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The Last Shadow is the long-awaited conclusion to Orson Scott Card's epic Enderverse series The book ties together the timelines of both the Ender Quintet and the Shadow Saga, bringing together characters from both series for a satisfying conclusion.

The Enderverse concluded in 2021 with Orson Scott Card's The Last Shadow. This long-running epic space saga depicts a galaxy-spanning war between humans and insect-like Formics. At its center is Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a gifted strategist and military commander who first learns how to fight the Formics before discovering that humanity's views on the creatures may be misinformed. The series began with Ender's Game in 1985 and received a film adaptation in 2013, though there are many differences between the Ender's Game book and movie. Since then, Card has released 17 books, 16 short stories, various essays, comics, one-shots, and even an audio play adaptation to round out the Enderverse.

A prolific writer, Card has...

The Forgotten Realms campaign offers a wealth of diverse adventuring parties that would make great movie adaptations, such as "The Cleric Quintet" and the Order of the Burning Dawn. The Heroes of Waterdeep and Moon Daggers stand out as exciting and underdog adventuring parties that would capture an audience's attention. Force Grey and the Men of the Basilisk provide unique perspectives on adventuring parties, combining fantasy with crime and dark dealings. The Nine Swords Company and Ladies of Renown offer intriguing stories that explore tradition, history, and themes rarely seen in fantasy. Drizzt Do'Urden's party and the Heroes of Baldur's Gate already have a dedicated fanbase, making them strong contenders for D&d adaptations.

After the release of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, there's no doubt that the iconic roleplay game can be just as entertaining on the big screen as it is on a tabletop, however the question remains,...

Filmmaker Boaz Yakin discusses some of his favorite films with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes:

Movies Referenced In This Episode

Aviva (2020)

The Harder They Fall (2021)

The Harder They Come (1972)

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Fresh (1994)

Mo’ Better Blues (1990)

Safe (2012)

Scream (2022)

The Punisher (1989)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Kagemusha (1980) – Bernard Rose’s trailer commentary

Mean Streets (1973)

Jaws (1975) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

The 400 Blows (1959) – Robert Weide’s trailer commentary

Yojimbo (1961)

Dodes’ka-den (1970)

Short Cuts (1993) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray commentary

Casablanca (1942) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Coonskin (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Fritz The Cat (1972) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

The Lord of the Rings (1978)

Wizards (1977)

Heavy Traffic (1973) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Warriors (1979)

Quintet (1979)

Brewster McCloud (1970) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Mash (1970)

Nashville (1975) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary, Dan Perri’s trailer commentary,...

Snes games might not be much to look at now, but in many ways, they were a massive improvement over any console games that came before. Snes developers could create massive worlds with detailed sprites that actually looked like what they were intended to represent. New advances in technology also meant that games could take their first real steps toward becoming the kinds of cinematic experiences we arguably take for granted today. And while 4 Mb wasn’t even a ton of storage even space back then, it was still more than enough to fit an impressive script for a 40-hour story.

In short, the Snes was almost perfectly set up to be the home for RPGs. While the console RPG scene was still finding its footing at the time of the Super Nintendo’s release, many developers were more than willing to dip their toes into the genre to see...

Bibi Andersson, the Swedish actress who starred in 13 Ingmar Bergman films, died Sunday in Stockholm. She was 83.

Director Christina Olofson confirmed her death to several outlets. Andersson had suffered a stroke in 2009 and was hospitalized.

Andersson made a name herself after her type-defying role in 1966’s “Persona,” for which she received the award for best actress at the 4th Guldbagge Awards, the Swedish equivalent of the Academy Awards. Previous to the role, she was generally cast in more innocent parts, like in “The Seventh Seal” and “Wild Strawberries.”

Andersson won the silver bear for best actress as the Berlin Film Festival in 1963 for her work in Vilgot Sjöman’s “The Mistress” and in 1968, she was nominated for best foreign actress at the BAFTAs for her roles in both “Persona” and “Syskonbädd 1782.” After her “Persona” fame, she went on to work consistently throughout the ’60s and ’70s and accumulated roles in more than 50 films,...

Success in the ’90s gave Robert Altman the opportunity to experiment once again. Several short stories by Raymond Carver interlock in a mosaic of Los Angeles populated by scores of actors in ensemble mode. Clocking in at three hours, Altman’s epic has all the time and space it needs.

