Hard West 2 has arrived, keeping the ricochets and adding a game mechanic familiar to those who've played Gears Tactics or Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters. If you kill an opponent, you…
We first met the Framework Laptop last year, with a follow up earlier this year that confirmed that the laptop is indeed upgradeable, as Ars Technica swapped out the original hardware…
Jared Mauch, the Michigan man who built a fiber-to-the-home Internet provider because he couldn't get good broadband service from AT&T or Comcast, is expanding with the help of $2.6 million in government money. From a report: When we wrote about Mauch in January 2021, he was providing service to about 30 rural homes including his own with his ISP, Washtenaw Fiber Properties. Mauch now has about 70 customers and will extend his network to nearly 600 more properties with money from the American Rescue Plan's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, he told Ars in a phone interview in mid-July.
The US government allocated Washtenaw County $71 million for a variety of infrastructure projects, and the county devoted a portion to broadband. The county conducted a broadband study before the pandemic to identify unserved locations, Mauch said. When the federal government money became available, the county issued a request for proposals (RFP) seeking contractors to wire up addresses "that were known to be unserved or underserved based on the existing survey," he said. "They had this gap-filling RFP, and in my own wild stupidity or brilliance, I'm not sure which yet, I bid on the whole project [in my area] and managed to win through that competitive bidding process," he said. Mauch's ISP is one of four selected by Washtenaw County to wire up different areas.
Mauch's network currently has about 14 miles of fiber, and he'll build another 38 miles to complete the government-funded project, he said. In this sparsely populated rural area, "I have at least two homes where I have to build a half-mile to get to one house," Mauch said, noting that it will cost "over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served." The contract between Mauch and the county was signed in May 2022 and requires him to extend his network to an estimated 417 addresses in Freedom, Lima, Lodi, and Scio townships. Mauch lives in Scio, which is next to Ann Arbor. Although the contract just requires service to those 417 locations, Mauch explained that his new fiber routes would pass 596 potential customers. "I'm building past some addresses that are covered by other [grant] programs, but I'll very likely be the first mover in building in those areas," he said. Under the contract terms, Mauch will provide 100Mbps symmetrical Internet with unlimited data for $55 a month and 1Gbps with unlimited data for $79 a month.
Despite how it ended, we all have to agree that it was rare for a television show to accomplish what "Game of Thrones" did. The extent of character-driven storytelling depicted through its vast, immersive world was the basis of its appeal. Its breathtaking cinematography was a feat on its own, making the world of Westeros a place where any problem can be tackled with a sword or a saddle. The overwhelming success of "Game of Thrones" made it the biggest television show in the world — with several actors clamoring to join the show in any capacity. It was a dream for Richard Madden (who played Robb Stark for three seasons) to have stayed on the series for as long as he did, but when the time came for him to leave, the Golden Globe-winning actor was only "thankful" for his experience.
Since leaving "Game of Thrones," Richard Madden has dabbled in many genres — he's played a prince, a police officer, a soldier, and even a superhero. And he probably wouldn't have been able to do any of this if it wasn't for his timely "Game of Thrones" exit.
Playing Rob Stark For Five Years Wasn't Easy
In Variety's "Actors on Actors" interview with Amy Adams, Richard Madden revisited his years working on "Game of Thrones." Although Madden's character Robb Stark was one of many who met with a tragic, brutal death toward the end of season 3, his other co-stars went on to star in all eight seasons of the show. The actor spent five formative years of his career filming "Game of Thrones," and he is grateful for everything he learned.
"I died at the end of season 3. It was such a hard thing to finish because from first pilot to my death was five years. But five years was a great time to be on the show. It helped me so much with my career and experience. I learned a lot from shooting 30 hours of television. You really start to learn the trade doing that. And then I was thankful to leave it. The actors on it now must be 11 years into playing these characters. Give these guys some medals, because that is a marathon."
'There's A Restraint That Comes From Doing These Television Shows'
While Madden was thrilled by the prospect of working in different genres and taking on other roles, he was "sad" to leave behind his "Game of Thrones" family, with whom he spent a lot of time. The actor shared, "I was happy to move on from that and work through the rest of my twenties doing other jobs, other characters. There's a restraint that comes from doing these television shows because sometimes you can't — you're not allowed to do other things."
The actor explained that navigating multiple projects while starring in television shows was challenging because of scheduling conflicts and press commitments. As sad as he was that his time on "Game of Thrones" was up, Madden was very "comfortable" and ready for his departure.
Robb Stark was dishonorably slain by the Freys in "The Rains of Castamere," the penultimate episode of season 3. He was shot by multiple crossbows, stabbed by a dagger to the heart, and his corpse was later decapitated, with his direwolf's head sewn onto his. The King of the North was massacred during the Red Wedding alongside his mother, Lady Catelyn Stark, and his pregnant wife, Queen Talisa. "Game of Thrones" might have one too many shocking moments — but the brutal Red Wedding has been impossible to forget, for its shock value and jaw-dropping conclusion, ever since the episode aired in 2013.
You could make the strong argument that "A League of Their Own" is the very best baseball movie. It deftly balances the built-in tension of any game within America's national pastime with character work, pathos, and some of the most memorable one-liners of the last 40 years. But it would be a lie to say that the 1992 Penny Marshall comedy, a period piece set in the mid-1940s that follows the arc of the first season of an all-women's baseball league during World War II, got everything right. One notable moment features a Black woman revealing herself to have a hell of an arm when she throws an errant baseball back to the film's heroine Dottie (Geena Davis). And the film's undertones of what "makes" a woman feminine, such as "proper manners" or makeup, belie a potential discussion on LGBTQ+ framing in a story that's less invested in male/female romance than female friendship.
This is all to say that while "A League of Their Own" is a classic film, it is not a perfect one, and it is ripe enough for a redo thirty years later. Enter Abbi Jacobson of "Broad City" and co-creator Will Graham, of "Mozart in the Jungle," who have refashioned an eight-episode adaptation of "A League of Their Own" for Prime Video. The new "League" tackles racial integration and sexuality head-on, doing so with varying levels of success in an adaptation that, by its conclusion, feels less invested in adapting a beloved film as much as it feels trapped by that film as it tries to spread far beyond its main focus.
Though the outlines of the 1992 film are present throughout the first few episodes of "A League of Their Own" (I've seen all eight episodes of the first season, premiering all together on August 12), it's evident from the opening scene that this will not be a beat-for-beat retelling. Jacobson stars as Carson Shaw, a housewife from Idaho first seen hightailing it to a train in the hopes of being considered as a recruit to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Though Carson, like Dottie Hinson, is a skilled catcher who is underestimated and proves her worth over time, her journey is singular — there's no corollary in the show to Dottie's kid sister Kit (Lori Petty). Instead, some of Carson's character traits serve as a blend of Dottie's headstrong nature and Kit's persistence. More importantly, while Carson's husband (Patrick J. Adams) is overseas fighting in the war, Carson's essentially running away from him and her home to take part in the AAGPBL tryout.
All of this is captured in a headlong rush in the first five minutes of the opening episode, which also introduces us to more modernized versions of characters played in the film by Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell, and the other women who become part of the Rockford Peaches. By the end of the opening hour, two of the leads have embarked on a tentative romantic relationship, one of many same-sex couplings depicted throughout the first season. In some ways, this "League of Their Own" is very much like the film, capturing some subplots with striking similarities. And in some ways, the show is emphatically and drastically different, or it at least tries to be.
Perhaps the most notable difference throughout is that while Jacobson serves as the main lead, she's equally matched by Chanté Adams as Max, or Maxine, a young Black woman living in Rockford who's gifted with an incredible pitching arm but is saddled by ... well, by being a young Black woman in the American Midwest of the 1940s. She tries and fails to make headway at the AAGPBL tryouts because the league was not integrating Black women at the time. But that setback aside, Max is arguably the second lead of "League," as she tries to break into the world of baseball any way she can (but without being a direct part of the Rockford Peaches' ascent in the AAGPBL's first season). If there is a grim reality against which this show's creative aims struggle, it's the attempt to reconcile 21st-century progressivism with the harsh and disturbing facts that being a woman, and being Black, lent very few athletic opportunities in the 1940s. To focus on a Black woman's rise in baseball in the 1940s is to create a fascinating set of dramatic obstacles, but those obstacles run counter to the main Peaches storyline. Adams is quite good as Max, and her storyline often manages to a) be the most compelling in a given episode and b) exist in what feels like a totally separate world from the rest of the show.
Within the Peaches' storyline, there is a clear victor among the ensemble: the delightful and charming D'Arcy Carden as Greta Gill (this series' version of the Madonna character), a beautiful, snappy, and enigmatic player who sets her eyes on Carson from the moment they meet at the AAGPBL tryouts. Anyone who watched Carden on "The Good Place" will not be surprised that she's the MVP of this show, too; if this show does anything right, it lets Carden steal the show in every scene.
No Crying In Baseball
The flip side is that if there's anything genuinely disappointing — and arguably baffling — about the adaptation, it's in how the manager role once originated by Tom Hanks is handled. Now, following in Hanks' footsteps — playing a loutish ex-MLB player who can barely stand straight for being constantly hung over and is now the barely willing manager of female ballplayers — is a tough task. On paper, casting Nick Offerman as a similarly loutish ex-player (this time a man named "Dove" Porter) is about as close to a win as possible. While Offerman does his able best with the material, he has extremely little material to work with (to say more would be to spoil too much of the show's season-long arc). By the end of the season, it would have been creatively difficult to imagine a scenario where Porter wasn't present, but the writers barely crafted an arc for him.
It feels largely necessary for anyone watching this "League of Their Own" to do their best to ignore the 1992 film. Though some of that movie's most quintessential moments are recreated, those moments have little potency and feel like they were demanded by Amazon's executives. (Yes, a character shouts "There's no crying in baseball!" during this show. No, it is not remotely funny or effective.) Where "League" is strongest is in teasing out the various ways in which women were trapped by societal norms in the 1940s. All of the women who become part of the AAGPBL (as well as Max on the other side of Rockford) are depicted as standing slightly on the edges of acceptable society, struggling to be embraced by that society without changing who they are, despite that society flatly rejecting them for being athletic and aggressive, and for who they love.
These strengths of the show are, of course, pretty much antithetical to what happens in the movie, where the commentary about certain characters' physical appearance — Marla Hooch, who's treated as a lost cause by a team of women trying to apply a makeover upon her — is often counterbalanced with many of the women being defined by their romantic relationships with local men or, in the case of Dottie, her husband. The new "League" sidesteps most of the film's romantic angles to lean heavily into being more squarely about being lesbian in a time when that preference was treated as something akin to a mental illness by a more puritanical society. The conflicts here, as the women of the Rockford Peaches traverse their first year in the world of baseball, are as much about how society will treat them for who they love, as about whether or not they'll be able to accept themselves, and those conflicts are less successful when focusing on the larger societal concerns. Within the team, someone finding out that another of her fellow players is "queer" (the term bandied about in the show's 40s-era vernacular) is treated in one episode as a big, concerning cliffhanger, and then tossed off as a jokey resolution in the following one.
