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30 Sep

New World: The Best Stats For Every Weapon and Build

New DVD release

New World breaks from some MMORPG character-building traditions in fascinating ways, but like pretty much every other RPG ever made, the game ultimately relies on stats and attributes to help determine the effectiveness of your created character. That being said, it’s not immediately clear exactly how New World‘s attributes actually work. While the game tries to simplify the system through icons and basic explanations, you’re not alone if you initially feel overwhelmed by the possibilities and specifics. In order to help make New World‘s attribute system a little less intimidating and a little more exciting, here’s a slightly expanded look…

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30 Sep

Venom: Let There Be Carnage Post-Credits Scene is a World-Shattering Game Changer

New DVD release

This article contains major Venom: Let There Be Carnage spoilers. Read the spoiler-free review here. It was the moment fans have been waiting for ever since they announced a Venom movie way back in the day: the big gooey black monster we call Venom is now sharing a scene with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. Kind of. It’s still a bit confusing how we got there, but there’s no doubt that the implications for the Marvel Cinematic Universe are earth-shattering. Or is that multiverse-shattering? To recap, after Tom Hardy’s Venom made a tasty meal out of Cletus Kasady’s brains, Eddie and the…

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30 Sep

The Guilty Review: Jake Gyllenhaal Carries New Netflix Thriller

New DVD release

The quarantine movie — a film shot during the pandemic following the appropriate guidelines set forth by the CDC — will be a curious sub-genre to look back on. While these movies vary in quality and sometimes choose to explicitly place themselves in a world where COVID-19 is raging (something I can’t quite bother with now, but may appreciate at a later date), they all share similar characteristics: small casts, limited locations, chatty scripts.  Antonie Fuqua’s The Guilty, a remake of 2018 Danish hit Den Skyldige written by True Detective scribe Nic Pizzolatto, is certainly a quarantine film. While the…

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30 Sep

New World: What Are the Best Trade Skills?

New DVD release

New World‘s Trade Skills system is certainly one of the game’s most interesting features. See, instead of only allowing you to learn a couple of Trade Skills at a time (which are broken down into Gathering, Refining, and Crafting categories), New World lets you learn all 16 available trades at once. On top of that, it turns out that the majority of the game’s Trade Skills are genuinely useful and arguably equally valuable. While that kind of design approach means that you can (and maybe should) learn as many Trade Skills as possible, the fact of the matter is that…

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30 Sep

Link Tank: The New Trailer for Encanto Brings Disney’s Trademark Magic

New DVD release

The new trailer for Disney’s latest animated feature Encanto brings a magical world to life. “Disney Animation Studios has released a new trailer for Encanto, the 60th animated movie from the studio and their first to be set entirely in Colombia. The trailer expands on the magical-filled story and the songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Encanto is currently slated for release on November 24 with a 30-day exclusive window of theatrical release before coming to Disney+ on Christmas Eve.” Read more at Collider Hold up… why does Boba Fett’s armor look banged up again in the first poster for The Book…

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30 Sep

Do Star Trek Characters Watch Star Trek?

New DVD release

This Star Trek: Lower Decks article contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 8 “I, Excretus.” For Star Trek fans who worry that Lower Decks somehow doesn’t “count” because it’s a comedy, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only does Lower Decks count as real Star Trek canon it also actively explores Trek canon, constantly illuminating that what we think we know about the world of the Federation, Starfleet, the Klingon Empire, etc. The result? What we know is actually very limited by our perspective of what we’ve seen on the various live-action Trek shows. Lower Decks creator Mike…

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30 Sep

New World: The Fastest Way to Reach Level 60

New DVD release

New World is finally here, which means that it’s time to lose yourself in another MMO and say goodbye to every other aspect of your life as you try to hit the game’s level cap as quickly as possible.  Yes, while it’s always nice to advise people to stop and smell the roses in an MMO, the truth of the matter is that many modern players are more interested in leveling as quickly as possible so that they can finally start “playing the game.” While leveling in New World is surprisingly slow compared to other modern MMOs, here are a…

