Jemaine Clement has had a rich and varied career since debuting with Flight of the Conchords, from voice appearances in Moana and on Rick and Morty to appearing in Steven Spielberg’s The BFG to getting a plum role in the Avatar sequels. But his most cherished non-Conchords work may be the What We Do in the Shadows-verse. Clement co-directed the mockumentary movie with Taika Waititi, and then went on to create the FX TV version, which focuses on a squadron of vampires in Staten Island. It’s had two great seasons thus far, and while it’ll be back for a third, Clement will be a bit less involved.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly (in a bit picked up by ComicBook.com), Clement — who’s twice swung by the show as long-haired stud Vladislav the Poker, his character from the movie — was asked what on earth he has left after the wild Season 2 conclusion. Here was his answer:
The writers will have to figure that one out because I won’t be in the writers’ room next season. I’m leaving them with this big problem to work out. I think it’s a good idea to end on a big cliffhanger, we did the same thing last season. Now they can figure out how to get out of this big mess.
So that’s pretty funny. It’s almost like a game of Exquisite Corpse, kind of, with Clement helping steer the writers’ room into a wall and see if they can plot their escape. It also means What We Do in the Shadows will remain a lively and surprising program that doesn’t rest on its laurels or give fans the same-old.
Elsewhere, Clement reveals one of his Vladislav appearances wasn’t supposed to happen. “I wasn’t even going to do this until the day before, because we had trouble getting anyone in time,” he revealed. “We were hoping we’d get someone who has played a vampire before, like in ‘The Trial’ last season with the vampire council, but we didn’t have enough time. So I happened to be in Toronto, where we shoot the show, so I put my wig on again, but it wasn’t planned.”
We finally have two consoles to be excited about for the next generation that arrives later this year. While Microsoft officially showed the Xbox: Series X as recently as last December, and had a showcase event in early May, Sony had remained oddly quiet. All details of the PlayStation 5 were released via statements, leaks, and articles in Wired. The most information anyone had about the console came from a very dry event for the Game Developers Conference that explained how the PS5 was going to function on a hardware level.
Finally, on June 11, Sony gave video game fans what they have been asking for in the form of a gameplay trailer event that showed some of the games that will be available in the near future on the PlayStation 5. In typical Sony fashion, the games ranged from exciting and cinematic to artistic and playful. It was a wide range of games and there was reason to be excited about all of them, but with any event like this, there are going to be those games that stick out from the crowd. Here are some of the trailers that left all of us anticipating Holiday 2020 and early 2021.
The Heavy Hitters
These games are console sellers. You buy the console because you want to play these games the most.
Spiderman Miles Morales
Marvel’s Spider-Man was one of the best games on the PS4 when it launched in 2018 and it didn’t take Sony and Insomniac long to get working on a sequel. This time they’re going with fellow Spider-Man Miles Morales. The star of Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, Morales will now be starring in his own game. The trailer begins with Peter Parker from the previous games telling Morales what it is that makes him a hero. Donning his black and red spidey suit we see him in a winter setting swinging through the city doing his job as Spider-Man.
I’m really excited to see what direction the franchise goes with Morales as the main protagonist of the game. To explain why this would be exciting would get into spoiler territory for the end of the last game, but let’s just say that Spider-Man fans everywhere will be picking up a PS5 to play this.
Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon: Zero Dawn was an incredible new IP on the PlayStation 4 that was unfortunately overshadowed by other exciting games at the time. Despite this it carved out a very strong and vocal fanbase that can spend hours explaining to you what makes Horizon such an incredible game. Taking that IP and giving it a sequel was a no brainer and there is heavy anticipation about what they are going to do with the franchise now that they have experience with it under their belts.
One thing we know for certain is that the world is going to be beautiful. The last game looked great, but if the trailer is anything to go by, then the follow up in Forbidden West is going to blow it out of the water. There is color everywhere and what appears to be a vibrant and growing world. While the trailer should obviously be taken with a grain of salt, because it’s a trailer, you cannot help but be excited when watching it.
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village might as well be called Resident Evil 8, because that’s what it is. The Resident Evil series underwent a mini reboot with seven and went back to their horror routes in creating a scary, but still very Resident Evil, kind of game. Village is going to continue the format RE7 and stick with the first person view focused on horror.
