#star trek strange new worlds got the same criticism for their musical episode

[performing-personhood]

Like yeah okay well all fairy tales are sort of cringe, kind of an integral part of the magic, are you new here babes cuz it seems like this your first time in the greater sci-fi genre

"that musical segment in the 2023 Doctor Who christmas special was cringe" news flash asshole, all of Doctor Who is cringe, shut up and enjoy the stupid fuckin gay cartoon

[popwasabi]

“Picard” S1 Review: Doesn’t boldly go but is nonetheless engaging

Produced by CBS All Access

Starring: Patrick Stewart, Isa Briones, Allison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Evan Evagora, Harry Treadaway

Many fans had high hopes for “Picard” going into CBS All Access’s continuing voyage into the Star Trek franchise.

Fans wanted to see the lore finally expanded into the future after its previous three ventures (Enterprise, Abrams Trek, and Discovery) took place in the past, bring modern themes and ideas to Star Trek’s futurist’s world view in a way that felt fresh and relevant, but most importantly continue the story of the franchise’s greatest captain; Jean-Luc Picard, of course.

(He’s the best captain. This is not up for debate. Don’t @ me!)

In some ways the new series succeeds at this. We get glimpses of the previously untouched world of Star Trek post “Nemesis,” new themes that are resonant with real world events and exploratory, even critical, of the Federation’s worldview, and of course plenty of Picard himself as he navigates the strange new galaxy he inhabits.

But Picard ultimately misses the mark due to rushed storytelling, half-baked side plots, and just plain poor execution overall. It’s sad because “Picard” and this very talented cast and production team have their moments throughout this first season’s ten episode run but somehow even with 10 episodes of content to work with fans still end up with a somewhat jumbled mess.

(Me by like the eighth episode.)

This isn’t to say “Picard” isn’t worth your time if you’re an avid Star Trek fan or just someone who likes Patrick Stewart in this role in general but the first season will leave you still hungry for more and not in a good way.

“Picard” continues the story of the titular captain, now retired admiral, many years after the events of “Nemesis” as a retired Jean Luc reflects on his life in Starfleet and of his late friend Data who gave his life for his. A synth ban has been enacted in Starfleet after a major riot on Mars some years prior and Picard is understandably sour on the idea, given his relationship with Data, while also fighting Starfleet on not helping the exodus of the Romulans after the supernova that wiped out their homeworld in “Star Trek (2009).” When a young woman comes seeking Picard’s aid after an attack by mysterious assailants, revealing that she is an android and the possible daughter of Data, and gets killed, it is up to the retired Admiral to find her twin sister before she suffers the same fate.

Before we get started let’s throw out some of the bad faith arguments on why this series wasn’t all that good.

“Picard” doesn’t suck because it has “politics” in it. At this point, if you are complaining about the existence of social viewpoints and political/philosophical discussions in your Star Trek, or let alone any series for that matter, I don’t know what the hell you’ve been watching the past few decades. Star Trek has always been more than just a show about cool-looking spaceships and laser beams, you neckbeards.

(Hell, even the other “Star” got more going on in it than that.)

It’s also not bad because of female representation or “girl power.” Again, Star Trek has always had this and frankly having a few more instances of the women of Trek taking center stage doesn’t even come close to rebalancing the scales on the overall massive representation of cis white men across the genre and even the series anyways.

Also get the fuck over the use of curse words in this series. While certainly some instances in this show felt awkward, the use of the word “fuck” does not dilute Star Trek’s overall story.

(It would have made earlier season’s funnier for sure.)

Now that that’s out of way let’s get into the real reasons that, for me at least, the series fell short of an otherwise promising goal of delivering great new Star Trek.

The main problem stems from the series overall jumping off point in its first episode. Picard is understandably still upset about the death of Data and having him deal with survivor’s guilt is a great way to bring this character into the future and reexplore the humanist viewpoints Data touched on in the older series. But also having Picard deal with his fallout from Starfleet, both from the synth ban AND the Romulan exodus, creates chasmic diverging plotlines that never quite come together. The story really needed it to be one or the other. Either Picard wanting to advocate for the continued existence of synthetic life or the rescue of the Romulans post super nova. The latter is touched on a bit through the addition of the character Elnor but doesn’t quite work given that majority of the Romulans in this series are portrayed as villains.

There is definitely a post Brexit, anti-immigrant hysteria message being told there but not enough depth and nuance is given to make it look like Starfleet was particularly wrong here to abandon them given that they do end up being spies committing espionage in the Federation and the clear villains of the first season. The showrunners could have brought these two stories together by perhaps making Soji a Romulan bent on bringing down synthetic life because maybe her twin sister died in the riots on Mars, making Picard have to choose between his commitment to both minority groups abandoned by the Federation but of course, that’s not what the series goes with.

Also suddenly shoehorning in a convoluted anti-synth worldview into the already ultra-secretive Romulan empire was muddled to say the least.

(A decent summation of the Romulans, pretty much ever. Also why is the only Asian actress in this scene in Osaka depicted as an alien, Mr Kurtzman?...)

Some of these ideas could’ve been saved through better editing and pacing though but not enough is done in this first season to mitigate these issues. Too much of plot is told through plain exposition; people sitting down and talking for five-ten minutes about prophecies and backstory instead of having the story simply show us instead. It makes the pacing often slow even by Trek standards and grinds the action to a halt even when there are lasers being shot at one another in the next scene.

Many of these plots get barely any attention too. The Borg cube, why it’s abandoned, and why Hugh is working for the Romulans through the Federation is given surface level development at best. Seven of Nine returns and at one point is momentarily hooked up to the Collective and she doesn’t really say much about it after it happens. The new character’s Rios and Raffi both have side stories given to their development that get touched on once and never brought up again. Dr. Jurati straight up murders her lover and is set to turn herself into the Federation and it’s just kind of forgotten about in the finale. And Elnor, well, he gets to do his best Legolas impression slicing and dicing fellow Romulans with his sword I guess.

(He is still best boi though :3...)

The main co-star however, Soji the perfect android, has a particularly rushed development going from a scientist unknowing of her nature, to supposed prophet of doom, to predictably the savior all in one season. Her arc needed more time to develop with perhaps her Romulan love affair with Narek being the first season’s main driving force and her realization as an android being the climax. 

Instead we get basically four seasons of Battlestar Galactica’s Sharon arc crammed into one season and it unfortunately makes the story feel half-baked.

(Ok, Boomer.)

Don’t get the wrong idea, all these new characters have great individual moments as well throughout the season but sooooo much side plot is shoved in already into a muddled overarching narrative that it feels like several seasons worth of storytelling stuffed and edited down into a ten episode arc. Why the series felt it needed to conclude this robust story about synth hating Romulans in “Picard’s” first season feels like an unforced error in this reviewer’s opinion even if Sir P Stew only has maybe a couple seasons of extensive acting left in him anyways.

But the season isn’t completely worthless, as much as this review has been spent dunking on its less than stellar parts. The cast is exceptional, even working with the spare parts they’ve been given. Episode 5’s “Stardust City Rag,” in particular, stands out as a good mix of old and new Trek, with a decent dosage of cheese featuring Patrick Stewart trying on a French accent in a space bar. Santiago Cabrera is delightful as the ship captain Rios while also playing various forms of himself in AI form in equally enjoyable roles. Evan Evagora is fun as the deadly yet somewhat aloof Elnor, even if his character doesn’t do all that much except cut up a few Romulans. Seeing Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis reprise their roles as Riker and Troi respectively in episode 6 was heartwarming and felt the most like TNG out of all the episodes. And Jeri Ryan seems liberated in this series in this version of Seven of Nine, no doubt glad to be rid of that restrictive corset and Rick Berman’s meddling hands.

(Big “Fuck you, Rick Berman” energy going on in this scene.)

The production value is obviously high level as Trek has rarely looked this good on the small screen. There’s some great cinematography throughout the season whether it’s Picard’s chateau winery, the haunting nature of the Borg cube, or the synth homeworld in the season’s final beats. The spaceships look cool as always and the world of the future feels well futuristic.