"A League of Their Own" the show is messy and strange and not often successful, unlike the film on which it's based. The ensemble cast is top-to-bottom solid (among the supporting players, the always-funny Kate Berlant is especially well-cast as the neurotic Shirley), and some of the storylines would almost be more fascinating if they weren't tied down to the needs of building the season around a scrappy underdog sports show. (On a truly nitpicky level, the way this show depicts the basic act of throwing a baseball around, whether through pitching or infielders handling a ground ball, is vexing because every throw seems heavily CGI-enhanced, implying the actresses didn't have that much athletic ability, which is a weird vibe to create.) Parts of "A League of Their Own" work, on their own, but when this show feels the need to re-connect itself to its source material, it stumbles.
"A League of Their Own" premieres August 12, 2022 on Prime Video.
If one could have predicted what Fred Astaire's final motion picture would've been, they likely would've guessed it was a movie musical, or at least something pleasant and frothy. Yet while Astaire was, in his Hollywood heyday, a consummate song-and-dance man, the actor seemed interested in leaving that reputation behind him during the last act of his career.
Of course, Astaire was not so naive as to believe he could change his entire screen persona from his prior decades of film appearances, but during the mid-'70s and early '80s, he nonetheless chose projects and roles that didn't have any musical component to them and certainly didn't require dancing. After making his last musical in 1968 with "Finian's Rainbow," Astaire seemed determined to diversify his filmography, from being a part of the trapped ensemble of "The Towering Inferno" and tooling around Ireland helping lost people in "The Purple Taxi" to appearing as Starbuck's father in an episode of "Battlestar Galactica."
Yet few could have predicted that Astaire's final appearance on the big screen would be a fully-fledged horror film. Adapted from the best-selling novel by Peter Straub, 1981's "Ghost Story" is more than just an offbeat vehicle for Astaire; it's a chilly, dark, erotic (!!!) Gothic gem that's worth checking out for many reasons.
Astaire Joins A Murderer's Row Of Classic Screen Actors In 'Ghost Story'
One of the standout aspects of "Ghost Story" the novel is the way Straub attempts to live up to the traditional elements of ghost stories. One of these elements is the tale revolving around a group of elderly characters who literally tell each other ghost stories by a fireplace, the better to distract themselves from the real-life ghost story that has haunted them their whole lives.
Such a setup meant that the "Ghost Story" movie had the opportunity to create an ensemble of seasoned actors, and director John Irvin went after the top of the list: as the AFI Catalog states, the likes of Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda were initially approached to star.
Although Stewart and Fonda wound up passing on the project, the film still ended up with a killer group of veteran actors: Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman, and of course, Astaire. Rather than having Astaire and his cheerful demeanor be the odd man out in a horror film, each of these performers has an inherent warmth to them which cleverly contrasts with the film's wintry setting and its dark story. The characters these men play are allowed to be sympathetic as the supernatural entity known as Eva/Alma (Alice Krige) threatens their lives while also being riddled with guilt over their past sins, which have quite literally come back to haunt them.
'Ghost Story' Creates A Spooky And Surprisingly Erotic Mood
With such an accomplished cast and popular source material, it was up to Irvin and his other collaborators to make "Ghost Story" live up to its promise, and it does in many ways. Cinematographer Jack Cardiff (himself a veteran of Archers classics like "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes") certainly makes the most of the film visually. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review upon the film's release in 1981, "Ghost stories should always begin as this one does, in shadows so deep that the flickering light of the dying fire barely illuminates the apprehensive faces of the listeners."
Ebert also praised the succinctness of screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen's script, explaining how "Background is provided without being allowed to distract from the main event. The characters are established with quick, subtle strokes." The critic then offered his unequivocal stamp of approval: "This is a good movie."
Expectedly enough, "Ghost Story" has several eerie moments that capitalize on the film's pervasive mood of menace and dread. Yet what is perhaps even more interesting is how sexy the film is. Contrasting with the story of Astaire and the other men who make up the film's "Chowder Society," the movie follows the exploits of Don Wanderley (Craig Wasson), the son of Edward (played by Fairbanks Jr.) who becomes romantically entangled with Alma. Their scenes together are remarkably free and frank, rivaling another 1981 release, "Body Heat," for conflating desire and danger.
Although Astaire's character, Ricky, is never in a similarly compromising position, his brief interactions with his wife Stella (Patricia Neal) have more weight thanks to the film being so open and mature. It only serves to push "Ghost Story" further away from the more sanitized fare of Astaire's zenith.
Ghost Story Was Almost A Creepier Film
Although the general plot of "Ghost Story" is clear enough, there are a lot of odd characters and moments in the film's margins that remain unaddressed by the end. This includes the haunted house-dwelling duo of Gregory Bate (Miguel Fernandes) and Fenny Bate (Lance Holcomb) as well as the unnerving hints and allusions to just what Eva/Alma is.
Of course, these questions are answered within Straub's novel, which is a rather dense book of 483 pages. Cohen, who had previously adapted Stephen King's much more streamlined novel "Carrie" for Brian De Palma's 1976 film, does an impressive job paring down Straub's story but can't quite solve all the problems created by such simplifying.
Moreover, Irvin found himself in a tough spot when it came to the movie's tone and content. Universal Pictures was initially interested in having the film compete with the glut of gory slasher films that had been released throughout 1981, and a number of ghastly practical effects creations had been planned for the movie. Most of those were courtesy of effects makeup guru Dick Smith, who was fresh off of landmark horror effects movies like "Altered States" and "Scanners." Smith designed several incarnations of the demonic Eva/Alma, very few of which turn up in the final cut. Still, a few provocative stills remain, and articles such as the one published in the February 1982 issue of Cinefantastique (which is quoted in this piece) at least provide some elaboration on what could've been an even more disturbing version of the film.
Despite those missing elements, "Ghost Story" retains its power to frighten and entertain, and if nothing else is an impressive showcase for Fred Astaire's range as a performer. It's only unfortunate that such a revelation came too late. Thus, "Ghost Story" is the only film where you can see Astaire stab a guy, survive a car crash, and fight a ghost. C'est la vie!
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Barred from her lab by pandemic restrictions, behavioral ecologist Daniela C. Robler caught local jumping spiders and kept them in clear plastic boxes on her windowsill, planning to test their reactions to 3-D-printed models of predatory spiders. When she came home from dinner one night, though, she noticed something strange. "They were all hanging from the lids of their boxes," says Robler, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz in Germany. She had never seen jumping spiders suspended motionless on silk lines like this before. "I had no idea what happened," Robler says. "I thought they were dead." It turns out the jumping spiders were simply asleep -- and that Robler had discovered an alternate sleeping habit of the species Evarcha arcuata, which had been known to build silk sleeping dens in curled-up dead leaves. But the real surprise came when she decided to spy on them all night. [...]
Mostly the spider just hung there. But then her legs started to twitch, and her abdomen and even her silk-producing spinnerets did so as well. Sometimes her legs curled in toward her sternum. With every spider Robler recorded, these odd movements only appeared during distinct bouts that lasted a little more than a minute and occurred periodically throughout the night. "They were just uncontrollably twitching in a way that really looked a lot like when dogs or cats dream and have their little REM phases," she says. [...] Robler and her colleagues wondered if the twitching spiders could be experiencing something like an REM phase of sleep and possibly even having dreams. "We were like, 'Okay, that would be insane,'" she says. Then she thought, "Let's figure it out," and immediately changed her research plans for the spiders.
[...] When Robler recorded 34 sleeping spiderlings, she found that their twitches were accompanied by unmistakable eye-tube movements that did not happen during other phases of sleep. [...] But it is too soon to say for sure that the spiders are experiencing something akin to REM sleep in humans. The researchers first need to confirm the spiders are actually asleep during this phase by showing that they are less responsive to their environment. Robler and her "dream team" of co-authors have already started those tests. And she points out that the leg curling is a particularly striking aspect of the spiders' REM-like phase because that pose is typically only seen in dead spiders. Spiders use hydraulic pressure maintained by muscles to keep their legs extended, and the curling could result from the muscle paralysis that typifies REM sleep. The team's initial findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
We're late this week but still coming through to bring you a rambly episode as we talk about Prey (the movie) without spoilers, talk about the games we're probably using to take the sting out of all these delays, read some of your emails, and plenty more. This week's music: Urban Heat - Have You Ever
Microsoft’s cloud storage service, OneDrive, turns 15 years old this month, and to celebrate, the company is redesigning the home page. OneDrive originally launched in 2007 as Windows Live SkyDrive, and it’s changed significantly over the years. The latest redesign aims to make the experience more tailored to the specific needs of each user.
First, there’s the new Home page, headlined by the new For You section. In this section, you’ll find highlighted files more relevant to you, such as documents you’ve been working or pictures taken on that day in past years (for personal accounts). Below that, you’ll see a list of your recent files, which you can filter by type to make it easier to find something specific. In an organization, OneDrive will show you who owns the file, when you last opened it, and also a new Activity column, which shows you who interacted with the file most recently. This can include new comments, whether someone shared the file, and so on.
This new Home page will be the default landing experience on OneDrive, but you’ll still be able to see the My Files section to see all your files. The Activity column will also be shown there, so you can be aware of recent activity on your files. Microsoft has also worked to make the file management experience coherent across OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint, so navigating your files on any of these platforms should feel similar and intuitive.
Microsoft also highlighted some other recent changes to OneDrive, including a new sharing experience, which is also consistent across OneDrive, Teams, and other parts of Microsoft 365. Over on mobile, OneDrive is currently testing a new “photo story” feature, which is a new way to share photos from OneDrive library with family and friends. This feature was released in preview at the beginning of July, and Microsoft says it plans to roll it out to users before the end of the year.
The new version of the ethical-hacking-focused Linux distribution Kali Linux has been released, dubbed 2022.3. It ships with added tools to create a local penetration test environment. The developers have also announced a new Discord server.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has published a knowledge base article acknowledging a problem with encryption acceleration in the newest versions of Windows that could result in data corruption. The company recommends installing the June 2022 security updates for Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 "to prevent further damage," though there are no suggested solutions for anyone who has already lost data because of the bug.
The problems only affect relatively recent PCs and servers that support Vector Advanced Encryption Standard (VAES) instructions for accelerating cryptographic operations. Microsoft says affected systems use AES-XTS or AES-GCM instructions "on new hardware." Part of the AVX-512 instruction set, VAES instructions are supported by Intel's Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Rocket Lake, and Alder Lake architectures -- these power some 10th-generation Core CPUs for laptops, as well as all 11th- and 12th-gen Core CPUs. AMD's upcoming Zen 4 architecture also supports VAES, though by the time these chips are released in the fall, the patches will have had plenty of time to proliferate. Microsoft says that the problem was caused when it added "new code paths" to support the updated encryption instructions in SymCrypt, Windows' cryptographic function library. These code paths were added in the initial release of Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022, so the problem shouldn't affect older versions like Windows 10 or Windows Server 2019.
