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23 Sep

What Quantic Dream’s Star Wars Game Means for the Controversial Studio

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A not so long time ago, in a website not so far away, Video Games Chronicle picked up the rumor that French studio Quantic Dream might be working on a Star Wars video game. This was later corroborated by Kotaku. If the rumors are true, it would be surprising to say the least. Quantic Dream, of course, is the developer behind celebrated interactive adventure titles like Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit, but also the controversial company that just lost a libel lawsuit against French outlet Mediapart (while winning another against the publication Le Monde) after reports and claims of an unsafe,…

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23 Sep

There Are No Secrets of Dumbledore Worth Adding to the World of Harry Potter

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The sunk cost fallacy is a powerful thing. Despite the fact that the current pandemic has audiences more desperate than ever for tentpole films, no one has exactly been clamoring for the continuation of the Fantastic Beasts series, slated to have five movies in total. So it was with muted fanfare that Warner Bros. announced the upcoming release of the third Fantastic Beasts film, set to premiere in April 2022 under the title Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Those who watched The Crimes of Grindelwald will remember the prominent role of a young Dumbledore played by Jude Law—clearly the…

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23 Sep

Peacemaker Features James Gunn’s Favorite Soundtrack Since Guardians of the Galaxy

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The most important aspect of director James Gunn’s films, aside from gratuitous violence, family drama, and adorable space-critters, is a truly bangin’ soundtrack.  Gunn’s ear for the perfect diegetic pop hit extends all back to his mainstream debut in 2006’s Slither, but reached creative heights in his first Marvel Studios effort: 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The soundtrack, dubbed Peter Quill’s “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” featured eclectic sounds from the ‘60s and ‘70s like Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” and Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child.” Gunn followed that soundtrack up with “Awesome Mix Vol. 2” in Guardians of the Galaxy…

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23 Sep

American Horror Story Double Feature Season 10: Revenge and Slaughter in the Red Tide Finale

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This American Horror Story: Double Feature review contains spoilers. American Horror Story Season 10 Episode 6 One thing you can say about American Horror Story is that they don’t shy away from making world-shattering events part of the show. Maybe it’s the announcement that witches are real. Maybe it’s the end of the world. Maybe it’s an apocalyptic cult. Or maybe it’s just the complete and total destruction of a major industry (and a major American city) because of one person getting a little too greedy. Either way, when it’s go big or go home time, American Horror Story always…

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23 Sep

Midnight Mass Cast: Previous Credits From Hill House to Bly Manor, Legion & Sherlock

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If you find yourself thinking ‘where have I seen that guy before?’ while watching a Mike Flanagan show or film, the answer may well be ‘in another Mike Flanagan show or film’. The horror writer-director is known for his rep company of actors, many of whom appear in multiple roles across various projects. Below is a spoiler-free rundown of the main players in the Flanagan gang’s new Netflix horror series Midnight Mass, about the ripples caused by the arrival of a mysterious priest in a remote North American island community. There’s also info on who they played in past collaborations,…

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23 Sep

Riverdale’s Mothmen Saga Reveals the True Monsters Among Us

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This Riverdale review contains spoilers. Riverdale Season 5 Episode 17 “People believe what they want to believe.” It’s no secret that Riverdale has trouble sticking the landing. With the notable exception of the debut season’s finale, each year has seen the resolution of its respective core mystery solved in an acceptable, yet not entirely satisfying manner. (Please don’t get me started on how things wrapped up with the Gargoyle King). Alas, this trend has been broken by the latest episode “Dance of Death.” My initial impulse was to balk at how the series once again knocked on the door of…

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23 Sep

Is Star Wars: Visions Canon? The Anime’s Timeline Explained

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This Star Wars: Visions article contains spoilers. Seven animation studios have come together to create Star Wars: Visions, a collection of nine anime short films that reimagines the galaxy far, far away through the lens of Japanese culture and aesthetics. It’s one of the most ambitious projects Lucasfilm has ever embarked on with the saga, and it’s an experiment that largely pays off, as it not only brings fresh perspectives to Star Wars but also new characters, from the mysterious swordsman known only as Ronin to a little droid named T0-B1 who wants nothing more than to become a real…