The musical score is also top notch, with a great opening theme that feels very much in line with Trek at its futurist glimpse into a hopeful cosmos.

The season’s best moments though are between Picard and Data and will remind you why they were more than likely your favorite characters on TNG. Generally speaking, exploring the humanist themes of artificial intelligence in new Trek was a good choice and having Picard deal with survivor’s guilt kept the pulse of the muddled story still beating. Brent Spiner is still great as Data and will remind you all again how talented he has always been as an actor and though his age seeps through the makeup a bit he is nonetheless still a perfect android.

Though the finale as a whole is underwhelming, the characters do share a nice final moment that is both touching and reminiscent of everything a fan loves about Star Trek. It’s a great cap to an otherwise ok return to Star Trek for TNG’s top characters and its truly touching in the best way that this franchise has always been known to be.

(Deactivating my emotions chip because I just..can’t! I just can’t, ok! *Sobs*)

But great acting and high production value can only mask so many flaws with a convoluted plot and “Picard” unfortunately suffers from the bloated and uncooked nature of its many ideas. What the story really needed was three season arc not just ten episodes and it shows. I guess the plus side is with this particular plot wrapped up it leaves the door open for new ideas and a fresh start in the second season but it does feel like an overall miss for Picard’s homecoming back into the universe of Star Trek.

Overall, though there are worse ways a Star Trek fan can spend their quarantine than watching “Picard” and there’s certainly enough here for fans to latch onto and have hope for better things in the next season.

Hopefully things are less rushed or at least more focused in the second season and we can see a more proper return to form for both Picard and future Star Trek.

Here’s hoping the producers and writers make it so…

VERDICT:

3 out of 5

Let’s hope we get a return of Q in the next season.

[douxreviews]

Star Trek: Discovery - ‘Project Daedalus’ Review

Spock: "We will never relate as equals, so long as you continue to pretend that every burden is your own."

By nature I love brevity: A very good episode taken by itself, but in the context of the larger show it both highlights and compounds one of the show's major issues, and the episode's impact suffers for it.

I complain a lot in my reviews of Star Trek: Enterprise that the only characters who get developed nearly enough are Archer, Trip, and T'Pol. From the amount of development the others get, particularly in the first two seasons, one might even assume that they weren't main characters at all, and were simply part of the background. In most episodes, they get one or two lines each, mostly in the regular performance of their duties aboard the ship. Sound familiar? While Discovery may not have the same problem when it comes to main cast members like Tilly or Stamets, or even Ash Tyler, it does suffer greatly from its failure to develop the secondary cast. It is notable that at least some effort is being made this season - we do now actually know all their names - but not enough. Even the more prominent bridge crew members like Detmer or Owosekun get little tidbits and nothing more.

I think the main problem, and the main reason this happens, is that this show is so laser-focused on its plot that it doesn't have time to develop their characters. This is by no means to say that it couldn't have time, but I think that it doesn't have the time right now. It just doesn't seem like it's a priority for the writers. We have so much development for Saru, Tilly, Stamets, Burnham, and even now Tyler and Culber, that I now care about each of their characters (to varying degrees, of course; Shazad Latif turns me off of Tyler and I don't find Burnham compelling). But while little nods like 'Owosekun grew up in a Luddite community' or 'Detmer has had her pilot's license since she was a teenager' help to ground their characters as humans, they haven't been developed at all as characters in this show. I don't have a sense of Owosekun's emotional state, or Detmer's motivations. And the reason I say the show could very easily make the time for those characters is because it did so here.

Airiam's development here is quite good, and I found her backstory compelling enough. The problem is that it was all shoved into this one episode. That short a span of time is not enough to get to care that deeply about a character. It's not even like it had to be complicated in previous episodes. Maybe a scene where Airiam logs her memories, or a brief little dialogue exchange between her and Burnham to establish that they were friends. If the show had made a conscious effort to sprinkle little bits of Airiam's character throughout the season, it would have made a world of difference for this episode's emotional impact. As it was, director Jonathan Frakes and all the actors brought everything they could possibly have brought to the scene, but it just didn't have the impact it needed because what had come before wasn't compelling.

That said, I am glad Airiam got something of weight before her departure, and it did lead to some further characterization of the other bridge crew, Detmer in particular. I don't think I've seen them feel more human than they did here. The shots of each crew member's horrified blank expression at the death of their friend, combined with Frakes' emotional direction and Jeff Russo's suddenly understated music, really drove home the emotion of the scene, even though I didn't feel it myself because I had only just been given the opportunity to become attached to Airiam.

We have other stuff to touch on, so let's get into it. First, let's get the main plot out of the way. The story worked just fine, and the reveal of Control's complete, well, control over Section 31 was well done. They've dropped hints of the evil AI in charge of 31 throughout the season with just the right balance; it was enough that the audience understood what it was and that it was there, but it wasn't heavy handed enough that it made me groan with how obvious it was. I think I like the direction they're taking it, with a few caveats. If things continue the way they seem to be continuing, I anticipate that we will find out for certain that the conflict in the future is between the evolved Control and the rest of the universe. This could be good for a couple of reasons. The first is that it gives the whole story a sort of connectivity that the two half-arcs last season lacked, and the second is that this could very easily be the reason that Section 31 drops under the radar by the DS9 era. Maybe 31 collapses almost completely at the end of the season, and Starfleet shelves the project, but then Georgiou secretly starts it up again independent from Starfleet. That would also give the announced Section 31 series some sort of direction to go in.

Here we come to the biggest thing that makes all shows sink or swim - the characters and their relationships with each other. In what is becoming a nice trend for this season of Discovery, the writers continue to provide us with pairings of characters that make us think and, for the most part, work. This episode the highlight was Stamets and Spock. I really enjoyed their little scene together in Engineering. I really like that this show is starting to slow down enough to have scenes like that, where characters make their connections and have moments that would fall by the wayside in the middle of an action or plot-driven episode. Stamets gave Spock some very human advice to his problem that logic has not been able to solve. Likewise, Spock provided Stamets with a much-needed outsider's perspective on his relationship with Culber, lending him an objectivity that he would never reach on his own.

The other relational dynamic, that of Spock and Burnham, is less interesting but still of worth. As with last week, their relationship is deeply broken and fractured, and their issues aren't just going away. Spock's criticisms of Burnham are valid and cut deep, but at the same time, her evaluation of his current state rings true. Spock is still struggling madly to wrap his head around the problem before him, and nothing is working. As the chess game shows expertly, Spock has just about given up. As he said last week, both logic and emotion have failed him. He has nowhere else to turn, and his dejected resignation shows in Ethan Peck's performance.

There's a lot to recommend here. I ended up liking it a great deal. I just wish they'd laid the groundwork better earlier down the line.

Strange New Worlds:

No new planets this outing, but we did see part of Section 31 HQ.

New Life and New Civilizations:

Confirmation that Airiam is a human with cybernetic augmentations after she was critically injured. it also struck me that a significant portion of our cast has some sort of augmentation using technology. Detmer has her eye, Nhan has her breathing piece, and Stamets has those things in his arms that allow him to connect to the spore drive.

Pensees:

-Another appearance of Admiral Cornwell. I like Jayne Brook, so that's always fun to see. It was also good to see her using her background as a therapist.

-The ship looked brighter in this episode, and at some points significantly less blue. I wonder why; could it be Frakes?

-Every single time they say 'logic extremists' I want to burst out laughing because the name sounds really dumb.

-The Federation doesn't permit the use of mines at this point in the timeline.

-There was a distinct red glow on the scattered chess pieces at the end of that scene. Interesting...

-Faith interpretation of the week: Faith in your own abilities.

-Some definite parallels to Star Trek VI with the magnet boots in zero gravity, and the floating blood.

-My viewing group guessed that Admiral Patar was dead about ten seconds before the episode told us.

