Review: In ‘Common Side Effects,' It's Fungus vs. Them
From 'The Last of Us' to athlete's foot commercials, fungus does not have the best of reputations on television. But what if it could save us all?
'Common Side Effects,' a wryly funny animated conspiracy thriller beginning Sunday on Adult Swim, suggests that not everybody would be pleased.
Marshall Cuso (Dave King), an eccentric environmentalist and self-employed scientist, discovers a rare mushroom on an expedition to Peru. The fungus, a ghostly specimen called the Blue Angel, can cure almost any illness and heal seemingly fatal injuries — including the ones Marshall sustains when he is attacked by gunmen immediately after making his discovery.
Back in the States, pursued by the Drug Enforcement Administration and other, more mysterious figures, Marshall runs into Frances Applewhite (Emily Pendergast), his former school lab partner who is now unhappily working for a pharmaceutical giant. Together, they make a pact to bring the magic mushroom to the people and protect it from the forces who would like to erase all traces of its existence.
Who are those forces? Them. And who's them? 'Big Pharma, the insurance companies, the government,' Marshall explains. 'All the people who make tons of money just from keeping us sick.'
A figure like Marshall — nerdy, neckbearded, with a prominent belly hanging from his Hawaiian shirt and one big theory that explains it all — would usually be portrayed on TV as, at best, a well-meaning kook, a side character who exists for laughs and exposition. Even in the conspiracy-riddled world of 'The X-Files,' he would be more of a Lone Gunman than a Fox Mulder.
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Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Last of Us: Season 2 Episode 6 Review
Episode 6 of season 2 of The Last of Us is directed by Neil Druckmann, and when viewed through that lens, its intentions become clearer. It contains some of the scenes that fans of The Last of Us Part 2, and presumably its creator, hold dearest. This allows Druckmann to tightly control the sacred bond between Joel and Ellie, as well as giving space to further explore characters barely present in the game – the final moments of Eugene's life strains the connection between the protagonists in new ways. Joe Pantoliano imbues the doomed Eugene with a dash of class, Bella Ramsey slots nicely back into the role of a younger Ellie, and Druckmann steadily steers the whole ship, but this chapter is undeniably Pedro Pascal's. His pitch-perfect portrayal of Joel reminds us of what both Ellie and the show have lost. Framed around each of Ellie's birthdays following their return to Jackson, episode 6 delicately displays Joel's urge to fulfil his role as a father. It's rooted in the very first scene, in which we see him as a teenage boy: The conversation between Joel and his father, played with warmth yet underlying hardness by Better Call Saul's Tony Dalton, presents the poisoned chalice passed down from Miller to Miller. That struggle of generational fatherhood is what has driven Joel ever since. Sarah was his world before the outbreak. Then he grieved her, holding onto her memories until Ellie arrived. By the end of this episode, she's 17, and he's on the brink of losing another daughter. It's a crossroads he's contending with, and one brilliantly displayed by Pascal throughout, as he battles to do the right thing by her. It's perhaps best conveyed in the final moment between them – and the very last conversation between Ellie and Joel before his death. Their porchside chat is perhaps the most affecting in all of the game, so it's a huge relief to see it recreated so well here. The vulnerability in Pascal's face is all-consuming, as he barely utters a word but lets his eyes speak for him. He's terrified of losing Ellie, but he's expressing it in a way that he can't really control, and a way that will infect her, too – his tears filling that cursed cup once more, ready for Ellie to sip from and make the same selfish mistakes he did. It adds extra heartbreaking context to her 'I'm gonna be a dad' quip from earlier in the season. She'll aim to break this cycle, but little in her present-day actions suggests this. Though that's giving more thought to the present day than episode 6 can muster, which is my major reservation about this episode. The series of flashbacks is heartfelt and works excellently when it comes to building out the protagonists of The Last of Us' past and future, but I can't help but feel like momentum has stalled here. It feels off to spend a whole episode exploring Ellie's history when we've just ratcheted the tension on who she's become. And with only one episode left to go in the season, it feels like the only road to a satisfying finale will involve covering a lot of ground in a short period of time. It's not so much a criticism of what this episode does, but more of its place within season Ramsey feels much more at home as a younger Ellie, portraying a wide-eyed, excitable version of the character with a far greater verve than the more fearsome evolution we got last week. It's best shown in her and Joel's visit to a nearby museum, where Ellie takes a heartstring-tugging trip into orbit, thanks to a tape recording and a long-forgotten space capsule. The smile that dances across her face is a rare moment of levity in a show, that, up until this moment, has been irrepressibly bleak. As we watch the pair enjoy their respite, it feels like some of that season 1 magic has been rebottled. But, as ever, what The Last of Us giveth with one hand, it taketh with the other, not letting us sit with this flash of joy for