Weekly Meme #20
Film Review: Cruella
Ah, yes. Disney villains. The one scenario where the world seems to like the bad guys more than the good guys. Cruella De Vil, the dognapping fashion designer is no different, and Disney has gone and taken advantage of this to bring us her backstory in a clever twist of a movie simply titled “Cruella”.
I won’t talk too much about the plot of this movie in case you haven’t seen it, but this movie adds a lot of backstory and insight to explain why this character became what she became. Emma Stone did an amazing job bringing Cruella to life, and transforming her from a devilish villain into more of an antihero.
One thing that I loved about this movie, from a musician’s standpoint instead of a reviewer’s, is that the music never stops. You’d think it would get stale, especially because this movie is over two hours long, but it somehow manages to keep the energy and excitement flowing through the whole thing. Disney really took advantage of this movie’s setting in the Punk Rock Revolution when making this score, and is thoroughly impressive.
Overall, this movie is a clever mix of humor, tragic backstory, characteristic darkness, and fun music. I highly suggest this for lovers of Disney villains. I can’t wait to see if Disney makes more of these Villain backstory movies, because this one certainly knocked it out of the park.
Minecraft: Caves and Cliffs Part 1 Review
Before we begin, a quick shoutout to @safetychef for following the site! That’s right, following the site gets you a free shoutout, and I’ll follow you right back! Now, for the actual topic of this review…
A Minecraft cave update is something fans have been asking for for years now, and Mojang recently delivered. A two part update titled “Caves and Cliffs” was set in place to release in Summer and around Christmastime this year, and be a huge changeup to the games mountain biomes and famed cave systems. And on June 8, part 1 released.
So what’s in the first part of this huge update? Well, we have three new mobs: The axolotl, the glow squid, and the goat (my personal favorite). The axolotl and goat aren’t necessarily what this game NEEDED, but the addition of them is great, and I’ve had a lot of fun utilizing both. The axolotls have an interesting feature of playing dead when they take a certain amount of damage, and can be tamed and used against fighting monsters like Guardians. The goats make for a somewhat amusing challenge when navigating mountains, as they can jump extremely high and have the tendency to head-butt you off a cliff. This will be especially dangerous when the mountain biomes are amplified in 1.18.
The glow squid was added after a community vote, and it won over two other possible mobs. I like the design of the squid, and it’s aesthetic is really nice, but it’s a little disappointing that it’s light doesn’t actually illuminate anything around it.
Of course, as is the case with any Minecraft update, there are new blocks and materials at your disposal. Copper can be found and used for structural building, making lightning rods, and handy if you want a build that ages with time, as the blocks oxidize and change color over time- just like copper in real life. I like this mechanic a lot, and I’ve been using it a lot in my builds. We can also make spyglasses for seeing far away, candles as another light source, raw iron, gold and copper instead of ore blocks, and new types of stone called deepslate. All of these new features are either very fun accessories or useful changes, and I honestly have no critiques here.
Some added items are serving as a preview of what’s coming in 1.18. Dripstone was added, a material acting like real-world stalactites, and can fall on top of a player. In the next update, we will see massive dripstone caverns, with these potential hazards everywhere above us.
Amethyst geodes will appear randomly in caves, and these amethysts can be used for tinted glass and spyglasses. I haven’t found one of these geodes yet, but they look absolutely beautiful and I can’t wait to find one.
Moss blocks and new plants, like azaleas and dripleaves, have been added and will be found in the lush caves later on. I’ve been using the dripleaves for things like obstacle courses, and they serve their purpose really well.
Overall, this was a fun little update, that showed a little of what’s to come in 1.18, and had some great new additions. Hope you enjoyed this review!
Loki Episode 1 Thoughts
Episode 1 of Disney+’s new Marvel series, “Loki”, dropped yesterday, and boy, is it everything I could have hoped for.
The series that reprises Tom Hiddleston’s role as Loki, the God of Mischief, is set after the events of “Avengers: Endgame”- or at the end of 2012’s “Avengers Assemble” if you want to get technical about it. Th story thus far is that Loki, having stolen the Tesseract and escaping the Avengers, has created an error in the Sacred Timeline, and is under the confines of the Time Variance Authority.
