Review: Stonewall Outloud

I love gay history, so I jumped at the chance to attend a screening of the documentary short Stonewall Out Loud at the Stonewall last week.  It initially premiered on June 5 of this year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the riots and is currently streaming on YouTube.  After viewing the film by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato – the acclaimed directors of Inside Deepthroat and Party Monster, among others—I’m happy to report that my enthusiasm was rewarded. 

As Bailey told the crowd at the screening, there are very few photographs from the Stonewall riots, so he and Barbato had to get creative.  Their brilliant conceit was to bring audio recordings of the participants to life by having various LGBT celebrities “play” the storytellers: i.e. lip sync.  It seemed a little odd at first, seeing the likes of Lance Bass, Adam Rippon, and Isis King “speaking” for the participants, but I quickly got used to it.  Considering lip syncing’s long association with drag, the technique is actually all too appropriate; in fact, Drag Race’s Jinkx Monsoon “portrays” the legendary Sylvia Rivera.  The film also includes conversations between the actors and the still living “voices”—like Fredd E. “Tree” Sequoia, who still bartends at Stonewall today—and reflections from both generations on the significance of these events in shaping our community’s ongoing history.    There are also cinematic close-ups of smashing bottles, flashing lights, and other images evoking the riots and the context surrounding them, as well as incendiary footage of Rivera lashing out at a hostile crowd at Pride 1973.  Watching this documentary in the spot where it all happened was a truly moving experience.

“Tree” Sequoia with Adam Rippon

Afterwards, legendary journalist Michael Musto conducted a Q&A with Sequoia and Bailey before opening up the floor to audience questions.  One self-identified “zennial” (cross between a millennial and generation Z) professed that they talk about Stonewall “all the time” with their circle of friends and that it’s quite meaningful, “especially for the trans community”—this comment brought a chorus of snaps from their friends in the crowd.  With Stonewall Outloud, those young people and generations to come have an invaluable new testament.

The Geeks OUT Podcast: Skeletors in My Closet

The Geeks OUT Podcast

Opinions, reviews, incisive discussions of queer geek ideas in pop culture, and the particularly cutting brand of shade that you can only get from a couple of queer geeks all in highly digestible weekly doses.

In this week’s super-sized episode of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin is joined by John Jennison as they discuss new trailers for the final season of Marvel’s Runaways & Amazon’s Hunters, possible gay-baiting in He-Man and the Masters of the Multiverse, and celebrate Kevin Conroy as Batman in Crisis on Infinite Earths in This Week in Queer.

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BIG OPENING

KEVIN: He-Man and the Masters of the Multiverse possibly gay-baiting
JOHN: Stargirl will be bi-network

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DOWN AND NERDY

KEVIN: Knives Out, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Watchmen, Daybreak, Annihilation: Scourge
ERIC: The Good Place, Theater of Terror, Disney Plus

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STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

New trailer for Runaways confirms final season

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THIS WEEK IN QUEER

New details & photos reveal plot details for Crisis on Infinite Earths including Kevin Conroy as Kingdom Come Batman

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CLIP OF THE WEEK

New trailer for Hunters

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THE WEEK IN GEEK

MOVIES

New trailer for Cats
Noah Hawley is directing new Star Trek movie
• Black Adam to introduce the JSA
• New teaser for Antebellum

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TV

• Titans finally gives us Nightwing
Undone coming back for season 2
• Apple renews Servant before it premiers
• New trailer for Steven Universe Future
Game of Thrones pressured nude scenes
Lord of the Rings series already renewed for a second season
• New trailer for Doctor Who
• New teaser for Avenue 5
• New trailer for season 2 of Project Blue Book
• New trailer for V Wars
• New teaser for AJ and the Queen
• New trailer for The SpongeBob Musical: Live on Stage!
• New trailer for Infinity Train: Book Two

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COMIC BOOKS

• Marvel announces new Spider-Woman series
• Boom! changes Angel to Angel & Spike

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SHILF

• KEVIN: Prince Keldor/Skeletor
• JOHN: He-Man

GEEKS OUT BOARD INTERVIEW #4: Kyle-Steven Porter

We here at Geeks OUT want you, the reader, to know more about who we are. To help with that, we’ve started interviewing members of our board so you know what makes us tick. Here’s our fourth interview!

