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Larson’s archive is officially online for the first time

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Quibi, the star-studded, nostalgia-draining short-form streaming service that’s set to launch in April, has been digging through your skull. What scraps of pop culture ephemera are still swimming in the Mountain Dew puddles flooding the creases of your brain? Oh, is that James Van Der Beek saying “I don’t want your…

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The 25th Bond movie feels like Daniel Craig’s last hurrah

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There are more customization options than Pokémon in Sword and Shield

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Sorry, Quentin Tarantino: Your Star Trek thing is going to the back of the line. According to Deadline, the actual next Star Trek movie is going to be directed by Fargo and Legion mastermind Noah Hawley, presumably on the strength of his recent feature directorial debut Lucy In The Sky—which was also about space,…

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Honestly, how did it take someone this long

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It might take more than one punch to win, however

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Recent silence and a couple of high-profile departures from BioWare have led fans and pundits to speculate that the studio has abandoned its most recent game, Anthem, but the opposite is true. For the last few months, BioWare and parent company EA have been planning an overhaul of the online shooter, according to…

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According to Deadline, Netflix has worked out a deal to get David Fincher and Robert Towne to team up on a pilot script for a prequel to Chinatown. The plan for the series, if it gets that far, is for it to focus on a young Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson in the film) as he does various Chinatown-esque things…

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Why say yes when you can say no?

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How a little game influenced the entire industry

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The hit tabletop roleplaying podcast gets a 24 episode animated series

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Evidently emboldened by the success of—or at least the existence of—Hulu’s Veronica Mars revival, creator Rob Thomas has started contemplating the idea of a revival of one of his other canceled-too-soon TV cult classics: Party Down. As reported by Vulture, Thomas, Jon Enbom, and Dan Etheridge (a.k.a. the Party Down cr…

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I’m getting married tomorrow, so this week’s newsletter is going to be different than usual and wedding-themed. (Since I am thinking about the wedding, final wedding plans, and really nothing else.) I wanted to write something, but I don’t have the time to breakdown all the music and media I’ve consumed over the past week. Instead, I’ve been putting this together in small stages over the past few days. I’ll be back next week with a longer piece that has a deeper dive into the entertainment and musical stuff I’ve been enjoying lately. The supporter Q&A post can be found here.

If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.

A Certain Number of Things

• Thank you to everyone for all the wedding wishes over the past few weeks, and for the encouragement over the past year as I wrote about the entire planning of it in this very newsletter. You’ve all been along for the ride as this unfolded; I can’t believe it’s finally here.
• I wrote up my first impressions of the new AirPods Pro. Short version: I like them a lot, and Transparency Mode is a game-changer.
• Our wedding photographer posted up some of our engagement photos on her blog. Fun tidbit: the very first photo is the exact spot Hannah and I met. She was sitting with a friend, and I asked if she knew how long the people playing pool had been using the table. We started talking, and now seven years later we’re getting married.
• Curious what songs will be played during the reception? Here’s the DJ playlist. It’s full of stuff Hannah and I enjoy, and think people can sort of dance to, and then scattered with the popular songs I can tolerate enough to get people out on the dance floor.
• A string quartet will be playing at our ceremony, and Hannah’s arranged all the music herself. I get to walk out to her arrangement of the “Throne Room” music from the end of Star Wars. I’m very excited about it. And she’s put together a string quartet arrangement of Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” to be played after the ceremony ends as we walk back down the aisle as a couple for the first time. Curious what it sounds like? Here’s a recording of the practice from last night running through the arrangement for the first time.
• We’re getting married in a library, and I can’t think of anything more perfect for the two of us. The goal of the wedding was to make it very much us; I think we succeeded.
• My tux was chosen based on James Bond’s Skyfall look. Same navy shawl collar, white shirt, white pocket square, black bow-tie, and mother of pearl cufflinks. As a gift, Hannah’s parents bought me the same suspenders that Bond wears in the movie as well. It’s just my opinion, but if you have to wear a tux, you might as well try and look like James Bond.
• We got engaged on 8/18/18, and we’re getting married on 11/9/19.
• Each of the tables at the reception has quotes on them from some of our favorite things, if you’re curious what we picked, here’s a screenshot from the spreadsheet.
• We wrote our own vows and there’s zero chance I make it through without crying.
• My sister is my “best-person” and I am so grateful that she’ll be standing up there with me on this day. My other two groomsmen are lifelong friends, and our officiant is my best friend’s wife that we’ve known for a very long time.
• Dinner is a choice of St. Helen’s Filet Mignon with red wine bordelaise; mashed potatoes with garlic and parmesan, and roasted seasonal vegetables; or Wild Alaskan Salmon stuffed with brie cheese, dill, dungeness crab and Oregon bay shrimp, with citrus cream sauce; garlic mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables; or Vegetable Napoleon, stacked roasted zucchini, onion, eggplant and tomato with feta, mint, oregano, and roasted yellow pepper coulis. The three-tier cake has one layer of white lovelight sponge with strawberry preserves and cream cheese frosting, the second is lemon delight sponge with lemon jelly and lemon swiss buttercream, and the third is poppyseed sponge with raspberry preserves and vanilla swiss buttercream. I really hope I remember to eat.
• Next week will probably be a relatively slow week around the website for me. We’re not going on a honeymoon right away, but we’re going to take some time to ourselves and try and relax and enjoy not having to do any wedding planning. I’m sure I’ll be around the site and will post some news, but the plan is for it to be a light week of work. Then I’ll be back and focusing on putting together the “Best of the Decade” feature and preparing for the end of 2019 and all the features we usually run around that. After that, as we start 2020, I’ll be deciding if I want to go through with the redesign of the main content side of the website that I’ve been playing around with.
• I think that’s all I’ve got for this week’s wedding edition of the newsletter. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and I promise to be back next week with a return to our regular scheduled newsletter outline and format. I’ve been listening to and watching some cool stuff, and I’m excited to write about it.

