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https://www.thenerdelement.com/2021/04/08/avengers-campus-reopening-announcement/
Hi everyone! Today I have some very good news for you guys who may be Marvel fans and you have been waiting for it to open up at Disney’s California Adventure Park! So, let’s get started, shall we?! So, the Disneyland resort has announced that Avengers Campus will finally be opening up on June 4, 2021! Thor, Black Panther, Black Widow, and more will be walking around the land — and visitors might also catch of a glimpse of the trickster Loki. New superhero recruits will be able to experience Disneyland’s Avenger Campus on June 4, Disney said during a theme park webcast Thursday.
The new area is an extension to Disney’s California Adventure theme park in Anaheim, California and features Marvel’s mightiest heroes from Earth and the stars.
“What I can tell you is, it’s awesome,” Josh D’Amaro told CNBC ahead of the webcast. “I think it’s going to be an unbelievable addition to California Adventure. If you think about the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] and what’s happening on that front, as recently as ‘WandaVision,’ it’s hot. It’s a hot franchise. And we now have the ability to open this thing up to the world.”
The park was initially set to open in July of last year, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic, theme parks in California have been shuttered since March 2020.
Disney’s two parks in Anaheim will reopen April 30 and will operate at around 15% capacity to start. The new land has taken the place of A Bug’s Land and includes the preexisting Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission: Breakout ride at the edge of Hollywood Land. It will also feature a new Spider-Man attraction, a dining location called Pym Particles Test Kitchen and an area based on Dr. Strange.
“We’ve got the ultimate playground for Marvel,” D’Amaro said. “As quickly as Kevin [Feige] and that Marvel team can create characters and create stories, we can integrate them.” Disney has already teased that the Spider-Man ride will be based on the Worldwide Engineering Brigade aka WEB, a company that helps give regular people super powers. The attraction gives guests the chance to test out their webslinger vehicle. While driving the vehicle, little spider bots are let loose and riders must snatch them up with their new web-slinging powers.
Character meet-and-greets will be a big part of Avengers Campus. Thor, Black Panther, Black Widow, and more will be walking around the land — visitors might also catch of a glimpse of the trickster Loki. D’Amaro teased “over-the-top” entertainment and technological innovation, including the potential for the company’s stuntronics tech to be showcased in the land. Stuntronics is a project that Disney pulled the curtain back on in 2018. In essence, Disney’s Imagineering team and development lab has created a robot that can swing and flip through the air like a real stunt person.
In this case, the robot may look like Marvel’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
“There are just going to be some spectacles,” D’Amaro said. “There’s just going to be stuff that you can’t believe is happening in front of your eyes.”
I’m very excited for the Avengers Campus to open up! However, for me, my family were planning to go to Disneyland at the end of May and we may not be able to see it unfortunately unless we change our trip plan to Disneyland to June. I would be okay with going just after June 4, but my mom does not really want to go in June again. So, If I really want to go see the land, we have to change our plans to go in June instead of May. So, I hope that things will go very well for us! Fingers crossed!
This news just came out today on Disneyland news!
So, what do you guys think about this news about the Avengers Campus?!
I would love to hear some comments, thoughts, opinions, questions, or concerns down below!
Stay tuned for more Disneyland updates.
The post Avengers Campus Reopening Announcement! appeared first on The Nerd Element.
Although masks have been mandated as a measure against COVID-19 around the world, there are cons to the face coverings. Especially if you wear glasses. A new scientific report outlines an additional downside to masks, along with other forms of single-use personal protective equipment (PPE), noting that they inundate wildlife areas once wearers have discarded them. And, consequently, cause the kinds of heartbreaking entanglements usually associated with plastic six-pack rings and turtles.
Auke-Florian Hiemstra et al.
Science News picked up on the report, which a team of scientists recently published in the journal, Animal Biology. The lead authors of the study, both Dutch PhD researchers in the field of biology, say they came up with the idea for the study after finding a freshwater fish trapped in the finger of a rubber glove. The pair of researchers were cleaning up local canals when they came upon the fish.
