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https://www.thenerdelement.com/2022/05/01/hatching-a-monster-tale-of-family-dysfunction/
Hatching (Pahanhautoja) (2022)
By Désirée I. Guzzetta
Director Hanna Bergholm’s feature, “Hatching,” unflinchingly shows us the monsters we are, and the monsters we can become. Working from a screenplay by Ilja Rautsi, Bergholm takes the audience on a hell of a coming-of-age journey filled with spectacular practical creature effects and terrifying human beings.
The Finnish “Hatching” begins with Tinja (Siiri Solalinna), a teenage gymnast, stretching as her mother watches her. Tinja’s position makes her look somewhat like a bony egg, foreshadowing what’s to come. She seemingly has a good relationship with her mother (played by Sophia Heikkilä), who comes up and tickles her. Everything seems loving.
Turns out, though, that Mother is an influencer filming the scene for her vlog, “Lovely Everyday Life,” and life isn’t really that lovely in her home. Mother is incredibly selfish, while Father (Jani Volanen) is a weak man who lets Mother dictate their lives. Tinja’s brother, Matias (Oiva Ollila), is an obnoxious clone of his dad. Tinja has no friends because her mother drives her so hard to win at gymnastics. All for their viewers, of course, and not because she wants Tinja to succeed for her own self-esteem. Tinja’s needs are not really her concern.
A horrifying series of events is set in motion when a bird shatters the faux-idyllic shoot, leading Tinja later to discover an egg that needs protection and help so the baby inside can hatch. However, the egg grows to gigantic proportions and what emerges is hideous. Despite the baby bird’s monstrous looks, though, Tinja grows to care for it and dubs it Alli. She hides Alli in her closet and mothers it.
After Tinja befriends the new neighbors’ daughter, Reetta (Ida Määttänen), who turns out to be a better gymnast, things go more awry. Mother doesn’t like seeing Reetta’s superior skills and forces Tinja to practice until her hands are calloused and bleeding. Mother’s family has their online reputation to protect, after all.
Alli also doesn’t like anything that causes Tinja distress. As Alli grows larger and larger, the curtains get pulled further open on the realities of Tinja’s broken home life.
At Sundance, Bergholm revealed they changed the lead character of the story from a boy to a girl because she feels there needs to be more complex females in film. The change works very well here, given the nurturing Tinja does for Alli, and the relationship she has to her selfish, winning-at-all-costs mother, whose idea of relieving stress is to win. “When you win, you don’t have to worry about anything,” she tells Tinja at one point.
“Hatching” devastates with its scathing critique of the way social media warps real-life sensibility in the pursuit of presenting perfection, but its greatest depth is in showing what repressing emotions can do to someone. It’s also a brilliant metaphor for coming of age, as Tinja grapples with the truth of her family’s dysfunction while also caring for a literal monster she feels responsible for. Tinja might as well be invisible for all her family actually cares about her as herself–she is only allowed to be whatever Mother wants. She’s living a teenager’s nightmare, only it’s on-screen for Mother’s followers to praise because they can’t see the horror behind the artifice.
Solalinna is affecting as the shy, bird-like Tinja, and Heikkilä shines as the self-involved Mother (neither Father nor Mother get names). The practical effects on Alli are exquisitely grotesque and a joy to see for folks who enjoy a good old-fashioned monster as well.
“Hatching” makes an excellent addition to the pantheon of horror films dealing with teenage girls growing into their own power, such as 2000’s “Ginger Snaps” and 2007’s “Teeth.” But what sets it apart is its unflinching ability to delve deep into the damage mothers can do to their daughters when they try to live through them without paying any attention to their daughters’ feelings.
The post “Hatching” a monster tale of family dysfunction appeared first on The Nerd Element.
According to series Caroline Dries, the CW show Batwoman has been canceled after 3 seasons on the network.
The TV writer posted on Twitter the breaking news stating:
“Just got the sad news that #Batwoman will not be seeing an S4. I am bummed, but full of gratitude. What an honor to make 51 episodes. So many inspiring, brilliant people contributed to this series. Thank you producers, cast and crew. Thank you, fans! We love you.”
Just got the sad news that #Batwoman will not be seeing an S4. I am bummed, but full of gratitude. What an honor to make 51 episodes. So many inspiring, brilliant people contributed to this series. Thank you producers, cast and crew. Thank you, fans! We love you.
— Caroline Dries (@carolinedries) April 29, 2022
In season three of Batwoman, Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) shed her parole for the Batsuit and her van for the Batcave to carry out the legacy of Batwoman and protect Gotham’s underserved communities. Her journey continues as she and the Bat Team focus on finding Batman’s trophies, a collection of objects seized from Gotham’s most infamous villains before they land in pernicious hands. Meanwhile, Ryan personally struggles with the bombshell dropped by Alice (Rachel Skarsten) – that her birth mother is still alive.
Season 3 also brought in new players including actor Robin Givens as Jada Jet and Nick Creegan as Joker. Creegan is the first Black actor to play Joker in that role. No additional information from CW or other talent from the series has been released as of yet as this story is still breaking.
Variety has also reported the story.
I think it’s safe to say that if you had never been on Twitter prior to this week — that is no longer the case. 
