While the Pikachu ex might be making all the headlines and drawing all the wider attention, Pokémon TCG’s Surging Sparks set is pulling in resale prices on multiple cards like the game hasn’t seen in years. And although the opening fortnight’s craziness is beginning to calm down, it’s still a surprisingly pricy…
After more than a decade on PC and console, Final Fantasy XIV is coming to smartphones. Square Enix’s hit MMO revealed a mobile version this week that has the potential to bring millions of new players into the rich RPG world of Hydaelyn. It also raises a lot of questions about just how exactly a mobile version of…
Xbox is expanding its streaming options and will now let players stream some games they already own that aren’t included in Game Pass on any device that supports it.
Xbox is expanding its streaming options and will now let players stream some games they already own that aren’t included in Game Pass on any device that supports it.
In case you missed it, the nominees for the 10th annual Game Awards, set to air on December 12, have been announced. Some frontrunners were predictably nominated in multiple categories, such as Astro Bot and Metaphor: ReFantazio, which scored seven and six nominations, respectively. But there were some pleasant…
In case you missed it, the nominees for the 10th annual Game Awards, set to air on December 12, have been announced. Some frontrunners were predictably nominated in multiple categories, such as Astro Bot and Metaphor: ReFantazio, which scored seven and six nominations, respectively. But there were some pleasant…
Lionsgate is here to give you a shot in the arm with the latest trailer for its highly-anticipated action-thriller Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. Directed and written by Christian Gudegast, the Den of Thieves 2: Pantera trailer presents a balls-to-the-wall diamond heist in Europe, with ‘Big Nick’ O’Brien (Gerard Butler) and Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) burying the hatchet for a bullet-chewing-caper that could set them up for life.
Here’s the official synopsis for Den of Thieves 2: Pantera:
In Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, Big Nick is back on the hunt on the mean streets of Europe, closing in on Donnie, who is embroiled in the dangerous world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia, as they plot a massive heist of the world’s biggest diamond exchange.
Jordan Bridges (Den of Thieves, Mona Lisa Smile), Swen Temmel (The Covenant, Boss Level), Evin Ahmad (Snabba Cash, Beyond Dreams), Yaen Zates Atour (The Witcher, Robin Hood), Salvatore Esposito (Fargo, The Perfect Dinner), Orli Shuka (Gangs of London, War Machine), and Rico Verhoeven (Black Lotus, Undercover) star alongside Butler and Jackson Jr. as primary cast members.
Today’s Den of Thieves 2: Pantera trailer turns the heat to 11 with enough bullets, explosives, and high-stakes heisting to satisfy audiences looking to escape into a world overrun with criminals, pipe dreams, and best-laid plans gone to s**t. I can get behind Gerard Butler and Jackson Jr. joining forces, which is an intriguing enemies-to-friends narrative, especially since both have enough on the line to make them fight tooth and nail to complete the job. My only question is: Can they stop arguing long enough to map a clear path toward victory?
Jordan Bridges, Evin Ahmad, Swen Temmel, Salvatore Esposito, Ciryl Gane, Dino Kelly, Orli Shuka, Rico Verhoeven, and more join Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. for one of the new year’s most testosterone-filled action blowouts, with others waiting in the wings for their chance to shine.
What do you think about Lionsgate’s Den of Thieves 2: Pantera trailer? Are you a Den of Thieves fan? Will you watch the original film again before diving into this one? Let us know in the comments section below.
Check out the new poster for Den of Thieves 2: Pantera below:
The post Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. use every trick in the book to pull off the ultimate heist in the latest Den of Thieves 2: Pantera trailer appeared first on JoBlo.
Just when you thought The Polar Express was the creepiest thing about the holiday seasons, Coca-Cola enters the chat with an almost entirely AI-generated holiday commercial. As you can imagine, it has gone over about as well as New Coke. But before we go any further, you should check out the video, which is embedded below:
So we’ve got the usual Christmas staples in reindeer, snow and Santa – along with Coca-Cola’s trademark polar bears – but it won’t take perfect vision to notice just how phony all of it is, something that viewers have called the company out on in fervor. Some have stamped the ad as lifeless and hollow, while others have blasted Coca-Cola for its lack of creativity and snubbing actual artists of work. Oddly enough, the only part that looks organic – even at the animation level – is the iconic Coca-Cola font, although that’s primarily because generative AI didn’t have the capabilities to reproduce it. For the ad, Coca-Cola approached three different studios – Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card – to deliver their best work…and this is what came of it, with the “winner” spending the better part of their day punching in key phrases just to end up with that dog. Look, there is something artificial about Christmas, but this takes it to a bizarre and off-putting level.
In a statement, a rep wrote, “The Coca-Cola Company has celebrated a long history of capturing the magic of the holidays in content, film, events and retail activations for decades around the globe. We are always exploring new ways to connect with consumers and experiment with different approaches. This year, we crafted films through a collaboration of human storytellers and the power of generative AI. Coca-Cola will always remain dedicated to creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology.”
Coca-Cola is also actively promoting Create Real Magic, which lets you generate an AI scene inside of a snow globe, provided you’re super into the holiday spirit…which I was not, just to test the waters. I tried to make Santa recreate the scene from The Simpsons’ “Miracle on Evergreen Terrace” in which Bart accidentally burns the Christmas tree down and buries the presents in the yard but this was a little too risque for Ol’ Saint Nick, who prompted me with, “Oh dear, that sounds like quite an unexpected holiday adventure! Let’s flip the switch to a happy memory. Can you tell me about a moment of kindness you experienced during the holidays? Perhaps a shared laugh with family or a cozy gathering with friends?” So there are limits to AI!
For their part, Coca-Cola has also produced a live-action counterpart titled “Holiday Road”, which is immensely more human and emotional if not just because it features real people. Your move, Pepsi…
What do you make of Coca-Cola’s AI-generated holiday commercial? Is there value in what they’ve produced?
The post Coca-Cola’s AI-generated holiday ad goes flat with viewers appeared first on JoBlo.
Plot: Season two finds new parents Ava and Nathan Bartlett three months into parenthood. Focused on taking care of her family, Ava is determined to resist her true crime obsession and return to work as a real estate agent while Nathan trains private tennis clients. But a series of new murders pulls her back in – is Matt behind the slayings? Is Tory, now entangled in a relationship with Matt, in danger? For a while, life is good — Ava’s TikTok habit and her new friend Drew provide a welcome distraction, and Nathan’s all in on reigniting his tennis career as well as his friendship with Matt — until danger comes knocking, literally.
Review: When the first season of Based on a True Story dropped last year on Peacock, I was not impressed with the story of a couple who started their own true-crime podcast with input from a real serial killer. The podcast-themed series has been done better, notably in Only Murders In The Building, but there is still some quirky charm in Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina’s performances. With a new showrunner and a slight shift in the story’s focus, the second season of Based On A True Story builds on the comedy elements of this murderous mystery. Further, it develops the characters introduced in the first season. It is light entertainment featuring heavy topics but will surely resonate with fans of these actors.
At the conclusion of the first season, Based On A True Story showed Ava (Kaley Cuoco) and her husband Nathan (Chris Messina) cleaning up the residual evidence of the murder of Ava’s friend, Ruby Gale (Priscilla Quintana) when her husband, Simon (Aaron Staton) walks in on them. With serial killer Matt Pierce (Tom Bateman) off trying to rehab his murderous impulses, the finale left audiences wondering what would befall the married true-crime podcasters. Season two flashes forward three months and explains how the pair got out of their sticky situation. Now, with a newborn struggling with midnight feedings and parental stress, Ava and Nathan have moved on from their podcast, with Ava being a stay-at-home mom while Nathan is back to giving tennis lessons. That is until they learn Ava’s sister, Tory (Liana Liberto), and Matt are together in Mexico.
With Ruby’s murder still being investigated, Ava must try to cope with the loss of her friend as well as her role as an accomplice in the death. This involves listening to breastfeeding podcasts and spending time with a new friend, Drew (Melissa Fumero). Nathan’s friendship with Matt deepens despite knowing his deeper tendencies. As Ava and Tory deal with disagreements over Tory’s romance with Matt, a new killer arrives in town, which not only prompts a new take on their podcast. Awash in social media, with a focus mainly on TikTok influencers, the sophomore run of this series dives even further into the dark humor of murder and getting away with it while still maintaining a slightly off-kilter sensibility that makes it hard to feel like anything happening in this series is remotely realistic or plausible.
While Kaley Cuoco’s popularity on The Big Bang Theory shifted to a more layered performance in the short-lived series The Flight Attendant, the actress’s approach to playing Ava feels annoying this season rather than endearing. Chris Messina plays Nathan as an exhausted and exasperated partner in crime to his wife and makes for a far more interesting character. Ava’s decision-making is completely strange and becomes more challenging to watch as the season progresses. On the flip side, Liana Liberto gets much more to do this season as Tory’s relationship with Matt gives the pair significant screentime. Tom Bateman, sporting a man bun and full beard, is the most endearing serial killer since You‘s Joe Goldberg. Bateman is great as this character, and where the series takes him by the eighth and final episode improved significantly compared to where the first season concluded. New cast members Melissa Fumero and Sara Paxton are excellent in their roles and help round out this ensemble.
Series creator Craig Rosenberg elected not to return for the second season as showrunner of Based On A True Story after writing all eight first-run episodes, but he sticks around as executive producer. Director Alex Buono returns to bring some consistency behind the camera along with executive producers Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan. New showrunner Annie Weisman takes over the day-to-day and scripted the premiere episode. Weisman is best known for her work on Desperate Housewives, About A Boy, and The Path, and she created the Apple TV+ series Physical with Rose Byrne. The sensibility from Physical‘s balance of the darkly comedic and dramatic does show in this season of Based On A True Story. However, the overly crisp visuals and production style still feel a little mismatched. Rather than a single writer, this season counts seven scribes on eight episodes. There certainly is some better depth to this season, but it still feels a little uneven once you wrap the season finale and reflect on the story as a whole.
Based On A True Story has always had an intriguing concept of pairing ordinary people with a psycho killer. Still, the concept wore thin in the first season before flipping the idea around for a slightly better second batch of episodes. While I like Chris Messina, Liana Liberto, Tom Bateman, and the other ensemble members, I did not like Kaley Cuoco’s turn as Ava this time. I have nothing against the actress, but this season struggled to feel cohesive, and the end of the season seems to indicate another tonal shift will be coming in the potential third season. Fans of the first season will likely enjoy this next chapter in the story of Ava, Nathan, Matt, and Tory, but it did not improve enough for me to change my opinion. Despite better consistency in the writing and a more challenging mystery to solve, Based On A True Story still falls a little flat compared to better series with similar concepts.
Season two of Based on a True Story premieres on November 21st on Peacock.
The post Based on a True Story Season 2 TV Review: Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina are back for more murderous shenanigans appeared first on JoBlo.
Back in 2015, we heard that Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil) was in talks to star in the George R.R. Martin adaptation In the Lost Lands, which at the time was set to be written and directed by Constantin Werner (The Pagan Queen). That version of In the Lost Lands never made it off the ground – but seven years later, the project was revived, with Jovovich still in the lead and her husband Paul W.S. Anderson (Event Horizon) taking over as director. Two years after we heard that In the Lost Lands was back on, it was announced that Vertical had picked up the distribution rights to the finished film. And now we know when we’re going to have the chance to see it, as it has been revealed that Vertical is planning to give In the Lost Lands a theatrical release on February 28th.
Scripted by Anderson and Werner, the film centers on a queen who, desperate to fulfill her love, makes a daring play: she hires the sorceress Gray Alys, a woman as feared as she is powerful. Sent to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands, Alys and her guide, the drifter Boyce, must outwit and outfight man and demon in this fable that explores the nature of good and evil, debt and fulfillment, love and loss.
Jovovich plays Gray Alys and is joined in the cast by Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) as Boyce.
This adaptation of In the Lost Lands was produced by Anderson, Jovovich, Bautista, and Werner, along with Jeremy Bolt, Robert Kulzer, and Jonathan Meisner.
“With In the Lost Lands, we’ve created a movie with a completely unique visual style and storytelling that uses cutting-edge technology to bring the story to life like never before,” Anderson said in a statement. “So, it was always important to me that it be seen on the big screen. That’s why I couldn’t be more thrilled that Vertical is bringing In the Lost Lands to American theaters.“
When asked if the characters played by Jovovich and Bautista would be fighting each other, Anderson told Variety, “Oh yeah, I mean you can’t have Milla and Dave in a movie and not have them have a go at it. It’s an adaptation of a George R.R. Martin story so you know it’s going to be dark and twisted and have wonderful characters. Because that’s what George does.“
Are you interested in In the Lost Lands, and are you glad to hear that it’s going to receive a theatrical release in February? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
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