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The Weekend Warrior 9/3/21: SHANG-CHI, CINDERELLA, WORTH, MOGUL MOWGLI, YAKUZA PRINCESS, YEAR OF THE EVERLASTING STORM, and More

There’s only one new wide release this week but I’m not gonna say this movie title five times, because it’s so freakin’ long, that I can only really say it once. But it’s a good one! There’s also so many limited releases that as always, I just couldn’t get to all of them. (Word of warning: This column was finished under the influence of Churches' excellent new record, Screen Violence.)

Marvel Studios’ second movie of 2021, SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS (Marvel/Disney) stars Simu Liu as the “Master of Kung-Fu” from the comics, making his very first appearance in any live-action form that I know of. I have to say that I loved the comics as a kid and was truly bummed when I sold my whole collection, knowing that a lot of the great run of the comics from the ‘70s and ‘80s that have never been reprinted. That being said, this is Marvel’s first solo character introduction going all the way back to Brie Larson as Captain Marvel back in March, 2019, and before that, you’d have to go back November, 2016 for Doctor Strange, since Black Panther was introduced in Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Shang-Chi is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, who broke onto the scene with indie films like I Am Not a Hipster and the better-received Short Term 12, which also introduced much of the world to Larson, and then the two of them made an adaptation of The Glass House. Cretton then directed Michael B. Jordan, and again, Larson, in Just Mercy for Warner Bros., which grossed $36 million in early 2020 but never quite achieved the Oscar hopes some were expecting. Still, all that work with Larson paid off, because it got him a meeting with Kevin Feige and Marvel for him to pitch this.

Granted, Simu Liu is a bit of an unknown quantity, having not made too many movies and being best known for the sitcom, Kim’s Convenience. On the other hand, his co-star Awkwafina has been building quite an impressive career from her roles in the 2018 hits, Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8, plus her starring role in the indie, The Farewell, for which she won a Golden Globe (but really should have gotten an Oscar nomination). She’s taken that success to put it into her Comedy Central show, Nora from Queens, while also providing her voice for lots of animated movies, including this year’s Disney animated movie, Raya and the Last Dragon. Most who have seen the movie early have mentioned that her comic chemistry with Lu has stolen the movie and oddly, her “best friend” character Katy seems to be heading towards a larger part in the MCU.

If we look at movies based around characters who received solo films before appearing anywhere else in the MCU, we get the aforementioned Captain Marvel movie, which had an insane $153 million opening weekend, doing even better than the Distinguished Competition’s own solo female movie, Wonder Woman, even though the latter was definitely better known. Captain Marvel ended up grossing over $400 million domestic and over a billion worldwide. The Doctor Strange movie that preceded it, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, didn’t do quite well but still opened with $85 million and made $232 million domestic. A year earlier, Marvel Studios’ attempt to make Ant-Man a thing led to one of their bigger disappointments with that opening with “just” $57 million and grossing $180 million domestic. (That also cost $30 million less than Doctor Strange and $45 million less than Captain Marvel, but when you get to those budgets over $100 million, every dollar counts to making back that budget.)

As with many MCU movies, Shang-Chi has been receiving rave reviews with a strong 92% on Rotten Tomatoes from over 140 reviews (at this writing). My review of this is over at Below the Line, and I loved it, too. The big selling point for Shang-Chi is that like Black Panther was to African-Americans, this character is to Asian-Americans, being able to see the first Marvel movie starring an Asian-American, as well as a mostly Asian cast that includes the great Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh (who also starred in Crazy Rich Asians).

There are a few factors to bear in mind, and not just the COVID Delta variant one that we’ve been hearing so much about -- there’s no denying that things are getting worse, and hopefully this can be quelled before there’s another shutdown. This weekend is the four-day weekend with Labor Day on Monday, which has never been a great weekend at the movies, partially because schools have either started or are about to start and people just stop going to movies, despite there having been plenty of early September hits like Warner Bros’ It. September is definitely a new month for Marvel to release a movie, but with all the delays due to COVID, it’s a good (I’m not gonna use the term “experiment) to see if Marvel really can withstand the proverbial 12-month release calendar rather than their movies needing to be released over the summer or holidays or any other month.

