood’s paltry representation of it — will be a theme on the show.
“Basically the [one specific] episode starts with my character in 1990, as a little kid, watching TV,” Ansari said. “He’s watching Short Circuit 2. He sees the Indian guy in Short Circuit 2 [played by Fisher Stevens, who is white]. It goes into the TV, and then you see a montage of every Indian character that I remember seeing growing up. And it’s just gas station, gas station, gas station, gas station, weird guy from Indiana Jones who eats brains, Zack Morris making some sort of curry joke. It ends with Ashton Kutcher’s Pop Chips commercial where he dons brown face and is a Bollywood producer named Raj. It’s one of my favorite things we did.”
During an interview on the Graham Norton show, Sam Smith revealed that it’s physically painful for him to sing “Writing’s on the Wall,” his song for the upcoming James Bond movie, Spectre. It’s a weird thing to say, given how he knew he would have to sing it on the show shortly after. As Spin pointed out, it’s the first time he’s performed the song live. Smith’s interview Norton is on top, and here’s the performance: