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io9
The Best Sci-Fi Trips to Help You Escape…at Least for a Little While
What I wouldn’t give to travel again. To see someplace new. Visit someplace exotic. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy may say “There’s no place like home,” but she didn’t have to stay home for almost a full year during a pandemic. That desire to travel gets even stronger around the holidays. This is the … Continued
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io9Trailer Frenzy
Anthony Mackie’s Existence Is Classified in the New Trailer for Outside the Wire
We’ve already seen Anthony Mackie as a soldier who becomes super with a little help from technology. Next, we’ll see technology make him a different kind of super-soldier—an android, to be precise. That’s the set up for Outside the Wire, a Netflix original out next week. Set in the near future, Mackie plays an Army … Continued
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io9
12 Intriguing Sundance Movies That Could Become 2021’s Genre Sleeper Hits
Even though no one will actually be in Park City, Utah to see it, the 2021 Sundance Film Festival is still happening. It’s taking place mostly online from January 28-February 3 and anyone can go, if they buy tickets and passes. Those go on sale January 7 so, in the build-up to that, we went … Continued
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io9
The 12 Best (And 6 Worst) Genre Movies of 2020
Here’s how weird 2020 was for movies: Unless you saw something in January or February (like The Invisible Man, Birds of Prey, or Bloodshot), there’s a good chance you didn’t see a movie in a movie theater for the entire year. A whole year without going to the movies. Frankly, it’s hard to even fathom, … Continued
io9 Staff -
io9Movies
Cherk Is Gonna Win an Emmy or an Oscar or Something for Apple TV+, for Sure
Apple TV+ had a rough launch over the course of the past year, perhaps in part because of repeated meddling by Apple execs in creative decisions. It’s starting to turn the ship around with a stronger slate of programming and is hoping to win an award or two over the next few months. On Wednesday, … Continued
By Tom McKay -
io9
The Fictional Characters, TV Shows, and Movies We Lost in 2020
It was a rough year for all of us in the real world, but those fictional universes we spend so much time in didn’t get off scot-free. A lot of television shows ended their runs this year, and a lot of our favorite characters from sci-fi, fantasy, and horror took their final bows as well. … Continued
io9 Staff -
Reviews
The Physics of Tenet Is Shaky, but It Still Kicks Ass
“Don’t try to understand it,” a scientist tells the protagonist of Tenet, as she briefly explains the physics of Christopher Nolan’s $205-million, time-traveling spy thriller. Sure, the physics is often unrealistic and confusing, but it’s fascinating. And with its many Easter eggs, Tenet sets up some nice jumping-off points for Wikipedia rabbit holes. (Sator square? … Continued
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io9
All the Star Wars, Marvel, and Other Disney News You Might Have Missed
Usually, investor calls are dry, numbers-heavy business meetings intended for people far richer than you or I. But because It’s Capitalism, yesterday Disney turned its 2020 Investor Day call into something that would’ve been right at home screamed from the rooftops of San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H. Here’s all the Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars … Continued
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io9Trailer Frenzy
KFC’s Latest Ploy to Make Colonel Sanders Sexy Is a Lifetime Movie Spoof
As the secrecy and mystery around KFC’s chicken recipe has waned in recent years, the fast food giant pivoted to creating edible monstrosities. It has also turned its founder-cum-mascot Colonel Harland Sanders into the centerpiece of an I’m Not There-style multimedia ad campaign, featuring a variety of actors portraying the white-haired chicken slinger in different scenarios. Sanders … Continued
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io9
The Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or Horror Movies io9 Rewatched in 2020
Twenty-twenty hasn’t been good for much, but it has been given us bountiful free time— time you hopefully used to finally make good on that statement “Oh, I’d love to watch that but I don’t have time.” Well, in 2020 you did. As a result, many of us revisited and once again fell in love … Continued
io9 Staff -
How To
The Best Alternative Streaming Services You Can Still Try Out For Free
You’re probably spending more time at home right now, and maybe you’re looking for a new streaming service to try—preferably without paying, at least until you decide to commit. Netflix and Disney+ have ditched their free trials, but there are plenty of other music and movie streaming services you can try out without spending a dime, … Continued
By David Nield -
io9Movies
AMC Says Its Cash Might Run Out by the End of the Year
Theater chain AMC might be totally broke by the end of 2020 and require “additional sources of liquidity or increases in attendance levels” to survive, the company disclosed in financial filings on Tuesday. AMC wrote that it expects its cash reserves to be “largely depleted” by the end of 2020 or early 2021, given low … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Earther
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet Nails the Planetary Problems But Misses the Political Ones
David Attenborough is 93. Over the course of his lifetime, the beloved natural historian and broadcaster has seen the planet go through unimaginable changes. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have soared, as has the human population, while biodiversity has declined precipitously. He details these shifts in a new documentary released on Netflix on Sunday, which … Continued
By Dharna Noor -
io9Games
Nintendo Teases the Possibility of More Adaptations After the New Super Mario Movie
One of the more shocking things to come out of genre films as of late was the reality that Detective Pikachu was actually a ridiculously solid movie—the sort of video game film that properly demonstrated that video game adaptations don’t have to be bad. Apparently, Nintendo has taken note of this development and is considering … Continued
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io9ComicsIndies
This Comic Book Writer Spent a Year Mailing Michael Cohen Movie and TV Spoilers in Prison
For the entire year Donald Trump’s shady former attorney, Michael Cohen, spent in federal prison for campaign finance violations, financial fraud, and other crimes, he was receiving spoilers for movies and TV shows courtesy of comic book writer Matt Miner. Thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic, Cohen was released to home detention in May 2020 … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech News
Drone Video of Bay Area’s Orange Haze Fits Too Perfectly With Blade Runner 2049 Soundtrack
A YouTuber has combined drone footage of San Francisco’s apocalyptically orange real-life landscape from Wednesday with music created for the 2017 movie Blade Runner 2049. And it all fits together almost too perfectly. The entire west coast of the U.S. is experiencing devastating wildfires this week, with people in California’s Bay Area waking up on … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsNews
I Sincerely Hope I’m Not Calling This Too Early, But Here’s the Dumbest Piece of Tech in 2020
We thought nothing could possibly be worse than shelling out increasingly more expensive premium-video-on-demand costs, as with recent releases like Trolls World Tour and Mulan. Well, how about paying per person for tickets to watch a movie from your own freaking living room? This is evidently the concept proposed by startup Xcinex, whose Venue device … Continued
By Catie Keck -
How To
How to Identify Any Song or Movie Using Your Phone
Your smartphone is a pocket portal to information on just about every song and movie in history, thanks to the internet—and it’s better than you might have realized at matching what’s in the real world to the wealth of data on the web. Of course, there aren’t going to be too many occasions when you … Continued
By David Nield -
io9MoviesHorror
Duncan Is An Unflinching Portrait of a Pizzagater
In 2016, a heavily armed North Carolina man barged into a Washington, DC-area pizza joint, intending to investigate a baseless conspiracy theory that it was secretly torturing children in a basement it didn’t actually have. Shots were fired and panic ensued, but no one was physically harmed. Improbably, those real-life events are now the subject … Continued
By Tom McKay