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In the realm of creature features and monster movies, the werewolf flick occupies a unique spot. Typically speaking, monsters are monsters and people are people, but werewolf films feature characters who shift back and forth between human and creature. Not only does that offer room for mystery and intrigue, but it also means filmmakers get a crack at executing a memorable transformation sequence. Of course, most don't take real advantage of the opportunity, but it's there all the same.

You already know the high-profile werewolf movies, and I've previously highlighted some fun lesser-known ones you've probably missed, but who's up for a list of the 27 best werewolf movies of all time? For our purposes, we'll be limiting the picks to movies featuring a werewolf as a central element (meaning no "What We Do in the Shadows" or "Trick 'r Treat") and in which the werewolf is real (as opposed to ones that reveal it was just a serial killer, lion in a costume, etc.).

Keep reading for a look at the 27 best werewolf movies ever made!

An American Werewolf In London

Two Americans backpacking in the UK are attacked by a beast on the moors. One becomes a werewolf while the other returns as a slowly rotting corpse, urging his friend to kill himself before he commits murder. And it's a comedy! 1981 was an epic year for the werewolf subgenre with the release of two certified classics (placing a reminder here that as much as I love "Wolfen" it is not a werewolf movie), and this is arguably the best of the bunch. Rick Baker's work on the transformation scene delivers physicality, awe, and pain. And it still beats any CG werewolf sequence.

• Starring: David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter
• Director: John Landis
• Year: 1981
• Runtime: 97 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

Bad Moon

A jungle vacation leaves a man doomed to a life of lycanthropy, but he hopes to find solace in a visit with his sister. Unfortunately for him, their family dog isn't interested in welcoming lupine visitors. The source novel, Wayne Smith's "Thor," tells its tale from the point of view of the family dog. While the film drops that angle, it still affords plenty of screen time for the German Shepherd, as he's ultimately the real hero. Solid practical effects (marred slightly by some optical nonsense), copious bloodletting, and an engaging family dynamic make for a good time. 

• Starring: Mariel Hemingway, Michael Paré, Mason Gamble
• Director: Eric Red
• Year: 1996
• Runtime: 80 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 30%

The Beast And The Magic Sword

Waldemar Daninsky is a 16th-century werewolf, and he's not too happy about it. He heads to Japan in search of a cure, but he finds only witches, ninjas, and a very hungry tiger. Paul Naschy made several films focused on the Daninsky character, and while none would crack a top 10 list of werewolf movies, two have made the cut here due to their creativity and vitality. Fur flies as frequently as the exposition, but there's a joy to seeing Naschy meld genres with a serious affection for the material.

• Starring: Paul Naschy, Shigeru Amachi, Gérard Tichy
• Director: Paul Naschy
• Year: 1983Runtime: 115 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: n/a

The Beast Must Die

An eccentric millionaire invites friends and colleagues to his lavish estate for a single purpose: He believes one of them to be a werewolf. Think werewolf movie by way of an Agatha Christie mystery, and you'll be on the right page with this '70s gem that revels in its whodunnit nature. It's cheesy at times, and the werewolf's final form is essentially a dog, but the mystery is solid. You can't knock a film that literally pauses during the third act for a "werewolf break" to give viewers time to lock down their suspicions.

• Starring: Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing, Charles Gray
• Director: Paul Annett
• Year: 1974
• Runtime: 93 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 50%

The Company Of Wolves

"Don't trust men whose eyebrows meet in the middle," says Angela Lansbury, and you'd be right to listen. A cautionary lesson in the form of a fairy tale, Neil Jordan's sumptuous film finds drama, romance, and atmosphere to spare. Thankfully, it also gifts viewers with some highly memorable werewolf transformations and sequences as the beasts literally tear their human flesh off to reveal the hairy beasts within. It's "Little Red Riding Hood" imbued with lust, grue, and wisdom. 

• Starring: Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Stephen Rea
• Director: Neil Jordan
• Year: 1984Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

The Curse Of The Werewolf

An adopted boy grows into a man and discovers that his blood bears a devilish curse. He is doomed to become a werewolf unless he finds someone to love him for who he is and not the upper-class position he holds. There are admittedly far too few werewolf shenanigans to be found here, but they satisfy once unleashed in the film's third act. Instead, the big draw here is its look at class, power, and the abuses born by each. And let's be honest, you can never go wrong with young Oliver Reed.

• Starring: Oliver Reed, Clifford Evans, Yvonne Romain
• Director: Terence Fisher
• Year: 1961
• Runtime: 91 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 50%

The Cursed

Villagers in 19th century France begin falling prey to a creature, and while the victims die horribly, the survivors suffer an even worse fate. While the superior "Brotherhood of the Wolf" explores the real-life story of the Beast of Gévaudan with a more grounded resolution, this new take on the story embraces a supernatural explanation. A curse brings a werewolf-like creature down on a wealthy family as punishment for their own acts of cruelty, and the film brings it to life with gorgeous cinematography, acts of gory brutality, and some dodgy CG. That last element is unfortunate, but the film's atmosphere and fresh mythology earn it a spot on this list.

• Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Kelly Reilly, Alistair Petrie
• Director: Sean Ellis
• Year: 2021
• Runtime: 112 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%

Dog Soldiers

British soldiers on a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands find more than they bargained for when a werewolf begins tearing through their ranks. Familiar genre beats get a breath of fresh air when placed within unexpected setups and locations, and that's just what we get here as military men come face to face with a supernatural nightmare. Practical effects bring the uniquely designed beasts to bloody life while a strong cast grunts, wails, and fights their way towards one end or another. There's a fittingly gritty feel to all, thanks as much to being filmed on 16mm as to the intense, earthy atmosphere of it all.

• Starring: Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd, Liam Cunningham
• Director: Neil Marshall
• Year: 2002
• Runtime: 105 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man

Awakened from his deathly slumber by graverobbers, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) is once again on the hunt for a cure to his lycanthropy or a guarantee of permanent death. Lon Chaney Jr.'s portrayal of Talbot remains the definitive one as he finds the empathy missing from so many others cursed by the bite. Here, he goes looking for Dr. Frankenstein's journals, but his attempt at self-help is interrupted by eternally panicked villagers and another mad scientist. The film sees Talbot extend his own empathy toward Frankenstein's monster (Bela Lugosi), leading them both on a path toward tragedy.

• Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Ilona Massey
• Director: Roy William Neill
• Year: 1943
• Runtime: 72 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 25%

Ginger Snaps

A teenager is attacked by a beast shortly after her first period strikes, and she soon realizes she's been turned into a werewolf. Why it took until the year 2000 for a film to link the monthly curse of lycanthropy with menstruation is anyone's guess, but the wait was very much worth it. The focus here is on a pair of sisters who are local outcasts even before things get hairy. Their story is as much one of female empowerment as it is about oppression within a patriarchal society. It's no dry sermon, though, and instead finds fun, drama, and terror in the sisters' journey. Fans can continue the story with the sequel and prequel (as well as a possible television series that may be heading our way).

• Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Mimi Rogers
• Director: John Fawcett
• Year: 2000
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

Good Manners

A young, pregnant, single woman hires a nanny in advance of her child's birth, but she soon begins to suspect her new employer is hiding something. The beauty of this Brazilian tale is that the werewolf elements don't even rear their hairy heads until an hour in, and that time is used to build character, mood, and atmosphere. More familiar beats arise in the back half, but there's still an appealing and affecting approach to the clash between motherhood and monster. If you still need convincing, just know that critically speaking, it's the highest-rated entry on this list.

• Starring: Isabél Zuaa, Marjorie Estiano, Miguel Lobo
• Directors: Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 135 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

Howl

Passengers on a late-night train are upset when it breaks down in the middle of a forest, but at least they're not under attack by a vicious werewol — Oh, never mind. There are some visual flaws here, as the budget results in some underwhelming optical effects, but the practical makeup more than makes up for it. The beast is big, muscular, and coiffed with the finest heavy metal haircut you've ever seen. And it means business, as the passengers soon see their numbers dwindling with nothing but torn flesh and pools of blood to show for it.

• Starring: Ed Speelers, Shauna Macdonald, Elliot Cowan
• Director: Paul Hyett
• Year: 2015
• Runtime: 89 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 63%

The Howling

A newscaster heads to a remote resort to relax and recover after a run-in with a serial killer, but neither is on the agenda as she soon discovers that they're all on the menu instead. Joe Dante's fang-in-cheek slice of atmospheric horror is 1981's other great werewolf movie, and while a slew of sequels followed, none can touch the blend of goofiness and kick-ass werewolfery that this gem still delivers. Special effects master Rob Bottin's werewolf transformation scene is a practical makeup effects delight, and the film manages some unsettling sequences in between the silliness.

• Starring: Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan
• Director: Joe Dante
• Year: 1981
• Runtime: 91 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%

Late Phases

A blind war veteran relocates to a tired retirement community expecting to be bored, but it's anything but dull thanks to a spate of killings that might just be the work of a werewolf. Spoiler: They are, and soon, the monster has the blind man in its sights. There are more than a few movies about blind protagonists pursued by villains, but this is the first to introduce a werewolf into the mix. The result is a solid survival tale with a strong lead character, terrific practical effects, and a curious werewolf design choice.

