Resident Alien 2: starring Allan Tudyk
Space Force 2: starring Steve Carell
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Inventing Anna
February 2022 | 18+ | 1 Season |
This February Inventing Anna began airing on Netflix. The drama series has a journalist chasing down the story of 25 year old Anna Delvey, who convinced New York’s elite she was a German heiress and came close to swindling New York banks and high society out of millions of dollars.
Between 2013 and 2017, Anna Delvey (Anna Sorokin in real life) scammed her way across New York as a fake German heiress. She wore designer clothing, stayed at boutique hotels, and had dinners at expensive restaurants. She managed to swindle tens of thousands of dollars from friends to banks. And she came so close to conning financial institutions into giving her $40million to fund her exclusive social club project, the Anna Delvey Foundation. But soon after things began to unravel for Anna.
The Tinder Swindler
February 2022 | 18+ | 1 Season
This British true crime documentary follows the story of Simon Leviev, an Israeli con-artist who posed as the son of the “king of diamonds” Lev Leviev, a famed Russian-Israeli diamond oligarch in order to woo young women on the dating app Tinder and seduce them with travel by private jet, luxury hotels and expensive dinners.
Thereafter he manages to swindle them for millions and pay for his luxurious lifestyle. This is the true story of Cecilie Fjellhøy, Pernilla Sjöholm and Ayleen Charlotte, their heartbreak and financial ruin thereafter—just three of Simon Leviev’s many victims across Europe.
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Enjoying some down time with a cocktail drink in hand among friends and a great view of the cityscape doesn’t get any better at the newly opened Imagene Bar. If you’ve been meaning to find the right after-hours place, then head no further than Imagene Bar – a cozy enclave tucked along the hill-side of Nivel Hills on Cebu Veterans Drive.
On the menu you’ll find over 60 drinks and cocktails as well as some delectable Bar Chow put together by Imagene Bar founder Eugene Dy who’s been serving up bottled cocktails online with a mobile event bar after a stint at the Spago in Marina Bay Sands Singapore.
Imagene Bar accommodates up to 80 guests and is open Tuesdays to Sundays. Bar hours are from 5pm to 2am but it’s best to make reservations on weekends.
]]>Bridgerton Season 2 … March 2022
Stranger Things Season 4 … mid 2022
The Witcher: Blood Origin … starring Michelle Yeoh.
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The holidays are fast approaching and you know what that means — your calendar’s about to be filled with Christmas parties and family gatherings! What better way to liven up a gathering than with a game? Board games are so much more than just Scrabble, Chess, and Monopoly — there are tons of great games to play that are funny, exciting, and sure to put everyone playing in a great mood. Here are our top 5 picks for the best board games to play with your family or friends during the holidays:
1. Codenames
In this game, players separate into two teams. Each team has a spymaster and the spymaster’s responsibility is to get the rest of the team to guess correctly which words on the chosen cards belong to their team. However, they need to be careful because if their teammates guess the words of the other team, the points go to the other team instead! Codenames is an absolute blast of a word game. The entire party is sure to have a great time as the spymaster struggles to come up with the perfect clues and the other team members struggle to figure out what words the clues refer to!
2. Dixit
Dixit is the most beautiful game you’ll own, with 84 cards of nothing but gorgeous illustrations. The game is great as well — on an active player’s turn, they pick a card from their hand and come up with a clue to describe it. The possibilities here are endless — your clue can be a word, a phrase, a sentence, a poem, or even a song! Once you’ve given your clue, everyone gives a card from their hand they think matches your card. The cards are all revealed and now all other players need to guess which card is yours. It’s a fantastic game that’ll really challenge the creativity of everyone playing it!
3. Cluedo
A classic for a reason, Cluedo is the murder mystery board game where someone is murdered and everyone needs to figure out who did it, what weapon they used, and where the murder took place. The first person to figure out all three wins the game. Was it Colonel Mustard with a knife in the library? Or was it Miss Scarlet with a pistol in the lounge? Everyone playing will have tons of fun as their deduction skills are put to the test! (There’s a great film based on this game as well which we highly recommend watching after playing!)
4. Cranium
Another team-based game, Cranium will test how well your team works together. In this game, everyone gets to shine!With four different categories, Cranium has got something for everyone — really into performing? Star Performer is for you! More into reading and writing? Test your word skills out with Word Worm! Consider yourself something of a trivia lover? Data Head’s your category! Love drawing and sculpting? Creative Cat’s got the challenges for you! Cranium is a game everyone will love and enjoy, especially because you’ll all find yourself laughing like crazy when playing it!
5. Telestrations
Terrible at drawing? Then you’re perfect for this game! Telestrations takes the game Telephone and turns it into a drawing game. Each player gets a drawing notebook and a word they need to draw. Once everyone’s done drawing, each player passes their notebook to the side and now has to guess the word of the drawing they currently have in their hands. Guess what they drew, then draw what they guessed, and see how funny the changes get. Everyone playing will be in tears laughing at the end of each round, wondering how someone started by drawing a bagel and ended up with the final guess Rapunzel!
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League of Legends a very popular video game that’s been around for over a decade has now been adapted into an animated series on Netflix. The series, Arcane: League of Legends was just released on November 6, 2021 and starring Hailee Steinfeld. As a person who doesn’t play LoL, I was very surprised by Arcane’s story and the quality of the animation. The title theme song is by Imagine Dragons and soundtrack is very cool.
