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Why Batman Really Needs the Batcave - Arkhaven Site
No, it’s not just a place for him to keep his stuff. Batman is profoundly, psychologically dependent on the Batcave. It’s complicated but so is Bruce Wayne. Have you ever gotten the feeling that when Bruce is alone in the cave and then Alfred or (whichever) Robin walks in, it’s rather an intrusion isn’t it? […]
RE:Play Redneck Rampage - Arkhaven Site
Having covered all of the old Sierra games or at least all of the old Sierra games I gave a crap about, I decided to move on to the nineties proper. That means Doom clones and that means games built with the legendary Build engine. I’m not going into the history of the build engine here […]
The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Gladiator II - Arkhaven Site
“Jug-Jugurtha!” I blurted out laughing. It annoyed the people around me, which also made me laugh. If you don’t know anything about Roman history, making Jugurtha a Roman enemy during the (rather brief) Severan dynasty is comparable to having Generals Lee and Grant put aside their differences and team up against their common enemy, Henry […]
Disney Deathwatch: The Thanksgiving Edition - Arkhaven Site
Captain America 4 is already DOA Here’s a shock, the latest round of test screenings went badly so they are going back, yet again, into reshoots. I have no idea how many times it has gone into reshoots at this point. The production budget is well north of $400 million and given the lack of […]
The Dark Herald (sort of) Recommends: Wicked (PART I) - Arkhaven Site
I can’t get across to my children what a Television Event used to be like. What it was in tangible terms is obvious, a marketing ploy and a very successful one. A captive audience of 70 million Americans is something a contemporary ad man doesn’t even dare dream of today, but that was what you’d […]
Volvo Blows Jag-You-Are Totally Out of the Water - Arkhaven Site
This is utterly ludicrous. Volvo just launched this four minute commercial on YouTube and it is everything that the Jaguar commercial is NOT. The comments show all the difference in the world. People are saying that they hadn’t considered a Volvo before but are now. This is the whole point of an advertisement. Volvo’s marketing […]
The Dark Herald’s Game of the Year - Arkhaven Site
I step out of the ruins of a record shop and onto the streets of Selaco. My health is 100% and I have plenty of ammo. Like a perfect nugget I’m admiring the scenery instead of checking the corner I’m about to step into. My reward for this stupidity was a flash and a boom […]
Hasbro Comes to Bury Gygax, Not to Praise Him - Arkhaven Site
Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are in the process of releasing their DEI drenched new rules for Dungeons and Dragons. As a kind of cross promotion they are releasing a companion book the 40th Anniversary Making of DnD. The forward of which absolutely castigates Gary Gygax for the unspeakable crime of not being a […]
RE:View – The Muppet Christmas Carol - Arkhaven Site
No story on Earth has been done to death as thoroughly as Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Every possible iteration on this classic story has been made. I tried to find out how many versions there were by typing “A Christmas Carol” into the IMDB search bar, and it called me an asshole. Or it may as […]
Jaguar For MODERN AUDIENCES - Arkhaven Site
Jaguar, the legendary British auto manufacturer, not the South American bobcat, started life as the Swallow Sidecar company. They made, admittedly, handsome motorcycle sidecars. They expanded to become the Swallow Coachbuilding Company. Back in the 1920s, the British favored a model where the car’s chassis, engine, brakes, and engineering guts in general would be built […]
Star Trek's Tombstone - Arkhaven Site
It’s called Unification And it feels like a respectful sendoff to something that was once beloved by many. Like the kind of goodbye to the 23rd Century the old Trekkies wanted. The franchise is dead. Kurtzman Trek is a skinsuit zombie version of something that simply can’t be brought back to life by today’s Hollywood. […]
First Impressions: Dune Prophecy - Arkhaven Site
Have you ever wanted to see what a Merchant Ivory space opera would look like? Well, now you can! Okay, there’s more to it than that, but if you are a dude just be prepared, that’s all I’m saying. Dune: Prophecy started life as Dune: The Sisterhood and has been in development since before the […]
Half-Life 2 At Twenty - Arkhaven Site
