Seven years ago, I had high praise for Space Beast Terror Fright, a tense and often intense roguelikelike FPS about exploring alien-infested spaceships. It was murderously punishing, with limited ammo and endless aliens making it important to seal up routes and activate sentry turrets. It was great! Well, SBTF finally left early access and launched in full over the weekend, so I returned today and oh no. I have grown so very old since 2015, and this game is now too much for me. Oh no.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In this recent interview, Tom Power of Q on CBC talks to auteur filmmaker and body horror OG, David Cronenberg. Among many other fascinating subjects (the future of eating plastic, a world that no longer feels pain, artists risking everything for their work) they talk about David's latest film, Crimes of the Future. — Read the rest
The White House now wants to set minimum requirements for its planned national EV charging network, The Biden administration has proposed standards for chargers funded under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program to ensure they're "convenient, affordable, reliable and accessible" for a wide variety of drivers and vehicles. Ideally, you won't have to worry about completing a cross-country trip.
The standards would require that stations offer enough ports to fast-charge four EVs simultaneously at 150kW or higher, and use the CCS plug often found at universal chargers. The chargers would have to be functional at least 97 percent of the time, with a skilled workforce to keep them maintained. You also wouldn't have to worry about how you'll pay. There would be "similar" payment systems, and station operators couldn't require a membership. Common data standards would ensure real-time charge status regardless of your EV model.
President Biden is using NEVI to help states build 500,000 chargers by 2030, and hopes the program will spur EV adoption to the point where 50 percent of new vehicle sales are electric by 2030. The standards could play a key role in this — you might be more likely to buy an EV if you know you can charge quickly, without waiting in long queues.
There are limitations. The proposal wouldn't cover chargers outside of NEVI, of course, so you'd still have to watch out for slow or cumbersome stations. It's also unclear how well the charging specs would hold up over time. While a minimum of four 150kW ports may sound adequate now, that might not remain true by 2030 — Tesla already has 250kW Superchargers, and there's still the possibility that EV sales could outpace charger installations. If the standards take effect, though, you'll at least have a baseline you can use to plan your routes.
Season 1 of "Shining Girls" has come to a satisfying end. Creator Silka Luisa's time travel series, which is based on Lauren Beukes' novel, hit a fittingly complicated final note for Kirby (played by director and producer, Elisabeth Moss). There's no tidy closure to her pain, but a new chapter begins for her. The finale, titled "30," also ties up loose ends in Kirby's search for the time-traveling killer named Harper (Jamie Bell). Their final confrontation is both grueling and thrilling, which is a tough balance the show struck well through its eight episodes.
Luisa and her team managed to spin a seemingly never-ending series of plates, and not a single plate broke over the course of eight episodes. Recently, in an interview with Luisa about the finale, she told /Film about the final shot of season 1, Kirby's journey, and how she made time travel a personal experience. Spoilers for "Shining Girls" ahead.
Luisa: Did you watch it as a binge or did you watch it week to week?
I watched it over two days.
I wonder if that was more fun to watch as a binge. Do you think it works better as a binge or do you think it works better week to week?
Hard to say, because as a drama, it's great week to week. For putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, the genre elements, it's great to watch as a binge.
I never thought of it that way, where it's like the shows that you want to take time, week to week, are the ones that have more emotional stories because you want to settle into it. A lot of people ask, "Oh, do you want to have your shows binged?" To your point, there are certain aspects that work better as binge, but then there are certain aspects that work better week to week.
It balances telling a story of trauma and an exciting time travel story well. They don't feel at odds.
That was really important to me, that it was fun coming back week to week and that it didn't feel like a slog. Even though it's dealing with trauma and PTSD, like you were saying, that it's still a fun ride.
Jumping into the finale, for that final shot, different versions of what Kirby was feeling in that moment were shot, right?
Because it is the final moments of the finale, there were a lot of different closeups of Lizzy for that final shot. We landed on the one that we chose because it was important to us to have a more ambiguous ending where it doesn't feel necessarily like a complete triumph. It's not a clean victory, even though she has bested Harper and she has taken the house from him, what is she going to do now? She has her entire life, all of time ahead of her at her feet, at her disposal to use. What is she going to do with it?
At the same time, you've seen her build all these relationships over the season. If she stays in the house, she's removing herself from them because you have to stay in the house. So, is she going to be able to have a relationship with Dan? You saw a possibility of it when they met at the bar. Is she going to have a new friendship with Claire? All those things, the house might actually cost her. I liked leaving her at a decision point where she had accomplished -- you've sort of seen her process one chapter of her trauma, but now she's staring into the unknown and she has to make a decision about what she's going to do.
I do want to ask more about that final moment, but the last scene between Dan (Wagner Moura) and Kirby at the bar, how'd you decide how much to say and how much to leave unsaid?
I love that scene. I love their chemistry in that scene. It's one of my favorites in the entire season. To me, it's not even a genre moment. It's just two phenomenal actors [playing] off each other. Actually, that scene was easy to write and I think they just nailed it. That was an easy one.
Obviously, Harper used the house that led to Kirby's trauma. The idea of her now ending up in that home, on an introspective level, what did it mean to you?
I think it was very satisfying to have. The house itself is a totem of power, right? Anybody who has it can yield it however they want. You have the ability to time travel, but you can use that [for] whatever serves you best. And so in that sense, it's very exciting for Kirby, and to imagine all the possibilities, all the possible futures she could have. At the same time, like I was saying before, there's a sadness to it. There's a sadness to what she's gone through. I think confronting her trauma over the season, you don't ever go back to who you were, you become a new person and you have to get to know that new person. And that's how I see her at the end of the season.
Ending with a new beginning.
Exactly. Really, that was my experience reading the book. The book left me in this great place where I was satisfied with the character stories. I had seen a complete arc for Kirby. At the same time, there were mythology questions still left that I could explore. It was a great balance of feeling satisfied, but still having questions, and I was trying to honor that shape.
The book ended with Kirby burning down the house, right? Was that a change you knew you wanted to make early on?
The mythology of the house in the book is really different. The house is completely tied to Harper. It's almost a manifestation of his psyche and it's a time loop. You don't know what existed first, Harper or the house. I separated the house from Harper because I thought it was important, as a television show, for it to have had more of a history, to be a separate entity from him, and for him to have more agency in his own choices.
It's not a malevolent house that is making decisions for him; it's him deciding to use the house to murder these women. And then once I did that, you don't want to see her burn down the house because it's not a part of Harper. You can punish Harper, you can make him live through what you went through, but you've been handed this incredible opportunity. You want to take a minute to think about what you're going to do with it.
[Director] Daina Reid's work in that final confrontation is great.
I know. Daina did a fantastic job with -- I love that whole fight sequence in the house, and the shifts are, I mean, she really knocked it out of the park.
You had three directors with Daina, Michelle MacLaren, and Elisabeth Moss. Usually, showrunners work individually with filmmakers on a show, but did the four of you work very closely together as a unit?
It was really different from most of the shows in that sense. Usually, you shoot one person, the one director is working on their two episodes, the other director's in prep, they're pretty siloed. The first director leaves and then there's a cycle. We were shooting a lot at the same time, partly because of shooting the same moments in time. The scenes that repeated with Jin-Sook, the ones that were in episode 1 and episode 5 and 7, we shot at the same time because it made more sense and it was easier for continuity, but also for practical money-saving reasons.
You're shooting episode 2 when you're shooting episode 7. It meant that Lizzy and Daina had to work on the same day. It was at times chaotic, but at the same time, because we were all there in Chicago, it made it easier because you're all involved in each other's scenes. You're all having the same conversations. I think it made the process very collaborative.
What were some of the major conversations you had with Daina about the final episode?
We talked a lot about, obviously, the final fight, just choreographing that, all the stunts that go into that. Obviously, you write a version of it, and then when the director comes, you step through it and you break through what you can actually achieve. What's a practical fight that you can achieve within the space, within the time, how she'd like to shoot it? So that very much becomes a conversation as opposed to what's on the page.
We talked a lot about Kirby having a different energy in the episode after Dan's death, just being exhausted of feeling she was under someone's thumb and really wanting to have her have a lot more drive. And so, you can feel it in the episode, the episode has a lot more momentum because Kirby has a lot more momentum. So that really shaped Lizzy's performance a lot.
Obviously, it feels good when Dan and all the women return. And yet, it still doesn't feel like, well, it all worked out in the end. How'd you manage to pull that off?
We did talk a lot about that in the writers' room: Do you get to see the other women again? Is that erasing trauma or not? But without it -- because I had looked at the edit without it -- it feels very bleak without it. It also leaves you with the question of, "What happened to Julia? What does that mean for Jin-Sook?" And so, it did feel like we owed the audience the opportunity to see them. Logically, it made sense to me because Harper never found the house, because Kirby's willing to make sure that he never finds the house, that he's never able to interact with those women.
Going back to the final moment, since you shot variations, what was written on the page?
The action line was, "She sits on the sofa and she stares out at the house and she's asking herself what now." When you go to shoot it, you make sure that you shoot a bunch of different options because you want to make sure you cover it well. It's hard to say when you actually see it all cut together which version, which close-up actually lands that emotion.
Or how an actor is going to interpret a line or moment on the page, right?
Yeah. I will say that Lizzy and I talked a lot about every scene before she went. The way we worked was, the week before, we would always workshop every scene, read it together, and talk through every moment. By the time she went to film it, either as a director or as an actor, we were on the same page about the intention, what was important, what the objective was of the scene -- which was really nice to be able to have that time together.
She has such great, subtle comedic timing. Just the way she says "no" to coffee in the morgue is, strangely, funny.
She has such great comedic timing. I wish there were more jokes in it because she, as a person, has fantastic comedic timing.
Let's talk about time travel. What were some rules you had for season 1?
It was challenging. The way we did it was, for every single character, we had their own time chart, I would say. It's very hard. Any time we thought about time in the room or we tried to make mythology objectively, it fell apart or we just got bogged down and talked about it for days. Once we started focusing, "Okay, I'm Harper. What was my Monday? What was my Tuesday? What was my Wednesday?" Then it started to make sense. And so, you can really only think of time from each character's point of view. Every character, if the show takes place over two weeks, which it did, this is what their day-to-day was. This is the date of what it was. Sometimes people are jumping dates, but that's how we broke it down.
Can you ever deviate? Can you allow for paradoxes in "Shining Girls?"
No, because there is no real science to it, so you have to create your own rules and there has to be an internal logic, but it has to be one that makes sense to me. So I created my own internal logic that made it possible for me to tell the story. There are all different kinds of time travel, time loops, and parallel universes. For me, I didn't do that. I did one single string of time and Harper's actions, because they're connected across time, his actions in a butterfly effect way, impact Kirby. And so, that's how I saw it.
How does free will fit in?
I believe completely in free will. I mean, that's a big piece of making the house not responsible for Harper's actions. I think he was always the man that he was before he went to war, and that experience just unleashed the monster that he was. But Kirby has agency -- you see her reclaim her narrative over the season. I believe that every character has agency in shaping their own story.
Of course, there are all these possibilities at the end, but not in a way that leaves the story feeling unfinished. There is an ending, even if it's a new beginning for the character, but are you thinking about a season 2?
We don't know if there's going to be a second season or not yet. It was important to me that it felt like the book where, if you ended it, you would feel satisfied. It wasn't ending on a cliffhanger in that sense of incompleteness. I felt like I'd been on a full journey with her.
"Shining Girls" season 1 is now available on Apple TV+.
Read this next: The 10 Apple TV Shows That Justify A Subscription
The post Shining Girls Creator Silka Luisa Breaks Down the Season Finale [Interview] appeared first on /Film.
By 1998, buddy cop movies were old hat, and critics of Brett Ratner's hit film "Rush Hour" were quite aware. The genre was well codified, and both critics and audiences acknowledged that any buddy cop movie is going to live or die depending on the strength of its leads. Ratner, already a friend of Chris Tucker through their collaboration on the 1997 film "Money Talks," had the idea to pair him with Jackie Chan, knowing of Chan's prowess as a movie star following the American release of "Rumble in the Bronx" in 1995. It was a pairing that made for a hit: "Rush Hour" made $141 million domestically on a budget of only $33 million.
The story is simple enough: A Los Angeles cop (Tucker) is paired with a visiting Hong Kong cop (Chan) to rescue the daughter of the Chinese consul, a friend of Chan's. In true buddy cop tradition, the two initially hate one another, but slowly learn to bond over their mutual expertise in investigations. Tucker is funny, Chan is a capable stunt performer, everything works out just fine, let's go get Jody Maroni's after the flick. It was enough of a crowd-pleaser to warrant two successful sequels in 2001 and in 2007.
Chan, however, was never entirely comfortable with "Rush Hour." Chan was well known for his action/comedy films in Hong Kong for decades (Chan is 18 years older than Tucker) and felt he understood the way cinematic comedy works. With "Rush Hour," well, he simply didn't think the movies were funny.
In a 2002 interview with the magazine Crosswalk, Jackie Chan admitted he experienced a great deal of disappointment and confusion over "Rush Hour," eventually realizing that what American audiences find funny is vastly different than what audiences in Hong Kong find funny. He even brought numbers to prove it, and it's telling that "Rush Hour" was not a success in Asia, and many of Chan's Hong Kong movies remained only cult hits in America. It took him two "Rush Hour" films to just accept that his American costars are being hilarious, even if he didn't think so:
"I like American people, and I think they will like it. Something I don't like is successful like 'Rush Hour,' I make the movie and I tell my manager, 'See? I should never make this kind of movie!' Then I go to Asia to make [an] Asian film. And they call me and say, 'Jackie, big hit! It['s a] success!' I say what? Then I make 'Rush Hour 2' and I hate it! Worse than 'Rush Hour 1!' And they call me and say, 'It['s a] success!'
