Connect with us

Entertainment

The Perfect Political Satire That's Exactly What We Need Right Now

By TeeJay Small
| Published

In these bizarre times, it almost feels like satire is dead. Even South Park has struggled to make sense of American politics and societal trends, with mixed results. If you’re concerned that topical comedy might never be funny ever again, there’s one film that you need to watch today: 2017’s The Death of Stalin.

Despite being a period piece centered on the fall of the Soviet Union’s most enigmatic leader, the movie manages to make some extremely prescient points about unchecked power, lines of succession, and the lack of consequences for wealthy oligarchs.

A True Story, Mostly

The Death of Stalin centers on, well, exactly what it sounds like. The film begins during the final days of Joseph Stalin’s life, as he presides over a nation gripped by fear. Over the course of three decades, Stalin has ruled as a totalitarian dictator, murdering anyone suspected of suspicious activity. In the Soviet leader’s endless paranoia, Stalin has created a council of sycophants who kiss up to him at every turn, each prepared to destroy the others if they dare to step out of line. So, when the supreme leader drops dead in the middle of his private quarters, there’s a massive power vacuum left in his absence.

History buffs will know going in that Nikita Khrushchev (played by Steve Buscemi) is destined to take on the mantle, but this isn’t obvious in the first act. In fact, most of the narrative of The Death of Stalin centers on other real life soviet politicians attempting vain power grabs, all while wrangling Stalin’s insufferable adult children. Though the film takes a lot of liberties to tell the actual true story of the USSR following Stalin’s death, the broad details are generally accurate, including some of the off-the-wall comedic beats. Somehow, The Death of Stalin manages to take this dark and twisted true story, and make it easy to watch, simple to grasp, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Politics Are Funnier In The Rear View

I won’t get too political here, but surely we can all admit that American politics have become a circus in the last decade or so. Whether you love Donald Trump more than life itself, or hate his guts like you’ve never hated anyone before, it’s hard to ignore how unusual things have become.

For that reason, it’s nearly impossible for comedians to lambast our politicians for any one gaffe, blunder, or controversy, as the media cycle struggles to keep up. Does anybody remember the “Covfefe” tweet, or the “little tiny rocket man” comments, or the entire existence of Anthony Scaramucci at this point? The Death of Stalin shows that sometimes, you need to wait for the absurdity to come and go before you make an attempt to comment on it, because you never know what will actually stick in the public consciousness.

The Death Of Stalin Is A Must See Movie

No matter your political leanings, I think The Death of Stalin is an excellent movie that everyone can enjoy. The movie is also based on a French graphic novel of the same name, which is a must-add to the bookshelf of any aspiring political satirist. For those interested in giving this one a spin, The Death of Stalin is currently streaming on Hulu.


source

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Entertainment

Khloé Kardashian Says Daughter True Thompson Has an 'Elevated' Way of Wearing Her XO Blue Perfume

Like mother, like daughter! Khloé Kardashian’s new XO Blue perfume has already earned the approval of daughter True Thompson.

Ahead of the launch party in Malibu, California on June 16, The Kardashians star shared that Thompson, 8, is already taking after her in one unexpected way.

Khloé Kardashian/Instagram

“She doesn’t wear fragrance on a daily basis, but she has the Squishmallows fragrance, which is so cute and age-appropriate, and then she has all of mine on her counter, and sometimes she sprays herself, and sometimes she doesn’t, but they’re into scents, these kids,” she explained during a virtual press day.

When Kardashian’s daughter does decide to borrow one of the reality television star’s favorites, she has her own way of doing things.

“I do let her use it, but it’s everything in moderation and she’s so great. She sprays her clothes and not herself, which I’m like, ‘Okay, elevated.’ I love when kids are smarter and more creative than we are. So, she doesn’t spray her body, which I’m fine with.”

Khloé Kardashian/Instagram

It’s a far cry from Kardashian’s own spritzing habits growing up.

“When I was younger, it was Bath and Body Works. … I mean, we doused ourselves in the most potent of stuff.”

These days, though, Kardashian is chasing vacation vibes with her signature scent. 

“XO Blue is very tropical, in my opinion. I think when you put it on, you immediately get this woody coconut. I feel very transported onto a beach with a piña colada. … It’s still something that you can wear, but I just love where it transports me to.”

Khloé Kardashian/Instagram

And for the Khloé In Wonder Land podcast host, the appeal goes beyond an island getaway.

“I just want you to feel the sexiest at your core, and that doesn’t have to be this aesthetic thing.”

