fly, crash, return, rebirth, chance, retelling, face/off and milestone.
Last Week in Pop Culture 009, 2nd week of November 2018
I made it, just under the wire! Now I need to sleep ...
As always, please do download my podcast for an auditory companion to this recap (53.5 MB). This goes on just under an hour which was quite a rare occurrence for my podcast. The rundown and timestamp can be found here ... in the coming future.
Bare in mind that the podcast has some delineation since I based it on my blog rather than this particular entry, but rest assured that I cover most of the topics included here. Here's my accumulated news list for last week.
00. obituary: Will Goldman {August 12th, 1931 - November 16th, 2018}
The famed writer for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the Princess Bride among many others in his illustrious career passed away at the age of 87. I might not be familiar with his earlier works but I did watched the Princess Bride just recently and enjoyed it thoroughly. I hope this will urge you to look through his track record (the Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, the Stepford Wives, Misery, Maverick, etc.) and revisit or watch them for the first time in remembrance of his passing.
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01. Agents of SHIELD officially renewed for Season Seven!
While the Sixth is still coming next summer, I am over the moon that they get renewed right away! That means they like what has been filmed and that is good news to me. The series has been going from strength to strength with the fourth being my personal favourite with the introduction of Robbie Reyes' Ghost Rider. While it is unfortunate they will cut down the number of episodes (with thirteen episodes moving forward if I'm not mistaken), I think the storytelling will benefit with shorter time to be more concise and straightforward (I do not think they are any fluff in previous seasons but almost two dozens can be daunting if you do not tune in from week to week), just like how Iron First Second Season did with only eight. The ending of last season is quite open ended so I'm intrigued to see where they will go with it. Does Daisy's updated look play into it at all?
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02. 19-mile-wide meteorite crater finds deep beneath the ice in Greenland
"The serendipitous discovery may just be the best evidence yet of a meteorite causing the mysterious, 1,000-year period known as Younger Dryas.
12,800 years ago, during the Pleistocene, Earth was warming up from its last Ice Age. Temperatures slowly rose while glaciers retreated, that is, until something major happened that triggered a cold snap big enough to leave its mark on the geologic record. Over the course of just decades – the blink of an eye in geological timescales – the planet cooled somewhere between 3 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 6 degrees Celsius). The resulting period is known as the Younger Dryas, a mysterious 1000-year blip in history."
Well, at least there is something positive coming out of the global warming ... as we dig deeper and deeper through the surface, we can so much more of our past. Having a visible proof of an actual meteorite crater tell us how it affected the climate back then, and how it is still visible after so many years have passed show us the magnitude of its impact.
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04. Devil May Cry will be next in Adi Shankar's Bootleg Multiverse after Castlevania
While Assassin's Creed is still a rumour for now, the success of Castlevania allow him to reel in the next game property to be adapted under his guidance. Granted it had its own anime series back in 2007 but having the team behind Castlevania tackle this premise will make it a project that I am excited to see.
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07. Fighting with My Family [February 22nd] Paige's biopic
While you might think that I am highlighting this just because the Rock is in it, I am as a wrestling aficionado and a diehard modern WWE fan is quite invested in the central wrestler herself, Paige. Saraya Bevis comes from a family of wrestlers that have been active in the UK independent scenes and when she and her brother were called up for a tryout, only her passed the audition to be going through the developmental at the Performance Center. You can see in the trailer how this put a wedge between the future Superstar with her family members especially her brother and being competitive with fellow trainees didn't help her to gain any friend (the Charlotte Flair equivalent is there to be her rival) but in the end it was worth it as she won the title at her main roster debut. That might be how they will conclude her journey here although they might alter some parts (you can see her fighting with Nikki Bella at the end there ... she won the title from AJ Lee but since the company have a sour relationship with her and her husband, they might change the wrestler just because of that, which is unfortunate ... scratch that, AJ Lee will be in it and she will be played by Zelina Vega, an up-and-coming wrestler, which is great really!). I'm happy to see Dwayne Johnson pushed for this project to be put on the fast track and have Stephen Merchant to make his full feature directorial debut with this. The Rock might be a glorified cameo with all said and done but I know he is returning to his wrestling roots to put over so to speak the company's project with his star power while giving back to the younger talents. It saddens me that Paige had to retire early (although being active in the scene for over a dozen years really took its toll on her developing body) but I hope she will make an appearance at the end with other wrestlers that she came with through NXT. This might be the biggest chance for WWE Film to have their most successful box office hits, and this might greenlight that long rumoured Vince McMahon biopic with Bradley Cooper.
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09. LeBron James surpasses Wilt Chamberlain for 5th on the All-Time scoring list
He is one heck of an athlete and this just shows his athletic prowess. The detractors can't deny this fact!.
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10. Alfonso Cuarón's Roma [November 21st -> December 14th] (Netflix)
I have been a fan of his previous works from Children of Men to Gravity and having this being his most personal and arguably his most ambitious project just makes me want to watch it even more. After watching the trailer myself, I am justified in thinking so! Are you as well?
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04. former CIA Chief explains how spies use disguises
Well, this was released a few weeks ago but I just came across it last week and it is actually an interesting watch to see real life application of disguises to protect the agents of government and the public interacting with them, from the well-known facial prosthetic to the mannerism to the change of appearance in the public. Quite an interesting topic to ponder ....
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~Fin~
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