Ronald.phillips

"Yellowjackets" and "Ted Lasso" have one crucial thing in common, if you can believe it: They bring on the feelings that viewers are longing to feel. For "Ted Lasso," it's joy and hope, for "Yellowjackets," it's darkness and mysterious dread. Co-creator Ashley Lyle revealed she is convinced that fans were interested in one because of the other, but not in the way you might think. 

"I think it's almost impossible to really parse why an audience is responding to something, but I do think that there might be something to the fact that it's almost like an anti-'Ted Lasso' effect," she explained in an interview with Indiewire. "For a while during the pandemic, everyone just wanted to watch something nice, myself included. I was just bingeing 'The Great British Baking Show' because I just wanted something pleasant in my life."

She added:

"There was something about coming toward the end of the lockdown stage of the quarantine and everybody hitting an exhaustion point — maybe people wanted an outlet for their discomfort with the world around them or for their anger or their feelings of dread. Maybe our show captures that, but at the same time, we were very, very careful. We always knew we wanted to make a show that was really dark, but we never wanted it to be bleak or grim. We always wanted it to be really fun at the same time. I personally suspect something about that combination of darkness and humor struck a chord in just how maybe sardonic people were feeling."

During the series' initial season 1 run, episodes averaged more than 5 million viewers across all platforms, and saw heavy support from the streaming audiences. Streaming numbers tend to represent a younger demographic, so it stands to reason longevity of viewership can be predicted from the impressive "Yellowjackets" streaming stats. The show went on to become Showtime's most-watched freshman series since the 2016 debut of "Billions."

Yellowjackets, Ted Lasso, And Original Programming

Whether you're in for some saccharine "Ted Lasso"-style sweetness or the biting realities of "Yellowjackets," producing original content that isn't tied to a previous intellectual property has been difficult for filmmakers and artists over the last few years. The "Yellowjackets" team went through the same struggles with their project.

"We knew we had an uphill battle ahead of us just by pitching an original idea," Lyle told Indiewire. "Things have changed a little bit in the past five years, but at the time, so many shows that were being bought were based on IP, whether it was a foreign format or a book or a movie."

She also noted that projects spotlighting teen girls can also be met with their fair-share of roadblocks. "We knew going in that probably the most problematic part of the pitch would be that it had a really strong focus on teenage girls," she added, continuing:

"That in the past has been, I think, very limiting in terms of where you can go with a pitch — in terms of what networks might be interested — and we just ignored it. We did try to explain this wasn't a YA show despite half of the cast being teenage women. We just had to take a leap of faith because it was just so endemic to the pitch itself that there was no getting around it."

However, it's clear that well-developed, thoughtful original ideas are still making their way through the cracks, and between "Yellowjackets" and "Ted Lasso," we have a ton of incredible examples.

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

The post Yellowjackets Creators Suspect an 'Anti-Ted Lasso Effect' Contributed Towards the Show's Success appeared first on /Film.

The Steam Deck from Valve is an engineering marvel that makes the Nintendo Switch look like a child's toy. Chances are you already own a ton of games that’ll work on it, including demanding AAA titles. It’ll even run Windows if you're particularly fond of punishment.

Warning: major spoilers ahead for episode 3 of "Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Episode 2 of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" ended with Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) arriving at the gut-wrenching realization that Anakin was alive and that he had completely turned to the dark side. This epiphany weighs heavy on him throughout episode 3, as we see Obi-Wan stumble through his complex emotions while making sure that Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) gets home safe to Alderaan.

This particular installment of the show also granted us a highly-anticipated confrontation between the Jedi Master and his former padawan, along with the sheer terror that Vader's mere presence manages to evoke across the galaxy. This is peak "Star Wars," right from the glint of red and blue lightsabers clashing against a desert backdrop to the cold, mechanical interiors of the Inquisitorius fortress that are terrifying to behold.

While episode 3 does not lean too much on cameos or Easter eggs, there are a few references and details that are integral to how the plot might unfold in future episodes.

The Return Of James Earl Jones

While the term "iconic" is often overused in popular culture, this is exactly how one would describe Darth Vader, who emerges more than an anti-hero or villain in the stereotypical sense of the term. Vader's telltale breathing is enough to induce chills during key moments in the canon, such as his sudden arrival during the final boss fight in "Jedi: Fallen Order," in which the dude does not even have a health bar, or his particularly brutal entrance in "Rogue One."

However, it is Vader's voice that significantly adds to his iconic status, as there is something sinister about his cadence, especially when he threatens someone in a quintessentially Vader way. James Earl Jones, who originally voiced Vader in Episodes IV, V, VI, and IX, as well as "Rebels" and "Rogue One," has returned to grant his voice to the Sith Lord in "Obi-Wan Kenobi." The results are nothing short of chilling — his threats to Reva (Moses Ingram) are ominous, and his conversation with Obi-Wan is extremely hard-hitting.

This Alien Driver Seems Freck-Ing Untrustworthy

When Obi-Wan and Leia arrive on the mining planet of Mapuzo, they travel to the rendezvous point provided by Haja Estree (Kumail Nanjiani), but no one shows up. An alien driver happens to pass by, and Leia decides that it is better to hitch a ride instead of aimlessly roaming on the strange planet. This alien driver, named Freck, is played by none other than Zach Braff, and it is easy to miss the surprise cameo by the "Scrubs" star, as he is unrecognizable as Freck. 

While Freck appears helpful at first, there is something sus about him from the get-go, as he is too comfortable with the Empire stripping away resources from planets. He proceeds to promptly rat out Obi-Wan and Leia to the stormtroopers, but the two manage to get away with the aid of Tala Durith (Indira Varma).

The Massive Quinlan Vos Namedrop

While this can be deemed as an Easter egg, "Obi-Wan Kenobi" might be setting up something significantly bigger with the Quinlan Vos namedrop in the episode. When Obi-Wan, Tala, and Leia hide inside a safe house that is part of a network called The Path, Obi-Wan sees the words of a certain Jedi etched on the wall. Tala reveals that Quinlan helps out with the smuggling of younglings, as the Empire hunts down anyone who is Force-sensitive, which includes children. However, what's the big deal about Quinlan?

Quinlan is a Jedi Master who first appeared in a "Star Wars" comics published during the prequel era, and his proper arc was introduced in "Star Wars" #19. Quinlan is easily a fan favorite, emerging as a badass character with an edgy personality, and perhaps the few ones who aided the Republic despite being so close to tipping over to the dark side. Quinlan also possessed psychometry and is seen teaming up with Obi-Wan in "The Clone Wars."

The relationship between Obi-Wan and Quinlan is seminal according to the "Star Wars" expanded universe, as the "Dark Disciple" arc sees the two interact closely, in which the former helps out the latter in massive ways. Could Quinlan make an appearance in upcoming episodes of the show, and present himself as a possible ally? The thematic mirrorings are hard to ignore, as Quinlan turned to the dark side and was able to come back to the light — it is possible that Obi-Wan feels that the same might be possible for Anakin.

Fortress Vader Looms Like Sauron's Eye

We see a glimpse of Vader's fortress on the volcanic planet of Mustafar, and the interior of his throne room, wherein we see Vader speaking to Reva's hologram. The castle acts as a Sith stronghold and Vader's personal abode, and was conceptualized in "Rogue One." Based on the beautiful concept art by Ralph McQuarrie, Fortress Vader contains a dark side locus, and the structure was eventually in ruins after Vader's death.

Interestingly, the Inquisitorius Fortress on the moon on Nur mirrors Vader's, and a pretty cool detail inside the former is the collection of lightsabers in the background, which were most likely taken from the Jedi who were hunted by the group for years. To see lightsabers as mere exhibition souvenirs inside an Imperial stronghold is a chilling thought.

The Jedi Order Logo Can Be A Dangerous Thing

The Jedi Order logo can be a thing of hope, for sure, especially for Jedi in hiding — we see Cal Kestis look at this logo before engaging in a fight with the Inquisitors on Bracca, kickstarting his journey in "Fallen Order." However, etching this symbol during a time in which Imperial stamps dominate any planet is a foolish endeavor, which is exactly what happens in episode 3, as Reva uses the symbol to track a young Leia, with the intention of luring out Obi-Wan once again.

Reva's anger on seeing the logo could hint at her past as a Jedi youngling who witnessed Order 66, as it symbolizes the abandonment she experienced as a child, and the resentment she harbors towards Jedi like Obi-Wan. However, this is pure speculation at the moment, as her motivations remain unconfirmed at the moment.

The episode also contains glimpses of probe droids, an R5 astromech droid, and a reference to Project Harvester, which turned Force-sensitive children to the dark side. Obi-Wan also hallucinates a young Anakin in a hooded robe on Mapuzo, symbolizing how heavy the matter weighs in his mind and heart. Apart from this, the Outer-Rim planet of Jabiim is mentioned, along with the typical stormtrooper gags being referenced, especially in terms of them being hit (um, killed) by deflected blaster shots and standard stupidity.

 Episode 3 of "Obi-Wan Kenobi" is currently streaming on Disney+. New episodes premiere every Wednesday. 

Read this next: Horror Roles That Changed Actors Forever

The post The Best Easter Eggs & Cameos In Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 3 appeared first on /Film.

(Superhero Bits is a collection of stories, updates, and videos about anything and everything inspired by the comics of Marvel, DC, and more. For comic book movies, TV shows, merchandise, events, and whatever catches our eye, this is the place to find anything that falls through the cracks.)

In this edition of Superhero Bits:

• The "Black Adam" trailer gets a release date.

• Marvel is losing a legend.

• Disney+ Day is coming back for another go-around this year.

• "The Boys" releases an anti-drug PSA featuring Soldier Boy.

• All that and more!

Watch An Orchestra Crush The Marvel Future Revolution Soundtrack

"Marvel Future Revolution" is a popular mobile game that utilizes various heroes from the Marvel universe. It is not necessarily important that you play the game - or are even aware of it - to enjoy what we have going on here. The video sees the Beethoven Academy Orchestra absolutely crushing segments from the game's soundtrack in a live performance. You merely need a base-level appreciation for music and generally rad things to extract some joy out of this. Check it out for yourself above.