• Starring: Nick Damici, Ethan Embry, Lance Guest
• Director: Adrian Garcia Bogliano
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 62%

Night Of The Werewolf

Waldemar Daninsky is back, baby! And this time he's up against the infamous Countess Bathory (Julia Saly) whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Both have been resurrected after their 16th-century deaths, and the only hope the world has against vampiric seduction is a hairy Paul Naschy. This is arguably the most purely entertaining entry in the franchise as Naschy goes fangs deep with the pseudo-Gothic atmosphere, blood reds, saucy T&A, and monster mayhem. His films are a vibe unto themselves, and if you're on board with his sincere lunacy, you are in for a good time.

• Starring: Paul Naschy, Julia Saly, Silvia Aguilar
• Director: Paul Naschy
• Year: 1981
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: n/a

Silver Bullet

A paraplegic teen suspects someone in his small town is a werewolf, but only his sister and their irresponsible uncle believe him. Stephen King's "Cycle of the Werewolf" gets the feature adaptation here, and the result is a highly entertaining coming-of-age tale. We watch through the free-spirited eyes of youth as a cynicism towards authority figures is earned, and we have fun all the while. Gary Busey is having a blast, Corey Haim is enjoying an early lead role, and the werewolves tearing it up during a sermon is an all-timer of a scene.

• Starring: Corey Haim, Gary Busey, Everett McGill
• Director: Daniel Attias
• Year: 1985
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 45%

Wer

A lawyer defending her client on murder charges begins to think he might be a monster — not just a killer but an actual monster. This one doesn't get the love it deserves (I blame the title), but genre fans should give it a spin as it delivers a high body count and an interesting approach to the central mythology. Things get bloody at times, and the action kicks up a notch or three in the back half, including a scene that sees a werewolf toss a cop towards a moving helicopter. It's a small film with big, toothy aspirations.

• Starring: A.J. Cooke, Sebastian Roché, Brian Scott O'Connor
• Director: William Brent Bell
• Year: 2013
• Runtime: 93 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 40%

Werewolf Of London

A botanist returning to London sees his arrival set off a string of attacks throughout the city. It seems he brought back something more than flowers from his Tibetan vacation. This might surprise you, but Universal Pictures produced this werewolf tale a full six years before nailing the formula with 1941's "The Wolf Man." Makeup legend Jack Pierce worked on both creatures, and it's interesting seeing the choices made between them. This film also plays up humorous elements with mixed results, but it's worth a watch for its place in genre history.

• Starring: Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson
• Director: Stuart Walker
• Year: 1935
• Runtime: 75 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 77%

Werewolves On Wheels

A biker gang breaks up a satanic ceremony but pays the price when one of their own is cursed by mad monks. Soon the deaths are piling up, and the only response is a return to the unholy church where it all began. As werewolf movie premises go, this one is right up there with a title to match, and while it doesn't deliver quite what you're hoping for, there's still some good biker exploitation fun to be found. The occult angle comes in hard, the leather and denim-clad bikers hit even harder, and there's just enough werewolf on a motorcycle to prevent the title from being a lie.

• Starring: Steve Oliver, Donna Anders, Gene Shane
• Director: Michael Levesque
• Year: 1971
• Runtime: 80 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 24% 

Werewolves Within

A newly assigned park ranger finds his quiet town turning into a bloodbath just as a winter storm isolates them from the rest of the world. Horror comedies are tough business, but this riotously funny werewolf flick nails the assignment. Bloody killings, big laughs, and a legitimate mystery as to who among them is the beast make for a wonderfully entertaining time. The cast and script are pitch-perfect in delivering both the humor and the red herrings leading to a surprising and thrilling finale. Make it a double feature with "The Beast Must Die," and you'll be in werewolf mystery heaven.

• Starring: Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub, Harvey Guillén
• Director: Josh Ruben
• Year: 2021
• Runtime: 97 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

When Animals Dream

A teenager living in a small island community struggles with her parents' past and her present, and her internal struggle is only amplified when a series of mysterious deaths occur. Think sheltered Danish love child of "Let the Right One In" and "Ginger Snaps," and you'll have an idea of what the film is going for. It doesn't quite hit all of its marks, but there's still a somber beauty here in the form of a haunting coming-of-age tale. It's a definite slow burn, though, so stick with it till the very end. 

• Starring: Sonia Suhl, Lars Mikkelsen, Sonja Richter
• Director: Jonas Alexander Arnby
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 85 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%

Wolf

An over-the-hill book publisher loses out on a promotion and is then bit by a werewolf. His day gets better, though, when he realizes he can use his new powers to woo Michelle Pfeiffer. The werewolf antics are genre dressing on a tale of male politics, literary in-jokes, and big acting, but that's not a knock. Jack Nicholson's ranting and howling are worth the price of admission — cheap for us, but $70 million for Columbia Pictures in 1994 — and the battle between him and James Spader delivers an entertaining and amusing time.

• Starring: Jack Nicholson, James Spader, Michelle Pfeiffer
• Director: Mike Nichols
• Year: 1994
• Runtime: 125 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 63%

Wolf Children

A recently widowed mother of two struggles to raise her children alone, even as things grow more complicated by their increasing display of werewolf traits. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the only animated film to make the list comes from the director of "Summer Wars" and "The Boy and the Beast." All three films explore human relationships by way of people's interactions with non-humans, and here the focus is narrowed further by the wild highs and lows of motherhood. While most of the films here are horror, this is an emotionally affecting, beautifully animated drama. Find the time for it.

• Starring: Aoi Miyazaki, Takao Osawa, Haru Kuroki
• Director: Mamoru Hosoda
• Year: 2012
• Runtime: 117 minutes
• Rating: PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

Wolf Guy

Akira Inugami (Shin'ichi "Sonny" Chiba) is a crime-fighting werewolf. Do you honestly need more than that before seeking out this wild, weird, and thrilling Japanese gem? He's the last of his kind, and his latest case involves an invisible tiger slashing its way through unwary victims. The story moves fast, almost as fast as the fists, feet, and blades flying through the film's numerous fight scenes. The filmmaking is equally energetic with its zooms, pans, and bold colors. Does it make any sense? Who's to say? But it sure is a lot of bonkers '70s fun!

• Starring: Shin'ichi "Sonny" Chiba, Kyosuke Machida, Yuriko Azuma
• Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
• Year: 1975
• Runtime: 86 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 18%

The Wolf Man

Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) is bitten by a werewolf, and it doesn't bode well for the rest of his very short life. While it's not quite the original (see "Werewolf of London" above), it's understandably considered the OG of werewolf movies. As mentioned previously, Lon Chaney Jr.'s sympathetic portrayal of a man cursed with lycanthropy gives the film heart and pathos, and it leads the story towards tragedy. Time-lapse transformations may seem dated, but combined with a strong lead performance, an engaging tale of sacrifice, and attractive black and white cinematography, the film is timeless.

• Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi
• Director: George Waggner
• Year: 1941
• Runtime: 70 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Wolfcop

Lou Garou (Leo Fafard) is a cop battling boredom and alcoholism, but both take a backseat when he crosses paths with a creepy cult and wakes up with heightened sense, hairy palms, and a pentagram carved into his chest. As werewolf comedies go, this silly slice of Canadian cheese is a barrage of broadly crafted humor that you'll either enjoy or despise. It's gleefully R-rated, as evidenced by a transformation scene that starts with Lou's giblets before moving throughout the rest of his body. The laughs don't always land, but there's enough goofy joy here to make for an entertaining romp in the moonlight.

• Starring: Leo Fafard, Amy Matysio, Sarah Lind
• Director: Lowell Dean
• Year: 2014
•  Runtime: 79 minutes
• Rating: n/a
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 65%

The Wolfman

Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is bitten by a werewolf while investigating his brother's death at the teeth and claws of a wolf-like creature, and he soon discovers that he's now cursed to become a monster with the rise of the full moon. Years before Universal kicked off its ill-fated Dark Universe, the studio took an expensive stab remaking its 1941 classic. There's no arguing with the cast, Danny Elfman's score, or Shelly Johnson's cinematography, but hiring legendary makeup effects artist Rick Baker and then using CG for the transformations is a major red flag. Still, a big-budget werewolf movie delivers the scope and visuals that most others can't reach.

• Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt
• Director: Joe Johnston
• Year: 2010
• Runtime: 102 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 34%

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The post 27 Best Werewolf Movies Ever appeared first on /Film.

Sam Raimi, what a guy. His latest movie, "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," incorporates his horror roots and signature cinematographic style into the massive Marvel blockbustet. But he also blessed us with the Tobey Maguire led "Spider-Man" trilogy, giving us Willam Dafoe as the Green Goblin -- a villain so good, he was able to terrorize three different versions of Peter Parker simultaneously in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." 

This isn't about Raimi's super-powered film career, however. Instead, we're going to take a look at the multihyphenate's television career, ranking the TV shows that Raimi had a hand in creating/developing, directing, and/or writing (meaning the shows he only served as executive producer for are excluded) according to the following metrics set forth by the person writing this article: Critical reception, longevity, execution, and notability.

Before We Get Into The Rankings...

The aforementioned ranking criteria was carefully crafted as a result of me, the writer, being like three years old at the time some of these shows were airing, and therefore not having a working memory or any sort of familiarity with some of them during their heyday. Having set criteria across the board also helps avoid familiarity bias, because it wouldn't be fair or interesting to read "I think this one is cool because I saw it before the others." Yuck. Boring. 

With this in mind, think of these rankings as more of a fun and informative take on the shows as opposed to the definitive critique of some faceless ranking god who wants to ruin your favorite TV shows with their opinions on the internet. Now, onto the rankings, in order of worst to best!