Short Cuts

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 265

1993 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 187 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 18, 2016 / 39.95

Starring Andie MacDowell, Bruce Davison, Jack Lemmon, Julianne Moore,

Matthew Modine, Anne Archer, Fred Ward, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Penn, Lili Taylor, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Tim Robbins, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits, Frances McDormand, Peter Gallagher, Annie Ross, Lori Singer, Lyle Lovett, Buck Henry, Huey Lewis, Margery Bond, Robert DoQui.

Cinematography Walt Lloyd

Production Designer Stephen Altman

Art Direction Jerry Fleming

Film Editors Suzy Elmiger, Geraldine Peroni

Original Music Gavin Friday, Mark Isham

Written by Robert Altman, Frank Barhydt from writings...

Many consider Dmitri Shostakovich the greatest composer of the 20th century. Born September 25, 1906, he might not have lived past his teens if he hadn't been talented. During the famines of the Revolutionary period in Russia, Alexander Glazunov, director of the Petrograd (later Leningrad) Conservatory, arranged for the poor and malnourished Shostakovich's food ration to be increased. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, his graduation exercise for Maximilian Steinberg's composition course at the Conservatory, was completed in 1925 at age 19 and was an immediate success worldwide. He was The Party's poster boy; his Second and Third Symphonies unabashedly subtitled, respectively, "To October". (celebrating the Revolution) and "The First of May". (International Workers' Day).

His highly emotional harmonic language is simultaneously tough yet communicative, but his expansion of Mahlerian symphonic structure, dissonances, sardonic irony, and dark moods eventually clashed with the conservative edicts of Communist Party officials. In 1936 he was viciously denounced by Pravda...

It’s 1940, and the Nazi invasion of France is fully under way. A mother, father, a five-year-old girl and her tiny dog are among a throng of refugees fleeing Paris and jamming roads across the French countryside while German planes drop bombs and strafe their path with a relentless rain of machine gun fire. Soon the girl will be completely alone, her parents and that beloved dog all cut down in front of her eyes. But before she even has the chance to process what has happened (if she even can—on the most immediate level, she believes they’re only asleep), she’s given a ride by an older couple, one of whom cruelly flings the animal’s corpse, the only thing the girl has been able to save of her now-devastated familiar world, into a creek. The girl, Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), jumps off their wagon, retrieves the dog...

Among the familiar monuments, those attempts to capture entire cities and eras within single movies, there's a host of fascinating curios to be relished at Moma's six-week celebration of the films of Robert Altman, the crankiest great director America has produced. You can catch American Football, for example, one of three work-for-hire Altman shorts discovered by the talented filmmaker Gary Huggins in Kansas City junkpiles. Or Corn's A-Poppin', a satirical 1956 musical about a harried popcorn bigwig. There's Altman's TV westerns of the '60s and some woozy feature-length '70s bafflements like Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Quintet, both cockeyed and frustrating and rewarding — both daring films that, if just a couple things that went wrong had ...

Director Robert Altman had his fair share of ups and downs. The oscillation between works widely lauded and those typically forgotten is prevalent throughout his exceptionally diverse career. This was — and still is — certainly the case with his 1970s output. This decade of remarkable work saw the release of now established classics like M*A*S*H, Nashville, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller, as well as a picture like 3 Women, which would gradually gain a cult following of sorts and subsequently be regarded as a quality movie despite its initial dismissal. But couched between and around these features are more electric and generally more unorthodox films. There are multiple titles from this, arguably Altman’s most creative of decades, that remain generally unheralded to all but his most ardent of admirers.

For Altman, the 1970s began with this disparity. The first year of the decade saw the release of M*A*S*H,...

Director Robert Altman.

Robert Altman: Eclectic Maverick

By

Alex Simon

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the April 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

It's the Fall of 1977 and I'm a bored and rebellious ten year old in search of a new movie to occupy my underworked and creativity-starved brain, feeling far too mature for previous favorites Wily Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Return of the Pink Panther (1975), and wanting something more up-to-date and edgy than Chaplin's City Lights (1931). I needed a movie to call my favorite that would be symbolic of my own new-found manhood (and something that would really piss off my parents and teachers). Mom and Dad were going out for the evening, leaving me with whatever unfortunate baby-sitter happened to need the $10 badly enough to play mother hen to an obnoxiously precocious only child like myself. I scanned the TV Guide for what...

