deerstalker

https://blackgirlnerds.com/review-netflixs-resident-evil-is-an-action-packed-story-about-family/

Written by: April Prince

Since the release of the first game in 1996, Resident Evil as a series has captured the attention of gamers all over the globe. It’s even spawned other forms of media such as comics, animated films, audio dramas, live-action films — and TV shows. That’s what we’ll be taking a look at today. Thanks to the people at Netflix, we were granted early access to the new live-action Resident Evil show from showrunner Andrew Dabb and Constantin Films. Let’s see if this new angle on an old favorite holds up or if it’s meant to be put down.

Resident Evil follows Jade and Billie Wesker, the half twin daughters of everyone’s favorite mad scientist Albert Wesker. Yes, that’s right. Wesker is allowed to parent in this iteration and surprisingly? He seems like a genuine, loving father. 

The series takes place during two periods in time. The first takes place in our current time during 2022, where Jade and Billie are teens who just moved to New Racoon City with Albert and are adjusting to their new life. The other half of the show takes place in 2036, 14 years in the future. In the future, most of civilization has been wiped out by a virus. Jade is a researcher seeking to understand said virus on how the “Zeroes” work. Zeroes are the name given to the infected. 

In this new live-action story, we are getting themes of family, survival, and forgiveness. The survival is obvious; this is a Resident Evil show after all. But those themes of family and forgiveness are ones that are handled with a lot of heart and honesty. RE is not new to tackling these things, but the way it’s handled in the show makes you care about the characters and how they relate to each other. 

As stated before, Albert Wesker is a surprisingly caring father, and it puts the viewer on edge mainly if you’re familiar with his depiction in the games. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s a tinge of the usual threatening nature we’re used to with him but not to the degree or in the way you’d expect. 

There’s the very easy-to-spot fact that Albert is being portrayed by a Black man. Yes, there was some controversy about this casting choice. However, Lance Reddick brings his masterful skills to the role, marrying the fresh depiction of Wesker as a father with the usual haunting and off-putting figure fans recognize from the games. It’d be easy to write this off as a racebending casting for brownie points, but Reddick does a great job with the material. Don’t write him off.

As for the show’s other characters, Jade and Billie hold their own quite well. Jade is a strong-willed woman who puts her goals above all. This is something that realistically serves as both a positive and a negative. Thankfully the show doesn’t pull punches when it comes to her flaws. Having a one-track mind can lead to catastrophe when you don’t know when to pull back. 

Billie, on the other hand, is someone who goes along to get along, for better or worse. She’s passive by nature, and that means she’s more likely to turn the other cheek for the most part. In the beginning, she alludes to her explosive temper and how she doesn’t want to relive those moments of anger and lashing out. It makes for an interesting character arc of her either choosing to continue to be passive or letting her anger out and being known as the wild, irrational girl all over again. 

The setting of New Raccoon City is portrayed as an idyllic suburb on the surface while below that there’s something more sinister going on. There’s an undercurrent of militarized threat that permeates almost every interaction, and the presence of surveillance doesn’t assuage those feelings. Each time teenage Jade or Billie seeks to better understand their surroundings there’s someone there to shut that down as soon as possible. It gives the viewer an incentive to keep watching as we know only as much as the characters we’re following do. If they don’t know something, we don’t know either. It’s what makes certain reveals later in the season hit hard and land effectively. 

The big question to ask is, who is this show for? Well, longtime fans of the series may find it hard to reconcile what you already know and expect from a Resident Evil story with how Constantin chose to go about their version. But, once you give it a chance, it’s entertaining and does a good job of telling an engaging story while leaving things open for a second season. For newcomers who aren’t as familiar with Resident Evil, the show is a good mixture of action, sci-fi, and family dynamic. The characters are well defined and their motivations are paired well with their personalities. 

All in all, it’s a good show that deserves a fair shot with the potential to offer something new to an already packed franchise. 

The series premieres on July 14, 2022, on Netflix. 

https://blackgirlnerds.com/interview-comedy-gumbo-with-sam-jay/

It’s an interesting thing, interviewing Sam Jay.