Unlike the recent Black Widow, which had a substantial $80 million opening, Shang-Chi is not being released simultaneously on Disney+ via Premier Access, which presumably will mean more people will have to go see the movie in theaters during its 45-day run before heading home, but the question really is “Will they?” Besides Crazy Rich Asians, which did incredibly well among non-Asians, there haven’t been a ton of movies with Asian casts that have done well just due to the fact -- I mean, look at the recent Snake Eyes from Paramount Pictures. It didn’t get nearly as good reviews, but it’s another superhero movie with a mostly Asian cast, and that community didn’t get behind it at all. Maybe we can say the same about Raya but that also was released much earlier in the pandemic.

With that in mind, I do think Shang-Chi is good for a four-day opening between $53 million and $57 million, although I don’t think we can expect this to have the same impact as a Marvel movie with a well-known character or actor in the lead.

This weekend’s four-day box office should look something like this:

1. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $55.6 million N/A

2. Candyman (Universal) - $13.2 million -40%

3. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $11 million -16%

4. Paw Patrol: The Movie (Paramount) - $7 million +6%

5. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $4.5 million -10%

6. Don’t Breathe 2 (Sony/Screen Gems) - $2 million -30%

7. Respect (MGM) - $1.8 million -20%

8. The Suicide Squad (Warner Bros.) - $1.3 million -35%

9. The Protégé (Lionsgate) - $1.4 million -43%

10. The Night House (Searchlight) - $800k -39%

Hitting Amazon Prime Video on Friday (as well as select theaters in New York and L.A.) is Kay Cannon’s musical CINDERELLA (Amazon), which was originally going to be released theatrically by Sony Pictures in January, but it then became one of the first movies to have its production be shut down by COVID, so everything was delayed, and then Sony just decided to sell it off to Amazon, but considering everything going on, that may have been the wise choice, since I have a feeling more people will see this on Amazon then would have gone out to theaters with COVID, school starting, etc. Either way, you can read my interview with Kay Cannon over at Below the Line.

The movie stars pop star Camila Cabello In the title role of the musical was the brainchild of James Corden, who is no stranger to musicals. In fact, he seems to appear in almost every single one, or is that me? The nice thing is that you already know the story, as that hasn’t changed much, although Cannon definitely gives it a more modern spin in terms of Ella being far more feisty and a truly modern woman despite living in times where women aren’t allowed to do their own thing. Ella wants to be a designer, and she’s already making progress as she sews beautiful dresses in the basement where she’s kept by her stepmother (Idina Menzel) and taunted by her stepsisters (Maddie Baillio and Charlotte Spencer). One day, she meets the Prince Robert (Nicholas Galzitine) in the woods and has such an effect on him that he decides to hold a ball and invite all the women in the land in order to find a princess.

Like I said, pretty much the same story that we’ve seen in so many adaptations and quite a few musicals, and really, what probably will stand out more than anything is how talented Cabello is, considering that this is her first acting role in a major feature, and she kills it. I wouldn’t say that I love all the song choices, but I did love most of the arrangements, and there are so many great standout moments like “Shining Star” performed by Billy Porter as Cinderella’s “Fab G” (replacing and gender-switching her Fairy Godmother) and Menzel’s performance of her own song she wrote for the movie is a definite showstopper.

Obviously, casting the likes of Menzel and Porter means you have a couple ringers, but Minnie Driver is also great and even Pierce Brosnan kind of makes up for his horrific singing performance in Mamma Mia! This time, he gets something more in his range. And James Corden is in it, but it's such a small role that even those who truly hate him don't have enough time to do so.

It’s probably a cliché to say that this Cinderella won’t be for everyone, and I’m sure many critics had their knives out for it sight unseen. Personally, I know tons of fans of musicals and movies like Into the Woods, and yes, the Pitch Perfect movies, who will really enjoy what Kay Cannon and her talented cast and crew have done with the story. Kay Cannon’s Cinderella is a movie that’s more about fun entertainment than anything particularly cerebral, and in days like these, maybe that’s all that is needed sometimes.

There's a ton of other interesting indie films out this week… some of them are even good!

A movie that many (hopefully) will view with interest is Bassam Tariq’s MOGUL MOWGLI (Strand Releasing), co-written by and starring Riz Ahmed, which premiered all the way back at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2020. Besides it being of interest due to Ahmed’s presence, Tariq is also rumored to be directing the new Blade movie for Marvel Studios, starring Mahershala Ali, so many will (hopefully) be checking out this movie for that reason alone. (It certainly grabbed my interest.)

