FILM

Stop Putting Jared Leto in Movies

Jared Leto will reprise his role as The Joker in Zach Snyder's "Justice League." Below, read one whistleblower's unheeded warning.

Jared Leto @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Benefit Celebrating the Opening of Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty - The Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC

Photo by Carl Timpone/BFA.com/Shutterstock

There's a big problem with the trailer for Morbius, Sony's upcoming Marvel outing that is definitely not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe even though it has Michael Keaton reprising his role as Vulture (please let us keep our license, Disney!).

See if you can spot it.

MORBIUS - Teaser Trailerwww.youtube.com

Keep ReadingShow less
History

The History Channel, now known simply as "History," is the biggest joke of a television channel in...well, history.

Anyone unfamiliar with History might understandably assume that the channel airs documentaries and educational content related to its namesake. But while that assumption might have been correct back in the mid-90s, modern History is an unapologetic wasteland full of the worst reality TV shlock humanity has to offer. In some sense, though, maybe this is the History we deserve. Maybe humanity really is just a vapid, brain-dead virus destroying our planet in the name of empty profit, and History Channel truly is the history of us. And if that's true, if these History shows are reflective of who were are as a species, then perhaps global warming is the reckoning we deserve. Just take a look at what's on this channel.

5. Ice Road Truckers

Ice Road TruckersHistory

Ice Road Truckers is a show about truckers driving trucks down long, cold stretches of icy roads. 3.4 million people watched its premiere for some reason, and it aired for 11 seasons from 2007 to 2017. I don't know who watched Ice Road Truckers in the first place, and I don't know who kept watching it for 138 episodes. But I do know that if the only good thing that comes from global warming is that Ice Road Truckers can't get a reboot because all the icy roads are no longer icy, then maybe we're on the right track.

4. Swamp People

Swamp PeopleHistory

Swamp People is like Duck Dynasty except stupider. I never thought I'd need to type that sentence, but here we are. The show revolves around a bunch of Louisiana hillbillies hunting alligators in a swamp. That's it. There are spin-off shows and mobile games and absolutely none of it makes a lick of sense. Millions of people tune in every week to watch a middle-aged man shout "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' 'BOUT!" as he shoots alligators in a swamp. This is all anyone needs to know about humans to know that we're fully deserving of being destroyed by the planet.

3. Pawn Stars

Pawn StarsHistory

If you replaced all the old, kindly appraisers from Antiques Roadshow with four yelling obese men, you'd have pretty much created Pawn Stars. It's certainly more entertaining than Ice Road Truckers and Swamp People, what with its deeply unlikable cast of overly dramatic pawnbrokers, but it also somehow offers less educational value, which should be impossible. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Pawn Stars is most popular in rural Kentucky. Luckily, Las Vegas is already pretty hot as is, so if we're lucky, global warming will destroy it first.

2. Brothers in Arms

Brothers in Arms HistoryHistory

This History Channel masterpiece follows two Army veterans who now run a gun shop in Utah where they build souped up weapons and harass their daughters about wearing make-up. It's an absolute pandering dumpster fire geared towards the kind of gun owners who are frankly too stupid to be anywhere near a bathtub, let alone a round of live ammo. When global warming destroys Utah, it will undoubtedly be for the best.

1. Ancient Aliens

Ancient AliensHistory

If ever there was a show that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt why humans no longer deserve planet Earth, that show would be Ancient Aliens. The premise of the show is that a group of lunatics lie about and attempt to decontextualize human history in order to pretend that ancient humans once made contact with aliens. There are 14 seasons of this show. It is still running, and it airs on a channel called History. I pray these idiots are correct, because while global warming might destroy us within a few centuries, aliens would be a whole lot faster.

TV

An Ode to Randall Pearson and His "This Is Us" Adoption Story

No parent is perfect, adoption is a lifelong journey, and Sterling K. Brown is a marvel.

THIS IS US cast

Photo by Richard Shotwell (Invision-AP-Shutterstock)

On paper, This Is Us has all the staples of the perfect, corny family drama that networks like NBC love to exploit: saccharine speeches about family solidarity, impromptu monologues about inner demons, and a sappy instrumental soundtrack.

Keep ReadingShow less
TV

What Are Kate's Relationship Demons on "This Is Us"?

That feeling when your older boss looks up your address and appears on your doorstep, uninvited: RUN

THIS IS US cast

Photo by Richard Shotwell (Invision-AP-Shutterstock)

What do you do when the co-worker you've started making out with at work suddenly shows up at your door to have dinner with your family?

