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Wednesday marked the end of the end of the world, as FX closed the book on an American Horror Story installment eight seasons in the making — but was Apocalypse‘s conclusion worth the wait? My guess is that you still need some time to digest what the actual fudge just went down, so let’s make sure we’re all on the same page.

The first part of the episode explained Cordelia’s master plan, most of which we knew, though it was helpful to have a few remaining blanks filled: Myrtle kicked things off by waltzing into Antichrist HQ and compelling Jeff and Mutt to free up some space in Outpost 3… before putting both of those mop-topped morons out of their misery. This fatal encounter was preceded by a classic Horror Story catfight, as Venable dared question the nature of Myrtle’s glorious mane. “My hair is an eternal mystery never to be fully understood,” she replied, before looking at Venable’s outfit and scoffing, “Purple is for royalty, dear, not middle management.” You’ve got to hand it to Myrtle — she’s savage, even in the face of the apocalypse.

Next, Cordelia cast the infamous identity spell on Coco and Mallory, wiping their minds of all magical memories. In order to keep Mallory’s powers suppressed, Coco’s new personality — modeled after Madison, naturally — was intended to demean her at every turn. The two actually shared a really sweet moment before having their supernatural lobotomies, with Coco pre-apologizing for mistreating her. “Spell or no spell, I’d never let anything bad happen to you,” Mallory said. “If the world is going to end, at least we’ll be together.”

This brought us back (forward?) to before the season premiere, with Coco and Mallory arriving at Gallant’s salon for the first time. It seems Coco’s Uber driver (Madison!) was a little reckless, resulting in a wind-blown mess that would take all afternoon to fix. And wouldn’t you know it, she met a nice man named Brock while she was there. (These witches really were responsible for everything, weren’t they?)

Time jump No. 2 returned us to Mallory and Michael’s confrontation in Outpost 3, which apparently signaled Cordelia, Myrtle and Madison to rise from their years-long dirt nap. (As confirmed by Madison, the entire experienced “sucked ass.”) By the time the trio arrived at Outpost 3, the survivors had already bobbed for apples, setting the stage for Coco, Mallory and Dinah’s revivals — as well as the witches’ final showdown with Michael.

As expected, that traitorous Oprah-wannabe Dinah Stevens refused to fight by Cordelia’s side, claiming to always pick the winning team. Little did she know, Cordelia never intended to align herself with Dinah; through the magic of yet another freaking flashback, we learned that Cordelia promised to hand Dinah’s soul over to Papa Legba in exchange for the release of — you guessed it — the OG voodoo queen, Marie Laveau. (The fact that Angela Bassett’s name appeared on screen prior to her arrival totally ruined the surprise, but it was still damn good to see Marie back in action.)

At this point, it looked like smooth sailing for the witches. Marie made quick work of Dinah, Cordelia whispered a spell that blew Mead into a million little pieces, and Madison used the robot’s severed arm-gun to make bloody swiss cheese out of Michael’s torso. But just when the ladies were ready to start popping bubbly, along came Brock (ugh!!!) to gut Mallory with a cleaver and spoil her big time-travel plan. Brock was appropriately punished, burning alive at Myrtle’s hands, but it wasn’t long before the witches also dropped dead. A revived Michael beheaded Madison (“Oh, f–k, I guess it’s back to retail!”), ate Marie’s heart right out of her chest, and snapped poor Coco’s neck with a flick of his wrist. Myrtle put it best when she said, “It appears as though we’re f–d, my dear.”

But Cordelia still had one trick hidden up her sleeve. Don’t ask me how any of this worked, but by sacrificing herself, she revived Mallory, who recited the time-traveling spell and hauled ass back to 2015. A desperate Constance had just kicked Michael out of the house for murdering a priest (“Do you have to kill every single living creature that crosses your path? Could you maybe just maim one?”), but she forgot to remind him to look both ways while crossing the street. If she had, perhaps Mallory (!) wouldn’t have run him over (!!) repeatedly (!!!) until he suffered a painful death in the middle of the damn road. (That knowing look Mallory exchanged with Constance before running him over one last time was chilling.)

