Entertainment
Dune: Part Three Trailer Is The End Of The Beginning
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published

Generations of sci-fi fans waited for Dune to finally be recognized as one of the greatest sci-fi epics in history. Frank Herbert’s grand vision was deemed unfilmable, unadaptable, and incomprehensible for the average movie-goer. That’s why the reveal of Dune: Part Three is so stunning. The story of the second novel, Dune Messiah, is coming to theaters. It’s being marketed as the conclusion of the Dune trilogy, which is odd, as in the books, it’s the end of the prologue to the real story yet to come.
Dune: Part Three Brings Dune Messiah To Life

After the events of Dune: Part Two, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) is seen in the teaser trailer as the leader of the Fremen, accepting his role as their Messiah, the Muad’Dib, while his lover Chani (Zendaya) appears to be pregnant. The teaser doesn’t reveal if it’s a boy or a girl, but what the brief two minutes and 30 seconds of footage does reveal is Paul’s doubts about being the Messiah. In the best line of the teaser, his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) reminds Paul that his father “didn’t start any wars.”
Dune: Part Three is again going to be full of amazing special effects, gorgeous shots of Arakkis, and even more all-out wars between the Fremen and everyone who wants them dead. Which, as it turns out, is everyone else. Towards the end of the trailer, we hear Paul say he’s not afraid to die, not yet, as what looks like the biggest explosion yet goes off right in front of him.
A Darker Story Than It Looks

Those who have read the books are excited that Dune: Part Three looks, amazingly, to contain the major plot beats of the novel. If Denis Villeneuve and Brian K. Vaughn’s script sticks to Frank Herbert’s masterpiece, this is going to be a dark, but very satisfying movie that’s not going to go the way fans of the films will expect. The trailer looks like it’s front-loading the battle scenes, but as with every Dune film, it’s the political intrigue and philosophical discussion that’s going to eat up most of the running time.
Joining the cast for Dune: Part Three is Robert Pattinson, as the Tleilaxu Face Dancer, Scytale, another role that’s going to remind people that playing Edward in Twilight was the odd role out for one of Hollywood’s strangest leading men. The returning Florence Pugh, as Paul’s wife Irulan, and Anna Taylor-Joy as his sister, Alia, will get substantially more to do in the third movie. Jason Momoa, who brings to life Duncan Idaho, will also get a lot more screen time now that he’s overcome the small problem of being dead.
The Last Dune Movie Because Studios Are Cowards

There’s a lot to unpack in just over two minutes of footage, and book readers can already pick out key scenes that have made the jump to the big screen, but it’s the marketing for Dune: Part Three that’s revealing a whole lot. We knew Denis Villeneuve was only to make three movies, but again, the original series is six novels, with Dune and Dune Messiah becoming mere footnotes by the time of the fourth novel, God-Emperor of Dune. No studio will ever adapt that particular novel about a human/sandworm hybrid galactic tyrant ruling for thousands of years as he brings humanity to his grand vision, “The Golden Path.”
All of that is to say that Dune: Part Three, referred to as the end of the trilogy, is going to be as far as Hollywood goes into Frank Herbert’s universe. This is the final time we’ll get to see Villeneuve’s vision for Arakkis, and in a landscape devoid of smart sci-fi, it might be the last great sci-fi blockbuster of this decade.
Entertainment
Amazon greenlights 1-hour and 3-hour delivery in select US cities ahead of its spring sale
Have you ever wished that you could simply make a run to the Amazon store instead of waiting *shudders* a business day? Well, Amazon just announced the next best thing — or the first best thing, if you’d prefer to not leave your house: Depending on where you live, three-hour or one-hour Amazon delivery could be a thing now.
Three-hour Amazon delivery is available for folks in more than 2,000 cities and towns in the US, and one-hour Amazon delivery is available in hundreds. (Head to amazon.com/getitfast to see your delivery options.)
Eligible items are the types of things for which you’d typically make a Target run: pantry staples, cleaning supplies, health and beauty items, baby essentials, and over-the-counter medications. Other categories include electronics, toys, clothing and accessories, and home and garden.
Mashable Trend Report
The best robot vacuum deals to shop ahead of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale: Dreame, Shark, and Eufy
The March 17 news comes the week before Amazon’s Big Spring Sale kicks off on March 25 (and runs through March 31). A huge chunk of items in the categories we just listed will be on sale.
You don’t need to be a Prime member to get access to most Big Spring Deals, nor do you have to be a Prime member to get one-hour or three-hour delivery as an option. However, speedy delivery is much cheaper for Prime members: One-hour costs $9.99 with Prime or $19.99 without Prime, and three-hour costs $4.99 with Prime or $14.99 without Prime.
It’d be nice if Amazon revived its free $5 delivery driver tip from the holidays in honor of this new delivery milestone. But either way, don’t forget to tip your driver.
Entertainment
Raunchy, Unrated Comedy Will Make You Hate Your New Neighbor
By Robert Scucci
| Published

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class, you know how hard it is to use simple language to get your point across. Written, published words are forever, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of overcomplicating things. Mark Twain famously said, “Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” As much as I wanted to enjoy 2020’s The Mimic, written and directed by Thomas F. Mazziotti, I mostly felt like I was back in college workshopping an overzealous undergrad’s short story that was clearly written with the help of a well-worn thesaurus.
It’s not that the movie isn’t funny at times, or that the characters aren’t great. It is, and they are. The problem is that nobody talks like this, and dialogue meant to sound witty often makes the whole thing play like a prolonged episode of Gilmore Girls. The Mimic certainly tries to be a smart and witty comedy, but I’d enjoy it more if it didn’t feel like it was constantly reminding me how smart and funny it was.
The Kid Is A Sociopath