Who are you and what do you do for Geeks OUT?

Hi! I’m Kyle-Steven Porter, and I’m presently a Board Member for Geeks OUT, serving as co-chair for the Conventions Committee as well as acting Diversity Lounge Manager at the US-based PAX conventions.


How did you first get involved?

While Geeks OUT events had always been on my social radar, my first actual event was Flame Con 2, back in the summer of 2016. I then volunteered at NY Comic Con, and shortly after that, wound up on the Board.


What makes you geek out?

My earliest introductions to the wonderful world of geekdom would have to be Nintendo, comics and literature. The Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt combo was the first video game I ever played and it made a fantastic impression. We had a few other systems as well as the years went on, but the Nintendo ones were always where I felt the most at home and, more importantly, had the most fun. (With the exception of the Virtual Boy and Wii U, I’ve owned every other Nintendo system to date.) Most Mario iterations (Kart, Party) are great at breaking the ice and losing to me, and the background of my phone is Ike from Fire Emblem Path of Radiance. I’ve already got over 100 hours logged in Fire Emblem 3 Houses and it’s been out for just under 2 weeks.Other fun media franchises that had a strong influence on me growing up (and still yield quite a bit of geeking) are Spider-Man, Pokémon, The Simpsons, Power Rangers (Mighty Morphin through Space were watched RELIGIOUSLY), Animorphs, Beast Wars and Invader Zim. I also currently possess a freakish wealth of knowledge of RuPaul’s Drag Race.


What are your favorite geeky past times?

I love drawing and making fan art when I can, but that can be a little tough to juggle with real world stuff. Most often the easiest way for me to unwind is through video games – my commute to work is an hour each way, which makes for getting in some solid time on games on my 3DS or Switch. I also LOVE having a game night with friends – board and card games work, and the Jackbox Party Pack is good at getting people involved who might not otherwise play.


What book/tv show/comic/etc. are you enjoying now?

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but Fire Emblem 3 Houses! With the amount of dialogue in it, it might as well be a book, and the cutscenes and events often have you feeling like you’re involved in an epic miniseries if not lengthy movie. It’s not without some faults (very minor spoiler alert: HOW is Claude not bi with the amount of flirting he does with you?!), but it’s still easily the most fun I’ve had with a game this year. I also think Into The Spiderverse might very well be the best movie of the last 10 years, if not more.


Who do you ship?

Ike x Ranulf (sorry Ike x Soren fans!), Boyd x Ulki, Heather x Nephenee, Elincia x Lucia – it’s niche, but Path of Radiance is REAL queer y’all, in addition to just being a brilliant game. Get into it!


Anything else?

If you’re ever at PAX East, West, South or Unplugged, I’ll be in the Diversity Lounge with Geeks OUT – come say hi! You can also catch me as one of the cohosts of The Shade Of It All: A Rucast Podrace for RuPaul’s Drag Race, available on iTunes/Apple Music, Google Play, Spotify and more! We go off on geeky and pop culture tangents all the time (with a majority of them being Simpsons references), so it’s not just a straight recap – it’s more a gab session with friends. 🙂

The Geeks OUT Podcast: Resting Sonic Face

The Geeks OUT Podcast

Opinions, reviews, incisive discussions of queer geek ideas in pop culture, and the particularly cutting brand of shade that you can only get from a couple of queer geeks all in highly digestible weekly doses.

In this week’s episode of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin is joined by Calvin Cato as they discuss the newly revamped Sonic the Hedgehog trailer, the highs and lows from the launch of Disney+, and celebrate the new game Tell Me Why featuring a trans hero in This Week in Queer.

