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13 Dec

Nothing Bad Happens in the Succession Season 3 Finale

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This article contains spoilers for Succession season 3. Here’s the thing about the Succession season 3 finale: everything is going to work out fine for the Roy siblings.  Despite the sale to GoJo ending any chance of their inheriting Waystar Royco, Kendall, Shiv, and Roman Roy aren’t going to be financially destitute any time soon. The trio has been obscenely rich for so long that it’s almost functionally impossible for them to ever not be rich anymore. Through their previous jobs at Waystar, allowances, and various investments, each of the Roy children are certainly still multi-millionaires, if not billionaires. Like…

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13 Dec

Link Tank: What We Know About The High Republic Star Wars Game Eclipse

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Our first look at Quantic Dream’s Star Wars game Eclipse showcases some beautiful imagery of the high republic era. “We already knew this was coming, but a reveal at The Game Awards tonight makes it official: Quantic Dream, the controversial developers of games like Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain, are working on a brand new game set in the Star Wars universe, on what looks like a brand new world of their creation.” Read more at Kotaku Could these teases in Hawkeye be setting up Laura Barton, played by the incomparable Linda Cardellini, to be something more than just a superhero’s spouse? “There are only two episodes left…

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13 Dec

Dexter: New Blood Episode 6 Review – Too Many Tuna Sandwiches

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This Dexter review contains spoilers. Dexter New Blood Episode 6 Dexter Morgan and Kurt Caldwell are on a collision course. It’s not just that Iron Lake is too small for two serial killers, it’s also the fact that both men seem to be fighting for the soul of Harrison. Obviously, Dexter is conflicted with whether he should open up to his son. Not many people would react to news of their dad being a serial killer well, but because of their history and the resentment Harrison already feels, plus his worsening mental state and desire to “hurt people,” Dexter is…

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12 Dec

How Zack Snyder’s Justice League ‘Laid the Groundwork’ for Batgirl Star’s Return

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The casting of J.K. Simmons as Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon in the DC film universe back in 2016 was met with enthusiasm — Simmons, one of our best character actors, already had proven his superhero movie bona fides with his definitive take on Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies a decade earlier. But when Gordon made his debut in Justice League — the truncated 2017 version started by director Zack Snyder and finished by Joss Whedon after a family tragedy took Snyder away — his participation was frustratingly small, limited to a…

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11 Dec

West Side Story (2021) vs. West Side Story (1961): What Are the Differences?

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This article contains spoilers for both screen versions of West Side Story. For most of his career, Steven Spielberg has spoken of his desire to make a musical. It turned out to be well worth the wait. Despite harboring serious reservations about a remake of one of the finest movie musicals ever made—Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story movie from 1961—I was entirely won over by Spielberg’s sparkling and passionate reimagining of the original 1957 Broadway show. As if by magic, it returned to the Oscar winning director some of the irresistible exuberance of youth. A sweeping and…

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11 Dec

The Expanse Season 6: The Plan for the Series End

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Although The Expanse rearranged the order of some character introductions over the years, each season for the most part followed the conflict of each successive book in the James S. A. Corey series. Season one followed Leviathan Wakes, season two followed Caliban’s War, and so on. But with the ninth and final novel recently released, how can the show possibly wrap up the story in a way that will satisfy fans and resolve the issues brought about by the introduction of alien technology into the solar system? The short answer is: it doesn’t need to. Ty Franck, one half of…

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11 Dec

How Halo Infinite Became the Franchise’s Own Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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Even though it’s technically a sequel to 2015’s Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Infinite‘s mission was not so much to continue the story of the Reclaimer Saga and all the Cortana and Forerunner baggage that comes with it. Yes, there’s still a bit of that throughout Halo Infinite’s 10-15 hour story campaign, but the game’s main concern, as Master Chief crash lands on yet another mysterious Halo ring, is to recapture the magic of 2001. From the opening space mission, it’s clear that Halo Infinite wants its 30+ year old fandom who bought the original Xbox two decades ago to feel…

