Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Review
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – Copyright Sony Pictures
The multiverse is not a new idea for the Marvel universe. Hundreds of Earths exist in the continuity – many of them often made for one issue of a comic and that’s all. One of the most important ones until it more or less ended in 2015 was Earth-1610, otherwise known as the Ultimate Universe. That universe that gave us the Brooklyn born, biracial Miles Morales, with a new suite of spider like abilities but the same mission – save New York City from threats in the most quippy way possible. In the new blockbuster film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, we watch Miles gain his abilities and come into his own – not just to save the New York City of Earth-1610, but all of them. However, it’s not done without the help of several other Spider-people.
To put it plainly, Into the Spider-Verse is a love letter to Spider-Man in all of his iterations: the comics, the live-action films, the classic and often meme’d cartoon, even the much maligned ice cream novelty treat. Not just that, it’s a love letter to comics in general and animation. Each spider-person comes with their own art style, each rendered differently, which makes plain that they are not of this universe. If you love this character, you will love this film because it loves the Spider-Man universe and all of the characters and tropes therein.
Into the Spider-Verse gives us a kind and hopeful Mary Jane Watson, a firm and capable Aunt May, several wise-cracking Peter Parkers, and all of the most iconic Spider-Man villains—Green Goblin, Doc Oct, and Kingpin—if not just a little different. It gives us origin stories like nearly all Spider films do, but for each and every spider-person they introduce. From the standard Spider-Man to the washed up despondent remains of the older and failed Peter B. Parker (which I believe from the main Marvel Universe, Earth-616), the Earth-65 Spider-Woman Gwen Stacy (better known as Spider-Gwen), Earth-90214’s Spider-Man Noir, anime styled Penni Parker and her Spider Mech SP//dr from Earth-14512, and the Looney Tunes–styled Spider-Ham from Larval Earth. Note that absolutely none of these characters are newly created; all of them had existed in comics before their joining the film.
Beyond that, all of the film is amazing – from the immersion in the deep world of Spider-Man, to the care taken in depicting each spider-person as a completely different animation style, and the soundtrack that blends modern and 90’s hip hop that perfectly encapsulates the character of Miles Morales, and the world he and we exist in. A soundtrack so amazing, I should mention, that it is currently number one on iTunes for albums as of this writing.
My only complaint about this film is the inclusion of Peter Porker the Spider-Ham, but that is merely read more…
Fans Pricing Saturday for December 22, 2018
(Note: We request the price changes from Amazon on Friday evenings. Unfortunately, they don’t change all of the prices at one time.)
Scorpion’s Fury
Protector
Haunted by the Gods
Advance
Orphan Witch
Chasing magic
Nobody Lives Forever
Through the Fire and Flame
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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina – A Midwinter’s Tale Review
Image: Netflix
This review contains spoilers for the first part of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, including the special available for streaming on Netflix.
While the second part of the series isn’t due until April 5th of next year, Netflix has already gifted us with more of our favorite, teenage witch in the eleventh chapter of part one, “A Midwinter’s Tale”, just in time for Christmas. This 55 minute special finds us a few days before Christmas and the Winter Solstice, and we see the half witch, half human Sabrina Spellman wishing for the council of her long, dead, human mother, who she saw in Limbo earlier in the season. She decides to perform a séance during the Solstice when the barrier between this world and that of the dead is at it’s thinnest. Meanwhile, we follow Susie as she gets a job as an elf in the Christmas village – something she’s wanted for a long time, but it isn’t all that it seems.
In what will be undoubtedly classic Chilling Adventures of Sabrina form, this special takes things that we would find familiar from the Christmas Village and Yule log and turns them on their ear to fit into the Chilling version of Earth. Likewise in the same way, we watch as Sabrina goes back to the well of bad choices made with good intentions.
While a fun holiday special, the majority of this episode is spent resolving and updating us about the going ons of the characters in the story before the second part releases. We know where Sabrina stands with Harvey after getting the advice from her mother’s spirit about her experience trying to be a mortal in love with a witch, and how he in turns feels about the witch side of her. On the other hand, we also get that she has, to one extent or another, reconciled her relationships with her friends, both mortal and magical. We also get what Aunt Zelda will do with Leticia, the female twin that she stole from Father Blackwood, and a minor insight into to the warlock group read more…
Top Selling Science Fiction Audiobooks at Audible Right Now
In the middle of moving, I realized that I have no problem finding a locality to purchase a bed and a couch. I’m not worried about finding the heavy stuff and not moving things like furniture. You know what essential item I am bringing with me: my books. I simply can’t live without my books. They go where I go.
My books are like memories. While closing one volume, I contemplate the period I was in at the time. I remember reading all of Dickens and then moving onto Hawthorne and not understanding what it meant to have a scarlet letter emblazoned on you. Fast-forward into the modern world and the streaming services that offer books, a classic becomes an instant hit.
We all know how some of the world’s most renowned authors didn’t make it big until long after their deaths. What they had to say did resonate at the time, but it wasn’t until long after they were gone that we as humans understand what they were trying to say about the current culture and conventions.
Take my favorite book Contact by Carl Sagan, and how a story really told the insider mind of science through narrative. That’s what science fiction gives us. It not only puts into reality modern science and understanding, it gives us characters that utilize these scientific tools
We’ve compiled a list of the bestselling science fiction books available on Audible.com right now. These books tell of real human people struggling and how technology is impacting their current life and how it is projecting the future.
