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17 Sep

With No Time to Die Farewell Speech, Daniel Craig Makes Peace with James Bond

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Much will be written about the finale of the Daniel Craig era of the James Bond 007 franchise in the next few weeks, as No Time to Die prepares to hit theaters, but the actor was looking to the past during a brief farewell speech to the cast and crew. “A lot of people here worked on five pictures with me, and I know there’s a lot of things said about what I think about these films or all of those whatever. But I loved every single second of these movies, and especially this one, because I got up every…
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17 Sep

Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Series Finale Makes Up for Season 8

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This article contains spoilers for BROOKLYN NINE-NINE season 8 episodes 9 and 10. There reaches a point where every sitcom needs to say goodbye. While many fans would be content to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine play the hits forever — watch Jake uncover a triple cross yet again, cringe when Boyle drops another unintentional innuendo, laugh when Holt robotically delivers the newest slang term — at some point, cast and crew run out of creative steam and must move on. Brooklyn Nine-Nine attempted to stretch itself in Season 8, admirable for a series this far into its run itself, and especially…
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10 Sep

Empire of the Vampire Makes Vampires Scary Again

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This article is sponsored by As a species, humans have more or less always been obsessed with vampires. (The earliest references to blood-drinking creatures date back to ancient Mesopotamia, believe it or not.) But the way we relate to these creatures has shifted throughout the centuries, as legends, folklore, and popular culture have adapted to the needs and fears specific to respective societies.  Published in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula may have sparked a particular vein of horror story that continues to this day (looking at you, American Horror Story: Double Feature), but Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, published in…
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05 Sep

Aquaman 2: Jason Momoa’s New Suit Makes Big Changes to Hero’s Look

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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will see the King of Atlantis return for another adventure next year. It’s a no-brainer after the first Aquaman movie scored the DCEU its first billion-dollar box office take, making the Jason Momoa superhero vehicle the highest grossing DC movie of all time. It’s a bit of a Cinderella story considering that before the massive success of the movie, Aquaman was often the butt of jokes for being the DC hero who talks to fish. Of course, when an actor as charismatic (and imposing) as Momoa is wearing the suit, he’s no joke at all.…
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15 May

The Mummy Returns Isn’t Afraid of Romance, and That’s What Makes It Great

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We just passed the 20th anniversary of the release of The Mummy Returns, the follow-up flick to the 1999 blockbuster classic, The Mummy. While the franchise sequel has understandably not developed the same level of legacy as its predecessor, it’s honestly still pretty great and has some lessons contemporary blockbusters could learn from—namely, that there can be great power in a good romance. The Mummy Returns came out in 2001 and is set nine years after the original film when it picks back up with Rachel Weisz’ Egyptologist Evelyn “Evie” O’Connell (née Carnahan) and her husband, American adventurer Rick O’Connell…
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05 May

Supergirl: Chyler Leigh Makes Her Directorial Debut

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This SUPERGIRL article contains spoilers for Season 6, Episode 6, “Prom Again!” Supergirl Season 6 Episode 6 Brainy and Nia’s journey back in time to Midvale saw a marked improvement (and even more time travel!) in its second episode. Part Cat Grant-origin story, part sales pitch for a Dreamer (and Brainy?) spin-off, Olivia Nikkanen (young Alex) and Izabela Vidovic (young Kara) continue to wholly embody Chyler Leigh and Melissa Benoist to an eerily impressive level. For her part, Chyler Leigh herself made her directorial debut in an episode that was so good, Brainy even happy-cried. This episode resolved two of the biggest…
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02 May

Back to the Future Not Being Planned as a Trilogy Is What Makes It Great

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In the last decade, it’s become a common refrain among fans and industry players alike: the filmmakers should’ve “planned it better.” This trilogy could’ve been mapped out; those five sequels needed to be outlined first. Perhaps this is inevitable in an era where “shared universe” is part of the everyday vernacular, yet I cannot help but be amused when folks grow wistful over sequels with allegedly concrete roadmaps: franchises like Star Wars, Godfather… and the Back to the Future trilogy. Whenever social media discussions about sequels or franchises that most smoothly told their sagas rear, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s…
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23 Apr

Mortal Kombat: Biggest Changes the Movie Makes to the Games

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This article contains spoilers for Mortal Kombat. The Mortal Kombat movie may be one of the first true blockbusters of 2021, but for millions of fans of the games, it’s also another chance to “get it right.” Sure, 1995’s is a somewhat underrated live-action adaptation of a video game, but its irredeemable sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, left many fans doubting that we’d ever see another big-budget live-action Mortal Kombat movie much less one that comes close to capturing what makes the games special. You can read our review of the film itself for a better look at how close the new…
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17 Apr

Synchronic Ending Makes Sci-Fi Movie a Modern Classic

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This article contains Synchronic spoilers. “Time is the school in which we learn / Time is the fire in which we burn,” wrote poet Delmore Schwartz decades ago, and if any genre filmmakers take that couplet to heart, it’s Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. The self-contained directing/writing/producing/acting pair have made four feature films to date, each of them dealing in some way with the passage of time, the volatility of memory, and the warping of both. Their fourth feature, last year’s Synchronic—which makes its Netflix debut this week—is the duo’s most mature, fully developed, and coherent film yet, while also…
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07 Apr