When you sit down with the comedian, Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live writer, and host of HBO late-night series PAUSE with Sam Jay, at least if you’re me, you get the feeling like you came at the wrong time. A twenty-minute Zoom meeting is fine for establishing the facts, but it’s not enough for getting into the spirit of things. 

There are glimpses, yes, of the fun one usually sees on Jay’s hilarious and often brutally personal talk/sketch show. However, maybe because the setting is more formal than the laid-back bars and lofts where Jay and her friends typically have PAUSE’s lively discussions about everything from sexual miscalculations to being a rude kid in school, the vibe is off. Stilted.

Then again, I may just be a bad and/or boring interviewer. But I also get the feeling Jay doesn’t necessarily like interviews. As she tells me about the format of her HBO show, she prefers dynamic discussions to interviews. 

Part of the feeling I get may just come from the fact that Jay is a Boston comedian by way of Atlanta. Why does it matter that she’s from Boston? To quote her, “I think Boston is also a cynical town.” This cynicism may work in a few ways. On the one hand, it may make you wary and a little wearied by answering questions that are similar, if not unintentional facsimiles, of ones you’ve been asked before. On the other hand, in Jay’s estimation, this cynicism is also one of the main ingredients of what she calls “comedy soup,” the sausages (maybe even the shrimp?) in a comedic gumbo. 

If you’ve seen Episode 2 of PAUSE’s latest season, titled “The Crackas Is Coming,” you might see some of this apparent cynicism. 

At one point, in an absorbing interview (read: frank discussion) with a psychologist, Jay asks what the components of an abusive relationship are. The therapist, a white woman, outlines the signs — trauma bonding, gaslighting, a lack of empathy — and Jay asks if Black people are in an abusive relationship with white people in America. “Yes,” the therapist says. “Well,” Jay responds, “do we need to leave?” 

The audience never finds out the psychologist’s answer.

If that situation didn’t read like out-and-out cynicism, that’s because it isn’t. Another part of what I believe Sam Jay’s comedy gumbo to be is empathy. Yes, she tells me, writers’ room arguments were what led to the show having its looser format where several people have often overlapping discussions over drinks while a camera follows along. “As we were building the show, I just kind of felt like it still wasn’t resonating. Like the vehicle you’re using just sort of didn’t feel correct. And when I was kicking it with one of the writers, we were drinking and just arguing, and I was like, ‘Oh, it should feel like this.’” The writer agreed, and he and Jay took the idea back to producer and co-creator Prentice Penny (Insecure, Happy Endings, Girlfriends). He and HBO agreed, giving Jay the leeway to make the show structured however she saw fit. 

As a result, we get a show with a surprising — and, depending on who you are, frustrating — amount of empathy. We get a show trying to see where people are coming from and what makes them tick, even if it seems like the most vocal folks on Twitter have seemingly closed the books on any given conversation.

This process of building a comedy show built around people’s personal struggles begins with Jay and the things she’s experienced. “It’s a very personal season. I talk about prison because my brother went to jail, and, like, what that did to the family. I talk about cheating because I just went through that with my girl, and we just got on the other side of that stuff.” As far as pressure to become a topical late-night talk show goes, Jay has this opinion: “There’s enough people taking the topics of the day and saying their opinions about them. I feel like that space is filled. Beyond filled. And so we’re trying to make a show that fit in another space that wasn’t being occupied.”

The other space the show fills is certainly something different. 

It comes from a place of pro-Blackness, but it asks “Woods Whites,” that is, white guys who might hang out in the woods on purpose for fun, what their deal is. It asks the same therapist from earlier why white women don’t seem to be on the lookout for white men and their potential struggles the way Black women, in Jay’s view, tend to look out for Black men. 

If the previous sentence just sent you into a fit of reflexive hand-wringing, well, that’s the show. I ask her if the idea of pushback for looking at every angle of an issue — what we might sometimes too simply call “both sides” — makes her want to steer clear of it. “I don’t know if you can avoid that,” she says, “but I don’t know that I can cater to that either.” She adds, “There’s also other shows that don’t do that.” She says with a laugh, “That’s what this show does. If you’re not into that, that’s cool.”