-Saru can see heat signatures, even through subspace. Cool.

-So Airiam downloaded all her memories into Disco's mainframe? Is that just opening the door for her return?

-Burnham using Kirk Fu is amazing. That's really all that needs to be said.

-Other Trek references - Kadis-Kot and 3-D Chess

-I can't help but feel like they had Nhan kill Airiam just to absolve Burnham of the responsibility.

-For some reason, something kicked out our ads and our teaser for next episode when we watched it on Amazon.

-Next week's episode is called 'The Red Angel.' I guess this is it, folks! Final theories in the comments below!

Quotes:

Stamets: "Can one of you say something? I don't like hearing myself talk when I have an audience." Burnham: "We're thinking." Stamets: "Think louder." There's good old grumpy Stamets again.

Pike: "Giving up our values in the name of defense is to lose the battle in advance."

Burnham: "I express myself through my work and my choice of decor." Spock: "Clearly."

Burnham: "If there's a logical reason to sacrifice your rook, I don't see it." Spock: "Perhaps I simply dislike rooks."

Spock: "I understand now. If only I'd taken your pawn, the mystery would have been solved."

Spock, to Stamets: "Perhaps he needs distance from you not because he no longer has feelings for you, but because he no longer knows how to feel about himself."

4.5 out of 6. Would have been 5, but the poor context drags it down.

CoramDeo picked a lousy day to wear his contacts.

[wbwest]

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West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 8/25/17

  In movie news, there was quite the controversial casting this week, as the color lines blurred for some comic book adaptations. First up, it was announced that English actor Ed Skrein would be portraying Japanese character Ben Daimio in the upcoming Hellboy reboot. Now, according to what I’ve read, Daimio’s Japanese heritage heavily influences the character, so this whitewashing of the character doesn’t seem to be in the best interest of the character. I mean, after the problems with whitewashing in Doctor Strange, Ghost in the Shell, Aloha, The Great Wall, and Ni’ihau, you’d think Hollywood would avoid shit like this. Yes, movies are made to make money, but it’s not like Skrein is a bankable star worth slotting into the role, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Usually this is done for the film’s STARS. Damon, Johansson, Stone. This is a secondary character, so it really wouldn’t have hurt them to seek out an Asian actor. Normally I’m just like “Well, Hollywood’s gonna Hollywood”, but this decision just doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Next up, 24: Legacy’s Anna Diop has been cast as Starfire in Warner Bros’ Titans series, slated to air on DC’s upcoming digital service. Some folks are saying they should’ve cast a Latina, but she’s gonna either be painted or CGied in orange, so it’s not like it’s gonna matter at the end of the day. Personally, if they wanted authenticity, I think they should’ve cast an actual orange alien princess. Right now there are just too many unknowns for me to get excited about this. I mean, DC announced the digital service without a lot of information. What’s gonna be on it? What will it cost? How much of the DC library will be available to be housed on it? As for Titans, this is the show TNT passed on. Ya know, the home of such illustrious shows as The Librarians and The Last Ship. I mean, they’re basically just about a notch up from what we got in the 90s from Universal’s Action Pack lineup. If Titans couldn’t fit anywhere on that schedule, then it probably just isn’t “ready for primetime” yet.

Speaking of aimless Warner Bros decisions, they announced 2 different Joker movies this week. First up is an origin tale, directed by Todd Phillips of Old School fame, and produced by Martin Scorsese. Hmm, one of those things is not like the other. I mean, why would Scorsese touch something helmed by the dude who gave us Road Trip? And who even WANTS a Joker origin story? First of all, it’s reportedly not even going to be part of the DCEU, so why confuse the audience with a story that won’t even really “count” in the grand scheme of things? Nobody needs a standalone origin of a take on a character they’ll likely never see again. This is just as foolish as Sony’s Don’t-Look-For-Spider-Man-To-Appear Venom movie. Next, the guys behind This Is Us (SO hot right now!) and Crazy, Stupid, Love are working on a Bonnie & Clyde-style Joker and Harley film, with Jared Leto and Margot Robbie reprising their roles from Suicide Squad. Since this would sort of negate the empowerment that Harley gained by the end of Squad, it’s believed that this actually means that the planned Gotham City Sirens film, also slated to star Robbie, is now dead. Honestly, I could do without either of these movies. I found Leto’s take on Joker to be…interesting, but Less is More with that character. Plus, I don’t really think the DCEU would be strengthened by this sort of movie. It’s not the world-building they need to be doing right now, as they haven’t even figured out the core of their star characters like Batman and Superman yet.

In TV news, Christopher Sebela’s comic Heartthrob has been optioned as a TV series by Felix Culpa – a production company launched by actress/Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough. Now, comics are optioned every day, and the final product never comes to fruition, but I hope this series sees the light of day. I’m actually a big fan of the comic, which is published by Oni Press. Set in the late 70s, it focuses on Callie, who’s received a heart transplant while the process is still in its infancy. Given a new lease on life, but still told she’s basically living on borrowed time, she decides to change her life when she meets Mercer, a charming guy with a shady side. She immediately falls for him, and he teaches her how to be bad, like rob banks and commit other crimes. She gets off on the rush. Pretty soon, however, she realizes that Mercer isn’t real. No, he’s actually the ghost of the guy whose heart is now in Callie. So, it’s a Bonnie & Clyde story where Clyde’s calling the shots from the afterlife. The book is published in “seasons”, so the first 5-issue miniseries wrapped up back in early 2016, while season 2 is hitting stores now. If you’re looking for a new comic not from the Big Two, I highly recommend it.

In music news, Taylor Swift did a whole social blitz to announce that her next album would be called Reputation, and would be released Nov 10th. On top of that, the first single was released last night, with rumors that the video will premiere at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. Ya know, the same awards hosted my Taylor’s enemy Katy Perry. Yeah, that should be pretty interesting to watch. Anyway, the new song is called “Look What You Made Me Do”, and I’m not too impressed. It lacks a real hook, while the chorus itself is basically spoken. I feel like it has all the ingredients for a great song, but it’s not living up to its full potential. If this is an indicator of what to expect on Reputation, though, I’ll admit I’m curious. It can’t be worse than Perry’s Witness.

Speaking of Katy Perry, we got the premiere of her video for “Swish Swish”, which was reportedly her diss track against Taylor Swift. After a lot of backtracking and sucking up, though, it seems Katy wants to put that feud behind her. That’s why this horrible video does everything it can to take the bite out of a song that was never really that biting to begin with. I mean, just look at it – Molly Shannon? Terry Crews? Even Nicki Minaj was clearly CGied in, as I’m sure she didn’t wanna be anywhere near this shitshow. The sad thing about the Perry/Swift feud is that Katy bailed on it the minute she realized the Swifties were a more powerful lobby than she had thought. Nobody was feeling her SNL performances, and Witness didn’t exactly fly off the shelves. She realized that she can’t really survive by making enemies, so suddenly she became conciliatory to save her ass. Plus, it’s kinda lame that this blood feud started just because Taylor stole a few of Katy’s dancers for her tour. Anyway, you’ll never get those 6 minutes back. You’re welcome.

I had the pleasure of joining my buddy Zac for his new podcast, The Zac Shipley Show. He’s treating these first few episodes as pilots for ideas he’s wanted to try, so our ep was called Streaming Pile, where we talked about the worst things we could find on streaming services. I talked about a Star Trek: Voyager episode where formerly perky pixie Kes returns all middle-aged and bitter. You should check it out, and give a listen to his other episodes while you’re there!

Song of the Week

I’ve been a big Maren Morris fan since she released “My Church”, and I was really into her next single, “80s Mercedes”. With this song she continues not to disappoint, as I love the groove on this thing. Listen to the bassline. It’s not a dance song, yet you can do a MEAN two-step to it. Hell, I think you could even do a casual version of The Hustle to it. This will definitely go to #1 given time.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

NBC’s planned reboot of Xena: Warrior Princess – which would’ve featured a full-on lesbian relationship between her and Gabrielle – is officially dead, as they said “it didn’t warrant a reboot”. Man, if only other studios would realize this about some of their projects…

Director James Gunn mentioned in a Q & A session that the 3rd Guardians of the Galaxy film would set up the next 10-20 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yup, you’re just now realizing your own mortality. I’ll give you a minute to deal with that.

