TL;DR – We dip our toes into what Melbourne has to offer a little more with round 2.
Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.
Well, one good night’s sleep later, and it was a slightly more welcoming day that greeted me in the morning as I made my way down the Yarra River to the Convention Centre.
Continue readingTL;DR – This was just a fun delight from start to finish.
Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene and an audio tag at the end.
Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.
We are in an interesting time for the MCU. The once dominant cultural force in the cinematic landscape is now starting to find itself on rocky footing. It has struggled to find its voice in the post-Endgame world, with only Guardians 3 shining in the mix. It is in this space we get a film that stars two characters that we only introduced in the Disney+ series, and that might be a tall order to pass.
So to set the scene, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) is enjoying spending time writing comics about her hero, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), instead of doing her science homework, but little did she know that on a planet in space, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) is digging up her other bangle. This fractures space-time, and as Captain Marvel and Captain Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) investigate just what happened, they all get zapped by the energy. This would be bad enough on any day, even less because now, whenever one uses their powers, they switch with each other.
TL;DR – This is an interesting spin on the original, that works well within the framework that was set, even if it does not quite get the tone right in places.
Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.
Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.
Back in the day, I was fascinated by this small show out of Canada that took a science fiction concept, in this case, cloning, and took it to the extreme with some of the best acting and weird worlds of subterfuge, rebellion, and secret organisations. During Orphan Black’s five-season run, I was transfixed with each new clone and turn in this world, so you better believe I was excited to find out we were coming back to this universe.
So to set the scene, a woman, Lucy (Krysten Ritter), wakes up with no memory of her past life, with only a therapist (Keeley Hawes) to tell her that she has had a procedure and some of the subtlety of her long-term member might not have worked. After being sedated, the woman is not just going to sit around and breaks out when she finds the house is a fake hidden in a warehouse. But worse still is the room full of body parts, a suspension chamber full of red liquid, and an unfinished artefact of a human. Can they print humans now? And who was the woman they scanned to make this body? Am I the only one who has been printed? We will be looking at the series as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.
TL;DR – We dip our toes into what Melbourne has to offer a little more with round 2.
Disclosure – I paid for all products featured or mentioned here.
When you work in the games and pop culture space, you hear of the joy of PAX, but I have never experienced it myself, until I got there in 2022. Well, it is time for Round 2, where I know Melbourne/Narrm a touch better than before, and I see a couple of things I missed that I needed to make up for. So, in today’s and the next few Explore-It’s, we will look at our time down past the daylight savings divide to a city with an entirely different seagull-to-pigeon ratio than I have ever seen.
Continue readingTL;DR – We take a look at the bonus episode from The Expanse: A Telltale Series featuring Chrisjen Avasarala
Disclosure – I paid for this game.
Earlier this year, we looked at a new Telltale-style game from Deck Nine that brought us back into the world of The Expanse. The Expanse: A Telltale Series explored the world of Camina Drummer (Cara Gee) before she joined the story that we know. It was a fun blast, bar that time, I accidentally got a crew member killed. You can read our full review of the game HERE. I knew there would be a bonus episode dropping at some point, but I didn’t know who it was going to focus on, and now it is here. I could not wait to give it a whirl.
So to set the scene, Undersecretary of Peace Operations Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) has been sequestered away from the United Nations to the Secretary General’s bunker. The rest of the politicians are up on Luna, and this is a sort of safety net, or prison, depending on who you ask. But if you are alive, you can work to find a way forward, even if there are phone calls from Calisto to distract you. Because Mendez (Rogelio Ramos) is out there trying to take your job, and you will not let that snivelling excuse of pustule get his way.
TL;DR – Links to every geographical feature mentioned in Old World so you can explore them if interested
A while back when working on our Civilization and Humankind maps, I decided to put together a Cartographic Educational Database to allow you to explore the features in our world. Well now that we have finished our Old World Map, it is time to do the same as we explore the many different geographical features of the Mediterranean region. Below you will find links to Nations and their Cities, and Wonders. As well as, all the geographical features in the game.
