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The latest news on the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard deal from regulatory bodies around the world gave fans a solid hope that the company's prized games might soon make it to Game Pass. After all, if heavy hitters like Diablo and Call of Duty appeared on Microsoft's subscription service, analysts believe the subscription figures could explode. However, speaking to Rolling Stone, Xbox corporate vice president Sarah Bond said the true value of Game Pass lies in the depth and breadth of its portfolio rather than any single acquisition.

We’ve been very clear about our commitment to have our first-party portfolio shipping to Game Pass day and date. We understand that people really value that, but it’s also about diversity of content. It’s not really about any one acquisition. It’s about the depth and breadth of the portfolio all up; from big triple-A games to indie titles to hidden gems. That’s actually what makes Game Pass really valuable.

It could be argued that purchasing one of the biggest third-party publishers is a great way to increase both the depth and breadth of said portfolio. Needless to say, it would make a huge difference, and there's a chance Microsoft might also increase the subscription service's price; they've already removed the long-standing $1 new user promotion. On the other hand, the company is also testing a Friends and Family option that might be advantageous for large groups of relatives and friends.

In the Rolling Stone interview, Sarah Bond also talked about the way Game Pass influences game development.

Game Pass is an option for developers. One thing that we talk a lot about internally but I’ve been striving to share more externally is the business model associated with a game has an endemic link to the nature of the gameplay. We invest a lot of time in how we introduce more business model diversity; how we create more options. We talk a lot about Game Pass because subscription is the latest option that we scaled: you have pay-to-play, then there was free-to-play, and then we introduced Game Pass.

We’ve talked about how we’re experimenting with other models, like what does it mean for advertising in games which is more prevalent in mobile – are there models of that that work well in PC and console? Are there other models where you might have timed slices of games and stuff like that? Providing creators with options and choice enables them to experiment and do what they like, and actually create more immersive and creative experiences without having to fit into a mould.

One recent example of that is certainly Obsidian's Pentiment, which might have never been made without Microsoft's help and the existence of Game Pass.

Elsewhere in her interview with Rolling Stone, Bond also commented on the announcement-release combo that did wonders for Hi-Fi Rush. As many had suspected, it was a case-by-case decision, so it won't necessarily be repeated any time soon. For more on Hi-Fi Rush, check out our freshly published post-launch interview with John Johanas.

Lastly, Sarah Bond said the advent of AI could massively democratize game development. Just yesterday we covered a new generative AI tool that quickly creates hundreds of unique NPCs, and of course, Microsoft could do so much more thanks to its investment in ChatGPT. Just imagine an RPG where you actually speak with non-player characters in a freeform fashion to get a unique experience every time. It may take a while, but we'll get there.

Recently, Lifehacker asked whether our readers tip every time they’re asked. Point-of-sale gratuities are more and more common, showing up in previously straight-forward transactions like buying a coffee, picking up some takeout, or even buying some groceries at the store, so we’re hoping to get a feel for the new…

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Business is booming in India's $117 billion education industry and new colleges are popping up at breakneck speed. Yet thousands of young Indians are finding themselves graduating with limited or no skills, undercutting the economy at a pivotal moment of growth. From a report: Desperate to get ahead, some of these young people are paying for two or three degrees in the hopes of finally landing a job. They are drawn to colleges popping up inside small apartment buildings or inside shops in marketplaces. Highways are lined with billboards for institutions promising job placements. It's a strange paradox. India's top institutes of technology and management have churned out global business chiefs like Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. But at the other end of the spectrum are thousands of small private colleges that don't have regular classes, employ teachers with little training, use outdated curriculums, and offer no practical experience or job placements, according to more than two dozen students and experts who were interviewed by Bloomberg. Around the world, students are increasingly pondering the returns on a degree versus the cost. Higher education has often sparked controversy globally, including in the US, where for-profit institutions have faced government investigations. Yet the complexities of education are acutely on show in India. It has the world's largest population by some estimates, and the government regularly highlights the benefits of having more young people than any other country. Yet half of all graduates in India are unemployable in the future due to problems in the education system, according to a study by talent assessment firm Wheebox. Many businesses say they struggle to hire because of the mixed quality of education. That's kept unemployment stubbornly high at more than 7% even though India is the world's fastest growing major economy. Education is also becoming an outsized problem for Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he attempts to draw foreign manufacturers and investors from China. Modi had vowed to create millions of jobs in his campaign speeches, and the issue is likely to be hotly debated in the run up to national elections in 2024.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is excited to announce that we are shifting to a new threat actor naming taxonomy aligned to the theme of weather. The complexity, scale, and volume of threats is increasing, driving the need to reimagine not only how Microsoft talks about threats but also how we enable customers to understand those threats quickly and with clarity.

The post Microsoft shifts to a new threat actor naming taxonomy appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

In the fall of 1979, Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and the rest of the cast and crew arrived on location in the woods of Tennessee to make a movie called "The Evil Dead." It wasn't always called that; its original title was "The Book of the Dead," and there were more suggested titles along the way. Thankfully Raimi went for economy, and the title we know today matches the film: Concise, scary, and in-your-face. 

It also wasn't the first time that Raimi and friends had embarked on such a project. A year earlier, the young filmmaker rustled up $1600 to make a 30-minute proof-of-concept called "Within the Woods" to showcase his team's talent and raise money for their first feature-length movie. It is only just about watchable, but it is fascinating to see some ideas and techniques that Raimi would later use taking shape in the trial run.

"Within the Woods" helped secure enough funding to make "The Evil Dead." Released in 1981 after the successes of "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th," it became a sleeper hit. At that stage, even Raimi himself probably never envisioned that his film would go on to become a cult horror franchise, with two sequels, a remake, a TV show, and a new generation of Deadite-bashing movies beginning with "Evil Dead Rise." 

Raimi's film was incredibly influential, cementing the spooky cabin in the woods setting as a subgenre of its own and paving the way for "Cabin Fever," Tucker & Dale vs. Evil," and, er, "The Cabin in the Woods." As groundbreaking as "The Evil Dead" was, its concept wasn't totally original. 13 years before Raimi made "Within the Woods," another young filmmaker and his pals made "Equinox," an ultra-low budget horror movie with an uncannily similar premise.

So What Happens In Equinox Again?

"Equinox" opens with a young man, David (Edward Connell), frantically fleeing an unseen menace in the woods. Making it to the road, he is struck down by a car with no driver.

Exactly a year and one day later, a newspaper reporter visits the psychiatric ward to follow up on his previous story about the mysterious deaths of David's friends. David, now in a catatonic stupor, becomes violent when shown a photo of his old university professor, Dr. Watermann (Fritz Leiber).

The reporter listens to a tape of David's testimony from when he was first brought into the ward. In flashback, David tells how he received a phone call from Dr. Watermann, asking him to come urgently to his cabin in the mountains. Along for the ride was his best friend, Jim (Frank Bonner), Jim's girlfriend Vicki (Robin Christopher), and his blind date Susan (Barbara Hewitt).

They find Dr. Watermann's cabin destroyed and no sign of the professor. Exploring a nearby cave, a crazy old man gives them a strange book filled with arcane symbols and ominous illustrations. Helpfully, Dr. Watermann's notes are tucked inside, revealing how his experiments with the book unleashed demonic creatures, one of which trashed his shack.

Things get worse from there. The gang finds huge footprints in the sand outside the cave and spots a castle that appears and disappears randomly; Dr. Watermann dies after snatching the book from David, only for his body to vanish; and they encounter Asmodeus (Jack Woods), a creepy forest ranger with very suspicious eyebrows. For a finale, the kids witness the true power of the book. They're attacked by a huge gorilla-like creature and a giant caveman before Asmodeus reveals his true nature and turns into a winged demon. Running for their lives, David is the only survivor. Or is he?

Equinox Was A Labor Of Love For Its Creators

"Equinox" was the pet project of young filmmaker and producer Dennis Muren, who got together with writer Mark McGee and stop-motion animator David Allen to make their own monster movie. Muren would go on to have a hugely successful career in special effects, winning eight Oscars for his work on movies like "The Empire Strikes Back," The Abyss," and "Jurassic Park."

With that kind of nascent talent behind the project, it's no surprise that the special effects are what really make "Equinox" worth watching. The stop-motion creatures wouldn't look out of place in a Ray Harryhausen movie, which is incredible considering it was made by a group of teenagers on a tiny budget. The rest of the film is fun but unremarkable, with pleasant performances and a cheerful can-do spirit. Without the benefit of lighting, Muren and friends shot during the day, giving the movie a sunny Californian vibe like the Beach Boys took a wrong turn and wound up in a horror flick.

Muren's movie was shot over two years and then lay dormant until it was picked up by Jack H. Harris, the producer best known for "The Blob." He hired editor Jack Woods to film extra footage with the original cast, re-edit, and pad it out to feature length for a theatrical release in 1970. The newer footage mostly blends in, although the length of time between the original 1965 shoot and the extra scenes results in the actors visibly aging and de-aging before your eyes.

The similarities between "Equinox" and "The Evil Dead" don't stop at the storyline and subject matter. Although Raimi's film cost considerably more, it was still a low-budget project that needed plenty of hands-on ingenuity. One that was made in far less sun-kissed circumstances.

The Evil Dead Was A Tough Shoot For Cast And Crew

"The Evil Dead" eventually cost $375,000, which sounds like a fortune compared to what Sam Raimi originally had to work with for his prototype. Even so, it was still an exercise in DIY-style filmmaking that put the cast and crew through a miserable 12-week shoot as winter set in. As Raimi told IGN: 

"There was no running water, and it was in the 20s and 30s -- we didn't have any winter wear. It was freezing. When you're in that cold for 16 hours, you start to -- I started to die. There was no food, and everything was covered in Karo syrup in that temperature... The only water we had was in a hot water heater so you could make instant coffee. Boiling water over your hands from the tap; that's how you'd wash them, to load the film into the camera."

One of the great things about "The Evil Dead" is that you can almost see the filmmaker's fingerprints. When you feel that human touch and the passion that went into it, it's easier to overlook the moments when the budget restrictions poke through. Raimi's directorial style stands out, typified by those signature crash zooms and prowling P.O.V shots representing the evil force crashing through the woods. Those moments still look really accomplished, achieved by strapping a camera to a length of timber and running with it through the woods. The effect is so good that Raimi even snuck a slicker version into his much higher budget "Spider-Man 2." As for the gloopy makeup effects, the man responsible was Tom Sullivan, who also worked on "Within the Woods" and credits "Equinox" with influencing his career.

Did Equinox Influence The Evil Dead In Any Way?

Given the close similarities in the storyline and subject matter, it would seem surprising if "Equinox" hadn't had some influence on "The Evil Dead." However, Sam Raimi has cited "The Night of the Living Dead" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as major inspirations instead. This makes sense, as they were also groundbreaking low-budget horrors that were largely set in a claustrophobic single location.

"Equinox" was promoted by influential editor Forrest J. Ackerman in "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine, bringing it to the attention of a new generation of creature feature lovers including Tom Sullivan, who oversaw the makeup effects in "Within the Woods" and "The Evil Dead." He acknowledged the film had a big impact on his career (via Criterion):

"I had seen 'Equinox' at least twice in drive-ins before making 'The Evil Dead.' I don't recall having discussed it with Sam Raimi, but the similarities are remarkable. I think they come from the low-budget nature of both films. That is, a few characters, an isolated, inexpensive location, and ambitious special effects. All in all, 'Equinox' did inspire me to continue my goal of making movies. 'If they can do it...'"

I'm not about to accuse Raimi of ripping off "Equinox" but, as they say, there is no such thing as an original idea. Whether Sullivan remembers it or not, it seems unlikely to me that the film never came up when talking about the storyline for "The Evil Dead." After all, the source of evil changed from a desecrated burial ground in "Within the Woods" to a necromantic book unleashing demons on a group of teens. Whether it had an influence or not, the charming earlier film makes a fun port of call for "Evil Dead" fans eager to check out the connections.

Read this next: Horror Remakes That Are Better Than The Originals

The post The Low-Budget Horror Cult Classic That May Have Inspired Evil Dead appeared first on /Film.

A team of scientists led by Slava Turyshev of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology have proposed merging miniature satellite units with a solar energy process that would create a fast, inexpensive, lightweight mode of travel. Phys.Org reports: Solar sailing is a process by which the pressure generated by the sun's radiation is harnessed for propulsion. Recent innovations in this technology were demonstrated in a successful crowdfunded 2019 mission undertaken by the Planetary Society's LightSail-2 project. The researchers explain, "Solar sails obtain thrust by using highly reflective, lightweight materials that reflect sunlight to propel a spacecraft while in space. The continuous photon pressure from the sun provides thrust, eliminating the need for heavy, expendable propellants employed by conventional on-board chemical and electric propulsion systems, which limit mission lifetime and observation locations." They say that sails are far less expensive than heavy equipment currently used for propulsion, and that the ever-present continuous solar photon pressure from the sun makes thrust available for a broad range of vehicular maneuvers, such as hovering or rapid orbital plane changes. Solar sails and miniaturization "have advanced in the past decade to the point where they may enable inspiring and affordable missions to reach farther and faster, deep into the outer regions of our solar system," the report says. The researchers refer to the merging of these two technologies as the Sundiver Concept. "Fast, cost-effective and maneuverable sailcraft that may travel outside the ecliptic plane open new opportunities for affordable solar system exploration," the report states, "with great promise for heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics." With enhanced maneuverability, the spacecraft can easily deliver small payloads to multiple destinations if required, and can dock with related modular craft. The reliance on the sun and the miniaturization of the carrier, which requires no dedicated launch site, will prove to be significant cost savers, the researchers add: "A substantial reason for the high costs is our [current] reliance on slow and expensive chemical propulsion, operating at the limits of its capabilities, effectively rendering the current solar system exploration paradigm unsustainable. A new approach is needed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Stay connected with your social network, family, and friends to maintain a sense of belonging and support.
• Cultivate interests and hobbies such as gardening, woodworking, or cooking to stimulate the brain and enhance physical strength and agility.
• Explore nature – walk in the park, admire seasonal flowers, visit beach towns, or take a road trip to seek new experiences.
• Prioritize your physical health with regular exercise, a healthy diet, and routine check-ups.

Aging is a natural process that we cannot avoid. As we grow older, our health, mobility, and overall physical and mental abilities decline, which can be quite depressing. However, if you focus on life’s positive aspects, senior years can also be filled with joy, self-discovery, and memorable experiences. This blog post will discuss six practical ways to fill your aged years with happiness and excitement.

Stay connected with your social network.

As you age, your social network tends to shrink due to fewer opportunities to meet new people or engage in new activities. Therefore, staying connected with your family, friends, and community groups is essential to maintain a sense of belonging and support. You can join a social club, volunteer in a charity, attend a senior center or participate in a hobby group to meet new people and create meaningful connections.

Another great way to maintain your social network is by attending church services. This will help you connect to a larger community and make new friends who share your values. The good news is that you don’t have to leave your home to attend church services. Many churches offer virtual Sunday services, so you can stay connected with fellow believers while enjoying the comfort of your home.