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BIG OPENING

KEVIN: New revamped trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog movie
CALVIN: Disney+ experienced many glitches on launch

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DOWN AND NERDY

KEVIN: The Mandalorian, Rick & Morty, AHS: 1984, Immortal Hulk
CALVIN: Batwoman, Life is Strange, Street Fighter 5

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STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

New trailer for DC Universe’s Harley Quinn

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THIS WEEK IN QUEER

New game coming out Tell Me Why features trans main character

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CLIP OF THE WEEK

New trailer for The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run

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THE WEEK IN GEEK

MOVIES

Marvel announces 5 more untitled movies
Black Adam has an official release date
• Freeform airing gay Valentine’s Day movie The Thing About Harry
• New trailer for Scoob
• New trailer for Fantasy Island from Blumhouse
• Netflix teams up with Nickelodeon for movies & series
• Birds of Prey is running art competition

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TV

• The Witcher already renewed for season 2
Batwoman introduces Alfred’s daughter
• New teaser promos and photos for Crisis on Infinite Earths
Titans renewed for another season
Gossip Girl reboot to be diverse & queer
Frank Miller’s Sin City being developed into a series

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COMIC BOOKS

• Marvel announces Falcon & Winter Soldier comic
• Wolfsbane’s resurrection opens fresh wounds in New Mutants

Review: Terminator: Dark Fate

Mackenize Davis and Natalie Reyes

What if you made a sublime sequel and nobody came?  That seems to be the problem facing two new films this month: Terminator: Dark Fate and Doctor Sleep.  While I haven’t seen the latter, it’s gotten rave reviews—but underperformed at the box office this past weekend.  So did Dark Fate, which I can say unequivocally deserves to be a massive hit.

Linda Hamilton

Maybe it’s franchise fatigue.  There have been three sequels since 1991’s revolutionary Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a blockbuster sci-fi action extravaganza that made Linda Hamilton (waitress turned survivalist resistance leader Sarah Connor) a butch lesbian icon.  They’ve all been pretty meh, especially 2015’s mythology busting Terminator Genisys, which lamely swapped in Emilia Clarke for Hamilton and featured an evil cyborg John Connor (Jason Clarke), or something.  But Dark Fate distinguishes itself by bringing back original director James Cameron as a producer and Hamilton as star, while wisely ignoring everything after T2.  Essentially, it pulls a Halloween (2018): hello creators, goodbye years of convoluted mythology.

Gabriel Luna

Despite Cameron’s above-the-title billing, this movie really belongs to director Tim Miller (Deadpool), and he does an outstanding job.  The action sequences are at the same thrilling level as the first two films; if I occasionally lost track of the combatants as they chased and fought over highways and through manufacturing plants and government facilities, that’s a very minor quibble with a sensationally entertaining package.  Once again a hero and a villain face off as the fate of a future savior hangs in the balance.  This time, Mackenzie Davis’ cyborg Grace must save Dani (Natalia Reyes) from the relentless Terminator (Gabriel Luna, who’d be sexy if he weren’t so scary).  Into this fray steps Sarah (Hamilton), who’s developed a hilariously cynical sense of humor but is just as much a force to be reckoned with at age 64—I think of her as “Action Grandma.”  (According to a recent Queerty interview, the actress reminds many gay men of their own fiercely protective mothers.)  Eventually, our heroes ally themselves with a T-800 played, of course, by original franchise star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once again puts his stoic affect to comic use.

Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger

A number of factors make this a superior sequel.  It makes use of the series’ well-worn formulas while giving them enough twists to stand on its own.  At one point, Arnold picks up a pair of the same sunglasses he rocked in the original films before putting them back down, a knowing wink at the audience’s expectations.  The cast is uniformly good: Davis is utterly compelling as the androgynous Grace, and Reyes believably embodies Dani’s arc from innocent bystander to battle-ready warrior.  Hamilton, though, walks away with the film.  She’s so terrific, and displays such range, that I truly hope this movie leads to a career renaissance for her.  As iconic as she was in The Terminator and T2, I don’t know that I truly realized just what a great actor she was until this film.  The special effects, meanwhile, are predictably top notch, especially when the new cyborg and Terminator are involved.

