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Recent updates made to the RPCS3 PlayStation 3 emulator have brought major performance improvements for select titles like Metal Gear Solid 4, Red Dead Redemption, and Persona 5.

The new updates have been showcased in a new video shared by the emulator's developers on the RPCS3 official YouTube channel. You can check out the video below.

Thanks to Nekotekina optimising SPU performance, SPU bottlenecks have been reduced across the board allowing for higher RSX (PS3 GPU) utilisation. Metal Gear Solid 4 saw the largest improvement from this change with most users seeing a 25-50% performance uplift! This change gave kd-11 some much-needed headroom to optimise RSX performance even further! And kd-11 has done just that, with a 5-20% performance gain in most RSX heavy games/areas such as outside of towns in Red Dead Redemption.

In fact, kd-11 is already working on another RSX improvement, this time to Zcull performance! Early testing has revealed yet another huge gain in Metal Gear Solid 4, and of course other games as well. Stay tuned. kd-11 also resolved a NVidia specific physics issue affecting Uncharted 1 & 2 due to differences in float calculations.

More information on the RPCS3 emulator can be found on its official website.

The post RPCS3 Latest Updates Bring Major Performance Improvements for Metal Gear Solid 4, Red Dead Redemption and Persona 5 by Francesco De Meo appeared first on Wccftech.

This post contains spoilers for episode 3 of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is, even more so than most of the recent "Trek" shows, a legacy program. While "Star Trek: Picard" steers into nostalgia like a raft caught in a current and "Star Trek: Lower Decks" is lousy with references to older "Trek" episodes, it's "Strange New Worlds" that features a cast made up almost entirely of "Trek" characters previously seen. Captain Pike (Anson Mount) was originally played by Jeffrey Hunter. Spock (Ethan Peck) was played by Leonard Nimoy. Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) was played by Majel Barrett. Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) was originally played by Booker Bradshaw. Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) was originally played by Nichelle Nichols. And while Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) is not on the show, his descendant La'an (Christina Chong) is. The only wholly new characters are the engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak) and helm operator Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia). 

The most exciting legacy character on "Strange New Worlds," however, is certainly Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), previously only known as Number One and originally played by Majel Barrett in the 1966 "Star Trek" pilot episode "The Cage." 

Exciting, because "Strange New Worlds" will finally have an opportunity to explore a character that has remained notoriously mysterious for multiple decades of "Trek" history. In 1966, all audiences knew about Number One was that she was the first officer of the Enterprise, possessed a great deal of authority, and was going to have to stare sexism in the face on a regular basis (Pike has a notorious line of dialogue in "The Cage," saying that he can't get used to having a woman on the bridge). Thanks to the third episode of "Strange New Worlds," -- "Ghosts of Illyria" -- a lot of Number One's backstory is now filled in, and -- playing fair -- the "Trek" creators have redefined her, broadening her character into something few viewers could have predicted. 

The Original Number One

In "The Cage," Number One was little more than a professional authority figure. The pilot episode was so busy with its story of Pike, the Talosians' mental illusions, and trying to hook up the captain with a potential mating partner in a woman named Vina (Susan Oliver) that few other members of the ensemble were given a moment to shine. Number One is eventually kidnapped by the Talosians, along with a young yeoman (Laurel Goodwin), each one presented to Pike as potential mating partners when Pike refuses to procreate with Vina in front of the voyeuristic aliens (One might sense a small streak of prurient male fantasy running through Roddenberry's creation). 

When Number One is trapped in the Cage with Pike, the Talosians describe her as having a superior mind. She's the one who is interested in computations and numbers. The Talosians also read her mind and say that, while she apparently lacks emotions, it's merely a pretense and that she frequently fantasizes about the captain. Her secret feelings for the captain are wisely -- at least so far -- being ignored by the makers of "Strange New Worlds." 

It was posited in Daniel Leonard Bernardi's 1998 book "Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future" that one of the reasons NBC rejected the original pilot, apart from it being "too cerebral," was the presence of a woman in authority. Additionally, NBC was upset that Roddenberry wanted Barrett in the role, an unknown actress that the studio knew Roddenberry was dating. For the second "Trek" pilot, the character was written out.

The Illyrians

In "Ghosts of Illyria," the newly christened Una Chin-Riley ("Una," I'm guessing, as a play on "Number One") takes command of the Enterprise in the middle of a health crisis: A mysterious virus is spreading among the crew, the primary symptom being their hypnotic attraction to bright lights. Una is able to fight off the virus (!) and goes about investigating the disease's spread. Pike and Spock, meanwhile, are stranded on the planet below, a place called Illyria. And no, while stranded in Illyria, neither of them disguises themselves as their dead fraternal twin sibling to infiltrate the court of Duke Orsino. (That's a "Twelfth Night" reference. Sorry.)

 The planet of Illyria is a reference to the "Star Trek: Enterprise" episode "Damage" (first aired: April 21, 2004). In that episode, the Enterprise had been damaged in a dogfight with the Xindi in the previous episode, and were left with dead crew members and a broken warp coil. While adrift, the ship encounters an Illyrian vessel, also damaged by some gravitational razzmatazz in a forbidding area of space called the Delphic expanse. The Illyrians explain that they are genetically enhanced race that tinkers with their own genomes as a matter of course. By the end of the episode, Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) will attack the Illyrians and steal their warp coil. No one is happy about that. The Illyrians are left stranded. Archer never goes back to help them. 

Una, The Illyrian

At the end of "Ghosts of Illyria," Commander Chin-Riley has to reveal a secret to the captain: She was able to fight off the disease because she is, in fact, an Illyrian herself. She lied about her species on her Starfleet application and has been posing as a human this whole time. Pike, being a laidback kind of captain, does not reprimand her, nor suggest disciplinary actions to his superiors. He simply rolls with it. Whether or not Number One will restore her cranial ridges -- the Illyrians in "Damage" didn't look entirely human -- remains to be seen. 

In the mythology of "Star Trek," genetic engineering is strictly verboten, largely because of the much talked-out and devastating Eugenics Wars. Khan was a tyrant from said wars, and the conflict would lead to an outright ban on genetic manipulation for reasons of personal enhancement. La'an still bears the genes of her enhanced ancestor, and her status is well-known in Starfleet. Cin-Riley, knowing the law -- and the taboo -- against manipulation, opted to keep her identity secret. By episode three, the cat is out of the bag. Perhaps she was relieved when that Talosians didn't find that in her mind back in 1966. 

Not only is Una now a far richer character with a more interesting backstory, but it seems that the "Trek" writers have played fairly. Because Number One was grievously underwritten in the 1960s, she's more or less a blank canvas. Presenting the character as a genetically enhanced Illyrian does not undo anything established. It merely confronts our assumptions. Additionally, La'an and Una now have something in common, and may find themselves bonding over their "outsider" status on the Enterprise. 

Now, we find, there is much more to explore.

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

The post Star Trek's Most Mysterious Character Now Has a Backstory appeared first on /Film.

After U.S. chip providers Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD) decided to stop chip shipments to Russia in the aftermath of the ongoing Ukraine invasion, Russian motherboard manufacturers have started to use Chinese microprocessors with the same designs as those provided by the American companies. This news comes courtesy of a Russian publication and has been picked up by Tom's Hardware. It marks one of the first such instances of a shift to Chinese processors by an industry that has limited options to build and sell products due to intellectual property and local industry constraints.

Russian Motherboard Manufacturer Selling Product With China's KaiXian Microprocessor

According to Habr, the Russian motherboard manufacturer, Dannie introduced a new motherboard earlier this week which uses a Chinese processor. This lineup of chips is one of the few out there that use the x86 microarchitecture. These designs have been optimized for personal computing and other workloads and come with higher power consumption when compared to those with other designs such as the Arm architecture.

Intel and AMD are two of the fourth firms in the world that have the authority to design and sell chips with this microarchitecture for use in personal computers. With the pair out of the picture in Russia, the country's board manufacturers are left with few options to choose from.

One of these, Zhaoxin, designs and sells the KaiXian lineup of processors primarily for use inside China. The latest of these chips is the KX 6000 lineup which was introduced in 2019 and is manufactured using the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 16-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process.

Avid readers will note that when compared to the latest products from both Intel and AMD, the 16nm process node is an older technology that uses more power and has a larger product surface area.

The board in question is the Russian firm Dannie's MBX-Z60A micro-ATX motherboard and the processor that it uses is Zhaoxin's KaiXian KX-6640MA processor. This chip has a top frequency of 2.7Ghz and is designed for low to mid power use such as notebooks.

Dannie is headquartered in both Russia and China and it has offices in Turkey and Lithuania as well. The company also designs and sells other products in addition to computer motherboards. These include automotive smart cameras and digital displays.

Zhaoxin has been launching processors since 2014 and the KaiXian lineup is its latest set of chips. The company is also aiming at launching newer products that should compete with their global counterparts in some aspects. Its KX-7000 processors aim to use the 7nm manufacturing process via China's largest chipmaker, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). However, SMIC's progress with the 7nm node is unclear, and the company has been aiming to develop the breakthrough technology for several years.

All in all, the KX-6640MA is a last resort for computer firms looking to sell their products in the post-Ukraine invasion era. The country's government has announced several plans to beef up local chip production, but the complexities of the industry coupled with difficulties in accessing the advanced machines that print millions and billions of tiny circuits on a piece of silicon remain key hurdles towards developing a homegrown semiconductor industry. For its part, the United STates government has warned Chinese companies, particularly SMIC, of strict actions in case they try to help Russia in avoiding the consequences of U.S. sanctions.

The post Intel, AMD Ban Sees Russia Turn To Chinese Chips by Ramish Zafar appeared first on Wccftech.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When you use your phone to unlock a Tesla, the device and the car use Bluetooth signals to measure their proximity to each other. Move close to the car with the phone in hand, and the door automatically unlocks. Move away, and it locks. This proximity authentication works on the assumption that the key stored on the phone can only be transmitted when the locked device is within Bluetooth range. Now, a researcher has devised a hack that allows him to unlock millions of Teslas -- and countless other devices -- even when the authenticating phone or key fob is hundreds of yards or miles away. The hack, which exploits weaknesses in the Bluetooth Low Energy standard adhered to by thousands of device makers, can be used to unlock doors, open and operate vehicles, and gain unauthorized access to a host of laptops and other security-sensitive devices. [...] [The] attack uses custom software and about $100 worth of equipment. [Sultan Qasim Khan, a principal security consultant and researcher at security firm NCC Group] has confirmed it works against the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y and Kevo smart locks marketed under the Kwikset and Weiser brand names. But he says virtually any BLE device that authenticates solely on proximity -- as opposed to also requiring user interaction, geolocation querying, or something else -- is vulnerable. "The problem is that BLE-based proximity authentication is used in places where it was never safe to do so," he explained. "BLE is a standard for devices to share data; it was never meant to be a standard for proximity authentication. However, various companies have adopted it to implement proximity authentication." Because the threat isn't caused by a traditional bug or error in either the Bluetooth specification or an implementation of the standard, there's no CVE designation used to track vulnerabilities. Khan added: "In general, any product relying on BLE proximity authentication is vulnerable if it does not require user interaction on the phone or key fob to approve the unlock and does not implement secure ranging with time-of-flight measurement or comparison of the phone/key fob's GPS or cellular location relative to the location of the device being unlocked. GPS or cellular location comparison may also be insufficient to prevent short distance relay attacks (such as breaking into a home's front door or stealing a car from the driveway, when the owner's phone or key fob is inside the house)." There's a few countermeasures one can take to mitigate this attack. "One mechanism is to check the location of the authenticating device to ensure that it is, in fact, physically close to the locked car or other device," reports Ars. "Another countermeasure is to require the user to provide some form of input to the authenticating device before it's trusted." The phone's accelerometer could also be used to measure its movements. The advisories published by NCC Group can be found here, here, and here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Movies are good.

