This is how you get yourself blackballed — Joss Whedon had already been cancelled, so nobody cares about unfounded claims against him, but when you start accusing the suits...

Regardless of whether a Black actor was originally supposed to play the role of Jimmy, when QT decided to play the role himself, he changed the intent and meaning of the scene (even if he didn’t change a single word of the script). It’s unthinkable that he didn’t consider the implications of this creative choice prior…

They have a fair amount of leeway given that Black Panther usually becomes a CGI model whenever the full mask is down — they could kill off T’Challa in an exciting opening action sequence without recasting or using outtake footage of Boseman. I don’t see any way they can move forward with recasting. It’s one thing if…

The franchise also meant so much to so many people specifically because it was clear that a company like Disney ran the numbers, and decided that a Black superhero movie was worth investing hundreds of millions of dollars in because it would turn a profit. And then it did! Black Panther’s status as a profitable…

In most of Europe, Pizza Hut is more of a sit-down restaurant — not fine dining, but significantly more upscale than the U.S. version.

He’s not wrong — the character of Finn has no arc. Just the idea of a defecting Stormtrooper was cool and unique, but then they do nothing with it. It’s a problem with all three movies, and Finn becomes less relevant to the plot in each movie. Even in TFA, he’s more of a red herring that was shown wielding a…

When I was a kid, Pizza Hut was a family night out that we always looked forward to. I remember the pizza actually being good, and I’m from NYC, so it’s not like I grew up in a pizza desert. There was one Friday night in the mid-90s where we went there and it was just awful. It was like they had changed all the…

I’m on the young Gen X / old Millennial borderline and I had the same reaction. I enjoyed the original movies as a kid, but re-watching them now one thing that really feels dated is the idea that an all-white 90s prog rock band would not just dominate their contemporary music scene, but would endure for hundreds of…

Just a few weeks ago I remember reading a story that Boseman was pissed because the MCU’s future plans for the franchise involved passing on the Black Panther mantle to Shuri, with T’Challa moving into more of a supporting role. I’m pretty sure Black Panther 2 would have already been in the can by now if not for…

Because on a fundamental level it’s just hard to accept multiple actors playing the same character. Yes, lots of actors have played James Bond and Batman, but whenever these roles are recast they essentially reboot the entire world around them, aside from a few supporting cast holdovers. We were rarely expected to…

The write-up’s misguided snark about “newly remote workers realizing they can just do their jobs from home” is the key to why NYC is going to be fine within the next 5-10 years. See, a lot of introverts have gotten used to working from home, and they’re just assuming that after the pandemic their employers will let…

Especially in the era of Black Lives Matters, where we’re increasingly seeing the police as the protectors of capital rather than the rule of law, it *is* interesting that a billionaire chose to use his wealth to become a super-pseudo-cop and beat up criminals with impunity. And that Commissioner Gordon accepts his…

This 100%. It’s easy to make Hammond the villain. Far harder to make him a sympathetic character. And this might be the creative choice that elevates the film into a classic.

Well, the strategy only would have worked if it was national. The problem was that we had a patchwork response, with 50 governors setting different levels of lockdown, encouraging lots of interstate travel. Your area did it right, but one of your neighboring counties or states didn’t, and the result was someone…

There were basically two options. One was letting the free market do its work — basically every movie theater would have gone out of business, but we would have had an extensive national infrastructure of boarded-up movie theaters. After the pandemic, someone would have purchased those theaters for pennies on the…

That bit about how one episode was pulled for criticizing Saudi Arabia may hint at a different, related problem — while the episodes were written largely from a U.S. perspective, he did spend a lot of time criticizing foreign governments (particularly autocratic ones) who are contributing to American problems or…

Same here.

Hey maybe you heard about this virus that kills 1% of infected people, and spreads like wildfire in crowded, indoor, poorly ventilated spaces — you know, like the elementary school auditoriums and gyms that are often used as polling places in the U.S.?

I re-watched TDK last month and was surprised by how heavy-handed and tedious the “post-9/11” angle was pushed, and how irrelevant all that seems now that we’re all living through a national crisis that’s a million times worse. Even by 2008, after further large-scale terrorist attacks had failed to materialize (but…

Back when Karens were protesting for their right to a haircut in April, I assumed there was little reason for government-mandated lockdowns to continue too much longer, because most people were sensible and wouldn’t actually patronize bars and movie theaters even if they were open. I thought Karens were the fringe and…