Van Helsing Season 1 Episode 1 One thing becomes abundantly clear three minutes into the pilot of SyFy’s latest genre offering Van Helsing; this is not your teenaged daughter’s vampire story. Gone is the inherent sexiness we’ve come to associate with the highly attractive creatures of the night, and in its place a gritty, grimy, visceral appearance that articulates the reality of an existence that revolves solely around securing basic human needs in the face of post-apocalyptic obstacles....

What will WandaVision episode 5 do with this information? Thankfully, Marvel and Disney+ have released an uncommonly revealing teaser to give us some ideas. Give it a watch below. There is certainly plenty to unpack here. SWORD now has first person intel inside what they’re calling the “Westview Anomaly” thanks to the return of Monica Rambeau. After the clip pauses to share Darcy’s episode 4 theory that this is a sitcom (you are correct, Darcy!...

You could say it all started with one Paul William Bettany. Last month, the star of Marvel’s WandaVision got fans’ attention when he started teasing a new character arriving in the MCU spinoff series that had miraculously survived online leaks, which in turn meant that Evan Peters’ “Pietro” Maximoff definitely wasn’t who he was referring to. “There is one character that has not been revealed,” Bettany told Esquire. “And it is very exciting....

And so we now live in an era where damn near every form of entertainment that has ever existed is at our fingertips. Except of course for new movie novelizations, which are now more of a prestige, boutique thing (see Charles Ardai’s novel of The Nice Guys for an example) than the merchandising given they once were. At the risk of turning into a grumpy, sighing real-life version of The Simpsons‘ “old man yells at cloud” meme, I will say that the fall from grace of the movie novelization is a bummer because it denies readers the opportunity to see how a product intended purely as a quickie cash grab can become a classic in its own right....

Here’s why the visual homages in the new “Star Trek Day” Picard season 3 trailer are as much about the Kirk, Spock, and Bones era, as it is about The Next Generation. Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Trailer Since the debut of Picard season 2, showrunner Terry Matalas has made it clear that his love for the classic The Original Series films informed the visual style of the series, noting that the uniform styles in season 2 were specifically an homage to Kirk and Spock’s costumes in The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock....

The idea of playing a game to achieve a high score is one of those concepts that wormed its way into our pop-culture consciousness around the time that gaming itself reached the mainstream. To be fair, many gamers love inserting quarters into arcade cabinets, outperforming rival players, and recording their scores after each session. To some hardcore gamers, acquiring an all-time high score is serious business. Some players devote their lives to perfecting runs that maximize their in-game points....

What We Do in the Shadows Season 3 Episode 3 After constant battles, stakings, stalkings, hauntings, and curses, What We Do in the Shadows season 3, episode 3, “Gail,” finds love, or something like it. It comes from the past, is completely unexpected, and very hard to maneuver. Yes, I’m going to start with Laszlo’s (Matt Berry) jalopy, which is more than he can do, even with Colin Robinson’s (Mark Proksch) help....

What We Do in the Shadows Season 3 Episode 5 The vampires get back to their official duties on What We Do in the Shadows season 3 episode 5 “The Chamber of Judgement.” Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) are poised to take the throne at the center of the judicial altar in the subbasement office of the Vampiric Council. They poise for quite a while. So long, in fact, it becomes unjudicial....

Despite the name, Flesh and Blood is a relatively simple TCG that won’t leave you covered in cuts and bruises—not literally, anyway. Hailing from Legendary Story Studios in New Zealand, the game involves pitting your hero against your opponent’s in a back-of-forth game of might and magic, using equipment, abilities, and some plain old wits to get the upper hand and achieve victory. It’s a quick game that values making fast moves and keeping everyone light on their feet until someone reigns supreme....

Lost Ark is one of the latest titles to come under fire for egregious microtransactions. It all started (or at least drew gamer ire en masse) with the launch of the MMO’s Argos Abyss raid. Like raids in other MMOs, the Argos Abyss tests player skill, cooperation, and equipment strength. In order to participate in the raid, though, players need an item level of at least 1370. At first, that requirement didn’t sound too bad....

