If you are a Sonic fan, you have to check out their brand-new menu items. The fast-food restaurant recently shared that it will be introducing some new mouth-watering, comfort-food-inspired items to its menu. The best part is that fans won’t have to wait very long to try them. Sonic New Comfort Food Menu Items View this post on Instagram A post shared by Markie_devo (@markie_devo) On August 26th, Sonic announced that its Groovy Fries are getting a new-and-improved upgrade. A food blogger named @markie_devo shared the specifics on Instagram. Sonic is updating the fries and creating a new dipping sauce to go with them. According to the post, the Groovy Fries have a “crispy exterior to lock in heat and provide a bite that’s crisp on the outside while soft and fluffy on the inside.” The Groovy Sauce that comes with it “features the savory flavors of creamy ranch and herbs combined with the mild spice of siracha.” The Groovy Fries are not the only new and improved item on the Sonic menu. Parade shares that “beginning next month,” they will also be releasing various other food items. Those food items include ” three varieties of Loaded Queso Fries, new Bacon Ranch Queso Wrap, and Southwest Crunch Queso Wrap.” Mouth-Watering Goodness Sonic Drive-In shared the following descriptions of their new food menu items on their website. Bacon Ranch Queso Wrap: “An all-white meat, crispy tender wrapped up in a soft, flour tortilla along with crisp bacon, melty cheddar cheese, creamy ranch, and creamy, white queso.” Southwest Crunch Queso Wrap: “An all-white meat, crispy tender wrapped up in a soft, flour tortilla along with a creamy Southwestern sauce, crunchy tortilla strips, melty cheddar cheese and creamy, white queso.” Parade shared a description of the Loaded Queso Fries that will be gracing Sonic’s menu as well. “It’s crispy crinkle-cut Groovy Fries dressed with a ‘mouth-watering’ white queso sauce.” Customers can also try the Southwest Loaded Queso Fries and the Bacon Ranch Loaded Queso Fries. If you want to get your hands on any of these delicious new Sonic menu items, you can order them online today at participating locations. However, if you want to enjoy eating these delicious treats in person, the official release date of all of these comfort foods is September 2nd. No matter which food item you choose, your taste buds are sure to be satisfied. The featured image source is here. The post Sonic Is Adding Delectable Comfort Foods To Its Menu & We Can’t Wait To Try Them! appeared first on InspireMore.

Costner is clearly missing out

'There are millions of dead fish'

Imagine getting paid nearly $70 million in a year

A post shared on social media purportedly shows an image of a post from former First Lady Michelle Obama discussing the Epstein client list. Verdict: False The post stems from a parody account. Fact Check: Michelle Obama appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago recently along with her husband, former President Barack Obama and compared her […]

An image shared on Facebook purports to show 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz wearing blackface. Verdict: False The image does not show Walz but actor Jon Hamm as Don Draper during an episode of the HBO series, “Mad Men.” Images of Hamm wearing blackface on the show were featured in […]