#7 - Spy Game

Series Run: 1997

Number of Seasons: 1

Raimi's Involvement: Creator

"Spy Game" was intended to be a parody of spy shows like the 1966 "Mission: Impossible" TV series. Unfortunately, it seems as though the show's curious unwillingness to lean fully into comedy resulted in poor ratings, as viewers seemed to take note of how unbalanced the series felt as a result. Due to poor ratings and reception, the series was canceled by ABC after just 3 episodes, with the last four episodes of the 13 episode series going completely unaired. Apparently, people don't tend to stick around for shows that have an obvious identity crisis. Go figure. 

There's really not much else to say here given the show's extremely short shelf life, but it's worth noting that of the few user reviews available on sites like IMDb, the general consensus from both positive and negative reviewers is that "Spy Game" was overwhelmingly cheesy. Personally, I enjoy more than a few "so bad it's good" TV shows and movies, but there's a limit to that sort of charm.

#6 - M.A.N.T.I.S.

Series Run: 1994 - 1995

Number of Seasons: 1

Raimi Involvement: Writer, Creator, Producer (for pilot)

If M.A.N.T.I.S. had kept its original cast and concept from the movie pilot, it could have been amazing. It was the creation of Sam Raimi and screenwriter and comic book artist Sam Hamm, and featured a Black superhero played by Carl Lumbly in the leading role. It also featured a racially diverse cast of characters, including Gina Torres as a coroner and a variety of other Black and POC characters in roles that weren't limited to stereotypes typical of the era. 

Unfortunately, "M.A.N.T.I.S." was whitewashed to hell and back after the pilot, so in the TV series that followed the movie, there's no Gina Torres, no meaningful diversity, and no fun. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth since the initial hype of seeing such a diverse cast with a variety of characters with the movie pilot was killed by the network's decision to reduce such a promising and colorful cast to just one Black guy, a sassy Black maid stereotype, and a bunch of white characters who didn't exist in the pilot at all.

Apparently, the big wigs at Fox felt that a series with too many people of color just wouldn't be relatable to viewers -- because I guess they forgot that people of any race or ethnicity can and do share a love of entertainment across various genres -- and decided to make the final version of "M.A.N.T.I.S." more palatable for a few white people who can't handle acknowledging that people who don't look like them exist. 

A 1994 Orlando Sentinel article details the motivation behind the upsetting decision to destroy the work put into the 2-hour pilot that Sam Raimi and comic book writer Sam Hamm created. Most notably, series producer Bryce Zabel was adamant that "changes were done because the African scientists would simply be 'unrelatable' to viewers'' and that "he felt the African aides and the overall 'look' of the movie -- a drama that centered on African-Americans -- could never hold up as a weekly series." At the time, both Raimi and Hamm issued statements making it clear that they had no ties with this needlessly rebooted version of "M.A.N.T.I.S."

Ultimately, I have to rank the finished product of the series -- a toothless, bastardized disappointment compared to all the promise and excitement of the movie -- very low. This is what happens when you let cowardice and bigotry influence art; like a venomous serpent it slithers up and injects its deadly poison, leaving behind a pale corpse of what was once brimming with so much life and color. Had Fox had the guts to stand by the vision Raimi and Hamm intended for the series, it would have easily been ranked much higher, as evidenced by the difference in ratings when comparing the positive reception of the TV movie pilot to the lackluster viewership and relatively swift cancellation of the woefully watered down TV series.

#5 - Rake

Series Run: 2014

Number of Seasons: 1

Raimi's Involvement: Executive Producer, Director (2 episodes)

"Rake" didn't leave much of an impression on me, and apparently I'm not alone in this assessment. The comedy-drama received mixed reviews, with a recurring theme among various reviews being comparisons to Fox's hit medical drama "House." 

Like the titular character of the medical series, the main character in "Rake" struggles to balance his bad habits with his professional life, with protagonist Keegan Deane (Greg Kinnear) practicing law in between gambling money he can't afford to lose and being kind of a loser who should probably have his s*** together at his age. Basically, it can be argued that the premise of "Rake" is if "House" was about a lawyer with severe and self-destructive personal issues, rather than about a physician with those same shortcomings. 

Unfortunately, viewers didn't find "Rake" nearly as entertaining as the show about the talented-but-abrasive doctor, and the series was canceled after just one season. Several critics stated that, not unlike one of the other shows on this very same list, the series seemed to be torn between multiple identities and unable to commit to any of them in a way that would keep viewers interested enough to warrant a second season.

#4 - Legend Of The Seeker

Series Run: 2008 - 2010

Number of Seasons: 2

Raimi's Involvement: Creator, Producer

Fantasy series "Legend of the Seeker" received criticism for being distractingly derivative of more well known fantasy and sci-fi franchises like "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars" while failing to offer anything new to the genre. Still, the series (based on the "The Sword of Truth" fantasy novels) had a dedicated fanbase and a lot of promise. 

When the series was canceled after 44 episodes spread out over the course of two seasons, there was enough love for the show that distraught fans campaigned for the show to be renewed on social media using the phrase "Save Our Seeker." Notably, the Save Our Seeker Twitter account was active until 2020, and has over 5700 followers. Although those involved with "Legend of the Seeker" were touched by the show of support from viewers who enjoyed tuning in to catch up on the magical, mythical exploits of the characters, the show was not granted additional time to develop and find its footing with a third season.

#3 - 50 States Of Fright

Series Run: 2020 - 2020 (so far?)

Number of Seasons: 2

Raimi's Involvement: Executive Producer, Director (3 episodes)

"50 States of Fright" was a horror anthology series that debuted on the ill-fated and incredibly short lived streaming platform Quibi. Although the stories presented within the episodes are more than fine on their own the segmented format of the show clashes with the storytelling in a way that makes watching it feel a bit disjointed. This is due to the fact that all Quibi's content was designed to be broken up into tiny, "digestible" 10-minute chunks. In the case of "50 States of Fright" the stories being told were broken into 2 and 3 parts in order to meet the aforementioned 10 minutes per episode standard.

"50 States of Fright" currently has a total of 2 seasons and has received pretty solid reviews with much of the less favorable criticism being that the format of the series made it feel as though the narratives were being cut short before they had a chance to really develop. In 2020, the same year it first hit the platform, the fate of the series was left temporarily unknown when Quibi shut down after just 7 months of operation. 

Eventually, Roku announced that it had picked up "50 States of Fright" and would rebrand it as a Roku original, although there is currently no word on when season 3 will premiere or whether or not it has started production. If and when the series continues with a third season, it would be nice if it were reworked a bit so that viewers are served full course spooky stories, rather than quick bites of potential.

#2 Ash Vs Evil Dead

Series Run: 2015 - 2018

Number of Seasons: 3

Raimi's Involvement: Creator/Developer, Executive Producer, Director (premiere), Writer (Premiere)

"Ash vs Evil Dead" has the benefit of being relatively new, an extension of Raimi's "Evil Dead" universe with a built-in fanbase, and just being a whole lot of fun. Fans of humor and horror who are somehow unfamiliar with the "Evil Dead" series could still be easily drawn in by the series premiere alone, as it strikes a great balance of catering to the existing fanbase while generously welcoming newcomers into the fold. Its newness and budget mean the special effects hold up a lot better than some of the older shows on this list, which is always nice. Additionally, Raimi's signature flair for the dramatic and macabre is on full, glorious display throughout the series.

In "Ash vs Evil Dead," viewers meet up with Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) 30 years after the events of "Army of Darkness." The uneventful life this much older Ash has been leading is upended, forcing him to take up the fight against the Deadites once more. Along the way we find out that Ash has a teenage daughter who he didn't know existed, and we get to learn more about his life as the series progresses. 

Although "Ash vs Evil Dead" received overall favorable reviews, a decline in ratings led to its cancellation after three seasons. Despite this, those involved with the series reflect positively on the series and the way it ties into and expands upon the "Evil Dead" universe. The conclusion of the series also marks the last time Bruce Campbell reprised his role as Ash Williams, as the actor stated he was ready to move on from playing the character in a tweet after fans campaigned for Netflix to pick up the series.

#1 XENA: Warrior Princess

Series Run: 1995 - 2001

Number of Seasons: 6

Raimi's Involvement: Developer, Executive Producer

I have to be honest and say I initially had no idea Raimi served as a creative developer and executive producer for this groundbreaking series, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover his involvement in the groundbreaking series. "Groundbreaking" is not a term to be used lightly, so just what is it about "Xena: Warrior Princess" that justifies such a statement and places the Lucy Lawless-led show at the number one spot? 

For one thing, "Xena" is easily the most well known of all shows on the list, with its place firmly cemented in pop culture history thanks to Xena's lasting status as both a queer and feminist icon. Fans loved her complexity as a character, her status as a weapon-wielding badass during a time when woman-led action shows were few and far between, and of course, her relationship with her best gal pal and soulmate across lifetimes, Gabrielle. 

Sure, Xena was not the first heroine to have her own show, but her characterization was certainly a step up from the all-too-common hyperfeminine waif with a one-dimensional personality who manages to be relentlessly, impossibly dainty at all times. Xena would go on to become the blueprint and source of inspiration for powerful and complex woman characters to come.

In addition to Xena as a mold-breaking character, "Xena: Warrior Princess" is just a really fun show. It's got everything. Gods. Demons. Magic. Action. Revenge. Redemption. Gals being pals with enough "subtext" to fill a stadium. The list goes on. On top of that, Xena remains a popular character to cosplay over 20 years after her first appearance in 1995 as a villainous side character on the series "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," the subsequent debut of her own spin-off series that same year, and the series finale in 2000. Having such a dedicated fandom so long after its inception is a rare feat reserved for only the most impactful series, so it's only right that, considering all these factors, "Xena: Warrior Princess" concludes the list.