In Case You Missed It

• Retrospective Review: My Chemical Romance – Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge
• Holy Pinto – “Malady” (Song Premiere)
• All Time Low Release New Documentary
• Andrew McMahon Announces New Tour Dates
• Mayday Parade Cover Further Seems Forever
• Fireworks Release New Song
• Lucy Dacus – “Fool’s Gold”
• Creeper – “Born Cold”
• Panic! at the Disco – “Into the Unknown”
• Lucy Dacus Covers “Last Christmas”
• Kristen Stewart Stars in SNL Pop-Punk Video
• Angels & Airwaves – “Kiss & Tell” Video
• Albums in Stores – Nov. 8th, 2019

Community Watch

The trending and popular threads in our community this week include:

• Hrny on MA1n
• Build a setlist: My Chemical Romance
• Best Nut
• NFL Gameday Week 10
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Sequel (April 8, 2022)
• General Politics Discussion (VI)
• 2019-2020 NFL Season Thread
• People from the A1 Thread Who Honestly Suck
• Blink-182
• Food

The most liked post in our forums last week was this one by TUG in the “My Chemical Romance” thread.

Would you like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week? You can sign up to have it sent to your email right here.

Previous editions of Liner Notes can be found here.

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At the risk of sounding overly optimistic, Henry Cavill sure seems to be nailing his take on Geralt Of Rivia in this new trailer for Netflix’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books. He makes a little joke about having horns, he slices the shit out of some dudes with his sword, and his voice even sounds a lot…

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There’s no wrong movie to watch on Halloween so long as you watch it in a dimly lit room with plenty of candy, but according to our all-knowing readers, Tim Burton’s classic The Nightmare Before Christmas is the best film to stream on All Hallows’ Eve.

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Earlier this month, Kevin Smith teased that his long-in-the-works third Clerks movie was back on, with original stars Jeff Anderson and Brian O’Halloran on board and the script being completely rewritten from Smith’s original plan. Now, thanks to The Wrap, we know what the new plan is: After having a heart attack,…

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Water parks can carry a lot of baggage—allegations of financial malfeasance and employee intimidation, not to mention literal decapitation—but, hey, we’re always willing to give these oases away from daily life and summer heat a fair shake. Even knowing what we know now, surely there’s nothing wrong at this beautiful…

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1990s kids horror TV show Are You Afraid Of The Dark? is notable for two key reasons. For one, its anthologized stories starred baby-sized versions of now-famous, mostly Canadian actors ranging from Ryan Gosling and Elisha Cuthbert to Jay Baruchel and Neve Campbell. For another, its retroactively hokey stories of…

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The works of animator Genndy Tartakovsky may vary wildly in tone—from cartoonish mania (Dexter’s Laboratory) to meditative action-adventure (Samurai Jack) to mainstream studio comedy (Hotel Transylvania)—but collectively they showcase an artist who is constantly pushing the boundaries of the form. His newest series, …

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South Park celebrated its 300th episode last night as you might expect it to—by publicly, profanely condemning a communist regime. “Fuck the Chinese government!” declared Randy Marsh in “SHOTS!!!,” an episode that found the character’s ally, Towelie, demanding he stop selling weed to China since it’s only being used…

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Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?

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Before we begin, let’s make one thing clear: There are no aliens at Area 51. They were either transferred back when a stoned 21-year first announced his plans to storm the military facility back in June or freed into the desert this past Wednesday when the CIA declared the area a no-fly zone. Hell, maybe they’ve long…

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Scorn them if you must, but football would not be the same without its officials. NFL fans watch 22 men crumple each other into a grunting pile of flesh, again and again, every weekend, for months. Imagine what a dull spectacle this would be without the occasional intermission of a person, dressed like a zebra,…

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They remade Poltergeist and we balked. They remade Aladdin and we laughed. Now, they’re remaking Face/Off. And we riot. Deadline reports that Paramount Pictures has hired one of the Sonic The Hedgehog screenwriters to reboot John Woo’s absolutely perfect 1997 action thriller. Have they considered just eating a peach…

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She was betrayed by her government.

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Tales of Vesperia - Definitive Edition (Nintendo Switch) | $30 | Amazon

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The race is just beginning

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We’ve never been so happy to see a 79-year-old man go back to work. Three months after announcing that his pancreatic cancer was in “near remission,” longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek is back and busy taping episodes of the show, as THR reports. Humbly sandwiched in the middle of a YouTube video announcing the…

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