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    Movie Review

    Spielberg's Ready Player One goes back to the future with '80s nostalgia

    Alex Bentley
    Mar 29, 2018 | 1:21 pm
    Spielberg's Ready Player One goes back to the future with '80s nostalgia
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    How you feel about Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, Ready Player One, will likely depend on when you grew up. With a heavy focus on pop culture of a certain era and the recent trend toward all-encompassing video games, the film will be enjoyed greatly by particular generations, but perhaps leave others befuddled and cold.

    Set in a semi-dystopian 2045, the world has apparently turned so dire that nearly everybody spends their days in the virtual reality world called the OASIS. Wade (Tye Sheridan) — known as Parzival in the OASIS — has discovered that anything is possible in that world, as long you have the skills to continue without “zeroing out,” aka losing all your digital currency.

    The recently deceased creator of the OASIS, Halliday (Mark Rylance), has hidden a series of Easter eggs that will give the person who discovers all of them power over the virtual world. Parzival is one of many gamers in search of the hidden prizes, along with Aech/Helen (Lena Waithe) and Art3mis/Samantha (Olivia Cooke). Trying to get there before them is corporate overlord Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), who utilizes his own virtual army in the pursuit.

    Based on the book by Ernest Cline (who also serves as co-writer of the film), the movie is unabashed in its love of almost anything that entered pop culture between 1978 and 1991. In the context on screen, that admiration makes sense as Halliday grew up in that time period and thus filled the OASIS with things from his childhood. Parzival, who reveres Halliday, has taken a shine to many of the same things despite having grown up 50 years later.

    The level of detail the film uses to indicate this devotion is staggering. There are so many references that it would be impossible to catch them all without the benefit of a pause button. You could call it nostalgia overkill, except that, for the most part, the film doesn’t get bogged down in the references. Yes, they are ever-present and there are certain sequences where they play an integral part of the plot, but they also usually feel organic to the story at hand.

    That’s because the film also immerses itself in the gamer culture that has popped up in the last 10 years or so, one that is nothing but self-referential. If you can do anything in the OASIS, it makes perfect sense that players would want to use or build certain pop culture items that they loved or that they think would impress other players.

    Still, the onslaught can get a bit wearing, as can the sheer amount of exposition that Wade and others must impart to make the story intelligible. Surprisingly, what doesn’t wear out its welcome is the computer-generated imagery, which easily comprises 70 percent of the film. Spielberg and his crew seamlessly transition in and out of the virtual world, making the characters’ avatars and everything else in the OASIS feel as natural as anything in the real world.

    The performances are somewhat hit-and-miss. Sheridan and Cooke are the only actors who get to act close to the same both in and out of the OASIS, so they come off the best. Rylance plays the socially awkward Halliday well, but a little of him goes a long way. Mendelsohn is naturally intimidating, so why he or someone else chose to saddle him with unsightly and speech-impeding fake teeth is beyond me.

    Unlike many of his recent films, Spielberg clearly set out to make Ready Player One as purely an entertaining experience. As long as you don’t try to overanalyze the innumerable references and just go with the flow, it’s a blast to watch.

    Tye Sheridan in Ready Player One.

    Tye Sheridan in Ready Player One
    Photo by Jaap Buttendijk
    Tye Sheridan in Ready Player One.
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    Gymnastics news

    Simone Biles' U.S. gymnastics crown passed to Plano champ Hezly Rivera

    Associated Press
    Aug 11, 2025 | 12:01 pm
    2025 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships
    Photo by Alicia Malnati/Getty Images
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    NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hezly Rivera was the fresh face a year ago. The newcomer. The teenager on a team of 20-something Olympic gymnasts, doing her best to absorb what she could from Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey, and Jordan Chiles.

    The one thing that stood out, even more than the sometimes otherworldly gymnastics, is the way her fellow gold-medal-winning teammates went about their business.

    “They looked so confident,” Rivera said. “They're like, ‘I’m going to go out and I'm going to hit.' It gave me that confidence as well.”