“For me, that’s all energetically. I just want you to feel just super sexy and feminine and that you can manhandle anyone and do whatever you want to do, and you’re just that girl. … You want to be in a summer dress or a tank top. It’s so silly that that’s how I feel when I’m wearing it, but I feel like the less clothes, the better.”

Greg Swales

The Khloud founder is just as passionate about what goes into her body as what goes on it.

“I love peptides. I don’t know if that’s a secret. I feel like everyone takes a peptide. … I take injections, which I love, and they just make you feel good and you look good. … I’m also a big vitamin girl and just staying active. There’s not one thing that’s gonna make anything all better.”

RELATED CONTENT:

source

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Set Phasers To Fun: The Year Of Star Trek Video Games Is Here

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated

Star Trek has been entertaining sci-fi fans for 60 years through TV shows, movies, books, and comics. There’s only one entertainment sector where the franchise historically falters: video games. If we’re being honest, there have only ever been a handful of really good Star Trek games, and the best ones came out literally decades ago. Because of that, any Star Trek fans looking to lose themselves in a good video game would be forgiven for giving a Bones-like prognosis to the state of modern Trek titles: “it’s dead, Jim!”

However, all of that is changing. We already got Star Trek: Voyager—Across the Unknown, a game that puts us in command of Voyager as the crew tries to make it back home from the Delta Quadrant. Later this year, we’ll be getting a SimCity-style game (Star Trek: Outposts Unknown) as well as a digital, customizable card battler (Star Trek Warp). Next year, Star Trek: Shadow Frontier will put us in control of Ro Laren, with Michelle Forbes reprising her role from The Next Generation. So, what’s the deal with all these games? What are they about, and when can you play them? Keep scrolling to replicate answers to all these questions!

Finally, You Can Kill Tuvix Yourself

The first game to kick off the Star Trek video game renaissance is Star Trek: Voyager—Across the Unknown, and it takes the franchise where it has never gone before. You take control of Voyager after it is zapped into the Delta Quadrant, and like Captain Janeway, you must help everyone find their way back home to the Alpha Quadrant. Much of the game is spent managing finite resources and using your best judgment of which systems to prioritize. Speaking of judgment, you’ll have to make snap calls in several adventures (including recreations of iconic Voyager dilemmas, like whether to kill Tuvix) that can save the day or possibly get everyone killed.

The general consensus on Star Trek: VoyagerAcross the Unknown (which is out now on console and PC) is that it’s good but not great. The most notable thing about it is arguably its sandbox nature and its emphasis on resource management. Historically, many Star Trek games have been shooters, real-time strategy games, and RPGs filled with bonkers puzzles. This was the first game to focus extensively on both resource management and narrative choices, making it arguably the best Starfleet captain simulation since the 2002 title Star Trek: Bridge Commander.

Two More To Beam Up

star trek

Surprisingly enough, we’re going to get two more Star Trek games this year. One of them is Star Trek: Outposts Unknown (which will be released for PC and console sometime this year). This game is designed like SimCity, but with a Trek twist. Basically, you are trying to build, maintain, and defend an outpost on a distant planet. That means exploring strange new worlds, gathering resources, and defending everyone from the planet’s most hostile creatures. While not exactly a cozy game, the Outposts Unknown demo (which is out on Steam) proved surprisingly relaxing, which may be good news for players who don’t like the intensity of games like StarCraft.

The other big Star Trek video game of 2026 is Star Trek Warp. This title is described as a “card battler” that lets players “choose characters from a huge roster of Star Trek legends, heroes, and villains, and deploy them at iconic locations like Ten-Forward and the Warp Core.” With seven virtual lanes to defend, this game is designed to keep you on your toes; the title also features both PvE and PvP modes. Overall, Warp sounds like the weird lovechild of League of Legends (what with the lane defense) and the old Star Trek Customizable Card Game. That might just help it appeal to both young fans and older fans.

A New Strategy And An Old Legend

The most exciting new Star Trek game won’t be coming out until next year. Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is a survival horror title where a Starfleet officer must survive on a mysterious planet. The twist? That officer is Ro Laren, who once left the Enterprise-D to join the Maquis before making her way back to Starfleet. Since her surprise appearance in Picard, fans have been wondering how she went from being a principled rebel to being a good, rule-abiding officer. Shadow Frontier may very well give us that explanation. If nothing else, it will give us something unique: a Silent Hill-type game set in the Star Trek universe.

