Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) started as a minor, recurring character on “The Big Bang Theory,” developing into a larger presence on the show in later seasons (he was listed as main cast for seasons 8-12). The owner of Comic Center in Pasadena is joined on “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” by three other “BBT” ensemble members: Brian Posehn as Bert Kibbler, Lauren Lapkus as Denise, and John Ross Bowie as Barry Kripke. In the show’s pilot, the world has already collapsed into “The Last of Us”-esque chaos, complete with dwindling supplies and supernatural enemies. Stuart and Bert are using Comic Center as a base, throwing things into an interdimensional rift that they don’t really understand.

One day, an alternate reality version of Stuart comes to our reluctant hero and tells him that he’s the key to saving mankind in this timeline and beyond. Stuart and his three allies end up traveling across alternate realities, ostensibly to try and save the universe, but they’re basically just jumping from frying pan to fire and back again. The structure is simple: Drop the quartet of multiverse travelers into a new concept and watch as they try to figure out how to escape before the episode ends. It can be as simple as a reality in which everyone has telepathy or as ludicrous as one in which everyone eats grass and chews their cud like cows.

The timeline jumping gives “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” the structure of a comic series: Same characters, different adventures every chapter, recurring guest stars (including some from “BBT” that shan’t be spoiled but become a bit of a crutch early on as we’re more interested in who pops up next than the developing leads). The characters become, at best, secondary to the concepts. Sussman does alright holding the show as Stuart, but Lapkus is given almost nothing to play as his love interest Denise, and Bowie’s schtick gets exhausting in its alternating punchlines of horniness, cruelty, and mocking people with speech impediments. Posehn is great at this kind of “gentle giant” thing, but even he struggles to stand out.

The overall issue with “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” is a simple one: It’s just not funny enough. Standing back and looking at its ambitious concept gives it a few style points, for sure—it’s not just “Big Bang 2,” which I’m sure CBS would have backed up money trucks for the creators to make—but the humor writing is shallow and predictable, almost defiantly so in light of the bigger ideas in the outline of the show. It’s as if they knew they had an “out there” premise, and so the writers’ room intentionally tied it to depressingly predictable sitcom writing. We get it: Kripke is a horny dick with a speech impediment. It’s a joke that grew old on another show, which means it feels stale on this one despite its first season status. And it feels like even the writers know they don’t have enough material here as episodes are consistently under 18 minutes long—the seventh one lands at a depressing 14 minutes without credits.

There are, admittedly, glimpses of ingenuity on “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.” The opening credits play with the idea of skipping stream introductions with different messages every week, set to a great theme song by Danny Elfman. And there’s one episode that completely shifts the dark tone as the gang land in a utopia that’s never heard of things like ownership or monogamy (and completely destroy it). These blips aren’t enough to recommend “Stuart,” but they do hint at where the show could go in future seasons, leaving behind so much of the “BBT” baggage that it willfully brought on this inaugural trip for a brighter reality.

“Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” premieres on HBO Max on July 23, 2026. Whole season screened for review.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

It’s not often you can say a horror series has a pretty flawless record. For every Halloween, there’s Halloween: Resurrections. For every The Exorcist, there’s The Exorcist 2: The Heretic. For every Children of the Corn, there’s…well, there might not actually be a good Children of the Corn movie. But one franchise I can confidently say doesn’t have a bad film in it is The Evil Dead franchise. Whether you like your deadite slaughtering romps with silly slapstick or depressing brutality, the series has got a little something for everyone. The most recent offerings in the series have leaned a little more towards the latter, so you may be disappointed to hear that Evil Dead Burn is carrying on that trend.

While the series hasn’t been nearly as goofy and cheesy as they’ve once been, there has been no shortage of films that continue to push the envelope for just how much blood and guts can be shown without completely bumming you out. Burn definitely tows that line, mixing in themes of abuse, emotional manipulation and generational trauma to mostly satisfying effect. French director Sebastien Vanicek impressed me with his 2023 film Infested, and he’s fully succeeded at translating that New French Extremity style to a pretty familiar territory. Perhaps too familiar, as even this diehard fan of the series can admit that it feels like the ideas and concepts of the series are starting to feel a tad stagnated. That may be true, but if you’re just looking for a bloody, brutal good time, then the Evil Dead franchise still remains one of the most reliable on the market.

Something I caught onto that I thought worked pretty well here is how much the deadite taunting fit into the themes of the movie. The plot revolves around a French woman, Alice, who must contend with her in-laws after her abusive husband dies in a car wreck. Tensions are already high, but throw in a few Kandarian demons, and you’ve got yourself a real family gathering you wanna take the weed wacker to. Alice is, of course, distrusted by her dead husband’s parents, but things aren’t exactly peachy with their still living son Joseph either. And as more and more of the family begins to become possessed, the more of those unspoken resentments start to come out. This has always been a thing in the series, but here it just feels painfully more relatable to how friends and family can sometimes use emotional manipulation to get you to feel a certain way, no deadites required. The cast all does pretty solid across the board, but it might just be Maude Davey’s Polly that steals each and every scene they’re in. Probably because she just reminds me of every old person at the family function; confused, but unafraid to speak their mind.

But the real scene stealer here is, of course, the insane level of violence. This is a gross, disgusting, viscous movie that doesn’t waste any time getting right into the meat and potatoes of it all. Kicking things off with a loosely connected cold opening, the film doesn’t take too long before everything starts to unravel with the elements you’ve come to expect; everyone gets possessed, leaving one girl left to try and fight her way out. Heads get smashed, faces get sawed in half, and skulls get crushed with bare hands in absolutely gruesome fashion. The violence does have a tinge of campiness to it, but the presentation is as visceral and unflinching as it gets. There’s honestly some pretty distressing moments of violence that I won’t spoil, but there’s usually two things horror audiences tend to want to avoid seeing harm come to. Evil Dead Rise kinda already did one of them, so you might be able to guess what that second thing is. It’s a tough watch, but it does lead to a moment that might just get a tickle out of Resident Evil fans. 

There’s two things I admired a lot about Vanicek’s last film; the hectic energy and the groundedness of his characters. While this film admittedly moves so fast that it kinda leaves worthwhile character development in the dust, that crazy, erratic energy has successfully made the jump to here. Rarely does the film ever take the time to linger on one shot or subject, cutting pretty rapidly in even slower scenes. This might seem headache inducing for some, but I thought it fit for the most part. It helped to accentuate the madness in my eyes, giving it its own somewhat unique voice that helps differentiate it from the pact.

And it definitely needed that, because this is very similar to the last two films this franchise has produced. Now, if you’re a fan of those films like I am, that’s not entirely a bad thing. But they still feel like a far cry from those original Raimi films, both in tone and execution. This is mostly a self-serious film, but there are some moments of dark comedy that sometimes work, sometimes don’t. But, conceptually, there’s nothing here that’s really pushing the envelope of creativity like those original films. The deadites have more or less been boxed into these pseudo-zombie designs for the past three films, and I wish these films would lean back into the freakishly demonic appearances some of them had in the past. We need a Henrietta for a new generation, damn it. And the story telling can be very heavy handed at times. There’s, like, ten different Chekov’s items in this that get so much attention that they might have well as drawn a red circle around them and had arrows pointing to them.

Additionally, the settings are getting a bit repetitive. Evil Dead Rise injected some new scenery by having the film take place in an apartment building this time around, but Burn more or less returns to the home in the woods, only this one has more than one floor. I get that Evil Dead is kind of a domestic horror film in some ways, but I think it’s time to mix it up and find some type of new or exciting setting for future films to freshen things up. And while I do have some praise for the themes at play here, it does kind of make a caricature of domestic violence and generation trauma in a way that doesn’t entirely move you in a way that gets you caring for these characters all that much. Possessions in these films are often pretty terrifying and honestly sad as your loved ones are ripped away from you. But we hate nearly everybody in this house, so, yeah, hack away, man.

Even if this may be the weakest entry in the series to date in my eyes, I still don’t consider this a bad movie. It hardly ever ceases to be entertaining with its nonstop mayhem that continues to find new and brutal ways to absolutely ruin the human body. It’s that carnage that really holds the movie together, while the underbaked story and overly familiar concept keeps it from being a true standout in the franchise. But you know that saying “a bad day fishing beats a good day working”? That’s kinda how I feel here, finding enough to enjoy my time with despite some apparent criticisms. So maybe give this one a try if you wanna see more tendons than you’ve ever seen in your life and demons who’ve got a mouth on them. Sam Raimi can keep picking directors he likes, and I’ll probably keep seeing them every year as one big vomit inducing tradition.

RATING

LAST LIGHT

Sometimes it’s customary to light a candle in honor of the memory of a loved one that’s passed…then you throw that sh*t back, because it’s time to party! At least, that’s what one of the possessed characters does with a candle in this movie, and it got me wondering how you would go about make a candle-like drink. Well, what I landed on is this coconut flavored tequila cocktail that packs a little bit of smoke from mezcal and a little bit of spice from some habanero bitters. The final product is nice and creamy, but to really sell the candle part of the drink, I’ve also thrown a lime boat garnish on top that you can light on fire. For a little extra subtlety, I went ahead and froze a lime husk into a large whiskey cube, so you don’t have to worry about the balancing act that comes from putting a lit crouton on top of a lime on top of an ice cube. Highly recommend!

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5oz tequila
• 1/2oz mezcal
• 3/4oz coconut cream
• 3/4oz lime juice
• 1/2oz vanilla syrup
• pinch of salt
• 2 dashes habenero bitters
• Garnish: lime husk (half of a lime that has been juiced)
• Garnish: Crouton
• Garnish: 151 rum

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Add ingredients to a shaker and shake with ice until chilled.
2. Strain into rocks glass over large ice cube.
3. For the garnish, nestle the lime husk on top of the ice cube (or freeze it directly to it, as explained above)
4. Place the crouton in the lime husk, then douse it with a small amount of 151 rum.
5. Carefully ignite the crouton using a match or lighter.
6. IMPORTANT! BLOW OUT DRINK AND REMOVE LIME HUSK BEFORE CONSUMING!