Movies & TV Batman Shadow of the Bat: Novelty Meets Nostalgia in Batman: Caped Crusader Relying on the aesthetic of Batman: The Animated Series, Caped Crusader never quite ascends to the same heights. By Marc Singer | Published on August 29, 2024 Comment 1 Share New Share More than thirty years after its debut, Batman: The Animated Series still sets the gold standard for Batman cartoons. Just how gold that standard is can be seen in Batman: Caped Crusader, the new animated series on Amazon Prime. Batman: The Animated Series debuted in 1992 in the wake of the highly successful Tim Burton films, but part of its particular genius was that it looked back to earlier inspirations. Under the direction of creators Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, the series conjured a retro-futuristic world of Art Deco skyscrapers and streamlined roadsters, landing somewhere between the Fleischer brothers Superman cartoons and the New York World’s Fair. The result was a series that seemed to be looking back to Batman’s origins and forward towards a future that never quite arrived. Bruce Timm has returned with Batman: Caped Crusader, which takes Batman back to his roots in the comics of the 1930s and the pulps, films, and Gothic novels that inspired them. The series also draws liberally from the BTAS production design, though the characters have been updated to feature a racially diverse cast better suited for modern audiences. As changes go, though, that’s the easy one. Caped Crusader presents a bold, stylish, completely consistent vision of Batman’s retro past, but in hewing so close to its predecessor, the series courts the inevitable problems of comparison. Hamish Linklater is given the unenviable task of following Kevin Conroy, who voiced Batman for more than 25 years. That hasn’t been a problem for other animated adaptations, which varied sufficiently in tone and style that viewers knew they were watching something different. But hearing a Bruce Timm-designed Batman speaking in someone else’s voice triggers an uncanny valley response, a sense that something isn’t quite right. Linklater adopts Conroy’s trick of varying his voice when he’s playing Batman and Bruce Wayne, but that’s where the similarity ends. His Wayne has something of Conroy’s lilt, but his Batman speaks in a monotone of flattened affect. The script backs him up, suggesting this is not just one actor’s choice but part of the series’ larger take on the character. Caped Crusader is deeply invested in portraying Batman as a trauma survivor who walls himself off from other people, someone so stunned by tragedy that he refers to Alfred, his faithful butler and surrogate father, as “Pennyworth.” It’s a far cry from BTAS, where Batman’s emotional investment was never in doubt. Conroy’s performance could go over the top— “I am vengeance! I am the night! I am Batman!” became a meme for good reason—but beneath the theatrics, he always understood that Batman was the most caring person in Gotham City. The result was a hero who could actually go toe to toe with his rogues’ gallery of two-faced attorneys and killer clowns and not come away diminished. Linklater’s Batman too often seems to be a bystander in his own series. Caped Crusader struggles most when it tries hardest to escape the shadow of its predecessor. The first episode lays down its marker by introducing a gender-flipped version of the Penguin, but without any further attention to how that would change the character, the revamp feels gratuitous. A series that already features Barbara Gordon, Renee Montoya, Selina Kyle, and Harley Quinn cannot be said to lack complex female roles, and yet this new Penguin misses what made the character work in the first place. Penguin as cabaret owner? Inspired. Penguin as cabaret performer? Another trip to the uncanny valley. Oswald Cobblepot might have craved the approval of Gotham’s high society, but he knew better than to get it by singing and dancing. The boldest and most troublesome departure comes in the decision to revamp Harley Quinn. Created by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini in 1992 as a sidekick and love interest for the Joker, Harley is easily the most popular Batman character created in the last fifty years. When Dini and Timm collaborated to tell her origin in the comic Batman: Mad Love, they made Harley a scheming, ambitious psychiatrist who fell in love with her most notorious patient. The story added just the right amount of pathos, propelling Harley to a stature that few comic book characters attain. Caped Crusader starts out strong by introducing Harley in her pre-villainous career as a therapist—and making Bruce Wayne one of her patients, a situation rife with possibilities that is abandoned far too quickly. Things take a turn as the episode reveals that she already has a costumed identity and a criminal career completely independent of the Joker. (Her shtick, kidnapping and brainwashing her rich clients, is lifted straight from Dr. Hugo Strange, an early villain from the comics who would be absolutely perfect for this series if Harley hadn’t stolen his bit.) Cutting Harley loose from the Joker could be read as an emancipation of a character who has long since outgrown her sidekick status. But shorn of that origin, this Harley has no motivation, no history, no tragedy—none of the things that made her character so memorable. She doesn’t even have a straight man to play against (part of the genius of the original Harley was that she made the Joker her straight man). The new Harley is little more than a name and a costume design, a hollow reminder of a better character. If Harley Quinn is deflated by the series’ desire for novelty, then Two-Face is flattened