You might be wondering why it’s so surprising to see a horror franchise actually have horror elements in the trailer and that’s because Resident Evil is also known for being extremely campy. For example, Chris Redfield almost gets crushed by a boulder in Resident Evil 5 and starts punching it to escape. Speaking of Chris, he shows up at the very end of the Village trailer leaving a lot of us long time Resident Evil fans wondering what role the former member of STARS is going to play in all this.
The Welcome Returns
These games might not be console sellers, but it’s great to see them make an appearance on the console.
Hitman III
It’s hard to say too much about Hitman III with the trailer itself being so vague, but it’s exciting to see that they’re making another Hitman game. There was concern that the franchise didn’t have much life left in it five years ago and now we have them as one of the major parts of a console event. The video game industry changes fast!
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a welcome sight for long time PlayStation fans. The franchise was a major part of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 eras but surprisingly did not have a major role in the lifespan of the PlayStation 4. The Ratchet and Clank series has always been a lot of silly games with a great variety of weapons to choose from as you mow down enemies and platform through the colorful worlds.
This iteration sees Ratchet and Clank traveling through dimensions and if the developers can deliver on their promise of being able to do so at will, this could be one of the most creative games in the franchise and on the PlayStation 5 itself.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure
If you never played Little Big Planet on the PlayStation 3 then you did yourself a disservice. They were some of the best platformers of that generation and the player creation aspect led to some really unique level design. However, as the game grew it moved farther away from its traditional platforming roots and leaned heavily on the player creation aspect. This of course eventually led to developer Media Molecule making an entire game around that in “Dreams.”
Sackboy A Big Adventure sees the protagonist of Little Big Planet, Sackboy, returning to his roots and starring in his own 3D platformer. The trailer is absolutely charming and features some really unique levels that will be fun to traverse. As a fan of platformers, this is going to be in my cart on day one.
Demon’s Souls
We don’t need to spend too much time on this one. Demon’s Souls is a remake of the 2009 cult classic of the same name. Fans of this game and the Souls franchise have been waiting for a remake ever since the PS4 came out. They will be pleased.
Some Exciting Newcomers
Not everything needs to be a sequel or remake. Here are some exciting and fresh IP’s that stuck out.
Pragmata
Pragmata left me fascinated. Why is this world empty? Why is this person in a space suit? Why is there a little girl there? What in the world is happening to the world around them? Why are they now on the moon? I need to know the answer to these questions and it’s painful I will not know until 2022.
DEATHLOOP
DEATHLOOP is a game that, as a concept, is not entirely original but in execution is completely original. You play as a character who is put on an island where everyone is trying to kill him. When he dies he quite literally “respawns” and has to try and do it all over again. His eventual goal? Kill everyone on the island so he can escape. Simple enough right? Well, considering how often he’s been through this scenario based on the trailer, apparently not.
I’m a sucker for games like this. They’re extremely meta and the concept of a never ending loop that you have to solve is an interesting one. DEATHLOOP even throws in the extra caveat of an opposition character. A woman whose sole job in life is to kill the man stuck in the DEATHLOOP. They also potentially teased a multiplayer aspect at the end when they showed what appeared to be a player perspective taking control of her. Perhaps this is a 1v1 multiplayer game of some kind? I’m fascinated to know more.
The PS5 Itself
No one actually came into this event expecting to see the PS5 itself. Sony pushed hard that this was an event meant to show the games and nothing else. So to suddenly drop the look of the PlayStation 5 immediately caught everyone off guard.
Today was a major win for Sony and PlayStation. It’s now Microsoft’s turn to see if it has an answer with the Series X.
From Bon Appétit to CrossFit, top editors and executives are being called out for racism. But the Black Lives Matter movement is about much more than white-collar accountability.
True crime is a bit of a weird genre. There’s a lot to be gleaned from learning about the abuses, failures, and corruption of our various systems. Finding out how police coercion works or bearing witness to full-on criminal activities by the police teaches lessons many of us need to learn right now. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the voyeuristic side to true crime that’s almost a celebration of crime — especially white male serial killers. It’s weird but often hard to turn away from.
All of that makes finding the “best true crime documentaries” a balancing act between the teachable moments and thriller-esque viewing pleasure. For this list, we’re going to try and skip the more sensational pieces of My-Favorite-Murder bait and focus on stories that expose, not celebrate crime. The 12 true crime documentaries below touch on several sectors of society — police discrimination, our broken justice and penal systems, ingrained bigotry, sexism, and highlight some bizarrely evil crimes. Hopefully, instead of stoking fear, these docs will help to educate and illuminate the world we live in.