What seems to be Jay’s whole thing at the end of the day is mixing laughs with genuine emotion, trying to get an understanding even for people from the so-called other side. 

“I’m really curious. If we’re out here talking, I’m curious. It’s also I’m genuinely interested in what this person is going to say and why they are thinking or moving the way that they’re moving. It’s a genuine curiosity there.”

I ask where this need for empathy, and, therefore, understanding, comes from and how it affects her show.

“I had to live with a lot of different people after my mom died. I’ve seen people’s behavior switched, and I’ve seen just a lot of sh*t that kind of forced me to be empathetic and to realize that everybody’s carrying their own stuff with them. And a lot of times it’s that stuff that makes people act the way they act. Not this natural evil or good, but just life and its circumstances and where they bring you. And so I don’t think I would have survived a lot of this shit I survived mentally if I couldn’t make space for that thought process. Then I would have been holding on to so much bitter sh*t, and it would have destroyed me.”

As far as the show goes?

“[Empathy] just became a part of my personality. The show has that in it because it’s truly in me.”

So, Sam Jay’s comedy soup is one part Bostonian cynicism, one part empathy, and a large part of laughs. It’s certainly not for everyone, but, then again, what food is?

Seasons 1 and 2 of PAUSE with Sam Jay are available to stream on HBO Max.

https://blacknerdproblems.com/the-champions-hike-review/

Since 2018, any time you have seen me get on this site and mention Craig of the Creek, you know I’m about to tell you bout an episode where they not only understood the assignment but handed in extra credit as well. ‘The Champion’s Hike’ is another notch in the belt for Craig of the Creek as an episode that does not miss. What I’ve always loved about Craig of the Creek is the long game they play. The show focuses on character development extremely well. We also see a rotation of which kid from the creek gets highlighted. This episode is no different as we get a closer look at the former Champions of King Xavier. Aggie, Keun-sup, and Maya sit at the center of the episode, but it’s Jackie who steals it entirely.

An interesting thing about Craig of the Creek is how characters are handled when they become someone else. We saw this with Omar no longer having to dawn the Green Poncho. He is now just Omar but letting go of the routine of the Green Poncho wasn’t easy, but he has. We’ve seen glimpses of the former champions of the king post-capture the flag war. This is the first time we’re seeing all the champions hanging out together as former champions now. We get to explore who these characters are outside of their old roles.

Enter Jackie formerly known as “The Arm.”

“The Champion’s Hike” episode centers around Craig trying to fit in among his former enemies turned friends and Maya being the one to let him know that it’s okay to just be himself. The other portion of this story is how we get to see African American Sign language on screen via Jackie who is deaf. We see Jackie’s father communicating with him prior to the group leaving. We also see Keun-Sup signing communicating to Jackie with ASL as well. Not only do we get to see African American Sign Language, but this episode gives us sign language conversation between two characters of color. We also see Craig learning more ASL and remembering what he’s learned prior from Keun in order to interact with Jackie. Craig of the Creek really be out here thinking of everything man.

There is an artist touch used here as well where we know what is being said of the conversation only by how Keun reacts verbally to what Jackie is saying. We viewers who aren’t versed in ASL won’t understand what’s being said (like the conversation between Jackie and his father) However, that’s fine because it’s not for us. There was an issue of Hawkeye (Hawkeye #19 [2014]). The issue had Hawkeye, Clint Barton, receiving an injury that made him deaf again. We see his brother Barney signing to him, but there is no caption for those not familiar with ASL, which was an intended choice. I appreciate the creators “The Champion’s Hike” episode making the same choice for their audience as well. There’s something that makes it even more authentic.

I’ve been saying this since 2018, but you’re going to love what them creek kids are getting up to over at Craig of the Creek. They’re putting up new episodes along with top tier substance. It’s really not getting any better than this MVP cartoon over on Cartoon Network.

