Fantasy Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

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.

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.

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.

More exhausting than thrilling, Netflix’s latest period fantasy adventure, “Shadow and Bone,” will have a tough time breaking out of the fan base already built by the books on which it is based, written by Leigh Bardugo. It’s a show that never quite figures out its tone or audience, taking itself way too damn seriously to produce thrills while also being shockingly light on actual action.

https://t.co/P0u2mDFrizIn shock to learn of the death of Terry Goodkind, master epic fantasy author. He was also a very close friend, but he was an extremely private man so I didn't share photos and stories.

Ian Holm was a British actor whose many roles included the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the android Ash in “Alien” (1979). Other notable roles for Holm include trainer Sam Mussabini in “Chariots of Fire” (1981), Napoleon in “Time Bandits” (1981), and Father Vito Cornelius in “The Fifth Element” (1997).

Author Marlon James (Photo courtesy CAP UCLA)

Henry Cavill was really thirsty when he filmed bathing scenes in his new Netflix hit The Witcher after refusing to drink for a day.