Settling Marco's Pizza #Ronicup debate reveals movie rental store, portal to 1997 - City Pages
Settling Marco's Pizza #Ronicup debate reveals movie rental store, portal to 1997 - City Pages |
- Settling Marco's Pizza #Ronicup debate reveals movie rental store, portal to 1997 - City Pages
- The Best Movies and TV Shows New on Netflix Canada in August - The New York Times
- Netflix August 2019: The 11 Best Sci-Fi Movies and Shows to Watch - Inverse
| Settling Marco's Pizza #Ronicup debate reveals movie rental store, portal to 1997 - City Pages Posted: 31 Jul 2019 03:02 AM PDT Pineapple is garbage, unless it's not. Red sauce is lordt, unless it's not. Deep dish is everything, unless it's not... Summer 2019 may well go down as the season in which pepperoni finally threw its hat into the quibble-ring. Once a topping of respite from inane arguments about shit that literally couldn't matter less, everybody's favorite little slices o' spice have become grounds for division: Are you a #RoniCup bro who'll ride for tiny pepperoni that curl up into crispy cups, or more of a classic lay-flat slice boi who finds refuge in all that's nostalgic from our childhoods? (If the latter, hold that thought, because our quest to settle the Great Pepperoni Debate led straight to terrain designed just for you.) After working as a pizza cook, I have notoriously shitty taste in pizza… mostly in that I rarely want to eat it at all. When I do, I don't want it to taste like pizza. My partner and I can agree on pepperoni. The fact that, now, pepperoni is something we have to decide on struck fear into my heart. But for this publication, I courted pizza disaster in the pursuit of Pepperoni Truth. Enter: Marco's Pizza. The national pizza franchise has been around since 1978 and has locations in a few Twin Cities suburbs, but not in Minneapolis or St. Paul. Their Pepperoni Magnifico pizza may keep couples from arguing over pepperoni once and for all, as it has both pepperoni varieties on a single pie. So we got in the car, drove to New Brighton, and prepared to hash it out. The youngster who took our order clearly wasn't yet sick of it all, which was pleasantly refreshing, and the pizzas themselves were… good, especially for a strip mall, takeout-only joint. We ordered a 10" topped with each pepperoni variety: #ronicups (DBA Old World), traditional, and the elusive Pepperoni Magnifico (fancied up with Roma seasoning, because it was offered so politely), plus a cup of their Jalapeño Ranch sauce for good measure. The dough is made fresh in-store, and it tastes like it. After housing four or five slices apiece, my partner and I spent half an episode of pretending to watch some random Netflix schlock waffling over our 'roni preferences. Our final answer? Pepperoni is good, man. And Pepperoni Magnifico has the most pepperoni. Four thumbs up for Marco's. The thing is, Marco's pepperoni varieties, even after conducting a thorough taste test, were the least fascinating part of our Pepperoni Quest. Operating alongside Marco's is Family Video -- a real, tangible video rental store. Our only proof we hadn't actually teleported back to 1997 was that Family Video also sells CBD products. In addition to renting hard copies of DVDs and Blu-rays (new releases lining the perimeter, classic selections divvied up by genre in the center), they also sell "digital movies" right from the store.  Do you believe in portals through time and space? Sarah Brumble Family Video also has a service window leading directly into Marco's, for most convenient simultaneous pizza acquisition and movie browsing. Moreover, if you don't feel like leaving your house at all, the businesses are in cahoots, offering a delivery package (provided you live in-zone) where they'll drop a movie rental along with your pizza right to your doorstep. That's not a thing that existed during the Clinton years, but definitely should have. Meanwhile, the past few hours have anecdotally revealed that many remaining Family Videos (I see you, Eau Claire, Anoka, Fond du Lac, Rochester...) are conjoind with Marco's Pizzas. Special as we felt discovering this "in a vacuum," New Brighton's pizza window inside a movie rental store in the Year of Our Lord 2019 isn't unique, provided you know where to look. Sure, we set out looking to settle a (dumb) internet-based pepperoni debate, but we've come away with something far more valuable: the knowledge that this gem of nostalgia -- letting a movie case speak to you rather than endlessly scrolling through Netflix -- was never lost, simply guarded like precious treasure by suburbanites who knew we'd lost our privileges.  |