Speaking of Gunn, he’s attached to write the pilot for (and possibly direct) a reboot of 70s series Starsky & Hutch. This adaptation is supposed to be similar in tone to CBS’s upcoming S.W.A.T. and not comedic in tone like the 2004 Ben Stiller & Owen Wilson movie.

Surprising every critic in Hollywood, Netflix has renewed the maligned comedy Friends From College for a second season.

Known for controversial publicity stunts, Alamo Drafthouse is reportedly organizing a Clowns Only screening of the new adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

We got a new poster for Thor: Ragnarok. So many colors!

Michael K. Williams has reportedly been cut from the Star Wars Han Solo film, as Ron Howard’s reshoot schedule conflicted with another role that Williams had accepted.

There are, like, 8 different Knight Rider reboot treatments floating around Hollywood, but the latest rumor is that one of those productions is looking at John Cena as Michael Knight, with Kevin Hart as the voice of K.I.T.T. Of course, it would be a comedic adaptation, a la the popular Jump Street franchise.

Super Troopers 2, the sequel to one of the most overrated films I’ve ever seen, will hit theaters April 20th, 2018.

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson will star in Nasty Women, which is a female-led reboot of the Michael Caine/Steve Martin classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Independence Day: Resurgence‘s Jessie T Usher will star in Son of Shaft, with Samuel L. Jackson potentially reprising his role as John Shaft (from the 2000 reboot film), the nephew of the original John Shaft, played by Richard Roundtree, who is also in talks to join the movie. Man, that gave me a headache.

Always on the cutting edge, here’s Sesame Street’s parody of 2017’s song of the summer, “Despacito”

According to the creators, the Netflix series Stranger Things will most likely end after its fourth season

The actress formerly known as “Andrea Zuckerman”, Gabrielle Carteris, has been re-elected to a 2-year term as the President of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)

Ryan Gosling will host the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, with musical guest Jay-Z, on Sept 30th.

Jamie Bell is developing a Jumper TV series, based on the 2008 film about teleporters

Suicide Squad 2 is reportedly being fast tracked, but I hope they fast track it right into the garbage. I mean, I enjoyed the first one, but I don’t need a sequel.

I like Nick Kroll, even though I never saw even a second of Kroll Show. Anyway, he’s got a new animated series about puberty called Big Mouth coming to Netflix and after watching this teaser I am ON BOARD!

We’re a month away from the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery, and it was revealed that it will be rated TV-MA, for Mature Audiences. Now, it doesn’t mean there’ll be tits and phasers, but it does mean they can tell more complex stories. That said, I still feel like they don’t truly understand the source material.

After a scathing essay from his ex-wife went public, accusing him of adultery and other generally shitty behavior to women, Joss Whedon went underground and the fan site, Whedonesque, shut down after 15 years.

We got a new teaser for Netflix’s The Punisher. With the rate I’m getting through these Marvel shows, I’ll probably get to it just before Evie goes off to Hogwarts.

There was a national solar eclipse this week, which was the first occurrence since 1918. I’m sure you might’ve heard something about it. It was kind of a big deal. Folks were pimping out special cardboard glasses on Craigslist for insane amounts of money, and the American President made news by looking directly into it. It seems that it had a strange effect on different folks. For example, Netflix viewership went down 10% as people went outside to view the phenomenon. Not everyone understood what was going on, bless their hearts. At work, a frantic parent called in and said “Y’all watching the news? You hear about this eclipse? Is it serious?!” Apparently she thought it posed some sort of danger to her kids and the school. No, ma’am. It’s just a beautiful sky ballet. Anyway, the eclipse was EVERYWHERE. I didn’t get to see totality, but it was still nice to stand outside for a bit on a nice day. What am I saying? I hate the outdoors! Well, it was nice to not have to work for a few minutes. You couldn’t escape the Eclipse Fever at the start of the week, so that’s why the Solar Eclipse of 2017 had the West Week Ever.

[actutrends]

The DeanBeat: My favorite games of 2019

Games grew to a $148.8 billion market in 2019, up 9.6% from 2018 and reaching over 2.5 billion people across the globe. Console games, the lion’s share of the industry a decade earlier, were smaller than mobile games in 2019, a continuation of a multi-year trend, according to research firm Newzoo.

We watched the further growth of esports and game watching expand this year, and we saw the introduction of subscription gaming for Apple Arcade, Google Play, and Google Stadia’s cloud gaming service. Hyper-casual mobile games that last 30 seconds emerged, but big mobile titles like Call of Duty: Mobile emerged to hold their own against the nanosecond attention spans.

I didn’t think we could match last year’s brilliant titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, and Marvel’s Spider-Man. For me, last year was the triumph of traditional narrative triple-A games that blended open worlds with deep narratives.

But the highest end of the industry didn’t rest on its laurels in 2019. As usual, I didn’t have enough time to play it all. But I enjoyed everything across the board, from Sandbox VR’s Star Trek: Discovery — Away Mission virtual reality experience to episodic games like Life is Strange 2 to mobile titles like Call of Duty: Mobile and Apple Arcade’s Where Cards Fall. I re-engaged with favorite maps from years past in Call of Duty: Mobile and plunged into battle royale maps with squadmates in the multiplayer action of Apex Legends. And I was scared out of my wits playing titles like The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan.

It felt like I had less time to explore indie experiences that my peers played, so I wasn’t the first to stumble on titles like Untitled Goose Game. But I enjoyed delving into my own passions, such as the World War II real-time strategy game Steel Battalion 2 from Eugen Systems, where I could zoom in on a single tank in a battle or pan out to see an entire division marching across the Russian landscapes. Toward the end of the year, I rushed to finish titles such as Remedy’s Control and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

For the sake of comparison, here are my favorites from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011. In each story below, the links go to our full reviews or major stories about the games. And be sure to check out the GamesBeat staff’s own votes for Game of the Year and the best individual favorites of the staff soon.

Check out our Reviews Vault for past game reviews.

10) Sayonara Wild Hearts

Above: Sayonara Wild Hearts takes you on an impossibly fast ride.

Image Credit: Annapurna

Developer: Simogo Publisher: Annapuana Interactive, iam8bit Platforms: Apple Arcade/iOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Windows, MacOS, tvOS

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this dream-like game, as music games don’t usually get me dancing. But Sayonara Wild Hearts has an artsy combination of dance-fighting, pop music, and high-speed motorcycle chases that clicked for me. I played it on an iPhone with Apple Arcade‘s $5 a month subscription platform, and I used a Rotor Riot wired game controller to play it rather than brave the untrustworthy touchscreen. You can also play it on an iPad or Apple TV.

It’s a high-adrenaline game where you tap, jump, and maneuver to collect little hearts in a beautiful neon-and-black landscape. And it isn’t that long with 23 levels. The neon-on-black art is beautiful. It’s hard to believe a small game studio put it together, because the art is so well-crafted. There isn’t much of a story, but the developers tell you what you need to know.

In Sayonara Wild Hearts, you play as a young woman who suffers a heartbreak. A tarot card pops up and dubs her The Fool, transporting her into an alternate universe. She sets out to restore the harmony of the universe hidden away in the hearts of her enemies. As you take control of The Fool, you speed along on a motorcycle within a tunnel-like view of the horizon.

The fusion of music and gameplay reminds me of music games like Rez from 2001 or that wacky and artistic “Take On Me” music video by A-Ha in 1985. The gameplay in Sayonara Wild Hearts seems impossible, and it takes a lot of skill to avoid crashing. But it’s whimsical and forgiving at the same time, as you can start up right where you crashed to try again. I thought songs like Begin Again were catchy and hard to get out of my head. I’m not going to say that this was far better than many of the triple-A games that debuted this year, but this is my nod in the direction of creativity, fun, and the indie spirit on mobile devices.