Cultivate your interests and hobbies

Aging does not mean giving up on your passions and interests. It is the perfect time to explore new hobbies, learn new skills, and develop your talents. If you don’t know what hobbies or activities to try, here are some ideas:

Gardening

Planting a garden is an enjoyable and easy activity from home. Gardening can give you the peace of mind and satisfaction of creating something beautiful with your hands. Invite some of your family or friends to join you in your gardening venture and enjoy some quality time together.

Woodworking

Woodworking is an excellent activity for seniors because it stimulates the brain, enhancing physical strength and agility. It also helps you appreciate the beauty of nature and teaches patience as you watch wood transform into something useful.

Cooking

Cooking has many benefits, both physical and mental. Not only will it help you stay active, but it will also elevate your mood while savoring delicious dishes. Try experimenting with new recipes or learning traditional dishes from your heritage to keep things interesting.

Explore nature

Nature has a therapeutic effect on the mind and body. Go for walks in the park or trails, explore nearby gardens, and admire seasonal flowers. You can also visit beach towns to appreciate the ocean’s beauty or take a road trip to seek new experiences.

Prioritize your physical health

Maintaining good physical health is crucial for overall well-being, especially in senior years when health can be fragile. You can include regular exercise, a healthy diet, and routine check-ups to energize your body. Walking, swimming, yoga, and dancing are great options for seniors to stay active without putting too much strain on the body.

Practice mindfulness and relaxation techniques

Aging can come with higher stress, anxiety, and sleep disorders. Mindfulness and relaxation techniques, such as meditation, deep breathing, tai chi, and massage, can help improve mental and emotional well-being. These practices can also reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure, and improve sleep patterns.

Make time for travel and adventure

Just because you are in your senior year does not mean you cannot travel or explore new places. It is the perfect time to cross some destinations from your bucket list! You can plan a trip with your loved ones, take a group tour, or travel solo to explore new cultures and make new memories.

Give back to your community

Giving back to your community can create a sense of purpose and fulfillment while helping others in need. You can volunteer at a local charity, donate to a cause you care about, or mentor young people. This can create a sense of pride and satisfaction, knowing that your contributions positively impact other people’s lives.

The Bottom Line

In conclusion, senior years can be filled with joy, excitement, and fulfillment if we focus on the positive aspects of life. By staying connected with our social network, pursuing our passions, prioritizing our physical health, practicing mindfulness, traveling, and giving back to the community, we can create a life filled with happiness and contentment. Remember, age is just a number, and we can make the most of our senior years with a positive attitude and the desire to make each day count.

The post How to Fill Your Golden Years with Joy and Happiness appeared first on Joe Martin.

There’s a type of food writer who will insist certain recipes can’t be done without the best, most premium ingredients. I once read an article that said you shouldn’t even bother making a caprese without the finest bufula mozzarella (or, if you must, local cow’s milk mozzarella). This, in my not-so-humble but somewhat…

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It was after a particularly grueling session with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that I started to wonder: When did developers stop putting cheats into their games to help the less talented among us get through the tricky bits? When I was a kid, a little bit of Up Down Left Right A and Start together, and a little older, a little /~noclip saved me no end of bother. These days, if you look for cheats for any modern game online, the best you’ll get is to be sassily told to “git gud.”

Sorry, a little context: I play games, but I’m not a Gamer, or a Nintendo Person, so in 2023 I resolved to remedy this. So many discussions at work fly past me because while I’ve heard of Cliff Bleszinski and Hironobu Sakaguchi, I couldn’t tell you their oeuvre without Googling. Part of my self-education was to watch every Zero Punctuation compilation to speedrun the last decade of games development. Another part was to seek out some classic games that I’d never played through ignorance, weakness, or my own stupid fault.

The first step on this journey only required me to go to the bookshelves in my living room, ironically. I bought my Pokémon Go-loving wife a Nintendo Switch at the start of 2020 so she could play Let’s Go Pikachu!. Not long after, a friend handed me their copy of Breath of the Wild and said I should give it a play. But it’s been sitting on my bookshelf for three years, as I subconsciously resisted the urge to give it a go. This, I’ll admit, is because I’ve always had the notion that Nintendo games are Hard Work.

And that was my belief up until a month ago, when I thought I’d better try Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom came out. I figured I’d give it half an hour, the smallest of toes dipped into the world, so that I could say I’d tried and that it wasn’t for me. And before you can say “I need to be up at seven in the morning for work,” it was long past midnight. Since then, Breath of the Wild has consumed my every waking moment. It is, without a doubt, one of the most engrossing and immersive games I have ever played, despite my frustrations.

Nintendo

It’s why I felt compelled to write this, because I want to spread the gospel to non-gamers who might feel similarly like they’ve missed the bus. Especially since we can hope that the older game might fall in price as people seek out its replacement. Or, given the current situation with Nintendo persistently keeping the prices of its older first-party games high, at least it won’t get any more expensive. But, to undermine my own argument, I’d say that if Tears of the Kingdom is half as good as Breath of the Wild, it’ll probably be the first game that’s worth the $70 fee Nintendo’s trying to push consumers into accepting.

Despite its age (it is from 2017, after all), Breath of the Wild feels cutting-edge, and part of that is how deep it is. When I started playing, I worried that it would be yet another soulless open-world grind-a-thon, a feeling not soothed by the presence of Far Cry-esque towers you need to conquer to open up areas of the map. But the one thing that this game has that sets it apart from its genre-mates is a level of curation that continues to surprise me.

It plays out on a sprawling map, but it never feels like you’re traversing through an empty void. The density of what’s available means that, despite spending a month or so covering just half of Hyrule (I’ve only recently reached Goron City), I never stop finding new stuff. And there are some assets that have been reused, like the standard template for enemy camps, but you never feel that they’ve been copy-pasted to pad out the space. This Hyrule feels hand-made, with every detail sweated beyond any player’s comprehension.

Even a philistine like me can appreciate the level of craft, not just in its layout, but how it has been built. Take the chemistry engine, which seems like such a simple idea you wonder why it hasn’t been a part of open worlds forever. By giving each material its own properties, you can take advantage of more than just weight physics to help you solve puzzles. Thanks to YouTube, once I understood how Shock Traps worked, I was able to start making real progress in the shrine quests that put you face to face with a particularly murderous killbot.

And the game’s critical path is left so completely wide open as to almost not matter at all, giving you total freedom. Rather than giving you a set series of missions, you unlock the main quest line after the first hour, and then can tackle it in any way you wish. I’ve seen more than a few Straight To Ganon speed runs where expert players take a bare-footed Link to defeat the title’s big bad within minutes of being able to leave the tutorial area. I love, too, how the landscape gently nudges you toward the safer areas where you can level up before you’re let loose on the harsher climates of, say, Death Mountain.

Nintendo

This works so well that when you’ve gotten a little way along you start picking up weapons that aren’t total garbage. Recently, I was cornered by a Guardian Stalker, very much a one-hit kill villain you can only ever hope of running out of view from. But, trapped in the North Lomei Labyrinth, I had no option but to try and fight without dying. And I managed to hack off its legs, one by one, until it flopped on its side, unable to shoot me with its laser. The feeling of exhilaration and satisfaction after so many deaths, was one for the ages. You don’t need to git gud in the grindy sense, you just need to spend enough time in the world to gently, naturally evolve how you play the game until things get easy.

And this is when I realized there was a good reason developers don’t put cheats into their games any more. Because a good title, like Breath of the Wild, rarely prescribes how you navigate and solve its world. If you’re not a fighter, you can devote your energies to stealthily circumnavigating your foes. When you grasp the game’s physics engine, you can use a well-placed remote bomb to send a venom-spitting Lizalfo hurtling down the side of a cliff. The only thing I can’t do yet is take on a Lynel – the game’s super-tough mini-boss – and not get rinsed, because I’m not sure I’ll ever learn the art of parrying.

Now, that may be deficiency enough that I never actually finish the game, since that’s rarely an impediment to getting to the fun bits. Take the shrine quests, which (mostly) offer the most enjoyable physics puzzles since Portal, give or take the aforementioned combat trials. Part of this is because the puzzles can be hard but are never unfairly-formatted, and there’s almost always a solution that’ll come to mind if you just walk around for long enough. The fact there’s no time limit or villain trying to force you to hurry up helps matters considerably.

I have gripes, but they’re all mostly nitpicks. The Switch’s hardware limitations means that the game’s draw distance can sometimes be a problem. If you’re looking for a spot out of sight of enemies to land your glider on, it can only be once you’re inches from the ground that it’ll finally render a camouflaged Lizalfo. And Nintendo’s policy of never being entirely open with the player to encourage experimentation means you’ll need to have some YouTube tutorial channels bookmarked to help you navigate some of the more baffling bits.

Simon Parkin’s essay about Breath of the Wild in The New Yorker quoted original series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who described Hyrule as a “miniature garden you can put into a drawer and revisit any time you like.” And this speaks to something I’ve found about the game, that it’s less of a video game and more of a place that you can choose to visit. This vast, pastoral paradise, which you can roam around on foot, climbing mountains or on horseback. A land only spoiled by the regular appearance of a zombified enemy crawling up out of the ground to ruin your reverie.

In a way, as much as I enjoyed having No Man’s Sky as my lockdown game of 2020, I wish I’d been braver and tried Zelda back then. I’d have rather spent time inside Miyamoto’s miniature garden, now lovingly tended by Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Eiji Aonuma. And I think I’m going to have to try and get this finished as quickly as possible so that I’m ready to continue my journey in Tears of the Kingdom.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-this-non-gamer-fell-in-love-with-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-123054845.html?src=rss

We can all appreciate that April showers bring May flowers; but when those showers also bring dampness to your basement and water damage to your foundation, that appreciation wears thin. For those who live in parts of North America experiencing a rainy early spring, the deluge coming from the downspout might seem like…

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UPDATE : July 9, 2023

The article has been updated to include new signatures added for SSL, DNS and NTLM protocols.

 

UPDATE : May 22, 2023

On July 18, 2023, Microsoft will be deprecating a subset of signatures found in the "NetworkSignaturesInspected" action type of Advanced Hunting. With the recent integration of Zeek providing advanced protocol parsing capabilities, which result in better visibility into full network sessions compared to the raw packet bytes found in the "NetworkSignaturesInspected" action type of Advanced Hunting today, the effort to consolidate will provide a better overall experience for our customers by reducing the signatures that serve similar functions without the added benefits provided by the new Zeek alternative. For customers currently using the "NetworkSignaturesInspected" action type, here is a list of signatures that will be deprecated, referenced alongside their alternatives available in Advanced Hunting: 

 

Protocol / Signature Name	Old Action Type	New Action Type
SSH	NetworkSignatureInspected	SshConnectionInspected
FTP_Upload	NetworkSignatureInspected	FtpConnectionInspected
FTP_Client	NetworkSignatureInspected	FtpConnectionInspected
HTTP_Client	NetworkSignatureInspected	HttpConnectionInspected
HTTP_Server	NetworkSignatureInspected	HttpConnectionInspected
HTTP_RequestBodyParameters	NetworkSignatureInspected	HttpConnectionInspected
HTTPS_Client	NetworkSignatureInspected	SslConnectionInspected
DNS_Request	NetworkSignatureInspected	DnsConnectionInspected

 

Steps you can take now:

Your organization might be using a "NetworkSignatureInspected" action type in your Advanced Hunting queries and custom detections. Particularly, you might be using a Signature Name that is going to be deprecated soon. Please update your queries with the new action types so that you can leverage this valuable data and avoid breaking your current custom detections.

 

An example of your old query:

 

DeviceNetworkEvents  
| where ActionType == "NetworkSignatureInspected"
| extend AdditionalFields = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| where AdditionalFields.SignatureName == "SSH"

 

 

Your new query:

 

DeviceNetworkEvents  
| where ActionType == "SshConnectionInspected"

 

 

 

-----------

In our previous blog about hunting for network signatures in Microsoft 365 Defender, we described how we used device discovery capabilities to capture some network event information in deeper detail and expose them in advanced hunting with the NetworkSignatureInspected action type. Since then we have made several developments, the most significant being the integration with Zeek. This release has expanded what is possible for generating network detections across Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. That announcement, shared examples of detections created for PrintNightmare and NTLM password spraying attempts.

 

Today, we would like to share a variety of Zeek-based events in advanced hunting that will help you expand your investigation, hunting, and detection capabilities for identifying and addressing network-layer anomalies across HTTP, SSH and ICMP protocols. Using the new Zeek events, we will demonstrate how to perform network threat hunting while also covering some of the MITRE ATT&CK Matrix.

 

Note: As the integration with Zeek continues to mature, more action types will gradually be released over time. With the Zeek integration only supported on Windows devices, these action types will surface for connections to and from Windows device.

 

To identify these action types in your tenant, look for the value ConnectionInspected in the ActionType field of the DeviceNetworkEvents table of advanced hunting. The extra information is stored in the AdditionalFields column as a JSON data structure and has the commonly known Zeek fields per event, which can be parsed. These field names are identical to those that Zeek uses, which are documented on Zeek’s site. You can also check the Schema Reference flyout page on the advanced hunting pages to check for any new action types that were recently released.

 

Link to query

 

DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType contains 'ConnectionInspected'
| distinct ActionType

 

 

The result of this query looks something like this:

 

Figure 1 – Sample result upon checking for ConnectionInspected in the ActionType table

 

The format of the action type will follow the [Protocol_Name]ConnectionInspected standard.

 

Inspecting HTTP connections

 

The HttpConnectionInspected action type contains extra information about HTTP connections, inbound or outbound. In cases where you click on an event of the HttpConnectionInspected action type, the page flyout will parse the additional fields and present them in a  format like the example below:

 

 

Figure 2 – Sample result of an HttpConnectionInspected action type

 

Below, you will find a complete list of fields that this action type can expose and the respective descriptions:

 

Field Name	Description
direction	The direction of the conversation relevant to the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint-onboarded device, where the values are either ‘In’ or ‘Out’
host	The host header content
method	The HTTP method requested
request_body_len	Length of the HTTP message body in bytes
response_body_len	Length of the HTTP response body in bytes
status_code	The HTTP response code
status_msg	The full text message of the response
tags	A set of indicators of various attributes discovered and related to a particular request/response pair.
trans_depth	Represents the pipelined depth into the connection of the request/response transaction
uri	The complete URI that was requested
user_agent	The user_agent header of the request
version	The HTTP version used

 

Let’s look at a few examples of using the HttpConnectionInspected action type. In the first example, you want to look for rare user agents in the environment to identify potentially suspicious outbound web requests and cover the "T1071.001: (Application Layer Protocol) Web Protocols" technique.