Here's Why Gotham Knights Won't Take Place In The Arkham Universe

"Gotham Knights" is finally set to arrive later this year after quite a long wait. However, those who were hoping that this will be connected to the "Batman: Arkham" games should temper expectations, as this game will be establishing its own universe. As for why that decision was made? Warner Bros. Games Montreal Creative Director Patrick Redding recently addressed that very topic on Discord (via The Direct). Here's what he had to say about it:

"We wanted to be able to interpret and adapt the characters – that's both the heroes and their rogues' gallery – in new ways that would support a new player experience and progression. We wanted to be able to write the history of these characters with an original story without being tied to a particular continuity or feature set."

So there we have it. "Gotham Knights" is set to arrive on October 25, 2022.

Heads Up: Disney+ Day Is Happening Again, Mark Your Calendars

Last year, Disney decided to celebrate the two-year anniversary of Disney+ with something called Disney+ Day. It served as a convenient excuse to announce a bunch of things. Admittedly, it did not go all that smoothly. Be that as it may, Disney+ Day is returning once again on September 8, 2022, as indicated in the above teaser. This is of note for one because we can probably expect at least a few Marvel announcements at that time, and two because it rolls right into this year's D23 Expo. That is where we can also expect a lot more Marvel-related news. Plan accordingly.

Sony Releases A Retro Trailer For Morbius, Whatever That Means

Sony is continuing to market "Morbius" now that the movie is available on digital, with the Blu-ray still set to hit shelves in June. Curiously, they have now released the above trailer which is labeled as a "retro" trailer for the Marvel Comics adaptation. However, the only things that are retro about it seem to be the 80s synth music and the text cards. Other than that it's really just another TV spot for the movie with a lot of vampire shenanigans in it. My sympathies to the people at Sony's marketing department who are trying to make something out of nothing here. A thankless job, to be certain.

Soldier Boy Does A Very Bad Anti-Drug PSA For The Boys Season 3

Jensen Ackles will be one of the biggest new additions to "The Boys" season 3 as Soldier Boy. Here, we see him in character doing a little PSA warning against the dangers of drugs. Sort of. This is no Captain America, as Ackles curses up a storm, discusses doing lots of drugs himself, and berates everyone trying to record the video off-camera. It offers a mere taste of what's to come when the new season drops and it appears Ackles is going to be bringing one despicable American hero to life. He should fit right in on the show.

People Are Re-Watching Chris Hemsworth's Pixelated Butt In The Love And Thunder Trailer

As noted by the folks at Comicbook.com, YouTube has begun revealing what moments in videos are the "most replayed." Well, it turns out that a whole lot of people are looking at a particular moment in the recent "Thor: Love and Thunder" trailer that sees Chris Hemsworth's God of Thunder de-robed by Zeus. Even though it's pixelated, audiences are clearly eager to see Thor naked as the day he was born on screen. Whether or not it will actually be censored out when the movie hits theaters in July remains to be seen though.

The Black Adam Trailer Drops On June 8, The Rock Reveals

There are few movies that can say they've weathered a 15-year road to becoming a reality, but that's exactly the case with "Black Adam." Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was first cast as the DC character back in 2007 and it has been a long journey to actually make it happen. But the movie is indeed arriving later this year, and now, as indicated by the above Instagram post, we're getting our first full-length trailer in just over a week on June 8. It's likely this is going to be the same trailer that debuted at CinemaCon last month. Now, the world at large is finally going to see Johnson in action as a superhero (or anti-hero, rather). We'll be sure to bring the trailer your way as soon as it drops.

Joe Quesada Is Leaving Marvel After More Than 20 Years

One of the most consequential figures in the history of Marvel Comics, Joe Quesada, is stepping away from the company after more than two decades. The one-time editor of the largest comic book publisher in the world, as well as the artist behind titles such as "Daredevil" and "Spider-Man," among many others, has revealed in the above Twitter post that he will be stepping down to focus on other projects. It does not seem that there is any love lost though as he will still be doing some work for Marvel Comics in the future. Quesada, during his tenure with the company, had a huge impact, largely being credited as the guy who saw the shift towards writing for collected trade editions, as well as introducing the more adult Max line. As for what Quesada is doing next? We'll surely learn more in the coming days/weeks, but this is the end of a major era.

Read this next: 12 Shows Like Stranger Things You Definitely Need To Stream

The post Superhero Bits: Joe Quesada Is Leaving Marvel, The Black Adam Trailer Drops Soon & More appeared first on /Film.

Over 50,000 items already vaulted

Embracer Group, the holding company that plays host to THQ Nordic, Gearbox Entertainment, and, most recently, Eidos Montreal, has announced the formation of a new games preservation archive that hopes to curate the world's largest collection of video games, consoles, computers, and related chicanery.

The Embracer Games Archive, which is housed in the company headquarters in Karlstad, Sweden, already boasts a collection of over 50,000 software and hardware items, from the oldest of video game releases to the most modern console platforms. A team of archivists, engineers, and researchers has been assigned to source, grow, and ensure the safekeeping of the archive's contents.

While there are currently no plans to open the archive as a public viewing gallery, Embracer Group plans to allow access to researchers and academics as a record of the artistic, technological, and design history of our favorite pastime. In time, Embracer may make the archive available for public perusal in the form of satellite exhibitions, but for now, it appears that the team is concentrating on the sourcing and collecting of items to further expand upon its impressive catalog.

In an increasingly digital world, any form of games preservation is becoming increasingly important, and while it's just as essential that private collectors the world over continue to gather relics from gaming's 50-year history, Embracer Group has the finance and resources to locate, purchase, curate, and maintain the condition of an artistic and innovate history often overlooked by mainstream museums.

You can read more about the Embracer Games Archive over on its official website.

The post Embracer Group announces formation of new games preservation archive appeared first on Destructoid.

NVIDIA's next-gen gaming lineup including the GeForce RTX 4090, RTX 4080, and RTX 4070 graphics cards are expected to launch in Q3 & Q4 2022, as per the latest rumor from Videocardz.

NVIDIA's Next-Gen GeForce RTX 40 Gaming Graphics Card Launch Schedule Revealed: RTX 4090 In August, RTX 4080 In September, RTX 4070 In October

Recently, it was revealed by leaker, Kopite7kimi, that NVIDIA was going to launch its GeForce RTX 4090 first followed by GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4070. Now more reports are coming in that this schedule might indeed be true. It looks like the GeForce RTX 40 series launch event may indeed be hosted around mid-July as per the previous rumors. Do note that this will just be an announcement while the actual availability for each respective graphics card is planned between Q3 and Q4 2022.

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Graphics Card - August 2022 Launch
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Graphics Card - September 2022 Launch
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Graphics Card - October 2022 Launch

The GeForce RTX 4090 will be the first to launch, followed by its siblings, the RTX 4080 and the RTX 4070. If you recall the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series launch, you will remember that the green team also announced the trio of its Ampere cards, the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070 the same day however, the launches took place a few weeks apart from each other.

NVIDIA first launched the GeForce RTX 3080 in the market followed by the RTX 3090 and the RTX 3070. The mainstream RTX 3060 cards came in months later. This time, however, NVIDIA is said to focus on its upper echelon of cards first such as the GeForce RTX 4090. We can the company using a similar launch schedule as the RTX 30 series with each launch being a few weeks apart. So while the cards could be announced as early as July 2022, the RTX 4090 won't be available till August and the GeForce RTX 4080 will slip into September while the RTX 4070 will be available on store shelves by October.

The trio of GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards is expected to utilize different Ada Lovelace GPU designs with the RTX 4090 using the top AD102 SKU, the RTX 4080 using the AD103 SKU while the RTX 4070 is expected to feature the AD104 GPU SKU. During its recent earnings call, NVIDIA stated that the demand for graphics cards in the crypto segment has already dried up. The AD102 and the AD103 GPUs are expected to utilize the same PCB, PG139, but the SKU will vary slightly with the RTX 4090 using the PG139-330 SKU and the RTX 4080 using a PG139-360 SKU. The RTX 4070 on the other hand will be based on a completely different board.

We can fully expect the RTX 40 and RX 7000 to be sold as MSRP.

— Greymon55 (@greymon55) May 31, 2022

The company has been trying to reignite interest for its GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards in the gaming segment with various marketing campaigns such as the 'Restocked & Reloaded' one we saw this month. It's likely that this attempt is to ship as many RTX 30 GPU units as possible prior to moving to the new GeForce RTX 40 series lineup. Greymon55 is also expecting that the GeForce RTX 40 series will be available at MSRP and won't have inflated prices like the existing lineup.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Graphics Card Lineup (Rumored):

Graphics Card	GPU	PCB Variant	SM Units / Cores	Memory / Bus	Memory Clock / Bandwidth	TGP	Power Connectors	Launch
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Ti	AD102-350?	TBD	144 / 18432?	48 GB / 384-bit	24 Gbps / 1.15 TB/s	~600W	1x 16-pin	TBD
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090	AD102-300?	PG137/139 SKU330	126 / 16128?	24 GB / 384-bit	21 Gbps / 1.00 TB/s	~450W	1x 16-pin	August 2022
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080	AD103-300?	PG13*/139 SKU360	>84 / 10752?	16 GB / 256-bit	21 Gbps / 672 GB/s	~350W	1x 16-pin	September 2022
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070	AD104-400?	PG141-310 SKU341	>60 / 7680	12 GB / 192-bit	18 Gbps / 432 GB/s	~300W	1x 16-pin	October 2022

The post NVIDIA’s Next-Gen Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 In August, RTX 4080 In September, RTX 4070 Graphics Card In October, Alleges Rumor by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

If you were to ask people who their favorite character from "Downton Abbey" is, my guess is well over 90% of the people would choose Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, as played by Dame Maggie Smith. As is the case with most television shows, people tend to gravitate toward the most fun characters, and without a shred of doubt, the Dowager Countess is the most fun. She gets to wield her power freely and deliver all the funniest, cleverest quips the show has to offer. Any scene she is in, her character becomes the focus of the scene, even if she just says a couple of sarcastic one-liners.

Smith won three of the five years she was nominated for her performance at the Emmys, and all anyone could say to her taking home yet another award was, "Well, obviously." Even as the show started losing its footing in the later years, you could always rely on Smith to bring the juice. After all, she has been a successful working actor since the 1950s. We have become so accustomed to her in her later years we sometimes forget she won two Academy Awards, five BAFTAs, and a Tony Award all before the turn of the 21st century (not to mention a litany of nominations).

By any metric, she has had a wonderful career as an actor, but she was not someone you would consider a household name. She was a well-respected character actor. The part of the Dowager Countess, on the page, is a character part, yet for her, it turned her into a complete star. This came as quite a surprise for Smith herself.