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11 Dec

The Actors Who Have Played Spider-Man

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With great power comes great responsibility. And the power of getting to don Peter Parker’s beloved red and blue tights has been bestowed only on a few. Despite it seeming like a new Spider-Man movie is coming to theaters every year—and to be fair that’s not too far from the truth—just three actors have played the character in live-action on the big screen. When the web is slightly widened to encompass television, the number of live-action Parkers increases, but they’re comparatively obscure. Truth be told, there have only been a handful of Spider-Men, and each has left a strikingly distinct…

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11 Dec

The Best Mike Nesmith Monkees Songs

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Robert Michael Nesmith, who died at the age of 79, is best known as the member of the Monkees who wore the wool cap, but also one of the band’s premiere songwriters. Besides providing several hits, the songs kickstarted the made-for-TV band into a self-producing, songwriting team. The Monkees played their own instruments. Former child actors Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz weren’t initially proficient but were as eager to learn as any garage band. Musicians Nesmith and Peter Tork were hired as actors who knew how to ape The Beatles look in comedy films like A Hard Day’s Night and…

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11 Dec

Cryptozoo: Inside the Must-See Mythical Animated Movie

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Writer, artist, and director Dash Shaw’s adult animated fantasy film Cryptozoo is a morality play masquerading as a dark reflection of Jurassic Park. In that film, dinosaurs were brought back to life through DNA and put on display. Cryptozoo does the same with cryptids, which are mythological creatures who have teased mankind’s imagination since the dawn of civilization. Cryptozoo is set in 1967 San Francisco, a time of civil unrest, disobedience and oppression, and the cryptids are facing the same kind of suppression as hippies like Amber (Louisa Krause) and Matthew (Michael Cera), but on a far more mythic level.…

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11 Dec

Young Justice: Phantoms Asks Important Questions About the Origin of Atlantis

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This Young Justice Phantoms review contains spoilers. Young Justice Season 4 Episode 10 Young Justice continues its ignominious probable sendoff with another episode that tells a far more interesting story than it shows. The pacing of each episode is so odd that I’m certain this is it for the series; the storytelling choices they’re making have me convinced it’s probably for the best. The sequences the show selected to animate this week include a fairly rote but capably directed magical fight sequence between Klarion the Witch Boy, the Child, Flaw, and eventually Etrigan, making his debut on the show at…

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11 Dec

Elden Ring: What is the Elden Ring?

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The new Elden Ring story trailer that premiered during The Game Awards was clearly designed to trigger a few debates about the game’s lore, but the biggest question that the trailer raises has to be “What, exactly, is the Elden Ring?” Ever since Elden Ring’s teaser trailer debuted in 2019, many fans have been working under the assumption that the Elden Ring is…well…a physical ring. It seemed to be the most logical explanation available at the time, and the idea of a magical ring as a McGuffin has certainly been featured in a few famous pieces of fantasy fiction. However,…

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10 Dec

The Matrix Resurrections: Tom Hardy’s Potential Surprise Cameo Revealed

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There’s already so much to look forward to in regards to The Matrix Resurrections, our first Matrix movie in almost two decades, and that’s without taking a potential Tom Hardy cameo into account. Venom 2 was filming in San Francisco at the same time as The Matrix Resurrections, with helicopters from Matrix production even making it into the background of the final Venom 2 edit, but what about the reverse? Will we see any hints of Venom 2 production in The Matrix Resurrections? Actually, we may even see Eddie Brock himself… Well, not the character of Venom, but the actor…

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10 Dec

The Expanse Season 6 Episode 1 Review: Strange Dogs

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This review of The Expanse contains spoilers. The Expanse Season 6 Episode 1 Fans of The Expanse don’t want their show to end, and although they only had to wait eight months between seasons 5 and 6, everyone wants each of these last six episodes to be as full and satisfying as possible. In that sense, “Strange Dogs” was both triumphant in signaling the show’s return and disappointing in merely setting up the action to come. Although the premiere was a necessary introduction to the continuing story, a desire for more created a paradoxical urge to get to the next…

