Call us spoilsports all you want, but we've got little love for April Fool's Day around here. It makes the already-tedious process of sorting through true and false on the Internet 100 times harder for a single day, and pulling off actually good pranks is practically impossible when The Onion is perfecting it all the other days of the year.
But like any good spoilsports, we're here to poke holes in all the pranks out there-- and because we're not totally monsters, pay tribute to the day's best pranks as well. So we'll be keeping the list below updated throughout the day of all the pranks we see that might affect you, the devoted movie fan who just wants to know the truth, dammit! But we'll also link to them, of course, so that you can check out the tomfoolery for yourself. If you see any that we haven't caught please add them in the comments. We can make it through this day unfooled, but only by working together. And by counting down the minutes until this cursed holiday has passed us by.
April Fools: Confirmed Holiday Lies
Netflix makes REALLY specific recommendations. We tease Netflix all the time for their very real specific categories-- "witty workplace TV comedies" anybody?-- but today they've taken it to a new level. Your suggestions may vary when you sign into your account, but here are a few that Kristy Puchko and I have come across: "Nephrotic Adventures Featuring Very Tiny Children," "Reality TV About People WIth No Concept Of Reality," "Movies Starring Fruits, Vegetables and Fungi" and "When You Watch Netflix, It Watches You." (via Katie Calautti). No, seriously!
Eric's Bad Movies: Casablanca. The always-funny Eric Snider has a running column at Film.com called "Eric's Bad Movies," so inevitably he's chosen today to target what might be history's most perfect movie, Casablanca. Even better, he actually engages with the movie and makes the kind of dumb complaints you can almost assume someone in the world has made: "Also, not for nothing, but Rick looks like he probably always smells like cigarettes and B.O. But don’t worry, it’s not like he’s the romantic lead in a movie or anything."
Film School Rejects gets illustrated. Usually the clever Rejects team comes up with a way to transform their site entirely, like the year they devoted the entire site to expressing their love for Michael Bay's Armageddon. Today they're keeping it simple, but sweet, with a big comic showing their imaginary headquarters, complete with illustrations of the entire staff-- the best, obviously, being founder Neil Miller as a giant floating Jor-El head.
Twitter announces Twttr. This is a prank that won't just fool pop culture lovers, of course, but Twitter proved their power over us once again by making our hearts stop with the announcement of Twttr, a service that will "encourage a more efficient and dense form of communication." But don't worry-- you can pay $5 a month to be able to include vowels in your tweets. Here's the mockup they included:
Chapelle's Show and Full House are both coming back to the air. Over at Screen Rant they always get in on the holiday pranks somehow, and so far this year they've doubled down on the idea of reviving dead TV shows-- not so far-fetched in this Veronica Mars and Arrested Development era. Even more aptly, the Full House and Chappelle's Show fake stories are written in a way that makes them seem highly real. These two shows aren't likely to come back still, but on April 2 and beyond, we'll still be reading stories just like this.
What Culture goes retro. What would it have been like to run a culture blog in 1998? Back then there were only a few sites alive, so What Culture has used the holiday to imagine it, running stories like "iPod: 7 Reasons Why Apple's Walkman Knock-Off Is Doomed To Fail" and "Psycho 1998: 5 Reasons It's An Excellent Idea." In the team's defense, they probably wouldn't have been wrong about every prediction at the time-- but it's much more fun to read people confidently proclaim why Jim Carrey's dramatic turn in The Truman Show will never work.
Think Geek offers the best toys you can't buy. Though you might want to buy one, the Bane Walkie Talkie Mask and the Eye of Sauron desk lamp aren't real… yet. But you can watch this promo video for the Bane toy and be really, really jealous of the kid who got it for his birthday.
Will Ferrell talks Anchorman 2. But wait, which Will Ferrell?!? Hollywood.com keeps the mystery alive until the final paragraph.
Leaked pre-visualization for J.J. Abrams' Star Wars. Yeah, not really. But points to Bleeding Cool for the first big Star Wars prank I've seen today.
Peter Dinklage replaced by Warwick Davis on Game of Thrones. Given how great Dinklage is as Tyrion Lannister on the show, which just returned for a third season last night, this is the kind of thing you almost can't joke about. HBO Watch did pretty well with it, though, even including the detail that Davis had asked for $1 million per episode, meaning "We’ll be seeing a lot less of the dragons and direwovlves due to the new budgeting that will have to be done to compensate. But in the end it’s a small price to pay for this kind of acting gravitas.”
Pineapple Express 2 red-band trailer. You can read all about it here.
Lena Dunham curating Joe Swanberg box set for Criterion. Here's one for the niche indie film fans among you, over at Criterion Corner.
Channing Tatum to star in Masters of the Universe. This is a classic April Fool's Day tactic, taking something that could be vaguely plausible-- G.I. Joe: Retaliation director Jon Chu is in talks to direct the movie, after all-- and dressing it up as real. Check out JoBlo for the full (fake) details.
George Takei cast in Star Wars Episode VII. The best part? This comes from George Takei himself, on his very active Facebook page. Here's the image that accompanied it:
The Monsters University website has been hacked. A vicious attack by Fear Tech. You can read more about it here.
Lady Gaga cast as The Dazzler in X-Men: Days of Future Past Bryan Singer, who has taken it upon himself to make casting announcements for the new X-Men movie frequently over the last few months, has decided to get into the April Fools game and has "revealed" on his Twitter feed that the Grammy winning singer has landed a role in his mutant movie. We're not falling for it!