So, what’s up with this sudden influx of Star Trek video games? The smart money is that Paramount is continuing to throw everything at the wall with this franchise to see what sticks. No Star Trek show is currently in development, and the only definitive thing on the horizon is a movie intended to give this universe its second huge reboot. Trek games (particularly those featuring characters like Ro Laren and Tuvok) are a way of appealing to older fans who like the IP and younger fans who just like gaming. By seeing what sells, Paramount can finally get to the bottom of a decades-old question: what the heck Star Trek fans actually want.


source

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Star Wars Is Dying Because It Can’t Stop Copying Marvel

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated

marvel star wars comics logo

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about one of the coolest things from the Star Wars prequels: podracing! Even the biggest critics of The Phantom Menace readily admitted that the podracing scenes were some of the most thrilling moments ever captured on film. This high-speed racing in a galaxy far, far away was so popular that it led to multiple podracing video games. Now, another game is on the horizon: Star Wars: Galactic Racer. Releasing on October 6th, this game will feature a solo campaign mode as well as a variety of multiplayer modes that pit players against different races.

Between excitement for this game and social media users rediscovering the darkly hilarious story of racer Ratts Tyerell, it’s clear that excitement for podracing is greater than ever before. That excitement is so great that it seems like a no-brainer for Lucasfilm to create a Star Wars TV show about a plucky young racer trying to win big. Unfortunately, we’re never going to get this or countless other great show ideas for a simple, depressing reason: the MCU. You see, Star Wars authorities like Dave Filoni are obsessed with creating their own Marvel-style cinematic universe, meaning that any shows that don’t directly connect to other series or movies will never see the light of day.

The Mando Cinematic Universe

If you somehow don’t know (what, you didn’t feel a disturbance in the Force?), there’s a slowly growing mountain of exciting Star Wars projects that got canceled before they ever got off the ground. This includes things like Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron movie, Guillermo del Toro’s Jabba the Hutt film, an untitled movie from Taika Waititi, and even an entire new trilogy from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. Some canceled projects were later transformed into TV shows for Disney+. This includes a solo Boba Fett movie and what was meant to be a solo Obi-Wan Kenobi trilogy. Interestingly, both TV shows featuring these characters underscore why Star Wars is doomed to fail.

You see, part of why The Book of Boba Fett sucked is that a huge chunk of its runtime was dedicated to other characters. Like, midway through its first and only season, this Boba Fett spinoff focuses on the Mandalorian and Grogu, with a bit of Ahsoka thrown in for good measure. Similarly, Obi-Wan Kenobi couldn’t simply focus on the wacky dessert misadventures of its titular character. Instead, Lucasfilm inexplicably threw in both Darth Vader and Princess Leia, which threatened to disrupt established Star Wars lore. Ahsoka is, of course, a live-action Rebels sequel with plenty of character overlap, and even The Acolyte features appearances by familiar names like Yoda, Ki-adi-Mundi, and even Darth Plagueis.

Let Me See That Thrawn

Why are potentially solid Star Wars shows getting clogged with characters that ultimately hurt the overall story? Simple: Dave Filoni wants this franchise to be more like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Part of the MCU’s charm is that characters can pop into each other’s movies. Iron Man is in the first Spider-Man movie, Black Widow is in the second Captain America movie, and so on. Done well, this lays the groundwork for major team-ups, like The Avengers. For years, there have been rumors that Star Wars is trying to put its own interconnected characters in place to loosely adapt Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire book into a show or film.

That sounds fine on paper; after all, Heir to the Empire is one of the best Star Wars books ever written. But it’s a book featuring characters that Disney likely won’t feature in their own adaptation, including all of the Original Trilogy’s primary heroes and fan-favorite new characters like Mara Jade. Even if we do eventually get an Heir to the Empire adaptation, it’s clear that it would have almost nothing in common with the book besides the presence of Thrawn. Adding some salt to the wound, the lack of any official updates means that this project is very likely dead.

No Heir, No Spare

If Filoni’s dream of creating an Heir to the Empire movie or series is over, then it means that we’ve had years of wasted Star Wars TV shows. Why bother using The Book of Boba Fett to set up more Mandalorian stuff? Why use The Mandalorian to set up Ashoka? Why try (and fail) to cause Ahsoka to set up Heir to the Empire? From the outside looking in, it seems like these shows were extensively tweaked to set up a project that we’ll never see. Episodes and entire series that could have been great ended up sucking, and for what? To set up yet another franchise project that ended up getting canceled.

Star Wars is dying because it can’t stop copying the MCU, which itself is on life support thanks to superhero fatigue. Just like that, two great franchises ruined themselves because they were too busy setting up the next big thing instead of giving fans what they really want: something original, for once!


source

Continue Reading