With the Antichrist dead and the apocalypse thwarted, Mallory made tracks for New Orleans, where she enrolled at Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies. Zoe was still alive, working as a teacher, but because Cordelia never revived her to save the world, Myrtle was no longer among the living. Queenie was also still alive, and bragging to everyone about how she was flying to Los Angeles to see The Price is Right (“Plinko all day, ho!”), though Mallory made sure to suggest alternative lodging — after all, the Hotel Cortez is nowhere near the studio. (Wink!)

And although Mallory revealed (via voiceover) that she intended on eventually reviving Madison, the movie star ended the season still trapped in her own personal hell. Mallory did, however, use her “blazing street cred” with the denizens of hell to have Misty and Nan brought back to life — even if the latter chose to stay by Papa Legba’s side. (“I like it down there,” Nan said. “Papa lets me play!”)

That’s when things got… interesting. Mallory’s final inner monologue led her to question the effects her actions could have on the future, cuing another time jump to 2020. Here, Emily and Timothy — yes, the non-rich couple “chosen” to live in Outpost 3 — met for the first time at a protest, presumably the one where alternate-timeline Emily was arrested. Anyway, they fell in love (or at least lust) and spawned a healthy baby boy, who turned out to be — wait for it — the Antichrist. The season ended with Mead arriving at Timothy and Emily’s house, alongside the Black Pope and Not-Pepper, where the cycle of darkness would soon begin again. Or, you know, for the first time.

Also worth discussing…

* Thanks to a map in Jeff and Mutt’s office — plus this handy “pause” feature on my DVR — we know that Outpost 4, whose residents include Charlize Theron and Jennifer Lawrence, is in the Bahamas, while the far-less-desirable Outpost 2 is in West Virginia. And was Myrtle’s mention of “Louisiana swamp mud” upon her revival confirmation that Outpost 3 is in Louisiana? (Not that any of that even matters, since this entire season never really happened.)

* I mentioned this earlier, but don’t you wish the finale had saved certain guests for the closing credits, rather than spoiling them on screen at the beginning? I wish I wasn’t expecting Marie, Nan or Misty to show up.

Your thoughts on the Apocalypse finale? Were you satisfied with the ending? Cast your votes in our polls below, then drop a comment with your full review.

CBS GIVES FULL-SEASON ORDERS TO "GOD FRIENDED ME," "MAGNUM P.I." AND "THE NEIGHBORHOOD" FOR THE 2018-2019 BROADCAST SEASON

CBS has given full-season orders to the new dramas GOD FRIENDED ME and MAGNUM P.I. and the freshman comedy THE NEIGHBORHOOD for the 2018-2019 broadcast season.

GOD FRIENDED ME is Sunday's #1 scripted series, averaging over 10 million viewers and improving its time period +8% in viewers over last season. GOD FRIENDED ME stars Brandon Micheal Hall, Violett Beane, Suraj Sharma, Javicia Leslie and Joe Morton. Steven Lilien, Bryan Wynbrandt, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Marcos Siega are executive producers for Warner Bros. Television. It airs Sundays (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

MAGNUM P.I. reaches over nine million viewers each week, improving the Monday 9:00-10:00 PM hour by +50% over last season. MAGNUM P.I. stars Jay Hernandez, Perdita Weeks, Zachary Knighton, Stephen Hill, Tim Kang and Amy Hill. Peter Lenkov, Eric Guggenheim, Justin Lin, John Davis, John Fox and Danielle Woodrow are executive producers for CBS Television Studios in association with Universal Television. It airs Mondays (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD is averaging over eight million viewers each week, and improves the 8:00-8:30 PM time period by +14% over last season's "Kevin Can Wait." THE NEIGHBORHOOD stars Cedric the Entertainer, Max Greenfield, Beth Behrs, Tichina Arnold, Sheaun McKinney, Marcel Spears and Hank Greenspan. Jim Reynolds, Aaron Kaplan, Dana Honor Wendi Trilling, Cedric the Entertainer and Eric Rhone are executive producers for CBS Television Studios. It airs Mondays (8:00-8:30 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

These series join the previously announced FBI as freshman shows receiving full-season orders for 2018-2019 on CBS.