Chan admits that he never, by his estimation, broke out of a Chinese mindset. He understood Chinese culture, and perhaps took for granted that his own sense of humor would translate. He realized American stars simply had an inverted sense of humor to his own:
"Then I slowly realize: Okay, I still have Chinese mind. I have 'hometown' mind. I don't get American culture, American dialogue. So now from that time on, I really listen to whatever Owen [Wilson] tell[s] me to say, whatever Chris Tucker tell[s] me to say. I realize, okay, anything I think not funny means, it's funny."
And it wasn't just Jackie Chan's sense of humor. As mentioned above, the "Rush Hour" movies weren't hits in Hong Kong they same way they were in the United States. That was a validation of Chan's feelings. He continued to Crosswalk:
"Now with Asian film[s], I am right! I know what works and what doesn't. 'Rush Hour' release[s] in Asia, and [it] bomb[s]. Nobody [went] to see it! Yeah! Only 12 million! My movie? I make a Hong Kong film, and it make 50 million! You see the difference? If 'Rush Hour' not starring Jackie Chan, I think it only make half million in Hong Kong. That's all!"
Chan admits something of a mercenary attitude when it came to making the "Rush Hour" movies, and had already agreed to make a third at the time of the 2002 interview. As anyone who has seen "Rush Hour 3" might be able to intuit, it was done for purely commercial reasons. Chan admits as much, knowing he is a viable movie star in both the United States and in Hong Kong, affecting a "one here, one there" attitude.
The early 2000s were a busy time for Jackie Chan, and he flew back and forth over the Pacific multiple times to shoot various American and Chinese projects. "Rush Hour 3" was going to be for, in his words:
"American market. Yeah, right now I know making a film for American market and every year I go back to make Asian film for Asian market. So right after 'Rush Hour 2,' now I'm doing my next movie, 'Around the World in 80 Days.' Right after that I go back to Hong Kong to make 'Titanium Ring.' It's a Hong Kong film for Asian market. But [the] Asian market film cannot release in [the] American market. Only direct-to-video. Even though I think my Asian film 'Accidental Spy' [is] 10 times better than 'Rush Hour 2'! Has anybody seen 'Accidental Spy?' You see it?"
The interviewers admitted they hadn't.
Chan, now 68, has slowed his roll, having made only three films to be set for release in 2022, all of them in China ("The Diary" is currently in post-production, and Chan does not appear; he served as director and producer). Chan's last onscreen appearance in a non-Chinese film was in Martin Campbell's "The Foreigner" in 2017. The same year, he provided voice roles in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature" and "The Lego Ninjago Movie."
Chan, while game, still has his hometown mind.
Read this next: The 15 Best Jackie Chan Movies Ranked
The post Jackie Chan Had Some Conflicting Feelings About The Rush Hour Series' Success appeared first on /Film.
Boba Fett is a fascinating character even beyond the "Star Wars" fandom, as someone with so little screen time (up until very recently anyway) managed to become so damn popular. Even people who are only very casually familiar with "Star Wars" probably know that name. Now, we live in a world where the bounty hunter has his own TV show, "The Book of Boba Fett," presumably with more appearances to come on Disney+ in the future. But when/if that time comes, star Temuera Morrison has some thoughts about what he'd like to see with the character. In particular, he wants to get back to the old Boba Fett that we all knew.
Morrison, who originally played Jango Fett in "Attack of the Clones" before returning as Boba Fett in "The Mandalorian" season 2, recently spoke with Entertainment Tonight. When the subject of returning as Boba once again came up, the actor was very clear about what he would like to see happen.
"We've got to bring him back somewhere. We've got to see the old Boba Fett. We reintroduced him. We found out some stuff. But I think it's time to get him back to his badass ways. No two ways around that. So, I think we sort of have that scope to go back there, but that's out of my control. I'll just see what happens."
That is, to put it very lightly, a telling answer. That answer, coupled with recent comments made suggesting that Morrison would have changed some things about his solo show, paint us a picture of an actor whose desires align with a great many fans out there.
It's no secret that quite a few fans weren't thrilled with "The Book of Boba Fett" for a variety of reasons. But the fact of the matter is that the version of the character we got in the show didn't exactly mirror the mysterious, ruthless bounty hunter audiences first (properly) met in "The Empire Strikes Back." This is a bounty hunter trusted by Darth Vader. This is the bounty hunter that scares Han Solo, a man who has no qualms about shooting at Vader without hesitation. A man who has to be told not to disintegrate his bounties. A badass, as Morrison so eloquently put it.
It's crystal clear that Morrison is longing to bring that iteration of the character back to the screen in a more meaningful way. We certainly got glimpses of that when he returned in "The Mandalorian" but it still wasn't quite the same thing. There is the Boba Fett that fans had built up in their heads for decades, and there is what we have now. There is undoubtedly a distance that exists between the two.
Whether or not Lucasfilm gives Morrison a crack at it remains to be seen. Boba Fett is very much alive and well, so there is no reason it couldn't happen. Who knows? Maybe we could actually get a Boba Fett movie still one day, as was originally the plan at various points before Disney+ made these big-budget TV shows possible. Whatever the case, Morrison is at the ready. As are a great many "Star Wars" fans, surely.
Read this next: /Film's Top 10 Movies Of 2021
The post Temuera Morrison Also Wants to Bring the Old, 'Badass' Boba Fett Back appeared first on /Film.
In the 1980s, no director respected and honored American teenagers as much as John Hughes. He believed teenagers took life seriously, and as a result, he treated their stories seriously.
Perhaps it's that earnest attitude toward teens that made Hughes bristle at one of the most famous nicknames for his actors, "The Brat Pack." In a 1986 interview in Seventeen Magazine, Hughes' star Molly Ringwald interviewed her frequent director and asked him whether the group's "obnoxious image" was deserved or a potshot at teenage actors who were just beginning to earn weightier roles. Hughes agreed that the term was an unfair label.
"There is definitely a little adult envy. The young actors get hit harder because of their age. Because 'Rat Pack' -- which Brat Pack is clearly a parody of -- was not negative. 'Brat Pack' is. It suggests unruly, arrogant young people, and that description isn't true of these people. And the label has been stuck on people who never even spoke to the reporter who coined it."
When New York Magazine writer David Blum coined the sobriquet "Brat Pack" in his 1985 cover story about breakout stars Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson, he imbued the term with macho intent. His description of "a roving band of famous young stars on the prowl for parties, women, and a good time" might have been an apt characterization of those actors' bacchanalian nights in Hollywood, but it missed the mark on Hughes' characters, which were more often sensitive portrayals of average, American teens dealing with mundanities of their suburban lives. And if there ever was a leader of the Brat Pack, it wasn't a young man, but Hughes' feminine muse, Ringwald. Hughes directed a trilogy of Ringwald vehicles including "The Breakfast Club," "Pretty in Pink," and "Sixteen Candles," with the latter's screenplay directly inspired by a headshot of the actress that her agent sent him.
Hughes credited his ability to write sincere stories about young girls to his regular exposure to teenagers. When he was a father of two infants, his friends and coworkers already had adolescent children who could weigh in on his scripts. He also used his sister, nine years his junior, and her friends as inspiration for his writing. In a 1985 interview with Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel ahead of "The Breakfast Club" premiere, Hughes laid out his reverence for the American teen and his disgust with Hollywood's depiction of them.
''Many filmmakers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant with pursuits that are pretty base...They seem to think that teenagers aren't very bright. But I haven't found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them. I don't discount anything they have to say just because they're only 16 years old. Some of them are as bright as any of the adults I've met; all they lack is a personal perspective."
In the same interview, Hughes detailed his fascination with the teenage psyche and how their ideas, clothes, and tastes were constantly changing compared with adulthood's ossified state. He also noted that filmmakers were wrong about teenagers' attitudes toward sex and shouldn't make the mistake of applying mature sexual themes to stories about teenagers. His own actors, Ringwald and her fellow "Breakfast Club" star Anthony Michael Hall, often requested that he remove more explicit scenes from his films. As Ringwald told The Atlantic, Universal had pushed Hughes to include a scene showing a skinny-dipping female gym teacher in "The Breakfast Club". After several rewrites, he brought a stack of different drafts and asked his young cast members to piece together a script they preferred.
The final version of "The Breakfast Club" almost feels like a stage play. It largely takes place in one room, and focuses on five thoroughly fleshed-out characters whose stories unwind under the pressure of detention, hormones, and marijuana. In the wake of '70s slashers that punctuated raunchy teen sex scenes with their gory demise, the movie marked a turning point in cinema by showcasing a somber teen dramedy. With the exception of some horny escapades from Judd Nelson's character, the film eschews sex in favor of teen angst. As actress Ally Sheedy told Roger Ebert in 1984, "The Breakfast Club" succeeded because of what Hughes left out.
"Look at what this movie doesn't have...No high school dance. No chase scene. No naked shower scene. No beer blast. No rumble. It's about kids who are learning about themselves. It's like doing a play. It's an actor's dream. And it's an ambitious picture. With a lot of teenage movies, you get the feeling the filmmakers are remembering their own youth. This movie is about right now."
As Ringwald notes in The New Yorker, Hughes blazed a trail for teenage stories in an age before young adult novels exploded in bookstores and in film adaptations. Though written by a man in his 30s, the characters in his films sounded like teens of the time rather than the adult movie stars masquerading as them. He empathized with teenage girls and his movies captured their angst and heartbreak in a way that hadn't been captured on screen in an earnest way.
But even if Hughes proclaimed to write scripts that tended toward the chaste rather than provocative, his male teens' attitudes toward girls and sex have aged poorly to say the least. Ringwald and her co-star Haviland Morris, who plays Jake Ryan's blonde, popular girlfriend, caught up decades later to discuss a scene in which Jake states that he could violate his blacked-out girlfriend "17 ways if he wanted to." Ringwald expressed discomfort over the date rape joke, while Morris argued the scene was not that black-and-white.
"On the other hand, she was basically traded for a pair of underwear," Morris acknowledged. "Ah, John Hughes."
For a director who respected teenagers, Hughes had some blind spots when it came to his treatment of his female characters like Haviland's. In a post-#MeToo era where teens are engaging in frank conversations about consent, his high schoolers' antics can sometimes feel tone deaf. Despite the iconic roles he wrote for Ringwald and Sheedy, Hughes could at times subscribe to "The Brat Pack" archetype, one that embodied male arrogance and recklessness.
Read this next: The 15 Best '80s Comedies Ranked
The post Why John Hughes Hated Critics Calling His Actors 'The Brat Pack' appeared first on /Film.
If getting “away from the things of man” is something that appeals to the dad in your life, then you’ve got a good starting point for Father’s Day gifts. The right gear can keep him safer and more comfortable out in the wilderness — and he’ll think of you each time he reaches for supplies. We’ve got recommendations for the gram-counting backpacker, the comfort-seeking car camper and all the dads in between. Get something on this list now, and dad will be better prepared next time he heads out there.
Last year we recommended Osprey’s Atmos AG 65 for anyone looking to be as comfortable as possible while backpacking. This year, we’re doing the same, just with some updated Osprey designs. The Atmos has been given a minor face lift, but the bigger deal is that it’s now made with 100-percent recycled materials. You still get an integrated rain cover, Anti-Gravity suspension and fit-on-the-fly adjustment system. It’s just now more eco friendly.
As part of the redesign, the capacity has been increased to better reflect the pack’s name. Before, if you bought the Atmos 65 in a small, you actually only got 62 liters of storage. Now the small is a full 65 liters. The one downside is that the new materials and carrying capacity have led to a slight increase in weight too, with the S/M Atmos AG 65 coming in at four pounds, 10 ounces.
The women’s equivalent of the Atmos is the Aura AG 65, which is slightly smaller and lighter, but has the same suspension system and similar lugging capacity. And if you’re on a tight budget this year, you can still find the older model available in some places at a steep discount.
Obviously, one of the most important pieces of camping equipment is a tent. Not everyone’s dad wants to spend their nights in a lean-to. But their needs will dictate what kind of tent to buy. If your giftee is an avid backpacker who needs something ultra light to take on the trail, I heartily recommend Big Agnes’ Tiger Wall UL 2. It’s not their lightest offering, but it strikes a great balance between weight and convenience. It can sleep two, and has two vestibules for stowing gear, but as a single person tent it’s borderline luxurious. Even with the optional footprint, the pack weight weighs under three pounds, and the mtnGLO light system means no fussing with a lantern or headlamp to read and sort gear after dark.
If unabashed luxury is more your dad’s thing, consider REI’s Wonderland 6. At $550, this is no casual investment, but it should last quite some time. The walls are nearly vertical and it reaches a height of six and a half feet in the middle, meaning all but the tallest of humans should be able to stand upright inside. The 83-square feet of floor space is plenty of room for a family of six to sleep in, and it has large ventilation windows to keep the inside cool during the hottest months. The one caveat is that, if you happen to do most of your camping in rainy environments, you might want to shop around for something with fewer windows and better rainfly coverage.
Neither the Wonderland, nor the Tiger Wall are cheap. So if budget is an important factor, or if dad is just looking to dabble in the world of car camping, consider the Coleman Skydome 6. Coleman gear is nothing fancy. You can find it in practically any Walmart or Dick’s Sporting Goods across the country. But it’s so ubiquitous because of its rock solid reliability and reasonable prices. The Skydome 6 is nearly the same size as the Wonderland, but comes in at just $130 (or $199 if you opt for the Darkroom model). The ceiling is shorter, and the walls more angled, but if you’re only using the tent to sleep in, that shouldn’t be a major concern.
Amy Skorheim contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-backpacking-camping-gear-for-dads-131509621.html?src=rss
I wore my copy of Tenacious D's self-titled debut down to the bone in my teen years. You could wake me up from a medically induced coma and ask me to sing Double Team, word for word, without fudging a lyric, and I could nail the feat with little effort. — Read the rest
Ending a relationship is never easy, least of all when one of the concerned parties is a human scientist and the other is a super-powerful alien from another planet whose race inspired the gods of Norse mythology. Such was the case with former lovebirds Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who broke up at some point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe between the events of 2013's "Thor: The Dark World" and 2017's "Thor: Ragnarok." But what, exactly, happened between the two?