Sorry. Ahem. We can do better than that. Movies are not only good, movies are enriching, nourishing, rejuvenating, beautiful, weird, funny, exhilarating, terrifying, discombobulating, and any other adjective you care to throw at them. The bad ones melt away. The good ones linger on. Therefore: movies are good. 

And 2022 proves that yes, movies are indeed still good. And to make that crystal clear, we're keeping a running tally, presented alphabetically, of the films we loved this year. The Indies. The blockbusters. The stuff you've heard of. The stuff that may not be on your radar. If it's on this list, it has the /Film staff's seal of approval. And we'll be updating it every few weeks. Happy to have you here. And we'll see you later. 

After Yang

"After Yang," Kogonada's follow-up to his exquisite 2017 film "Columbus" is another minimalist masterpiece. Set in a near future where android helpers are a common staple of families, "After Yang" is a meditative drama that uses its sci-fi premise to ask a key question: what do we really know about each other's inner lives?

Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) purchased a recycled android named Yang (Justin H. Min) as a companion for their adoptive Chinese daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), in an attempt to bring her closer to her ancestral culture. They've owned Yang for several years now, and Mika has grown attached at the hip to the android, who has become a friend, babysitter, and confidante to the young girl while her busy parents attend to their careers. But one day, Yang malfunctions, and Jake sets out to repair it for the sake of his devastated daughter. In the process, he uncovers something incredible about Yang's past.

Despite its minimalist approach and slow, methodical pace, "After Yang" manages to convey so much: the fallacy of the "hollow Asian" trope, the feeling of being an outsider looking in, of being but not belonging. It unravels the internality of a character thought to be long gone in fragments — a memory here, a melody there. But by showing a life in pieces rendered meaningful through the sheer weight of existence, "After Yang" manages to capture the heartache of transracial transhumanism, and make the case that every life is beautiful and worth admiring. After all, isn't that what makes us human? (Hoai-Tran Bui)

Ambulance

Michael Bay goes Full Bayhem with "Ambulance," a big, loud, incredibly entertaining movie about a team of bank robbers who highjack an ambulance as a getaway vehicle, and then proceed to wreak havoc wherever they go. The crooks are played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who are adoptive brothers with very different temperaments. Abdul-Mateen's character seems like a genuinely good guy, and he needs money to help pay for an operation for his sick wife. Gyllenhaal's character, meanwhile, is a wild and crazy freakshow of a man, always sweating and shouting as if he's ingested all the cocaine in the world. 

The ambulance rockets through Los Angeles with a paramedic (Eiza González) and an injured cop on board while law enforcement tries to close in on. Lots and lots of destruction follows, and Bay unleashes dizzying drone footage that swoops everywhere. But the real draw here is Gyllenhaal, who continues to confirm he's really a character actor in a leading man's body. His unhinged, wacky work has to be seen to be believed, and includes moments where he demands everyone stop for a moment so he can listen to his favorite song, "Sailing" by Christopher Cross. "Ambulance" is not going to convert anyone who thinks of Bay as a cinematic antichrist (and Bay has no problem leaning into things by having multiple scenes where characters discuss his previous movies). But if you're up for the goofiness he's selling, you're in for a wild ride. (Chris Evangelista)

The Batman

Every second of director Matt Reeves' new take on the Caped Crusader feels like a filmmaker getting away with something. "The Batman" isn't just terrific for a superhero movie, it's a terrific movie overall -- odd, sexy, sinister, exciting, and grimly funny, this three-hour noir about what it means to struggle for moral oxygen in corrupt and suffocating world is a big, bold swing, and a reminder that Batman and Bruce Wayne, when in the right hands, are as thematically malleable and fascinating as any character in pop culture.Not since "Blade Runner 2049" has a massive, expensive Hollywood blockbuster felt like it escaped the oversight of the people who are generally employed to keep a movie like this from getting made. Robert Pattinson's Dark Knight isn't an idealized hero, but a moody goth nutcase who looks like he hasn't seen the sun in a couple years and has the social skills to match. It's an outstanding performance, one that anchors the movie when he's both in and out of the cowl. And Reeves surrounds him with a murderer's row of support. Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, and Colin Farrell supply performances that feels as weary and lived-in as the crumbling Gotham around them. It's the kind of bench you dream of building a franchise around. And as complete and definitive as "The Batman" feels as a standalone movie, it's the rare franchise-starter that actually feels like it has the dramatic heft to shoulder an entire series of movies that movie fans will actually want to see. (Jacob Hall)

Brian And Charles

How could you possibly resist the adorable story of a quirky, reclusive inventor and his makeshift robot with the head of a mannequin and the body of a washing machine? You simply can't. "Brian and Charles" is a delightful story of friendship mixed with a dryly hilarious take on "Frankenstein" tropes with a little "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and "The Iron Giant" thrown in for good measure.

In the movie from director Jim Archer, adapted from his own short film of the same name, Brian Gittins (David Earl) spends his time creating oddball inventions such as shoes with trawler nets on the back, a belt for holding eggs, and a flying cuckoo clock that he attempts to launch on a bicycle. Shy and socially awkward, he steers clear of most people in his small town, especially some bullying rough-around-the-edges locals. But he lights up after creating Charles, a robot somehow formed from some roadside junk and a washing machine. The two become best friends, inspiring Brian to come out of his shell a bit. However, their friendship is tested when Charles desperately wants to learn more about the world around him, and Brian keeps him from venturing too far away from their countryside home. 

What follows is a wonderful, hilarious and charming adventure where Brian and Charles learn a lot about what it really means to be friends and even more about themselves. It's simple but lovely and will undoubtedly be a crowdpleaser when it hits theaters on June 17, 2022. Check out our review from the 2022 Sundance Film Festival right here. (Ethan Anderton)

Cha Cha Real Smooth

Writer/director/producer/star Cooper Raiff made a splash on the indie scene with his 2020 debut feature "Sh*thouse," and his latest movie, the delightful and ultra-charming "Cha Cha Real Smooth," proves he's not a one-hit wonder. Raiff plays an aimless college grad who stumbles into a career as a DJ/party starter at bar/bat mitzvahs, and the movie centers on his budding relationship with a beguiling woman (Dakota Johnson) who has a teenage daughter (Vanessa Burghardt) on the autism spectrum. Raiff's character strikes up a genuine friendship with both of them individually, and much of the drama hinges on whether his friendship with Johnson's character will evolve into something more romantic. Sparks undeniably fly between the two of them (and the actors have sizzling chemistry on screen), but are these characters at the right place in their lives for a connection like this? 

Once all of the pieces are on the board, the patterns of the narrative may become familiar to those with a passing knowledge of independent movies in the 21st century, but this movie is elevated by Raiff's inherent charisma, Johnson's magnetic performance, and the movie's willingness to use melancholy to great effect. The romantic comedy has experienced its fair share of ups, downs, near-deaths, and resurgences over the past thirty years, and "Cha Cha Real Smooth" is a fantastic example of how there's still plenty of life left in the genre when mesmerizing performers are given great material to work with. The film will arrive in theaters on June 17, 2022. (Ben Pearson)

Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers

After all the insufferable live-action CGI hybrid movies we've gotten based on classic cartoons, from "Alvin and the Chipmunks" to "Tom & Jerry," it's totally understandable if you initially rolled your eyes at the new Disney+ movie based on "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers." But we're here to tell you that this is one of the best movies of the year and it's a worthy successor to the innovative live-action animation hybrid "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

With a self-aware sense of humor and a cavalcade of cartoon cameos and references, "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers" is a witty Hollywood satire that lovingly sends up the animation industry, from two-dimensional Saturday morning cartoons to not-quite-lifelike computer generated imagery and even more in-between. Fueled by a mystery that threatens the cartoon characters of Hollywood, "Chip 'n Dale" finds John Mulaney and Andy Samberg as the estranged crime-fighting TV duo who are forced to become real-life heroes instead of just chipmunks acting for the small screen. Family friendly and endlessly rewatchable thanks to the dozens of Easter eggs sprinkled throughout, this is one of the biggest surprises of 2022, and it's easily one of the best original movies to come out of Disney+ since the streaming service launched. We're keeping our fingers crossed for a sequel. (Ethan Anderton)

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

For its first half, "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" serves up the Marvel formula: amusing quips, fun actors saying said quips, and energetic enough action to keep you occupied and entertained. The usual. And then the film takes a hard turn for the unusual, and what could've been just another Marvel movie transforms into a Sam Raimi movie.20 years after he invented the modern blockbuster with the original "Spider-Man" trilogy, Raimi returns to the superhero stomping grounds by ... stomping all over superhero movies. The gleeful, maniacal filmmaker reaches deep into his toolbox and pulls out the skills that he utilized in the "Evil Dead" trilogy, transforming the "Doctor Strange" sequel into a horror show where no one is safe and no camera angle can co un-canted. Once the gloves come off, the film comes to startling life: a chase scene that feels like "Evil Dead 4" actually happened, and it just stars the Scarlet Witch; a bizarre and beautiful duel between powerful magicians where music becomes a literal weapon; a climax that feels like Clark Ashton Smith's greatest heavy metal nightmare. It's a lot!"Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" is messy. You can see the seams of the reshoots, of the script that was never quite finished when cameras rolled. But you can also see the energy of a one-of-a-kind filmmaker marching into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and steamrolling your expectations. You thought you knew what you were getting, and boy, you were wrong. (Jacob Hall)

Everything Everywhere All At Once

"Everything Everywhere All At Once" is a mind-melting masterpiece. Not just because of everything it throws at the audience in Daniels' jam-packed, maximalist depiction of living in today's nihilistic, anxiety-filled world. But because it's a surprisingly compassionate knife that cuts through the noise.

It doesn't feel like there are enough words to describe what makes "Everything Everywhere All At Once" so incredible, but here is a string of several: It's an absurd, gonzo, sweet, silly, sad sci-fi flick. It's a multiversal adventure that makes the most of Michelle Yeoh's tremendous talents — whiplashing between comedy, to drama, to romance, to the martial arts excellence that we all know and love her for — casting the international superstar as a laundromat owner stressed over her taxes and impending divorce, who must also contend with a destructive omnipotent force that threatens to shatter all of reality. And because she's lived such an abysmally disappointing existence, she's the only one who can save us all.

In a way, "Everything Everywhere All At Once" feels like it's speaking a secret language. A language spoken through absurd hot dog jokes, and pop culture homages to Stephen Chow and Wong kar-wai and Satoshi Kon. We don't understand all of it, but we feel it. We feel the overwhelming state of existing, and we want it all to stop. But stop we can't, and "Everything Everywhere All At Once" reminds us of why we all go on. And if it has to do it with a butt plug joke, then so be it. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

Fire Of Love

Sara Dosa's visually stunning documentary "Fire of Love" is an unconventional love story. For decades, Katia and Maurice Krafft were two of the bravest and most well-known scientists in the field of volcanology (the study of volcanoes), and they were both obsessed with learning as much as they could about these natural phenomena -- even if that meant donning suits that look like something out of a pulp sci-fi novel in order to get up close with erupting lava. From the 1970s into the 1990s, the scientific power couple shot hundreds of hours of legitimately jaw-dropping footage of themselves standing on the precipice of active volcanoes, documenting how they behaved and helping to establish a foundation for the way we think about how they work. 

