Veep creator and In the Loop director Armando Ianucci got bored with political satire a little while back, mostly because the real politics of today are far too ludicrous and depressing to effectively make comedy out of them. But that’s not stopping the masterful comedy writer and director from starting a new series.
Avenue 5 has Armando Ianucci taking us to space aboard the luxurious space cruise ship of the same name. Hugh Laurie is the captain who seems to love his job, that is until the ship encounters a problem and he’s stuck with a plethora of smarmy socialites who are all the kind of people who immediately need to see a manager. Even on a space cruise, people are total dicks. Watch the Avenue 5 trailer below for a taste of what’s to come. Read More »
Video games are not required to be fun in a traditional sense. They just aren’t. So, if the entertainment medium is ever going to evolve artistically rather than stagnate and regress with the zombified fad of online competitive multiplayer, money pit loot boxes, time-wasting mobile games, and the first-person shooter obsession that has oversaturated the market more than superhero films could ever do for the movie industry, it’s going to take an awakening from consumers that gaming, even at 61 years old, is still in its infancy having nowhere near tapped into its unprecedented potential as a legitimate art form.
Not to go on a lengthy detour regarding the mixed critical and commercial reception Hideo Kojima’s (instantly recognizable for the iconic Metal Gear Solid franchise and his status as one of gaming’s only true auteurs) latest masterful accomplishment Death Stranding has received, but it’s difficult to accept that many of its naysayers went in to the 50-plus hour experience with the notion presented above: gaming does not and should not be limited to conventional methods of entertainment or whatever is trending, or what’s to be expected from a mainstream AAA blockbuster title.
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Next month brings the return of The Expanse, the show that SyFy axed last spring, but was saved by Amazon for a new season. In season 4, the crew of the Rocinante is being sent through the Ring Gate to explore a new world. A group of refugees has already claimed the planet as their own, and attempts to get the situation under control have failed. Now the crew must figure out how the mission went wrong, and what mysterious power makes the area dangerous for any new inhabitants.
Below, you can watch The Expanse season 4 trailer below, and if you like what you see but you’ve never seen a single episode, you can also check out a recap of the first three seasons from Kevin Smith to get you caught up before the show returns. Read More »
You may find it hard to believe, but Martin Scorsese has been in the news recently. On a cynical level, it’s arguably a bit convenient that Scorsese’s fully thought-out and reasonably critical opinions of both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and blockbuster cinema as a whole have become such a flashpoint of critical discourse over the last few weeks. His latest feature, The Irishman, has arrived in a handful of theaters around the country before landing in its streaming home, Netflix, on November 27. The new film wades in some familiar waters, specifically the Mafia, and features some of the director’s longtime acting collaborators. Yet most importantly, The Irishman is a firm, conclusive counterargument to one of the criticisms that has always hounded Scorsese: that he endorses the violence he depicts.
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Remember Spies In Disguise? The animated film where Will Smith turns into a pigeon? It was supposed to come out in January 2019, then got moved to April 2019, then got moved again to September 2019. Well, it was moved on final time – to Christmas. And now there’s a new trailer. Smith voices a cool super spy, while Tom Holland voices his very uncool scientist assistant. And at some point, human-to-animal transformation is involved. Watch the Spies In Disguise trailer below.
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It finally happened! If any of you thought that HBO’s Watchmen would not dare give us some giant alien squid, you were finally proven wrong. Not only do we get a beautiful and haunting recreation of the end of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s graphic novel, but Damon Lindelof and company manage to make it vital to the story they’re currently telling.
And that’s not all: there’s still an insane number of references and nods to the source material. So join us, won’t you? Let’s look at all the references to the original Watchmen and more in “Little Fear Of Lightning.” As always, this will be spoiler-heavy.
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There are two things that stand out in The Mandalorian, the live-action Star Wars series on Disney+. One is a certain character we kind of have to dance around to avoid spoilers. The other is Werner Herzog. As great as he is on the show itself, the real fun of this whole endeavor has been hearing Herzog talking about the show and Star Wars in general during interviews. Everything he’s said has been fascinating, simply because he’s Werner Freakin’ Herzog.
So when Herzog was recently asked about that mysterious character I mentioned above, his answer was typically Herzogian and amazing. In short: he said it made him cry. Spoilers follow.
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Y: The Last Man is one of the most universally lauded comic book series of the past few decades, and it will soon set to receive a star-studded TV series adaptation at FX, simply titled Y. Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra‘s Eisner Award-winning series is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi parable that centered on Yorick Brown, the last surviving male of the human race after a cataclysmic event wiped out all other living mammals with a Y chromosome. The comic book series was celebrated for its vision of matriarchal society, but in the years since its publication between 2002 and 2008, our understanding of biological sex and gender has evolved. And it seems that FX’s Y is taking that into account.
A casting call is circulating for a transgender character original to the series. As a transgender man, the new character would survive this apocalypse because he was biologically born a woman. While this casting addresses some of the failings that the original series had in regards to diversity and representation, a transgender character joining the Y cast potentially opens the floodgates for a whole new set of issues.
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Have you heard of Jurassic World: Evolution? In the tradition of theme park simulators, the video game lets players create their own dinosaur theme park where they have to bioengineer dinosaurs that think, feel and react intelligently to the park around them, create entertainment and security for guests, and keep the park up and running without any dinosaurs escaping and wreaking havoc. The game is a lot of fun, but it was all set in the modern Jurassic World park. But that’s about to change.
In December, new Jurassic World: Evolution downloadable content will allow players to go back to the original Jurassic Park from 1993, as you return to Isla Nublar and attempt to reclaim and rebuild the park so it can be open to the general public. Get a sneak peek at the Jurassic World: Evolution downloadable content for the original Jurassic Park below. Read More »
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We’ve known that Marvel Studios was working on a Loki series for Disney+ since last fall. However, very little is known about what the series will entail other than the return of Tom Hiddleston as the titular god of mischief, who finds himself popping up at various points throughout time as an unlikely influence on historical events. But now the series has a co-star in the form of Netflix’s Flowers star Sophia Di Martino, who was recently seen in Universal’s fantasy comedy Yesterday. Find out more below. Read More »
