If you’ve been on social media the past few days, you’re probably wondering why Foghorn Leghorn, the boisterous rooster from Looney Tunes, is giving pep talks to your favorite anime and video game characters. It turns out the joke has roots going as far back as 2021, but has gained new life in the past few days.
If you’ve been on social media the past few days, you’re probably wondering why Foghorn Leghorn, the boisterous rooster from Looney Tunes, is giving pep talks to your favorite anime and video game characters. It turns out the joke has roots going as far back as 2021, but has gained new life in the past few days.
Another month, another Netflix series enrapturing audiences and becoming the talk of the web. April’s, it seems, goes to Baby Reindeer, a miniseries based on actual events experienced by creator Richard Gadd. As names have been changed, it’s really no surprise that amateur sleuths are trying to figure out the true identity of some of the key characters. But Gadd would really like viewers to redirect their focus, telling them they are only missing out on the point of Baby Reindeer.
Richard Gadd took to social media (via BBC) to request one thing to Baby Reindeer viewers: “Please don’t speculate on who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show. Lots of love, Richard.”
One of Gadd’s primary goals with Baby Reindeer was to address stalking and abuse in a way that few shows have. As per Netflix, “Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up. It has a mystique. It’s somebody in a dark alley way. It’s somebody who’s really sexy, who’s very normal, but then they go strange bit by bit. But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality I hadn’t seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
The two Baby Reindeer characters that fans have zeroed in on trying to figure out the identities of are stalker Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning) and TV writer Darrien O’Connor (Tom Goodman-Hill), who grooms and rapes the lead character, Donny Dunn, who is both played by and based on Gadd himself.
Here is a partial synopsis: “The story of Baby Reindeer centers on struggling comedian Donny Dunn’s (Gadd) strange and layered relationship with a woman named Martha (Jessica Gunning), whose initially friendly demeanor unravels as she begins to stalk Donny relentlessly…Their first interaction is innocent enough: While working his shift as a bartender, Donny shows an act of kindness to Martha, a customer whose vulnerability is readily apparent. But, as the saying goes, “no good deed goes unpunished,” and this casual encounter sparks a suffocating obsession that threatens to wreck both their lives and forces Donny to face his deeply buried trauma.”
Baby Reindeer is doing quite well on Netflix, having topped the English TV chart with more than 13 million viewers.
What do you think of Baby Reindeer? Give us your mini review below.
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The big trailer drop this week finally showed some of Hugh Jackman in action as Logan in the much-anticipated superhero film of the summer, Deadpool & Wolverine. Fans marveled (pun intended) at finally seeing Jackman don the iconic yellow suit from the comics that has been put aside for every movie adaptation in favor of black leather. Eagle-eyed viewers also caught some surprising appearances of additional characters from the X-Men film universe in a quick shot from the trailer. This just adds fuel to the fire of fan speculation on who might make cameos in the fourth-wall-breaking sequel.
As Marvel Studios continues to explore multiverses and even work in some actors from past roles, such as Kelsey Grammer’s return as Beast in a post-credits scene from The Marvels, fans are curious if any of the fan favorites of established franchises are also willing to return. Deadline reports that Famke Janssen recently addressed this question. Janssen spoke with ComicBook.com when she was asked if she’d ever be reprising her turn as Jean Grey for any upcoming MCU project. Janssen replied, “I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t expect to come back after dying as Jean Grey. I came back as the Phoenix [The Last Stand], and I came back in flashback scenes in The Wolverine, and then in Days of Future Past.”
The former evil Bond girl also added that the additional appearances of Jean Grey in the later X-Men movies “were all surprises that I never anticipated.” While it is a long shot that she spill some beans about possibly showing up in Deadpool & Wolverine, she was still inquired about it and responded with, “I don’t know. I doubt it, but you never know.” Meanwhile, Janssen can be seen in the upcoming Boy Kills World as an evil dystopian ruler named Hilda van der Koy. Our own Chris Bumbray just released his review of the film, saying, “Overall, I had a total blast with this demented actioner. Hopefully this finds a theatrical audience, as it really is a great time on the big screen. I had a blast.” Read his full review HERE.
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It’s time for a new episode of the Real Slashers video series, and with this one we’re taking another look at one of my personal favorites, director Scott Spiegel’s 1989 film Intruder (pick up a copy of the unrated Blu-ray HERE). I previously covered this movie with an episode of Best Horror Movie You Never Saw and Emilie Black wrote about it for WTF Happened to This Horror Movie. Now it’s Tyler Nichols’ turn to dig into it, and you can find out what he had to say about Intruder by watching the video embedded above.