The initial fix for the problem, provided in Windows' June 2022 security update package (Windows 11 build 22000.778), will prevent further damage at the cost of reduced performance, suggesting that the initial fix was to disable encryption acceleration on these processors entirely. Using Bitlocker-encrypted disks or the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol or accessing encrypted storage on servers will all be slower with the first patch installed, though installing the July 2022 security updates (Windows 11 build 22000.795) should restore performance to its previous level.
As of this latest episode of "Better Call Saul," the show's penultimate hour, we're now right on the brink of witnessing how the stories of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) ultimately wrap up, for better or worse. Given some of those devastatingly sad moments and downright anxiety-inducing confrontations -- as much interpersonal as they are an ongoing battle between the best and worst natures within our protagonists -- all signs point towards a tragic (or at least deeply melancholic) conclusion. In other words, Gene Takovic's remark to the elderly Marion (Carol Burnett) a few episodes back about a "happy ending" now feels rather ominous.
Of course, this impending conclusion also marks the long-anticipated moment when this series finally loops around and connects with where Saul Goodman began as a supporting character in "Breaking Bad." Ever since "Better Call Saul" first aired in 2015, fans of the parent show were eager to compare how this upstart prequel measured up to the seemingly untouchable original. For the more casual viewers who came along for the ride, mostly lured in by Odenkirk's and Seehorn's impeccable performances and the promise of a very different series (both in terms of tone and structure) than "Breaking Bad," the early seasons proved surprisingly compelling for both subsets of fandom alike.
And yet, the nagging question of whether one was able to enjoy "Better Call Saul" to the fullest without having knowledge of the events of "Breaking Bad" remains ... or did, at least. The evidence pointing towards the need to know what fate awaits Jimmy in the future was there all along, but the last episode finally put a nail in that coffin and settled a longstanding debate.
Spoilers for "Better Call Saul" (and "Breaking Bad," as well!) follow.
It's About The Journey, Not The Destination
On its surface, it probably feels obvious that, in order to fully enjoy "Better Call Saul," prior knowledge of the series it's spinning off from would be a requirement. And while that's undoubtedly true -- the early reveal of Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz) at the concluding moments of the very first episode of season 1, for example, wouldn't have the same impact on viewers who never witnessed his drug-fueled mania in "Breaking Bad" -- the firsthand accounts of many fans nonetheless show how the experience could still be enriching in all the ways that actually matter.
Major characters like Jonathan Banks' Mike Ehrmantraut and Giancarlo Espositio's Gus Fring, both of whom originate from the original show, are still given proper introductions and serve crucial plot functions that are specific to "Better Call Saul" alone. Their respective journeys and motivations remain just as effective without thinking of their various run-ins in the future with Bryan Cranston's Walter White and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). While the black-and-white flash-forwards opening every season (until this last one, at least) might have thrown off the uninitiated, Jimmy and Kim's story still makes perfect sense as a standalone narrative of a flawed but well-intentioned man who struggles to overcome his basest instincts ... and who drags innocents down with him.
The drama, conflicts, and emotional punch are only ever enhanced by a complete, working knowledge of what happens down the line; it's never been dependent on it. But in perhaps the boldest creative choice in the entire series, that all began to change with every passing year until culminating in the sixth and final season.
A Tale Of Two Shows (In One)
The longer that "Better Call Saul" has gone on, the more that the boundary separating Jimmy McGill from Saul Goodman (from Gene Takovic) has started to crumble -- by design, mind you.
With each passing season, the separation between Jimmy's legal profession and the criminal underworld that Saul will eventually become subsumed by have blended together more and more. Curiously (and frustratingly, to some viewers), the generally lighthearted shenanigans of Slippin' Jimmy and the cartel thriller plotline of Mike began to feel somewhat disconnected from one another. But as critic Alan Sepinwall astutely points out in his review of "Point and Shoot," the symbolism of rival attorney Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) and cartel thug Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) buried together in the same grave marks the beginning of the end of the two-shows-in-one structure of "Better Call Saul." As the transformation of Jimmy into Saul just about reaches its inevitable final stage (exacerbated, though not entirely caused, by Kim walking out of Jimmy's life), "Better Call Saul" itself no longer tried to keep the final destination of "Breaking Bad" at arm's length.
The effect on viewers, consequently, meant that only those fully aware of future events could enjoy (or, more accurately, dread) the dramatic irony and looming specter of Saul Goodman fully unleashed and Kim no longer around to keep his worst tendencies in check. In the last episode of "Better Call Saul," one specific scene finally established beyond a shadow of a doubt that viewers are expected to have seen "Breaking Bad" in all its tragedy.
A Debate Settled
In the penultimate episode of "Better Call Saul," the show's agonizingly deliberate pacing has since turned into a raging river, sweeping the con artist formerly known as Jimmy McGill away and leaving us with the hollowed-out pomp and circumstance of Saul Goodman and the timid (but no less damaged) shell of Gene Takovic. Amidst that flood, the show's priorities have changed markedly, resulting in nostalgic "Breaking Bad" reunions and various references to the parent series that have done the impossible: making both shows into richer and more meaningful experiences.
All this is made crystal clear (get it? Crystal?) during the course of Gene's harrowing phone call with Kim, only revealed in its entirety during the last episode. In between his unseemly ravings, he slips in the casual but fascinating detail that he knows that Mike, Gus, and Lalo are all dead and gone -- the former two deaths having only occurred in "Breaking Bad." Those who only ever knew Mike and Gus from their appearances on the spin-off may have found this casual reveal either extremely anticlimactic or actually missed it altogether, but either way that one line makes the show's interconnectedness with "Breaking Bad" abundantly plain ... if it wasn't already.
The strength of "Better Call Saul" in its visual and subtextual storytelling means that, even without verbal acknowledgement, observant "Breaking Bad" fans have been rewarded with foreshadowing and recontextualizations that have taken full advantage of what we thought we knew about where things were headed. "Waterworks" underlines that point dramatically, confronting the washed-out world of Gene with the bombast and extravagance of "Breaking Bad"-era Saul.
Idris Elba will be seen squaring off against a lion in "Beast," but "The Suicide Squad" actor has his sights on bigger prey.
The mystery and intrigue leading up to the reveal of who Idris Elba was playing in James Gunn's "The Suicide Squad" (not to be confused with the 2016 "Suicide Squad") had many people theorizing what anti-hero the actor would play. Eventually, DC Fandome delivered the somewhat anti-climactic reveal that Elba would portray the villain Bloodsport.
James Gunn is a fan of lesser-known characters, and the roster he assembled for "The Suicide Squad" is a prime example.Featuring characters like Polka Dot Man, TDK (The Detachable Kid), and Peacemaker, Gunn's assembly of d-list heroes makes Bloodsport feel like a more prominent character in comparison. Idris Elba brought the character to life uniquely, boasting a wide array of weapons he pulls from seemingly out of nowhere in his intricately designed armor. Elba's future as the character is unknown at this point, but if there's one thing the actor knows about Bloodsport, it's that he has his eyes set on one big opponent in the DC Extended Universe.
Bloodsport V Superman
While promoting his upcoming film "Beast," Idris Elba spoke with Variety about Bloodsport's potential return and how he would want the character to get a rematch with the Man of Steel:
"I would definitely like to tell the Superman story. There's no doubt. Bloodsport versus Superman. It needs to happen."
The character of Bloodsport had gone up against Superman in the past, albeit offscreen. At the beginning of "The Suicide Squad," Amanda Waller provides timely exposition regarding the reason for his incarceration. Bloodsport, AKA Robert DuBois, had been taken into custody following an attempt on Superman's life. The assassin put the last son of Krypton in the ICU with a Kryptonite bullet, although he couldn't finish the job.
The idea of Bloodsport facing off against Superman, whether it be alone or with another variation of Task Force X, is an exciting idea. It's so interesting, in fact, that James Gunn considered Superman as the antagonist of "The Suicide Squad" at one point. The far weirder villain Starro ended up taking center stage as the film's villain, with Bloodsport barely making it out of the movie alive. While Bloodsport may have had Superman on the ropes in a previous unseen encounter, the character doesn't pose much of a threat to the hero without some Kryptonite.
Bloodsport's Future In The DCEU
Director James Gunn has his hands full right now, with "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" in post-production and "Peacemaker" season 2 on the horizon as well. A "Bloodsport" project isn't out of the question for the director, who has teased his involvement with several yet-to-be-named DC projects. However, it's hard to say what Gunn's priority would be following "Peacemaker" season 2. Spinning off characters from "The Suicide Squad" seems to be the recurring trend, especially given the development that Task Force X handler Amanda Waller is getting a spinoff of her own.
In light of Gunn's workload and other "Suicide Squad" related spinoffs, Bloodsport's character is highly likely to return, but we just don't know if it will be in another supporting role or a movie/TV show of his own. Either way, we hope that Idris Elba gets his wish at some point.
Elden Ring's patch 1.06 offers dozens of small tweaks that should make your journey across The Land Between just a little easier. The biggest of the changes are to how summoning works, but there are also tweaks to quests, attack speeds, and bug fixes that'll maybe not make you die less, but will at least make your deaths fairer.
J.J. Perry knows what's doing in this business. Calling him a first-time filmmaker isn't exactly accurate. "Day Shift" is his first feature film, his first "directed by" credit, but Perry has been making movies for over 30 years. The stunt coordinator, stuntman, and second unit director's list of credits is seemingly never-ending, including "John Wick: Chapter 2," "The Rundown," and the "Mortal Kombat" movies.
All those years of experience shine bright in his vampire action-comedy, "Day Shift," which is modern in action and old-school in its references. When Perry started getting offers to direct a feature of his own, he knew what he didn't want to make as a filmmaker. "I definitely was not trying to make 'John Wick' with vampires," he told us. "Although John Wick has some comedy when he says, 'Oh, the blade is in your aorta, remove it and you will die. Professional courtesy.' I think that's funny." Recently, we talked to Perry about action and what he wanted to achieve with his feature directorial debut, and we gladly would've listened to him talk action all day.
'There's An Added Pressure There That Directors, Normal Directors Never Feel'
When did you finally decide you wanted to direct a feature film?
So, I've been a second unit director for about 20 years. Do you know what second unit directing is?
You're mostly responsible for shooting the action.
It's pretty much directing all the action in the big action movies for them. Getting the opportunity to direct first-unit was huge. I was super stoked doing what I was doing at the time, like coordinating and second directing. I was making a ton of dough with all my friends, going all over the world. And after we did "John Wick 2," I started to get a lot of scripts.