The Familiarity Of Television

Prior to "Downton Abbey," Maggie Smith had not really done much television. She would take on a miniseries here or there or have a recording of a play air on the tube, but the small screen was not her domain. She thrived on film and on stage. Television, particularly of the soapy variety that is "Downton Abbey," allows the audience a different relationship with the performers. In an interview with "Fresh Air," Smith explained how fame has completely taken over her life:

"I find it very difficult to do anything on my own now because people recognize me. This has never happened to me before because I haven't really done television before. But I suppose if you're in people's rooms all the time — I don't know. I was thinking that the other night, with people like [Leonardo] DiCaprio and even — the big stars and Cate Blanchetts, and you just think, how do they exist? It's so difficult, and I think now it's very intrusive because of these cellphones, you know, with cameras."

When you have a weekly appointment with a program a couple months out of the year, you peer into the lives of these people on a consistent basis, almost making you think you know them. The actor and character form such a strong bond with each other that the two can't be separated. So if you see Smith on the street, you might think she's your houseguest or friend, which she obviously is not. Smith is currently 87 years old, and spending so many decades being able to just walk down the street unencumbered to now having to skirt the public must be a nuisance she quite frankly should not have to deal with. Don't bother famous people on the street. They're people too.

Why Did Harry Potter Not Do The Same Thing?

Strangely, Maggie Smith credits "Downton Abbey" with her overwhelming fame. Thinking of her career, I would have instantly thought the "Harry Potter" film series would be the ones that would have stopped her ability to live her life in peace and quiet. "Downton Abbey" is a big deal, but it does not hold a candle to the popularity of the wizard franchise. Those movies will never stop printing money, no matter how disinterested people are in the "Fantastic Beasts" spinoffs. The core eight Hogwarts pictures continue to be beloved by millions upon millions.

So how did they not create life-altering fame for Smith? I think it has to do with the audience. The key demographic for the "Harry Potter" films is children, and the people they obsessed over in the films were its trio of young stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. All the British acting royalty in the films that played professors, parents, shopkeepers, or whomever else could let the kids take the spotlight and recede into the background. Smith's Professor McGonagall is a major character across the series, but kids saw her as McGonagall, not Maggie Smith. If she wasn't adorned in witch robes, would they even recognize her?

When she signed onto the "Harry Potter" series, I bet she thought that would be the thing to turn her life upside down. In reality, it was an ITV and PBS show that did it.

Read this next: The 15 Best Anthology TV Series Ranked

The post Maggie Smith's Downton Abbey Fame Came At A Hefty Cost appeared first on /Film.

Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator, the president of Beyond Plastics, and a visiting professor at Bennington College, and Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and the founder of the Last Beach Cleanup, write in a piece: Americans support recycling. We do too. But although some materials can be effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content, plastics cannot. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. The United States in 2021 had a dismal recycling rate of about 5 percent for post-consumer plastic waste, down from a high of 9.5 percent in 2014, when the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled -- even though much of it wasn't. Recycling in general can be an effective way to reclaim natural material resources. The U.S.'s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, proves this point. The problem with recycling plastic lies not with the concept or process but with the material itself. The first problem is that there are thousands of different plastics, each with its own composition and characteristics. They all include different chemical additives and colorants that cannot be recycled together, making it impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastics into separate types for processing. For example, polyethylene terephthalate (PET#1) bottles cannot be recycled with PET#1 clamshells, which are a different PET#1 material, and green PET#1 bottles cannot be recycled with clear PET#1 bottles (which is why South Korea has outlawed colored PET#1 bottles.) High-density polyethylene (HDPE#2), polyvinyl chloride (PVC#3), low-density polyethylene (LDPE#4), polypropylene (PP#5), and polystyrene (PS#6) all must be separated for recycling. Just one fast-food meal can involve many different types of single-use plastic, including PET#1, HDPE#2, LDPE#4, PP#5, and PS#6 cups, lids, clamshells, trays, bags, and cutlery, which cannot be recycled together. This is one of several reasons why plastic fast-food service items cannot be legitimately claimed as recyclable in the U.S. Another problem is that the reprocessing of plastic waste -- when possible at all -- is wasteful. Plastic is flammable, and the risk of fires at plastic-recycling facilities affects neighboring communities -- many of which are located in low-income communities or communities of color. Unlike metal and glass, plastics are not inert. Plastic products can include toxic additives and absorb chemicals, and are generally collected in curbside bins filled with possibly dangerous materials such as plastic pesticide containers. According to a report published by the Canadian government, toxicity risks in recycled plastic prohibit "the vast majority of plastic products and packaging produced" from being recycled into food-grade packaging.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Brat Pack are a fascinating cultural object. Sure, the idea of having young, hot movie stars is nothing new, but the idea that they all operated basically within the same circle, constantly working with each other over and over again, is rather unusual. The 1980s saw a massive rise in movies targeted to teenagers, and the Brat Pack were the people they cut out of magazines and plastered all over their bedroom walls. Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, and more spoke to a whole generation of angsty teens. And perhaps the true poster boy for the Brat Pack was Emilio Estevez.

The main reason for his status was he appeared in two core texts of the Brat Pack: John Hughes' "The Breakfast Club" and Joel Schumacher's "St. Elmo's Fire," both released in 1985. Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson appeared in both films as well, but they were true character actors, playing quite different roles in the two pictures. Estevez was much more of the classical, handsome leading man who had more depth than the character was usually afforded.

"The Breakfast Club" has obviously had a massive cultural tail, and it remains one of the seminal teen movies of all time. As someone not particularly taken with the more youth-oriented cinema of the 1980s, I cannot deny that the film contains some riveting drama and digs at some human truths. "St. Elmo's Fire," on the other hand, does not have close to the same reputation as its '85 counterpart, despite being such an important cultural piece at the time. As for why that is the case, all you need to do is ask Estevez to understand why one fares so much better than the other.

It's All About Context

The key difference between the characters in "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire" are their ages. "The Breakfast Club" is obviously about a group of high school teenagers, whereas "St. Elmo's Fire" follows a bunch of college graduates. Both films traffic in extreme emotions in how they feel about the future, sex, and just about everything else. In an interview with The Guardian, Emilio Estevez looked back at the two Brat Pack staples and said of Joel Schumacher's film, "It's so overdramatic," and, "It's not a great film." He concedes that "The Breakfast Club" is overdramatic as well, but the context as to why the characters are heightened makes all the difference to him. He continued to The Guardian:

"I think the [school] setting allowed for us to give those kinds of performances, and John [Hughes, 'The Breakfast Club''s director] allowed the time for us to get under the skin of those characters, and as a result it's a superior film."

When you are a teenager, everything that happens to you becomes the most important thing that has ever happened. You do not have enough life experience yet to properly contextualize the things you experience in life. In "St. Elmo's Fire," they are still young, but they are transitioning into proper adulthood. Having the characters pitched at the same level makes them seem unreasonable or obnoxious rather than authentic. A crazy flourish like Estevez's Andrew releasing so much pent-up energy while high, resulting in a glass window spontaneously breaking, would only feel earned in "The Breakfast Club."

Also, Kirby Is A Creep

The more problematic elements of the films are also more understandable when they are done by adolescents. Judd Nelson's John Bender treats Molly Ringwald's Claire pretty terribly in "The Breakfast Club," including sticking his face between her legs without her consent, but by the end, she kind of falls for him. However, we are never meant to find the things he does to her charming or good. It is their further understanding of one another that brings them together, despite the abhorrent behavior. Of course, that presents other questions you have to wrangle, but this is why it is important they are teenagers. Teens are messy.

In the case of Emilio Estevez's Kirby in "St. Elmo's Fire," we are meant to find him stalking and forcibly kissing Andie MacDowell's Dale to be as alluring as the character herself. This trope of the guy who obsesses over and stalks a woman to prove his love for her runs rampant in the 1980s, and we still see it plenty today. They want us to believe these women love the attention instead of the truth, which is they couldn't be more scared and creeped out by it. Kirby falls right in line with this harmful trope that warped so many people about how to treat the people you are attracted to. Estevez even says in that interview about his "St. Elmo's Fire" role:

"If they were to remake that movie now they would never include that character."

There was talk about a TV remake of "St. Elmo's Fire" a few years back that never came to fruition, so we can't test Estevez's hypothesis. I would hope it would have been proven true. If not, Kirby better had been a radically changed character.

Read this next: Horror Roles That Changed Actors Forever

The post Why Emilio Estevez Thinks The Breakfast Club Turned Out Better Than St. Elmo's Fire appeared first on /Film.

Of the movie monsters that ended up spawning their own film series, I think it's pretty interesting how the Predator seems to be stuck in this kind of limbo where it fluctuates between whether it wants to recapture the spirit of the original film ("Predators") or go in a completely different direction ("The Predator"). "Predator" saw Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch, the leader of a paramilitary group dispatched to rescue hostages from a group of guerilla fighters in Central America. While the team completes the mission, a trail of flayed corpses indicate there's another player in the game that's waiting to hunt them in the jungle one by one. What follows is not only one of the greatest monster thrillers of the '80s, but Schwarzenegger at his most quotable.

When you think of all the movies Schwarzenegger has been a part of, it's pretty wild that he's never returned to "Predator." Usually a legacy sequel like "Predators" or "The Predator" would see an opportunity to bring him in, at least for a cameo role, but it seems like the "Total Recall" actor had no interest in returning. Even the "Terminator" series at its lowest ("Terminator: Genisys") kept finding ways to bring him back. But it doesn't look like Dutch is going to get a rematch anytime soon, given Schwarzenegger's thoughts on the "Predator" sequels as a whole.

Schwarzenegger Didn't Stick Around

According to The Hollywood Reporter, while participating in a 2015 Q&A session after a "Terminator Genisys" preview screening, Arnold Schwarzenegger made it clear he wasn't a fan of the series' trajectory, and it's the higher-ups who are largely to blame:

"The sad story is that sometimes studios do a great job with creating sequels, and sometimes they really screw it up bad, and it all has to do with greed. You know, they sometimes want to do it really cheap and make as much money as possible, so they don't hire the right cast or not the right director. ... It's stupid moves to make."

It seems like Schwarzenegger is vaguely referring to a deal that fell through in getting him in "Predator 2," which starred Danny Glover instead. There initially were plans to include Schwarzenegger in some capacity, but producer John Davis indicated in an interview with Collider that the "Kindergarten Cop" star ultimately let his own greed get the best of him:

"The deal broke down over $250,000, which is a shame."