In April 1992, William Ford was shot dead at an auto shop. The 24-year-old black man was murdered by a 19-year-old white man, Mark P. Reilly, over complaints Ford had with the quality of work at the auto shop. He was unarmed and shot dead for it. Of course, this being a story of white-on-black violence in the United States, the story doesn’t end there. An all-white grand jury gave the white Reilly the benefit of the doubt and decided his murder was an act of self-defense.
The Oscar-nominated documentary walks us through the murder and the bafflingly-yet-familiar aftermath wherein the police and judicial systems failed Ford’s family in bringing his murderer to justice. The ending of this doc is too familiar to spoil and will leave you ready to take to the streets.
Bikram Hot Yoga is a fad that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Its founder — who has made tens-of-millions of dollars off the practice — is an at-large predator who spent decades sexually assaulting and raping his students, predominately women of color. Yet he’s still not in prison. In fact, he’s living the high-life with his millions still intact.
The documentary follows Bikram Choudhury’s rise to fame in the U.S. throughout the 1970s and 1980s and then takes a turn into the very dark side of his power. There’s a clear feeling of cult leader behavior as Choudhury abuses his female students psychologically, physically, and sexually. Perhaps most amazingly, after Choudhury fled from arrest in the United States, he continues to attract people to his Bikram training seminars in Europe and Mexico to this day, adding to the cult-leader vibe.
Wow. Where to begin with this documentary? Jan Broberg was abducted twice by the same family friend in her teens. The kicker, the parents of Broberg knew what was going on and let it happen, even dropping charges for the first kidnapping.
That’s only the tip of the shit-show iceberg of this story. The twists and turns this documentary takes in telling the story of how one man could convince two parents that his kidnapping and raping of their 12-year-old daughter — twice — was not a crime has to be seen to be believed and helps illustrate how society’s ingrained trust of the “charming man” continues to fail women and girls.
One of Us follows two former members of Brooklyn’s Hasidic community as they adjust to life outside the neighborhood they grew up in. On the surface, that doesn’t really sound like a true-crime documentary.
But once the documentary dives into why the protagonists left, it becomes clear that heinous crimes are lurking just under the surface. Memories of domestic violence and child sexual abuse emerge and drive a further wedge between those trying to leave the community and those who are trying to keep it together.
Speaking of cults, Holy Hell is a bizarre look at the Buddhafield cult and the abuse doled out by its leader, Jamie Gomez, or “Michel” as Gomez prefers his followers to call him. The film is fairly straightforward in how it depicts the cultish behavior. Gradually, as with so many of these stories, Gomez becomes a monster. He starts emotionally abusing his female followers and sexually assaulting his male followers.
The ripple that makes this a unique watch is the insider view of the cult thanks to footage shot by Will Allen, Buddahafield’s main videographer for 22 years. The film offers a sort of behind-the-scenes glimpse inside the everyday life of a very active cult.
This documentary should leave you shaken to the core. The rapes of teens Audrie Pott in California and Daisy Coleman and Paige Parkhurst in Missouri, 15, 14, and 13 respectively at the time of their attacks, highlights pretty much everything wrong with, well, everything.
The documentary looks at how a community and social media bullying turned against the young rape victims to protect the perpetrators of these horrific crimes. It’s absolutely baffling. The vitriol and bullying these teens and their parents went through will make your blood boil. One of the most disturbing moments comes when the mayor and sheriff of Coleman’s town says on camera that “Girls have as much culpability” in their own rapes. The horridness doesn’t end there.
Sam Cooke’s murder was played as a simple robbery by the white authorities at the time. That white-police narrative has become harder and harder to swallow every day since the icon’s untimely death.
This doc takes a deep look at Cooke’s amazing rise to stardom and how he was parlaying his fame into life as an activist for Black rights in America alongside leaders like Malcolm X. If you don’t know anything about Cooke, this is a great look at his life and very dubious murder.
Marsha P. Johnson was one of the loudest voices for gay and trans rights in America. The untimely death and possible murder of Johnson after 1992’s Pride parade was written off by police as a suicide due to clear and deeply-rooted bigotry against the black community, the gay community, and the trans community in New York (and across the country). Eventually, the case would be reopened and investigated as a murder, adding a clear true crime element to this doc.