In the movie, Ahmed plays Zaheer who raps under the pseudonym of Zed, but he’s a Pakistani living in London at odds with his parents and the Muslim traditions put upon him. Just as he’s about to go on a major tour that could give his career a much-needed push, he suddenly loses the ability to walk and is diagnosed with a muscular disease that will involve stem cell therapy.

Okay, yes, this is another movie involving Ahmed as a performer who is hit by a debilitating condition much like his Oscar-nominated turn in Sound of Metal, but this is a very different movie that also deals with culture and religion and other things that just had much of an impact on me. Zaheer is told by his doctor that after the procedure, he would be unable to have kids, so he should freeze his sperm, and there’s a scene that I personally experienced when I was told the same before my stem cell transplant.

As much as this is very much a family drama, there’s also an interesting almost horror element to Mogul Mowgli as Zameer is constantly being plagued by hallucinations and nightmares, but there’s also some light humor in the fact that his main competition, another Pakistani rapper named “RPG,” is a bit of an idiot. But this really is Ahmed’s show, and heck, I might go so far to say that I think Ahmed’s performance in this movie is even better than his performance in Sound of Metal if you can believe that.

Mogul Mowgli proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Riz Ahmed’s Oscar nomination was no fluke. He is clearly one of the best actors we have today, and he also shows that lacking the right material, he’s just going to write his own. It's opening at New York's Film Forum on Friday, and I'm not sure where else.

Brazilian filmmaker Vicente Amorim’s action-thriller YAKUZA PRINCESS (Magnet) -- which has played a couple recent genre festivals like Fantasia in Montreal -- really should be my kind of movie. Based on the Manga of the same name, it’s set in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I used to live as a kid, believe it or not, but it’s also one of the largest Japanese communities outside Japan. In this environment comes newcomer Masumi as Akemi, who was orphaned as a child and left in Sao Paulo, but she later learns she’s the heiress to the Yakuza crime syndicate. She ends up meeting a badly scarred-up stranger with amnesia (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who believes an ancient katana sword might bind their fates.

Like I said, this should be my kind of movie, because I love Yakuza films and crime films set in the world of Japanese crime, and as I said, I lived in Brazil, so that country still hold a place in my heart. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of amazing Yakuza films from the great Takashi Miike, and this one is just so erratic in terms of pacing and tone that it really took me quite some time to really get into it.

Unfortunately, this movie at its core feels like another Kill Bill wannabe where Amorim relies so much on being super-stylish and throwing in lots of fast editing to make up for the lack of originality or any real substance.

The writing in the movie isn’t great, at least at first, but it’s also far too obvious how new and green Masumi is as an actor, because she delivers her lines and swordplay with very little charisma, and Rhys Meyers isn’t much better. In fact, the film’s best parts are the ones in Japanese, but that’s in the second half where the movie slows down considerably. There is the expected amount of gory swordplay and people being shot in the head, but there’s also way too much unnecessary exposition, much of it in bad English.

There’s just no way around that this is a movie that tries to jump on a genre bandwagon that has been handled so much better by Japanese filmmakers, while this just fails to keep the viewer interested beyond its soundtrack and the score by Lucas Marcier and Fabiano Krieger, which is pretty fantastic. Sure, it’s pretty violent and gory, but at times, it relies too much on viewers really only being on board for that. Other times, it feels like a patchwork of elements that don’t necessarily work together but also feels so derivative of so many better films.

Essentially, Yakuza Princess is yet another overly stylish action movie that’s better when everyone is fighting rather than talking. I had a hard time staying interested, and I’m not sure if that would have been exacerbated if I saw this on the big screen vs. a screener. Unfortunately, you'll only get to see on the big screen in certain regions, because it's mainly being released VOD.

Hitting Netflix on Friday after a week at New York’s Paris Theater is Sara Colangelo’s drama WORTH (Netflix), starring Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, and Amy Ryan, which premiered all the way back in January 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival. In the movie, Keaton plays Kenneth Feinberg, an opera loving lawyer and college professor who is commissioned to start the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, which has to come up with the amount of money that the families of those who died in the terrorist attacks will receive.