When the subject comes up in "Ragnarok," Thor is naturally reluctant to talk about it. "She didn't dump me. I dumped her. It was a mutual dumping," he stammers, prompting his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) to give him a perfunctory pat on the shoulder in what is probably the funniest part of the whole exchange. Speaking to Disney's D23 Magazine (via The Direct), Hemsworth admitted that it was only while working on the God of Thunder's next adventure, "Thor: Love and Thunder," that it became obvious to him "there actually wasn't a whole lot" there to help audiences fill in the blanks on their own.
In retrospect, however, Hemsworth said he's glad "Ragnarok" didn't address the matter beyond that:
"There actually wasn't a whole lot of evidence to definitively say, 'This is how they broke up. This is what happened.' It was left open for interpretation, which was great because it allowed us to go on this fun journey; 'What did their relationship look like when they were together? What did it look like when they were breaking up? Why did they break up?' It's some of the funniest stuff in ['Love and Thunder']."
"Thor: Ragnarok" director Taika Waititi, who's back at the helm for "Love and Thunder," has described the God of Thunder's latest outing as "a film about love, with superheroes and outer space," which more or less gels with what Chris Hemsworth is saying here. Natalie Portman affirmed as much, saying she really enjoyed getting to explore what it had been like for Jane and Thor to date in the past:
"It was really fun to get to imagine the parts of their relationship we hadn't seen ... and the hard parts of a scientist dating an otherworldly superhero."
Of course, Thor and Jane are both in very different places by the time "Love and Thunder" picks up, with the former in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis after defeating Thanos and saving Earth yet again in "Avengers: Endgame." Jane, meanwhile, has picked up some super-powers of her own, transforming her into the Mighty Thor and even allowing her to wield Mjolnir. Is there a chance those wild kids will get back together? Failing that, perhaps they can finally find gain closure (Thor could certainly use some) in-between battling Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) and whatever other trouble awaits them in the Nine Realms.
"Thor: Love and Thunder" charges its way into theaters (and, with a little luck, our hearts) on July 8, 2022.
Read this next: Every MCU Post-Credits Sequence Ranked From Worst To Best
The post Thor: Love and Thunder Will Fully Explore Why Thor and Jane Broke Up appeared first on /Film.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Game Pass is revolutionising the way that people play games, and expanding the horizons of gamers around the world. A few years ago, trying a new game would have meant coughing up a chunk of hard-earned cash – but Microsoft’s Game Pass lets you dip your toe in without having to buy the whole bath.
The selection of games included in Game Pass for PC encompasses enormously popular FPS games like Halo: Infinite, open-world favourites like Fallout 4, cutting-edge racing games like Forza Horizon 5, iconic strategy games like Age of Empires 4 – all for under $10 a month. The selection is so diverse, no matter what your preferred type of game, you’re sure to find something that you can sink hours into.
Today, huge portions of the population watch television through streaming services, and it’s not hard to imagine a similar future for the video game industry. Games are getting more and more expensive all the time (and we, the downtrodden masses, can’t always keep up financially). However, Game Pass provides a convenient and affordable way to access a vast library of popular games.
Chris Pratt is a man of faith, and, maybe more than any other person on Earth, Chris Pratt is keeping the faith for his pop-culture capital. The 42-year-old Minnesota native has gone from breakout TV star ("Everwood," "Parks and Recreation") to Marvel-machine-made superhero to studio tentpole anchor, weathering backlash and some bad project choices along the way.
What's remarkable about Pratt's career, though, is how many great projects he's contributed to. The man best known for playing Star-Lord has made an indelible mark on indie cinema, worked with game-changing auteurs, and shown the capacity for growth as both a performer and personality. Whatever Pratt's next evolution holds, there's little doubt it will be compelling or surprising. No one expected Pratt as Star-Lord. No one expected a great "Lego Movie." There's a reason Pratt keeps catching audiences off guard and studios continue to place their faith in him; this deep dive into his filmography (and future projects) will suss out why. Here are the 14 best Chris Pratt movies, ranked.
What if Antoine Fuqua's "The Magnificent Seven" went by any other name? That's the question that ran through my mind when I rewatched the movie. Approaching John Sturges' all-time great Western is a daunting task, like playing a game on maximum difficulty from the jump. Even Denzel Washington can't soften that. But if Fuqua's Western was a blatant rip-off of the original masterpiece under a different name, it would likely be more appreciated. Audiences are quick to forgive, and a tough, charismatic Western starring a murderer's row of brilliant actors gets forgiven its sins pretty quickly.
Besides Washington and Chris Pratt, "The Magnificent Seven" trots out Ethan Hawke as its heavy, plus Vincent D'Onofrio and Lee Byung-hun on hand along with Haley Bennett. If the film doesn't make ideal use of them, it shifts into a satisfying gear when it reaches its climactic shootout, one that stylistically merges Fuqua's whole career into one fiery sequence. Pratt is also in fine form here, channeling more genuine grit than he does in two separate "Jurassic World" movies and making a fine scene partner for Washington, who approaches his Josh Faraday with a mix of incredulity and burgeoning respect. It's not enough to be great, but it's compulsively watchable. That's more than can be said about some Pratt films, so this one makes the bottom of our list with flying colors.
There are valid arguments to be made that "Wanted" is willfully misogynistic and toxic to a fault. There are two reasons, though, that it earns a spot on this list. First, as comic book films have become more assembly-line driven, the visual kineticism Timur Bekmambetov unloads throughout "Wanted" has appreciated in value. Bekmambetov was fresh off "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" when he helmed the adaptation of Mark Millar's comic book series, and he arrived chomping at the bit. Teeth are knocked from mouths to briefly spell swear words in slow motion. The curved bullet gunplay is inexplicably cartoony and gory. You might not know whose movie you're watching, but it's undeniably packed with hallmarks.
The other reason "Wanted" is notable is because its most toxic choices are prescient. It is, ostensibly, an ostracized-male fantasy. The protagonist, Wesley (James McAvoy), has no life prospects and complains venomously about his situation. He then finds out his dad was a great assassin and unleashes his "inner caged" lion upon the hordes of those who have been cruel to him. Does this sound darkly familiar? Of course it does. Wesley's journey from zero to hero is conveniently quick, gun-filled, and driven by comeuppance. To him, it feels incredible. Anyone watching can tell you it's sad. Since the release of "Wanted," the world has seen a lot of Wesleys on visible platforms. That makes "Wanted" hard to stomach, but it also makes it feel like essential research.
Director Colin Trevorrow's 2015 "Jurassic World" is a disaster; it also made a ton of money. 2018's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," helmed by J.A. Bayona, was promptly deemed a catastrophe and also made bank, but one of these films is not like the other. Where "Jurassic World" is self-serious to the point of incidental parody, "Fallen Kingdom" is a B-movie free for all. Bayona's made emotionally solvent ghost stories, stirring disaster tales, and metaphor-heavy coming-of-age films. When "Fallen Kingdom" deploys Blue the raptor going full action hero or its clone subplot, it's because Bayona knows exactly what he's going for.
Is it good? That depends on your mileage for gothic silliness and clone subplots. I can't defend all of the storytelling choices in "Fallen Kingdom," but I can tell you almost all of them makes me cackle. There are even moments where it chokes me up, like the sight of a howling brontosaurus consumed by toxic gas as Jurassic Park is destroyed forever. "Fallen Kingdom" isn't as good as "The Last Jedi," but like Rian Johnson's classic, it's bold enough to question and challenge what we want from a "Jurassic Park" franchise film, and then follow the answers to apocalyptic ends. It's too bad Bayona didn't return to direct "Jurassic World Dominion."
"The Five-Year Engagement," which chronicles Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet's (Emily Blunt) oft-delayed nuptial ceremony, felt more severe when it was released in 2012. Back then, a global pandemic was either the stuff of dad-novel fiction or the somewhat recent past. Tom and Violet's foibles felt enough to engender their union, and Nicholas Stoller's film gently observed how the moment that makes someone your "till death do us part" person often occurs long before the words, "I do." Now, that's readily clear to many. The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed weddings and caused extended engagements.
This new status quo could render "The Five-Year Engagement" irrelevant; it doesn't. If anything, it's a portrait of what makes Tom and Violet special, and its anarchic refusal to let them wed still feels like a market correction on weddings as an end-all-be-all. "The Five-Year Engagement" is cynical about the wedding celebration complex. It believes, wholesale, in love. And as the primary comedic foil for Jason Segel, Chris Pratt is endearingly silly and chaos-causing. It offers a glimpse of the kind of movie star Pratt might have been if Marvel hadn't come calling. Maybe he'll return to this territory five years from now.
"The Lego Movie" was a fiendishly clever romp through Warner Bros. IP rooted in solvent emotional territory. The most clever part of "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part" is its title. That feels harsh, and yet, there's little doubt that the 2019 follow-up to one of the decade's most notable family films offers diminishing returns. "The Second Part" is still rife with sight gags and agreeable energy, but it never becomes more than the sum of its, yes, parts. The animated movie's place on this list has to do with what it means for one Chris Pratt. Pratt is about to go on a mini-run as a major voice actor, having signed on to play both Super Mario and Garfield in upcoming projects. "The Second Part" is an endorsement of these casting decisions.
Pratt returns to voice the eternally optimistic Emmett, but he also plays Rex Dangervest, a character built from every action-movie character Pratt has played in live-action over the last half-decade. There's a lot of Star-Lord. There's a dash of Owen Grady. And Pratt is expected to walk the line between sincere and winking without missing a beat, all while differentiating Rex from Emmett. He accomplishes all of this easily. That's above-average by any measure and an indication we should be quietly excited to see Pratt extend these talents further.
Disney and Pixar have been cranking out collaborative classics for so long that their good pictures threaten, as the kids say, to be labeled "mid." "Onward," a movie about two elf brothers on a quest to resurrect their dad for 24 hours, isn't one of Pixar's blemish-free efforts, but it's also anything but mid. Its blend of meticulous and creature-filled world-building, frantic comedy, and sudden, gut-punch drama is predictably Pixar but surprising by any other metric. If you somehow missed it, rectify that as soon as possible.
"Onward" also offers an inadvertent referendum on Chris Pratt's star power. The now fitness-forward actor came up playing loveable oafs, most notably Andy Dwyer on "Parks and Recreation," and Barley Lightfoot marks a sort of return to form in that regard. Barley is an obsessive role-playing gamer whose exhaustive knowledge of quests is matched by his difficulty moving through the real world. We see him through Ian's eyes; which is to say we underestimate him right up until the moment Ian realizes Barney has been his father figure all along. Barney is a diamond in a rough of his own making. Pratt made himself appear more diamond-like, but he's still lovingly rough around the edges underneath — someone who understands a misfit heart. In "Onward," that heart shines through.
"Strangers with Candy" doesn't seem like a good fit for Chris Pratt's comedic chops, and I mean that as a compliment to both parties. Pratt elevates a himbo's enthusiasm to high art. At best, his feigned naivete makes him an ideal audience surrogate whether he is or isn't by design, transforming Pratt into a wide-eyed window to the world who's also capable of warping its frame. Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) from "Strangers with Candy" is a universe. She's seen it all. She's the odd woman out. Blank catalyzes chaos and gets the regular world onto her wavelength. She and Pratt might as well be oil and water.
Sometimes that makes for great art, though, and there's zero doubt the "Strangers with Candy" movie is that. The rare TV to cinema leap that works, "Strangers with Candy" is directed with flair by Paul Dinello and is every bit as ridiculous, endearing, and colorful as the series with helped launch stars Sedaris and Stephen Colbert. If you've never seen it, it's probably because you don't know the series. Adding both to your viewing queue is a must.
It's worth remembering that there was a time when people were skeptical of "Guardians of the Galaxy." It was a property no one imagined making it to the big screen, featuring Bradley Cooper as a talking raccoon, and starring Chris Pratt playing a super heroic lead. In every sense, Pratt transformed for the role. Pratt's physical shape-up was mirrored by a performance that added new dramatic muscles to his arsenal. "Guardians" is a funny film (the title credits sequence where Pratt dances and dropkicks alien rodents to "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone may be the MCU's most hysterical moment), but it doesn't work if the moment where Star-Lord notices the holes in Rocket's back whiffs and misses. Pratt is asked to do the heavy lifting and he makes the reps count.
Then again, so does everyone. Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Cooper, and James Gunn all offer revelatory moments in their specific lanes. If Vin Diesel doesn't, it's because he's repurposing one of the most endearing voice-over performances ever. "Guardians of the Galaxy" has minuscule expectations and didn't clear the bar so much as elevate it. That's why it's hard to remember a time when it wasn't beloved, anticipated, and worthy of excitement.
It's easy to forget that Chris Pratt was in "Jennifer's Body" unless you're a super-fan of the film. Come to think of it, it's difficult to remember that "Jennifer's Body," retrospectively, assembled an ensemble of actors who came to embody millennial culture across multiple spectrums. There's Megan Fox, an actress chewed up and spit out by Hollywood in the most misogynistic of ways whose resurgence has brought the 2000s along with it. There's also Oscar-nominee Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody, and the institution that is J.K. Simmons. Most of all, there is director Karyn Kusama, one of the architects behind 2021's best and most forward-thinking television shows. In short, that's what "Jennifer's Body" is: forward-thinking.
It's not just that Diablo Cody's razor-sharp script is endlessly quotable. It's that the story of a cheerleader named Jennifer (Fox) sacrificed to Satan by a punk band who then becomes a man-devouring demon is as incisive a satire of gender roles as it is a portrait of female friendship. The film cast a star Hollywood still undervalues to this day and it achieves, inexplicably, a balance between comedy and actual horror that most horror comedies struggle to exhibit. "Jennifer's Body" is a blueprint by which to build better movies. It's hard not to be a superfan of it.