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

I mentioned this in my most recent newsletter (you can sign up here, BTW), but Sector M recently celebrated its first anniversary on June 11! Now we are on to Year Two, and there’s a lot of exciting things on the horizon. There’s no doubt that it’s a time of great change for me both personally and professionally, and that’s the subject of this blog post.

What do I mean when I say that I’m in my Ranger era? Simply put, it means that my mental focus is shifting away from what I’ve done in the past to meet the challenges of the present and the future. If you are familiar with Dungeons & Dragons this will make a little more sense, but I will attempt to explain in plain speech for those who aren’t up on their RPG character classes.

The Classes of My Life

Before we get into the part about the Ranger, let’s take a look back at the other eras of my life and the classes they would correspond to on the character sheet of my life. When I was growing up, I would say that I started out as a Monk. My preferred colors were black and red, which are still reflected in the brand colors of Sector M.

Both of my parents were martial arts teachers, and even ran their own dojo for a few years. I studied a number of different styles during this time and tried to live simply. This era of my life taught me how to concentrate, how to meditate, and how to try to silence my inner devils, though that last part met with only limited success. Perhaps, most importantly, my Monk era taught me to be introspective and deeply appreciative of beauty in all its forms.

This era lasted until my early twenties. That’s when I underwent my first shift in focus or class change. I multiclassed into a Rogue. It wasn’t that I lost an appreciation for the things in my previous era, but I became much more circumspect in how I conducted myself. My colors became black and dark blue. I tried to walk unnoticed whenever I could, so I could operate and conduct myself without attention.

Despite the name of the class, I wasn’t up to anything nefarious; I just wanted to be left alone to pursue my interests without constraint. Rogues aren’t frontline guys the way Fighters and Paladins are, so they tend to look for the weaknesses in the system and save their efforts for those times when they can punch above their weight. So it was with me.

The transition to this era was definitely shaped by a character that I played for several years out at Renaissance Faires, a character who was most definitely a rogue in every since of the word. He became something of my alter-ego for a time, and he’s still there when I need him. I won’t name him here, but if you know me personally, you likely know his name. My Rogue era was predominately spent in around large cities, as Rogues are known to do in D&D, but over the last year, I’ve once again felt another paradigm shift on the horizon. 

Origin of the Era

Strangely enough, the dawn of my third era arrived with the rediscovery of a song from when I was a kid. Back in the ’80s, there was a relatively short-lived cartoon called The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, one of my favorites. I remembered that it had a really great theme song, something the ’80s was known for. Take a look at the intro.

We only got a snippet of the song, but it rocks. A little over a year ago, I found John Von Tongeren’s full song on Apple Music. Immediate download, right then and there. I found that the intro version of the song had been sped up, likely to keep it concise in the intro. As much as the intro song rocks, the full song is even better. It’s great when you’re cruising down the road or need something with a driving beat and catchy hook.    

It sparked something within me, particularly the lyrics taking a stand, ready to prove it again. This came back to me at a time when I was already yearning for something different. My professional life at the time had proven unsatisfying. It took so much from me that little was left for any of my books, games, or creative pursuits.

This pressure had been building for years before then, but I sensed that it was all quickly coming to a head. This song had a way of piercing through all that. When I lost my godfather, I had a stark reminder that our time on this world is finite and that I wasn’t getting any younger.

If I had any hope of scratching the surface of the stories I wanted to tell, and the things I wanted to see and do, I had better get to it. It was high time for a change, and that ultimately led to a moment on a beach in Grand Cayman. I have been resolved ever since.

The new era had begun.   

Into the Wilds

So why a Ranger this time? Rangers and Rogues do have a lot in common, but Rangers are meant to strike out from home, to make do with few resources, be precise with every shot they take, and to blaze a trail through the wilderness. Becoming an indie author would require me to give up many of the things I had taken for granted, like a steady paycheck, so I had to think carefully about how I would move forward.

Further, I would need to travel for signings and conventions to promote my work, which would carry me far outside my comfort zone to say nothing of home. Lastly, going indie would mean I would have to find my way in the harsh and unforgiving territory of self-publishing and self-promotion. No safety nets, no guardrails. I would need to step lightly, yet boldly.

I am only at the beginning of this journey. There are marketing platforms I need to master, advertising data I need to analyze, and convention and promotion plans I need to solidify. This won’t happen overnight, and I’m bound to make mistakes along the way, but I have a fantastic team of people supporting me that I thank my lucky stars for every day.

I will say that the production of Axis Point taught me a number of things. This was the first time that I had taken a book through the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) process on my own. There are other routes I will pursue for my books, but KDP was the one I knew best, so it became the starting place.

Now I know that I can take a book from a simple manuscript to a fully realized book. This knowledge was hard won, but it will serve me well in the future as other books make their appearance on the scene. I have a fantasy novel in the editing/rewriting phase right now, I’m finishing up the first draft of my cyberpunk trilogy, and I’m ramping up to start on my next book. Oh, and one book I have to send through edits features a Ranger as the protagonist, so it seems fitting for him to finally get his day at last in this era of my life.

What Kind of Ranger?

Rangers persist throughout speculative fiction. The most resounding example in fantasy has to be the Rangers of Gondor and the Dúnedain. Let’s face it, you don’t get much more Ranger-y than Faramir and Aragorn. Let’s not forget Drizzt Du’orden, Tanis Half-Elven, and the Night’s Watch. Sci-fi has its share of them as well. There’s the Power Rangers, merrily morphing their way through teenage drama and kaiju fights alike. There’s the Anla’Shok from Babylon 5. (Marcus Cole is one of my favorite characters from the show.) Then, of course, there are the Galaxy Rangers who helped me to realize that it was time for a change.

Which one of these Rangers will be the shining example for me to follow moving forward?

Yes.

There’s a bit of each of them that I will try to apply to my actions as I stride forward. I’m hardly a teenager with attitude anymore, but the mercy and wisdom of Aragorn, the iron resolve of the Night’s watch, walking in the dark places no others will enter, and taking calculated risks — the proverbial “no guts, no glory” — will serve me well now that colors are black and green.

The Ranger’s Code

Since I’m undergoing my transition to this new era, it strikes me that I should put down a few tenets that I will attempt to live by in the uncertain days ahead.

Pursue my objectives without fear: I know what I want to do and where I want to be. I’m just not entirely sure how I’m going to get there. Truth be told, it can be a scary place to be. I’m likely to get lost a few times, but I must be persistent, tenacious even, to find my way through the unknown.

Endure through hardships and setbacks: Whether it takes the form of delays in production, technical issues, negative reviews of my work, or things not panning out the way I thought they would, I need to be able to take all of that in stride to keep going. In all this, I should do what is necessary to keep moving, keep flying, without compromising my principles. 

Use what is at hand to greatest effect: I will need to be resourceful and thoughtful with what I already have. If/when new resources become available, I will need to use them as efficiently and productively as possible. Even if I should get to a point where there is an abundance, I should still proceed with a mix of caution and discernment.

Find the path forward: Regardless of what new (proverbial) forest I may enter, I must find my way through it, either by seeking the advice of those who have already traversed it or by blazing a trail of my own if a suitable one is not available. A brute force approach will almost never be the answer, so I will need to be tactical and clever in my approach to matters.   

Take only what is needed, and preserve the rest: Any level of success should not be an end unto itself; it should be a stepping stone to something more. Complacency is the eternal enemy, and I don’t want to get too comfortable wherever I land. I should always strive to be better for as long as I’m able. Where possible, I should help those struggling in the wilds along the way.

Final Thoughts

Do I know how long this era of my life will last? No. Do I know if I’m eventually due for another class change, either returning to a previous focus or finding an entirely new one? Also no.

What I do know is that this is the way I will walk for the foreseeable future. The previous eras of my life taught me certain life lessons that I won’t forget, and will certainly apply what wisdom I can in all of this. The Ranger is not a replacement for those other classes; it’s in addition to them.

While a Monk/Rogue/Ranger build in the current edition of D&D would likely be a disaster (just think of the competition over your Bonus Action!), I think this is what I need right now not only as an indie author but as an individual. It won’t be easy, but then again, nothing worth doing ever is.

I am incredibly thankful for everyone who has supported me during my writing career. And, if you are someone out there who is new to Sector M, and wishes to help Ranger operations move forward, please check out the Support page here on the blog. My new novel, Axis Point, is out now. I have a Patreon as well. If you want to take a look at what all Sector M has to offer, I have a free email newsletter you can sign up for here.

Thanks for reading!

__________________________________________________

_{Do me a favor, okay? Subscribe to my newsletter for more news, updates, and information on Sector M’s current and upcoming projects!}

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

I look forward to celebrating George’s legacy with his loved ones and friends this week. The visitation for him will be held from 4pm to 8pm on Thursday, July 16th, at Leak and Sons Funeral Home, 7838 S. Cottage Grove Ave., followed the next day by his funeral at 11am at Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W. 95th Street. The funeral service will be livestreamed at trinitychicago.org. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Chicago State University ( and/or The HistoryMakers (

Even though we will be attending a Memorial Service, my memories of Mr. Johnson through the years, are of how lively, gentlemanly and sharp he was about business, human relationships and life itself! That includes earlier this year where we hosted him and his wife Madeline at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Gala in California. He was so pleased that he had finally published his memoir a year earlier (at age 97!). He said that the Lord whispered to him that it was time to tell his story. He connected with the writer Hilary Beard and the result was the entertaining book: Afro Sheen: How I Revolutionized an Industry with the Golden Rule, from Soul Train to Wall Street.