long. Episode 6 finally answers a question posed in the season premiere: What did Joel do to Eugene to make Gail resent him so much? Pantoliano is given his time to shine as Eugene, a member of the Jackson community whose time is ticking away thanks to an infected's bite. His introduction enables Joel and Ellie's dynamic from season 1 to resurface, and echoes of their experience in Salt Lake City can be felt. Joel has lived long enough in this world to be wary of Eugene – any sense of optimism (or hope that Eugene can be healed) is long gone. Not Ellie, though: She still carries an element of naivety and wants to help Eugene. The mercy killing carried out by Joel only sows more seeds of distrust between him and his surrogate daughter. In his lie to Gail about it, Ellie realises just how easy it is for Joel to hide the truth. It's in this moment that the fissures in their relationship really start to crack wide open. What Joel did isn't necessarily wrong, but it runs counter to Ellie's moral code and how she would've dealt with Eugene. It effectively means that she now knows that Joel has been lying about what happened in that Firefly hospital, and the revelation of him lying about Eugene is a great choice by Druckmann. It's an example of adaptation for the better – which this season largely hasn't landed for me – and a much more impactful, and logical, option than having Joel and Ellie traipse all the way back to Salt Lake City as they do in The Last of Us Part 2. It's something the episode as a whole does to great effect as it further explores the intervening years and Joel and Ellie's dynamic, offering new glimpses into previously unseen moments. Joel catching Ellie doing things she maybe shouldn't be doing at 17 and his built-in resentment for Seth (due to his former life as a policeman, like Joel's dad) add more shades to the character, even though he's long gone in the present day. These little touches and grandstand speeches combine to great effect to help us fully understand why Joel made every decision that led to his death, all the way up to rescuing his eventual killer from a horde of infected. Above all else, it's the desire to be a protector that forged the Millers' poisoned chalice – and eventually led to his downfall.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Last of Us Creative Team on How They Crafted Season 2's Most Crucial Episodes
Full Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 follow. At IGN Live today, The Last of Us Co-Creator and Executive Producer Craig Mazin was joined by several of the show's core creative team – including Ksenia Sereda (Cinematographer), Ann Foley (Costume Designer), Don Macaulay (Production Designer), Alex Wang (VFX Supervisor), Timothy Good (Editor), and David Fleming (Co-Composer) – to discuss the tremendous amount of work that went into the just-completed second season of the HBO series. As the panel began, Mazin remarked, 'The truth is that Neil [Druckmann] and I are vastly over-credited for the success of the show. We work really hard on it but these are the people that bring it to life and they deserve so much credit… All of it is necessary to make it what it is.' When the panel was asked to name their favorite episode from Season 2, nearly everyone named either episode two ("Through the Valley") or episode six ('The Price'), which made sense since they were such standouts - and segued nicely into the fact that these were the two episodes moderator Amelia Emberwing focused on for the conversation. "Through the Valley' of course had two monumental events, including the horde of infected attacking Jackson and, well… that other thing which we'll get back to. With footage of the massive attack sequence playing, Mazin noted that there were visual effects in basically every shot, saying, 'I think Alex had to touch nearly everything here.' Rewatching the attack on Jackson, Macaulay joked, 'All I can think about is the thousands of meetings we have,' saying they quite seriously probably had 10 meetings about how the barrels would be launched from the town gates into the horde. As he put it, 'Nearly every shot in this took 10-15 meetings. Craig loves meetings!' Even after all of that there was 'a lot of retrofitting on set. Lots of rooftops we weren't planning to do.' Foley said episode two was definitely the hardest part of the season for her as the costume designer because of how many actors and extras were in that episode working on multiple filming units - and that it was all taking place while they were also working on the Seraphite costumes for upcoming episodes. As she explained, this involved "65 people in three different areas.' Wang stressed that previs is crucial, and the many discussions they have about what Macaulay will build vs. what Wang will oversee being added digitally. It's a long process, with Wang noting, 'You're planning for success 6-8 months down the line' and that he's constantly in communication with Macaulay, the stunt team, and many more. Mazin joked that when he calls Wang in for one of his infamous meetings, 'His heart sinks because he knows he's about to go over budget again.' One reason the infected horde was so tricky was that it dealt with such a large army and as Wang explained, in the visual effects world, when you have a group that large 'repetition is usually okay,' since you have characters in the same costumes or creatures of the same type. Here though, Mazin wanted to sell that these were all originally different human beings who were different sizes and ages in different outfits before they were infected. As he put it, they nearly 'broke Wētā [FX]' over the specifics they asked for. Then there's Good