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18 Dec

10 Biggest Video Game Controversies of 2021

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While we’re looking forward to celebrating the very best games of 2021 in the near future, it’s tough to paint an accurate picture of this year without also spending a little time talking about some of 2021’s biggest controversies. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this has been an especially noteworthy year for video game controversies compared to previous years, but there is no denying that some of the year’s biggest stories were controversial in one way or another. Given the context of some of those controversies and the way they remind us that there is a…

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18 Dec

George Harrison’s ‘My Sweet Lord’ Has a Long, Complicated History Beyond the Music Video

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George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was released on Nov. 23, 1970, as the first single to his groundbreaking and historic solo album. The Beatles were the first band to play stadium concerts, put backwards instrumentation into songs, and the first rock band to put sitar and tamboura drones in pop rock. But Harrison’s first solo release after the band’s break up, All Things Must Pass, was the first triple album coming from a single act in rock. “My Sweet Lord,” was the first number one hit by a solo Beatle and the biggest selling single of 1971. It is most…

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18 Dec

The Spider-Man: No Way Home We’ll Never See

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Now that Spider-Man: No Way Home has swung its way to theaters armed with an array of revelations, it’s practically unfathomable that collaborative companies Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios envisioned anything short of its stupendous scope. However, it appears that slimmer, multiverse-deprived ideas were originally planned for the threequel during a brief period of panic in which Spider-Man seemed destined to leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man: No Way Home successfully promoted its returning villainous ghosts (so to speak,) of Spider-Man iterations past, and implicitly teased even more universe-shattering surprises, on which it delivered—we’ll just leave it at that. However,…

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17 Dec

10 Hardest Games of 2021

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While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that 2021 has been a banner year for hard video games, anyone who seeks out difficult games as a cathartic escape from difficult times certainly won’t be disappointed by this year’s selection of controller smashing, monitor breaking, soul-shaking experiences. In fact, it was an especially interesting year for difficult Triple-A and AA games. From Metroid Dread to certain difficult settings in Resident Evil Village, it really does seem like more and more major studios are starting to explore the viability of at least adding optional difficulty modes to their major releases…

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17 Dec

The Witcher Season 2: Why Does Jaskier Sing ‘Burn, Butcher, Burn’?

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One of the standout accomplishments of the first season of The Witcher was the sheer addictiveness of the song, “Toss a Coin To Your Witcher” as sung by Joey Batey, who plays the bard Jaskier in the show. Now lightning has struck twice with the season 2 entry, “Burn, Butcher, Burn,” which is just as much of an earworm. Given that it’s been awhile since we last saw Jaskier, the circumstances related by the lyrics might have been forgotten by some. Why is the bard so pissed at his friend Geralt, who is clearly the subject of this rage anthem?…

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17 Dec

How Anna and the Apocalypse Shows Zombies are, in Fact, Christmassy

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There are some things we just automatically associate with Christmas. Tinsel, Christmas trees, crackers with bad jokes in, fairy lights. There are also stories we keep coming back to at this time of year. Scrooge and his ghosts, George Bailey seeing what the world would be like if he’d never been born, and yes, John McClane single-handedly foiling a terrorist attack that is actually an elaborate heist. But one thing you probably don’t associate with Christmas is hordes of the shambling undead attempting to batter your door down and feast on your brains. In 2017 Anna and the Apocalypse set…

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17 Dec

Link Tank: Find Out Who Rhys Ifans Wants The Lizard to Fight Next

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Spider-Man: No Way Home actor Rhys Ifans says he wants to see the Lizard take on Venom in a future movie. “The Lizard is in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but is Rhys Ifans? The actor, who also stars as Rasputin in The King’s Man (2021) is keeping his lips closed on the new Spidey movie, but he still has opinions on why his The Amazing Spider-Man character was such a good antagonist for Peter Parker.” Read more at Inverse After her standout performance in What If…?, Captain Carter is getting her own run in the comic books. “Peggy Carter has gone through many different titles during…

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17 Dec

1883: Everything to Know About The Yellowstone Prequel’s Cast

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At first glance, Yellowstone didn’t have the makings of a major TV hit.  By the time Yellowstone premiered in 2018, its creator Taylor Sheridan didn’t have much name recognition beyond action movie die-hards. The show’s name was generic and certainly not search engine friendly. And its home on Paramount Network? One could be forgiven for not knowing where that was in their cable package. And yet, Yellowstone did become a TV heavy hitter, arguably one of the biggest ones on television. Its ratings are absolutely massive, with the season 4 premiere pulling in a mind-boggling 14 million viewers before streaming…

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17 Dec

The Expanse Season 6 Episode 2 Review: Azure Dragon

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This review contains spoilers for The Expanse. What a difference a week makes! If Prime Video had released the final season of The Expanse all at once, viewers would have seen the premiere as nothing more than the preamble to episode 2, but on its own “Azure Dragon” stands out as an action-packed but also emotionally powerful installment that deserves its own week of appreciation. Although it’s still easy to wonder how the story can possibly wrap up in four more episodes, things are definitely on a good track. Even small moments like Naomi freezing up during the mission to…

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17 Dec

Spider-Man: No Way Home Easter Eggs and Marvel Universe References

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This article contains Spider-Man: No Way Home spoilers as well as potential spoilers for the wider MCU. Spider-Man reaches the end of a trilogy, which in its way now feels like the culmination of a trilogy of Spider-Man sagas. In what we can best describe as the end of the “Son of Stark” era of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, our hero goes big. Thanks to an ill-advised team-up with a wizard, heroes and villains from other continuities and past movie franchises show up, including a bizarre cameo from a drunken wild card trying to make sense of this…

