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☆ Critical Role's heartbreak prince helped make 'Dungeons & Dragons' cool. Now he's coming for the gothic horror gaming scene.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-08 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Critical Role recently released "Candela Obscura," a gothic horror roleplaying game. AdvertisementIn October, Critical Role, a crew of eight self-professed "nerdy-ass voice actors," played their long-running "Dungeons & Dragons" game at a sold-out Wembley Arena. These qualities make O'Brien ideal for stepping into the game master role for "Candela Obscura," Critical Role's new gothic horror game, and he's leaning hard into the tragedy. AdvertisementIt's also one of the more punishing gaming systems he's played in, O'Brien told me during our video call. Mercer, the team's designated game master, is the one who crafts the narrative and controls how the story develops.

Persons: Liam O'Brien, —, Matthew Mercer, O'Brien, I've, It's, he's, Twitch, Mercer, — O'Brien, — Taliesin Jaffe, Imari Williams, Aimee Carrero, Alexander Ward —, Taliesin Jaffe, Alexander Ward, Julius Caesar, Irish, Martin McDonagh, Spenser Starke, Rowan Hall, Aabria Iyengar, Starke, Mary Shelley, it's, Amazon, Marisha Ray, Travis Willingham, Ashley Johnson, Sam Riegel, Laura Bailey, Matthew Mercer Robyn von Swank Organizations: Service, Wembley, Darrington Press, Hasbro's, Hasbro, CR Locations: Europe, Ireland, New York, Mercer, Starke

☆ Nerd world's most famous faces are out to conquer the gothic horror gaming space — and their heartbreak prince is here to get the job done
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-08 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Critical Role recently released "Candela Obscura," a gothic horror roleplaying game. These qualities make O'Brien ideal for stepping into the game master role for "Candela Obscura," Critical Role's new gothic horror game, and he's leaning hard into the tragedy. AdvertisementIt's also one of the more punishing gaming systems he's played in, O'Brien told during our video call. Mercer, the team's designated game master, is the one who crafts the narrative and controls how the story develops. "I always prefer complicated narratively satisfying endings to a neat little happy ending," O'Brien told me.

☆ 7 things to stream this weekend, from 'The Bachelor' finale to the new season of 'Is It Cake?'
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-29 | by ( Caralynn Matassa | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Check out new historical dramas like "We Were the Lucky Ones" and "A Gentleman in Moscow." AdvertisementIf you're looking for an immersive limited series to dive into, you're in luck — two new ones premiered this week. The first three episodes of Hulu's Holocaust family drama "We Were the Lucky Ones," starring Joey King and Logan Lerman, are out, too. And if you like your comedy with a hint of horror, you can also now stream "Lisa Frankenstein," a fresh twist on the Mary Shelley story from screenwriter Diablo Cody. Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're looking for.

Persons: Lisa Frankenstein, —, Ewan McGregor's, Joey King, Logan Lerman, Jerrod, Tig, Mary Shelley, Diablo Cody, Here's Organizations: Service Locations: Moscow

☆ Climate Change and ‘Last-chance Tourism’
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-03 | by ( Desiree Ibekwe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A lot of climate discussion revolves around time. Lines rise across charts predicting the next century. As the Earth warms, natural wonders — coral reefs, glaciers, archipelagos — are at risk of damage and disappearance. This has motivated some travelers to engage in “last-chance tourism,” visiting places threatened by climate change before it’s too late. (Early tourists included Mary Shelley and Mark Twain.)

Persons: it’s, ” Paige McClanahan, Mary Shelley, Mark Twain Organizations: Times Locations: Glace, French

☆ Barbie and Bella: Two Different Shades of Female Liberation
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-02 | by ( Maya Phillips | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One takes place in a bright, plastic world where everything is coated in pink. The other takes place in an isolated black-and-white world that transforms, “Wizard of Oz” style, into a flashy, steampunk domain. Though they’re very different stylistically, the Oscar-nominated films “Barbie” and “Poor Things” are both modern feminist fables about the making of a woman. Here the Dr. Frankenstein is Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), and his monstrous creation is Bella (Emma Stone), a woman he has resurrected. At first Bella babbles and stumbles around like a precocious toddler, learning to speak and move by imitating the adults around her.

Persons: Oz, Oscar, “ Barbie ”, Yorgos Lanthimos, Mary Shelley’s “, jigsaws, Frankenstein, Godwin Baxter, Willem Dafoe, Bella, Emma Stone, Bella babbles

☆ How the mystery of electricity helped 18-year-old Mary Shelley create 'Frankenstein'
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Jenny Mcgrath | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In 1818 Mary Shelley published “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.”In the novel, Frankenstein brings a creature to life with a "spark of being." Both scientists influenced “Frankenstein.” Shelley incorporated some of Davy’s writings into her novel, and the 1818 and 1831 prefaces both reference Darwin. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" when she was 18 years old. Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesPoet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom Mary Shelley married the same year she started "Frankenstein," was also fascinated with science. “Could it be electricity?”The electrical experimentsIn her 1831 revised edition of "Frankenstein," Shelley removed the part about lightning and instead referenced galvanism.