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The post “The Champion’s Hike” Brings Black American Sign Language to ‘Craig of the Creek’ appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

https://blacknerdproblems.com/mario-party-is-a-torture-chamber/

When my partner comes to visit me, we like to engage in Mario Party violence: Good ol’ Birdo vs Donkey Kong action. We talk shit, then pick up the joy-cons and throw hands. But one weekend I stopped and observed that the mini-games are the homies being—tortured? Hold it with me for a second. Mario and his homies are being put in some inhumane situations (even for the sake of their world). In Mario Party, they got capitalistic ghosts, mushrooms that watch you get robbed, and “minigames” that include things that could kill you. Mario Party is not fun and games. It has never been fun and games. We’re playing into violent affairs, and we’re complicit in our remotes.

Let me start off with some of these “minigames.” These ain’t games okay. They’re forcing people (and animals) to do extravagant, possibly life-altering tasks for 10 dollars.

Exhibit A:

Let’s start off with this Pogo-a-Gogo. A game where three characters on a pogo stick fight to stay on a space station as a rival rotates the platform so that you may plummet into intergalactic doom. Okay. So, we see the problem, right? Toad, the host is basically telling you, “For ten bucks, make your homie disintegrate into the milky way.” My questions are: How they even got the pogo sticks up there in the first place? Why aren’t they floating away? And why did they have to choose something so life threatening in the first place?

According to Business Insider: “You could only last 15 seconds without a spacesuit — you’d die of asphyxiation or you’ll freeze.”

And how long is this game you ask?

They all should’ve died four times.

Exhibit B:

Next, let’s go to Bowser’s Blast, which is basically that bomb diffusing scene in Die Hard with a Vengeance, but everyone is Samuel L. Jackson. Bowser’s Blast presents four people in a line, with a huge bomb in the shape of Bowser’s head on a stage. One by one you have to select the lever that doesn’t set off the bomb. Each time someone selects a lever and it doesn’t go off, there’s one less lever for someone to choose; therefore, it increases the odds of you getting blown up. Basically, it’s an erotic dream for a serial killer.

I don’t know what kind of funding Toad got, but someone needs to investigate his budget for weapons of mass destruction.  Because there is no reason why you got UNLIMITED Bowser head bombs. Look at them covering their heads as their best friend gets caught in the explosion. Tragic.

Exhibit C:

The last mini game I’m gonna focus on is Hot Rope Jump. It’s jump rope, but the rope is made out of flames. I want you to think about it. Imagine you’re playing double dutch back in the day and one of your homegirls say: “What if we lit this shit on fire?” Everyone was like, “Haha good one Shirley.” But then she insisted, “Nah, we’d look dope!” Everyone disagreed, but she did it anyway. That’s Mario Party Hot Rope Jump in a nutshell. You’re literally jumping to save the hairs on your butt from being singed.  And what happens to you if you get caught? Literal smoke is flaming out your anus, and you’re hopping to safety.

Honorable Mention:

1) Cheep Cheep Chase: Four people get thrown into a dungeon pool being forced to swim for their lives avoiding spike balls floating on the water while a huge fish blubs after you to suck off your flesh and bones.

2) Boulder Ball: Three characters run up a steep incline as someone at the top of the hill throws down boulder balls at them.

Next, lets gravitate our attention to the party boards. Here they present you separate “paradises” and “invigorating experiences” to choose from. Ranging from a tropical island to a haunted forest, each is equipped with their own methods of follicle stressors. My main focus is going to be on Space Land. Modeled after a space colony, this board has multiple paths with a counter in the middle to set off a huge laser beam that not only blasts you into the air, but also yeets your entire bank account.

I bet you’re asking, what makes this more of a torture chamber than say Peach’s Birthday Cake where you can grow large piranha plants between the crevices of sweet frosting. Or why not Woody Woods where moles pop out of the ground and mess with the map, so you’re forced to go around in circles in a God forsaken place where mushrooms play soccer with acorns. You’re probably wondering why not Yoshi Island? A paradise where Bowser robs you of 20 bucks then throws a shell at your face disguised as a cake. No, I assure you Space Land is a menace, and here’s why.

