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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated a number of fault lines already present within the global energy supply chain. This is especially true in Europe, where many countries were reliant on the superstate's natural resources, and are now hastily looking to cut ties before the supply is shut off. This has revealed the fragility of Europe’s energy market, and caused it to drive up demand and prices for consumers all over the globe.

In the UK, things are becoming increasingly dire and energy prices are skyrocketing. Bad planning on the infrastructure side and the cancellation of several major domestic energy efficiency programs are exacerbating the problem. It’s clear that real, useful action on the national level isn’t coming any time soon. So, I wondered, what would happen if I, personally, simply tried to break up with natural gas on my own? It’s relatively straightforward but, as it turns out, it comes at a cost that only one percenters will be able to bear. 

Dan Cooper: Energy consumer

I live in a four-bedroom, end-terraced house that’s around 150 years old and I’ve tried, as best as I can, to renovate it in an eco-friendly way. Since we bought it almost a decade ago, my wife and I have insulated most of the rooms, installed a new gas central heating system and hot water cylinder. We are, like nearly 20 million other households in the UK, reliant on natural gas to supply our home heating, hot water and cooking. And in the period between January 8th and April 7th, 2022, I was billed on the following usage:

	Usage (kWh)	Cost Per Unit (GBP)	Cost (GBP)
Electricity (incl. standing charge)	861	0.32	£307.18
Gas (incl. standing charge)	8696.7	0.753	£678.80
Total (incl. tax and other charges)			£1,035.28

Essentially, I paid around $1,300 for my natural gas and electricity in the first quarter of 2022. That figure is likely to rise significantly, as the UK’s mandatory price cap on energy rose by more than 50 percent in April. A further price rise is scheduled for October, with the figure set at £2,800 per year, even though wholesale energy prices are no longer increasing. It’s likely that my energy bill for the first quarter of 2023 will be nearly twice what I’ve just paid. In 2020, the UK reported that 3.16 million households were unable to pay for their energy costs; that figure is likely to leap by 2023.

In the US, the EIA says that monthly utility bills rose to a national average of $122 in 2021, with Hawaii ($178 per month) and Utah ($82 per month) the most expensive and cheapest state to buy energy in. The average price per kWh is around 13.7 cents, which is less than half the comparable price in the UK as it currently stands. For natural gas, the average natural gas price for residential customers was $10.84 per thousand cubic feet in 2020.

The gas problem

Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

Much of Europe is reliant on natural gas, a significant proportion of which was supplied by Russia. Despite a rapid decline in domestic production, Europe sought to make natural gas the bedrock of its energy policy in the medium term. A 2013 policy paper written by Sami Andoura and Clémentine d’Oultremont outlined the reasons why officials were banking on it. “An economically attractive option for investors, a potential backup source for renewables and the cleanest fossil fuel, natural gas is expected to play an important role in the European transition towards a low-carbon economy by 2050.” This is despite the fact that “European energy resources are being depleted, and energy demand is growing.”

In 2007, then EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said that the bloc is “dependent on imports for over one half of our energy use.” He added that energy security is a “European security issue,” and that the bloc was vulnerable to disruption. “In 10 years, from 1995 to 2005, natural gas consumption in the EU countries has increased from 369 billion to 510 billion m3 [of gas] year,” he said. He added that the EU’s own production capacity and reserves peaked in the year 2000.

The EU’s plan was to pivot toward Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), methane which has been filtered and cooled to a liquid for easier transportation. It enables energy supplies from further afield to be brought over to Europe to satisfy the continent’s need for natural gas. But the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has meant that this transition has now needed to be accelerated as leaders swear off Russian-sourced gas and oil. And while the plan is to push more investment into renewables, LNG imports are expected to fill much of the gap for now.

Except, and this is crucial, many of the policy decisions made during this period seem to be in the belief that nothing bad would, or could, disrupt supply. Here in the UK, wholesale gas prices have risen five times since the start of 2021 but there’s very little infrastructure available to mitigate price fluctuations. 

The Rough Field is a region in the North Sea situated 18 miles off the coast of Yorkshire, and was previously a source of natural gas for the UK. In 1985, however, it was converted into a natural gas storage facility with a capacity of 3.31 billion cubic meters. This one facility was able to fulfill the country’s energy needs for a little more than a week at a time and was considered a key asset to maintaining the UK’s energy security.

However, Centrica, the private company spun out of the former state-owned British Gas, opted to close the field in 2017. It cited safety fears and the high cost of repair as justification for the move, saying that alternative sources of gas – in the form of LNG – were available. At the time, one gas trader told Bloomberg that the closure would “boost winter prices” and “create seasonal swings in wholesale energy costs.” He added that the UK would now be “competing with Asia for winter gas cargoes,” raising prices and increasing reliance on these shipments. 

And, unsurprisingly, the ramifications of this decision were felt in the summer of 2017 when a pair of LNG tankers from Qatar changed course. The vessels were going to the UK, and when they shifted direction, Bloomberg reported that prices started to shift upward almost instantly. 

Analysis from TransitionZero, reported by The Guardian, says that the costs associated with natural gas are now so high that it’s no longer worth investing in as a “transition fuel.” It says that the cost to switch from coal to gas is around $235 per ton of CO2, compared to just $62 for renewables as well as the necessary battery storage.

Swearing off gas

MarianVejcik via Getty Images

In order to break up with gas in my own home, I’ll need to swap out my stovetop (not so hard) and my whole central heating system (pretty hard). The former I can likely achieve for a few hundred dollars, plus or minus the cost of installation. (Some units just plug in to a standard wall socket, so I may be able to do much of the work myself if I’m feeling up to the task.) Of course, getting a professional to unpick the gas pipeline that connects to my stovetop is going to be harder. 

Unfortunately, replacing a 35kW condensing gas boiler (I have the Worcester Bosch Greenstar 35CDi) is going to be a lot harder. The obvious choice is an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP), or even a geothermal Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP), both of which are more environmentally-friendly. After all, both are more energy-efficient than a gas boiler, and both run on electricity which is theoretically cleaner.

More generally, the UK’s Energy Saving Trust, a Government-backed body with a mission to advocate for energy efficiency, says that the average Briton should expect to pay between £7,000 and £13,000 to install an ASHP. Much of that figure is dependent on how much of your home’s existing hardware you’ll need to replace. A GSHP is even more expensive, with the price starting at £14,000 and rising to closer to £20,000 depending on both your home’s existing plumbing and the need to dig a bore hole outside. 

In my case, heat pump specialists told me that, give or take whatever nasties were found during installation, I could expect to pay up to £27,000 ($33,493). This included a new ASHP, radiators, hot water and buffer cylinders, pumps, piping, controllers, parts and labor. Mercifully, the UK is launching a scheme to offer a £5,000 ($6,200) discount on any new heat pump installations. But that still means that I’m paying north of £20,000 (and ripping out a lot of existing materials with plenty of life left in them) to make the switch. 

In the US, there’s plenty of difference on a state level, but at the federal level, you can get a tax credit on the purchase of a qualifying GSHP. A system installed before January 1st, 2023, will earn a 26 percent credit, while a unit running before January 1st, 2024, will be eligible for a 22 percent credit. Purchasers of a qualifying ASHP, meanwhile, were entitled to a $300 tax credit until the end of 2021. 

The contractors also provided me with a calculation of my potential energy savings over the following seven years. It turns out that I’d actually be spending £76 more on fuel per month, and £532 over the whole period. On one hand, if I had the cash to spare, it’s a small price to pay to dramatically reduce my personal carbon emissions. On the other, I was hoping that the initial investment would help me reduce costs overall, but that's not the case while the cost of gas is (ostensibly) cheaper than electricity. (This will, of course, change as energy prices surge in 2023, however, but I can only look at the data as it presently stands.)

An aside: To be honest with you all, I was fully aware that the economic case for installing a heat pump was always going to be a shaky one. When speaking to industry figures last year, they said that the conversation around “payback” isn’t shared when installing standard gas boilers. It doesn’t help that, at present, levies on energy mean that natural gas is subsidized more than energy, disincentivizing people making the switch. The rise of electric cars, too, has meant that demand for power is going to increase sharply as more people switch, forcing greater investment in generation. What’s required just as urgent is a series of measures to promote energy efficiency to reduce overall demand for both gas and electricity. 

Energy efficiency

Dan Kitwood via Getty Images

The UK has had an on-again, off-again relationship with climate change mitigation measures, which has helped sow the seeds of this latest crisis. The country, with low winter temperatures, relies almost exclusively on natural gas to heat its homes, its largest energy-consuming sector. As I reported last year, around 85 percent of UK homes are heated by burning natural gas in domestic boilers. 

Work to reduce the UK’s extraordinary demand for natural gas was sabotaged by government in 2013. In 2009, under the previous Labour government, a series of levies on energy companies were introduced under the Community Energy Saving Programme. These levies were added to domestic energy bills, with the proceeds funding works to install wall or roof insulation, as well as energy-efficient heating systems and heating controllers for people on low incomes. The idea was to reduce demand for gas by making homes, and the systems that heated them, far more efficient since most of the UK’s housing stock was insufficiently insulated when built. 

But in 2013, then-Conservative-Prime Minister David Cameron was reportedly quoted as saying that he wanted to reduce the cost of domestic energy bills by getting “rid of all the green crap.” At the time, The Guardian reported that while the wording was not corroborated by government officials, the sentiment was. Essentially, that meant scrapping the levies, which at the time GreenBusinessWatch said was around eight percent of the total cost of domestic energy. Cameron’s administration also scrapped a plan to build zero-carbon homes, and effectively banned the construction of onshore windfarms which would have helped reduce the cost of domestic electricity generation. 

In 2021, the UK’s Committee on Climate Change examined the fallout from this decision, saying that Cameron’s decision kneecapped efforts to reduce demand for natural gas. As Carbon Brief highlighted at the start of 2022, in 2012, there were nearly 2.5 million energy efficiency improvements installed. By 2013, that figure had fallen to just 292,593. The drop off, the Committee on Climate Change believes, has caused insulation installations to fall to “only a third of the rate needed by 2021” to meet the national targets for curbing climate emissions. 

Carbon Brief’s report suggests that the financial savings missed by the elimination of these small levies – the “green crap,” – has cost UK households around £2.5 billion. In recent years, a pressure group – Insulate Britain – has undertaken protests at major traffic intersections to help highlight the need for a new retrofit program to be launched. The current government’s response to their pleas has been to call for tougher criminal penalties for protesters including a jail term of up to six months.

Carbon Brief

Making my own power

Andia via Getty Images

Looking back through my energy bills over the last few years, my household’s annual electricity consumption is around 4,500kWh per year. A heat pump would likely add a further 6,000kWh to my energy bill, not to mention any additional cost for switching to all-electric cooking. It would be sensible to see if I could generate some, or all, of my own energy at home using solar panels to help reduce the potential bill costs. 

The Energy Saving Trust says that the average homeowner can expect to pay £6,500 for a 4.2kWp system on the roof of their home. Environmental factors such as the country you live in and orientation of your property mean you can’t be certain how much power you’ll get out of a specific solar panel, but we can make educated guesses. For instance, the UK’s Renewable Energy Hub says you can expect to get around 850kW per year out of a 1kW system. For a theoretical 5kWp system in my location, the Energy Saving Trust thinks I’ll be able to generate around 4,581kWh per year. 

Sadly, I live in an area where, even though my roof is brand new and strong enough to take panels, they aren’t allowed. This is because it is an area of “architectural or historic interest where the character and appearance [of the area] needs to be protected or improved.” Consequently, I needed to explore work to ground-mount solar panels in my back garden, which gets plenty of sunlight. 

While I expected grounded panel installations to be much cheaper, they apparently aren’t. Two contractors I spoke to said that while their average roof-based installation is between £5,000 and £7,000, a 6kWp system on the ground would cost closer to £20,000. It would be, in fact, cheaper to build a sturdy shed in the bit of back yard I had my eye on and install a solar system on top of there, compared to just getting the mounting set up on the ground. That’s likely to spool out the cost even further, and that’s before we get to the point of talking about battery storage. 

The bill

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For this rather nifty thought experiment, the cost for me to be able to walk away from natural gas entirely would be north of £30,000 ($37,000). Given that the average UK salary is roughly £38,000, it’s a sum that is beyond the reach of most people without taking out a hefty loan. This is, fundamentally, why the need for government action is so urgent, since it is certainly beyond the ability of most people to achieve this change on their own. 

In fact, it’s going to require significant movement from central government not just in the UK but elsewhere to really shake our love-hate relationship with natural gas. Unfortunately, given that it’s cheap, cleaner than coal and the energy lobby has plenty of muscle behind it, that’s not likely to happen soon. And so we’re stuck in a trap – it’s too expensive to do it ourselves (although that’ll certainly be an interesting experiment to undertake) and there’s no help coming, despite the energy crisis that’s unfurling around us.

The HBO Max animated series "Harley Quinn" is coming back for its third season in July, and Harley (voice of Kaley Cuoco) and Poison Ivy (voice of Lake Bell) are not just fighting crime together. They're a couple. It's a much healthier relationship than when Harley was with the Joker (voice of Alan Tudyk). But some fans have noticed something about Harley's voice depending on who she is with: it tends to change accents. That's for a very good reason, according to writer and executive producer Justin Halpern. 

Harley Quinn was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm back in "Batman: The Animated Series" in 1992. The character didn't have a comic book presence before that, but now you're unlikely to think of the Joker without Harley. Not only is she a fan favorite -- particularly a favorite of cosplayers with her distinctive look -- but she's now appeared in movies like "Suicide Squad," "The Suicide Squad," and her own film "Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)" starring Margot Robbie.

In an interview with The GWW, Halpern was asked about the changing accent of the Kaley Cuoco version of Harley in the animated series. The interviewer mentions what fans have noticed: that Harley's strong New York accent, the one we know from Arleen Sorkin's work in "Batman: The Animated Series," happens when she's around the Joker, but that she sounds more natural when she's around her now-girlfriend Poison Ivy. The question posited that it was because Harley wasn't over the Joker so she tried to please him with the accent he was used to. Was this a conscious choice, Halpern was asked?

Talking To Mr. J

Halpern said that it was. He explained:

So, you're not imagining, it was intentional. It was a joint decision by one of the EPs, Dean Lorey (he worked on Arrested Development for years and is a brilliant writer/director) and Kaley. Kaley would add so many little touches like that, along with her voice director, Charlie Adler. Like, in the episode where she went home, Kaley was like "when people go back home they slip into a thicker accent" so she did that. She's a really thoughtful performer, which is rare. Not every actor is like that! We got so lucky with our cast. They were all just total killers."

That never would have occurred to me, but it absolutely tracks. As someone who does have a tiny Long Island accent slip on a few words when I talk to my parents or go home for a visit, I guess I do it as well. Most of us do. It's such a subtle touch, and something that brings so much more life to Harley Quinn, and more understanding of her character for the audience. 

The third season of "Harley Quinn" will have 10 episodes (the first two seasons had 13 each), and will premiere on HBO Max on July 28, 2022. From the trailer, it looks like it's going to be a wild ride.

Read this next: Joker's Wild: Ranking The Cinematic Versions Of The Clown Prince Of Crime

The post There's A Reason Kaley Cuoco's Harley Quinn Voice Is So Consistently Inconsistent appeared first on /Film.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, was sworn in yesterday, replacing retiring justice Stephen Breyer. Though an historic moment, "the lifetime appointment … will not shift the current ideological balance of the court," notes the BBC. — Read the rest

Based on a report from DigiTimes, it looks like the recent decline in PC demand may affect NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 40 graphics card lineup as GPU demand has hit a new low & is expected to get worse in the coming months.

NVIDIA Allegedly Cutting Down 5nm Wafer Order For GeForce RTX 40 Series Due To Expected Low Demand

The report states that NVIDIA has cut down its orders of TSMC 5nm wafers which are expected to power their next-gen GPU lineup. The report mentions that the PC and electronics market has slowed down rapidly and Apple is also one of the big 3 customers of TSMC who wants to revise their wafer order given the current scenario. But for NVIDIA, the slowing PC market is not even the biggest concern, it's the recent GPU flood.

Meanwhile, while AMD has cut down its 7nm and 6nm orders which power its current CPU/GPU lineup, they haven't revised their 5nm wafer orders which means the company remains optimistic about its Zen 4 and RDNA 3 product lineup coming later this year.

In addition, NVIDIA has paid a huge amount of prepayment to obtain more process capacity below 5nm since Samsung’s 8nm return to TSMC. However, the decline of the mining boom came quickly and quickly, and the terminal channel and graphics card manufacturers were full of stocks. The large number of second-hand cards released to the market, and the less-than-expected demand for gaming PCs, forced NVIDIA to adjust its plans and indicated to TSMC that it would delay and reduce the first wave of orders.