Persons: Mary Shelley, “, ”, Frankenstein, Shelley, —, Lisa Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, Shelley doesn’t, Mary Shelley’s, William Godwin, Erasmus Darwin, Charles ’, Humphry Davy, “ Frankenstein, ” Shelley, Darwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Erasmus Darwin’s, she’d, Byron, Boris Karloff, reenacted Benjamin Franklin ’, Franklin, Michael Faraday, Georg Ohm, Juliet Burba, he'd, Luigi Galvani, he’d, Alessandro Volta, Dominique Jean Larrey, Galvani’s, Giovanni Aldini, Aldini, Thomas Forster, Shelley’s Organizations: Service, Getty, Universal, Obscura Locations: Hulton, Lake Geneva

☆ Opinion: ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ is giving us a new kind of monster
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-09 | by ( Opinion Noah Berlatsky | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

The new “Lisa Frankenstein,” by Zelda Williams in her directorial debut, hits some of the same notes. Kathryn Newton stars as Lisa Swallows and Cole Sprouse as The Creature in LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a Focus Features release. This is where “Poor Things” and “Lisa Frankenstein” diverge. Bella Baxter in “Poor Things” starts out as a clumsy innocent, but she becomes more knowledgeable and self-confident over time. “Lisa Frankenstein” shows why that’s a loss for all of us — and Lisa is ready to cut up the patriarchy to prove it.

Persons: Noah Berlatsky, CNN —, Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, ”, Victor Frankenstein, —, Shelley, Noah Berlatsky Noah Berlatsky, we’ve, “ Lisa Frankenstein, Yorgos Lanthimos, Lisa Frankenstein, Zelda Williams, Diablo Cody, “, Lisa, Kathryn Newton, She’s, Carla Gugino, Liza Soberano, Cole Sprouse, Lisa Swallows, LISA FRANKENSTEIN, Michele K, “ Lisa Frankenstein ”, Bella Baxter, she’s, Bella, Williams, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Celine Song’s “, Emma Stone, Atsushi Nishijima, Greta Gerwig’s, Barbie, “ Barbie, It’s, Cody, he’s, wouldn’t, Lisa Frankenstein ”, Barbie ”, “ Oppenheimer, Lily, Mary Organizations: CNN, REO, Searchlight Pictures Locations: Chicago, Hollywood, Taffy’s, “, Ireland

☆ Opinion | Sam Altman, Sugarcoating the Apocalypse
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-02 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

My favorite “Twilight Zone” episode is the one where aliens land and, in a sign of their peaceful intentions, give world leaders a book. Government cryptographers work to translate the alien language. They decipher the title — “To Serve Man” — and that’s reassuring, so interplanetary shuttles are set up. But as the cryptographers proceed, they realize — too late — that it’s a cookbook. It was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit to serve man, to keep an eye on galloping A.I.

Persons: —, — Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman —, A.I, Mary Shelley Organizations: San Locations: San Francisco

It is the ideal way to celebrate the musician and civil rights activist, and the ideal gift for a music fan of any walk. Cost: $135SAY CHEESE: This one might give an audiophile a heart attack, but that doesn't make it any less adorable. The “Turntable Cheese Board" from Uncommon Goods is exactly what it sounds like — a cheese board designed to look like the most expensive, slick turntable, featuring a slate platter and hidden slicer in the one arm. Cost: $78HEAR IT LOUD: There's never a wrong time to upgrade headphones — in fact, it makes for a great gift. Cost: $47K-POP COOL: Far too often, holiday gift guides — even those specifically catering to music enthusiasts — fail to account for dedicated, artist-specific fandoms.

Persons: It'll, SIMONE, Nina Simone, Simon, Marc Masters, Harry Styles, Styles, ”, “, It's, Sony's, Barbra Streisand, ” She'd, Jimmy Fallon, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Streisand, ” Streisand, I’m, Lol Tolhurst, Tim Burton, Edgar Allan Poe’s, Mary, Emily Brontë, Questlove, Tariq Trotter, a.k.a Organizations: ANGELES, Philips, Doubleday, Associated Press, Division, Bauhaus, Los Tigres Del, Grupo Frontera Locations: They're, longhand, Austin , Texas, Los Angeles, Los Tigres Del Norte, Banda

☆ ‘birth/rebirth’ Review: ‘Frankenstein’ Comes to the Bronx
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( John Anderson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Marin Ireland Photo: IFC FilmsOne could never faultMary Shelley for a lack of imagination, just a lack of available technology: Her 1818 “Frankenstein” offers no pseudo-scientific explanation for its Creature’s reanimation, only some vague primal force harnessed by the book’s title character. It was the movies, beginning in 1931, that suggested electricity as a means of fusing humans out of spare parts. What is suggested by the remarkable “birth/rebirth” is how Shelley’s story—its mythos, at any rate—can itself be brought back to vibrant life, time after time, by torquing modern medicine into increasingly plausible horror. The Shelley blueprint—which locates the fear factor in every scientific leap that humans make as they inevitably play God—is always paved with good scientific intentions. Rose and Celie mean well.