Terminator: Dark Fate also has some intriguing socially relevant touches.  Whether purposeful or not, Grace has a gender fluid quality that might connect with non-binary audiences—for instance, in two separate scenes she chooses men’s clothes over women’s.  It could be coincidence, but Miller’s last film Deadpool 2 certainly suggests he’s comfortable with queerness.  There’s also a stretch of the film detailing the characters’ tortured journey across the Mexican border, ending in a detention center—when Grace asks a guard where “the new prisoners are taken” she insists that they refer to them as “detainees.”  It’s a timely plot element that isn’t overly didactic or preachy, and grounds the film as firmly in the twenty first century as T2 was in the 1990s.

Ultimately, this is a funny, exhilarating entry that rewards longtime fans.  Regardless of the box office, time will be kind to it, and if this is the end of the line for Cameron’s creation, it’s a satisfying finale.

The Okay Witch Is More Than Okay

The Okay Witch is a recently released YA graphic novel, written and drawn by Emma Steinkellner, published by Simon and Schuster’s Aladdin imprint. Steinkellner, who previously illustrated the Eisner-nominated Quince series, makes her graphic novel writing debut in this coming-of-age story about Moth Hush, a serially bullied thirteen year old girl from the town of Founder’s Bluff, Massachusetts. It may seem easy to overlook one more young adult comic about witches, but it would be a mistake to compare this book to any of its superficially similar contemporaries. What The Okay Witch truly excels at is showing off the enormous scope of stories and subject matter at home in the coming-of-age fantasy genre.

This book is far from the first piece of fiction rooted in early American witch hunts. A common problem with these stories is that they can sometimes seem to play into the narrative of witch hunts as legitimate criminal trials rather than absurd, state-sanctioned torture by suggesting that real witches were actually involved. This book manages to subvert this issue by calling out the inherent misogyny of these hunts, and exploring as a major theme, the deliberate erasure of history as a way to control marginalized communities and embolden those already in power. Where this intersects with racism heavily influences the entire narrative. Our protagonist, Moth, is a mixed race teenager who has never known her father, and whose mother’s side of the family is an utter mystery. Moth suffers from accusatory, racially tinged questions like, “Where are you from,” despite her family having roots in the very founding of her town. The witches themselves also reflect the problems of white feminism failing to center the voices of women most particularly targeted by patriarchal violence. The leadership of a black woman is questioned by the other witches again and again throughout the story. “Many were already uneasy with her leading them, and fear and doubt were making it worse.” And while LGBTQ themes are not as significantly apparent as themes of race, a declaration of love between two young men in the fifties is delightfully queernormative in a way that reinforces the book’s ideas about erasure and representation.

Beyond the storytelling, the craft of the book is superb. The art is whimsical and joyful, each character’s design is unique, memorable, and instantly recognizable. The colors express a range of moods, and highlight the difference between present day, flashbacks, and other worlds brilliantly. The lettering is especially impressive. While some pages are very dialogue heavy, they read well, never slowing down or distracting from the art. Given that Steinkellner is the only person credited in the book, it seems safe to assume she handled each of these duties, which is an honest-to-goodness triumph. YA graphic novels continue to explode into the market, and with titles like Raina Telgemeier’s Guts and Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls showing up on the American bestseller list for books overall (not comics or kids books mind you, but books), it seems readers can’t get enough. My recommendation is this, you won’t find a better read for the fall season than The Okay Witch. And if you’ve already checked out Witch Boy, or Mooncakes, or Witchy and feel like you can skip this one, I assure you that all these wonderful titles have different things to offer, and this is just one more that definitely deserves your attention.

The Geeks OUT Podcast: GLAAD Your TV’s Queer

The Geeks OUT Podcast

Opinions, reviews, incisive discussions of queer geek ideas in pop culture, and the particularly cutting brand of shade that you can only get from a couple of queer geeks all in highly digestible weekly doses.