In addition, although AMD has reduced orders for 7/6nm by about 20,000 pieces, its 5nm PC and server orders have not been revised, and they are willing to accept price increases. Therefore, TSMC has little response to this.

via DigiTimes

As reported a few weeks back, the crypto crash had resulted in a huge flood of used graphics cards entering the reseller and used marketplace. These cards are available for much cheaper than their retailer-listed prices and most gamers who were waiting for a new solution for their PCs are going to buy these GPUs, even though we advise them not to. Not only is there the existing flood but the NVIDIA GPU inventory that is comprised of current-gen Ampere graphics cards is vast.

NVIDIA wants to get rid of this inventory to make some space for their next-gen GeForce RTX 40 series lineup but currently, they have two cards playing against them, the aforementioned decline in the PC segment and the flood of used graphics cards from the crypto segment. So it's a pretty bad outlook for NVIDIA at the moment.

NVIDIA wants to cut orders, but TSMC is unwilling to make concessions. At present, the adoption of the 5nm next-generation RTX 40 series can delay the purchase of goods for one season, or even to the first quarter of 2023, but NVIDIA is responsible for finding other vacated production capacity. Customers take over to make up, minimizing the impact.

via DigiTimes

Furthermore, the report states that NVIDIA already paid TSMC to secure a vast supply of 5nm wafers early on. We had multiple reports on how NVIDIA spent Billions of Dollars to acquire 5nm wafers from TSMC last year but that might not have gone as NVIDIA planned as TSMC is not willing to make concessions to the green team and the best they can do is hold back the supply for at least 1 quarter which is likely why we were hearing reports of a delay for the GeForce RTX 40 lineup. The possibility remains that the launch may even be moved to Q1 2023. NVIDIA will also be responsible for finding replacement customers for any vacated production capacity.

Now a positive outlook for all of this would be that NVIDIA may actually have a good supply of next-gen GPUs at launch (when they launch) and we can also expect MSRP-level pricing considering the supply issues have all but vanished and the crypto boom has ended for good.

The post NVIDIA Wants To Cut Down 5nm Wafer Orders For Next-Gen GeForce RTX 40 Series Due To Crypto Flood Resulting In Lower Demand, Alleges Report by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

It's no secret that "Stranger Things" season 4 took a spectacular turn into horror. Channeling the greatest horror movies of all time, we saw nods to "Carrie," "Poltergeist," and even a Wes Craven classic, "A Nightmare on Elm Street." But it looks as though Vecna isn't done with his waking nightmares.

Throughout the season, Will (Noah Schnapp), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), and the rest of the gang have been plagued by the show's latest big bad who, it turns out, has more than a passing connection to Eleven. Season 4 Part 1 gave us a glimpse into Vecna's past, as Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Robin (Maya Hawke) investigate the tragedy that befell old Victor Creel (Robert Englund).

Creel, it turns out, was one of Vecna's first victims. And without giving too much away, he has a very personal connection to the dream-walking humanoid monster. But while we all thought Vecna would be vanquished by the end of season 4, it looks as though that's not the case.

Escaping the clutches of Nancy, Steve, and Robin, it seems Vecna is still on the loose. And while Max (Sadie Sink) is in the hospital, the fact that she technically died for a minute has allowed Vecna to complete his dastardly plan, providing the four deaths he needed to open up rifts all over Hawkins.

Now, the Upside Down is bleeding into the Rightside Up, with Hawkins at the epicenter. But with Vecna still out there, could he be tempted to revisit Victor Creel once more?

One, Two, Vecna's Coming For You ...

Victor Creel first appeared in "Stranger Things" in the season 4 episode "Chapter Four: Dear Billy." Played by none other than Robert Englund, this was another clear nod and wink to the audience about the season's horror roots. After all, Englund shot to fame in the '80s after he became the face of Freddy Krueger in "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

But will he be back in Season 5? Englund himself thinks Vecna has some unfinished business. He told Collider:

"... You hear Vecna talking. I think it's to Nancy, and he talks about me. He says, you know, 'Oh, Victor. Old grumpy Victor. Never got back to him. Maybe I should. I've been so, so busy.' So, I don't know what that means. Is he gonna kill me? Does he want to punish me more than I've already been punished? I don't understand what that meant, or if they feel they need to pay that off. There's so many loose ends that have to be resolved in Season 5."

Obviously, there is a lot of unfinished business to cover next season. Most importantly, what's going on with Hawkins? But the notion that Vecna might not be done with Victor Creel is an interesting one. After all, he did let the man live.

I can't help wondering whether Creel will play into his plans further down the line. What's the real end goal, and how will he accomplish it? If there's a compelling enough reason to revisit Creel at the old mental hospital, it would certainly make another cool return for Englund.

A Loose End To Tie Up ... And It's About Time

Vecna's relationship with Victor Creel is ... complicated. "Chapter 7: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" sheds some light on this. It turns out Victor is Vecna's father — the monstrous villain was once known as Henry Creel. And the massacre at the Creel murder house? It was all Vecna's doing.

Of course, he wasn't Vecna back then. Henry was a remarkable child, born with powers similar to Eleven. But he grew tired of the mundane existence of humanity, ultimately murdering his entire family and framing his father in the process.

Now that Creel has won, raining fire and brimstone upon Hawkins as the Upside Down bleeds into our dimension, it could be the perfect time to put an end to his story once and for all. Coming full circle to kill his father would be a fitting victory lap, or perhaps Victor will prove to be the key to saving Hawkins once and for all.

It's a compelling thought, and it sounds as though Robert Englund would be up for a "Stranger Things" return — with a good reason that's steeped in horror literature. He told Cinema Blend:

"But you know, Victor. What's Victor? What is the name Victor? What is the dropdown basic horror collective consciousness of the name? Victor Frankenstein. And who is Victor Frankenstein? What did he do? He gave birth to a monster. Because Frankenstein is the scientist, not the monster. And I'm Victor Creel, and I gave birth to a monster. So, what does that say about my evil seed? It's good writing. There's a whole lot of stuff going on."

Will Victor return to help vanquish his son? For now, we'll have to wait and see. But it's a very compelling thought.

Read this next: Tragic Stranger Things Deaths We Still Haven't Recovered From

The post Will Robert Englund's Victor Creel Return in Stranger Things Season 5? appeared first on /Film.

Mission: Impossible (1996).

DB here:

Filmmakers rightly consider themselves problem-solvers. They deal with budget limits, scheduling constraints, temperamental staff and casts, and balky equipment. Some problems come with financial demands; others are self-imposed, such as: “Tell a story confined to a single room.” The artistic problems often demand solutions that guide viewers toward clarity, comprehension, and emotional impact.

Suppose your story situation is this. Character A is telling a story, but it’s a lie. Character B realizes it’s a lie, but doesn’t signal that recognition. This is really two problems in one: How do you tell the audience A is lying? And how do you convey that B knows but doesn’t reveal that knowledge?

These are at the crux of in an intriguing sequence in Mission: Impossible. The solutions found by screenwriter David Koepp and director Brian DePalma show how even a straightforward “entertainment movie” can pose interesting questions about cinematic expression.

Spoilers ahead. But I bet you’ve seen this movie.

 

The problem(s)

The Impossible Mission team has been sent to Prague, purportedly to retrieve a digital disc listing all CIA agents in Europe. They don’t know that this assignment is a pretext for finding a mole, a rogue agent who is selling secrets to foreign interests. While infiltrating a state gala, most of the team is killed. Only Ethan Hunt, point man in the mission, and Claire Phelps, the wife of the team leader Jim Phelps, survive. The IMF chief Kittridge accuses Ethan of being the mole so Ethan, along with Claire, needs to flee. But out of devotion to duty he insists on finding the mole. He learns that the mole under the alias of Job has offered to sell the NOC list to Max, a dealer in covert information. The bulk of the plot revolves around Ethan’s efforts to induce Max to reveal Job, which Ethan can do only by offering Max the NOC list—while at the same time making sure that it doesn’t really fall into Max’s hands.

After a prologue, which I discussed in an earlier entry, the film’s first stretch revolves around the team’s invasion of the embassy party. As the scheme collapses, we see the deaths of the team members. Through cross-cutting and a moving-spotlight narration, the film shows us the technician Jack killed in an elevator shaft, Jim Phelps shot on a bridge and tumbling into the river, Sarah stabbed at a gate, and Hannah killed by a car bomb. The effects of these killings are registered largely through Ethan’s response. He hears Jack lose contact, watches video transmission of Jim’s bloody hands, finds Sarah impaled by a knife, and sees Hannah’s car explode. Later he, and we, will learn that Claire escaped.

At the start of the film’s climax, Ethan discovers that Jim Phelps is still alive. In a café, Jim explains that he survived the shooting and that he saw the killer: Kittridge. Kittridge is the mole, he claims. Jack brings Jim into his plan to meet Max on the Eurostar train and apparently give her the NOC list he’s stolen from Langley.

The twist is that Jim–Ethan’s mentor, friend, and surrogate father–is lying. He is Job the mole, and he has eliminated his own team, faking the attack on himself. Thanks to crosscutting, the first version of the attacks concealed from us the actions Jim takes to kill his colleagues. The narrative problems are: How and when to tell us of Jim’s treachery? And how to represent Ethan’s state of awareness? Is he misled by Jim’s account, or does he doubt it? And what is Claire’s role in all this?

 

Three solutions

Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

Every creative choice eliminates alternatives, and I’ve compared classical filmmaking to selecting from a menu of more or less favored options. That menu can offer filmmakers ways of solving narrative problems. One choice for the M:I revelation is simply to present Jim telling Ethan his lies in the café. Ethan then can react in horror, leaving us to assume that he doesn’t doubt him.

This option was actually tried out in an early script draft. Jim explains and Ethan, despite some hesitation (“Hold on, it’s taking me a minute to adjust here“), seems to accept his story. Only in their final confrontation on the Eurostar does Ethan reveal that he had long before figured out that Jim had betrayed the team. We had no inkling that in the café Ethan was merely pretending to accept Jim’s account. His awareness of Jim’s scheme was held back as a surprise.

Another narrative option appears in a later script draft. This time Jim’s explanation is accompanied by flashbacks illustrating his lies. He claims to have swum to shore, patched up his gunshot wound, and followed Ethan’s trail. He then tells Ethan it was Kittridge who shot him and killed Sarah, and these moments are illustrated with quick flashback imagery. These are lying flashbacks. As a neat fillip, two of these shots replay Ethan finding Sarah’s body nearby, as if to certify Jim’s story. “Ethan just stares at Phelps, his eyes wide with surprise.” Again, we’re led to think that Ethan trusts Jim’s tale, making the train confrontation a revelation of Ethan’s outplaying Jim.

We should remember that the Hollywood menu provides the lying flashback as an option, albeit rare. In Singin’ in the Rain, for instance, Don Lockwood’s voice-over interview portrays his early career as one of refined show-business accomplishment. “Dignity—always dignity.” But the images undercut this by showing him performing slapstick routines in burlesque. Since this is a comedy, we can understand that the film’s flashbacks are debunking his pretension. As for the second problem, that of conveying a listener’s skepticism, the present-time scenes reinforce the impression of Don’s puffery by showing his pal Cosmo’s eye-rolling reaction. Still, the interviewer and presumably the radio audience are taken in.

This second M:I script variant doesn’t include such hints that Ethan doubts Jim, so the problem of the conveying the listener’s true reaction is bypassed. But the final film supplies yet another solution.

After I drafted what you’ve just read, I heard from screenwriter David Koepp. I had written him to ask about the alterations, and he talked with De Palma about them.

Brian reminded me that the intention of the scene was built around an idea — can we show Jim lying, and simultaneously see Ethan figuring out those lies in his own mind?  Without telling Jim that he knows it’s a lie, Ethan is picturing for us what the truth must (or might) have been.  It’s a cool idea, and, typical of DePalma, highly visual.  Actually seeing on screen versions of events that may or MAY NOT have happened is something we started playing around with in M:I, and then did to a greater degree in Snake Eyes, which we wrote right after that.  

Neither one of us can remember in useful detail about why we might have tried several other versions first, but my guess is that the one with Jim simply verbalizing the lie was jettisoned in favor of images for obvious (and again, DePalma-esque) reasons, i.e., it’s better to see something than to hear it.  The flashback showing Kittridge as the perpetrator was likely because we wanted to keep going for as long as possible with the character I’ve come to call the Principled Antagonist — POSSIBLY a villain, turns out not to be, but always diametrically opposed to the hero and his goals.

It was good to have my hunch confirmed, and to watch filmmakers sampling the menu of options from draft to draft. The final shooting script presents the new variant. Ethan, not Jim, spells out the scheme in dialogue. This leads Jim to assume that Ethan accepts Kittridge as the culprit. But the image track shows Jim committing the crimes. As the script puts it:

A reprise of PHELPS’s narrative only now ETHAN’S telling it and camera is showing the events as ETHAN sees they actually happened.

There’s still a potential obstacle, though. What if the viewer takes the flashbacks to show what really happened but doesn’t grasp that they’re Ethan’s imaginings? They might be only “the film telling us what really happened,” as in Singin’ in the Rain. How to establish that we’re following Ethan’s train of thought while he lies during his dialogue with Jim?

 

How to lie to a liar

Here’s the sequence as it appears in the film.

On the first problem, the sequence makes clear that Jim’s accusation of Kittridge is false. We’re introduced to Jim’s treachery with several shots showing Jim engineering Jack’s death in the elevator. Several more shots, stressed through slow-motion, illustrate how Jim faked his own death. And the knifing of Golitsyn and Sarah is attributed to Krieger. You can also argue that wily viewers will take Jim’s sidelong glance at Ethan as a tip-off to his treachery–a classic shot lingering on the Guilty One (as we’ve seen elsewhere).

Still, how can we be sure that Ethan sees “events as they actually happened”–especially since his shock and puzzlement at hearing Jim’s tale seem so genuine?

The sequence solves the second problem with two passages that strongly imply that the flow of images reflects what’s in Ethan’s mind.

First, among phases of the stabbings at the gate, there’s the interpolated shot of Ethan pinning Krieger’s wrist to the wall during the Langley heist.

               

The two-shot of Ethan and Krieger, a flashback not part of Jim’s story, indicates Ethan’s realization that the knife he found in Sarah’s side was one of Krieger’s. Interestingly, this shot isn’t in the shooting script.

A stronger cue that we’re in Ethan’s mind comes with the “revised and corrected” version of Hannah’s death. Did “backup” take her out? The answer comes with a shot of Claire triggering the explosion and turning to look at the camera.

Claire’s look defies plausibility. It’s as if she is turning to glare, almost defiantly, at the Ethan who’s imagining this. Because he’s attracted to Claire, he wants to give her the benefit of the doubt. His imagination immediately proposes an alternative in which Jim sets off the bomb.

In the train at the climax, Jim will confirm Ethan’s hesitation: he was reluctant to suspect Claire. In the later stretch of the café scene, not included in my extract, the question of her loyalty is evoked as Jim urges Ethan to keep quiet about the scheme. When Ethan returns to Claire at the safe house, there remains the issue of whether her seduction of him is sincere or a further act of betrayal.

More immediately, the two problems are solved. Not only do we have the exposure of Jim’s lie, but we also get glimpses of how Ethan reconstructs what really happened. What makes this all particularly clever is that Ethan’s dialogue seems to confirm Jim’s tale. Ethan’s verbal duplicity is consistent with his talent for bluffing (as with Krieger and the fake NOC disc) and the earlier twinge of suspicion he had about Jim’s Palmer House Bible. When image and sound contradict one another here, we’re obliged to trust the image.

All of which charges Ethan’s final question–“Why, Jim? Why?”–with a double significance. Apparently asking about Kittridge’s motive, Ethan is pressing his mentor, almost desperately. Jim’s answer, about a refusal to accept the end of the Cold War, applies as much to him as to a CIA bureaucrat. We may not fully recognize it at the moment, but Ethan’s question marks the end of their friendship.

 

Someone might ask if every audience member will realize that the sequence solves both problems. Presumably even a ninny understands that Jim is lying; but maybe some viewers don’t get that Ethan is aware of the lie. My own inclination is to see the cues of Krieger’s knife and the revised version of Hannah’s death as pretty solid hints. Still, we might be in the realm, not unknown to Hollywood cinema, of a film that includes subtleties that not every viewer catches. I’m reminded of a screenwriter’s remark: “It’s not necessary that every viewer understand everything, only that everything can be understood.”  This is presumably one reason we return to films and find more in them.

It’s also one reason it’s fun to analyze them.