As you can probably expect, this movie is a laugh a minute… no, I’m kidding, this is a well-written and acted, but also often rather dry drama that’s about a serous topic, but it also feels like it comes so late after 9/11 that it doesn’t feel as relevant anymore, even with the anniversary coming up soon.

The movie is very much a spotlight for Keaton, who sports a heavy Massachusetts accent but still delivers a solid performance as the man with the unenviable task of trying to calculate the payouts for the people who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks. But Keaton doesn’t just deliver himself, he also brings out the best from everyone else in the cast, not too surprising from Ryan or Tucci, but there are also lots of pleasant surprises, including Shunori Ramathan and some of the actors playing the people who lost family members.

More than anything else, the movie is very much about the excellent script by Max Borenstein (who mostly has written a bunch of Godzilla and King Kong movies, oddly enough), and in that sense, it reminds me of Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight or the recent The Report, which are both solid movies but also very dialogue-driven ensemble dramas. Colangelo does a fine job with the film's pacing, which much have been a difficult task.

The only real problem with Worth is that it's so filled with crying and drama it's pretty hard to take for two hours straight. Basically, it’s one of those very good movies that you really have to be in the right headspace to get through it.

Michelle Civata's THE GATEWAY (Lionsgate) is a crime-thriller set in rural St. Louis with Shea Whigham playing Parker, a social worker who is trying to protect his client, a single mother (Olivia Munn) with a young daughter, whose husband was just paroled from jail with a drugdealer (Frank Grillo) trying to get him back on the payroll.

I wasn't sure about this one at least as it started, even with such a solid cast, which includes Bruce Dern as Park's estranged father, and it certainly started out a bit erratic with some scenes and characters working better than others. What works in the movie's favor is Whigham is such a good actor who rarely gets juicy roles like this one where he can be at the center of the story, and The Gateway shows that maybe this shouldn't be.

Despite a woman as director and co-writer, the whole thing comes off as fairly macho, clearly influenced by filmmakers like Scorses, but the fact that there's heart and real characters at the center of the movie that doesn't offer some degree of action -- gunfights, car chases and such -- does make The Gateway far better than it could have been.

Unfortunately, things start to fall a bit in the last act, although there are some great scenes between Whigham and Dern, and I generally like what the movie is trying to say about family. Because of that, The Gateway ends up being a decent indie crime thriller that doesn't veer too far from others but gives Wigham a long-deserved leading role to show his stuff.

The Gateway will open in select theaters, and be available via Apple TV and other digital platforms Friday and then be available on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, September 7.

Sean King O’Grady’s thriller WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING (IFC Midnight) stars Sierra McCormick as teenager Melissa, who ends up trapped with her family in a house after trying to shelter from a storm… and boy, did this movie remind me of this awful recent movie called John and the Hole that IFC released last month. And this one really isn’t much better, despite starring great actors like Vinessa Shaw and Pat Healy.

Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would read the script by Max Booth III (based on his own novella, no less) and think, “Boy, this would make an interesting movie,” but this is the age we live in where everyone is trying to make something cool and woke for the kiddies, and in this case that comes in the form of Melissa’s goth girlfriend Amy (Lisette Alexis) who shows up (in flashback) as so that they can do some incantations which may be causing all the weirdness. It’s as if the filmmakers thought that throwing in a bit of The Craft might save it.

I probably was most disappointed by Healy, since I’m such a fan of his work, but he isn’t given much to do except rant and rave and yell a lot, and he really comes off like an asshole, which is not a great look for him.

O’Grady throws all sorts of things at the family like a not particularly scary stupid looking rattlesnake that has them screaming horribly and some kind of… werewolf or something? (I don’t know ‘cause we never see it. We just see its tongue which Melissa rips out.) Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen worse acting, which just makes the family even more annoying.

With a really stupid premise that is barely able to carry a movie, if you’re gonna call your movie We Need to Do Something, then for EFF’s sake, DO SOMETHING! Man, this movie frustrated the hell out of me.

Also out on Friday is the anthology film, YEAR OF THE EVERLASTING STORM (NEON), which features an amazing roster of filmmakers, including David Lowery, director of the recent The Green Knight, Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Laura Poitras (CITIZEN4), Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and others, taking a semi-documentary approach to share their thoughts on living in a pandemic… I watched the Panahi and Chen segments but never got to the rest, but if I do, I'll add my thoughts on the film as a whole when I have a chance. The movie opens at the IFC Center in New York this Friday and then in Los Angeles at the Laemlle Royal next Friday.

