So some might say 40 years on, there’s little left to unearth beneath the Overlook’s snow. Yet we beg to differ. In times such as these, where your dear writer has spent more than two months in self-quarantine due to a pandemic, I’d argue there’s a wealth of information we’ve yet to learn from dear old Jack and his endless winter in the Colorado Rockies. Because as you probably realize by now, we’re all caretakers of the Overlook these days....

Netflix got in one more grim K-drama before Christmas: moon mystery The Silent Sea. Because nothing says Christmas like a spooky, abandoned lunar base! The drama stars Bae Doona (Cloud Atlas, Kingdom) as Dr. Song, an astrobiologist-turned-ethologist who agrees to go on a mission to the lunar base where her sister died in order to retrieve a mysterious “sample.” The story is set in a probably-too-near future in which climate change has rapidly reduced the Earth’s water supply, leaving the surviving population to fight for the unevenly distributed resource....

The subject came up when Copeland spoke with Den of Geek last year about Under the Volcano. Gracie Otto’s documentary is about Beatles producer George Martin’s Air Studios Montserrat, where Synchronicity sessions ultimately troubled the Police’s future. Copeland calls “Trouble Again,” the song he wrote and recorded with Derek Holt for Star Wars: Droids, “extremely obscure,” and says he was “not even aware that that was released anywhere.” It’s true, the opening credit sequence for the 1985 cartoon, which itself feels like a relic of the past, features only a minute of Copeland’s song, which has become a cult favorite among both Star Wars and obscure rock music fans....

When we sat down to speak with Gunn last month, we brought up the character and just why the filmmaker felt so endeared to this creature that he wanted to see Starro go head to head with his version of the Suicide Squad. “Starro is hilarious because he’s ridiculous,” Gunn explains. “He’s a giant, cerulean blue starfish, but he’s also fucking terrifying. When I was a kid, I thought that was the scariest thing of all time and also recognize that it was somewhat ridiculous....

But as enjoyable as every season of irrepressible Gallagher behavior can be, there’s little denying that each year features something so Shameless that it dwarfs the rest of the bad behavior that came before it. These are moments that are so crass in their unapologetic depravity that they transcend being more broken furniture on the South Side, and instead become a true work of Gallagher (or Milkovich) art. There are quite a few of these Gallagher-ups, but we’ve boiled it down to the 15 essentials ahead of the final season....

The Walking Dead: World Beyond Episode 8 The implications of Silas killing his father have followed the character around during his journey on The Walking Dead: World Beyond. Throughout his arc in the first season, that hint of violence, potential or actualized, has been the thing Hal Cumpston has projected most strongly. Not threatening, per se—Silas has never looked like a direct threat to anyone, shrinking back rather than using his size to menace—but fear....

The Witch is uncannily accurate – right down to the version of English that the characters speak – and unrelentingly disturbing. The story taps into ancient – and even modern – fears about nature, possession and black magic, coupled with the power of religious persuasion and sexual repression. It’s thoroughly eerie and atmospheric, and an incredibly confident debut from Eggers. We sat down with the young director and Anya Taylor-Joy – who is also quite amazing in the film – to discuss bringing this dark, dark fable to the screen....

In our current moment when fan culture constantly obsesses over what’s next—what year will we get that fabled reboot of the X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and what will the cast look like?—high-water marks from the past tend to go forgotten. This is particularly apt for X-Men: First Class since the new era of fun go-go mutant movies that film promised ultimately went on to crash and burn with the bad and worse one-two punch of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and Dark Phoenix (2019)....

If you didn’t know that there was an NES game based on Predator, then take comfort in the fact that you belong in the ranks of the happy many. There are dozens (if not hundreds) of NES games that are still being discussed all these years later for one reason or another, and Predator generally isn’t one of them. It’s a game that most are all too happy to forget about if they even knew about it in the first place....

In olden times, comets were seen as portents of death and disaster, so goodness knows what they’d have thought of something like the Rosetta mission of a few years back: the ambitious attempt to put a landing craft on the jagged bulk of a comet called Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Our ancestors probably would have thought we were completely mad. Or in league with the devil for creating such advanced machinery in the first place....