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

The post Every Sam Raimi TV Series Ranked appeared first on /Film.

Spoilers for "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" follow.

The moment it was announced that Disney was planning to add the X-Men to the MCU, and then after the events of "Spider-Man: No Way Home," there was only a matter of time before we saw the first actual mutant in a Marvel movie. Still, no matter how many theories and confirmations we had, seeing Sir Patrick Stewart reprise his role as Professor Charles Xavier in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" was a true joy.

What made the moment even better is that aside from Stewart being such a noble spirit that he outright confirmed his cameo appearance rather than lie to us, the cameo did not retcon Xavier's emotional send-off in "Logan." Instead, arguably the biggest surprise of the movie is not the cameo itself, but that this Xavier seems to be the same one from the 1997 "X-Men" carton, making it canon. As The Illuminati make their introduction, we see Stewart emerge in his glorious yellow hoverchair, while the instantly recognizable theme song plays in the background.

It is just the kind of hyper-specific reference that makes the idea of a multiverse exciting, with the possibility of exploring older and lesser-known titles without spending too much time explaining the details — did the "Secret Wars" storyline happen in this universe too? How did the mutants do against Thanos? 

And yet, as cool as those initial five seconds are, it ends up as an empty gesture. Xavier dies not 10 minutes after being introduced, in an absolutely gnarly yet unceremonial way — not unlike the death of the first team in "The Suicide Squad" or the X-Force in "Deadpool 2." It is a devastating moment that honestly bummed me out for the rest of the movie, and it could have easily avoided that. If "No Way Home" could redeem a failed franchise, why couldn't "Multiverse of Madness" give Sir Patrick Stewart more than yet another ugly death?

Professor X Is The Kenny Of The X-Men Universe

Indeed, despite being one of the smartest people in the universe (and Reed Richards was there too), Xavier utterly failed to predict that Scarlet Witch Wanda would pose a bigger threat than ... Doctor Stephen Strange M.D.? Which results in a gruesome sequence where Wanda breaks Xavier's neck and turns Mr. Fantastic into linguini.

This marks the fourth time we see Charles Xavier die in a Marvel movie, so either Sir Patrick Stewart (or PatStew for short) really loves doing death scenes, or someone at Marvel really hates his guts. Whether it's being disintegrated by Jean Grey, killed by sentinels, or stabbed by a Wolverine clone, plus all the times he's died in the comics, Xavier is quickly becoming the Kenny of the Marvel multiverse. And the worst part is that this is far from an emotionally devastating death like in "Logan," but instead a senseless death meant to shock audiences after making them cheer for recognizing someone from another movie.

If Wanda had killed a bunch of C-list heroes, or side characters from things we recognized, then that'd be one thing. If they had Wanda kill the Avengers (or variant versions of them), that'd at least have had some emotional weight to them as we realize how much more powerful she is than we realized. But to instead have her kill a bunch of characters who have always been in their own little, separate universes, five minutes after you introduce them here? It ends up being a cheaper gimmick than anything in "The Last Stand," and that is saying a lot.

Because Charles Francis Xavier is not a character you bring in for a quick cameo or a cheap joke. He is no Black Bolt, not someone you can turn into a joke. Xavier is a character with decades of history, both in the comics and in the movies. He is a leader, a mentor, someone who deserves more than just being betrayed and killed over and over again.

What Now?

Indeed, what makes Sir PatStew's quick cameo frustrating is that it is everything fans feared would happen with "No Way Home," that it would hype up the appearance of other Spider-Men only to relegate them to blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos. That we don't even know for sure if this is the same Xavier from the cartoon, or how it fits together, or why any of that even matters gives voice to the common criticisms of Marvel movies as little more than reference machines, meant to elicit applause for 5 seconds and nothing more.

But fine, we can try and look at the glass half full and take the "X-Men" theme song to signify that the 1997 cartoon is indeed canon. What does that mean? Well, the most obvious answer is that Marvel could decide not to bring over the live-action versions of the X-Men over to the MCU, but maybe just keep some of the actors and cast them as the 1997 versions of the characters. This would mean an actually useful Jubilee, and a hot Gambit that actually manages to make it to a live-action movie.

As for how to bring them to the MCU? Well, "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" already teases a solution: the incursion. In the film, we learn that an incursion is when two universes start colliding, blending until only one, or none, survives. If an incursion is initiated in a future movie, but is stopped right before it can destroy both universes, then maybe the MCU could pull a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and bring only certain characters as refugees from an alternate universe. Cue the rad theme song.

Read this next: 13 Box Office Bombs That Are Truly Worth A Watch

The post There's Not Nearly Enough [REDACTED] in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness...and We're Bummed appeared first on /Film.

The Wine project has released development version 7.8, which arrives with some tweaks to drivers that could make Windows games work better on Linux. The move could ultimately make Linux more attractive to gamers, including on Valve's Steam Deck.

Another Intel Arc Alchemist delay could be on the cards, as the desktop GPU range might not release until late summer. Sources close to Igor's Lab suggest the gaming PC part may arrive as late as August, with the publication speculating that software issues are to blame.

Rumblings from the rumour mill previously suggested that an Intel Arc Alchemist delay would push the blue team's desktop graphics card release date to late summer, but specified that they'd potentially show up in early Q3 2022. News of yet another delay threatens to extend the PC GPU's arrival past the company's vague summer 2022 window, meaning it might end up entering the fold shortly before the upcoming Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 series.

It's worth reiterating that Intel hasn't announced an official Arc Alchemist desktop GPU release date, so it's probably best to take any related rumours with a grain of salt. There's also reason to believe the delay solely affects the lineup's flagship graphics card, the A780, as Insiders have informed Wccftech that A750 and A380 variants may show up as early as this month.

RELATED LINKS: Arc Alchemist GPUs - everything we know, Raptor Lake CPUs - everything we know, Best gaming CPU

While the Apple M1 Linux support is off to a great start and using Asahi Linux is offering good CPU performance and most functionality working to at least some degree, the biggest blocker remaining is getting the Apple M1 3D graphics working. The latest progress on that front is the Mesa code working to begin correctly render glmark2, a basic OpenGL / GLES benchmark...

A key component of the Biden Administration's $1 trillion US Infrastructure Bill was ensuring that people of all means had access to reliable high-speed internet. Now, twenty internet providers including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have agreed to offer high-speed broadband internet plans for no more than $30 per month via a subsidy, the White House announced.

The ISP's, which cover 80 percent of the US population, agreed to "either increase speeds or cut prices, making sure they all offer ACP-eligible households high-speed, high-quality internet plans for no more than $30/month," The White House wrote. Biden has previously highlighted the challenges not having broadband poses to some families. "Never again should a parent have to sit in their car in a McDonald’s parking lot... so that their child can get access to high-speed Internet to do their homework," he said in a speech last month. 

The subsidy is part of a $65 billion program for expanding broadband primarily through fiber-optic cable installations. $14 billion of that is earmarked for subsidies in the Affordable Connectivity Program aimed at lowering internet costs. It's available to any families with income 200 percent or less than federal poverty guidelines, or for those who qualify for certain assistance programs.

Some 11.5 million households have signed up for the subsidy, but there are as many as 48 million eligible households. To that end, the administration is launching a site called GetInternet.gov that will provide details on how to sign up. It's also reaching out to people through federal agencies, partnering with states and cities and collaborating with public interest organizations like the United Way and Goodwill. 

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on an actively maintained remote access trojan called DCRat (aka DarkCrystal RAT) that's offered on sale for "dirt cheap" prices, making it accessible to professional cybercriminal groups and novice actors alike. "Unlike the well-funded, massive Russian threat groups crafting custom malware [...], this remote access Trojan (RAT) appears to be the work of

(In other news, I finally send off the novel manuscript I've been working on for the past 18 months. Taking a couple of days off before getting back to work on a novella I started in 2014 ...)

(Disclaimer: money is a proxy for control or power. I'm focussing on money rather than political leverage only because it's quantifiable.)

To you and me, a billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. It's on the order of what I (at peak earning capacity) would earn in 10,000 years. Give me just $10M and I could comfortably retire and live off interest and some judicious siphoning of capital for the rest of my life.

So are there any valid reasons to put up with billionaires?

There's a very fertile field of what I can only describe as capitalist apologetics, wherein economists and others try to justify the existence of billionaires in terms of social utility. Crude arguments that "greed is good" are all very well, but it begs the question of what positive good billionaires contribute to the commonweal—beyond a certain point the diminishing marginal utility of money means that every extra million or billion dollars changes nothing significant in the recipient's life.

For example, Steve Jobs had pancreatic cancer, as a result of which his liver was failing (after he underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy ). As a very rich man, he could afford the best healthcare. As a billionaire, he could do more than that: he reputedly kept a business jet on 24x7 standby to whisk him to any hospital in the United States where a histocompatible liver for transplant surgery became available. (Livers are notoriously short-lived outside the donor body. Most liver transplant recipients are only able to register in one state within the USA; Jobs was registered in two or three.) But at that point, it did not matter how many billions he had: once you've got the jet and are registered with every major transplant centre within flight range, no extra amount of money is going to improve your chances of survival. In other words, in personal terms the marginal utility of money diminishes all the way to zero.