Within the same 2015 Q&A, Schwarzenegger also said that "So far, no 'Predator,' no matter which one they did after the first one has come out, has been satisfactory to the audience." Although the sequels, and even the first "Alien vs. Predator" to an extent, has their fans, he's not entirely wrong. I don't think this solely has to do with his absence, but 20th Century not quite knowing what to do with the titular hunter. While the Predator wasn't a huge hit with his last outing, it appears that "10 Cloverfield Lane" director Dan Trachtenberg appears to be bringing the space warrior back to its roots with the upcoming "Prey" this summer. 

"Prey" will be available to stream on Hulu on August 5, 2022.

Read this next: The 20 Best '80s Horror Movies Ranked

The post Why Arnold Schwarzenegger Doesn't Care For The Predator Sequels appeared first on /Film.

Hello Games has released a brand new update for No Man’s Sky. According to the release notes, the Leviathan Update 3.91 packs a number of fixes for bugs that plagued the game. For instance, this latest patch resolves an issue that could cause the player to load inside their ship in the Space Station. It … Continue reading No Man’s Sky Leviathan Update 3.91 is out and here are its full patch notes →

The post No Man’s Sky Leviathan Update 3.91 is out and here are its full patch notes appeared first on DSOGaming.

Get ready to join up with the Independent People of Skye to capture the newest BattleMech in a 5-mission questline.
Genre: Action, Simulation

Also, while you’re at it, take a moment to read our article about the captivating games set in the BattleTech universe.

Blaxploitation is a subgenre of films that were largely made by Black casts and crews and often dealt with racial themes. Because of their status as "exploitation" flicks, many blaxploitation films contain lurid subject matter, including sex, violence, rape, and drugs, and are often lumped in with the wider grindhouse genre. However, the blaxploitation movement is more nuanced than its schlockier contemporaries and ran the gamut across many other genres, including comedy, crime, drama, and horror. Another reason why the blaxploitation genre should be given more credit than the other grindhouse films from that era is that many of the films explored relevant social issues of the day, something that typical blood-and-guts films of the day didn't usually do.

The heyday of blaxploitation films was the early-to-mid-1970s, although blaxploitation films continue to be made today and have been a source of inspiration for many of our generation's top filmmakers. While most blaxploitation films were made on tiny budgets, several of them were bona fide box office hits that did much to promote many Black actors and filmmakers among mainstream audiences. Today, blaxploitation is considered a major part of the history of Black cinema.

When the blaxploitation genre first exploded in the early '70s, there was a flurry of films that were released after the initial boom, making it difficult for someone interested in exploring the movement to know where to start. Luckily, we've created a list that outlines the essential blaxploitation films.

Cleopatra Jones (1973)

"Cleopatra Jones" follows Cleopatra "Cleo" Jones (Tamara Dobson), who poses as an international model by day while working as an agent for the United States government by night. Her most recent mission was destroying a poppy field in Turkey that was used as part of a drug empire headed by a crime boss named Mommy (Shelley Winters). Bothered that her occupation of ruining innocent peoples' lives has been handicapped, Mommy vows revenge on Cleo, who's been tearing apart Mommy's drug enterprise in Los Angeles. Will Mommy's all-male crew of cronies be a match for Cleo's martial arts skills and machine gun-equipped Corvette Stingray?

"Cleopatra Jones" is notable for not only having a strong female lead but for having a strong Black female lead, which was extremely rare in mainstream cinema at the time. Also, the character of Cleo, while exuding sexuality, was not as sexualized as other Black female characters, making the film all the more groundbreaking. While not a huge box office smash, "Cleopatra Jones" was popular enough to warrant a sequel, 1975's "Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold."

Blacula (1972)

Leave it to the blaxploitation genre to combine horror and romance with some biting social commentary on race. "Blacula" tells the story of an African prince (William Marshall) who, after asking Count Dracula (Charles Macaulay) for help in ending the slave trade in 1780, is bitten and turned into a vampire himself. Dracula then dubs him "Blacula" and imprisons him in a casket under his castle in Transylvania. However, the prince is pretty bothered by having his name forcibly changed and being prevented from leaving his host's pad for over a century, so he immediately starts chomping on the necks of modern-day Angelenos when he's awakened in 1972 Los Angeles.

"Blacula" may sound like a cheap gimmick, but the filmmakers' decision to give the title character a background that relates to slavery makes it stand out from other low-budget horror films of the 1970s. The film also has the distinction of being the first to win the award for "Best Horror Film" at the inaugural Saturn Awards. The legacy of "Blacula" will live on thanks to a reboot of the character that's currently in the works at MGM.

Dolemite (1975)

Rudy Ray Moore stars as the eponymous Dolemite, who's a renaissance man of sorts. In addition to his life as a stand-up comic and owner of a nightclub, he's also developed a name for himself in the pimp business (pimps were a common trope in blaxploitation movies, and their influence can even be felt in "Star Wars"). However, this man of many tastes has his respectable career put on hold when he's framed for a crime he didn't commit and given a 20-year prison sentence. Luckily, Dolemite is given another chance at a free and sleazy life when one of his pimp peers convinces the governor to let him out — as long as he helps the authorities bring down the local drug empire.

"Dolemite" features plenty of the hallmarks of classic blaxploitation films and is a cult classic with a long legacy. It spawned two sequels: 1976's "The Human Tornado" and 2002's "The Dolemite Explosion" (alternately titled "The Return of Dolemite"). Also, Netflix released a film about Rudy Ray Moore and the making of "Dolemite," 2019's "Dolemite Is My Name," which features Eddie Murphy as Moore.

Truck Turner (1974)

Isaac Hayes (best known for his musical work on the blaxploitation classic "Shaft"), stars as Mack "Truck" Turner, who works in Los Angeles as a bounty hunter and has dreams of leaving his rough life behind as soon as his girlfriend gets out of jail. When Truck and his partner, Jerry Barnes (Alan Weeks), confront a pimp named Gator (Paul Harris) who owes bail, Gator is killed by the pair when he tries to shoot them. However, Gator's partner in crime, Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols), isn't too happy about her man's death and puts a hit out on Truck and Jerry.

In addition to playing the lead role, Isaac Hayes also provides the soundtrack. Although it's not as renowned as his previous work on "Shaft," Quentin Tarantino did use one of the cues in "Truck Turner" for "Kill Bill: Vol. 1." While Isaac Hayes is an absolute badass in this film, credit should also be given to Nichelle Nichols, who was known mostly for playing Uhura in the original "Star Trek" series. Her turn from stoic space cadet to evil crime boss is delightful and is worth the price of admission alone.

Black Caesar (1973)

Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) was beaten up by a police officer as a child in Harlem, which, of course, turned him into one of the biggest crime bosses in New York City by the time he became an adult. His crime dynasty goes to war with the Italian Mob and engages in all kinds of illegitimate behavior. All the while, he records his dealings in his private ledger. Things get complicated for Tommy when he gets involved with a singer named Helen (Gloria Hendry), who soon turns on him for his violent tendencies and offers to work with his rivals.

Tommy Gibbs is played by former football player and B-movie icon Fred Williamson, who would go on to appear in "From Dusk till Dawn," starring and written by blaxploitation superfan Quentin Tarantino. "Black Caesar" is also notable for featuring a score written by the Godfather of Soul himself James Brown, which has been sampled by numerous rappers, including Ice-T, Trick Daddy, Prodigy, and Nas.

Three The Hard Way (1974)

One of the few blaxploitation flicks that seems to have a budget, the filmmakers behind "Three the Hard Way" put that money to good use in the form of big action scenes, impressive stunts, and multiple shooting locations. The film follows music producer Jimmy Lait (Jim Brown) as he stumbles upon a white supremacist plot to carry out the genocide of African Americans with a toxin that's to be deployed into the water supplies of major cities. Jimmy is joined by his friends, businessman Jagger Daniels (Fred Williamson) and martial artist Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly), and together, they arm themselves with guns that apparently never need to be reloaded.

The plot of "Three the Hard Way" is ludicrous, but man, is it fun! Jim Brown as Jimmy, Fred Williamson as Jagger, and Jim Kelly as Mister Keyes are a delight to watch. Plus, the film's multiple locales (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C.) give the film a James Bond vibe.

Trouble Man (1972)

Robert Hooks plays a private detective named Mr. T (heh) who's got connections to law enforcement as well as the criminal element of South Central Los Angeles. Mr. T lives a good life, walking that fine line that separates both sides of the law, and displays his good life with his expensive car, apartment, and outfits. He's soon hired to track down a quartet of robbers in what seems like a straightforward gig. However, Mr. T is framed for the murder of a local crime boss' henchman and finds himself hunted by both the criminals and the LAPD.

While "Trouble Man" is every bit as sleazy as its blaxploitation contemporaries, it's noted for a strong performance from classically trained Robert Hooks, who brings a captivating presence to a genre populated by films that were generally led by inexperienced actors and athletes. Plus, who could forget the stellar soundtrack by R&B legend Marvin Gaye?

Coffy (1973)

Why someone whose name is Flower Child Coffin would need a nickname is beyond me, but it's not like blaxploitation flicks are renowned for their subtlety. In this one, Flower Child (called "Coffy" and played by Pam Grier) is a Los Angeles emergency room nurse whose sister is addicted to heroin. Coffy declares war on the crime and depravity that have besieged Los Angeles. She's not afraid to get her hands dirty in this war, either. Her modus operandi is to pretend to be a sex worker with a drug addiction. She seduces pimps and drug dealers, catching them in a trap that generally ends in their brutal deaths.

Blaxploitation films had no shortage of tough-as-nails female leads, and "Coffy" is among the better examples. With this film, Pam Grier established herself as a force to be reckoned with in the genre and would go on to capitalize on her impressive performance a year later in another blaxploitation classic, "Foxy Brown." Of course, trash cinema-lover Quentin Tarantino would have her play the lead in his ode to blaxploitation, 199'7s "Jackie Brown."

Super Fly (1972)

After living a life of high-paying crime, Youngblood Priest (Ron O'Neal) is looking to give up his career of selling cocaine but only after one last lucrative score, of course. As proof of his desire to become a decent, law-abiding man, Priest coerces his dealer, Fat Freddie (Charles McGregor), to help him rip off one of their rivals under the threat of pimping out Freddie's wife against her will. As expected, plenty of things go wrong on Priest's quest to join the side of the angels, especially when that one last score involves a million dollars worth of coke.

