In IMAX, Tron: Ares doesn’t just unfold, it engulfs you. From the first neon pulse to the last flicker of light, I felt like I wasn’t just watching a film but being uploaded into it. The franchise that once imagined the world inside a computer now feels eerily close to our own, a mirror made of code and conscience.
Continue reading “‘Tron: Ares’ and the Algorithm of Humanity”
With apologies to Dua Lipa, 2025 ought to be a good year to assess the state of superhero movie fatigue and/or fervor in our pop culture landscape. After all, there’s a new Superman film coming out, and he’s pretty central to the whole concept, que no? With my personal queasy feeling about 2025 noted for the record, let’s start this escapism-focused listicle with the question of Anthony Mackie’s America:
Continue reading “10 Future Nostalgic Marvel/DC-Movie-Related Questions For 2025”
Finally! An episode where we don’t talk about wrestling. Also, it’s about time Bravestarr get the live action treatment!
Continue reading “FDI Cast 190: Bring Back Bravestarr”
For the first time in a very long time, the FDIC goes on an away mission to sunny Connecticut for a whimsical wedding in a freaking aquarium! We also review Wrestlemania weekend in our not-at-all-wrestling-related podcast.
Continue reading “FDI Cast 189: That Time We Went to a Professional Wrestler’s Wedding”
We remember wrestling superstar Virgil.
Continue reading “FDI Cast 188: That Time Brandon Bought Virgin an Orange Julius”
We wax nostalgic about the ’90s not so golden age of talk radio.
Continue reading “FDI Cast 187: WNOC’s Morning Zoo With Jam and Brando”
Keith and Dominic are back and so are some of your favorite childhood Marvel Memories! For the Boomers, Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four announcement was dripping with ’60s sentimentality. Meanwhile, Millennials were mesmerized by the X-Men ’97 teaser. Naturally, it’ll require a couple of Gen X-ers to break down what it all means!
Does it feel like everything is falling apart, like you’re constantly pushing a boulder up hill and life just kicks it down again? That’s basically what this episode is about.
Continue reading “FDI Cast 166: The Trial of Sisyphus”
Wake up the members of iCarly nation — the revival of the hit Nickelodeon show, which ended in 2012, is finally premiering on June 17! The streaming service’s official Twitter shared a sweet video to both celebrate star Miranda Cosgrove’s birthday and share the exciting news. Along with Cosgrove, original cast members Jerry Trainor and Nathan Kress are also starring in the revival! New cast members include Laci Mosley and Jaidyn Triplett.
Continue reading “The ‘iCarly’ Revival Has its Paramount+ Premiere Date”
When Dominic and I recorded the most recent episode of Hard NOC Life, I mentioned the 25th anniversary of Batman Forever (as well as the 15th and 31st anniversaries for Batman Begins and Batman ’89, respectively, but more on the latter in a second). June used to be a big month for Batman movies. I mention those anniversaries as a launching point for a broader conversation about being a different kind of fan and accepting different interpretations of our favorite characters. And for the last few weeks, I had started reconsidering how I felt about certain films, including the double feature of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, both directed by Joel Schumacher, who died of cancer on June 22.
Continue reading “Batman May Return But Schumacher is ‘Forever’”
Before December 2019 ends, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on one of the most significant pop culture artifacts of the year. This is the month, after all, in which one of the co-creators of the iconic series Lost gave us a critically acclaimed and universally praised ninth episode of a series that breathed new life into a franchise that had not been this beloved since the mid-1980s. By shifting the focus away from the historically white male heroes of the original and toward a story centering women and people of color, the creators had to also confront the toxic — and often racist — fan culture that had laid claim to the property for over thirty years. Plus, they were able to do all of this without the consent of the property’s original creator.
Of course, I’m talking about Watchmen on HBO.
Continue reading “‘Lost’ Legacies: How to Re-imagine Sacred Nerd Texts”
Last week, a list started circulating online that supposedly contains all the previously released content that will be made available on Disney+ on its November 12 launch date. Of all the titles, the Disney Channel Original series, So Weird, is one of them.
Continue reading “How Disney’s ‘So Weird’ Deepened My Connection to My Filipino Side”
This morning, Netflix dropped a new trailer for Stranger Things, and of course the internet lost its mind.
Continue reading “New ‘Stranger Things’ Trailer and We’re Giving Away Funko Toys”
According to today’s live Q&A event hosted by Marvel Studios at a re-created Tower Records in West Hollywood, which also featured live sets by Bush and L7.
No one appreciates nerd nostalgia like we do at The Nerds of Color, so you’d think Ready Player One would be tailor-made for us. Well, at least Lena Waithe and Win Morisaki are in the movie?
Still, there’s no denying that Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel — which serves as the basis for the Steven Spielberg-directed blockbuster coming out this Friday — was a massive hit. Now, you can get your hands on the book that inspired the movie by following us on twitter!
Continue reading “Follow and Win the ‘Ready Player One’ Novel”
Win Morisaki is not a household name, certainly not to American audiences, but he’s ready to be. As the lead singer of the J-Pop group, PrizmaX, Morisaki is no stranger to the spotlight. He’s done music, movies, and TV. Now, the 27-year-old actor and singer will make his international debut in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One as Toshiro Yoshiaki, aka Daito, a gamer in the OASIS and part of the High Five.
The Nerds of Color sat down with the actor to chat about being part of a Spielberg film, being part of Generation Z, and how it feels to represent his identity on the big screen.
Please note, Morisaki is still learning English and had to use a translator at times during the meeting and those answers were used during the interview.
Continue reading “Win Morisaki Takes on America and Disney with ‘Ready Player One’”
To properly analyze Star Wars: The Last Jedi, you have to go beyond the trappings of fandom and look at the movie as a part of a larger product of Disney/Lucasfilm storytelling. Approaching this as anything other than a corporate juggernaut mainly concerned with moving merchandise and building the next generation of consumers will result in total anger, confusion, and regret. This might sound cynical and cold, but it’s only the acknowledgment that Hollywood cinema is big business and sometimes actual art will slip through the image factory despite their best efforts to curtail imagination and wonder.
I’m not saying The Last Jedi lacks imagination or wonder, but there’s definitely a middling corporate influence throughout the movie that simultaneously keeps the movie in an inoffensive zone of bland character moments while setting up Rian Jonhson’s long-term vision for the Star Wars franchise.
What makes The Last Jedi interesting, though, is that it deliberately erases the nostalgic underpinnings of the Star Wars saga being about the Skywalker clan. Now this is where you see a lot of online outrage regarding The Last Jedi (even when you remove the knee-jerk right-wing racist backlash to the movie being “too diverse“) with the main complaint is that it “feels different” than previous Star Wars films.
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW
Continue reading “‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ and Moving Beyond Nostalgic Ownership”