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17 Dec

Spider-Man: No Way Home Ending Explained

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This MCU article contains MAJOR spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home. Spider-Man: No Way Home, the latest installment in the Marvel pantheon, has hit theaters, complete with an ending that is sure to reverberate across the MCU—if not because Doctor Strange has left cracks in the multiverse than in the space it will leave in the Avengers where Peter Parker once stood. The movie crams a lot into its two-and-a-half-hour runtime, giving rewarding endings to not one but three Peter Parkers. How does it do it? And what does No Way Home’s ending mean for the future of Spider-Man and the…

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17 Dec

Spider-Man: No Way Home Post-Credits Scene Explained

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This article contains significant Spider-Man: No Way Home spoilers. Going into this event movie weekend, there were a whole lot of fan theories and guesses at what the post-credits scene would be in Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: No Way Home. Would the worst kept secret in the world—that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were coming back for another inter-dimensional Spidey adventure—give way to extra cameos from Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson and Emma Stone as a resurrected Gwen Stacy? Could it be revealed that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange had been Mephisto all along? Or, my personal favorite, would Bruce Campbell…

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17 Dec

What Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Toys Reveal About the Movie

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has effectively kept its plot details covered under a magic cloak of secrecy, but the time for touting approaches, especially as its direct predecessor, Spider-Man: No Way Home, hits theaters this weekend. Consequently, a tradition for Marvel Cinematic Universe tentpole pictures has just been fulfilled with a grand unveiling of the 2022-scheduled sequel’s tie-in toys, providing previews of unseen characters and costumes. Hasbro Toys is now teasing the Marvel Legends 6” scale action figure line’s wave of tie-in toys for Multiverse of Madness. Among the various surprises, the preview provides a potentially profound…

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17 Dec

The Batman: Are There Too Many Jokers in the DC Movie Multiverse?

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In the latest edition of its Heat Vision newsletter, the Hollywood Reporter dropped a little news item saying that Warner Bros. Pictures recently test-screened two different versions of director Matt Reeves’ The Batman — one featuring a particular actor, and one without him. Although the Reporter would not say who the actor was, or what role he played, it was heavily implied that it was Irish actor Barry Keoghan, and the part in question was the Joker. Keoghan is in fact listed in the cast of the movie, as Gotham police officer Stanley Merkel (who, in the comics, was James…

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16 Dec

Link Tank: Should Batman Returns Be Considered a Christmas Movie?

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While everyone is enjoying the Christmas-time Marvel show Hawkeye, let’s take a look back on the holiday-themed DC flick Batman Returns. “Batman Returns (1992) is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre movies ever made. You wouldn’t expect anything less from a Tim Burton movie, but even then, it’s a hard movie to pin down. It’s a Batman movie, a comic book movie, and somewhere between an action and sci-fi movie—that much is clear. But is the superhero showdown also a Christmas movie? Read more at Mental Floss Could Hawkeye be taking another step further into making Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. no longer MCU canon? “Fans are now…

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16 Dec

Final Fantasy 14: Common Error Message Meanings and Solutions

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While I’d love to be able to talk more about Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker‘s story, characters, best moments, and mechanics, the fact of the matter is that most of the conversations about this game so far have been focused on the MMO’s ridiculously long queues and various error messages. I hope that Square Enix’s recent decision to suspend sales of Final Fantasy 14 will help fix the game’s worst server issues, but it’s likely that you will continue to encounter the most common problems until the hype surrounding the latest expansion dies down a little bit and Final Fantasy 14‘s…

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16 Dec

When is Spider-Man: No Way Home Set In the MCU Post-Blip Timeline?

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline was hard to keep track of before a universe-changing event occurred in Avengers: Endgame, prompting the main chronology of the series to skip five years ahead mid-movie. Now we’re on the other side of “the Blip,” and the five-year time jump it prompted, but what does that mean for the latest MCU movies and TV shows, including Spider-Man: No Way Home? Let’s break it down, year by year. MCU: 2018 Endgame begins in 2018, not too long after the events of Infinity War where half the universe was “blipped” out of existence with a snap…

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16 Dec

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 5 Easter Eggs & References

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This Star Trek: Discovery article contains spoilers for Season 4, Episode 5. Following in the footsteps of Season 3, the first batch of episodes in Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 do two things: The overall story of the season-long arc is explored, but, the episode itself presents a standalone story in the classic Star Trek tradition. Last week, Tilly got her “Galileo Seven” moment, but this week, in “The Examples,” DISCO tackles a classic Trek ethical dilemma. As Burnham and Book navigate the morality of saving prisoners on a doomed colony, “The Examples” front-loads the episode with a ton of…

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16 Dec

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 5 Review: The Examples

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The following contains Star Trek: discovery spoilers. Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 5 After several weeks of smaller, character-based stories, Star Trek: Discovery dives right back into the apparent season-spanning question of the mysterious gravitational anomaly that is capable of destroying entire worlds. And, in doing so, it manages to – albeit briefly – wrestle with just the sort of ethical conundrums with no easy answers that Star Trek has always been so uniquely good at exploring. (And that’s not even counting the fact that the ship’s computer seems to be somehow developing human emotions, which is going to…

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16 Dec

Nightmare Alley: Guillermo del Toro Noir Is Devilishly Good

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Time to share a secret: as much as I respect and admire Guillermo del Toro–not just for many of his films, but for his genuine love of cinema and particularly of genre, and his championing of the latter in all forms–his last several movies have left me cold. Pacific Rim (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015) were both disappointments, technically impressive and stunning to look at, but lacking in the humanity and emotional resonance that fueled his personal masterpieces like The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). His 2017 Best Picture and Best Director winner, The Shape of Water, was…

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