Tapping into that wealth of archival footage, Dosa and narrator Miranda July weave an almost fairy tale romance about this duo who clearly loved each other deeply, but who also loved studying volcanoes just as much. The movie's greatest success is balancing those two sides of this unusual love triangle; we learn a ton about the personalities of Katia and Maurice, who seem like eccentric characters out of a Wes Anderson movie, and their relationship to each other, but we're also allowed to sit in awe and witness the hypnotically powerful and natural splendor of the footage they were able to capture, and we learn what volcanoes meant to each of them. See this on the biggest screen possible -- you won't regret it. "Fire of Love" doesn't have an exact release date yet, but it's expected in theaters sometime this year. (Ben Pearson)

Good Luck To You, Leo Grande

Everyone loves Emma Thompson, and rightfully so: The two-time Oscar winner is a fantastic writer and mega-talented performer who is equally comfortable portraying shades of whimsy, wistfulness, and joyful glee. "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande," the latest movie from filmmaker Sophie Hyde, gives her arguably her best role yet as Nancy, a repressed widow and retired teacher who has only been with one man her whole life and has never experienced an orgasm. That ends tonight: the nervous and charmingly bumbling Nancy hires a sex worker named Leo Grande in an attempt to have every sexual experience she always wanted, but never achieved with her late husband. Up-and-comer Daryl McCormack lights up the screen as Leo, a smooth, confident guy whose ultra laid-back vibe is the polar opposite to Nancy's understandable jitteriness. 

But as the film goes on and the two actually get to know each other, they begin to develop a deeper connection -- one that's so personal and intimate, it begins penetrating their layers of defenses and exposing their true selves in more ways than one. Writer Katy Brand sets a majority of the movie in a single hotel room, which, on paper, might make this sound like one of those movies that might be better off as a stage play than a film. Thankfully, Hyde's roving camera gives the film a sense of immersion that would be impossible to capture on stage. A touching, passionate, soulful, and moving exploration of self-love and self-acceptance, "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande" is unquestionably one of best movies of the year, and you can see it starting on June 17, 2022. (Ben Pearson)

The House

There's so much junk on Netflix. But there are hidden gems, too. Titles that get next to no promotion from the streaming service. Titles that are doomed to slip through the cracks if you're not actively on the hunt for them. One such title just waiting to be discovered by more audiences is "The House," a spooky little treat featuring stop-motion animation. Three different stories unfold in this anthology, and the only connection is that they all appear to take place in the same mysterious house.

In the first story, which appears to be set sometime in the late 1800s, a family is offered a chance by a famous, mysterious architect to move into a brand new house. They leap at the chance, but as you might've guessed, the house is full of dark, scary secrets that threaten to destroy them all. The second tale is set in the present day, and for unexplained reasons, the characters have now transformed from humans to anthropomorphic rats. One such rat has bought the house and intends to flip it for a profit, but once again, nothing goes accordingly to plan. The final story is set sometime in the future, where a catastrophe (global warming seems the most likely culprit) has sunk most of the world underwater. But the house remains, standing like an island. 

Eerie, strange, and even a little beautiful, "The House" got next-to-no-buzz when it dropped in January. But you owe it to yourself to seek it out. (Chris Evangelista)

I Love My Dad

Cringeworthy comedy isn't for everybody, but if you can handle uncomfortably shifting in your seat and truly skincrawling awkwardness, then you will absolutely crack up at this comedy starring Patton Oswalt. "I Love My Dad" finds the stand-up comedian playing Chuck, a deadbeat father who has always had the best intentions but can't help disappointing his son Franklin (played by James Morosini, who also wrote and directed the film inspired by his real life) at every turn. Things have gotten so bad that Franklin attempted suicide, and he's only just now starting to feel normal after a stint in a mental hospital where he learned to finally set healthy boundaries with his perpetually maddening father. 

That might sound pretty dark for a comedy, but the humor comes when Chuck starts to catfish his son online as an effort to maintain contact with him after being blocked on social media. Pretending to be an attractive young girl, Chuck creates a dreamy romance for Franklin that escalates into a despicable lie that only gets worse and worse. It's the manner in which this story unfolds that brings the laughs. Though terribly misguided, Chuck is clearly desperate to reconnect with this son, even if it's in the most ill-advised way possible. Patton Oswalt has never been better, and this movie will have you laughing and wincing simultaneously over and over again. After premiering at SXSW earlier this year, "I Love My Dad" is slated to hit theaters on August 5, 2022, followed by a VOD release on August 12. (Ethan Anderton)

Kimi

Hey, did you know there was a movie this year in which the uber-prolific Steven Soderbergh paid homage to Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma? You may have missed it in the deluge of streaming content, but this particular HBO Max original is absolutely worth checking out. "Kimi" is Soderbergh's riff on movies like "Rear Window" and "Blow Out," and the result is a heart-pumping little thriller that's actually made for adults. There are no post-credits stingers here, no big cameos or connections to other movies. "Kimi" knows exactly what it wants to do, and executes that vision efficiently and effectively. 

Zoe Kravitz stars as Angela, who works for a big tech company reviewing the audio that comes in from its Amazon Echo-style device in peoples' homes. When she overhears what she thinks is a murder, she tries to run it up the corporate chain -- but the people in power aren't interested in dealing with the issue. In fact, they just might be willing to kill to keep it covered up. For the first half of the film, Soderbergh keeps us inside Angela's apartment. She's agoraphobic, and has not handled the isolation of the pandemic well. (Yes, this movie acknowledges the pandemic, but in a refreshing and not obnoxious way.) But as soon as she ventures beyond her familiar walls, the movie opens up and kicks into another gear, and "Kimi" never lets up after that. A streamlined, simple premise in the hands of a master filmmaker? More like this, please. (Ben Pearson)

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On

"Marcel the Shell With Shoes On" is the best live-action movie that Studio Ghibli never made. So it's fitting that indie distributor darling A24 made it, and that it's their first venture into family-friendly filmmaking. Because "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On" is an utter delight.

Based on the short films of the same name created by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate, "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On" stars Slate as the titular sentient shell, who lives in an Airbnb with his grandma. But it wasn't always this way. Once, Marcel was part of a thriving community of shells and pencils and erasers and other sentient tiny objects, including his huge family of boisterous shells. But one stormy night, the man and woman who once lived in this house got into a terrible fight and the man stormed out, taking Marcel's family and friends with him. Now it's just Marcel and his grandma living alone, the woman having abandoned the house and turned it into an Airbnb that brings in all kinds of weird guests. Including Dean Fleischer-Camp's aspiring filmmaker, who meets Marcel and decides to make a documentary on him.

"Marcel the Shell With Shoes On" is sweet and lovely magical realism tale for the millennial age, but it has a sharp edge of melancholy to it, delving into issues of abandonment, lost love, and aging. Through the naïve, wide-eyed perspective of Marcel, the whole world can seem amazing and full of possibility, before it turns scary. But "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On" never loses its shining optimism, even as it reduces you to tears over the antics of a shell with one giant eye and pink shoes. "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" arrives in theaters on June 24, 2022. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

Men

Alex Garland's "Men" is a puzzle. Garland is a filmmaker who seems to relish not spoon-feeding his audience, and you know what? Good for him! We need more directors who are willing to challenge us. Of course, there's a flip-side to that: some folks who watch Garland's latest might get annoyed at how mysterious it all is. There are no easy answers here. No moment where someone stops to explain to the audience just what the hell is going on. There are plenty of clues mixed in with plenty of strange images, and the rest is up to us.

Jessie Buckley plays a recently widowed woman who decides to get away from it all by renting a country house in a small village. It looks peaceful and idyllic, but almost as soon as Buckley's character arrives, things seem off. As she moves about, the strangeness only increases as it becomes clear that every male figure Buckley encounters (save for flashbacks with her husband) is played by Rory Kinnear. Kinnear, who dons a series of wigs, false noses, and more, to play multiple characters, is phenomenal, bringing a distinct air of menace to each of his parts. Every single man Buckley interacts with is slightly off, or even downright threatening. That includes a child, also played by Kinnear (or rather, Kinnear's face digitally added to a younger actor's body, which is just as disturbing as it sounds). 

By the time "Men" reaches its gruesome, body-horror-heavy finale, audiences will either love the folk horror insanity Garland is dishing out, or vow to never watch one of his movies again. (Chris Evangelista)

Navalny

With Russia's authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin waging war on the citizens of Ukraine, Daniel Roher's new documentary "Navalny" feels more vital than ever. The doc follows Alexei Navalny, a charming and handsome orator who became a major player in Russian politics and eventually Putin's chief political rival after openly criticizing the corruption that was happening in his home country. He's amassed a huge social media following, and he knows how to galvanize the younger electorate: As a middle-aged man, he's making viral TikTok videos and regularly meets Russians on their level by directly addressing them on the digital platforms they use on a daily basis. Putin, willing to do anything to retain his grip on power, is so scared of Navalny that he won't even speak his name aloud in press conferences -- oh, and there was also that whole thing when Navalny was poisoned using a method frequently utilized by the Kremlin. 

After Navalny recovers from the botched assassination attempt, he teams up with a Bulgarian journalist to try to find proof that the Kremlin organized the hit on him, and the movie shifts into a "Bourne"-style spy thriller. The doc gives us access to these stories in a way the headlines never could, tapping into the politician's family members and closest allies and showcasing the footage they captured of these events while they were happening. Unfortunately, things don't end well for the protagonist -- but perhaps if this film is more widely seen, it could prompt harsher official responses from global powers than the tepid statements that have been made thus far. (Ben Pearson)

The Northman

It's a testament to Robert Eggers' talent that "The Northman" is his weakest film so far, and yet still completely rocks. While not as brilliant as the one-two punch of "The Witch" and "The Lighthouse," "The Northman" is still a great showcase for Eggers' unique brand of historical storytelling. Here, Eggers draws on the legend of Amleth, which heavily inspired Shakespeare's "Hamlet." As a result, the film often feels like a Viking version of "Hamlet," with a little of "The Lion King" thrown in for good measure. 

Alexander Skarsgård and his gigantic traps plays Amleth, a prince who, as a child, flees his kingdom after his father (Ethan Hawke) is murdered by his uncle (Claes Bang). When Amleth grows up, he becomes a hulking killing machine and vows to finally get his revenge. Anya Taylor-Joy plays a witchy woman who helps him along the way, and Nicole Kidman chews plenty of scenery as Amleth's mother. 

Full of strange, mystical energy and bursts of brutal violence, "The Northman" probably should've seen a little weirder than it ended up being. Eggers does pepper in plenty of evocative imagery, but this is also his most mainstream, straightforward film to date. (Chris Evangelista) 

On The Count Of Three

A comedy about suicide? It sounds like a difficult topic to spark laughs, but in the Sundance-selected "On the Count of Three," stand-up comedian Jerrod Carmichael somehow finds a delicate balance between the raw, introspective emotions that come from depression and suicidal thoughts and the dark comedy that can come from following two best friends who form a suicide pact to kill each other by the end of the day.

Jerrod Carmichael and Christopher Abbott ("Girls") play the two leads, Val and Kevin. Just a few days ago, Kevin tried to take his own life and is currently being monitored in a hospital. Meanwhile, Val has been paralyzed by the fear of proposing to his girlfriend, and simply can't deal with the mediocrity of a life spent working at a job he hates. Val quits his job, breaks his best friend Kevin out of the hospital, and the two agree to kill each other, but not before living out some answers an age-old question: What would you do if you only had one day left to live?

