story

24 Apr

Do Shadow and Bone & Six of Crows Work as One Story?

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This SHADOW AND BONE feature contains spoilers for Season 1. Though Netflix’s new fantasy series Shadow and Bone is based on the bestselling Grishaverse novels of author Leigh Bardugo, it’s not a straightforward adaptation of the book series that shares its name. In addition to the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the series also incorporates elements from Six of Crows, a duology that is set in the same world, but focused on a very different set of characters.  Set two years after the events of Shadow and Bone, Six of Crows is a dramatic heist story set in a different country…

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19 Apr

Yasuke Review: Netflix Anime Reclaims The Story of a Black Samurai

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This Yasuke review contains no spoilers. What’s supposedly last known about Yasuke, the documented 16th-century Black samurai of Japan, is that he was brought back into the hands of his former Jesuit owners after his samurai employment was cut short. From there, the African-originated warrior, who remarkably rose to impressive status under the warlord Oda Nobunaga despite his being a foreigner, appears to vanish from history. Both historical and legendary, Yasuke had nary a chance to grace onscreen media, although he allegedly inspired the protagonist of the densely shaded neo-noir Afro Samurai manga-based anime. He was the star of an…

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14 Apr

Confronting a Serial Killer Review: The Confession Is Chilling, But the Story Is Balanced

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The new Starz documentary series Confronting a Serial Killer is captivating, immersive and infuriating. One of the first things we learn is how victims are parsed through the criminal justice system. On the scale of homicide priorities, “pretty white college students are the most dead, black hookers are the least dead.” Because it tells a story about an under-represented and largely dismissed cross-section of the community, Confronting a Serial Killer focuses on the victims. Even the journalist spearheading the investigation is a survivor. Putting a human face and voice to statistics is a slowly growing trend in true crime coverage.…

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12 Apr

Batwoman is So Close to Becoming a Truly Radical Superhero Story

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This Batwoman article contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 10. The latest episode of Batwoman, “Time Off For Good Behavior,” continues this season’s trend of examining Gotham’s authoritative structures from new angles and through different lenses. Ryan Wilder is the product of a system that not only did not protect her but actively worked to ensure that she and other kids like her did not escape the cycles of poverty and violence that trap them in lives of criminality. Ryan was adopted out of foster care in her late teens, which saved her, but didn’t spare her from being preyed…

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09 Apr

Will The Last of Us PS5 Remake Change the Game’s Story?

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An otherwise quiet week for gaming was rocked by a Bloomberg report that reveals, among other things, that a shift in the PlayStation team’s creative direction may have left Naughty Dog working on a PS5 remake of The Last of Us. I highly recommend reading that report if you haven’t already as it sheds some light on Sony’s long-term plans and has already triggered a heated debate over the changing nature of the Triple-A video game industry. For now, though, let’s focus on that rumored remake of The Last of Us and try to answer the question “Why would Naughty…

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05 Apr

The Walking Dead: How “Here’s Negan” Opens the Door for a Saviors Origin Story

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While the origin story of The Walking Dead’s antihero former big bad was effectively revealed in Season 10 finale “Here’s Negan,” it noticeably missed most of the comic book miniseries it adapts. Indeed, the episode may have showcased the arc of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan from philandering former Phys Ed teacher to post-apocalyptic barbed-wire-bat-swinging badass, but his arrival as a covetous cult leader was nowhere to be seen. However, that story might still manifest in the television universe… just not on the main show. The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang essentially eliminated the notion of further Negan flashbacks on the…

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02 Apr

John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise Producer Says There Is More to the Story

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John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise is a deep dive into one of the most compelling and confounding serial killers in American history. Known as the Killer Clown, John Wayne Gacy assaulted and murdered at least 33 young men and boys between 1972 and his arrest on Dec. 21, 1978. Peacock’s original six-part docuseries doesn’t limit coverage to the infamous headliner. The victims receive full and detailed histories. Journalists discuss Gacy’s impact on the news. The NBC News Studios documentary team interviews the investigators on the case, and family members of the victims. They also interview Gacy’s sister Karen Kuzma.…

