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  • Winter’s Tale Review

    winters-tale

    I won’t mince words: Winter’s Tale was a disaster upon release. With a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a worldwide gross of only $30 million, there is no world in which Warner Bros didn’t regret releasing this film. The rumor is that it was a long-gestating passion project of Akiva Goldsman, who had worked on so many films with so many powerful players in Hollywood that he was able to call in favors and assemble an all-star cast and crew to bring his dream project to life. Every one of them likely wishes they had just said no.

    That being said, it could have probably worked better than it did. Right from the start, Winter’s Tale establishes that Colin Ferrell’s Peter Lake has existed in multiple time periods, that he was shipped out in a tiny Moses-boat when he was still a baby, that everybody has a “miracle” for somebody else if the two can meet, and that there is a dog spirit (guardian?) that shows up to rescue Lake in the form of a horse, which is actually a Pegasus. When the Pegasus-dog-horse showed up, I checked my blu-ray timer to see how long the movie had taken to establish all this nonsense. It had been seven minutes and thirty seconds. Winter’s Tale wastes no time leaping into crazytown.

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  • Until Dawn Review

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    (The first half of this article is spoiler-free. The second half contains only light spoilers, but goes into the game’s mechanics in a way that could limit one’s enjoyment. The transition is clearly marked, so if you intend to play Until Dawn, please do not read that section until you are finished)

    If you’ve played Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls,  Life is Strange, or any of the recent Telltale Games series’, then you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Until Dawn. Dawn uses the same “Your actions have consequences” framework as its predecessors, and works with the same combination of choice and quicktime events that made most of them enjoyable.

    The difference, here, is the genre. Unlike the heavy drama often found in these narrative-choice games, Until Dawn exists wholly within the b-movie slasher-horror realm. All major characters are teenagers (appropriately portrayed by actors and actresses well into their 20s and 30s), the location is a creepy house hidden away from civilization on a mountain (with a series of cabins, mineshafts, and an insane asylum to boot!), and there are tons of cheap scares and red herrings to keep things interesting.

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  • Unknown Hosts 9/2/2015

    Thanks for joining us for another episode of Unknown Hosts! This week we unveiled our BRAND NEW LOOK (thanks Lucid!), and were PACKED with topics for The Good, The Bad, The Kappa, chat suggestions, and random tangents, so check it out and feel free to leave your opinions in the comments!

    1:45 – Lucid Nightmare’s Graphic Design
    3:28 – Our New Look!
    5:42 – What’s New? What Are We Playing?
    9:27 – Giveaway Tease: Penny Arcade Episodes 1 and 2
    9:49 – Green Man Gaming Bioshock Infinite Bargain
    10:52 – Mad Max PC Port Update
    11:43 – Portal Stories Mel “Story Mode” Update

    The Good The Bad The Kappa
    13:30 – New GBK Art
    13:50 – Trine 3 Developers Apologize for Upsetting/Disappointing Fans
    17:54 – No Server Browser for Star Wars Battlefront
    23:17 – Xbox One Elite Console Unveiled
    28:37 – Konami Made Employees Give Up Vacation Time to Ship Peace Walker on PC the Same Day as on Consoles
    33:12 – FTC (Settles) Investigation into Microsoft-Machinima Deceptive Youtube Marketing
    38:20 – PS4 Update Adds Major Features, Including Youtube Streaming
    41:32 – Youtube’s Automated Copyright Protection Causing Issues with Super Mario Maker
    46:49 – Steam Getting an Uncensored Sex Game
    55:52 – Hulu Plus ad-free for $11.99

    1:12:55 – Lucid and Graphic Arts Discussion
    1:14:30 – Lucid’s Door “Giveaway”

    Chat Topics
    1:16:03 – Rock Band 4 – No RB1 Instrument Combatibility
    1:18:48 – Sword Coast Legends, Battlefront Open Beta, and Black Ops 3 Beta
    1:19:37 – Call of Duty and eSports
    1:22:29 – Sword Coast Legends
    1:24:00 – Evolve Free Weekend: Will it Spike Interest?
    1:26:00 – “If you want to get into MOBAs, here’s Infinite Crisis…and, it’s gone”
    1:27:17 – Rainbow Six Siege
    1:28:18 – Big Game Launches for September and October: Metal Gear Solid V, Mad Max, Destiny: The Taken King
    1:31:13 – Dishonored: Definitive Edition
    1:32:08 – Game Giveaway: Penny Arcade – On the Rainslicked Precipice of Darkness, Episodes 1 and 2
    —1:36:00 – 1:37:06 – Steam Competitor Tangent
    1:40:57 – Plugs
    1:43:57 – About Lucid Dreaming
    1:51:19 – Kingsman

  • Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp Review

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    It’s incredible that Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp exists at all. The Netflix series consists of eight episodes of inspired absurdity with a star-studded cast that other comedies could only dream of obtaining. This may have only been possible given the future success of the original film’s cast: Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Jon Benjamin…all were still up-and-coming at the time, but are huge draws in 2015. Alongside the more established cast members at the time, including Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Christopher Meloni, Molly Shannon, and most of the cast of The State, Wet Hot American Summer’s cult status has only grown with the success of its actors.

    To see all of these actors return with a whole slate of new big-name cameos speaks to the reverence these comic actors have to the original movie. Still, working around so many people’s busy schedules is incredibly difficult (see: season 4 of Arrested Development). Somehow Wet Hot American Summer manages its star availability in a way that it is invisible to the viewer. Like the movie, there really isn’t a central plot to the series, just a vast number of subplots that interweave from time-to-time. Since Wet Hot American Summer feels like it can jump around freely to whatever weird thing it feels like doing, it’s completely fine if we don’t check in on every character in every episode.

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  • Hannibal – Season 3 Pt 2 Review

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    (This article contains spoilers, and is written under the assumption that the reader has viewed the entire series of Hannibal)

    “This is my becoming.”

    With that phrase, we reached the moment when Will Graham became fully aware of his own descent into evil. It’s something that’s been building over all three seasons of the show, but in this second half, the Red Dragon arc, we see his complete refusal of Hannibal crumble into acceptance. It’s simultaneously a moment of catharsis and defeat. Will tried to stay away from Hannibal and commit to a family, but it was never in the cards. Bedelia tells him in the finale that he’s found his religion, but in truth Will found it a long time ago. His transformation was almost complete; he just needed to consciously give himself over to his darker impulses.

    The theme of transformation has been a major focus in Hannibal for some time, but is even more central in this arc. For one, the story they are adapting about the Red Dragon is explicitly about a man becoming something else altogether. For Francis Dolarhyde, the Dragon gives him power, but it also makes him a slave to its own desires. Despite being a relatively faithful adaptation of the source material, Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, the parallels between Dolarhyde and the TV show’s version of Graham are illuminating. Both are men who are becoming more powerful and dangerous against their conscious wills, and both have people that they love (Will’s family, and Francis’ blind lover Reba) who are bound to fall victim to their darker predilections.

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