The result is a hilarious series of misadventures, emotionally stirring conversations, and a story that somehow finds light in pitch black darkness. Carmichael has a bright future ahead of him as a filmmaker and star, and if he can pull of something like this with his directorial debut, then I can't wait to see what else he has up his sleeve. (Ethan Anderton)

RRR

"RRR" asks the important question: what if two legendary revolutionaries who were active at the same time in colonial India actually met? Better yet, what if they were best friends? Better yet, what if one betrayed the other in a melodramatic twist of fate that ended in a climactic musical showdown that basically ends in them becoming god-like superheroes? That's "RRR," the incredible, insane, maximalist Indian Telugu-language epic directed by S. S. Rajamouli.

"RRR" tells the (fictionalized) story of Alluri Sitarama Raju (Charan) and Komaram Bheem (Rama Rao), two real-life revolutionaries who, again, probably weren't best friends in real life. But "RRR" imagines that they were, in the most eye-popping, adrenaline-pumping, hyperstylized action flick of the year.

In "RRR," Raju is a police officer working for the British Raj who is tasked with finding and arresting the legendary Bheem, a sort of John Wick-ian figure (except with more tiger punching) who protects the peaceful Gond tribe, after the British governor forcibly takes one of the Gond tribes' young girls as a pet for his wife. But Raju and Bheem, disguising himself as a lowly Muslim mechanic, unknowingly meet for the first time while rescuing a young boy from a train crash and instantly become best friends by virtue of their equivalent manliness (and also through a musical montage straight out of a rom-com). All this time, Raju doesn't know that Bheem is the man he is hunting, and Bheem doesn't know that Raju is actually an undercover cop working to steal weapons away from the British government. It all climaxes in a fiery inferno of betrayal, more tiger punching, motorcycle-throwing, and a viral musical sequence where Raju and Bheem happily outdance a bunch of white people. Take that, imperialism. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

Sundown

"Sundown" is set almost entirely in bright, tropical locales. On sunny beaches and in vacation spots where people soak up the rays and relax. And yet ... it's also one of the most chilling movies of the year. This is definitely a "less is more" movie — as in, the less you know, the more shocked you're going to be as the film slowly reveals what it's all about. As writer-director Michel Franco's film begins, we meet a man (Tim Roth) on vacation in Acapulco with a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and two 20-somethings. Based on how they're acting, our first assumption is that Roth and Gainsbourg's characters are a couple, and the younger characters are their children. But appearances can be deceiving. 

An emergency sends Gainsbourg and the kids back home, but Roth's character stays behind. He says he left his passport back at the resort and that he'll catch another plane home. But that's not what happens. Instead, he checks himself into a new place and begins what seems like a never-ending vacation. Is he abandoning his family? Or is something else going on here? Little by little, piece by piece, "Sundown" begins to give us some answers. All of this is frequently punctured by sudden bursts of shocking violence that turn the film completely on its head. We suddenly find ourselves rethinking the entire movie, only to have it happen again and again. This is slow-burn storytelling at its finest, and Roth, who is in nearly every frame but spends a huge chunk of the film saying very little, is fantastic. (Chris Evangelista) 

Top Gun: Maverick

Tom Cruise finally returns to the role that made him a superstar in "Top Gun: Maverick," a spectacular sequel that, against all odds, actually ends up being worth the three-decade wait between movies. Despite his boundary-pushing personality constantly getting him in trouble, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is called back into action to train the next generation of fighter pilots, who are faced with an impending mission that could avert nuclear disaster. Maverick's particular set of skills makes him the perfect person to teach the new class, but when he realizes that one of his students is Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick's beloved and long-dead former partner, things get a lot more complicated. The stage is set for high drama and even higher flying -- and you know Maverick isn't gonna be sitting on the sidelines as a teacher when the real mission kicks off. 

Even though director Joseph Kosinski doesn't have the same eye for pure style that original filmmaker Tony Scott had (there is significantly less sweat in this movie, and the color palette isn't nearly as creative overall), he's still able to deliver outstanding aerial action that will get your heart pumping and have you holding your breath in the theater. There's also a surprising emotional core to this movie: If you happen to find yourself wiping away tears and asking yourself, "Wait, did a 'Top Gun' movie just make me cry?", you won't be alone. When all is said and done, this just might be the most crowd-pleasing film of the year. (Ben Pearson)

Turning Red

Pixar's "Turning Red" is one of the most accurate cinematic depictions of what it was like to be a hormonal teenage girl, and of feeling so much you just might burst. Directed by Domee Shi (who won an Oscar with her first directorial effort, the lovely Pixar short "Bao"), this coming-of-age fantasy comedy makes the coming-of-age part literal in one of the most vibrant, exciting, and joyous animated films to come out of the animation house in years. 

"Turning Red" follows the uber-confident Meilin "Mei" Lee (breakout star Rosalie Chiang), a Chinese-Canadian 13-year-old who does what she wants and says what she wants — except in the presence of her parents. Mei was raised in that classic Asian immigrant second-generation way: to revere and respect her parents' wishes, while living a double life to hide her own burgeoning identity and urges. But the precarious balance she holds between her two lives is shattered by that great beast: puberty. In this case, puberty manifests in the form of a giant red panda that Mei turns into when she experiences a strong emotion.

Like I said in my review, "Turning Red" wears its anime influences on its sleeve and its middle-school shame on its face, bursting at the seams with bright colors and emotions thanks to an elastic animation style that takes its inspiration from anime like Rumiko Takahashi's "Ranma 1/2." But "Turning Red" is more than the sum of its inspirations, delivering a sweet and fresh depiction of the power of friendship, and the pain of intergenerational trauma. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent

Nicolas Cage playing Nicolas Cage. That's all you need to know in order to get psyched about "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent." All right, so Cage is actually playing an exaggerated, fictional version of himself, including a digitally de-aged, physically manifested inner-monologue who appears from time to time. This version of the Hollywood star is down on his luck at this stage in his career, so he finds himself taking a somewhat embarrassing gig asking him to appear at the birthday party of Javi, a rich superfan. However, the FBI is interested in this fan because he's a dangerous drug cartel kingpin, and they end up recruiting Cage to help them find a girl that Javi seems to have abducted.

What makes this meta comedy from director Tom Gormican work so well is that it manages to be a great buddy action comedy that not only makes impeccable use of Cage's eccentric and eclectic career, but it allows "The Mandalorian" star Pedro Pascal to be his hilarious fanboy counterpart. Watching Cage get caught up in espionage and intrigue has an almost "Last Action Hero" vibe to it, and there are flares of "Tropic Thunder" and "Three Amigos" too. It's wildly entertaining, and it will make you wonder why Cage hasn't been asked to make more comedies. His timing is extraordinary, and he's not afraid to really cut loose, even if it means making fun of himself. There are also plenty of fun references to Nicolas Cage movies, from "Con-Air" to "Captain Corelli's Mandolin." It's an irresistibly good time. (Ethan Anderton)

Read this next: The Best Movies Of 2021

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Apple's latest and greatest M1 Ultra chip in the Mac Studio is plenty fast to handle your processing and graphics needs. We have previously covered the M1 Ultra benchmarks and their comparison to the 28-core Intel Mac Pro and other machines. However, a new series of tests have been conducted that aims to give us a better comparison between the M1 Ultra with the M1 Max in real-life usage. Scroll down to read more details on the subject.

Latest Tests Show M1 Ultra Comparison Against M1 Max and How Much Power Apple's Latest Chip Brings In Real-Life

Apple announced the new M1 Ultra chip with the launch of its new Mac Studio product line. While it can be seen as two Mac mini models stacked on top of each other, the show's real star rests on the inside. The Mac Studio is designed to bolster proper thermals so the machine does not heat up. The M1 Ultra can be described as two M1 Max chips as a single unit. The latest tests compare the M1 Ultra and the M1 Max chips based on real-life performance.

The tests are performed by Engadget and they have taken a slightly different approach. Instead of devising tests themselves, it consulted its readers to list the demanding tasks that they perform in their everyday life. The publication could then specifically create a benchmark comparison between the M1 Ultra and M1 Max chips.

The M1 Ultra fuses two M1 Max chips together to get you a processor with 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores, along with up to 128GB of RAM, and it’s one of the fastest processors we’ve ever tested.

We asked what tests you’d like to see run on the M1 Ultra and assembled quite a list, including Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve and Fusion, 3D modeling in Blender, machine learning tests like TensorFlow and Pytorch, and even some gaming.

It was concluded in the comparison that the M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio is twice as fast as the M1 Max chip. This is not surprising since the prior is made up of two M1 Max chips fused together to form a single SoC. In terms of GPU, the differences were not proportional as the M1 Ultra only saw a gain of 40 percent to 80 percent. However, when it comes to video rendering, the M1 Ultra chip performs like a champ. The M1 Ultra chip takes ten 8K videos and gets the job done in 29 seconds.

The M1 Ultra does best when its hardware accelerators can kick in. These are the parts of the chip built to speed up specific tasks, namely video rendering and AI processing. In a test processing ten 8K video clips at once, the M1 Ultra did the job in just 29 seconds when its accelerators were able to help out. This was about twice as fast as the PC we were testing, despite it having a 16-core AMD 5950X processor and Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti graphics card.

The tests between the M1 Ultra and the M1 Max show real-life CPU and GPU performance comparisons. You can check out the video embedded above for more details. This is all there is to it, folks. Do you need the power of the M1 Ultra chip for your daily tasks? Let us know in the comments.

The post Latest Real-Life Tests Show Apple’s M1 Ultra Chip is 40 to 80 Percent Faster Than M1 Max – Video by Ali Salman appeared first on Wccftech.

Time travel stories can have pretty high stakes, because usually you only travel in time when you really need to change something. A killer robot is trying to kill a lady because of something her son will eventually do, that kind of thing. My favourite episodes of Doctor Who, by contrast, were always the ones where the Doctor met a miserable dog-alien thousands of years in the future, and the dog alien is like "Not only is the planet about to blow, but my marriage is in trouble," and then the episode was mostly about the latter issue rather than the former. This is all by way of introduction to Eternal Threads, a puzzle game where you go back in time to stop everyone in a house share dying in a fire.

To save a present that has been rendered apocalyptic by time travel itself, you are part of a team who go back and change tiny things in the past to fix it, in this case 2015. While it is imperative for some reason that the fire does indeed happen, it is just as important that all six occupants live. You can alter small decisions they make in the week running up to the fire, and so save their lives by choosing whether they go to the pub, if they comfort each other in times of need, or what they have arguments about. The beat of a butterfly's wing, indeed.

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That's a lot of road trip money

It's hard to believe that Final Fantasy XV is in the rear-view mirror of the Regalia. This is a game where I once had to create a giant checklist to keep track of all of the demos, cross-media projects, DLC, and crossovers. Well, as of this week Square Enix reports that Final Fantasy XV sales have hit a new milestone of 10 million units worldwide.

Square Enix "thanks fans for their continued support" for the game. And continued support it has gotten, from a certain point of view! Even as recently as the past few years, there's been crossovers with other games, including a recurring Final Fantasy XIV event. In a sense, this game refused to die, and earned that 10 million through sheer force of will. I'm not just talking about the cross-media projects either. Two years after launch it came to PC, where it was met with a flourishing modding community. Then it arrived on Stadia a year later.

