Doug Pembry

Writer of all things fictional; semi-confessions of an aspiring liar; a professional with no good works to profess; and fuck your letterboxd too

[Humanoid History @HumanoidHistory]

John Berkey, 1988.

[Richard Kadrey @Richard_Kadrey]

If you’re looking for some excellent folk horror, try THE BANISHED, an Australian film from 2024. It’s a gorgeous, non-linear story of slowly mounting terror in a remote and hostile landscape. If you like Ben Wheatley and Alex Garland’s work, I think you’ll enjoy THE BANISHED.

[Haunted_Hangover @HauntedHangover]

Vigo possessing Ray in Ghostbusters II is still one of the creepiest-looking visuals ever. Underrated!

[Coy Hall @CoyHallBooks]

Irresistible Force (1993). Cynthia Rothrock is a new cop and terrorists take over a mall and she’s trapped inside and she spin kicks the shit out of them. Stacy Keach is her world-weary partner who also doesn’t play by the rules. Man, this should’ve become a cable show. Shame.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

New trailer for ‘LUCKY’, a new series starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Timothy Olyphant.

The series follows a con artist who has to go on the run from both the FBI and a ruthless crime boss.

Releasing July 15 on Apple TV.

[ToonHive @ToonHive]

Nicholas Galitzine, who stars as He-Man in the upcoming live-action film, has officially recreated the iconic meme.

[Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️ @BaronDestructo]

Well this is a hastily cobbled together shit-take of conjecture and misdirection.

The author starts by misreading a grassroots marketing launch as a statement of exclusive intent. Come on.  Announcing a series TO a fandom alongside its community leaders is standard PR; it's not proof that the show was designed exclusively FOR fandom. In fact, it was made clear from the start that, first and foremost, the series would function as an accessible entry point for new viewers...while still respecting canon.  And, by the way, “Respecting canon” does not mean “requiring new viewers to be familiar with 350+ hours of existing Stargate programming” as this article implies.

The author proceeds to support their point by launching into fan fiction: "No plot details were revealed about the scrapped show, but I can easily imagine…”  And they certainly do.  What follows is a parade of clichés, a generic legacy-sequel checklist that the author has conjured up from nothing and pinned to the new show as predictive evidence.

Then comes the claim that Starfleet: Academy failed because the showrunners: "focused too much on paying tribute to the series' past.”  Uh, wut?  Yes, Starfleet: Academy did receive a fair amount of criticism, but strict adherence to canon wasn't on the list of grievances.  This reads like a comment from someone who likely never even watched the show, much less perused the fan response.

They state: "Rebooting the cannon also would let the new Stargate showrunner bring back the Goa'uld, the franchise's most iconic villains…”  No, it wouldn’t.  Know why?   Because the goa’uld... ARE CANON!!!!

The article concludes with a disconnected meditation on an old Stargate storyline with no relation to either the new show or the author’s own argument.

I want to say it was written by A.I., but surely A.I. would display more logical consistency than this.

How the hell does this account have over 1 million followers?

[Donald Ward @WardoftheStates]

Stargate remains a very masculine SciFi franchise. Especially after the first couple of seasons you didn't see much pussyfooting around with the SG-1 or Atlantis team.
When in trouble, shoot the bad guys with a gun.
If that doesn't work, shoot the bad guys with a bigger gun.
Or blow them up with C4.
Or use alien technology to do them in.
The lessons they learned to save the day in one episode are then remembered and used to save the day in the next. A novel concept!
Small wonder why the suits at Amazon cancelled Martin Gero and the gang.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Martin Scorsese, the director of Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street, once called Marvel blockbusters “almost like AI making a film.” He meant it as an insult. That was 2023. This week, at 83, he signed on as a paid adviser to an actual AI company.

The company is Black Forest Labs, a small German firm founded by some of the researchers who kicked off the AI image boom. Its software turns a sentence you type into a finished picture, and it already runs inside Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, and Meta. The whole thing is worth $3.25 billion. Scorsese attached his name last year, and this week the company cashed in that prestige with a press release and a slick promo video of him using it. Its CEO called Scorsese “a great proof point that this works.”

Scorsese did not find this company on his own. His longtime manager, Rick Yorn, brought him in, and Yorn’s investment firm has a stake in it. So one of cinema’s most protective voices is now the public face of a company his own manager invested in.

What he did with the tool is small. He used it to picture what a snowy town might look like for his next film, the rough drawings directors call storyboards. There is no AI in the movie, and the movie already finished shooting.

But storyboarding is a job. Scorsese draws his own. Plenty of directors pay artists to do it, and that drawing is the exact task this software now does for free. Somewhere there is an artist who learned the craft from Scorsese’s own storyboards for Taxi Driver, and this week their hero put his name behind the machine built to replace them.

He is not a sellout for liking new tools. He shot Hugo in 3D and made Robert De Niro look decades younger for The Irishman. For years he has spent his own money rescuing old films from rotting in vaults. The man clearly loves movies.

That is what stings. The loudest voice for keeping movies human just lent that voice to a tool that does a human’s job for free. His own storyboards are safe. It is the next director’s storyboard artist who becomes an optional line in the budget.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

‘BACKROOMS’ director Kane Parsons says he would get “no enjoyment” out of using generative AI on any project — “It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”

“I think I'm in the same boat as most well-adjusted people. If I could snap my fingers and make generative Al disappear forever, I probably would.”

(Source: https://t.co/LA3K1o9KjK)

[Art Hits Hard @nightwriter22]

Backrooms has been a huge success, and a sequel is already in the works. That said, Parsons is currently looking for a writing partner for the follow-up. In the meantime, reports suggest he’s eager to team up with Oz Perkins on a brand-new original project that he’ll direct himself. Perkins, known for films like The Monkey and Longlegs, makes for an exciting collaborator. No plot details have surfaced yet. It's still very early in the process.

[Variety @Variety]

How a 10-Minute Short Film Landed Luke Barnett a Role in 'Dark Winds,' a Feature in Development and More: 'It's Had a Far Greater Impact Than Anything Else I've Done' https://t.co/9kM9w4pJ4u

[SciFi Art @retroscifiart]

Rest in peace the legendary John Blanche (1948 - 2026)

[Valerie D'Orazio @TheVallyD]

A genuine Marvel Comics “No-Prize” envelope. (I’m *guessing* it was mailed to fans empty?)

[Sci-Fi Archives @SciFiArchives]

"Space Colony", Jinsei Choh, 1982

[ilikefreakyfilms @freakyfilms0]

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

[Jason Pargin, author of John Dies at the End, etc @JasonKPargin]

This is the one time I feel like a film adaptation genuinely ruined the reputation of the book. The Brad Pitt film World War Z used the title and literally nothing else, the book is about something entirely different and far more interesting. That's why it was a huge deal!

[Scott McCrea Adventures @ScottMcCreaWest]

The genius of Psycho II is that it manipulates us to feel sorry for Norman Bates.

[oui cinéma @ouicinema]

Betsy Russell
Avenging Angel (1985)
Robert Vincent O'Neil

[Epic Film Guys ® @EpicFilmGuys]

Our new Pamela Voorhees. I was kinda frightened at first, but she was a peach.