---

Thanks to David Koepp and Brian De Palma for responding to my questions. David’s script archive is here.

The remark about understandable stories comes from Ted Elliott, as quoted in Jeff Goldsmith, “The Craft of Writing the Tentpole Movie,” Creative Screenwriting 11, no. 3 (May/ June 2004):, 53.

Mission: Impossible (1996).

 

At a glance, "Mank" might seem like an odd film for David Fincher to make. The director broke his streak of lurid crime thrillers for a biopic about the co-writer of "Citizen Kane" -- and not even Orson Welles, but Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman). Fincher's reason for making the movie was personal: His late father, Jack, wrote the screenplay and wanted his son to direct the movie.

Jack Fincher was a journalist by trade; the peak of his career was serving as San Francisco Bureau Chief at Life Magazine. When he retired in the early 1990s, he decided to follow his son into the movie business as a screenwriter. David Fincher has a well-deserved reputation as a cynic and a perfectionist, and as he tells it, even his own father wasn't spared from these sides of his personality.

Fincher On Fincher

For Variety, Fincher spoke with Ben Affleck, the star of his last film before "Mank," and the two discussed how the film came to be. According to Fincher, his father had great respect for the screenplay as an art form, unlike the gun-for-hire Mankiewicz. Jack Fincher felt the barebones terseness of a screenplay (i.e. no-to-little internal dialogue, a 90-120 page upper limit, etc.) meant writing one was a genuine challenge -- one he was eager to undertake.

In the Fincher household, father and son shared reverence for "Citizen Kane," Jack having introduced it to David early in his son's life. As David Fincher recounts, he was 12 or 13 when he discovered "Raising Kane," Pauline Kael's infamous (and inaccurate) 1971 essay arguing Mankiewicz was the true writer of the film, not Welles. Wrong as they were, Kael's words clearly left an impression on the Finchers. Years later, when Jack asked his son what to write about, David suggested, "What about Herman Mankiewicz? I've always thought he was a funny dude. He's an odd sort of character to follow through a film."

Jack Fincher took his son's advice, but when David read the finished draft, he wasn't terribly impressed. And he didn't sugarcoat his feelings to his father, either. As Fincher recalls, "He gave me this thing. I read it. And I said, 'You know, I don't think he got it.'" 

According to Fincher, his father was understanding since Jack Fincher was much the same way himself.

"To be perfectly honest, I didn't get this [ability to be blunt and straightforward] out of nowhere, I got it from him. He was almost always the guy who was, gonna tell you ... No matter how painful. I always immediately run through and I go, 'Well does he need? He needs to hear this.' And then I just launched."

How The Script Changed

So, what was it about Jack Fincher's first "Mank" draft that David disliked? For one, the tone. Fincher called his father's draft a "pollyanna" and compared its depiction of Hollywood to "Singin' In The Rain." The final film's view of the movie business is much closer to David Fincher's usual cynicism, as evidenced by the scene in which MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) suckers his employees into accepting a pay cut with crocodile tears. 

David Fincher also states he, as a director, wasn't interested in the idea of who deserved "credit" between Welles and Mankiewicz: "Credit wasn't the reason to make the movie." Luckily, Jack Fincher happened on a new core for the film when he saw a documentary about how Mayer and media baron William Randolph Hearst influenced the 1934 California gubernatorial election with movie reels made at MGM. This helped swing the election Republican Frank Merriam over Democrat Upton Sinclair (eventually played in "Mank" by Bill Nye the Science Guy). Fincher recalled his father pitching him:

"Here's a guy who more than 30% of his output as a screenwriter, he happily gave up any kind of credit on. He's an adult, he signed a contract with the Mercury Theatre, he knew what he was doing. And for one brief, shining moment, he really wanted to revise that. What if there was something else that he had tossed off in the same kind of glib way that came back to haunt him? So that we could dramatize the thing that he desperately wanted on its headstone, and the thing that he would love to never be known for."

Mank And Kane

By shifting focus like this, the script and the eventual film created an odd situation. "Mank" purports to be about the writer of "Citizen Kane," since that's the marketable logline. Yet, much of the film ostensibly doesn't have all that much to do with "Citizen Kane." The few scenes with Orson Welles (Tom Burke) are some of the weakest, particularly the last one where he throws a tantrum over Mank demanding a co-writing credit (the influence of "Raising Kane" rearing its head).

"Kane" and "Mank" share some political messaging, mostly about the dangers of letting the wealthy control the media. In "Kane," the title character declares that readers of his newspapers will think "what I tell them to think." Hearst's sway over politics proved that someone of comparable power to Kane could back up this declaration (and, of course, Kane was famously inspired by the real-life Hearst). The framing device of Mankiewicz dictating the screenplay that becomes "Kane" to Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) brings the character's guilty conscience full circle. As he's believed to have done in real life, Mank is channeling his disillusionment with Hearst into the screenplay.

However, these links are more spiritual than anything. The end result is a film about the co-writer of "Citizen Kane" but isn't actually about the writing of "Citizen Kane." One of the best things "Mank" has going for it is that, flawed as it is, it's still a labor of love from a son for his father.

Read this next: /Film's Top 10 Movies Of 2021

The post David Fincher Didn't Hold Back On His Father's First Draft Of Mank appeared first on /Film.

Everything about "Stranger Things 4" was big, so I suppose it's only fitting that the grand finale — two extra-long episodes being billed as "Stranger Things 4 Volume 2" — is overstuffed to the extreme. Clocking in at nearly four-hours total, the two-part finale is big, big, big! Big explosions! Big emotional swings! Big speeches! It's a super-sized bucket of popcorn entertainment spilling liquified butter all over you. And that's not a bad thing, really. As I said in my review of the previous episodes for this season, "Stranger Things 4" is like a summer blockbuster condensed to your TV (or phone, if you're a crazy person). It picks and chooses bits and pieces from blockbusters of the past (especially from the '80s and '90s) and molds them into something ... well, not new, precisely. I don't think anyone could get away with calling this show "original." But it's still a lot of fun. 

At the same time, when the conclusion rolls around there's a prevailing sense that "Stranger Things 4" didn't quite stick the landing. Sure, there are plenty of satisfying moments here. But there's also a big set-up for what comes next — the show's fifth and final season. I'm all for teasing what's to come, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this season was strangely inconclusive. Getting there, though, was mostly worth the ride. These final two episodes try to give everyone in the massive ensemble moments to shine, particularly Millie Bobby Brown, who excels at some of her most challenging acting moments in these two episodes. Even better: poor Noah Schnapp, stuck with his Moe Howard haircut as Will Byers, finally gets to step into the spotlight, too. There's a moment between Schnapp and Finn Wolfhard, as Will's best buddy (and, let's be honest, crush) Mike Wheeler that shows what Schnapp can do when he's given the right material. 

In these final two episodes, the various factions from Hawkins must band together to finally stop the evil, gooey Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), who is also Henry Creel and the first kid to be experimented on by the nefarious Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) — "Vecna ... Henry ... 001, sorry, what are we calling him now?" Robin (Maya Hawke) comically asks at one point, only to have a bunch of the other characters yell out different options at once. Vecna was inadvertently created by Eleven when she banished him to the Upside Down after he murdered all the other children that were part of the same experiment. Which means Eleven is probably the one who can take him down — with a little help from her friends. But like the ensemble of "The Lord of the Rings," all the characters are scattered in various places when they need their togetherness more than ever. And for the first time in this show, there's a real sense of danger. Vecna is the best villain the series has had, and his presence has upped the stakes considerably. "Not everything has a happy ending," Robin observes before pointing out that maybe, just maybe, they won't all make it out alive this time. 

So Much Stuff

Will Eleven regain her full powers and save the day? Will Max (Sadie Sink, one of the MVPs of this season) continue to survive Vecna with the help of Kate Bush? Will metalhead Eddie (Joseph Quinn, the other MVP of the season) clear his name? Will Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce (Wiona Ryder) escape Russia? Will the Hawkins kids save the world ... again? All of these questions may or may not be answered by the time the season ends, but getting there will take some time. 

Much digital ink has already been spilled over the fact that these two episodes seem way too long (the final episode clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes!). In my humble opinion, overly long episodes of TV aren't a bad thing, as long as they justify their length. And "Stranger Things 4 Volume 2" never really reaches that point. There are long, long stretches where characters fire off wordy, protracted speeches to each other, and you can't shake the feeling that the Duffer Brothers, who wrote and directed these two episodes, could've trimmed the speeches down just a tad. On top of that, some plotlines go on way past their expiration date — the storyline about Eleven stuck in the underground bunker trying to get her powers back is the prime example; it stretches on for an interminable length, and should've been condensed considerably. 

Thankfully, these pacing problems don't sink the finale as a whole, as the Duffers pack in so much stuff that you can't help but get swept up in it all. Explosions! Interdimensional missions! Psychic fights! Jocks vs. nerds! Kids arming up with weapons and military gear as if they were auditioning for "Red Dawn"! Scenes where characters emotionally yell at each other! It's all here, and then some. These final two episodes also make good use of the scattered, overpopulated cast. Everyone gets more to do here. Hell, even the perpetually stoned pizza boy Argyle (Eduardo Franco), someone I found immensely annoying in the first half of the season, ends up being liable and funny this time. (The same can't be said for Nikola Đuričko as shifty Russian smuggler Yuri, a character who remains irritating). 

How's It Going To End?

All that said, the Duffers can't help but fall into familiar traps. They stage at least three different scenes between three different sets of characters in which said characters come very close to either confessing their love for each other or even sharing a smooch — only to be immediately interrupted by some new revelation. And yet, there are also sparks flying from time to time — Harbour and Ryder, kept apart for most of this season, get a great moment here that's fun and flirty, albeit far too brief. I would've traded at least two of the big, long-winded speeches for more flirtatious scenes between Joyce and Hopper. 

By now, you're either on board with "Stranger Things," or you disdain its reliance on nostalgia and pop culture references. I remain a fan. Do I think the show takes lazy shortcuts at times in order to move things along? Absolutely — there are more than a few scenes here where characters figure out exactly what's going on without having any real information. Do I grow weary of how underlit certain moments are, especially set within the Upside Down, a dimension where everything is icky, the lightning is red, and no one has ever apparently heard of a lightbulb? Definitely. Please, for the love of cinematography, learn how to shoot dark scenes in such a way that we can still decipher what's happening! I beg you! Most of all, I am more than a little peeved that the season ends the way it does (for the sake of spoilers, I won't say more, find out for yourself!).

But I also enjoyed watching everything here, and chasing that feeling of eternal, dumb youth; that summer movie vibe that used to seem so fresh, so vital, so invigorating when I was younger, and summer vacation felt like it was going to stretch on forever ... until it didn't. You could argue that "Stranger Things" hasn't earned that feeling; that it's cheating by blatantly ripping off (or paying homage to) the past. And I wouldn't fault you for that argument. But I can't help but fall into the show's traps. I enjoy almost all of these characters (a hat tip to Joe Keery as surrogate dad Steve Harrington), and I genuinely care about their fates. These final two episodes go to considerably dark places and put almost everyone in peril, and I bought it, hook, line, and sinker. I sat on the edge of my seat. I bit my nails. I worried. And most of all, I had fun. I would never say something as stupid as "turn your mind off and enjoy the ride!" But I do think there are plenty of cheesy, corny, amusing thrills to be had here, and I can't wait to see how it all ends.  

"Stranger Things 4 Volume 2" is now streaming on Netflix.

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The post Stranger Things 4 Volume 2 Review: An Epic, Overstuffed Finale Full of Big Emotional Swings and Long-Winded Speeches appeared first on /Film.

Fans were kept in suspense for Stranger Things 4, episode 8 and 9 (no spoilers).

Rosario Dawson is a bonafide geek culture queen, having worked with directors ranging from Kevin Smith to Quentin Tarantino. She hasn't gotten to do a ton of spooky stuff, but sought to change that with a small cameo in Rob Zombie's 2005 tribute to '70s exploitation horror, "The Devil's Rejects." Unfortunately, her scene was cut from the movie, meaning her character's harrowing death has been relegated to the DVD extras of time.

In the significantly more serious sequel to Zombie's 2003 debut "House of 1000 Corpses," the murderous Firefly family goes on a killing spree after their house of horrors is raided by law enforcement. During that raid, the police retrieve the mutated Nazi scientist, Dr. Satan, played by special effects legend Walter T. Phelan. Dawson appears in the deleted scene as a nurse named Marsha who cares for the deteriorating doctor. He's attached to all manner of IVs and wires and appears to be in some kind of coma, but when poor Marsha leans in to check on him, he reaches up and rips out her throat with his bare hand. 

It's an absolutely horrific death that comes a mere forty seconds after Dawson is introduced, but it makes for an unforgettable moment. So why did Zombie decide to leave the scene on the cutting room floor? 

Slicing Out Dr. Satan

In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Zombie explained that he had initially wanted to include Dr. Satan in "The Devil's Rejects," but he was just too cartoonish to fit into the film's more grounded reality. "'House of 1000 Corpses' was so cartoony and psychedelic and weird you could kind of do anything," Zombie said. "But when I shot the scenes for 'Devil's Rejects' with Dr. Satan, almost instantly I was like, 'This is stupid. This is not going to work.'"

Dr. Satan is a truly monstrous character, a sadistic former Nazi doctor with a mutated, withered body and a whole host of mechanical appendages to help him operate. He would be more at home in a film like "Mad Max" than in the sunburnt '70s grime of "The Devil's Rejects," so it makes sense that Zombie would want to cut his brief appearance to make the movie feel more cohesive. 

On the Without Your Head podcast, franchise star Sid Haig, who plays Firefly patriarch and killer clown Captain Spaulding, agreed with the decision, explaining that originally the plan was to cut from the Firefly family on the run to Dr. Satan in the hospital bed, but it brought the movie's momentum to a complete stop. It would have been great to see Dr. Satan (and Dawson's doomed nurse) in the movie, but it would have hurt the overall pacing, which can honestly tank an otherwise solid film.

A Cool Cameo Left On The Cutting Room Floor

Dr. Satan is a beloved villain in the franchise, but some fans were even more disappointed that the scene had been cut when they found out Rosario Dawson was in it. She had already garnered some attention for her roles in films like "Josie and the Pussycats," "The Rundown," and "Alexander," and she was due to star as the supremely kickass sex worker Gail in Robert Rodriguez's "Sin City," as well as Mimi in the film adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical "Rent." Dawson's star was on the rise and getting to see her in a Rob Zombie movie would have been a pretty big deal, but unfortunately, it just didn't work out. 

Dawson herself was disappointed, telling /Film in 2007, "I was a Reject in 'The Devil's Rejects,' which was very sad. I thought getting my throat tore [sic] off by Doctor Satan was a definite in, and it clearly wasn't." That wasn't the end of the road for Zombie and Dawson, however. "Luckily I was able to do a voice for him," Dawson continued. "He called me to do a voice for him on the 'The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.'"

Zombie's lackluster venture into animation didn't entirely make up for fans missing out on seeing Dawson get the "Road House" treatment from an elderly eugenicist. The scene is absolutely brutal, with Dr. Satan's fingers grabbing a good bit of her carotid artery before ripping it loose. The practical effects are grisly, and the sheer amount of blood that soaks through Dawson's stark white nurse's outfit is impressive, but it wasn't quite enough to justify slamming on the brakes during a heart-pounding escape sequence. 

Will We Ever See Dr. Satan Again?

Rob Zombie went on to tell Bloody Disgusting that by simply removing the Dr. Satan subplot he left the character's possible demise completely ambiguous, going as far as to say that Dr. Satan could have been a figment of one survivor's imagination:

"I left it so that it could be whatever. Is it real? Is it probably just the girl, that Denise, after a long night of being tortured and watching all of her friends killed, maybe she just went cuckoo and was imagining all these crazy things? You know, I thought for that film it's best just leave it as however people want to interpret it."

Dr. Satan didn't appear in the follow-up to "The Devil's Rejects," "3 From Hell," so it may be that the satanic surgeon will never be seen again. Oh well, at least fans will always have that deleted scene. 

Read this next: 16 Horror Movies That Ruined Everyday Activities

The post The Deleted Horror Movie Scene That Gave Rosario Dawson a Gruesome Death appeared first on /Film.

The world needs more grounded kickass princesses. Part of this is because, historically, there were just a lot of badly “misbehaving” princesses who frequently pushed against expectations. The idea of a strong powerful princess resonates with many. With the arrival tomorrow of 20th Century Studios’ THE PRINCESS, viewers will be getting a kickass princess onscreen who is not only strong but vulnerable. She quite literally is in for the fight of her life as she tiredly battles her way through her besieged castle. And, the action in this film is where it is at!