Final Fantasy XV is polarizing still, I get it. It has what I can only describe as "Final Fantasy VIII energy," which was also polarizing at the time, and a mixed legacy that endures to this day. Playing through it in a bubble before all the controversy, DLC, and post-launch content delays, I found it to be exceedingly relaxing, among other things. In the eternal "Final Fantasy rankings" debate that's been going on since I can remember (Final Fantasy VI kind of sealed that top spot at release though, and for some, even still): it'll probably end up somewhere in the middle.

The post Final Fantasy XV hits 10 million in worldwide sales appeared first on Destructoid.

A kind woman in Rocklin, California spotted what appeared to be an abandoned or orphan kitten in need. So she brought the cute creature home. However, a family member noticed that the "kitten" was not a kitten but rather a kit—a a baby fox. — Read the rest

The RPCS3 team has released a brand new version of its incredible Playstation 3 emulator that packs major performance improvements to a number of games. Going into more details, Nekotekina optimized SPU performance which reduced SPU bottlenecks across the board allowing for higher RSX (PS3 GPU) utilization. Metal Gear Solid 4 saw the largest improvement … Continue reading Latest version of RPCS3 offers major performance improvements in God of War 3, Metal Gear Solid 4, Red Dead Redemption & more →

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Not everyone loves the sun. Not everyone loves the sand. Not everyone loves to swim. There are no shortage of ways for a person to fashion themselves as “not a beach person.” But maybe they’re just not doing it right. When properly prepared, the beach is a wonderful way to relax on a summer day and spend some time in…

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What is High Dynamic Range video? Why should I care about it or want it? We've got answers to all your questions right here.

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Daniel Day-Lewis is widely regarded as one of the best actors of all time. Famously choosy with roles, he has only been in 11 feature films in the last 30 years, and 2017's "Phantom Thread" really is (devastatingly) supposed to be his last. Known for his rigorous preparation for roles and remaining in character during filming, Day-Lewis' name will always come up when discussing method acting, even if he doesn't like to ascribe to any one technique. Day-Lewis has worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, and Paul Thomas Anderson, as well as some of his best work with Jim Sheridan. It must be nice to dip into the acting world, blow everyone away, probably win an Oscar, then go back to your life as an Italian cobbler or whatever it is you're doing these days.

Even across these 14 films, which represent Day-Lewis' almost entire filmography, it is clear to see his wildly impressive range. In 12 lead roles, and two supporting ones, Day-Lewis commands the screen, sometimes bringing a barn-storming speech, or a subtle desperation to frequently unlikable characters. Very few of these protagonists are heroes; they are usually far more complex, and Day-Lewis has deliberately sought out roles that provide a challenge. If we really have seen the last of Day-Lewis on the big screen, it's such a loss to the world of movies, but we can at least cling onto these 14 incredible films.

The Bounty (1984)

From 1984 to 1985, Daniel Day-Lewis had two roles where he could use his own upper-class English accent. His reputation as the greatest actor of his generation would form from him playing Irish (and Northern Irish) and American men, as he's actually rarely played Englishmen. In "The Bounty," starring Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian, the famous mutineer, Day-Lewis plays Fryer, an officer who initially clashes with Bligh, but then remains loyal to him and the "proper" way of doing things aboard ship. Like Bligh, Fryer is horrified by the sexual freedom that many of the crewmembers indulge in while in Tahiti. 

Even at this early stage of his career, and with limited screen time, Day-Lewis still manages to use micro-expressions to express disgust or frustration brilliantly. Perhaps his greatest achievement is disguising his natural beauty and charisma, and to embody a sniveling coward who turns the audience off, rather than drawing them in. It was Gibson who had to have the appeal here, so Day-Lewis does a good job of blending into the background. making for an interesting early role.

Gangs Of New York (2002)

Making a good counterpoint to "The Age of Innocence," which is set amongst the upper classes in 1870s New York, director Martin Scorsese and Daniel Day-Lewis cinematically traveled back to NYC nearly 10 years later. This time, they explored the 1860s and an area that may as well be on another planet: Five Points. "Gangs of New York" is set amongst rival gangs in a working-class neighborhood. Bill the Butcher (Day-Lewis) and his gang ironically call themselves Native Americans because they have at least been born there. Their rivals are Irish Catholic immigrants, initially led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) and Happy Jack (John C. Reilly).

The first thing that has to be discussed with "Gangs of New York" is, of course, the accents. A miscast Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz lead the way in the embarrassingly bad accent department. This being Scorsese, it still looks absolutely gorgeous and the costumes are a real highlight here, especially on Bill's gang. And, like "Age of Innocence," his mastery of crowd scenes is second-to-none, except here they are usually brawling instead of dancing. Once again, his use of lighting, color, framing, and blocking elevates and distinguishes scenes that would all look samey in less experienced hands.

Bill the Butcher is the first of two bombastic, over-the-top lead performances that Day-Lewis would deliver in the 2000s, the second of which he, of course, won the Oscar for. While not to everyone's tastes, these performances once again demonstrate his range.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Set across a 30-year period at the start of the 20th century, mainly in California, Paul Thomas Anderson used the novel "Oil!" as a jumping-off point for this saga of greed, alcoholism, religion, and fatherhood. Although Daniel Day-Lewis received the majority of the plaudits for "There Will Be Blood," it absolutely would not be the film it is without Paul Dano, who also co-starred with him in "The Ballad of Jack and Rose." The scenes between Daniel Plainview's oilman and Dano's preacher Eli Sunday are when the movie really comes alive; the violence of Plainview's words is often more stinging than anything he does physically.

The casting of Plainview's deaf son HW (Dillon Freasier as a child, and in an important scene, Russell Harvard as an adult) is another masterstroke. Like much of Anderson's work, there are many memorable lines of dialogue, with "I've abandoned my boy!" and "I drink your milkshake" probably being the most famous. It's the classic American tale of a man selling his soul for money, acquiring more and more at the cost of any personal relationships, and being left alone and alcoholic, rattling around a Hearst Castle-like mansion.

Jonny Greenwood's score is one of the movie's main strengths. Critical reception was split on the film's infamous ending, but if you're going to have a film as melodramatic and overwrought as this, you may as well go for broke at the end. The 2000s were certainly an interesting decade for Day-Lewis.

Lincoln (2012)

It's funny to think that while Bill the Butcher was tearing up the Five Points, Abraham Lincoln was the president, something that encroaches on their lives at the end of "Gangs of New York" with the Civil War Draft Riots. Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis don't seem like a natural match, but Spielberg was determined that it should be Day-Lewis to take on the role of Lincoln. Spielberg waited years for Day-Lewis to accept the role, then a further year or so for him to prepare.

"Lincoln" has a vast cast, with blink-and-you'll-miss-it roles for the likes of Adam Driver and Colman Domingo, as well as supporting roles for Tommy Lee Jones, Lee Pace, Michael Stuhlbarg, Walton Goggins, David Strathairn, Jared Harris, and David Oyelowo, to name but a few. A large key to the film's success is Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. The film does well to balance Lincoln's private life and family concerns, with the problems of a troubled nation that he also had to contend with.

There was really nothing more inevitable than Daniel Day-Lewis playing Abraham Lincoln in a Steven Spielberg film leading to his third Oscar win. Of course, it goes without saying that it's a good performance, if not his most exciting — unlike the one in "Phantom Thread," which thankfully came afterward.

The Boxer (1997)

Returning to work with director Jim Sheridan for the third time, Daniel Day-Lewis took on the role of Danny Flynn in 1997. The character is newly released from jail after 14 years, attempting to restart his life in his former community in Belfast. In "The Boxer," Emily Watson (a worthy screen partner) plays the woman who was Danny's girlfriend when they were teenagers, and Brian Cox plays her father, the local kingpin. 

Influenced by real-life Northern Irish boxer Barry McGuigan, who helped train Day-Lewis for the film, "The Boxer" features Danny finding his feet back in civilian life, mainly in the boxing ring. In typical Day-Lewis style, he trained so rigorously while preparing to shoot the film that McGuigan said he reached the level of a professional. The movie was made during the ceasefire that lead up to the Good Friday Agreement, and it captures the uneasy alliances and tensions of this specific moment in time very well.

The scenes between Day-Lewis and Watson are the greatest strength of this film, and it's a shame that there aren't more of them. Another highlight is when Danny travels to a posh gentleman's club in England for a boxing match. Ken Stott is also excellent as Ike Weir, an alcoholic friend of Danny's. They work together to attempt to rebuild and reopen an abandoned gym, in the hope of training youngsters and helping them avoid jail. This lesser-known entry in Day-Lewis' filmography is worth seeking out.

The Crucible (1996)

Theater director Nicholas Hytner followed up his film adaptation of the play "The Madness of George III" with an adaptation of Arthur Miller's most famous work. After "The Age of Innocence," Winona Ryder was once more doomed to play a woman who is in love with Daniel Day-Lewis, but he does not return the feeling. Unlike the selfless May Welland though, Abigail Williams is jealous and vindictive to the woman she considers her rival: Elizabeth Proctor (Joan Allen). It seems quite a choice for John Proctor to be perhaps the most attractive version of Day-Lewis to have ever graced our screens, but it also works quite well, so we can go some way to understanding why Abigail destroys so many lives over him. 

Day-Lewis is as impressive as ever, as a tortured soul who will do anything to make up for his former betrayal of his wife, and to restore his honor and good name as a legacy for his sons. An actor who is more under-the-radar than Day-Lewis, but also one of the best of all time, is Paul Scofield, who plays the judge who must contend with an endless parade of hysterical teenage girls who keep changing their stories. While it's a pretty straightforward adaptation of something that works so well in the confines of a stage, the source material and the acting are of high enough quality to make "The Crucible" a worthwhile exercise.

My Left Foot (1989)

Method acting has always been a source of much discussion, and Daniel Day-Lewis earned his reputation for going to extraordinary lengths for his roles early in his career. In his Oscar-winning role in "My Left Foot," he plays real-life Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, who had cerebral palsy. Director Jim Sheridan's daughter, Kirsten Sheridan, said that Day-Lewis did not leave his wheelchair during filming: "You'd be feeding him, wheeling him around."

The physical control required for such a role is one thing, but Day-Lewis also makes an impression mainly through his interactions with the women who were important in Christy's life. There's his mother, a physical therapist, and nurse Mary Carr, who features heavily in the film's framing device. Christy turns on the charm with them and he is fiercely protective of his mother and sister (who are under threat from his father), but he can also be belligerent, jealous, frustrated, and angry — all of which Day-Lewis expresses through extremely limited physical movements. 

As much as this is an insight into this specific man's life, the Brown family is representative of many working-class British and Irish families of the time. Overcrowded in tiny homes, with never enough to eat, and ruled by a (frequently drunk) patriarch who they all feared. It's a snapshot of a place and time, and we should be grateful that filmmakers such as Sheridan are around to chronicle this way of life.

The Last Of The Mohicans (1992)

Michael Mann, known for some of the finest neo-noirs ever made, took a detour into the historical epic in 1992. Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves" had won seven Oscars the year before, perhaps leading to "The Last of the Mohicans" being virtually ignored by the Academy. This is the first time that Daniel Day-Lewis would play an American in a leading role, as a white man who has a Mohican father and brother. The film is primarily a love story between Hawkeye (Day-Lewis) and Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe), and also Cora's sister Alice (Jodhi May) and Hawkeye's brother Uncas (Eric Schweig).

