How Hocus Pocus Became A Halloween Staple

But its reputation as a Halloween necessity is something it’s acquired over the years, because when Hocus Pocus came out, critics hated it. Roger Ebert gave it just one star, and complained that it lacked focus and structure; Entertainment Weekly’s Ty Burr gave it a C-, claiming that for Bette Midler fans, it was “depressing as hell.” Overall, on Rotten Tomatoes right now, Hocus Pocus stands at 33 percent rotten, which is pretty dire....

December 31, 2022 · 11 min · 2232 words · Edwin Mcelroy

How Horror Movies Influenced Brightburn

Yarovesky is still working with a relatively modest budget on Brightburn, but that’s part of the movie’s charm: in many ways it’s a bit of a throwback to the sort of mid-level horror sleepers that dominated the late 1970s and 1980s. The movie stars Elizabeth Banks and David Denman as a childless couple who one night discover a baby in the woods behind their farm — a toddler who crashed to Earth in what is clearly a vessel of extra-terrestrial origin....

December 31, 2022 · 7 min · 1449 words · Brenda Campbell

How Joseph Fiennes Lost The Obi Wan Role In The Star Wars Prequels

In an interview with The Wrap, Fiennes has been talking in loose terms about his audition and why he didn’t get the role. “I auditioned for a great director,” he recalled. “It was whittled down after many auditions to myself and another fine actor who I was at that time at drama school with.” Fiennes was indeed at drama school with Ewan McGregor. These were not tricky clues! Ouch. Ewan McGregor, of course, got the role, and continues to be linked with a return to it....

December 31, 2022 · 1 min · 103 words · Timothy Prewitt

How Mortal Kombat Became The Best Selling Fighting Game Franchise Ever

While WB has confirmed the lifetime sales of the Mortal Kombat franchise to date, it should be noted that some of the other current sales figures for the other major fighting game franchises are either estimates or are based on reports that haven’t been updated quite as recently. Having said that, it certainly appears that Mortal Kombat is now the best-selling fighting game franchise ever, which is even more impressive when you consider that it was nowhere close to dethroning Super Smash Bros....

December 31, 2022 · 6 min · 1158 words · Theresa Figueroa

How Shang Chi Could Make Up For Doctor Strange S Ancient One Whitewash

September’s Shang-Chi premiere will unleash the MCU’s adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Master of Kung-Fu, a title once considered a relic of 1970s pop culture’s post-Bruce-Lee martial arts craze, but has since been revived in the modern era. The film will be the first MCU offering to showcase a predominantly Asian cast; an attribute that accurately complements its plot pertaining to the film’s titular Chinese crime syndicate, the Ten Rings, which has been lurking in the MCU’s shadows since the very beginning in 2008’s Iron Man....

December 31, 2022 · 4 min · 840 words · Ralph Robinson

How Star Trek Prodigy Just Challenged Discovery Canon

The last days of DISCO were erased. In the Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 finale, “Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2,” Pike, Spock, Number One — and even everyone’s favorite Section 31 fashion icon, Ash Tyler — all told Starfleet Command that the USS Discovery had been destroyed. On top of that, Spock doubled down by recommending to Starfleet that everything about Discovery become classified, which is why in the 32nd Century of DISCO Season 3, Admiral Vance, at first, is baffled that Burnham and company even exist....

December 31, 2022 · 4 min · 769 words · David Shepard

How Super Mario S Most Iconic Power Up Was Inspired By Magic Mushrooms

If you hear that joke when you’re 12 or 22, you’ll likely treat it like some kind of incredible revelation that changes the way you look at the Super Mario Bros. franchise. At some point, though, the gag becomes yet another example of someone trying to apply an edge to a kid-friendly product by making some kind of barely believable suggestion that the whole thing is actually about something slightly darker....

December 31, 2022 · 11 min · 2214 words · Angela Tracy

How The Walking Dead Ending Changed The Daryl And Carol Spinoff

The Walking Dead main series showrunner Angela Kang and chief content officer Scott M. Gimple originally planned for the main series exits of Reedus’s Daryl Dixon and McBride’s Carol Peletier for the spinoff series. However, Norman Reedus recently revealed to Entertainment Weekly radio show EW Live that the new series—in which the duo leave the confines of Alexandria, VA to hit the road and explore other regions of apocalypse-afflicted America—would have seen Daryl and Carol occasionally come home for guest spots on the mothership show, which didn’t have an expiration date at that point....

December 31, 2022 · 3 min · 619 words · Chrystal Wheaton

How To Watch Season 13 Of Mystery Science Theater 3000 On Gizmoplex

Well, almost. Mystery Science Theater 3000 season 13 debuts at 8 pm EST on Friday, March 4th! But it’s going to look a little different this time, and not just because the beloved comedy series won’t be on the cable channels it called home from 1989-1999. Nor will it be on Netflix, like seasons 11 and 12. No, season 13 will be streaming on the Gizmoplex, a streaming service designed especially for MST3K....

December 31, 2022 · 2 min · 406 words · Elizabeth Ruelas

Hulk Smash Costumed Avenger Destroys Donald Trump Walk Of Fame Star

The attack on the undeserved monument to a man whose only previous claim to fame was being a racist landlord, fake rich dude, and host of a phony reality TV show happened at about 5 am PDT, only an hour or so after the President announced that he and the First Lady had been infected with Covid-19. Apparently, $5,000 worth of damage was done to the star, which is over 6 times more than alleged rich guy Trump paid in taxes in 2017, the year he ascended to the White House toilet to abuse us daily with his syphilitic nonstop stream of consciousness tweets....