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02 Apr

Netflix’s The Serpent True Story: the Book That Inspired the True Crime Drama

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French-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim first learned about serial killer Charles Sobhraj as a teenager in the 1990s. He picked up the book On the Trail of the Serpent from his older brother’s nightstand, and read about a manipulative murderer who drugged, stole from and killed a series of mostly backpacking victims along South Asia’s “hippie trail” in the 1970s. Two decades later, Rahim would be cast as Sobhraj in true crime drama The Serpent, an eight part series now on Netflix. In it, the actor sought to channel the unnervingly still, hypnotic but fast-striking cobra-like quality the book’s descriptions of…

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30 Mar

Unforgotten’s Cassie and Sunny: a Love Story

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Warning: contains spoilers for the Unforgotten series 4 finale. Conflict might be the basis of drama, but love is what makes it a pleasure. Achieve the right blend of both and a TV show becomes somewhere audiences want to spend time. There’s a joy in being buffeted by plot but held in place by the constancy of characters who love one other. Not kissing-in-the-rain, perfume advert love, but the real stuff, the everyday-bacon-sandwich-love of friends who watch out for, rely on and rib each other – the kind of love shared by DCI Cassie Stuart and DI Sunny Khan in ITV’s Unforgotten. Cassie…

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29 Mar

Link Tank: The Story Behind Resident Evil’s Worst Soundtrack

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Resident Evil Director’s Cut: DualShock Edition is best remembered for its abysmal soundtrack, but the story behind how it came about is worse. “The story behind this curious misstep is even stranger, and the 25th anniversary of the original Resident Evil is a fine time to revisit one of the oddest chapters in the series’ history. Here’s how Mamoru Samuragochi, the disgraced composer once known as Japan’s Beethoven, left his mark on the iconic survival horror franchise.” Read more at Inverse. Let’s take a moment today to remember actor/singer Andy Hallett and his lovable Angel character, the green horned demon…

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04 Mar

How Neil Gaiman’s Uncredited Hellboy II Fairy Tale Enhanced its Story

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While Neil Gaiman has been one of the most revered writers in the world of comics for decades, his live-action CV has grown in recent years as he fields an increasing number of adaptations of his own works. Interestingly, the author has revealed how an uncredited contribution to director Guillermo del Toro’s 2008 sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, was his first substantive foray into the world of film and television writing. It’s a contribution that, in retrospect, helped shape the film’s mythology-heavy plot. In a testimonial that appears in the new documentary, Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters, centered on the…

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02 Mar

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell Review – Netflix Doc Unpacks Notorious B.I.G. Myth

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Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace but AKA Notorious B.I.G., is a contradictory legend. A rapper who was always heard singing, a serious artist who never stopped clowning, he took the streets with him knowing it would take him down. His first album was called Ready to Die and his next was Life After Death, but he had a life in between. It is sad how his legacy is posthumous. But, as Sean Combs says at the very start of Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, “This story doesn’t have to have a tragic ending.” Combs, who co-produced the film,…

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02 Mar

How WandaVision Proves Marvel Can Tell a Love Story That Matters

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This article contains Wandavision spoilers. The pages of Marvel Comics include some of the most iconic romantic relationships in pop culture, but looking at the feature films that comprise the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you’d be forgiven for not really knowing that fact. These twenty-some-odd movies have given us everything from space operas and magic to war dramas and spy films. Yet, in all this time, we’ve never really gotten a love story, and certainly not a film in which the central romantic relationship was the primary driving force behind its narrative. Until now. WandaVision is not just the MCU’s first…

