by Emily Nagle
Just on the heels of the cancellation of a plethora of Warner Bros. films (most notably Batgirl), more details have broken regarding the future of HBO Max as the streamer’s merger with Discovery+ has finally been given a release date.
On the company’s Q2 earnings call earlier today, CEO and president of global streaming and interactive for Warner Bros. Discovery JB Perrette unveiled a detailed timeline for the merger, as well as their visions for the new platform.
Despite customer views of HBO Max skewing more negative lately, Perrette’s discussion of what WarnerMedia’s streaming service will bring to Warner Bros. Discovery’s upcoming streamer both technical-wise and content-wise was quite positive. HBO Max is rich in content but has “performance and customer issues”, while Discovery+ boasts a more stable infrastructure, but less content.
by Emily Nagle
Comedian and actress Pat Carroll passed away on Saturday, July 30. She was 95.
Her Hollywood career that lasted nearly eight decades kicked off in 1948, when she got her first film role in “Hometown Girl”. Her television debut came four years later, when she first appeared on The Red Buttons Show. Carroll made appearances in other variety shows between the 1950s and 1970s before appearing in various sitcoms, including “Laverne & Shirley”, “The Danny Thomas Show”, and “Busting Loose”. During her long-spanning career, she won Emmy, Drama Desk, and Grammy Awards, and was nominated for a Tony.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s when Carroll got into voiceover, scoring roles in various Hanna-Barbera animated series including “Pound Puppies”, “A Pup Named Scooby-Doo”, and “Yogi’s Treasure Hunt”. This is also when she got her most well-known (and one of Carroll’s personal favorite) role of her entire career, voicing evil sea witch Ursula in “The Little Mermaid“. She even returned to voice the character in subsequent theme park attractions, the “Kingdom Hearts” video game series, and television shows.
Carroll’s death was confirmed by her daughter Karry Karsian, who notified The Hollywood Reporter that she had died of pneumonia at her Cape Cod home. Pat Carroll is survived by her two daughters Karry and Tara, and her granddaughter Evan.
by Emily Nagle
Top 5 Highest Grossing Films for Weekend of July 29-31, 2022
5. Top Gun: Maverick ($8.4 million)
4. Minions: The Rise of Gru ($11 million)
3. Thor: Love and Thunder ($13.2 million)
2. Nope ($18.6 million)
1. DC League of Super-Pets ($23 million)
This weekend saw the premiere of Warner Bros.’ “DC League of Super-Pets”. The first animated DC film since “The Lego Batman Movie” focuses on the heroes’ super-powered pets for the first time ever, primarily Superman’s (John Krasinski) dog Krypto (Dwayne Johnson). When the Man of Steel and the rest of the Justice League get kidnapped by Lex Luthor (Marc Maron), Krypto rallies together a motley crew of animals to rescue the team of superheroes. “DC League of Super-Pets” has been met with mostly positive reviews from critics, and grossed in the low end of projected opening weekend performance.
Coming in at number two was Jordan Peele’s sci-fi horror film “Nope”, which experienced a sharp 58% decline compared to its premiere last week. Recent news broke that the movie will be available to stream on demand within the next month.
by Emily Nagle
Today on Shark Spotlight, we’re discussing the sci-fi horror film “Raiders of the Lost Shark”!
To set the scene, this movie is about a group of four friends who take a boat to a private island for a vacation. It’s all going smoothly until they discover a genetically engineered killer shark is on the loose, and now it’s up to them to defeat it.
Despite its title being a play on “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, the movie doesn’t even come close to spoofing it. Which is kind of weird. I mean, maybe the boat that our heroes take to the island could be considered an ark. But don’t be fooled by the title; it’s nothing like the Indiana Jones movie. You could probably say the same thing about “Sharks of the Corn”, but at least that movie actually had cornfields in it. “Raiders of the Lost Shark” is not an action-packed adventure.
It’s got awful visuals, with terribly animated sharks (and not terrible in a good way, like the ones in “Bad CGI Sharks”!) and shark attack scenes that look like they’re made on one of those free iPhone apps. Like, we’ll see a shark leaping out of the water, and then 3 seconds later it’ll cut back to perfectly calm water. The poorly animated shark attacks scenes are hilarious, and definitely my favorite part of the whole movie.
Another wonderfully bizarre aspect of the movie is how the characters keep taking their clothes off. All the female characters try to be sexy about it, and for some reason they always magically have swimsuits on under their clothes. Almost 100% of the time, though, it’s just super awkward. Like, they’ll freak out when someone else gets attacked by a shark, but then take their time removing their clothes before wading into the water to investigate the incident. It makes absolutely no sense, and it’s amazing.
