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Officially licensed 1981 Donkey Kong arcade mug.

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FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (2025) Marvel stumbles with this good-looking but chaotic slice of ridiculous nonsense, which is only occasionally as good as it wants to be. It tries to do way too much, while being about absolutely nothing. It's comic-booky in the best and worst ways, and politically hollow in a way that fails to meet the current moment. This will be a divisive film, because there's a lot here to like, and to look at. It's got a strong retro aesthetic and terrific music by Michael Giacchino, and there are a handful of scenes where the characters almost behave like real human beings. That should be enough to leave viewers with a sense of wonder. All I'm wondering is, why am I still watching these movies? I've generally liked and supported what Marvel is doing, but I'm wondering if we're now in the "Hobbit" phase where anything these movies had to say has already been said. Or, more to the point, we're way past "Iron Man" now, and none of these movies are grounded in any kind of reality anymore. They seem made by and for rich people who are completely out of touch with people who have to actually pay bills. Every shot is a CGI special effect, and when there's normal character acting scenes, they're short and the continuity is bad.

Even the post-credits scenes feel played out, teasing a future Avengers movie, and animating (via Titmouse) a goofy 60s animated intro for the Fantastic Four, for whom multiple TV (and radio) series exactly like that already exist. So what's the point? It's also something that The Incredibles did better, and you can say that about almost every aspect of this film. I will at least single out Vanessa Kirby, who is probably the best Sue Storm we've had, and Pedro Pascal doesn't embarrass himself as Mr. Fantastic, despite doing a nerdy voice the entire time. I was less impressed by Joseph Quinn's Human Torch here, and the other leads are either CGI monstrosities or Mark Gatiss.

After four previous attempts to put Marvel's Fantastic Four on the big screen, the rights finally rest with the Disney Marvel Cinematic Universe, as of 2024's "Deadpool & Wolverine," which served up nostalgia for FOX's Marvel efforts, which varied greatly in quality. That was a silly and irreverent film, and I wish it hadn't been a harbinger for the tone of this one. "First Steps" sets up a retro-60s alternate universe, outside of the MCU we know. That's a clever enough way to simplify things, and show why the Fantastic Four weren't around during the previous Avengers films, and let them succeed on their own terms. But this movie's idea of "simple" is to explain that the Fantastic Four have already been in action for four years, that there's very advanced technology everywhere in the 60s, and that they don't need to explain anything. This has the effect of making the plot not make much sense.

It also means that the Fantastic Four are the only real characters in this film, which sets up a political problem that the film handles badly. This entire cinematic universe only seems to exist for the benefit of four white people in New York, the Fantastic Four, who everyone loves. If they step outside and say or anything, they are always suddenly on national television, even if no cameras appear to be present. They can tell the entire world to do something, and the entire world will just do it, because four American people have the moral high ground over everything. In our 2025, America doesn't have the moral high ground about anything.

The central problem of the movie -- and this is a big fuck-off spoiler -- occurs when they are asked to sacrifice one of their number (a number you can count on one hand, remember) to save the entire world. Of course they say no, and of course this makes sense on a personal level. But at the moment, in the real world, allies of the United States of America are committing a genocide in Gaza and surrounding areas, starving and murdering millions of people. The idea that one of the Fantastic Four is worth more than the entire rest of the world is exactly the wrong political message to be sending at this moment. And it's hard not to compare this to James Gunn's 2025 Superman, which took on the difficult task of incorporating 2025 politics into a superhero film. "First Steps" absolutely does not do that, unless it's very much on the wrong side of things. (I suspect it is, genuinely, on the wrong side of things.) Halfway through, the local population turn on the Fantastic Four and start protesting. The protesters are, of course, wrong, and crowds of people are treated throughout as insignificant ants. Vast amounts of New York (and parts of the world even) are destroyed so that the Fantastic Four can have their little family drama, and do a little acting.

There is always a possibility for superhero stories to turn fascist. The creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, understood that from the start. They intended their good guy as a purposeful reversal of the trope of a N_zi "Ubermensch," a nonexistent man of superior powers destined to rule over the human race. Siegel and Shuster considered a "Superman" villain, but then decided to make a humble hero who fought for the little guys, the workers. There is a worrying trend in some superhero movies where any crowds of normal people are the enemy. Protesters are the enemy. That would be on the wrong side of history in any era.

The 1960s aesthetic of the film is delightful, but it also feels like a copy of a copy of a copy. This movie wants to look like a real movie, but the script is screaming otherwise. It does at least show how to trick these bloated $200 million superhero movies and Disney TV series into being lit like a real movie. You just say, it has to look retro, like something from the 1960s. There's a few sequences in the middle where they stop doing this for awhile, and shut all the lights off so that it looks like a poorly-lit Disney+ TV series, and the movie loses any charm it has during that time.

Meanwhile, Michael Giacchino, composer for the previous Disney Fantastic Four movies known as "The Incredibles," works overtime to make the movie sound great, giving it a better score than it deserves. As a full choir sing "Fantastic Four," you'll be reminded of what John Williams did with his theme for "Superman."

Director Matt Shakman also seems competent enough, having previously blessed Marvel with various retro aesthetics in the 2021 TV series "WandaVision." Shakman was previously a child actor, such as in the movie Meet the Hollowheads (1989). He understands 80s sitcoms, having grown up on the sets of seven of them. He has brought some charming, if surface level, retro vibes to both Marvel projects, and seems competent enough with actors. But a $200 million superhero film has a lot more going on than acting, and this one is trying to do too much at all times.