An action-packed fight to the death set in a fairy tale world, THE PRINCESS is directed by Le-Van Kiet (Furie, The Requin) and stars Emmy Award® nominee Joey King (“The Act,” The Kissing Booth) as a beautiful, strong-willed princess who refuses to wed the cruel sociopath to whom she is betrothed, and is kidnapped and locked in a remote tower of her father’s castle. With her scorned, vindictive suitor intent on taking her father’s throne, the princess must protect her family and save the kingdom.

Recently, Nightmarish Conjurings took part in the global press conference for the upcoming film release of THE PRINCESS. Moderating the conference was Morgan Hoffman of ET Canada, and attending the conference was director Le-Van Kiet, actor/Executive Producer Joey King, and actor Veronica Ngo (The Old Guard, Tam Cam: The Untold).

The primary driving force of THE PRINCESS is its action scenes. The film itself is one fighting sequence after another after another. And, as was discovered during the press conference, Joey King was actually heavily involved with the physical sequences. In what is her most physically demanding role to date, King is almost in every scene, and the bulk of the scenes, she’s doing some level of fight choreography and stuntwork. This is why when asked by Hoffman what her overall experience was like filming THE PRINCESS, it makes so much sense that King responded: “Exhausting.” Those fight scenes are no joke.

When it came down to the action scenes, one particular scene proved to be universally tough for both King and Ngo. And it might not be the one that viewers would think. During the conference, an audience member asked which scene was the most difficult for King to tackle, and she answered:

“It was actually a scene with Veronica. It was in the woods. We had a flashback sequence of us fighting together. And the reason why that was the most challenging scene is ’cause I don’t think we actually stopped fighting for 12 hours. All the cameras were kind of already where they needed to be, and we would just kind of move them around us. If I remember correctly, we wouldn’t cut sometimes. We’d just go right into another take and just keep fighting. And I was wearing leather pants. I think I lost five pounds of water weight that day. I was so tired.  I went home and I Theragunned my whole body, and  I was crying. [laughs] Oh, that was a hard day.”

Ngo agreed with King that this was the most difficult scene, but there was an additional layer of stress involved for Ngo. One that many don’t oftentimes think about when it comes to what all goes into prepping these types of action-based scenes:

“I was very concerned when I came into a fight scene with another actress, ’cause, we need a lot of training. It’s better for me to fight with a stunt person.  It’s easier, ’cause I know they can take a lot, and then I can really kick and punch as hard as I [can].

But fighting with another actress gives me a lot of stress. But Joey, she came in [committed] and I saw her training and we trained together. We felt confident. And again, when you’re on set, the stress is there, and the people and the camera and the actions go on. It’s a lot of stress to carry. But I’m super proud of how we pulled it out. The scene, it’s amazing. It looks really real. And for you to see that, you will see us fighting together. Not like on one side or the other side. We were [fighting] in a wide shot.”

The biggest surprise, though, from this exchange was the reveal that there was an injury that took place during the lengthy filming of this particular scene. After Ngo was done explaining the difficulties of shooting the sequence, King pointed out that there was actually something that happened while they were shooting that day that she still felt incredibly guilty about:

“I hurt Veronica’s finger so bad that day. I accidentally hit her super hard with the sword, and her finger was bleeding so bad. I felt so bad. But again, she’s so amazing. She’s so professional. She wasn’t head shy the next time we went into it. It was a hard day for many reasons, but also, some mistakes were made on my end, and I wound up hurting her, and I felt so guilty.  But she was amazing about it.”

Kiet added his two cents in about that day, revealing that it actually was pretty bad. This considering that both Kiet and Ngo have worked together on a couple of films together at this point:

“It was actually bad, ’cause I came to Veronica and  I looked at her knuckles, and they literally looked like she was in a brawl. And she just looked up to me, she’s like, it’s okay.  It’s all right. We’ve been through this before, right?  And so I was with Joey. I was like, “Joey, don’t worry. These things happen. It’s an action movie.” But a  lot of this speaks to who stepped up, because Veronica is right. Our camera coverage was special for this scene because of the way it’s designed in the movie and the way it’s stylized. We couldn’t shoot it [with] a stunt double. So these two, I just can’t speak enough. I  hope they keep that. I mean, Veronica, no problem, but  Joey’s a pro now. She’s gonna just be like, yeah, I got it. “

A lot of preparation and training is involved leading up to shooting these sequences. However, injuries can happen. It’s something that is prepared for because accidents are a hazard of the job. That said, the behind-the-scenes stories surrounding this flashback fighting sequence add an extra weight to all of the hard work this trio (as well as the rest of the cast and crew) put into bringing the action-packed THE PRINCESS to life for the screen.

THE PRINCESS will stream on July 1, 2022, exclusively on Disney’s direct-to-consumer platforms: on Hulu in the U.S., Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ under the Star banner in all other territories.

The post [Article] THE PRINCESS & Its Most Difficult Action Sequence appeared first on Nightmarish Conjurings.

Yesterday, I read an article that claimed brie was the “best” cheese to put on your burger. I was, frankly, a little stunned. I’m a big fan of brie, and a big fan of a big pan of brie, but the “best” burger cheese it is not.

Read more...

Content warning: This article discusses homophobia, pedophilia/hebephilia, and child abuse at length and contains spoilers for "The Black Phone."

When John Wayne Gacy was apprehended in 1978, his modus operandi of targeting teenage boys and history of working as a part-time clown turned him into one of the most notorious and recognizable figures in criminal history. His crimes were partially responsible for the introduction of "stranger danger" discussions, the idea of a house having a crawl space became subject to paranoia, and his horrific reign of terror became the inspiration for the "Galesburg Grabber" in Joe Hill's short story, "The Black Phone." For the uninitiated, Joe Hill is the son of master of horror Stephen King, and given the resurgence in popularity of King's most iconic monster following the releases of "It" and "It: Chapter Two," Hill and the creative team behind the film adaptation of "The Black Phone," director Scott Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill, made the wise decision to change The Grabber's occupation from "part-time clown" to "part-time magician."

This change is a good thing in that it allows "The Black Phone" to stand on its own and out of the shadows of both Stephen King's "It" and the easily identifiable connection to John Wayne Gacy. However, the flamboyance of magicians and the current state of political unrest in the United States has caused some people to make an alarmingly dangerous read on the film adaptation of "The Black Phone." When discussing John Wayne Gacy, we refer to him as a serial killer, a hebephiliac, and a necrophiliac, but what we don't call him is "gay," because he wasn't. So why are some people calling Ethan Hawke's performance of a character inspired by him "gayface?"

What Is 'Gayface?'

Gayface is the term used to describe a straight actor performing a caricature of a gay person by playing into harmful tropes. Admittedly, there desperately needs to be a different name for this practice, as equating gayface to the unforgivably disrespectful "Blackface" is like comparing apples to 400 years of systemic racism, but for the time being, that's the term we have. Gayface is not only an offensive practice that relegates the representation of queer people in the media to painful stereotypes, but also denies queer actors the ability to tell their own stories while implying that there's only one type of way to be gay.

I first heard about the claims of gayface in "The Black Phone" following its premiere at Fantastic Fest in 2021, and again after the Beyond Fest screening a few weeks later. To say I was disappointed was an understatement, considering I've been obsessively singing the praises of Derrickson, Cargill, and Hawke's first horror collaboration, "Sinister" for a decade. I walked into the theater to see "The Black Phone" expecting to have my heart broken by creators I had championed for years, only to find myself getting actively angry at the abhorrent and inaccurate allegations cast against this film that are definitely going to be parroted by bigots and queer-mongering evangelicals, and believed as fact by well-meaning straight people who aren't familiar with queer theory but don't want to support something labeled as "problematic." 

Calling Hawke's performance in this film "gayface" is a take devoid of any nuance.

Where Did This Take Come From?

I went in to my second viewing of "The Black Phone" with the sole intention of trying to clock any and all instances of Ethan Hawke's performance that could have been perceived, read, or coded as gay. Before I list them all out, please understand that these attributes are not inherently or exclusively "gay," because there is no one way to be, act, look, present, or exist as gay, and to imply otherwise is homophobic.

• The Grabber speaks to his victims in a sweet, soft, and higher-pitched tone.
• The Grabber often dramatizes his speech with flared finger/hand gestures.
• The Grabber is a man who lives alone in the 1970s (until his brother moved in).
• The Grabber carries himself with effeminate posture.
• The Grabber's game with his victims is called "Naughty Boy."
• The Grabber's victims are exclusively young men.

Believing these aspects make the Grabber a gay caricature is so unfathomably harmful it honestly makes me physically ill. In a different genre and with a lesser creative team, I would completely understand why someone would come to this conclusion, but because Derrickson and Cargill aren't homophobic monsters, all of these supposed gayface attributes are explained in the text of "The Black Phone." The Grabber is so clearly portrayed as a hebephiliac serial killer, not a gay man, and conflating the two gives legitimate power to the oppressive talking points of those who are sincerely trying to exterminate the existence of queer people in real life.

The Text Disproves The Gayface Claims

It's mentioned that the room The Grabber uses to harbor his victims is from his childhood. Abuse is often cyclical, and the script indicates The Grabber's actions are a result of his own unhealed trauma after having been a victim of abuse himself. This is likely why his victims are all young men, as he was a young man himself when he experienced abuse, and the "Naughty Boy" game is just a continuation of the abuse he endured as a child. He's placed himself in the power position he was unable to do in his younger years. It's not an excuse and he certainly doesn't get a pass, but it explains why he is the way he is.

As we aren't given a full psychological analysis or criminal profile, trying to pathologize him further is both irresponsible and impossible.

The Grabber's voice changes depending on who he's talking to. With his victims, he puts on a gentle demeanor with a higher tone, something adults do in general when talking to children. It's an attempt to disarm the victim and make them feel like they're safe, not an indication of queerness. When he kidnaps Finney (Mason Thames), he acts silly when dropping his groceries. If he was using the aggressive and "macho" voice he uses with his brother, Finney would have avoided him. As for the posturing and hand motions? He's a part-time magician. He's a showman. He's putting on a performance for his victims and his finger movements are nearly identical to the sleight of hand used when performing close-up magic.

The Complication Of Reclamation

Given horror's complicated relationship with queer presentation, many of us have found ways to reclaim the monstrous ways our community and identities have been shown. I say this as someone who has a portrait of Countess Marya Zaleska of "Dracula's Daughter" tattooed on my forearm. There's power in owning up to the villainous characters created to try and make us feel lesser than, and a catharsis in seeing these villains enact the anger and rage we often don't get to unleash for the sake of not giving bigots any additional reasons to hate us, finally affirmed on screen.

There are some queer people who have been reveling in Hawke's performance, understanding that he's a monster but delighting in the exaggerated personality of the role. And that makes "The Black Phone" an even more complicated movie to assess in terms of the gayface accusations and queer reads that are undoubtedly going to be made in the current climate. I ran some of these thoughts by lesbian film writer Annie Rose Malamet -- who specializes in the queer, perverse, and controversial -- who loved the film, but admitted, "I do think it's something we'll be looking at in 20 years when we study media and this moment." She's right. Wholeheartedly. "The Black Phone" was supposed to be released in January and the landscape regarding LGBTQIA+ rights has completely changed during the release delay. It's impossible to know how the film would have been received had the pandemic not forced a delay and it came out before "Don't Say Gay," and the obvious delegitimization of the Supreme Court. 

The Danger Of Giving Bigots Unneeded Ammunition

We are currently living in a time when anti-gay legislation is popping up all over the country, and Anita Bryant-esque beliefs have returned as right-wing talking points. Gay people are being called "groomers" constantly, so ignoring the reality that The Grabber is a hebephiliac and instead equating him to gayface is playing right into the hands of conservatives who want us dead. It's also wildly dangerous because there is zero evidence that shows any connection to homosexuality and child abuse, and the overwhelming number of those who abuse children are actually straight men. However, it's important to note that pedophilia/hebephilia are the words used to describe the attraction, and not the action, despite the fact culturally the words are often used interchangeably.

"The Black Phone" was released in the middle of a moral panic surrounding homosexuality (and specifically, trangenderism) and it would have been impossible for Derrickson, Cargill, and Hawke to have predicted how infuriatingly backward America was moving when developing the character. Unfortunately, I've seen this conflation made not just by straight people, but also queer people who should absolutely know better. There is a dark and twisted history in the way entertainment has portrayed the queer community, and there is a direct correlation between our representation and they way we are treated by society at large. Any portrayal of a man victimizing boys is going to stir up subconscious associations of that historically bad representation, but that's not the fault of Derrickson, Cargill, or Hawke.

It's the fault of people's unable to differentiate between actual queerness and depictions of queerness.

Hawke's Performance Is Phenomenal, But It's Not Inherently Gayface

Claiming Hawke's flamboyant performance is gayface is an extremely reductive way at assessing queerness, and an even more limiting approach to gender performance. Our culture struggles enough as-is not associating anything outside of the aggressively masculine as "gay," which has only continued keeping us all in rigid gender role boxes none of us asked for. Ethan Hawke should be able to play a flamboyant predator without being accused of gayface, especially when playing a character that is by all textual support, not gay. Associating his performance with a caricature of a gay man honestly says a lot more about the viewer than it does the performer. 

The sick, sad reality is that it wouldn't have mattered how Hawke portrayed the Grabber -- he was always going to be associated with homosexuality by fear-mongering bigots simply because of the nature of his crimes. Saying that his performance should have been "straighter" will not save us because conservatives are just going to continue moving goal posts. We are never going to score if we continue playing their game. The Grabber is a hebephiliac child murderer. Period. And yet people are still willfully falling into the trap of associating dramatic flair with queerness. Bigots already hate us, a serial killer in a movie isn't going to change that.

Stop helping them write their playbook with bad faith interpretations.

Read this next: The 15 Best Final Girls In Horror Movies Ranked

The post The Grabber, 'Gayface,' and the Danger of Conflating the Two in The Black Phone appeared first on /Film.

After debuting on the big screen in 1981, the adventurer "Indiana Jones" has continued to stand the test of time. After four blockbuster films directed by Steven Spielberg and a fifth one on the way from "Logan" director James Mangold, one has to wonder: What is it about Harrison Ford's fedora-toting archaeologist that makes this iconic character so appealing? 

"Indiana Jones" is a product of a wonderful collaboration between two iconic filmmakers: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. After creating the character, George Lucas took Indy to Spielberg to direct, with screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan writing what would become "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and the rest is movie history. Dr. Henry Jones Jr. became a swashbuckler that audiences adored watching as he barely escaped the most daring adventures by the skin of his teeth. Back in 2008, George Lucas gave some insight into the continued success of the "Indiana Jones" franchise and what he believes is the reason behind the character's appeal. 

Indiana Jones Can Take A Beating

Speaking to Variety, Lucas explained the endearing and enduring nature of Indy and his action hero status that makes him stand out from the rest, especially when it comes to taking on bad guys:

"It's one of the few times when the hero gets beat up and he also looked like he got beat up, and he actually continues through the movie looking beat up. He didn't suddenly the next day come out, "Oh, yeah, my broken neck, my broken nose, that's all fixed now, nothing like a good night's sleep."

The believability of Indy's adventures also helps to make the films stand the test of time. It isn't just the way Indy takes hits, but also the treasures that are grounded in history in some form or another. Lucas said:

"We just had to make a good story and tell it well, and, yes, it's an action movie, but it's important for us that there's a real supernatural mystery going on. Only Indiana Jones films are supernatural mystery movies. They're always going after some supernatural object. It's not a pretend object. It's not something that we made up. It's something that actually exists, or people believe exists..."

Suspending Disbelief

Lucas has the belief that "Indiana Jones" continues to succeed because audiences' suspension of disbelief isn't too tall of a task for an "Indiana Jones" adventure. He even went so far as to compare it to the massive success of "Jaws", saying that film's firm establishment with some sense of realism gets audiences invested:

"It was the same thing with Steven [Spielberg] with 'Jaws.' They said, 'Let's make it a 30-foot shark.' He said, 'There is no such thing as a 30-foot shark. They have caught a 21-foot shark. We'll make it a 24-foot shark.' That's where the difference is. We try to keep it within the realm of reality, but stretch it just a bit to make it more interesting and have more fun with it. And also, it's based on some kind of real mythology that exists that people actually believe in."

"Stretch it just a bit" is a great way to describe the first three "Indiana Jones" adventures in how they make Indy and his experiences believable. However, Lucas' belief in keeping things grounded isn't consistent with the fourth entry in the franchise, which is easily an example of what could go wrong when not applying what Lucas believes to be the key to success for the "Indiana Jones" franchise.

New Decade, New Indy

While the believability of the first three films isn't in question, Lucasfilm teetered on the edge of unbelievable with the fourth installment, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." The sequel differentiates itself from the rest of the series with its action and MacGuffin. 