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10 Dec

Why Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop Was Canceled

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The live-action remake of beloved anime Cowboy Bebop had all the makings of a Big Deal ™ for Netflix. In development since 2017, the show was intended to honor Sunrise animation’s 1998 sci-fi neo noir classic while hopefully introducing its world to a new generation of fans. Prior to the Cowboy Bebop’s release, Netflix even unveiled a trailer to depict how the show would closely mimic the anime’s kinetic style. Now it looks like all those high hopes were for naught. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix has canceled Cowboy Bebop just a few weeks after its Nov. 19 premiere.…

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10 Dec

Spider-Man: No Way Home – J. Jonah Jameson is ‘Absolutely the Same Guy’ From Raimi Trilogy

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It was one of the most stunning Marvel mid-credits sequences in the entire history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: at the end of 2019’s Spider-Man: Far from Home, a webcast frames Spider-Man (Tom Holland) as the villain behind a drone attack in London and the death of the reputed superhero Mysterio, while revealing Spidey’s true identity as Peter Parker to the world. The person behind this webcast? None other than J. Jonah Jameson — played by J.K. Simmons, the same actor who played Jameson in the three Spider-Man movies directed by Sam Raimi circa 2002-2007. Except for a change in…

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10 Dec

Does Spider-Man Have Room in the MCU for Harry Osborn?

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Spider-Man: No Way Home may already have its handprint set in Marvel Cinematic Universe cement in a yet-to-be-revealed manner, but speculation about the Wall-Crawler’s future films is already rampant, with plans for a new trilogy recently confirmed. Thus, as star Tom Holland touts the film as “the end of an era,” fans are fixating on the idea of Peter Parker’s famous pal, Harry Osborn, making an MCU debut. Intriguingly, Holland and co-stars Zendaya and Jacob Batalon are backing the idea of Timothée Chalamet for the coveted role. As the main trio of the Sony Pictures-produced Spider-Man MCU films collectively known…

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10 Dec

Why Wonder Woman is Perfect for Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis System

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The Game Awards featured a number of incredible (and surprising) trailers, but the show may have been stolen by the announcement that Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor developer Monolith Productions is working on an open-world Wonder Woman game that will feature a version of the “Nemesis System” that the studio’s Lord of the Rings games are famous for. For those who don’t know, the Nemesis System is a unique mechanic that essentially relies on a military-like hierarchy of NPCs that can remember player actions. That system serves the plots of the Shadow games, but it’s best known for enhancing the thrill…

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10 Dec

Link Tank: The Hidden Secrets of Christmas Vacation

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Did you know National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is based on a short story? Learn all about that and more fun facts on the holiday classic. “On December 1, 1989, a new chapter of Griswold family dysfunction was unleashed upon the world when National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation made its debut in movie theaters and an instant holiday classic was born. Here are some things you might not know about everyone’s favorite Christmas comedy.” Read more at Mental Floss Guy Ritchie returns in the most Guy Ritchie movie yet; Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre. “Early 2020 action movie The Gentlemen kind of suggested that Guy Ritchie had…

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10 Dec

The Wheel of Time: The Secrets of Moiraine and Siuan

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This article contains The Wheel of Time spoilers. The Wheel of Time has plenty to enjoy for those who haven’t read the Robert Jordan novels upon which the show is based, but there has been no shortage of frustration on the part of “book purists” who are dissatisfied with some of the changes made by the television adaptation. Complaints of women being among the Dragon Reborn candidates, for example, may have primed more defensive viewers to question the latest narrative revision: the portrayal of Moiraine and Siuan as lovers. But before the claims of “woke nonsense” come rolling in, hold…

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