    Looks like it.

    The now 17-year-old who says she's paying no attention to the idea that she's the leader of the women's program in the early stages of the run-up to the 2028 Olympics certainly looks the part.

    Buoyed by a polished steadiness — and a beam routine that finally looked the way it does back home at her home gym, the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy in Plano — Rivera captured her first national title Sunday, August 10 at the U.S. Championships. Her two-day total of 112.000 was good enough to fend off a challenge from Leanne Wong and put her in excellent position to lead the four-woman American delegation at the world championships in Jakarta, Indonesia, in October.

    The U.S. title was passed to Rivera from the legendary Biles, who won her historic ninth U.S. Championship in Fort Worth in 2024. She is not currently competing.

    Simone Biles, Skye Blakely, Kayla DiCello Gold medalist Simone Biles (center), silver medalist Skye Blakely (left), and Kayla DiCello at 2024 U.S. Championships in Fort Worth's Dickies Arena. Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

    Rivera, by far the youngest member of the five-woman team that finished atop the podium in Paris a year ago, bounced back from a shaky performance at the U.S. Classic last month with the kind of measured, refined gymnastics that she attributed to simply “letting go” of whatever pressure she might feel as the lone Olympic gold medalist in a remarkably young field.

    “No matter how rough the competition is, I still can get back into the gym and work hard because all those months previously that I’ve been working hard, I know it’s going to show up eventually,” she said. “So it kind of just took a weight off my shoulders.”

    Rivera, at the very least, locked up a spot in the world championship selection camp next month. So did Wong, a four-time world championship medalist, budding entrepreneur and pre-med student who shows no signs of slowing down despite years of competing collegiately and at the elite level simultaneously.

    Asked how she juggles it all, the 21-year-old who insists she doesn't keep a planner said she lives by the motto “there's time for everything.”

    Joscelyn Roberson, a native of Texarkana and an Olympic alternate last summer, shook off an ankle injury suffered at the end of her floor routine to finish third as the three most internationally experienced athletes in the field looked ready to lead after spending most of the last Olympic quad learning from Biles and company.

    “You go from, ‘Oh you’re so young, you’re so young,’ to, ‘Oh, you are the older kid,’” the 19-year-old Roberson said. “People say, ‘How are you feeling?’ Like, I honestly don’t feel that different.”

    Two summers ago, Roberson was Biles' bouncy sidekick. Now she's among the leaders of the next wave.

    “I felt like more responsible to let the little, smaller, less experienced kids know it’s not the end of the day if you have a bad day or if you had one fall,” Roberson said. “I want to help them grow instead of think ‘I have to be perfect.’”

    Roberson then walked the walk. Or maybe limped the limp. She appeared ready to make it a three-woman race for first until she turned an ankle on the final tumbling pass of her floor routine.

    The rising sophomore at Arkansas gingerly continued on anyway. She gritted her way through her vault dismount, though the five-tenths (0.5) deduction for using an additional pad for her protection took her out of contention for the all-around.

    Hezly Rivera Plano's Hezly Rivera was the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team in Paris in 2024. Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

    Still, the victory hardly came easy for Rivera. She was pushed through four rotations by Wong, who started Sunday with a stuck Cheng vault and didn't relent over the course of two hours.

    Rivera responded each time — she posted the top scores on three of the four events — but it wasn't until she walked off the podium following her floor routine with victory in hand that she could relax.

    “Everything fell into place,” Rivera said. “I tried not to get too overwhelmed because nerves obviously can be there, especially when you know you’re in a spot to win a national title, but I just took all pressure off myself.”

    Skye Blakely of Dallas, a fellow WOGA gym trainee who was injured at the Olympic Trials in both 2021 and 2024, was sublime on both uneven bars and balance beam to put herself in consideration to make the world team.

    gymnasticssimone bilesawardshezly riveraplanoolympic coverageolympic trialssports
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