 

Link to query

 

// Identify rare User Agent strings used in http conversations
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType == 'HttpConnectionInspected'
| extend json = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend direction = tostring(json.direction), user_agent = tostring(json.user_agent)
| where direction == 'Out'
| summarize Devices = dcount(DeviceId) by user_agent
| sort by Devices asc

 

 

 

Suppose you have identified a suspicious-looking user-agent named “TrickXYZ 1.0” and need to determine which user/process/commandline combination had initiated that connection.  Currently, the HttpConnectionInspected events, as with all Zeek-related action types, do not contain that information, so you must execute a follow-up query by joining with events from  ConnectionEstablished action type. Here’s an example of a follow-up query:

 

Link to query

 

// Identify usage of a suspicious user agent
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where Timestamp > ago(1h) and ActionType == "HttpConnectionInspected"
| extend json = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend user_agent = tostring(json.user_agent)
| where user_agent == "TrickXYZ"
| project ActionType,AdditionalFields, LocalIP,LocalPort,RemoteIP,RemotePort, TimeKey = bin(Timestamp, 5m)
| join kind = inner (
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where Timestamp > ago(1h) and ActionType == "ConnectionSuccess"
| extend TimeKey = bin(Timestamp, 5m)) on LocalIP,RemoteIP,LocalPort,TimeKey
| project DeviceId, ActionType, AdditionalFields, LocalIP,LocalPort,RemoteIP,RemotePort , InitiatingProcessId,InitiatingProcessFileName,TimeKey

 

 

In another example, let’s look for file downloads from HTTP, particularly files of executable and compressed file extensions to cover the "T1105: Ingress tool transfer" technique:

 

Link to query

 

// Detect file downloads
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType == 'HttpConnectionInspected'
| extend json = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend direction= tostring(json.direction), user_agent=tostring(json.user_agent), uri=tostring(json.uri)
| where uri matches regex @"\.(?:dll|exe|zip|7z|ps1|ps|bat|sh)$"

 

 

The new HTTP action type will unlock a variety of possibilities for detection on this protocol. We  look forward to seeing the queries you come up with by sharing your contributions with the community.

 

Looking at SSH connections

 

The SshConnectionInspected action type will display information on SSH connections. While decrypting the entire SSH traffic is not possible, the cleartext part of the SSH session initiation can provide valuable insights. Let’s look at the data found in the AdditionalFields section.

 

Figure 3 - Screenshot of additional fields that SshConnectionInspected generates.

 

The fields depend on the activity that was observed. Some of these fields might not appear depending on the connection. For example, if the client disconnected before completing the authentication, you will not have an auth_success field populated for that event..

 

Below, you will find a complete list of fields that this action type can expose and the respective descriptions:

 

Field Name	Description
direction	The direction of the conversation relevant to the Defender for Endpoint-onboarded device, where the values are either ‘In’ or ‘Out’
auth_attempts	The number of authentication attempts until the success or failure of the attempted session.
auth_success	The success or failure in authentication, where ‘true’ means successful user authentication and ‘false’ means the user-provided credentials are incorrect.
client	The version and type of client used to authenticate to the SSH session.
host_key	Host public key value
server	SSH server information
version	SSH protocol major version used
uid	The unique ID of the SSH session attempt

 

Let’s look at a few advanced hunting examples using this action type. In the first example, you want to look for potentially infected devices trying to perform "T1110: Brute-Force" against remote servers using SSH as an initial step to “T1021.004: Lateral Movement - Remote Services: SSH”.

 

The query below will give you a list of Local/Remote IP combinations with at least 12 failed attempts (three failed authentications on four sessions) of SSH connections in the last hour. Feel free to use this example and adapt it to your needs.

 

Link to query

 

// Detect potential bruteforce/dictionary attacks against SSH
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType == 'SshConnectionInspected'
| extend json = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend direction=tostring(json.direction), auth_attempts = toint(json.auth_attempts), auth_success=tostring(json.auth_success)
| where auth_success=='false'
| where auth_attempts > 3
| summarize count() by LocalIP, RemoteIP
| where count_ > 4
| sort by count_ desc

 

 

 

In the next example, let’s suppose you are looking to identify potentially vulnerable SSH versions and detect potentially unauthorized client software being used to initiate SSH connections and operating systems that are hosting SSH server services in your environment:

 

Link to query

 

// Identify Server/Client pairs being used for SSH connections
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where  ActionType == "SshConnectionInspected"
| extend json = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| project Server = tostring(json.server),Client = tostring(json.client)
| distinct Server ,Client

 

 

Figure 4 - An example result with a short description of the different components

 

The results above describe breaking down the SSH banners to identify the different components. A short analysis of the banners shows that the server is Ubuntu 22.04, running OpenSSH version 8.9, and the client software is WinSCP version 5.21.3. Now, you can search these versions online to verify if they are vulnerable.

 

Note: The query above can be used to surface potential "T1046: Network Service Discovery" attempts, as attackers may try to search for unpatched or vulnerable SSH services to compromise.

 

Reviewing ICMP connections

 

The IcmpConnectionInspected action type will provide details about ICMP-related activity. The breadth of fields generated creates opportunities for some interesting detections. Here’s an example of the human-readable view of the event as shown on the event flyout page

 

Figure 5 – Sample result of an IcmpConnectionInspected action type

 

 Below, you will find a complete list of fields that this action type can expose and the respective descriptions:

 

Field Name	Description
direction	The direction of the conversation relevant to the Defender for Endpoint-onboarded device, where the values are either ‘In’ or ‘Out’
conn_state	The state of the connection. In the screenshot example OTH means that no SYN packet was seen. Read the Zeek documentation for more information on conn_state.
duration	The length of the connection, measured in seconds
missed_bytes	Indicates the number of bytes missed in content gaps, representing packet loss.
orig_bytes	The number of payload bytes the originator sent. For example, in ICMP this designates the payload size of the ICMP packet.
orig_ip_bytes	The number of IP level bytes that the originator sent as seen on the wire and taken from the IP total_length header field.
orig_pkts	The number of packets that the originator sent.
resp_bytes	The number of payload bytes the responder sent.
resp_ip_bytes	The number of IP level bytes that the responder sent as seen on the wire.
resp_pkts	The number of packets that the responder sent.
Uid	Unique Zeek ID of the transaction.

 

Let’s explore a few examples of hunting queries that you can use to leverage the ICMP connection information collected by Defender for Endpoint.

 

In the first example, you wish to look for potential data leakage via ICMP to cover the "T1048: Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol" or "T1041: Exfiltration Over C2 Channel" techniques. The idea is to look for outbound connections and check the payload bytes a device sends in a given timeframe. We will parse the direction, orig_bytes, and duration fields and look for conversations over 100 seconds where more than 500,000 were sent. The numbers are used as an example and do not necessarily indicate malicious activity. Usually, you will see the download and upload are almost equal for ICMP traffic because most devices generate “ICMP reply” with the same payload that was observed on the “ICMP echo” request.

 

Link to query

 

// search for high upload over ICMP
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType == "IcmpConnectionInspected"
| extend json = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend Upload = tolong(json['orig_bytes']), Download = tolong(json['resp_bytes']), Direction = tostring(json.direction), Duration = tolong(json.duration)
| where Direction == "Out" and Duration > 100 and Upload > 500000
| top 10 by Upload
| project RemoteIP, LocalIP, Upload = format_bytes(Upload, 2, "MB"), Download = format_bytes(Download, 2, "MB"),Direction,Duration,Timestamp,DeviceId,DeviceName

 

 

 

Below is an example result after exfiltrating a large file over ICMP to another device on the network:

 

 

In the last example, you wish to create another hunting query that helps you detect potential Ping sweep activities in your environment to cover the "T1018: Remote System Discovery" and "T1595: Active Scanning" techniques. The query will look for outbound ICMP traffic to internal IP addresses, create an array of the targeted IPs reached from the same source IP, and display them if the same source IP has pinged more than 5 IP Addresses within a 10-minute time window.

 

Link to query

 

// Search for ping scans
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType == "IcmpConnectionInspected"
| extend json = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend Direction = json.direction
| where Direction == "Out" and ipv4_is_private(RemoteIP)
| summarize IpsList = make_set(RemoteIP) by DeviceId, bin(Timestamp, 10m)
| where array_length(IpsList) > 5

 

 

Identifying the origin process of ICMP traffic can be challenging as ICMP is an IP-Layer protocol. Still, we can use some OS-level indications to narrow down our search. We can use the following query to identify which process-loaded network, or even ICMP-specific, binaries:

 

Link to query

 

DeviceImageLoadEvents
| where FileName =~ "icmp.dll" or FileName =~ "Iphlpapi.dll"

 

 

 

Inspecting SSL connections

 

The SslConnectionInspected action type contains extra information about SSL connections, inbound or outbound. In cases where you click on an event of the SslConnectionInspected action type, the page flyout will parse the additional fields and present them in a  format like the example below:

Figure 6 – Sample result of an SslConnectionInspected action type

 

Below, you will find a complete list of fields that this action type can expose and the respective descriptions ( sourced from Zeek SSL log documentation )

 

Field Name	Description
direction	The direction of the conversation relevant to the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint-onboarded device, where the values are either ‘In’ or ‘Out’
version	The SSL/TLS version that the server chose.
cipher	The SSL/TLS cipher suite that the server chose.
curve	The elliptic curve the server chose when using ECDH/ECDHE.
server_name	The value of the Server Name Indicator SSL/TLS extension. It indicates the server name that the client was requesting.
established	Flag which indicate if this ssl session has been established successfully, or if it was aborted during the handshake.
subject	Subject of the X.509 certificate offered by the server.
issuer	Issuer of the signer of the X.509 certificate offered by the server.
resumed	Flag to indicate if the session was resumed reusing the key material exchanged in an earlier connection.
client_issuer	Subject of the signer of the X.509 certificate offered by the client.
client_subject	Subject of the X.509 certificate offered by the client.

 

In the following example query, you wish to search https connections to external IP that use self-signed certificates :

 

Link to query

 

 

DeviceNetworkEvents 
| where ActionType == "SslConnectionInspected"
| extend AdditionalFields = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend issuer = tostring(AdditionalFields.issuer), direction = tostring(AdditionalFields.direction)
| where direction == "Out" and not(ipv4_is_private(RemoteIP))
| where AdditionalFields.issuer matches regex @"CN=\S+$"

 

 

 

 

Inspecting DNS

 

The DnsConnectionInspected action type contains extra information about DNS connections, inbound or outbound. In cases where you click on an event of the DnsConnectionInspected action type, the page flyout will parse the additional fields and present them in a format like the example below:

 

Figure 7 – Sample result of an DnsConnectionInspected action type

 

Below, you will find a complete list of fields that this action type can expose and the respective descriptions (sourced from the Zeek DNS log documentation)

 

Using this action type we can explore and investigate the DNS traffic of each managed endpoint. In the following example we will try to identify potentially suspicious DNS traffic directed towards a DNS server that is not listed in the DNS server configuration of any managed endpoint:

 

Query Link

 

let knownDnsServers =
 DeviceNetworkInfo
 | where isnotempty( DnsAddresses)
 | mv-expand todynamic(DnsAddresses)
 | where DnsAddresses !in("::", "127.0.0.1","0.0.0.0")
 | distinct tostring(DnsAddresses);
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType == "DnsConnectionInspected"
| extend AdditionalFields = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend Direction = tostring(AdditionalFields.direction), QueryType = tostring(AdditionalFields.qtype_name), Query = tostring(AdditionalFields.query), Answers = todynamic(AdditionalFields.answers)
| where Direction == "Out" and QueryType == "TXT" and RemoteIP !in(knownDnsServers) and isnotempty(Answers)

 

 

 

Inspecting NTLM traffic

 

For network connection with NTLM authentication we’ve create “NtlmAuthenticationInspected” action type. By clicking on the AdditionalFields the page flyout will parse the additional fields and present them in a format like the example below:

 

Figure 2 – Sample result of an NtlmConnectionInspected action type

 

Below, you will find a complete list of fields that this action type can expose and the respective descriptions (sourced from the Zeek NTLM log documentation)

 

 

Field Name	Description
direction	The direction of the conversation relevant to the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint-onboarded device, where the values are either ‘In’ or ‘Out’
username	A 16-bit identifier assigned by the program that generated the DNS query. Also used in responses to match up replies to outstanding queries.
hostname	Hostname given by the client
domainname	A descriptive name for the class of the query.
server_nb_computer_name	NetBIOS name given by the server in a CHALLENGE.
server_nb_domain_name	NetBIOS domain name given by the server in a CHALLENGE.
server_dns_computer_name	DNS name given by the server in a CHALLENGE.
server_tree_name	Tree name given by the server in a CHALLENGE.
success	Indicate whether or not the authentication was successful.
server_version	The server NTLM version.
version	The client NTLM version.

Using using this action type we can track NTLM authentication that were observed on managed endpoints. In the following example we will try to identify multiple failed logons in short interval against internet-facing :

 

Query Link

 

let devices = DeviceInfo
|summarize arg_max(Timestamp, *) by DeviceId
| where IsInternetFacing
|distinct DeviceId;
DeviceNetworkEvents
| where ActionType == "NtlmAuthenticationInspected" and DeviceId in(devices)
| extend AdditionalFields = todynamic(AdditionalFields)
| extend Direction = tostring(AdditionalFields.direction),username = tostring(AdditionalFields.username), success = iff(isempty(AdditionalFields.success),  false, tobool(AdditionalFields.success))
| where isnotempty( username) and not(success) and Direction == "In"
| summarize Attempts = make_set(username) by SourceIP = LocalIP, bin(Timestamp, 10m),DeviceId
| where array_length(Attempts) > 3

 

 

More information

 

Understand which versions of the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint agent support the new integration here:

• What's new in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint | Microsoft Learn

Find out more details about the integration in our ZeekWeek 2022 presentations:

• ZeekWeek 2022 - Zeek for Windows: The Journey to Run on All Endpoints - Elad Solomon
• ZeekWeek 2022 - Zeek for Endpoint: Detection and Device Discovery - Boaz Wasserman

View the open-source contribution in Zeek’s GitHub repository:

• Microsoft's Port of Zeek for Windows - zeek/zeek (github.com)

Previous announcements:

• Ignite: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Announcements at Microsoft Ignite 2022
• Corelight: Zeek is Now a Component of Microsoft Windows (corelight.com)
• Zeek Project: A few questions and answers on Zeek and Windows

This post contains spoilers through the fourth episode of "Yellowjackets" season 2.

In the first few episodes of "Yellowjackets" season 1, it seems like present-day Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is doing the best out of all the known survivors. She's a rich, well-regarded politician running for a New Jersey state senate seat, with a loving wife, Simone, and a cute son named Sammy. But by this point in season 2 of "Yellowjackets," we're starting to wonder if Taissa's actually the worst off. Her sleepwalking habits have now isolated her from her family and have put her wife in a coma, and at this rate it doesn't seem like she'll be able to hold onto that senate seat for much longer. Even Natalie, staying at Lottie's purple cult, has got a new friend. But Taissa lately has no one left in her life who can understand her. At least, no one except Van.

Adult Van (Lauren Ambrose) is revealed at the end of "Old Wounds" to be the person Taissa has traveled all this way to see. They don't say anything to each other before the credits roll, but when Van sees Taissa walk into the room, she makes a face that's filled with mixed emotions. There's a lot of history between these two characters, and not all of it is good. 

With the confirmation of adult Van, "Yellowjackets" has now raised the question of why she and Taissa are no longer together. They're still on good terms in the teen storyline, so what sort of dark, crazy stuff happened that would make adult Tai go fourteen episodes without ever mentioning her? Well, Cypress has her own theory.

The Queen Of Compartmentalization

"I think that [Taissa] has compartmentalized [Van]," Tawny Cypress told TV Line in a recent interview. "Put her away in a box when they ended their relationship. She says how many girls she f***ed in college and all this other stuff. It didn't even dawn on her to connect with Van again until the other Tai came out and told her to do so."