Scripted by Spiegel (who wrote Evil Dead II with Sam Raimi) from a story he crafted with producer Lawrence Bender, Intruder has the following synopsis: It’s 10 pm and the employees of Michigan’s Walnut Lake Supermarket are in for a really bad night. The place is shutting its doors for good, and the night crew has a long shift ahead of them… longer than they think! The lovely check-out girl has a deranged ex-boyfriend, the store’s phone lines are cut, and the employees start dying in the most stomach-churning ways imaginable. A deranged killer is on the loose in the grocery store! Can anyone stop this murderous intruder?
The film stars Elizabeth Cox, Renée Estevez, Danny Hicks, David Byrnes, Eugene Glazer, Billy Marti, Burr Steers, Craig Stark, Ted Raimi, and Sam Raimi. There are also appearances by Alvy Moore and Tom Lester of Green Acres, Three Stooges regular Emil Sitka, and Bruce Campbell.
Here’s what Real Slashers is all about: Ahhh the ’80s. A simpler time where the blood ran red, the boobies swung freely, and the weed was copiously smoked. A time where rampant killers were simply excuses for excessive sex and over the top murder. Yes, we’re looking at an era where the slasher movie ran wild over cinemas everywhere. Today, we’re looking at “Real Slashers.”
The show is Written, Narrated, and Edited by Tyler Nichols, Produced by John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
What do you think of Intruder, and how did you like this episode of Real Slashers? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
A couple of the previous episodes of Real Slashers can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!
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Steam has an oft-exploited refund policy, whereby any player is able to request their money back for a game that they bought within the last 14 days, and played for less than two hours. (Selling a game that’s shorter than two hours? Sucks to be you.) But it seems that people buying games with so-called “Advanced…
Steam has an oft-exploited refund policy, whereby any player is able to request their money back for a game that they bought within the last 14 days, and played for less than two hours. (Selling a game that’s shorter than two hours? Sucks to be you.) But it seems that people buying games with so-called “Advanced…
Hugh Grant has been expanding on his career beyond his famous rom-coms, having starred in last year’s special effects-laden big-budget films Wonka and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Grant will be returning to his popular franchise with Renée Zellweger for the recently announced upcoming fourth film in the Bridget Jones movies, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. The plot is said to “pick up with Bridget in her early fifties, as she navigates the challenges of modern life while juggling the responsibilities of motherhood.”
Grant recently spoke with the publication People as he teases the next installment in the series. The English actor stated,
It is very moving as well as funny. It’s partly based on Helen Fielding’s experiences of bringing up two children by herself after her husband died. And so Bridget is bringing up two kids and wondering whether she should ever go back to dating. It’s a very good script.”
Universal Studios and Working Title are the studios, with Michael Morris (Better Call Saul, 13 Reasons Why, Bloodline), Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, Dirty Pretty Things, Serenity), and Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) joining the cast. Zellweger returns as the bumbling yet endearing Bridget Jones, Hugh Grant plays the antagonistic Daniel Cleaver, and Emma Thompson plays Dr. Rawlings. Meanwhile, Ejiofor and Woodall’s characters remain a secret.
Inspired by Helen Fielding’s popular novels and a previous column she wrote as the title character for The Independent, the Bridget Jones film series revolves around Zellweger’s Bridget Jones, a hapless single woman lost in love who explores a complex web of relationships. The series began in 2001 with Bridget Jones’s Diary, followed by the sequels Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Bridget Jones’s Baby, debuting in 2004 and 2016. The trilogy was a surprising box office banger with $760 million worldwide in ticket sales.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is being planned to release in theaters and on Peacock on Valentine’s Day 2025.
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PLOT: A deaf and mute warrior (Bill Skarsgård) raised by a mysterious shaman (The Raid’s Yayan Ruhian) attempts to topple a repressive regime.
REVIEW: Last year, Bill Skarsgård played a suave villain in Keanu Reeves’ John Wick: Chapter 4, but notably stayed out of the action scenes. Had the movie been released after Boy Kills World, I think the part would have been radically reimagined, with the actor putting himself through the kind of physical transformation that changes careers. Watching the hulking, 6’3 actor blast his way through opponents in Boy Kills World, it’s hard to believe that the same guy, just a few years ago, was best known as Pennywise the Clown. Indeed, Boy Kills World is the perfect launchpad for Bill Skarsgård to become a major action hero (it bodes well for his next film – the remake of The Crow).