Source: Nielsen NTI "most current" ratings (as of 10/17/18)

Popular Now

The 2018 edition of Unsafe+Sounds festival has just announced its full line-up, inviting the likes of Aja Ireland, Mick Harris (formerly of Napalm Death) and Lucrecia Dalt to venues around Vienna this October.

Entering its fifth year, Unsafe+Sounds ("unsafe and sounds") aims to gather key figures from the experimental music scene in the Austrian capital, programming in eight nights of experimental electronics, free improvisation, and fringe techno around the city.

Other acts include Polish audiovisual duo WIDT presenting a new collaboration with legendary German producer Christoph de Babalon, Linda Sharrock’s modern freeform group In the Abissity of the Grounds, noisy Aussie glass-smasher Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham), American minimalist Kali Malone, plus a whole host of adventurous music from the local scene including Pita (aka Peter Rehberg of KTL and Editions Mego). The full lineup details can be found online here

"Under the banner of Brutal Times, we gather workers from the musical frontiers to find some medication for this pathological time," says the festival. "We believe these are to be found in the poetics of catharsis and physical affection; in neurotic, transgressive, psychoacoustic, and obscure approaches."

This year’s festival takes place at various locations in Vienna, between the 2nd and 13th October 2018. Ticket information can be found here.

CBS SERIES SCORE POSTSEASON FOOTBALL SPOTLIGHTS

"THE LATE SHOW with STEPHEN COLBERT" TO BROADCAST FOLLOWING LATE LOCAL NEWS AFTER "SUPER BOWL LIII" ON FEB. 3

"THE LATE LATE SHOW with JAMES CORDEN" TO AIR AFTER LOCAL NEWS FOLLOWING AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME ON JAN. 20

ROOKIE DRAMA "MAGNUM P.I." ALSO RECEIVES PRIME AFC POSTGAME SLOT

With postseason football right around the corner, CBS has announced the lineup of late night and primetime shows that will receive big promotional platforms following both the AFC Championship game on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2019 and SUPER BOWL LIII two weeks later on Sunday, Feb. 3.

THE LATE SHOW with STEPHEN COLBERT, the #1 show in late night in all measures, has secured a special Sunday slot immediately following the late local news after SUPER BOWL LIII on Sunday, Feb. 3 (11:35 PM-12:37 AM, ET/8:35 PM-9:37 PM, PT; time is approximate). At the conclusion of the game (and preceding local news) is the previously announced special premiere of the new competition series THE WORLD'S BEST (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/7:00-8:00 PM, PT; time is approximate after post-game coverage), hosted by THE LATE LATE SHOW's James Corden, with judges Drew Barrymore, RuPaul Charles and Faith Hill.

Additionally, following late local news on Sunday, Jan. 20 (11:35 PM-12:35 AM, ET/8:35 PM-9:35 PM, PT; time is approximate), CBS will present a special Sunday episode of THE LATE LATE SHOW with JAMES CORDEN. Earlier in the evening, immediately following the AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME, the Network will air a new episode of freshman series MAGNUM P.I. (10:00-11:00 PM ET/7:00-8:00 PM, PT; time is approximate after post-game coverage).