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22 Sep

How Foundation Brings the Asimov Novels to Life on Apple TV+

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This article is presented by Apple TV+. Click here for a free trial to stream Foundation! When considering the adaptation of a classic science fiction universe as massive as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, the sheer scale of such an enterprise seems quite daunting. How can Apple TV+ take a story that spans centuries in a galactic empire with thousands of inhabited planets and make it accessible both to hardcore fans and to audiences unaccustomed to “space opera” sci-fi? When viewers watch the first three episodes of Foundation, set to release on September 24, they’ll see Asimov’s world come to life…

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22 Sep

Star Wars Visions: Who Is Ronin?

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This Star Wars: Visions article contains spoilers. The first short film in Star Wars: Visions, “The Duel,” sets the anime collection’s unique, creative tone. Its main character, a wandering swordsman named Ronin, also challenges the idea of what it means to be a Sith. But just who is Ronin and what is the significance of his name? Visions sits just to the side of Disney’s Star Wars canon. Given free range to create stories inspired by the beloved saga, the seven studios invited to make the nine anime shorts in the collection were able to reinterpret the story of Star…

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22 Sep

Safe House and Watching Ryan Reynolds Before He Was Deadpool

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There’s a scene midway through Safe House, the 2012 thriller which stars Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, that hits entirely differently in 2021. As with any number of films starring these leading men, the stars are cultivating an oil and water relationship in the sequence, one built on mutual distrust and loathing as they drive across a countryside. But in the case of Reynolds, it plays differently than how modern audiences likely expect. When Washington begins trying to get under the younger guy’s skin—poking at his insecurities like he’s Ethan Hawke in Training Day or pretty much the entire cast…

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22 Sep

Why Cary Fukunaga Left Stephen King’s It

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Amongst innumerable adaptations of Stephen King’s literature floating ubiquitously like creepy red balloons in the contemporary ether, director Andy Muschietti’s 2017 updated, polished big screen rendition of It stands out as one of the most prominent and profitable. However, the film—which was followed up with 2019’s It: Chapter Two—was the end product of almost a decade’s worth of permutations under various creative forces. One such force was Cary Fukunaga, who, before tackling HBO’s True Detective and upcoming Bond film No Time to Die, served as director and co-writer until creative clashes with studio New Line. Interestingly, Fukunaga now elaborates on…

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22 Sep

Squid Game’s Most Heartbreaking Hour is Also Its Best

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This Squid Game article includes MAJOR spoilers for all nine episodes of the series, including Episode 6. “Gganbu” isn’t the Squid Game episode with the highest kill count. It’s not the episode when we finally discover the man behind the deadly competition, or its ultimate winner. It is not the most fast-paced or action-driven of the Netflix series’ nine installments, nor is it the bloodiest. Instead, it is a relatively quiet hour that divides its characters into teams of two, with each pair acting as their own mini-social experiment. If the “deadly competition” trope is designed to reflect on the…

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22 Sep

How Star Wars: Visions’ Lop Was Inspired by a Classic Marvel Character

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This Star Wars: Visions article contains spoilers. Star Wars: Visions brings the galaxy far, far away closer to its Japanese roots with nine anime shorts that introduce plenty of new characters to the saga. There’s Ronin, a lone wanderer with a mysterious past who gets stuck in the middle of a Sith invasion; Karre and Am, twins raised from birth to be powerful in the ways of the dark side; Kara, the daughter of a legendary sword smith who may be the only hope for a new generation of Jedi Knights; and the Elder, an aging master swordsman who travels…

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22 Sep

Link Tank: Kathryn Hahn to Star as Comedian Joan Rivers in Showtime Series

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WandaVision star Kathryn Hahn is set to star as the legendary comedian Joan Rivers in a new series for Showtime. “Though she didn’t end up getting an Emmy for her work on WandaVision (despite the fact that it was Agatha all along), Kathryn Han may have lined up another gig with some Emmy potential. According to Variety, she’s going to star in The Comeback Girl, a new limited series for Showtime about the mid-career revival of legendary comedian Joan Rivers.” Read more at The A.V. Club The upcoming Marvel Disney+ series Armor Wars could feature some unlikely team-ups of MCU…

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22 Sep

Is Squid Game Based on an Anime, Comic, or Manga?