Lena Luthor Takes a Stand – Makes a Play for Redemption

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This Supergirl article contains spoilers for Season 6, Episode 2, “A Few Good Women.” While our heroes work on freeing Supergirl from the Phantom Zone and its resident space dementors, Lex Luthor’s courtroom drama over his latest plan for world domination plays out expeditiously. It’s a somewhat uneven hour of television that does best when it leans into the lessons these women have learned, whether that’s Alex Danvers pushing herself to bring Supergirl home instantaneously, M’gann schooling J’onn J’onzz on the dangers of charging into dangerous missions too quickly, or Lena Luther in what feels like a synthesis of everything the character…
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06 Apr

In First Become Ashes, K.M. Szpara Makes Us Wonder if Magic is Real

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K.M. Szpara‘s debut Docile was one of the most binge-able, divisive reads of 2020. A near-future drama set in a world in debt crisis (imagine that), Docile explores the violence of capitalism at the most intimate of interpersonal levels, as we follow Elisha as he sells himself to trillionaire Alex in order to pay off his family’s debts. With Docile, Szpara, a queer and trans Baltimore-based author, proved himself willing to dive into some complex, culturally loaded subjects to tell a science fiction story that reflects some central yet ignored truths about our contemporary society. For me, a White reader,…
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11 Mar

From Hitchcock to Star Wars: What Makes a Great MacGuffin

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In the fall of 1939, director Alfred Hitchcock stood before Columbia University to tell a story we can only hope he invented. With a ruthless, dry delivery, Hitch spoke of two Scotsmen on a train. One of these fellows carried with him a mysterious package he says is a “MacGuffin.” When the other man asks what exactly is a MacGuffin, the carrier responds, “It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.” What an odd response, the other guy thinks. After all, there is no such thing as highland lions! When he points this out though, the MacGuffin’s owner…
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25 Feb

Doctor Who: What Makes a Great One-Off Character?

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Some Doctor Who characters are intended for greatness; some are intended to be killed off at the end of their first episode. Writers have a lot more control over the second than the first. What remains true for all characters, is the tension that exists between their function in the story and their potential to affect it. Even a guard who simply runs into a room to get shot could have dragged the story in another direction, should they be allowed (this stock background character was the inspiration for Terry Pratchett’s City Watch novels). Successful one-off characters aren’t necessarily those…
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21 Jan

Peaky Blinders: Ending With a Film Makes Sense, But is it Fair to Fans?

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‘The city is a character in its own right’. ‘This cast gets on so well, we’re like a family!’ ‘I never read reviews, we made this for the fans.’  Of all the clichés uttered on the promotional circuit, the one most likely to sink the stomach is being told that a hot new series ‘is really a 10-hour movie.’ As a phrase, it’s so derided by now the real wonder is that anybody continues to say it (and yet they do. Perhaps they’re telling the truth about not reading their own press).  As explained neatly here by Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk, it’s…
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20 Jan

Why Daphne Bridgerton Makes a Great Romance Heroine

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This Bridgerton article contains spoilers for Season 1. Though Bridgerton is a story of multiple romances – and many different kinds of love – its first season centers primarily on the relationship between debutante Daphne Bridgerton and the roguish Simon Bassett, Duke of Hastings. But it would be a mistake to assume that the romance is the only story this series is trying to tell or even its ultimate endgame. In truth, the real story of Bridgerton’s first season is about a young woman coming into her own, learning who she is, what she really wants, and how to find…
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11 Dec

Perfect Dark Trailer Makes Shocking Debut at The Game Awards 2020

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Perfect Dark returned at The Game Awards 2020 as Microsoft confirmed that recently formed studio The Initiative is working on a title set in the franchise’s universe. Very little is known about the game at this time, but you can get a brief look at what the revival has in store by checking out its debut trailer: What little else we know about this project besides the information made available in the trailer above comes from a brief pre-roll from The Initiative team that aired during The Game Awards. In it, the team revealed that Perfect Dark will feature a…
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07 Dec

Link Tank: YouTube Makes 19 James Bond Movies Free to Stream

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Refresh your memory of 007’s past adventures before No Time to Die. The first nineteen James Bond movies are free to stream on YouTube! “If you have a hankering for some Bond, James Bond action, YouTube is, surprisingly, suddenly an appealing place to turn. As noticed by Slash Film, the first nineteen James Bond films are streaming, for free, on the platform. That includes the films starring nearly all of the Bonds: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan.” Read more at Gizmodo. The latest episode of Big Mouth tackles the blackness of one of its…
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25 Nov

Legendary Painter Bob Ross Makes Flames, Death Relaxing with New Magic: The Gathering Cards

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The different colors in Magic: The Gathering represent different types of magic. Black mana, for example, is drawn from swamps, and is parasitic and destructive, leeching power from its victims before destroying them completely. Red mana, from mountains, is chaotic and explosive, dealing lots of direct damage to opponents. Wizards of the Coast would clearly want an artist to represent these themes in the art on the cards. Who better to represent the death and destruction of mountains and swamps than Bob Ross? Starting Cyber Monday (November 30th), Wizards of the Coast is releasing one of its periodic Secret Lair…
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DVD Guide reviews current dvd releases of movies and TV shows. The reviews of these dvd releases are my thoughts and understandings of the movie, dvd releases or TV show and not be taken as fact.

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