There were dark scripts about soldiers with PTSD because I was a soldier. "Oh, this would be good for you." I was like, "No." "Oh, you can do another 'John Wick' kind of movie." And I was like, "No, I don't want to do that." As soon as I read "Day Shift," I knew I had to do this movie because I grew up in the '80s with "Big Trouble in Little China," "Lost Boys," "Evil Dead," "Fright Night," the action-comedy-horror genre in no particular order. As soon as I read "Day Shift," I knew I had to do it. I started working on it and just put all my chips on that one. And here we are.
How rare is it for the director, in your experience, to be shooting the action?
No, the second unit always does. There's guys out there that are crushing, like Darren Prescott, Garrett Warren. These are other masters of this craft. I hope soon that they will all get a shot at directing as well.
Another one, [stunt coordinator] Brett Chan, he's fantastic.
There's a brother. He's a good bro of mine. A good bro of mine. If you talk to him, tell him J.J. said what's up.
He's said when directors are wise enough, basically, they let him shoot the action in "Warrior."
So I worked in Hong Kong quite a bit in the early '90s and in the mid-'90s, when it was Hong Kong and then when it went back to China. What happens there, that's why their action movies are -- well, action is a star of their movies. When the dialogue stops, the director gets up and leaves and the action director takes the chair. And that's how it goes. And that's kind of how it's gone for the last 10 or 12 years on big budget Hollywood movies with tons of action. They've got a whole separate unit somewhere else, shooting a sequence. And then they go back in the end of the movie and tie it together on a blue screen, whatever little elements on a motion capture stage or whatever.
I will tell you, my friend, that it's infinitely -- now that I've done both, directing a big car chase through a city or a big scene, a big, big, huge fight scene where there are 30 people going at it in a room with fire and explosions, is a lot harder than directing a couple of guys talking in a room. Not just the technical part, but also you also are dealing with the risk of somebody getting killed or hurt, as a second unit director. There's an added pressure there that directors, normal directors never feel.
I'm not bagging on directors. Listen, respect, it's a blessing to be able to do this work. But yeah, I think it's much harder to [direct] the action than it is to [direct] the acting. I don't have any experience working with bad actors. So maybe when you have bad actors, it's very difficult, but I was very blessed to have amazing talent in "Day Shift."
When you were casting, was it important to cast actors you knew you wouldn't have to cut away from during action scenes?
I've worked with Jamie before. He's an amazing athlete. I've watched him do 42 pull-ups when he has a pull-up bar. He did 98%, the only thing he didn't do is, he didn't get wrecked. We didn't pull him into the floor, on a ratchet. But yeah, Dave Franco, too, Snoop, it was important to me we had willing accomplices.
I didn't need any stars or divas. I mean, they're all movie stars, but they were all super cool. They were all partners in crime. Everybody gave it all up. Carla, Megan, Natasha, also -- everyone trained. We ran a little bootcamp. It was bada**. As soon as we saw how good they were, it influenced the way that I captured it.
Whenever you're doing an action scene, you look around a location and say, "All right, what would be the worst possible thing that could happen in this location?" In the house attack sequence with Scott Adkins, you get to go wild in that regard. How was it putting together that sequence?
So, I have this amazing stunt team that I work with. We go around the world, do these movies, stunt coordinating and second unit directing and these amazing -- Justin Yu, Mike Lehr, Troy Robinson, Allegra, just this whole team of animals, all the way back to "John Wick 2." It's been seven years I've been on the road with them. I've had the same team, and we call it "the doomsday scenario." In other words, when we go in immediately, they start looking for rusty nails. In the chair that I'm sitting in, flip it upside down, you've got four legs standing up. You want to throw them on that. And then, it's always the worst case scenario. And then I had Greg Barry, my production designer, who's a dear friend of mine, I've worked with him for years. That's the benefit of being in this business so long: You learn and you work with all these amazing people.
When it was time for me to pull my team together, I just pulled some of the coolest people and some of the best people I knew. A lot of times when you're making a movie, there's 20 departments and they kind of interface. But in my movie, I made sure we were all were moving as one cohesive unit. Because at the end of the day, I knew which direction we were going to look. If I'm not going to turn around, we don't have to light over there, you know what I mean? We're going to look this way. Also, in the house that we built, one of the walls [was moveable] -- you don't see in one of the fights, in the middle of a fight, we pull a wall and we put it back, because the camera wraps around. There was a lot of intricacies in there that we did, that were built into the preparation of the movie. There was a great collaboration between all of my departments to make all of these action scenes work.
'The Action Is The Star'
In your experience, how many cameras do you use and what choices with them result in the best action?
Typically, I have three cameras on set when I'm doing hand fighting. I shoot, I'm cutting in A camera, but I'm protecting with B camera and C camera, searching for something. I use top shots a lot for a lot of fight choreography. What makes choreography interesting to me is creating a problem and then showing how it's solved. So, for me, the way that you capture choreography is dictated by the choreography itself and the venue you're doing it in. So we have an idea, when we're doing it, when we're pre-vizing, we're doing it in a room with boxes. We put the camera where the action is the star. There's no movie star there or no character star -- the action is the star. We get a good look at the action: What are the groovy parts of the action? Then we put it into the build. Once it's built, we go in and redo and shoot. It really dictates the way it's filmed. Car chases are much more difficult, because you have a lot of more things going and it's a lot more coverage and you have to use a lot more cameras.
The drone photography in that car chase is very good.
Listen, since "Day Shift," we've been R&D'ing a bunch of stuff. I will reinvent car chases with that drone, just because of the being in the car, behind the driver and the passenger, then throwing the drone out of the sunroof and going to the next car and doing that all over again, is a perspective that the audiences haven't seen before. Do you remember when the Russian Arm came in the late '70s or early '80s? The Russian Arm, it's a high performance car with a crane arm. It has a remote head on the front of it. It changed the perspective of driving, of car action that hasn't been seen, and no one's done anything to change that since then. Now, this drone photography gives you a new perspective the audience hasn't seen. I think on our sophomore effort, or my sophomore directing effort, if I get a chance to do big car chase, I think we will knock that out of the park.
When you get to the editing room, how do you know you've hit the right speed and cutting rhythm for the action scenes?
You want to run the take as long as it'll go. The whole idea of oners is cool, but if you're doing a oner just to do a oner as a gimmick, people already been doing that. You're not going to beat "Oldboy," the original, no matter how good you are. I mean, it's a dolly with a slow push and 30 guys beating each other up. I think it's cool to [have] oners, but I just think that if you want to make an impression, if you want the action to be bada**, you have to do what's best for the action in the movie. The action has to service the story.
Editing, for me, when we're shooting our action sequences, is literally going to the DIT [Digital Imaging Technician], dumping it and cutting it right there so we have real time intel on how we're doing. So that's part of the team that I have with me. That's part of the things that we've been doing on the road. In the last seven years, it's been a constant and it's helped make the action in the movies better because it informs what we do, if we need something else or is this perfect? I think that editing the action, we create the action together. We already are speaking the same language. My team and I are in lockstep on what it should look like.
As a stunt coordinator, second unit director, I pre-viz. Then as a second unit director, I shoot and cut. I shoot the action and then I edit it and I deliver it to the director as proof of concept and then proof of execution. It's up to them at that point how they want to cut it. It's not my movie. As a second unit director, my job is to help the director with his or her vision of what the action is. So when I'm second unit director, I give, "This is the cut that I promised you. Hope you love it. And when you give it to your editor, you guys can do whatever you want with it. But this is proof of execution. This is what we talked about doing, here it is."
Then it's just a matter of taste, right?
Listen, it's all opinions. When we look at something, if we look at the same picture, you are going to see something different than me. You're not going to make everyone happy. As an action director, one of my jobs is to have my finger on the pulse of what I think the target market that I'm doing the action for, what they like. That's one of the things that's in the skill set that I'm required to do. I can't just do what I think is cool, because it'll be a big kickboxing tournament with guns. I have to do what services the story and what I think our target market is going to like. You have to be able to make the salad from all different ingredients all the time.
I do think you maybe just struck gold with the kickboxing idea.
I love it, brother. Come on, let's do it together.
'When I Got Out Of The Army, I Never Thought I'd Be Doing Any Of This'
For Jamie Foxx, how'd you want his character to fight and move?
I made Jamie as much like me as I could, because we're the same age. We're both from Texas. I was in the army. You saw when he's in the shower, he has the 82nd airborne tattoo, and he's working as a loan operator. When you're in the army, you're working on the squad level, platoon level and squad levels. You're working, you've got six or seven men or women in a stack with you. As a loan operator, when you come in, you can't watch your own six. That's why he puts the wire, so he's protecting himself. He's put an ambush in the back.
I wanted to make him smart. I didn't want to give him a style of fighting, like, "Oh, he's a judo guy." I wanted to be ambiguous. He's a scrapper. He'd been in the army. He'd been to combat. There's a couple of karate trophies in his apartment that the camera pans off of, whether you see it or not; there's a boxing trophy, a karate trophy. You just have to hint that he's got a background in maybe some martial arts or whatever, and that's the way I played it with Jamie.
With all the contortionists, I mixed contortion work with lucha libre and MMA, within the movement. So you saw when the old lady gets him, she puts him in the crucifix. You saw the lucha libre entries there. The character Heather (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) as well, she did some lucha libre to get off of Jamie in the apartment. I think lucha libre, Mexican wrestling, is super fun and interesting and super dynamic. You don't need wires to do it. You just need game-bred performers to do it.
Snoop, of course, was interesting because -- I'm going to call him Calvin Broadus, because that's who I hired. I didn't actually hire Snoop. I hired Calvin to play Big John in my movie, because I think everybody hires Snoop to be Snoop in their movie. He reminds me of my old platoon sergeant, and I'm a big fan of his. When I hired him, no one had seen him kick a**, and he's actually quite handy. He's really handy as a martial arts guy. He's a very avid martial artist, boxing, all that stuff.
I want to go back in time a bit to your Hong Kong days. What did you shoot there?
The first one that I did was a movie called "Enter the Eagles," and it starred Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, and Benny Urquidez, Benny the Jet, who's one of my idols at kickboxing. I played his little brother. Corey Yuen was directing and we shot two months in Prague and then three months in Hong. It was the first time I went. This is probably '95 or '96 and right before I did the "Mortal Kombat" movies.
You get there and you have to really pay attention, especially back then because they're speaking Cantonese and they're choreographing stuff very fast and they expect you to learn it immediately. So you have to watch everything, because I don't speak Cantonese. But they were super cool, super efficient because they're shooting with one camera and super wild.
I remember Corey came to me and he says, "So J.J., after this, you're going to do one big weebo stunt." And I was like, "Weebo stunt?" And he was like, "After stunt, weebo, weebo, weebo." So that meant he was going to 86 me. I got knocked out and it was beautiful. It was odd, but the shot looked great. I got ratcheted across a room into an electric box and they didn't have ratchets. It was six of the Chinese stuntmen on a ladder with a bunch of sandbags. They jumped off the ladder and pulled me across the room and smacked me into this thing. So that's what we call a weebo stunt in Hong Kong: You know you're going to get 86'd, brother.