So, personal wealth has an upper bound beyond which the numbers are meaningless. Which leads to the second common argument for tolerating billionaires: that they have the resources to undertake tasks that governments decline to address. For example, there's the Gates Foundation's much-touted goal of eliminating childhood diseases of poverty in South-East Asia (which I haven't heard much about since COVID19 hit—or, for that matter, since the allegations of a Gates-Epstein surfaced in the press). Or Elon Musk's avowed goal of colonizing Mars.

Contra which, I would argue that in planetary terms a billion dollars is peanuts.

Gross planetary GDP (GWP—gross world product) is on the order of $85Tn— that is, $100,000 billion—a year. It's hard to pin it down because it's distributed among multiple currencies with varying PPP, so it could be anywhere from $70Tn to $100Tn.

Anyway. Those insanely rich guys, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos? Each of them is worth less than the growth of GWP during 2019. The richest billionaires are barely visible when you look at wealth on the scale of GWP. Collectively, along with Gates, the Waltons, Putin, et al, they represent only about 1% of GWP.

They can fund lobbying groups and politicians, rant about colonizing Mars, and buy midlife crisis toys like Twitter or weekend getaways on a space station, but their scope for effecting real change is actually tiny on a global scale. Even Putin and Xi, who are at the state-level actor end of the scale (individually they're multi-billionaires: but they also control nuclear weapons, armies, and populations in 8-9 digits) have little global leverage. Putin's catastrophic adventure in Ukraine has revealed how threadbare the emperor's suit is: all the current gassing in the Russian media about using nuclear weapons if he doesn't get his way actually does is to demonstrate the uselessness of those nuclear weapons for achieving political/diplomatic objectives.

So I conclude that they probably feel about as helpless in the face of revolutions, climate change, and economic upheaval as you and I.

Which in turn suggests something about the psychopathology of billionaires. They're accustomed to having their every whim granted, merely for the asking, as long as it exists within the enormous buffet of necessities and luxuries that are available in our global economic sphere. But they're all going to grow old and die. They can't really avoid the threat of creeping disablement within their own body, although they can buy the most careful attendants and luxurious bedpans and wheelchairs. They can't insulate themselves from objective reality, although they can pretend it doesn't exist and buy their very own luxury apocalypse bunker in New Zealand.

So they're likely to succumb to brutal cognitive dissonance at some point.

Elon Musk turns 50 this year. He's probably finally realized that he is not going to have a luxurious retirement on Mars. If the Mars colony isn't established within 20 years, he'll probably be too old to make the trip there (and I'm betting 20 years isn't long enough for what he'd want).

Vladimir Putin turns 70 this year. He's been treated for thyroid cancer, and may well be quite ill. Only one former Russian or Soviet leader lived past 80 in the past 400 years, and that's Mikhail Gorbachev (who was out of office, and insulated from its premature ageing effects, after only 5 or 6 years). My read on the situation is that Putin hadn't been impacted by external reality for decades before his Ukraine "peacekeeping operation"; his 70th birthday present to himself, intended to secure his legacy by re-establishing the Russian empire, has turned into a nightmare.

Jeff Bezos is 58; keep an eye on him in January 2024, that's when he's due to turn 60. (He seems to be saner than Musk and Putin, but his classic midlife crisis year falls around the start of a presidential election campaign in the US and he might succumb to the impulse to make a grand gesture, like Mike Bloomberg's abortive run on the presidence.)

More to the point?

Granting individuals enormous leverage can sometimes be socially useful. But before you point at Musk and Tesla or SpaceX, I need to remind you that he didn't found Tesla, he merely bought into it then took over: SpaceX's focus on reusability is good, but we had reusable space launchers before—the only really new angle is that it's a cost-reduction measure. Starlink isn't an original, it's merely a modern, bigger, faster version of 1990's Teledesic (which fell victim to over-ambitious technology goals and the dot-com bust). Meanwhile, billionaires can do immense damage: the Koch network has largely bankrolled climate change denial, Musk's Mars colony plan is fatally flawed, and so on. We inevitably run into the question of accountability. And when one person holds the purse-strings, we lose that.

I can't see any good reason to let any individual claim ownership over more than a billion dollars of assets—even $100M is pushing it.

Can you?

More threats—not enough defenders

The security landscape has become increasingly challenging and complex for our customers. Threats have grown at an alarming rate over the last year, and cybercrime is now expected to cost the world USD10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from USD3 trillion a decade ago and USD6 trillion in 2021.¹

As attacks increase in scale, so must our defenses. Last year, Microsoft Security blocked over 9.6 billion malware threats and more than 35.7 billion phishing and other malicious emails. Microsoft Security is actively tracking more than 35 ransomware families and 250 unique threat actors across observed nation-state, ransomware, and criminal activities, and our technology blocks more than 900 brute force password theft attempts every second.

But technology alone is not enough to defend against cybercrime. Technology is critical, but it’s the combination of leading technologies, comprehensive threat intelligence, and highly skilled people that makes for a truly effective security posture. The challenge is that in this critical moment when cybersecurity has reached an inflection point, our nation is facing a cybersecurity talent shortage with nearly one in three—or 2.5 million—security jobs vacant in the United States,² pushing the time of detection for a breach to an alarming 287 days.³ And, even when talent is available, access to highly skilled expertise remains a challenge.

Our expertise is now your expertise

It’s getting harder every day for organizations to build and maintain a full security team, let alone one with the ever-expanding skillset required to meet the range of today’s security demands.

That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that Microsoft is expanding our existing service capabilities under a new service category called Microsoft Security Experts. Security Experts combines expert-trained technology with human-led services to help organizations achieve more secure, compliant, and productive outcomes.

Our vision is to deliver this new category of services across security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy. The first step on that journey is offering new and expanded services for security.

Video description: Microsoft Security Experts is a line of managed security solutions that combines human-led services with expert-trained technology to help organizations achieve better security outcomes. In this brief overview video, we highlight how this new suite of services delivers solutions across Microsoft’s security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy product categories.

Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help our customers and their partners meet today’s security challenges. We secure devices, identities, apps, and clouds—the fundamental fabric of our customers’ lives—with the full scale of our comprehensive multicloud, multiplatform solutions. Plus, we understand today’s security challenges because we live this fight ourselves every single day.

Now, our world-class security expertise is your security expertise.

New managed services from Microsoft Security

With input from our incredible partner ecosystem, we’ve designed three new managed services that can help you scale your team of experts to fit your needs—without the challenges of hiring and training them.

Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting is for customers who have a robust security operations center but want Microsoft to help them proactively hunt for threats across Microsoft Defender data, including endpoints, Office 365, cloud applications, and identity. Our experts will investigate anything they find and then hand off the contextual alert information and remediation instructions so you can quickly respond. With Experts on Demand, you can consult a Microsoft expert about a specific incident, nation-state actor, or attack vector with the simple click of a button. You will also get specific recommendations to help you understand and improve your security posture. Defender Experts for Hunting will be generally available in summer 2022, and you can request to be part of the preview now.

“Defender Experts for Hunting is like the tip of an iceberg. It is supported by all of the Microsoft applications, technologies, and cloud services overlaid with security tools that connect the entire system together, then powered by machine learning.”

—Igor Tsyganskiy, Chief Technology Officer, Bridgewater Associates

Video description: Bridgewater Associates goes all-in on Microsoft Defender Experts, heralding a new age in managed security services.

Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR is for customers who need to extend the capacity of their security operations center. Defender Experts for XDR is a managed extended detection and response (XDR) service that extends beyond endpoints to provide detection and response across Microsoft 365 Defender, investigating alerts and using automation and human expertise to respond to incidents alongside your team. You stay in control and reduce costs, excess noise, and manual processes. Defender Experts for XDR will move into preview in fall 2022.

“Our engineers and security team are very pleased with results and learning they get from the Defender Experts for Hunting service. Our clients are happy that we have such a robust service in place, and our management team is happy with its high return on investment and our increased security posture.”

—Chad Ergun, Chief Information Officer, DGS Law

Video description: DGS Law raises the security bar and levels the playing field with Microsoft Defender Experts.

Large enterprises looking for more comprehensive, high-touch managed services from Microsoft experts will benefit from Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise. This comprehensive, expert-led service combines proactive threat hunting and managed XDR, leveraging Microsoft’s complete security information and event management (SIEM) and XDR stack to protect all cloud environments and all platforms. Dedicated Microsoft security experts manage onboarding, daily interactions, practice modernization, and incident response for you. Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise is sold through a custom statement of work and is available today. Interested enterprise customers should contact their Account Executive to learn more.

Existing security services

Through our Microsoft Industry Solutions group, we currently offer a broad set of services for incident response and advisory. These service offerings, designed to support customers in times of crisis and to help them modernize their security practices, are delivered by Microsoft’s global team of professional services experts, and will become part of the Microsoft Security Experts portfolio. Watch the mechanics video to learn more.

Microsoft Security Services for Incident Response supports customers before, during, and after a breach. Incident response and recovery experts will help you remove a bad actor from your environment, remediate your defenses after a breach, and build resilience against future attacks. Our global team of experts leverages Microsoft’s strategic partnerships with security organizations and governments around the world and with internal Microsoft product groups to respond to incidents and help customers secure their most sensitive, critical environments. ​

Microsoft Security Services for Modernization is for customers that want to take advantage of Microsoft best practices and know-how as they embrace new modern security capabilities and embark on their security transformation. It provides consulting services that help customers at any stage of their security journey modernize their security posture and embrace a Zero Trust approach. Our modernization services utilize extensive cybersecurity knowledge and industry expertise gathered over 35 years to keep your business secure.