While Lucas speaks of grounding a story in something that people believe in, "Crystal Skull" features Indy taking physical feats that, while expected of action films in the decade it came out in, were hardly ever achieved by Indy in the original films, and that was when he was a much younger adventurer. 

Add to that the sci-fi angle introducing aliens into the equation, and you have a film that stands far removed from Lucas' original principle. The fourth film saw Indy encounter aliens with psychic energy (and their crystal skull) and even had him survive a nuclear explosion by hiding in a fridge. Hell, it even resulted in coining the term "nuke the fridge" to describe over-the-top moments, along the same line as "jump the shark" from "Happy Days." The sequel came off a nearly 20-year gap between films, so it's not surprising that "Crystal Skull" takes a leap further from "The Last Crusade," but it's all a bit much.

Hopefully, James Mangold and the crew at Lucasfilm will continue the trend of the first three "Indiana Jones" films and engage audiences in the sense of grounded action and pseudo-history when the next film in the franchise comes out next summer on June 30, 2023.

Read this next: 12 Awesome Action Movies That Never Got Sequels

The post George Lucas Thinks This Is The Key To Indiana Jones' Continued Success appeared first on /Film.

Shadow IT refers to the practice of users deploying unauthorized technology resources in order to circumvent their IT department. Users may resort to using shadow IT practices when they feel that existing IT policies are too restrictive or get in the way of them being able to do their jobs effectively. An old school phenomenon  Shadow IT is not new. There have been countless examples of

Return to Monkey Island is a return to the legendary series published by Devolver Digital with the help of the original series creators Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman. While this is great in its own right, several people took issue with the upcoming game's stylized HD 2D look for the game, rather than 3D models or retro pixels.

It seems like some of those people was taking things a little bit too far since Ron Gilbert has made a public post on his blog stating that he will stop talking about the upcoming game. This decision was made following tons of unrelenting abuse from 'fans' of the series. Guybrush Threepwood actor Dominic Armato showed his disdain toward this sector of the community in a tweet:

(And those were the ones that he *didn't* moderate.)

— Dominic Armato (@SkilletDoux) June 30, 2022

The issue, once again, was with the game's graphical art style. The game's stylized HD visuals have definitely become a point of contention among some fans. Gilbert initially defended the art style in his blog, stating that the game had "a team of incredible artists, animators, sound designers, programmers, and testers all pouring their souls into this game and it’s beautiful to see, play, and listen to". This statement ultimately ended with him saying that while it may not be the style everyone would roll with, it's the style he wants.

He further defended this very principle during the blog post that preceded the comment shutdown by stating that:

It's an amazing game and everyone on the team is very proud of it. Play it or don't play it but don't ruin it for everyone else. I won't be posting any more about the game. The joy of sharing has been driven from me.

So, that's where we stand at the moment in terms of Return to Monkey Island. The game is set to release on PC and Nintendo Switch sometime in 2022.

The post Ron Gilbert will No Longer Post About Return to Monkey Island Following Abusive Comments by Ule Lopez appeared first on Wccftech.

2022 has been a pretty big year for laptops, with many devices from all kinds of brands getting brand-new designs, features, and processors. One such laptop is the HP Spectre x360 13.5, a successor to the Spectre x360 14. More recently, Apple also introduced a major refresh for the MacBook Air, and both of these laptops are fantastic premium devices. If you’re looking at the best laptops you can buy today, both of these are going to be common recommendations, but which one should you choose? In this article, we’ll be comparing the HP Spectre x360 13.5 and the 2022 MacBook Air to find out.

To be clear, there’s never going to be a definitive answer that applies to everyone. Both of these laptops have great strengths, and one will excel at some things, while the other will be more appealing in other ways. Perhaps the most notable factor here is the operating system, since one laptop runs macOS and the other runs Windows 11. That alone could make the choice for you, but there’s a lot more. Let’s take a closer look.

Navigate this article:

• Specs
• Operating system
• Performance
• Display and sound
• Design
• Ports and connectivity
• Final thoughts

MacBook Air (2022) vs Dell XPS 13 (2022): Specs

Operating system: macOS or Windows

As we mentioned above, the biggest factor you’ll probably be looking at when choosing between these two laptops is the operating system. This is the core of the experience, and if you’re more used to either one of these, that’s probably what you’ll prefer. It comes down to familiarity, at least for most people. But if you don’t have a preference already, there are still valid reasons to choose one or the other.

Windows is the most popular operating system in the world when it comes to PCs, and that has advantages in itself. Most apps you could ever want exist for Windows, so you’ll have a much easier time with compatibility, whether with specific apps or devices that require special drivers. Windows 11 is the latest version of Windows, and in addition to the long-standing compatibility with all kinds of apps, it has a new design language that looks beautiful, and it’s a bit more beginner-friendly than previous versions. It’s getting even better with Windows 11 version 22H2, too.

On the other hand, macOS is generally considered the best OS for content creation, and that’s thanks in big part to Final Cut Pro. This is a video editor developed by Apple, and it’s often considered one of the best on the market, if not the very best. And because of its popularity with creators, many other content creation apps offer great support for Macs, so it’s a great device for that. Some also consider macOS to be more friendly to new users, so it might be a good choice if you’re new to computers as a whole. Just like Windows 11, macOS also gets big updates every year, such as the upcoming macOS Ventura.

Performance: The Apple M2 processor is powerful and efficient

Performance is one area where Apple has truly pulled ahead since the introduction of Apple Silicon back in 2020. The Apple M2 is the second generation of Apple Silicon, and now it offers even more performance, both on the CPU and GPU fronts. It still has an 8-core CPU, but it offers 18% more performance than the previous generation, which was already very fast.

Of course, the HP Spectre x360 13.5 also comes with the latest Intel processors, and that brings some big performance improvements over the previous model. It comes with 10 cores and 12 threads, and it’s plenty fast for day-to-day use, too. We don’t have benchmark numbers to compare these two laptops directly yet, but according to Apple’s internal tests, it’s clear that the M2 pulls significantly ahead. The graph below compares the Apple M2 to the Intel Core i7-1255U, which is the most powerful model available in the HP Spectre x360 13.5.

As you can see, at the same 15W power consumption the Apple M2 is almost twice as fast as the Intel Core i7-1255U. And even when the Intel processor is allowed to use more power, it still can’t match the performance of the M2.

That’s even more true when it comes to the GPU side of things. Comparing the Apple M2 to the Intel Core i7-1255U again, Apple’s processor has an even bigger advantage, achieving 2.3 times the performance of Intel’s at the same power level. And even when the Intel processor uses more power, Apple pulls far ahead.

It’s worth mentioning here that the Apple M2 does have two variants of its GPU – one with 8 cores and one with 10 – and this comparison uses the more powerful one. However, the same can be said for the Intel Core i5 compared to the Core i7, so things should balance out when comparing the same pricing tier.

It’s not just performance itself, though. Something else that’s apparent in the comparisons above is that the Apple M2 achieves these fantastic levels of performance while using far less power than the Intel processors. So, even though HP’s laptop has a physically larger battery, it may end up not lasting as long on a charge, or it may be more balanced than it initially seems based on battery capacity alone.

As for the rest of the specs, the HP Spectre x360 13-5 pulls out ahead in terms of RAM capacity, which can go up to 32GB instead of the 24GB of the MacBook Air. On the flip side, since the RAM in the MacBook Air is built into the M2 chip, it can offer faster speeds and it’s accessible by the CPU and GPU as needed, which can greatly help with tasks where the GPU needs to load assets from memory. As for storage, both laptops go up to 2TB, but the HP Spectre x360 has a 512GB SSD in the base configuration, which gives it an advantage over the MacBook Air’s base model.

Display and sound: The HP Spectre x360 13.5 has an OLED option

Moving on to the display, this is a situation where your budget plays a big role in which laptop is the better option. The MacBook Air only has one display configuration – it’s a 13.6-inch panel and it comes in a unique 2560 x 1664 resolution, giving it a slightly taller aspect ratio than 16:10. That’s the standard across the board, and for a base configuration starting at $1,199, it’s a fantastic display. It’s very sharp for this size, and it can reach 500 nits of brightness, plus it supports P3 Wide Color. One downside here is that the screen has a notch at the top for the webcam, which some people may not like.

Comparatively, the HP Spectre x360 13.5 is a bit less impressive in its base configuration, at least when it comes to the visual experience. The 13.5-inch screen has a 3:2 aspect ratio, which is taller than the MacBook Air’s, making it even better for productivity. But the base configuration is “only” Full HD+ (1920 x 1280) resolution, which is a big step down compared to Apple’s offering (to be clear, it’s still more than sharp enough for this size). That’s just the base model, though. HP gives you the option to upgrade to a 3K2K (3000 x 2000) OLED panel, which is a stunning display that’s both sharp and vibrant. OLED means you get true blacks, more vivid colors, and a high contrast ratio, making for a stellar visual experience.

That’s just the visual side of it, though. The HP Spectre x360 has another potential advantage, which comes from being a convertible laptop. The display supports touch and pen input so you can use it in more intuitive ways. It also makes it easy to take notes or draw. Also, if you work with sensitive information, the Spectre x360 gives you the option for an integrated privacy screen (HP Sure View Reflect), which blocks the people around you from seeing what’s on your screen while you’re working.

As for the webcam, both of these will give you a great experience. Apple is using a 1080p camera for the first time in the MacBook Air, and that’s backed by an advanced image signal processor inside the Apple M2. Meanwhile, the HP Spectre x360 13.5 uses a 5MP camera with 1080p video, plus smart features like auto framing and lighting correction. On paper, it looks like HP’s webcam is better, but both are great either way. The Spectre x360 also has the benefit of supporting Windows Hello facial recognition, in addition to a fingerprint reader. The MacBook Air still only has Touch ID despite having a notch on the display.

Finally, in terms of sound, both laptops come with a quad-speaker stereo setup, which is pretty good for a 13-inch laptop. You’re bound to get a great audio experience with either one, but Apple has typically had some of the best speakers on any laptop, so if that stays true with the MacBook Air, it might come out on top in that department.

Design: One is a convertible, one is not

Design is one area where HP pulls ahead in terms of functionality and looks. Functionality-wise, the Spectre x360 ahs the benefit of being a convertible, as we’ve already mentioned, That means the hinge can spin 360 degrees so you can use it as a tablet, but also in a variety of positions in between, such as “tent mode”. Of course, the screen also supports touch, so you can use the PC as a tablet, too. Comparatively, the MacBook Air is a simple clamshell laptop, which makes it less versatile.

The HP Spectre x360 is also more interesting in terms of looks. It uses a dual-tone design, which means the surfaces of the laptop are one color, but the edges are colored differently. The Nightfall Black model has “pale brass” accents along the edges, and the Nocturne Blue version has light blue accents. If you want something more subdued, the Natural Silver variant is also available, and it’s a single color.

On the other hand, the MacBook Air looks much simpler, though there are new colors this year. You can get it in Silver, Space Grey, Starlight, or Midnight. These are all fairly subdued colors, though they still manage to cater to different users. Still, we’d certainly give the point to HP in this department.

However, the convertible design of the HP Spectre x360 comes with a downside, and that’s portability. This laptop weighs 3.01lbs, which isn’t super heavy, but it’s not that light either. The MacBook Air weighs 2.7 lbs, making it slightly more portable. The MacBook Air is also significantly thinner, measuring 11.3mm compared to the 17.02mm of the HP Spectre x360 13.5.

Ports: The HP Spectre x360 13.5 has a more capable setup

Finally, we come to the ports, where the Spectre x360 manages another victory. HP’s laptop doesn’t have a ton of ports, but it does give you two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB Type-A port, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader. That means you should be able to plug in most of the basic peripherals you’d want, and Thunderbolt support means you can use things like Thunderbolt docks and external GPUs, too.

On the other hand, the MacBook Air also has two Thunderbolt ports, plus a headphone jack and a MagSafe charging connector. There are some differences here, though. On one hand, the headphone jack on the MacBook Air is more powerful, meaning it can actually support high-impedance headphones without an external amplifier. On the other hand, the Thunderbolt ports are limited by the Apple M2 chip. You can only connect one external display via Thunderbolt (regardless of resolution), plus there’s no support for external GPUs this way. That takes away a lot of the versatility of Thunderbolt.

As for wireless communication, the two laptops are similar, though the MacBook Air still doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6E, the new standard with a higher 6GHz frequency. HP’s laptop does support it.

MacBook Air (2022) vs HP Spectre x360 13.5: Final thoughts

As with anything, choosing a laptop is ultimately up to your personal preference. Both the MacBook Air and HP Spectre x360 13.5 have clear advantages in certain areas, and it’s up to your needs to determine what you value most. If performance and mobility are your priority, the MacBook Air is the best choice. Plus, if you want a great display without having to spring for a very expensive configuration, it also gives you that option.

On the other hand, the HP Spectre x360 has a more premium OLED display if you have the money to spend, plus it has the major benefit of being a convertible, which makes it more versatile. That alone could be a reason to choose HP’s device – personally speaking, that’s the biggest reason I’d choose the Spectre over the MacBook Air. Plus, it has a more visually unique design, and potentially the best webcam of the two.

And even with all of that, there’s a good chance that your decision is entirely up to the operating system – if you want macOS, you get the MacBook Air, and if you want Windows, you get the HP Spectre x360 13.5. For many, that’s probably all you need to consider.

If you’ve made your decision, you can check out both laptops below. The HP Spectre x360 13.5 is already available to buy, but the MacBook Air (2022) is expected to launch in July.

The post MacBook Air (2022) vs HP Spectre x360 13.5: What’s the best 13-inch laptop? appeared first on XDA.

When a "What We Do in the Shadows" TV series was announced, I was skeptical. It's my general nature; I'm skeptical about everything. It wasn't that I thought the 2014 mockumentary about a group of vampire roommates wouldn't translate to TV. Indeed, the film was highly episodic, and therefore perfect for TV. But my skepticism arose around the idea that the film's cast of bloodsuckers — including Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi — was going to be very hard to replace. 

Of course, I turned out to be completely wrong. In fact, for its first two seasons, I'd say the "What We Do in the Shadows" TV series actually surpassed the film that inspired it. This was primarily due to the phenomenal cast — Kayvan Novak as former warrior Nandor the Relentless, the married couple of Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry) and Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou), energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), and Nandor's long-suffering familiar (and a not-so-secret vampire hunter), Guillermo (Harvey Guillén). This team is consistently funny and watching their vampiric exploits resulted in high comedy, particularly over the course of seasons 1 and 2. 

And then came season 3. Sure, the third season of the series had its highs, and the cast remained likable. But there was something ... off about season 3. The show expanded its mythology to include a whole bunch of stuff about the ancient Vampiric Council. Sadly, none of it was very interesting, or particularly funny. Nor was the addition of The Guide, an envoy of the Vampiric Council played by Kristen Schaal. I usually find Schaal to be an enjoyable performer, but she just doesn't quite click here. She can't match the abundant chemistry that exists between the main players. But Schaal wasn't really the problem with season 3. Instead, the things that made the show so damn funny to begin — the mundane everyday lives of vampires living on Staten Island — were sidetracked. In short, I didn't like it much. 

Which is why I'm pleased to say that "What We Do in the Shadows" season 4 is a return to form. Indeed, the premiere episode of the season spends a large chunk of time essentially undoing everything that happened in the season 3 finale. And that's fine. 

Together Again

Season 3 ended with the characters scattered to the winds, going on their own separate adventures. I thought it might take some time for them to get back together again, but the writers wisely realized that the interplay between everyone is key to the show's success. Sure enough, as season 4 begins, the gang quickly reunites in their (increasingly crumbling) house on Staten Island. Some things have changed: Colin Robinson died last season, only to be reborn as a strange child that still has actor Mark Proksch's head creepily positioned atop a kid actor's neck. Lazlo has been trying to raise the child into "the most interesting adult there has ever been," but realizes that's going to be harder than expected when the boy (Lazlo refuses to call him Colin Robinson) reveals he loves *shudder* musical theatre. Meanwhile, the-once-and-former-Colin Robinson keeps growing at an alarming rate, going from baby to grade-schooler in the span of days. 

As for Nandor, he's feeling lonely, and on the search for a new bride — after asking Guillermo to be his best man before he's even found someone to marry. Guillermo as a character remains slightly frustrating: no matter how many times he claims he's going to stand up for himself, walk away, and stop letting the vampires boss him around, he always finds a reason to fall back into his old role as a familiar. Still, it's hard to fault the show for maintaining this dynamic when it works so damn well — Novak and Guillén are laugh-out-loud funny together.