The plot for The Mimic would make for a great sketch or even a sitcom episode, but its 81-minute runtime becomes tiresome once you get to know the principal characters. Our protagonist, simply billed as The Narrator (Thomas Sadoski), is a widower and a writer (it’s all starting to make sense now). When The Kid (Jake Robinson) becomes a presence in his life, The Narrator immediately suspects he might be a sociopath. His reasoning is simple: The Kid copies everything he does and seems to have no personality of his own. The Kid never breaks eye contact while conversing, suggesting he’s constantly sizing up whoever he’s interacting with.
The Kid also has a number of odd hobbies, including ducks (in general), wild mushrooms, and talking about a wife who is never seen on screen. Fascinated by The Kid, and eager to prove his theory, The Narrator consults a woman known only as The Librarian (Jessica Keenan Wynn) so he can learn more about sociopathy. His ultimate goal is to write a story about The Kid and impress the women who work at the local paper, who constantly “bicker over semicolons.” As the two men get to know each other better, it slowly dawns on The Narrator that he and The Kid aren’t so different after all, raising the very real possibility that The Narrator himself may also be a sociopath.

All of the above scenarios make for a solid comedy if done right, but the standout moments that truly made me cackle, like The Kid’s awkward, impromptu bathroom escapades with Gina Gershon’s “Woman at the Bar” character, are few and far between.
That’s It. That’s The Whole Thing
Being married to a woman who was a teenager when Gilmore Girls was the talk of the town, the only thought I had while watching The Mimic is that The Narrator and The Kid are basically male versions of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore. Every single conversation becomes a rapid-fire deluge of pop culture references, psychological ramblings, and gotcha-style exchanges that force the viewer to keep up with them, despite the fact that most of these exchanges don’t drive the story at all.

What’s unfortunate is that there are some tremendous zingers here, but you’ll probably miss them while trying to unpack every single line of dialogue in real time.
Circling back to that Creative Writing 101 vibe, The Mimic falls into all the familiar traps. Mazziotti is too precious with his jokes and doesn’t always know when to trim things down. Given the film’s 81-minute runtime, it often feels like there simply wasn’t enough story to stretch the premise into a feature-length film. It makes you wonder how much better this might have worked if the whole thing had been trimmed to a sharp 20 or 30 minutes.

Things get even more convoluted when the perspective zooms out and we learn that two characters known as The Director (M. Emmet Walsh) and The Writer (Doug Plaut) are actively writing the script for The Mimic, arguing about motivation and how much of each character’s backstory should be revealed to the audience. The whole thing smells like an undergrad’s notebook. The kind of smell you get when the PB&J they packed a week ago and forgot about breaches the Ziploc bag and leaks all over the first draft right before peer review.
The Mimic, as a concept, has a lot of promise. As a feature-length film, though, it ends up feeling like all flash and no smash. I wouldn’t mind spending more time with these characters because they’re genuinely fun and riff well off each other, but I wish we got a more distilled, cohesive version of what Mazziotti was trying to accomplish.

As of this writing, The Mimic is streaming for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
Disney Executive Sues Company For $40 Million Over Blatant Discrimination
By Jennifer Asencio
| Published

The Disney Corporation has experienced a lot of upheaval so far this year. First, Bob Iger announced he was stepping aside. Then Josh D’Amaro taking his place was overshadowed by the huge promotion of Dana Walden from Head of Entertainment to Chief Creative Officer. Now, Disney is being sued by another top exec for racial discrimination.
The plaintiff is Jay Ong, Head of Disney Games Group. His job has been to oversee the production, marketing, and sales of games that fall under the Disney umbrella. This includes not only Disney IP, like the Toy Story games, but also Marvel and Star Wars games, such as Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, which was announced in December at the 2025 Game Awards. The Disney games are performing above expectations right now, but Ong has taken a huge pay cut in the form of bonuses and incentives.
Suspicious Pay Cuts Despite Stellar Performance

The trouble started in February 2025, when Vice President of HR Natalia Strauch told him in an evaluation meeting that he was a “poor cultural fit” for the company. He was also told he was getting a pay cut, losing roughly $40,000 in bonuses and $150,000 in incentives. His work was called “exceptional,” but he was told he was taking the cut anyway.
Meanwhile, he alleges in his suit, Strauch also contacted his executive coach behind his back, which is against company policy. He claims this contact led to the reductions in his bonus and incentives, and that Strauch was trying to “dig up dirt” on him.
The discrimination, Ong contests, is against Asian employees at Disney. He alleges that the meeting with Strauch, the contact with his executive coach, and the reduction in compensation were all intended to drive him out of the company by embarrassing him. His suit alleges “such treatment is part of a broader pattern at Disney whereby those of Asian descent – the few which Disney deigns to hire – are discriminated against.”
On this basis, Ong is suing Disney for $40 million.
Ong’s History With House Of Mouse

While Ong is certainly not poor, the fact is that he has overseen the release of several successful Disney games during his tenure. Before managing the entire Disney library of video games, he was head of Marvel games for a decade. Since even HR admitted that his performance in his position was “exceptional,” the House of Mouse is going to find themselves in serious trouble if it turns out they’re actually discriminating against Ong and other Asian executives. It is clear the company’s treatment of Ong was unfair, given that the video game department is the only segment of Disney that hasn’t suffered under its recent leadership struggles.
At this time, Ong still lists Disney as his current employer. However, Disney has seen a lot of its executives depart recently, and a discrimination suit might lead to the departure of yet another. This time, though, it’s someone who was actually succeeding at his job, leading to a net loss for the Magic Kingdom.