As fans can recall from adult Taissa's season 1 heart-to-heart with Shauna, young post-wilderness Taissa went out and did everything she'd originally planned to do, continuing along the plans she made for herself back in high school as if nothing out of the ordinary ever occurred. Throughout season 1, she clearly wants to think of those 19 months in the wilderness as some separate period of her life, one with no bearing on anything that happened to her before or after. If she has to get rid of Van in order to maintain that illusion, so be it. 

"I think she is too much into making her life as perfect as possible and she's a narcissist so, she's not just thinking about old, past relationships," Cypress speculated. But as "Yellowjackets" has made abundantly clear by this point, you can never just ignore your past. Maybe that's why Bad Taissa is so much scarier and more violent than what we've seen from any of the other survivors so far. Taissa's tried the hardest to bury everything that happened, so when the past does come back to the surface, it returns with far more of a vengeance than she expected. It turns out that if you try to lock something away for 25 years, it's going to be angry at you when it finally gets out. 

Where Van And Taissa Go From Here

But now that Taissa's seems to realize that compartmentalizing isn't a great long-term strategy for dealing with trauma, it looks like she might let Van back into her life after all. But does Van want Taissa back in her life? It's not clear yet. There's still nearly a year's worth of wilderness drama for the teen characters to deal with, so there's no telling what sort of other horrible stuff will happen that might keep adult Taissa and Van apart. 

On the other hand, "Yellowjackets" is currently lacking in endgame couples to root for. Sure there's Jeff and Shauna, but those two are already together, so there's not a whole lot of dramatic tension there. Taissa and Van, meanwhile, still have a lot of obstacles to go through before they can ever get back to the bliss of their happy teenage relationship in the wilderness. Adult Taissa still has a family she cares about, even if that family increasingly wants nothing to do with her. We don't know what the deal is with Van exactly, but it certainly seems like she's already got a comfortable life for herself without Taissa around. 

Whatever happens with these two, we can at least trust that next week's episode will finally give us the long-awaited proper introduction to adult Vanessa Palmer. What's she been up to these past 25 years? What questionable coping mechanism has she found for herself? Next week's episode promises us some answers on this front. Taissa may have tried to put Van away in a box, but the show itself has no intention of doing the same. 

Read this next: Every Yellowjackets Main Character, Ranked

The post Tawny Cypress Knows Why Tai Cut Van Out Of Her Life in Yellowjackets Season 2 appeared first on /Film.

Here are the best USB-C car chargers to keep your devices topped off while you're on the go.

This article contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets."

In the second season of "Yellowjackets," Misty Quigley (Christina Ricci) and her reluctant bestie Natalie Scatorccio (Juliette Lewis) have been separated — one friend being kidnapped by a cult will do that. So now, Misty has a new partner in (solving) crime, Walter Tattersall (Elijah Wood). They're both part of the "Citizen Detective" online forum (Misty's username is "AfricanGrey," Walter's is "PuttingTheSICKInForensics") and Walter is hot on the trail of the disappeared artist Adam Martin (Peter Gadiot).

Misty always downvotes his theories — for good reason, because Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), another of her semi-friends, is the one who killed Adam. Misty even helped her clean up the crime scene back in season 1. However, Walter is a longtime admirer of "AfricanGrey" and when Misty turns to the forum for help in finding Natalie, he orchestrates an in-person meeting between them — both of them show up to it having gleaned each other's real names. As of the most recent episode, "Old Wounds," they're on a road trip to upstate New York to find Natalie.

Now, Misty is maladjusted and Walter doesn't seem entirely on his rocker either — are they heading for a dark conclusion? Speaking to Harper's Bazaar, Wood was asked about Walter calling himself "a Moriarty looking for his Sherlock" and if that's a hint of his future with Misty. Wood answered:

"I don't know that [Misty and Walter] will get adversarial — not in this season, at least. Although all those hints certainly suggest that possibility. Who knows where [their relationships] could go? But it definitely crosses into darker territory than one would initially have imagined it going into."

What are some of those other hints?

On Two Different Pages

Walter is enamored with Misty due to her investigative instinct and their shared love of musicals. When she accuses him of being a "Yellowjacket obsessive," Walter retorts that he actually thinks that her 19 months in the wilderness is "the least interesting thing about her." Even so, Misty isn't returning Walter's feelings. She finds him off-putting — finally, someone makes her feel the way she does everyone else.

The strongest tell that they aren't on the same page is when they check into a bed and breakfast. The clerk asks if they just want one room. Walter replies "Probably" before Misty cuts him off with a firm "No." So, he backtracks and agrees with her. When they head up the stairs to their separate rooms, she declines his offer to carry her back. Once they're in their rooms, though, the episode goes split-screen, showing how closely their actions mirror each other (such as placing the remote control in a plastic bag to not leave fingerprints).

Will these similarities bring them closer together? Or will Misty decide Walter is too accurate a reflection for comfort? Before I read Wood's interview, I wasn't expecting Walter to make it out of this season alive — he's getting dangerously close to the most unstable character on "Yellowjackets." However, Wood implies that Walter and Misty's relationship will carry on past season 2.

While he could just be saying that to conceal spoilers, I'm reminded of one of Ricci's previous roles: "The Addams Family." Morticia and Gomez are two deeply weird people, but they're the perfect match for each other. More darkness could be the very thing Misty and Walter need to come together.

New episodes of "Yellowjackets" stream on Showtime every Friday and air on television every Sunday.

Read this next: Every Yellowjackets Main Character, Ranked

The post Yellowjackets' Misty and Walter are Headed Into Dark Territory, Says Elijah Wood appeared first on /Film.

The retro shooter revival has certainly been a wild ride, with a lot of inventive ideas mixed into the nostalgic vibes. Prodeus is part of that trend that doesn’t try to rock the boat too much. It’s very traditional, mixing together modern arena shooter trends (in part due to the developers having worked on Bioshock Infinite and Doom 2016, among others) with classic style and flow. It also may just be one of the best of this genre due entirely to how well it executes on every single idea and concept, making up for its derivative nature with tons of gibs and violence that never fail to pump one’s blood.

The premise of the game is that mankind is at war with both the monsters of the Chaos dimension, and the powerful Prodeus AI that created the world of mortals. You are the vessel, someone who has decided to fight against both forces and kick them out. Problem is the vessel starts the game pulling a move that balances power too far in the favor of Chaos, so they need to try and fix their mistake via shoot and bang (and some punch).

Prodeus has a nearly non-existent narrative outside vague hints and a handful of set-pieces that give some context to events in a few levels. What is there does the job of setting the stage for the carnage to come, really kicking in once the first of the Prodeus forces appear and you see Prodeus possessed monsters fighting their Chaos brethren. It’s mainly an excuse plot, but not wholly ignorable as it dresses up select moments and makes the campaign stand out more as a result.

The real reason you’re here is for that campaign, and it is clearly made by people who have a strong understanding of map design (down to getting map designers from the Doom modding community). Prodeus is a mostly linear affair, with some open areas for large scale fire fights, but there’s real attention paid to making memorable moments. For example, one map will have you dodging sniping from enemies in a central tower as you make your way there towards level end, then backtrack as Prodeus units enter the field and cause mass chaos. A late game level has you infiltrating a space station, causing the flow of the level to shift from area to area. Another had you manipulating the acid fill of the area to help reach higher areas. The game never stops finding ways to make every level feel unique.

That’s an impressive accomplishment, as the game never gets too inventive with enemy types. There’s a close sticking to the usual Doom era monster types, like possessed soldiers (non-hitscan this time, but still accurate), imps, pinkies, pain elementals, ect ect. Prodeus units are also just these units again minus possessed soldiers, but with a blue and white electro look that are faster, smarter, and stronger. How these enemies are used is what keeps things exciting, as every skirmish rarely feels the same as a previous one, leaving plenty of options for getting on the offensive.

You get a lot of options too. There are three tiers of weapons for nearly every category, and they all remain useful the whole way, even your fists. Prodeus lets you rapid fire your fists by alternating your punches quickly, meaning it is perfectly viable to save ammo by duking it with lower tier enemies and turning them into gooey paste with your bare fists. Your pistol has an alt fire that has better aim with a three shot concentrated fire, allowing for headshotting options early on.

Once you get the shotgun is when you really start to realize how fun this arsenal is. The shotgun is very similar to the Doom one, with strong range, plus has an alternate charge fire that can be used for mid-range sniping that gives off a strong fire shot. It’s viable the entire game, a strong work horse weapon, and you only get crazier stuff from there. The shredders are nothing special for dual SMGs, but the grenade launcher can get tricky with sticky bombs that go off only when you take your finger off the alt fire button.

The plasma gun has a homing beacon you can shoot out for complicated arcs to spread your fire where you really want it. The auto shotgun’s alt fire can send bullets as ricochets for trick shots. You can rev up the chaingun ahead of time for more controlled firing. The arc rail is both a lightning gun and a rail gun, ideal for sniping from long distances. The swarmer is a ridiculous rocket weapon great for clearing out mobs and taking down high end enemies quickly with a swarm of smaller rockets. Heck, you even get an extremely accurate revolver weapon that can pierce multiple enemies.

What’s even cooler is that there’s added replay value via the shop. Some of the game’s best weapons require ore found in levels to buy, as do the double jump and dash, which completely change up what you can do and find in levels. It encourages you to go back to old levels and explore them more, making you practice against enemies more in the process and improve your combat prowess – which you will need.

To say things get hectic later is an understatement. The flow of levels is usually to have smaller skirmishes between open areas with large mobs of enemies every which way, especially in the back half. Things get absolutely bonkers as Prodeus units and Chaos forces go at each other, all while you make the situation more explosive. When Prodeus wants to, it will show you some of the most bloody and bombastic battles the retro shooter can provide.

Helping with this is the game’s style. At default, Prodeus uses a sort of pixel filter alongside simplistic animations to make every enemy look like a monster from the earlier years of the FPS, just cranked up on modern hardware. It’s like Doom 64 on steroids, with a cool red and blue centered color scheme to further feed you information on what enemies are around. Some effects can be a bit much, like the pixel smoke and the after flash of the plasma gun at close range, but its otherwise quite readable and exciting. It’s sort of like a 90s The Web sort of look was lightly coated over the Doom aesthetic, and it really works, especially with Marathon and Halo style grand architecture at spots. The sheer amount of blood and viscera is also greatly appreciated, and somehow never manages to get in the way of the action.

Helping is the score, done by Doom mod scene composer James Paddock and famed voice of “Triad Members” Andrew Hulshult, a solid mix of downbeat and grimy. It’s a nice collection of low down metal, taking notes from Doom 2016 while still managing their own sound. The stand out track is definitely Hulshult’s Spent Fuel, which has a hypnotic, deep beat as the song builds up and down with the carnage via absorbing guitar work. There’s a dynamic music system in here, so the score shifts in intensity based on what’s currently happening, further adding to the ability to read the situation, making good play feel as easy as breathing. The strong sound design helps, with monster sounds and crunchy noises with every action.

That not enough for you? The game also has full proper multiplayer, co-op play, and a map editor with full community support. It’s also still being updated as of writing, with new weapons being added in. The studio seems pretty focused on continuing to build the game for some time, including having mapping contests, so you can expect a healthy selection of people to play with for a good while if the campaign wets your appetite.

This is some real good shooter stuff, a great blend of modern and classic gameplay and graphical touches. Despite a lack of new ideas, Prodeus really gets what makes these sorts of shooters so fun and nails down just about every detail. The game was in development for a long while, only reaching early access in 2020. They took their time and made that time really count, resulting in a very refined experience. All of the style and the focus on support of community projects just shows how much they get their audience, what made the FPS such a long lived genre in the first place, and makes one excited for what the team does next. The forgiving checkpoint system and high selection of difficulties even makes it approachable for those new to the genre. It’s one of the easiest games in the retro FPS craze to get into, and well worth the cost of admission.

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Prodeus was first posted on April 17, 2023 at 10:41 am.
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Gender has become a hot political topic, and drag shows have become the battleground for a conservative war against self-expression. Fire-and-brimstone-spewing lawmakers are creating legislation to shut down drag shows and penalize anyone who performs drag around children. The biggest point of contention seems to be drag events at libraries, where performers read age-appropriate books to children. While it's entirely possible that some parents are just afraid that their children will learn to read and think for themselves, they claim that drag queens are "indoctrinating" children. 

There's just one massive flaw in that logic: drag performers have been around forever and have been a huge part of pop culture for decades, so why are they only a concern now?

Drag has existed for centuries but had a boom in mainstream popularity in the 1990s, popularized by Madonna's "Vogue," which brought the drag culture of New York City ballrooms into people's living rooms via MTV. Gender-bending was nothing new, of course, but for the first time, seeing this style of expressive performance was accessible to the masses. For a young, confused child who felt like a freak because gender roles often felt genuinely painful, seeing people who transcended the binary was life-changing. Though it may be viewed as flawed by some, seeing films like "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" as a child showed me gender-non-conforming joy for the first time, and gave me hope for happiness in my own future. As drag bans continue, these movies will become even more of a lifeline for young people whose gender just doesn't fit.

The Nuances Of Drag And Gender

Before we dig into the magic of the movies, it's important to note the difference between drag performers and transgender individuals, because the two are not one and the same. Drag is a performance, often including cross-dressing, and a form of expression that does not necessarily reflect the gender or sexuality of the person doing it. To put it simply: not all drag queens are transgender (or even queer!) and not all transgender or gender non-conforming people do drag. One of the best early examples of drag in Hollywood is "Some Like It Hot," where two cisgender, heterosexual men dress as women because they are on the run and in hiding. 

They had to release it without the approval of the Hays Code because of the cross-dressing elements, but the public didn't care and made "Some Like it Hot" a hit all the way back in 1959. Drag is big in comedy, and troupes like Monty Python and the Kids in the Hall used it much like Shakespearean players of old, giving us the giggles with depictions of men in dresses. 

Transgender and other gender non-conforming people might use drag as a form of self-expression, of course, and there are absolutely trans and non-binary drag queens and kings who embrace the outlet. Unfortunately, some audiences don't understand the difference, and the proliferation of drag performed by cisgender men in cinema has given people the wrong idea about transgender women. There are a lot of nuances and conflicting views even within the trans community — more than I can dig into here. For a thorough look at the impact of these kinds of films from a variety of transgender and non-binary voices (and not just my own), make sure to check out the documentary "Disclosure," streaming on Netflix. 

Finding Gender Joy For The First Time

The first time I ever saw any kind of intentional gender play, it was Robin Williams pretending to be an English nanny (with a Scottish accent) in order to spend more time with his kids during a messy divorce in "Mrs. Doubtfire." While comical, it was a means to an end for the character and not a part of who he really was. Then my babysitter rented "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar" and I saw true gender-bending joy. Here was Patrick freaking Swayze, a sex symbol who oozed masculinity in his other roles, playing a sweet, maternal drag queen who just wanted to help people be true to themselves and spread a little beauty in the world.