[Laughs] So it was a great experience getting knocked out.
It was awesome. Listen, every experience in this business -- when I got out of the army, I never thought I'd be doing any of this. I'm just super grateful for all the experiences I've had. All over, 36 countries. I didn't go to college. I didn't really have any film school, none of that. I got out of the army and I became a stuntman and I just never said no to anything. I said, "I'm going to embrace this and I'm going to go on the ride." I got to work with some of the greats and it's been a real hoot and I never expected any of it. I'm grateful for every minute of it. So, for me, all of it has been amazing. All my experiences in Hong Kong, Thailand, I mean 36 countries, brother. It's been amazing.
What have been some of the best countries you've worked in?
I got to tell you, I love Hong Kong. I love Thailand. England is sick. Hungary is ridiculously cool. Australia, New Zealand, any cities that are on the water, like Sydney or Vancouver. Those cities on the water where you're taking water taxis and you know you're going to get thrown in the drink, probably, as a stunt man. So if the water's cold, it sucks. But if the water's warm, it's bada**. Hawaii's bada**. "The Rundown" we did in Hawaii. Listen, I haven't really had a bad experience anywhere. It's like I said, it's been a blessing to get to do this work. It's really been a blessing. Every movie I've been on, I cherish it.
Do crews tend to work differently wherever you go? Like, in Hong Kong, they were notorious for moving fast and everyone helping to do everyone's job on set.
Absolutely. We have unions here and that changes things a bit, but I'll give you an example with "Undisputed II." That was a good movie. It's a movie with Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White, a million dollar budget movie that we did back in Bulgaria in 2003. I got to operate the camera, and we did a little bit of everything. It was like one of my first big second unit directing jobs. It was a great experience for me. And that's part of it, too. When we're shooting, pre-viz, we're operating cameras, we're editing, we're building little makeshift props. Doing pre-viz is actually filmmaking, strangely. All the guys that do pre-viz will inform you on how to be a great director. So yeah, the different countries have different methods. I still think Hollywood now, we were behind [Hong Kong] a little bit in the fighting in the '90s. But once Hong Kong came here and left, I think we've surpassed them. I think we've totally surpassed them. If you look at what's coming out of Hong Kong now, it's not great.
Why do you think that is?
I think that China and Hong Kong now, it's just a different climate there, maybe, politically or whatever. But look at South Korea making great films. Thailand had "Ong-Bak" come out 20 years ago. It was refreshing to see "Ong-Bak." Japan makes great action films. France, England, I mean, all the world now, because right now there's more content being made than any time in the history of TV, cinema, film. More content being made means more experience. People are getting way more experience. More people are getting in the business. And now that technology grows exponentially. When I started in stunts, you couldn't say, 'Let's just fix it in post." You had to figure out how to do it. Now, well, there's a zillion ways to make it better.
"Day Shift" will be available to stream on Netflix on August 12, 2022.
Welcome back, "Saul" fans. I was on vacation last week, which means you get a double-dose of "Better Call Saul" recaps tonight, with both episode 11, "Breaking Bad," and episode 12, "Waterworks." And of course, it's worth mentioning that tonight's episode is the penultimate ep of the series — yep, there's only one more "Better Call Saul" episode left before the show rides off into the sunset. Time to scream in terror and anxiety!
Breaking Bad
Seemingly ever since "Better Call Saul" began, fans have wondered: when will Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) show up? It was a foregone conclusion since "Saul" is a "Bad" prequel. But here's the thing: I was never one of those fans clamoring for more Walt and Jesse. Don't get me wrong! I love "Breaking Bad"! I think it's one of the best shows of all time, no hyperbole. But I think "Better Call Saul" is better. I know that's a wee bit controversial, but it's what I believe. And as far as I was concerned, I was perfectly fine with Walt and Jesse never making an appearance.
But Heisenberg and his trusty sidekick finally appeared in season 6, episode 11, aptly titled "Breaking Bad." Anyone hoping for the duo to have a big part of the story was likely disappointed: Walt and Jesse only appear in some flashbacks, as Saul recalls the first time he met the pair — when they abducted him and made him think they were going to bury him in a grave in the desert. Here, we see more of the conversation after that incident, with Saul quickly figuring out that Walt is Heisenberg. Saul sees a huge opportunity here, but later, when he talks with Mike, Mike is quick to shoot the entire idea down. He states that Walt is an amateur, and getting mixed up with him will be a mistake.
Of course, we all know Mike is right. And you can't help but think of how different everyone's fates would be had Saul just listened to Mike and walked away from Walt and Jesse. But as the rest of the episode shows, Saul has difficulty letting things go.
Slippin' Jimmy
The majority of "Breaking Bad" focuses on how Gene, aka Saul, aka Jimmy, is continuing to slip back into his Slippin' Jimmy con artist mode. Gene was forced to think up a scam involving a mall heist to get leverage over Jeff (Pat Healey), who recognized him as Saul Goodman. But even though he told Jeff that they were done working together after the mall job, Gene just can't let things go. And so he reunites with Jeff and Jeff's buddy (who is named Buddy) to cook up a new scheme. In true "Better Call Saul" fashion, we don't quite know where this new plan is leading. But it involves Gene posing as a guy named Victor. Victor hangs out in bars and quickly zeroes in on a mark (later we find out Gene has done extensive work to narrow down his targets). After Gene (as Victor) gets the mark nice and drunk, Jeff shows up in his cab to take the intoxicated rube home. He also drugs them with a barbiturate-laced bottle of water.
This causes the victim to pass out at home, at which point Buddy (and his very good, very obedient dog!) breaks into the house and proceeds to take photographs of credit cards, bank statements, and more. Is Gene/Jimmy/Saul/Victor (phew) planning some massive identity stealing plan? I don't know! We'll have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, a complication arises. One of the marks ends up revealing that he has cancer (just like Walter White). Gene has a moment where he pauses, and you think he's going to call the whole thing off. But instead, he goes forward with it. Buddy, however, is uncomfortable ripping off a cancer patient. Gene tries to change his mind, ghoulishly stating that it will take months for the victims to even find out they've been scammed — at which point the cancer guy will probably already be dead. But Buddy can't be swayed, and Gene decides to break into the house himself.
She Asked About Me
Everyone's favorite ponytail-sporting, chain-smoking, morally compromised former lawyer Kim Wexler has been absent from the show since the devastating episode "Fun and Games." In "Breaking Bad," we finally get info on her whereabouts. She's apparently working at a place called Palm Coast Sprinkler in Florida. This info comes to us after a conversation "Gene" has with his former secretary, Francesca.
We learn that in the post-"Breaking Bad" world, Francesca is a landlord. She's also still being tailed by law enforcement, since she's one of the few people from the Saul-days that's still around (she mentions that Walt's wife Skyler cut a deal, so she's in the clear and not being hounded). Gene has left a large sum of cash for Francesca in the desert, near an abandoned gas station. After making sure she's not followed, Francesca drives out there and receives a call, via a pay phone, from Gene. He wants to know how hot things are back home, and Francesca tells him that even though Walter White is long dead, law enforcement isn't giving up on trying to track Saul down.
In the midst of this conversation, Francesca reveals that she got a phone call from Kim, asking how she was doing. Francesca also reveals that Kim asked about Jimmy, news that truly surprises Gene. The idea that Kim might still care for him is like a shock to his system, and after he hangs up with Francesca, he places a call to Palm Coast Sprinkler. Here, director Thomas Schnauz does an interesting thing — the camera cuts to outside the phone booth where Gene is making his call. We see him on the phone, and can sort of hear him talking, but we can't figure out what he's saying. We can't even tell if he's talking to Kim. In any case, the call goes bad, leading Gene to smash the receiver down, Robert De Niro in "Goodfellas"-style, and then kick out a bit of glass from the booth. Was it Kim who upset him so much? Or someone — or something — else. We'll have to wait and see.
Sidebar 1
As usual, "Better Call Saul" knocks it out of the park visually. I firmly believe this is the best-looking show on TV right now, and there are a wealth of incredible shots and sequences here. One particular standout is a shot of an open grave that slowly fades into Gene laying in bed, framed as if he were in the grave itself.
While talking with Francesca, Jimmy/Gene/Saul asks about some of the old gang from his glory days. For instance: where's Huell? Apparently, he went back home to New Orleans, and is not still sitting in a motel room like we last saw him on "Breaking Bad."
Carol Burnett returns as Jeff's mom Marion, and she spends the majority of her screentime watching cat videos on a computer Jeff bought her. But before the episode ends, she spots Gene, Jeff, and Buddy heading into the garage after the cancer patient job goes wrong. Hmm.
Speaking of Jeff, Pat Healy really makes a great addition to this world. He's an actor who feels like he definitely belongs here.
I know it's part of their dynamic established in "Breaking Bad," but it feels a little weird to see Saul be so mean and obnoxious towards Mike here, considering all Mike did for him in the wake of the Lalo incident.
Is Kim really working at a place that sells sprinkles? I know she gave up being a lawyer, but that sure seems like a huge step-down, career-wise! I guess we'll find out what's going on there in episode 12. Maybe.
Waterworks
I have been holding out hope — perhaps naively — that "Better Call Saul" might have a happy ending. I never felt this way about "Breaking Bad" — Walter White's story could only end in death. But Jimmy aka Saul aka Gene isn't Walter White. And there was always a slight chance that this story might end with some sort of redemption. But after "Waterworks," I'm pretty sure that's impossible.
This is a dark episode, and it's immensely tense — although the majority of the runtime doesn't even involve big, thrilling action or set pieces. It mostly involves characters sitting around in long stretches of silence, remembering all the terrible things they've done. First and foremost is Kim, who returns this week much changed. It's been six years since she and Jimmy last spoke (more on that later), and now Kim lives in Florida, enjoying what appears to be the banalest, boring life imaginable. On top of that, she's hardly recognizable, now sporting a much different haircut (no ponytail!), and her hair dyed brown.
Is Kim content with her new life? It sure doesn't look like it. Instead, she moves like a zombie. She has what appears to be a boyfriend, a guy who seems both very nice and incredibly dull. They engage in some passionless sex (wherein Kim's beau chants "Yup, yup, yup," over and over again) and attend a lifeless backyard BBQ. It's like Kim has become a zombie shambling through suburbia.
And then she gets a phone call.
I'm Glad You're Alive
I've gone on record several times as saying Rhea Seehorn is one of the best actors on TV right now. From the very start of the season, she fast became the best part of an already great show. Seehorn's acting secret seems to be in how she allows her character to react. Like Spencer Tracy, she's a great listener — when other actors are talking, Seehorn takes care to make it clear her character is actually listening, and thinking things over. That may sound simple, but it's a lot harder than it looks.