Security for all, together with Microsoft partners

One of our core principles at Microsoft Security is security for all. Meeting the needs of all kinds of organizations means offering choice—not only in the types of services customers buy but in who they buy them from. At the end of the day, we know that a single provider can’t meet the unique needs of every organization.

That’s why Microsoft is fully committed to working with an ecosystem of partners and technologies that provide customers the flexibility to choose what works for them—and to leverage those trusted relationships for the best outcomes and returns on their investment. Founded in 2018 with 26 charter members, our Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) has more than 300 members that include more than 100 service partners.

“This collaboration with Microsoft highlights their commitment to the partner community. The transparency and visibility provided by Microsoft, coupled with the feedback given by Critical Start during the design phase, allowed us to focus on driving value and providing the best outcome for customers.”

—Randy Watkins, CTO, Critical Start

As an industry-leading security company with more than 785,000 global customers, we believe that Microsoft Security service partners offer an important path for customers to get the services they need, and we rely on these partners to help us scale.

Our goal is simple: we want to empower customers, not only by offering world-class security products but also by providing access to critical human expertise when they need it from the best cybersecurity experts in the world. As some of the best defenders in the industry, our partners are essential for this vision.

An invitation to our managed XDR partners

Gartner® predicts that 50 percent of organizations will be using managed detection and response (MDR) services to contain threats by 2025.⁴ We want to invite all our managed detection and response partners to expand their offerings to help meet the critical customer need for managed detection and response services that go beyond the endpoint.

To help enable you to meet this growing demand, we will be making an incremental multimillion-dollar financial investment this coming year in our managed XDR partner community in three key areas. These new investments will expand the way we integrate with our managed XDR partners and create exciting new go-to-market opportunities. Microsoft is committed to showcasing verified partners and their managed XDR solutions on our marketing websites, through our commerce marketplaces, and in direct sales conversations with customers. We will do that in a few ways:

1. A new managed XDR partner designation within MISA will unlock an expanded set of co-marketing benefits to ensure partner offerings are front and center in each customer conversation.
2. We are launching a new co-sell benefit for managed XDR partners. This worldwide investment represents millions of dollars that can help you build your business around Microsoft’s advanced security products.
3. Based on input from our design partners, our engineering teams are building new APIs to help ensure partners have access to Microsoft threat intelligence.

“We are thrilled to have been an initial design partner for Microsoft Security Experts. The future of managed services will rely on the unique combination of threat intelligence, product leadership, and human expertise aligned under Microsoft Security Experts. We are looking forward to providing security services to our mutual customers tailored to their needs through deep integration with Microsoft threat intelligence through APIs, co-sell, and marketing opportunities.”

—Milan Patel, Global Head of MSS, BlueVoyant

More information on the new partner investments will be available during Microsoft Inspire, our worldwide partner conference taking place in July 2022. There, we’ll share specifics on how to integrate with the new APIs and take advantage of the expanded program benefits and go-to-market (GTM) opportunities. You can also find more information on our Microsoft Security Experts Partner page.

“Our partnership with Microsoft to create this new category of services will enable organizations to get ahead of cyberthreats, deepen their security resiliency and minimize the impact of incidents. At a time when the need for detection and response capabilities has never been greater, our collaboration will make a genuine human impact for all.”
—Rajiv Sagar, Cybersecurity Lead, Avanade

Looking to the future

Wherever you are in your security journey, Microsoft Security Experts will meet you there, whether you need additional security expertise, help with specific technologies, or guidance in navigating new security challenges. Leveraging industry-leading technology, the best defenders from Microsoft and our partner community, and the most comprehensive threat intelligence in the world, we can build a safer world for everyone, together. 

To learn more, join me and Satya at Microsoft Security Summit on May 12, 2022, or come see us in a few weeks at RSA—spoiler alert: cool things will be happening at the Microsoft Security Hub!

Partners, please join us at Microsoft Inspire, where we will share specifics on how to integrate with the new APIs and take advantage of the expanded program benefits and go-to-market (GTM) opportunities. You can also find more information on our Microsoft Security Experts Partner page.

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

---

¹Cybercrime To Cost The World $10.5 Trillion Annually By 2025, Steve Morgan, Cybercrime Magazine. November 13, 2020.

²America faces a cybersecurity skills crisis: Microsoft launches national campaign to help community colleges expand the cybersecurity workforce, Brad Smith, Official Microsoft Blog, Microsoft. October 28, 2021.

³Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021, IBM.

⁴Gartner, Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response Services, Pete Shoard, Craig Lawson, Mitchell Schneider, John Collins, Mark Wah, Andrew Davies, 25 October 2021.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

The post Building a safer world together with our partners—introducing Microsoft Security Experts appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

GPCS4 v0.2.0 is released. A PlayStation 4 emulator which was just started. A project done for fun, and for technical research....More

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Turns out, the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding was right. Windex can do way more than just make your windows spotless. (But don’t spray it directly on your skin—he was wrong about that part.)

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When it comes to our health, we like definitive answers—there’s a lot on the line, after all. We are constant victims of personal biases, and we should be most skeptical of the things we’re most sure of—but we can’t necessarily look to others for the truth either. Crowdsourced conventional wisdom about health doesn’t…

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I’m testing an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti this week. No fully-formed, review-style thoughts on it yet, though after an unusually stressy installation I do have a question: does it need to be so god-damned big?

“Yes, because heat” is probably the answer, as when you’ve got as many processor cores as the RTX 3090 Ti, running at such high clock speeds as the RTX 3090 Ti, and with as much memory as the RTX 3090 Ti, it’s a bad idea to try building an RTX 3090 Ti that’s the size of a postage stamp. But the best graphics cards aren’t huge as a rule, and when it’s got to the point where new GPUs can’t easily fit into a standard mid-tower PC case, it might be time for some course correction.

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This is it, folks. It's no exaggeration to say that this has been 36 years in the making. Ever since the moment when Tom Cruise first strapped on those aviators and climbed behind the cockpit of an F-18 in the original Tony Scott classic "Top Gun," few would argue that it has all been leading to this. I'm referring, of course, to Lady Gaga officially unveiling her new single "Hold My Hand" that will feature prominently in the soundtrack of the long-awaited sequel, "Top Gun: Maverick." We're truly back in the Danger Zone!

In all seriousness, the early reactions from the film's screening at CinemaCon all seemed to point unanimously towards a worthy follow-up from director Joseph Kosinski -- to absolutely nobody's surprise. After all, why would anyone expect anything less from an actor as motivated and driven to deliver excellence as Tom Cruise has been over the last few decades? Not only has he successfully guided the action-heavy "Mission: Impossible" franchise through several years of franchise reinvention and consistent success (lasting longer than Daniel Craig's run as James Bond, in fact!), but he's left an indelible mark on American cinema in general ever since he first arrived on the scene in the 1980s. If that doesn't automatically make him one of our last remaining movie stars, then I don't know what does.

Which is why it's so thrilling that /Film's Jenna Busch was able to speak face-to-face with the man himself, Tom Cruise, at a recent press junket for "Top Gun: Maverick" in San Diego.

'You See The Emotional Journey Of The Characters'

It's no secret that the production of this "Top Gun" sequel has endured a long and unexpectedly challenging development process, with years of rumors preceding a pandemic which threw a massive wrench in the plans to release the film. Cruise has been excited about this one for years, and after an incredibly long wait, the actor is once again back on the press tour and hyping up the film with all the ferocity of the jet wash from an outgoing fighter jet.

While speaking to /Film's Jenna Busch, Cruise shed some light on the many script revisions involved on the long road to making "Top Gun: Maverick" into what it ultimately is. To hear him tell it, the process was far more involved than simply reading a screenplay and giving his approval or not. The actor, who also has a producer credit, went many steps further than that. As he put it with his usual brand of forthright (and refreshing) honesty:

"Listen, we developed this script. So it wasn't like ... I didn't just read the script. It was the concepts and ideas. And it wasn't just the script. It was a moment where, quite frankly, they didn't work. None of the stories worked. And films, it's not like you just have the script. You have an idea and you start to know that we're onto something emotional and what effects we want to create for the audience. And then we just started delving into it and became very interested in these concepts.

I think you see it. You see the emotional journey of the characters. You see the world is incredibly fascinating. That was always there. But what's the drama? What's the story? The story is king. Always. So those things you have to develop as you're going on."

It certainly sounds as if "Top Gun: Maverick" will truly be tailor-made for the big screen, in accordance with the actor's well-established history of putting his body on the line for the sake of the art. We'll find out for sure whether all the backbreaking effort was worth it when the sequel flies into theaters on May 27, 2022.

Read this next: Every Martin Scorsese Feature Ranked From Worst To Best

The post Tom Cruise Explains Why This Version of Top Gun: Maverick Was The One He Wanted to Make [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

A couple of weeks ago, Bob Odenkirk was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As part of the unveiling ceremony, David Cross, Bob's co-star on Mr. Show delivered this wonderful speech.

Image: Screengrab

Writing dialogue for Matt Berry is the kind of dream every writer aspires to. The man could make the phone book sound like poetry, so it must be pure ecstasy getting to hear your words come out of his mouth, complete with British lilt and impeccable elocution. "What We Do in the Shadows" writer Stefani Robinson got to take that magic a step further, writing dialogue for Berry as his character Lazlo's alter-ego, Regular Human Bartender Jackie Daytona. Robinson was nominated for an Emmy for her writing on the season 2 episode "On the Run," which sees Lazlo hiding out from Jim the Vampire (Mark Hamill) after a feud about an old unpaid debt. In an interview with the AV Club, she explained that Berry had one unusual request for his dialogue in the episode — and it's hilariously on brand for the comedy performer. 