by its obsession with psychological realism. Caped Crusader does an admirable job of establishing District Attorney Harvey Dent’s simmering temper and his penchant for corruption prior to the acid attack that sends him over the edge, but once it happens, both actor and script are reluctant to lean into the character’s signature duality. Diedrich Bader’s Dent is self-pitying and his Two-Face (who is never called by that name) is violent, but the personalities just don’t seem like they’re in conflict. Batman villains deal in extremes, but both Bader and Caped Crusader hold back where they are most needed. The series even provides a perfect (if probably unwitting) metaphor for its reticence. Two-Face is infamous for deciding his victims’ fate with the flip of a double-headed coin, one side scarred, the other not. But in Caped Crusader, the coin is unscarred on both sides. Maybe this is meant to convey some deep psychological insight into Harvey Dent—acid burns or not, he is ultimately responsible for his own problems—but it’s hard to shake the impression that sometimes the series is afraid to commit to its source material. Caped Crusader does have certain advantages over its predecessor. The series draws on an expanded cast of characters and ranges freely across genres, mingling gritty crime drama with Gothic horror. Unencumbered by the Standards and Practices board of any broadcast network, it can indulge in grim, unflinching violence without ever becoming gory. But the show is strongest when it capitalizes on its retro setting to take the characters back to basics. The best episodes are even more faithful to the original Batman comics than BTAS was, beating the master at its own game. The second episode, “…And Be a Villain,” introduces viewers to Clayface—not the shapeshifting blob of later comics and cartoons but Basil Karlo, a frustrated actor who uses an experimental treatment to become a man of a thousand faces. As he pursues his vendetta against the film industry that marginalized him, Karlo leaves a trail of bodies in his wake but he never loses his flair for the dramatic: he’s the sort of villain who ruthlessly murders his rivals but tosses Batman a sword out of a sense of chivalry. The episode recalls the finest moments of BTAS, revealing its villain’s humanity without lessening the severity of his crimes. The next episode, “Kiss of the Catwoman,” is another standout. Most of the great Batman villains serve as dark reflections of some aspect of his character, but this version of Catwoman bases her entire criminal persona around him, even to the point of acquiring a souped-up car and a long-suffering servant. Turning to crime for thrills as much as cash, she shows us what Batman might be like without any moral compass. The interpretation is faithful to the character while still providing something we haven’t seen in animation before: BTAS never gave Catwoman an origin story since the producers assumed everybody knew who she was from the Burton movies. But even in the best episodes, something important is missing. When Catwoman kisses Batman, there’s no spark—nor is there ever any doubt that he’s going to bring her in at the first opportunity. Conroy’s Batman, like Michael Keaton’s, was clearly attracted to Catwoman, tapping into a transgressive charge that has kept this cop-and-robber relationship going for more than eighty years. Linklater’s Batman gives her nothing. No attraction, no spark, not even a catch in his voice. His numbed take on the character might speak to television’s current vogue for trauma and character study, but it leaves a hole in the heart of the series. Batman: Caped Crusader’s Gotham City is still a place of big emotions, operatic villains, grand drama in the classic style. It would be nice if the hero were part of it.[end-mark] The post Shadow of the Bat: Novelty Meets Nostalgia in <i>Batman: Caped Crusader</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Never Let Go Never Let Go Trailer Will Have You Clinging to Your Theater Seat By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on August 29, 2024 Screenshot: Lionsgate Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Lionsgate Lionsgate has a post-apocalyptic movie coming out that stars Halle Berry as a woman trying to keep her children safe in a world that includes possessed people (maybe?) as well as a giant snake, which may or may not be real. The film is called Never Let Go and comes from director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Crawl). And as the recently released trailer shows, it looks equal parts disturbing and creepy. It also looks like it plays with audience expectations of what is real and what may be a delusion (though I’d lean more toward those half-decayed humans being real within the universe of the movie). Here’s Never Let Go’s official synopsis: In this new psychological thriller/horror, as an evil takes over the world beyond their front doorstep, the only protection for a mother (Halle Berry) and her twin sons is their house and their family’s protective bond. Needing to stay connected at all times—even tethering themselves with ropes—they cling to one another, urging each other to never let go. But when one of the boys questions if the evil is real, the ties that bind them together are severed, triggering a terrifying fight for survival. In addition to Berry, the movie stars Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins. It’s written by KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby. Never Let Go premieres in theaters on September 20, 2024. Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post <i>Never Let Go</i> Trailer Will Have You Clinging to Your Theater Seat appeared first on Reactor.