Seehorn has already had several jaw-dropping moments throughout the series, but this might be her finest hour. Last week, we saw Jimmy place a phone call to Kim's place of employment — a company that sells sprinklers; she works in the marketing department — but we never heard either side of the call. This week, we hear it. At first, Jimmy tries to act as if nothing has changed; that they can just slide back into their old form of conversation. But Kim is mostly silent, unable to think of what to say. Again, Seehorn puts her remarkable listening powers to the work, and we can see a million different conflicting emotions on Kim's face as she listens to the call. Eventually, she does speak — to tell Jimmy that he should turn himself in.
Jimmy is incensed at this idea, flying off the handle and mockingly saying that if Kim feels so guilty, she should turn herself in. Finally, Kim ends the call, stating: "I'm glad you're alive." She hangs up the phone, and everything feels bleak and devastating. And we're just getting started.
Have A Nice Life
As it turns out, Kim takes Jimmy's advice. She heads back to Albuquerque and files an affidavit in which she breaks down what happened: how she and Jimmy teamed up to ruin Howard, and how Howard was murdered by Lalo. She then takes this document with its gory details to Cheryl, who is understandably horrified. Once again, Seehorn mostly sits and reacts to how her scene partner, Sandrine Holt, reacts as Cheryl pours over the words that finally reveal her husband's tragic fate.
Cheryl wants to know what will happen next — is Kim going to jail? Maybe ... but probably not. As Kim states, it's up to the District Attorney to file charges, and there's a good chance that won't happen because there's no physical evidence. Kim also tries to stress that Howard didn't suffer when he was killed, but Cheryl reminds her that Howard's reputation was ruined right before his death, and now that's all anyone remembers of him. Kim replies that she wants to change that ... somehow. "Why are you doing this?" Cheryl asks.
Kim doesn't have an answer. But later, we see her riding a bus, and we are forced to watch as she has a complete breakdown. Director Vince Gilligan keeps the camera trained on Seehorn's face as it slowly cracks, bit by bit, until she's overwhelmed with emotion, sobbing. It's brutal to watch. As is another scene that comes after — a flashback to when Kim and Jimmy last saw each other six years ago. It involved the former couple signing their divorce papers. Jimmy is in full Saul mode, and rather cold to Kim, dismissing her with a cruel, "Have a nice life!" before returning to his criminal clients.
After the deed is done, Kim heads outside of Saul's strip mall office. It's pouring rain, which isn't exactly normal for this location. As expected, Kim needs a cigarette after the previous painful encounter, and she lights one up. As it turns out, she's not alone — also outside is none other than Jesse Pinkman, who asks to bum a smoke. Kim obliges, and Jesse proceeds to go on a very Jesse-like diatribe about the weather, and about his criminal buddies — one of whom Kim actually represented years ago. Finally, he asks Kim about Saul Goodman. Another of Jesse's friends is represented by Saul (because he likes the commercials), and Jesse wants to know if the lawyer is any good. "When I knew him he was," Kim replies. Like I said: brutal.
Busted
The Kim stuff is honestly enough for an episode all on its own, but we also check back in with Gene this week in the aftermath of the last episode, when he was seen breaking into the house of one of his marks. In a tense, bleakly amusing scene, Gene goes about rummaging through the house and even steals some watches upstairs, only to be hampered when the homeowner wakes up. Fortunately for Gene, the man is still too drugged to stay awake long — which is good, because Gene comes very close to bashing the man's head in with an urn containing the ashes of a dead dog.
After the victim passes out again, Gene goes to make his escape with Jeff waiting outside in his taxi. But as bad luck would have it, a cop car has parked behind Jeff. Not because they care about his cab or what he's doing there — but because they're having themselves a late-night lunch. Jeff doesn't know that, though, and freaks out — crashing the cab in the process. Gene gets away on foot, but Jeff is busted — and his situation is made worse when the homeowner comes out and accuses him of theft.
Later, Jeff calls Gene (calling Gene "dad") and asks for help. Gene, who has been downing several drinks, says it won't be a problem — the cops have no evidence. Gene promises to pick up Jeff's mom Marion and bail Jeff out of jail. But, like everything else involving this caper, that doesn't go according to plan. Marion grows suspicious that Jeff would call Gene instead of her after his arrest. And she also finds it odd that Gene has such extensive knowledge of the law. By the time Gene shows up at Marion's home to pick her up, it's too late — Marion has been watching the old Better Call Saul commercials, and she knows Gene is Saul Goodman (she found him, amusingly enough, by going to Ask Jeeves and typing in "Albuquerque" and "Con Man." Yep, that'll do it.
His cover blown, Gene gets downright scary here. He pulls out the phone cord so Marion can't call the cops, and he even wraps it around his fists as if he's going to strangle her to death. While she doesn't have a phone, Marion still has her Life Alert — the medical alert system for seniors made popular by the "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" commercials. Gene moves to stop her from using that, too. But Marion states: "I trusted you." Carol Burnett puts just enough weight on her delivery of that line, and the words clearly take Gene aback, remaining him of the days when he wasn't such a bad guy.
With nothing else to do, Gene flees.
Sidebar 2
Was not expecting to see Jesse again, so that was fun! Although I think Aaron Paul is too damn old to still be playing this part, if I'm being honest.
"I'm still out here. I'm still getting away with it!" — Jimmy talking to Kim on the phone.
I know Saul was on record as being okay with the attempted murder of a kid on "Breaking Bad," but this episode has to be the most threatening the character has ever appeared. He's downright maniacal at points, and it's scary to watch. Like I said: probably no chance of a happy ending at this point.
I don't know what I expected the final episodes of this show to be, but I was absolutely not expecting any of this. And I am not complaining.
I really, really hope this isn't the last we see of Kim. It can't be, right? She has to come back for the finale? Right...?
NVIDIA seems to have modified its internal TBP figures for its upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 & RTX 4070 graphics cards.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 & RTX 4070 Updated To Lower TBP Specs, Now Rumored at 320W & 285W
The latest rumor comes from Kopite7kimi who has reported that NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080 & RTX 4070 graphics cards will now feature a lower TBP (Total Board Power) figure versus what the green team had planned previously. It is stated that the GeForce RTX 4080 would feature a TBP of 320W & the RTX 4070 would feature a TBP of 285W however one should always remember that these specs aren't set in stone and while they are based on actual internal changes, the final retail specs could always change.
We can expect RTX 4080 with 320W and RTX 4070 with 285W.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is expected to utilize a cut-down AD103-300 GPU configuration with 9,728 cores or 76 SMs enabled of the total 84 units whereas the previous configuration offered 80 SMs or 10,240 cores. While the full GPU comes packed with 64 MB of L2 cache and up to 224 ROPs, the RTX 4080 might end up with 48 MB of L2 cache and lower ROPs too due to its cut-down design.
As for memory specs, the GeForce RTX 4080 is expected to rock 16 GB GDDR6X capacities that are said to be adjusted at 21 Gbps speeds across a 256-bit bus interface. This will provide up to 672 GB/s of bandwidth. For power, the TBP is now set to be rated at 320W, a 100W decrease from the previous 420W spec that we got. This brings the TBP to the same ballpark as the existing RTX 3080 graphics card (320W too).
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 "Expected" TBP - 320W
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 "Official" TBP - 350W
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Series Preliminary Specs:
Graphics Card Name
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
GPU Name
Ada Lovelace AD102-250?
Ada Lovelace AD103-300?
Ampere GA102-225
Ampere GA102-200
Process Node
TSMC 4N
TSMC 4N
Samsung 8nm
Samsung 8nm
Die Size
~450mm2
~450mm2
628.4mm2
628.4mm2
Transistors
TBD
TBD
28 Billion
28 Billion
CUDA Cores
14848
9728?
10240
8704
TMUs / ROPs
TBD / 232?
TBD / 214?
320 / 112
272 / 96
Tensor / RT Cores
TBD / TBD
TBD / TBD
320 / 80
272 / 68
Base Clock
TBD
TBD
1365 MHz
1440 MHz
Boost Clock
~2600 MHz
~2500 MHz
1665 MHz
1710 MHz
FP32 Compute
~55TFLOPs
~50 TFLOPs
34 TFLOPs
30 TFLOPs
RT TFLOPs
TBD
TBD
67 TFLOPs
58 TFLOPs
Tensor-TOPs
TBD
TBD
273 TOPs
238 TOPs
Memory Capacity
20 GB GDDR6X
16 GB GDDR6X
12 GB GDDR6X
10 GB GDDR6X
Memory Bus
320-bit
256-bit
384-bit
320-bit
Memory Speed
21.0 Gbps?
21.0 Gbps?
19 Gbps
19 Gbps
Bandwidth
840 GB/s
672 2GB/s
912 Gbps
760 Gbps
TBP
450W
320W
350W
320W
Price (MSRP / FE)
$1199 US?
$699 US?
$1199
$699 US
Launch (Availability)
2023?
July 2022?
3rd June 2021
17th September 2020
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 'Expected' Specifications
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is expected to utilize the full-fat AD104 GPU core with 7680 cores or 60 SM units. From previous leaks, we also know that the AD104 GPU will come packed with 48 MB of L2 cache and up to 160 ROPs which is simply insane. That's a 25% increase in core count and a 12x increase in cache versus the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti which rocks the GA104 GPU core.
As for memory specs, the GeForce RTX 4070 is expected to rock 12 GB GDDR6X capacities that are said to be clocked at 21 Gbps speeds across a 192-bit bus interface for 504 GB/s bandwidth. As for power numbers, the RTX 4070 is now rated at 285W TBP which is 65W higher than the TBP of the RTX 3070. The graphics card is expected to be based on the PG141-SKU331 PCB design.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 "Expected" TBP - 285W
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 "Official" TBP - 220W
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Series Preliminary Specs:
Graphics Card Name
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
GPU Name
AD104-400?
AD104-400?
Ampere GA104-400
Ampere GA104-300
Process Node
TSMC 4N
TSMC 4N
Samsung 8nm
Samsung 8nm
Die Size
~300mm2
~300mm2
395.2mm2
395.2mm2
Transistors
TBD
TBD
17.4 Billion
17.4 Billion
PCB
NVIDIA PG141-SKU331
NVIDIA PG141-310 SKU341
NVIDIA PG141
NVIDIA PG142
CUDA Cores
~7680
~7680
6144
5888
TMUs / ROPs
TBD / 160
TBD / 160
192/ 96
184 / 96
Tensor / RT Cores
TBD / TBD
TBD / TBD
192/ 48
184 / 46
Base Clock
TBD
TBD
1575 MHz
1500 MHz
Boost Clock
~2.6 GHz
~2.5 GHz
1770 MHz
1730 MHz
FP32 Compute
~40 TFLOPs
~38 TFLOPs
22 TFLOPs
20 TFLOPs
RT TFLOPs
TBD
TBD
42 TFLOPs
40 TFLOPs
Tensor-TOPs
TBD
TBD
174 TOPs
163 TOPs
Memory Capacity
12 GB GDDR6X?
12 GB GDDR6X?
8 GB GDDR6X
8 GB GDDR6
Memory Bus
192-bit
192-bit
256-bit
256-bit
Memory Speed
21 Gbps
21 Gbps
19 Gbps
14 Gbps
Bandwidth
504 GB/s
504 GB/s
608 Gbps
448 Gbps
TBP
~400W
~300W
290W
220W
Price (MSRP / FE)
$599 US?