Movies are inevitable products of their era, and the great ones are usually both timely and timeless. "Zero Dark Thirty" cannot work around this truth, and no one would accuse it of trying to. But the odd conundrum of Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," a docudrama about the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, is that it deliberately aims to be both timely and timeless while chronicling events that were a year old at the time. Bigelow, writer Mark Boal, and the world had experienced the ripple effects of the 9/11 attacks and America's War on Terror for a decade-plus; why not make a motion picture which marries that experience to a century-defining event? The result is a movie that's now dated, but too immaculately crafted to ignore.
The character study of Maya (Jessica Chastain) is subtle but unnervingly specific, her poker faces both stoic and betraying the acclimating weight of the war's cost. The raid sequence (in which Chris Pratt's Justin plays a pivotal role) is still a breathless piece of filmmaking, featuring 30 minutes of hyper-real and nerve-jangling tension. Most affectingly, the climax of this scene — the death of Osama Bin Laden — is both cathartic and not enough. When war is hell and war is every day for a decade, there's little way the pain can truly abate. This is what "Zero Dark Thirty" captures, warts and all. That aspect of it is unflinchingly timeless.
Drama therapy is a lesser-known but legitimate therapeutic practice that uses drama and/or theater techniques — including improvisation, role-playing, and using puppets — to achieve breakthroughs in one's life. This also describes the crux of "The Lego Movie." By now, most know about the film's third-act twist: Emmet (Chris Pratt) finds himself in the human world where his life's story is being played through by a flesh and blood, non-Lego boy named Finn (Jadon Sand), who is frequently in conflict with his father, "The Man Upstairs" (Will Farrell). Farrell also voices Lord Business, the primary bad guy of "The Lego Movie." This is by design, both for "The Lego Movie" and Finn. Whether Finn realizes it or not, he is using play to try and find peace or make sense of what he's feeling. "The Lego Movie" is on his side.
What's remarkable about this goes beyond the sentiment. "The Lego Movie" backs up its case for the power of play by making its cinematic language as big and exuberant as the proverbial sandbox itself. Characters from DC iconography (Batman, Superman, Green Lantern) are realized through singularly goofy means. Will Arnett's hysterically brooding Batman got his own spin-off, and the visual style blends CGI and live-action with a plethora of stylistic accents. Some moments feel as in tune with '40s noir as they do "One Punch Man." It's therapeutic for one's inner child and cinephile alike.
It feels cheap, on some level, to pick "Avengers: Endgame" for a Chris Pratt movie list. Pratt barely appears in "Endgame," and his limited screen time partly serves to set up "Thor: Love and Thunder." Yet there's no getting around the truth: "Endgame" is a vastly superior picture to "Avengers: Infinity War," one which transcends the MCU and comic book movie cinema to establish a new high watermark for blockbuster cinema. "Endgame," by accident or not, pushed the summer tentpole into maximalism. If it isn't the maximum amount of characters showing up, it's a plethora of set pieces; overstuffed is the new normal.
This sounds bleak on its surface (and, to be fair, has yielded some dismal movies), but one only needs to look at this year's "Top Gun: Maverick" or "Everything Everywhere All at Once" to see the positive impact of priming audiences for multiversal stories and maximalist blockbusters. The longer the MCU goes on and the more distance we get from "Avengers: Endgame," the more convinced I am it is miraculous. It's an assemblage of corporate IP orchestrated like it's a Tchaikovsky symphony, bombast and subtlety going off in equal measure. There isn't a single moment of it that isn't memorable. It should have been a swan song, but it wasn't. As a result, Hollywood is trying to go bigger, faster, and harder than it. It has no equal.
Joaquin Phoenix has developed a reputation for playing some of Hollywood's most intense characters. He won an Oscar for bringing Arthur Fleck to life in "Joker." Phoenix even made an extreme characterization of himself for the performance art film "I'm Still Here," one that was wildly broad but so lived-in and contingent on Phoenix's erratic reputation that everyone bought it. Conversely, though, Phoenix's most heartbreaking work is more down-to-earth, such as in the stunning "C'mon C'mon." There's also much to be said about his mesmerizing turn in "Her," Spike Jonze's blindingly romantic film about a man who falls in love with AI.
Today, "Her" feels infinitely more possible than it did upon release. Human hearts feel harder for anyone to know the landscape of and connections have been formed through circumstances as crazy as artificial intelligence. The question "Her" asks, beyond its sci-fi trappings, is what it means to be human and how, or if, love factors into that equation. It doesn't arrive at any easy answers, but the fact that it breaks your heart, all the same, is proof that its unknowable elements still land like brilliant sucker punches. The entire ensemble — Chris Pratt included — delivers, but make no mistake that this is Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson's show, and the former lands its hook, line, and sinker. Love is one of the most complex and extreme parts of the human journey. No wonder we needed Pheonix to show us its depths.
"Moneyball" is the best baseball movie ever made, and it's not about baseball. For all intents and purposes, it is about two men — Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) — whose shift to analytics as the basis for rebuilding the Oakland Athletics changes America's favorite pastime forever. On the front, it succeeds. The trade negotiation scene, which is little more than Beane and Brand on the phone with multiple executives, is the most thrilling writing of Aaron Sorkin's career and a masterclass in how to wring tension and catharsis from the dialogue. It should be studied in film schools everywhere.
But "Moneyball" is also about what baseball can mean. Baseball is the only league with a farm system. It is the only sport that deliberately invests in a player's potential long-term growth and takes time to see if the seeds of talent bear fruit. It's no coincidence that the minor league clubs where this happens are predominantly in small American towns, nor is it a coincidence that the demographics of baseball clubs look more and more like those of America. When baseball changes, it reflects the change in its country. "Moneyball" is about how two men's willingness to evolve causes ripple effects for an entire organization in America. We could all heed its stunning lessons.
"He may have been your father, boy, but he wasn't your daddy." These 12 words, spoken by Yondu (Michael Rooker) near the end of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," are among the most moving in comic book cinema. They're the product of a creator seeing the potential in underutilized characters and telling a personal story through them. That creator is James Gunn, and he makes comic-book movies (their action, stories, and necessary trailer shots) look as easy as breathing.
If 18 years of superhero dominance have taught us anything, it's that it isn't easy. "Guardians of the Galaxy" and its follow-up are among the genre's gold standards because when you're in the throes of them the genre feels limitless and a place for voices to thrive. The comedic voice of Chris Pratt comes through, as does the wounded heart of Nebula (played to the hilt by Karen Gillan). More than that, the primary themes of the MCU shine and become crystallized. Whether you believe the Infinity Saga was planned or not, it became about the family you find and the one you come from. It breaks in favor of the former, and it does so through one of the most lovely moments Gunn has ever staged.
Read this next: Every MCU Post-Credits Sequence Ranked From Worst To Best
The post The 14 Best Chris Pratt Movies Ranked appeared first on /Film.
Just today, as part of a vague tease of what's to come on Sunday during Microsoft's "E3" 2022 conference, they've posted some plans for both the next few years and "the next 20 years." Perhaps most importantly in the near future, the company announced an enhanced Xbox demo program coming later this year.
Here's the recap, with some bullet points being more pertinent to some audiences than others:
Several facets of this plan just involves plain old Microsoft corporate expansion: the type of thing that only really excites shareholders/execs. But the biggest point is arguably the bit about Xbox Game Pass, including a new Xbox demo program announced today called "Project Moorcroft."
No this isn't a misspelled code name for a game starring a Sherlock Holmes relative: it's a vague promise of "new curated demos of upcoming games." Microsoft says that it'll arrive "within the next year," and the start of the program will focus on "independent developers from around the world." Apparently it's not just offering consumer-side benefits, as developers can view metrics of "how their demos perform," and earn compensation.
Paying people to bring stuff to the Xbox platform is decidedly Microsoft. But I've generally been a fan of everything they're doing this generation from a macro-perspective, so hopefully this does actually encourage better relationships for indie studios, publishers, and fans alike. We'll find out more "within the next year," and possibly on Sunday during Microsoft's showcase.
The post Microsoft talks plan for “the next 20 years of gaming,” including an enhanced Xbox demo program appeared first on Destructoid.
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Cinema is arguably the greatest special effect ever conceived. The mere existence of motion pictures has become blasé by this point in history, but there was a time when it was an attraction unto itself. As major movie studios were constructed and the medium of film became not just commonplace but an entertainment business, filmmakers not only had to find new ways of drawing audiences in, but also found themselves enthralled with its possibilities.
The visual effects arms race, if you will, kicked into overdrive with the advent of movies like "Star Wars" and "Jaws," helping propel Hollywood into an era of blockbuster features that each strove to bring a seemingly impossible reality to the screen. "Jaws" director Steven Spielberg was one of the people at the forefront of this boundary-pushing, yet he also retained a sense of Old Hollywood-style ballyhoo and showmanship. In other words, his effects films actually delivered the goods.
Perhaps the most influential movie in a long line of watershed event films to feature pioneering visual effects, 1993's "Jurassic Park" was touted as "An Adventure 65 Million Years in the Making." The resulting film, with its ingenious blend of state-of-the-art animatronic creatures and cutting-edge computer graphics imagery (or CGI, as it's better known), delivered that promise and changed the landscape of cinema forever. It also kicked off a franchise that has never lost sight of its aesthetic mission statement: to provide visuals and moments that are utterly memorable.
In celebration of the final chapter of the "Jurassic" saga released this week, "Jurassic World Dominion," here are 10 of the greatest.
Author Michael Crichton's concept for his original "Jurassic Park" novel was focused on how the genetic engineering of dinosaurs would be most applicable toward an entertainment venture, given how otherwise "there isn't any pressing need to re-create a dinosaur," as the writer explained. 2015's "Jurassic World" took that concept and ran with it, the titular theme park acting as a payoff to not just Crichton's concept but "Jurassic Park" the movie, with the dream of John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) fully realized.
But how would such a park run on a day-to-day basis, especially when the first "Jurassic" film showed how things could go very wrong before such a park could even be opened (and, indeed, given how very wrong things ultimately go for Jurassic World)? "Jurassic World" answers that question almost immediately with the introduction of Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), an ex-Navy ethologist who develops a tenuous mastery of arguably the meanest and most independent species of dinosaur, the Velociraptor.
Even in his introductory scene, where Owen bravely steps into the raptor pen to calm down the flock after a worker falls inside by accident, the raptors aren't fully subservient to him. Yet Owen is nonetheless able to hold the raptors at bay, resulting in not just a meme-able moment but one that sells the idea that Jurassic World just might work.
The "Jurassic Park" films have made a habit of delving into various tones and genres, from straight-up horror to comedy to science-fiction. Even so, it's surprising that "surrealism" is one of those genres. Yet, in "Jurassic Park III," there it is: a talking velociraptor.
The moment occurs as part of a dream sequence, of course, one had by Alan Grant (Sam Neill). Yet there are unique elements surrounding the sight of a raptor saying Alan's name that help the moment stand out: for one thing, the dream visually illustrates Alan's fear and anxiety about returning to the island full of dinosaurs that nearly caused him to lose his life years earlier, and director Joe Johnston brings an eerie mood to the sight of Alan on an empty airplane before the raptor shows up. For another, Alan has recently learned through his research that Raptors had (or rather, have) a larynx for communication with each other, effectively enabling them to "speak," which is a plot point that comes into play later during "Jurassic Park III."
Moreover, the idea of a raptor speaking a human language is subversively hilarious, setting up this installment's playful sense of humor. And who knows — maybe this moment helped inspire the infamous 2005 "Jurassic Park 4" script by William Monahan and John Sayles that didn't get made.
"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" has a lot going on, and that's putting it mildly — the movie starts with the total volcanic destruction of Isla Nublar, and ventures into so many different concepts and genre riffs before culminating with all of the dinos being let loose en masse into the world, fulfilling the threat of eco-chaos established by the original "Jurassic" concept.
It's ironic, then, that one of the biggest game-changing plot developments in the movie is a little one, literally and figuratively: the fact that the young Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) is not the granddaughter of John Hammond's colleague Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), but rather the cloned version of Sir Benjamin's deceased daughter. The idea of the technology fostered by Hammond, Lockwood, and their corporate partners being applied to human beings seems like a concept almost wholly separate from the "Jurassic" series, and yet it's such a lateral move that it's a wonder it hadn't turned up in a sequel before this.
Whether you think it's an unwieldy misstep or a fascinating development that further exemplifies the ethically irresponsible idea behind the "Jurassic" films, it makes for a moment that's able to stand out in such an overstuffed entry in the series.
The "Jurassic" movies are more than just dino-sized spectacle. One of the most impressive aspects of the original film is how well-developed (not to mention well-cast) the human characters are, so much so that they would be able to carry the movie had the dinosaurs ended up not working.
For proof, look no further than Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) seductively explaining his theory of a chaos-ruled universe to Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). The monologue perfectly explains Crichton's ethos regarding technology used irresponsibly and foreshadows the events to come within the film, as a chain of events instigated by Alan Grant leaving the jeep while Malcolm explains chaos theory (running to investigate a sick Triceratops) leads to the ensemble of characters becoming scattered across the island and entering into even more danger.
At the same time, the moment establishes the dynamic between the three leading adult characters of Ian, Ellie, and Alan, as Malcolm slyly flirts with the fascinated Ellie while Alan is hopelessly distracted. It proves that "Jurassic Park" has more on its mind than bringing dinosaurs to life.
The "Jurassic" sequels, like most sequels, have an escalation problem — they are in constant need of a bigger, badder dino villain. The "Jurassic World" trilogy has tried to attack this problem head on by acknowledging it in the body of the narrative, with the scientists at Jurassic World deliberately concocting a Frankenstein's monster of a never-was dinosaur, the Indominus Rex. "Fallen Kingdom" makes the obvious choice to bring the Indominus concept to the Velociraptor, making an "Indoraptor" that we're told has all sorts of crazy features, including being genetically unstable.
