The Gifted Season 2, Episode 5 The Gifted delivers one of its strongest episode yet by concentrating on the aftermath of the Mutant psychiatric facility breakout, following the Mutant Underground, the Inner Circle, and Jace and the Purifiers in the wake of this one event. It makes for a cohesive episode, one that takes on topics like the dynamics of a fascist hate group and institutional prejudice with unexpected nuance. The previous episode ended with the Inner Circle successfully driving a high-value Mutant away from the facility....

It’s pretty remarkable that an hour like this one – a mostly stationary, whispery two-hander hinging on emotional catharsis rather than action – is TV now. Time was, television shows had to be accessible to latecomers wandering the schedules. They had to wrap up plot points by the time the credits rolled. They had to be about crack commando units sent to prison for a crime they didn’t commit, or mighty princesses forged in the heat of battle....

While I don’t want to dive too deep into TLOU spoilers for those looking to go into the show as fresh as possible, it feels safe to say that TLOU‘s version of the apocalypse is filled with mutated monsters. Said monsters are actually the result of the Cordyceps brain infection that causes the aforementioned end of the world There are actually various stages of the infection and each stage alters its host in increasingly drastic ways....

The Leftovers Season 3 Episode 1 How fitting is it that The Leftovers would premiere its third and final season on Easter Sunday? For a show meditating on what it means to have faith and exploring what leads people to belief, I can’t imagine that it’s a coincidence, especially now that the series features something of a Messiah figure. Kevin Garvey drowned, drank poison, was shot point blank in his chest, and visited purgatory, yet is still alive in Miracle....

The Leftovers Season 3 Episode 5 If there’s a God, he has to have a sense of humor. Well, at least I would hope, mainly because it would help smooth over some of my hellish behavior, but also it would explain the random injustices, accidents, and cruelty that take place in everyday life. It’s all better off as a joke and laughing at the absurdity of life is one way to stomach its unsavory aspects....

One of the more interesting storylines from last season surrounded Trade Minister Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuke Tagawa) and his discovery of the ability to cross between worlds and visit with a daughter-in-law version of Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos), but there was little connection between his story and what was going on back in his own version of history. This season of The Man in the High Castle does an admirable job of jumping into the idea of alternate realities almost immediately....

Well, that was a very short-lived cameo, wasn’t it? In a surprise post-credits scene, Jabba the Hutt’s former majordomo Bib Fortuna returns to Star Wars live-action just long enough to get blasted off his dead boss’ throne. Played once again by veteran Star Wars engineer Matthew Wood, who also played Fortuna in an uncredited role in The Phantom Menace and later voiced General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith, the Twi’lek seems to be running things on Tatooine before Boba Fett shows up....

So return visits to the Nice Guys Detective Agency will never be in the cards. Nonetheless, Black’s sardonic buddy movie has still found its audience over the last six years, becoming something of a cult classic and recently even earning the lofty accolade of cracking Netflix’s “Top 10” algorithm. Better late than never, eh? It’s easy to imagine Gosling’s Holland March making that same shallow observation over shots at two in the afternoon with Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe)....

In 1989, Neil Gaiman first introduced to the world Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, and Shaper of Form, in the epic comic book saga The Sandman. The original DC Comics and Vertigo imprint series ran until 1996, and follows Morpheus as he is trapped for 70 years through a ritual led by an Aleister Crowley-esque occultist. When he finally escapes in the late 20th Century, he sets out on a journey of vengeance, and reclamation of his realm, the Dreaming....

Though Stephen King may be best known as a prolific creator of bullies, creeps, and monsters (sometimes all in one person), one of his finest characters is firmly on the side of the angels. “Mother” Abigail Freemantle is a key figure in King’s 1978 classic The Stand (and in its 1990 unabridged version as well). A direct descendant of freed slaves, the 108-year-old Mother Abigail serves as God’s figurehead on Earth following a superflu pandemic that kills off 99% of the population and sets up the remaining survivors for a final confrontation between good and evil....