The subject matter may be typical blaxploitation sleaze, but "Super Fly" is one of the most influential flicks to come out of the genre, leading to two sequels (1973's "Super Fly T.N.T." and 1990's "The Return of Superfly") and a remake in 2018. Ron O'Neal delivers a surprisingly complex performance as Youngblood Priest, giving the film a dramatic heft not often found in other blaxploitation films. "Super Fly" is also notable for its hit soundtrack provided by Curtis Mayfield.

Foxy Brown (1974)

When her boyfriend is killed by gangsters, Foxy Brown (Pam Grier) sets out to avenge his death and connects his killers to a supposed modeling agency. The agency, however, is just a front for a drug ring that has links to politicians and police officers. Foxy works her way into the agency by presenting herself as a sex worker and even manages to free an innocent Black woman from their clutches. It's not too long before Foxy's ploy is uncovered, and the bosses of the criminal syndicate send her to a drug manufacturing plant to work for them. What they don't know is that Foxy is tougher and more clever than they thought, and she's got a heavy score to settle.

Pam Grier had already established herself as a force to be reckoned with in the previous year's "Coffy," but "Foxy Brown" cemented her reputation as the reigning queen of 1970s Black cinema. In 2016, there was some talk of rebooting "Foxy Brown" in the form of a TV series with Meagan Good in the title role, but there've been no new updates on the project.

Shaft (1971)

John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is a preternaturally cool private detective who, after casually taking out a couple of gangsters, learns that they were sent by a crime boss named Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn). Shaft catches the attention of the local police after a fight that ends with one of the gangsters being thrown out of a window. He's given 48 hours to hit the streets and collect intel on what's brewing between various rival gangs. Shaft meets with Bumpy, who wants him to rescue his daughter from mobsters, but this being a blaxploitation film, Shaft's assignment gets real violent real fast.

"Shaft" was an early blaxploitation entry, and is also one of the best. It features many elements that would go on to become hallmarks of the genre: stylish-yet-tough leads, gratuitous shootouts, gang war, racial commentary, and a killer soundtrack. Who could forget Isaac Hayes' legendary theme song? Hayes' classic tune would garner him numerous major awards, including an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a Grammy.

Ganja & Hess (1973)

Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones) is a prominent anthropologist who, along with his colleague George Meda (Bill Gunn), is studying an age-old African tribe called the Myrthians. While this may not seem like a typical setup for a blaxploitation movie, it should be noted that drinking blood was a sacred custom among the Myrthians, and it isn't long before Meda is possessed by the spirit of an ancient evil Myrthian queen and turns Hess into a vampire before killing himself. Hess then seduces Meda's widow, Ganja (Marlene Clark), gets her addicted to blood, and the two go on a lovers' killing spree.

There aren't very many horror movies in the blaxploitation genre, making "Ganja & Hess" stand out from its more crime-oriented contemporaries. However, its sanguine subject matter is artfully portrayed and features some surprisingly experimental elements. It still holds up well today with critics, and its legacy was secured even further when it was remade by Spike Lee in 2014 as "Da Sweet Blood of Jesus."

Penitentiary (1979)

"Penitentiary" follows Martel Gordone (Leon Isaac Kennedy) as he's taken in by an illegal sex worker named Linda (Hazel Spears) who's developed an interest in him. However, when Gordone gets into a fight with a couple of Linda's customers, he ends up knocked out, only to wake up with a murder charge for supposedly killing one of his attackers. Gordone is sent to prison where he takes down one of the toughest inmates in a brutal brawl, leading to him being thrown into another cell. However, upon meeting an elderly inmate (Floyd Chatman) who imparts some wisdom to him, Gordone's inspired to participate in an illegal prison boxing contest put together by a corrupt prison guard. The winner will be released on parole.

A latecomer in the blaxploitation genre, "Penitentiary" stands out for its entertaining mix of crime, prison drama, and boxing. Like many of its contemporaries, the film balances its use of exploitation cliches with plenty of biting commentary about the ways Black people are still being treated long after the progress made by the civil rights movement.

The Mack (1973)

John "Goldie" Mickens (Max Julien) has just finished serving five years in the slammer and, having failed to learn that crime doesn't pay, decides to get his life back together by becoming a pimp in Oakland. This upsets Goldie's brother, Olinga (Roger E. Mosley), who's trying to clean up his crime-plagued neighborhood. Ignoring Olinga's pleas to live a straight life, Goldie soon puts together a stable of sex workers and emerges as a luminary in the pimp business. However, Goldie's rapid rise puts him on the radar of Fatman (George Murdock), his previous employer in the heroin sector, and two racist white cops.

The subject matter of "The Mack" is typically sleazy, but there's a surprising amount of social commentary on race and crime. Legendary comedian Richard Pryor (who plays Goldie's partner, Slim) is a delight, and the film features a terrific soundtrack by Motown artist Willie Hutch. One of the tracks, "Brother's Gonna Work it Out," has been sampled by numerous rappers, including Dr. Dre, Chance the Rapper, Chief Keef, and others.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)

Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) spent his childhood as an orphan living in a brothel in Los Angeles, so right off the bat, you know that Yale probably isn't going to be in his future. By the time he's an adult, he's still at the brothel, putting on regular sex shows. However, Sweetback's — ahem — career is interrupted when his boss, Beetle (Simon Chuckster), hands him over to the police, who are looking for a suspect to bring in for the murder of a Black man — even if that suspect is innocent. After Sweetback brutally beats up two police officers for their part in assaulting a Black Panther, he ends up on the run from the law. His journey to Mexico includes plenty of run-ins with the police, hippies, and biker gangs.

"Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" is quite possibly the first-ever blaxploitation flick. Trashy yet incredibly fun and innovative for its time, the film is the product of Melvin Van Peebles' genius. Van Peebles wrote, directed, starred in, produced, edited, and wrote the score for it. While Van Peebles, unfortunately, passed away in 2021, the making of his masterpiece was immortalized in his son Mario's acclaimed 2003 biographical drama, "Baadasssss!"

Trick Baby (1972)

"Trick Baby" has a wonderfully ludicrous premise: "Blue" Howard (Mel Stewart), who is Black, and "White Folks" (Kiel Martin), who is half-Black, half-white, are two con artists who use their differing complexions as part of their criminal schemes. The two are able to take advantage of the complicated race relations of the time to pull off some successful scores, but their cons attract the attention of the mobsters they rip off as well as that of the local police.

The film was based on the eponymous novel by Iceberg Slim, a prominent Black author at the time. Despite the absurdity of "Trick Baby," its noirish tone and downbeat ending lend some dramatic heft to what could've been an otherwise forgettable exploitation flick. Because of its critique of the racial dynamics between Black and white people, "Trick Baby" has something thoughtful to say even today and is worth watching for those who want a bit of profundity served with some gritty action.

The Education Of Sonny Carson (1974)

Sonny (Thomas Hicks) is a teenager who spends three months in jail for attempting to rob a local store. While in jail, Sonny is recruited into a gang called the Lords by their leader, Willie (Roger D.A. Davis). As an adult, Sonny (Rony Clanton) has continued his gangster life with the Lords, which includes regular bouts with rival gang, the Hawks. After robbing a man, Sonny is sent back to prison, where he encounters Willie again. After numerous lessons on the brutality of prison life, Sonny begins to question his choices and whether it's worth it to continue his felonious ways.

One of the more dramatic and realistic films in the blaxploitation genre, "The Education of Sonny Carson" gives audiences an unflinching look at the tumultuous experiences many Black people experienced at the time. The film's stark depiction of race comes from its source material, the autobiography of civil rights leader Robert "Sonny" Carson (who later went by the name Mwlina Imiri Abubadika). Popular in the rap world, dialogue from the film has been sampled by such artists as Common, Ghostface Killah, and 2 Chainz.

Read this next: The 16 Best '80s Action Movies Ranked

The post The 17 Blaxploitation Films that Defined the Genre appeared first on /Film.

In 2021, workers everywhere reevaluated their professional and personal choices, leading to what became known as the Great Resignation. In 2022, a new trend that many are calling the Great Reshuffle has emerged, with 43 percent of the workforce saying they’re very likely to consider changing jobs or exiting their industry altogether in the coming year.¹

As our 2022 Work Trend Index, Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work, revealed, employees have a new “worth it” equation and are voting with their feet.² As a result, employees are onboarding and offboarding more frequently. The constant flow of tasks, starting with applying for a job and navigating the first few days of employment, leaves much room for error, thus increasing stress for HR, IT, and each new employee.

Given that 73 percent of employees want to keep their work options flexible, more than three-quarters of Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) plan to preserve the newer hybrid work options available today and accommodate the flexibility that existing and prospective employees desire.³ Unfortunately, the complexity and cost of both onboarding and offboarding employees have increased in our new hybrid reality.

The 2022 Work Trend Index surveyed more than 31,000 people in 31 countries and found that 53 percent of people are likely to consider transitioning to hybrid work in the year ahead.

Workforce feedback and statistical studies reveal two challenges specific to credentialing:

1. The rising cost and frustration of employee onboarding.
2. Increased security risks of employee offboarding.

The rising costs and frustration of employee onboarding

The typical multistep process of the new hire onboarding journey became even more convoluted during the pandemic with the rise of both hybrid and fully remote work. As a result, managing the details of recruiting, interviewing, and hiring has become increasingly challenging, leading to a sharp rise in costs.

Organizations struggle with navigating the start of the employee journey for both in-person and remote workers in the most efficient and secure way possible. For example, the chart in Figure 1 summarizes the findings of a private study Microsoft conducted in 2021 to understand who’s involved in tasks associated with identity verification for new employees. Responses from 3,000 organizations show that HR and IT split these tasks almost evenly and that across the 14 industries surveyed, onboarding accounts for an astounding 14 to 31 percent of all ID verification spending.

In fact, 69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company if they experience great onboarding.⁴

Traditionally, HR teams have relied on physical documents—such as a driver’s license, birth certificate, or passport—and in-person communications to verify a new employee’s identity and credentials, a semi-manual process that can cause frustrating onboarding delays, flagging a potential concern given more remote, in-person, and hybrid options available in a competitive labor market. The modern workforce expects a more automated experience that’s also more secure. In fact, 82 percent of study participants wish there was a better way to perform verification.