In this week’s super-sized episode of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin is joined by J.W. Crump as they discuss the new trailer for Universal’s Invisible Man, the trailer for Netflix’s new anthology series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, and celebrate GLAAD’s latest report on LGBTQ+ representation on TV in This Week in Queer.

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BIG OPENING

KEVIN: Crisis on Infinite Earths is getting an aftershow, plus new teaser
J.W.: New trailer for Universal’s Invisible Man

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DOWN AND NERDY

KEVIN: Doctor Sleep, His Dark Materials, Watchmen
J.W.: All Rise, BoJack Horseman, Seth Meyers Special

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STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

New trailer for Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings anthology series

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THIS WEEK IN QUEER

GLAAD report shows growth in representation

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CLIP OF THE WEEK

New trailer for Servant coming to AppleTV+

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THE WEEK IN GEEK

MOVIES

The Sanderson Sisters are officially a go for Hocus Pocus sequel
New teaser trailer for Pixar’s Soul
• New trailer for Wendy
• First look at Scoob
• Joker beats out The Mask as most “profitable” comic movie
• New trailer for Color Out of Space
• Scream 5 is in development
• Disney+ series Loki to tie directly to Dr. Strange sequel

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TV

• Kung Fu reboot with female lead in development at CW
Arrow features an overdue “coming out”
• HBO unscripted series We’re Here follows small town drag makeovers
• Marvel’s Moon Knight and She-Hulk get head writers
• Sens8’s Brian J. Smith comes out

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VIDEO GAMES

Overwatch director explains why the first black female character will be in sequel
• Protestors demonstrated outside of BlizzCon last weekend

A letter from the President

Now that the holiday season is almost here, I find myself thinking about everything Geeks OUT has accomplished this year. We attended conventions across the country almost every month – connecting with LGBTQ communities from Boston to Seattle and Chicago to San Antonio. We’ve continued to celebrate the work of diverse creators through our partnership with PAX’s Diversity Lounge and Pride Alley at Awesome Con. And, of course, you all joined us for a fifth year at Flame Con – our biggest and most successful one yet!

2019 has been a year full of growth and learning.

When Geeks OUT started 9 years ago, the goal of our small group was to bring a positive queer presence to a booth and a panel at New York Comic Con. And now, as the organization enters its tweenage years, I’m so thrilled to be joined by dozens of folks shaping that vision on a much larger scale. From the vendors, panelists and performers who share their talents, to the pink-caped volunteers who keep the show running smoothly, to the nearly 7,000 attendees who fill the venue that weekend, Flame Con represents the best of what our passionate and dedicated community can do. For me, it’s chosen family in action!

And, like any proud family member, I am excited to announce that our family is growing. This fall, we welcomed Maya Bishop and Michelle Rose Micor to the Geeks OUT Board. Maya has volunteered with us for the last two years, bringing an incredible focus to accessibility at Flame Con in her previous role as Programming Coordinator. We are all looking forward to building an even more inclusive event with her in her new role as Flame Con Chair. Michelle has also been a Coordinator with us for the last three years. She brings an enthusiastic spirit and media savviness into her new role as Marketing & Communications Co-Chair – talents we know will help us champion voices in queer fandom.

Of course, change also means saying good-bye. Geeks OUT Co-Founder, Joey Stern is departing this year. His work was integral to the early years of the organization and both Geeks OUT and Flame Con will be very different without him.

So, as I think about what’s ahead, I remain thankful for all the people making our success possible – including you!

Thank you and see you in 2020!

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival: Spiral review

Spiral is the quintessential film I wanted to like more than I actually did.  I was excited to review a queer horror film, especially one specifically addressing homophobia in the 1990s.  Alas, Spiral’s reach winds up exceeding its grasp.

Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman

In director Kurtis David Harder’s film, a gay couple with a teenage daughter move to a small town—and Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) soon suspects something is amiss.  Are the neighbors part of some bizarre cult?  Did the lesbian family who lived in the house previously suffer a horrible fate?  Or is Malik—still traumatized from a hate crime years earlier– just suffering from a delusion?