Futurama parodied The Twilight Zone with "The Scary Door," and "Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible" did something similar with 70s horror shows. Both series had punchlines where the twist endings of six different "Twilight Zones" happen at once, resulting in absolute chaos. "There's a Gremlin on the wing of this plane, but no one believes me because suddenly I'm the guy who started World War 2!" "This elevator is going to hell and we're all mannequins and always have been and there's room for one more!"

That's the kind of movie this movie is. Oh, Sue Storm is having a baby, in space, in zero gravity! We're going through a wormhole at light speed in a spaceship, while Johnny Storm tries to do the Star Wars thing of shooting at fighter ships, except he's shooting at the Silver Surfer, herald of Galactus, who he has a crush on. She's a CGI monstrosity. And the wormhole is bending the gunfire laser beams! And Galactus is going to eat the Earth! He's a CGI monstrosity! And we're all out of fuel! So we have to slingshot around this star, which is like a burning black hole, which will nearly destroy the ship but not actually destroy it for some reason. This will cause the Silver Surfer, herald of Galactus, who Johnny has a crush on, to get trapped in a time dilation! And Galactus wants Sue's unborn baby, who is being born right now, and tries to steal it from her womb! And so does the Silver Surfer, who can phase through the ship! Mr. Fantastic can stretch and do science, Herbie is a cassette tape powered robot, and The Thing is a CGI monstrosity made of rocks and he'll be growing a rock beard for the rest of the film! There's a Silver Surfer on the wing of this spaceship, and did I mention Sue Storm is having a baby right now while all of this is going on?

There's a scene later on where Johnny Storm confronts the Silver Surfer with what he knows, and if I had to write down all the things about this that don't make sense and should have been written differently, I could fill a chapter of a book. Also, why do the people of Earth suddenly know who Galactus is, as if they have a general sense of who he is in the comic books? There's a scene in one of the comics where Reed says (to Franklin, but mainly to himself) that he'll always feel responsible for the accident that "changed" this team and gave them their powers, and that he made this team into media celebrities so that they wouldn't be treated like monsters. I kept waiting for this movie to show that level of understanding about anything, but there's not much of that here.

This movie is comic booky in the best and worst ways. It's just not grounded enough in any kind of reality to be coherent for very long. It's going to be divisive because that's exactly what many people want in a superhero film, and at times this movie is exactly as good as it wants to be. But there's something about it which sounds like an out of touch billionaire who hasn't done his own grocery shopping since Iron Man was a hit, back in 2008. And maybe the Fantastic Four are important. But they're not more important than everyone else in the entire world.

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#supernatural, doctor who, news

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Actually this is about Leland Palmer but there are many similarities

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"It is made from sweet Italian bread dough spread with a mixture of cheese, fish, thin slices of spicy sausage and a hot sauce before baking."

It could be an oversight, because many early descriptions of pizza in the US get the details wrong, but there's no direct mention of tomatoes, which are native to the Americas. I wonder if they'd figured that part out yet, in Michigan.

Detroit Free Press, Michigan, August 29, 1939

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Me in 2009, restoring a Raggedy Ann feature film for an unofficial DVD

OH MY GOD???

THEY’RE A DUO!!!!??

THEY’RE BONDING??!!

HE’S TEACHING HER HOW TO SHOOT??!!!!!!

THEY’RE SUPER AWESOME???

THEY CUTE AS HELL????

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when you buy otter pops at the grocery store

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In the mid-80s, most video game magazines had folded due to Atari's crash (and Coleco's) and the feeling that console video games were a fad that had ended. Even Computer Entertainer was mostly a computer game magazine, but change was on the way, with one of the few US reviews of Super Mario Bros in June 1986. "No owner of the Nintendo Entertainment System should be without this game--it's a must!"

The first appearance of the NES in the magazine is actually two photos of the AES, an earlier design which was revised before the system actually launched. The 1986 magazine also wonders when CD-ROM technology will be inexpensive enough to be viable (mentioning the unsuccessful laserdisc system the Halcyon, which ran Rick Dyer's Thayer's Quest game). They note vaguely that another company also believes that home video games aren't dead, and will have something ready for Christmas (Sega's Master System of course). In October they note rumors of a Super Nintendo. They then look forward to SonSon, Castlevania and The Legend of Zelda, as well as the Bandai Family Trainer pad (later the Power Pad). A trip to Japan has them trying to make sense of press coverage of a lot of Disk System era NES games that never made it to the US. At one point they start listing Kinnikuman characters - presumably the only English in a writeup about the second MUSCLE game.

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Here's how to be an AI artist. Here, I've Google Image Searched for "Batman," and it's given me some art of Batman. Who drew it? Doesn't matter. It's mine now. I am the AI artist, and I have created AI art. Now, to jump out a window

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Okay, we've got our scales for measuring temperature. There's Celsius, Fahrenheit ... we forgot Kelvin

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Mamma mia! I told-a the press-a that my child sleeps with the fishes, for being woke and queer. But the mamma Grimes, she says the child is the pride of the famiglia, and can come round anytime for spaghetti dinner! I must-a unfollow the traitor Grimes on 𝕏, the everything app!

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Charlie Brown and The Lion King take place in the same universe but it never comes up.

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like a candle in the wind like, comment and subscribe a candle in the wind

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Frosty the Snowman knew your mom was hot that day

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Forcing high school students to state their positions on "Palestine" and "Immigration" in a debate, before they can get into college.

It's really streamlining the process of taking them directly from high school to a concentration camp.

These are controversial subjects and the "empathetic, curious and kind" answer is not an answer that is allowed by the current Presidential administration. They are currently, already, arresting people for holding these opinions, and sending them to concentration camps, either overseas or here. That currently, already includes children. No child is safe under this policy. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opinion/college-admissions-essays.html