and his crucial work as editor. He has to begin editing without the final effects in place, which can be tricky. And not just because, as he pointed out, in the early footage 'a Bloater isn't a Bloater, it's a green dot.' But after they may have cut of the episode they're happy with, 'we get the animation back and everything's changed. The motion's become faster than a human actor is able to do," so they have to re-edit to adjust. When it came to scoring the 'Through the Valley,' Fleming described it as particularly challenging, because Mazin asked him, 'How do we start this at 11 and then keep going up for the whole episode?' The idea was they were 'building up momentum so it just felt relentless relentless relentless. Then at the end, it was kind of the opposite with the pivotal scene with Joel.' When Fleming paused and said he'd been avoiding talking about how that episode ended for so long, Mazin couldn't resist chiming in: 'He died!' As Fleming explained, the original music for Joel's wrenching death scene was much busier but then 'Craig asked 'strip it back.' It was a less is more situation.' While praising the performances of Pedro Pascal, Kaitlyn Dever and Bella Ramsey, Good revealed that for Joel's death 'I actually edited it five times before I was ready to show it to Craig,' because he knew how important it was to get it right. As Joel's death scene played out, the panel couldn't help but become somber and when Mazin cracked, 'Let's talk about the golf clubs we picked out. They have lots of meaning" to release some tension, he then paused and added that actually, when it came to which exact club Abby would use to beat Joel with, 'There was a whole discussion!' The conversation then moved to episode six and its flashbacks to Joel and Ellie together set between Season 1 and 2. The sequence where Ellie climbs the dinosaur was shown and Mazin remarked, 'I love this in the game. I love that we got to do it!' He added that this was a funny situation where the actual dinosaur built for Ellie to climb 'was wobbling too much so then Alex stopped it from wobbling. But then it looked fake so we had to make it wobble [again] a little bit.' Discussing Joel and Ellie's clothes, Foley noted they did their best to match their looks in the game, though there might be slight changes occasionally for specific reasons. One such case was in the museum scene. In the game, Ellie is wearing a tank top in this sequence. However, on the show, they wanted to underline that Bella Ramsey was playing a more youthful version of Ellie in these flashback scenes, so they ended up making it a t-shirt because 'changing it from a tank to a t-shirt made it look baggier and make her look younger.' In general though, 'Joel and Ellie are in the same things they wear in the game because there's no reason to change it.' Ksenia Sereda said she was both excited and nervous about shooting the scene where Ellie and Joel go inside the space capsule, because 'the way it was done in the game was so brilliant,' including the close up on Ellie smiling, imagining going into space. Sereda joked the game provided 'the most expensive previs I've ever had to work with.' Mazin marveled how Sereda lit the screen so that all of the light changes on Ellie's face were done practically, without visual effects needed. Sereda explained how difficult it was, because 'the whole sequence is lit through this teeny tiny window on the side of the capsule. It was very challenging to find this whole look.' This sequence had particular significance to Mazin because 'This is the first thing that Neil ever showed me from the second game.' He elaborated that when he went to Naughty Dog to speak to Druckmann about turning The Last of Us into a TV show, the team were nearing the completion of The Last of Us Part II. When Druckmann showed Mazin the space capsule sequence, his response was, ''We're doing that!' In my mind, I was like, 'We need to do a good enough job for Season 1 that we're renewed [to do that].'" With Season 3 of The Last of Us now in the works, Mazin said he was eager to get back in the thick of it, turning to his fellow panelists and saying 'I can't wait to do that. I can't wait to do that with all of you.' He then proclaimed: 'Don, are we going to have meetings!!'
UPI
23 minutes ago
- UPI
'Thunderbolts,' 'Last of Us' lead Critics Choice Super Awards nominees
June 11 (UPI) -- The nominations for the Critics Choice Super Awards are in. Deadpool & Wolverine, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the titular characters, tied with Thunderbolts, starring Florence Pugh, for the most film nominations. Both titles are up for six awards, including Best Superhero Movie, according to a press release. The Last of Us, the TV series starring Pedro Pascal, is also nominated for six awards, topping the television categories. The show's nominations include Best Superhero Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie and Best Horror Series, Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie. The Critics Choice Association holds the Critics Choice Super Awards to honor fan favorites in the superhero, sci-fi and fantasy, horror and action genres in television and film. "The Super Awards continue to spotlight the incredible achievements in genre cinema and television. This year's slate of nominees truly blew us away with their performances and craftmanship," said CCA Super Awards director Sean O'Connell in a statement. "These selections represent the very best of popular culture, and we can't wait to see who takes home the honors." Winners for the 5th annual awards show will be announced Aug. 7 at 9 a.m. EDT on Marvel stars walk the red carpet