Appreciating American Vulgarity

It turns out that the first version of the script didn't have quite enough Yankee swearing for Matt Berry's taste, and he requested that Stefani Robinson add in more Americanisms. Robinson told the AV Club:

"He did come to me after initially reading the script, and he said, 'I want more American curse words and more American sayings.' He was like, 'I want to say 'god d***' a whole bunch.' I was like, 'Do you not say that in the UK?' I guess maybe they don't. But he loves saying, 'god d*** son of a b****.' So I made sure to go through the script and give him as many Americanisms as I could. He was very specific about that. That was his one request."

Berry is famous for his raunchy comedic stylings, where he manages to make even the foulest F-bombs sound posh. The man is an expert-level performer, and his propensity for potty language is a lot of fun. If Samuel L. Jackson is the master of American cursing, Berry is the champion of British swears. The man is clearly having the time of his left as Jackie Daytona, dropping as many G.D.S.O.B.s as he d*** well pleases, and it's extra funny that he's hiding in plain sight with a toothpick and pair of jeans. The stateside swears sound kind of strange with Berry's accent, and perhaps that's part of why he wanted to pepper more of them in. Whatever his reasoning, "On the Run" is one of the best episodes of "What We Do in the Shadows," and Daytona's vampiric vulgarity is absolutely a contributing factor. 

"What We Do in the Shadows" has three great seasons and a fourth already filmed and hopefully on the way to our TVs soon. If there's any good in the universe, we'll see Jackie Daytona again. 

Read this next: The 13 Best Comedy Shows On Amazon Prime Right Now

The post Matt Berry Had a Raunchy Request For His What We Do In the Shadows Role appeared first on /Film.

While we still have doubts that the many, many "Avatar" sequels will ever arrive, James Cameron has been working non-stop to return audiences to the world of Pandora. And after years of delays and filming, the first "Avatar 2" trailer is here in all its blue-tinted glory. And while I'm sure we're all going to be calling this "Avatar 2," it's worth noting the official title is "Avatar: The Way of Water." 

Jake Sully, the former human turned Na'vi, and his Na'vi girlfriend Neytiri have settled down with a family. But following family life isn't enough of a spectacle for "Avatar 2," which means all-new adventures and all-new worlds await. And if this thing makes nearly as much money as the first movie, you can expect a bunch more sequels to follow. For now, though, feast your eyes on the "Avatar 2" trailer below. 

Avatar 2 Trailer

James Cameron has spent over three years working on the follow-up to his 2009 blockbuster, and a nagging question persists: does anyone still care? The first "Avatar" is still the biggest box office hit of all time — not even "Avengers: Endgame" could dethrone it for very long — so it's safe to say that someone must care about more "Avatar" movies. Still, the first film has an odd cultural footprint. We're all aware of that movie, but we don't talk about it often. 

I took it upon myself to revisit the first "Avatar" recently on Disney+. I'd only ever seen it once before, when it opened in theaters in 2009. I remember the theatrical experience to be memorable due to the impressive 3D technology. I personally think 3D is a bit of a gimmick, but I'll freely admit that Cameron managed to do something special with the format. Beyond that, though, I didn't think about the movie very much. So when I revisited it on Disney+, it was almost like watching it for the first time. The bottom line: it was fine. It's not the most original film -- it lifts heavily from both "Dances with Wolves" and Disney's "Pocahantas" — but Cameron is so damn good at staging action set pieces that you can't help but pay attention.

And now here comes "Avatar 2"! I, for one, would love if Cameron went off and made a new movie that had nothing to do with "Avatar," but that clearly doesn't interest him. Instead, he wants to keep bringing us back to Pandora. In this sequel:

Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, "Avatar: The Way of Water" begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure. Directed by James Cameron and produced by Cameron and Jon Landau, the film stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement and Kate Winslet.

Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, CCH Pounder, and Matt Gerald are all reprising their roles from the original film. Sigourney Weaver is back, too, but she's playing a new character (since her character died in the first film). And the returning players are joined by new cast members Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Michelle Yeoh, Jemaine Clement, Oona Chaplin, Vin Diesel, and CJ Jones. 

"Avatar 2" arrives on December 16, 2022. Unless it doesn't. You never know, they might delay it again, just for fun. 

Read this next: The 15 Worst Sci-Fi Movies Of The 21st Century (So Far)

The post Avatar: The Way of Water Trailer: James Cameron's Long-Awaited Sequel is Almost a Reality appeared first on /Film.

Flying has never been something I have been afraid of. Plenty of people out there strap into their seat belts on an airplane and lose their minds. I have seen people grab hold of the seat in front of them and the person beside them simultaneously at the slightest bump in the air with the fear of god in their eyes. The only thing I dislike about air travel is the constant ear popping. I am someone who has struggled with ear infections and whatnot his whole life, and the popping drives me nuts. But the fear of flying, or more specifically crashing, is not one I have ever had.

An old remedy you hear about people who are scared of flying is that they should learn how to fly. The thinking there is if you know how it all works, you no longer would be afraid when it is not you controlling the plane. You experience all the problems firsthand and realize there is actually not much to be scared of at all. However, it takes a long time and a lot of studying and practice to get a pilot's license. Not everyone has that kind of free time, money, or dedication to do it. If you get a pilot's license and can't afford a plane, what kind of use is that license of yours going to get? For most, it is a rather impractical method of getting over your fear.

Of course, sometimes all you need is one jolt of adrenaline to snap you out of fear, where you move so fast you do not even have time to be afraid. Such was the case with Jennifer Connelly, one of the stars of "Top Gun: Maverick," who unexpectedly ended up having to face her fear of flying.

A Plane With Tom Cruise Inside Will Not Stay On The Ground

When you sign up to be in a "Top Gun" movie, that does not necessarily mean you are signing up to fly a plane. Sure, if you are cast as a United States Navy pilot, you probably should get some in some reps in the cockpit of a plane. Jennifer Connelly does not play a pilot in the film, though. Her character owns a bar. She may live in the world of these people doing rolls and flips in the air, but she is not one of them. That was good news for Connelly, as she is scared of flying. She gets to be in the cool plane movie but doesn't have to get in the air. A win-win.

But then she got in a plane with Tom Cruise. Cruise has been a pilot for decades and has no qualms getting up in the air. In an interview on "The Graham Norton Show," Connelly revealed how Cruise convinced her to be in a flying scene:

"Originally when I signed on to do the movie, there was no flying for my character. My character was on land. She was on the water. She was never in the air. There was a scene, at one point, where we were taxiing on a runway ... So, Tom and I are shooting that scene, and the plane, the P-51 is, like, tiny. The top of the cockpit is right here. My knees are up against his back, and he's like, 'Jen, have you ever been in a plane like this before?' I was like, 'No, no, I haven't, Tom. It's amazing.' He's like, 'Ever done aerobatic flying before?' I was like, 'Umm,' starting to get nervous, 'No. Why? Will I be doing some?' He's like, 'It's going to be very graceful, very elegant, just some very elegant rolls, you know. It's going to be nice and easy.' So, that's how I found out I was going to be up in the P-51."

A ... Tolerance For Speed?

Tom Cruise may be a person we think about risking his life on screen for crazy stunts, but in reality, he does not do a single one without the utmost assurance of safety. He trains and prepares for things like this like nobody else and knows exactly what he is doing. So if you go up in a plane that Cruise is flying, you can best believe he is not going to do something that isn't absolutely safe.

So once he had Jennifer Connelly doing aerial rolls, I can imagine that getting on board a JetBlue flight feels like a piece of cake now. Then again, with the mask situation on air travel now, maybe it is actually more dangerous than it has ever been. Better just stick to personal pilot Tom Cruise.

Read this next: The 15 Best '80s Comedies Ranked

The post Tom Cruise Unknowingly Helped Jennifer Connelly Overcome Her Fear of Flying During Top Gun: Maverick appeared first on /Film.

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With GOG now turning their attention back to the actual good old games, we get this article on the store's website that serves as both a retrospective for Richard Garriott's legendary Ultima series and an invitation for us to purchase those classic titles.

Check it out:

In certain gaming circles, Ultima is one of the most iconic game series out there. First released way back in 1989, the series spans nine total games, and there are even spin-offs to explore if you’ve exhausted the main campaign.

With so many games available, it can be an overwhelming experience for newcomers to Ultima. Even those that have played the series before might struggle to jump back in.

We’re going to give a brief overview of each game in the series and talk a bit about the spin-offs, as well. But, before we dive into that, we’re going to take a trip down memory lane to talk about the series as a whole and its creator, Richard Garriott.

Looking back at the creation of Ultima

Ultima is well-known in the gaming community, and for good reason. The original helped define the computer role-playing genre when it was released in 1989. Later games also added features that you can still find in RPGs today.

The third game in the series, Ultima III: Exodus, was another iconic entry. This game introduced party gameplay where players controlled multiple characters. If you’ve played almost any modern RPG, you know the impact this has had on the genre as a whole.

The brainchild of Richard Garriott, the series spans the world of Britannia and takes players on what feels like an endless adventure.

Set in a fantasy world, Ultima follows the adventures of the Avatar (that’s you!). The games follow more traditional adventure tropes, with evil wizards, revenge, and classic good versus evil plot lines.