An upgraded version of Half-Life 2 has been made available to… I was going to say celebrate the twentieth anniversary but perhaps observe is a better term. In any case, you can’t beat the price, which is free. The reason I say observe instead of celebrate is that at the end of day, the Half-Life […]
They Have No One But Rey - Arkhaven Site
“Rey is the most valuable cinematic asset, In some ways the only one.” That is a quote from an alleged LucasFilm insider that the Hollywood Reporter talked to. What is unbelievably tragic is that he is perfectly right. LucasFilm at this point has nothing else. A lot of this comes down to Disney’s institutional commitments […]
The Dark Recommends: The Penguin - Arkhaven Site
**There will be spoilers throughout** The Batman has its fans and I will grant it has a few things going for it. The main plot was decent enough. The muscle car Batmobile was at least a little different. Alfred was good. However, DEI was force-fed into it by the Warner comedy team of Sarnoff and […]
The New Disney CEO Will Be Worse? - Arkhaven Site
Disney Chairman of the Board James Gorman’s search committee apparently has orders from Bob Iger. “Find someone who will make the bastards miss me!” The internal Candidates at Disney haven’t been all that promising. Jason Pitaro the Chairman of ESPN has done fine with his division but he doesn’t have the connections he’d need to […]
The Captain of the Kotaku Concordia Has Fled the Ship - Arkhaven Site
Editor of Kotaku and failed sex worker Alyssa Mercante has left Kotaku, right before it got hit by a massive round of layoffs. I don’t like being fair to Mercante but I feel I need to be both to maintain my own standards for integrity and because she is incredibly litigious. She did not put […]
Tony Todd RIP - Arkhaven Site
“My beloved. May you rest in power sweet to the sweet in heaven,” said Virginia Madsen, Todd’s Candyman costar in a tearful post on Instagram. “The great actor Tony Todd has left us and now is an angel. As he was in life.” Tony Todd was born in 1954 in Washington, D.C., and grew up […]
Why Was the Polling So Bad? - Arkhaven Site
Democrats are absolutely beside themselves with rage over… Well everything at the moment but they feel they have once again been betrayed by the polling. This time they are completely right. A while back, Disney subsidiary ESPN bought up Nate Silver’s 538 to help with their forecasting. It was actually a pretty smart idea. Then […]
Why Disney is the Biggest Loser of the Election - Arkhaven Site
If not the biggest certainly the most high profile is The Walt Disney Company. Under Bob Iger’s leadership, Disney has become the company that always and ever only ever only puts its money on one side of the table. Not a great idea for a high-profile business. Hollywood used to be smarter about it. The […]
Blogs and Ends: The Powell Group Update - Arkhaven Site
I’ll just be updating this post over the next couple of days as I suspect there is going to be minimal interest in a comics and pop culture blog before Wednesday. Just check in now and then. FIRST Oh, dear. It appears that as friends go the Powell Group is definitely of the fair-weather variety. […]
It Was Wiccan All Along? - Arkhaven Site
Apparently so. I can’t really do a proper review of Agatha All Along because I didn’t watch the whole thing. Having learned more than I ever wanted to about Marvel TV’s storytelling I figured, (rightfully so as it turned out) that I could just skip everything between the premiere episode and the series finale because […]
Sweet Baby Inc. Is Doing Just Fine - Arkhaven Site
“Bowser is Bondage Daddy Sexy!” –Kim Belair: CEO and Co-founder of Sweet Baby Inc. That quote is from Kim Belair’s long-defunct (and as of today mostly erased) podcast, The Sexiest Podcast. It was one of several podcasts Belair was doing at the time. She was clearly throwing content at the wall to see what would […]
Analog Horror - Arkhaven Site
Paraphrase Conversation Truncation Eldest Darkspawn: No, Dad they’re being smart. Dark Herald: Putting Alien: Romulus out on something as completely obsolete as VHS is smart? Eldest Darkspawn: Analog Horror! You know, it’s like analog energy. It’s like giving horror. It slaps! Dark Herald: How does it… uh… slap? Eldest Dark: VHS is like our Gen […]
Vampire Rules: (Part III) Netflix Woke Dracula - Arkhaven Site
Back in Doctor Who’s heyday, the weekly numbers in Britain and America were huge. Big enough to lift BBC America into Tier 1 cable status, Tennant had emo girls throwing their panties at the TV, and the best episode of the year, the one everyone looked forward to, was the one that would be written […]
Teri Garr RIP - Arkhaven Site