This season, THE LATE SHOW is #1 in late night, averaging over 3.5 million viewers and consistently beating its closest competition by over one million viewers. THE LATE LATE SHOW is a broadcast and digital hit, boasting the top three most-watched late night videos on YouTube (#1 "Adele Carpool Karaoke" with 188 million views, #2 "Justin Bieber Carpool Karaoke" with 140 million views, and #3 "One Direction Carpool Karaoke" with 134 million views). MAGNUM P.I., which has increased viewership in the time period +23% over last season, will air another new episode on Monday, Jan. 21 in its regular 8:00-9:00 PM time period.

Guests for both THE LATE SHOW and THE LATE LATE SHOW will be announced at a later date.

About THE LATE SHOW with STEPHEN COLBERT

Stephen Colbert brings his signature satire and comedy to THE LATE SHOW with STEPHEN COLBERT, the #1 show in late night in all measures, where he talks with an eclectic mix of guests about what is new and relevant in the worlds of politics, entertainment, business, music, technology and more. Featuring bandleader Jon Batiste with his band Stay Human, the Emmy Award-nominated show is broadcast from the historic Ed Sullivan Theater. Stephen Colbert took over as host, executive producer and writer of THE LATE SHOW on Sept. 8, 2015. Stephen Colbert, Chris Licht, Tom Purcell and Jon Stewart are executive producers for The Late Show, Inc., a CBS Company.

About THE LATE LATE SHOW with JAMES CORDEN

Each weeknight, James Corden invites the audience to join in on the fun as the Emmy Award-winning THE LATE LATE SHOW with JAMES CORDEN features a mix of celebrity guests, musical acts, games and sketches. Corden differentiates his show by giving a peek behind-the-scenes into the green room, bringing all of his guests out at once and lending his musical and acting talents to various sketches. Additionally, bandleader Reggie Watts and the house band provide Corden with original, improvised music throughout the show. Since Corden took the reins as host in March 2015, the show has quickly become known for generating buzzworthy viral videos, such as "Carpool Karaoke." Ben Winston and Rob Crabbe are executive producers for CBS Broadcasting Inc.

About MAGNUM P.I.

MAGNUM P.I. stars Jay Hernandez as Thomas Magnum, a decorated former Navy SEAL who, upon returning home from Afghanistan, repurposes his military skills to become a private investigator. Perdita Weeks, Stephen Hill, Zachary Knighton, Tim Kang and Amy Hill also star. Peter M. Lenkov, Eric Guggenheim, Justin Lin, John Davis, John Fox and Danielle Woodrow are executive producers for CBS Television Studios in association with Universal Television.

by Brian Tallerico

It’s always fun to find random connections at film festivals. And so seeing two films on back to back days about leaders who were arguably undone by their raging libidos makes for a funny duo. The fact that both movies frustrated me more than I expected—although one way more than the other—is just another TIFF coincidence.

The superior film, by some stretch, is Paolo Sorrentino’s “Loro,” which finds the mega-talented Italian director returning to his world of Fellini-esque excess and his leading man Toni Servillo. The star of “Il Divo” and “The Great Beauty” plays Silvio Berlusconi, but we don’t even meet him until about an hour into the 150-minute movie, which was originally released as two 100-or-so-minute movies in Italy. If you’re good at math, you can discern that there’s quite a bit missing in this combined version, which exists primarily to be eligible for Oscar consideration. I’m eager to see the separate versions because there’s something lost in the mash-up.

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“Loro” opens by introducing us to a player named Sergio (an effective Riccardo Scarmacio), who basically gets close to men of power by appealing to their basic instincts. He’s the kind of guy who has a stable of beautiful women willing to do whatever he says to keep the political wheels greased. But Sergio wants to play with the biggest dog in Italy, the notorious Berlusconi, captured here late in his political cycle from about 2006 to 2009 but still one of the most recognizable leaders in the world. He may be basically in exile in his Sardignia home and in a marriage that seems increasingly stale, but people still need his influence and blessing. And Berlusconi wants to maintain the power he has remaining and maybe even lead Italy again. Sergio wants to be there when that happens, and so he rents a home near Berlusconi’s and stocks it with half-naked women and mountains of drugs, just trying to get his attention. He gets it.