Fortunately, recent advances in technology are making it possible to digitize identity information in a way that’s portable and privacy-respecting for the user, while helping businesses streamline their verification processes. This new technology, called verifiable credentials, is based on a decentralized identity approach and allows organizations to verify an individual’s credentials, such as employment or education. For the background check process, employers can confirm a new hire’s identity information digitally and within seconds from an authoritative source. The business can then issue an employee ID as a verifiable credential, which the employee can store in their digital wallet and use to access other resources that require employment confirmation, such as benefits enrollment or equipment purchases.

Although these modernization efforts must still align with government regulations that require physical inspection of original documents, they have the potential to significantly transform the employee’s onboarding experience and their first days on the job, making it easier for them to access the resources they need to be immediately productive in their new role.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID will help streamline the process of credential attestation, reducing frustration and delays that HR, IT, and new employees currently experience. The chart in Figure 2 illustrates a transformed onboarding journey, and how HR and IT manage both pre-onboarding (blue) and onboarding (green) to ensure the process runs smoothly for the employee.

As we all know, first impressions matter. By simplifying and expediting the onboarding experience, using verifiable credentials can help create a positive first impression that helps make employees feel good about joining an organization, rather than second-guessing their decision.

Increased risks of employee offboarding

When an employee leaves an organization, their access credentials—along with their access permissions—should be wiped clean to prevent valuable company information from walking out the door with them. Using modern identity governance tools such as verifiable credentials, IT can select one box to decommission a departing employee’s access to the organization’s digital assets. If HR tools are integrated with identity systems, then any changes HR makes in their systems automatically perpetuate to other IT systems, and vice versa.

The offboarding governance process may include revoking any employer-issued verifiable credentials used to grant access to organizational programs, such as employee discounts, or employee-only resources. Verifiable credentials also give employees a new level of control over their personal information. They can revoke permissions they’ve given their former employer to access verifiable credentials that share educational history, government-issued identity numbers, and other sensitive data. And with the introduction of Microsoft Entra Verified ID, it’s now possible to allow individuals, organizations, and devices to decide what information they share with whom, and to take it back if necessary.

The benefits of using verifiable credentials

According to the 2021 Employee Experience Survey Highlights, organizations that provide digitally transformed experiences are nearly three times more likely to report higher productivity than their industry peers, and 90 percent more likely to report lower annual turnover.⁵

Using verifiable credentials creates tangible benefits for HR and IT departments and the employees they support:

• Faster, easier, and less expensive processes. HR can start replacing some paper-based or in-person identity or credential verification processes to reduce onboarding time and get new hires productive sooner. IT can easily integrate verifiable credentials into existing systems without writing any custom code. 
• Compliance with ever-changing global privacy regulations. IT can implement decentralized identity solutions based on open standards that allow HR to verify an employee’s skills, certifications, education, and career history in a privacy-respecting manner.
• A better employee experience that strengthens recruiting and retention. Today’s employees expect easy, convenient, and contactless digital experiences that protect their privacy. Verifiable credentials provide a secure way for individuals to share their personal information with their employers and revoke access when they leave.

Avanade, a leading professional services and technology provider, is using Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) verified ID to streamline credentialing processes and facilitate collaboration among employees, vendors, and clients.

Navigating the path ahead

The Great Reshuffle is the living, evolving proof that organizations need to pay closer attention to the employee experience. HR and IT business leaders must therefore respond to employee expectations for flexibility, safety, security, and support for their overall wellbeing. This response must start with a smoother onboarding process, in which verifiable credentials can significantly simplify and streamline.

Learn more about how Microsoft and verified ID can help your organization navigate the Great Reshuffle.

Read more information on the solution and open standards initiative with decentralized identities.

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

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¹2022 Work Trend Index: Annual Report, Microsoft. March 16, 2022.

²Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work, Work Trend Index 2022, Microsoft.

³The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work – Are We Ready?, Work Trend Index 2021, Microsoft. March 22, 2021.

⁴Don’t Underestimate the importance of good onboarding, SHRM. 2017.

⁵2021 Employee Experience Survey, WTW. July 20, 2021.

The post Streamlining employee onboarding: Microsoft’s response to the Great Reshuffle appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

What could the world achieve if we had trust in every digital experience and interaction?

This question has inspired us to think differently about identity and access, and today, we’re announcing our expanded vision for how we will help provide secure access for our connected world.

Microsoft Entra is our new product family that encompasses all of Microsoft’s identity and access capabilities. The Entra family includes Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), as well as two new product categories: Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) and decentralized identity. The products in the Entra family will help provide secure access to everything for everyone, by providing identity and access management, cloud infrastructure entitlement management, and identity verification.

The need for trust in a hyperconnected world 

Technology has transformed our lives in amazing ways. It’s reshaped how we interact with others, how we work, cultivate new skills, engage with brands, and take care of our health. It’s redefined how we do business by creating entirely new ways of serving existing needs while improving the experience, quality, speed, and cost management.

Behind the scenes of all this innovation, millions and millions of connections happen every second between people, machines, apps, and devices so that they can share and access data. These interactions create exciting opportunities for how we engage with technology and with each other—but they also create an ever-expanding attack surface with more and more vulnerabilities for people and data that need to be addressed.

It’s become increasingly important—and challenging—for organizations to address these risks as they advance their digital initiatives. They need to remove barriers to innovation, without the fear of being compromised. They need to instill trust, not only in their digital experiences and services, but in every digital interaction that powers them—every point of access between people, machines, microservices, and things.

Our expanded vision for identity and access

When the world was simpler, controlling digital access was relatively straightforward. It was just a matter of setting up the perimeter and letting only the right people in.

But that’s no longer sustainable. Organizations simply can’t put up gates around everything—their digital estates are growing, changing, and becoming boundaryless. It’s virtually impossible to anticipate and address the unlimited number of access scenarios that can occur across an organization and its supply chain, especially when it includes third-party systems, platforms, applications, and devices outside the organization’s control.

Identity is not just about directories, and access is not just about the network. Security challenges have become much broader, so we need broader solutions. We need to secure access for every customer, partner, and employee—and for every microservice, sensor, network, device, and database.

And doing this needs to be simple. Organizations don’t want to deal with incomplete and disjointed solutions that solve only one part of the problem, work in only a subset of environments, and require duct tape and bubble gum to work together. They need access decisions to be as granular as possible and to automatically adapt based on real-time assessment of risk. And they need this everywhere: on-premises, Azure AD, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, apps, websites, devices, and whatever comes next.

This is our expanded vision for identity and access, and we will deliver it with our new product family, Microsoft Entra.

Video description: Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Security, Compliance, Identity and Management, and Joy Chik, CVP of Identity, are unveiling Microsoft Entra, our new identity and access product family name, and are discussing the future of modern identity and access security.

Making the vision a reality: Identity as a trust fabric

To make this vision a reality, identity must evolve. Our interconnected world requires a flexible and agile model where people, organizations, apps, and even smart devices could confidently make real-time access decisions. We need to build upon and expand our capabilities to support all the scenarios that our customers are facing.

Moving forward, we’re expanding our identity and access solutions so that they can serve as a trust fabric for the entire digital ecosystem—now and long into the future.

Microsoft Entra will verify all types of identities and secure, manage, and govern their access to any resource. The new Microsoft Entra product family will:

• Protect access to any app or resource for any user.
• Secure and verify every identity across hybrid and multicloud environments.
• Discover and govern permissions in multicloud environments.
• Simplify the user experience with real-time intelligent access decisions.

This is an important step towards delivering a comprehensive set of products for identity and access needs, and we’ll continue to expand the Microsoft Entra product family.

“Identity is one of the cornerstones of our cybersecurity for the future.”

—Thomas Mueller-Lynch, Service Owner Lead for Digital Identity, Siemens

Microsoft Entra at a glance

Microsoft Azure AD, our hero identity and access management product, will be part of the Microsoft Entra family, and all its capabilities that our customers know and love, such as Conditional Access and passwordless authentication, remain unchanged. Azure AD External Identities continues to be our identity solution for customers and partners under the Microsoft Entra family.

Additionally, we are adding new solutions and announcing several product innovations as part of the Entra family.

Reduce access risk across clouds

The adoption of multicloud has led to a massive increase in identities, permissions, and resources across public cloud platforms. Most identities are over-provisioned, expanding organizations’ attack surface and increasing the risk of accidental or malicious permission misuse. Without visibility across cloud providers, or tools that provide a consistent experience, it’s become incredibly challenging for identity and security teams to manage permissions and enforce the principle of least privilege across their entire digital estate.

With the acquisition of CloudKnox Security last year, we are now the first major cloud provider to offer a CIEM solution: Microsoft Entra Permissions Management. It provides comprehensive visibility into permissions for all identities (both user and workload), actions, and resources across multicloud infrastructures. Permissions Management helps detect, right-size, and monitor unused and excessive permissions, and mitigates the risk of data breaches by enforcing the principle of least privilege in Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. Microsoft Entra Permissions Management will be a standalone offering generally available worldwide this July 2022 and will be also integrated within the Microsoft Defender for Cloud dashboard, extending Defender for Cloud’s protection with CIEM.

Additionally, with the preview of workload identity management in Microsoft Entra, customers can assign and secure identities for any app or service hosted in Azure AD by extending the reach of access control and risk detection capabilities.

Enable secure digital interactions that respect privacy

At Microsoft, we deeply value, protect, and defend privacy, and nowhere is privacy more important than your personal identity. After several years of working alongside the decentralized identity community, we’re proud to announce a new product offering: Microsoft Entra Verified ID, based on decentralized identity standards. Verified ID implements the industry standards that make portable, self-owned identity possible. It represents our commitment to an open, trustworthy, interoperable, and standards-based decentralized identity future for individuals and organizations. Instead of granting broad consent to countless apps and services and spreading identity data across numerous providers, Verified ID allows individuals and organizations to decide what information they share, when they share it, with whom they share it, and—when necessary—take it back.

The potential scenarios for decentralized identity are endless. When we can verify the credentials of an organization in less than a second, we can conduct business-to-business and business-to-customer transactions with greater efficiency and confidence. Conducting background checks becomes faster and more reliable when individuals can digitally store and share their education and certification credentials. Managing our health becomes less stressful when both doctor and patient can verify each other’s identity and trust that their interactions are private and secure. Microsoft Entra Verified ID will be generally available in early August 2022.

