Let’s face it. The release of Wolfenstein: Youngblood has been predictably depressing. Angry men whining that the game has a SJW agenda. Angry men whining that it’s putting politics in their gaming. Angry men just being, you know. Angry men. And 2019 is peak angry internet man season, let’s be real. Parcel out a gleaming…
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Tokyo is an insane city. It’s beautiful, busy, bustling. It’s an insane, gleaming spiders web of interlocking streets, humming with life. But like any other city, it’s noisy. It’s really noisy. Which might be why Sony flew me there to road-test their new WF-1000XM3 earbuds. What better was to test their noise-cancelling capabilities? I’d never…
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Do you remember your first Walkman? I know I do. I recall feeling like I had a universe in my pocket. Well, not in my pocket. Clipped to the belt near my packet. Either way, I had a tiny, sleek box that would accept a cassette and click shut with a satisfying “schlick” noise. I’d…
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I was standing in a darkened bar, full to the brim of influencers, a vintage bike wedged behind me in a copse of fake trees. In front of me, a bank of cathode ray TVs blinked and sputtered. Next to them, a perfect replica of the Byers living room, with LEVIS X STRANGER THINGS spelled…
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When the Solo: A Star Wars Story trailer dropped recently, everyone had one name on their lips. Lando. It’s not that people weren’t excited about seeing a young Han, or finding out how he met Chewie, or seeing the maiden flight of a surprisingly clean Millennium Falcon. It’s that there he was. Lando frigging Calrissian….
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2017! What an unmitigated dumpster fire. Which I know is about as far from a hot take as you can get, but my point is this: somehow, escapism became a counterbalance. Some of the best games (and films, and movies, and albums, and books) came out this year, as if artistic antibodies hurried to fight…
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**SPOILER WARNING!** The following contains spoilers regarding the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas Special, “Twice Upon a Time”. And with that, the sprawling, often brilliant but mostly wildly inconsistent [Steven] Moffat run on Doctor Who is over! …Oh, right. We’re meant to be talking about the regeneration of Capaldi into Whittaker. Well, that was brilliant, clearly….
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This piece contains spoilers regarding Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is here. Rian Johnson, writer and director of Brick, The Brothers Bloom and Looper, has been given the reins to the Star Wars empire. I met and dined with Johnson back a few years, and he was utterly lovely. Quiet, friendly, humble….
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People are talking about how Discovery is a fresh take on the Star Trek formula, and I’d have to agree, though whether it’s better than the others remains to be seen. Taking place ten years before The Original Series (TOS, to fans), and settled snugly within the prime timeline, Discovery has been planted in fertile…
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Blade Runner 2049 has arrived at an odd time. Back when the original was released, 2019 seemed eons away, and the ravaged, rain-soaked cyberpunk Los Angeles seemed entirely within reach. The Cold War was at its height, and the Three Mile Island incident had highlighted just how easy it would be for America to succumb…
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When Twin Peaks: The Return was first announced, I sort of just assumed it’d be like everything else 2017 has had to offer: another helping of char-broiled butts. Why should the return of Twin Peaks, the most significant and artful television endeavour of all time, be anything but a let down? Lynch hadn’t made anything…
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