THERE’S GHOSTS IN SPACE!

Everywhere else, it makes sense. Yoshi island? You could make an excuse for dead Yoshis. Haunted forest? Of course! You know what Space Land has? Ghosts AND cops! You make a space utopia, and you got homies in hoods and masks stop and frisking you at checkpoints. Sounds familiar, but I digress. Imagine in space and away from earth, you got homies chasing you in cop cars, a countdown waiting to strip you of your entire bank account, and on top of that when you least expect it, some broke dinosaur on the other side of the board plotting to steal your stars. You literally cannot escape the treachery.

My personal experience with Space Land begins with a classic game my partner (Donkey Kong) and me (Birdo, the bougie dinosaur). I knew this game was gonna be something when a huge cinderblock with arms chased me all the way to the other side of the board, which plopped me head first into the laser. What happened next? My partner circled around the counter and had all of my money (100 coins by the way) disappear. To give you retrospect, having 100 coins or more is basically like being the 1%, so imagine that to losing all your money and being broke. It be feeling like everyone laughing at you. Like, “Ah ha! Wasn’t you out here making it rain on Toadette? Now look at you, scraping for three dollars every five steps.” It’s quite embarrassing actually. And the fact that you can’t even pay off the “space cops” (Shy Guys) if you don’t got money. They just ignore you saying, “we got paper work.”

This Whole Board is Disrespectful!

After I got chased to the back of the board and was left with no money, everything was wild. I passed by the bank; they pitied my ass. “We’ll take whatever you have.” I’m sure Koopa is just looking at me and internally saying, “Oh. Brokey McBroke Broke is back. Somebody, get her a dollar.”  I landed on the V.S. but didn’t have enough money for the betting pool. Toad started making side remarks about how there’s less money in the pot. Like obviously! You knew what was going on when I got here! Stop embarrassing me in front of the crew. I could sauté him for talking wild like that, but I’m not saying nothing.

But by far, what makes the Mario Party torture chamber worse are the item stores. If someone throwing boulders at you and a ghost coming to rob you isn’t enough, those mini shops set up throughout each board ran by Toad will do it. Toad the mastermind of all things PAIN has diabolical items ranging from things that can make you move faster, or reduce your opponents speed, steal things from them, etc. If you want to hurt someone ,Toad has it. But for the purpose of my own trauma, I’m gonna focus on one:

The “Chomp Call”

The Chomp Call summons three metal balls with TEETH to move Toadette to another star location. This item is inhumane. Not only does it revoke an opponent’s chance to get a star no matter how close they are, but it also puts Toadette at risk. Imagine you just see three wrecking balls with good dental coverage circling around you like sharks. I’d be terrified. This is Toadette’s life. The Chomp Call is probably one of the pettiest items in the game, because the computer specifically waits till you get really close to set it off. Right when you have your hopes and dreams, waited four turns to finally afford a star, then BAM! Somebody whips out their inhumane wrecking ball whistle to redirect the star somewhere else on the board. The places where Toadette falls, can lead the star directly to you or 50 steps away.

The Chomp Call is the Hateration in the Dancery

There’s been plenty of occasions by luck I roll high numbers and think I’m going to hit the star but like frustrating magic, I fall one step before it. I cry. I scream. Then, I see another player has a Chomp Call. They see my joy, pull it out and FWEEEEET! My hopes, my dreams dashed as I am forcibly taken back to the same side of the board I just came from and will take me another five turns to return to the star’s location.

I know we grew up thinking for generations that Mario Party is innocent fun and filled with activities for all ages. But I’m here to tell you that it is absolutely not. Folks get mad at violent shooter games; Mario Party needs that same energy. If you got your friends conspiring against you from 30 steps away, taking your money, making you succumb to money grubbing lasers and throwing boulders at you?! I think you have to rearrange your priorities.

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The post ‘Mario Party’ is a Torture Chamber appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.