Books book review A Winning Hand in a Korean Space Opera: Ocean’s Godori by Elaine U. Cho A review of Elaine U. Cho’s new science fiction novel By Helen Rhee | Published on August 29, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Godori is a winning hand in the popular Korean card game called Go-Stop. Played with flower cards called “hwatu”, the basic concept of the game is to take cards from the center deck and pair them with similar picture cards in your hand for points. When you find the special set of three bird cards known as godori, you win the hand and can stop the game to collect your winnings. There are basic rules, but also a myriad of ways to play. The variations are endless and each household has their own rules, but godori is always a winning hand. This game is fast-paced and usually won through strategic moves, some risk-taking, and of course, a little bit of luck—all of which you will see in Ocean’s Godori. In the 23rd century, a reunified Korea is the powerful leading nation; its space agency, Alliance, dominates the solar system. Ocean Yoon just might be the best pilot in Alliance or maybe even the entire solar system, but after a fall from grace, Ocean has been relegated to the Ohneul, a low-ranking class 4 ship with an eclectic, motley crew that includes an algae-loving but loyal xenobotanist, a mechanic who loves to cook, a selfish captain with questionable priorities, and a new Mortemian medic from Prometheus. While seemingly content with this new life of hers on the Ohneul, trouble is on the horizon when she finds out her best friend, Teo—the second son of the uber-wealthy Anand family and founders of the Anand tech empire— is being framed for murdering his family. This leads Ocean, Teo and the rest of the crew on a quest to clear Teo’s name—one that is filled with space chases, raiders, and mysterious but technologically advanced enemies.  It’s undeniable that Cho has created a unique world. For a member of the Korean diaspora like myself, seeing a reunified Korea become the dominant power in our solar system was fascinating. With so many Korean cultural references from the crew’s skincare routine to the different Korean snacks, as well as the usage of Korean words without explanation, this book felt like a warm hug from a dear chingoo. The exploration of Ocean not feeling “Korean” enough (a feeling so many of us can relate to) despite her long lineage to the Jeju haenyo made it clear to me that this book was written for the Korean diaspora. For that reason alone, this book is special.  Buy the Book Ocean’s Godori Elaine U. Cho Buy Book Ocean's Godori Elaine U. Cho Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget With descriptions of car-like spaceships set against the vast solar system, Cho has created a world that, for a ‘90s Korean kid like me, was both futuristic and retro. And it’s not just spaceships. There are hoverbikes with manual mechanics built even for the “drift car fanatics”—another vehicle Ocean excelled at riding thanks to her sensitive feet and to her brother, Hajoon, a car expert who’s even rebuilt a Nissan 240SX (a model that was popular for drifting in the ‘90s). This world is in the future, but it also felt like my childhood. Some might find the descriptions of spaceships with manual mechanics like having a clutch confusing and even annoying, but for me it was giving Initial D vibes and I was all for the nostalgia. The world-building and character setup does take up a good portion of the book, but even with it I did feel confused at times, especially with the robust ensemble of characters. From the Ohneul crew to the Anand Family to the raiders, there are a lot of names, both first and last and sometimes even nicknames, to keep track of. I found myself flipping back pages to keep them all straight, which was at first frustrating, but I soon realized my frustration came out of concern. I cared about them. Cho has an ability to lure you into each character with… nuance. There are the usual, broad strokes of personalities that fit and fill certain character roles, but it’s the small shading and textures she imbues into the interactions and dialogue between them that give this book so much heart. I was expecting the action, the high-stakes political and strategic play, and even the violence, thanks to the hwatu allusion in the title, but I was not expecting to be moved by the relationships and found family in the book, which are, in my opinion, the true stars. I grew to love the characters, as many as there were, and found myself invested—a testament to the care and time Cho spent on them.  The world that Cho starts to build in Ocean’s Godori is special and feels expansive, but it is unexplored. This, coupled with the cliffhanger ending, would no doubt leave the reader craving for more. When this book was released back in April, the question of a second book was still up in the air. I’m happy to report now that the much-needed sequel to Ocean’s Godori has been confirmed (actual release date to be determined). Like many other readers, I want more of this world. I want to know why the Mortemians are shunned for practicing death rights. I want to know how the Anand Tech Empire came to be and at what cost. I want to know what happens to all the characters that captivated me. But most of all, I want to know if Ocean truly ends up with a godori—a winning hand in her life—and what that looks like. I am truly excited for what’s to come.[end-mark] Ocean’s Godori is published by Hillman Grad Books. The post A Winning Hand in a Korean Space Opera: <i>Ocean’s Godori</i> by Elaine U. Cho appeared first on Reactor.

New School Year Means New Approach to Pro-Palestinian Activists