| The Best Movies and TV Shows New on Netflix Canada in August - The New York Times Posted: 31 Jul 2019 08:00 AM PDT  Every month, Netflix Canada adds a new batch of TV shows and movies to its library. Here are the titles we think are most interesting for August, broken down by release date. Netflix occasionally changes schedules without giving notice. Movies'Otherhood' The premise for "Otherhood" sounds like a cautionary tale for errant children: After another Mother's Day without cards or gifts from their adult sons, three suburban moms head off to New York City to pay them an unannounced visit. Once there, they find plenty of disorder to straighten out, from filthy bachelor pads to screwed-up romantic relationships, but they also take time to experience a little big-city night life of their own. Felicity Huffman plays one of the mothers, alongside Angela Bassett and Patricia Arquette (the film was delayed a few months in the wake of Ms. Huffman's involvement in a college admissions bribery scheme). It doesn't seem as if enough time has passed for viewers to forget the scandal, but how much they're affected by it is another matter. 'Being John Malkovich' Twenty years have passed since this surreal comedy announced Charlie Kaufman as a major screenwriting talent, kicking off a career that would later include such brilliant melancholy oddities as "Adaptation," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Synecdoche, New York." Kaufman wrote "Being John Malkovich" with the actor in mind, and Malkovich liked the script enough to agree to a mercilessly self-deprecating turn as himself. In the movie, John Cusack stars as a file clerk who discovers a portal into Malkovich's head where people can occupy his consciousness for 15 minutes before getting deposited near the New Jersey Turnpike. Within this wacky scenario, the film expresses touching sentiments about human desire and the transcendent power of love. 'Dunkirk' The one knock against "Dunkirk," Christopher Nolan's rendering of a crucial Allied retreat from a French beach during World War II, is that the dialogue is nearly indecipherable. But that seems partly by design: Nolan wants the images and sound to be so transporting and persuasive that words are not necessary. Actions are what really matter. Though Nolan engages in some of the temporal trickery of past films like "Memento" — the film alternates among three periods of time (one week, one day, one hour) — "Dunkirk" focuses on the simple problem of evacuating Allied soldiers who are trapped on a beach, utterly exposed to German attacks. 'American Factory' In this outstanding pickup from the documentary slate at Sundance, the directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert take their cameras into a former General Motors factory in Dayton, Ohio, that has been occupied by Fuyao, a Chinese car-window manufacturer. The merging of ex-G.M. employees with workers brought over from China results in some strange and often hilarious and touching encounters, but differences in corporate culture, particularly the diminished salary and safety conditions, create long-term headaches. Without editorializing, "American Factory" shows globalism at its best and worst, exposing a sharp contrast in work ethic and individual rights.
TV'Basketball or Nothing' There has been an ongoing debate in N.B.A. circles over the effectiveness of "small ball," a strategy that involves giving up size to an opponent in order to beat them with speed, agility and outside shooting. For the Chinle Wildcats, a high school team from the Navajo Nation reservation in Chinle, Ariz., their drastically undersized players give them no other choice. The documentary series "Basketball or Nothing" follows the Wildcats in their run for the state championship, tying their struggles and triumphs to a community where the median annual household income is less than $30,000 and the essentials of running water and electricity are not guaranteed. 'Dear White People': Season 3 Justin Simien's satire "Dear White People" won a jury award and a major distribution deal out of the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, but if anything, the series has found a more comfortable home as a series on Netflix, where its collegiate slice of life has more room to breathe. Focusing again on a small community of black students at Winchester College, a mostly white institution, the new season follows Sam (Logan Browning) as she shifts from radio to film, working on a thesis project that seeks to find the good that surrounds her. Almost needless to say, this mission proves to be harder than it seems. 'The Naked Director' The adult filmmaker Toru Muranishi is credited with revolutionizing the porn industry in Japan, but in challenging societal norms, he faced controversy and numerous legal setbacks. Set in the 1980s, when Muranishi and the business flourished amid an economic boom, the 10-episode series "The Naked Director" looks like a Japanese "The People vs. Larry Flynt," a stylized portrait of smut peddlers and censorious prigs, built around a character whose innovations, for better or worse, are still relevant. It also gives time to young women who press for sexual liberation, often at a steep personal cost. 