The stunning landscape that is captured by Dante Spinotti, and the stirring score by Trevor Jones and Randy Endelman, are the film's two main strengths. The "Main Title" theme combined with the Scottish folk song "The Gael" — most notably in a track called "The Kiss" — provide all of the emotion we need over scenes that contain little-to-no dialogue. The main characters are being hunted and the entire film sees them on the move, trying to stay one step ahead of Wes Studi's Magua, which leads to a tragic conclusion.

Much has been made of the Mann and Day-Lewis' dogged commitment to historical authenticity, but the film's greatest strengths are the cinematography, score, and Day-Lewis' usual grounded performance at the center, convincing us that he entirely belongs to this time and place. It's an epic that deserves the biggest screen and speakers possible.

A Room With A View (1985)

Daniel Day-Lewis broke onto the scene with two roles in 1985 movies that could not have been more different from one another, demonstrating his extraordinary range right from the get-go. In a supporting role in Merchant Ivory's "Room with a View," he plays the snobby Cecil Vyse, with who the central character Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) becomes engaged. The delightful Denholm Elliott plays eccentric Mr. Emerson, and Julian Sands plays his son George, a romantic, passionate, impetuous young man who is a stark contrast to Cecil.

The cast is rounded out by British acting stalwarts such as Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, and Simon Callow. The film contains stunning scenery, firstly in Florence, then in the Surrey countryside. "A Room with a View" has some of the best hair ever seen onscreen — from Carter's piles of Gibson Girl curls to Rupert Graves' floppy mop. One of the most memorable scenes is when George, Freddy, and Reverend Beebe are bathing in a pool in the woods, and Cecil and Lucy stumble across them.

Day-Lewis spends the entire film looking down his nose (through his pince-nez) at everyone, bristling at the joy others find in silly songs, romantic literature, or anything else he considers "ugly things." It is typical of Day-Lewis to choose a prickly, thorny, unsympathetic role over someone we could easily fall in love with, and he's been challenging himself in this way ever since.

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

The other 1985 film that Daniel Day-Lewis starred in really exemplifies the opposite side of British cinema, which is in total contrast to Merchant Ivory costume dramas, the kinds of things that people first think of when it comes to British films. But there's a working-class British cinema (from filmmakers like Mike Leigh and Ken Loach) that tackled Margaret Thatcher's Britain and showed a more modern, unflinching reality. "My Beautiful Laundrette" is written by Hanif Kureshi, and stars Gordon Warnecke as Omar, trying to be more like his successful businessman uncle than his alcoholic father. 

Day-Lewis plays Johnny, who the film surprisingly implies has been two things — a "skinhead," and Omar's former lover. Johnny comes back into Omar's life and they try to turn the laundrette that Omar has been entrusted with into a success. The film does not make a big deal about the gay romance as it seamlessly ebbs and flows around other events and never really seems to be under threat in the kind of overdramatic way it would usually be in movies, particularly of this era. The movie contains so many sensual and sexy moments between Omar and Johnny; most famously, Johnny licking Omar's neck, but also the use of the two-way mirror at the back of the laundrette. It offers them a sanctuary, as well as provides a great shot where their faces blur together. Day-Lewis is charming, dangerous, and complex here in a thrilling breakout role.

The Age Of Innocence (1993)

Just as Daniel Day-Lewis starred in an anomaly in Michael Mann's oeuvre, he also took the lead role in a film that many may overlook when discussing Martin Scorsese's career. Adapted from Edith Wharton's book, "The Age of Innocence" has some of the best uses of color, cross-fades, and framing in all of cinema, thanks to Michael Ballhaus' cinematography, and of course Thelma Schoonmaker's editing. The crowd shots are exquisite, and they're juxtaposed with the breathlessly snatched private moments that Newland Archer (Day-Lewis) manages to grasp with Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Despite not containing any sex scenes, this manages to be one of the erotically-charged films ever — from the unbuttoning of a glove and kissing a wrist, to a (fully-clothed) kiss of the neck, to the lovers collapsing over one another, to hands grasping around a chest from behind. Every stolen moment is precious. While Day-Lewis is perhaps viewed on another level in terms of acting, there have been a few actresses working opposite him that rise to meet him, and Pfeiffer is absolutely one of them. Winona Ryder's very different style works well for the seemingly naive May Welland, and Robert Sean Leonard as their son at the tail-end of the film is delightful. Most of Day-Lewis' best performances have been in romantic roles, but he brings a level of vulnerable yearning here that we don't often see from him. 

Phantom Thread (2017)

Daniel Day-Lewis has unfortunately only made two films in the last decade, and has apparently really, officially retired this time. If Paul Thomas Anderson's "Phantom Thread" does end up being his swan song, it is an absolutely perfect one. Anderson's dialogue and Day-Lewis' line readings combine to make "Phantom Thread" one of the best comedies of the last 10 years. Day-Lewis stars as Reynolds Woodcock, a fussy and fastidious fashion designer in 1950s London, and it is fitting that his final role acknowledges his own accent and class.

Day-Lewis' performance is matched by Lesley Manville as his sister Cyril, and crucially Vicky Krieps as his young lover-turned-wife Alma, who has such a tricky role to get right. Every scene, mostly revolving around food, is memorable — from the Hungry Boy breakfast, to the asparagus prepared the wrong way, to the interrupting tea, and the infamous mushroom omelet — the facial expressions as characters look daggers at one another and spit passive-aggressive insults through gritted teeth remain burned in the brain.

"Phantom Thread" is a perfect example of building a film around an utterly unlikeable central character, but still making it completely compelling and somehow has us rooting for a relationship that should be doomed from the start. Day-Lewis once again pulls out a performance completely unlike anything he's delivered before, demonstrating comedic timing and skills that would have been good to have seen more of in his career. 

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being (1988)

Milan Kundera's novel, which depicted Czechoslovakia in the lead-up to, and aftermath of, the Soviet invasion in 1968, was adapted by Philip Kaufman just a few years after it was published. Daniel Day-Lewis plays surgeon Tomas, a womanizer who is drawn to two particular women: the worldly Sabina (Lena Olin) and the more naive Tereza (Juliette Binoche). Binoche is a formidable screen partner for Day-Lewis, giving one of her best performances here — and that's saying something. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is one of the sexiest films ever made, and even though it isn't truly a European film (everyone speaks English, for one thing), it certainly borrows a lot from European cinema.

Day-Lewis dialed up his sparkly-eyed charm to 11 here, making it so however rakish Tomas is, you can still entirely understand Tereza being drawn back to him again and again. As detached as Tomas tries to remain, attempting to keep sex and romance and love separate, he enters into the conventionality of marriage with Tereza. Olin and Binoche share some electric scenes in the absence of Day-Lewis, and the film really rests on the shoulders of all three of them. This is the kind of movie that makes you long for the days of "movies for grown-ups" and proper movie stars who are utterly magnetic. Day-Lewis would probably like to think of himself as a character actor, but a star is what he is.

In The Name Of The Father (1993)

The fact that Daniel Day-Lewis made two films in one year is surprising enough, but his two 1993 roles could not be more different from one another — and both performances are astonishing. Going from an upper-class Gilded Age New Yorker in "The Age of Innocence" to a working-class Northern Irish petty criminal, and being utterly convincing and compelling in both roles, is one of the many reasons why Day-Lewis is one of the best to ever do it.

"In the Name of the Father" is based on the true story of the wrongly-convicted Gerry Conlon, who spent 15 years in prison for an IRA bombing. At the center of the film is the relationship between Gerry and his father Giuseppe (the extraordinary Pete Postlethwaite), who would also be convicted of helping to make the bomb. The film uses poetic license to depict Gerry and Giuseppe sharing a cell, but this leads to some of the best scenes. Day-Lewis' performance is nothing short of sensational, from the scenes of interrogation and being tortured to confessing to his struggles in jail, particularly surrounding his father's illness and death. 

Gerry is a deeply flawed man who is not presented as a hero, but Day-Lewis easily fluctuates between his charm and youthful arrogance, through to his utter desperation and despair while in jail. In a career of performances at the level of Day-Lewis', it's hard to pick the best, but this just might be it.

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

The post The 14 Best Daniel Day-Lewis Movies Ranked appeared first on /Film.

India is pushing ahead with its new cybersecurity rules that will require cloud service providers and VPN operators to maintain names of their customers and their IP addresses and suggested firms unwilling to comply to pull out of the world's second largest internet market. From a report: The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team clarified (PDF) on Wednesday that "virtual private server (VPS) providers, cloud service providers, VPN service providers, virtual asset service providers, virtual asset exchange providers, custodian wallet providers and government organisations" shall follow the directive, called Cyber Security Directions, that requires them to store customers' names, email addresses, IP addresses, know your customer records, financial transactions for a period of five years. The new rules, which were unveiled late last month and go into effect late June, won't be applicable to corporate and enterprise VPNs, the government agency clarified. Several VPN providers have expressed worries about India's new cybersecurity rules. NordVPN, one of the most popular VPN operators, said earlier that it may remove its services from India if "no other options are left." Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the junior IT minister of India, said that VPN providers who wish to conceal who uses their services "will have to pull out."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Russian subsidiary of Alphabet's Google plans to file for bankruptcy, saying it had become impossible for the company to pay employees and suppliers. From a report: Google submitted a notice of intent to declare itself bankrupt, according to a message published Wednesday on Russia's Fedresurs registry. A Google spokesperson separately said an earlier move by authorities to seize its bank account made continuing operations in the country impossible. "The Russian authorities' seizure of Google Russia's bank account has made it untenable for our Russia office to function, including employing and paying Russia-based employees, paying suppliers and vendors, and meeting other financial obligations," the Google spokesperson said. The company had already paused most of its commercial operations in Russia, including all advertising, after the country's communications censor accused the company's YouTube video service of spreading misinformation and stoking protests.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The inner workings of a cybercriminal group known as the Wizard Spider have been exposed, shedding light on its organizational structure and motivations. "Most of Wizard Spider's efforts go into hacking European and U.S. businesses, with a special cracking tool used by some of their attackers to breach high-value targets," Swiss cybersecurity company PRODAFT said in a new report shared with The

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Cybersecurity agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand warn that threat actors exploit poor security practices for initial access to victim environments.

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You can get a lot done in the kitchen with the most basic tools, but adding a few gadgets to your countertops can make things a little easier and probably more enjoyable. This is the tech-infused cooking gear we like to use in our own kitchens, with insight from Engadget reviews, buyer’s guides and personal experiences. The perennially popular Instant Pot is here, as is the brand’s air fryer, which is the best we’ve tested. Our favorite thermometer takes zero seconds to give a reading and our top pick for a blender makes everything you put into it smooth as silk. If you like to cook, these are the best kitchen gadgets to help you do it.