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30 Sep

Stargirl: Rick Tyler’s Vulnerability Is His True Strength

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This article contains Stargirl spoilers. Stargirl Season 2 Episode 8 Summer has been no fun for the kids of Stargirl. The newest season has seen them lose teammates and classmates as well as taking on Eclipso, their most terrifying foe yet. After the shocking events of episode seven which saw Yolanda Montez abandon the mantle of Wildcat for her own sanity, episode eight focuses on Rick Tyler’s Hourman, who’s having issues of his own. It’s one of Stargirl‘s most powerful episodes yet, anchored by an incredible performance by Cameron Gellman. In the wake of the tragic events that occurred this…

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30 Sep

My Universe: BTS & Coldplay’s Sci-Fi Music Video Explained

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BTS and Coldplay went fully, gloriously sci-fi in the music video for their collaboration, “My Universe.” In the new music video, released at midnight on September 30th, the two bands exist in a futuristic reality where music is forbidden. In spite of the ban, and with the help of a space DJ, the groups come together for a high-energy, galaxy-spanning performance of their new song. The “My Universe” music video/short film is directed by Dave Meyers, an American filmmaker best known for his commercials and music videos, which include MVs for artists Drake, Ed Sheeran, Pink, Normani, Ariana Grande, and…

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30 Sep

How The Book of Boba Fett Changes the Bounty Hunter’s Original Star Wars Story

New DVD release

The return of infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett in The Mandalorian was the first big surprise in a second season full of them. First as a hermit living in the deserts of Tatooine, and then as a Mandalorian warrior on a quest to get his father’s armor back, Boba’s story five years after Return of the Jedi was told in the background of Din Djarin and Grogu’s own adventure. And it all led to a massive cliffhanger in the season finale that showed Boba and his new partner, the assassin Fennec Shand, take over Jabba the Hutt’s palace. This is…

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30 Sep

Aliens Invade American Horror Story: Double Feature

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This American Horror Story: Double Feature review contains spoilers. American Horror Story Season 10 Episode 7 On August 28, 1995, the Fox network turned to Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction host Jonathan Frakes, special effects guru Stan Winston, cinematographer Allen Daviau, and forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht as part of a never-before-seen special called Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction. The footage, released by UK entrepreneur Ray Santilli, was presented as an authentic autopsy of the body of a gray alien recovered from the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash supplied to Santilli by a military cameraman. Despite the Santilli “recreation” being…

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30 Sep

Venom: Let There Be Carnage Review

New DVD release

Grading on a curve always raised mixed emotions when I was in school. If I didn’t know the subject as well as I should, it could be a godsend—the stay of execution from a grade card hangman. When I actually knew what I was doing, however, the bell curve was a curse, dragging even whole classes down. A similar nagging dilemma occurs while watching Venom: Let There Be Carnage: Is showing the most improvement in its franchise’s brief history the same thing as not failing? Technically, this goofy muddle of a sequel is a significant step up from the absolutely…

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30 Sep

Best Movies Coming to Netflix in October 2021

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You feel that? There’s a sudden coolness in the air, and the smell of freshly fallen leaves out your window. If you listen closely, you can even hear the delight of passerbys as they realize everything suddenly tastes like pumpkins. Yep, spooky season is almost here, and that goes for Netflix too. Ironically, the most popular streaming service in the world has chosen to play a bit of a trick on those users wanting a lot of new horror content. While the streamer is providing new original horror films and television programming from its in-house productions, most of the films…

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30 Sep

The Sopranos Didn’t Terminate Robert Patrick, They Busted Him Out

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The Many Saints of Newark will tell stories about things our friends, and friends of friends, did before the events on The Sopranos. We’ll see a young Paulie Gualtieri, Silvio Manfred Dante, and Artie Bucco, all who knew Tony Soprano as a kid. One childhood friend you might not see is a prequel version of Davey Scatino. Last we heard, in the appropriately named episode “The Telltale Moozadell,” he’s now “in a mental health facility in Nevada.” Robert Patrick is probably best known for playing the cyborg T-1000 in Terminator 2. It is an iconic role in science fiction cinema,…