His book is an inspiration and a blueprint for making your dreams come true by having faith in yourself, in Black entrepreneurship and he emphasizes, by following the Golden Rule. It was his firm belief that we should treat others as we want to be treated. I sensed that his pleasure in telling his story was not to bring glory or attention to himself, but to encourage others to follow their dreams. And indeed, at the stops along his book tour that I attended, I noted that among the attendees were a good many successful men and women who attributed their success to encouragement (and seed money) from him. 

It’s worth noting that several successful Black families in Chicago had the last name of Johnson, which at one time caused some confusion. There were the Ebony/Jet magazine publishers John and Eunice Johnson, and leading Cadillac dealer Al Johnson, among others. Yet George’s near-century of achievements will stand as a singular beacon of inspiration for generations to come.

Born on June 16th, 1927, in Richton, Mississippi, George entered a world where opportunity for Black Americans was deliberately limited. When he was just two years old, his family joined the Great Migration, settling in Chicago in search of the promise that so many Black families hoped the North might offer. George learned the value of work early. He shined shoes as a boy and held whatever jobs he could find to help support his family. Financial realities forced him to leave high school before graduating, but they never diminished his curiosity or his ambition. Instead, they sharpened his instincts. He learned to recognize problems, to listen carefully, and to see opportunities where others saw none. And at his death, he had been awarded almost 10 honorary doctorate degrees from various universities.

After gaining experience working for the legendary entrepreneur Samuel B. Fuller, George struck out on his own. In 1954, he and his wife, Joan Henderson—whom he had met in high school—founded Johnson Products Company with $500. Part of that amount was a $250 loan that a bank gave him to “take his wife on a vacation.” (He had been turned down for a loan in that amount to start a business.)

It has all the ingredients of a classic American success story, but what made George remarkable was not simply that he started with very little. It was that he recognized an entire community whose needs had been overlooked. For years, Black consumers had largely been ignored by major manufacturers. Products formulated specifically for Black hair were limited, and advertising rarely reflected Black beauty with dignity or pride. George understood that serving this market meant more than selling shampoo or hair relaxers. It meant telling millions of people that they mattered.

His products—including Ultra Wave, Ultra Sheen, Afro Sheen, and later Classy Curl—addressed practical needs, but they also arrived at a pivotal cultural moment. As the Black Is Beautiful movement encouraged African Americans to embrace their natural features and reject decades of imposed standards, Johnson Products became part of a larger affirmation of identity. His advertisements didn’t ask Black Americans to aspire to someone else’s definition of beauty. George’s business grew into one of the most successful Black-owned companies in America, eventually dominating the Black hair care market. In 1971, it became the first Black-owned company listed on the American Stock Exchange. This resonated as far more than a financial achievement. For many Black Americans, it was proof that Black ownership could thrive on a national stage, that excellence and ambition were not exceptions but expectations, and that businesses rooted in serving Black communities could become institutions.

George’s influence extended far beyond commerce long before corporate America recognized the value of investing in Black audiences. Johnson Products became the first national sponsor of “Soul Train,” helping transform what began as a local Chicago television program into one of the most influential cultural platforms in American history. Through music, dance, fashion, and joy, “Soul Train” introduced millions of viewers to Black artists and Black creativity on their own terms. He believed economic opportunity was inseparable from civil rights. While marches and legislation transformed America in visible ways, George understood that ownership, employment, access to capital, and economic independence were also instruments of freedom. Having experienced discrimination in securing financing himself, he later helped establish Independence Bank of Chicago, creating opportunities for Black families and entrepreneurs who had too often found traditional financial institutions unwilling to invest in their futures.

If there is a thread running through George’s remarkable life, it is that he consistently opened doors he had once been forced to knock on himself. He built products that affirmed identity. He created a company that created opportunity. He invested in culture before others recognized its value. And he built institutions that would continue serving communities long after he stepped away.

On a personal note, I had the great fortune of knowing not only George but all three of his wives (the middle of which has been left out of most tributes I’ve read). All three wives were smart, beautiful and accomplished. But it was Joan with whom George started their business and with whom he had four beautiful children: Eric, Joan, John and George E. Johnson, Jr. Joan was admired in the Black community. We shared confidences at the hair salon where we both were clients of the late Emory Jones.

Joan and George divorced after nearly four decades of marriage. But like a story from a fairytale, they later remarried in 1995, and remained so until her passing in 2019. Before they got back together, however, George was married briefly to Renée Derem, the founder of Chicago’s Sister-City relationship in Paris. I fondly recall spending time with the couple in both cities.

Then in 2022, George married his third wife, my longtime friend, the very accomplished Madeline Murphy Rabb. Madeline is an artist, designer, and veteran art advisor who once served as the Executive Director of the Chicago Office of Fine Arts. In addition to being an artist and curator, she is a Silver and Bronze Medalist in the National Senior Games. I remember George being greatly impressed by Madeline’s beauty and athleticism, which she demonstrated through her competitive swimming captured in Luchina Fisher’s acclaimed documentary short, “Team Dream.” The film won our Ebert Award at the 2023 edition of the Ebertfest Film Festival. Madeline is also one of the kindest women around. 

Together George and Madeline embraced a season of life that many people assume no longer exists in later years. They traveled, visited friends, and shared adventures. It is a beautiful reminder that life’s final chapters need not be defined by decline. They can also be marked by companionship, curiosity and gratitude. Just this past November, George was honored with the Edwin C. “Bill” Berry Civil Rights Award by the Chicago Urban League. And it was only weeks prior to his passing, according to his son Eric via AP News, that the Joan and George Johnson Program Room was dedicated to them at the recently opened Obama Presidential Center. President Barack Obama was in attendance for the dedication as was George, a crowning moment for a towering life. 

When George took his final breath at the age of ninety-nine, Madeline was beside him, holding his hand. There is something quietly fitting about that image. A man who spent nearly a century building, creating, and giving was surrounded, in the end, by love. History will remember George as a pioneering businessman, a visionary entrepreneur, and one of the most consequential figures in the history of Black enterprise. Those titles are well deserved. Long before “Black excellence” became part of our everyday vocabulary, George was quietly living its meaning. His products filled store shelves. His vision expanded horizons. And his legacy will continue to grow in every entrepreneur bold enough to imagine a future that others cannot yet see.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

While it’s unsurprising that a streamer like Netflix might want to take a crack at reimagining this classic for a new generation, any revival or reboot would need to walk a fine line between honoring what has come before and striking out on its own path. Good news: The streamer’s “Little House on the Prairie” re-imagining understands the assignment, and the result is a pleasant enough eight-episode drama that more than looks the part, without ever really challenging its audience or complicating its own depiction of life on the American frontier all that much. 

Based on the third book in Wilder’s series of novels, “Little House” follows the Ingalls family as they leave the Big Woods of Wisconsin behind and journey into Kansas in search of a fresh start in the steadily expanding American West. Armed with a flyer promising free land, Charles (Luke Bracey) is optimistic about the family’s future, though his wife, Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald), and daughters, Mary (Skywalker Hughes) and Laura (Alice Halsey), are sad to leave their old life behind. 

Arriving in the aspirationally named Independence, the family settles in, fights off some dreadful CGI wolves, and builds a house for the winter as they get to know new neighbors and an assortment of other townsfolk who are also chasing their own idea of the new American dream. The vibes are relentlessly wholesome, the scenery almost offensively sun-drenched. In many ways, this is “Little House” by way of Instagram, and the show’s stories are largely surface-level affairs in which the family faces various challenges and triumphs over them through the power of love and community.

To be fair, the Netflix version does attempt to modernize the source material a bit, adding some necessary fresh perspectives to the classic story and addressing some of its more problematic elements. Black settlers serve key roles in the town’s larger economic ecosystem, including as its doctor (Jocko Sims) and the owner of the general store (Barrett Doss). 

Independence’s women also have larger roles to play, from the snooty, try-hard wife of a wealthy railroad executive (Mary Holland) to a decidedly non-traditional widow (Rebecca Amzallag) who wears trousers and cherishes her own personal freedom. And this “Little House” makes a point to acknowledge that the Ingalls—and hundreds of other settlers just like them—came to Kansas to settle on land that did not belong to them and that, technically, was not up for grabs. 

Unlike the original TV series, where the Osage are only present in its pilot episode, the tribe has a major role to play throughout the season, and the show purposefully establishes the Ingalls’ neighbors, the Mitchells, as a sort of Indigenous mirror to the town’s white families, complete with a precocious young daughter (Wren Zhawenim Gotts) who becomes Laura’s best friend. However, while these are all welcome changes, this “Little House” isn’t a remake that’s interested in rocking the proverbial boat or straying particularly far from the traditional themes and the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps aesthetic that made the original series so popular. Family is paramount. Resilience is necessary. And community is the only way to survive. 

Yes, the Ingalls clan faces its share of setbacks, from wild animal attacks and money troubles to outbreaks of crippling fever. But none of their problems ever feels too perilous or lasts for all that long. Everything is surprisingly clean, lost animals are always found, and broken bones mend cleanly without keeping anyone away from their chores for longer than strictly necessary. Even petty sisterly jealousies are resolved fairly quickly, and there’s basically no problem that singing songs together or a night of fiddle music can’t solve. 

If you’re looking for anything approaching a realistic depiction of the difficulties of carving out a life in an untamed wilderness, well. This isn’t that show. On the plus side, fans of the original will undoubtedly be relieved that this reboot isn’t the dark and gritty reimagining that many likely feared. But “Little House” plays it so safe in the storytelling choices that it never manages to be all that interesting, either.