As much as the murder acts as a hook, the backbone of this documentary is really Johnson’s life as an activist who lived through big moments in LGBTQI history from the Stonewall Inn Raids and following riots to the AIDS crisis. The doc will leave you in awe of Johnson and the massive amount of bravery it took to keep up those fights while also feeling enraged that her death was written off so quickly by the police.
It’s almost unbelievable that a person could be tried for murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison based on a witness’ dream. Yet here we are. Dream/Killer looks the case of Ryan Ferguson, who received that sentence for a murder he had nothing to with. However, he was implicated in it based on a ridiculously coerced confession to the police.
The backbone of the film follows Ryan’s father, Bill Ferguson, as he spends nearly ten years trying to prove his son’s innocence. If you don’t know the case, go in without knowing how it all ends.
If you still hold the very flawed idea that everyone in prison is there because they deserve it, you need to watch this doc from the U.K. The story is about Nick Yarris who spent 22 years on death row fighting for his freedom. He didn’t get that freedom until DNA evidence proved his innocence and he was circulated back into society.
The film’s draw is its unique style. The narrative is told with Yarris taking a stage, so-to-speak, and monologuing over atmospheric reshoots of his experiences. It’s an engaging way to flip the script visually on the usual true-crime style, and it’ll hook you right away.
If you haven’t seen 2013’s Blackfish, you might want to do that now. The film has become the seminal testament to the horrors of for-profit captivity of large mammals in amusement parks.
The film follows the story of the captive orca, Tilikum, and the three deaths the orca caused while in captivity at Sealand on the Pacific. The film also features interviews from SeaWorld employees and lays bare the tactics of captive orca breeding. Thankfully, this doc was single-handily responsible for waterparks like SeaWorld losing massive ticket sales. When you watch the doc, you’ll understand why.
This documentary from National Geographic feels more relevant than ever right now. It takes an un-polished look at how police violence and systemic racism has been tearing Los Angeles — and the nation — apart for a long time before the police beat Rodney King and got away with it.
The film looks at the L.A. Riots of 1992 using archival footage with voice over from actual reports, police scanners, activists, politicians, and people at the time. The doc takes you right there and is so visceral you can feel the heat from the fires and the anger of the people on the streets. This is what happens when the cops and the justice system are the ones committing the crimes and the people just can’t take it anymore.
The Punisher may never appear on TV screens again. This might be for the best, considering that the Netflix show developed an identity crisis, perhaps as a response to a premiere pushback due to the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. Writers attempted to move former Marine Frank Castle beyond his core vigilante function by softening him, which only further muddied the waters of what should be a pretty straightforward comic book character. None of that explains the already wild misappropriation of the antihero’s logo by law enforcement and members of the military. Really though, if one takes the character and contextualizes him against the past five years or so of current events, it’s a solid time to put The Punisher to sleep.
Maybe it’s not time to lose him forever (as some suggested when Netflix’s TV series debuted), but placing Frank, comics and everything, into hibernation mode could be a powerful tool. I’m suggesting that move in light of a growing fan-based movement (amid protests against police brutality) for Disney, which acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009, to sue police departments that have co-opted the character’s telltale skull logo.
First, let’s run down a few quick examples of cop-and-military fascination with Frank Castle. Those who are sworn to protect us, well, they tend to idolize the guy:
– In 2011, a watchdog report detailed “a gang” of rogue officers (also referring to themselves as the Punishers) within the Milwaukee PD, who (according to their police academy supervisor) “represented a danger that warranted further investigation and action by the department.” The group affixed The Punisher stickers to their gear.
– American Sniper, the 2014 Best Picture Oscar nominee starring Bradley Cooper, is filled to the brim with The Punisher imagery due to Chris Kyle’s fixation with Castle. His platoon went so far as to call themselves the Punishers while painting the logo all over their uniforms and equipment.
Warner Bros. Pictures
– In 2019, the British SAS flat-out told soldiers to stop usingThe Punisher logo. Officially, the stated reason was that the logo was reminiscent of the “Totenkopf” symbol used by the Nazi SS. Yet the fact remains that there were enough soldiers using the symbol that it needed to be addressed at all.
– Earlier this year, Fox News’ Sean Hannity (who, in recent days, accused Black Lives Matter of starting a militia against police to upend the social order) wore a stars-and-stripes-themed version of the logo as a lapel pin on air.
– And last week, Detroit cops were photographed while apparently wearing The Punisher logo on their uniforms while they arrested those who protested police brutality. Here’s an officer walking through a crowd of protesters with a “Detroit Police” patch that includes the skull.