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27 Feb

The Conjuring 2’s Enfield Case: A True Story That Still Haunts Us Today

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Lorraine Warren has seen true evil at the start of The Conjuring 2 and wants to call it quits — at least for a while — but when the Hodgson family finds itself under siege by a terrible haunting, the paranormal investigators have no choice but to help. Set in the late ’70s in the London Borough of Enfield, The Conjuring 2 ticks off many of the same boxes as the original: haunted house, demonic possession, and a relentless pace full of jump scares that doesn’t let up until the Warrens are back in their spooky museum, locking away their…

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27 Feb

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell

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In the wake of the Notorious B.I.G.’s landmark induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and ahead of what would have been his 50th birthday, Biggie: I Got A Story To Tell offers a fresh look at one of the greatest, most influential rappers of all time by those who knew him best. Made in collaboration with Biggie’s estate, I Got A Story To Tell is an intimate rendering of a man whose rapid ascent and tragic end has been at the center of rap lore for more than twenty years. [Netlfix]Rated: Not RatedRelease Date: Mar 01, 2021

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27 Feb

The Conjuring 2: The Real Story of the Demonic ‘Nun’ Valak

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The Conjuring 2 depicts the demon Valak as some horrific rendition of Cheech and Chong’s Sister Mary Elephant. But this Grand President of Hell is more cherub than dragon in the demonic hierarchy. As the 62nd spirit in a 72-demon roster, Valak is no delinquent, although he’s been blamed for the two 1212 Children’s Crusades to the Holy Land, which resulted in thousands of teenagers from Germany and France being sold into slavery. Valak also retroactively gets the rap for the 1284 Pied Piper missing children incident in the German village of Hamelin. The majority of what we know about…

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25 Feb

Nomadland: How Bob Wells’ Real Life Story Grounds a Quiet Depiction of Grief

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We’ve already written more generally about how director and writer Chloé Zhao used documentary techniques to blur real life and fiction in her neo-western drama Nomadland, which is now available to stream on Hulu. One of the chief filmmaking choices Zhao made was to utilize non-actors to play fictionalized versions of themselves. Characters like Linda May and Swankie are played by real-life nomads who live in their vans. Bob Wells, a vlogger and author who writes about life lived in his refurbished van, is the most famous of the actual nomads to appear in Nomadland. Wells is an older American…

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21 Feb

How WandaVision is Rewriting Our Understanding of Wanda Maximoff’s Story

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This article contains WANDAVISION spoilers. Despite its many still-lingering questions, WandaVision has made one thing crystal clear: Wanda Maximoff is truly the most powerful Avenger. Not just the woman who destroyed an Infinity Stone and almost single-handedly defeated Thanos, she’s also managed to somehow power an entire town built on false realities and resurrect her dead boyfriend at the same time. But even as the show reaffirms the scope of her power, it also acknowledges one other truth that is too often swept under the rug: Wanda Maximoff is also incredibly depressed. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to…

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19 Feb

Why Nomadland Feels Like a True Story Documentary

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Nomadland, the Oscar-tipped feature film from Chloé Zhao, debuts on Hulu today after getting an American limited theatrical release a few weeks ago. The film stars Frances McDormand as Fern, an older woman and working class widow who travels the American west in a van, in which she also lives. Though Nomadland is not a true story or a documentary, the film often blurs the line between fiction and reality by centering real places and communities, as well as casting a number of real people who are playing fictionalized versions of themselves. To further capture the feel of the nomadic…

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19 Feb

How Clarice Continues Agent Starling’s Story

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In 1991 The Silence of the Lambs became a phenomenon; cleaning up at the box office, winning all five major Academy Awards (Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actress, and Actor) and turning both of its lead characters into overnight icons. But while antagonist Hannibal Lecter has scarcely been away from our screens, the steely yet vulnerable hero of the film, Clarice Starling, only reappeared in the poorly received 2001 sequel Hannibal. Even Bryan Fuller’s cult classic TV adaptation of Thomas Harris’ source material novels couldn’t use Clarice due to complicated divisions of the rights. But now Clarice is back, headlining a…

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