'Wu Assassins' In the martial arts series "Wu Assassins," Kai Jin (Iko Uwais) is an aspiring young chef in San Francisco's Chinatown whose knife skills are about to be useful for more than chopping scallions. Long ago, 1,000 monks sacrificed themselves to empower his chosen-one hero to stop ancient warlords from destroying the world — so, you know, no pressure. Kai Jin does enjoy the benefits of mystical powers and a team of attractive, dynamic fighters, but his chief adversary is a Chinese Triad boss, who also happens to be his father. Martial arts fans will recognize Uwais as the Indonesian dynamo at the center of "The Raid" movies, and hope that this series has a similar punch. 'The Family' Controversy seems certain to follow the five-episode documentary series "The Family," about a secretive Christian organization called the Fellowship that has long been engaged in dismantling the separation of church and state in Washington. The Fellowship has sponsored the National Prayer Breakfast since the Dwight Eisenhower administration and every president since has participated, addressing a room of over 3,000 guests. That gathering is symbolic of a larger mission to influence policymakers and steer the country toward fundamentalist values, even through an "imperfect vessel" like Donald J. Trump. "The Family" brings the Fellowship into the light with surprising access to its members. 'GLOW': Season 3 Though inspired by the rise and fall of the '80s syndicated women's wrestling circuit, "GLOW" has never been interested in historical fidelity so much as mining what it needs from the past and discarding the rest. Each season has been a quick, pleasurable binge of 10 half-hour episodes, following a constantly exasperated director (Marc Maron) and a coterie of failed actresses and misfits as they produce a cheap, down-the-dial mix of action, titillation and broad comedy. The second season reserved an entire episode for a complete "GLOW" broadcast, and the third takes the gang to Las Vegas for a live show at the Fan-Tan Hotel and Casino. 'Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready' A month after her spectacularly filthy performance in "Girls Trip" put her on the map, Tiffany Haddish told her story in the hourlong Showtime stand-up performance "Tiffany Haddish: She Ready! From the Hood to Hollywood." Now Haddish is elevating a handpicked selection of six female comics with "They Ready," each getting her own half-hour set. All of the performers have experience on showcases like "Wild 'n Out," "Last Comic Standing" and "Def Comedy Jam," but none are household names. Yet. 'Diagnosis' In her New York Times Magazine column, "Diagnosis," Dr. Lisa Sanders, a Yale University associate professor, focuses on solving medical mysteries, rounding up patients who have unusual symptoms and searching the globe for diagnoses. This seven-episode series reveals the results of an experiment in which Dr. Sanders chose various subjects — a gulf war veteran with memory loss, a little girl beset by paralyzing seizures, a young woman with chronic and unaccountable pain — and had them share their stories on video, in the hope that they would find useful information from readers. "Diagnosis" follows every step of the process, often to inspirational ends. 'Mindhunter': Season 2 Set in 1977, the first season of this David Fincher-produced series followed the F.B.I. agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), and a Boston University psychology professor, Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), as they formalized the study of serial killers. Gathering data from interviews with incarcerated murderers, they worked on creating a Behavioral Science Unit within the F.B.I. while applying their knowledge in the field. Details about the second season have been shrouded in mystery, but it's expected to cover the Atlanta child murders case, when 28 children and teenagers, all of them African-American, were murdered between 1979 and 1981. The three leads developed a frisky chemistry throughout the first season, and it seems likely that tensions among them will rise in the face of this difficult case. 'Hyperdrive' The executive producer Charlize Theron lends her name and seal of approval to this 10-episode car racing series, which has been described as an "American Ninja Warrior" for cars. At Eastman Business Park in Rochester, a crew constructed a massive obstacle course to host a competition between elite street racers in customized vehicles. Narrow military bridges, a giant teeter-totter and water hazards are among the challenges faced by the drivers, who have been culled from racetracks and drag strips around the world. 