The movie itself is a pretty wild, dystopian action epic with heavy doses of black comedy and outrageousness mixed in. While Skarsgård’s character is mute, he narrates the film via his inner monologue, affecting the last voice he heard, being a voiceover track from an old-school arcade game. Originally, when I saw the film at TIFF in the fall, Skarsgård did the voice. In the version being released, the voiceover has been done by Archer‘s H. Jon Benjamin, which does sound more arcade-like. This mostly affects the first half-hour of the film, with it affecting a more (intentionally) comic vibe. I can’t be 100% sure, but I believe that as the movie gets more serious in the second half, there’s a lot less voiceover, which is a solid creative choice. While I was originally dead-set against the change, the finished product played relatively well. The character is also shown to be a master lip-reader, something which is used for comedy when he encounters Isaiah Mustafa (It: Chapter 2) as a particularly mumbly ally.
The action in this movie kicks off early, with the premise being that the titular “boy” is an orphan after his family was killed by the minions of his city’s evil ruler, Hilda van der Koy (Famke Janssen). Every year, the van der Koy’s have a ritualistic “culling” where they murder civilians live on TV. The Boy has himself taken so that he can kill his way to Hilda, with him facing off with Hilda’s son Gideon (Brett Gelman) and her two daughters, Melanie (Michelle Dockery) and June 27 (Jessica Rothe). The latter is an LED-helmet-wearing badass, whose skills rival Boy’s (as does her physique, with Rothe wearing a midriff-bearing jumpsuit that shows off her shredded abs).
The movie is absolutely jam-packed with action, with it being a mix of hand-to-hand and gunplay, most of which seems to be done by Skarsgård himself. Some of the gore has sprinklings of producer Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead worked in (perhaps). One of the most notably disgusting bits involves Boy using a box grater in a gory scrap, and another highlight is a hand-to-hand fight where his opponent keeps losing parts of his body.
Of course, the action is way over the top, with it a hard-R rated actioner by design. The cast is unique in that neither Skarsgård nor Rothe are action veterans, making them feel like fresh choices to lead a movie like this. Andrew Koji is also cast against type in a mostly non-fighting role as a motormouthed resistance member who teams up with Boy, while Sharlto Copley also shows up to chew some scenery. Everyone seems to be relishing their chance to amp up the madness, especially Dockery in a role far removed from her iconic turn on Downton Abbey. She looks like she’s having a blast. Yayan Ruhian from The Raid movies has his most prominent role in a North American movie to date as Boy’s mentor, with him participating in the film’s best fight sequence – which seems a given.
Overall, I had a total blast with this demented actioner. Director Moritz Mohr makes an impressive debut, and the film includes enough world-building that it could easily spawn a franchise (check out the short that got him the job here). Hopefully this finds a theatrical audience, as it really is a great time on the big screen. I had a blast.
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When it was announced that Liam Neeson would be playing the lead in a reboot of The Naked Gun, the sound of people collectively going “Whaaaa??” was heard across every precinct. Liam Neeson? The guy who reinvented his career by pretty much only taking on action movies when he was in his mid-50s? Heck, even Neeson himself was a little nervous about whether he could handle such rapid-fire comedy. Now, original Naked Gun director and co-creator David Zucker is weighing in, casting his own skepticism on the project.
Speaking with TMZ, David Zucker said of the upcoming Naked Gun entry – the first in three decades – “We were not excited about having the franchise given to other people. At the time, I couldn’t believe it because we thought we had a great script, and they loved the script from what we heard. I don’t have any control over it. I’m not involved, and they haven’t asked me for my help…It’s completely their concept, and they’re just going to go ahead and do it.” Adding to this, he noted that he has zero involvement whatsoever. “Paramount is just going ahead and doing it. They haven’t involved me. I just don’t have any thoughts on it. They’re just gonna do what they want, that’s Hollywood…They have not contacted me to make a cameo or be involved with the writing.”
The spoof genre is a tough one to pull off, which is why there are so many awful spoof movies out there. Even the team of ZAZ – David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker – has made their clunkers. But their best works are top-notch representations of the genre. As Zucker added of The Naked Gun, “Whether or not they’re gonna do a job with it…This kind of spoof – I mean, it’s not rocket science but it’s not easy.” He, too, doesn’t see a need for the movie because he feels younger generations are already discovering the works of ZAZ such as The Naked Gun and Airplane!
The Naked Gun spawned from the too-short-lived Police Squad! (just six brilliant episodes), itself the project that the Zuckers and Abrahams focused on instead of Airplane II. That was a good call to say the least, but will this reboot be? We’ll have to wait and see if Liam Neeson can pull off the task when it hits theaters on July 11th, 2025.
Are you looking forward to this reboot of The Naked Gun or should it have been left with the legacy of Leslie Nielsen? Share your thoughts below.
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