@Netflix Dropped the official “Bridgerton” Season 2 Treasure during fan Valentine’s event!

Thanks to #Netflix, I was able to attend the fan #Bridgerton zoom that featured a cast Q & A with special guest, book author Julia Quinn.

Not a ton of new information was dropped. A couple other scenes were shown along with the teaser. The Q&A was fun and it was revealed that we will be getting to see how Penelope is handling her Whistledown duties. And we’ll be getting a book reader favorite scene.

All in all, it sounds like this should be another exciting season of Bridgerton!

First Look Show Review: Wheel of Time

Thanks to Amazon, I was invited to a fun screening of the first two episodes of their newest epic fantasy adaptation, Wheel of Time. This is our first look thoughts and review of these episodes.

First, I haven’t read the series. I know it’s a lot of books, it meanders a bit in the middle and was finished by Brandon Sanderson after Robert Jordan passed away before he could finish the series. So I went into this as a pretty blank slate.

The adaptation starts by introducing us to the prophecy that seems to be at the heart of the show’s conflict; The Dragon Reborn, the one who will either save or distort humanity; and the magic of the world. These two elements bring us to Two Rivers where our protagonists are brought together.

The story seems to be well paced. The first two episodes felt like they each came to a natural end. I was drawn in, ready to move from one episode to the next, but I wasn’t going wtf, they’re ending it there?!?! The adaptation gave me, a newcomer to the story, enough information to keep me engaged, and based on crowd reaction, also gave some fan service and seemed to leave them excited about the adaptation.

Amazon seems to be taking a Game of Thrones approach to the expanded world, creating behind the scenes and expanded world features. The screening included a behind the scenes look at the big fight scene from the first episode, and an animated beginnings feature. The animated history expanded a story told in the episode about the dramatic history of the Two Rivers area.

I’m excited to see where this story goes and how Amazon and the creative team handles the adaptation and bringing the story and world to life. The series debuts on Friday, November 19, 2021 on Amazon Prime video.

Photos belong to Amazon Prime.

Thanks to the @experienceseuss I got to take my nephew to explore the exhibit space set up in the Chicago Water Tower Place.

The exhibit is set up as rooms to explore, each featuring an aspect from a different Dr. Seuss book. They also have book characters that do photo ops and a little parade.

This is definitely an experience for kids 10 and under. My nephew is 2 and he had a blast.

They also gave a great gift store full of a wide variety of items including books, plushies, shirts, and some experience exclusive items. I wish they had more exclusives like magnets and such so you could have a little souvenir that’s exclusive to the exhibit.

Get tickets and lean more at https://www.experienceseuss.com - the exhibit is open through at least December 2021 in Chicago.

#Cinderella is back in this #PrimeVideo exclusive. Thanks to Prime Video, we got an advanced look at the movie.

This version of Cinderella (written and directed by Kay Cannon, who wrote and produced the Pitch Perfect film series) has Cinderella attending the prince’s ball to help her pursue her dreams and to find buyers for her couture dresses. The story is told mostly the lyrics of pop favorites and a few originals.

With all the songs, the movie is fast paced and moves through the standard story beats of Cinderella quickly but with twists. I liked that Ella has contemporary goals and our fairy godmother is truly a Queen. Billy Porter’s “Fab G” (our fairy godmother) epic introduction steals the movie. The movie is beautifully made and the the songs were well placed to move the story forward in a fun and different way.

The movie’s use of song lyrics as plot and its fast pace are also what causes the movie fall flat. The lyrics serve as a large part of the script, offering a lot of big moments without a lot of character development. We’re told the Ella wants to be the one in a million but we don’t get to see what makes her the shinning star.

The prince’s little sister also has great moments, but her big moment seemed like an after thought with scenes added to support it instead of it growing naturally out of the story. This is compounded because the prince’s story arc falls flat.

Cinderella is a supper fun movie and I’ll totally be watching it again. But I’ll always whish it lived up to its potential. Sadly this seems to be a common issue with streaming service exclusives. The stories are supper fun and the production value is there, but the plot and character development falls short. I hope I hope this trend turns around soon.

Hey Chicagoland, we have your chance to see #Cinderella before it hits Amazon Prime Video on September 3, 2021.

http://amazonscreenings.com/PageTurner

The advanced screening is Tuesday, August 31, 7 PM at the Showplace Icon Roosevelt Collection, 1011 South Delano Court, Chicago. The link allows you yo download a pass good for 2 attendees.

The passes and seats at the screening are both limited and first come first serve. So click and arrive early to get a seat!

Thank you Amazon Prime Video for the passes.