$499 US?
$599 US
$499 US
Launch (Availability)
2022
2022
10th June 2021
29th October 2020
The graphics card is expected to deliver 11,000 points in 3DMark Time Spy which will easily match a stock RTX 3090 Ti graphics card.
It also seems like KittYYuko is back in the leak scene on Twitter and his first new info seems to be about another Ada Lovelace AD102 GPU codenamed AD102-250 which would feature 14848 cores, a 20 GB VRAM across a 320-bit bus interface running at 21 Gbps speeds which equals to 840 GB/s of bandwidth. The card is said to utilize the PG139-SKU340 PCB. It is likely that this config may be used by an RTX 4080 Ti graphics card or a Pro variant but let's see until we get more confirmation.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 graphics cards will be amongst the first graphics cards besides the RTX 4090 to launch to gamers however we can't tell whether the green team plans to launch them within this year soon after RTX 4090 or wait till early next year. The RTX 4090 is so far expected to launch around October 2022.
Which NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series graphics card are you looking forward to the most?
Even before "Breaking Bad" ended its highly acclaimed run, there were talks about a spin-off series. Many different angles for the spin-off show were considered, with "Better Call Saul" at one point being thought of as a half-hour comedy centered around Goodman being visited by a different goofy character with legal problems every week. There even was a version of the show where Saul Goodman was "sort of a Jerry Maguire for criminals," assembling teams for jobs and getting in trouble.
But when "Better Call Saul" finally made it to air, it was a very different show than anyone could have expected. The show pulled many magic tricks, starting with the way the writers made audiences fall in love with Jimmy, to making Kim Wexler one of the best TV characters of the past decade, to successfully marrying the world of law and Jimmy to the criminal world of Mike and Gus, to resolving outstanding cliffhangers from "Breaking Bad."
Now, six seasons and seven years later, it's become clear what the biggest magic trick "Better Call Saul" pulled really was: very rarely showing the Saul Goodman we knew from "Breaking Bad."
Slippin' Jimmy
Even in the first season, it became clear that Jimmy McGill was far from the man Saul Goodman would one day become. Like "Breaking Bad," this was a story of how someone goes from being a decent guy to a total monster, but the main difference is that Saul was never really like Walter White. Sure, he had darker moments in his past, and sure, he had the capacity to do awful things, but Jimmy always had what he thought were good intentions in mind. His slip-ups and cons tended to be targeted against selfish or greedy people, and even when he did bad things, he tried to help others along the way — like when he conned Irene to try and get an early settlement for the Sandpiper deal for his own good, but which would have still helped the seniors.
Even as Jimmy changed his name to Saul Goodman, even as he changed his clientele to shadier groups, and even as he got involved with the cartel, he mostly remained Jimmy McGill. It's not until Kim leaves him that we understand Jimmy is truly dead and gone, and Saul Goodman is in charge. But rather than focus on the immediate aftermath and give us some Saul Goodman misadventures with his shady clients, we skip ahead in time and jump straight to Gene Takavic living in Nebraska after the events of "Breaking Bad."
This makes the whole of "Better Call Saul" a show with a title referring to a character we barely ever see, and best of all is that it makes perfect sense for what the story Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are telling.
"We know what Saul Goodman looks like. You saw him on a great many episodes of 'Breaking Bad.'"
Sure, it would have been funny to see Bob Odenkirk pull the Saul act in all its glory again, but it would be redundant as we've already seen the most significant events in the professional life of Saul Goodman. The only stories the show could have told had to be small-scale side stories, and this late in the season they'd have been devoided of impact.
By mostly skipping Saul and going straight into Gene, "Better Call Saul" keeps up the suspense. We're finally seeing the protagonist devoid of any plot armor since there is nothing preventing the writers from giving Saul his comeuppance. This also allows Gene to slip back into Jimmy, if only for a moment, when he lets Carol Burnett's Marion live. Perhaps this will lead to a last-minute change of heart and a shot at redemption for Gene. If that is the plan, it would have been very uncharacteristic and out of place to do with Saul, the man who suggested murder rather as an easy and convenient alternative to legal action the first time we meet him.
In a show full of surprises, skipping the character audiences wanted to see when "Better Call Saul" was first announced is the most shocking twist imaginable. Those who want to see what happens to Jimmy before he becomes Gene can still just watch the show with the chemistry teacher that brings down a whole drug empire.
Michael Mann's "Heat" is a modern classic — a sprawling, violent, engrossing crime epic that fans have obsessed over for years (example: Blake Howards has an incredible podcast called One Heat Minute that breaks down the entire film minute by minute). It's arguably Mann's most popular movie — the one we return to, again and again, despite (or perhaps because of) its overwhelming runtime. The overstuffed nature of the film hooks us, and makes us feel as if we're part of the world Mann is creating.
Mann's 1995 film, inspired by true events and a reworking of his TV movie "L.A. Takedown," follows two men obsessed with what they do. There's live-wired cop Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and career criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro). They're on opposite sides of the law, and couldn't be more different in temperament — Hanna has an off-screen cocaine addiction that turns him into a loud, over-the-top force of nature, while McCauley is quiet, calm, and reserved — and also a sociopath who wouldn't hesitate to gun down an innocent bystander if it benefited him in any way. Despite their differences, the men formed a connection — they were like kindred spirits.
While the main focus (and marketing) of "Heat" was devoted to Pacino and De Niro's characters, Mann's film also had a large cast of cops and robbers, including Val Kilmer playing Neil's right-hand man, Chris Shiherlis. In the end, every member of Neil's crew except Chris was killed following a show-stopping bank robbery. Neil, too, was eventually killed — by Vincent, in the film's haunting, beautiful final moments.
With so many main characters dead, and the story seemingly wrapped up, one has to ask: how do you make a sequel to "Heat"? If you're Michael Mann, you team up with Meg Gardiner and craft a story as sprawling and violent as the film that inspired it. "Heat 2," which hits bookshelves today, is a lean, mean, time-and-globe trotting story that brings back familiar characters and introduces some new ones, too. And Mann and Gardiner manage to translate the quirks and habits of the actors who played these men into the book — the book version of Hanna is just as volatile and shouty as Pacino's performance, while McCauley remains the quiet, calculating man De Niro played so well. But how can McCauley be back if he was killed? The answer is all about time.
A Certain Melancholy
"Heat 2" picks up in the immediate aftermath of the film, with Hanna and his men running down the remaining leads involving with McCauley and his crew. The killing of McCauley is clearly weighing heavily on Hanna, who still can't help but relate to the man he shot to death. As Mann and Gardiner flashback to the now-famous diner conversation between Neil and Vincent, they write:
"While revealing nothing that might compromise themselves, they talked with the intimacy sometimes occuring between strangers. They discovered that they took in the real world and the way life rushed at them in similar ways."
Later, when Vincent is standing in Neil's now-empty home, the authors note:
"A certain melancholy holds him to the hardwood floor. A life gone, irreversible, a man he knew."
While everyone else in Neil's crew is dead, Chris is still alive — and the dogged Hanna wants to catch him. That won't be easy, though, because Chris is on the run. Leaving his wife Charlene and son Dominick behind, Chris gets out of the country and eventually ends up in South America. From here, Mann and Gardiner begin jumping around in time. We head back to the 1980s, where a younger Vincent and his crew are preparing a job in Chicago. As it so happens, Hanna is working as a cop in Chicago at the time, although he and Neil never cross paths.
Instead, Hanna is investigating a series of brutal, sadistic home invasions, perpetrated by a gang led by a truly repulsive character named Wardell, who recalls racist scumbag serial killer Waingro from the original movie. As fate would have it, Wardell becomes aware of a new score that Neil and his gang are fixing to pull off — and reasons he can get the drop on them and make off with their loot.
An Action-Packed Page-Turner
Flashbacks can only take up a certain amount of page time here, which means that Chris more or less becomes the main character as the book unfolds. In fact, Hanna vanishes for a huge chunk of the narrative as Chris gets in good with a crime family in South America and falls for a new woman in the process. While there's nothing wrong with this idea, and Kilmer's performance was memorable in the film, Chris just can't compete as a character when compared to Neil and Vincent. We're interested in his inner workings — his gambling addictions, his loneliness, his thirst for revenge against Neil's killer — but we're never quite as engrossed as we should be. As Chris' story unfolded, I couldn't help but wish the story would switch back in time to focus on Neil or Vincent.
This doesn't sink "Heat 2," though, as the book's sprawling nature and the way Mann and Gardiner slowly but surely start tying all the narrative threads together makes for thrilling reading. Indeed, "Heat 2" moves at a near breakneck pace, sweeping us along like an addictive film. The result is a pulpy, action-packed page-turner that fully engulfs us in the moody, bloody, romantic worlds Mann creates in his films. In the end, "Heat 2" may not be as good as "Heat," but hell, what is?
"Heat 2" is now available from William Morrow through the HarperCollins-based Michael Mann Books.
The "will-they-won't-they?" narrative between Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) dominated the first several seasons of the hit NBC series "The Office." It took two seasons for a single kiss, and another full season before the two would even go on a formal date. But a heartfelt episode in between that time gave fans just enough to quench their thirst for the potential of the two finally getting together.
"The Office" wasn't shy at pushing the envelope. The show paved the way for the rise of mockumentary-style television. It also asked actors to pull double duty as writers, many of whom had no prior sitcom experience. From the writer's room to the director's chair, series creator Greg Daniels trusted everyone working on the show.
Case in point, in season three, an important episode featuring a pivotal scene between Jim and Pam was entrusted to an inexperienced director. The payoff was huge, but the production also created a logistical nightmare on the set.
The Actors Were Having A Real Conversation
At the end of season two, "The Office" finally gave viewers what they were asking for. Jim confessed his romantic feelings to Pam, only to be rebuked. In season three, the writers played the long game, sending Jim off to another Dunder Mifflin branch in Stamford, CT. The show put all sorts of obstacles in front of the duo, including a new love interest for Jim. They also kept Jim and Pam apart on screen until the eighth episode of the season.
But in the fifth episode, "The Initiation," the pair was brought back together ... kind of. Jim calls the Scranton office after hours to leave Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) a message about fantasy football, but Pam was still there and picked up the phone. After an emotional, "Oh my God," from Pam when she realizes it's Jim on the line, the pair slips right back into a lengthy natural conversation that made them such a great duo.