Getty Image
That last example appears to be the last straw for comic book fans, who’ve had enough, but a lawsuit probably isn’t the best way to go here.
These fans are pushing for Disney to sue police departments for twisting the logo’s meaning, which initially makes sense for a few reasons: (1) Disney’s not afraid to put its foot down when it doesn’t want, say, a family to use a Spider-Man logo on a child’s gravestone; (2) Disney has pledged $5 million toward nonprofit organizations (including $2 million for the NAACP) geared towards advancing social justice.
What better way to unite the above two Disney interests than by making a larger gesture (in lawsuit form) against police brutality? Disney doesn’t shy away from lawsuits against copyright and trademark infringement, but there’s a not-so-small issue here: the effort would likely fail, as it did in 2017 when the conglomerate battled a “knock-off business” that “provides unlicensed and poor quality appearances and performances” by actors dressed as “iconic characters for themed events, such as children’s parties.” The argument there, beyond the company profiting from dressing up people as not-Loki and un-Elsa, was that the “shoddy” portrayal of characters, even under different names, was “likely to damage customers’ positive associations with Plaintiffs’ marks.”
Well, a court refused to indulge Disney’s argument, shutting down a summary judgment motion and denying the trademark infringement claim, so the case went nowhere. That’s bad news because such a trademark infringement suit — revolving around defamation, since Disney can’t argue that these PDs are profiting from the logo — would have been the ideal argument against cops using the symbol. Sorry, Marvel fans!
So, where to go from here?
For its part, Marvel has declared (to io9) that it is “taking seriously” any unlicensed usage of its imagery but is sticking with the following statement (also posted to the Disney+ and Star Wars accounts) from last week on their Twitter account.
Meanwhile, writer Gerry Conway, who brought Frank Castle and his logo (along with John Romita Sr.) to life nearly 50 years ago, continues to speak on the subject. Conway has been vocal for years about Castle’s distaste for cops and military members using the logo for their own ends. Castle is driven by trauma, vengeance, and grief to be a one-man, extrajudicial killing machine who operates outside legal boundaries. Castle can do so because he’s a friggin’ comic book character, not an idol to be emulated.
As Conway explained, police have misinterpreted Castle’s purpose. He actually “represents a failure of the Justice system.” Further, Castle is an indictment of “the collapse of social moral authority and the reality [that] some people can’t depend on institutions like the police or the military to act in a just and capable way.” He simply isn’t written to be a role model for law enforcement or military forces. Last year, The Punisher #13 comic pointedly set out to illustrate this point by including a story of cops fanboy-ing all over Castle, who ripped up their logo-sticker and told them to get lost:
“I’ll say this once. We’re not the same. You took an oath to uphold the law. You help people. I gave all that up a long time ago. You don’t do what I do. Nobody does. You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America, and he’d be happy to have you.”
— Erick Tweets (Trying to sift through reality) (@ErickTweets110) June 4, 2020
Gerry Conway recognizes that the current moment could harness some energy, so he has invited young comic book artists of color to step up for the cause. In a series of tweets, he’s asking artists to help raise funds for Black Lives Matter in a project aimed toward The Punisher. He also noted that this symbol “must *not* be… a symbol of oppression,” and he wants to claim the logo for BLM.
As to the debate over whether the Punisher symbol can ever be a symbol for justice — I agree that’s an open question. What it must *not* be is a symbol of oppression. I want to deny police the use of the symbol by claiming it for BLM. Call it irony.
The question remains, though: would BLM activists even want to repurpose the logo for their cause? It’s difficult to imagine them embracing a symbol that’s worn by cops who are arresting them. Even if Conway could rechannel The Punisher‘s energy for the pursuit of justice with his project, I’d argue that it’s too soon for BLM to associate itself with the logo. A stronger statement would be for Marvel Entertainment to actually shut down The Punisher comic — forgoing those profits for a limited time and asking fans to donate that money to BLM instead. It’s not like Marvel hasn’t done something this drastic before. Remember when they killed Captain America? Steve Rogers was reborn a few years later, and there’s no reason why The Punisher can’t take the same route.
Seriously, put Frank Castle on ice. That would be a powerful stance to take against police brutality, by shutting down their misplaced fanboy-ism. Then get through 2020, and bring the comic back with a Black Lives Matter story arc. Oh, and make a Disney+ limited series to match. People would watch the heck out of that show. Let’s do this.
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