"To Wong Foo" is a drag Cinderella story with a happy ending, and though it's a little dated and lacking in drag authenticity outside of a RuPaul appearance at the beginning, it was paramount to learning to accept myself as a kid who didn't feel like a boy or a girl. While I would love to see a remake with actual drag queens and trans creators involved, "To Wong Foo" was pure cinematic joy for me as a child, with a message all about learning to accept yourself, standing up your yourself, and loving yourself. It felt like a celebration for those of us whose gender isn't neat and tidy, and such celebrations could be tough to find.

Finding Power In Breaking The Binary

I was raised as a little girl but more often felt like I was a boy. Other than Disney's "Mulan," there weren't exactly any representations of my experience at the movies. The closest thing I could find was "Boys Don't Cry," which told the story of murdered trans man Brandon Teena, and that was as far from joyous as possible. Reality is terrifying and depressing enough when you exist outside of the gender binary, so I didn't need reminders of the potential hell I could face if I lived authentically to myself. Instead, I needed heroes, and drag performers are the colorfully costumed heroes of breaking the binary.

Other films followed pretty early in my adolescence, primarily "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." My parents introduced me to "Rocky Horror" because they were dressing as the characters for Halloween, and I could identify with creator Richard O'Brien's confusion about gender and sexuality, portrayed through the many characters. The most powerful of them all was Tim Curry's Dr. Frank-N-Furter, who strutted around in fishnet stockings and commanded the entire castle. He wasn't explicitly a drag queen but absolutely transcended gender norms. Though the language used in the film is up for debate, his incredible power from existing somewhere between masculine and feminine is still undeniable. I wanted some of that for myself and found a kind of faux-femininity through Frank that helped me fit in and feel fierce. 

Finding Love For Myself

Because I was a suburban white kid in the southern United States prior to the streaming era, I didn't have a lot of access to international films or even most indies, but I managed to snag a copy of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" from my local video store when I was a young teenager. Here, I was given another beautifully flawed example of someone who exists outside of the basic boy/girl dynamic. Like all of the other examples on this list, Hedwig was played by a cisgender man, though it's notable that Hedwig herself isn't exactly trans. 

She decides to have gender reassignment surgery in order to escape a bleak future in East Berlin and marry a man who will take her to America, but she was perfectly happy living as a boy before. When the surgery is botched and her husband leaves, she's trapped with a body that doesn't feel right and is desperate for someone who understands. John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig was revelatory because I knew exactly what it felt like to perform femininity as a means of survival, but the story had an even more powerful message beyond that. 

Hedwig spends most of the movie seeking her other half, believing in the idea from Plato's Symposium that all humans were originally two and we were split by the gods. At the end of the film, she learns that she's a whole person without anyone else and that she isn't wrong because of her unique situation — she's a beautiful expression of the in-between. She's a complex character whose trauma left her bitter and flawed, but that complexity felt closer to reality and made me feel seen. People are messy, and gender can be messier still, and that's okay.

Finding The Greater Queer Canon

Digging further into drag performance in film history led me to Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary masterpiece "Paris is Burning," following drag ballroom culture in New York City. This was drag at its most authentic, as an expression of not only gender defiance, but other marginalization due to sexuality, race, and socioeconomic status. The AIDS crisis raged and many of these incredible young people only had the ballrooms in which to feel anything other than fear and sorrow, and it's an incredibly powerful thing to see. "Paris is Burning" was fictionalized with the FX series "Pose" in 2018, and though the series was a bit soapy at times, it was heartfelt and gave some truly incredible transgender performers a moment to shine for a broader audience. "Paris is Burning" was foundational, but it was far from the only film about the trans experience that helped shape my worldview. 

There were other movies, too, like "XXY," an Argentine drama about an intersex teenager, and "Tomboy," Céline Sciamma's look at trans-masculinity at an early age. The further down the rabbit hole I got in exploring films about gender, the more comfort I found in the beauty and the passion of existing as your most authentic self, even when archaic and misguided societal norms say otherwise. Drag performers were the gateway drug to self-discovery and self-expression, which I think is something everyone should be encouraged to do.

Drag Is Big, Bold, And Beautiful

Trans and non-binary adolescents are at a much higher risk of suicidal ideation than their cisgender peers, and a big part of that is isolation. People in their communities, including their families, might not be accepting of their gender exploration, and that can be absolutely brutal. Many hide that part of themselves until they are older and can safely express who they are. 

Seeing fictional depictions of joyous gender expression outside of the binary can be a lodestone, a way to experience even a bit of that joy in otherwise oppressive situations. For others, it's a way to recognize something in themselves for the first time. Even for cisgender, heterosexual people, an appreciation of drag can provide a way to step outside of social norms in a "safe" way, and can help them realize that the boundaries of the binary aren't as simple as they seem. 

The crackdown on drag performances is part of a larger attack on the rights of transgender and non-binary people, with pundits asserting that drag is always sexualized and children seeing drag acts is harmful. I argue the opposite: drag and other forms of gender expression can help children feel more confident in themselves and potentially have the language to advocate for themselves. Even if it just leads to a love of the colorful world of drag culture, it can give young queer kids a home and young straight kids a better understanding of their LGBTQ+ peers. 

A better understanding of ourselves and each other can lead to a better future for all of us, and drag performers are on the front lines of self-expression and understanding.

Read this next: The 20 Most Important LGBTQ+ Directors

The post Drag Roles In Movies Can Be A Lifeline For Kids Whose Gender Doesn't Fit appeared first on /Film.

This post contains spoilers for the two-episode premiere of "Barry" season 4.

Paul Rudd is a funny guy. He's funny on screen in roles in movies like "Ant-Man," "This Is 40," and "Clueless," but he's also apparently funny off-screen, where he seems to lend ideas to writers on both projects he's a part of and projects he has nothing to do with. In a recent interview, Rudd revealed that Judd Apatow used a real-life argument from Rudd's marriage in the "Knocked Up" script, and Marvel President Kevin Feige even says it was his idea to explore the quantum realm in the latest "Ant-Man" sequel.

It sounds like the actor loves to pitch ideas that might make for good comedy, and he did just that in a conversation with "Barry" co-creator and star Bill Hader that led to one of the show's most eclectic music choices. Hader appeared on The Prestige TV Podcast this week to unpack the highly anticipated return of his pitch-black HBO comedy, and Rudd's name came up in a conversation about Gene Cousineau's (Henry Winkler) ridiculous one-man show. When it came to picking the tune that would play when Vanity Fair reporter Lon O'Neil (Patrick Fischler) stepped into the theater, Rudd had the perfect idea for over-the-top mood music.

Rudd Suggested A Ridiculous Needle Drop

"I've gotta give Paul Rudd credit," Hader told the podcast, "because I was telling him about the sequence, and I go, 'Oh, I need good music playing when [he] comes in,' and Paul said, 'Oh, you should get that choir singing 'Desperado.'" It wasn't just any choir Rudd had in mind, either, but a children's choir. Judging by the vocals heard in the episode, the cover of the classic song by Eagles came from The Langley Schools Music Project, which posted a version of the song to YouTube back in 2013. How Rudd knew about this bizarre cover is anyone's guess, but the comedian thought it would be the perfect fit for Gene's utterly over-the-top theatrical "interview" with Vanity Fair.

"That was Paul Rudd's pitch," Hader confirmed, "And I called him after we cut it, and I was like, 'Dude, it's so funny.' And he goes, 'Oh, does it work?' and I go, 'Oh my God, it is so funny. Thank you so much.'" The filmmaker went on to explain that he initially pictured more traditional theater-going music, and cites the score from "To Kill a Mockingbird" as an example. "You know, the kind of music that's playing when you come into a theater and the lights go down," Hader explained. But Rudd, who it should be noted doesn't even work on this show and seems to have been just chatting with Hader when the idea came up, knew exactly what the situation called for.

Gene's Ego Is On Full Display

The filmmaker laughed when he recalled Rudd's pitch, and it's easy to see why. Even the original 1973 version of "Desperado," written by Glenn Frey and Don Henley, would've been hilarious in this context. The narrator of the song is sharing some very heavy wisdom with the titular desperado, who has chosen a tough and lonely path. "You better let somebody love you/Before it's too late," Eagles sings in the soulful tune, and it's the kind of platitude that Gene probably imagines he shared with Barry in the made-up version of this story in which he's the heroic main character.

The lyrics here reveal a total misunderstanding of Barry as a person, with Gene implying -– as he does in the stage show -– that he did everything he could to save the poor soul from his darker impulses. The fact that the song plays out not with Eagles singing, but the voice of a child, makes the whole thing that much funnier. There's an unspoken punchline in the choice to have Gene, clueless and egotistical, play a song in which a young kid pretends to have the world-weary wisdom of a heroic narrator. It's a needle drop that adds yet another layer of absurdity to this story of Hollywood hangers-on trying to squeeze some fame out of a decidedly bleak situation. And apparently, as with so many great things, we somehow have Paul Rudd to thank for it.

Read this next: The 18 Best Crime Dramas In TV History

The post Barry Season 4 Features a Surprising Behind The Scenes Contribution From Paul Rudd appeared first on /Film.

This post contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" season 2.

Everyone always wants to know who the Man With No Eyes is on "Yellowjackets" ... but does anyone ever ask how the Man With No Eyes is on "Yellowjackets"?

In all seriousness, the visually-challenged specter remains one of the biggest mysteries of Showtime's captivating horror/thriller puzzle box series part-way through its second season. Is he merely the psychological manifestation of Taissa's childhood trauma from her grandmother claiming she could see a being with no eyes shortly before her death? This was also the first time Taissa glimpsed him, although we've no idea if her grandmother saw the same individual or someone else. He's continued to haunt Taissa in season 2's '90s flashbacks, seemingly guiding her to trees with that mysterious symbol carved into them. But does he actually exist outside of Taissa's imagination? And if so, what is he ultimately after?

Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. The Man With No Eyes hasn't done anything flat-out evil so far. Okay, he sorta almost led Taissa off a cliff, but it's dark in the Canadian wilderness at night and that could've been an honest mistake. There's no need to go all J. Jonah Jameson on him and declare him a public menace just because he's tall and pale and doesn't emote very much. (Not that I can personally relate or anything.) It's not like he's out here telling children to commit horrific acts of violence against themselves, unlike certain ominous phantoms who shall remain nameless.

For now, "Yellowjackets" fans will simply have to speculate as to whom or what the Man With No Eyes really is and what's he after, if anything specific. We can, however, answer the question of why he looks the way he does, vitamin D deficiency aside.

'It's A Lot'

As we all learned in kindergarten, you should never judge a book by its cover. That being said, when the "book" is an eyeless figure who only certain people seem capable of seeing (one who also wears a funeral suit and never speaks), it's not unreasonable to have some questions you'd like to ask them. 

Tawny Cypress, who plays Taissa in the present-day on "Yellowjackets," was unsurprisingly tight-lipped about the Man With No Eyes while being interviewed by TVLine. Nevertheless, she confirmed "he's just as scary in real life" as he is on the show thanks to the gnarly practical effects used to bring him to life. Cypress explained:

"Yeah, it's an entire prosthetic that goes over his face and eyes that like, makes that look. Yeah. But it looks really natural. I can't figure out ... I don't know, he says he can see so, I don't know. He's so tall and thin, it's crazy, and he's in that suit, that funeral suit. It's a lot."

Similar to Din Djarin in "The Mandalorian," The Man With No Eyes is portrayed by multiple actors in "Yellowjackets." Brahm Taylor (The Uninvited in "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina") played the character in season 1 prior to Brody Logan Romhanyi (a fellow Archie-verse alum who went uncredited for portraying a demon on "Riverdale") depicting him in season 2. Cypress didn't specify which actor she was referring to during her interview, but it seems they enjoy terrifying their co-stars in-between takes (as they should!).

"He loves it. I was like, 'You need to go to conventions with this look because this is going to get people going.' He loves it," Cypress added.

New episodes of "Yellowjackets" premiere in the Showtime app and on Paramount+ on Fridays and air Sundays at 9/8c on Showtime.

Read this next: The Best TV Episodes Of 2022, Ranked

The post Yellowjackets' Horrifying Man With No Eyes is a Gnarly Practical Effect appeared first on /Film.

The low code/no code movement provides simplified app generation – but it needs to be understood to be safe.

The post The Security and Productivity Implications of Low Code/No Code Development appeared first on SecurityWeek.

(Welcome to Best Action Scene Ever, a column dedicated to breaking down the best, most effective action sequences throughout the genre. In this edition, we circle back to Jackie Chan's stunt-acular action classic, "Police Story.")

Before Jackie Chan ever crossed the shores of the American mainstream during his Hollywood heyday in the 1990s, the actor/director/stuntman extraordinaire had been hard at work in Hong Kong cinema, churning out hit after hit for decades in his native country. One of his most memorable successes came only a scant handful of years before he finally crossed over into global appeal: 1985's "Police Story," directed by and starring Chan as Chan Ka-Kui, followed the rogue cop on his relentless quest to take down a drug lord, babysit a key witness played by Maggie Cheung, and subsequently clear his own name after being framed by his powerful enemies

The movie — which, quite honestly, could've had several different scenes come up as a contender for this column — kicks off with a jaw-dropping raid on the villainous Chu Tao (Yuen Chor) that crescendos with multiple cars plowing through a small hillside town, ups the ante with a frightfully risky stunt involving a runaway bus, and even throws in some deceptively complex bits of slapstick humor and complex physical comedy for good measure. Yet with so much to choose from, this action/comedy somehow manages to top itself with its concluding set piece set at a shopping mall that features a little bit of everything executed on an improbably high level.

The Scene

Throughout the film, Chan's tireless cop Ka-Kui has remained in dogged pursuit of the powerful gang leader Chu Tao, going to whatever lengths necessary to arrest him and, most importantly, prove his guilt. Hilariously enough, the path to achieving that goal ends up becoming less direct than the straightforward cop would prefer. The crime boss' secretary Salina Fong (Brigitte Lin) is rounded up in the opening raid and compelled to testify at Chu Tao's upcoming trial (we're not 100% sure the legal proceedings as depicted in the movie fully check out, even for one set in 1980s Hong Kong, but just go with it), making her a prime witness and a top target from her own former employer. Naturally, Ka-Kui is recruited to serve as her personal bodyguard for the next 24 hours, which hardly goes according to plan.

Having escaped from both the police and Chu Tao's criminal racket, Salina finally regains a sense of agency from both rival organizations and sets out to take control of her own fate ... by stealing her old boss' incriminating computer data right out from under him. It's never made clear exactly what she means to do with this information, whether blackmail Chu Tao or hand it over to the police to secure her own freedom. (Again, who's to say this evidence would actually be admissible in court, but that's not exactly the point here!) But this juicy setup provides the momentum to bring the story to a head, turning the unexpected location of a shopping mall into the place where all three competing parties intersect in spectacular fashion.

Thanks to Chan's direction, incredible fight choreography, and some brazen (reckless?) stunt coordinating, this scene has since become immortal.