To its credit, the show is beautiful to look at, full of sweeping landscapes, picturesque vistas, and beautiful sunsets. And its characters remain recognizably familiar, merely given new shades and layers. Caroline and Charles are treated as fully formed figures who exist beyond the simple “Ma” and “Pa” archetypes, and both are allowed to question whether they’re truly meant for life on the frontier. 

Sadly, the show never does all that much with the oft-hinted problems the family appears to have left behind in Wisconsin, or the apparent lingering tension between Caroline’s family and her husband. Bracey and Fitzgerald have warm, believable chemistry, and Warren Christie turns in a solid supporting performance as a troubled neighbor and Civil War veteran who essentially imprints on the Ingalls family. But the series’s true star is Halsey, who, at just ten years old, steals the entire show. 

Any “Little House” remake will naturally live and die by its Laura, and Halsey is a delight, spunky and bold in a way that occasionally feels too modern, but is endlessly charming throughout. Given the often thankless task of playing the more responsible (read: dull) older sister, Hughes holds her own as a Mary who’s trying to navigate her own coming of age—Crushing on a boy! Wanting her own life!—even as circumstances prevent her from being but so independent.

Netflix’s “Little House on the Prairie” is the kind of remake that’s essentially designed in a lab to appeal to the broadest possible swath of viewers. That’s not necessarily a criticism—the experience of watching the show is perfectly enjoyable. But it’s difficult not to wonder what a version of this show that wasn’t quite so aggressive…adequate might have been like. 

All eight episodes screened for review. Premieres July 9 on Netflix.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

In addition to representing how many years McElwee has taught at Harvard, 40 is significant for McElwee the documentarian: it’s the number of years that have elapsed since the release of his first feature, 1986’s “Sherman’s March,” one of cinema’s most inspiring examples of a director leaning into a behind-the-scenes disaster and making art from it. The story: McElwee received a $28,000 grant (in today’s money) to make a documentary retracing Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Civil War campaign through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. He was about to start shooting when he and his girlfriend broke up, which devastated McElwee and made it hard for him to focus on the film’s original premise. 

In his own circuitous, digressive way, the result does get around to telling the story of Sherman’s march. But it’s intertwined with McElwee’s musings on the cultural aftershocks of the Civil War, the threat of nuclear extinction, and interviews with women. The latter tend to fall into one of two categories: new prospects that McElwee would like to hook up with, and former girlfriends that McElwee hopes can give him some perspective on why their relationships failed. Sometimes McElwee’s interview subjects interview him back.

McElwee’s filmography flows into and out of “Sherman’s March.” “Charleen” (1978) focuses on his longtime friend Charleen Swansea; his 1984 featurette “Backyard” is about his relationship with his father and the complex dynamics between Black and white people in the southern states. “Time Indefinite” (1993) is a direct continuation of “Sherman’s March” that touches on the death of McElwee’s grandmother and father, the sudden, shocking death of Charleen’s husband, and the filmmaker and his then-wife, Marilyn Levine, experiencing the miscarriage of what would have been their first child. “Photographic Memory” (2011) was an unwitting prequel to the agonies depicted in “Remake,” detailing McElwee’s increasingly uneasy relationship with Adrian, by then a teenager who was developing his own interests, viewpoints, and spiky personality while struggling with the mental illness and drug addiction that would claim his life.

The totality of McElwee’s work brings to mind Robert Altman’s comment in 2006 while accepting a lifetime achievement Oscar: “To me, it’s just been one long movie.” I was blessed to talk to McElwee about the long movie of his life—in particular, the experience of grieving for Adrian off-camera and then struggling to translate his feelings into images and words. Shaken by watching “Remake,” I told McElwee about my own experience as a man who’s been widowed twice, and he sensitively referenced these losses periodically throughout our talk, which to me was like a small-scale, verbal equivalent of watching one of his wonderful films.

My condolences on the loss of Adrian.

Ross McElwee: Well, thank you. That’s a nice way to begin to talk about this. It’s been quite a journey getting through that. The decision to make a film about it was not easy.

As a father myself, I can’t imagine going through something like that.

That’s interesting to know that you have had experience raising kids, or maybe you’re still in the process. I’ve spoken with people who’ve really appreciated the film, both with and without children. The way people perceive the film seems to break down into two audiences.

What other patterns have you noticed in audience reactions?

Maybe it’s predictable, maybe it’s obvious, but I do think that as you get older, you’re more sensitive to these kinds of losses.

I’ll tell you a quick anecdote, which I haven’t shared with too many people, maybe nobody, but at the end of my film, there’s this peculiar choice of “El Erlkönig (The Elf King),” a famous 1782 ballad by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that Franz Schubert put to music as a song for the credits. The story is about a father holding his son, who’s very, very ill, as they race on horseback to reach a place where there might be help for the boy. And as he rides, his son sees monsters in the trees. 

The son keeps saying that he sees the Erlkönig, this sort of mythical king of the monsters. He tells his father, “It’s the Erlkönig, and he’s trying to take me to his kingdom of death.” And the father keeps saying things like, “No, my son—that’s only the mist in the trees that we’re running past—don’t worry!” 

The piece goes through several cycles of this, and finally, the Erlkönig grows increasingly upset with the child because the child won’t agree to go with him, and the monster starts threatening him. He tells the child, “Okay, now I have to take you with me,” and the son says, “Mein factor! Mein factor! Mein factor!” My father, my father, my father. The father finally pulls up to a place where he can get some medical attention for his son, still holding his son, and he looks down, and the son is dead. 

I mean, even telling you the story…It sort of…[Long pause] I get a little choked up just telling that story.

The story adjacent to that is: I knew that poem [set to music] from a college course decades ago. It always stayed with me because it was really vibrant, written in a way that lets you hear the horse’s hoofbeats as it tries to get the father and son to their destination in time. It’s really beautifully constructed, the whole thing. You know, I wasn’t weeping the first time I heard the music or anything. I wasn’t thinking of my brother and my father. For a while, I didn’t quite know why that song stayed with me. 

Then suddenly I realized it was because my father, who was a doctor, also had an experience like that, where his son—my brother—was injured, and it turned out he was injured mortally, and my father was out in the wilderness somewhere and couldn’t get help in time. And that’s why the story of the Erlkönig stayed with me for so long. Then, at a certain point after my son died, I realized that turned out to be true for me, too.

This film is having its commercial release in 2026, almost 10 years after Adrian’s death. What made you decide that enough time had elapsed to address that loss as an artist, after spending a decade trying to process it as a dad?

It is a distinction that needs to be made. The dad part of me could never come to terms, I guess. 

Maybe you know some of this yourself, after what you’ve been through with the double death of your first wife and your second wife: there’s a thing that people say to me, this phrase, ”Well, at least you had”—in my case—“twenty-six good years with him before he died.” When they say this, I don’t reply; I just nod my head. 

And you know, they say things like “Memories are so important, and they will sustain you through this.” Joan Didion wrote two books about losing people: The Year of Magical Thinking, about losing her husband, and Blue Nights, about the loss of her daughter soon after that. In Blue Nights, someone tells her,’“You have your wonderful memories,” and she says something to the effect of, memories are the things that I no longer cherish, or no longer need. They’re too painful. I think that was really my situation for a while.

What was it like processing Adrian’s loss from a father’s perspective?

The way I got through it was to first go through a long process of doing nothing. No writing, no thinking about a film or anything. I thought about the wording Joan Didion used: that memories are the things we don’t want to remember.

I didn’t quite answer your original question, though, which was how I finally got over the part of the grieving dad to become the grieving artist. I think I had to do it in stages. One stage was that I hired an assistant to go through my films, select only those in which Adrian had appeared, and choose one of two still frames from each film that featured him. I just wanted the still frames, the frame grabs. I wanted to see if I could begin writing about the still frames without breaking up and being unable to go any further, which is what happened to me when I tried looking at home movies: I just couldn’t do it because they were moving. 

This was something different, though. The still frames gave me a little bit of objectivity. And I wrote paragraphs to accompany each still frame. There were seven of them altogether. Doing that helped tremendously, because I got to see that I could somehow eventually come around to being able to do a film featuring home movies in which Adrian had appeared, and scenes from my feature films in which he’d appeared, if necessary. 

After that, I started going back to the archive and choosing moments with him that I’d filmed when he was a child, piecing them together into a kind of timeline and using that as the basis for the film.

About those paragraphs you wrote to go with the still frames: what were they like? Did you make the text merely descriptive? Or did it spin off into other areas?

It went off in other areas. It was descriptive, giving context to each case, but I also had to start dealing with my emotions because I was thinking, “My emotions are probably going to end up playing a role in this film as voiceover narration,” which helped me get to that point.

There’s a bit of narration that says, “My family life had been the lens through which I tried to make sense of the world around me.” That made me wonder if, at this point in your life, having lost so many family members to natural and unnatural causes, you are concerned that the lens is gone? Or at least harder to use, or harder to focus?

The answer is surely yes, but maybe for more than one reason. One is what you say: it’s just emotionally very, very difficult for me to think of ways to creatively reckon with images of people who are no longer here. But also, as I’m getting older and older, I think I’m losing some of my libido to go out and film the world, which is kind of a sad thing. I don’t know that I have the desire or energy to continue undertaking these journeys into the real world, whatever that means these days. I’m not feeling entirely comfortable with asking other people to reveal themselves to me when I’m holding a camera. 

Now, this could all change. I’m still very much in the throes of living and working on the distribution of “Remake,” the film I just finished. I think when I’m all done, I can take a deep breath, reconsider everything, and make another film—one that actually does allow me to use that lens that you just referred to as a way to see the world

I was struck by the particular words used in Adrian’s death notice. It says “Adrian R. McElwee, 27, passed away on December 24. 2016, after a long illness.” There was a time when most people would wonder what kind of physical illness: cancer, pneumonia, multiple sclerosis. But it refers to mental illness generally, and to addiction, which is increasingly thought of as a category of mental illness.