'The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance' The 1982 fantasy "The Dark Crystal" was Jim Henson and Frank Oz's attempt to bring the puppeteering wizardry of "The Muppet Show" into a more technically ambitious and dramatic realm, even if it meant leaving younger children behind. Though it struggled to turn a profit, its cult reputation has grown as the fantasy genre itself has burst into the mainstream. Now Netflix has invested significant resources into "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance," a 10-episode prequel series that attempts to recreate the tactility of Henson's handcrafted creatures and sets. Taron Egerton and Mark Hamill are among the voices that bring life to a war between the good Gelflings and the evil Skeksis over the powerful force that holds together the world of Thra. Also of interest: "Logan Lucky" (Aug. 1), "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (Aug. 1), "Training Day" (Aug. 1), "Derry Girls": Season 2 (Aug. 2), "Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj": Volume 4 (Aug. 4), "The LEGO Ninjago Movie" (Aug. 5), "Bridget Jones's Diary (Aug. 15), "45 rpm" (Aug. 16), "Better Than Us" (Aug. 16), "The Little Switzerland" (Aug. 16), "Blade Runner 2049" (Aug. 26), "Styling Hollywood" (Aug. 30).  |
| Netflix August 2019: The 11 Best Sci-Fi Movies and Shows to Watch - Inverse Posted: 31 Jul 2019 11:21 AM PDT  Stranger Things Season 3 might be the highlight of Netflix's summer, but the streaming platform isn't letting up as we head into August 2019 with new seasons from The CW's iZombie and The 100. In case you missed it last month, there's also the gripping new series Another Life starring Battlestar Galactica alum Katee Sackhoff. In recent months, the streaming platform has also gotten new seasons of originals like Black Mirror and Dark, while also adding a classic anime in the form of Neon Genesis Evangelion. We've got all of these recommendations and more in this August's round-up of Netflix's best sci-fi, whether that means series or movies. If you're hankering for a taste of tomorrow this August, here are the 11 best pieces of science fiction on Netflix with a focus on the new, exciting, and original — but more importantly, we'll always have the very best recommendations. 11. Another Life, Season 1One part Arrival, one part Battlestar Galactica (thanks to lead Katee Sackhoff), Netflix's new original series Another Life never quite resonates as well as it should, but it still makes for a solid sci-fi outing. After an alien artifact lands on Earth and begins projecting a beacon out into the far-off reaches of space, a crew of humans are tasked with tracking down the signs of intelligent alien life. What they find might be more than they hoped — and not necessarily in a good way. 10. Wu Assassins, Season 1At the cross-section of sci-fi and action fantasy lies Wu Assassins, a new Netflix original magical kung fu series with an almost entirely Asian ensemble cast. In it, one young San Francisco Chinatown chef discovers he's the avatar of the ancient "Wu Assassin." He's destined to take down a mysterious criminal organization that boasts its own supernatural powers. With a hip-hop track boasting the likes of Snoop Dogg, Wu Assassins has a distinct style that almost makes it feel like a Fast & Furious series with supernatural elements.
9. The 100, Season 6One of The CW's best non-Arrowverse programs, The 100 is a veritable YA dystopian drama with a hard sci-fi premise. Following the nuclear apocalypse, a portion of humanity took to a series of connected space stations to survive the radiation. Almost a century later, supplies are diminishing, and a group of 100 delinquent children is sent down to test survivability on Earth's surface. That premise doesn't sound sustainable for six full seasons, and yet The 100 still thrives on The CW. Season 6 ends in early August and hits Netflix a week later, exploring a new life for the violent cast of characters on a brand-new planet. Will the people adapt to a drastically new lifestyle? Hint: Nope.
8. iZombie, Season 5The CW sends Season 5 of its best zombie drama to Netflix in early August — just one week after the series finale airs on cable. iZombie began as a quirky procedural drama light on the horror with the main character eating peoples' brains to gain access to their memories, therefore helping to solve murders. But as the series evolved and more zombies were created, iZombie was elevated to something closer to True Blood with political commentary about a persecuted minority — just with a lot less bite. Season 5 expands into full-on human versus zombie war as it aimed for a thrilling conclusion to the series.