With that single instance as inspiration, the two researchers, Auke-Florian Hiemstra and Liselotte Rambonnet, set out to measure the extent of COVID-19 PPE’s impact on the environment. And upon searching, they found thousands of examples of PPE litter from around the world. In large part thanks to the researchers’ #glovechallenge; an online hashtag repository that gathered 11,000 images of PPE litter from around the globe.
Yes! Happy to contribute!
— Liselotte Rambonnet (@LRambonnet) March 30, 2021
On top of the #glovechallenge, Hiemstra and Rambonnet also scanned the internet for other PPE litter reports. The researchers found, for example, another Dutch PPE litter project that itself had gathered more than 6,300 photos from people of gloves or face masks littering The Netherlands. And that was only between the months of May and June in 2020.
“Initially, these products were mainly found in close vicinity to supermarkets and healthcare institutions, but when face masks became compulsory in public transport, they were also increasingly being found near bus, tram, and train stations,” Hiemstra and Rambonnet write in their report. But “By now the use of face masks is mandatory or highly recommended in many countries…[and] as a consequence, the increase in production and consumption of PPE litter inevitably leads to interaction with animal life,” the researchers add.
Auke-Florian Hiemstra et al.
Moving forward, the researchers are looking to document as many instances of animal-PPE interaction as possible. Hiemstra and Rambonnet have launched a site, www.covidlitter.com, where people can report instances of PPE litter affecting animals. Each entry into the database includes an instance of, say, a seagull entangled in a mask. And, of course, stands as a stellar reminder that we all need to pick up our trash!
Feature image: Auke-Florian Hiemstra et al.
The post Scientific Study Says PPE Waste Harming Wildlife appeared first on Nerdist.
The first time I heard about the relationship between the Seminole First Nation and the Maroons (Black Seminoles) was in the book, What Mama Couldn’t Tell Us about Love: Healing the Emotional Legacy of Racism by Celebrating Our Light written by Brenda Lane Richardson and Dr. Brenda Wade (1999). Africans were kidnapped to what we now call Florida in the 1520s. The British, claimed Florida as a colony in 1763. As white settlers injected themselves on this land, members of smaller first nations united to form the Seminole nation. White settlers built plantations with enslaved labor. The Black population quickly rose, and a number of the enslaved escaped to live in free communities embedded in the untamed Florida landscape. As the communities of self-liberated Black folks grew, they merged with the Seminole nations and were called the Maroons. The Seminoles and the Maroons became family.
In the first five minutes of Raoul Peck’s docuseries, Exterminate All the Brutes, a subtitle appears on screen. “The Disturbing Confidence of Ignorance: 1836 Seminoles and Maroons.” A determined Seminole female chief (Casia Ankarsparre) appears on screen. Unblinking, she says, “This is the day we fight.” The next scene is a meeting between the chief and a male Maroon leader. In this scene we see a true story that the majority white gatekeepers who control Hollywood rarely include in their whitewashed stories about the history of what we now call “America” — Black and Brown living in integrated community, sharing resources, and resisting white supremacy. As they sit in a circle under a modest covering, the Maroon leader humbly offers to run in order to protect the community. The chief replies, “We’re family now. You stay.” The Maroon leader emphasizes that he doesn’t want to bring harm, to which the chief knowingly says, “They bring harm to our nation, not you.” The white man wants their land by any means necessary. They decide to fight together to protect one another and their land.
Exterminate All the Brutes is a documentary series that jumps time, brilliantly ripping off the facade of “the American Dream,” allowing the audience to face the reality that America was born as a colonial power and to this day operates as one. Peck wrote and narrates the docuseries, so he literally tells the thinly hidden truths of how America came to be. Exterminate All the Brutes holds no punches, defining white supremacy as a poisonous superiority complex that kills nations in order to thrive.
