Katharine Trendacosta

Quiz: Fictional Dystopia or the Super Bowl?

In the shadow of the Super Bowl, unrest and citizen distrust are on the rise in San Francisco. Under the cruel hand of the NFL, the city by the bay has become virtually indistinguishable from the urban hellscapes of dystopian fiction. Can you tell SF apart from a dystopia in this quiz? You won’t believe…

A Giant Crane Just Flipped Upside Down and Killed Someone in Downtown Manhattan

This morning, shortly before 8:30, a crane fell down on Worth Street in Tribeca. The pictures show extensive damage, but the full extent isn’t known yet. Over 100 firefighters have reported to the scene at Worth St. and Church St., and the FDNY has confirmed one fatality, a person sitting in a car on Worth,…

Once Upon a Time‘s Version of Hades Is So Bad It’s Kind of Great

When Once Upon a Time left us in December, it did so with the promise that the main cast would be journeying into the underworld. Now, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, we know what Hades will look like come March. It’s pretty stupid. In the still above, it looks like Greg Germann accidentally stepped in front…

How The Expanse Pulled Off Two Miracles at the Same Time

The Expanse just finished its first season—leaving us with ten episodes of a show which beat all our highest expectations and made Syfy a destination in a way that it hasn’t been since Battlestar Galactica. How? Warning: Spoilers abound. The Expanse had a doubly difficult job to do. It had to adapt a book to…

The First Clip from Midnight Special Is Full of Danger, Both Extraordinary and Mundane

Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special is premiering at the Berlin Film Festival next week, which means we’re finally seeing images and the first clip from this science fiction, family, and small town drama. Here’s the official synopsis: Every mile that Roy and his eight-year-old son cover on their journey down highways and byways brings us closer…

The Truth Is in This X-Files-Themed Art Show

In celebration of the return of The X-Files, the iam8bit gallery in Los Angeles is teaming up with Poster Posse to present an entirely Mulder, Scully, and friends-themed art show. And the art? Is great. If you’re in Los Angeles from tomorrow until February 14, you can stop in to the gallery and see the…

Francis Ford Coppola Wonders If Star Wars Was Really Worth It

Francis Ford Coppola is really worried that making a whole bunch of Star Wars movies ruined George Lucas. Which leaves us wondering if we would trade more Star Wars for a lot of original Lucas content. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Coppola said: George [Lucas] is kind of a genius but I think it’s a pity…

Ohlala, the App That Lets You Pay for Dates, Is Coming to the United States

Ohlala, with its quirky almost French-sounding name, blends everything you normally see in a dating app with the twist that men are paying women for the dates. And starting tonight at 6:21 PM Eastern, New Yorkers can start using it. The original Ohlala has been up and running in Germany since August 2015, starting in…

The MacGyver reimagining has officially gotten a pilot order from CBS. Furious 7’s James Wan is still on board to direct the pilot and produce the show. [Variety]

Visual Effects Created Almost All of Agent Carter‘s New York

In the visual effects breakdown for Agent Carter season one, there are the usual suspects: explosions, effects from mad science, action sequences. But the thing that stands out is just how many effects were needed to turn the show’s California locations into period New York ones. The video released by Marvel repeatedly shows sets and…

Some Lessons in Smartphone Photography, Courtesy of the X-Files

On last night’s episode of The X-Files, Mulder proved himself to be basically as adept with a smartphone as any old man. Worse, possibly, than most. Here are some lessons you can take from Mulder’s abject failure. The burst mode can really annoy your partner: Why not consider filming instead of taking a shot every…

Last Night’s X-Files Was Everything That Made the Show Great

Last night was episode three of The X-Files, and not only did it finally deliver on the promise of the reboot, it was a perfect showcase of everything that made The X-Files great in the first place. Spoilers abound. “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” simultaneously had a very low bar and a very high…

What’s Up With Uber’s New Logo? 

That’s Uber’s new logo which isn’t a stylized “u” anymore. Which is a weird choice that doesn’t seem at all connected with the name of the brand. Updated with more information and another logo. The new logo, along with quadcopter-like background, is already everywhere from App Store: To the official Uber twitter account: The old…

The New Gods of Egypt Trailer Has Stupid Amounts of Action

I mean that literally: everything in this movie is stupid. But stupid in such high quantities that I have to almost admire it. Like, this movie is a puppy that keeps shitting on my floor, but it’s too cute for me to really get worked up. It’s been a long time since a movie a…

The Ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past Didn’t Just Wipe Out X-3

It wiped out all three of the original X-Men films. Guess we know how Fox is going to reboot X-Men. This was probably inevitable, since the X-Men prequels were lurching closer and closer to when the 2000 movie took place. After the 80s-based Apocalypse they either had the choice to ditch the “one movie per…

Alice Through the Looking Glass‘ Secret Weapon Is… Clocks?

And quick cuts designed to hide much of this disaster from the audience. Also Alan Rickman’s voice, which actually might work as a weapon. This 30-second trailer is just incomprehensible. It’s got a soundtrack that I’m pretty sure came from a film about industrial life in the 30s, a semi-steampunk aesthetic best imbued by Sacha…

Cloverfield‘s Old Viral Marketing Machine Is Up and Running Again for 10 Cloverfield Lane

Remember how Cloverfield came out of nowhere and then dumped a pile of viral marketing on us to keep interest in the then-mysterious movie high? Well, its sibling movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane, is operating in much the same way. Let’s break this down: Back when the trailer for Dan Trachtenberg’s movie came out last month,…

E-Divorce Startup Wants to Make Splitting Up Painless

Divorce can be expensive, drawn-out, and painful. But one startup is betting that it can make divorce proceedings more amicable for everyone involved. Wevorce, a new web-based divorce service, allows couples to collaboratively dissolve their marriage by leading them through the process without the burdenesome time and expense of a long court battle. The company…

See the Failed Con That Brings the Heroes of Zootopia Together

While we are rapidly approaching the point where I feel like we’ve seen most of the first half of Zootopia via trailers. But the international trailer shows how officer Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) meet. It involves a con and a giant popsicle. This is also where we learned that, for…

Mark Hamill Will Once Again Voice the Joker in Cartoon Network’s Justice League Action

Cartoon Network’s putting the animated band back together. It’s new show, Justice League Action, will have Kevin Conroy voicing Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker. Close your eyes and imagine Batman: The Animated Series has returned. Like Teen Titans Go!, Justice League Action will have 11-minute episodes with, I swear this is the official…