I wasn’t able to get to Safy Nebbou’s WHO YOU THINK I AM (Cohen Media), based on the best-selling novel from Camille Laurens, but it stars the great Juliette Binoche, a single mom and middle-aged professor who is ghosted her 20-something lover so she creates a fake Facebook profile for 24-year-old avatar named “Clara” who is friended by her ex’s roommate. This opens at the Quad Cinema in New York on Friday as well as in L.A. at the Landmark, and I hope to get to watch it soon.

Another movie I’ve been looking forward to seeing since it premiered at Sundance but just haven’t found the time is Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s WILD INDIAN (Vertical), starring the great Michael Greyeyes as a native American man who decades earlier covered up a classmate's murder, but now has to deal with a man who wants vengeance for the secret he's trying to keep as he tries to protect his wife (Kate Bosworth) and boss (Jesse Eisenberg) from that secret. Sounds pretty amazing and man, I wish I could just fit in more movies with everything I have going on right now.

Chad Michael Murray plays the title role in Daniel Farrands' TED BUNDY: AMERICAN BOOGIEMAN (Voltage/Dark Star PIctures), which hits VOD and DVD this Friday, but unlike last week's No Man of God, which deals with Bundy already in prison, it deals with Bundy still on the prowl and the law enforcement agents who eventually brought him down including detective Kathleen McChesney (Holland Roden) and rookie FBI profiler Robert Ressler (Jake Hays). I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but it would have been nice if they released the two movies in chronological order, no?

A great doc that played at the Tribeca Festival a couple months back and will hit Showtime this Friday is Sacha Jenkins’ BITCHIN’: THE SOUND AND FURY OF RICK JAMES (Showtime), an absolutely fascinating look at the controversial funk and soul star whose catchy dance music of the '70s led to drugs and worse offenses in subsequent years. This is a fantastic doc that I wish I could watch again, but I don't have Showtime. Waugh waugh...

Others that came out this week or weekend:

AFTERLIFE OF THE PARTY (Netflix)

STEEL SONG (Gravitas Ventures)

SAVING PARADISE (Vertical)

Next week, the new horror movie from James Wan, Malignant, as well as Paul Schrader's The Card Counter, which I think might be going wide next week, too.

#The Weekend Warrior #movies #reviews #cinderella #shang-chi #box office #yakuza princess #worth #mogul mowgli

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newidaho · 5 years

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Selected Clippings from Various News Sources, 25-26 December 2054

I. Source: Harris, Jordan. “Lucidity: An Unexpected Sea Change.” News Idaho. 25 December 2054

Just hours ago, the world received an unsolicited Christmas Present in the form of a guerrilla Lucid Event.

Compelling Keynote presentations for new technology have been the norm for 80 years, since Steve Jobs first took to stage to present the Mac in 1984. Rarely since then, however, have many CEOs and entrepreneurs been able to stand up to Jobs’ legacy.

Enter Lex Lucid and his company, Lucid Labs: The 20 year king of paradigm shifts in industry and technology.

There’s no need to recap the ways that Lucid Labs has changed the way we go about our lives. If you’re one of the 75% of Americans, or 87% of New Idahoans with Augmented Reality Lenses, you have seen it for yourself (and if you’re not, feel free to watch today’s Lucid Labs Keynote to jog your memory). If the Lucid Lens was his iPhone moment, now, 20 years later, Lex may find a moment of world-changing integration that Jobs only hoped for, only one year younger than Jobs on the day he died.

It’s Christmas Day, 2054, and Lucid Labs has announced “Lucidity”.

Lucidity is an earth-shattering technology that few of us saw coming. Lucidity is a small patch containing a computer that is (allegedly) so sensitive to brainwaves that it can essentially read your mind.

So what can you do with this powerful new technology? During the event, Lucid discussed three applications that you will be able to find on the device upon it’s release in February:

-Lucid Dream: The flagship application for the device. Lucid Dream can already record and playback the user’s dreams. Further updates are expected to integrate the software with the Imaginary Friend capabilities that have been evolving with augmented reality for the last 20 years. After that, you can finally be with the girl of your dreams. Literally.