One more reason to be super jealous of our friends in Austin, the announcement of the Paramount’s Summer Classic Film Series 2011 would make any classic film lover think they had died and gone to heaven. Celebrating 36 years and going strong, the place to be during the summer is Austin (as usual). And of course, when there’s classic films being announced at a repertory theater, there’s always a few Criterion connections.

Peter Bogdanovich, who recently entered the Criterion collection himself with his magnificent film The Last Picture Show (which will be screening July 27th – 28th, hosted by Sam Beam of Iron & Wine), will be there at the kick off, on May 20th, where he will be discussing Hollywood history which then is followed by a screening of Casablanca and a film of his choosing. That alone is worth your anticipation, because if anyone has great stories about film,...

Certain directors have made themselves right at home in the genre of science fiction -- George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are three directors who come to mind for whom their science fiction films are their cultural calling cards. But scifi flicks aren't only made by specialists -- some of the great films, in fact, are by directors who found their greatest fame outside the genre. Now, not every great director is a great fit for science fiction -- see Robert Altman's Quintet or Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 for evidence of that -- but for the curious, here's a sampling of the ones who were.Franklin J. Schaffner Schaffner won his directing Oscar for Patton and made his technical bones as an innovative television director who brought movie techniques to the small screen in shows like Studio 90. But science fiction fans know him as the director of Planet of the Apes,...

Certain directors have made themselves right at home in the genre of science fiction -- George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are three directors who come to mind for whom their science fiction films are their cultural calling cards. But scifi flicks aren't only made by specialists -- some of the great films, in fact, are by directors who found their greatest fame outside the genre. Now, not every great director is a great fit for science fiction -- see Robert Altman's Quintet or Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 for evidence of that -- but for the curious, here's a sampling of the ones who were.Franklin J. Schaffner Schaffner won his directing Oscar for Patton and made his technical bones as an innovative television director who brought movie techniques to the small screen in shows like Studio 90. But science fiction fans know him as the director of Planet of the Apes,...

Nearly 30 years ago, Dustin Hoffman played a trouble-making actor who had to pretend to be a woman to get a job. Tootsie played on Hoffman's reputation as an extremely precise professional (Aka a pain in the butt), insisting to his agent that he set a new standard in playing real-life vegetables. My memory's a bit hazy on the details, but you get the idea. Hoffman has been a hero to many in the acting profession for insisting on such verisimilitude, for walking the extra mile in worn shoes to capture the peculiar gait of a particular character.

And now he'll get to tell other actors what to do. The Daily Mail reports that Hoffman is in advanced negotiations to direct Quartet, based on a stage play by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist). The comedy revolves around a trio of elderly opera singers, now living in a retirement home. Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay,...

The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Quick Stop Weekend Shopping Guide - your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

(Please support Quick Stop by using the links below to make any impulse purchases - it helps to keep us going…)

Those fans that have only experience the butchered editions of weird and wonderful The Mighty Boosh that have been running on Adult Swim need to run - not walk - to their favorite DVD emporium and snag copies of the new-to-the-us unexpurgated editions of The Mighty Boosh seasons 1-3 that have now been collected into the massive Mighty Boosh Special Edition DVD set (BBC,...

Two Paul Newman titles from the recently released Paul Newman Tribute Collection (pictured right) I mentioned on Tuesday, a look at a film I watched in preparation for one of last week's screenings and a reminder of a Blu-ray I recently reviewed make up this week's list. On top of everything below, on Saturday I went to a screening of the Toy Story and Toy Story 2 3-D double feature, which ended up being a lot of fun as I am pretty sure it was the first time I actually saw Toy Story 2 on the bigscreen. The 3-D is quite good and the opening moments of Toy Story 2 lend themselves so well to the format it's almost surprising it wasn't originally intended to be released in 3-D. Of course, as with all quality films, the 3-D does nothing for the story. These films were never considered classics for...

Seattle – Dalton Trumbo was one of the biggest names in screenwriting who for the longest time wasn’t allowed to show his name on the screen. He won two Oscars, but wasn’t allowed to step onto the stage.

At the peak of his career in 1947, he was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify about communists in Hollywood films. Like other screenwriters before the Huac, he refused to answer the questions. Their decision to not name names got them blacklisted in the industry and sent to prison. After nearly a year behind bars, Dalton secretly returned to screenwriting. He used fake names and front writers on various project. It wasn’t till 1960 when his name accompanied Exodus and Spartacus that the blacklist was broken.

Trumbo is a documentary about the writer that was originally a play written by his son Christopher Trumbo. The play had actors reading...