This series has everything that you could have expected from a Loki centered show- the bitter humor, the mischief, and the unwavering dignity that we love to hate. I like the idea of the TVA entering the picture, and it will be interesting to see how they are involved in the MCU later on. They essentially know everything that is to come, so it’ll be cool to see if they manipulate certain events, or find out if something like that has already occurred.
But forget reviewing this episode ‘s story and quality. Let’s talk Mephisto!
I know the director of this series, Kate Herron, confirmed Mephisto isn’t involved in this series. On an interview for Entertainment Tonight, she said the shot of the devil in the stained glass we’re all talking about is “honestly just a super weird coincidence”, and ” it’s genuinely a reference to Loki—the horns, he was cast out of heaven, that’s what it’s a reference to”. This does make sense, considering Mobius, a character siding with Loki in this series, says he wants him to hunt another version of Loki.
But here’s why that claim doesn’t line up- the character of Loki originates from Norse mythology, where he is the God of Mischief; not any kind of representative of the devil. That role belonged to the aptly named Hel. Thanks to Marvel feeling it necessary to label every location in their films with text, I know the church where we see that picture is French, not Norse, therefore would not feature Loki at all.
Now, I don’t believe Mephisto will explicitly appear. I believe the “Variant of Loki” that Mobius is trying to capture, likely the hooded figure who set the TVA officers up in flames, could very well be him in disguise. Think about it- we see Loki with a set of gold horns in the trailer for the show, but they are much shorter than the horns we’ve seen him wear before. They used to resemble the horns of a goat or ram, but now, they look a lot more like-you guessed it- devil horns.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Marvel has trolled us before. I still have flashbacks to the Quicksilver incident too- I know your pain. But this little detail is much more explicit, and I think in the future, we could potentially be seeing our favorite heroes dancing with the devil. Hope you enjoyed this analysis!
Weekly Meme #19
Film Review: A Quiet Place Part 2
A movie that people have long awaited is the sequel to 2018’s “A Quiet Place”, and on May 28, our prayers were finally answered.
In this film, the remaining members of the Abbott family leave their farm in search of others who may have survived the invasion of the aliens that terrorized the first film. This movie managed to keep the same eerie, silent tension as it’s predecessor, and added the element of human antagonists. A large plot point in the movie is that feral humans are also out to get the Abbott family, which made for an intense marina scene that switched around with the gut-wrenching clips of two of the children almost suffocating in an air-tight bunker with a monster right outside.
There are many great things about this movie, Again, it uses all the same elements of fear factor as the original, with minimal voice lines and different audio ques. It also adds more backstory to the current situation, and even though the ending was a little abrupt, it was still an interesting cliffhanger that left the door open for a possible third movie.
Overall, I give this movie an 8/10. I definitely think you should go check out this movie if you liked the first one, and I hope you enjoyed this review!
Song Review: “Biobond” by IRIS
One song that came out during my time off that has absolutely blown me away is “Biobond” by IRIS. This single released on May 8, and will be part of the upcoming album “Dawn of the Dimetrix”.
I have to say, the artwork for IRIS gets more impressive with every song. First was the album cover for “Goliath’s Throne”, which had so many little details and really brought life to an intimidating character. And then “Mothohive” came out, and the design for that monster was so beautiful I even made my own artwork for it. But the person, known online as Steel, who does this art has successfully terrified me to no end with the design for Biobond. The story goes that Biobond was once named Jebediah, and was taken advantage of by his brother Abram. He murdered Jebediah, took out his nervous system, and I guess hooked him up to the Dimetrix and made him into a living computer. Because after a living skeleton and giant moth monsters that kill armies at 2.5 health (yeah I saw the meme), this was the only thing that made sense to throw into the lore.
But lets talk about the song. It is very unique and stands out from past IRIS songs with implications of dark techno elements behind a very grungy, aggressive guitar riff. I love the glitchy synths in the intro, and the rapid fire vocals in the verses. The breakdown slows the entire song and hits super hard, before bringing us into the final chorus, and overall, showing the rage of a living computer who just wants to die how he should have died.
Overall, I love the uniqueness and variety of this song. Every bit of IRIS content released is just bringing up hype for the new album. Let me know what you all think of this song!