While all that verbal build up amounts to not much within the body of the film, director J.A. Bayona cleverly sidesteps the issue by adopting the "show, don't tell" ethos of movie making. Thus the Indoraptor becomes the series' first dinosaur that doesn't feel like an animal, the creature far more cunning and deliberately evil than any of her predecessors. Bayona visualizes this by having the Indoraptor stalk little Maisie throughout the creepy old Lockwood mansion in a manner that intentionally recalls Frank Langella's Dracula from the 1979 film of the same name.
The portrayal of a dinosaur as something akin to a Gothic horror creature makes "Fallen Kingdom" an entry not to be easily dismissed or overlooked, as it steers the series back toward the horror elements it had begun with.
By the time he made "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," director Steven Spielberg was no stranger to sequels, and he knew that any sequel has to go bigger than the original. Spielberg and writer David Koepp's solution to the original film's T. Rex attack, then, was to simply add a second T. Rex. Oh, and to make sure both T. Rex's are furious at the puny humans inside a trailer on Isla Sorna who'd abducted their baby Rex (albeit for veterinarian care purposes).
While no one doubted Spielberg's mastery of choreography and suspense at that point in his career, the director nevertheless proves himself many times over with this one set piece. The tension is at an all-time high throughout the lengthy sequence, as not only are the lead characters trapped and in immediate danger, but the team's field equipment expert Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) is menaced by the Rex family while he struggles to rescue the others once the dinos have toppled half of the large trailer over a perilous cliff.
It's a sequence that rivals Spielberg's "Indiana Jones" films in terms of it being a (literal) cliffhanger, and underlines just how perilous these movies can be for the very chewable humans caught in the middle.
Steven Spielberg is known for his action choreography and suspense, but he's also famous for creating moments that contain a genuine sense of awe and wonderment, to the point where so many of his characters adopt the same wide-eyed gaze when faced with the immense and impossible that it's become a fully-fledged trope.
While other similar moments from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" vie for the title, the introduction of Alan, Ellie, and Ian to the living dinosaurs of Jurassic Park is the single best distillation of Spielbergian awe. John Williams' majestic main theme for the film soars on the soundtrack while the scientists react with equal parts nervous disbelief, exuberant wonder and scholarly fascination (meanwhile, the shady lawyer Donald Gennaro simply sees giant dollar signs in place of the grazing brachiosauruses).
It's a scene that defines the "Jurassic Park" series, not just in tone, but in its proof-of-concept use of CGI to manifest the giant dinos on screen. It remains one of the most sincere moments in cinema history — which means, of course, it's since been parodied in increasingly ridiculous ways.
Right from the opening scene of the first "Jurassic Park," it's clear that the victims of the out-of-control dinosaurs are likely to meet their untimely ends in an increasingly grisly and disturbing fashion. When director Colin Trevorrow rebooted the "Jurassic" films with "Jurassic World," he needed to establish just how disastrous a dinosaur outbreak with a park full of people would be.
Thus, the Pterosaur attack. Right from the start, things are hairy, as a flock of deadly Pterosaurs swoop down on an unsuspecting throng of tourists in the open-air concourse of the park. The Pterosaurs are far from the only breed of dinosaur in the park, however, and Trevorrow chronicles a particularly gnarly fate for the personal assistant to park operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), Zara (Katie McGrath), who's attempting to chaperone Claire's nephews Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson).
First, Zara is plucked without warning from the ground high up into the air by a Pterosaur, only to be dropped from that height — right into the nearby show pool. Zara's safety is short-lived, however, as the Pterosaur is merely playing with its prey, swooping into the pool and grabbing the hapless assistant in its jaws. As a wise Jedi Knight once said, however, "there's always a bigger fish," and both the Pterosaur and Zara are swallowed whole by the water-based Mosasaurus. Worst babysitting job ever!
While the "Jurassic Park" series can't be called "educational" with a straight face, the movies at least gave audiences worldwide a newfound respect (not to mention fear) for these long-extinct animals. Where once upon a time it was easy to look at bones in a museum or illustrations in a book and think dinosaurs weren't very scary or intimidating, the "Jurassic" films proved us all very, very wrong.
There's no better example of this than the Velociraptor sequences in the first movie, which at times feels like a feature-length argument that raptors were the most formidable predators to have ever lived. The scene where Tim and Lex Murphy (Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards) are stalked by a pair of raptors inside the kitchen of the Jurassic Park visitor center is one of the most suspenseful and heart-pounding sequences of Spielberg's career, as the unarmed children seek to distract and outwit their clawed, toothy nemeses if they're to survive.
Yet the most chilling moment of this sequence occurs right at its start: our cast of characters learn that the raptors escaped their pen, and Sattler assures Grant that they've been contained. "Unless they've figured out how to open doors," she adds facetiously. Cut to a shot of a door handle being awkwardly pushed down, with a raptor breathing menacingly as the door opens. Before "Jurassic Park," only the biggest dino die-hards knew what a velociraptor was. After "Jurassic Park," everyone is now very, very aware of them.
Despite all the great moments from the series, there's one distinct image that everyone who sees "Jurassic Park" has tattooed on their memory: the sight of water inside a glass gently, ominously rippling as a distant boom sounds in time with the ripples.
That image is representative of the terror, scale, and awe-inspiring adventure that Spielberg promises with "Jurassic Park" in general and the T-Rex escape scene in particular, and on all levels, he delivers. The mixture of the animatronics (designed by Stan Winston), the fluid CGI (composited by Dennis Muren and ILM), and the physical on-set effects (supervised by Michael Lantieri) bring the Rex to vivid life, the creature seeming real enough to be truly imposing and terrifying. The actors help sell the illusion, reacting with various levels of panic and fear that are all utterly believable. Editor Michael Kahn lends the sequence an incredible sense of timing, and sound designer Gary Rydstrom blends the sounds of a baby elephant's squeal, an alligator's gurgle, and a tiger's snarl to give the Rex a deafening, and defining, roar.
From there, Spielberg keeps the suspense high at all times, putting various characters in jeopardy and raising the stakes by having the Rex eat a man alive (so long, Mr. Gennaro). As the Rex causes havoc and escalates the terror, she behaves in a manner that's befitting any large animal. This isn't a sci-fi creature like the Indo-dinos from "Jurassic World," nor is it the "King Kong"-esque Rexes of "The Lost World" and "Jurassic Park III." This is an ancient predator returned to life.
Dinosaurs will never walk the Earth again (nor should they, as the series seems to argue), yet the "Jurassic Park" movies make that somewhat sad truth easier to accept. The films didn't just rekindle a fascination with the extinct animals, but gave them a new form of life, actually resurrecting them in the modern age ... if only on movie screens. In this way, the "Jurassic" series isn't just an exciting blockbuster franchise, but a perfect example of the magic movies can create, whether they were 65 million years in the making or just a couple.
Read this next: /Film's Top 10 Movies Of 2021
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Ever since "Game of Thrones" ended, everyone has been looking for the next big fantasy TV show. Of course, we've got some good candidates, from "The Witcher" and "Shadow and Bone," to "The Wheel of Time," and now the upcoming "House of the Dragon" and the "Lord of the Rings" TV show.
While the search has focused on live-action, the unfortunate and still very wrong assumption that animation is somehow a "lesser" medium meant for kids has made people miss out on the best fantasy TV show currently on TV — "The Dragon Prince." The spiritual successor to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" is an epic tale of political intrigue, romance, adventure, action, and magic set in a fleshed-out world with a vast mythology.
The show follows two prince half-brothers and an elf assassin as they set out to bring the last infant dragon to its kind, in an attempt to end a thousand-year-old conflict between elves and humans.
After what feels like 84 years (it's been three, but feels much longer), "The Dragon Prince is finally coming back with new episodes this year, and we have a new trailer to prove it.
Last season ended on a rather conclusive note, with the villain defeated, the dragons reunited, a seemingly peaceful truce between both sides of the war, and a new crowned king. While this first trailer is rather thin on plot details, it does seem to tease the focus of this next season.
After all, Netflix is describing it as "the start of the next phase of 'The Dragon Prince' saga," meaning we're likely to see a sort of reset button being hit while the new status quo is established. That being said, the focus on the mysterious villain Aaravos, who gives the season its title, is rather intriguing since we know extremely little about it. The other tease in the trailer is that Aaravos continues to hold a tight grip on Viren, the dark mage, and his purpose will presumably be revealed this season. Last we saw Aaravos, he was in a cocoon, metamorphosing into a new form. What will that be? We'll find out soon enough.
"The Dragon Prince: Mystery of Aaravos" returns later this year on Netflix.
"Many questions remain following The Battle of the Storm Spire, but only one continues to haunt the very heart of Xadia: "Who is Aaravos?" Where did this enigmatic Startouch elf come from? What does he want? And what price will our heroes have to pay to stop him?"
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In 2019, Twitter user @MapleCocaine tweeted out an innocuous statement that would become one of Twitter's core axioms: "Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it." Usually the wearer of the main character crown has either said something so out of pocket that anyone with more than two brain cells can see that "the best time to delete the tweet was immediately after sending it, the second best time is now," or someone who makes a statement so bafflingly offensive with an unfounded sense of confidence, we're shocked to discover the tweeter wasn't just two junior high boys in a trenchcoat pretending to be an adult behind a keyboard.
Yesterday's Twitter main character was Hanna Rosin, a novelist and editorial director for audio for New York Magazine. After watching the delightful gay rom-com "Fire Island" on Hulu, Rosin criticized the film about gay men for its *checks notes* inability to pass the Bechdel Test.
For those unaware, The Bechdel-Wallace (commonly just Bechdel) Test is a cinematic measuring tool of the depiction of women in fiction. The test has only three rules: (1) that at least two women are featured, (2) that these women talk to each other, and (3) that they discuss something other than a man. "The Test" first appeared in Alison Bechdel's 1985 comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," based on conversations Bechdel had with her friend Liz Wallace, as well as the works of Virginia Woolf. It is also a tool that has been willfully misunderstood and weaponized over its nearly 40-year existence, and yesterday was no different.
The Bechdel-Wallace Test is not meant to be treated as the be-all, end-all of feminist theory, but a bare minimum measurement of media produced for mass audience appeal. The Bechdel-Wallace Test is imperfect by design, because it allows something like the objectifying male fantasy "Weird Science" a passing score, while a film with inarguable feminist characters like "Jackie Brown," "Gravity," or "Before Sunrise," fail.
The Bechdel-Wallace Test was not designed to be a definitive metric, it was a punchline in a comic strip that points out how frequently Hollywood blockbusters fail their female characters. Unfortunately, plenty of people have somehow convinced themselves that The Bechdel-Wallace Test is the only qualifier as to whether or not a movie is "good," completely ignoring any of the nuance, context, or intention of the stories being told.
In a now deleted (but screenshotted to hell and back) tweet, Rosin applied the test to "Fire Island," stating that the film receives "an F-," failing the test "in a whole new way." While Rosin could have stopped there and gotten plenty of eye rolls, she went a step further by saying, "Do we just ignore the drab lesbian stereotypes bc cute gay Asian boys? Is this revenge for all those years of the gay boy best friend?" Disregarding the fact the Bechdel-Wallace Test is pass/fail and the utter disrespect to refer to the ICONIC Margaret Cho as performing "drab lesbian stereotypes," the tweet was a perfect showcase of how beyond misunderstood the Bechdel-Wallace Test has become.
"Fire Island" was written by Joel Kim Booster and directed by Andrew Ahn, and is a modern, gay, retelling of Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice" starring gay Asian American men. It is true, yes, that Hollywood has a problem with showcasing women in complex, interesting roles, but do you know who else Hollywood has a problem with showcasing in complex, interesting roles? Literally anyone that isn't a cisgender, straight, white man.
"Fire Island" is a film that celebrates queer, Asian American joy, and showcases a community of men that are often regulated to secondary characters or offensive stereotypes. This is a film about specific experiences, not the whole of the LGBTQIA+ community. This means it is not the responsibility of "Fire Island," Joel Kim Booster, Andrew Ahn, or anyone else who worked on the film to pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test, because this movie isn't telling a story that would elicit the need to pass the test.
A film like "Fire Island" shouldn't be held to the same standard as something like the Bechdel-Wallace failing "The Avengers," because the film wasn't made with the intention of appealing to universal audiences or trying to tell a story that could speak to society as a whole. Getting pissy about "Fire Island" failing the Bechdel-Wallace test is the cinematic equivalent of judging a fish by its ability to ride a bicycle. It's also impossible to ignore that Rosin's ire was directed at a film providing seldom-seen representation of a marginalized community, and not calling something out something like "Top Gun: Maverick," which also doesn't pass the test.
When The Bechdel-Wallace Test first appeared in 1985, the world was an entirely different place. American supervillain Ronald Reagan was president, for crying out loud, and we're still trying to undo the fallout of his destruction of American progress. The simplistic test was a reflection on the very narrow perspective of women's representation in cinema, not taking into account a multitude of factors that influence whether or not a film would, could, or should pass the test. The test is a reflection of the outdated social norms of the 1980s, and has not evolved to encompass the broader scope, mainly because it was a joke in a comic strip and not some groundbreaking philosophical theory based on heavily researched data.
Okay, I just added a corollary to the Bechdel test: Two men talking to each other about the female protagonist of an Alice Munro story in a screenplay structured on a Jane Austen novel = pass. #FireIsland #BechdelTest
— Alison Bechdel (@AlisonBechdel) June 8, 2022
Understandably, Rosin was ratioed beyond her wildest dreams and Alison Bechdel even took to Twitter to praise "Fire Island," poking fun at the ridiculousness of holding the film to The Test's standards. For what it's worth, Rosin did post an apology on Twitter, but it's no one other than the impacted party's place to determine whether or not the apology is accepted and if the harm has been rightfully repaired.