Why It Works

The ol' maxim of "Keep it simple, stupid" applies to many different aspects of life, not least of all screenwriting. Although action filmmaking in particular can get away with incredibly convoluted plots on occasion if placed in the right hands, this generally tends to be helpful advice for keeping action sequences clear, coherent, and engaging so that storytellers can focus on adding all sorts of elements to spice things up. The final set piece of "Police Story" follows this to a T, despite the considerable length of the final sequence. Clocking in at almost 15 minutes, the setup and subsequent fight at the mall carries viewers through to the ending credits. None of it would've worked if not for Chan and co-writer Edward Tang's insistence on establishing the basics of the action.

It helps that, despite her murky motivations, Salina's inciting action of stealing the data sets up a very easy-to-follow sequence of events. Ka-Kui needs the evidence and Salina (who's the only living witness who can clear his name) intact to put Chu Tao behind bars for good. Chu Tao simply can't afford to lose that data, forcing him to send in everything he's got against both of our heroes. And through it all, Ka-Kui increasingly wavers between doing his job as a police officer, doing the right thing by Salina, and losing what little control he has left -- a spiral that began when he was first framed by Chu Tao and his men for the murder of a (secretly traitorous) chief inspector.

The simplicity of the story allowed Chan and his team to go overboard with the stunt work: smashing any visible pane of glass in sight, jumping over escalators, and — famously — Chan sliding multiple stories down a pole.

The Key Moment

Tone can be an impossibly fine line for any filmmaker to ride. Push too much in the direction of humor, and even the most death-defying stunts won't pack the punch they need in order to land with an audience. Pull back and go darker, and you risk creating an atmosphere where over-the-top action feels jarringly out of place.

"Police Story" tells its story with a noticeable amount of earnestness right from the opening scene, charting a deadly shootout between the police and Chu Tao's forces ... with a surprising amount of screen time dedicated to one police officer wracked by trauma and stress at the prospects of being in his first engagement. From there, however, Chan's Ka-Kui is depicted as an almost absentminded slacker: capable of earning commendations and promotions from his higher-ups with his bravery in the face of danger, but with no compunctions about staging a home invasion just to prove a petty point to Selina that she needs his protection. Throughout the film, Chan pokes fun at his own character (and, by extension, his rapidly ascending reputation as a movie star) as a chauvinistic pig, but manages to dial it back once the story takes a darker turn and Ka-Kui becomes much more desperate, compelled to take his own superior officer hostage to escape custody so he can prove his innocence.

The key moment comes in the movie's final seconds. Having thoroughly exhausted himself fighting off a small army of henchmen and barely managing to protect Salina, Ka-Kui survives long enough for the police to arrive and take Chu Tao into custody. But after his girlfriend May (an underused Maggie Cheung) is put into danger, our hero snaps and gives the villain the karmic beatdown he deserves. As the energetic main theme kicks in and ends things on a triumphant note, the final freeze frame tells a decidedly different story -- one that the 1988 sequel dives into further. This uncomfortable ending feels fully earned thanks to the careful setup earlier, yet still manages to coexist with scenes of Chan performing a one-man "Abbot & Costello" routine where he answers multiple phones at once at a police station.

"Police Story" is a fascinating artifact, preserving a very specific moment in Chan's career. Years later, it still holds up every bit as much as it did when its first fans got to experience its thrills and kills for the first time in theaters.

Read this next: Jackie Chan's 15 Greatest Fight Scenes Ranked

The post The Mall Sequence In Jackie Chan's Police Story Is The Best Action Scene Ever appeared first on /Film.

Increasing our attention on cybersecurity at VA is an absolutely critical component of our vision and its focus on operational excellence. Our highest priority is protecting our Veterans’ personal information and ensuring our systems and services are available to care for our Veterans, their families, and care providers. Moreover, we believe that we don’t get the right to deliver on the next set of feature improvements to our product and services unless we first create and maintain a secure environment that is shielded against cyber attacks.

The digital footprint of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is vast, including over 500,000 desktops at over 2,000 locations, interfacing with over 1,000 systems. The significance of size makes the tasks of security in this environment very challenging. It’s made more difficult by the diversity of systems, the age of those systems, and the fact that they don’t share a common structure or architecture. 

To address this risk and complexity, the federal government expends a lot of effort on establishing security policies, which helps establish baseline requirements for good cybersecurity practices and configurations, but policy alone is insufficient. It’s much easier to create security policies than enforce them. Policies are often created that are unrealistic to enforce. Others may not be at the right level of specificity to be actionable.  Still others may be the result of an external mandate that is not aligned with the overall risk-based priorities of the organization. As a result, there’s a temptation to conclude that because you’ve defined a comprehensive set of policies and rolled them out as requirements, you’ve solved the problem; yet policies and their enforcement are only one component of a strong cybersecurity program.

VA has many security policies that drive a great number of processes around compliance checking. Even the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) audit, conducted each year by our Office of the Inspector General (OIG), is highly focused on whether VA is adhering to our own policies. This isn’t wrong. However, auditing compliance with security policy isn’t equivalent to auditing the organization’s security. To ensure a highly secure environment, we must complement security policy with a deep technical assessment of our security posture and engineering efforts.

We need to increase our focus on risk-based assessments of our current security posture. We must constantly assess where we feel the greatest risks are that need mitigating. These assessments should ask:

• What is your most worrisome theory of how you might be breached?
• How would threat actors get in or exploit your information and systems?
• If the breach occurs, what is the most valuable asset, intellectual property, or service that would be vulnerable and how significant is the risk?
• What precise mitigations do you need to bet on to reduce these risks?
• How good is our response and remediation capabilities?
• How will we measure our progress?

Embrace a secure framework.

Executive Order (EO) 14028 requirements provide many focus areas for improving our nation’s cybersecurity—namely, deploying secure government cloud services, implementing Zero Trust architecture government-wide, and mandating multifactor authentication and encryption. But more than simply being a federal mandate, VA embraced Zero Trust Architecture as our security framework because it is powerful. It is comprehensive yet simple to understand. At its heart, it has a simple premise: assume you’ll be breached and then ask, “What can they get their hands on?”. There should be no implicit trust by virtue of having gained access to the Intranet.

It’s easy to find recommended implementation paths for Zero Trust, but it’s not a project with a beginning and an end. Nor can you write up an execution plan that works for all organizations. Zero Trust creates a solid framework for implementing robust security in an organization, but the implementation order needs to reflect your view of the greatest risks in the organization. For us at VA, there are a number of areas we focus on:

• Get to 100% multifactor authentication (MFA) and drive MFA exemptions to zero. This means having non-name/password alternatives for people who are having issues with using the primary MFA method (PIV cards for those of us at VA).
• Get to 100% of systems using single sign-on (SSO), enabling us to manage permissions more centrally.
• Eliminate simple name and password authentications, including service accounts, and find ways to further secure and validate access granted to service accounts.
• Enforce endpoint protection on 100% of devices and ensure all devices meet baseline configuration requirements. For BYOD devices, either require that they run end point protection or assume the worst and restrict their access accordingly.
• Completely isolate the most mission-critical systems from our Intranet. This is a significant investment that takes time and focus, but the Intranet is a popular target for phishing attacks and provides too much risk of lateral movement once threats gain access.
• Challenge our defenses. Our environment is incredibly complex and has so many projects going on that the risk of vulnerabilities being inadvertently introduced is high. We must continuously and aggressively look for vulnerabilities via ongoing sweeps and red team exercises.
• Deploy great monitoring to look for indicators of compromise. The tools in this area are getting better all the time. 
• Focus on robust and rapid incident response. Measure and set goals for our response through metrics like Mean Time to Containment (MTTC) and Mean Time to Remediation (MTTR).
• Drive towards regular audits of user access lists, and ultimately, build the needed linkages to HR systems to automatically remove account access upon job change or termination.

We can and must make these multiple investments simultaneously, since most will take time to come to fruition. An example of this is achieving least privileged access, a difficult technology and business process challenge.

We must measure and track our progress relentlessly. For us, we focus on the most pressing near-term goals through our OKRs—Objectives and Key Results (OKR). We establish a set of OKRs that represent our highest priority cybersecurity efforts, drive hard to accomplish the goals we set, and edit the list as we accomplish more or the environment changes.

In my view, organizations shouldn’t be too enamored with maturity models. These models aren’t well calibrated to the degree of implementation difficulty and are generalizations, while breaches are specific. I think they’re best used as a list of potential investments to use in assessing your strategy. You still have to figure out which investments you believe will yield the greatest improvement in security per erg of energy expended.

Leverage FITARA and ATOs as hard gates

In an organization as complex as VA, people have many competing priorities and real-time distractions that divert attention from even high priorities like cybersecurity. As a result, there must be forcing functions that drive compliance. Fortunately, there are two such gates for all projects in the federal government: Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) compliance and the Authorization to Operate (ATO) process. All projects must pass through these two gates. We leverage FITARA to ensure all IT projects have a good plan in place for cybersecurity and that clearly articulate the people who are accountable. We use the ATO process to assess our true level of system security—and that the project maintains a high expected security level—not just that it adheres to our cybersecurity policies. In addition to reviewing compliance against cybersecurity policies, we push for a true technical assessment of the residual cyber risks of operating the system and a discussion of whether they are acceptable risks for the organization. In the end, the Authorizing Officer (AO) must feel that they are personally signing off on the risk for the entire organization and must take that responsibility seriously.

Drive clear cybersecurity responsibilities for Shadow IT

Shadow IT is inevitable in any organization, and we have much more than I’d like at VA. We can’t fully eliminate it, but it can’t be a place where cyber risk is introduced. We need to ensure a strong cybersecurity skillset in the team that owns and manages the Shadow IT system. This isn’t easy, since the organization’s non-IT businesses often own Shadow IT, and technology is not their mission. That’s what’s most scary about Shadow IT. We need to ensure that if the business is insistent on owning the system, they understand and adhere to all cybersecurity requirements in the organization. This is a great place to use FITARA and ATO as hard gates that Shadow IT systems and services must pass through. This depends on ensuring the organization’s CIO reviews all Shadow IT investments, so that they go through these gates, and that the CIO feels personally accountable for the security of the Shadow IT system, even if he or she doesn’t have day-to-day responsibilities for managing it. It’s one of the toughest mismatches between authority and accountability in the CIO role.

Build deep cyber skills within the organization

As I mentioned, in an organization as vast as VA, it’s easy to focus solely on cybersecurity policy adherence rather than the technical assessment of cyber risk. The reality is that deep technical assessment and mitigation planning necessitates strong cyber skills. Even policy adherence roles benefit from a strong technical understanding of cybersecurity. With the high demand for cybersecurity skills in the market, building these skills internally is critically important. It also represents a valuable career path for an IT professional, including veterans, who represent half the OIT team. We are working to increase our focus on building strong cyber skills and career paths in the organization, driving the effort across our cyber workforce recruitment, hiring, and retainment efforts. We believe that we have a huge opportunity to onboard smart individuals, build their cyber skills, and in so doing, build a skillset that results in a rewarding and fulfilling career for them and an enduring asset for VA.

Be paranoid, very paranoid

Security is a space where the adage that it’s impossible to prove a negative is particularly apt. There is no way to prove that your organization is secure from cyberthreats. Even if you could, cyber attacks are getting more sophisticated all the time.  I’ve read intrusion scenarios that have left me amazed at the multi-step process to exploitation—scenarios that had to be explained to me multiple times before I truly understood them. The evolving speed and rapid adoption of AI only enhances these risks by making it easier to parse through large volumes of data to find patterns and potential vulnerabilities in software code as examples. The threats to an organization will always increase, and so too must our readiness for new threats supported by our ability to remediate and recover from them.

Reflecting on all of this, not only is it impossible to prove that your organization is secure, it’s impossible to prove your organization hasn’t already been exploited. Hackers will gain entrance to an organization, insert a vulnerability, and wait to exploit it until they have all the information they need or the time is right.

The only appropriate posture under these circumstances is to assume you’ve been breached, theorize how it’s done, and work as hard and as fast as you can to close the vulnerabilities. In short, you need to be continuously paranoid about being exploited to to give your organization a good chance that you won’t be.

Threat actors associated with the Vice Society ransomware gang have been observed using a bespoke PowerShell-based tool to fly under the radar and automate the process of exfiltrating data from compromised networks. "Threat actors (TAs) using built-in data exfiltration methods like [living off the land binaries and scripts] negate the need to bring in external tools that might be flagged by

My first post on this topic didn't result in a great deal of engagement, but that's okay. I wrote the first post with part II already loaded in the chamber, and I'm going to continue with this topic because, IMHO, it's immensely important. 

I've see more times than I care to count findings and reports going out the door without validation. I saw an analyst declare attribution in the customer's parking lot, as the team was going on-site, only to be proven wrong and the customer opting to continue the response with another team. Engagements such as this are costly to the consulting team through brand damage and lost revenue, as well as costly to the impacted organization, through delays and additional expenses to reach containment and remediation, all while a threat actor is active on their network.

When I sat down to write the first post, I had a couple more case studies lined up, so here they are...

Case Study #3
Analysts were investigating incidents within an organization, and as part of the response, they were collecting memory dumps from Windows endpoints. They had some information going into the investigations regarding C2 IP addresses, based on work done by other analysts as part of the escalation process, as well as from intel sources and open reporting, so they ran ASCII string searches for the IP addresses against the raw memory dumps. Not getting any hits, declared in the tickets that there was no evidence of C2 connections.

What was missing from this was the fact that IP addresses are not employed by the operating system and applications as ASCII strings. Yes, you may see an IP address in a string that starts with "HTTP://" or "HTTPS://", but by the time the operating system translates and ingests the IP address for use, it's converted to 4 bytes, and as part of a structure. Tools like Volatility provide the capability to search for certain types of structures that include IP addresses, and bulk_extractor searches for other types of structures, with the end result being a *.pcap file.

In this case, as is often the case, analyst findings are part of an overall corporate-wide process, a process that includes further, follow-on findings such as "control efficacy", identifying the effectiveness of various controls and solutions within the security tech stack to address situations (prevent, detect, respond to) incidents, and simply stating in the ticket that "no evidence of communication with the C2 IP address was found" is potentially incorrect, in addition to not addressing how this was determined. If no evidence of communications from the endpoint was found, then is there any reason to submit a block for the IP address on the firewall? Is there any reason to investigate further to determine if a prevention or detection control failed?

In the book Investigating Windows Systems, one of the case studies involves both an image and a memory dump, where evidence of connections to an IP address were found in the memory dump that were not found in application logs within the image, using the tools mentioned above. What this demonstrates is that it's entirely possible for evidence to be found using entirely different approaches, and that not employing the full breadth of what an analyst has available to them is entirely insufficient.

Case Study #4
Let's look at another simple example - as a DFIR analyst, you're examining either data collected from an endpoint, or an acquired image, and you see a Run key value that is clearly malicious; you've seen this one before in open reporting. You see the same path/file location, same file name. 

What do you report?

Do you report, "...the endpoint was infected with <malicious thing>...", or do you validate this finding? 

Do you:
- determine if the file pointed to by the value exists
- determine if the Run key value was disabled  <-- wait, what??
- review the Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Core/Operational Event Log to see if the value was processed
- review the Application Event Log, looking for crash dumps, WER or Application Popup records for the malware
- review the Security Event Log for Process Creation events (if enabled)
- review Sysmon Event Log (if available)
- review the SRUM db for indications of the malware using the network

If not, why? Is it too much of a manual process to do so? Can the playbook not be automated through the means or suite you have available, or via some other means?