9) Rage 2

Above: Rage 2 couldn’t fight the dying of the light.

Image Credit: Bethesda

Developer: Avalanche Studios and id Software Publisher: Bethesda Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows

When id Software’s Tim Willits visited Avalanche Studios in Stockholm, he told his new compadres to ignore constraints. “When I met with the team in Stockholm on the whiteboard, “More crazy than Rage” That was the first pillar of this game,” Willits said.

And he got what he asked for. Rage 2 didn’t get the best reviews, but I thought it was underrated, as I played it through the end of the single-player campaign and played a lot of silly side missions as well. Rage 2 had a lot of environments, ranging from the Mad Max-style desert to jungles and cities. The script was a bit weak, but the enemies were tough and the weapons were glorious. The “nanotrite” capabilities that you discovered along the way are critical to defeating the biggest bosses. The art style was absolutely wild, with plenty of bright pink and yellow colors splashed across the punk habitats. And I enjoyed reuniting with my old friend, the Wingstick, which is like a boomerang that could slice an enemy’s head off.

If it had flaws, it was that it wasn’t Red Dead Redemption 2. It often littered the landscape with side missions and enemies to kill, to no purpose. You could get damaged on your way to an important mission, and then have to figure out a way to recover. It’s good if you stayed on track, built your capabilities up, and stuck to the good stuff.

The final part of the game lasted a lot longer for me because I had trouble taking down General Cross, the bad guy, and his pet monster. But to me, it was a thrill when I finally succeeded.

8) Days Gone

Above: A horde of Freakers chases Deacon St. John in Days Gone.

Image Credit: Sony

Developer: Sony Bend Studio Publisher: Sony Platforms: PlayStation 4

The amazing success of its first Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) hampered this game, as did a couple of years of delays. By the time it came out, many were sick of it, and it suffered from having some of the worst bugs I’ve ever seen in a triple-A game. Others wrong wrote it off as a copycat of The Walking Dead, World War Z, and The Last of Us.

But I admired Sony’s guts in standing by Bend Studio, and I stuck by it too as my colleagues ragged on it. I played it for perhaps 50 hours over several weeks, and I was quite possibly the last critic to review the game. I rated it only as a 75, because of the bugs. But without them, it would have been more like a 90, based on the quality of its story and the thrill of fighting the hordes of zombies, or Freakers.

I was drawn to the story of Deacon St. John, a bounty hunter in the Oregon woods and a broken man in a fallen world. He had a death wish and could ride a motorcycle through a horde of zombies just to get them to chase him. But Bend Studio delivered on the big scene where a few hundred zombies chased the biker through an abandoned lumber mill. It was a thrill to figure out how to beat that challenge, and I was hooked on the story of how Deacon was haunted by the memory of his lost love Sarah.

The adventure took me across the beautiful Oregon landscape into horrifying creature battles, motorcycle chases, infected crows, memorable horde battles, stealth missions tracking the secretive government agency, and just plain-old surviving in the wilderness. It was kind of an art to orchestrate your escape from several hundred Freakers. And it was good to see Deacon change and become the person that Sarah would have wanted him to be.

7) Steel Division 2

Above: Your forces appear as icons when you zoom out in Steel Division 2.

Image Credit: Eugen Systems

Developer: Eugen Systems Publisher: Eugen Systems Platforms: Windows 

There are no Metacritic reviews for Steel Battalion 2. I may have been the only one who played it. But I saw the game being played on YouTube by some dedicated influencers with tiny audiences. And I was fascinated. I’ve been playing the Total War series of real-time strategy games since they first debuted more than 15 years ago, and I played Total War: Attila for hundreds of hours in 2015.

And I was glad to pour scores of hours into it this summer into Eugen Systems’ real-time strategy World War II games, which are a niche within a niche. It dwells on a bit of war history I didn’t know much about, Operation Bagration. It was the Soviet Union’s huge summer offensive in Belarus to take back big chunks of Eastern Europe from the Nazis, as the Allied invasion of Normandy was gathering steam in 1944. It was a massive set of tank, infantry, and air battles that left the German Wehrmacht in full retreat on the Eastern Front.

It has a steep learning curve. The game has more than 600 historically accurate units, 18 divisions, and an astounding level of detail in its graphics. You can focus in on an individual scene, such as above, or zoom out to get a birds’ eye view of an entire battle with thousands of soldiers. Your job as general is to constantly feed the right kind of troops into the fray to make the enemy’s forces melt away from you. This is easier said than done, as you can dislodge well-trained enemy squads from a forest trench, even if you’ve got superior armor. The enemy AI is smart, taking out your anti-tank guns on a hill with artillery or air power.

I lost dozens of skirmish matches against the AI before I figured out how to win. On top of the tactical battles, I also got hooked on the Army General mode, where you moved around divisions like chess pieces on a map. But you can still choose to play those huge campaigns, one tactical battle at a time. That’s what is amazing about the title.

6) Gears of War 5

Above: Kait gets here close-up.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Developer: The Coalition Publisher: Microsoft Platforms: Windows, Xbox One

Coalition head Rod Fergusson humbly said that Gears 5 was the best entry yet in the Gears saga. And he wasn’t making that up. I was gratified to see the developer get the balance right when it came to creating a wild action game with an emotional story with strong characters such as the hero, Kait Diaz.

Gears 4 got pretty goofy at certain points in its narrative about the human race losing its battle for survival against the Swarm in a world gone mad. But this story balanced that goofiness that brought us chainsaw bayonets with the moments where you mourn the death of a lost friend. These are tough moments because the cast of characters has survived some very tough times, and they’re a close-knit group. When you rip a character out of that group, it leaves deep wounds.

The campaign’s longer than usual, and it features cool features such as a skiff that sails across both the desert and ice. shoot out the ice under the feet of the Scions, the heavy tank bosses that carry a heavy weapon and are often shielded from attack by flying drones. This was very different from past Gears games. I remember spending an hour battling a blind boss, slowly figuring out a kind of choreography to stay out of its way, replenish my ammo, grab new weapons, and spray it with the frosty freeze guns. The title also had some cool additions to multiplayer and co-op play.

Gears 5 delivers a sense that you’re losing a big war at the same time it delivers the blow of a personal loss. And it generates a resolve to hit back. I like how this team outgrew its urges to be goofy and shocking and instead opted for something closer to fine art.

The post The DeanBeat: My favorite games of 2019 appeared first on Actu Trends.

[nathanielwharton]

My 2016 in Pop Culture

Same deal as last year. This is what meant the most to me last year in pop culture.

Top Forty Things From 2016

40. Penny Dreadful Season 3 This turned out to be the final season of the show, and while it feels a little rushed to a conclusion in the end, the majority of the season was another wonderfully ghoulish ride. With the characters scattered at the end of the second season, the third season adds a weird western flavor to the Penny Dreadful world, finally pulls the trigger on introducing Dracula, and once again offers a stellar Eva Green showcase (an invaluable service). I'll miss this one.

39. Achewood Returns As with Bloom County last year, Achewood made something of a surprise return in 2016. Though updates have again petered out, it was a real treat to spend some time with those characters once a week.

38. Gravity Falls Series Finale Disney XD finally dribbled out the last Gravity Falls episode in early 2016. And boy, the wait was worth it. The ending was as funny, strange, mysterious, and ultimately moving as the show was at its best.

37. The Witch This was a movie to sink into, with an immersive atmosphere and a creeping sense of unease that became almost overwhelming by the end. And then in its final moments, that unease bloomed into something thrilling. Terrific movie.

36. The Fireman Joe Hill's latest novel, and it's another rich, engrossing yarn with good characters. Always excited to see what he's cooked up, and this one didn't disappoint.

35. Galavant Season 2 I just really loved this show and am sorry to see it go after a second season that did fun stuff with the characters and avoided the pacing hiccups of the first season.