Persons: Marin, Shelley, Frankenstein ”, Laura Moss, Brendan J, ”, Rose, Judy Reyes, — Organizations: IFC Locations: Marin Ireland

For Lol Tolhurst, co-founder the influential “goth” band The Cure, it's all of the above. He explores what he calls “the last true alternative outsider subculture” in a new book titled, “Goth: A History,” published late last month by Hachette. From there, the book dives into gothic literature and the French existentialists, whom Tolhurst considers formative to the subculture. LA was also home to the psych rock band the Doors, who were the first group described as “gothic rock" — by critic John Stickney in 1967. Elsewhere, he draws connections between goth and Catholicism, a relationship Tolhurst believes goes beyond a shared iconography and morbidity.

Persons: Tim Burton, Billie Eilish, Edgar Allan Poe's, Mary, Emily Brontë, Lol Tolhurst, “, ”, Tolhurst, It's, Joan Didion —, Nico, David Bowie, Molchat, Iggy Pop, Peter Murphy, tickling, John Stickney, everything's Organizations: ANGELES, Hachette, Joy Division, Bauhaus Locations: Southern California, London, Belarusian, New York City, England, Los Angeles, LA

☆ Opinion | You Can Win in Business Without Being Unhinged
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-27 | by ( Jessica Grose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I’ve read and watched many stories about the most heralded business leaders of the past few centuries. I’m not immune to the inherent drama of an arrogant rise, a spectacular fall or both. (For example, harassing job interviewees, firing people in front of crowds, attacking former employees of companies they purchased. Isaacson puts innovation first: This man might be a monster, but look at what he built! Whereas Mary Shelley, for instance, put innovation second: The man who built this is a monster!

Persons: I’ve, Walter Isaacson’s, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Aaron Sorkin’s, Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jill Lepore, Isaacson’s, Isaacson, Franklin, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Shelley, Marisa Meltzer’s, Emily Weiss’s Glossier, ”, Meltzer, clichés, valorizes Weiss, Weiss, underling, Lauren Conrad, Whitney Port, Hunter Harris Organizations: The Times Locations: ”

☆ ‘The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster’ Review: Resurrecting the Frankenstein Story
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-22 | by ( John Anderson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Laya DeLeon Hayes Photo: RLJE Films/Shudder/ALLBlkMary Shelley ’s “Frankenstein” and its latest offspring, “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster,” are both wellsprings of metaphor and parables of madness. For Victor Frankenstein, the source of crazy was his mother’s death and a resulting God complex; for Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes)—the title “angry girl” known as her neighborhood’s “mad scientist”—it is a family disappearing due to gang violence, drug dealing, predatory policing and a certain black experience that casts the world as out of control. Hence her theory: Death is only a disease. And if it is a disease, she should be able to cure it.

Persons: Laya DeLeon Hayes, Mary Shelley ’, Victor Frankenstein, —, ” Organizations: RLJE

☆ Jill Lepore Revisits American Myths With an Eye to the Present
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( Sloane Crosley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

THE DEADLINE: Essays, by Jill LeporeIn 1636, at the height of the Dutch economic hysteria known as Tulipomania, John Harvard helped found the first college of the American colonies. It’s a good thing I do not have Jill Lepore’s job. The phrase “historical framework” is insufficient when it comes to Lepore, who also provides the picture and the glass. Through these figures Lepore covers American consumerism, literary biography, journalism, intellectual property law and other cultural curiosities. But it’s her inclinations toward misfits and old narratives we have taken for granted that make “The Deadline” glow.

Persons: Jill Lepore, John Harvard, Jill Lepore’s, John Harvard’s, ”, Lepore, Jane Franklin, Lela, Robert L, Ripley, Who ”, Rachel Carson, Mary Shelley, “ Frankenstein, Fredrick Douglass, Joan Didion’s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s, “, Karl Marx, Walt Whitman Organizations: Yorker, Magna Carta, Mattel, Affordable, Lepore

☆ 36 Hours in Bath, England
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-15 | by ( Susanne Masters | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

3:30 p.m. Be awed by Mary ShelleyThe author Mary Shelley stayed in Bath for five months from 1816 to 1817, attending scientific lectures. By the time she left, most of “Frankenstein” was written. Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein (entry £17.50), a museum that opened in 2021 near Queen Square, explores Shelley’s life and the time she spent in Bath, as well as her influences and her legacy. Basement rooms add to the creepy experience by pushing you through bad smells and weird textures while someone lurks in costume. Upstairs, explore the vast quantity of films and memorabilia inspired by the book.