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If you are wondering if Squid Game has a source material past its script, then you aren’t alone. It’s one of the search terms that trended after the Korean social horror hit Netflix last week, and it’s not hard to understand why. In this era of peak content, a notable chunk of the stories that make it to our screens in the form of TV shows and movies are adaptations of some kind. When it comes to genre storytelling specifically, many of those adaptations have anime, comic book, or manga source material—one look no further than the Marvel Cinematic Universe…

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22 Sep

Star Wars Visions Review: A Stunning Anime Reinterpretation of the Saga

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Let’s get this out of the way: Star Wars: Visions is wonderful, a pleasure to watch from start to finish, even if it does tend to lean on the same subject matter from one anime short film to the next. But Visions‘ over-reliance on Jedi stories is more than fair. After all, George Lucas heavily borrowed from real samurai history and traditions for his laser sword-brandishing space wizards. It’s only right that the seven Japanese animation studios assembled to bring Visions to life should get a chance to reinterpret Jedi lore now. I won’t be going into heavy spoilers in…

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22 Sep

Endeavour: Why Joan Thursday Has To Choose Strange Over Morse

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Joan Thursday and Endeavour Morse can’t end up together. That’s the unavoidable truth casting a pall over their every encounter. However much chemistry and yearning those two share, when Inspector Morse begins sixteen years down their timeline, Miss Thursday won’t be part of Morse’s life. Colin Dexter’s Inspector is destined to remain unmarried and to live out his days alone, in the very house that Endeavour fans saw him buy in the series six finale.  That house – which, like Morse of late, has been in a bit of a state and requires some work – is destined never to be a family home,…

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22 Sep

What If…? Episode 7 Ending Explained

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This article contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 7. With a couple exceptions (the Captain Carter and Dr. Strange episodes, to be specific), Marvel’s What If…? series has had a fairly consistent system to its endings. They would end the story on one note and then tack on a cliffhanger scene that would subvert it. T’Challa as Star-Lord ends on a happy note? Well, Peter Quill and Ego might bring the end of the universe. Loki rules Earth? Well, here are some heroes who say otherwise. Spider-Man hopes to save the world from the zombie apocalypse? Well, here’s Zombie…

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22 Sep

What If…? Episode 7 Review: Party On, Thor! Party On, Loki!

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This review contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 7. In episode 7 of Marvel’s What If…?, ‘What If… Thor Were an Only Child?’, we get to find out what would have happened if Odin had decided to return the wee babby Loki to his Frost Giant family instead of keeping him, and Thor had grown up believing he was an only child. I’m phrasing it that way because, y’know, Hela still exists. Lest we forget her majesty. It’s a fun, fluffy episode that ends with a terrific cliffhanger that seems to set up the finale of this consistently entertaining…

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22 Sep

15 Hardest Dark Souls Bosses

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It’s easy to call Dark Souls the most influential game of the 2010s. Whether it was the deep combat, obtuse storytelling, or the unforgiving difficulty, dozens of other games have taken inspiration from Dark Souls in one way or another over the last 10 years. It’s even spawned an entire sub-genre of similar “Soulsborne” games. There’s a lot to love about Dark Souls, but for most fans, the most memorable parts will always be the boss battles. We’ve spent hours trying to topple these bosses in the never-ending quest to “git gud.” There’s really no such thing as an “easy”…

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