Regardless, the fact the Bechdel-Wallace has become the "gold standard" of film criticism in many "progressive" circles is a complete misuse of the test's existence, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what determines a film's quality. The next time someone dismisses a film because "it doesn't pass the Bechdel Test," that should be a sign to interrogate why the film doesn't pass, because if it's anything like "Fire Island," it's an intentional decision worthy of praise.
Read this next: /Film's Top 10 Movies Of 2021
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The Quake mod AQtion Quake 2 is on Steam as a standalone release, making it for the first time since the FPS game mod came onto the scene in disc form back in 1998. AQtion’s creators credit it as the game that inspired Counter Strike, itself originally a spinoff mod from Half-Life. AQtion is free on Steam, as you’d expect from most mods, and it comes with a host of modes and features. While the mod is likely much as you may remember it from years ago, it’s likely to keep changing., AQtion Quake 2 is also on GitHub as an open-source project anyone can contribute to.
The development team originally made AQtion Quake 2 soon after Quake 2 released at the end of 1997, as they wanted a faster-paced experience closer to what you see in action movies. You can hardly call Quake 2 plodding, but there’s no denying AQtion achieves its goal of creating a more thrilling experience.
The mod features six modes, including the classic Deathmatch, along with Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Espionage, and a robust Teamplay mode. Despite the emphasis on multiplayer in AQtion, these modes can all be played offline as well against a set of bots whose behavior you can customize to suit your needs.
Horror has never fared well at the Oscars. Despite the Academy Award's 93-year-run, horror films have only won 18 Oscars out of over 3,000 possible ones. Frequently, horror films don't even make it into the Oscar nomination phase — as was the infamous case for Toni Collette's performance in Ari Aster's "Hereditary." Now and again, a film like 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs" breaks through this boundary. Jonathan Demme's procedural thriller became the first and only horror film to earn an Oscar for best picture. But since Hannibal's on-screen debut, only a handful of horror films have received award season attention — namely 2017's "Get Out," which won an Oscar for best screenplay. Sadly, horror stars haven't received the recognition they deserve for the grueling emotional and physical work the genre requires.
Below is a list of some of the best and most promising horror actors of all time. These stars slay in bloodbaths, emotionally-driven moments, and subverting what horror films can and can't do.
No matter what film Linnea Quigley stars in, her joy is contagious. Since her role as Dolores in 1981's "Graduation Day," Quigley has become an iconic scream queen that slays in bonkers B-horror films. Known for her work in 1985's "Return of the Living Dead" and 1988's "Night of the Demons," Quigley brings gleeful gore to the screen like no one else. 2009's "Night of the Demons" tried to redo Quigley's iconic lipstick scene to no avail. Only Quigley lands that unique mixture of sexy, sarcastic, and campy violence. After five decades of tongue-in-cheek and blood-soaked films, it's become her revered signature style.
Even though she's an established horror icon, Linnea Quigley consistently makes time for the horror community. Despite her incredibly busy film production schedule, Quigley still has time for horror fans. She regularly attends midnight movie Q&As and horror film conventions, charming all who meet her.
Most horror fans know about the psychological abuse that "The Shining" star Shelley Duvall endured on set for director Stanley Kubrick's vision. Unexpectedly cutting Duvall's lines, isolating her from the cast and crew, and verbally abusing her until she cried were all par for the course for Kubrick. In 2021, Duvall discussed Kubrick's method-like approach to The Hollywood Reporter, admitting that Kubrick's "exacting" takes for "The Shining" were exhausting, especially the film's iconic staircase scene which took no less than 127 takes and dehydrated the star.
While horror fans often discuss these troubling production elements, more attention should go to Duvall's raw and visceral performance as Wendy Torrance. Duvall crafts a much-needed vulnerability with Wendy in the Stephen King adaptation, which grounds the character alongside Jack Nicholson's unhinged performance. Without her, "The Shining" would have become something more akin to camp, as Nicholson's Jack Torrance often skirts the line into foreshadowing the menace of the Joker from 1989's "Batman." Although Wendy's agency pales in comparison to her literary counterpart, Duvall soared with the material she had.
We must call out abuse on film sets, but the "Three Women" star deserves more critical acclaim for her creative depth. Fans craving more horror featuring Duvall should check out "The Twilight Zone" segment titled "A Saucer of Loneliness."
While Florence Pugh is a relative newcomer to the horror genre, she won over the bloody hearts of fans with her leading role as Dani in Ari Aster's "Midsommar." Aster's film follows Dani's overwhelming grief, terror at leaving an unhealthy relationship, and unfulfilled desire. Thanks in part to Pugh's mastery of subtle facial expressions that convey just the right feeling at the right time, Ari Aster's heartwrenching movie became a commercial and critical hit, earning over $40 million globally on a $9 million budget.
Yet, many horror fans missed out on seeing Pugh's first foray into terror. In 2016's "Lady Macbeth," Pugh portrays Katherine, a 19th-century woman sold into an unhappy marriage. What follows is a chilling film that shows off Pugh's sinister capabilities alongside her sympathetic demeanor. By the end of the film, viewers will wrestle with disgust and fear of Pugh's cutthroat character, who will not second guess murdering to get what she wants.
Pugh will next stretch her horror muscles in Olivia Wilde's upcoming feature film, "Don't Worry, Darling." Based on the trailer, Pugh's Alice discovers some unsettling truths about her domestic life. Blending the machismo elements of "Mad Men" with the feminist sci-fi lens of 1975's "The Stepford Wives," Wilde crafts a dystopia perfect for showcasing Pugh's talents.
Dee Wallace entered the world of horror with 1975's "The Stepford Wives," portraying Nettie the maid. Decades later, she still reigns as a scream queen. Wallace has portrayed some of horror's most memorable roles in such films as "Cujo," "The Howling," "Lords of Salem," "The Hills Have Eyes," and 2007's "Halloween." She frequently collaborates with Rob Zombie and has worked with iconic genre directors like Steven Spielberg, Wes Craven, and Peter Jackson — achievements that few horror stars can claim.
While it's an impossible task to pick which horror film best showcases Wallace's talent, many look to her role as Donna in "Cujo" as a prime example. Although the Stephen King adaptation takes place during a scorching summer, filming for "Cujo" happened in the winter of 1982. Despite Wallace "freezing to death" on set, her acting never falters. It's easy to believe she's fighting against a rabid dog to save the life of her son and herself. Once "Cujo" wrapped, Wallace spent three weeks in the hospital due to exhaustion.
2019's "Ma" showcased Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer's knack for portraying a horror villain. Created on a budget of $5 million, "Ma" brought in more than $60 million globally at the box office. Despite this impressive feat, critics gave it a cool reception gave it a cool reception. However, it's worth noting that the flaws of "Ma" were tied more to Scotty Landes' uneven script than Spencer's madcap performance. Based on its stellar box office numbers and critics' love of seeing a "bananas" Spencer on-screen, Blumhouse Productions should see the film's franchise potential if an unhinged Sue Ann "Ma" Ellington rises again. If Michael Myers can cheat death over and over again, why shouldn't Ma have a chance to show off her truly terrifying potential?
Regardless of Ma's fate, Spencer shows fans that all her years of starring in critically acclaimed dramas have only perfected her ability to gleefully shock audiences. Hopefully, more horror directors will see this, too, and give us more films featuring Spencer's talents.
Written and directed by Jordan Peele, "Us" became a critical and commercial hit. While the horror-mystery film has a stellar cast that includes Elisabeth Moss and Winston Duke, Lupita Nyong'o's dual performance as Addy and Red in "Us" deserves special praise. In Peele's film, she's not just the final girl. She's also its central villain. Although Nyong'o is a relative newcomer to the horror genre, "Us" demonstrates that she can play both the sympathetic lead and avenging foe with ease. Her versatile and chilling work in "Us" proves she's a winning bet for any future horror film's casting.
Nyong'o next stars in Marvel Studios' "Black Panther" sequel, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," which is slated to hit theaters on November 11. While there are no future horror film announcements at this time for Nyong'o, fans should keep their fingers crossed that this blockbuster action star will return soon to the world of terror.
While he's best known for voicing a killer doll, Brad Dourif has acted as unhinged characters in genre films for over four decades. To his credit, the Emmy-nominated actor has starred in some massively popular horror film universes such as "Alien," "Halloween," "The Exorcist," and of course, the expanding mythos of Don Mancini's "Chucky." Dourif has made a career out of playing characters who are either on the edge of madness or have long since gone over the edge — as is the case with his role as the "Gemini Killer" in William Peter Blatty's"The Exorcist III."
Although Dourif told Rue Morgue in 2018 that he was done playing sociopathic and sadistic characters, he reprised his role as Chucky for Mancini's 2021 Syfy series of the same name. Dourif will voice the killer doll in Season 2 of "Chucky," continuing the legacy that the serial killer turned child's toy.
In 1992's "Candyman," genre icon Tony Todd brings the urban legend of Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project to life with sinister charm. His portrayal of Candyman ranks as one of horror's most memorable performances, paving the way for Black horror filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta to tell their own horror stories. Inspired by Todd's legacy, DaCosta and Peele crafted their take on the Cabrini Green monster with 2021's "Candyman." Peele spoke about Todd's influence on his horror career in 2020, sharing, "A Black monster was pretty revolutionary. If there was no 'Candyman,' I don't know that there would be a 'Get Out '... Tony Todd built a character that was a force and had a charisma. He gave me a sense of power as opposed to a feeling of otherness."
Todd has portrayed Candyman throughout the horror franchise's four films. The horror star has accumulated more than 247 roles in his career, taking turns at playing heroes and monsters — including the fan-favorite character of Death in the "Final Destination" franchise.
Beginning with 1985's "Re-Animator," Barbara Crampton has made a name for herself in the world of horror. From her deliciously campy work in beloved horror classics like "Puppet Master" to her gory role as Susan in Stuart Gordon's "Castle Freak," Crampton consistently delivers killer performances. To her credit, Crampton knows precisely when to dial-up tension or lean into comedy, making her a joy to watch. There's a sarcastic edge to Crampton's humor, which shines brightly in 2021's "Jakob's Wife," a film that the star also produced.
While Crampton often stars in horror films, "Jakob's Wife" marked the first time that the genre legend played an old-school monster. Critics loved seeing Crampton transform into a sexy and scathing vampire, giving the film a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The 2021 horror film looks at vampire lore through a feminist lens, using its familiar concept to uniquely explore a woman's buried passion for life. Crampton's sharp timing soars above the buckets of B-movie blood, cementing her status as one of horror's greatest actors.
1981's "The Evil Dead" introduced the world to Bruce Campbell's dim-witted but charming Ash Williams, and horror hasn't been the same since. At the time, no one knew that Sam Raimi's low-budget horror film would become one of horror's most beloved properties. During the film's 40th anniversary, Campbell noted how the film's legacy now has surpassed its initial reception. "The irony is we're in more theaters 40 years later than we were when it originally got released," Campbell told The Columbus Dispatch in 2021.
Campbell reprised his iconic role for the film's two sequels and Starz's "Ash vs. the Evil Dead" television series. "Ash vs. the Evil Dead" truly showcases Campbell's acting talent, adding layers of depth to a tired and world-weary Ash. While his knack for physical comedy (and perfectly timed flips) has always shined through in his roles, the Starz series best showcases how much Campbell's Ash has evolved. Campbell refined a role that was born out of slapstick, B-movie terror into one filled with pathos. Ash Williams becomes someone searching for redemption, and it's a joy to root for him on his journey.
While many horror fans praise Kurt Russell's R.J. MacReady in John Carpenter's "The Thing," Keith David's Childs deserves equal acclaim. By the end of "The Thing," Childs and MacReady are seemingly the only ones left alive as they both wonder if the other is an alien. Thanks to David's tense Childs, the film lands its ambiguous ending. In another actor's hands, the ending could have felt lackluster, but David sells the film's terror. The Emmy-winning actor has starred in horror classics like "They Live" and "Pitch Black" and in beloved scary television series like "Tales From the Crypt" and "Creepshow."
Despite David's talents, horror hasn't given him too many more leading roles. As Ashlee Blackwell, the author of "Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror," said best, "We've always loved horror. It's just that unfortunately, horror hasn't always loved us." Thankfully, fans craving David's horror talents won't need to wait too long. He next stars as Otis Haywood Sr. in Jordan Peele's highly anticipated third feature film, "Nope."
If there was a real-life Supreme, it'd be Angela Bassett. The timbre of Bassett's voice is a master class in witchcraft in itself. While she got her horror start in Wes Craven's "Vampire in Brooklyn," she has gone on to be an integral returning cast member in Ryan Murphy's horror anthology series, "American Horror Story." In each season of "AHS," Bassett outshines her co-stars through her committed powerhouse performances. She's earned Emmy nominations for her roles in "AHS: Coven" and "AHS: Freak Show." The longtime Murphy collaborator also directed "Chapter 6" of "AHS: Roanoke" and "Drink the Kool-Aid" in "AHS: Cult."
Of the four "AHS" characters she's portrayed so far, none hold a candle to her fierce performance as community leader and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. "AHS" fans loved her character so much that they even asked her to star in a spinoff show featuring her take on the real-life Marie Laveau. Horror has often struggled with its portrayal of Black witches. Often, horror harmfully stereotypes Black women into using their powers to sacrifice their story in favor of saving a white lead, as happened with Bonnie Bennett in "The Vampire Diaries." Or horror pushes Black witches to the sidelines as in the case of Rachel True's Rochelle in "The Craft." However, Bassett's Marie Laveau fought to keep her community safe, never sacrificed her values, and showed off some impressive magic to boot. More Marie magic times, please!