Valentina Palladino and Amy Skorheim contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-kitchen-tech-gadgets-small-appliances-124515179.html?src=rss

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A delivery app marketing campaign offering a "free lunch" -- aka a $15 promo code valid for three hours -- sent customers and restaurant workers alike into a spiral on Tuesday as thousands of orders jammed the system and disgruntled New Yorkers tweeted through their hunger pains. BuzzFeed News reports: GrubHub's New York City campaign on May 17 touted the physical and mental benefits of eating lunch, but yielded dozens of complaints, cancelled orders and service workers telling BuzzFeed News they were "exhausted" trying to keep up. GrubHub told BuzzFeed News that at times during the promotion that ran from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. the app was averaging 6,000 orders per minute. "It got overwhelming," said Brandon Ching, who was working the counter at Greenberg's Bagels, a popular sandwich spot in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. "We were short-staffed today so it really added extra stress to my day." And customers were frustrated at the delays. Ebenezer Ackon told BuzzFeed News he was in 3,630th place in line to talk to GrubHub's customer service when he gave up, after waiting more than an hour for food, and went to get something from across the street from his apartment. Blake, who didn't want to use his last name, said the small Brooklyn cafe he ordered from received 200 orders in five minutes as soon as the promo began, so they reluctantly had to cancel orders -- including his. [...] Customers may be frustrated about not getting a product they wanted, but for service industry workers it was a day of non-stop stress. A spokesperson from GrubHub sent BuzzFeed News a statement following the fiasco: "It's clear, New Yorkers were hungry for lunch! While we knew 72% of New York workers call lunch the most important meal of the day, our free lunch promotion exceeded all expectations." Tuesday's campaign received six times more orders than a similar promo last year, they said. The company's statement mentioned that "initial demand temporarily overwhelmed" the app and served customers an error message that was "rectified so New Yorkers could enjoy their much-deserved lunch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Emergency tire inflators aren't the most exciting of gadgets, but they sure can be helpful. The Fanttik Apex X8 is the fastest, smartest tire inflator I've ever seen—capable of fully inflating a bike tire in under 30 seconds, and shutting off automatically when it reaches the target pressure. It also features a bright and easy-to-see screen, emergency flashlight, and a USB port so you can keep your smartphone on. For vehicle emergencies or when biking, the Apex X8 is so small and lightweight, considering the enormous peace of mind it brings.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has a long history. As a character from the original "Star Wars" film, he's been around since the beginning and, as one of the older characters in that film, he had the longest history there.

When we're first introduced to him, we see him in exile on Tatooine, watching over Luke Skywalker in case the Sith discovered him, talking about his glory days as a Jedi Knight. We knew he'd been through hell, walking through the desert, but we'd never quite understood the totality of his story. Old Ben sacrificed himself for the good of the galaxy, to help Luke Skywalker escape the Death Star with the plans that would destroy it. Over the intervening 43 years, we've been given more and more of Obi-Wan's saga. At the end of this month, we'll see yet another chapter with "Obi-Wan Kenobi" on Disney+, a six-part series that tells a tale between the original trilogy of "Star Wars" films and the prequel trilogy.

With all of the material that's come out, it can sometimes be difficult to know what you need to watch, read, or play for the context you want for the story to have its maximum impact. Obviously, the bare minimum is going to be the first six "Star Wars" films. But I think we can all assume we've watched those (though there's never a wrong time to rewatch them). For those of us who want to dive deeper into the context of what we'll want to know, this is the place for you.

The Clone Wars

George Lucas and Dave Filoni expanded on the relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, in the critically acclaimed show "Star Wars: The Clone Wars." Coursing through seven seasons across more than a decade, the show added context and complications to Kenobi, his moral center, and the trials he faced. Particular arcs to watch include the first trilogy of Mandalorian episodes in season 2, "The Mandalore Plot," "Voyage of Tempation," and "The Duchess of Mandalore." These episodes show us that Obi-Wan had a past with a woman that would have had him leave the Jedi order entirely and figure into later episodes. Obi-Wan Kenobi's interactions with Darth Maul intertwine with this story as well, ending in tragedy as they always do. In fact, with Darth Maul hellbent on revenge against Kenobi, all of the episodes of "The Clone Wars" with Darth Maul and Death Watch make those episodes practically mandatory to watch for "Obi-Wan Kenobi" as well as "The Mandalorian."

The biggest thing a complete rewatch of "The Clone Wars" does, though, is tighten the connection between Anakin and Obi-Wan. The pair of them had a contentious relationship as master and padawan, but as equals they develop into true brothers. "The Clone Wars" really charts the ups of their relationship, making Obi-Wan's continued confrontations with his former apprentice all the more heartbreaking.

Star Wars Comics And Books

There are more wisps of Obi-Wan Kenobi's story to be found in the pages of Marvel comics. Most recently, a limited series started this week with Obi-Wan at the center. These comics are framed around Old Ben in the desert, writing in his journal, reminiscing about his past. The first issue tells a story of Obi-Wan as a youngling, on the eve of the Gathering, before he got his lightsaber crystal. The second issue promises an adventure with his master, Qui-Gon Jinn. That relationship between master and apprentice is further explored in Claudia Gray's terrific novel "Master and Apprentice" as Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon struggle with their different philosophies, all the while getting hints of Count Dooku's turn to the dark side. The story is rife with political intrigue and excellent moments across characters. It's definitely worth reading.

Going back to the Marvel "Star Wars" series that relaunched with Jason Aaron as a writer, there are more excerpts from Obi-Wan Kenobi's journal that Luke Skywalker finds. These document everything from conflicts with Uncle Owen to a knock-down fight with Black Krrsantan, made even more famous in "The Book of Boba Fett." These hints of Obi-Wan's time on Tatooine tell the story of a man who just can't stay out of trouble. You can take the Jedi out of the galaxy, but you can't take the Jedi out of Obi-Wan.

The Inquisitors

The villains in the new "Obi-Wan Kenobi" show — aside from Darth Vader — appear to be the Inquisitors. For those who don't know, the Inquisitors were users of the dark side of the Force who were trained to hunt down the remnants of the Jedi. Some were former Jedi themselves, others were merely touched by the dark side. Though they work for the Sith and use red lightsabers, they are, themselves, not Sith. There can only be two Sith. To watch the origin of the Inquisitors in their early days after the events of "Revenge of the Sith," you're going to want to turn to Charles Soule's 2017 "Darth Vader" comics series from Marvel. That documents those early days and shows what a powerful force the Inquisitors can be.

Another great resource to delve into the Inquisitors would be the video game "Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order." First released in 2019, "Fallen Order" tells the tale of a former Jedi padawan on his journey back to the ways of the Force, hunted by the Inquisitors the entire time. The game culminates in a confrontation on the moon of Nur in the Mustafar system. There, one can find the Fortress Inquisitors, headquarters of the order. This underwater facility features prominently in the trailer for "Obi-Wan Kenobi" and playing the game will certainly add gravitas to any scenes set there.

Star Wars Rebels And The Grand Inquisitor

The first season of "Star Wars Rebels" gives us a look at the Grand Inquisitor, who seems to be the chief villain in "Obi-Wan Kenobi." A former Jedi Temple Guard who turned against the Jedi order, he's voiced in the cartoon by Jason Isaacs. On "Obi-Wan Kenobi," actor Rupert Friend plays the part with what seems to be an equal menace.

Subsequent seasons of the show introduce us to other members of the Inquisitors, including the Fifth Brother who is played by Sung Kang on "Obi-Wan Kenobi." On "Rebels" the Fifth Brother was teamed up with Seventh Sister, voiced by none other than Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Although Obi-Wan Kenobi's single appearance on "Star Wars Rebels" takes place after the events of the television show, it is definitely worth your time. The episode in the third season, "Twin Suns," ties up his long storyline with Darth Maul and gives us another look at a more peaceful moment in his mission to protect a young Luke Skywalker.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi" begins streaming with two episodes on Disney+ on May 27, 2022.

Read this next: The 20 Best Clone Wars Episodes Ranked

The post Everything to Watch (and Read and Play) Before Obi-Wan Kenobi appeared first on /Film.

Electric vehicle and aerospace billionaire Elon Musk's bid to take over social media network Twitter, Inc took an ugly turn when a company executive personally targetted the executive and stated that Twitter had to regulate speech in order to push users to make the right choices. The video, which is a personal conversation between Twitter's Lead Client Partner Mr. Alex Martinez and a member of the group dubbed 'Project Veritas' in which Mr. Martinez discusses his company's take on regulating information on its platform and Mr. Musk's attempt to change things at Twitter by buying the company. It ends with the Twitter executive commenting on an email shared with employees warning them about Project Veritas and being glad that he had avoided being targeted by the group.

Twitter Executive Believes Company Is All About Making Money - Targets Musk Personally

The bombshell video clip surfaced earlier today and was published by the Candian right wing publication The Post Millenial. It was also, rather ironically, shared by a Florida based journalist on Twitter, where he tagged Mr. Musk and stated that the executive would love to share his thoughts on the affair as well.

It starts with Mr. Martinez sitting in what appears to be a restaurant with another individual and sharing his thoughts on Musk's attempt at taking over Twitter and changing the manner in which the platform controls the flow of information present on it. The clip shared on Twitter was shorter than the one shared by TPM, with the latter's recording including profanity and more comments about Musk and his beliefs about free speech. Martinez was led on by his friend and reassured the latter that Musk would face some tough questions from Twitter's board and executives.

It included controversial opinions about Martinez's beliefs about the public being able to decide their own beliefs, with the executive stating that:

People don’t know how to make a rational decision if you don’t put out -- correct things that are supposed to be out in the public, right?

He also shared cynicism about the true intentions of Twitter's board, its founder Jack Dorsey and Mr. Musk, stating that money-making was their primary goal.

When asked whether profit or ideology reigned supreme at Twitter, he replied:

Now I think it's about it, well, right now we don't make profit. So it's gonna say ideology, which is what's led us into not being profitable.

. . .Well if we're implementing all these rules that they're – and Elon wants to dismantle them, then technically our ideology has led us to not making money because we're not making money.  And Elon wants to turn it the other way so that we can make money. Do you get what I mean?

I have no doubt that there's more to what they tell us than what, than what they tell us. Like there probably is some more, tell me the real, like-like what you're asking. I have no doubt there is, but there's a statement they, [Twitter Board Members] need all 7,000 people to say. And so they can't like tell us like the real truth, like you get what I mean? Like that's what I'm saying. I think at the end of the day, what the real truth is that they can't ever really say is it's all about money.

That it's all about money and making all these money. Parag, Jack, the board members, everyone gets paid. Elon gets like tax benefits. Doesn't have to pay taxes forever. Everything. Like it's all like a money, sh*t, greed America.

Some of his choicest remarks were however reserved for Mr. Musk, whom he described as having special needs:

Elon Musk as a person is whatever. I don't. . .like he's a loony tune, he has Asperger's.

So he's special. We all know that. And that's fine. So here, no one's gonna say some f**cking crazy sh*t because he's special.

Cause again like. . . don't you also see his piece about "why can't we just all love each other?" Haven't you seen his other tweets where he's like, I'm like you're special needs -- you're literally special needs. Literally though, you really are. So I can't even take what you're saying seriously. Cause you're special.

The video ends with Martinez being grateful that he had avoided Project Veritas so far and that Twitter had warned its employees of being targeted by the group and instructed them to not disclose internal information to others.

Musk's response to the entire affair was brief where he simply pointed out that the Twitter executive was trashing and mocking free speech and people with Asperger's. The executive has shared his doubts about proceeding ahead with his takeover after Twitter's chief executive officer Mr. Parag Agarwal shared controversial details about the number of fake accounts on his platform.

The post Elon Musk Personally Attacked By Twitter Exec Mocking Him In Leaked Conversation by Ramish Zafar appeared first on Wccftech.

In this special one-on-one episode of the Geekbox, Ryan talks The Chase (which you can watch Tuesday nights on ABC), Jeopardy!, and all things trivia with Brad Rutter, one of the most successful game show contestants and trivia experts in the world. Starring Ryan Scott and special guest Brad Rutter.

Recently, AMD's new FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 technology, also called FSR 2.0, debuted and was tested against the game Deathloop, offering surprising results when matched against the competing NVIDIA DLSS solution. Improving on graphics is one thing, but with its open-source capability and providing better results on older technology, it is a significant focus right now.