Bowyer-Chapman (UnREAL) is the best part of the movie.  He gives an arresting performance and is believable, endearing, and sexy as a gay man trying to find his footing in a relationship with an older man and as a step parent.  As his partner Aaron, Ari Cohen essentially plays the standard disbelieving husband role we’ve seen in countless horror films, but for the most part he avoids coming off as unsympathetic (he’s a cute daddy, too).  Jennifer Laporte is the other cast stand out as daughter Kayla, whose angst never rings false. Lochlyn Munro (Betty’s slimy dad on Riverdale) is effortlessly slimy here as the suspicious neighbor.

 The set-up is tight, with the film seemingly aspiring to be a gay take on Rosemary’s Baby and/or Get Out.  Intriguing threads are set up: Malik realizes the documentary he’s editing is about a conversion therapy advocate; the grieving man from next door seems like he might be interested in Malik; blackmail photos appear to threaten his relationship with Aaron.  But the shift to overtly supernatural content feels jarring and a little silly, and those three threads never really pay off.  By the time the end game is revealed, Spiral has trampled over the goodwill it earned during its first hour.  The tone is a problem, too; the premise is fairly ludicrous, but the movie wants to be deadly serious.  If it had leaned into the campiness a bit, it might have been an enjoyably pulpy allegorical thriller.  Instead, the movie comes off as pretentious, with its statement on the shared struggles of different marginalized groups landing with all the subtlety of a cartoon anvil.  (A quote lifted from Harvey Milk feels almost blasphemous.) What’s more, the audience’s investment in Malik and his family is betrayed rather callously by the narrative.  Ultimately, Spiral is a misfire, though I’d love to see Bowyer-Chapman in bigger and better things. 

The Geeks OUT Podcast: HBO Max-imum Derek

The Geeks OUT Podcast

Opinions, reviews, incisive discussions of queer geek ideas in pop culture, and the particularly cutting brand of shade that you can only get from a couple of queer geeks all in highly digestible weekly doses.

In this week’s super-sized episode of the Geeks OUT Podcast, Kevin is joined by Tea Berry-Blue as they review all the new details announced for HBO Max, what The Good Place can teach us about teaching others, sweat over Henry Cavill in the new trailer for The Witcher, and discuss Delta censoring queer content in movies in This Week in Queer.

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BIG OPENING

KEVIN: Details for HBO Max released, including two new series based on Green Lantern & Strange Adventures
TEA: New Gender inclusive emoji release is a step forward, but not as inclusive

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DOWN AND NERDY

KEVIN: Terminator: Dark Fate, Eli, BoJack Horseman, Luigi’s Mansion 3
TEA: Jojo Rabbit, The Good Place, Godzilla movies

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STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER

HBO Max orders DC Super Hero High from Elizabeth Banks

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THIS WEEK IN QUEER

Delta called out for censoring queer movies

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CLIP OF THE WEEK

New trailer for The Witcher

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THE WEEK IN GEEK

MOVIES

New trailer for reboot to The Grudge
Game of Thrones showrunners step away from Star Wars
• Final trailer for Jumanji: The Next Level
• Marvel announces Ant-Man 3
• Release date for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel
• First look at Halloween Kills
• Avatar coming to Disney+
• Playstation Vue is shutting down

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TV

• HBO orders Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, while passing on another starring Naomi Watts
• CW developing a Superman & Lois series
• New teaser for Amazon Prime series Hunters
• New trailer for Work in Progress co-written by Lilly Wachowski
• New trailer for season 3 of The Dragon Prince
Pennyworth renewed for season 2
• New trailer for The Mandalorian
• New trailer for BBC’s limited series Dracula
• Launch of Apple TV+ and reviews are in

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COMIC BOOKS

DC teases new official timeline
• Marvel is bringing back Giant Size X-Men

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SJHILF

• KEVIN: Turnstyle Jumpers
• TEA: The former staff of Deadspin