People who live in a world of excess like Sergio clearly fascinate Sorrentino, who has chronicled the impulses of the powerful before, but this features that aspect of his work to date turned up to eleven. In many ways, it is his “Wolf of Wall Street,” a vision of the modern fall of the Roman Empire with scene after scene of carefully-choreographed drug and sex parties; MDMA and cocaine are primary motifs. Some of the visuals in “Loro” are unforgettable, such as a party sequence with colorful pills falling from the sky in slow motion and an exploding garbage truck, but it gets numbing after a while. There’s a narrative slack to “Loro” that almost makes one wonder if Sorrentino wouldn’t rather just be shooting music videos. This is even more prominent when the film shifts to Berlusconi and pretty much leaves Sergio (and a few other interesting supporting characters behind). I’m guessing the transition is smoother in the complete form, but the film practically causes viewer whiplash in its move from fetishing excess to castigating it. There are enough fantastic sequences in “Loro,” and another great performance from Servillo, but this is a slight disappointment given what we’ve come to expect from Sorrentino.

There’s nothing slight about the disappointment I felt from Jason Reitman’s “The Front Runner,” the cinematic equivalent of porridge—bland, mushy, and without much personality of its own. Reitman attempts to teach viewers a lesson about how politics changed with the fall of U.S. senator Gary Hart, but does so without passion or even a defined viewpoint. There are a remarkable number of familiar faces in “The Front Runner,” but they’re all wasted, especially the women, in a film that feels like it never figured out what it wanted to say. Someone had to make a movie about Gary Hart eventually, and so here it is.

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The film stumbles from the outset, telling us that Hart was a leader and a potentially fantastic President without ever really showing us why. There’s too little sense of what was lost when the Miami Herald learned that Democratic front runner Hart (Hugh Jackman) was fooling around with Donna Rice on a boat ironically called the Monkey Business. Taking us into the war room of Hart’s campaign as well as the offices of the Herald and Washington Post, the two driving forces behind breaking the story, “The Front Runner” looks ambitious on paper and has a ridiculously talented cast that also includes J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, Vera Farmiga, and many more. It looks like something that could offer a commentary on the increasingly tempestuous dynamic between press and President, and provide insight into how we got to a point in which image matters more than message. It’s truly disheartening that the movie doesn’t. 

Unsure about how much we should ask of our candidates—the material that attempts to balance out the fact that Hart was professing moral backbone while cheating is particularly wishy-washy—“The Front Runner” never comes to a conclusion about the fairness of what happened to Hart or even how it impacted politics to come. Reitman is too interested in overlapping dialogue Altman-style in an effort to show his skill with ensemble to give the piece the urgency and depth it so desperately needed. If you know absolutely nothing about Hart's rise and fall, there could be some historical value here. If you’re as old as I am and remember the facts, there’s just no reason to care.

Next Article: TIFF 2018: Table of Contents Previous Article: TIFF 2018: Outlaw King, Transit

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Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9 — a semi-sequel to his 2004 hit, Fahrenheit 9/11 — is engineered to get viewers of all political persuasions up in arms about the current state of the American democratic experiment as represented by President Trump. But the Oscar-winning filmmaker himself was in high spirits at the movie’s Toronto International Film Festival premiere last night.

That’s probably due to the standing ovation he received — along with cries of “Michael Moore for president!” — and the fact that he was joined by some special guests who are prominently featured in the movie. Those guests included April Cook-Hawkins, who blew the whistle on the Michigan state government for its lack of accountability in the still-ongoing Flint water crisis, and David Hogg, a survivor of the school shooting in February in Parkland, Fla. Taking the stage, the 18-year-old gun-control activist hugged Cook-Hawkins as Moore looked on beaming, and then he addressed the cheering audience directly: “I have a question for you guys: Who is ready to save America?”