34. The Jungle Book/Pete's Dragon It seems like it is going to become a running theme in these lists that I express concern about Disney's "make live-action versions of our classic library" strategy (it can seem pointless, and certainly seems like a dead end road if they're not generating new original films in addition) and then end up loving the resulting films. And I loved both of these ones, finding them dazzling to look at and, ultimately, moving.

33. Duck the Halls: A Mickey Mouse Christmas Special I've loved the Mickey Mouse shorts that Paul Rudish has been doing for Disney Television Animation, and this first half-hour episode they made as a Christmas special maintained the style and energy I've enjoyed in the shorts and applied them to a Christmas story with new music and a focus on Donald Duck. So of course I loved it.

32. The Shallows/Nerve/Don't Breathe/The Boy It was a great year for smaller genre fare. All four of these accomplish exactly what they set out to do, and do it with wit, style, and craft that exceeds what you might expect from movies like these. They were also all GREAT audience movies.

31. Paper Girls It was a good year for "kids on bikes," and this comic series is a really great entry in the genre. I wasn't prepared for some of the twists and turns in the story, and I'm pretty interested to see where it goes.

30. Grease: Live Holy smokes. This was a dazzling adrenaline rush of live television. It was a fun mounting of the show, with nice performances, and while some of the staging and performances occasionally felt strange when they too closely seemed to be doing karaoke of the movie version, it was mostly a really fun and thrilling piece of television. A best-case scenario for the new TV-musical boom.

29. Archie Comics Mark Waid's Archie continued to be really fantastic, and the new Betty & Veronica, Josie & the Pussycats, and Reggie & Me all got off to excellent starts. But my favorite of the lineup is probably Jughead, now written by Ryan North (of my beloved Daily Dinosaur Comics). It's a truly perfect match of writer and subject.

28. Hell or High Water A great hang-out movie, with characters and actors I just loved watching interact, but it also features a story with opportunity for both excitement and commentary. A great western.

27. Kubo and the Two Strings Somewhere between the wonderful The Boxtrolls and the dazzling Kubo and the Two Strings, Laika solidified their image as a can't-miss animation studio for me. Each time out they come up with something different, but they share a few general qualities: they are gorgeous, they are funny and off-kilter, and they are unlike anything else currently on offer in American animation.

26. Ash vs. Evil Dead Season 2 This was, in many ways, an improvement on the already great first season. It explores a number of other horror subgenres through the Evil Dead lens, ramps up the thrills and carnage even further, and gives Bruce Campbell even more to play. And it features perhaps the most disgusting sequence in any Evil Dead.

25. Star Trek Beyond The third film in the Kelvin timeline, Beyond also functioned (by default, as the only new filmed Star Trek this year) as the 50th Anniversary celebration of the franchise. Luckily, they came prepared with the best of this new series of films. The crew continues to be as wonderful as ever (and the film finds opportunity to pair them up and give us some excellent character moments). And the story works as a nice interrogation of some Trek principles, proving them fresh and sadly relevant as the real world took a turn for the isolationist and regressive.

24. Arrival I wrote about this one for SportsAlcohol.com.

23. “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” The X-Files revival was, appropriately for the original series, a mixed bag with the good, the bad, and the nutty all jumbled together. But there was a clear highlight, and as I'd hoped, Darin Morgan basically justified the entire revival in his one episode. His "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster" was funny and weird and moving, in the best tradition of his previous X-Files work. It was packed with winks and references, Duchovny and Anderson were clearly having a ball, and interestingly it seemed to offer a different perspective (or even a response or rebuttal) to the main thematic concerns of his episodes from the original series. At the conclusion of his episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" (one of my favorite episodes of TV, full stop), Chung narrates, "Then there are those who care not about extraterrestrials, searching for meaning in other human beings. Rare or lucky are those who find it. For although we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways on this planet, we are all alone." Though he was known for writing the funny ones, this loneliness, this belief in the impossibility of real human connection, forms the emotional underpinning that grounds Morgan's X-Files episodes. And his episodes are often hilariously critical of Mulder. So it threw me for a loop when "Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster" was surprisingly sympathetic toward him, and ends with this simple exchange between Mulder and the titular monster. Guy Mann - I don't mean to get too personal, but this has been a real trying time for me. I've been through a lot. But just having someone like you to... Look, what I'm trying to say is, I'm glad to have met you. Mulder - Like... Likewise.

22. Star Wars I guess this works as a proof of concept for Disney being able to sustain this new pace of Star Wars media. The comics continued to be generally excellent. Star Wars Rebels dug a little deeper with their own characters and made canny use of characters like Ahsoka, Darth Vader, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Aftermath: Life Debt, the second in the trilogy of novels telling the story of the immediate...aftermath of Return of the Jedi, offered some cool glimpses of what characters both important and obscure were up to in that time period, and also develops some intriguing story threads that look to pay off in the next novel and in Episode VIII & IX. Catalyst, the novel that provided backstory for some of the main characters in Rogue One, was also one of the most enjoyable. And the publishing highlight of the year was Bloodline, the novel focusing on Leia Organa's exit from the new galactic government she'd fought to establish and her role in the origin of the Resistance in the new trilogy. And Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a proof of concept all on its own, building some real goodwill for me toward the notion of these Star Wars spin off films. It offered up a new batch of characters that I liked, a cool story with some interesting Star Wars world building, and some rad filmmaking with a bunch of iconic images.

21. Weiner This documentary might play more like a horror movie after the 2016 election season, but it played like a raucous audience-participation comedy with the New York audience I saw it with. Weiner is an incredibly fascinating subject, and the movie has surprisingly intimate access through some rough times for Weiner, his campaign, and his family.

20. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping I wrote about this one for SportsAlcohol.com.

19. The BFG Steven Spielberg adapting a wonderful Roald Dahl novel with a screenplay by Melissa Mathison? Yep, this was an easy guess to be one of my favorites of the year, and that's exactly what it was. As with most Dahl adaptations, it finds a little more sentiment in the story than I found on the page, but it's a charming, wondrous marvel. And Mark Rylance's BFG is just perfect.

18. Beyonce's "Lemonade" on HBO I don't know if you'd call it a movie or a collection of videos or something else altogether, but it was beautiful and moving and very special. Any insight I could offer would pale compared to the great writing it inspired by others, but I found it dazzling.

17. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life I really loved this revival. It was full of checklist hitting and Palladino self-indulgences, but I even mostly loved that stuff and was pretty into the stories they chose to tell. And, as is the goal of a revival like this, I loved getting to see all of the characters again. Sure, I'd have loved to spend more time with some of them, but I was pretty satisfied overall with the balance we got. And I loved the ending.

16. The Handmaiden I wrote about this for SportsAlcohol.com.

15. Hail, Caesar! I wrote about this for the SportsAlcohol.com list.

14. Green Room I could describe this literally as a white-knuckle thriller because it had me actually clutching my armrests when I was watching it. Impeccably crafted and astonishingly intense. And a perfect final moment.

13. Marvel Cinematic Universe It was another good year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, despite some disappointments (Agent Carter had a delightful second season and was summarily cancelled, Luke Cage and Daredevil both started out great and petered out to varying degrees). Agents of SHIELD continues to be a lot of fun (I don't know if it gets better and better in an uninterrupted curve, but I look forward to it each week). Doctor Strange was super cool, introducing new characters I'm excited to follow in future adventures and providing a really dazzling experience in the theater. But the highlight this year was surely Captain America: Civil War. A really exciting example of how this shared universe, long-form storytelling can pay off, this was a great movie. I loved the characters, both returning and brand new (psyched to see Spider-Man and Black Panther in their own movies), and I found the story to be really intriguing, posing some interesting moral questions and paying off story threads planted throughout a number of the previous films. And it builds to a climax where the feeling of dread that had been building in the pit of my stomach throughout left me emotionally drained at the film's ending.

