Fantasy: Last News

Denis Villeneuve’s stunningly realized film adaptations of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi saga Dune take an epic leap forward in Dune: Part Two, the sequel to the Oscar-winning first film starring Timothée Chalamet as possible Chosen One, Paul Atreides.Last seen at the end of Dune trekking into the desert like a twink Lawrence of Arabia, Paul is still a refugee on the desert planet Arrakis. Following the massacre of his father and the House of Atreides by savage Harkonnen forces, he’s hiding among the native Fremen, plotting to avenge his House, while also evading death or capture by his clan’s universe of enemies, including ruler of all, Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken).The first film felt mostly like a long-winded setup for a protagonist who took little action.

Time Bandits series charts its own clever course through history.The original movie, written by Gilliam and Monty Python mate Michael Palin, and featuring Palin and John Cleese in supporting roles, served up an eccentric, ruefully sardonic take on myth and modern times.The titular bandits, having stolen God’s map of the universe, had decided to use the all-powerful tool to hopscotch through time, ransacking wealth from the likes of Napoleon, Robin Hood, and King Agamemnon.Along the way, the Bandits, portrayed by six talented men of short stature, crashed through a time portal into the present-day bedroom of 11-year-old history buff Kevin, who was whisked off on the adventure of his life.Not only a spirited, escapist fantasy aimed at kids, Gilliam’s movie was a visual marvel that took fearless turns into dark corners of greed, consumerism, loss, and abandonment. The film’s notoriously bleak ending boldly subverted the common fairy tale that as long as the kid hero makes it home safe from Oz, then all will be rainbows and sunshine.The ten-episode series dabbles in such darkness, but series creators Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi don’t let the show live there.This Time Bandits — following the same premise of hurtling through history searching for loot and treasure — leans much harder on the humor, and that’s where it shines.

The Marvels, Nia DaCosta’s action-packed addition to a decent if not spectacular year for the films of the MCU.The ending we’re talking about is not only the film’s climactic showdown and good-humored epilogue but, since this is a Marvel movie, also the buzzworthy mid-credits sequence. All three components offer satisfactory closure to the story at hand, while heralding intriguing future adventures for the film’s titular trio of superheroes.The credits scene, in particular, foreshadows the first truly exciting MCU plot development since Marvel cracked open its now 33-film fictional universe into a kaleidoscopic multiverse of rarified worlds and reimagined characters.

do not call it a “board game,” I was advised by one friend in-the-know) was the focus of steady and significant controversy from critics, mostly concerned parent groups, who believed it to be connected to more than two dozen murders and suicides. It was not, of course, but facts have never gotten in the way of a good ol’ fashioned moral panic.Eventually, conservative Christian parents found other things over which to fret and ban — video games, Harry Potter, trans children (such diversity of hatred) — and Dungeons & Dragons (also known as “D&D” or “DnD”) fell off their radar, leaving only a bunch of lovable nerds and geeks and the occasional xckd comic reference in its wake.I’ve never played D&D, but it feels as though every other friend of mine has had some sort of history with the game.

Stretching the phrase “inspired by true events” to its bare limits, Cocaine Bear (★★★☆☆) takes off from the stranger-than-fiction real-life tale of a Kentucky drug runner who, in 1985, dumped bundles of cocaine from a plane over Georgia, then perished trying to parachute after the drugs, a large, expensive portion of which were found and somehow consumed by a 500-lb. black bear deep in the Georgia woods.Anyone interested in the dead-serious facts of the case can grab a copy of Sally Denton’s comprehensive chronicle The Bluegrass Conspiracy, originally published in 1990.This movie, on the other hand, takes a bold leap off that plane with Thornton’s duffel bags full of brown paper-wrapped bricks of blow, and never looks back.Directed by Pitch Perfect mogul Elizabeth Banks, and scripted by Jimmy Warden, Cocaine Bear leaves no gruesome gag unturned, no outrageous one-liner untold, serving up the sort of anything-goes big-screen comedy that comes along rarely.Mid-rampage, the coke-fueled bear snorts a line off someone’s severed leg.

It’s a wonder that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (★★★☆☆) should work as well as it does, or feel half as transporting as it does, when, by the looks of it, the actors were planted inside a studio for the majority of the action, and it shows. For the size-shifting superhero’s third solo MCU outing, director Peyton Reed — also at the helm for Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp — filmed much of this journey to the sub-atomic fantasia known as the Quantum Realm using technology that surrounds the actors in an immersive digital environment. Rather than emoting towards blank green and blue screens, Paul Rudd, as thief-turned-Avenger Ant-Man a.k.a. Scott Lang, can gaze across a virtual Quantum Realm and perform face-to-face opposite whatever outlandish creatures the filmmakers might imagine.

Priscilla Tolkien, the youngest child of The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, was Vice President of The Tolkien Society.Priscilla Tolkien was born in Oxford, England, where her father was a professor at the university. Her childhood teddy bear was named Bingo, and in early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.