But Wait, There's More...
During my time as a DFIR analyst, I've seen command lines used to created Windows services, followed by the "Service Control Manager/7045" record in the System Event Log indicating that a new service was installed. I've also seen those immediately followed by a "Service Control Manager/7009" or "Service Control Manager/7011" record, indicating that the service failed to start, rather than the "Service Control Manager/7036" record you might expect. Something else we need to look for, going beyond simply "a Windows service was installed", is to look for indications of Windows Error Reporting events related to the image executable, application popups, or application crashes.

I've seen malware placed on systems that was detected by AV, but the AV was configured to "take no action" (per AV log messages), so the malware executed successfully. We were able to observe this within the acquired image by validating the impacts on the file system, Registry, Windows Event Log, etc.

I've seen threat actors push malware to multiple systems; in one instance, the threat actor pushed their malware to six systems, but it only successfully executed on four of those systems. On the other two, the Application Event Log contained Windows Error Reporting records indicating that there was an issue with the malware. Further examination failed to reveal the other impacts of the malware that had been observed on the four systems that had been successfully infected.

I worked a PCI case once where the malware placed on the system by the threat actor was detected and quarantined by AV within the first few hours it was on the system, and the threat actor did not return to the system for six weeks. It happened that that six weeks was over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, during a time of peak purchasing. The threat actor returned after Christmas, and placed a new malware executable on the system, one that was not detected by AV, and the incident was detected a week later. In the report, I made it clear that while the threat actor had access to the system, the malware itself was not running and collecting credit card numbers during those six weeks.

Conclusion
In my previous post, I mentioned that Joe Slowik referred to indicators/artifacts as 'composite objects', which is something that, as an industry, we need to understand and embrace. We cannot view artifacts in isolation, but rather we need to consider their nature, which includes both being composite objects, as well as their place within a constellation. We need to truly embrace the significance of an IP address, a Run key value, or any other artifact what conducting and reporting on analysis.

Bleeping Computer warned this week about compromised web sites "that display fake Google Chrome automatic update errors that distribute malware to unaware visitors." The campaign has been underway since November 2022, and according to NTT's security analyst Rintaro Koike, it shifted up a gear after February 2023, expanding its targeting scope to cover users who speak Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. BleepingComputer has found numerous sites hacked in this malware distribution campaign, including adult sites, blogs, news sites, and online stores... If a targeted visitor browses the site, the scripts will display a fake Google Chrome error screen stating that an automatic update that is required to continue browsing the site failed to install. "An error occurred in Chrome automatic update. Please install the update package manually later, or wait for the next automatic update," reads the fake Chrome error message. The scripts will then automatically download a ZIP file called 'release.zip' that is disguised as a Chrome update the user should install. However, this ZIP file contains a Monero miner that will utilize the device's CPU resources to mine cryptocurrency for the threat actors. Upon launch, the malware copies itself to C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome as "updater.exe" and then launches a legitimate executable to perform process injection and run straight from memory. According to VirusTotal, the malware uses the "BYOVD" (bring your own vulnerable driver) technique to exploit a vulnerability in the legitimate WinRing0x64.sys to gain SYSTEM privileges on the device. The miner persists by adding scheduled tasks and performing Registry modifications while excluding itself from Windows Defender. Additionally, it stops Windows Update and disrupts the communication of security products with their servers by modifying the IP addresses of the latter in the HOSTS file. This hinders updates and threat detection and may even disable an AV altogether.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matt Reeves' 2022 film "The Batman" featured the title character in yet another rebooted continuity, this time even darker and grittier than ever before. Batman (Robert Pattinson) was seen as a pale-skinned, stoic outsider, rarely making public appearances as Bruce Wayne, preferring to use his fists to ignite fear in the hearts of the criminal underground. He didn't smile and seemed incapable of experiencing happiness. The Riddler (Paul Dano) was reimagined to resemble the real-life Zodiac Killer, and murdered people on the regular. Gotham City was more corrupt than ever, and it is tantalizingly suggested at one point that Bruce Wayne's late father might have opened the door for massive corruption to leak into the city's legislature. Sadly, that moment is walked back. 

Selina Kyle (Zoë Kravitz), meanwhile, is a stolid and bitter woman living in poverty with multiple cats and her at-risk girlfriend Annika (Hana Hrzic). Technically, the screenplay never makes it explicit that Selina and Annika are lovers, but the subtext is in place. Selina Kyle is also known as Catwoman, of course, meaning she will have to possess the outrage, the cat burglary skills, and the fighting acumen of a comic book supervillain. Like Batman, she is stoic and determined, more prone to anger and despair than happiness or contentment. Given its bleakness, it's no wonder that "The Batman" was so often compared to David Fincher's 1995 serial killer film "Se7en." 

Kravitz's fight training, as explained in a 2022 behind-the-scenes video, was something she had been doing since she was a girl. And it turns out that Robert Alonzo, a second unit director and the film's supervising stunt coordinator, had once been hired as a young Kravitz's martial arts coach when she was 10. 

Put Me In, Coach

Alonzo began working professionally as a stunt performer back in the mid-1990s, appearing on episodes of "Nash Bridges" and "Big Bad Beetleborgs." In film, he began his career working on "Swordfish," and the Jet Li film "The One." He has since appeared in dozens of high-profile Hollywood features including "Collateral Damage," "The Scorpion King," "Cradle 2 The Grave," "Spider-Man 2," "Mission: Impossible III," "Star Trek," and way too many others to list here. Most recently, he did stunts and/or fight choreography for "Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood" and "Ad Astra." Kravitz was born in 1988, so Alonzo was already working on shows like "Charmed" and "Roswell" when he was giving private lessons to her. 

"For Zoë and myself," he said, "it was a bit of a reunion for us. I used to actually teach Zoë private lessons in martial arts when she was ten years old."

Alonzo pointed out that, while he had worked with the actress many years before, training her in 2020 was particularly difficult. "The Batman" was in the middle of filming when the world locked down because of Covid, requiring Alonzo to give most of his training remotely. He was still able to communicate what needed to be done, however, and could even recall the precise martial arts that Selina Kyle would have been trained in. Alonzo said:

"Given the required social distancing, we've implemented video training so that they can learn technique and stance work. [...]  A lot of her style is more evasive and in tune with using the style of, say, tai kwon do and capoeira and hapkido."

Staying Sharp

Kravitz, meanwhile, recalled only how difficult the training was. Because of the Covid-related lockdowns, Kravitz had to take several months off, and retaining her martial arts knowledge was difficult. She said:

"The first couple months of training was, you know, it was intense. I would hobble home. I started training in November 2019, and then we shut down in March for six months and I tried my hardest to just kind of remember everything I'd learned. [...] Rob Alonzo and his whole team are just incredible people, really dedicated to it feeling real and feeling accurate."

In addition to realistic fighting styles, Kravitz's stunt moves were also evocative of, well, a cat. The evasiveness that Alonzo mentioned above was, to the audience's eye, very much like a cat trying to avoid being picked up by its owner. "The Batman," like many of the more recent superhero fare, deliberately stays away from using the characters' colorful superhero names. As such, Catwoman's feline attitudes and themes had to remain academic, communicated either through the character's personal circumstances -- she owns cats -- or her physicality. Hence the cat-like fight moves and the black cat suit. It was only incidentally that Selina's Catwoman mask possessed a pair of pointed tips on the top, making it look vaguely like cat ears. 

"The Batman: Part II" is currently in production. It operates in the same world as the upcoming "The Penguin" TV series, but will exist outside of the ballyhooed upcoming connected DC Universe.

Read this next: Batman Movies Ranked From Worst To Best

The post Zoë Kravitz Kinda Began Catwoman Training for The Batman When She Was 10 Years Old appeared first on /Film.

The year is 2021: projects delayed by the pandemic are finally moving forward and the phrase "The Movies are Back!" has lost all meaning. But you're willing to let that go because news has just dropped that Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult are set to co-star in a violent comedy as Dracula and his bug-eating assistant, Renfield. At long last, The Movies will actually be Back because that's exactly the kind of unhinged, perfect casting that will save the industry!

Except that year is now 2023, "Renfield" is tanking in theaters, and more importantly, the movie isn't even half as fun as we thought it would be.

On paper, "Renfield" has all the makings of a good time: Cage's Dracula is a scene-stealing weirdo, Hoult is anchoring the movie with as much pathos as one can muster for a bug-eating multi-century murderer, and the action is campy as hell with gore frequently splattered across our screens. So where exactly did it all go wrong?

It might have something to do with the fact that — despite the promise made by the premise — this movie only spends so much time on the relationship between Renfield and Dracula. The other half of the runtime is dedicated to an extremely thin and utterly uncompelling plotline about Awkwafina's Rebecca Quincy, a cop whose father was murdered by the mob. What does New Orleans mobster crime have to do with the story of Dracula and his souring relationship with Renfield? I've seen the movie and I'm still not sure.

But wasting time that could be dedicated to the vampiric odd couple isn't even the biggest blunder that the film makes. The real fatal flaw of "Renfield" is that it squanders the talents of proven onscreen maniac, Nicholas Hoult.

The Role He Was Born To Play

Much fanfare has been made about the fact that "Nicolas Cage as Dracula" is one of the greatest ideas ever. Because, y'know, obviously. But there hasn't been enough hype about the genius behind casting Nicholas Hoult as Renfield. A mere glance at Hoult's resume will confirm why he's perfect for the role: crazed chrome-mouthed Nux in "Mad Max: Fury Road"? The menacing yet oafish emperor of "The Great"? The scheming, powdered-wig-wearing aristocrat of "The Favourite?" Hoult is incredible at being a maniacal little weirdo, which is exactly the personality that Bram Stoker's R.M. Renfield is known for.

The deranged, fanatically devoted servant presented in "Dracula" is literally locked up in an insane asylum for the bulk of the novel. Under the thrall of the Count, he's absolutely unhinged, casually feeding on flies, spiders, and birds. It creeps out everyone in his vicinity, as does his fascination with blood and weird ramblings about his master. His gleeful, unsettling energy is the kind of energy that I can easily picture Hoult pulling off. Unfortunately, my imagination is all I have: in "Renfield," that character is essentially scrapped for something more subdued.

Of course, I don't expect this twist on the vampire classic to follow every aspect of "Dracula" to the letter — the fact that it pokes fun at the lore is half the fun. But the movie does want us to believe that this version of Renfield existed once, a long time ago. We just never get to see it for ourselves. We're told that Renfield was once fully under Dracula's thrall, and committed heinous acts for his master without thinking twice. But by the time we meet him, centuries have passed and he's reluctantly treading on in Dracula's employ until an act of heroism inspires him to change.

Let Nicholas Hoult Be Weird, Dammit!

If hiding Renfield's reprehensible side is an effort to keep him likable then all I can do is shake my head in disappointment. If anyone can pull off going from an absolute monster to a sympathetic character in 90 minutes, it's Nicholas freaking Hoult. He's been nailing it for the past 20 episodes of "The Great," where the erratic psycho Emperor Peter III has slowly become a charming (if occasionally punchable) presence. We went from rooting for his murder to dreading his inevitably dark fate. The grand scheme to make us care for him has gone ridiculously well because Hoult always has us in the palm of his hands.

Hoult uses his face like a pro: playing up his boyish charms whilst pulling off heinous or disturbing acts. When he needs to, he hams it the hell up (huzzah!), whether that be abrupt murder in "The Great," or going totally apes**t in "Fury Road." In both cases, those are characters we end up rooting for with teary eyes.

Where is any of that in "Renfield," a movie that seems like the perfect place for Hoult's particular skillset? The movie is hilarious when Ben Schwartz goes wild as the buffoonish heir to a mob empire, and impeccable when Cage is snarling through razor-sharp teeth as the sauntering, uber-entertaining Drcaula. So how is there no space for Renfield to shine too? Isn't this movie named after him?!

Only occasionally does Renfield let loose, in too brief glimmers — like swallowing an entire ant farm to attack enemies with severed arms, still actively gushing blood. That particular scene comes late in the film, a quick glance at the lunatic that could've been. Hoult knows how to swing for the fences, and it's a shame that "Renfield" doesn't grant him the chance to prove it.

Read this next: The Best Horror Movie Performances Of 2022

The post Renfield's Biggest Problem is That It Doesn't Let Nicholas Hoult Be Weird Enough appeared first on /Film.

It's genuinely surprising that the peculiar Transylvanian family residing at 1313 Mockingbird Lane was never updated for modern audiences until 2022. "The Munsters" TV show ran on CBS for only two seasons in the mid-1960s and then sat dormant for decades until Rob Zombie finally revived the series, transforming it into a Technicolor feature film that eventually landed on Netflix. The final product served as more of a prequel to the TV series that focused on the bizarre courtship between Herman (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie) before settling down with Lily's grandfather The Count, their son Eddie and their niece Marilyn. 

Regardless of whether you're a fan of the 2022 film or not, (/Film's review wasn't exactly kind), Zombie felt like the perfect choice to direct. "The Munsters" was a dream project for the musician and filmmaker who had long been obsessed with the original series and subsequent TV movies featuring Fred Gwynne returning to the Frankenstein-esque role he made famous. For evidence of Zombie's passion for the material, look no further than the MTV Cribs episode showing mountains of memorabilia and an original poster of the 1966 Universal movie "Munster, Go Home!" that advertised "America's Funniest Family in their First Full-Length Feature in Technicolor."

For now, it seems that Zombie has no plans to do a follow-up to his take on "The Munsters" after being put through the wringer just to get the film financed and completed during the pandemic. Zombie has the unique opportunity to go back and forth between directing and making music, and right now he has his sights set on his upcoming summer tour with Alice Cooper and making another record, according to a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. 

Zombie's Dream Project Wasn't Ideal

Getting any movie made is always an uphill battle, and Zombie has fought hard to get his indie horror filmography in front of audiences for decades. After directing several of his own music videos, Zombie's feature film debut, "House of 1000 Corpses" is somehow celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new Blu-ray and Best Buy exclusive SteelBook from Lionsgate. In short, he's paid his dues as a filmmaker and it sounds like "The Munsters" may be his last film for the foreseeable future, telling EW:

"'The Munsters' was exhausting. That was an exhausting movie to make. It took almost five years of non-stop pushing. And then, being in a foreign country, during the height of COVID, was not as much fun as you would think! So the whole experience was very draining."

The original TV series was filmed on the backlot of Universal Studios, but due to budget restraints, Zombie and crew traveled to Budapest, Hungary to shoot their version. After numerous attempts to get "The Munsters" made, Zombie had to go through a lot of adversity in order to get his vision in front of cameras, and it doesn't sound like he has any intention right now to try and repeat that process all over again. 

With multiple films under his belt at this point, Zombie really doesn't have much else to prove, and the loyal fanbase that he's amassed over the years has plenty of his horror movies to revisit until he decides to take on directing again. His only real reason to make a sequel to "The Munsters" is to revisit the iconic characters again, a luxury he was able to enjoy with his Firefly family trilogy of "House of 1000 Corpses," "The Devil's Rejects," and "3 From Hell."