From Kay Cannon (Pitch Perfect), Cinderella is a modern musical with a bold take on the story you grew up with. Our ambitious heroine (Camilla Cabello) has big dreams and with the help of her Fab G, she perseveres to make them come true. Cinderella has an all-star cast including Idina Menzel, Minnie Driver, James Corden, Nicholas Galitzine, Billy Porter and Pierce Brosnan.

Follow Cinderella on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter

secretsofblackthornhall:

Dear Cristina, from Emma

Dear Cristina,

I was going to try addressing this letter to Polyamorous Cottage In Faerieland, but I figured it might never be delivered. :) Ok, ok, I’m kidding. I’m sending it to the New York Institute—Clary says she’ll hold onto it for you. I know Jules and I have been popping around the globe like ping-pong balls, but we’ve finally settled here in London for at least a couple of months, so you can — and should — write me back at the London Institute — I’m not sure the place we’re staying even has an address.

(And sure, I could have just sent you a fire-message, but I have too much to tell you. Buckle up.)

So, a while ago Jules and I were in Manaus, in Brazil, studying the Curupira demon, when we got called into the Rio Institute. They had a message for Julian. His great-aunt — yeah, the one he was visiting when you first came to L.A. — had died. Really sad. And then, remember the beautiful house in Sussex where she lived? Well, she left that to some cousin nobody’s heard of, but she left Julian Blackthorn Hall. Which is a crumbling ruin in Chiswick (kind of a suburb of London). And then we had to come here, because of a codicil in the will (ahem, according to the dictionary, that’s “an addition or supplement that explains, modifies, or revokes a will or part of one”). Either Julian has to fix the place up, get it livable again, in five years, or he has to donate it to the Clave.

Anyway, you know how Julian is. He makes up his mind fast. We Portaled to London the next day after he got the news.

I was all set to eat scones, drink tea, and go on the Eye (all the things I didn’t get to do last time we came to London, due to being pursued by unkillable Faerie warriors.) But that was before we took a black cab from the Institute out to Chiswick and really saw the place.

From the outside it looks like a museum or an old library—you know, big marble columns, grand staircase, big metal dome on top that looks like it should have a telescope in it. (It doesn’t; I checked.) But inside it’s more like a fairytale. Not, like, something from Faerie. Or something from a kid’s movie. It’s like one of those fairytales where a crumbling palace sleeps for a thousand years. It was kind of romantic, for about five minutes. Then we spotted the first rat, nibbling on the tassel end of one of the drapes.

It’s a weird mix of interesting history, weird old art, and total ruin. There are cool portraits of old Blackthorn ancestors, mostly intact. Julian says he doesn’t recognize most of the faces. Some of them have names written on the back of the canvas or on the frame but other than “Blackthorn” none of the names mean anything to any of us. There are wooden chests full of ancient books and papers, and beautiful overgrown grounds that I’m sure were once gardens and are now England’s version of a jungle. There’s an old greenhouse and a weird little brick structure we can’t figure out. (Storage shed? Very small weapons room?) The whole place is just a mess, and most of the house isn’t habitable at all anymore. Someone built an apartment with “updates” off in one wing, probably in the sixties. (The apartment, by the way, reminds me of that vintage shop in Topanga I dragged you to. Remember?) Whoever lived in it left a closet of all kinds of vintage clothes and there’s crazy flower-patterned wallpaper and modern art everywhere. At least the apartment has electricity, running water, and heat, because the rest of the house definitely doesn’t —

I’m back now. Sorry, had to stop writing for a second. Julian was calling me. He was up in what was probably a ballroom? But anyway he took a wrong step and his foot went through the floor. (Not all the way through the floor, which is a relief. But it definitely made a hole.) The ballroom is big and dusty, but you can see how long ago it must have been beautiful, and very fancy. It has these huge French doors that open onto marble balconies, though most of the glass in the doors is gone now.

Once I freed Jules from the broken floor I figured it was my only chance to try to talk some sense into him, so I pointed out that this is a gigantic project for two people who have never fixed up a house before, and that we have a perfectly fine place to live already. And the weather is better there.

Jules, being Jules, took his time answering, really thinking about what I’d been saying. Then he said, “If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to do it. You’re more important to me than a house. Any house.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to do it,” I said. “I just don’t even know where to start.”

Jules calmly explained that he’d been in contact with some faerie builders of some kind, hobgoblins maybe? who would be here Monday to do “a walkthrough.” Then he put his arms around me and said, “I know we can always live in the L.A. Institute. I love it there, too. But as much as any Blackthorn legacy exists, this is it. All these old papers, whatever secrets the house is hiding, they’re our family history. I want to pass it on to Dru and Ty and Tavvy. I want to give them what I never had.”