But the real MVP of the series remains Demetriou, whose unhinged, frequently oblivious Nadja gets the biggest laughs. Having fled her duties at the Vampiric Council in England, Nadja wants to turn the Councils Staten Island headquarters into a vampire nightclub, complete with blood sprinkles — like in the movie "Blade"! The first four episodes provided for critics deal primarily with this plotline, as Nadja and company struggle to get the club off the ground while The Guide remains hesitant to buck tradition. 

Familiar Ground

Season 4 falling back into old habits will either be a blessing or a curse, depending on what you thought of season 3. If you wanted even more expansion of the Vampiric Council stuff, you're going to be disappointed. But I'm on board with what I saw here, and hope the season will continue to improve on season 3's mistakes. Sure, there's a part of me that knows the show can't just play the hits and give me the same old same old; there should be a progression, something driving the story forward, even slightly. But what can I say? I'm a sucker for the familiar comforts of "What We Do in the Shadows," and having the story migrate back onto familiar ground felt refreshing in the wake of a so-so previous season.

Besides, there's still plenty of growth here. The Colin Robinson spawn isn't just another version of the Colin Robinson we already know; he's a completely different character, which is perhaps why Lazlo has such trouble calling him Colin. And those craving more mythology will get it in the form of the excellent episode "The Night Market," which takes the characters (and us) to an underground bizarre where monsters of all shapes and sizes gather to barter over various ghoulish goods. 

But how much longer can this story continue? "What We Do in the Shadows" has already been renewed for two more seasons, so it stands to reason the writers already have some ideas banked. For now, I remain enamored with the series, which makes me laugh louder and longer than most other comedies on TV right now. The fount of blood may run dry eventually, but for now, I'm just happy that the old undead gang is together again. 

"What We Do in the Shadows" season 3 premieres with its first two episodes on Tuesday, July 12, 2022 on FX and the next day on Hulu.

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As anyone who's seen a period piece knows, the secret to getting the era right lies in the details. However, as anyone who's worked on a film or television set before knows, making sure of the details can be a monumental task. After all, there exists a position on most production crews where someone just watches the sets, props, and dialogue for internal continuity, never mind for historical aspects.

Netflix's "Stranger Things" is a show where its chosen period of 1980s America acts like a character unto itself, but it's certainly far from the only defining element. The series also juggles such unwieldy concepts like teen melodrama, adult angst, shady government conspiracies, creepy crawlies from another dimension, telekinetically powered human beings, and Dungeons & Dragons lore, so there's a lot for any given writer, actor, director, or continuity person to keep an eye on.

Fortunately, the show has its own secret weapon: Winona Ryder, a leading actress whose persona arguably helped define part of the 1980s. Playing the perpetually anxious mama bear Joyce Byers is only one of Ryder's roles on the show, as she also apparently helps advise the creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, on the important details of the decade.

Ryder Keeps Stranger Things Honest To The '80s

Winona Ryder spent almost the entirety of her teen years during the 1980s, which are arguably the most formative years of a person's life. During such years while one's tastes are formed and interests are born, every moment feels like a milestone. In addition to that aspect causing the days of youth to feel special (a quality in which the nostalgia-laden "Stranger Things" revels), it makes things easier to remember, too — like, say, the year a particular movie or song was released.

Ryder is clearly drawing on that memory on the set of "Stranger Things," making sure creators Matt and Ross Duffer (who were much younger than Ryder was during the '80s) pay attention to the period details. As Ryder's costar David Harbour observed in a recent interview with Harper's Bazaar, "It's just kind of epic how wild her mind is and how it goes to all these different corners." Harbour explained how Ryder will often correct the Duffers about the musical anachronisms in some of the scripts: "She'd tell them, 'This song actually came out in '85, and you have it in '83.'"

According to Harbour, Ryder's intimate knowledge of the '80s extends beyond knowing what year a particular song debuted, with the actress helping the Duffers stay honest on a range of period topics. "She knew all of these minute, tiny details they didn't even know, and they had to change things in the script based on that" he told Harper's.

Stranger Things Aims Not For Complete Historical Accuracy, But For Nostalgia

Winona Ryder's efforts have mostly paid off for "Stranger Things," the show generally being correct about the release of certain songs, movies, and trends during the '80s. Yet it's clear the series doesn't intend to be a rigid historical document about the decade, either — after all, there is no such thing as the Upside Down.

Just like any given movie or TV series' continuity, "Stranger Things" has ended up with a set of anachronisms. The show's historical accuracy is ultimately difficult to keep straight, especially with regard to needle drop music cues, as some songs are used diegetically (like Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill [A Deal With God]") while others are not (such as Peter Gabriel's cover of David Bowie's "Heroes" seen in season 1 and 3, a version Gabriel recorded in 2010).

While as much accuracy in detail as possible can only help evoke the show's chosen period, the real aim of "Stranger Things" is to provide a general nostalgic sense of the decade. Letting a few anachronisms slip by every now and again helps the series create a fantasy version of the time period, an '80s that both was and never was, one where a girl can save her friends from deadly monsters with her psychic powers. Still, for those who remember the '80s well or wish to learn more about it, at least we — and the show — have Ryder.

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The post Stranger Things Has a Secret Weapon For Getting Its '80s Period Details Right appeared first on /Film.

This article contains major spoilers for "All Those Who Wander," the ninth episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."

The ninth episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is essentially a horror movie reminiscent of Ridley Scott's "Alien," but it also keeps with the early Trek tradition of depicting horrible things happening to people. In early Trek, the Enterprise crew could have their faces magically erased, their salt drained by a shape-shifting vampire, or their bodies dehydrated into geodesic blocks. While "The Elysian Kingdom," the previous episode of "Strange New Worlds," was a bout of light whimsy (the crew was magically transformed into characters from a fantasy novel), "All Those Who Wander" features the return of the Gorn, last seen in "Memento Mori," and depicts them as vicious biological oddities who implant their young in living host bodies.

Not only are the monsters a reference to "Alien," the premise is too: The Enterprise receives a distress beacon from a downed starship called the U.S.S. Peregrine, crashed on a class L planet. The Enterprise, in a rush to deliver power cells with an expiration date, leaves a landing party behind in a communications dead zone to investigate. They find few survivors, an alien they cannot communicate with, a young girl (echoes of New from James Cameron's "Aliens"), and an encroaching litter of Gorn young, at a stage in their youth when they are more or less feral miniature dinosaurs.

Poor Hemmer

By the end of the episode, multiple crewmates have been injured or killed, and the Enterprise's grumpy Aenar engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak) has become infected with Gorn spores, his body serving as host to a potential new litter. Rather than offer an additional threat to an already-desperate situation, Hemmer elects to exit the ship and fall off a cliff to his death. Before falling, he takes a brief moment to appreciate the frigid weather around him. Just like his home planet, Andoria.

Hemmer's death is an unexpectedly tragic moment on "Strange New Worlds," as he was, up to this point, a member of the core cast. While Trek would occasionally kill off a crewmate to accentuate the danger of the job -- there's a reason Red shirts have become a pop culture staple -- it's rare that a central character on a Trek show is ever killed. It's happened so infrequently, you can count the instances on one hand. 

A Trekkie's mind may immediately jump to the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Skin of Evil," a notoriously dark episode wherein the Enterprise's security chief Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) is unceremoniously killed by a powerful, sentient blob of tar calling itself Armus. Yar's death happened quickly, had no build-up, and occurred before the halfway point of the episode. And, since the crew was still trapped in a precarious scenario, no one had time to properly mourn or even comment on her death. It wouldn't be until an epilogue that the crew could properly memorialize her. 

Skin Of Evil

One can be of two minds on "Skin of Evil." Yar's death was, of course, anticlimactic, which was intentional. The point was that losing a senior member of the crew on an away mission is certainly a possibility as a Starfleet officer, and not everyone is going to have a heroic moment prior to their dying. Just like real life. One can die just by falling down a staircase one day. That abruptness reveals that death is indeed part of the Trek universe, and that it can just ... happen. The showrunners, however, in failing to pause on the death of a major character -- to give her a heroic moment or a second of defiance -- did her something of a disservice. Practically, Yar dying made sense. Dramatically, well, it does leave one wanting more. 

The memorial service was tasteful, one might suppose, but it was perhaps too sentimental a moment after too abrupt a death. When one learns why Crosby left the show -- she felt she was too much of a background character and not enough of a lead -- it becomes all the more anticlimactic. Luckily, Crosby would return multiple times, thanks to (actually clever) alternate timeline shenanigans. 

But her actual death lost a lot of its sting for its abruptness. 

No Small Parts

More tactful was the death of Lt. Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore), the hulking Bajoran security chief on the U.S.S. Cerritos on "Star Trek: Lower Decks." In the episode "No Small Parts," Shaxs -- an overwhelmingly violent man -- takes perhaps a little too well to a sudden threat to his ship. Shaxs dies in a fiery explosion while rescuing a crewmate from an onslaught by the Pakleds. It was the kind of badass ending that the character seemingly warranted; there was no way Shaxs was going to go quietly. 

But, since "Lower Decks" is a comedy show, Shaxks death was undone in a deliberately undramatic way. The main characters on "Lower Decks" are the ship's lower-ranking officers, the ones who have to do unglamorous grunt work while the senior staff gets to have cosmic adventures. Said adventures are rarely communicated to the ensigns, so the main cast has to live with the fact that they may simply never know what the bridge crew is up to. This conceit is played with brilliantly when Shaxs comes back to life ... and no one explains how. He's merely back, and the ensigns have been warned not to ask what happened, as it would be gauche. The audience never learns. That's hilarious.

Just Like Andoria

Hemmer does not have as heroic death, but he did die committing a noble act. A mission that was meant to be a brave rescue ended up being devastating, with no one expecting a life-threatening situation, forcing Hemmer to come around on his mortality in a moment's notice.

What Hemmer is given that Tasha Yar never had was a moment to face death with dignity. Hemmer is given several minutes to acknowledge the gravity of his situation -- to understand what's happening to him -- and to make a decision based on the situation. As a professional Starfleet officer, he is able to face his final moments with clear judgment, knowing he could spare his fellow officers from further risk. And even though it was only a moment, Hemmer is able to take a final peaceful breath of freezing cold air, granting himself a moment of peace. 

Of course, while these moments may have spelled dignity for Hemmer, it is incredibly tragic for the audience. A character we were just growing to like died rather than risk hurting his fellow officers. Bruce Horak was doing a wonderful job in the part, and Hemmer had added just the right dynamic to the show. To see him taken out leaves the viewer feeling sad, yes, but concerned that the crew will not be able to recover, either practically or dramatically. 

The next episode is the season finale, so audiences will have to see how well everyone recovers. 

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Back in 2015, the world was introduced to Dakota Johnson. Now, she's a movie star with roles in "The Lost Daughter" and "Cha Cha Real Smooth" under her belt. Back then, she was the lead in the film version of the E.L. James bestselling book "Fifty Shades of Grey," leading to two sequels to match the other books in the trilogy. The first film was directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and also starred Jamie Dornan. It follows a young woman named Anastasia Steele (Johnson) who is introduced to the world of sadomasochism by Christian Grey (Dornan). Johnson spoke to Vanity Fair for their July/August 2022 cover story, and she talked about what a wild ride it was. 

In the story, she said she liked Taylor-Johnson's approach to the film, but that the author of the books had creative control and kept changing the script. She had "signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making." She said James made demands, and discussed that there were things in the book, like the inner monologue Anastasia has, as "incredibly cheesy," and said it wouldn't work out loud. "It was always a battle. Always," Johnson explained. James changed the script that had come from Patrick Marber. 

Johnson said they'd shoot the takes the way James — who goes by Erika — wanted them, and then Johnson would rewrite scenes with the old dialogue the night before, so she could add in some of the previously written lines. "It was like mayhem all the time," she said, explaining there were a lot of disagreements, and that she was ultimately proud of what they ended up getting on the screen, but, "it was tricky."

Fifty Shades Of Mayhem

Dakota Johnson also debunked the persistent rumors that she and her costar Jamie Dornan were feuding. "There was never a time when we didn't get along," she told Vanity Fair. "I know it's weird, but he's like a brother to me. I love him so, so, so much. And we were really there for each other. We had to really trust each other and protect each other." 

Johnson also mentioned that when Sam Taylor-Johnson stepped down for the second film and James Foley was hired, it changed things. She said:

"It was different doing those bizarre things with a man behind the camera. Just a different energy. There are things that I still cannot say because I don't want to hurt anyone's career and I don't want to damage anybody's reputation, but both Jamie and I were treated really well. Erika is a very nice woman, and she was always kind to me and I am grateful she wanted me to be in those movies."

The whole thing sounds like it was a complete mess, though neither Johnson nor Dornan's careers have suffered. I did wonder back then if they would. It's one thing to read a badly written book about this stuff; it's another to get it up on the screen. No shaming from me at all as far as the subject matter, but the book was also a complete mess, with Christian Grey's abusive and stalking behaviors portrayed as romantic. I'm glad both actors have come out of this better for it. 

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The post The Fifty Shades Films Were a Constant Battle Against Author E.L. James' Changes, According to Dakota Johnson appeared first on /Film.

This week's episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is, essentially, the show's take on "Alien." A crew of officers, trapped in a downed starship, must face a species of vicious, poison-spitting lizards that incubate their young inside host bodies. It's a straight-up monster movie in miniature. It's tragic -- several characters die -- and it's scary.

"Star Trek" fits under the banner of several genres. Primarily, it is a science fiction show, yes, specifically a pioneering space Western; Gene Roddenberry initially pitched it as "'Wagon Train' to the stars" in reference to the hit 1957 TV series. Secondarily, "Star Trek" is a workplace drama, following a crack team of diplomatic experts on their job-related struggles; when "Star Trek" begins delving into the minutiae of management styles and command structures, this Trekkie's little heart sings. Tertiarily, "Star Trek" may be deemed a military show, focusing on formality, uniforms, and respect of the captain's good judgement. Although not about necessarily tactical prowess or military might, the wartime technicals of ships and weapons play a large part on every Trek series. 

Quaternarily, however, "Star Trek" could easily be described as a horror show, especially the 1966 series' first season. Many, many horrible things happen to Enterprise crewmates in season one. So many, in fact, that a critic may be forgiven for comparing it to "The Twilight Zone." Over the years, Trek has revisited terrifying space monsters time and again, highlighting that the cosmos, while often filled with interesting and exciting new cultures, is still vast and cold and horrifying. 

Below are the vastest, coldest, and most horrifying episode of "Star Trek." 

Catspaw

"Catspaw" first aired on October 27, 1967, making it a proper Halloween episode of "Star Trek." In it, the Enterprise encounters a mysterious medieval castle on a distant planet, occupied by a pair of mysterious sadists named Korob (Theo Marcuse) and Sylvia (Antoinette Bower) who seem to possess infinite power. Sylvia occasionally turns herself into a black cat, and seems to hold power over the Enterprise itself. When she dangles an Enterprise-shaped medallion over a candle, the ship begins to heat up in orbit. 

These sadistic Halloween creatures were presaged by a chorus: Outside the castle, a trio of Macbethian witches gave Kirk (William Shatner) grave warnings about what is to come. By the end of the episode, Kirk and crew learn that Korob and Sylvia are in fact cosmic entities with facial tentacles, like Elder Gods out of an H.P. Lovecraft story. They can shapeshift, and Sylvia can appear as a giant cat. The special effects aren't terribly sophisticated, but they are incredibly effective. 

Eventually Kirk smashes the widget the Elder Gods required to manipulate reality, their castle vanishes, and the day is saved. To highlight their defeat, Kirk and company see the aliens' true form: They are miniature blue fluff creatures -- little marionettes -- who die and disintegrate when they come into contact with air. Elder Gods, perhaps, but no longer vast. There is a tragedy in watching the little critters die.

Wolf In The Fold

Not to be outdone by "Catspaw," "Star Trek" continued apace the following Christmas with "Wolf in the Fold," which aired on December 22, 1967. In the episode, it appears that Scotty (James Doohan), while putting the moves on a young lady (Tanya Lemani), went insane and stabbed her to death in a foggy alleyway. There are immediate echoes of Jack the Ripper, and Scotty is apprehended for murder. Scotty, claiming not to remember what happened, is connected with a medium who holds a séance (!) to read his mind. The medium begins ominously mentioning an ancient evil with a hunger that cannot be sated. Kirk, through some investigation, finds that there is a noncorporeal entity in their midst, and that it can possess people and force them to commit murder. It's, for lack of terms, a demon. Oh yes, and this demon once lived on Earth as ... Jack the Ripper. 