It’s time to talk about the man who practically thinks he’s the real-life incarnation of Tony Stark. The man who brought you electronic luxury vehicles. The man who founded a whole spaceflight company and wants to send you to Mars.
I’m talking about the man who just bought out Twitter for a measly $44 billion…
Do I even have to say his name? Let’s seriously unpack this for a second because this is wild!
Can you imagine what you could buy with $44 billion dollars?
Well, let me help you. 
#1: A Country
Oh, yes! Did you know that Sri Lanka has a debt amounting to a whopping $35 billion?
Recently, the country has been seeking support due to its struggling economy and other issues that have begun to arise throughout its debt crisis: food shortages, power cuts, and street protests.
With $44 billion, Elon could have paid the debt of an entire nation.
Just let that sink in for a minute.
#2: A Laptop for Every College Student on Earth
As in Planet Earth, people! It has been reported that there are approximately 250 million college kids studying around the world today. That $44 billion could’ve afforded a decent Chromebook for each of these students and Elon would still walk away with some change left to throw an after-party!
How much change? A quarter 
of a billion dollars.
Speaking of students…
#3: Student Debt
It has been reported that America loans an annual total of $45.3 billion to 44.4% of all postsecondary students.
I can’t even begin to process the fact that it is possible for a single human being to be capable of wiping out a year’s worth of student debt for almost half of all graduate students in America.
Which tier of the flex hierarchy does this fall into? Can someone please tell me?
Anyway, at the end of the day, we can’t control how people spend their hard-earned billions.
So, how did we get here?
Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time Elon Musk has considered buying Twitter. He’s been a big fan of the platform for years and staunchly believes that Twitter plays a great part in protecting free speech and free information.
The first time Musk publicly inquired if Twitter was for sale was in this tweet exchange with @redletterdave back in 2017:
Many thought the tweet to be a joke at the time, but, in retrospect, it is very possible that Musk has been eyeing Twitter as his next acquisition target for longer than we realized.
But, why now?
Well, it appears that the straw that finally broke the camel’s back came from Twitter itself.
In recent years, Elon Musk has been very transparent about his growing discontent with the platform when it began to censor users and suspend accounts without notice or explanation.
Twitter’s content moderation didn’t entirely come out of the blue, however.
No social media platform is perfect, but Twitter has continued to face a growing conundrum since its inception.
Despite being a hub committed to freedom of speech and expression, the platform’s flaws began to surface when it was exposed that there were an increasing number of accounts/users promoting terrorism and recruitment for ISIS in 2015/2016.
Additionally, due to the drastic rise in “fake news,” Twitter has ramped up its moderation of content and accounts in order to prevent the spread of disinformation on the platform.
With over 200 million users around the world, many argue that Twitter can be a wondrous gift and a curse. Now it plays an ethical role in ensuring accuracy of information, fact-checking claims to uphold public safety, and protecting the values that democracies hold dear.
So, what’s the big deal?
Elon Musk believes that Twitter has gone too far with its censorship and, if it goes unchecked, the platform could be doing a disservice to social discourse and free speech.
He has also gone on record to blame Twitter for the rise of Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social media platform, and indicated that it wouldn’t have come to fruition if Twitter had been more neutral in the past and politically nonpartisan.
He later issued a letter to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s board chairman, that expressed his discontent with the platform as well as his desire to take the company private: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
Imagine being so angry at a multibillion dollar company that you resort to buying it out completely.
Must be nice … can’t relate. But we can dream, right? 
As for Twitter—how did they respond?
Their board of advisors decided they weren’t going down easy, so they tried to curtail Musk’s acquisition efforts by initiating Operation “Poison Pill,” a defense tactic that would “flood the market with new stock that all shareholders except Mr. Musk could buy at a discounted price.”
Therefore, share prices would rise above current levels and would force Musk to buy Twitter at a higher premium.
It’s giving savagery, isn’t it? 
Honestly, I’m still side-eyeing Twitter for pulling such a questionable mechanism as it does negatively impact fairness for all shareholders and make a stock more volatile.
With that said, poison pills have been legal since the 1980s and were designed to help companies protect themselves from hostile takeovers and acquirers.
Unfortunately for Twitter, that didn’t deter the Tesla founder at all. But, fortunately for Twitter, this mechanism increased Musk’s bargaining price significantly to $44 billion ($54.20 a share), which would be a 38% premium increase for the social media giant.
Shortly after Twitter’s board of advisers unanimous decision to sell broke the news, Musk announced a few of the changes and initiatives he wanted to bring to the platform via none other than his Twitter account:
Since then, Musk has expressed interest in the following:
- Allowing tweets to be long-form (more than 280 characters).
- Adding an edit button to tweets.
- Making DMs end-to-end encrypted so that they can’t be hacked or surveilled.
- Buying Coca-Cola to “put the cocaine back in.”
Let’s move on …
The future of Twitter is still uncertain, but we’re in for an interesting ride because there’s still the possibility that Musk could walk away from the deal.
There are so many questions to be answered, but what are your thoughts — is this the change that Twitter finally needs? Is Elon Musk the right man for the job?
Drop those comments on our social media channels!