In 1996, Joseph Tobin was a professor of early education at the University of Hawaii when he decided to walk into a hobby store in Kaimuki for field research. “They had some Pokémon stuff—the Japanese versions of the cartridges,” Tobin recalls. “People could buy them in this store before they were even available elsewhere. We interviewed the owner and decided that Pokémon would be a really interesting thing to study....

Given the resumes of the teams working on this project (which include some of the talent responsible for Streets of Rage 4 and the brilliant Scott Pilgrim game), it’s surprisingly easy to be confident in their ability to craft a modern TMNT beat ’em up that feels worthy of the surprisingly enduring TMNT franchise and the best TMNT video games. Yet, no matter how good the game could be, it may be unfair to judge it on the basis of how it recaptures that exact feeling many of us conjure whenever we think about those original titles....

Britney’s conservatorship, overseen by her father Jamie Spears, has been profitable. With a net worth of over $60 million, maybe too profitable to ever get resolved. It could be a form of life imprisonment and wannabe jailers appear to come out of the woodwork regularly in Britney’s career. Spears also currently has a restraining order against Sam Lutfi, one of her former managers. According to “Framing Britney Spears,” court documents call the singer a “high-functioning conservatee....

On another Earth, somewhere in the countless strands of reality in the multiverse, The Amazing Spider-Man 3 opened in theaters on June 10, 2016. The film would have followed 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and might well have marked the end of both Andrew Garfield’s tenure in the suit and director Marc Webb’s behind the camera. But while Garfield and Webb did both exit the Spider-Man franchise–at least until now for Garfield–it was instead the prior film that proved to be both men’s swan song....

The new installment, which is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, in conjunction with Treyarch and Raven Studios, will take the series back to the conflicts of World War II for the first time since 2017. It’ll feature an all-new single-player campaign that tackles an alternate history “what if” scenario where a special ops unit must foil the Nazi’s plan to find Adolf Hitler’s successor at the tail end of the war....

It’s no secret that the settlement that first made its debut in season 5 has gone through some serious shit over the past few seasons. Not only has it survived walker invasions but also assaults by the Wolves, Negan and the Saviors, and most recently the Whisperers, who drove a massive horde of the undead through the settlement, tearing down many of its walls and laying waste to buildings. The place has withstood more than any other setting in the show’s 10-season history....

The report claims that Head of Xbox Phil Spencer told employees that “we absolutely will end up on iOS” in regards to the chances of some of Microsoft services being available on Apple devices sometime in the future. As we previously mentioned in a report on Microsoft’s battle with Apple over this matter, xCloud and Game Pass are currently blocked from appearing on Apple’s App Store due to policies that prevent approved iOS apps from offering users the chance to make purchases and downloads from outside of the Apple ecosystem....

One of the most popular price tags of mobile video games is free…ish. Those games, colloquially called “free-to-play games,” ask for an initial investment of $0.00 and generally charge real money for certain services such as experience boosts and special cosmetics. It’s sadly not uncommon for a free-to-play mobile game to push items that give players an unfair advantage, which makes the occasional free-to-play mobile title that is fun with fair microtransactions all the more noteworthy....

Marvel Studios is in absurdly fine financial shape. It seems odd to state that out loud, but given the “sky is falling” pieces running lately, it feels pertinent to remind folks of this fact. Their latest film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, has grossed $700 million worldwide to date while being in theaters for less than two weeks. It will certainly cross $800 million. Considering the first Doctor Strange tapped out at $677 million worldwide, and opened at less than half what the sequel did, this is a commercial win for a studio that can still demonstrate audience-brand loyalty to a stunning degree....

When you add on the terrible direct-to-video animated films Mattel regularly pumped out (no disrespect to the genuinely funny Life in the Dreamhouse) and a long development cycle that saw Anne Hathaway, Amy Schumer, Diablo Cody, and others sign on and drop out, Barbie seemed like a disaster in the making. But then came Greta Gerwig. With two great movies under her belt (Lady Bird and Little Women), Gerwig brought on an all-star cast with Margot Robbie as Barbie, Ryan Gosling as Ken, and a whole host of actors playing alternate versions of the couple, including Shang-Chi‘s Simu Lui, new Doctor Who Ncuti Gatwa, and Insecure‘s Issa Rae....