As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, a notice for someone like Adrian would have had a headline that either obliquely communicated the cause of death or omitted it entirely. What do you think about all this?

I think now that those two terms, mental illness and addiction, are being described and perceived today much more readily than in the past. I’m not quite sure what moved my former wife to describe it in the way that she did, but we were very aware that he’d had mental health issues. We spent a lot of time helping him find therapists and work with psychiatrists. He went away to wilderness camps that dealt with substance abuse issues. I think if this [event] were happening now, in 2026, instead of 2016, it would have been possible for [the death notice] to be even more forthcoming from the very beginning about the issues involved in his death. 

It all happened so quickly, too. Suddenly, there was a need to hold a funeral service and post something. And to be honest, I don’t even remember how it all came about. I’m not even sure I was able to read what was written before it was published. It was just so complicated. 

It’s interesting what you did, going back to that death notice. Adrian himself was very much interested in the whole phenomenon of addiction and left behind footage that proves it. He has lots of footage that he shot of his friends experimenting with these opioid drugs, and you know [from the film] that opioids led to heroin and then fentanyl, which of course is what Adrian got in trouble with. So I think it would be described differently if it were an obituary that was written these days. 

You could probably hear me stammering and stuttering as I talked to you. I find it amazing that we’ve been traveling with the film for almost nine months, and that still happens. You’d really think that by now it would have become very simple for me to talk about this more eloquently and in a more flowing way. But something happens when I start talking about Adrian’s death. I can feel the constriction in my throat. It’s just very, very hard for me to do, as you well know.

People constantly tell you it’s unhealthy or abnormal to carry a wound like yours around for the rest of your life. Some of the greatest poetry in English, by poets such as Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and John Donne, is about loss and grief. In the 1800s, someone who had suffered a loss like yours might have visited their loved one’s grave every week and left a flower there, and no one in their circle would’ve judged them negatively for doing it. 

Did you, by any chance, read George Saunders’ book Lincoln in the Bardo?

No, I haven’t.

Oh, you should. I mean, that’s exactly what it’s about! President Lincoln just can’t help himself in going back to the tomb of his son, who died when he was a child. It’s largely fictionalized, but it’s about the phenomenon that you’re talking about. I read that book early on while trying to work my way through the grieving process and create something. It was very useful for me to read and understand what was going on with Lincoln. 

It’s also unexpectedly amusing in places. Saunders creates these fictional people who are writing articles that appear in local papers, with very florid descriptions of the loss of the president’s son and how that’s affecting him and his family.

There’s a moment in “Sherman’s March” where the camera is pointed at you in a medium shot. You’re just sitting in a chair with a window behind you, and you say, “My father’s asleep upstairs. I think he already has enough questions about the validity of my film project without seeing me dressed up like this.” I wonder, in the 1980s, did you know any other people who were filming themselves that way? Do you feel like one of the founders of that form of expression?

There were certainly other people doing it. In fact, one of my film school teachers was one of those people, and I was greatly influenced by him. His name was Ed Pincus, and he made portraits of his family. He had a large impact on me and other filmmakers. There was a small colony of us, mainly in Boston and Cambridge, who were making those kinds of movies. Half a dozen people, maybe. We all encouraged each other foolishly to keep doing it. I persisted because it was something I felt comfortable doing.

But it also was very important to me to be sure that the films, certainly the early films, featured other people, because otherwise you ran the risk of something being really narcissistic and self-centered, and that would never work as a movie. It needed expansiveness to strive for some sort of universality.

But now it seems like everybody’s doing it. And you’re right, selfie-making has become an international phenomenon. I hope my films weren’t a catalyst for that happening. I would be very disappointed in us as a nation if that happened because of my filmmaking. 

Of course, there are differences between how most people make [selfie videos] and how I do them. For one thing, most of theirs are over in 25 seconds or whatever, where I really give the time in all of my films to let whatever version of reality I happen to encounter and alter with my filming to take as long as it needs to sort itself and explain itself. Even that monologue you just mentioned: I think that was like two or three minutes long, an unedited single shot. So, in a way, if I helped create or help launch the selfie revolution, I was continuously undermining it at the same time.

In “Sherman’s March,” there’s a scene where you’re filming your first meeting with a prospective date. Your friend Charlene, who introduced the two of you, intervenes and says, “Would you stop? Would you stop? This is important. This is not art. This is life.” What do you think about Charlene’s warning today, 40 years later? Where is the divide? Is there a divide?

Are you asking me if the whole concept of trying to film a version of your own reality is no longer a valid pursuit?

No, I’m curious to hear your interpretation of what Charlene said to you. The implication is that if a personal moment is really important, you should put the camera down.

That’s a very urgent phrase that Charlene tossed up, and there was nothing rehearsed about it—it just unfolded before the camera. She was really sort of upset with me for doing [“Sherman’s March”] but also highly amused by it. And, having taught poetry in schools for many, many years, Charlene was aware of what art can do and of its importance. So I think there’s an ironic implication in her juxtaposing those two possibilities in the same statement, but it is kind of a clarion call for caution, because you can overdo it one way or the other with a camera when you’re trying to live your life.

Can you really live your life when you’re filming it at the same time? 

Good question. I think about it all the time: This is not art, this is life. There are times when you should put the camera down, stop filming, and deal with what you have to do in order to live your life. So I think there’s validity to what she says.

When I’m watching iPhone footage of somebody who’s caught in, let’s say, a war zone, or a tsunami, I think, “It’s so stupid that they’re filming this! They could be killed!”, but also, “Wow, we’re so fortunate to have this footage to look at, because it shows us what it feels like to be in that situation.”

Yes, I think both things are true. They could be killed, and it’s pretty amazing that they’re getting this footage. And then there’s also the question of whether you have the right to stick your camera in somebody’s face as they’re going through some traumatic event, or have just been through a traumatic event, and expect them to be able to respond?

I made a film called “Six O’Clock News,” which asks those questions as I travel across the country. That was one of the things that set my journey in motion across the country: how do people deal with these tragedies, and how in the world does television think it has the right to stick a camera in their face and ask these questions? So I went out and did it myself. But I broke the ice by allowing the TV camera crews to sort of do the dirty work of finding the person who was willing to talk to a camera, obviously, because I would never have known anything about them, but then I’d go interview them a few weeks later to see where their lives were now. 

By the way, on that film, I think I was motivated by the fact that I had just lost my father, and so I’d had my own grieving period and got through that. I never totally left it behind. But was able to move forward with making a film. How do other people deal with their losses? That was the question that motivated “Six O’Clock News.”

What sorts of reactions have you heard from people who have seen “Remake” and have themselves lost a child?

A few people have come up to me after screenings and talked about that experience. Invariably, they’re weeping, and then I start weeping too, and it’s kind of a mess. I learned pretty early on that I should vacate the theater. But I feel bad about that because one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about showing films—my previous films, anyway—was interacting with individuals in the audience who had just seen the film. To avoid that entirely would be to deny [myself] that important experience. So it still seemed necessary to do it sometimes.

As for the people who have come up and talked to me…I mean, it’s, it’s very difficult. Everybody’s loss is, in some ways, similar and, in others, absolutely unique. I guess I found it supportive of my filmmaking that they felt the need to discuss something similar and deeply tragic that had happened in their own lives with the filmmaker. 

I do hope maybe that something could be done once this year passes and we’re not doing live screenings anymore, of offering the film to groups of people who’ve lost family members or loved ones to addiction, so they could then go out and talk about the process of dealing with what they’ve been through. There are already groups like that. They exist and have existed for many years. But maybe films like this can also play some role. It’s still too early for me to know.

I think what I’m bringing to people is a sense of solace. I can never make the pain go away, any more than they can make it go away from their own lives. But the film gives them the sense that they’re not alone, that there are other people who’ve been through this, too. All of that, I think, is worth doing.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

The DCU has an uphill battle ahead of it. On one end you’ve got the MCU to compete with, which would have been a daunting task if it was ten years ago. But you also have one of the most toxic fanbases in the world frothing at the mouth to point out any little inconsistency from the source material or cry and complain about anything they consider “too woke”. This has kinda been the fate that has befallen Supergirl, the follow-up to last year’s mostly enjoyed Superman. Whether it be claims that star Milly Alcock isn’t pretty enough to just having a hate boner for any director not named Zack Snyder, the film has already suffered heavy casualties of online discourse, which is honestly so tiring. It’s such a superficial and brain poisoned way to view art and media and is not the way to go about deciding if a movie is good without seeing it.

Well, I have seen Supergirl, and, yeah, this movie isn’t good.

For all the criticisms I had for 2025’s Superman, it looks like a pristine diamond when compared next to this much anticipated follow up. While Superman is full of life, a goofy but sincere voice and a colorful style, Supergirl is bland, surface level and often downright ugly to look at. It really seems like it’s chasing the tail of James Gunn without really understanding what makes his movies fun and memorable in the first place. It’s not needle drops and gross alien freaks. Those help, but not when they’re superfluously thrown in there expecting it to elevate the narrative and characters. Let me tell ya, it did not work here. Maybe the DCU really is following in the MCU’s footsteps with starting pretty strong and then stumbling right when you get to mile one.