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30 Sep

Midnight Mass: The Real Life Event That Inspired the Show’s Climax

Netflix, New DVD release

This article contains spoilers for Midnight Mass. Midnight Mass is the project that’s rattled around Mike Flanagan’s head the longest. According to the creator himself, Flanagan developed the central conceit of the faith-based horror story well before his horror career even began. The project has been fine tuned many times, first as a novel, then a movie, and now finally a Netflix series. Though the details of Midnight Mass have changed over the years, two particular moments have remained immutable. The first is the opening scene in which protagonist Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) kills someone in a drunk driving accident.…

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30 Sep

How Alias Anticipated Modern Superhero Storytelling

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J.J. Abrams’ spy drama Alias, which turns 20 this week, was a lot of things: high-octane action-adventure series, twentysomethings relationship drama, occasional National Treasure homage. It was also, surprisingly, a spiritual predecessor to today’s hyper-saturated superhero movie and TV universes: A preternaturally gifted fighter, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) inhabits comic-book-esque alter egos to infiltrate secret missions related to ancient artifacts and promised immortality, all while ensuring that her nearest and dearest don’t know how many times she’s saved the world—or which side she’s really on. Like the series’ MacGuffin-generating Nostradamus figure Milo Rambaldi, Alias has proven to be somewhat prophetic…

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30 Sep

15 Best James Bond 007 Games Ever

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After multiple delays, No Time to Die is finally hitting theaters in the UK and U.S., marking Daniel Craig’s final appearance as super spy James Bond, the end of an era for one of the more beloved 007s. It’s still too early to say in which direction the storied franchise will go next, but now is the perfect time to look back at the history of 007 in video games, especially as Hitman studio IO Interactive prepares to bring James Bond back to gaming! Just like the films, some Bond video games are much better than others. There are a…

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30 Sep

Riverdale Is Next to Normal in Its Best Musical Episode Yet

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This Riverdale review contains spoilers. Riverdale Season 5 Episode 19 “She wants this perfect family but she’s lying to herself.” In 2009, the expectations of Broadway audiences were firmly upended by the challenging and, at times, deeply unpleasant themes of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Next to Normal. By covering topics ranging from bipolar depression to the impact of ignoring grief and the results of undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, it was one of the biggest downers ever to hit the Great White Way. It was also a breathtaking work whose beyond candid exploration of mental illness earned it numerous Tony Awards,…

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29 Sep

New World’s Bugs and Glitches Are Almost as Bad as Cyberpunk 2077

New DVD release

Amazon’s New World is finally here, and while the red hot MMO is quickly shaping up to be the company’s biggest gaming hit so far, it’s also worth noting that it might just be the buggiest major game since Cyberpunk 2077. Now to be clear, it’s pretty much impossible to release an MMO or any game of similar size without a healthy amount of bugs. There’s a lot to be said about how many performance issues we’ve learned to put up with at a time when Early Access development strategies are being employed by a growing number of major studios…

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29 Sep

Star Wars Brings Back George Lucas, But Not How You Expect

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Remember George Lucas? He’s back… in figure form! Yes, the filmmaking visionary who, with some help, conceived a ubiquitously-dominant film franchise, is set to be immortalized in plastic via the practice that put the Star Wars merchandising machine on the map. Indeed, Hasbro Toys has revealed a new George Lucas rendition, this one arriving in the 6” scaled Black Series line. While the gravity of such a tribute might be mitigated by the fact that it’s his fourth figure, this particular release commemorates one of his most crucial, pre-Star Wars, achievements: the 50th anniversary of Lucasfilm. Of course, George Lucas…

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