-Lucid Creation: A native software package for Lucid Labs technology since the Lucid Mask in 2024, Lucid Creation is expected to take strides right along with the new Lucidity hardware. During the keynote, Lex Lucid hinted at what was already in the works, including an update to Lucid’s animation and music software that allows the user to simply “think” his or her creation into existence.

-Lucid Idea: Lucidity’s messaging application. Exactly how close we are to legitimate telepathic communication was unfortunately missing in the Keynote, but the promise is there.

Lucidity is a computer unprecedented in power and sensitivity, providing expansive fertile territory for new explorers of the technology. The new era of PCs and VR have passed—Lucidity is the new wild west for developers.

And so far, it would appear Lucid wishes to allow and encourage developers to work to his newest computer’s level: Lucidity was rolled out with a guaranteed shelf life of five years. God knows what you’ll be switching to in the sixties.

In these early days, it’s hard to know what applications Lucidity will evolve to have. Even more open to speculation are the implications, which are sure to be a near-constant conversation from today onward.

“From today onward”. It’s a rare and awesome occasion when humanity can say this so profoundly. Lucid’s Christmas gift to the world has been unwrapped, whether we like it or not.

The first Lucidity will ship in February. Until then, if you are living in New Idaho, you may want to drop a hint to one of your peers at the Labs—rumor has it that Lucidity has already been passed out and is in use by Lab employees.

II. Source: Reefer, Banananut. “What We Expect from Lucidity” The Ringworm. 25 December 2054

Hello again! It’s your local bloodthirsty newshound, Banananut Reefer, here to report on the new sensation that’s sweeping the nation.

That’s right, we’re talking about Lex Lucid’s latest: Lucidity.

Now, Lucidity basically takes a look at all of your unfiltered thoughts, and somehow organizes them into doing different tasks.

After the announcement this Christmas, The Ringworm sent a team of reporters to camp out on the mountain ring outside the Labs and see what they could find out. After staring at what was mostly just an empty building for seven hours and losing four toes to frostbite, they decided to report back. Here’s the applications we know from the Event and the ones we speculate are coming in the future.

Lucid Dream: Now, Lucidity is, more than anything, a deep probe into your disturbed psyche. Nothing points this out more so than “Lucid Dream,” An application native to the device that allows you to play back those unacknowledged scenes from the depth of your consciousness.

Lucid Creation: If you can think it, you can make it—Lucid plans to help more people come to terms with the harsh reality that they lack imagination in addition to skill.

Lucid Idea: Well, we finally did it—we are getting to the point as a society where we can read each other’s minds. I wonder if we can still use autocorrect? In the meantime, Paranoia is expected to skyrocket among those who already thought their friends were talking behind their back.

Lucid Potato Patch: Judging by our researcher’s observations, there is a large patch of soil near the front parking lot of Lucid Labs. This being Idaho, we at The Ringworm believe it likely has to do with a Lucidity application that allows you to grow your own potato patch with energy from the mind.

Loosened Bowel Movement: There’s only one explanation our researchers could think of for why they hardly saw anyone at the Labs—chronic constipation! We can only hope for an app in Lucidity that allows you to save the experience of all your best bowel movements in order to play them back again later in all their glory. The fact that so many workers at the Labs appear to be out due to constipation, we must conclude that they are blocked up by anticipation (consticipation?) for the app, which we have guessed will be called “Loosened Bowel Movement.”

Lucid Bank: It’s not a new technology these days without a new form of cryptocurrency. We expect the Bitcoin of Lucidity will be based on your thoughts—if you invest more time mining other people’s thoughts, you can get more thought coins, which you can invest as you would any currency. Hopefully nobody sends any dirty thoughts over to muck up the whole system!

At the end of the day, you never really know where all this hype is going to end up. We can only hope for the apps that we were promised and the apps that we have speculated on. Here at The Ringworm, we’ve been paralyzed with despair after forgetting a defecation we expected to remember forever. Now that Lucidity promises to change that, we will be wearing that patch on our temple all day every day.

EDIT: Sources have confirmed that Lucid Labs employees were given the day off for Christmas, though we see no reason to rule out the idea that diarrhea was still in full force for many employees

III. Source: America, Tommy. “So Long Self-Control, Hello Mind Control.” Truth Quest. 25 December 2054.

Well, folks, the day is nearly here. We’ve been calling it or a while, but the powers that be have made a move today that could very well put the free man in checkmate.