The demon feeds on fear, and, in the episode's climax, possesses the Enterprise's computer, scaring everyone on board. Luckily, Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is on hand to administer what is essentially marijuana, causing the crew to mellow out and not be so worried, man. And since the demon is now part of a ship's computer, he strains the demon's brain by asking it to calculate pi to its final digit. The demon flees into a person (John Fiedler), Kirk beams him into space, and the mystery of Jack the Ripper comes to a close. 

The first half of "Wolf in the Fold" is an exciting serial killer thriller with ghostly elements. Kirk's solution makes the monster seem all the less terrifying. Logic and clear-headed thinking will defeat even demons. 

Conspiracy

Trekkies all agree that the best episodes of any series are the ones wherein a mold of Paul Newman's head, stuffed with meat, is blown up. 

That was certainly the case with the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Conspiracy" (May 9, 1988), the penultimate episode in the show's first season. Throughout the season, there were several scenes of Starfleet Admirals confiding to Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) that there may be a conspiracy at play in the upper echelons of the Federation. The conspiracy came to a head (heh) when several shadowy officers attempt to induct Picard and Commander Riker (Jonathan Fakes) into their ranks. It turns out that humans are playing host to large, pink, mind-controlling stag beetles that live in their throats. When a host is killed, the beetle exits and climbs into the mouth of its next host. 

The episode climaxes with one of the most violent scenes in "Next Generation" history. A character named Remmick (Robert Schenkkan) reveals himself to be the host of the queen parasite, and Picard and Riker, with the utmost diplomacy, blast his face open with phasers. When a big slimy screaming arthropod emerges from Remmick's gloppy, tattered abdomen, they blast that too. Yes, the mold for Remmick's exploding head was indeed formed using an old mold of Paul Newman's head left in the Paramount props department. The explosion of Remmick is less a "Star Trek" moment, and more like something out of a Universal monster movie. No child watches the scene without being marked. 

Night Terrors

Handily one of the scariest episodes of any Trek series is NextGen's "Night Terrors" (March 18, 1991), an episode about hallucinations and madness. In it, the crew of the Enterprise find a derelict ship with only one survivor, a seemingly comatose psychic who seems locked in a perpetual state of speechless fear. The ship then becomes gravitationally trapped near a binary star system that eerily begins robbing the crew of their ability to reach R.E.M. sleep. No matter how long they are unconscious, the crew is never rested. They don't dream. Without rest, they become fatigued and begin hallucinating snakes in their beds, shuffling noises, phantom doorbells. 

In the episode's most chilling scene, Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) hears movement in a cargo bay filled with dozens of dead bodies on gurneys. She looks around and sees that the bodies, wrapped in translucent body bags, are sitting up on their own. Not menacing her. Not speaking. Sitting up is enough. Dr. Crusher has to take several deep breaths, reminding herself that the visions aren't real. 

Eventually Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Data (Brent Spiner), both immune to the effects of the binary stars' effects, are able to decipher a nightmare Troi had been having about a whispering space tunnel. By the end, the crew is restored, but not before a nap. Everyone is rattled, including the audience. Don't watch this episode late at night by yourself. 

Schisms

People who were fans of both "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and of "The X-Files" in the mid-1990s (and we were legion) were distantly miffed that the Enterprise never encountered the famed alien "Greys" frequently mentioned in true-to-life accounts of alien abduction. Maybe it was because "Star Trek" is fiction, and alien abduction is ... gulp ... very much real. Maybe? For those unfamiliar with the lore, short, spindly, large-eyed space aliens have been known to visit Earth, float Earthlings out of their bedroom windows at night, and take them aboard their ships to perform odd medical experiments on them. The humans would be returned, sometimes miles away, with no memories of the events. These things were accepted as common facts in the early '90s.

"Next Generation" did feature their own version of alien abduction in the episode "Schisms," another Halloween episode that aired on October 19, 1992. Various random crew members begin having strange, fearful reactions to everyday objects. Worf (Michael Dorn) is startled to see a pair of hairdresser's scissors for instance. Troi, the ship's shrink, finds that said crew members are experiencing similar memories, and they convene on the holodeck to recreate a monstrous medical torture table they recall being strapped to. Eventually, the crew finds that they are indeed being transported off the ship by hooded, mysterious insect aliens and are indeed being subjected to medical experiments. Their motives are never determined. 

Frame Of Mind

It seems "Next Generation" was generous with their scares, perhaps a reaction to TV trends at the time -- "Tales from the Crypt" and its many knockoffs were running concurrently with NextGen. Horror seemed to be a popular TV genre at the time. One of the more notable fright fests from the show's final season was "Frame of Mind," an episode about a mental institution, shattering layers of reality, and madness. In "Frame of Mind" (May 3, 1993) Riker has been getting a little too deeply into character for a play he has been roped into performing. He is playing a man committed to a mental institution who is dogged by fantasies and hallucinations. Riker himself soon beings having hallucinations, specifically of one alien crewmate (David Selberg), and eventually wakes up in an institution. He is told that "Riker" was the hallucination, and that he is, in fact, a convicted murderer being treated for severe mental illness. Such episodes always resolve themselves well -- "Star Trek: The Next Generation" wasn't suddenly going to become a hospital show -- but they can be damaging to our personal sense of perspective. When Riker finally comes back to reality, he is unhappy with how easily his mind unraveled, even if it was at the hands of malevolent alien intrusion. We leave off with our world a little shaken. 

Empok Nor

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" was typically too busy mucking about with heady sociopolitical themes and the implication of war to delve into the fantastical (the season 1 episodes "Move Along Home" and "If Wishes Were Horses" notwithstanding). When the show did introduce a fantastical story line -- certain characters became inhabited by malevolent alien consciousnesses called Pah-wraiths -- it was widely derided by even the most devout Trekkies. But on at least one occasion, "Deep Space Nine" indulged in a proper "haunted house" episode with "Empok Nor" (May 19, 1997). 

In the episode, several members of the DS9 crew led by Chief O'Brien (Colm Meany) have to trek to a distant station -- in the same design as theirs, allowing for reused sets -- in order to salvage parts for engineering reasons. It turns out that the abandoned station is not only heavily booby-trapped, but there are elite cryogenically unfrozen soldiers stalking the corridors, high on drugs that make them even more hateful and xenophobic than they had been previously. The killers cannot be reasoned with, making them more similar to Michael Myers than to the Dirty Dozen. 

Not so much supernatural as cautionary, "Empok Nor" is still chilling.

The Thaw

Handily the best episode of "Star Trek: Voyager," "The Thaw" (April 29, 1996) involved facing fear -- quite literally. 

The episode was about the Voyager crew finding a matrix of interconnected cryo-stasis tubes where a small group of people have been suspended for many years. To keep their minds active, their brains were wired into a simulation that would allow them to interact as if they were conscious. Sadly for them, a glitch in the simulation created an entity -- an evil sadistic clown played by Michel McKean -- built of their fears. When several Voyager crewpeople enter the simulation themselves, they find they cannot leave, doomed to be tormented by a fear clown until they die. McKean, best known for comedy roles, handily makes the Clown as terrifying as possible, able to out-think anyone who would stymie his torture games. 

Ultimately, Captain Janeway has to ask the ultimate philosophical question: What does Fear want? Why are biological creatures hardwired with it? What does it expect us to do? The answers she arrives at will push Fear into the darkness. Thoughtful, heady, and scary, "The Thaw" is a highlight of the show.

The Haunting Of Deck Twelve

The "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "The Haunting of Deck Twelve" (May 17, 2000) is a little frustrating as horror stories go, as the events in it may or may not be fictional. At this point in the show, the Voyager crew has taken several recovering Borg children on board, and are teaching them to rediscover their humanity. In "Haunting," the Borg kids wake up in the middle of the night, and the jolly Neelix (Ethan Phillips) tells them a scary bedtime story to get them back into bed. In the story, a certain deck on the ship became mysteriously haunted, with electrical discharges attacking the crew. Eventually Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) surmises that the discharges are being caused by a rogue noncorporeal entity -- effectively a ghost -- that moved into the ship when it passed through a nebula. The ghost ends up forcing the entire crew off the ship, leaving Janeway behind to punish her and suffocate her for accidentally destroying its nebula home. 

Was it true, or did Neelix make it up? If Neelix made it up, he essentially spends the episode engaged in a pitch meeting with Paramount executives. While there's nothing terribly original with noncorporeal ghosts infecting a ship (see "Wolf in the Fold" above), "Haunting" tries to tell the story in a spooky, shadowy fashion. It's not the scariest thing, but it will do as a bedtime story. 

Impulse

Since "Star Trek: Enterprise" took place a century prior to the events of "Star Trek," there were a lot of technologies that viewers had taken for granted. Transporters were not safe for human use, there were no tractor beams (they had grappling cables), no shields (they polarized the hull plating), and ships didn't necessarily protect the crew from more dangerous cosmic rays. In "Impulse" (October 8, 2003), the ship's crew learn that an upcoming area of space called the Delphic Expanse requires extra shielding. The substance the Enterprise uses for the shield, however, contains a subtle neurotoxin that only affects Vulcans. It degrades their brains, and essentially turns them into mindless, violent zombies. Yes, dear reader, it is about zombie Vulcans. 

"Impulse" -- a play on words, as the ships on "Star Trek" use impulse engines -- is filmed like a zombie movie, with Vulcans snarling and attacking like any of the fast runners from "28 Days Later." Chillingly, the Enterprise crew is unable to help the zombie Vulcan, barely escaping with their own hides in tact. When Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) learns that the shielding minerals will affect his Vulcan first officer, he elects not to use it. It is the decent thing to do. 

Read this next: Every Star Trek Show And Movie In Chronological Order

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With its finale set to air on Paramount+ next week, I think we can officially call the first season of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" a resounding creative success. The latest Trek series is boldly going where none of its predecessors have before: Into prequel territory, as it covers the years directly before Captain Kirk stepped foot on the Enterprise. Fun, dynamic, and character-driven, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" marks a refreshing return to episodic storytelling for the half-century-old franchise.

The show's first season has introduced memorable new crew members, but it's also given the spotlight to reimagined and expanded versions of characters that fans of the 1966 series know and love. Each reintroduction has been excellent, but few have been as instantly winning as Jess Bush's Nurse Chapel. Bush embodies the character originally brought to life by Majel Barrett, but while the old Chapel was mostly known for her one-sided crush on Spock, the new incarnation is a quick-thinking, charismatic, and grounded member of the Enterprise crew. Also, this time around, her flirtation with Spock is shaping up to be a bit more reciprocal.

I spoke with Bush via Zoom about how it felt to become Nurse Chapel, which classic "Star Trek" episode she loves, and future glimpses we'll get into Chapel's "grit" and her backstory with Doctor M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun).

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

'There Was A Really Great Opportunity To Give Chapel New Life'

"Star Trek: The Original Series" has this amazing legacy, and you're entering into hallowed ground stepping into the role of Nurse Chapel. I was wondering how much of becoming that for you was research on old "Trek," versus intuition on starting something new?

Yeah, I mean, it was a really great combination of both. The writers and the showrunners wanted to honor the original Chapel, but also we're really excited to give her rebirth and allow for new things to emerge. I think that there was a really great opportunity to give Chapel new life in a way that wasn't really possible for women back when "TOS" was being written and then screened. I think that they've done a great job with allowing that to really blossom, you know?

So yeah, I did do my own research, both into "Star Trek" more broadly and how it fit into pop culture contextually when it was first around, and how it has done that throughout the decades that it's been around. Because I think that's important, too, in character development in this show in particular. And into Majel [Barrett's] performance.

Also, this has been more of an ongoing thing, but just reading into different materials like nursing memoirs, and watching different documentaries on medical work in different contexts, like medevac and things like that, too, which I think have been really helpful. Yeah, so there's all that background research, but a whole lot of intuition, also. I think that just builds the skeleton for then things to unfold organically. So it's been really nice to kind of be a participant, but also be an observer and just be like, "Oh, this unexpected thing has come about," and taking that on board and letting that grow.

'People First, Heart First'

I think that's really interesting that you looked at nursing texts as well, and I think that the show has really been clear that Nurse Chapel is a very essential figure in the crew. She's a very savvy problem solver, and she gets a lot of moments where she's embodying what it is to be a healthcare worker in terms of thinking on her feet, problem solving, and giving compassionate care. How did you go about creating that angle, and were there discussions ahead of time or was it all in the script?

I think a lot of it is in the scripts, but it's also important to know where it's coming from for you in reality, like in your body. And I think that Chapel, in my development of her, my process is quite physicalized as opposed to intellectual -- or I take intellectual ideas and make them a physical reality for myself and how my body moves and where I move from. So with Chapel, it was about understanding that she acts from a place of instinct and morality a lot of the time rather than intellectual ideas and rules, and what that meant for me. And I think this also came from my research into nursing, that nurses are so driven by their heart, at all costs, it's always driven by the heart.

I think my approach to what it's speaking of, that's literal for me. So when I'm reading scripts for the first time and doing my own digestion of them, it's reading it from that part of my body first and seeing where it lands for me, and what kind of feelings and ideas that makes in my body, and then deepening my discovery from there. And then when I'm on set and working with the other actors, it's that literally again, I move from the heart. I reach into their hearts from my heart and let decisions come from there. So that kind of translates to "people first, heart first." That kind of thing. So it's quite literal, actually.

Adapting To Something Like Trek 'Is An Art Form, Really'

When you first started shooting, did you feel that way right away, or were there nerves to get over at the beginning? And if so, how did y'all deal with being the new kids on the block in "Star Trek?"

Yeah, look, I think that is an art form, really. I think that's really one of the biggest challenges of acting, for me anyways. Letting something be the most exciting and important and all-consuming thing for you, but also treating it like it's just every day. Like walking into these giant sets and being like, "Yeah, this is fine." At once, it has to be giant for you and all-absorbing, but also, you have to be able to handle it really casually to be able to be open. And I think that just came from doing it more, just with time. But it definitely took me a little while to calm the nerves.

In your research into "Star Trek," do you have a certain episode that you like either as a touchstone for your character or just in a favorite episode in life, overall?

Yeah. I mean, I recently watched the "TNG" episode, "Inner Light." Are you familiar with that one?

I'm not a "TNG" person yet, but I'm on my way.

Well, if you don't watch any other ones, this episode is just so beautiful. I found that really inspiring and deeply moving. It's just, it's quite simple. In a way it's simple, the way that they tell the story, which makes it even more powerful, I think. There's not a lot of the classic big action sequences and crazy science things going on, but it's just really poignant and moving, and Patrick [Stewart]'s performance is just, ooh, beautiful.

'There's A Real Depth And Strength To Her'

I'm sure everyone's asking you about all the relationships on the show. What I really like about the show -- I mean, there's a ton to love -- but I like that all the interpersonal relationships are handled with such a light touch. There's sort of like a playfulness to everything. Can you talk about how it's been to develop Chapel's relationships out, whether it's with Spock or Ortegas, or everyone else?

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of that, again, is organic. It's been really interesting to be developing the friendships with the cast members outside of the show. And then also being able to watch the dynamics between our characters develop separately, and them being slightly different, and just being open to what the other actor's bringing to set. Seeing how your creation interacts with their creation is really interesting.

I love Ortegas and Chapel's friendship. I think their dynamic is really cool. And I also love -- I've really enjoyed watching Chapel's relationship with M'Benga unfold. I think that their friendship is beautiful. It's got this really gorgeous familial quality about it, and their story goes deep. It goes really deep in the future. And yeah, it's just a really supportive and safe friendship, I think. I think they trust each other with a lot.

With your version of Chapel, already you've gotten to engage with such a full range of emotions. In the episode that's airing this week, there's kind of a fear angle that we haven't seen before with her. In terms of going forward, because I know it seems like there's some already planned for season 2, is there a certain side of her that you want to see more?

I don't know how to not spoil this. I can just say that there's a lot of grit to Chapel coming up, and I'm really excited about her backstory. And there's a real depth and strength to her that's going to come out in a way that I'm really excited about.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is available to stream on Paramount+.

Read this next: The 14 Best Sci-Fi Shows On Amazon Prime

The post Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Jess Bush on Nurse Chapel's Backstory and the TNG Episode She Loves [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

Throughout its four seasons, "Ozark" was populated by every kind of criminal you could possibly imagine. But despite all the mob bosses, cartel leaders, and assassins, one of the show's most hated sources of grey morality came from suburban housewife turned criminal mastermind, Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney). The way she's first introduced, it would be hard to see this coming for Wendy, who initially plays second-fiddle to her money-laundering husband. But before long, the show rises to the occasion and puts Linney to great use.