Peck is one of the most renowned storytellers of our time. After completing I Am Not Your Negro, he says that he felt called to make Exterminate All the Brutes, which deconstructs the origins of white supremacy. Now is the right time for this momentous series. Normally, the documentary filmmaker is “outside” of the film. Peck skillfully inserts himself into the story using home movie footage of his Haitian American immigrant family, grounding viewers in relatable reality as he guides us through over 400 years of imperialism and the impact of white dominance and fascism. We need that in order to bear witness to hard truths. Peck is familiar with dealing with dictators. His middle-class family was exiled during the reign of Haitian president/dictator Francois Duvalier and ended up living in Brooklyn when he was a child in the 1960s. Peck narrates, “We traveled a lot because of another dictator, but it doesn’t feel like an exile. I am with family. I am an immigrant from a ‘sh*thole country,’ like he said.”
Three books are the foundation of this docuseries. Exterminate All the Brutes, by Sven Lindqvist, exposes the cruel impact of European imperialism on the African continent. An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, details the Native American genocide. Silencing the Past, by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, is about how Haiti’s independence in 1804 changed the trajectory of the Western world. Peck unites this circle of intellectual healers to create the extraordinary HBO docuseries and credits these authors, who are also his dear friends, as co-creators of the film.
History is remembered by the victors. American history has been reinforced by Hollywood. The Civil War ended in 1865. Moving pictures were invented in 1893, and in 1915, The Birth of a Nation (a white supremacist propoganda film) was the first blockbuster film made in Hollywood. We have generations of Americans who believe in the big lie of Western expansion by Westerns that center one white man killing everyone with a gun.
Peck uses his superpowers as a filmmaker to tell the truths of history from the perspective of the colonized. The docuseries not only uses historical footage and newsreels but also Peck has created full narrative short stories within the documentary to add nuance, humanizing the history.
The white male lead of Exterminate All the Brutes is Josh Hartnett. The character Hartnett plays has no name, but I recognized him immediately. Josh Hartnett is deftly playing white superiority, a character every Black person in America has to endure a daily basis. I have to say, experiencing the way Peck wrote that character and how Hartnett deftly embodies that toxic energy was more frightening than any race-based horror film or series I’ve seen this year. Witnessing the impact of that white man dominating through time was a frightening truth we rarely see told openly. I’m just grateful that I’ve lived long enough to be able to see the truth of this country on screen.
The parts of the documentary that hit me hardest used animation to powerfully reflect the North Atlantic Slave Trade and the Trail of Tears. I will hold those images in my heart forever. Stories give us the opportunity to empathize. We can look past the superficial differences and see we are one people. White supremacy thrives on simplicity. Exterminate All the Brutes is a rich documentary that uses wise storytelling to clearly share the complexity of the system grounded in white dominance that we are all living under.
The documentary is broken up into four episodes, which are really short films.
- Part 1: The Disturbing Confidence of Ignorance
- Part 2: Who the F*** Is Columbus
- Part 3: Killing at a Distance, or How I Thoroughly Enjoyed the Outing
- Part 4: The Bright Colors of Fascism
When deciding to make this film, Peck was encouraged by his friend Sven Lindqvist, who said to him, “You already know enough. It’s not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.” As I’ve been watching the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd, Exterminate All the Brutes was a form of catharsis for me. After viewing the entire series, I feel charged up and inspired to continue to do the daily work of dismantling white dominance as our ancestors need us all to do.
Don’t miss Exterminate All The Brutes, written, directed, produced, and narrated by Raoul Peck, now streaming on HBO/Max.
Episodes: https://www.hbo.com/exterminate-all-the-brutes/episodes
Additional films, books and resources:
https://www.hbo.com/exterminate-all-the-brutes/raoul-peck-essential-reading-films
By: Désirée I. Guzzetta
Godzilla vs. Kong, the final installment of Warner Bros. / Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse, is here and it’s a doozy.
The film carries on the grand tradition of paying as little attention to full human character development as several of the other Godzilla franchise movies do, though in this case, that’s a feature, not a bug. The primary reason to see Godzilla vs. Kong is to watch the two behemoths duke it out with just enough plot in between the big set-pieces. Spend too much time on the human beings running around and risk the wrath of the fans who will say there’s not enough Godzilla in their Godzilla picture.