Despite all of that, there is some good here. Milly Alcock is a good actress. House of the Dragon is more than enough proof of that. Yet she’s given nothing worthwhile to work with here. She’s presented as this grief stricken wanderer drinking away her problems, but this idea is presented in such a superficial way. There’s no real edge to her, no real sense of internal struggle. She’s jaded and troubled, yet these setbacks never really get in the way of her doing the right thing. It’s like the writers tried to circumvent the “Mary Sue” accusations, but also worried that making her too rough around the edges, especially as a female character, would drive people away. So you’re left with a character with no real arc, no real struggle and no real emotional conclusion by the end. Those two minutes we get of her in Superman somehow do more to make the character likable and interesting than the entirety of the character here. Alcock does shine in more emotional scenes, like her flashbacks to Krypton, which were some of the best moments in the film for me. She’s got all the tools to be a solid super heroine, but the material just wasn’t there.

The rest of the cast is pretty much in the same boat. Eve Ridley’s Ruthye, Supergirl’s vengeance-lusting sidekick suffers from flat writing and uninteresting characterization. Matthias Schoenaerts villainous Krem has some diabolical moments, but he ends up being pretty forgettable, honestly looking like a run of the mill minion from another sci-fi movie. Jason Momoa truly, genuinely shines as Lobo. You can tell he’s having fun with it, and he manages to be a fun injection into the film. It’s just too bad he’s a complete non-factor to the story. Seriously, you remove Lobo from this and nothing changes. His impact on the story is incredibly minimal, so while he is a lot of fun to watch onscreen, his overall inclusion in the narrative amounts to a hot load of nothing. Ironically enough, some of the best moments in the film come from the very brief inclusions of David Corenswet’s Superman. Every minute he’s onscreen he pretty much reaffirms why he was a tremendous pick to wear the cape, exuding a goofy, likable charm that no one else in the film manages to capture.

A negative that did carry over from Superman to here was the visuals, but for different reasons. Superman had a lot of color, but also felt insanely washed out at times while the visual effects occasionally looked pretty janky and rubbery. This is actually something I think Supergirl does way better. I think the effects are a huge upgrade, from particle effects to the prosthetic work that can be found on a ton of goofy side characters. It really does feel like Diet Star Wars at times. The problem here is in the coloring and design choices. The whole film is caked in this ugly brown and gray color palette that makes the whole thing look muddy and ugly to look at. And the thing is, the film takes place across multiple worlds and planets, and they all look the exact same; grimy, rundown and dusty. There’s no variation, no telltale signs of what makes these settings different. Watching the trailer, you’d think the entire thing takes place on the same planet, but no, it’s, like, three different ones. You could say the dirt aesthetic is supposed to contrast to the bright blue of Supergirl’s outfit, but she doesn’t even wear it until the end of the film. They Surfing Dracula-d her! This movie is loosely based off of the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic series, but those astonishing visuals and colors did not make the jump to the screen at all. I haven’t read the series, but I can’t imagine much of what made the story great made it in either.

Narratively, it’s a bit of a mess. The story gets super repetitive with Supergirl finding the bad guys, her powers get nullified in some way, they fight for a bit, and then the baddies escape. This happens multiple times, and there’s no clear sense of urgency or danger being built in between these encounters. The action ends up being pretty decent, but also feels like a pulled punch compared to the bonkers stuff we saw in Superman. All of these sequences end up having some built in contrivance to make these encounters end in a stalemate, and it never really comes down to any weakness in Supergirl’s worldview or vices, which would make for an interesting mountain she’d have to climb to finally succeed. I already spoke on how weak the characterization of Supergirl is in this, but to pile on, they really don’t do a good job selling what her outlook really is. We hardly learn anything about her other than she’s jaded and she likes to drink. Me too, man, but I’m not exactly called interesting because of it. She also constantly reaffirms that revenge will taint your heart to Rutheye, but the film never shows any reason why she’s so staunch on that despite the fact she kills people herself. The film occasionally builds some interesting differences and parallels to her and Superman, but they’re never capitalized or expanded upon, leaving us now with two Kryptonians different only in the fact that one likes to swear. 

This was pretty disappointing all things considered. I don’t know what I expected, but a boring, bland, dredge of a film was not it. As a followup to Superman, it’s a huge step back, both as an establishment of the universe’s next big character and as an expansion of the universe itself. I didn’t want this to be a cheap imitation of James Gunn’s style, but this halfway approach just made the film devoid of character and true meaning. And it sucks because all players involved are capable of much better. Director Craig Gillespie is; star Milly Alcock is; producer James Gunn certainly is. I have no clue what happened here, but I’m not ready to call the DCU a failure quite yet. Marvel’s output range was good to meh up until the first Avengers movie hit theaters, so the DCU still has some time to pull it together before I’m ready to call a time of death. But it looks like this movie is the DCU’s The Incredible Hulk; a forgettable outing that’s best moved past as quickly as possible.

RATING

KRYPTONITE DELIGHT

Kryptonite is the bane of any Kryptonian’s existence, but for us mere mortals, it’s just an ordinary rock you can stand to eat. Okay, maybe you can’t eat it, but you can destil it into a bright, neon green cocktail like this. This drink combines sweet and bright flavors with a few earthy, botanical notes to give it the flavor palette of something extraterrestrial, yet still grounded. The combination of celery juice and gin really helps to reel back the flavor of the Midori without completely eliminating it, making for a slightly melon, slightly tart cocktail that packs a bit of saltiness. Kara may need to get her drinking under control, but this is so good that it may just be worth one, deadly sip.

INGREDIENTS

• 1oz Midori
• 1oz gin
• 1/2oz Benedictine
• 1/2oz celery juice
• 1/2oz lime juice
• pinch of salt
• GARNISH: lime peel diamond

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker and shake with ice.
2. Strain into coup glass.
3. Garnish with lime peel cut in the shape of a diamond.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

★★★★

In a post-Andy world, the heart and soul of the Toy Story saga ended sixteen years ago, all since rendered adjunctive. The Bonnie years have yet to drop the ball but lack necessity. Where Toy Story 4 charted life post-Andy imitatively, however, the fifth does stray from the beaten path. Just a smidge. Toy Story 5 may feel no more essential than its 2019 predecessor but the film does, at least, boast a certain tonal distinction. For the first time in thirty years, Randy Newman doesn’t sing. Oh, and Tom Hanks’ Woody is no longer the lead.

The two points are connected, each the marker of a changing guard. Sure enough, it’s not until Woody finally returns to eight-year-old Bonnie’s bedroom, some twenty minutes in, that Toy Story 5 finally drops a bar of franchise theme “You Got a Friend in Me.” It’s a legacy beat now, rather than core identity. Before then, Newman’s score majored in the melody of 1999 Sarah McLachlan heartbreaker “When Somebody Loved Me” – soundtrack to a thousand Toy Story 2 tears. A quarter century on – and in a very Pixar way – the film pursues closure for everyone’s favourite red-haired ragdoll. This is a Jessie story.

In many a sense, Andrew Stanton’s story feels familiar. For one, it builds on the same themes of adolescent inevitability that haunted the second and third in the series. The lifespan of a toy is inherently time limited and it has always been the want of Toy Story to wrack grownups with grief for our casual abandonment of childhood favourites. What Stanton does well is to update the narrative with more contemporary concern. A toy today need not fear replacement by a space ranger, not when a tablet or smartphone proves far more pernicious a threat. As Woody has it himself: ‘Toys are for play but tech is for everything…’

Such is the crisis that faces Jessie (Joan Cusack) and co. when a frog themed tablet called Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) finds its way into the arms of shy, lonely Bonnie. ‘The age of toys is over’ cry the ditched and dispossessed as screens glow from windows up and down the street. It might feel old guard and preachy were it not so depressingly true. All told, Stanton stumbles here, never quite prepared to villainise the tablet. Perhaps not so surprising given Pixar’s own (Steve Jobs shaped) culpability in the tech-takeover. Instead, the trajectory recalls Inside Out 2, with more than a little of Anxiety to Lilypad’s motivations and arc. When Bonnie wants for friends to play with, Lilypad’s social media know-how means well but has some very predictable, very unpleasant consequences.

Lilypad’s not the only new electronic on the scene, mind. Conan O’Brian has fun with a long redundant potty training device – “Smarty Pants” – and an entertaining subplot finds several dozen next-gen Buzz Lightyears on the hunt for Star Command from a cargo shipwreck. Other newbies include a GPS hippo, an amusingly named pig and one more lonely little girl in need of a playmate. The cast expansion does rather relegate old favourites to glorified cameos – there’s little room for Slinky, Rex and the Potato Heads – while continuing the prevailing sense that this isn’t quite the Toy Story you grew up or old with.

Not inconsiderable contrivance is required to draw the various strands together – particularly given the surprising final destination – but the effort never feels strenuous. Strip away the excess and you’re left with a very funny, genuinely touching and superlatively animated legacy adventure. Perhaps the voices creak rather more than you remember. Maybe each reunion loses another face. We’ll still turn up. Necessary? No. Nice, though.

T.S.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

The exhibition space, accessible free of charge during the inaugural weekend, houses a permanent exhibit that covers the overall history of animation, from the zoetrope to the advent of CGI, with sketches and props illustrating the evolution of the artform, alongside video commentary from directors who have attended the festival over the years (including Guillermo del Toro, Henry Selick and Wes Anderson). Temporary shows highlight current and upcoming projects, with Laika’s “Wildwood” being the hottest ticket. Puppets and sets from Travis Knight’s new stop motion movie were on display for everyone to see, although security was tight to an unusual degree: to prevent leaks (since the exhibit opened before the visuals were made public via a special presentation at Bonlieu), staff were instructed to put stickers on people’s phones to cover the cameras. A sound strategy, as it forced spectators to truly take in the first glimpse at what promised to be an epic journey to a new world.

