Worst of the Worlds (War of the Worlds review)
If you're a big hip hop fan, you might be considering watching Ice Cube's new disaster flick, War of the Worlds. We watched it so you don't have to.
Topics discussed:
- Quick snapshot of this disastrous disaster film
- Where this fits in the hip hop canon (it doesn't really)
- Fun facts about this tedious movie
- The impact this film might have
- Hilarious roasting by fans
Also check out:
National Geographic's series on UFOs is really good
Credits
Hip Hop Movie Club is produced by your HHMCs JB, BooGie, and DynoWright. Theme music by BooGie.
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Transcript
If you're a big hip-hop fan, you might be considering Ice Cube's new disaster flick, War of the Worlds.
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:This is Hip-Hop Movie Club, the show for serious hip-hop fans who want to deepen their cultural knowledge.
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:We've watched over 75 hip-hop themed films, and this episode
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:we will tell you if it's a brilliant disaster or just a disaster of dystopian proportions.
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:We'll give you a quick snapshot about this film, talk about where it fits in the hip-hop canon,
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:few fun facts, what kind of impact this film might have going forward, and what fans are saying.
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:Hip-hop legend Ice Cube takes on alien invaders in this wild
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:2025 “screenlife” adaptation that unfolds entirely through computer screens.
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:Playing a department of homeland security tech alongside Eva Longoria, Cube brings undeniable cultural weight to a film that has been heavily criticized, earning a brutal 4
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:% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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:Ouch.
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:Ouch!
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:Indeed!
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:It also stars Clark Gregg and it's directed by Rich Lee, most known for doing visual effects in the Tom Cruise blockbuster Minority Report and directed music videos for Black
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:Eyed Peas and Lana Del Rey.
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:So let's get right into this one.
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:Where does it fit in the hip hop film canon?
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:Very low.
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:in terms of how we define hip hop movies, hip hop movie has
one or more of the elements of hip hop, or it stars a hip hop actor legend, in this case
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:Ice Cube.
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:So in that regard, hip hop film, but you don't really see any of the cultural elements, because it's not really about hip hop.
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:It's a dystopian or apocalyptic film or attempts to be.
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:Right, there's no Aliens breakdancing.
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:There's no alien break dancing.
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:We probably should, that would have been a better improvement.
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:Yes, exactly.
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:So no real hip hop in this.
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:If you're looking for true hip hop, no, you will see Cube.
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:Yeah, there's no DJing or break dancing or rapping or even fashion or dance or anything.
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:none of that.
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:ah
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:even Cube this is not even the typical you know Cube that everyone knows this is like you know this is like if you took the Hulk and made him intelligent Hulk this is like
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:intelligent Cube it's like
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:That’s a good one.
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:We’re getting O'Shea Jackson instead of Ice Cube.
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:Right right, we got O’Shea.
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:Yeah, you're not going to see the charisma that you see in Boyz n the Hood, as Doughboy or in Friday or Are We There Yet?
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:any other movie.
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:Yeah, exactly.
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:So that's kind of, he's playing a father who's, he has a high profile job, it's very stressful.
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:So he's trying to balance that.
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:But there's a lot of flaws in this film.
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:Some other...
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:fun facts or notes.
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:I noticed because I have kids around the age that grew up with that Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, there was Mark who plays Cube's daughter's fiance.
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:He plays Rodrick in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and he's a goofy guy in that as well.
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:So he has that, he's kind of cast type of this like goofball type figure, kind of likable, but kind of odd.
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:And he plays the same role in this one.
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:Yeah, Devon Bostick.
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:Yeah, I liked his character.
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:Yeah.
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:He was a, he had all of the good intentions.
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:You know, you could tell that he definitely cared about Faith, who's the daughter.
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:He cared about her and the lengths that he went through to not only get to her, but to be there for her and support her.
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:It was admirable, admirable character.
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:Mm-hmm.
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:Yep.
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:One of the few watchable things about this movie was the younger generation of people in this film.
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:Yeah, mean, Faith, Iman Benson, I wasn't familiar with her work and her brother, Cube's son, Henry Hunter Hall.
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:Yeah, they did a nice job.
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:They worked with what they were given.
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:Exactly.
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:Yeah.
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:But as far as the impact and legacy of this film, as we mentioned at the outset, it got very bad reviews and ratings.
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:And we were talking about this prior to recording.
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:This is a flawed film.
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:For me specifically, to watch an apocalyptic movie through computer monitors and pop-ups and screens, like I see pop-ups and screens all day.