Whether or not you've gotten around to binging the show on Netflix, chances are the story still strikes a familiar chord: "Ozark" follows a middle-class suburban family getting in over their heads by tying themselves to a criminal enterprise. One second they are laundering money from a distance and the next, they're burying bodies, being pursued by the federal government, ordering assassinations, or staring down the barrel of a gun themselves. Within that familiar setup are the character archetypes we'd all recognize anywhere: a looming cartel figurehead and the family under his thumb. This includes two oblivious kids who accidentally cause more trouble than they realize, a dangerous man fueled by ambition, and his disapproving wife — except that "Ozark" immediately throws those clichés out the window. The kids are brought in on the plan two episodes into the show, Marty (Jason Bateman) isn't so much filled with ambition as he is just scrambling to survive another day. And Wendy? She's the show's secret weapon.

Ozark's Scariest Antihero

Rather than being horrified by what her husband has gotten tied up in, Wendy Byrde thrives within their constantly endangered state. She seizes control and quickly becomes the person pulling the strings, pushing her husband further into the darkness with her Lady Macbethian ways. She has lofty ambitions of making them one of the most powerful families in the midwest — no matter the cost — and much of it is rooted in her traumatic backstory, growing up in the church with an abusive father, a mentally ill brother, and nowhere to turn but her own wits. For better or worse, it's impossible to imagine where the Byrdes would be without Wendy, but, according to Laura Linney, the version of Wendy that we know and love to hate isn't the Wendy she first read in the script.

Linney recently sat down to chat with Vulture, reflecting on the end of "Ozark" and next chapter of her career. During the conversation, when she was asked about the version of Wendy from the original pilot script, she confirmed that the character who first appeared on the pages had a long road to becoming the conniving matriarch of the Byrdes.

"The character in the pilot was very different. I just remember she was snoring in the bed a lot. There was a lot of: Wendy snores. I just didn't know where it was going to go. I don't know why I trusted Jason Bateman and Chris Mundy as much as I did, but I remember saying to them, "I hope that if I sign onto this, you'll use me. Otherwise, don't cast me. Take someone else."

It's hard to imagine this simpler, snoring Wendy but perhaps it's a reference to the version of the character that we later see on the show.

The Irreplaceable Laura Linney

Twice, after suffering major losses, Wendy retreats into herself. Stuck in a depressive state, she ends up confining herself to bed, struggling to come to terms with the pain. Maybe this is where the beginning of "Ozark" was originally set to catch her. Either way, it turns out that Linney had nothing to worry about: bedridden Wendy is just another version of the character that she was destined to conquer, revealing the cracks in her formidable facade. However hard it is to imagine a different Wendy, it's impossible to envision the show without Linney. 

In a recent conversation with The Ringer, Bateman said:

"You're really being foolish if you don't give Laura Linney as much work as possible inside of any show she's a part of. To just delegate her to some cliché, traditional wife role would simply be leaving one arm tied behind her back and not taking advantage of everything she can bring to a project."

Linney herself said, "There's nothing worse than people not wanting what you have to offer. When people don't want what you have to offer, it's just womp-womp-womp." But while showrunner Chris Mundy (via Vanity Fair) has previously revealed that "there wasn't a big road map for Wendy's character," the show clearly found its footing thanks to Linney's performance. Mundy added:

"Probably 100 times in the editing room, we'd just be like, 'I can't believe how lucky we are that she's on the show.' You'd see the scene, and she'd give three subtly different versions of it just to see which one you wanted to do. She made us all look good for five years."

All four seasons of 'Ozark" are currently streaming on Netflix.

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

The post Laura Linney Didn't Originally Like Wendy Byrde in the Ozark Pilot appeared first on /Film.

A group of MIT researchers is exploring a radical idea for reversing global warming: using a raft of "space bubbles" to reflect sunlight away from our planet. Freethink reports: The copious amounts of greenhouse gasses humans have been releasing into the air ever since the Industrial Revolution are forming a sort of blanket around our planet, trapping heat in the atmosphere and causing global temperatures to creep ever higher. [...] Instead of injecting particles into Earth's atmosphere to cool the planet, an interdisciplinary team of MIT researchers proposes we take solar geoengineering to space. Specifically, the group is investigating what might happen if we positioned a shield made of bubbles at Lagrangian Point 1 -- a point in space where the gravitational pulls of the Earth and the sun form a sort of equilibrium that would keep the shield in orbit there indefinitely. The proposed shield would be about the size of Brazil, and the bubbles for it could be manufactured and deployed in space, possibly out of silicon -- the group has already experimented with creating these "space bubbles" in the lab. "In our preliminary experiments, we succeeded at inflating a thin-film bubble at a pressure of 0.0028 atm, and maintaining it at around -50C (to approximate space conditions of zero pressure and near-zero temperature)," they said in a press release. Because the bubbles would be almost a million miles away from Earth, the MIT team says this approach to solar geoengineering wouldn't be as risky as methods that directly involve Earth's atmosphere. [...] This isn't the first time someone has proposed placing a solar shield in space to cool the planet, but creating it out of bubbles would give us a relatively straightforward way to abort the mission if it went awry: just pop the bubbles.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you're like me, you've been biding your time waiting for part 2 of season 4 of "Stranger Things" by pouring over the first seven episodes. Not to mention trying to drown out the noise of bones snapping in half by and listening to way more Kate Bush than I normally do. The source of all the terror and empty eye sockets is of course Vecna, the newest enemy to attack Hawkins from the Upside Down. Although it was initially unclear how or even if Vecna was connected to Eleven's past — the finale ultimately confirmed not only was he Victor Creel's deviant son but also One. Setting up an incredible confrontation between the characters in part two.

But learning the origins of Vecna wasn't the only piece of information revealed about the Upside Down, a realm that has remained shrouded in frightening mystery since season one. After a group of the older Hawkins teens is marooned there in episode six — though not before the Duffer Brothers decided to give a cruel tease of Steve's death for which I will never forgive them — it's revealed that this warped dimension isn't an exact copy of theirs. In fact, it differs from their reality in one important way: the Upside Down version of Hawkins exists perpetually in 1983.

A Nightmare Frozen In Time

As reported by Screen Rant, production designer Chris Trujillo offered some insight into the peculiarities and possible significance of the Upside Down's frozen timeline. Explaining that Eleven's creation of the Mother Gate — caused by Papa a.k.a. Martin Brenner's insistence she touch the Demogorgon — is part of the reason. He continued:

"The moment that the Upside Down was quote-unquote 'created' inadvertently by Eleven, the set dressing and the world of the Upside Down is frozen in that moment. So like when we're in Nancy's room, we'll discover in the Upside Down that Nancy's room is as it was season [one] when we first were introduced to it."

Trujillo is far from explicit about why that first sustained portal led the Upside Down to be stuck in 1983, but that hasn't stopped plenty of people from speculating madly. Given the entanglement between the lives of Vecna/One and Eleven it's at least clear the connection isn't accidental. Perhaps her inadvertent creation of the Mother Gate allowed him to re-establish a connection with Hawkins. Maybe he even managed to figure out it was Eleven. For her part, Millie Bobby Brown expressed belief her character didn't create the Upside Down.

With all the twists and turns season four has offered so far, I wouldn't even be surprised if Dustin's hypothesis about Vecna/One being the Mind Flayer's five-star general is wrong. That in fact, it was him, using his considerable psychic abilities, to send monsters from the Upside Down into Hawkins. Fans will just have to keep guessing though as the Duffer Brothers explained of the many answers part two will have — they won't involve the mystery of the frozen timeline.

Read this next: Actors Who Died In 2021

The post Here's How Time Works in Stranger Things' Upside Down appeared first on /Film.

After recent global events, Microsoft pulled support from Russia, meaning people could not purchase Windows operating system or any Microsoft-developed devices. And since then, Russian tech enthusiasts have turned to either using pirated copies of the operating system or abandoning ship entirely for Linux.

You can finally play the Doom RPG on PCs, and if your first response is “the what now,” that’s exactly why this is good news for Doom fans. Back in 2005, Fountainhead Entertainment, better known for Orcs and Elves, launched Doom RPG for mobile devices, a sequel to Doom 3 that released just in time to be a tie-in for the notoriously bad Doom movie and prompted both a sequel game and a Wolfenstein RPG.

RELATED LINKS: Doom runs on Twitter, Play Doom

Like most of you, I was glad to see the 2022 RSA Conference return to its in-person roots after a two-year digital hiatus. This year’s event was a great success, drawing 26,000 attendees to three days of cutting-edge security sessions, tutorials, seminars, and special events at Moscone Center in San Francisco. The conference included more than 600 speakers and 400-plus exhibitors, along with hundreds of media representatives. Microsoft Security was on the ground, interacting with customers and security professionals at Microsoft’s 20-plus earned sessions, as well as showcasing new solutions like Microsoft Entra that help realize our goal of comprehensive security.

I was honored to give a keynote address (video courtesy of RSA Conference) on the future of cybersecurity, including a look at where technology and human expertise are headed, as well as why creating a more inclusive and diverse security workforce will be critical in our defense against evolving threats. Also addressing a subject that’s become more urgent with the growth of the decentralized enterprise, my colleague Bret Arsenault, Microsoft Corporate Vice President (CVP) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), gave a special presentation on managing Shadow IT. All in all, it was a fun, collegial, and productive five days. Let’s look at some of the highlights.

Figure 1. Vasu Jakkal gives the keynote address—Innovation, Ingenuity, and Inclusivity: The Future of Security is Now.

Microsoft Security Hub—you made it shine

Thanks to our guests and some hard work by our onsite team, the Microsoft pre-day event was a huge hit. We registered 430 attendees for this all-day event held on June 5, 2022, at Bespoke Event Center. Attendees were able to partake in Q&As with security experts about Zero Trust, threat intelligence, multicloud protection, risk management, and how Microsoft is re-envisioning the future of identity and access with Microsoft Entra.

I hosted Bret Arsenault in a fireside chat about navigating today’s security challenges and my colleague Joy Chik, CVP of Identity and Access, made a special presentation on Microsoft Entra and the trust fabric of identity.

Figure 2. CVP of Identity and Access Joy Chik speaks at the 2022 RSA Conference.

Attendees also enjoyed our immersive walkthrough art experience (and of course, the custom swag bar). Many guests took advantage of the reception to network with other security professionals and reconnect with old friends. It was great to see some familiar faces and share new insights with defenders across our community—a big thank you to everyone who joined us!

Figure 3. Attendes network at the Microsoft Security Hub.

Microsoft had a booth at the North Expo of RSA which showcased Microsoft comprehensive security solutions across our six product families: Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Endpoint Manager, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Priva. More than 7,300 people visited the Microsoft booth.

Figure 4. Microsoft Security booth at RSA Conference 2022.

Standout sessions

Microsoft speakers appeared in more than 20 earned sessions at this year’s RSA, addressing everything from supply chain attacks to ransomware, botnets, and ways to protect our democracy. We also hosted 40 sessions in our booth. Some of our most popular sessions included:

• Practical Learnings for Threat Hunting and Improving Your Security Posture: Hosted by Jessica Payne, Principal Security Researcher and Threat Intelligence Strategist at Microsoft, and Simon Dyson, Cyber Security Operations Centre Lead in NHS Digitals Data Security Centre, this 50-minute session addressed threat hunting and security posture improvements from a threat intelligence-informed perspective. Attendees gained insights from Jessica’s experience in demystifying and defusing real-world ransomware attacks. They also got a first-hand recounting of Simon’s work securing the complex network maintained by England’s National Health Service (NHS) during the pandemic, and how his team’s experience can benefit all of us.
• Conti Playbook: Infiltrate the Most Profitable Ransomware Gang: Participants learned how a disgruntled affiliate exposed one of the most infamous ransomware gangs, divulging its ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) secrets to help take them down. This immersive, hands-on workshop guided attendees through a typical Conti attack sequence and provided tips to defend against advanced persistent threats. Thanks to Tom D’Aquino, Fabien Guillot, and Arpan Sarkar of Microsoft partner Vectra AI for this presentation.
• Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting Has Got Your Back: Abhishek Agarwal, Chief Security and Technology Officer at Helix Biotech, examined threat hunting’s virtuous cycle: track, hunt, and analyze. Specifically, attendees learned how Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting uses AI to accomplish all three components of the cycle faster, providing automated detection, hunting, and analysis to help the team track and stop threats across the company’s multi-national enterprise.
• Microsoft Security Research—How We Responsibly Disclose Vulnerabilities to Apple, Google, and the Linux Community: Jonathan Bar Or, Principal Security Researcher at Microsoft, discussed how disclosing bugs makes the world safer and benefits users, as well as giving Microsoft Security a better understanding of the technologies we work to protect.​ The goal is to challenge our own detections and prove product truth—making Microsoft Defender stronger by challenging our own blue teams.​
• Solve Secure Access Needs for Workload Identities with Microsoft Entra: Microsoft Product Managers Nick Wryter and Sandy Jiang led this informative session on the phenomenon of exploding workload identities. Currently, workload identities outnumber user identities five to one; the challenge being that many traditional identity and access management solutions don’t manage these prevalent and frequently over-permitted identities. Nick and Sandy explained how the new Microsoft Entra addresses this problem by providing a comprehensive view of every action performed by any identity on any resource, detecting anomalous permission usage at cloud scale.
• Tracking Highly Evasive APTs with Vectra Detect & Microsoft Sentinel: Tom D’ Aquino, Senior Security Engineer at Vectra AI, led this demonstration of real-life threat-hunting using Vectra Detect and Microsoft Sentinel. Tom demonstrated real-world workflows for threat tracking, including individual threat severity, lateral movement, threat targets, and more.
• The Shift of “Why” and “How” of Ransomware Attacks; How Microsoft Helps Customers Survive Ransomware: Led by MacKenzie Brown of Microsoft’s Detection and Response Team (DART), this session examined the how and why behind the recent increase in ransomware attacks. Attendees learned how attackers have evolved their methods to exert minimum effort for maximum return on investment (ROI), and why DART’s methodology can help you defeat them.

Shining a light on Shadow IT

Shadow IT can be broadly defined as a “set of applications, services, and infrastructure that are developed and managed outside of defined company standards.” These kinds of ad-hoc systems can pose a compliance risk, especially for security, privacy, data governance, and accessibility. Like any organization, Microsoft has not been immune to the proliferation of Shadow IT.

Figure 5. Vasu Jakkal and Bret Arsenault speak at the Microsoft pre-day event.

In keeping with our commitment to security for all, Microsoft CVP and CISO Bret Arsenault gave a special presentation on June 8, 2022, addressing Microsoft’s approach to managing Shadow IT. Bret discussed how Microsoft’s security team is enabling engineers and developers to build and operate security capabilities in the cloud, as well as Microsoft’s three primary principles for managing and addressing Shadow IT. For attendees wanting to learn more, we followed up the event with a free white paper on managing Shadow IT.  We’ve also made Bret’s presentation slides available to everyone.

2022 Excellence Awards

The Microsoft Security Excellence Awards (formerly Microsoft Security 20/20 Awards) recognize Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) members’ success during the past 12 months. This year’s 10 award categories were carefully selected to recognize the unique ways MISA members support their customers and help improve Microsoft security products. Our cross-functional panel carefully examined hundreds of nominations, narrowing the field to just three finalists for each category.

In the spirit of collaboration, Microsoft and MISA members alike voted on the winners. After dinner and cocktails, the awards were handed out at the San Francisco Design Center by Microsoft executives Phil Montgomery, Andrew Conway, Alym Rayani, Irina Nechaeva, Desmond Forbes, Sue Bohn, Mandana Javaheri, Madhu Prasha, Scott Woodgate, and myself. MISA members are a critical part of our approach to comprehensive security. We’re grateful for their vision and dedication to our shared mission of helping customers do more, safely. To all of this year’s finalists and winners—congratulations!

Comprehensive security year-round

Microsoft now protects 785,000 customers around the world, including our own digital estate. Our goal is to provide comprehensive security for our customers while enabling greater security for our shared online world. Microsoft’s best-in-breed protection, built-in intelligence, and simplified management integrates more than 50 product categories in six product families, allowing you to be fearless in the pursuit of your vision.  Our newest product family, Microsoft Entra, helps fulfill that mission by creating a secure entry point for end-to-end security. Entra provides a unified admin center for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), Entra Permissions Management, and Entra Verified ID where your organization can quickly verify and secure every identity or access request—all in one place.

Our commitment to comprehensive security also means providing the latest research and first-hand knowledge to help keep your organization secure. You can learn more at Cyber Signals, a cyberthreat intelligence brief drawn from the latest Microsoft data and research. If you attended RSA and engaged with Microsoft, please take a few minutes to respond to our RSAC 2022 survey so we can continue to improve your experience. My thanks to everyone who attended, and we’ll see you next year!  

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Microsoft at RSA 2022: Envisioning the future of security appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.