Well, what could I say to that? I get it. I have Jem as my living family history. Jules doesn’t have anything like that. And while Aline and Helen run the L.A. Institute now, they might not always, and besides, it belongs to the Clave. I get that he feels like he can’t give away a big chunk of his family’s history without giving them a choice in the matter.

I said, “All right. We’ll see what we can do. If we ever decide it’s too much, we can hold a big family meeting and everyone can vote. Keep the place or not.”

He picked me up and swung me around. Then we started kissing. I’ll be merciful and not give you the details.

So I’ve decided to consider all this An Adventure. It’s like an archeological site, and we are intrepid historians. Later I’ll see if I can convince Jules to put on a tweed coat and a pith helmet while we sort through the debris. Because whoever lived here before had a lot of stuff. It’s a big house, and every room has furniture with drawers and cabinets, and inside every drawer and every cabinet is clutter. Rusty weapons, water-damaged books, little boxes with more clutter in them, costume jewelry, portraits of random people, broken teacups…And remember, we’ll be going through it without any light but witchlights.

Anyway. I wanted to let you know what I was up to, and where we were. Our travel year was basically over anyway, so this is a sort of way of extending it and spending more time together. I’m not sad about that part. I was actually doing pretty well psyching myself up for the excavation of Blackthorn History, until this morning.

I know I said the house seemed haunted, but I was joking. Mostly. I’m not Kit; I can’t see ghosts unless they want me to see them, and so far I haven’t come across any ectoplasmic spirits with messages from The Beyond. But the place does feel odd — I keep finding myself turning around at the end of long, spiderwebby hallways, as if expecting to see something in the shadows. Or imagining I glimpse something over my shoulder in the mirror. I chalked it all up to nerves until this morning, when I came into the dining room and saw that the words “GO AWAY” were written in the dust on the floor.

I literally jumped. I was actually reaching for Cortana before I got a hold of myself. Don’t be ridiculous, I thought. That message could have been written any time. Long before we got to the house. It could have been sitting here in the dust for years, undisturbed.

I have a confession to make, though. I rubbed the GO AWAY message away with my foot. I didn’t want Julian to see it. He worries too much as it is. I didn’t want him to have that same bad moment of shock that I did, especially over something unimportant.

I feel better getting the story off my chest to you, though. Oh dear, Julian is calling for me again, I can’t wait to see what he’s put his foot through this time. I will write again soon, and in the meantime pip pip cheerio from London!

Love to you and the boys,

Emma

secretsofblackthornhall:

Thanks to Warner Brothers, I received an advanced screening copy of In the Heights.  It took me a bit to get my thoughts in order on this one.  

In the Heights is a snapshot in time in the NYC neighborhood Washington Heights.  The movie presents the neighborhood as one that is historically defined by the immigrant population that calls it home. For In the Heights, it’s a melting pot of Latin, Hispanic, and Caribbean immigrants.  This drives the music and atmosphere of the neighborhood as we follow our main characters over the course of several days.  

The story is about several 19/20 somethings, Usnavi, Vanessa, Nina, and Benny, who are trying to find their place in the world and how they fit into moving the neighborhood’s and their family’s stories forward.  Everything is intensified by a winning lottery ticket sold at Usnavi’s bodega and a blackout that happens during the hottest days of the summer.  

The movie had a weird mix of 1999 (when the musical was set) and contemporary.  They had one foot in each (old school radios for the taxi service dispatch center vs current cell phones and Beats headphones), and it didn’t really work for me.  I wish they would have kept it true to the musical, or brought it fully into the 2020s. 

And also because I don’t live in a big city, it was a little hard for me to relate to.  A lot of the happenings in the neighborhood were only things I ever see in movies, it’s not my reality.  Yes, I’ve been to NYC and Europe and have been in bodega type stores.  But block parties on stoops, all types of music coming out of open windows from blocks and blocks of apartment buildings, and fire hydrants being opened for the kids to cool off, these are things that are just as fantastical to me as what you see in a science fiction movie.  

I realize that on some level this story is a fantasy, it’s a musical after all, but the parts that were to ground it in reality, I had no context for other than other immigrant neighborhood movies.  I know I can’t fault the movie for this. I think it highlights the larger issue in movies and pop culture, where we don’t show the reality of neighborhoods in our big cities contemporarily and throughout history.  I do applaud the effort, but I don’t think it moved things forward enough. 

The movie was fun and looked amazing.  You can really see where Lin-Manuel Miranda started from in his music writing and glimpses where he was going.  I enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t the escape movie the trailers present it as.     