I’m talking, of course, about Lucidity—the huge Christmas announcement, the world-flipping new technology. Some people are excited as hell to get their hands on it and think sweet nothings to their little boyfriends and girlfriends, not knowing all the while these trivial pursuits will be causing them their freedom and the freedom of everyone in America as we know it.

When Snowden told us all the NSA was spying on us, we just shrugged our shoulders and moved on. When we learned the social media companies were getting rich off selling our information, we shook our heads, but we just kept scrolling. Sure, the Data Privacy Act of 2025 was a small victory, but just because it’s harder for companies to sell our information doesn’t mean it’s not out there.

After all, we’ve been running around with cameras attached to our heads for nearly 20 years—what more could the puppet masters want?

Turns out the answer is a resounding “YOUR MIND.” Fake news and fastidiously calculated manipulation on an extreme scale wasn’t enough. Now the powers that be are going to look past our behaviors and into our thoughts themselves.

I don’t need to tell you how dangerous that is. I don’t need to, but I’m going to anyway. If the NSA and major corporations (and their marketing teams) have access to our thoughts, they can finally carry out the mass manipulation the elites and the American government have been planning since the days of the robber barons.

We’ve known it for a while here at Truth Quest, but now there’s no question. The play is just way too obvious. New Idaho is an incubator for the new world leaders. It’s a haven for globalists. Why else do you think the federal government gives Mayor Krispyman special treatment? Why did America and Idaho just sit back and allow the “City of the Century” to be built, along with a hyper train through the mountains and a freakin’ jungle?

All I can think is, you get a lot of passes when you’re in on the game. Now that it’s more evident than ever that Lex Lucid is in the game, it’s official: Lucid is not the “Jobs of our lifetime”. He’s the Zuckerberg.

Slowly but surely, technology is ramping up to allow the globalists to take power over the world through taking power over the individual. Don’t let your mind be taken captive. Fight back! Don’t give up your mind to those whose only goals are to manipulate you and take over the world! Boycott Lucidity and boycott Lucid Labs!

IV. Source: Thompson, Acacia. “Penny For Your Thoughts.” The Midcentury Ungrateful. 26 December 2054.

So this is where capitalism leads to. Trust me, I’m as surprised as you are that it’s hung in there so long—guess it just goes to show the ever-powerful force of greed.

What the “Free Market” has decided we all need now is a way to communicate with objects and each other with our minds. That’s right, yesterday Lex Lucid took to stage to reveal “Lucidity”, the newest computer from Lucid Labs that syncs your brainwaves up to your glasses.

That’s right—two channels wasn’t enough, so we made 500. Boxy TVs were too ugly. We made them flat. Then we put more flat screens in our pockets. But it was too much of a hassle to keep pulling something out of your pocket all day—so we started to wear these computers on our face, with the screen projected right into our eye. And now, if we weren’t lazy enough, we have been given the ultimate convenience: A computer that reads your freaking mind.

Now, we’ve known for a while that capitalism can’t hold up. We just keep using more and more resources to make more products to make people more lazy so they keep buying more and more and depleting our Earth’s resources.

That’s how you end up with jungles in the middle of America.

But now the capitalists have taken it one step farther and one step closer to totally controlling us: A computer that gets inside our very heads.

Just think what ads will start to look like: Pretty soon, marketing companies will know about your perfect woman. They will know what your dreams are. What motivates you. They will start selling it to you in their virtual ads. They will start using characters from your own head to manipulate you into buying what they tell you you need.

Not to mention how much money Lucid Labs and friends will get from selling your information to these marketing companies—as there is no doubt they will do it.

So, is Lucidity something you need? Well, we’re not so blind as to think that this impressive (to say the least) new technology won’t be widely used and applied by the masses. So you might be leaving yourself out.

My question for you, however, is why you want to be in in the first place. Why spend time playing this useless game of making the fat cats fatter at the expense of your health, wallet, and those around you?

It’s hard to say, but it seems America’s here to stay. We’re hoping the tragedy of Lucidity will be the straw that breaks capitalism’s back, but we’re not holding our breath.

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