Most of these links will be to the relevant Wikipedia page, just because that is probably the most practical option for most people, but there are some links to other sites where it was the best fit. Also, while I have tried to find easily accessible links to every feature, some of them don’t have that access. There is the odd one here and there, which you can see below.
To assist with searching, you can jump to
So let’s dive into the geographical world of Old World.
Continue readingTL;DR – A solid interlude preparing us for the chaos that will be the season/series finale.
Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ subscription that viewed this show.
Post-Credit Scene – There is an audio cue at the End of the Credits.
Now Loki likes big ‘what the heck moments’ that dramatically shift everything we know. It didn’t hit as well as it could have in Season One, but I am not sure anyone particularly saw last week coming, where death came from every side. The question is: can they build upon that moment and propel everything forward or languish in possibilities?
So to set the scene, after fighting off the threat from Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), it looked like for a moment that they were actually going to stabilise the Temporal Loom and save the Multiverse. That was until Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) ran out to fix the problem and was immediately spaghetti-fied. Quite gruesomely, I should add. All Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Morbius (Owen Wilson), Sylvie (Sophia di Martino), Casey (Eugene Cordero), and O.B. (Ke Huy Quan) could do is sit and watch as the Time Loom collapsed under all the different timelines and the TVA was destroyed from within. Which makes it all the more peculiar when Loki opens his eyes to find himself still in the now empty TVA and time slipping all over the place. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.
TL;DR – A solid end to a fascinating series.
Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ streaming service that viewed this episode.
We have reached the end of the season for Star Trek: Lower Decks of what has been a solid season for the series. However, when you have summoned the great ‘To Be Continued …’, you must ensure you live up to that hype. In today’s review, we will first tackle the season finale and then look at the season as a whole.
So to set the scene, at the end of The Inner Fight, we discovered that the person behind all of the ship mutinies was former Starfleet Academy bad boy Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill). What is worse, he has just kidnapped Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and warped her away to his lair, where his fleet is kept. He is trying to start a revolution across space with a Genesis device to back it up. Starfleet is holding back so it does not accidentally cause a war, but Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) does not have the time to wait. We will be looking at the episode and series as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.
TL;DR – A stunning work of art that captivated me for its entire runtime.
Post-Credit Scene – There is no end-credit scene.
Disclosure – I paid to see this film.
There are some films where you know where you will land when the credits roll, but others still sit with you and reverberate through your brain over the coming days. Today, we look at just such a film that powered through my soul, with performances that were almost once in a generation.
So to set the scene, The Osage Nation had been forced from their homelands by the United States, but as luck or fate would have it, they found oil and became wealthy in this new land. Like any mineral found in human history, there was a rush to the county for those looking for work and making it rich. One such person was Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), who moved to the area to work with his uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro). Here, his uncle subtlety suggests that he marries a local Osage lady because there is a chance that oil headrights could end up with them, which he does with Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone). But what if you could help those progressions of headrights towards you with some targeted deaths?
TL;DR – A delightful romp through times past, made with the techniques of today, Now in Color.
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.
Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this film.
Last year, we reviewed Werewolf by Night, an experiment and, honestly, one of the best things that the MCU put out on Disney+ … and much to my despair, no one watched it. Well, they are taking a second crack at the project by presenting it “In Color”, so on this final day of the spooky season, it feels like the perfect time to jump back in and see if the colour has changed anything. To save you searching, we will begin with the review we wrote for it the first time out and then look to see if the “In Color” changed anything.
So to set the scene, we open on a dark night in a mansion deep in the woods where Ulysses Bloodstone’s (Richard Dixon) funeral is about to take place. All across the globe, the hunters gathered because this was both a funeral and a hunt. Whoever of the death dealers wins the ceremonial hunt gets the coveted Bloodstone, a relic of immeasurable power. But one of the hunters may actually be the hunted?
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50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
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freelance film critic with an interest in multilingualism, feminist perspectives in cinema and crime dramas.
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