That season of 30 Rock that just won another Emmy? It's on DVD. As are a controversial comedy with Seth Rogen and a lavish box devoted to a mixed bag of Paul Newman movies.

Read on for more!

I can't begin to imagine why any of you aren't already watching this brilliantly hilarious sitcom, but 30 Rock - Season Three is available to those of you who haven't been converted (as well as those who need repeated viewings to catch all of the rapid-fire gags).

This season contains two of my favorite episodes—"Believe in the Stars," in which a prescription-drug–addled Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) shares a flight from Chicago with Oprah Winfrey, and "Reunion," where Liz begrudgingly attends her high-school reunion to discover that she wasn't a picked-on nerd, as she'd remembered, but actually a bully.

Critics were sharply divided (literally, with a 51% at Rotten Tomatoes) over Observe and Report,...

DVD Links: DVD News | Release Dates | New Dvds | Reviews | RSS Feed The Paul Newman Tribute Collection I just received this box set earlier today so I haven't had a chance to do anything more than open it and peek through the 136-page book, which has details on each film included as well as accompanying images. The movies in the set are The Long, Hot Summer, Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, From the Terrace, Exodus, The Hustler Collector's Edition, Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man, What a Way to Go!, Hombre, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Collector's Edition, The Towering Inferno Special Edition, Buffalo Bill and the Indians Or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, Quintet and The Verdict Collector's Edition. The set is priced at $62.99 at Amazon, which means you are looking at approximately $4.89 per movie and as you can see you are getting the 2-disc collector's editions of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,...

It's tough to lose a legend like Paul Newman, and the rush of DVDs, biographies, and rumor mongering don't make it any easier. The rush of merchandising seems to walk a fine line between actually honoring the person, and pure graveyard profit. You can decide what category Fox's upcoming Paul Newman Tribute Collection falls into. I'm going to err on the side of classy, even at its steep price of $89.98, because it contains a total of 17 DVDs. The list includes:

The Long, Hot Summer (the film that Newman Joanne Woodward met on)

Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys

From the Terrace

Exodus

The Hustler Collector's Edition

Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man

What a Way to Go!

Hombre

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Collector's Edition

The Towering Inferno Special Edition

Buffalo Bill and the Indians Or Sitting Bull's History Lesson

Quintet

The Verdict Collector's Edition

The collection goes on sale...

It's hard to believe that Paul Newman died almost a year ago. He was the last specimen of a certain breed of actor, as well as being a pretty damn charitable human being. He didn't care about fame and couldn't be bothered by its many trappings, although he absolutely loved the work. Anytime you give great performances over five decades - and he did right up through his TV movie Empire Falls - you don't get there by accident.

Fox Home Entertainment will release a massive Paul Newman Tribute Collection on September 22nd. For the time being, it's just a standard format DVD release, because some of the movies it includes aren't ready for Blu-ray yet. A lot of times, these movie star collections have one good flick and a bunch of B-movies or films you already know you want to avoid. Because stars make movies for different studios, it's tough for Fox to grab,...

Paul Newman’s legendary career will be preserved forever as Fox Home Entertainment has announced the a 17 disc Paul Newman Tribute Collection, which will include 13 of the Oscar winning actor’s films, will be available to own September 22, 2009. Films included in the set will be The Long, Hot Summer, Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys, From the Terrace, Exodus, Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man, What a Way to Go!, Hombre, Buffalo Bill and the Indians Or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson and Quintet. The set will also include two-disc special collector’s editions of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Hustler, The Verdict and The Towering Inferno. Also included will be an exclusive 136 page soft-bound book loaded with photos taken on the sets of his movies with fellow cast and crew members, excerpts from each film and personal quotes from Newman. Check out the package artwork below.

Paul Newman, who combined Method training with matinee idol looks to become the personification of the cool '60s rebel in such iconic roles as the reckless Hud, the defiant Cool Hand Luke and the hotshot Butch Cassidy, died Friday. Surrounded by friends and family, including his wife, Joanne Woodward, the actor and philanthropist passed away at his farmhouse home near Wesport, Conn., after a long battle with cancer. He was 83.

In a film career that spanned nearly six decades, Newman received seven Oscar nominations before he was finally presented with an Honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable and compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft."

But then he pulled out a trump card of his own, winning the best actor Academy Award the following year for "The Color of Money," in which he reprised the role of pool shark Fast Eddie Felsen,...