Persons: Mary Shelley The, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein ”, Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein Locations: Bath, Queen

☆ Opinion | Don’t Kill ‘Frankenstein’ With Real Frankensteins at Large
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-27 | by ( Maureen Dowd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

WASHINGTON — By the time I took off my mortarboard two weeks ago, my degree in English literature was de trop. Instead of a Master of Arts, I should have gotten a Master of Algorithms. As I was pushing the rock up a hill, mastering Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce and Mary Shelley, I failed to notice that the humanities had fallen off the cliff. It was as if the bottle of great wine I saved to celebrate my degree was bouchonné. Students were fleeing to the hotter fields of tech and science.

☆ An Art Professor Says A.I. Is the Future. It’s the Students Who Need Convincing.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Zachary Small | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Lance Weiler is preparing his students at Columbia University for the unknown. “What I’m going to show you might disturb you,” he warned the class in January, at the beginning of his graduate course on digital storytelling. His classes have combined augmented reality with Edgar Allan Poe, virtual reality with Sherlock Holmes and machine learning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Now, Weiler wants his students ready for an art world that is gradually embracing the latest digital tools. He told his class in a dramatic whisper: “I’m going to show how you can leverage these technologies in your artistic practices.”

☆ Name Above the Movie Title? How About in It?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Leah Greenblatt | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

With “Pinocchio” and the 2022 Netflix horror-anthology series “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities,” the director joins a long line of auteurs, from Alfred Hitchcock to Tim Burton, whose presence not merely above the title but in it serves as a stylistic marker, even when it’s not strictly their hand guiding the material. (The horror godhead Wes Craven habitually did the same; see “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.”) Few, though, can claim to be the one-man industry that is Tyler Perry, who retains full ownership of the projects produced under his personal shingle at his stand-alone studio in Atlanta. The multihyphenate creator has famously put‌‌ his signature on several movie and television titles released under its umbrella — including “Tyler Perry’s A Madea Homecoming,” the most recent iteration of the reliably raucous comedies that he also writes and stars in as a salty, well-cushioned matriarch of a certain age. While Madea is Perry’s wholesale creation, indubitably linked to the man who wears her wig onscreen, certain intellectual properties with roots that reach back centuries have tilted their brims instead toward a more literal (and literary) acknowledgment of the source. Neither he nor Christie is officially billed in the title.

☆ What to Watch: The 15 Best New Movies and TV Shows From January
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Wsj Arts In Review Staff | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Here’s a roundup of the month’s most noteworthy movies and TV shows, as covered by The Wall Street Journal’s critics. After eight Chucky movies, three Annabelle flicks, and dozens more killer-doll stories from “The Twilight Zone” to “The Simpsons,” did we really need another one? I’d say yes, because “M3gan” is wittily written and smoothly plotted by Akela Cooper , from a story by her and James Wan , as well as tautly directed by Gerard Johnstone , who hearkens all the way back to Mary Shelley ’s warning. Like Dr. Frankenstein, we’ve created a monster, but there’s no way to kill off tech.

☆ Emma Thompson says she was ‘utterly blind’ about ex-husband Kenneth Branagh’s on-set relationships
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Toyin Owoseje | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

London CNN —Two-time Oscar-winner Emma Thompson has admitted she was “utterly blind” to her ex-husband Kenneth Branagh’s on-set relationships with other actresses and was left devastated when she found out. Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branagh dated for five years. “I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” Thompson told interviewer John Lahr. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.”Branagh and Bonham Carter went on to have a five-year relationship. Reflecting on her life with Wise, Thompson said: “I’ve learned more from my second marriage just by being married.

“It’s fascinating how people seek queerness — and where they seek queerness,” Fuller added. Murnau’s “Faust” and “Nosferatu,” such moments of levity keep viewers engaged while they’re soaking up early Hollywood’s rich queer history. “Whether you’re ideologically queer or sexually queer, you might relate to the monster’s narrative, because you, too, have felt ‘outsidered’ or villainized in some way.” Bryan fuller, 'queer for fear' executive producer“The Dracula costume kit is basically drag. So this, to me, is the experience of being a gay man.”As Alaska’s assessment demonstrates, “Queer for Fear” isn’t interested in just exploring how horror has provided a haven for queer creatives. Because of the Hays Code, LGBTQ creators and those, like Hitchcock, who wanted to include those themes had to do so through subtext, which counterintuitively gave birth to some of the most essential queer horror ever made.

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