Will horror fans ever get over Toni Collette's Oscar snub(s)? Not likely. In 1999, the "Knives Out" star was overlooked for an Oscar nomination for her chilling role as Lynn Sear in "The Sixth Sense." Again, in 2018, Collette's intense psychological portrayal as Annie in Ari Aster's terrifying hit film, "Hereditary," was disregarded. Her work as the disgruntled, grieving, and unhinged mother in the film was a gut-punch to horror fans — who are still reminding the Academy that they made a huge mistake. Throughout the film's tumultuous runtime, Collette's Annie succumbs to insidious forces outside of her control, and the star contorts her face and body to seething extremes. Critics have called her performance as Annie "soul-shattering" and "flawless."
While there are several fampus scream queens on this list, none of them can wail quite like Toni Collette. Her unwavering and unmatched intensity on-screen is pure nightmare fuel.
In 1996's "Scream," the dream team of Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven took every opportunity they got to school audiences on Jamie Lee Curtis' horror legacy — and for a good reason. Jamie Lee Curtis is a staple of the horror genre and has fundamentally shaped what we now know as the final girl trope. From her breakout role as the young Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's "Halloween" to starring in slasher classics like "Prom Night" and "Terror Train," she puts beauty and brawn into her portrayal of slasher survivors. Jamie Lee Curtis shows that women in horror can be running around screaming but also have enough agency to know when it's time to attack too. Thanks in part to her return as the weary and formidable Laurie Strode in the rebooted "Halloween" franchise, David Gordon Green's Michael Myers films have found global success.
The horror legend will finish her reprisal of Laurie Strode in Green's upcoming "Halloween Ends." Meanwhile, the legendary scream queen is channeling her horror experience into filmmaking. In 2020, Jamie Lee Curtis announced that she's directing and co-writing a climate change-themed horror film for Blumhouse Productions titled "Mother Nature."
Starring in horror films from the '40s through the '90s, Vincent Price contributed a wealth of meaty roles to the genre with his signature wit, distinctive voice, and debonair charm. After his starring role in 1953's "The House of Wax," Price became known for his creepy talents. He thrived in the era of classic horror cinema with roles in "Witchfinder General," 1958's "The Fly," and "House on Haunted Hill." He worked with the legendary Roger Corman and William Castle. His last genre-adjacent role was in Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands." As one of the only actors around for the birth of horror on the big screen, it's hard to quantify just how much of a positive impact he had on future generations of horror fans and filmmakers.
However, genre icon John Waters shared some insight into the "Master of Menace." "He gave upscale a good name, and he was always handsome, dignified, charming, and a little bit sinister," he said. Reflecting on his career as a campy horror movie villain, the late Price once shared, "I don't play monsters, I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge." Even decades later, it's impossible to deny Price's charisma as an artist.
Read this next: Horror Roles That Changed Actors Forever
The post The Best Horror Actors Of All Time Ranked appeared first on /Film.
One of the more notable movies of 2022 is Mimi Cave's "Fresh," which first appears to be a light, sweet romantic comedy that takes an earnest look at the painful foibles of modern dating. In "Fresh," Daisy Edgar-Jones (from "Under the Banner of Heaven") plays Noa, a woman whose app-arranged dates are getting worse and worse. She's received far too many unsolicited nudes, and men insult her as being stuck-up when she rebuffs their clumsy sexual come-ons. On the cusp of giving up on dating altogether, Noa unepxectedly hits it off with the handsome and charming Steve (Sebastian Stan) in a grocery store. Their rapport is good, he is apologetic when he accidentally says or does something wrong, and their sexual chemistry is spot-on.
While it seems like a big step to take in the early days of a relationship, Noa agrees to go on a weekend road trip with Steve, away from humanity, just the two of them. Everything seems to be working out for the best.
Until Noa awakens on a mattress on the floor with her wrists chained. For a moment, it seems like a playful joke, but Steve makes it as clear as possible that he has no intention of letting her go. Steve explains that he is, in fact, an entrepreneur who prepares special meal delivery boxes for the ultra-wealthy. They contain the finest cuts of meat. Human meat. Human meat sliced off of still-living women that Steve has seduced. The idea is that Steve will slowly butcher Noa, keeping her alive for as long as he can in order to provide the freshest meat possible for his clients.
Hello, "Fresh."
Steve -- which he will eventually reveal is not his real name -- delivers the revelation to Noa in a slow, matter-of-fact, almost apologetic way. Steve does not become a gnashing, villainous monster, but a weirdly caring captor, explaining that Noa's scenario is indeed quite unfortunate. His warmth, of course, makes the monstrousness of his actions all the more horrifying. Shortly after leaving Noa in her cell, Steve moves into the kitchen of the remote estate where he keeps his prisoners and prepares them for shipping. Steve removes a human leg from a fridge and, with the panache of a celebrity chef on The Food Network, ably begins chopping and slicing it into vacuum-sealed plastic pouches for delivery.
The butchering of human meat is ghastly enough, but it's Sebastian Stan's casual glee that gives the scene its edge. This is not a desperate hillbilly ghoul from "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," nor is it a cool and calculated Hannibal Lecter casually slicing up brains. This is an enthused craftsperson who has trained themselves to be as good a butcher as possible, takes pleasure in their work, and has managed to make some money from it. Steve is no different from someone who sells their own handmade jewelry on Etsy, or a local vendor who charges clients hundreds of dollars for hand-crafted vegan-leather shoes. Steve is a Millennial hustle-minded self-starter who turned their hobby into a business.
The only difference is that his hobby is cannibalism.
Sebastian Stan is a handsome and charming actor, likely most popular for playing the role of Bucky Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier, opposite Captain America. Despite his dazzling eyes and flip, attractive demeanor, Stan is an expert at playing characters who invite an element of wariness. He's the perfect date ... that you don't want to be left alone with. Immediately prior to "Fresh," Stan appeared in a romantic film called "Monday," directed by Argyris Papadimitropoulos. In that film, he and a young woman (Denise Gough) try to extend a vacation fling into a real relationship back home, to largely emotionally disastrous results. Stan's character is immature and inattentive.
In "Fresh," Stan is certainly more attentive, but not in the ways you might want, and Noa learns very quickly the chilling danger of Sebastian Stan's charms.
"Fresh" eventually reveals further secrets about Steve -- like his real name, for starters -- and provide Noa with an opportunity to escape ... or to see what all the fuss is about when it comes to eating human meat. It seems Steve has struck upon a weird fact posited by many films about cannibalism: That human beings are just delicious. Provided they're cooked and prepared correctly. And say what you will about the ghoulishness of the meat's source, some of those dishes look downright delectable.
Read this next: The 15 Best '70s Horror Movies Ranked
The post The Terrifying Sebastian Stan Scene That Still Gives Us Nightmares appeared first on /Film.
I don't think it's much of a secret that I like Supermassive Games and their recent output of horror titles. After Alessio and Date reviewed Until Dawn and Man of Medan, I took up the reins and reviewed Little Hope and House of Ashes. In a move akin to going from TV to cinema, Supermassive Games have brought us a spiritual sequel to Until Dawn. Published by 2K, we now have The Quarry. How does this return to the big screen feel after three The Dark Pictures Anthology titles, with a fourth likely to drop this year?
Let me start with a few niggles before I get into the game, how I feel about it and how I feel about Supermassive Games' progression. I use an ultrawide monitor, and with how gaming has developed, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect big-budget "AAA" games to support such setups. I've been accepting of it, to an extent, with previous titles, but this felt a little too far. I've had to play the entire game through a letterbox (2560x1065) - something you'll see in the gameplay footage I've included with this review.
I get that this is through cinematic design for traditional screens; the top and bottom letterboxing disappears on menus and particular tutorials. However, I'm confident I would have found myself more immersed with more on-screen. Out of spite, I'm removing the top and bottom bars from my screenshots. That'll show them.
Another slight niggle is technical issues. There aren't many, but I've had audio lines clip into each other a few times, or a character talk over themselves for maybe or two words. Very minor in the grand scheme of things but noticeable when it happens. I'll get my gripe over movement out of the way now too. The more I play games by Supermassive, the more I'm adamant they need a jog option. Or at least a fast walk, one that works since the regular walk here is akin to a dying turtle, with the quick walk being a tired turtle.
The need for quicker movement has become more evident now that Supermassive has started to include larger areas to walk around in their titles. House of Ashes began this, and The Quarry (while not a The Dark Pictures title) has expanded upon it. It's great that these more open and exploratory areas exist, too, they can both help set or accentuate the mood, and it works fantastically. As we're likely to see more of this happening in their future titles, putting people off by sluggish tank-like movement isn't ideal, especially as games like these make multiple playthroughs nigh-essential.
This section has gotten a little positive, so let's get back into niggles. The previous three games have drilled into me that I should explore to find pictures that will reveal a possible future should you fail a quick time event - more on these later. The Quarry has decided to change this entirely by putting tarot cards inside cutscenes and small camera changes, ones that if you don't press a button quick enough when they are visible, you miss the card. It is a non-essential QTE but irritating in that it allows you to miss dialogue options with a strange old lady (acting as this game's curator) and miss out on viewing one of the potential future options. The annoying cow also whines at me when I don't have any of her tarot cards. STOP HIDING THEM IN CUTSCENES THEN, BITCH.
That out of the way, I can't help but enjoy The Quarry. The longer length of this game allows for far more buildup than you've found in the previous three titles from Supermassive Games. Character development is fleshed out, with some characters even being pretty likeable. Some are a little too stereotypical, but the added story helps. I will admit that the prologue, focusing on just two characters, had me very intrigued at the start. It goes against the whole movie-night idea that Supermassive is sticking to, but I think they could do a fantastic job with a smaller cast.
Several horror stalwarts feature as part of the cast in The Quarry. David Arquette, Lance Henriksen, and Ted Raimi are all big names in the genre and give strong performances. A strong cast of actors for all roles supports these; each brought into the game as Supermassive has proven themselves capable of repeatedly doing. There are a few issues here and there: lips can go wonky, faces can look off, and eyes never meet. Still, I'd argue that Supermassive are the closest games get to managing that film-like look. We're still stuck in the uncanny valley, but we're getting there.
Supermassive Games have put the longer runtime to good use for the primary cast and for throwing in several red herrings, but this has come with a drawback. In previous titles, I've complained that some decisions seem to have an almost, if not wholly, imperceptible impact on the future. It's hard not to think this again, with the added issue that you've no clue how far back a decision was and how it's linked. If you have a character die, you have three lives that you can use to be taken back to the event that sealed that character's fate. You don't know that this can be up to an hour earlier, and it may not even be a decision but a puzzle.
These lives are a welcome system, one that I appreciate, but one that could give you a little more information when you use it. I don't appreciate two polar-opposite choices also resulting in the same outcome, something else that happened, though it's hard to know if the result was pre-determined by a previous decision, meaning it didn't matter what I chose. Still, the branching narrative on offer is widely branching, even more so with around a dozen characters' lives and deaths being down to your decisions.
Throughout the game, you'll control eight core characters. The interesting thing comes with characters you interact with through the story and how the story links to the narrator you speak to in between chapters. So, there is that. Exactly how everything links together turn out to be very interesting. That's another thing where Supermassive Games have improved, simply telling the story they want to tell but keep you thinking. Fortunately, while twists happen here in The Quarry, none are the same as those found in Man of Medan or Little Hope.
Also, like previous titles, Supermassive leans into its strengths. The use of light is fantastic, and I have to reiterate what I've said before; Supermassive Games are arguably the best developer in the world at lighting and using it to set the atmosphere. I am surprised you don't get to use torches much, letting you use the boost brought into House of Ashes more here, with forests and a camp being perfect environments for this. I have to admit, though, what I do get to use of it, I am finding movement and control more clunky as time goes on. It's possibly also linked to my irritation with the character's sloth-like speed.
I keep bringing up the speed, but I've got little else to complain about, so I'll stop. I like how The Quarry integrates a number of the collectibles into the end, with a particular section of these collectibles called "evidence". Take that as you will; I'm not going to tell you more. How others are linked to each other to give you more detail of the story and everything around it is also a positive move.
Finally, this may be because I overlooked it, but I enjoy how Supermassive Games have removed those bloody counters that show each character's personality. Your actions determine how these characters act towards each other as the game develops. That's all we need to know. We don't need to know that Laura has suddenly gained more fondness for milk, and Travis likes Prawn Cocktail crisps more than Salt & Vinegar now.
I have a problem with writing reviews of games like this. First, it's hard because there's only so much I can talk about without spoiling the story. The fact that I've told you there isn't a bullshit twist is already a spoiler in itself. As for visuals, well, they haven't changed much. The quality is improving slowly, and I've talked about the strange eyes and lips that appear now and then. The last thing I can talk about is music, with The Quarry having a great soundtrack, one with licensed songs - something the more budget-friendly The Dark Pictures Anthology avoids.
All in all, I like The Quarry and heartily recommend it. It's a Supermassive Games game with a more comparable budget and scale to Until Dawn's but benefitting from what they have learned from games like the excellent House of Ashes. With a strong cast of characters, a strong story with more time to flesh itself out, an excellent atmosphere, and everything else you expect from the company. Even the issues don't hold this back from being great, so if you like this game style, you'll like this.
PC version reviewed—copy provided by the publisher.
The post The Quarry Review – Supermassive Returns to the Big Screen by Chris Wray appeared first on Wccftech.
It doesn’t pay to pay. This advice on ransomware payment is often given, but rarely enumerated. Now it has been. A new study finds that 80% of companies that paid a ransom were hit a second time, with 40% paying again. Seventy percent of these paid a higher amount the second time round.
Hey, folks. We have/had a good discussion going here, but something happened to nearly all of the comments. I'm not sure what the issue is. They're still in the database, but they don't appear on the site. We'll work to solve the problem.
Update: Holy cats! It's not only the comments on this article. It's the comments on every article on the site. They're all gone. I can see them in the database, but they're no longer tied to their posts. They're just here hanging in the ether. I have zero clue what happened. May be time for a database restore.