Sometimes they serve to hide the killer’s identity while other times they conceal a disfigured face, and other times, well, probably the production team just thought it’d look cool. Usually the idea is that it’s what lurks underneath the mask that’s scary, but a good horror movie mask is frightening in its own right. Here then are 20 of the scariest masks ever to turn up in horror movies:...

It’s worth bearing in mind, first of all, that the Transformers TV series, which had been running for two years by that point, had never killed off any of its characters – even though they often engaged in protracted brawls and laser battles. In Transformers: The Movie, a number of much-loved characters were not only shot and killed, but occasionally died in surprisingly graphic fashion. On a personal note, I still recall seeing the film at the age of about nine, and being slightly stunned at the sight of Prowl – he was the one who could transform into a police car – being shot in the chest, causing a gout of fire and smoke to issue from his eyes and mouth....

So who is John Doe? That’s a great question that John Doe himself would also like to answer. Sony officially describes John Doe as “a smart-ass milkman who talks as fast as he drives.” They also note that the character has “no memory of his past” and gets a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make his wish of finding a community come true, but only if he can survive an onslaught of savage vehicular combat....

Vikings Season 6 Episode 13 “If anyone kills him, it should be me. A brother’s privilege.” Like most shows, Vikings is at its best when the action and dialogue flow easily, and the seemingly disparate storylines offer some measure of cohesion. Even though there’s still significant physical and narrative distance among them, “The Signal” presents highly satisfying developments in Kiev, Kattegat, and aboard Ubbe’s ill fated voyage. It’s never easy to understand the Lothbrok brothers, and the circuitous route that eventually reunites Ivar and Hvitserk provides an opportunity for both to confess their true feelings about their strained relationship....

After two months and nine episodes, WandaVision came to a close. One of the more unique projects to come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the show mixed mystery and horror with sitcom pastiche and understandings of grief under the superhero umbrella. The first step in both Phase 4 and Disney+’s Marvel lineup came out a success and built towards future projects. Then again, its mysterious nature worked against it at times....

Mechanicals! “Bob” aside, those robo-machine-gun-killer-dog-cyborg-bastards haven’t had a proper name since they first skittered out of their spaceships to pick off humanity’s dregs. Now we finally know what to call them – not that calling them is in any way advisable; running and hiding is a far safer option. Surprisingly in light of the Mechanicals’ ‘shoot first, shoot questions later’ approach, Adina said that they’d be able to care for Emily and Sacha on board that spaceship....

The third season of the CW series will be its last, something that didn’t come as a surprise to creator Geoff Johns. “With all the brewing changes at the network, we were aware this was possibly the last season,” Johns admitted in a statement (via Deadline). However, he also provides an encouraging update for fans, telling revealing that he and his co-writers “wrote with [potential cancellation] in mind and have delivered what I believe to be the best season of Stargirl yet, with complete creative closure....

The Time Traveler’s Wife Episode 5 This week on The Time Traveler’s Wife, Henry and Clare still have complications dealing with friends and family. How do you tell your family you’re dating a man you met when you were six but he’s a younger version of the man you met? How do you become best friends with a guy who you can’t stand but everyone swears you’re besties in the future?...

Episode 3 of Marvel Studios’ What If…? animated series is an enjoyably ridiculous, twisty whodunnit revolving around SHIELD boss Nick Fury as he tries to work out who exactly is taking out his Avengers Initiative candidates before they’ve had a chance to join the team. At first, the episode seems to be pondering what would have happened if most of the OG Avengers (minus Captain America) were murdered pre-Battle of New York, but we later find out that the actual “what if?...

The first thing I notice on returning to the Federal Bureau of Control for the first time in over a year is just how shiny everything looks. Janitor Ahti has clearly done a bang-up job in my absence, despite his – SPOILERS – fairly significant duties in the Oldest House. Because the laptop I’m using – a top-of-the-line NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080-toting MSI GS66 Stealth – is comfortably the most powerful gaming setup I’ve ever used, ray tracing is maxed out on the 2K screen and it really shows wherever you look....