December 31, 2022 · 2 min · 338 words · Ronald Nguyen

Hulu New Releases October 2021

The biggest Hulu original this month is undoubtedly Dopesick. This miniseries starring Michael Keaton premieres Oct. 13, is based on a book, and covers the U.S. opioid crisis in heartbreaking depth. To counterbalance that bleakness a bit, Hulu is also making a go of some food programming this month. Baking competition Baker’s Dozen premieres on Oct. 7. That will be followed by David Chang’s The Next Thing You Eat on Oct....

December 31, 2022 · 5 min · 980 words · Robert Pahl

Indiana Jones 5 Set Photos Reveal New Characters And Movie S Setting

Since the movie is filming on location at the moment instead in the secrecy of a Pinewood Studios soundstage, photo leaks abound from the set. In fact, the latest set photos to hit the internet reveal quite a bit about when the movie is set and also give us our first looks at some of the characters joining Indy for his final adventure. Obviously, there are spoilers ahead, so if you don’t want to know anything about this movie before it hits theaters, you might want to turn back now....

December 31, 2022 · 3 min · 549 words · Kathryn Sallie

Inside No 9 Series 7 Episode 3 Review Nine Lives Kat

Without question, that episode featured the worst dialogue, the most clichéd plot threads, and the most thinly drawn, hackneyed characters Inside No. 9 has ever produced. Which, of course, was entirely the point. This was metadrama: four characters (six, if you count off-screen Ashley and Georgie) in search of a rubbish author. Unlike with most of Inside No. 9’s surprises, who bets the show’s creators were hoping the penny would drop sooner rather than later with this one?...

December 31, 2022 · 3 min · 560 words · Johnny Cochran

Is It Better To Reinvent Fantasy Tropes Or Pay Homage To Them

Q: EVERINA MAXWELL: Fantasy as a genre is constantly reinventing elements it’s had since forever. Both The Unspoken Name and Drowned Country contain elves, for example, or at least something that looks like elves if you squint at them sideways. What inspires you to take a familiar concept and put a new spin on it? EMILY TESH: Oh thank you, you know I love to talk about elves. For me part of the joy of creating genre fiction is working with the constraints and expectations of that genre, whether you’re running with them or pushing against them–borrowing from what Kass said earlier about reusing characters, it’s helpful to have a paintbox rather than mixing your paint from scratch!...

December 31, 2022 · 7 min · 1464 words · Barbara Barnes

Is The Witcher 4 Still In Development

The answer to that question is…complicated. While it seems likely that developer CD Projekt Red is working on a new Witcher game (or hopes to at some point), it’s not exactly clear whether or not it’s realistic to expect to play The Witcher 4 anytime soon (or even at all). The studio has been very careful with the words they use when speak about even the possibility of such a project....

December 31, 2022 · 4 min · 788 words · Mark Chapman

Jason Isaacs Shazad Latif Interview Star Trek Discovery

What was your relationship to Star Trek before you were cast? Shazad Latif: My granddad was obsessed with it, my uncle had every episode on VHS. I grew up with TNG, which was on after Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. Jason Isaacs: Yeah I’m so much older than you. I watched the original series when I was a kid, crammed on the couch with my brothers and parents. We always argued about which of the existing three channels we should watch, but we never argued when Star Trek was on, so I watched TOS on repeat many many times and I’ve watched nothing since then....

December 31, 2022 · 7 min · 1384 words · Ollie Garcia

Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous Season 5 Ending Explained

Over the course of five seasons, Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous has brought PG thrills to a PG-13 franchise. In the final season, the six campers who were originally stuck on Isla Nublar during the events of Jurassic World bring their saga (but not their adventures) to a close, and reveal some of what franchise antagonist BioSyn was up to during the years between Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom....

December 31, 2022 · 8 min · 1598 words · Violet Meece

Kevin Smith Movies Ranked From Worst To Best

In the nearly 30 years since Clerks was released, Smith has continued to write and direct his own features while also occasionally working as a director-for-hire on larger studio projects. The core movies of his canon, known as the View Askewniverse and featuring Jason Mewes and Smith himself as anchor characters Jay and Silent Bob, predated the Marvel Cinematic Universe by more than a decade. Throughout it all, Smith has retained the style—if you call it that—which marked Clerks and most of his movies since: an emphasis on dialogue (and lots of it), raunchy or crude humor, and an almost willful reluctance to make the visuals of his films anything more than adequate....

December 31, 2022 · 14 min · 2830 words · Bertha Long

Kingsman 3 And Where The Franchise Goes From Here

By the time The King’s Man rolled credits late last year, more than a century’s worth of lore and internal mythology had been established in the three-film franchise. From the Kingsman spy syndicate’s earliest origins during the Second Boer War in 1902 to that time Eggsy, aka Agent Galahad, rescued Elton John in 2017, there’s now a vast timeline of adventures, world-saving hail marys, and espionage double crosses littered throughout world history....

December 31, 2022 · 6 min · 1108 words · Jean Munder

Link Tank All The Rumored Cameos In Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

“Marvel fans are starting to take their theories about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness a bit too far. The film, which will hit theaters in early May, promises to be one of Marvel’s most ambitious and trippiest projects to date. Picking up where WandaVision and Spider-Man: No Way Home left off, Multiverse of Madness has already been confirmed to feature appearances from some truly weird comic book villains as well as What If…?...

December 31, 2022 · 3 min · 482 words · Angie Blanton