A couple of weekends ago, Kim and I enjoyed a short vacation on the Oregon Coast. She's been taking foraging classes, and she had an early morning workshop on harvesting sea vegetables one Sunday. Rather than wake in the middle of the night to drive out, we rented a small place in Tillamook and took the dog for an adventure. (The dog loves the coast.)
We let Tally lead us on a walk through town one rainy afternoon. Coming home, we cut through a trailer park. “We're in the poor part of town,” Kim said.
“Yep,” I said. “But look at that trailer house right there. That is almost exactly like the one I grew up in.” Here's the trailer I grew up in:
We stopped to look at the trailer. I pointed out the tiny windows and the sagging roof. “It's small,” Kim said, frowning.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes it is.” The trailer was a beat-up 1970-era single-wide. Nothing about it looked appealing. I could imagine the inside: shag carpet, thin wood paneling on the walls, faded linoleum, colors like Avocado and Harvest Gold on every surface.
If you've been watching Stranger Things season four, as we have, the trailer houses in that show remind me of ours too. Look at this mobile home from Stranger Things; it's very, very similar to the one my parents owned:
Everything about that image feels like my childhood to me. (Well, except for the demonic tentacles wrapped around the house and car…)
I've talked before about how my family was poor when I was young. When he was working, Dad didn't make much money — but he was often out of work. Mom bought our clothes from the discount rack. There were times we relied on the church “relief society” for food. Mom and Dad often tried to make our situation seem like an adventure (“Kerosene lamps are fun!” “A wood stove provides more heat than a furnace!” “We don't need a TV! TV rots your brain!”) but in retrospect, I know now they were doing whatever they could to make ends meet.
There was indeed a brief time when Mom and Dad had money coming in. Dad started a business in 1976 that slowly grew into a profitable venture. When he sold that business in 1980, though, the buyer went bankrupt after making only one payment. Poof! There went Easy Street. And, of course, when Mom and Did did have money, they spent it. They never ever saved or invested.
It wasn't just my mother and father either. My Dad's entire family was poor. (My mother's family was not, but we had little contact with them.)
My cousin Duane's family, who lived about ten miles from us, was poor too. They had a big old drafty house instead of a trailer, but they also struggled to get by. His mother and father, like mine, were all about self-sufficiency. They grew their own food. They hunted. They fished. They built what they could by hand.
Duane loved to tell the story of how his father once refused to buy washers at the hardware store because they were too expensive. They cost seven or eight cents, or maybe a dime. Instead, Uncle Norman went home and drilled holes through nickels to make his own washers.
My father's sister and her family were just as poor as the rest of us. They lived up in the foothills outside Estacada in another big old drafty house. They needed a big house because there were nine children in the family. When I see movies featuring poor country folk from the 1930s, their circumstances often remind me of Aunt Virginia's bunch. (Long-time readers will recall that I've shared some stories from my aunt's family here at GRS in the past: “A Six-Dollar Christmas” and “The Night That Mama Cried While Angels Sang”.)
Naturally, the poverty of these three siblings had a source: their parents. Grandma and Grandpa were poor too, although it didn't seem that way when I was a boy. To me, Grandma and Grandpa were rich. Sure, their house was small. Sure, they lived simply. Sure, they grew much of their own food (in the form of gardens and livestock). Sure, they chopped their own firewood. Sure, they rarely bought anything beyond necessities. But their home and yard were always clean and tidy. And they could both make small things — oatmeal cookies, Bobbsey Twins books — seem like lavish luxuries.
During my early childhood, our life seemed to revolve around the extended family. We spent holidays with Grandma and Grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins. Outside of church, this was the only life I knew. To me, this was how the entire world lived. I had no conception that there might be anything else.
During those rare times I was allowed to watch TV, I saw different ways of living, of course, but these seemed like fantasy. Besides, the Cunninghams on Happy Days and the Bunkers on All in the Family didn't have lives that seemed too far removed from ours — except that they lived in the city. (The Brady Bunch, on the other hand, blew my mind. Such a big house! Such nice things! They were rich, and I knew it.)
Eventually, I made friends and I started to visit my friends' homes. Those friends who lived in the country sometimes lived in the same circumstances that we did, but many did not. Many had bigger homes, nicer homes, cleaner homes. (You would not believe me if I described how dirty and cluttered our house was when I was young.) And my friends who lived in town? Well, there was no question in my mind that they were rich.
I remember going to an overnight birthday party in town when I was in fourth or fifth grade. My friend's house was huge. It was modern. He had so many books and toys. His parents had new, fancy cars. They ate in restaurants. They could afford to take the entire birthday party to pizza! Looking back, it's probable that this friend's family was only middle class, but in 1980 they seemed rich to me.
As I entered middle school and high school, the differences between our circumstances and those of my classmates became even more apparent to me. Again, not all of my peers were rich. Some were poor like us, and they tended to become my friends. But I have vivid memories of my first experiences in the homes of rich people, and of how these rich kids carried themselves.
Once during high school, for instance, I went over to a friend's house after play practice. (We were rehearsing You Can't Take It With You.)
My friend's father was a dentist — my dentist. Their house, located on the shore of the Willamette River, was enormous. It was so big that there was an actual tree growing in the center of it. It was a smallish tree, but it was still a tree. My friend and her brother each had their own computer. They each had their own television. The family had so much. I was in awe.
During high school, I had brief encounters like this with wealth and wealthy people. In each case, I felt out of place. I felt dirty. I felt like an impostor.
It was also about this time that I began to notice a difference between the rich kids and the poor kids like me. The rich kids exuded confidence. When they wanted something, they asked for it — or they took it. We poor kids were much more timid. We never took anything, and often we were afraid to ask for what we wanted. We were rule followers. My rich friends were not. They behaved as if rules were meant for other people. (Inevitably, it was my rich friends who got into trouble. Just as inevitably, their parents bailed them out.)
I awakened to the difference between rich and poor during my teenage years. And I awakened to the knowledge that my family was poor. I began to think about my future. I never explicitly thought, “I want to be rich” or, “I don't want to be poor.” Instead, I thought, “I don't want to live in a trailer house when I grow up.” It seemed to me that the best possible escape route was college.
Fortunately, I was smart. I didn't particularly apply myself to my studies, but I didn't need to. I coasted through high school with a 3.29 GPA with zero effort. I never had homework (I finished it in class or during lunch) and I never studied for exams. I did phenomenally well on standardized tests. I could write well. I participated in a wide range of activities. In time, I was accepted to every college I applied to (although, admittedly, I didn't cast a wide net). And one school, Willamette University, offered me a full-ride scholarship based on my test scores and extra-curricular activities.
College was a shock. I was discomforted by my rich friends in high school, but that was nothing compared to the wealthy kids I met in the dorms. These kids had nice clothes, nice cars, and (seemingly) no cares. Again, they had so much confidence. They acted as if the world was made for them. How did they do it?
One of my friends, for instance, had a new BMW that his parents had bought him for high school graduation. His father was a doctor. My friend (and his sister, who also attended Willamette) weren't especially smart. In fact, they were kind of dumb. I tutored both of them at different times, and was always amazed by how little basic knowledge they possessed, and by how poor their study skills were. They didn't get into college on merit. They got into college because their father with deep pockets was an alumnus.
My friend and his sister sailed through college with poor grades and a rich social life. They were active in their Greek organizations. Their parents gave them money, which they promptly wasted on drugs and alcohol. To them, college wasn't about studying. College was about making connections.
I know it sounds as if I have negative feelings toward these two friends, but I don't. I loved them both. I have only fond memories of them. But there's no question that they were rich kids who acted like rich kids.
Once during my freshman year, I visited my friend's house. It was like a palace to me, and I said so. My friend was offended. To him, his house was a house. He took it for granted. But the place was enormous. It was opulent. I remember standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling wall of windows that looked out over the valley below us and watching the sun rise. I'd never experienced anything like that before.
At the end of my freshman year, I began dating a woman from Portland. Amy was terrific, and so was the rest of her family. But again, their life was outside my realm of experience. They owned a big old home in a nice part of town. Her father was a real-estate agent who owned several rental properties, including the building where he had his office. Amy's mother (who couldn't remember my name, so she called me “The Initials”) was a wonderful woman who was interested in the arts and philanthropic organizations. “Your family is rich,” I told my girlfriend once. She was offended, but it was true.
I had many experiences like this during college. In time, I became numb to them. I would visit a friend's childhood home, and it would look nothing like what I had grown up with. Always always always, I felt out of place. I didn't know how to behave. I didn't know what to do or think or say when in the presence of such wealth. But all of my friends seemed to fit in fine. They'd grown up in this world, and they knew its unwritten rules.
This is no small thing.
I've been fortunate in life. When we were married, Kris and I started with modest means. We lived in an apartment. Before long, we bought a standard ranch house near the high school where she taught physics and chemistry. We weren't rich but we were certainly middle class. In fact, by the time my father died in 1995, Kris and I had a home and lifestyle that surpassed what Mom and Dad had ever been able to achieve.
Dad's box factory did eventually allow him to escape poverty, but he didn't live long enough to truly enjoy it. And Mom's health declined before she could enjoy the change in financial fortunes either. Today, the box factory pays for her memory care and medical bills.
As an adult, my experience has been markedly different than when I was a kid. I've gradually moved from poverty to middle class to upper middle class. In the physical world, I am now rich. But inside? In my internal world? I'm still that poor kid living in a trailer house. Foolish though it may seem, I am trapped by those thoughts and those emotions. They guide my decisions (often at an unseen level).
I still lack confidence. I still feel like I don't deserve anything that I have. I still expect it all to vanish, to go away. I find it difficult to defer gratification. Intellectually, I understand that if I want to purchase something, I can do so any time I need to. I can wait. Emotionally, however, I feel like I have to buy things now because the opportunity may never arise again. It's irrational, I know, but that's how it is.
Last week, I had a conversation with a new friend here in Corvallis. I was talking about how frequently Kim and I have moved during our ten years together, and about how we're ready to stay in one place. “In retrospect,” I said, “we probably should never have sold our condo in Portland. It was a beautiful place. It was the best unit in the building: top floor, on the corner, with a view that looked over the river toward downtown. It was, by far, the nicest place that I have ever lived.”
“So why did you move?” my new friend asked.
“There were a couple of reasons,” I said. “We acquired pets, for one. We had two cats and a puppy, and they didn't do well on the top floor of an apartment building. Plus, the crime and traffic and homelessness in our neighborhood had become overwhelming. But if I'm being honest, I think the main reason I sold the place was because I felt like I didn't deserve it.”
“What?” my friend said, shocked. “Didn't deserve it?”
“I'm serious,” I said. “I've never really thought about this before, but it's true. During the four years we lived there, it never felt real. It felt like a dream. It felt like the place was too good for me. I felt like I didn't deserve it. I felt like an impostor.”
She and I then had a long discussion about growing up poor (because my new friend grew up poor too) and how poverty can mess with your mind, can lead you to conflate wealth with self-worth.
On a whim, I just looked up our old condo unit on Zillow. It just sold again two months ago! I bought it for $342,000 in 2013. It sold for $737,000 two months ago today. I think you can get a sense of just how posh the apartment was.
All of this rambling was inspired by a post I saw yesterday on the /r/fatFIRE forum on Reddit.
For those unfamiliar, /r/fatFIRE is a judgment-free place for rich people to talk about rich people problems. These are folks worth $5 million or $10 million or $100 million. Generally speaking, I do not begrudge these people their wealth. (I've never been one to envy the wealthy, actually. I'm not an anti-billionaire, “eat the rich” kind of guy.) That said, this question triggered some deep-seated issues inside me:
Our child is going a private four year east coast college. We are FAT but trying not to spoil him. All of our trusts are confidential and completely discretionary. He went to a private high school but does have a summer job. I want him to enjoy school and studying. What is a reasonable allowance per month for him? 529 will cover most of her other costs (housing, travel, books, etc). I don’t want him to be the spoiled trust fund kid that I hated in college.
Besides being unclear on this child's gender (him? her? why does the poster use both?), I was floored by this question. I'm not so much floored by the idea that a kid's parents might pay for their entire education — I've seen that plenty — as I am by the entirety of what's going on here: private high school, trust funds, a college allowance.
An allowance in college? Are you kidding me?
I'm serious: Even after a day to think about this, I still can't get over the concept. Do you know how much money my parents directly contributed to my college experience? Zero dollars. And I knew that's how it was going to be, which is why I pursued scholarships and grants and why I worked several jobs concurrently to have spending money. But it's not just that this Reddit question is far removed from my own life; it's also that I think it's a terrible, terrible idea. (My own experience has shown me just how spoiled kids like this can get. The Millionaire Next Door, though, backs this up with data.)
But what if I'm simply being jealous? What if I'm not flabbergasted; what if I'm actually envious? Does this situation get me riled up because I wish that I'd had the same advantages? And what if I had enjoyed the same advantages? What would I be like then? Would I have turned out spoiled too? Is the confidence I see in wealthy people produced by being spoiled? I don't know.
My mental health, which was woeful for several years there, has improved considerably during the past twelve months. (There are a variety of reasons for this.) All the same, I still suffer from some of the same core problems that have plagued me my entire life: lack of confidence, poor self-esteem, rotten impulse control. I look at my peers and they all seem to have their shit together. They're poised. They have direction. They act with purpose. Not me!
I can't say that growing up poor is the sole source of my hang-ups. Part of the problem is simply my genetic makeup, I'm sure. Part of the problem comes from the fact that my parents, who did the very best they could, weren't able to impart certain fundamental skills. Part of the problem stems from being picked on all the time during grade school.
But you know what? The older I get, the more I believe that many of my faulty mental models exist because I grew up poor.
What do you think? What's your experience? Did you grow up poor? Middle class? Rich? How do you think your family's financial circumstances during childhood affected who you are today? Are you richer or poorer than your parents? To you, do there seem to be differences between the choices and actions of the wealthy and the poor?