Speaking of stop motion, the Aardman crew—founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton, “Wallace & Gromit” creator Nick Park, and others—were in town to celebrate the company’s 50^th anniversary (technically 54^th, but they’re counting from when they started using clay instead of hand-drawn animation). Their panel set the tone for the entire festival, not least because it was, for many attendees, the first time seeing this year’s Annecy trailer: shown before each screening, the video—humorously showing the city, the event, and its sponsors—is made by a different studio each year. In 2026, that honor belonged to Aardman, and the resulting short was a self-deprecating delight. By the end of Day 1, viewers were whistling along once the familiar “Wallace & Gromit” theme music kicked in to cap off the video.

The other recurring element every year is a second festival trailer, or rather, a series of them (they change according to the day or the venue), made by students from Les Gobelins, the foremost animation school in France. They usually pay tribute to the individual edition’s country in focus, but this vintage of the festival didn’t have one, owing to the Cité inauguration and the resulting desire to celebrate all forms of animation (regular proceedings will resume in 2027, with Colombia as the guest of honor). The Gobelins package followed suit, each gorgeously hand-drawn short referencing a different style, with the anime-inspired “Sparkle Ranger” attracting the loudest rounds of applause.

Due to the shift in dates, the festival had to make do without some titles that would otherwise have been sure things, such as “Toy Story 5”. One old friend that didn’t fail to show up was Illumination, a regular since the very first “Despicable Me” premiered at Annecy in 2010. Eight films in, the franchise is still ridiculously amusing, and “Minions & Monsters” is arguably the best of the bunch, as it fully embraces the potential for chaos tied to the yellow henchmen, unleashing them in the context of silent era Hollywood. Given how famously cinephile a nation France is, and how much the language informs the gibberish spoken by the Minions (voiced by franchise creator Pierre Coffin, who was raised in Paris), the festival’s opening ceremony was the ideal way to unveil this ode to creative insanity.

The Feature Film Competition surveyed the best of global animation, some of it in collaboration with the other major French film event: out of eleven titles vying for the top prize, six had premiered in Cannes the month before. Naturally, national productions were a huge part of it, with “Iron Boy,” “In Waves,” “Lucy Lost” and “Viva Carmen!” gaining praise at both festivals. The remaining two Cannes veterans hailed from Japan (“We Are Aliens”) and the US (“Tangles”), and all six films exemplified the main unifying theme of the competition: aside from the Chinese production “Tana,” which used computer animation, all the entries were hand-drawn, showcasing the versatility of traditional techniques in one of the rare places where old school craft is not considered outdated.

In fact, “old school” is something that comes to mind when thinking of “The Violinist,” which took home the main prize. A co-production between Singapore and Spain (with additional funding from Italy), the film, directed by Ervin Han and Raúl García, is a simple yet affecting story of friendship born through music and then torn asunder when war keeps the two protagonists apart. A visual and aural trip down memory lane (the bulk of the movie is an extended flashback), its warm colors find their emotional match in the impeccably classic score.

Looking at the past century was a theme, most notably in another film with a Cannes connection: a few weeks ago, Croisette visitors were the first to see “Moulin,” a French drama about the fateful encounter between Resistance figurehead Jean Moulin and Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie; the latter returned in Annecy via “The Sunrise File,” a thriller recounting the complex relationship between the Israeli intelligence apparatus and a couple of Nazi hunters. Brian Cox lends his gruff tones to the aging Israeli secret agent whose memories are the basis of the narrative. Co-director Rupert Wyatt (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) makes his animation debut, with quietly devastating results.

The Contrechamp competition, showcasing films that go against the grain aesthetically or narratively, featured one of the biggest swings when it comes to a movie with a marked contrast between subject matter and depiction. It was another film dealing with the wartime period, specifically in a Japanese context: “Peleliu–Guernica of Paradise”. Set on the island of the same name in 1944, Goro Kuji’s tale of camaraderie is at times startlingly brutal, its portrayal of violence being starker than one might expect considering the characters have the physical proportions—and, to a degree, the facial features—of Funko Pops and look much cuter than your typical war movie cannon fodder.

Contrechamp’s big winner was another Cannes veteran, “Blaise,” a French dark comedy with an animation style reminiscent of the TV series “Archer”. Putting its own spin on the age-old trope of the dysfunctional family, it chronicles the everyday experiences of two parents and their teenage son as they come to terms with their oddball nature and actually try to fit in and make friends. Occasionally off-putting (in a very deliberate manner), but French cinema aficionados are in for a treat courtesy of Léa Drucker’s impeccable voice work as the mother.

On the short film side, longtime Annecy attendees were probably disappointed by the absence of Swedish director Niki Lindroth von Bahr, who won in 2017 with the exquisite “The Burden” and took Cannes by storm in May with “The End”. That said, stop-motion with a Nordic feel to it was still very much present in the form of “Please,” a melancholy tale about the need for human attachments. The puppets are human rather than anthropomorphic animals like in Lindroth von Bahr’s films, but there is an amusing behind-the-scenes connection: Alexander Skarsgård is one of the voice actors in “The End,” while his father Stellan lends his weary tones to “Please” with his usual charm and wit.

Besides film screenings, a major component of Annecy’s yearly celebration of the animated form is a wide array of special presentations: studio showcases, work-in-progress sessions, masterclasses, and the like. And none, besides the Aardman event on opening day, were as highly anticipated as the Warner Bros. Pictures Animation panel, touted as a new chapter in the company’s history (much like DC Studios, the animation unit is now its own thing within the Warner Bros. family). Those who follow what’s going on in Hollywood were justifiably concerned about what the future may hold for the team, given the merger with Paramount that appears increasingly, depressingly unstoppable. And yet, what unspooled on the screen, illustrating a slate of films coming out through 2028, was sometimes mesmerizing, never anything less than interesting (“Dynamic Duo,” a puppet-based take on the DC universe, looks spectacular).

The presentation also allowed attendees to see a new Looney Tunes short, “Daffy Season,” which will premiere theatrically with “The Cat in the Hat” later this year. A gem of pure lunacy, with Daffy Duck losing it over the fact everyone is suddenly obsessed with soccer (or, as he calls it, European football), it marks the return of animated shorts meant for theaters, as far as Warner Bros. is concerned, after a protracted absence. In other words, that’s not all, folks!

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

[Note: I do not consider myself a movie critic. What follows is just one fanboy’s opinion based off of a single double viewing of the film. Oh, and there are SPOILERS ahead for this movie, so take heed.]

Full disclosure, Masters of the Universe was never my favorite toy property (that accolade goes to Transformers), but it does have a special place in my heart. The He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon was not actually a Saturday morning cartoon. It aired in the afternoons (at least in Texas), just as I was getting out of school, but that only made me love it more. Instead of getting one episode per week, we got five. Even today, there’s just something about hearing that strange bone-chime/xylophone sound that announces a Filmation cartoon to take me back.

Unfortunately, the box office for this year’s Masters of the Universe isn’t looking so hot, which is a real shame. While there are hits and misses in this movie (as we’ll discuss), genuine effort was put into it, and it has a level of heart that I rarely see in movies these days. I’ve heard rumors that there will be another installment of this franchise regardless of the box office, and I definitely hope that’s true. Here’s hoping it does well enough when it goes to streaming to get Amazon to loosen the purse strings again.  

First Impressions

While the Dolph Lungren movie from 1987 has been panned, and even credited with the death of the MOTU franchise, I loved it when it came out. But even then, I knew it wasn’t quite like the cartoon. The characters, the sets, the costumes were all very different from what I had seen on the small screen.

When I first saw the trailers for the 2026 movie, it was abundantly clear that great pains had been made to make all those elements look like a direct live-action translation from the cartoon to the screen. I was intrigued by this, but of course, I’ve been burned by almost every other attempt to bring the various beloved ‘80s franchises to life for a new generation, Transformers and G.I. Joe being chief among them.

So, I set my expectations to mid, especially when I heard that Jared Leto was going to play Skeletor. Even with some trepidation on my part, I knew I was still going to go see it at least once. I wound up seeing it twice, and I hope to catch it one more time before it leaves theatres. Let’s get started and make it official.

BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL, I HAVE THE POWER!

What I liked

THE MOVIE SCORE: Wow, the opening moments really demonstrate the rock opera qualities of what we’re in for with this movie. It struck me immediately at how much it sounded like the Flash Gordon soundtrack from 1980. Little did I realize that this was because Brian May of Queen had lent his soaring guitar talents to the movie score, and it is sonic poetry. The composer for the score is Daniel Pemberton, who had previously created the Into the Spiderverse score, which was excellent. As soon as the movie was over, I knew this was a score I was going to download immediately. It’s one of the best I’ve heard in recent memory. Hearing the old MOTU theme in “A Job for He-Man” done with modern orchestration legitimately warms my heart.

The Director: I was not aware that Travis Knight was the director of the movie until I watched the credits. He was the one who directed Bumblebee, the only installment of the Bayverse that I actually liked. In the opening minutes of that movie, he gave us a frankly stunning look at the Battle for Cybertron. (Honestly, I wish we had a whole movie of just that.) So, it does not surprise me at all that Travis Knight was able to translate the world of Masters of the Universe to the screen. And that brings me to my next point.

The Atmosphere: As I said above, great pains were taken to make things look like the cartoon brought to life. The color palette is vibrant and beautiful. There are some definite psychedelic colors going on in the vein of Thor: Ragnarok, but that’s a good thing. That movie had more than its share of throwbacks to Flash Gordon as well. The world of MOTU was build on the artwork of Frank Frazetta, with nods to Alex Raymond and Jack Kirby, and it was brilliantly brought to life here.

The Character Designs: For the most part, when a character shows up on screen, I knew immediately who they were. The characters just looked right for the most part. There were a handful I didn’t recognize at first, but eventually I was able to figure out who they were. If I had one complaint, it was that some characters were done with practical effects (and done pretty well), while others were clearly CGI or CGI assisted. While the CGI is generally good, Beast Man looks entirely CGI, where Goat Man looks real due to the use of actual prosthetics. Also, shoutout to the return of Pig Boy and Karg from the 1987 movie. 