House Targaryen are not us. The dragonlord rulers of the Seven Kingdoms live by customs that, in our time and culture, wouldn’t just raise eyebrows but would urgently require the involvement of social services and several SWAT teams. In the interests of keeping their bloodline pure, Targaryens marry their siblings (sometimes a handful at a time), betroth children to grown adults, and when it comes to sexuality, are unencumbered either by Judeo-Christian religious shame or childish embarrassment....

Gone are those days when employees had no option but to walk into their office to complete the work. Organizations spent a fortune on desktops and hardware to enable remote access. Eventually, it led to issues concerning computing scalability, networking capabilities, storage, etc. To this, VDI solutions emerged as a savior against these problems. But how? Let’s understand VDI technology, capabilities, and the best VDI solutions for your business....

The Wheel of Time has plenty to enjoy for those who haven’t read the Robert Jordan novels upon which the show is based, but there has been no shortage of frustration on the part of “book purists” who are dissatisfied with some of the changes made by the television adaptation. Complaints of women being among the Dragon Reborn candidates, for example, may have primed more defensive viewers to question the latest narrative revision: the portrayal of Moiraine and Siuan as lovers....

Yes, the Lord of the Rings films were undisputed financial, critical, and cultural successes, but the trilogy was finished. The Hobbit films were nearly a decade away (and destined to disappoint), and there were only loose rumblings of further potential LOTR adaptations making the rounds at that time. The books themselves were always there, of course, but many LOTR fans old and new lamented the idea that the end of the movies meant the end of an era when we all felt united by our love for that fantasy franchise....

These days 1976’s Alice, Sweet Alice is remembered primarily for being the film debut of a very young Brooke Shields, but it’s even creepier than that.. The film’s tagline was, “If you survive this night, nothing will scare you again,” and even if that was pushing things a little the film made a bit of a splash at the time for its use of Catholic imagery and for being a different (and unusually bloody) kind of mystery....

With four seasons down, including this year’s Toast of Tinseltown set across the pond, Toast of London is responsible for some legendary moments in comedy. The mere mention of the show among fans will elicit responses such as “Yes I can hear you, Clem Fandango!”, “Fire the nucular weapons!” and “Well, he can f**k that sky high”. Toast is joined on the show by a clueless agent, a genteel landlord who’s also a retired actor, an arrogant acting rival and a casual lover who happens to be that rival’s wife....

Anecdotally, I recall that in the early days of social media, there was a lot of chatter among comic book fans that the villain should be evil psychologist Hugo Strange, who could’ve picked up where The Dark Knight left off, with the Gotham Police Department turning to a man they didn’t fully understand to catch the Bat. More often, however, fans seemed to support the industry trades who openly speculated on who should play the Riddler and Penguin in the next Batman movie, following up on a line Heath Ledger’s Joker espoused: “This city deserves a better class of criminal....

As per Paramount, Top Gun: Maverick’s box office will take in $124 million over the three-day window and a staggering $151 million across four days when the holiday is included. This blows past the current record-holder for the highest four-day Memorial Day debut, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which earned $139.8 million over the same weekend in 2007.* Meanwhile it marks the biggest opening bow in Cruise’s history with it more than doubling War of the Worlds’ $64....

Join the Den of Geek Book Club! Top New Science Fiction Books in December 2020 The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020 Edition by Rich Horton Type: Short story collectionPublisher: Prime BooksRelease date: Dec. 22 (Kindle) Den of Geek says: It’s that time of year. Year’s best anthologies are here. This one draws from stories previously published in the genre’s top magazines, like Analog, Asimov’s, and Clarkesworld. Buy The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020 Edition by Rich Horton....

Seasonally that means warm sweaters and warmer, fuzzier movies at the cinema (or streamer in 2020 parlance). Even though we are still nearly two months away from Christmas, a glance at the upcoming November releases reveal it’s already the season to be jolly. But there’s more than feel-good cheer. There are also horror movies, awards contenders, and comedies to look forward to, whether in a theater or from the comfort of your own home....