“We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic to take a world-leading technology like Microsoft Entra and implement Verified ID for employees in our own office environment?’ We easily identified business opportunities where it would help us work more efficiently.”

—Chris Tate, Chief Executive Officer, Condatis

Automate critical Identity Governance scenarios

Next, let’s focus on Identity Governance for employees and partners. It’s an enormous challenge for IT and security teams to provision new users and guest accounts and manage their access rights manually. This can have a negative impact on both IT and individual productivity. New employees often experience a slow ramp-up to full effectiveness while they wait for the access required for their jobs. Similar delays in granting necessary access to guest users undermine a smoothly functioning supply chain. Then, without formal or automated processes for reprovisioning or deactivating people’s accounts, their access rights may remain in place when they change roles or exit the organization.

Identity Governance addresses this with identity lifecycle management, which simplifies the processes for onboarding and offboarding users. Lifecycle workflows automate assigning and managing access rights, and monitoring and tracking access, as user attributes change. Lifecycle workflows in Identity Governance will enter public preview this July 2022.

“We were so reactive for so long with old technology, it was a struggle. [With Azure AD Identity Governance] we’re finally able to be proactive, and we can field some of those complex requests from the business side of our organization.”

—Sally Harrison, Workplace Modernization Consultant, Mississippi Division of Medicaid

Create possibilities, not barriers

Microsoft Entra embodies our vision for what modern secure access should be. Identity should be an entryway into a world of new possibilities, not a blockade restricting access, creating friction, and holding back innovation. We want people to explore, to collaborate, to experiment—not because they are reckless, but because they are fearless.

Visit the Microsoft Entra website to learn more about how Azure AD, Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, and Microsoft Entra Verified ID deliver secure access for our connected world.

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

The post Secure access for a connected world—meet Microsoft Entra appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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The world produces more food than ever, but the amount of land we use is now falling. From a report: Agricultural land is the total of arable land that is used to grow crops, and pasture used to raise livestock. Measuring exactly how much land we use for agriculture is difficult. If all farms were simply rows of densely-planted crops it would be straightforward to calculate how much land is being used. Just draw a square around the field and calculate its area. But across much of the world, this is not how farming looks: it's often low-density; mixed in with rural villages; in tiny smallholdings that are somewhere between a garden and a farm. Where farmland starts and ends is not always clear-cut. As a result, there are a range of estimates for how much land is used for agriculture. Here I have brought together the three leading analyses on the change in global land use. Each uses a different methodology, as explained in the chart (in the linked post). The UN FAO produces the bedrock data for each of these analyses from 1961 onwards; however, the researchers apply their own methodologies on top, and extend this series further back in time. As you can see, they disagree on how much land is used for agriculture, and the time at which land use peaked. But they do all agree that we have passed the peak. This marks a historic moment in humanity's relationship to the planet; a crucial step in its protection of the world's ecosystems. It shows that the future of food production does not need to follow the destructive path that it did in the past. If we continue on this path we will be able to restore space for the planet's wilderness and wildlife.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Munsters" fans everywhere must have made their voices heard, and Rob Zombie has apparently listened. Or maybe it's more likely that nobody even remembered the existence of such a minor character, except perhaps the biggest fans of the property. Luckily, that's exactly how pretty much everyone would describe the writer and director in charge of the upcoming "Munsters" reboot, and he's proving it by digging deep into the annals of the classic black-and-white sitcom for his latest update on the project.

You may or may not remember the character of Zombo, played by actor Louis Nye for a grand total of one episode way back in 1966. Appearing in the appropriately titled second season episode "Zombo," the eccentric guest star comes into the fold when Eddie finds himself the winner of a television contest. The reward, as it turns out, allows him to meet his absolute favorite television personality: none other than Zombo, of course!

As the horror director has made a habit of doing for this new "Munsters" movie, you can check out his latest Instagram update on the production below.

The One And Only Zombo!

Fans may not have immediately put someone like Zombo high atop their list of original characters that they'd love to see Rob Zombie bring back for this "Munsters" reboot, but that's exactly what they're going to get. Honestly, this is exactly the kind of deep pull we'd expect from a super-fan like Rob Zombie. The director breathlessly announced the news on his Instagram account, alongside the caption of:

💀After 56 years! The man... the myth... the legend returns! 💀 The one and only ZOMBO! 💀

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by RobZombieofficial (@robzombieofficial)

We get the feeling he's slightly overstating things for the sake of the joke, but that's half the fun here for a property as beloved as this one, after all!

To this point, we know that Zombie's "Munsters" film will be rated PG and will even star an original cast member from the series in Pat Priest. Other actors starring in the film include Jeff Daniel Phillips, Evan Rachel Wood, Daniel Roebuck, Cassandra Peterson, Sylvester McCoy, Jorge Garcia, and more. The Rob Zombie film doesn't have a release date just yet (expect it to premiere in theaters and on Peacock sometime this year), but any fans eager to fill that "Munsters"-shaped hole in their lives can help the wait go by a little easier by streaming both seasons (and all 70 total episodes) of the original series on Peacock.

Read this next: 14 Remakes That Are Better Than The Original

The post Rob Zombie's The Munsters Will Feature the Return of Zombo appeared first on /Film.

What we have are innumerable different collections of information, each of them specific to a particular application. Technology analyst Benedict Evans writes: Technology is full of narratives, but one of the loudest and most persistent concerns artificial intelligence and something called "data." AI is the future, we are told, and it's all about data -- and data is the future, and we should own it and maybe be paid for it. And countries need data strategies and data sovereignty, too. Data is the new oil. This is mostly nonsense. There is no such thing as "data," it isn't worth anything, and it doesn't belong to you anyway. Most obviously, data is not one thing, but innumerable different collections of information, each of them specific to a particular application, that can't be used for anything else. For instance, Siemens has wind turbine telemetry and Transport for London has ticket swipes, and those aren't interchangeable. You can't use the turbine telemetry to plan a new bus route, and if you gave both sets of data to Google or Tencent, that wouldn't help them build a better image recognition system. This might seem trivial put so bluntly, but it points to the uselessness of very common assertions on the lines of "China has more data" -- more of what data? Meituan delivers 50mn restaurant orders a day, and that lets it build a more efficient routing algorithm, but you can't use that for a missile guidance system. You can't even use it to build restaurant delivery in London. "Data" does not exist -- there are merely many sets of data. Of course, when people talk about data they mostly mean "your" data -- your information and the things that you do on the internet, some of which is sifted, aggregated and deployed by technology companies. We want more privacy controls, but we also think we should have ownership of that data, wherever it is. The trouble is, most of the meaning in "your" data is not in you but in all of the interactions with other people. What you post on Instagram means very little: the signal is in who liked your posts and what else they liked, in what you liked and who else liked it, and in who follows you, who else they follow and who follows them, and so on outwards in a mesh of interactions between millions of people.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Having the police show up at your door with a search warrant isn’t something most law-abiding citizens prepare for. The general assumption is that if you don’t engage in crimes, you won’t ever have to stand by while a bunch of officers tear through your house. But just because you can’t imagine something doesn’t mean…

Read more...

Hurricane Ian is a major category 3 storm expected to bring winds up to 125 mph, heavy rain, and possible floods as it moves up Florida’s Gulf Coast. In general, here are the things you need to get and do early to be ready for a hurricane or tropical storm.

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Much can be said about "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones," a movie that recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. George Lucas' second entry in the prequel trilogy introduced us to Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, was one of the first Hollywood films to ever be shot entirely on digital cameras, and is still considered by many fans to be one of the worst movies in the entire franchise. Yet, so much of the lore introduced in the film has been mined to produce great "Star Wars" stuff, such as the animated "Clone Wars" series and even parts of "The Book of Boba Fett." It's a mixed bag.

Temuera Morrison played Jango Fett in Episode II, with Daniel Logan taking on the role of a young Boba Fett, his unaltered clone son who would go on to become one of the most feared bounty hunters in the galaxy. Well, it turns out that Ewan McGregor had a little bit of fun with Logan on set during a pivotal scene from the movie, employing a bit of lowbrow humor to get a take that they were having trouble with. The key? It all involves a fart. Yes, a fart.

Ewan McGregor Got Creative To Get A Take Just Right

During this year's Star Wars Celebration, the cast of "Attack of the Clones" gathered together for a 20th anniversary panel, sharing all sorts of stories from the film's production all those years ago. At one point, McGregor and Logan were reminiscing about the scene where Obi-Wan meets Jango and Boba on Camino where the clone army is being built. As McGregor tells it, Lucas was having some trouble getting the correct reaction out of Logan. That gave McGregor an idea, which led to the take we actually see in the movie:

"When I come to their door, the first time I meet you, and you open the door, George wanted you to look sort of suspicious of me... So we did a few takes and George was like, 'Get it more suspicious.' I just leaned down to him and I went, 'When I open the door, act like I've done a terrible fart.' He went, 'What?' And I said, 'Just try it!' So the next take, he opened the door and he looked at me and he went [squints face], and it totally worked."

No, McGregor didn't actually fart, he clarified, but putting that thought in Logan's head was just what they needed to get the shot Lucas wanted. Cinema truly is a one-of-a-kind artform, isn't it? Movie magic at play.

Making Star Wars Fun

One thing that makes this story particularly worthwhile in the modern context is that it adds a little bit of lightheartedness to the "Star Wars" galaxy. It's no secret that the sequel trilogy led to some pretty ugly discourse and, for some, took a whole lot of the fun out of a galaxy far, far away. But here, we have the actors behind arguably the "worst" movie in the franchise celebrating it, having fun with it, and making people laugh about it all these years later. That is sorely needed right now as we all try to emerge from the messiness of the 2017 to 2019 era of Lucasfilm.

Is "Attack of the Clones" the best "Star Wars" movie? It's hard to imagine a lot of people arguing that it is. Does it have its fans? You bet! And it's nice that the actors are able to own it all these years later, and remember it fondly, farts and all, as we move into the next phase of the franchise.

Read this next: The 14 Best Star Wars Creatures Ranked

The post Ewan McGregor Called Upon The Power Of A Fart For A Scene With Young Boba Fett appeared first on /Film.

In countries with unstable currencies prone to hyperinflation, some people keep their net worth in the form of stablecoins, which are pegged to the U.S. dollar. Unfortunately, many of them bought Terra (LUNA), which wasn't backed by actual U.S. dollars. On March 29 it was trading at $107. — Read the rest

Seeing how you can now pick up The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall on Steam for free, you might be wondering what the best way to play the game is, considering it was originally released back in 1996. If that's the case, you should check out this PC Gamer article that lists some general instructions, tips, and a number of mods you might want to use.