Skeletor: Let me just say it: I don’t like Jared Leto as an actor. Normally his involvement in a project means I’m not interested. (I still haven’t forgiven him for the worst screen-version of the Joker we’ve ever seen.) He completely disappears into his role as Skeletor, and it’s a really good performance. The CGI to give Skeletor’s skeletal face emotion helped with this quite a bit. There were some lines that seemed to get lost, but my second viewing of the movie (shoutout to the Rangra Theater in Alpine, Texas) helped with that. While Skeletor is probably the biggest departure from the cartoon, particularly when it comes to his vocal stylings, it still works. He looks awesome, he’s terrifying, and seems like a genuine threat to He-Man and his allies. 

All the Little Nods: There are so many nods to the toys and the cartoon that they really are too many to count. One of my favorites, however, was when Roboto reveals her more toy-accurate remodel, saying that it’s ‘a little revealing.’ In that moment, all the characters have their hands on their hips and tilt their heads back in a big belly laugh, just like in the cartoon. Brilliant.

Shadow Casting: When I first saw Camila Mendes in the role as Teela, I thought she was cool, but a bit far removed from the fair-skinned, bright red-headed version of Teela from the cartoon. Here’s the thing, though. Teela is secretly the Sorceress’s daughter. And who does Camila Mendes look like, especially when out of her Teela persona? Answer: Morena Baccarin, who plays the Sorceress! Nice one there, casting director.

The Fight Scenes: When it comes to throwing down, He-Man delivers. The fight choreography is pretty sharp. Some of the major action set pieces can overstay their welcome at times, but when the action scenes arrive, they don’t disappoint. My favorites are probably He-Man soloing all of Skeletor’s henchmen and the fight sequence where Ram Man and Fisto fight in the courtyard of Eternos.

The Heart: This movie has heart, and I think a good message, even if the latter gets a little muddled at times. The whole struggle comes down to who gets the wield the Power of Grayskull. Ultimately, it’s Adam—a good person who has empathy for those around him— who becomes the vessel for the Power of Grayskull. In our real world, we’re constantly seeing power applied with a lack, or complete  absence, of empathy. Seeing a story where good triumphs over evil through the just application of force, but reserved for when diplomacy fails, is something we could stand to have a lot more of in today’s cinema.

What I DIDN’T like

The Runtime: The movie clocks in at two hours and thirteen minutes (though AMC puts it at two hours and twenty minutes). As a fan of The Lord of the Rings films, I don’t mind a long movie…provided that the content we’re seeing is good. This movie honestly could have used a tighter edit. There are some scenes that go on and on, and I think a more streamlined cut of the film would have done wonders for it. Keep the heart and soul, but trim the fat. I think the movie succeeds despite this, but I think it should have been around ninety minutes, give or take.

Telling, Not Showing: I think the movie missed a step with the sequences on Earth. We’re told by Adam’s boss that people like him, that he’s thoughtful, and understanding, but we don’t see it. Adam says that he’s really good at his job, but again, we don’t see that in action. Instead of him about to lose his job for obsessing over finding the sword, I would have much rather had a scene where, as a member of Human Resources, someone is having a real problem at work and Adam helps them through it with some well-placed words of wisdom.

Or show him resolve a dispute between conflicting parties by establishing trust and helping them find common ground. I think that would have made the scene where the Sorceress tells him why she chose him to be the recipient of the Power  that much more impactful. Most of the time it feels like stories have a lot of setup with no payoff. This movie seems to have payoff without actually setting up that key part of Adam’s character, and that’s unfortunate.

Undercutting Dramatic Scenes with Humor: Here we go again. This has been my complaint on so many movies the last couple of years. There are only a few writers/directors who can really pull that off, and even they will play that card a little too often. (James Gunn in last year’s Superman, anyone?) This has really been a problem since Thor: Ragnarok, and this movie falls for it as well. There are several serious moments that would have been so much stronger if they had just been able to breathe. But no, we have to throw a joke in there. Most of them don’t land, and just manage to sabotage the whole works. Please, by all that is good, movie directors…please stop doing this!

The Sword Dilemma: Adam jumps through a portal to Earth and loses the sword en route. Later, when he finds the sword again, it immediately sends a signal to Eternia. Within hours, Teela and Beast Man are on Earth and able to track him down. Isn’t it a lucky break that Adam lost the sword that early? If he had held onto it, wouldn’t Skeletor’s forces have been able to track him immediately?

In that case, he would have been on his own and still a kid, and certainly no match for Beast Man. Losing the sword worked out pretty well, then. It gave the resistance a few years to regroup and relocate, and it gave Adam time to grow up to be able to face his enemies as an adult. Now, having said all that, it is possible the signal to Eternia might have only been triggered when Adam tried to activate the sword’s powers for the first time. The only issue is that Adam didn’t say the right words in the comic shop. So, it’s not clear what triggered the signal. We might have to file this under “so the movie can happen.”

Folding Space Out In the Open: When Teela brings Adam back to Eternia, she translocates right over the ruins of Eternos. I know this is so that Adam can see the destruction of the city that was once his home with his own eyes. Teela even mentions that being out in the open is dangerous. Sure enough, Tri-Klops is waiting for them, and tracks them back to their hidden base. Was there some reason that Teela needed to fold space to that specific area? Could she have not appeared back at the open cavern where the resistance is hiding out? Again, I think this is a “so the movie can happen” issue.

The Lack of Early Warning Systems: Twice in the movie, the heroes are caught completely unaware by the arrival of enemy fighter craft. They sound the alarm only after there are ships overhead firing away. For a world where technology exists, do they not have long-range sensors or radar? Do they need to just rely on visual confirmation that an attack is imminent?

King Randor: I normally love James Purefoy as an actor, but making King Randor a huge jerk was not a creative choice that I loved. I know they wanted Duncan/Man-At-Arms to be the one to give Adam the inspirational speech, but I would have loved to see an inkling of the empathy in Adam reflected in Randor, especially since Purefoy is amazing at giving that kind of inspirational performance ever since A Knight’s Tale.

I understand that Randor in this movie was trying to make Adam strong in a world that needs strength, but I don’t think that worked. There was one blink-and-you-miss-it scene in Snake Mountain when Randor sees Adam fighting as He-Man, and Randor is near tears at seeing his son become the man he had always hoped Adam would be. Now that little moment I actually liked.

Skeletor Admitting to Being a Villain: In their final confrontation, He-Man tries to talk Skeletor down. The attempt fails, and Skeletor admits that he’s evil and a villain. I’ve talked about this in previous blog posts, but the best villains don’t necessarily believe or realize that they are the villains. That’s what makes them so scary. If you were to look at some other ‘80s cartoon villains, I’m pretty sure they would think they are the heroes of their own story. Cobra Commander and Mumm-Ra for sure. I don’t believe Megatron would consider himself a villain. A leader and conqueror, certainly, but not a villain.

Now, if there was an ‘80s villain who absolutely knew what he was, you could make a case for Skeletor being him. Plus, the movie variously refers to him as a fiend, a devil, and a demon. So, maybe he revels in his own evilness.

If we were going to draw a contrast between Skeletor and He-Man, however, I would have much preferred that it be along moral lines. He-Man believes in using the Power as morally as possible and only as a last resort; Skeletor believes that the Power is an end unto itself and thinks morality is for the soft and the weak. I think that would have been a stronger take than what we were served in this scene.

Unanswered Questions

For me, the biggest question here is: now what? Do we get more of this MOTU continuity, or is it going to be yet another failed attempt at capturing the magic of a 40-year-old franchise. I hope it’s the former, because I think this take on the material, and this cast and crew, really came through, all things considered.

While it’s a relatively minor thing, why did He-Man and his allies suddenly start choking and throwing up just after they broke out of prison? Was this just to undercut the cool walking in slow motion scene, or was there a Stinkor cameo that was cut? I’m not sure what that was all about.

I suppose the She-Ra cameo in the stinger is another question mark. Will the studio green light a She-Ra movie to make good on that brief glimpse into Etheria? Will she already be She-Ra or will she need to discover her powers the way Adam did? Will Adam and Adora ever get to team up the way they did in the cartoon?

I suppose only time will tell.

Conclusions

When I walked out of my first viewing, I knew I liked this movie, but didn’t love it as much as I had hoped I would. I’m not sure why, but my second viewing made me love it even more. There were little touches that I noticed here and there, and just some of the performances landed better for me. A lot of the jokes still didn’t work, but I didn’t find them nearly as distracting or annoying as on the first time. Like I said, I hope to see it a third time and see if I can get another boost toward the positive.

Masters of the Universe is really a movie about how Adam becomes He-Man. He’s the prodigal son returning home and finding the strength within himself to fight for his people. While I wish that some of the elements underpinning his journey had been a bit stronger, the message is one I can get behind. It really comes down to Spider-Man’s old axiom, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

And if you are, however unintentionally, channeling Stan Lee on a project, you know you’ve tapped into something. It is my sincere wish that we get to see these actors in these roles again. This is the closest thing we’re ever likely to get to a return to the golden age of He-Man, and it did my heart good to watch it all up there on the big screen. 

And that’s the way this fanboy sees it.

In today’s blog post, we saw an adult fanboy attempting to use his decades-old knowledge of our stories to make sense of a new telling of events in the modern day.

Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, reminding us of those things in the past we love that are close to our hearts, and that can be fun. Just be careful not to get too wrapped up in your own memories of long ago. You don’t want to enjoy the past at the expense of the present.

Until later…

__________________________________________________

_{Do me a favor, okay? Subscribe to my newsletter for more news, updates, and information on Sector M’s current and upcoming projects!}

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch