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Featured Fantasy by Sub-Genres

“Stardust” Remembers That Fantasy Should Be a Little Messy

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A fantasy movie can survive a lot if it remembers to have a pulse.

“Stardust” has one. It is romantic, strange, silly, occasionally uneven, and full of characters who act like the magical world has been running on bad decisions for generations. That is part of its charm. The movie does not present fantasy as a pristine museum of chosen ones and sacred objects. It gives us witches chasing youth, princes murdering each other over inheritance, pirates with better emotional range than expected, and a young man who begins the story with terrible romantic judgment.

Tristan starts out chasing the wrong woman, which is honestly useful. He is not introduced as a hero with ancient wisdom hiding under his village-boy haircut. He is young, eager, and foolish enough to think bringing Victoria a fallen star will earn him love. That kind of grand gesture is embarrassing in real life and extremely convenient in a fantasy plot.

Then he finds Yvaine.

Claire Danes gives Yvaine a nice sharpness. She is a star, yes, but she is also annoyed, injured, sarcastic, and fully aware that being treated like a prize is humiliating. Her chemistry with Tristan grows out of irritation first, which I prefer. They do not meet and instantly become a glowing romance poster. They bicker, misread each other, get dragged through danger, and slowly become better company than either of them planned.

Michelle Pfeiffer is having a fantastic time as Lamia. The movie gives her beauty, vanity, cruelty, desperation, and enough theatrical wickedness to keep the whole thing from becoming too soft. Her pursuit of youth has fairy-tale logic, but Pfeiffer plays it with real hunger. She is glamorous and disgusting in the same breath, which is the correct energy for a witch who would absolutely ruin your life to fix a wrinkle.

The princes are another pleasure. Their family dynamic is murder with paperwork. Every brother seems to understand the succession process as an invitation to remove relatives by any available method. It is dark, but played with enough dry humor that the brutality turns almost bureaucratic. These men are not noble rivals. They are inheritance goblins in good coats.

Robert De Niro’s Captain Shakespeare is the part people tend to remember, and for good reason. The performance is broad, but it is broad with purpose. He turns what could have been a throwaway pirate gag into one of the movie’s warmer detours. His ship gives Tristan and Yvaine space to change, and it gives the film a chance to become unexpectedly tender without losing its absurdity.

The movie is not elegant in the way some fantasy films are elegant. It has patches where the tone wobbles. Some jokes land better than others. Some effects carry that very specific mid-2000s sheen. The whole thing can look expensive in one scene and oddly cramped in another. I do not mind that much. “Stardust” has enough personality to survive its uneven surfaces.

What I appreciate is the way the film treats romance as a correction of appetite. Tristan begins by wanting love as proof of status. He wants Victoria because she represents an upgraded version of himself. His journey with Yvaine forces him to become less interested in being admired and more capable of seeing another person clearly. That is a better romantic arc than a hundred polished declarations under moonlight.

The ending is sweeter than I usually tolerate, but the film earns most of it. By then, the world has given us murder, vanity, greed, transformation, flying ships, family rot, and a star who just wanted to stop being hunted by everyone with an agenda. A little storybook closure does not feel like a betrayal. It feels like the movie admitting it was sincere all along, even while wearing a crooked grin.

“Stardust” is not flawless fantasy. It is better than that in some ways. It is lively, odd, romantic, funny, and just rough enough around the edges to feel handmade rather than embalmed. I miss this type of fantasy movie, the kind that lets adventure, comedy, danger, and romance share the same road without sanding every strange corner down.

Fantasy Recommendation

“MoonFu” Wants to Make Phone Entertainment Feel Safe Again

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The phone is not going anywhere, and family entertainment needs to deal with that reality instead of pretending kids are not watching stories vertically already.

That is where “MoonFu” has a clean and timely angle. The animated family adventure from creator David Santo is built for phone-first viewing, with a G-rated, mom-approved world designed to feel fun, safe, and emotionally useful for young audiences.

The newly shared “MoonFu” Short gives a fast look at that mission:

In the video description, the project is described as “an animated family adventure made for your phone,” with a direct nod to vertical video viewers. That positioning matters because “MoonFu” is not treating the phone like an enemy. It is treating the phone like the place where families already are, then asking what kind of story deserves to be there.

The series follows MoonFu, a karate-loving, jetpack-wearing, disco-dancing owl prince living in the fantastical realm of Featherfell. When he discovers that his father, King Talon, plans to steal a life-giving diamond from a hidden owl civilization, MoonFu is forced into a choice between serving his kingdom and saving an entire society.

That setup gives the show a bigger emotional frame than the character description alone suggests. The owl prince may be funny, colorful, and easy to market, but the story underneath is about courage, kindness, connection, and doing the right thing when pressure is coming from close to home.

The official MoonFu site expands on the series’ family-safe universe and prosocial focus: https://moonfustudio.com/

“MoonFu” is designed for kids ages 6 to 11 while also reaching mobile-native viewers through vertical pacing, humor, action, and emotional depth. The series is also endorsed by KidsFirst.org, adding another layer to its positioning as age-appropriate entertainment for families.

Santo has described the project as “Kung Fu Panda, but with talking owls,” which works because it gives the viewer an instant sense of the energy. Martial arts, comedy, animal adventure, heart, and a young hero learning who he is all live inside that comparison.

Episodes drop June 10 on Loopremium, giving “MoonFu” a vertical streaming home that matches the way the project is being presented. Loopremium can be found at https://loopremium.com/

The strongest thing about “MoonFu” may be that it does not sound afraid to be sincere. It is strange, bright, and owl-powered, but its promise is simple: families deserve stories that lift kids up instead of adding more stress to the screen.

Thriller

Nobody Knows You’re Here by Bryn Greenwood 

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A desperate woman fights to escape captivity in this gripping thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.

Beatrice is about to lose everything when a kind stranger offers her a cup of coffee and a job. It seems like a promise of a better life . . . until she wakes up under lock and key in an isolated mansion in the woods.

On orders from a shadowy criminal organization, armed jailers make the rules for their captives, enforcing them with unflinching violence. Beatrice has always been a “nice girl,” but that won’t save her now. Nobody helped her when she lost her job, her car, and her home, and nobody’s coming to give back her freedom. The only person she can rely on is herself. And now, several child hostages are relying on her too.

When the situation gets more dire—deadly even—Beatrice has to become the hero she and her fellow prisoners need. To escape she’ll have to outsmart her captors and do terrible things that would horrify her former self. If she succeeds, there’s no telling who she’ll be when the ordeal comes to an end.

Fantasy Recommendation

Star and Symbols by Logan Munger

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A thousand years after a global nuclear war, ice sheets reclaim the land as they did over ten thousand years ago. Armies hundreds of thousands strong mobilize once more, nations of millions reigniting long-held rivalries.

In what was once the western half of the great American nation, several new nations rise from the ruins, forging a future with ancient technology. Echoing the Roman Republic’s rise, they seek to expand their influence and territory, their petty rivalries and squabbles escalating. A dispute between two old rivals over the continent’s most fertile region sparks a continent-wide war.

Eight figures will shape and direct the war to its conclusion. Nithya Muirjawa-Sasfoz, princess of Cascadia, Ernesto Saranta, senator of California, and his daughter Yaniya Saranta, Etzli Cuauhtli, ambassador of Aztlan, Adhika Mahalia-Cruize, princess of Honolulu, Hengist Nilsulsa, warrior of Mydakona, brothers George and Liam Andsen, deer-herders of Sedaserii. Each will alter the war’s trajectory, impacting the others and their own people. In the end, only one survives.

In the first book, these figures are fully introduced, their stories beginning. The decisions each makes in the conflict’s first year are revealed, with consequences unfolding before their eyes, more yet to come in other books.

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Humor and Conservation Meet in “Never Only”

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Laurie Fairchild’s debut novel Never Only pairs a serious environmental question with a sense of humor, which may be one of the most appealing things about it. The book asks readers to imagine Mother Nature weighing Humanity’s future, but it does not approach that idea as a cold exercise.

Instead, Mother Nature is presented as someone who has spent millennia learning from life on Earth and grieving the loneliness left behind by mass extinctions. Wanting clarity about Humanity’s intentions, she enlists a therapist to help her decide whether one species may need to be sacrificed to save the rest.

The novel comes from a writer whose life has been shaped by the natural world in a very direct way. Fairchild is a Cheyenne resident and biologist who earned a Bachelor’s degree in Animal Science from the University of Wyoming and a Master’s in Water Resources Science from the University of Minnesota. Her career began in Alaska during the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, continued through seabird productivity work on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, and later extended into a range of positions with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. She retired in 2019 as a habitat and wildlife biologist working with landowners in Minnesota.

Never Only is out today, which gives its Earth Day release a built-in relevance. It is not hard to see why a novel centered on conservation and life diversity would choose this date to enter the world.

Readers in Cheyenne can also catch the release event today from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. The evening includes a reading, refreshments, books for purchase, and a guided tour of the Botanic Garden Conservatory. Venue details are available at botanic.org.

Fairchild’s childhood adds one more layer to the picture. She grew up moving around the country with her family while her father worked as a geologist building and repairing large dams, and much of that life unfolded in rural places that helped shape her love of horses, the outdoors, and exploring habitats.

Book link

horror

Black Hollow Pictures Expands Brandon Alvis’ Work Into a Dedicated Production Structure

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Black Hollow Pictures represents a shift toward a more structured production approach for filmmaker Brandon Alvis.

The company is designed to develop projects that combine historical context with investigative storytelling, working across both documentary and narrative formats.

Its current slate includes Until They Are Found, which follows efforts to locate forgotten graves, shaped by a discovery tied to a Civil War hospital.

The Fear Room documents filmmaker Nathan Withers and investigator Beth Huffman as they enter the Olde Park Hotel and conduct their own investigation.

Ghosts of the Gold Rush explores accounts connected to California’s Gold Rush era.

Phantom of the Blazing Eye is a narrative set in 1875, where a young understudy investigates events tied to a reported figure associated with death.

Dark Fantasy, Featured Fantasy by Sub-Genres

Brushed by Moonlight by  Anna Lowe

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Welcome to Château Nocturne, where magic lingers, temptation simmers, and shifters guard their secrets.
What’s a girl to do when she inherits a crumbling château in a remote corner of France? Mina plans to rent out a few rooms, fix the place up, and not think too hard about what comes next. But her new tenants, four dangerously attractive “bodyguards,” aren’t just looking for a private place to train. They’re supernaturals on the run from their pasts: a lazy lion shifter, a touchy tiger, a stormy-eyed dragon, and a thirsty vampire. In no time, they’ve aroused the suspicion of Clement, local hottie/police officer/overprotective wolf shifter — and aroused all kinds of sensations in Mina too…

Between dodging flirtations, mediating shifter standoffs, and plugging leaky roofs, Mina has her hands full, as well as her own secrets to protect. Because she hasn’t just inherited an estate — she’s also inherited her ancestors’ unpredictable magical powers.

When a mission takes the group from the vineyards of Burgundy to the sun-drenched cliffs of Mallorca in search of a stolen masterpiece, dark forces close in, enemies turn to allies, and passion blazes. Mina soon realizes the real treasure might not be a priceless Van Gogh, but the growly shifter ready to sacrifice everything for her. But when truth and lies blur — in art, in life, and in love — can Mina trust her heart to navigate the treacherous gray in between?

horror

Six Stories, One Book, and a Lot of Damage Sitting Under the Surface

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R. Jacob Honeybrook’s “Books for the Broken” is officially out now, bringing together six stories that were previously available in digital form and giving them a shared home in one collected release.

For horror readers, that alone makes this worth paying attention to. There is a different feeling when separate pieces are pulled together under one title. You start to see the patterns more clearly. In this case, the pattern looks pretty grim in a good way.

The collection spans psychological horror and bleak crime noir. Across the book, the characters move through places that already sound unstable before anything even happens: foggy woods, neon-soaked cities, desert highways, broken memories. There are people running from old damage and people trying to claw their way toward redemption, but nobody sounds safe in here.

Honeybrook started writing in 2018 and published “April Awakening” in 2020. That story now sits inside this collection with “Devils in the Night,” “Roadkill Blues,” “New Year’s Killin’ Eve,” “When We Once Loved,” and “Thaddeus Greene’s Spooktacular House of Horrors.”

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He has said this book is the result of years of hard work, and he has also been direct about how difficult the early road was. Rejection was part of that story. So was persistence.

There is another layer to the release because Honeybrook is not only a fiction writer. He also co-hosts the award-winning “Midnight Terrors Podcast” with Kevin Roche, where horror films and genre guests are part of the conversation, and he writes the “Honeycut” column for TBM Horror.

Featured Fantasy by Sub-Genres

The Forsaken King by Penelope Barsetti

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Ivory:

I see him watch me.

Everywhere I go—he follows.

He’s one of my father’s guards at the castle. Goes by the name Mastodon.

There’s something about him I don’t like, but my warnings are never taken seriously. But I bet if my brother voiced the same concerns that would be no issue…just because he has balls and I don’t.

Well, I have bigger balls than he ever will.

When I leave for the Capital, Mastodon escorts me. And just as I feared, he kills my guards and captures me.

At least he tries to capture me. There’s a lot of running and chasing. I land an arrow right in his neck, but it does nothing. It’s like he doesn’t even feel it.

He takes me into a cavern and we descend deep underground—to the Bottom of the Cliffs. Then he tells me why he’s doing this.

Because my family took everything from him—and now he’s about to do the same.


Mastodon:

Her father murdered mine then raped my mother—and forced me to watch.

Then he pushed us over the cliff—to our deaths.

But we survived—and now we’re ready for revenge.

She’s the key to that. After she helps us get what we need, I’ll hang her by her pretty neck and watch her take her last breath.

I steal her from Delacroix—and of course, she fights me the whole way. Not just with her fists, but her mouth too.

If she wasn’t my pawn, I might actually like her.

When I hand her over to my mother, I realize she has far more sinister plans. She tells me to do exactly what her father did—and force her.

That’s not the kind of man I am, so the answer is no.

But then she asks Geralt—the most barbaric man I’ve ever met.

So I volunteer—because I know she’d rather it be me than anyone else.

horror

“A Cursed Man” Lands Free on YouTube and Tubi After Building Strong Audience Attention

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“A Cursed Man” is now available to stream for free on YouTube Movies and Tubi TV, giving more viewers access to a documentary that has already stirred a lot of interest online and across genre media.

Directed by Liam Le Guillou, the film follows a dangerous premise. While exploring witchcraft and the occult, he sets out to answer whether magic is real by asking dark magic practitioners to place a curse on him. That decision turns the documentary into something far more personal, as the experience pushes him into deeper questions about belief, fear, and reality itself.

The release comes after a solid stretch of momentum. The film’s social video content has pulled in more than 10 million views, and conversations around the experiment have continued across TikTok and Instagram. It was also an Official Selection at Dances With Films in New York.

The film is produced by Second Shot Films and RobbinsCage. Le Guillou wrote, directed, and produced the project, while Michael Steven Robbins served as executive producer. Nigel Levy is credited as story producer and Blake Horn as cinematographer.

That attention carried into platform performance as well. “A Cursed Man” reached the number one rented or purchased documentary position on Apple TV in the US and Canada, along with six other countries. It also climbed to number three across all independent films.