Zombie Doesn't Need To Make Another Family Film

After making his mark in mainstream franchise horror with "Halloween" and "Halloween II," and making a true backwoods horror classic in "The Devil's Rejects," Zombie seems content to rest on his laurels. He's probably thought about where he could take the Munster family next, but he's adamant about not making another "Munsters" movie:

"I won't and I don't want to. The only reason I would ever want to is because I like making sequels. You have so little time with the first movie to develop these characters. Towards the end of 'The Munsters' film you go, okay, now they're all set, you can really jump in with what they're all about."

With the Firefly trilogy, Zombie got to mold Captain Spaulding, Baby, and Otis into new horror icons, which isn't easy to do. With the "House of 1000 Corpses" 20th anniversary happening now, it's as good a time as any to recognize Zombie's impact on the horror genre. "The Munsters" fulfilled a lifelong dream for Zombie, but there's no need to revisit the characters in a sequel that probably no one is really that interested in seeing, including his diehard fans. 

Read this next: Horror Remakes That Are Better Than The Originals

The post Rob Zombie Says Making The Munsters Movie Was Exhausting, And He Won't Make Another One appeared first on /Film.

While movie remakes are popular across genres (Anyone remember the 2018 remake of Garry Marshall's "Overboard"?), the horror genre is especially susceptible. The genre is unique insofar as its scares endure more than most. Where comedies and action movies, for instance, are inextricably linked to their time of release, a scary movie is a scary movie. With a fresh coat of paint, what was new three decades ago can seem fresh again.

A curious contemporary trend has emerged in which relatively recent titles are remade just a few years after their original releases. Released just 14 years after the first "Cabin Fever," the remake used the exact script as the original. Recently, horror filmmaker Anthony DiBlasi released "Malum" in select theaters. "Malum," a remake of DiBlasi's 2014 indie "Last Shift," isn't quite a shot-for-shot remake so much as it is a reimagining. With more money and more experience, DiBlasi revisits his demonic fable in a new context. 

Remakes have long been unfairly maligned. Though in some cases, they're even better than the originals. While fans remained mixed on what a remake should ultimately accomplish, the broad brushstrokes are there for filmmakers to reinterpret good ideas constrained by budget or decade of release. Here, we'll be looking specifically at 10 low-budget horror movies — all great in their own right — that could benefit from a remake.

Horror In The High Desert

Whether Dutch Marich's "Horror in the High Desert" gets a remake or not, it remains one of the scariest found-footage movies of the century. Structured as a faux-documentary, Marich's low-budget shocker uses several talking heads to explore the case of hiker Gary Hinge (Eric Mencis), who disappeared while hiking the Great Basin Desert. For the first hour, "Horror in the High Desert" speculates on what might have happened. Was it simply an accident? Was it foul play? Is Gary simply lost? As frightening as some of the suggested theories are, the truth is considerably more horrifying.

Unfolding in a breathless 20-minute climactic beat, Marich treats the audience to a genuinely terrifying foray into the darkness. The scares unsettle without seeming like too much, and in those moments, Marich cements himself as a horror auteur. It's in the early moments, however, where a remake could spruce things up. "Horror in the High Desert" takes a while to get going, and despite the committed work of an unknown cast, it very much feels like an indie production. The television graphics, interview staging, and true crime pantomime feel too uncanny. They're close to the real thing, but not quite. A remake could tighten the early moments, better ensuring the audience is fully invested by the time the terror arrives in earnest.

The House At The End Of Time

Alejandro Hidalgo's "The House at the End of Time" is one of the best international ghost stories of the last decade. Hidalgo channels a distinct Venezuelan lens in his merging of haunted houses and time travel, augmenting the entire enterprise with touching cultural specificity. It's unlike any haunted house movie that's come before, no doubt accounting for why it remains the highest-grossing horror movie in Venezuelan history. In 2016, New Line Cinema purchased the remake rights. However, in the years since, there's been no update on where the project stands or whether it's even going to happen at all.

A U.S. remake would no doubt dull some of Hidalgo's cultural touches, though it would expose domestic audiences to the original. Horror remakes, especially international horror remakes, are gateways for transnational cinema. They are springboards for the original release, opportunities for new audiences to discover and appreciate horrors beyond their own borders. A good story is a good story, and "The House at the End of Time" has a scary good one. It's worth giving this gem one more chance to shock audiences everywhere.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood

For the casual horror fan, "The Dorm That Dripped Blood" might simply be that movie Jamie Kennedy's Randy Meeks rattles off while on the phone with Ghostface in "Scream 2." For "Melrose Place" fans, "The Dorm That Dripped Blood" was the movie debut of Daphne Zuniga. Filmed at the University of California, Los Angeles, the film is a slasher in the purest form. Several students stay behind during the Christmas break to clear out an abandoned building, unaware that a killer is stalking the halls. "The Dorm That Dripped Blood" might not innovate, but with a meager $150,000 budget, it spills plenty of blood with style. 

Nevertheless, directors Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow create a consistent level of tension, including a protracted chase scene late in the film. A remake with a bigger budget would fit well within the current horror landscape. Revitalized slasher series like "Scream" and "Halloween" are making big bucks at the box office, so now is as perfect a time as any to drag this overlooked slasher into the new age.

Ghostwatch

"Ghostwatch" is one of the scariest movies ever made. The infamous BBC production terrified an entire generation, prompting thousands of complaints from "traumatized viewers," some of whom were allegedly convinced the movie they were watching was real. An early iteration of the found-footage format, "Ghostwatch" splits its time between television studio and camera crew as host Michael Parkinson takes viewers through an investigation into an allegedly haunted house in Northolt.

As a precursor to the simmering scares of later subgenre entries like "The Blair Witch Project" and "The Outwaters," "Ghostwatch" might well be the granddaddy of found footage horror. It strikes a verisimilitude that's rarely been seen since, and while most of that is innate to its distribution (a Halloween night television premiere in 1992), the final moments suggest a much larger paranormal world. Contemporary filmmakers could add some money to the ghostly coffers and explore a world governed by the undead. Given the links between the antagonistic spirits and technology, a remake could easily springboard into a cautionary, modern tale.

Sole Survivor

Released in 1984, "Sole Survivor" was "Final Destination" before "Final Destination." What it lacks in budget, star power, and scale, it more than makes up for in the sheer savagery of its existential terror. Slasher fans especially hold "Sole Survivor" in high regard, but more casual audiences have likely never heard of it. That's a shame. Director Thom Eberhardt (who also directed "Night of the Comet" the same year) accomplishes a lot with an estimated $350,000 budget. However, with more money, the full thrust of his conceit could be explored.

Anita Skinner stars as Denise, a television advertising executive who survives a deadly plane crash as the film opens. As the titular sole survivor, Denise grapples with survivor's guilt and the unfortunate appearance of several specters. Something from beyond isn't happy she's survived, and it's looking to reclaim her. Part slasher, part mood piece in the vein of "Carnival of Souls," "Sole Survivor" is as terrifying as it is mysterious. Eberhardt paints a world of miraculous scale, though the budget often constrains some of his best ideas. While there's power in suggestion, a remake could easily take "Sole Survivor" to the next level.

Dog Soldiers

It's not fair to rag on Neil Marshall. This is the man responsible for "The Descent" and "Dog Soldiers," after all. Beyond his cinematic offerings, he's helmed some of the best episodes of "Game of Thrones," including the Emmy-nominated "The Watchers on the Wall." Yet, in recent years, the master of frenzied genre cinema has directed some duds. His latest movies, "The Reckoning" and "The Lair," seem inexplicably removed from the person behind them. How is "The Lair" a Neil Marshall movie? The aforementioned "Dog Soldiers," Marshall's directorial debut, is long overdue for a remake. Better still, it would get Marshall back to his roots and remind contemporary audiences why he was once the most exciting voice in horror.

"Dog Soldiers" follows a group of military men battling werewolves in the Scottish Highlands. With a £2.3 million budget, it was undoubtedly low budget, accounting for some unfortunate production constraints. At times, the action is obscured, the lighting is a bit too dark, and Marshall creatively guides the camera away when the effects aren't quite convincing. It's still a classic werewolf movie. However, with the benefit of today's technology, it could be even more. There's a dearth of good werewolf movies released lately (the last might well be 2022's "The Cursed"), and no film is better poised to bring lycanthropes back than "Dog Soldiers."

The Hallow

Horror fans are more than familiar with the indie-to-franchise pipeline. Studios poach new talent, though rather than giving them the funds needed to explore their original vision, they saddle them with IPs. After the success of "The Taking of Deborah Logan," director Adam Robitel was tapped for "Insidious: The Last Key." Lee Cronin's debut, "The Hole in the Ground," was all the executives needed to hand him "Evil Dead Rise." Corin Hardy's Sundance smash, "The Hallow," got him the gig directing "The Nun," the highest-grossing entry in "The Conjuring" universe. Arguably the most gothic entry in the franchise, "The Nun" is excellent and serves the argument that Hardy should be given another shot at "The Hallow," this time with the budget to match his vision. 

In "The Hallow," a conservationist and his family are targeted by fairies in the woods outside their rural Irish cottage. Like many indie creature features, "The Hallow" suggests more than it shows, exploiting sound design and motivated staging to imply the horror. When the action shifts to exteriors, "The Hallow" is just a little too dark — a purposeful technique to hide the low-budget monster effects. It's supremely effective, but fae horror remains an untapped well. If "The Hallow" were remade with a larger budget, it could be the incentive studios need to unleash more fae horror into the world.

The Void

When Universal Pictures scrapped the practical effects for Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s prequel "The Thing," effects artists Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. took to YouTube to share some of the work they'd done — work the studio later replaced with computer-generated effects. They'd later leverage this exposure into the 2015 release "Harbinger Down," a movie meant to celebrate practical monsters in all their glory. The monsters looked great. The rest? Well, it's a low-budget horror movie. A similar fate befell Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie's "The Void." Kostanski would go on to direct the sensational "Psycho Goreman," but "The Void" remains a beguiling exercise in what could have been.

When grotesque, Lovecraftian creatures besiege a rural hospital, a ragtag band of survivors must endure a hellish, interdimensional nightmare. Like "Harbinger Down," "The Void" has great monsters — some of the best this century's seen — but the movie never coalesces into anything more than an effects reel. A remake could easily give the filmmaking duo the budget to match the story with the effects. While Kostanski and Gillespie raised $82,000 through IndieGoGo for the keystone monsters, a remake with more financial backing would not only augment the effects but also the story itself. 

Banshee Chapter

Like "The Void," "Banshee Chapter" is Lovecraftian horror in its purest form. While mainstream audiences have been given bits and nibbles of cosmic horror (Alex Garland's "Annihilation" was released theatrically, after all), the subgenre is most often relegated to the indie video-on-demand sphere. In recent years, we've seen "Color Out of Space," "Mandy" (both Nicolas Cage vehicles), and "Glorious." All were festival hits that later arrived on streaming. Cosmic horror relishes in the unknown, but sometimes, a little more budget (perhaps something akin to Guillermo del Toro's canceled "At the Mountains of Madness") would be nice.

Blair Erickson's "Banshee Chapter" is the perfect low-budget shocker to remake. Loosely inspired by Lovecraft's "From Beyond," the film follows journalist Anne (Katia Winter) as she endeavors to track down her missing friend. There are government conspiracies, unusual drugs, and entities from another dimension. "Banshee Chapter" manages a lot with a little, though there's no denying its best ideas are unfortunately relegated to off-screen moments. There isn't enough money to dive that deep into the cosmos. Nevertheless, "Banshee Chapter" is one of the best indie horror releases of this century, and if any film deserves a comeback, it's this one.

Grave Encounters

The first "Grave Encounters" cost somewhere between $120,000 and $2 million. It grossed $3.6 million worldwide. The second cost $1.4 million, grossing an estimated $8 million, though those numbers are difficult to verify. Movie accounting is strange, but there's no doubt "Grave Encounters" was a cheap little thing that made some dough (It did, after all, get a much more expensive sequel). It was one of the first found-footage horror movies to capitalize on "Paranormal Activity's" success, leveraging the burgeoning availability of streaming to generate considerable word-of-mouth. While it hasn't endured like its inspirations, it's one of the last decade's better ghost stories. If only those ghosts looked good.

Where "Paranormal Activity" never shows too much of its, well, paranormal activity, "Grave Encounters" doesn't hide anything. The early tension is strong, but the terror dissipates as soon as the CGI baddies show their faces in the latter half. They're not convincing by any stretch. Although audiences certainly know they're watching a movie, the documentary verisimilitude cultivated earlier evaporates almost entirely. These ghosts are of the YouTube scare prank variety — gray, distorted faces, all digital and blurry. Despite some missteps, "Grave Encounters" deserves credit, and were it to be remade, a little more money could go a long way in better designing its spirits. With a bigger budget, "Grave Encounters" could actualize the funhouse feel it aspires to.

Read this next: 14 Horror Movie Flops That Became Cult Classics

The post 10 Low Budget Horror Movies That Deserve Remakes appeared first on /Film.

"The fact remains that Google Chrome is the arbiter of web standards," argues FSF campaigns manager Greg Farough (while adding that Firefox, "through ethical distributions like GNU IceCat and Abrowser, can weaken that stranglehold.") "Google's deprecation of the JPEG-XL image format in February in favor of its own patented AVIF format might not end the web in the grand scheme of things, but it does highlight, once again, the disturbing amount of control it has over the platform generally." Part of Google's official rationale for the deprecation is the following line: "There is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG-XL." Putting aside the problematic aspects of the term "ecosystem," let us remark that it's easy to gauge the response of the "entire ecosystem" when you yourself are by far the largest and most dangerous predator in said "ecosystem." In relation to Google's overwhelming power, the average web user might as well be a microbe. In supposedly gauging what the "ecosystem" wants, all Google is really doing is asking itself what Google wants... While we can't link to Google's issue tracker directly because of another freedom issue — its use of nonfree JavaScript — we're told that the issue regarding JPEG-XL's removal is the second-most "starred" issue in the history of the Chromium project, the nominally free basis for the Google Chrome browser. Chromium users came out of the woodwork to plead with Google not to make this decision. It made it anyway, not bothering to respond to users' concerns. We're not sure what metric it's using to gauge the interest of the "entire ecosystem," but it seems users have given JPEG-XL a strong show of support. In turn, what users will be given is yet another facet of the web that Google itself controls: the AVIF format. As the response to JPEG-XL's deprecation has shown, our rallying together and telling Google we want something isn't liable to get it to change its mind. It will keep on wanting what it wants: control; we'll keep on wanting what we want: freedom. Only, the situation isn't hopeless. At the present moment, not even Google can stop us from creating the web communities that we want to see: pages that don't run huge chunks of malicious, nonfree code on our computers. We have the power to choose what we run or do not run in our browsers. Browsers like GNU IceCat (and extensions like LibreJS and JShelter> ) help with that. Google also can't prevent us from exploring networks beyond the web like Gemini. What our community can do is rally support behind those free browsers that choose to support JPEG-XL and similar formats, letting the big G know that even if we're smaller than it, we won't be bossed around.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After an unexpected week off, we're back to talk about the calm before the storm as we discuss this week's gaming news, Everspace 2, Minecraft Legends, Jedi Fallen Order, and a lot more.  This week's music:  Metallica - Too Far Gone