Here's an excerpt to get you started:

Despite being a multiplatform hit, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series is rightly considered a cornerstone of PC gaming. Sprawling open-world RPGs built for freedom of choice, full of expressive systems of play and intricate character customization. No two players have the exact same experience, and everyone has stories to tell.

However, it wasn't until Morrowind that modding became a key feature. The earlier, less customizable games have been left to languish, frozen in DOS-emulated time. Rough and clunky, Daggerfall in particular was a game of seemingly boundless ambition and scale (including the largest world map in the series by far), but held back by bugs, broken systems and DOS-era limitations that were only slightly mitigated by valiant fan-patching efforts.

Until now.

Thanks to the herculean efforts of independent developer Gavin 'Interkarma' Clayton, Daggerfall has been fully reserve-engineered and ported to the Unity engine. While there's still the occasional rough edge, it's already more polished, stable and playable than the DOS version ever was, packed with quality-of-life improvements and fixes for ancient bugs. Even better, it’s hugely moddable, and new user-made content for it pops up every day.

Now is the best time to play The Elder Scrolls Chapter 2: Daggerfall, and it won't cost you a penny. Let's get cracking.

Reply from dggionco, 30.05.2022, 12:48:

The new release 2.27 of Links for DOS it's out (27-May-2022):

http://links.twibright.com/download/binaries/dos/


Changelog:

http://links.twibright.com/download/ChangeLog

Since its 2016 debut, "Stranger Things" has dominated pop culture. The massively popular sci-fi series just debuted seven episodes of its ambitious fourth season on Netflix, with two more still to come. Just six years ago, before Eggo waffles were costume props, unsuspecting audiences didn't know the Upside Down from their elbows.

"Stranger Things" was one of the streamer's first massive original hits, with fans worldwide eating up this supernatural story that felt like a Stephen Spielberg classic for a new generation. With its reportedly blockbuster-sized budgets and crowd-pleasing penchant for '80s nostalgia, "Stranger Things" has continued to grow each season, and has undoubtedly changed the pop cultural landscape. But it's also changed its young stars, many of who began the series as kids and are now driving and going to college.

Few "Stranger Things" stars were immediately launched into the spotlight like Millie Bobby Brown. The eighteen-year-old actor took on the role of superpowered runaway test subject Eleven, also known as Jane, when she was just twelve. Her memorable turn as the angry, emotionally wounded young girl who joins the teen world of Hawkins, Indiana has earned her two Emmy nominations to date. The actor is excellent in the series, whether she's learning about simple concepts like the term "friend" or dealing with the complex trauma of her past.

Brown often calls the role "life-changing," and says that its impact on her life became clear immediately after the show's first season premiere. "The premiere was kind of crazy," she told W Magazine in 2017, saying:

"Everybody was like, 'The show is really good' and I was like, 'Okay,' like I don't know what you're talking about, this is just a little show in Atlanta, Georgia. And then three days later my whole life changed."

Actor, Producer, Ambassador

Although living in the spotlight means Brown's social media posts, style, and personal life are constantly scrutinized, the actor has still managed to tune out the noise and take on plenty of projects that are meaningful to her. In 2020, she starred in Netflix's "Enola Holmes," a film based on a book series by Nancy Springer. "Enola Holmes" follows the precocious younger sister of famed detective Sherlock Holmes as she looks for her missing mother and uncovers more mysteries along the way. A teenaged Brown not only starred in the project, but produced the film, bringing the adaptation idea to Legendary Pictures with her dad's help.

While Brown has taken roles in other projects, including two "Godzilla" films and the upcoming "Enola Holmes" sequel, the massive success of "Stranger Things" has also afforded her plenty of interesting off-screen opportunities. In 2019, Brown launched her own vegan beauty product line, called "Florence By Mills." She's also been appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and is the youngest person to ever take on the role. In an interview with Netflix Queue, the actor spoke about her work with UNICEF, saying:

"It hurts my heart knowing that there are children out there, there are young people out there, that can't do what they love — or that can't get nutrition or get shelter or just be warm and have their family around them. And I'm so grateful to have that myself. Being awarded the youngest-ever Goodwill ambassador is one of the best achievements I'll ever have in my life. Every day, I'm very thankful for that."

The Power Of A Haircut

Though "Stranger Things" undoubtedly changed Brown's life in a lot of ways, there's one change in particular that resonated with the actor from day one: her hair. To play the character of Eleven, Brown had to shave her head, an experience that she says was eye-opening and empowering. In a Twitter post in 2018, the actor remembered the transformation, saying that shaving her head "was the most empowering moment of my whole life." The actor continued, saying, "The last strand of hair cut off was the moment my whole face was on show and I couldn't hide behind my hair like I used to."

The actor told W Magazine that she relished having a shaved head, especially the joy of feeling the rain, but also admitted that strangers laughed at her or thought she was sick. Still, it sounds like Brown wouldn't trade that experience for anything in the world. "In the end," she told W Magazine, "being bald was the best thing I ever did — being different changed my life."

The life-changing roller coaster ride that is "Stranger Things" isn't quite over yet. The show will debut the last two episodes of its fourth season on July 1, 2022, before the fifth season wraps up the Netflix series for good.

Read this next: The 15 Best Netflix Original Series Of 2021 Ranked

The post How Stranger Things Changed Millie Bobby Brown Forever appeared first on /Film.

We're still reeling days after the loss of Hollywood legend Ray Liotta, the man who gave us a bevy of incredible performances across just about every genre. While known by most as Henry Hill in the Martin Scorsese masterpiece "Goodfellas," Liotta has truly done it all. He's played threatening gangsters, hilarious con men, and even had two different appearances in "Muppets" movies. 

There's something indefinably remarkable about Ray Liotta, who could deliver a performance in a film like "Narc" with the same intensity and dedication as "Wild Hogs." Liotta never half-assed it, and whether he was playing a certifiable criminal badass or the goofiest dad in the trailer park, he frequently stole every second he was on screen. With over 125 credits to his name, it's nearly impossible for someone to have seen everything Liotta accomplished over the course of his 40+ year career, requiring audiences to mine through his filmography to find hidden gems and unseen wonders.

We talked last week about Ray Liotta delivering the greatest voiceover performance in cinema history through his role in "Goodfellas," which got me thinking about Liotta's career as a voiceover artist. Liotta has appeared in a variety of roles, like the Bubble Poppin' Leader on "SpongeBob SquarePants," Count Dracula in "Dear Dracula," and himself in an animated cameo for "Bee Movie." However, many forget that Liotta also lent his voice for video games, and his most memorable role turned him into a gaming icon.

That's right, I'm talking about Tommy Vercetti in "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City."

'Tommy Vercetti, Remember The Name'

When "Grand Theft Auto 3" was released in 2001, it was a revolution in video gaming. The open world of lawlessness allowed players to fully control the destiny of the silent protagonist, Claude. Players could get caught up in a world of crime–looting, killing, assaulting, and driving like an absolute maniac, and players couldn't get enough of it. I don't want to be the type of person who tries to view a property through the moral lens of 2022, but "Grand Theft Auto III" has aged like an avocado cut in half and exposed to the air. 

The following year, Rockstar Games released "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," which took everything that made "Grand Theft Auto III" groundbreaking and, while still questionable in its depictions of violence, sex, and racial insensitivity, perfected the gameplay that the franchise would be known for in years to come.

"Vice City" transported players to a crime-ridden paradise inspired by 1980s Miami, clearly pulling references to both the show "Miami Vice" and the cocaine-fueled masterpiece that is "Scarface." The game introduced players to Tommy Vercetti, a criminal looking to move up the ranks and become the city's greatest drug kingpin while dealing with rival gangs, the war on drugs, and a surge in glam metal popularity. Most notably, however, Tommy Vercetti actually had dialogue, and "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" marked a turning point for the series. The addition of a protagonist voice allowed for a deeper connection to be made between player and character, and Liotta turned Tommy Vercetti into an icon.

'Please, Run Away And Shut Your Mouth'

"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" boasts a pretty impressive voice cast, with Liotta joined by Gary Busey, Luis Guzman, Danny Trejo, David Paymer, Lawrence "L.T." Taylor, and Jenna Jameson. In 2002, Liotta talked to IGN about his experience working on the game, and called it a lot of fun. "There's great people on this one and I did my homework with it," he said. "I know it's a pretty intense game," he added through his trademark smile. "I was trying to go under the radar with it." 

"Vice City" was the furthest thing from under the radar, becoming the best selling video game of 2002 and selling over 5 million copies in advance of its release. Liotta felt he was underpaid for his work considering the massive success the game found upon release, but also found the performance to be one of the most challenging in his career.

"You're creating a character that's not there before," he told IGN. "I'm the player, so you see my guy, but it's kind of like I'm you or you're me." Given the open world nature of "Grand Theft Auto" games, Liotta had to record lines for every possible decision a player could make in the game. "If I talk to one guy I'll be talkin' one way and if somebody else shows up and you choose to talk to somebody else, it's a whole other different thing," he said. "The scenarios that go on, it's exhausting." Despite the taxing requirements, Liotta delivered every step of the way.

An Impact Beyond Hollywood

The introduction of Tommy Vercetti changed the "Grand Theft Auto" games forever. Storytelling became as essential to "GTA" as the trademark gameplay, and allowed players to explore the depth of criminal characters beyond primal instincts, greed, and a need for revenge. Players were given the chance to get inside the mind of their player, and find the redeemable aspects of a character who spends an entire game being a ruthless b******. Sure, Tommy is a criminal mastermind who would happily kill every "dumb, Florida, moron" if it meant it could help him get ahead in the game, but he's also ridiculously intelligent and funny as hell.

Liotta won the award for Best Live Action/Voice Male Performance at the 2003 G-Phoria Awards and Best Performance by a Human at the 2003 Spike Video Game Awards for his performance as Tommy Vercetti, both completely well earned accolades. As we continue our collective mourning over the loss of one of Hollywood's greatest, it's important that we not forget the impact Liotta had outside of the silver screen.

Read this next: The Goodfellas Scene You Might Not Know Was Improvised

The post Let's Talk About Ray Liotta's Most Underrated Performance appeared first on /Film.