12. The Get Down Season 1 What a blast! The history of hip hop in the Bronx presented as a super-hero-origin musical Baz Luhrmann fantasia. It may not be accurate, and it may be a Luhrmanny mash of ideas and characters, but I loved it and I'm excited to see the rest of it when it goes up on Netflix.

11. 10 Cloverfield Lane The trailer for this movie could have been on this list by itself, both because it is a fantastic trailer and because the revelation of the title at the end of it was a genuine surprise. And then the movie itself turned out to be equally fantastic. Mary Elizabeth Winstead kills it, and John Goodman gives an incredible performance. If they turn out movies like this, they've got me onboard this Cloverfield thing for a good long while.

10. "One Trek Mind" Panel at Star Trek: Mission New York I went to my first Star Trek convention this year! I had a great time, and on the morning of the last day I went to my favorite event of the weekend. The panel was really just moderator Jordan Hoffman hosting a discussion with the audience with the goal of selecting the ideal crew from all iterations of Trek. You can hear it here, but the experience of being in the big hall as the debate was waged was something else. The audience was really engaged, it was a delight to see folks argue their picks (a group of young girls who came up to advocate Dr. Crusher was a particular highlight), and the way the crowd rallied behind Captain Janeway was freaking thrilling. And seriously, this thing was bonkers. Just look at that picture.

9. "Hallelujah" on Saturday Night Live Like a lot of folks, I was pretty surprised and upset by the results of the 2016 presidential election. And as much as I love Saturday Night Live (and I do! I could have gladly put Kevin Roberts, David Pumpkins, or this Russel Crowe sketch among many others), I was dreading the first episode after the election. I was in no mood to see some wan jokes about Donald Trump yukking it up in the White House or painting the walls gold or something, so I was particularly dreading the cold open, the kick-off sketch of the show and the traditional spot for a political sketch. I was surprised, then, to see this performance, done as tribute to both Hillary Clinton and the recently departed Leonard Cohen. Whatever I expected from that opening sketch, it wasn't to be moved to tears. But while it was a small thing, I found it cathartic.

8. Vice Principals Season 1 I wrote about this show for SportsAlcohol.com. And I'll just say that after that stunner of a final episode, I can't wait for the next season.

7. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them/Harry Potter and the Cursed Child This year marked J.K. Rowling's return to her wizard world, and I really loved it. I'm super on-board with the idea of her telling stories in that world in a different format (in this case a play and a film, instead of a new novel), allowing the seven existing books to stand as they are. I found Cursed Child intriguing and moving (and I'd really love to see it onstage), a lovely extended epilogue to Harry's story. And I loved Fantastic Beasts. I found the new characters instantly endearing, the world building and intimations of story in the world around them pretty exciting, and I adored the final moments of the film. Really into following along with whatever else she's cooking up along these lines.

6. Zootopia/Moana I loved Finding Dory, but this year Walt Disney Animation Studios really brought their A-game. Zootopia was a wonderful surprise, thoughtful and engrossing, and Moana proved about as adept as Frozen in getting me to well up with emotion throughout. Both films were hilarious, gorgeous, and exciting. What a great year for Disney fans.

5. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season 2 I wrote about this for SportsAlcohol.com.

4. The Fits What a wonderful, special little movie. It weaves a powerful, mysterious spell, and I really loved it. I don't want to talk too much about it if you haven't seen it, but I'd definitely recommend it.

3. The Nice Guys Russell Crowe is a freaking delight and Ryan Gosling gives probably my favorite performance of his yet, but the tremendous pleasure of this film pretty much comes down to Shane Black. It's the Shane Black special, with clever and unexpected plot turns, hilarious dialogue, terrific characters, and just a real cool vibe. On the shelf along with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang as a movie I'd happily watch any time.

2. Stranger Things Season 1 I'd been following this since it was announced as Montauk and all that was known about it was that it starred Winona Ryder and might have an Amblin-y vibe. So I wasn't so much surprised by its existence as I was by how successfully it was what it attempted to be. Like the greatest Stephen King miniseries that never existed, it was involving and atmospheric, and I just loved it. And it stuck the landing so well that I'm equally excited for the next season and wary of them opening up an ending I loved.

1. Shin Godzilla I wrote a bunch about this one for SportsAlcohol.com.

Top Twenty Things I’m Excited About in 2017

Kong: Skull Island I'm down for a King Kong movie at any time, but the posters and trailers for this one have been so great that I worry my expectations are impossibly high. Can't. Wait.

War for the Planet of the Apes The other two films in this revival Apes series were genuinely great. Everything I've read about this one has been really intriguing, and the teaser was excellent.

Baby Driver Edgar Wright's new movie! He's four for four, and it's almost four years since The World's End came out. It was kind of a toss-up whether I was gonna put Baby Driver or Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled or A Cure for Wellness, the new Gore Verbinski movie, on here. Or even Colossal, Nacho Vigalondo's kaiju film. Really excited about all of them, but I think Baby Driver might top the list.

Okja Bong Joon-Ho has a new movie coming this year. That's enough to warrant my excitement, but it's also got an interesting cast and some kind of monster or giant creature. This is also a Netflix release, and they've also got Duncan Jones's Mute and Jeremy Saulnier's Hold the Dark, so they're really earning my subscription fee.

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara Spielberg directs a new screenplay by Tony Kushner. I'm there.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi I am riding high on Star Wars love, and this year is going to have plenty to keep me afloat. More Star Wars: Rebels, more great Marvel comics, a handful of novels, and finally at the end of the year, the new adventure with Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren, and Luke Skywalker! Written and directed by Rian Johnson! Holy smokes!

Blade Runner 2049 Really cool teaser, an interesting director, cool cast, and now I'm really into this one. And honestly, I’d be intrigued by a sequel to Blade Runner no matter what.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales AND Beauty and the Beast For all the hemming and hawing I do beforehand about these live-action adaptations of Disney's animated classics, I've been pretty into all of them after seeing them. And Beauty and the Beast looks great. I also adore the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and I found the fourth one disappointing and I still kind of like it. So I'm pretty psyched that the new one promises a return to form, with an exciting directing duo and a couple of beautiful teasers.

The Mummy I still have intensely mixed feelings about this whole approach to reviving the Universal Monsters, but I've really liked some of what I've read in interviews with Kurtzman, and the teaser for this one was intriguing. Who am I kidding? I'll be there for this.

God Particle This may be the next Cloverfield movie, and even if it isn't, it's got a terrific cast and an intriguing premise, so I'm into it.

Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2017 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming both start out with a lot of goodwill on my part (both general Marvel Studios goodwill and based on the original Guardians and the new Spider-Man's appearance in Captain America: Civil War). The Guardians ads have been spectacular so far, and the Spider-Man trailer pressed the right buttons for me. On top of that, this fall we get Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok, which I'm already too excited about and I haven't seen a single frame. There's also Iron Fist and The Defenders due on Netflix, the continuation of the current season of Agents of Shield (which I'm really enjoying), and a few other potential TV projects like the IMAX/television Inhumans. I feel pretty safe that the MCU won't be slowing down for me this year. (And it's not Marvel Studios, but Logan looks great.)

Coco A new, original Pixar movie! Of course I'm excited. (Note: I'm even into seeing what they're up to with their Rocky III sounding Cars 3, so there's no chance I'd miss their fall offering.)

Riverdale Another one where I'm equally excited and afraid. In any case, I'm super interested to see how this works, so they've got me for the season!

The Leftovers Final Season The final season of a show that moved me like very works of art ever have. Not sure what to expect or even what I want from it, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. HBO is also serving up final seasons for Girls and Vice Principals, so I guess it's a good year for me to get super excited about the ends of shows I've loved.

Star Trek: Discovery I am going to subscribe to CBS's streaming service for the months this show is airing. That's how excited I am for it.

Twin Peaks Like Blade Runner, it is so strange that this is coming out and stranger still that it's in a form that is so exciting in its own right. Lynch directing (and co-writing with Mark Frost) like eighteen hours of new Twin Peaks! I genuinely don't know what to expect from it, but I'm excited.

