Valerie Ettenhofer
School
Saint Mary's College Of California
Expertise
The Last Of Us, Stranger Things, Streaming TV Shows
- A major "Avatar: The Last Airbender" fan since 2005, Valerie has previously ranked every episode of the series and even has a tattoo of the four element symbols.
- Valerie wrote an essay about the Nicolas Cage drama "Pig" – her favorite movie of 2021 – that appears in the 2023 Simon & Schuster anthology "Sad Happens."
- Valerie has previously served on the Critics Choice Awards TV comedy nominating committee, where she was thrilled to help highlight breakout performances from great shows like "Reservation Dogs" and "Abbott Elementary."
Experience
Valerie has been working professionally as an entertainment journalist since 2012, when she began freelance writing for her local college newspaper and quickly rose through the ranks to become editor-in-chief. After college, Valerie interned at the historic Roxie Theater in San Francisco, writing copy for their website and falling even more in love with film in the process. Since then, her work has appeared in print in the East Bay Express, as well as on websites like The Playlist, IGN, Dread Central, IndieReader, Movie Mezzanine, and more. Valerie is a voting member of the Critics Choice Association's TV and Documentary branches and the LGBTQ+ critics' circle, GALECA. For several years, she served as the head TV critic at Film School Rejects. She also publishes a weekly pop culture newsletter titled "Hey, What Are You Watching?"
Education
Valerie graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree from Saint Mary's College of California, where she studied English. Her film-heavy education allowed her to study special topics in pop culture, including independent film and the works of Alfred Hitchcock.
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Stories By Valerie Ettenhofer
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Agatha All Along features some fun nods to witchy media from the past in its credits sequence. Here are several of the biggest references.
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The first two episodes of Agatha All Along, which are now on Disney+, introduce Marvel characters the Salem's Seven. What's their deal?
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David Schwimmer once passed on one of Will Smith's best movies. Many years later, though, his decision still seems tricky to the Friends actor.
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It's clear that Star Trek veterans George Takei and William Shatner have a whole lot of baggage after decades of feuding in public.
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Parasite director Bong Joo-ho is finally back with the trailer for Mickey 17, his darkly funny and trippy sci-fi flick starring Robert Pattinson.
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Strangely enough, Gilligan's Island wasn't the first 1960s beach-themed project that actors Bob Denver and Tina Louise made together.
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The series finale of Evil ended with a wicked twist, and star Katja Herbers pushed to make it darker than originally planned.
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Steven Spielberg came close to meeting Alfred Hitchcock once. Here's what happened.
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While horror fans mourn the premature end of Evil, the show's co-creator has revealed what season 5 would have looked like.
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A new lawsuit accuses Netflix of stealing the plot of Squid Game from a 2009 Hindi-language movie called Luck, which also featured deadly games.
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1960s spy sitcom Get Smart spent several seasons mining the genre for laughs. Here's what the show's surviving major actors are up to now.
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Gilligan's Island star Jim Backus had a very prolific career, between his various TV shows and movies, comedy and novelty albums, and more.
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Netflix and Will Smith is a combination too irresistible for audiences to ignore, because a Smith-led animated film from the early 2000s is climbing the charts.
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All these years later, folks are still debating the ending of The Sopranos. In a new documentary, creator David Chase offers up a clue to what it all means.
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The trailer for the long-delayed Stephen King adaptation Salem's Lot is finally here for you to sink your teeth into.
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James Earl Jones never did his Darth Vader voice outside of the Star Wars films, save for one (highly amusing) occasion.
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Here's how James Gandolfini reacted to The Sopranos finale.
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Gilligan's Island star Dawn Wells lived a long and accomplished life, but she also had no problem with being best-known for a single role.
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From Gunsmoke becoming a hot topic in Congress to the intense fan protests against Netflix ending The OA, here are TV cancellations that made history.
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Here are the actors still alive from Tobe Hooper's TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot.
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Kurt Russell had multiple reasons for dropping out of the 1985 fantasy epic Ladyhawke (some of which were more personal than others).
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Several former Disney Channel stars have gone on to enjoy successful careers as adults, but only one of them has a billion-dollar net worth now.
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Joker: Folie à Deux might be the last time Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, but he has a very good reason for that.
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The first trailer for the live-action Minecraft movie has arrived, with Jason Momoa, Jack Black, and more starring in the video game adaptation.
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Stephen King is spearheading a campaign to bring back a surreal, incredible horror show that has a fantastic Rotten Tomatoes score to boot.
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The trailer for Marielle Heller's horror-comedy Nightbitch has Amy Adams getting in touch with her inner canine (quite literally).
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With so many spinoffs and prequels to manage, figuring out how to watch the Walking Dead shows is easier said than done. Allow us to help you out.