She was on the set of It Takes a Thief when she got the bad news. Her backdoor pilot hadn’t been picked up. It wasn’t really a surprise. Laugh-in always buried that show in the ratings. It would have been her big break but, ah well, that’s show biz, she thought to herself. Teri Garr […]
Hardriveby: Faith – The Unholy Trinity - Arkhaven Site
We are currently living in a golden age of indie horror games. The last five years have seen an explosion in a genre that used to get one game a year back in the 1990s and one every three years during the double Os. Those AAA titles were good games, certainly better than what we […]
RE:Play Clive Barker’s Undying - Arkhaven Site
“[Undying]’s a dark fantasy with lots of levels, lots of realities in it. It’s not horror in the sense of Hellraiser. It’s horror which is very bloody, very graphic, with plenty of monsters, no question; but also a big adventure level in it. There is the sense, as you are visiting different dimensions and alien […]
The Dark Herald Recommends: Venom 3 - The Last Dance - Arkhaven Site
Well, it is the best of the Venom movies. I do have to give it that. Even if that is about the same as being the finest hockey player in Zimbabwe. It did have a few things going for it that the others didn’t. I can actually remember what happened during this movie. That’s new […]
RE:Play Phantasmagoria - Arkhaven Site
“The history of horror is basically a history of what we aren’t all that frightened of anymore. Horror began appropriately enough in France shortly after the Reign of the Terror. Religion was officially outlawed. The Catholic Church had been forced out of the country and if you were going to worship anything at all, it […]
Vampire Rule: Nosferatu - Arkhaven Site
Nosferatu: Derivation from the Slavic Nesuferitu; defined as insufferable One Greek word: Nosphoros – disease-bearing The etymology indicates a common Indo-European root word. Possibly pre-historic in origin Something that was whispered in hushed tones around Pleistocene campfires. Nosferatu is the oldest surviving movie based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. There may or may not have been […]
It Came From the 80s - A Random Horror Listicle (Part 2) - Arkhaven Site
Fright Night (1985) We are now into much better-known territory. At least for the first one. The Plot: horror movie geek Charlie Brewster, thinks that a real-life vampire has moved in next door to him. Everyone thinks he’s nuts, including the has-been Hammer-Horror actor turned Monster-Chiller-Horror-Theater UHF TV host, Peter Vincent (the perfect name by […]
It Came From the Eighties - A Random Horror Listicle (Part 1) - Arkhaven Site
REPOST: 5 October 2023. I like to repost this one, every year in the lonesome October. Ah, Horror. The “lesser genre”. Eternally demeaned, abused, and snubbed by the elders of the film industry. Yet almost all of the major filmmakers started out in it. The only genre that has produced more mainstream directors is no-shit […]
Dune: Prophesy - Final Trailer - Arkhaven Site
TV shows don’t usually take four years to launch. It started life as Dune: The Sisterhood. The series is based on one of the prequel books by Brian Herbert and Keven Anderson that I’ve never read. It was part of their trilogy on the founding of the Great Schools, (the Suk, Mentat, and of course […]
Hammer Films: The Decline - Arkhaven Site
The memory of Ralph Bates is in an unfortunate position. The son of two Psychiatrists he had a unique approach to the craft of drama being able to concentrate on the deeper drives of characters and more importantly those of the characters he was playing against. He had enough raw talent to land a scholarship […]
Disney Announces New Chairman of the BOD - Arkhaven Site
He’s the Executive Chairman of the BOD of Morgan Stanley and frankly was nowhere on my radar for this job. This announcement was made with a concurrent declaration that Disney would be announcing the new CEO in early 2026. Meaning the Dark Herald was wrong, but will plead extenuating circumstances. I had predicted that Walden […]
And Which Narrative Design Company Did Unknown Hire? - Arkhaven Site
Subnautica 2 was just announced and I’m already a bit worried. Yes, it could be just lousy rendering. This is just a teaser afterall. But it can be assumed the two characters are going to be the protagonists. There isn’t too much information being released and no in-game engine footage at all. Unknown Worlds has […]
Disney Just Had a Very Bad Day - Arkhaven Site
Aww. Disney appealed to the 9th Circuit to avoid Discovery and got the big thumbs down. Keep in mind this won’t be immediate. The judge ordered a year-long mediation. Now this is not the same as arbitration, where the matter WOULD be settled. At the end of the period all Carano has to do is […]