December 2024 - Arkhaven Site

30DecDecember 30, 2024

The Dark Herald Recommends: Nosferatu (2024)

(Note for the reader, I don’t normally do this but I would strongly recommend reading my essay on the original Nosferatu (1922). Some of what I reference below won’t make sense otherwise. *** Spoiler Alert: This film follows the plot of the original 1922 film. Given that the story is literally a century old I will make no effort to avoid spoilers***)Gothic horror has at long last returned from the dead.For years the grand school of cinematic fear was...

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27DecDecember 27, 2024

The Dark Herald Recommends Squid Game

BUMPED (12/27/24). Since my essay on season 2 is rather brief, I've bumped up my season one review as a courtesy extra.I’ve heard several reviewers claiming this series is like Battle Royale.It’s not. It’s The Prisoner with a high body count and lots of gore.*** Spoilers from here on out. ***The title comes from a children’s game in Korea that is roughly analogous to King of the Hill. It’s a last-man-standing kid’s game. Although, there is apparently some cultural significance to squids being...

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27DecDecember 27, 2024

The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Squid Game Season 2

Writer-Director Hwang Dong-hyuk (hold the comments you are three anymore) has not delivered I’m sad to say. This isn’t season 2, It’s season 1.5.The original Squid Game was a surrealist horror story about people finding out what they will do to survive. Hwang, wrote the first iteration of Squid Game back in 2008. It was a project he couldn’t get made but never stopped pitching and when Netflix decided to start randomly financing K-Drama’s someone probably liked the rather...

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27DecDecember 27, 2024

The Amazon Bondoverse

Amazon wants to turn James Bond into a cinematic universe. This is a classic groupthink decision. We must have a multi-character franchise. We already have a single-character franchise. We must turn that into a multi-character franchise.Let the creatives do something with our brilliant decision.I really don’t know what they can do with it. Going with the movie characters (because that’s all the general audience knows about) you have James Bond, his boss, M, there used to be a secretary called Money Penny*...

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25DecDecember 25, 2024

Rudolph’s Propagantastic Beginning

There are no Gen-Xers that don’t have fond memories of Rankin/Bass Christmas specials (at least the ones who aren’t sad and miserable). They were part of the magic of Christmas for my generation. Earlier generations had one-horse open sleigh rides, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and Bing crooning about how he’d be home for Christmas.I suppose we still had Bing, but it was Charlie Brown and Rankin/Bass that signified we would soon be getting a two-week break from school and driving...

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24DecDecember 24, 2024

Christmas Ghost Stories

Americans are an odd bunch, even those of us holding on to our great heritage get a lot of that heritage wrong.Take a look at Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. Americans can identify with the familiar aspects of the story, but there are others that feel like they would be more at home at Halloween. There are strong undertones of the eerie and the uncanny throughout the book. That there is a darker reason that children are tucked into their beds with care, and blankets...

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24DecDecember 24, 2024

The Dark Herald Recommends Klaus

BUMPED 12-24-2024 A redemption story for Christmas? The nerve of some people!This is exactly the kind of excellence that Disney can no longer achieve.This was advertised as a Netflix Original. Which is a lie, but I understand why Netflix does this. Calling something a Netflix Original sounds a lot better than, “Dumped on Netflix.” If you can’t get a distribution deal these days, then your best hope is dumping your movie on Netflix.Netflix does have some standards for this. Usually,...

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23DecDecember 23, 2024

Is Activision Plagiarism Laundering??

An interesting and tricky legal question that I will have to be careful in dancing around. While credit laundering is legally speaking not the motive, it looks rather a lot like it’s the effect.Not too long ago Activision/Blizzard had yet another scandal. Hearthstone had sold some cards that turned out to have been created by generative AI. Now this was not actually company policy, this was just some stuff that was outsourced to an “artist” who let his computer do...

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23DecDecember 23, 2024

Christmas Weekend Roundup

Sonic 3 Runs Mufasa Into the GroundThe spikey blue hedgehog ran the Lion King's old man into the ground. Sonic's take is $62 million. Mufasa pulled in a decidedly second place $35 million. This isn't remotely a surprise. This loss was mostly due to Disney's corporate arrogance. They moved Mufasa onto Sonic 3's weekend and just assumed that Paramount would slink away with its tail between its legs when challenged by the awesome might of Disney's biggest animation...

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19DecDecember 19, 2024

Looks Better Than Snyderverse Superman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhUht6vAsMY My opinions:I don't think a single movie has ever had so much riding on it or had so many things going against it.Marvel doesn't have anything warming up in the batter's box that's going to make any money. Sam Wilson's Captain America movie has cost so much to make it would have to pull in $2 billion before it could see a profit and it's not going to be doing that. The Thunderbolts is already dead and...

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Monthly Archives - December 2024