Rottentomatoes gives the series a 100% score! Here’s what they say:
“Newcomers should be equally enthralled by Arcane’s compelling narrative, richly developed characters … “
Critics Consensus
“Arcane makes an arresting first impression, combining a spectacular mix of 2D and 3D animation with an emotionally compelling story to deliver a video game adaptation that could become legendary.”
Well then, this is a must see for me! Now out on Netflix
… zen
]]>You probably don’t need to be reminded of why Taylor Swift has decided to release re-recordings of her previous albums, starting with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) last year and now with Red (Taylor’s Version). However, if you somehow missed one of the biggest music controversies in recent history, here’s a quick summary: in 2019, talent manager Scooter Braun acquired the record label Big Machine and as part of the deal acquired ownership of the master recordings for the first six studio albums by Taylor Swift. Swift has been trying to buy the masters to her songs for years but she’s been offered nothing but unfavorable conditions — therefore, as a countermeasure, she is re-recording all of her six albums and so far has released two.
It’s a bold move on Taylor’s part, but lucky for her, the re-recordings have done incredibly well especially with the re-recording of her 2012 album Red. On its first day of release, Red (Taylor’s Version) has broken two Spotify records: one for the most-streamed album in a day by a female and another for the most-streamed female in a single day both in Spotify history.
It’s hard to review an album like this when Red (Taylor’s Version) is, for the most part, just a recreation of the songs of Red. There are new songs, of course, but the majority of the tracks are simply re-recorded versions of her already existing songs. The Immaculate Collection by Madonna, this isn’t — save for All Too Well, there are no new instrumentals or parts of the song here, just plain re-recordings of her previous songs.
Unfortunately for Taylor Swift, some of the songs don’t really benefit from being re-recorded. The original version of We Are Never Getting Back Together, for instance, while far from Swift’s best song at least had the energy and emotion you’d expect a bitter break-up song like it to have. In the new version, Taylor Swift just sounds lifeless and bored, especially when it comes to her spoken lines.
It’s difficult to blame her when she’s expected to still give convincing performances of experiences she’s had over a decade ago. How do you expect a singer in her 30s to sing a song about how excited she is to be 22 and still make it sound as convincing as she made it when she was actually 22?
That being said, some of the songs also benefit from being re-recorded. There’s a sense of nostalgia added to many of these songs. Taylor Swift sounds older and, in a way, that adds even more emotional depth to some of her tracks. And for anyone not wild about these songs simply being re-recordings, Swift has six new “From The Vault” tracks which should be enough to tide you over.
All in all, Red (Taylor’s Version) doesn’t always work, but for Taylor Swift fans, it’s a way to listen to versions of her songs that are hers. It’s why the “(Taylor’s Version)” at the end of these songs are so important and it’s great to know Taylor Swift finally has versions of the songs she wrote which she can call hers.
There’s a lot to like about the new Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl video game, especially if you’re someone who spent many lazy days as a kid watching Nickelodeon cartoons. For starters, just seeing our favorite childhood cartoon characters like Spongebob Squarepants and Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting each other is a blast, especially when they’re doing it on the Flying Dutchman ship.
If all I’ve said so far sounds nostalgic to you, that’s really the game’s main selling point: nostalgia. Despite having a few characters in their roster from the new Nickelodeon toons like the Loud House characters, most of the playable characters are from the older Nickelodeon toons, like Invader Zim, CatDog, and Danny Phantom. The target audience here seems to be less the children of today and more people currently in their 20s and 30s who grew up with cable and spent their weekends watching Danny Phantom episodes back-to-back.
Considering that, it’s a little disappointing to see so many characters from popular Nickelodeon shows missing from their roster. Currently, there isn’t a single character from The FairlyOdd Parents, despite the fact that it’s one of Nickelodeon’s most recognizable shows. There are also no characters from Jimmy Neutron or My Life as a Teenage Robot and the only character present from Rugrats is Tommy’s toy dinosaur Reptar. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are also missing two ninja turtles and Hey Arnold is missing, well, Arnold.
Nickelodeon has to be planning a ton of DLCs or even sequels for this game, given how long of a list their recognizable characters are and how short of a list the characters on this video game are. My best guess is that Nickelodeon plans on making this All-Star Brawl franchise as big and extensive as possible, which, given their plethora of iconic shows, isn’t a far-fetched goal at all. By this time next year or next next year, we might be seeing a Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2.
Still, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl remains a fun game, even if there really isn’t much here once the novelty of watching your favorite childhood cartoon characters fight fades off. If this game wants to compete against its big brother Super Smash Bros., it’s going to have to do a lot more than give us the gimmick of cartoon characters fighting. Sure, the Super Smash Bros. series also had the gimmick of iconic video game characters fighting, but more than that, it was a well-designed challenging fighting game. If you knew none of the characters, you would still have a blast playing it.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, however, is a good game that unfortunately could be much much better. While non Nickelodeon fans could have fun here, it’s hard to see them ever wanting to return to the game after. But let’s be real here — the only people interested in this game are the ones who can instantly recognize a Spongebob quote from its golden seasons. In that regard, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl does exactly what it needs to do — provide a fun nostalgic experience for the gamers of the Nickelodeon generation.
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