Author: Trafficblast

The Eyes of Tammy Faye was reviewed out of the Toronto Film Festival, where it made its world premiere. It hits theaters on Sept. 17.

Tammy Faye Messner (nee Bakker) was unapologetically preposterous, a plucky performer who channeled her love of Jesus into puppet shows, televangelist talk shows, and a library of music albums. She did it all with her signature look of big hair, bold outfits, and makeup permanently tattooed around her eyes and mouth. To some (including many members of the LGBTQIA+ community), this made her a beloved icon of empowerment, individuality, and Christian love. To others (including a slew of late-night hosts), her eagerness and tackiness made her a perfect target for cheap punchlines. Even the 2000 documentary, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which aimed to reframe her story with in-depth interviews with the maligned woman herself, couldn’t help but mock her, offering jibes about her face and her “addiction” to Diet Coke. Now, that dated doc has been adapted into a biopic of the same name, starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as Messner and her first husband, Jim Bakker, respectively. While this version shows more compassion for its subject, it comes off more like a mumbled sermon than a powerful proclamation.

Screenwriter Abe Sylvia pulls heavily from the documentary. Excerpts of Messner’s talking head interviews are copied and pasted into dialogue. Scenes from Messner and Bakker’s television archives are re-enacted by Chastain and Garfield. Memorable caught-on-camera sequences from the doc — like an awkward makeover moment and an excruciatingly embarrassing TV pitch meeting — are doggedly dramatized. Between these cherrypicked bits, Sylvia fills in the blanks of her childhood, her alarmingly short courtship with Bakker, and the trouble in paradise that lived behind the scenes of their television/real estate empire.

In these sections, factual accuracy is frequently ignored in favor of poetic license. For instance, a chipper college-going Tammy Faye excitedly tells her new crush Jim about how she’s the oldest of eight children. In real life, Bakker didn’t know she had siblings until after they’d married. It’s a strange fact to change, as it might have reflected the hastiness of their nuptials better than Sylvia’s method: a quick scene of guilt-ridden dry-humping, followed by a comedy cut of the pair married. Sex is slathered throughout the film, likely intended to bring some sweaty humanity to the pair’s squeaky clean (pre-scandal) image. Though arguably salacious, these scenes do help ground Tammy Faye as a woman of more than joy, but also of wants and desires that were increasingly ignored by her spouse.

The more startling changes from the doc are all the things Sylvia’s script chooses to leave out. Covering from 1957 to 1999, The Eyes of Tammy Faye’s plotline might have included her marriage to Roe Messner, her cancer diagnosis, and/or her return to television. However, all are oddly omitted from this story. Even her life-changing rehab stint is reduced to a single line of dialogue. Perhaps this was so the film could center not so much on Messner’s life but on her tumultuous relationship with Bakker. After all, this is where the most Oscar-baiting drama might be found, both in lusty pep talks in a golden bathroom and screaming matches over ambition, affluence, and Satan’s influence. Regrettably, Messner’s resilience isn’t properly showcased when you skip so many of her most challenging struggles.

Still, it’s easy to see why Chastain would want the role of Tammy Faye. Sylvia’s script does deliver a showcase role that allows her to sing, weep, giggle, and play a character who is a mix of sunshine and worried mob wife. Lifting her pitch to a Messner-like trill and saddling on a prosthetic jawline to better resemble the Midwestern preacher, Chastain is nearly unrecognizable. But there’s much more than these flashy transformations at play. Chastain gracefully charts the highs and lows of Tammy Faye over the course of decades. With a broad smile and penetrating stare, she smoothly embodies the impetuous youth of a newlywed, then the heartache of a wife fearing she’s losing her partner’s interest, then the inner fire of a survivor who must rebuild her life.

Garfield matches her for energy, and brings a boyish charm to Jim, which helps sell their initial attraction. His performance slyly slides into slimy terrain, as Jim’s big smile becomes less and less convincing while begging his public for pledges. However, their chemistry can’t keep this film from feeling woefully clunky. Callously dancing around Jessica Hahn’s allegations of rape against Jim Bakker, The Eyes of Tammy Faye focuses on how the fraud accusations broke their marriage. Not so surprisingly, a drama about real estate crime isn’t all that exciting. The film plows through plot points with a garish assault of montages, featuring news coverage and shocking headlines, overlaid by Chastain doing another Messner song number. Thus, the trauma of her life turns achingly episodic, her pain once more papered over by flashy spectacle.

Director Michael Showalter has made his name writing or directing envelope-pushing comedies like the raunchy parody Wet Hot American Summer, the tragedy-grounded rom-com The Big Sick, and the darkly funny Search Party. But he seems in over his head juggling essential factual details, expected biopic backstory, highlights from the namesake documentary, poignant drama, and a handful of laughs. Sweeping cinematography from Mike Gioulakis (Us, Under the Silver Lake, It Follows) gives the film a look of prestige, coming off as important, gorgeous, and thoughtful. It’s an attention-grabbing aesthetic that could court Academy voters, but ultimately this biopic feels uncertain about what it wants to say about Tammy Faye.

The jibes at her appearance are still made, by strangers or foes instead of the filmmakers. Sequences about her activism — including her groundbreaking interview with a gay AIDS patient in the middle of the AIDS epidemic — paint her as a warrior for social justice. Still, there’s a wobbliness when addressing her agency within the marriage, the TV network, and the financial fraud. The film seems so earnest to celebrate Tammy Faye that it commits the biopic sin of glossing over her flaws. All of her mistakes are portrayed so sympathetically that they seem almost inevitable, and therefore excusable. While well-intentioned, this perspective feels frustratingly fawning and pandering. It’s been 14 years since her death, and filmmakers still can’t grapple with the true complexity of Tammy Faye, a woman who was far from perfect but still divine.

Carnage is joining Fortnite’s Battle Pass as part of its brand new Chapter 2, Season 8, which launches today.

The addition of the Marvel villain’s character skin is just one of a number of changes making their way to the Battle Royale as players set out to face a brand new threat attempting to bring about the destruction of the island.

…Strange things have been happening on the Island while you were asleep.

Chapter 2 Season 8 – 9.13.21https://t.co/pGMbkgkhNM pic.twitter.com/Z6wtdTqMw3

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 13, 2021

The end of Fortnite’s last season brought with it the destruction of the alien mothership in Operation Sky Fire. As a result, the cubes that powered the ship were sent tumbling down toward the ground, causing a new wave of terror to sweep the map.

Now crashlanded, Season 8 of the Battle Royale delivers further on that threat as the cubes have begun creating a range of anomalies across the map. At various locations across the island, the anomalies themselves open up gateways to a monster-filled dimension called, ‘Sideways’ – a name that certainly feels like it gives off huge Stranger Things’ upside down vibes.

As part of the game’s monster-filled season, a new character skin brings Kletus Cassady’s symbiote alternate Carnage into the game as a Battle Pass reward. While fans will likely be eager to enter the island as the famed Spider-Man foe, doing so will require a little bit of work. In order to unlock Carnage, players will need to complete quests and wipe out enough players to garner the XP required to reach the skin where it is positioned at the end of this season’s Battle Pass.

Carnage’s inclusion in the game comes just weeks before the theatrical release of Tom Hardy’s Venom sequel, in which Woody Harrelson portrays the alternate symbiote as the film’s formidable villain. The character also marks the latest in a number of Marvel-based collaborations to make it into Fortnite in recent seasons. In a list that includes Wolverine, Groot, Thor, Iron Man, and Venom, Carnage should feel very at home when entering the Fortnite map for the first time.

On top of Fortnite’s latest Marvel crossover, the Season 8 Battle Pass for Fortnite features a number of other character skins that fans can unlock including Imagined Order agent Kor; Fabio Sparklemane, a shredded anthropomorphic horse-like being with rainbow coloured hair, and a paintable cartoon version of the game’s iconic mascot Fishstick known as Toona Fish.

For more on Fortnite, make sure to check out our dedicated page for the game where you can read more on a range of the Battle Royale’s latest news. Alternatively, to catch up on the game’s story so far, you can check out more in the trailer for Season 8 below:

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s soccer team, Wrexham AFC will unexpectedly be playable in FIFA 22.

One of the more weird yet wonderful stories to come out of the world of Welsh sport this year arrived when Hollywood duo Reynolds and McElhenney became owners of Wrexham AFC, the oldest professional Welsh football club. The team, which currently plays in the fifth tier of the English football league system, has now become a surprise addition to this year’s edition of FIFA.

While the game generally only includes teams as far down as English Football’s League Two (confusingly, the fourth tier of the English football league system) Wrexham AFC has been added to the game under its ‘Rest of World’ category, among other teams that don’t fit into any of the other leagues that the game already includes. Following the team’s inclusion in the game, Reynolds and McElhenney took to Twitter to announce the news in a typical comedic fashion.

This is a statement from the press office of Wrexham AFC regarding #FIFA22

“We’re in the game”.

Ends.@EASPORTSFIFA

🔴⚪️ #WxmAFC pic.twitter.com/88tYTs2lkX

— Wrexham AFC (@Wrexham_AFC) September 12, 2021

EA sports confirmed in a press release that the company’s partnership with Wrexham AFC will span multiple years, beginning in FIFA 22, with the team available for players to use in kick-off mode. Despite ‘Rest of World’ teams not typically available for use in career mode, previous titles have allowed players to move teams between leagues, meaning that it is likely that players would be able to move Wrexham into League Two should they wish to begin their journey into management with the Red Dragons.

The partnership between EA and Wrexham is set to extend off the pitch as well. According to the press release, EA Sports will begin work in the local community through an initiative with Wrexham Glyndwr University. The company will also provide a community lounge at the club’s stadium.

“It’s great to be partnering with Wrexham AFC and to support the club’s commitments to the Wrexham community and its fans,” said EA Sports VP of Brand, David Jackson. “We’re excited to launch innovative community projects in collaboration with the Club, and for Wrexham fans to experience playing with their side in FIFA 22 when the game releases later this month.”

In addition to the inclusion of Wrexham in its latest iteration, this year’s installment of EA’s FIFA series will also allow you to create your very own team that can be used in the game’s career mode. Player-created clubs will be available in Manager Career mode and can be added to any of the game’s many leagues. When adding a team to a league, your created club will replace an existing club. In an amusing turn of events, the replaced club will then be demoted into the ‘Rest of World’ category where it will join none other than Wrexham AFC.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Marvel Studios has released the first trailer for Hawkeye, the fourth live-action MCU show headed for Disney Plus.

The studio unwrapped the first full trailer for Hawkeye on Monday, offering fans a closer look at the Avenging archers in action, with Jeremy Renner returning as Clint Barton and Hailee Steinfeld making her MCU debut as Kate Bishop, a Hawkeye-in-training, in this episodic spin-off of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Check out the action-packed preview below:

The trailer sees Barton trying to get back to his family in time for Christmas, with the help of Bishop, a 22-year-old archer with dreams of becoming a Super Hero. As the footage teases (and per Marvel’s synopsis), the two are forced to work together when a presence from Barton’s past threatens to derail far more than the festive spirit.

Along with Hawkeye’s festive-themed trailer, Marvel also shared a brand new poster for the series, showing Barton, Bishop and Lucky the Pizza Dog walking the snowy streets of New York City. “This holiday season the best gifts come with a bow,” reads the tagline on the one-sheet that teases holiday hijinks in the six-episode season.

It’s one thing to call a game “small,” maybe referring to its length or something about its quaint aesthetics. But TOEM, a game about the joy of photography, is small in the way a snow-topped winter cabin is small, or a sleeping cat is small, or a plate of cube-shaped cheeses and nicely sliced meats is small. It’s small in totality; pristine, complete, and precise. It’s perfect for snuggling under a blanket on a quiet evening with a scented candle and a mug of cocoa to finish in one contented sitting.

TOEM starts with smallness in premise: a young protagonist, equipped only with a camera given to them by their mother and a pair of clogs, is now old enough to journey through their little top-down, black-and-white world to see the sights, take photos, and finally witness TOEM’s titular phenomenon: a spectacle described in the opening minutes with awe-struck vaguery. After departing from their quiet hometown, they visit adorably diverse areas including a dense forest with a woodland hotel, a seaside town featuring both sunny beaches and stormswept coastline, a bustling city full of rushed business folk, and a snowy mountain peak, helping members of the community with their camera along the way.

The initial camera functions are simple ones: you can zoom in and out, or flip it to take a selfie. Later, it gets a little bit deeper when you get a tripod that lets you set up specific shots, and a horn you can honk to elicit goofy reactions from your subjects. Rain, snow, and mud can spatter your camera lens, though certain items or interactions will clear this problem up if you don’t like it. Beyond these, don’t expect more elaborate photo editing tools from TOEM — but of course, just five minutes with it is enough to know that fancy camera functions would be utterly beside the point.

TOEM doesn’t gamify its photography further than “take a photo of this” to solve a puzzle or progress forward. There’s no photo scoring and no Pokemon Snap-like rarity system. In a different kind of photo game, this simplicity might have been a disappointment, but for the most part I didn’t miss it in TOEM. The cute, humorous scenarios TOEM rewarded my curiosity with were almost always satisfying enough without having to try and set up some perfect shot, and even without a quest or a reward to motivate me, I often found myself framing goofy selfies with characters and places I liked just because I wanted to.

Good photos tell stories, and good photo-taking games tell many stories; therefore, TOEM is a very good photo-taking game. Though its bookend areas are short by storytelling necessity, the rest are densely packed, intricate, and diorama-like in their design, giving the feel of playing around with an exceedingly well-made set of paper dolls or a 3D comic book. Each map is stuffed with pleasant moments featuring characters like a grouchy newspaper boss who’s rightfully proud of his mustache, a balloon family celebrating a birthday, or a DJ moose performing one heck of a set to an audience of glow stick-waving fans. The busy-ness of one or two areas (specifically ones with intense weather) did start to noticeably cause the game to chug on the Switch, but this was limited to those locations and was only a brief, minor annoyance.

There are longer stories, too, like the investigator you run into in each town who’s after a shady character hiding in the scenery, or a series of ghosts tired of having to do everything for themselves. Most of TOEM’s encounters happily marry the ordinary with either myth or absurdity, elevating day-to-day moments by asking you to look a little closer through a camera lens and appreciate the ways in which an army of ants might be just as delightful as a towering snow monster.

Many of these little photographed stories are useful for moving forward, as community service is rewarded with free bus rides to the next area. You’ll have to help out a handful of folk in each area through photo taking, fetch quests, or exploration in order to reach your eventual goal. For instance, you might need to use your zoom lens to identify all the items gumming up the machinery in a power plant to get a bridge to lower, find a lost dog, or take photographs of a snowman’s scattered body parts for an upset snowman builder. You’re free to take on whichever tasks you want to reach the quota for moving on, so if you get stuck on one it’s simple enough to just swap your focus to something else. But TOEM’s humorous, grounded writing was so enjoyable and its characters so silly and pleasant that I was eager to try and finish every possible task presented to me just to see all its world had to offer.

And it was easy to go beyond even that, as TOEM also comes with a short list of achievements, collectible clothing items, a critter compendium you can fill with photos of cats, dogs, bugs, and other animals, and plenty of surprising photo interactions to stumble across as you go. You can also collect a number of catchy, soothing music tracks from composers Launchable Socks and Jamal Green, which will dip in and out as you wander through the world and offer both musical accompaniment and also, critically, occasional silence to appreciate TOEM’s superb sound design.

All together, I only spent about three hours finishing TOEM’s story and an extra hour after that finding every last secret. I could have happily stayed longer, but TOEM was such a precise, neatly wrapped little box of a game that I feel greedy asking for more. It’s complete in a way I feel games often struggle to be, like a rare TV show that ends exactly how the writers intended after just a season or two, or a tasty meal that’s filling rather than stuffing. I think there’s something brave and wonderful about wanting to make something that is deliberately small in an industry where padded length and grand scope and scale are often equated with value by many people. I love walking away from a game feeling this content.