7. Stranger Things'80s nostalgia never looked as cool as it does in Netflix's Stranger Things, a sci-fi dark fantasy series set firmly within the decade of arcades and power rock ballads. Government conspiracies set amidst the backdrop of the Cold War come into focus in the generic town of Hawkins, Indiana. There, in a government lab where questionable men tried to weaponize a young psychic, they ripped open a portal to a dark dimension called the Upside Down. Stranger Things follows a wide cast of characters, mainly a group of young D&D-loving kids who get swept up into the adventure that will have them fighting for their loves against a demonic new enemy. In Season 3, they discover that the sinister Mind Flayer from the Upside Down remains in the real world exerting its influence in a way that could be more dangerous than ever before. 6. Neon Genesis EvangelionOne of the most famous and beloved anime of all time landed on Netflix in late June. For the first time ever since its debut in 1995, all 26 original Neon Genesis Evangelion episodes are now available to stream in one place, along with The End of Evangelion film and the bonus extended episode EVANGELION: DEATH (TRUE)². Altogether, the series is a must-watch for any anime fan. This complex sci-fi universe grapples with heady concepts like existential uncertainty in familiar mecha anime trappings: Humans pilot giant robots to fight monstrosities. Neon Genesis Evangelion uses this familiar premise as a vehicle to explore how religion influences culture, particular one on the brink of apocalypse. But more importantly, this groundbreaking sci-fi epic established tropes you'll recognize from across anime and even live-action sci-fi. Two companion films, The End of Evangelion and EVANGELION: DEATH (TRUE)², are also available on Netflix. 5. Cities of Last ThingsCities of Last Things is the fascinating, melancholic look at a normal life gone horribly wrong that quietly landed on Netflix earlier in July. As told through a series of three snapshots shown in reverse chronology, the story begins with the suicide of Zhang Dong Ling several decades in the future (that's where the sci-fi comes in). Each section of the film examines a series of extraordinary events that led him to this decision, flexing a unique vibe as it shifts from sci-fi to noir to a more traditional moody drama. 4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-VerseWe've gotten more Spider-Man movies in the last 20 years than any other solo superhero, yet somehow Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was able to do something surprising, exciting, and totally fresh. Spider-Verse functions as an origin story for Miles Morales, a black-hispanic teenager who's bitten by a different radioactive spider than the one that gave Peter Parker his powers. Netflix just added this Oscar-winning animated feature film in June, and it's a must-watch for all superhero fans out there, especially because of the way it explores the science behind the multiverse. 3. The Wandering EarthAfter its February release, The Wandering Earth rapidly became the second-highest grossing film in Chinese box office history. The Mandarin-language sci-fi action movie is set in a distant future where the Sun is primed to expand into a red giant that will consume the Earth. Rather than build an arc to travel far away, humanity instead straps a bunch of huge jet engines to the planet to blast it out into space for a 2,500 year journey to a new home. Reviews for The Wandering Earth are mostly mixed, but such a ridiculous concept winds up being a lot of fun for casual viewers. The biggest surprise, however, is how seriously the film addresses the real-life science at play. Must Read: Could 'The Wandering Earth' Actually Happen? Here's What a NASA Engineer Says 2. HerIn Her, the always-excellent Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with a disembodied A.I. voice — think of a hyper-advanced Siri or Alexa with Scarlett Johansson's voice who can learn at an exponential rate. Set in the near-future of Los Angeles, Her explores the depression of a sensitive guy mourning the end of a long-term relationship. He fills an emotional void with an A.I. What sounds like a bit of a crazy premise is sold by filmmaker Spike Jonze as nothing short of delicate tenderness. Her won Best Original Screenplay at the 86th Academy Awards, making it a must-see for any fan of science fiction. A programmer from a massive tech company wins a contest and gets to visit the company's brilliant billionaire founder on his remote compound. As it turns out, that founder's been developing an A.I. with a realistic synthetic body and needs someone else to help … test it. Ex Machina goes from quirky to strange to creepy to horrifying with enough cerebral tension to make you question whether you're a human yourself. I didn't know what "edge of your seat" really meant in terms of thrillers until I saw Ex Machina in the theater. Anyone who enjoyed Alex Garland's Annihilation will probably like this, his previous feature, even more — it's a master class in pacing and tension for any fan of good film. Past Updates:  |
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