Fourth Cormoran Strike Novel After a thoroughly enjoyable year of new Wizarding World material, I'm also anxiously awaiting news about J.K. Rowling releasing a new Robert Galbraith mystery this year.

Stranger Things 2 I really loved the first season, and as much as I think it ended perfectly and am kind of wary about them following up with a sequel, they built up a lot of goodwill and trust with me the first time around. And that teaser for the second season (and the episode titles they released) pretty easily override any doubts.

Olaf's Frozen Adventure It's a Frozen Christmas special from Walt Disney Animation Studios. Up. My. Alley.

The Fate of the Furious Of course I'm psyched for this. But it would be on this list over some others stuff I'm excited about for the perfect genius of the title alone.

[movietvtechgeeks]

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Will 2017 Be a Good Year for Film?

It’s a wonderful time to be comic book fan as our favorite heroes come to life one by one on the big screen. 2016 gave us Deadpool, the Suicide Squad, and Doctor Strange and a new incarnation of Batman for the DCEU. Harley Quinn became a household name and Ghost Rider got a proper treatment on TV and Spider-Man debuted in the MCU in a pretty big way. Favorite sci-fi franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars also made a big splash in the box office with Star Trek Beyond and Rogue One. 2017 promises to be a similar year for us geeks as well as the general public as both DC and Marvel have several offerings. This year, Marvel has three. Rogue One was stunning in IMAX. So save up to watch your favorite franchises in the best way possible in IMAX or in 3D. 2017 will be quite a ride. Here are the most anticipated films for 2017.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter – January 2017 – this film is anticipated by both Resident Evil fans and the general public as this is the final chapter of the long-running series of Resident Evil films starring Milla Jovovich. Is Wesker really actually a good guy? What happens to Alice, and the rest of the remaining human survivors on an earth taken over by the undead? Can the earth still be cleansed of the T-virus? We’ll find out very soon.

Logan – March 2017 – This could very well be Hugh Jackman’s final appearance as Wolverine on the big screen as he has held on to the character for over a decade and he’s not getting any younger. It’s been that long already? This will be an adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Old Man Logan storyline but without anyone else in the Marvel universe. This film somehow follows the disappointing X-Men: Apocalypse as Fox seems to have something against the chronology of X-Men stories. For their sake, hopefully, this redeems the X-Men franchise as not even Deadpool can hold everyone up. Maybe he could and teach Fox the merits of following source material instead of egos. The plot is something like Lone Wolf and Cub as Logan travels the country in a post-apocalyptic future. Tagging along is a young incarnation of X-23 and an old Charles Xavier which also marks Patrick Stewart’s final portrayal of the character.

Power Rangers – March 2017 – this is basically a wait-and-see film for fans of the Power Rangers franchise. This film takes some liberties with the kid-friendly version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The trailer and toy reveals have so far been disappointing, but hopefully, this film will surprise us like some films of 2016. Hopefully.

Beauty and the Beast – March 2017. While not a comic book or sci-fi film, we always love to anticipate the almost yearly fairy tale offerings from Walt Disney or Pixar. Beauty and the Beast is another live-action remake of Disney’s animation classics following Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty), Cinderella and The Jungle Book. Beauty and the Beast will star Emma Watson as Belle and like the animated musical, will also have the same musical score and possibly a few new twists.

Kong: Skull Island – March 2017 – Legendary Films is building its own shared universe after Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla. King Kong will be remade in a very big way. He will be much more colossal in order to be able to kick ass against or along with Godzilla in the future. The cast is equally colossal with Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman and Brie Larson.

Ghost in The Shell – March 2017 – is a live-action film based on the beloved sci-fi cyberpunk anime classic of Masamune Shirow. This film is controversial as the lead role was given to Caucasian Scarlett Johansson since the lead character was supposedly Asian given her name but is surprisingly okay with Japanese fans as their characters may be ambiguous when it comes to race or nationality. Fans of the anime are hopeful that the film will do the anime justice and that the film will be good enough to pass the casting issues like in Doctor Strange.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 – May 2017 – is the long-anticipated follow-up to the highly successful film of the formerly highly obscure team of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The whole gang returns including Vin Diesel to voice the adorable Baby Groot. Guess he’ll grow up by the end of the film. This film will feature the return of Nebula, the debut of Mantis as well as Ego, the Living Planet. If it’s any indication, the trailer alone suggests this adventure will be a fun ride. Plus, we’re excited to hear the contents of Peter Quill’s new mixtape.

Alien: Covenant – May 2017 – Director Ridley Scott returns to helm his most famous creation, this time giving us a less ambiguous prequel to our beloved space horror franchise. This film will follow the events of Prometheus but will now feature the familiar xenomorphs of the Alien franchise. Naomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender will reprise their previous roles as Shaw and the android David respectively. Fassbender will also take on the role of a newer android named Walter and Katherine Waterston is cast as Daniels as the other lead character akin to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley.

The Mummy – June 2017 – is an anticipated reboot of Brendan Fraser’s action-horror franchise. This time, Tom Cruise takes over for Fraser while the gorgeous Sofia Boutella (Kingsman, Star Trek: Beyond) takes on the titular role.

Wonder Woman – June 2017 – could probably be the DCEU’s saving grace after Batman V Superman. Wonder Woman’s appearance near the end was one of the film’s highlights and though some fans voiced their objections to the casting of Gal Gadot, she carried the character very well. Like Captain America: The First Avenger, this film will be the DCEU’s period piece. Has everyone noticed she’s been carrying a shield a lot recently? From the look of the trailer, this could be good. It’s another historic moment ad this will be her first solo film on the big screen.

Transformers: The Last Knight – June 2017 – Optimus Prime and Megatron return in another installment of the Michael Bay Transformers franchise. This picks up from the events of Transformers: Age of Extinction. Though the Transformers franchise is generally panned by critics and Transformers diehards, this franchise continues to rake in profits and let’s face it. We geeks love giant robots duking it out even though we can’t discern what’s happening when they come in contact. We remain suckers for what happens next in this franchise.

Spider-Man: Homecoming – July 2017 – this will be Spider-Man’s first solo film since his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He was already great in Civil War, and with RDJ and Iron Man as support, this film could turn out to be more than amazing. Michael Keaton again plays a winged character in the form of The Vulture. It’s a logical choice as he predates The Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and The Lizard. Some fans can’t wait to see younger upbeat Aunt May again.

Thor: Ragnarok – November 2017 – The Mighty Thor returns in the third installment of his own franchise. This film will pick up after the events of Thor: The Dark World, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Doctor Strange as we seek to discover what happened to Odin as well as the whereabouts of the Hulk. This film will feature an adaptation of Marvel Comics’ popular Planet Hulk storyline and we’ll be treated to an appearance of Doctor Strange as he will help Thor and Loki locate Odin.

Star Wars Episode VIII – December 2017 – there seems to be no stopping Disney in giving us new Star Wars stories every December. This decade is a new heyday for Star Wars fans as more and more Star Wars films are expected to come out after the success of The Force Awakens and Rogue One. We expect this film to pick up where Episode VII left off with Rey and Luke Skywalker and the fates of Finn and Kylo Ren.

Justice League – December 2017 – DC’s own efforts at an extended universe will finally come to a head this upcoming December with the release of their Justice League film. Much like with the Avengers going against Loki and the Chitauri, the newly-formed Justice League will likely go against an initial attack from the Parademon forces of Darkseid from Apokolips which will be led by Steppenwolf. The film will also feature the return of the Man of Steel. Again this will be a first for the big screen bringing together DCs core team of superheroes.

Other films to watch out for – Underworld Blood Wars, Jeepers Creepers 3, Despicable Me 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3: Dead Men Tell No Tales, War for the Planet of the Apes, Pitch Perfect 3, The LEGO Batman Movie, Cars 3, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, The Fate of the Furious, Stephen King’s It.

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