Using AMD's newest FSR 2.0 upscaling technology, Benchmark tests on Intel Integrated graphics offer surprising results

AMD has not provided a complete list of recommended graphics processors with their newest graphics enhancing technology, but they have hinted at particular series of graphics cards for specific resolutions. If you are running an upscaled 4K resolution, the company prefers the Radeon RX 6000 series graphics processors. When lowering the resolution to 1440p, AMD suggests the RX 5000 and RX Vega series graphics cards. And, for the standard 1080p upscaling, the company recommends their Radeon RX 590 or comparable graphics cards.

Website Tom's Hardware decided to check how capable the technology is on a hardware device that would potentially not handle most games easily. One such test the website chose to run this week was pitting a Tiger Lake-based laptop from 2020, offering a Core i7-1165G7 processor with Iris Xe graphics, pushing around 96 Execute Units. Inside, we are looking at 16GB of LPDDR4x-4267 memory.

The Intel-backed website's other laptop choice is a Core i7-1065G7-based laptop offering Gen11 graphics technology. This system also contains 16GB of memory, but the website has chosen to use a system that provides LPDDR4x-3200. The system comes from the Ice Lake processor family, which numerically offers half of what Xe-LP graphics technology provides.

Before showing the results of the testing of Deathloop on the two laptop computers utilizing AMD's FSR 2.0, they point out that the developers warn users that Intel graphics-based systems are not supported and may not work as intended. But Gelsinger is paying their bills, so let's see their results.

Outside of the obvious, the unsupported game took quite some time to load on the Core i7-1165G7 processor with Iris Xe graphics laptop — (four and a half minutes to get to the main menu). After waiting almost five minutes, the game was working on the system, and the tech site decided to run what benchmarks could be completed. The settings were currently as low as could be processed with a 1280 x 720 px resolution.

The first benchmark checked the system's graphics at 720p resolution on the lowest picture setting possible and then added native with temporal anti-aliasing, also known as TAA, and FidelityFX CAS, which stands for Contrast Aware Sharpening. Then, they tested both versions of the AMD FSR technology — versions 1.0 and 2.0 — and utilized the "Performance" upscaling mode to gain the highest framerate available. While the AMD FSR 1.0 fell short, offering terrible graphics with visual interference errors throughout, FSR 2.0 surprisingly handled the game much better.

The website continues to remind readers that the point of the test was not to see if it could run Deathloop "perfectly," but more could it at least handle the game in some aspect that it could be close to playable.

The initial laptop started with 28fps, but when added with TAA and CAS, it dropped two frames per second to 26fps. While AMD FSR 1.0 improved performance by 22%, pushing the system's frames per second to 34, FSR 2.0 offered 30fps at 16% increased performance. The test proved successful on the first laptop, improving a 22% increase in performance but offering more capability with both sharpening and anti-aliasing. In contrast, the previous version did not provide the same with a 28% improvement in performance.

The upscaling performance took a drastic hit on a much older laptop with Gen11 graphics from Intel. At the same baseline — 720p resolution and the lowest settings possible — the system could only produce 13fps, as long as TAA was not used. Once adding TAA and CAS to the mix, performance lowered to 11fps. Utilizing the AMD FSR technology, version 1.0 in "Performance" mode increased the frames per second to 15, but when initiating version 2.0, the frames per second dropped to 14fps. AMD FSR 1.0 proved an improvement of 35% on this particular test, and 2.0 produced only a 28% improvement.

The tests proved that AMD FSR 2.0 can work on an old Intel-based laptop but would not make the game completely playable. The site states that FSR 1.0 and 2.0 both worked on the systems, and the real problem was that they were using much older graphics technology that was Intel-based and not meant to run Deathloop. Most errors were chalked up to rendering errors that the system could not resolve.

The website further deduces that the problem is potentially the drivers themselves due to receiving D3D12 error messages in the log files. However, they did prove that with an older Intel system utilizing TAA and CAS, along with FSR 1.0 or the recommended 2.0 version currently, you will be able to see more promising results. The biggest hurdle is Intel correcting the driver issues that Tom's Hardware believes to be the culprit. Now having FSR work on integrated Intel GPUs means that it should also work fine with Arc graphics and since the first release of XeSS has been delayed, users can enjoy AMD tech on their blue hardware till it releases.

Source: Tom's Hardware

The post Intel XeSS Delayed? Don’t Worry, AMD’s FSR 2.0 Is Here To Save The Day! Intel Graphics Work Well With With Both FSR 1.0 & FSR 2.0 by Jason R. Wilson appeared first on Wccftech.

Millions of U.S. government employees and contractors have been issued a secure smart ID card that enables physical access to buildings and controlled spaces, and provides access to government computer networks and systems at the cardholder’s appropriate security level. But many government employees aren’t issued an approved card reader device that lets them use these cards at home or remotely, and so turn to low-cost readers they find online. What could go wrong? Here’s one example.

KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader — we’ll call him “Mark” because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press — who works in IT for a major government defense contractor and was issued a Personal Identity Verification (PIV) government smart card designed for civilian employees. Not having a smart card reader at home and lacking any obvious guidance from his co-workers on how to get one, Mark opted to purchase a $15 reader from Amazon that said it was made to handle U.S. government smart cards.

The USB-based device Mark settled on is the first result that currently comes up one when searches on Amazon.com for “PIV card reader.” The card reader Mark bought was sold by a company called Saicoo, whose sponsored Amazon listing advertises a “DOD Military USB Common Access Card (CAC) Reader” and has more than 11,700 mostly positive ratings.

The Common Access Card (CAC) is the standard identification for active duty uniformed service personnel, selected reserve, DoD civilian employees, and eligible contractor personnel. It is the principal card used to enable physical access to buildings and controlled spaces, and provides access to DoD computer networks and systems.

Mark said when he received the reader and plugged it into his Windows 10 PC, the operating system complained that the device’s hardware drivers weren’t functioning properly. Windows suggested consulting the vendor’s website for newer drivers.

So Mark went to the website mentioned on Saicoo’s packaging and found a ZIP file containing drivers for Linux, Mac OS and Windows:

Out of an abundance of caution, Mark submitted Saicoo’s drivers file to Virustotal.com, which simultaneously scans any shared files with more than five dozen antivirus and security products. Virustotal reported that some 43 different security tools detected the Saicoo drivers as malicious. The consensus seems to be that the ZIP file currently harbors a malware threat known as Ramnit, a fairly common but dangerous trojan horse that spreads by appending itself to other files.

Ramnit is a well-known and older threat — first surfacing more than a decade ago — but it has evolved over the years and is still employed in more sophisticated data exfiltration attacks. Amazon said in a written statement that it was investigating the reports.

“Seems like a potentially significant national security risk, considering that many end users might have elevated clearance levels who are using PIV cards for secure access,” Mark said.

Mark said he contacted Saicoo about their website serving up malware, and received a response saying the company’s newest hardware did not require any additional drivers. He said Saicoo did not address his concern that the driver package on its website was bundled with malware.

In response to KrebsOnSecurity’s request for comment, Saicoo sent a somewhat less reassuring reply.

“From the details you offered, issue may probably caused by your computer security defense system as it seems not recognized our rarely used driver & detected it as malicious or a virus,” Saicoo’s support team wrote in an email.

“Actually, it’s not carrying any virus as you can trust us, if you have our reader on hand, please just ignore it and continue the installation steps,” the message continued. “When driver installed, this message will vanish out of sight. Don’t worry.”

The trouble with Saicoo’s apparently infected drivers may be little more than a case of a technology company having their site hacked and responding poorly. Will Dormann, a vulnerability analyst at CERT/CC, wrote on Twitter that the executable files (.exe) in the Saicoo drivers ZIP file were not altered by the Ramnit malware — only the included HTML files.

Dormann said it’s bad enough that searching for device drivers online is one of the riskiest activities one can undertake online.

“Doing a web search for drivers is a VERY dangerous (in terms of legit/malicious hit ratio) search to perform, based on results of any time I’ve tried to do it,” Dormann added. “Combine that with the apparent due diligence of the vendor outlined here, and well, it ain’t a pretty picture.”

But by all accounts, the potential attack surface here is enormous, as many federal employees clearly will purchase these readers from a myriad of online vendors when the need arises. Saicoo’s product listings, for example, are replete with comments from customers who self-state that they work at a federal agency (and several who reported problems installing drivers).

A thread about Mark’s experience on Twitter generated a strong response from some of my followers, many of whom apparently work for the U.S. government in some capacity and have government-issued CAC or PIV cards.

Two things emerged clearly from that conversation. The first was general confusion about whether the U.S. government has any sort of list of approved vendors. It does. The General Services Administration (GSA), the agency which handles procurement for federal civilian agencies, maintains a list of approved card reader vendors at idmanagement.gov (Saicoo is not on that list). [Thanks to @MetaBiometrics and @shugenja for the link!]

The other theme that ran through the Twitter discussion was the reality that many people find buying off-the-shelf readers more expedient than going through the GSA’s official procurement process, whether it’s because they were never issued one or the reader they were using simply no longer worked or was lost and they needed another one quickly.

“Almost every officer and NCO [non-commissioned officer] I know in the Reserve Component has a CAC reader they bought because they had to get to their DOD email at home and they’ve never been issued a laptop or a CAC reader,” said David Dixon, an Army veteran and author who lives in Northern Virginia. “When your boss tells you to check your email at home and you’re in the National Guard and you live 2 hours from the nearest [non-classified military network installation], what do you think is going to happen?”

Interestingly, anyone asking on Twitter about how to navigate purchasing the right smart card reader and getting it all to work properly is invariably steered toward militarycac.com. The website is maintained by Michael Danberry, a decorated and retired Army veteran who launched the site in 2008 (its text and link-heavy design very much takes one back to that era of the Internet and webpages in general). His site has even been officially recommended by the Army (PDF). Mark shared emails showing Saicoo itself recommends militarycac.com.

“The Army Reserve started using CAC logon in May 2006,” Danberry wrote on his “About” page. “I [once again] became the ‘Go to guy’ for my Army Reserve Center and Minnesota. I thought Why stop there? I could use my website and knowledge of CAC and share it with you.”

Danberry did not respond to requests for an interview — no doubt because he’s busy doing tech support for the federal government. The friendly message on Danberry’s voicemail instructs support-needing callers to leave detailed information about the issue they’re having with CAC/PIV card readers.

Dixon said Danberry has “done more to keep the Army running and connected than all the G6s [Army Chief Information Officers] put together.”

In many ways, Mr. Danberry is the equivalent of that little known software developer whose tiny open-sourced code project ends up becoming widely adopted and eventually folded into the fabric of the Internet.  I wonder if he ever imagined 15 years ago that his website would one day become “critical infrastructure” for Uncle Sam?

FreeBSD 13.1 has been released today. Some of the new features include UEFI boot improvements for AMD64, a wide variety of hardware driver improvements, and support for freebsd-update to allow creating automated snapshots of the boot environment to try to make operating system updates foolproof. Phoronix reports: Some of the other changes with FreeBSD 13.1 include enabling Position Independent Executable (PIE) support by default on 64-bit architectures, a new "zfskeys" service script for the automatic decryption of ZFS datasets, NVMe emulation with Bhyve hypervisor, chroot now supports unprivileged operations, various POWER and RISC-V improvements, big endian support improvements, support for the HiFive Unmatched RISC-V development board, updating against OpenZFS file-system support upstream, and many other changes throughout this BSD open-source ecosystem. Downloads and the full change-log for FreeBSD 13.1 can be found here.

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