Keep ReadingShow less
TV

Who Is Cassidy Sharp on “This Is Us”?

Maybe it's Jennifer Morrison's stoic face or her impeccably plucked eyebrows, but we're dying to know who Cassidy Sharp is.

Jennifer Morrison

Photo by AFF-USA-Shutterstock

Warning: SPOILERS

In the first two episodes of This Is Us season 4, we see Randall's family adjusting to Philadelphia, Kevin's career taking off while he focuses on his sobriety, and Kate and Toby taking their newborn son home after learning that he's permanently blind.

Keep ReadingShow less
TV

"American Horror Story's" 1984 Trailer Looks Like a "Stranger Things" Ripoff

AHS 9 seems to be taking a summery, nostalgic, cliché-filled turn.

American Horror Story 1984

AHS's 9th season will be called 1984—the year that's also the title of George Orwell's very famous and disturbingly prescient dystopian novel—and it'll take place at a lakeside oasis called Camp Redwood.

It seems that Ryan Murphy's going for a slightly sunnier depiction of the 1980s than Orwell's surveillance-heavy, totalitarian dystopia, though certainly there will be plenty of blood and gore to sate viewers' hunger for the uncanny in the new AHS season.

Image via AltPress

Some fans already have mixed feelings about this season, as it won't feature many of American Horror Story's most beloved cast members. Sarah Paulson will "not have a significant role," according to Variety, though she may have a cameo or two. Evan Peters and Billy Eichner also won't return. However, the Emma Roberts will be back, almost certainly playing a stuck-up character as always, along with Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy. (Perhaps it's for the best that Peters and Roberts won't have to be on set together, because after a seven-year relationship, the two broke up in March 2019). The show will also feature Billie Lourd, Cody Fern, John Carroll Lynch, Leslie Grossman, and Matthew Morrison (of Glee notoriety), as well as a bunch of overzealous teenagers who are impossible to tell apart, at least judging by the trailer's first few frames.

Considering all this, it looks like AHS is either getting desperate or going fully meta. With 1984, they're capitalizing on some of the oldest horror tropes in the book—ripping off Anna Wintour, Friday the 13th, and Orwell's titlebut the trailer doesn't suggest a resurgence of any of the elegance or intelligence that made the show's first few seasons so bone-chillingly good. While Murder House, Asylum, and Coven were incredibly timely, due to the way they deftly threaded topics like school shooters, mental illness, queerness, and feminism into hackneyed horror tropes, it's hard to see how 1984 will replicate the raw ambition and timely acuity of those seasons.

Instead, the show seems to be going for a, well, campy approach, one that makes fun of poorly made '80s B-movies and their perpetually masked, knife-wielding killers. Knowing AHS, there will be some hyper-serious, dramatic undercurrent woven throughout the whole thing; it'll either all be a movie set a la Roanoke or a hyper-realistic hallucination, or perhaps another commentary on the state of American politics or the gleeful clichés of '80s horror; but it's hard to imagine that the entire season could be a parody. Still, in this day and age, sometimes parody feels like one of the most intelligent and realistic forms of media, for at least it's self-aware of its own bullshit. If it is all a parody, then 1984 could be a complete disaster or (by some miracle) AHS's best work in years.

AHS goes 80sImage via Screen Rant

One other thing we know about 1984 is that it won't be American Horror Story's last season. Maybe it should be; since Coven, none of the seasons have lived up to the expectations set by the first three. While many of the concepts have been creative and impressive, the show has favored excessive gore and absurd, unrealistic, and hollow characters, foregoing the nuanced, flawed complexity of characters like Murder House's Tate Langdon and Asylum's Sister Jude. With Peters and Lange not returning, hopefully some of the new cast members will be able to carry the show as these actors did, but that seems unlikely given the fact that the writers seem to be creating simpler (and more annoying) characters each season.

As far as 1984 goes, it seems that we'll be taking a deep dive down the nostalgic path paved by Stranger Things, with a bit of the sunny hysteria of Midsommar to boot, though with fewer neon lights and flowers and lots more blood. Most likely, there will be murders in cabins and by campfires, murders on a lake, and murderers on the loose in the pines. It's hard to know if AHS will be able to exchange some of its reliance on shock value and for its initially spellbinding, supernatural magic, but time will tell.

American Horror Story Season 9 "Camp" Teaser Promo (HD) AHS 1984www.youtube.com