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Down the Twisted Rabbit-Hole of Primetime

To Catch a Predator was such a distinctly 2000s artefact that people not around for it might be puzzled by its very conceit. A show that made a spectacle out of “catching” sexual predators, it was part of that initial reality TV boom of the 2000s -even as it was billed sometimes as an investigat ive journalism program. It got a lot of attention off of that public desire to watch bad people humiliated and punished (even though very few of the subjects from the show ever saw substantial prison time), and a little bit of a flare for vigilante justice. The show opined to be a bastion of justice, yet there was something just kind of seedy and gross about it. At that time and even more so now, Americans have an unusual preoccupation with pedophilia, and it was something that Chris Hansen, the creator of To Catch a Predator , was clearly aware of and keen to exploit. And as the man who always came around the corner to confront the would-be child molesters, he set himself up quite well to be...
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Not a Daredevil: The Intriguing Story of The Stunt Driver

The Stunt Driver is a movie that rides or dies on conveying a certain charmed veneration of its subject, Canadian stuntman Ken Carter. His personality and his ambitions, ridiculous and frankly idiotic though they may have been, are coloured by the film with gusto even if his motivations don’t entirely hold water. It is also impossible to separate this tone of the movie and its subject with star Jay Baruchel’s intense patriotism for anything Canadian. Baruchel really has come home in a way that few other Canadian celebrity expats have, dedicating much of his work to uplifting the Canadian film industry (he hasn’t appeared in an American movie since the last How to Train Your Dragon film in 2019). And even though he isn’t a producer, writer, or director her e, it feels entirely of that Canadiana spirit he’s been folding into his brand. The story of this plucky Canadian daredevil -known by the moniker “the Mad Canadian”- always in the shadow of Evel Knieval down south is right up his al...
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Back to the Feature: The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

In The Asphalt Jungle , everybody is corrupt except for the criminals. They are at least honest about what they are and what they want, and have a nobility to them that the cops and seemingly upstanding figures in their orbit don’t. John Huston began his career with The Maltese Falcon , one of the essential film noirs -but it is not until this movie nearly a decade later that he carves out a more complex image of the cops and robbers dynamic that made film noir an interesting genre to contend with. These are not shifty, unsettling figures like Sidney Greenstreet or Edward G. Robinson. They are more nuanced and motivated and in their way more moral. They are the ones with families -or in the case of Sterling Hayden’s Dix, a committed girlfriend. While the indebted, incompetent lawyer weaseling in on their scheme ignores his ill wife for a creepy affair with a much younger woman. It was a touch contentious in 1950. Louis B. Mayer, whose studio produced the picture, vehemently disliked it...
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Futurama Reviews: S11E09 -"A New New York Yankee in King Elfo's Court"

In 2014, a year after Futurama ’s second cancellation at Comedy Central, Matt Groening’s other show The Simpsons extended an olive branch with a crossover episode called “Simpsorama” -it wasn’t particularly good but it allowed the Futurama characters one more appearance on TV before presumably fading away. Of course, nine years later it got to come back again on Hulu, and now Futurama is in the position to return the favour to Disenchantment , another Groening show that was canceled by Netflix in 2023. It is fitting, Disenchantment shared a lot of the same writers and voice actors as Futurama , and as a medieval fantasy series functioned as something of a genre counterpart show. So “A New New York Yankee in King Elfo’s Court” doesn’t feel as out-of-place as “Simpsorama” (or the even worse Simpsons - Family Guy crossover); the pitch of both shows is hit quite well. They are still contrasts, but contrasts that gel together amicably. It begins in the (relatively) ordinary world of F...
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Why You Should Watch Star Trek: Lower Decks

Contrive enough world-building, and every major franchise will have its corners of untapped storytelling potential. And often those most curious corners are the ones that approach the grandiosity of such stories from a relatable vantage point. It can be fun to wonder about the everyday people living in the margins of superhero movies for example, especially the more extravagant universes like the MCU, which typically doesn’t care much for regular folks (outside of the occasional Spider-Man movie) and would actually be kind of a horrifying place to live the more you think about it. But also kind of a funny place, given that grounded perspective on superhero activities. The same is true of any monoculture franchise -what is it like to be a run-of-the-mill stormtrooper in Star Wars or part of a Bond villain’s army of goons, or a mere duty ensign in Star Trek possibly waiting to be killed on an away mission. Some of these nifty concepts have made it to screen, but perhaps none more direc...
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