The last two shark movies I watched, “House Shark” and “Sharks of the Corn”, both faced the problem of being way too long for a low-budget horror film. It was refreshing to find out that “Raiders of the Lost Shark” is only 70 minutes long. Sure, it’s shorter than the average hour-and-a-half to two hour runtime that feature films typically have, but for the purposes of being a movie that doesn’t take itself seriously, this is perfect. It’s not so long to the point where the joke gets dragged on.
With all this being said, I rank “Raiders of the Lost Shark” as Galxy’s second-best shark movie! It’s just the right length for over-acted, poorly-animated chaos (even if it doesn’t live up to its name). Here’s an updated ranking:
4. House Shark
3. Sharks of the Corn
2. Raiders of the Lost Shark
1. Bad CGI Sharks
“Raiders of the Lost Shark” is free to watch on Galxy, as are all the other above movies!
by Emily Nagle
Welcome to Shark Spotlight! After putting a kid-friendly twist on the series yesterday, we’re back to reviewing scary shark movies from Invincible’s very own Galxy catalog in honor of Shark Week. Today’s shark movie is “Sharks of the Corn“.
It’s hard to say what happens in “Sharks of the Corn”, because there’s really so much going on. The main plot revolves around bloodthirsty sharks popping up in Kentucky cornfields and killing people, but a bunch of other stuff goes on as well. Like, Bigfoot is in the movie, and Stonehenge keeps showing up for some reason.
When people describe a bad shark movie, they often describe the visual aspects of it as bad – for example, special effects reminiscent of those free iPhone movie effect apps or super overdone acting. It’s easy to make these deliberately bad to poke fun at other sharksploitation movies, but “Sharks of the Corn” is just poorly made as a whole.
There’s inconsistencies with the audio mixing at times; for example, during a scene where the characters are talking while walking through a cornfield, their dialogue is barely audible. Similarly, there are times where the music is too loud, and drowns out the characters’ dialogue. Sometimes, these scenes with poor audio mixing are followed by a scene where the dialogue sounds fine, which is disorienting because we have no clue what the characters were saying before.
With that being said, “Sharks of the Corn” definitely wasn’t unbearable. The poor production, along with the chaotic story and handheld cinematography, gives the movie the same energy as a high school TV studio project. This made it a little nostalgic – who didn’t love making nonsensical movies with their friends when they were kids? Yes, it’s almost as long as “House Shark” – it’s an hour and 45 minutes long – but it was nowhere near as unwatchable.
Yes, I said earlier this week that “House Shark” was all over the place, and talked about how bad it was. But the reason why having all that stuff going on in “House Shark” didn’t work was because it tried too hard. It overdid everything to the point where it got old really fast. Meanwhile, “Sharks of the Corn” is so bizarre that it holds your attention – there’s something new every second! First someone’s getting mauled by a shark in a cornfield, then you’ll blink and suddenly there’s a guy rambling about pleasing a shark goddess.
After having watched three different shark movies this week (and my sanity is hanging on by a thread), it seems appropriate to start ranking them as I go along. So, here are my rankings for Galxy’s shark films so far, from worst to best:
3. House Shark
2. Sharks of the Corn
1. Bad CGI Sharks
Tune in to Shark Spotlight again tomorrow to see which movie is up next, and for an updated ranking of Galxy’s shark movies! Until then, “Sharks of the Corn” is free to watch on Galxy.
by Emily Nagle
For today’s Shark Spotlight, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of discussing a shark-themed horror movie, we’re highlighting a not-so-scary shark-themed show in the Invincible catalog, more specifically “Street Sharks”.
This action-packed animated series chronicles the crime-fighting adventures of four human/shark hybrids. Together, Ripster, Jab, Streex, and Big Slammu protect Fission City from evil professor Dr. Paradigm, who transformed them into sharks and is now bent on imprisoning and destroying them.
Out of all the shark programs I’ve seen this week, “Street Sharks” has the most variety in terms of species. All the movies I’ve seen feature the same type of shark – just the standard Great White that typically comes to mind when you hear someone mention sharks.
Each of the Street Sharks is a different shark species, and they all have unique powers. For example, Jab is a hammerhead shark who can use his head as a battering ram, and Big Slammu is a whale shark (fun fact: this is the largest fish in the world!) who can perform the ground-shaking “Seismic Slam”!
“Street Sharks” first aired in the mid-to-late 90s, so the show has a nostalgic quality to it. Adults who grew up with the series have fond memories of watching the show, as reflected by IMDb reviews of people sharing stories about watching it on weekend mornings during their childhood. Some even wrote that they were thrilled to introduce the beloved cartoon to their own children someday!
Tune in tomorrow to see what’s next on Shark Spotlight! Until then, all episodes of “Street Sharks” are free to watch on Galxy.
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