It was already mentioned in May that the team behind Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was aiming for a 2024 release, but now SEGA and Paramount have narrowed down the official date: 20th December 2024.
I won’t spoil the new character who’ll feature in the third movie but it’s set to be a blast (no pun intended; Sonic Blast has nothing to do with it, thankfully)
There’s a clear decline, starting with the acclaimed Superman: The Movie (94 percent), then the well-received Superman II (82 percent), followed by the mediocre Superman III (29 percent), and finally ending with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace at a depressing 10 percent.
Superman IV is considered one of the worst films ever made — Superman or otherwise. 35 years later, I sat down to discover if the long-reviled film actually lives up to its reputation. Unfortunately, Quest for Peace’s status as a low point for the franchise (and superhero cinema in general) is extremely well-earned.
[…]
Superman IV is not only uninteresting, it’s filled with themes and plot points that go nowhere or are rendered forgettable because there’s too much happening. You’ve got the nuclear arms race, Lex and Nuclear Man, and the evils of tabloid journalism — not to mention we need a love triangle thrown in.
When I first saw the movie back in 2008, I was aware of it being known as the worst of the bunch (yes, even worse than Superman Returns) but I watched it anyway as I had yet to see it and… objectively, it was the worst. But subjectively, I kinda liked it? I like seeing films out of their “prime” eras, with the actors much older and trying to take on new ideas. It was still ropey in terms of plot themes but scenes like the one where Kal-El/Clark Kent plucks out an energy module from Krypton (‘all that remains of a once powerful civilisation’, as his father says) to heal himself from radiation sickness gave a truer sense of finality than in previous movies.
As for “worst movie ever”? Nah. It’s in that ballpark but there are worse films in the history of cinema.
Anyway, here’s an interview with Mark Pillow, the actor that played the (second) Nuclear Man. And some interesting trivia.
I adore self-awareness in media (even if it’s after-the-fact) because as much as films and TV aren’t true depictions of humanity, I need some reality. This supercut of the ‘Right Behind Me’ trope is a great example of people effing around and then finding out.
Having just finished a bottle of Ribena, I noticed the words Lucozade Ribena Suntory Ltd. on the packaging. ‘Suntory? Aren’t they the Japanese whiskey brand?‘ I thought. A quick Google and, yes, it was the same Suntory and both Lucozade and Ribena were their brands (as well as Orangina). Now, I’m trying to imagine the above commercial, starring Sammy Davis Jr., but he’s ad-libbing with a bottle of Ribena.
The global picture agency has launched the Black History and Culture Collection to raise awareness of the history of black people in the US and UK, providing free non-commerical access to the historical and cultural images. Getty will grant access to educators, academics, researchers, and content creators, “enabling them to tell until stories around black culture.”
The curated collection has been handpicked from Getty’s voluminous archive, thought to contain over two million photographs.
I like that they’ve covered the USandUK for this collection as the experiences and cultures of Black people in the UK often get overlooked for the former.
Nichelle Nichols has passed away at the age of 89. It’s a great loss to the world but her work in television, film, and STEM lives on. Besides her iconic role as Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series and subsequent films, Nichols also volunteered as a NASA recruiter:
Nichols was always interested in space travel. She flew aboard the C-141 Astronomy Observatory, which analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn on an eight hour, high altitude mission. From the late 1970’s until the late 1980’s, NASA employed Nichelle Nichols to recruit new astronaut candidates. Many of her new recruits were women or members of racial and ethnic minorities, including Guion Bluford (the first African-American astronaut), Sally Ride (the first female American astronaut), Judith Resnik (one of the original set of female astronauts, who perished during the launch of the Challenger on January 28, 1986), and Ronald McNair (the second African-American astronaut, and another victim of the Challenger accident).
I’m a duck fan and I’m a casual gamer. So CBR’s 10 Best Ducks In Gamingbeaked my interest and I discovered there were a lot of more ducks in games than I thought. Here’s #10:
10. FFXIV’s “Ducks” Create More Questions Than They Answer
Final Fantasy XIV has a vast array of birds, from dodos to pigeons, from chocobos to phoenixes. Still, amid all the feathers, the common duck is strangely absent. A possible exception is the “ugly duckling” minion. While it may be a cygnet or gosling, some localizations simply call it a duck.
In addition, duck bones are present as an item. The pieces of lore around the bones tell the tale of one Frandelont Raimdelle, who claimed the quacking of the “common” duck to be a sign of demonic influence and attempted to define the creatures, not as beasts, but as sinister and intelligent “spoken.”
My #1 fave Donald Duck is in the list, but not in the place I wanted him to be (that accolade when to his uncle). Who are your favourite ducks in gaming? Leave a comment!
The video above shows Tunde Dugantsi decorating Hungarian folk art cookies with royal icing. It’s delicate and beautiful to watch. I almost wouldn’t want to eat it.
I don’t know if you could cut your pizza at warp speed with this Star Trek pizza cutter but you can say “make it dough” and bask in the groans of your friends and family (or complaints since Picard wasn’t captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701).
Seattle Brutalism is a showcase of the brutalism in Washington’s largest city. There are only 9 buildings on the site and I don’t know if that number will increase but 9 is enough for at least a day’s worth of exploring and brutalist photography. Interestingly, two-thirds of them are either schools or churches. Off topic: while researching for this blog, I found out that Seattle actually isn’t Washington’s capital.
Frasier fans will quickly recognize his eclectic, high-end furniture, exotic decorations, and famous, abstract artwork, which I have neatly adapted to LEGO’s tone and style. Finally, you can recreate your favourite scenes, or throw elaborate but ill-fated dinner parties for a coterie of endlessly critical guests.
Frasier’s Condo features six original minifigures: snooty radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane, his ex-wife, Lilith Sternin, his charming producer, Roz Doyle, his fastidious brother, Niles Crane, their down-to-earth father, Martin Crane, and his eccentric physical therapist, Daphne Moon.
I designed Frasier’s Condo intermittently over the course of several months, beginning in April, 2020. My ideas were inspired and informed by many brilliant creators and creations, especially ALegoLass and their interpretation of Frasier’s condo. Although my idea is complete, I would like to eventually introduce Martin’s dog, Eddie.
As of today, this project has 34 days left so leave your support if you want this to be an official LEGO thing.
Tim Burton appears to have a thing for architectural models, giving the building model in Beetlejuisce (1988) quite a bit of attention and then these in Batman Returns. The chimneys of the power plant do resemble those of theChocolate Factory…
The photo was meant as a kind of a mug shot, so authorities could keep tabs on him. The photographer, a bureaucrat of the French colonial government in West Africa, aimed his camera at the standing Senegalese man, who was being kept under house arrest. The year was 1913 (or maybe 1914). Yet the camera did not capture a man trapped so much as a compelling, mythical radiance—the figure is poised, his headscarf glowing in blinding Sahelian sunlight, his face obscured but indelible. More than a century later the image has become unmistakable.
It’s the only known photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba (1854–1927), a spiritual leader of Senegal’s independence movement. Rendered variously in ink, paint, and charcoal, his image, based on that photograph, adorns homes and public spaces everywhere in the modern nation, from musician and politician Youssou N’Dour’s Dakar neighborhood of Médina to roadside villages in the interior. In murals, Bamba shares space with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and his iconic outline festoons all forms of transport, from trucks and taxis to ships. All of these variations go back to that single, overexposed photo, and to the Mouride legacy that it unintentionally heralded.