(In fact, though, there’s not as much Godzilla in this Monsterverse finale as Kong, who only had Kong: Skull Island to himself versus the Big G getting two pictures dedicated to him, 2014’s Godzilla and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Sure, it’s a minor nitpick, but I’m nitpicking it anyway.)
Now that my petty grievance is out of the way, let’s get to the story: Godzilla vs. Kong picks up three years after KOTM. The Titans, having declared fealty to Godzilla after the defeat of King Ghidorah, have gone off the grid. In human plot one, Monarch is maintaining surveillance of Kong over on Skull Island, where Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) monitors the now-full-grown ape with the help of Jia (Kaylee Hottle), an Iwi child who was orphaned when a large storm wiped out the rest of her tribe. Jia, who is deaf, is also watched over by Kong; the two have a special bond that’s very touching.
Meanwhile, in human plots 2 and 3, Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård), a proponent of the Hollow Earth theory mentioned in KOTM, comes to the attention of Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir), the head of Apex Cybernetics. Simmons is up to something that gets Godzilla’s hackles up and puts the kaiju on the attack.
In human plot 4, Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), who hosts a conspiracy podcast centered on the Titans, is investigating Apex. Once Godzilla attacks, Madison Russell (Millie Bobbie Brown, reprising her role from KOTM) seeks out Bernie to figure out what set Godzilla off. Someone has to protect him, given all the attention lavished on Kong (I am not bitter, I swear!).
All of this leads to several bouts of monster-bashing bedlam as Godzilla and Kong finally intersect. Do they fight? Do they ever! They punch, bite, smack, and wrestle one another in the water and on land. They destroy countless buildings and stomp on cars (and probably people). They roar in each other’s faces. It’s glorious.
Despite all the human activity, the film is very fast-paced, and the monster mashes are exhilarating, especially the neon-soaked fight in Hong Kong. Both Godzilla and Kong are expert brawlers, and their fight for supremacy of the post-Ghidorah world is the sort of spectacle summer (or in this case, spring) blockbusters excel at.
A lot of the credit for the expert pacing goes to director Adam Wingard, whose previous works include the superb horror films You’re Next (2011) and The Guest (2014). Wingard does a great job of propelling the story forward despite the many threads laid out in the screenplay by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein from a story by Terry Rossio and Michael Dougherty & Zach Shields. Yes, that’s a lot of names, and could be the reason the human element feels so thin, but Borenstein did the screenplay for the 2014 Godzilla and is one of the writers credited on the screenplay for Skull Island, so he understands these versions of Gojira and Kong very well. Dougherty also directed KOTM, so he’s no slouch in the Goji department, either. Both beasties command the screen and have personality galore.
The actors all seem to know what kind of film they’re in as well. Of the main cast, Hall, Hottle, and Henry are a joy to watch whenever they appear. Hall and Hottle have an endearing chemistry, and Henry is both funny and relatable as a man driven to uncover whatever tomfoolery Apex is planning.
Bichir appears to be having fun, too, as the cartoonish villain, Simmons, who may as well be twirling his moustache for all the subtlety he lacks whenever he speaks. Bichir chewing scenery makes a lot of the human silliness worthwhile.
But the main attraction in a film titled Godzilla vs. Kong is the epic battle of the two Titans. The CGI work here is stellar, as both creatures have a heft and solidness that makes their blows against each other land hard. While the movie does look fine on HBO Max, in IMAX, it’s stunning, especially the Hong Kong scenes. There’s also a part where Wingard pushes into a close-up of a very pissed-off Goji that had me literally sinking back into my seat in fear—that’s how good the CGI is.
Godzilla vs. Kong is loud, goofy fun, full of mayhem and destruction and two cinematic icons beating the heck out of each other. Unfortunately, there’s no after-credits scene, as Legendary’s contract to use the Toho kaiju has ended, but if Toho wanted to let them do another Godzilla film, there’s plenty of openings for more story (Kong is owned by Universal Pictures and could conceivably be licensed out to WB / Legendary again). If you want to have a blast of a time, Godzilla vs. Kong should be number one on your list. It’s definitely tops on mine.
*all pictures are property of Warner Bros and Legendary
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