The brief scene at the end of the episode reginted the long-running relationship narrative. In the "Office Ladies" podcast, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (Angela Martin) talked about the emotional phone call between Jim and Pam and how episode director Randall Einhorn pulled it off. Fischer said:
"This was really rare. We only did this a couple of times on our set. But here's what happened: Randall [Einhorn] told me that he requested that we be able to hear one another, but not just that, he wanted to shoot both sides of the conversation at the same time."
Einhorn had previously served as the show's director of photographer, but this was his first time directing an episode. Whether it was his inexperience or desire for authenticity, Einhorn's style of shooting the scene led to some tricky logistics for the production team.
'This Scene Wrecked Me'
Because "The Office" wasn't shot in a traditional studio, Einhorn's request created a logistical nightmare. The Scranton office was shot in one building and the Stamford office was shot in another with a big parking lot in between the two. Fischer explained on the podcast:
"[Producer] Kent Zbornak told me that NBC Universal I.T. came out, and they first they had to hook up the phone lines from these two buildings so that John and I could talk to one another. He said that they put Video Village — which is where the video feed goes, it's a little tent with video monitors, and each camera goes into a different monitor so that the director can sit and see what the cameras are seeing — they had to build that in the middle of the two stages in a parking lot."
To record the audio for the scene, they used separate boom mics for Jim and Pam and also recorded the phone conversation between the two characters. The result is a tender moment between two friends who had not yet reconciled their love for each other.
Despite the headaches to record the scene in a naturalistic way, Fischer admits it was worth it. "It made all the difference for John and I to be able to hear one another and to be able to really talk," Fischer says of the scene.
The heartfelt moment between the pair is also a favorite for Kinsey. "This scene wrecked me," Kinsey admitted to Fischer. "It's so beautiful, your conversation is so organic and earnest, it gave me all the feels."
The scene was the first that Fischer and John Krasinski had performed together in months, and Einhorn's decision to shoot the actors separately added to the scene's authenticity. It's one of many brilliant moments from a show that took great pains to make it appear as if nothing brilliant was ever happening.
Domino's Pizza's footprint in the home of Pizza proved to be short lived with Italians favoring local restaurants over the American version. From a report: The last of Domino's 29 branches have closed after the company started operations in the country seven years ago. It borrowed heavily for plans to open 880 stores, but faced tough competition from local restaurants expanding delivery services during the pandemic and sought protection from creditors after running out of cash and falling behind on its debt obligations. The US chain entered Italy in 2015 through a franchising agreement with ePizza SpA and planned to distinguish itself by providing a structured national delivery service along with American-style toppings including pineapple. Its ambitious expansion ran into trouble as traditional pizza makers scaled up deliveries or signed deals with third-party services such as Deliveroo, Just Eat Takeaway.com NV or Glovo to bring their products to customers' homes while restrictions prevented dining out.
Death is often seen as the worst thing that could happen to someone, whether they lived a long or short life. An eventful life or a boring one. While an inevitability, death is something universally feared because of how unexpectedly it could come.
However, what if there was a worse fate than death? In the world of "Better Call Saul," there is something much worse, and that is being stuck in a meaningless, boring life. That is the life that Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) is now living, and she is about to burst at the seams because of it. At least, that's what the penultimate episode, appropriately titled "Waterworks," suggests.
As previously revealed, Kim has abandoned Albuquerque in favor of the Sunshine State, Florida. While it is unclear why she specifically chose Florida as her new residence, it is likely that she just wanted to get away to a more hopeful and bright place. Unfortunately, that did not end up happening. She dyed her hair brunette, married a Winn-Dixie-shopping man named Glenn (Alvin Cowan), and now spends her days at work listening to her coworkers babble on about their husbands. When she and Glenn make love, he says "yep," and her most daring feat of action is making tuna salad with Miracle Whip instead of mayonnaise.
It's a normal, mediocre life, but it's one that Kim doesn't deserve. It is a fate truly worse than death.
Have A Nice Life, Kim
When juxtaposed against what Kim had done in her past life, she is now a shell of her former self. The woman with a passion for helping others no matter the cost has been reduced to a complacent and boring suburban lady whose only source of entertainment is putting together puzzles without a picture. While there are some women who want to be doting wives who provide for their husbands, Kim is, by nature, not one of those women, making her ultimate fate seem more like self-induced captivity and less like freedom. It is painful seeing a successful, ambitious woman with dreams of greatness be reduced to this, as it brings to mind other women in similar situations in real life.
This is something that Seehorn herself agrees with. When asked by Variety where Kim eventually ends up, she said that "death is not the only tragic end," with castmate Bob Odenkirk saying that viewers "should be worried" about both her and his somewhat-titular character.
Given how we now know how Kim ended up, those warnings seemed very apt. The prevailing theory for a while was that she would die, a victim of Jimmy's meddling in organized crime. However, that idea seems strangely merciful when compared to where she is now. Perhaps that would've been like how she described the death of Howard (Patrick Fabian) to his widow, Cheryl (Sandrine Holt): painless and without suffering. Instead, she's enveloped in the pain and suffering, torturing herself with mundanity until she couldn't take it anymore.
As for the final act of Kim Wexler, that will be revealed during the series finale of "Better Call Saul," airing on August 15 on AMC.
Modder ‘cgy95’ has released a fully voiced DLC-sized mod for Fallout New Vegas, called Race To The Bottom. According to the modder, Race To The Bottom is around the same size as the Automatron DLC from Fallout 4, packing almost 2 hours of gameplay. In Race To The Bottom, players will track down the assailants … Continue reading Race To The Bottom is a fully voiced DLC-sized Mod for Fallout New Vegas →
FromSoftware has released a brand new update for Elden Ring. According to the release notes, Update 1.06 brings numerous balance tweaks and bug fixes. Moreover, it adds two new functions, as well as a new way to advance White Mask Varre’s questline. Going into more details, Patch 1.06 adds the function to send summoning signs … Continue reading Elden Ring Update 1.06 released, full patch notes revealed →
Rescuezilla is a specialist Ubuntu-based distribution designed for system rescue tasks, including backups and system restoration. The project's latest release updates its Ubuntu base, improves support for Btrfs, and sidesteps the Firefox Snap package by using a personal package archive (PPA). "Replaces Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish) build with build....
A new Elden Ring mod that has been shared online in the past few days brings back an iconic gesture from the Dark Souls series.
The Praise the Sun mod replaces the Point Up gesture with the Praise the Sun gesture seen in the original Dark Souls. The Warrior of Sunlight Solaire of Astora is nowhere to be found in the Lands Between, but with this mod, players can finally honor his legacy in the latest game by From Software.
If only I could be so grossly incandescent...
Replaces "Point Up" gesture
To Install 1.
Download Mod Engine 2 here: https://github.com/soulsmods/ModEngine2/releases
Click Assets, then download the top .zip file.
Extract the contents of the .zip onto your PC.
2.
Download the mod and extract the contents of the zip file into the "mod" folder in the same directory as the "modengine2_launcher.exe".
Click launchmod_eldenring.bat to launch the game.
The Elden Ring Praise the Sun mod can be downloaded from Nexus Mods.
Elden Ring is now available on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One worldwide. You can learn more about one of the best open-world games released in recent years by checking out my review:
I tried hard to find any faults in Elden Ring, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find any outside of some technical issues that the developers could fix via patches. I firmly believe that perfection doesn't exist and that it is always possible to improve, but I really couldn't think of anything that Elden Ring could have done better. As such, the game wholly deserves a perfect score, an honor I would have given only to a couple of other modern games, not only for its extremely high quality but also for what it accomplished with its open world and for how it will surely influence video games as a whole in the future.
In case you have missed it, over the weekend, a new demo for IBM PC with CGA was released at Evoke, under the name Area 5150. It placed first in the competition, which should not surprise anyone:
I was wondering if I should comment on this demo, as I’m reasonably familiar with the man behind the curtain. I suppose the creators will write blogposts about the various parts, and give some insight into how it works, so I suggest you just wait for those.
I am not one of the creators. I was also wondering if I should comment on that. Perhaps at a later time.
I suppose what I can say about this is that during development of 8088 MPH, we chose to make a demo that runs entirely on a composite monitor, as the ‘party trick’ was the 1024 colour mode, and it wouldn’t make sense to have to watch part of a demo on one type of monitor, and another part on another.
But this meant that the ‘other monitor’ was still a valid target for a future demo. There were various tricks and effects that we had developed before or during 8088 MPH, which work fine on RGBI monitors as well, and there were also some tricks, effects, or at least ideas we had, that would work on RGBI, but not on composite. Like the so-called ANSI-from-Hell graphics.
So the logical conclusion was that 8088 MPH was going to be the ‘composite’ demo, and a future demo (under an internal title different from Area 5150 at the time) would be the ‘RGBI’ demo. Funny enough, shortly before 8088 MPH was finished, Genesis Project released GP-01, which was targeted at 8088 and CGA, using the ANSI-from-Hell mode to get 640×200 16-colour graphics. So they can claim a ‘first’ on that one, I suppose. At least, in a demo-environment.
The first use of this mode as far as we know, is in a game by Macrocom called ICON: Quest for the ring from 1984. A demo program known as ICONDEMO, which promotes the game and showcases the special CGA mode can still be found here. I suspect that Genesis Project got their inspiration from there. And I know for a fact that VileR got his inspiration there (the Macrocom trick is also part of what makes the 1024-colour magic happen in 8088 MPH, and it was already mentioned in his blogpost here). Trixter also covered ICON on his Oldskool “Life before demos” Shrine page (see under “Graphics Forged From Text Mode”).
A capture of ICONDEMO can be seen here:
Oh, and one more thing I want to mention is: overscan. This demo runs various effects in overscan mode. That’s not very obvious from a capture video (although the capture seen above does correctly capture the border environment, so you can see it if you know what to look for), and most emulators do not emulate a border area at all. But you should watch it on a real (CRT) monitor, and certain effects will fill the entire screen, much like ‘borderless’ effects on C64, Amiga and such.
Again, this is not entirely new. Trixter’s CGA Compatibility Tester already had some tests using border/overscan modes. But as far as I know, it’s the first time such a mode is used in a demo on CGA.
This was a phrase also used by Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM. IBM was an ‘elephant’: a huge company, which was slow to respond to a changing market, and could not keep up with technological breakthroughs. Lou had to ‘teach the elephant to dance’, to turn around the outdated company, and become profitable again, and back at the forefront of technical innovation. And making a demo on an IBM PC with CGA is also like trying to teach an elephant to dance.
I suppose the obvious next step would be 8088 + Hercules?
A quick-and-dirty video of the demo running on a real IBM 5160 and CRT:
Edit: An official capture of the demo is now available on YouTube:
Edit: A video of the demo running on a real IBM 5155 and CRT by RetroErik:
A few days ago, a friend and I were having a rather engaging conversation that sparked my excitement. We were discussing my prospects of becoming a red teamer as a natural career progression. The reason I got stirred up is not that I want to change either my job or my position, as I am a happy camper being part of Cymulate's blue team.
What upset me was that my friend could not grasp the idea
