Fantasy Island – Hungry Christine/Mel Loves Ruby

  • Title: Fantasy Island (2021) – Hungry Christine/Mel Loves Ruby
  • IMDb: link

Fantasy Island -  Hungry Christine/Mel Loves Ruby television review

Everything is new again. Again. For the second time Fantasy Island is rebooted (anyone remember the 90s version with Malcolm McDowell?). Roselyn Sanchez is cast as the island’s caretaker, although the role of her sidekick won’t be filled until the end of the episode when one of the characters gets a… tattoo. The premise of the original show is kept here with guests arriving at the mysterious island to live out a fantasy (which may not always go as planned). It’s not awful, which is more than I can say for some of these reboots, but I don’t know that there’s much magic here either.

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Deadpool: Black, White, & Blood #1

Deadpool: Black, White, & Blood #1 comic reviewFollowing in the footsteps of Batman, and other heroes who have gotten their own black-and-white anthology series, Deadpool gets three tales in Deadpool: Black, White, & Blood #1 which feature the wisecracking hero’s wacky adventures in three colors. In “Red All Over,” Deadpool calls Honey Badger for help in wrangling a zombie zebra (or as Wade names it a zombiebra) and have a heart-to-heart with the CEO of the company creating undead killing machines.

“Hotline to Heaven” involves Deadpool’s overreaction when discovering he can’t stream an old Bea Arthur movie and his quest to find a copy of the film. Deadpool is invited to check out Omega Red‘s new home in “Born in the USZORSUSR” only to see Ursa Major show up in an attempt to take over Omega Red’s “utopia” in the Canadian wilderness. Poor Canada.

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Big Doll House

  • Title: Big Doll House
  • IMDb: link

Big Doll House movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes us back to 1971’s Big Doll House. Produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman, the film kicked-off a jungle subset of the women-in-prison genre starring Judith Brown, Roberta Collins, Pam Grier, Brooke Mills, Pat Woodell, and Gina Stuart as inmates in a prison of an unnamed tropical country run by an evil warden (Christiane Schmidtmer) and overseen by the Nazi-like torturer Lucien (Kathryn Loder). Collins, Grier, and Brown would all return for the similarly themed Women in Cages released the same year.

Pushing the boundaries of what was allowed in the loosened ratings of the time, the independent film follows the basic format of the exploitation genre putting the women in various compromising positions guaranteed to get their clothes off such as strip searches, group shower scenes, catfights (one even in mud), lesbian and bondage scenes, and torture. We also get a revolution and escape plot, which would become part of the sub-genre, culminating in the group’s attempt to escape the prison during the movie’s climax. Although not the main character, the film is notable for launching Grier’s career in this genre and blaxploitation films.

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Leverage: Redemption – The Paranormal Hacktivity Job

  • Title: Leverage: Redemption – The Paranormal Hacktivity Job
  • IMDb: link

Leverage: Redemption - The Paranormal Hacktivity Job TV review

With the boys out of town, “The Paranormal Hacktivity Job” offers an all-girls episode as Parker (Beth Riesgraf) finds a client (Gillian Saker) scared out of her home by a pair of con men (Mike Massimino and T.C. Matherne). Using the bar as bait for another of their swindles, Sophie (Gina Bellman) tempts the pair in to use the high-tech haunting techniques allowing Parker to explain the pair’s actions to their client. The Halloween episode offers a late twist with the arrival of an assassin (Matt McTighe) whose fear of ghosts, and the methods already deployed in the bar (raised one-hundred fold), become tools to take down another criminal as well and stop an assassination.

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What If…? – Episode One

  • Title: What If…? – Episode One
  • wiki: link

What If...? - Episode One television review

Since it first debuted back in 1977, Marvel Comics’ What If…? has asked the question what might have happened if events had turned out differently. With decades of comic history to pull from, the on-again/off-again series examined both big and large changes and what ripples they might have caused. The Disney+ series takes the concept and applies it the MCU (meaning it has far less history to diverge in creating alternative timelines). The first episode asks the question of what might have happened if Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) had received the super-soldier serum rather than Steve Rogers (one of the most prominent characters not voiced by the actor who played him in the films)? It turns out to be a fun idea that the series will repeat in the next episode which uses a very similar set-up of swapping characters.

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