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:I'm in IT operations.
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:So it's like,
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:When I want to sit down and watch a film, like that's the last thing I want to see.
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:It's a little bit overwhelming and I can't keep up with all the pop-ups.
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:It's like, okay, I'm clicking here, I'm clicking drone, because I get it.
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:Cube is an op.
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:He has all the toys.
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:He can control drones and all this type of stuff.
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:But I mean, it gets a little bit overstimulating and I really, I almost feel like I'm in a computer simulation of like a disaster rather than like getting the real feels of, wow,
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:the entire world is.
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:collapsing.
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:You only see it through what's going on on his screen as he's trying to control what he
can and dealing with his bosses and dealing with his family and then little clips from
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:CNN.
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:But you don't really get that feel from other apocalyptic movies like the despair and desperation of society.
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:Right.
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:And that's what kind of carried over from the other two adaptations that the original classic one that I remember watching as a kid and even the version that came out with Tom
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:Cruise at the helm.
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:Well, starring in it, was Steven Spielberg was at the helm, but Tom Cruise starred in it.
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:I mean, he basically it was similar in the fact that he was trying to focus on saving his family throughout the entire movie.
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:But.
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:You got to see the levels of destruction firsthand from him as he was seeing them.
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:So it was, you know, there's much more at stake than just watching, you know, as you say, watching pop-ups and clips from CNN, you seeing as things were actually happening right in
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:front of his face and he's running and actually dodging explosions and lasers and things coming after him, you know, trying to find him as he was hiding.
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:So yeah, this, it was, like you said, it was a little, little overwhelming, hard to keep
up with the pop-ups.
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:I mean, I watched it twice prior to the recording and both times I felt myself like, all right, you know, I remember we're seeing what popped up over here the second time.
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:was like, all right, I'm going to focus in the other corner because I saw what happened over there.
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:Let's what's going on in this corner because you try to focus on both.
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:You're to miss like whole conversations with it.
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:It's like zipping by, zipping by, zipping by.
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:Hmm.
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:And I felt like the dialogue was kind of lacking too.
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:And when you're seeing a lot of it, see Cube just reacting to the occurrence, you know,
the meteors and the aliens.
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:it's just like, oh no, oh yeah, run, stop.
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:It's like, it just didn't really do it for me.
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:Yeah, from that perspective, it's like.
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:Prior to recording I told you he decided to go for the gold. It was you!?
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:it was you!
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:Oscar worthy performance right there.
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:Oscar Mayer performance.
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:Get him, Cube!
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:You
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:Yeah.
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:is my man, shoutout to Ice Cube, that's my man right there.
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:Go with what you were given, you know?
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:Yeah.
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:Yeah, just hope that grandpa shark didn't jump the shark in this.
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:hope that he could come up with a bigger hit next time because this is again, it's getting really bad reviews.
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:And I tried to be as objective as I could and not just be a sheep and be like, yeah, it was terrible, it's terrible.
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:But the more I think about it, didn't keep my interest.
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:I watched a half hour of it one night and I was getting tired.
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:And I kind of shut it down and it was kind of a struggle to get through the rest of it.
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:Yeah, it was very much a struggle to get through.
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:I I stopped counting all the implausible things that happened in this movie.
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:I think the most plausible thing was there was an alien invasion.
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:Oh, man.
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:actually have some real alien things in this.
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:They showed it very quickly, but they mentioned Project Blue Book and they mention AATIP.
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:These are actual government programs that were studying and researching alien unexplained phenomena and UFOs.
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:So that part was authentic, but everything else was so implausible that, yeah.
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:I wonder why Amazon thought this was a good idea.
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:I mean, you what we all know why.
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:Product placement.
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:Product placement, yeah.
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:of a 90 minute commercial for Amazon Air Drones
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:Heck yeah man, drone saves the day baby!
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:drone saves the...
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:well, not to spoil it or anything, but the Amazon drone saves the day.
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:Yeah.
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:Yeah.
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:Yeah.
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:Amazon and the drone and there was a lot of product placement there.
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:Yeah.
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:um
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:man, even showed how good their um, their tape guns are.
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:know?
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:Need a tourniquet?
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:No problems.
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:Yeah.
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:Amazon is saving the world.
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:Okay.
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:And he even remember, I he controlled the Tesla remotely too and got it, got his daughter to safety, I guess, when she was, had that massive wound in her, in her leg.
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:It's like, okay, this Tesla too.
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:like, so now this is Elon and Jeff Bezos, right?
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:They need the benefit more.
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:Like they need more.
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:Come on now.
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:This all hinges on whether you can get access to your Facebook account.
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:So there's your Mark Zuckerberg.
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:There you go.
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:man, so...
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:And we all know that the big idea behind, you know, grabbing all that data was to spy on people's Amazon carts I mean, they mentioned it a couple of
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:Remember he influenced the guy on the street to flip over to drone?
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:I'm going to put an Amazon gift card in his...
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:I'm going to send him Amazon gift card.
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:yeah, yeah, a thousand dollar gift card.
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:Hey, I say a win is a win.
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:yeah.
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:Amazon gift money is real money.
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:Mm-hmm.
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:it is.
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:I mean, I'll flip the drone for that too.
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:Yeah.
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:I might have flipped it too hard and had to go back and flip it back up.
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:Oops, flipped it too hard.
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:is to flip their drones over so they can't flip over.
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:I think they haven't invented a way to flip them over.
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:Oh man.
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:But it was like over the top with, I saw Eva Longoria was like inspecting, she's in the data center and she's like, oh, look at this.
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:And this literal bugs like true, like blue bugs.
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:Oh, they're putting bugs into the servers.
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:It's like, okay, I see what you did there.
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:I see what you did there.
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:Literal bugs.
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:Oh man.
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:was this.
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:and there's like a punch in the nose.
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:There's a punch in the nose.
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:Nanobugs.
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:no subtlety at all.
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:Yeah, I was like the entire data center was infected.
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:was wondering how cube was still able to have his monitors up and running for that for that long.
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:I was like, all right, he over he's got.
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:Conveniently he has his son who hacked the system and was able to defeat all these government Firewalls and such so
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:exactly.
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:Yeah, they formed the event.
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:Yeah, man, his hacker team formed the Avengers.
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:Very convenient that his daughter was a brilliant cannibal coder and his son was a world class hacker.
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:Very convenient.
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:So compact.
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:Yeah, I mean.
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:I think Will Smith was the better world saver in Independence Day.
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:I don't know.
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:Who put them together?
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:Will Smith here and Ice Cube here.
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:Who saved the world better?
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:I mean, let's see, mean, Will had the, he got the opportunity to actually punch an alien in the face.
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:Yeah, man.
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:He jumped out, he got punched.
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:You know what they say?
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:Yeah, know, punks jump up to get beat down.
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:And that's an all time scene that's memorable.
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:Like there was not a lot of character development, not a lot of memorable scenes really.
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:was just much more of a plot with Independence Day.
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:That's why it was a blockbuster success.
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:And this one was direct to Prime Video.
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:Direct to Prime video, it almost feels like this could have been an AI type film.
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:Like create a film about the storyline of War of the Worlds, an apocalyptic movie, but do it from the purview of a Homeland Security tech op who's just monitoring it.
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:by the way, he has got family struggles where he's a widower and he's struggling to
maintain relationships with his family.
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:Exactly.
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:There was one line in the movie that I did, I really really really appreciated it.
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:I don't know if y'all guys caught it, but there was the line that popped up in Shall We Play a Game?
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:from War Games.
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:The War Games reference, I was like, gotta be kidding me.
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:Like really y'all threw that in there?
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:I love that movie.
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:I was like, all right, okay, y'all, I'll see what y'all did there.
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:Mm-hmm.
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:Yeah.
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:Yeah.
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:was delivering his attack report, he had to deliver the report.
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:He sounded quite robotic.
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:It was kind of like, you know, I forget the exact words, but it's like, we have been compromised and there is no way out at this point.
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:And I'm like, that's not Cube I mean, Cube is authentic.
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:He's genuine.
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:was like, this was a bad writing and bad directing.
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:was not, you know, he's so much better than what they gave him in this script.
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:Yeah.
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:he was on his report.
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:I shall we play a game?
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:Yeah, exactly.
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:He's doing the robot, all the work in all the wrong ways.
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:Yeah, exactly.
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:Yeah, he's stole a line from Ludacris in this movie too.
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:When he was running, trying to get down to that server room, they hit that move, get out the way.
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:I caught that too,
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:my god, I saw a funny meme the other day.
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:was Kermit the Frog, like looking out a window with, you know, this raining.
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:And he's like, I wonder if that B ever got out of the way of Ludacris.
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:You see that one?
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:yeah.
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:Oh, that's funny.
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:I probably liked it.
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:It came up in your algorithm or something.
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:Probably, yeah.
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:Yeah, that's great.
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:you know how they spy on us and connect everything It's all part of the Goliath network
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:That's right.
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:the Goliath
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:Mm-hmm Briggs turned out to be a bad guy, you know trying to violate everybody's first and fourth amendments Stuff meanwhile cube was spying on his daughter the whole time like in a
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:creepy fashion I'm like listen, I understand that your daughter is pregnant and you want
to keep an eye on her but this was even before the Alien invasion.
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:I think he's just like watching her every move.
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:I'm like, that's really creepy like Kind of turned me off.
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:Yeah Yeah, where's location?
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:Where's the fiance location?
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:Where's the location like you're
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:overdoing it with your technology,
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:Talk about invasions of privacy.
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:helicopter parent and then there's a cube vision.
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:It's Cube Vision!
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:A drone parent apparently.
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:helicopter parent would be an improvement on this.
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:I gotta read some of the titles of the reviews on IMDb.
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:First one says, Bore of the world.
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:man.
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:I like this even better.
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:Was this a student project?
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:You
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:One more, a sci-fi masterpiece for people who think Zoom fatigue is a genre by someone who
regrets having eyes.
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:Woof!
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:Woof!
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:Brutal.
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:Brutal.
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:This film got roasted.
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:I mean on the upside, it is up on Rotten Tomatoes.
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:It was zero.
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:It is up.
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:It's all the way up.
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:Started from the bottom, now we're still here.
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:Oh man.
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:You
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:Get low, get low, get low.
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:right my god
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:boy, woof!
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:Stinker, stinker.
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:So Boogie, for the 2025 version of War of the Worlds, bring that funky flick back or leave it in the vault.
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:Yeah, I've watched it twice.
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:stays in the vault.
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:laughter
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:I can't get that time back.
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:like I said, I love Cube, I love Eva Longoria.
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:mean, like we said, the younger generation in the film, had some little chops that they got to work with.
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:But yeah, it stays in that vault.
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:Bye.
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:Slam the door.
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:DynoWright for war of the worlds bring that funky flick back or leave it in the vault
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:I'm leaving this in the vault and deleting my vault.
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:I'm not putting this on my Amazon wishlist.
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:As for myself for this one, I will leave it in the vault and say bye Felicia.
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:Oh man.
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:oh
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:Oh man!
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:No good.
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:No bueno.
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:Man.
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:Yeah, probably the worst disaster movie that I've seen.
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:And I've seen a handful.
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:I'm not a super, super movie buff with all these types of disaster movies, but yeah, this was the worst one.
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:The way it was filmed, the dialogue, a lack of feeling that I get.
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:Like I wasn't connected to this.
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:The whole world's blown up and I feel like it's just like a
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:simulation or something.
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:Yeah.
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:I think Sharknado was like Citizen Kane compared to this.
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:man.
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:I don't know man.
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:I don't know if it was the worst one, I still think
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:That Dragon Wars movie was...
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:That movie still haunts me.
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:Hahaha!
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:That movie still haunts me man.
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:my God.
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:And I saw that back in like 2001 or 2002, something like that.
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:Whenever it came out, early 2000s.
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:trauma.
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:Seriously.
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:Thanks for tuning into the Hip Hop Movie Club Show.
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:I'm Dyno Wright, filmmaker, longtime hip hop fan, and I live 15 minutes from Grover's Mill, the scene of the great Orson Welles radio adaptation of this H.G.
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:Wells classic.
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:I'm JB, 80s and 90s nostalgia junkie, long time hip hop fan, and 123 and I come with the
wicked style and you know that I'm from the wicked crew.
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:Act like you knew, Cause I got everybody jumping to the voodoo kick it.
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:Yes sir, yes sir.
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:Yeah.
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:And I'm Boogie, a DJ, long time hip hop fan.
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:And I've seen all of the major film adaptations of World of Worlds, the classic 1953
version, the:
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:And the current one that we just talked about, which is the 2025 version.
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:Next week, in time for spooky season, a horror-infused hip-hop film.
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:And join us on Saturday, October 4th, at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas at SteelStacks
at Bethlehem, PA, as the Hip-Hop Movie Club teams up with the first Saturday horror series
345
:and hosts of the How Could You podcast for a special screening of Tales from the Hood.
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:You will not want to miss this spooktacular event.
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:And remember, don’t hate...postulate!
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:Ayyyy