Hogg had other questions as well as the postscreening discussion unfolded. Of the IRS, he asked, “Why aren’t you auditing the president of the United States?” And as a general query, he posed this head-scratcher: “We’re still at war in Afghanistan — what the hell? I’m 18 years old; that war was started 17 years ago.” That questioning attitude and the desire to right the world’s wrongs are some of the reasons that Moore considers Hogg and his fellow Parkland students to be a “generation of action,” not a “generation of hope,” as an audience member suggested. “I’m against hope,” he said, only half-jokingly. “Hope was back with Obama. What we need is a generation of action.”

The popular former POTUS receives some withering criticism in Fahrenheit 11/9. Moore targets Obama for his actions during the Flint water crisis, when he visited the devastated town while still in the Oval Office and appeared to endorse the narrative that the situation was improving rather than demanding accountability from the state’s Republican-dominated government. As several of the Flint residents interviewed in the film recount, that approach actually caused them to lose hope in a president who had made it a major feature of his campaign and administration.

Fahrenheit 11/9 posits Obama’s appearance in Flint as part of a larger pattern of the Democratic Party compromising its grassroots values in an effort to appease the corporate classes — a transformation that Moore dates back to Bill Clinton. And while his last film, 2016’s Michael Moore in TrumpLand, featured him stumping strongly for Hillary Clinton, he’s highly critical of the candidate here, ridiculing her cozy relationship with big investment firms and even the size of her bumper stickers. In contrast, Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign is celebrated, and the senator himself is interviewed — very briefly — during which he criticizes the way the larger Democratic Party viewed his candidacy.

Still, most of the movie’s ire and anger is directed, as expected, at Trump. Moore opens the film with the implicit suggestion that the Manhattan-based real estate developer-turned-reality TV star never wanted the job — that his candidacy was merely a ploy to get NBC to pay him the same salary that Gwen Stefani received for her hosting gig on The Voice. From there, it recounts his erratic but successful approach to campaigning, his weaponizing of social media and the news media, his use of political tactics previously employed by Adolf Hitler, and his uncomfortably lewd comments about his daughter Ivanka Trump.

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Kent State University in Ohio has canceled their fall musical production of the famed West Side Story due to complaints that too many white students landed lead roles.

According to reports, of the three Latin leading roles, none were given to Latin students, including the lead role of the Puerto Rican Maria.

KentWired, Kent State University’s student newspaper, says that while “several” white students were cast in Latin supporting roles, some Latin students who auditioned were not given any role in the show.

In addition to the casting choices, students are frustrated by the theater department rules that force them to accept the role they are given.

If a student declines the role they are given, they are put on probation, meaning they may not participate in School of Theatre and Dance productions or outside productions.

via KentWired:

Senior theater major Viviana Cardenas, 21, also identifies as Latina. She got a callback for the role of Anita, another Puerto Rican lead role, but an African-American student got the part instead.

“It’s more than just getting a role,” said Cardenas, whose father is from Ecuador. “I don’t get to tell other people’s stories because of the color of my skin, but yet when there is this story that is about people of cultures like me, about people of color like me, and that gets taken away from me … that was the most heartbreaking.”

“If they didn’t have this diverse cast in mind, and if they didn’t think that we as the Latino students could fulfill these lead roles, why did they continue on with the show that they picked?” she said.

Eric van Baars, the School of Theatre and Dance director at Kent State, has since decided to cancel the production of West Side Story replaced it with a production of Children Of Eden.

West Side Story, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, takes place in 1960s New York City, where two rival gangs — the Polish-American “Jets” and the Puerto Rican “Sharks” — fight for control over the West Side streets.

Kent State University Fraternity Raises Money For Sexual Assault Victims

Source: https://coed.com/2018/10/03/kent-state-university-cancels-production-of-west-side-story-after-white-students-given-latin-roles/