In the Heights is currently in theaters and streaming on HBO Max for a limited time.

Thanks to Amazon, we received an advanced screener of Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse starting Michael B. Jordan and Jodie Turner-Smith.  The movie hits Amazon Prime on April 30th.

I’ve been a big fan of Tom Clancy movies for as long as I can remember. I got sucked into this world by Harrison Ford playing Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.  I then started reading the books, played a little bit of Rainbow Six back in the day, and have been enjoying the Jack Ryan TV series on Amazon Prime.  So I was excited to check out Without Remorse.

Like  Michael B. Jordan, John Clark and Rainbow Six are some of my favorite parts of the Jack Ryan universe.  Without Remorse the book shares John Clark’s origin story, the movie does the same.  It follows Jordan’s John Kelly after a mission goes sideways leading to the after action deaths of his wife and several other special ops team members who were also on the mission.  

The story then follows the now over used revenge storyline that brings Kelly deeper into geopolitical landscape that will take him from Kelly to Clark.  The movie is well made, acted (Jodie Turner-Smith is amazing!) and produced.  I enjoyed the action and seeing how well rounded Kelly is as a soldier and a strategist. But with that said, the movie did feel like it could have been from any action thriller world.  There was nothing tying it to Jack Ryan.  

I would love for there to be a Tom Clancy CMU. I think Jordan’s portrayal of John Clark was perfection, and I’d love to see him play in the whole universe.  It looks like we are going to be getting a Rainbow Six movie through Jordan’s production company Outlier Society that will also be an Amazon Prime original movie.  But sadly, these seem to be creating a stand-a-lone world, and wont mingle with Amazon’s Jack Ryan TV show world. 

I’m excited to see where this series goes, the Rainbow Six world is full of fun stories and characters.  I think any Tom Clancy fan, or fans of Action Thrillers will enjoy the movie.  But it did leave me wanting something new and fresh. 

PS, wait through the credits, there is a button scene that’s very much worth watching!

Go Beyond the Fold with netflixshadowandbone.com

Netflix has launched the official website for the #1 show, Shadow and Bone. NetflixShadowandBone.com lets you go beyond the fold to see how the show brought the books to life and some other fun surprises.

The site is broken down into 5 sections currently:

• The interactive Grishaverse Map
• Figure out what Crow you are in a very Jesper way
• Take a quiz to find out what your role would be in the Ravkan Army
• Create your own Grisha Avatar
• And RSVP for your chance to attend a special Virtual Event

The interactive Grishaverse Map is probably my favorite part of the site. The map is just cool. There’s so much to look at and so many little moving things. There’s a whale up by the Bone Road that spouts water, which made me a little too gitty when I first saw it.

Several interactive spots on the map will let you bring up pictures or videos from the show that explain the map marker. But there are two interactive locations that will let you explore even more. Alina’s room at Os Alta and The Crow Club at Ketterdam.

The Crow Club is fun, it lets you interact with and get a closer look at one of Inej’s knives, Jesper’s gun, and Kaz’s cane. It also lets you explore a little more. But Alina’s room is the must-see. You get a closer look at Alina’s stag drawing and the Keftas, get the Ravkan Alphabet so you can translate everything on your second watch through, and more.

The Ravkan Army quiz is the other must-do interactive section of the site. It’s a 12 question quiz that told me I was a Corporaliki Grisha. You can also see I got Jasper in the Which Crow are You section. This was fun, but not as interactive as the quiz.

And once your done exploring, don’t forget to RSVP for your chance to attend an exclusive Zoom event with members of the cast, Executive Producers Eric Heisser and Leigh Bardugo, and other special guests.

I really enjoyed exploring the site. For me, I had to scroll a lot and it wasn’t super obvious where the scroll bar was on each page. But overall, it’s a solid companion website. I’m sure it will continue to expand with the show and offer more goodies in the future.

And on a side note, I hope they do some merch for the show. The playing card art is so cool and the graphics created for the series are so detailed and amazing. I’d love to show off my Shadow and Bone love to the world with a cool hoodie :-D.

#shadowandbone hits @NetflixGeeked tomorrow, but you can join us as we take in the Sneak Peek Premiere TONIGHT!  It goes live on YouTube at 4 pm PT/7ET/6CT.  The YouTube premiere is now live, so set that reminder. 

This event will include a 10-minute sneak peek of episode 1,  appearances by cast members Jessie Mei Li, Ben Barnes, Freddy Carter, Amita Suman, Kit Young, Archie Renaux, and Executive Producers Leigh Bardugo and Eric Heisserer, and behind the scenes goodies!