- Artemis, by Andy Weir, Narrated by Rosario Dawson
- For We Are Many, by Dennis E. Taylor, Narrated by Ray Porter
- Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, Narrated by Wil Wheaton
- The Extinction Cycle Boxed Set, by Nicholas Sansbury Smith, Narrated by Bronson Pinchot
- The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi, Narrated by Martin Freeman
- Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey, Narrated by Jefferson Mays
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams, Narrated by Martin Freeman
Fans Pricing Saturday for December 15, 2018
(Note: We request the price changes from Amazon on Friday evenings. Unfortunately, they don’t change all of the prices at one time.)
Everyone In LA Is An Asshole Book 2
AND – A special Holiday bonus from J.L. Hendricks.
Miss Claus and the Secret Santa: A Shifter Christmas Romance
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Avengers Endgame, Trailer Review and Speculation
Part of the journey is the end. So says Tony Stark at the start of the two minute and twenty-five-second long first travel for the upcoming fourth and, if Marvel Studios is to be believed, last Avengers film, which also reveals the long-awaited subtitle: Endgame. With this, we begin to set the stage for whatever that film is and how the actors and characters we love so much will make their exit from the MCU.
The trailer begins with Stark on one of the ships from Titan, out of food and water and soon out of air as well. He records a message into the heavily damaged helmet of his Iron Man suit for his fiancee, Pepper Potts. We then shift to Thanos, having left his armor behind, walking on a world with flowers, with Black Widow voice-over, talking about how Thanos did what he promised, killing one-half of all creatures. Quick cuts to some of the surviving characters, Widow, Captain America, Bruce Banner, Thor, and Nebula. We see Natasha encounter someone in a new, less flashy outfit with a bow, revealed to be the former Hawkeye, Clint Barton, in his Ronin guise. Widow assures Captain that whatever they have planned is going to work, to which he replies: “I know it is, because I don’t know what I’m going to do if it doesn’t. The title card appears, the subtitle forming from rubble backlit in purple. The final moment is Scott Lang outside the front gates of the Avengers HQ asking to be let in as Captain and Widow look on with stunned amazement.
The trailer, while not letting on a whole lot about what will happen in the movie, the trailer is filled with emotion, a desperate need to hope. Captain barely read more…
Fans Pricing Saturday for December 8, 2018
(Note: We request the price changes from Amazon on Friday evenings. Unfortunately, they don’t change all of the prices at one time. As of right now, two of the books have not yet been price changed to fan’s pricing.)
Star Trek Discovery – Space No Longer The Final Frontier
Note: This article contains spoilers of Star Trek: Discovery Season One
Season one of Star Trek: Discovery gripped us like the science-loving nerds we are and dragged us to places we never knew we wanted to go. Michael Burnham is an intriguing protagonist with a more-than-strange past that plays a major role in how her future is shaped.
Being a human raised in a Vulcan society gifted her with an extensive knowledge base of sciences and of course logic. Michael is also Spock’s half-sister, adding to Michael’s already complicated past.
Knowing that piece of information helps ramp you up for what seems to be. As always, there are also teases as to what the seven signals sent throughout the galaxy could be.
Since chasing the impossible seems to be the Discovery’s thing, what new impossibility could they be exploring? Weren’t the famous words of the original Star Trek “Space, the Final Frontier.”?
Yet it seems that the ability to jump across the universe as we know it wasn’t all this new Spore Drive technology had to offer. Lieutenant Stamets showed us it was possible for a human to navigate the mycelium network.
Think about the reality of that possibility for humanity. Could we jump universes at a whim? It’s far-fetched, read more…
Making the Leap from Podcasts to Television
Podcasts have, in one shape or another, existed on the internet since the early 2000s, and as an avid fan myself, I love the medium. Everything from movie and television studios making podcasts to reach out to their viewers, comedians delivering material to their fans, and authors self-publishing their novels as weekly serialized audiobooks. While the medium has been around for a while, it’s widely believed that the current golden age of podcasting was begun by two wildly popular shows, the absurdist horror fiction radio show Welcome to Night Vale and true crime Serial.
Since then, there has been a boom in podcasting, particularly in the serialized science fiction/horror and true crime genres, many of them also becoming wildly popular. As the saying somewhat goes, a high tide raises all casts. In the circular way these things work, it is now podcasts that are being looked to for a source to adapt for other media. Here are a few massively popular podcasts that are, have been, or will be soon turned into television shows.
Homecoming
This sci-fi thriller was already ahead of the curve when it premiered with a star-studded cast which included Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac, and David Schwimmer, whose first season has been wonderfully adapted for television and is currently available for streaming on Prime Video. Starring Julia Roberts, Stephan James, and Bobby Cannavale in those respective roles lending even higher prestige for complex and time jumping story. While the show seems to be a direct adaptation of the first season of the show, the way it is shot and having the visual element adds so much to the story that fixes some of the weaknesses of the show. If you enjoy thrillers and slowly unwinding mysteries, Homecoming would be a great show for you.
Lore
Horror writer Aaron Mahnke in his podcast goes deep into stores of dark history, monsters, and killers. Each episode of Lore takes the listener by the hand and accounts history narratively so that the driest of facts are entertaining and the more sanguine details lessened in their macabreness. The television version, whose second season just released for streaming on Prime Video, does this at a slightly longer, using a huge read more…
Fans Pricing Saturday for December 1, 2018
(Note: We request the price changes from Amazon on Friday evenings. Unfortunately, they don’t change all of the prices at one time. As of right now, two of the books have not yet been price changed to fan’s pricing.)