Weekly Meme #18
Fury’s Rage Might Not Have the Answer…
On April 28, the horror game mastermind Scott Cawthon confirmed that the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s game “Security Breach” was delayed again, and to make up for the disappointing news, gave us another new game.
This game was titled “Fury’s Rage”, and saw the Glamrock animatronics in a side scrolling fighter game, with enemies paying homages to past FNAF games, and skins in the AR game “Special Delivery”.
But of course, this game not as it seems. That just how Scott works. If you beat the game on hard mode, you unlock a secret level that looks like this:
This spaceship-themed control room is likely referencing the laser tag area that we’ll see in “Security Breach”, or a reference to Freddy in Space. If you look closely at the screens in this room, you’ll see familiar graphics: Circus Baby’s blueprints from “Sister Location”, camera footage from FNAF 1, and the Marty’s Plungers ad from FNAF 6. If those weren’t significant references, the final boss of the game certainly is. We encounter the Dream Geist, a serpent-like ghostly figure with a covered mouth, a clock reading 6:00 in place of eyes, and a dome head, in which we can see the following: a toy chica action figure like the one in FNAF 4, balls that would be found in a ball pit (Into the Pit reference?), a microphone similar to the one held by Freddy, a key that could be referencing FNAF World, a grandfather clock, again from FNAF 4, and- you ready for this?- the box. Unlocked and opened, and we can faintly see what’s inside.
After all these years, it seems like Scott is finally giving us the answer to one of our biggest questions- what is in the FNAF 4 box? It’s really hard to see, but I can make out two things- an IV bag and a whole pizza. Obviously these tie into the Crying Child, who we know used to love Freddy’s Pizzeria, and fatefully died in the hospital after the Bite of 83. We can even see an IV stand next to his bed in FNAF 4.
But that can’t be it, can it? No. If you take a look at the Dream Geist, you see locks running down it’s body. Obviously, this is a metaphorical character meant to represent Scott not wanting to answer every single question about FNAF’s lore, and wanting to keep the mystery going. So there has to be more to this box. Those items have to have some sort of significance. I don’t think Fury’s Rage was meant to fully solve the mystery of the box. Perhaps it’s meant to tell us what will be seen in Security Breach. Scott wouldn’t have tied this game so heavily to that one for no reason. I think if we are patient, we may finally solve this mystery when the next game releases.
So those are my thoughts on Fury’s Rage! Hope you enjoyed this, and I’ll see you soon.
An Update
Hey, everyone! I know I’ve kind of been slow in terms of content recently, and I want to explain why, and hopefully get back on some sort of a regular schedule.
I’ve been super busy with school, with finals and end of year stuff. Today is actually my last day for the year, so hopefully I can work on this site a little more for the next couple of months.
But a lot of the time I haven’t dedicated to school has been used to focus mainly on VIRUS, my music project. I felt I wasn’t giving it the time and attention it deserves, and wasn’t truly satisfied with any of the music I was working on. So I took a break from other side projects, Facelessbook included, to really work on stuff on that end, and the results were amazing. In the time I’ve been away from this site, I put out three singles on Soundcloud and Bandlab- “Over Insomnia”, “Hollow”, and “Edge of the Blade”. All three of these have come to be some of my favorite songs out of everything else I’ve made, and the recent music has been received fairly well by the audience.
While on the topic of VIRUS, I always figured it would do better if it was separate from this site. I want people to recognize it as it’s own entity, and not tied to something else. So I am currently working on building a second website, specifically for news on VIRUS. Maybe I’ll put up some of the music there, but the main purpose is for general news, because if you saw the last post I made over here, you’ll know that I am working on something pretty big.
Again, I still want to come back to doing reviews on this site. I felt like it’s kind of the right time to return, not only because I have more time on my hands, but there have been some amazing things in the movie, music and game industries released in the past few months. I’ll be working on some more reviews, maybe a couple theory posts, and hopefully bring back the Weekly Meme series. I really enjoyed doing those, and you guys seem to like them, so we’ll see if that happens.
But anyway, that was just a quick update to tell you that no, I didn’t die. I got my vaccine a week ago, so I’m good, but you all need to get yours. We’ll all be done with this soon if everyone stops doubting what the medical industry is trying to do for the world. See you all soon!