As mentioned, the series was created by Richard Garriott, who got his start making video games in 1979. Back then, he was programming them on teletype terminals, where code was stored on literal paper tape spools. At the time, he was working at ComputerLand, and game creation was just a hobby.

Then, something magical happened. One game he was working on, called Akalabeth, ended up being a huge success. It was picked up by California Pacific Computer Company. It sold over 30,000 copies.

Speaking of astronauts, Richard also made his way to space in 2008, when he was flown to the International Space Station.

Now that we’ve spent a bit of time on the origins of this iconic game franchise, let’s dive into the games!

Ultima is broken up into three different ages

The epic RPG series breaks the nine main games up into three different ages: The Age of Darkness, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Age of Armageddon.

Ultima 1-3: The Age of Darkness

The Age of Darkness is where everything starts. You play as a man from Earth who has been summoned to the fantasy world of Britannia.

Ultima 1: Summoned to a new world, you have to stop the evil wizard Mondain. But things aren’t as simple as they may seem, as Mondain holds a gem that grants him immortality.

Ultima 2: The second game in the series follows the first game’s storyline. With Mondain out of the picture, you now have to stop a plot that has been drawn up to avenge the wizard’s death from the first game.

Ultima 3: Just when you thought that Mondain was completely out of the picture, a new threat is revealed that ends up being your toughest challenge yet. This game introduced the party system, which helped change RPG games as a whole.

Ultima 4-6: The Age of Enlightenment

In the Age of Enlightenment, you continue your journey, but the “good vs evil” plot is replaced by a focus on something called the Eight Virtues.

Ultima 4: Ultima 4 is a big turning point in the series. Instead of tackling an evil that has descended upon the land, you have been summoned by Lord British to act as a spiritual leader as you master the Eight Virtues.

Ultima 5: Now, as the Avatar, you return to Britannia to solve the mystery of Lord British’s disappearance and put a stop to a new evil that threatens the Eight Virtues.

Ultima 6: A new force has surfaced and you and your companions must fight off invading Gargoyles. Not all is what it seems, however, and this game tackles themes of racism and xenophobia.

Ultima 7-9: The Age of Armageddon

The final leg of the huge series sees the introduction of the Fellowship, a group that seems good on the surface, but players quickly learn that isn’t the case.

Ultima 7 (Part 1 and 2): As the Avatar, you meet the Fellowship. You are tasked with closing an evil gate that could summon an even more evil creature. There's also an expansion that adds a tie-in story with familiar characters from past titles.

Ultima 8: This game introduces a pretty big twist. Your character has been exiled from Britannia and you have to fight your way back. It also introduces the final bad guy of the series.

Ultima 9: The last game in the series, Ultima 9 features the conquering of Britannia and a big twist that players will have to overcome in order to cleanse the Eight Virtues and restore order.

Spin-offs in the Ultima universe

If you are able to conquer all nine (well, technically, ten!) games in the main series and still can’t get enough of the world of Ultima, then we have good news. There are a bunch of spin-off games that expand the world and story even more!

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire once again has you controlling the Avatar after being transported to a new world. In this world, you’ll find many tribes that you need to unite in order to defeat the insectoid Myrmidex.

Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams is a follow-up to The Savage Empire. But instead of being transported to an alien world, you’re transported to the Victorian Era…before going to Mars.

Still want more? Don’t worry, there’s still more Ultima to enjoy!

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss tasks players with saving the daughter of an important member of Britannia, but things are never quite that straightforward, are they?

Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds is the second game in this spin-off series. It takes place during the Ultima VII storyline and expands the story even more. Ultima Online

Finally, we wanted to take a moment to talk about Ultima Online. Released back in 1997, it has had eight different expansion packs and lets players live in the world of Ultima. It featured both PvE and PvP content and introduced new features and mechanics to the series.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t expected to be a huge hit. But it proved many critics wrong, and even today, you can jump into the MMO world based in the Ultima universe.

At its peak, the game had 250,000 subscribers and it ended up winning a bunch of awards. It was the first inductee into the Game Developers Choice Online Awards Hall of Fame. TIME named Ultima Online one of the "100 best video games of all time."

Where to buy the Ultima series?

If you are ready to sink your teeth into the Ultima series for the first time, or simply want to revisit this renowned classic, you’re in luck.

You can snag Ultima 1+2+3, Ultima 4+5+6, Ultima 7 Complete Edition, Ultima 8 Gold Edition, and Ultima 9 directly from GOG. Many of these bundles also include extra add-ons, so there’s even more to enjoy.

Once you complete that epic saga of gaming goodness, make sure to check out Ultima Underworld 1+2, as well as The Savage Empire and Martian Dreams!

Good luck out there on your journey to become the ultimate Avatar!

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Nuclear Disarmament ending can no longer be unlocked legitimately, according to a new online report shared over the weekend.

DidYouKnowGaming shared a new video yesterday where The Anti-Nuke Gang, a team of players who has been attempting to unlock the ending legitimately by reducing the number of nukes in possession of players to zero for quite some time, confirmed that doing so is no longer an option, as nukes obtained by banned players cannot be disarmed, thus making it impossible to bring the total number of nukes to zero.

We ran into what can only be defined as an invincible set of nukes that do not belong to any base. If you’re familiar with the MGSV Forward Operating Base system, a nuke is always placed on a FOB after a player makes it. But there were 40 or so of these invincible nukes that didn’t have FOB’s they belonged to. They simply existed without a FOB. We call them ‘Phantom Nukes

Despite this, the Anti-Nuke Gang did manage to confirm that the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Nuclear Disarmament ending is unlocked when the total number of nukes on any given platform reaches zero by hacking the game. Unfortunately, it is very easy to do the opposite and use cheats to add more nukes.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the latest main entry in the series created by Hideo Kojima. The game is now available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360.

Nine years after the events of MGSV: GROUND ZEROES and the fall of Mother Base, Snake a.k.a. Big Boss, awakens from a nine year coma. The year is 1984. The Cold War serves as the backdrop as nuclear weapons continue to shape a global crisis. Driven by revenge, Snake establishes a new private army and returns to the battlefield in pursuit of the shadow group, XOF.

The post Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Nuclear Disarmament Ending Cannot Be Unlocked Legitimately, New Report Confirms by Francesco De Meo appeared first on Wccftech.

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"Django Unchained" opens with a pitiful sight: our hero Django (Jamie Foxx), with haunted eyes and his feet in shackles, is marched across a barren landscape by a pair of brutal slave traders. The desperation and cruelty of his plight is laid out in bloody lash marks across his bare back. In typical Quentin Tarantino fashion, these images are juxtaposed by the theme song, a melodramatic ballad that sounds almost like a parody of western theme songs:

Django!

Django, have you always been alone?

Django!

Django, have you never loved again?

As he has so often proved during his career, Tarantino is the master of matching an incongruous needle-drop with harrowing images (just think "Stuck in the Middle With You" in "Reservoir Dogs") to the point where the tune feels like it could have been written specially for the movie. The lyrics here suit what we soon find out about Django, forced into solitude by his dismal status as an enslaved person, on a mission to find his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). She is separately held in servitude to the evil plantation owner Calvin J. Candie, played with meme-inspiring relish by Leonardo DiCaprio. 

Since this is a Tarantino film, the title song was lifted with great effect from another movie. "Django Unchained" is the middle instalment of the magpie auteur's revisionist history trilogy, between taking revenge on the Nazis in "Inglourious Basterds" and giving the murdered actress Sharon Tate a happy ending in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." This time, he takes it upon himself to deliver a bit of rough justice to the slave owners of the 19th century, drawing inspiration from the spaghetti westerns of the '60s. One in particular stands out, thanks to its name and this title tune: Sergio Corbucci's wild and bloody "Django."

So What Happens In Django Again?

We're used to the old western trope of a stranger riding into town and taking out the bad guys before riding off into the sunset again, but Corbucci's "Django" opens with a surreal image that inverts it completely. Instead of opting for the mobility of a horse, our protagonist Django (Franco Nero) is on foot, in a tattered Union uniform, dragging a coffin through the mud. The wooden box contains his main method of mowing down his enemies, and the burden it presents is a striking metaphor. It is his albatross, and it lends the character a mythic quality.

He spots a gang of Mexican bandits torturing a prostitute named Maria (Loredana Nusciak). He doesn't deem this worthy of intervention, but then some ex-Confederate dirtbags arrive and shoot the bandits dead, only to prepare a crucifix to burn the woman alive. Django finally rescues her with a little gunplay worthy of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name.

Django and Maria continue to a muddy ghost town where our laconic protagonist has unfinished business, visiting the grave of an old girlfriend who was murdered by Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo), head of the white supremacist gang who enjoy shooting Mexican peasants for sport. The town is torn between Jackson's crew and a band of Mexican revolutionaries led by General Hugo Rodriguez (Jose Bodalo), who are almost as bad.

Django goes to war with both sides, and the plot turns into a frankly baffling series of double-crosses and bloody confrontations. There is a standout moment when Django busts out the contents of his coffin against a whole army of Jackson's goons, and a wild excursion as he helps Rodriguez pull off a daring bullion heist. It could all be ripped straight out of the pages of a pulpy western comic book.

The Original Django Controversy

The cartoonish levels of violence in "Django" caused controversy when it was released, regarded as one of the most violent movies ever made at that point. It received an 18 certificate in its native Italy and struggled to find a distributor in the US until the early '70s, presumably helped along by the carnage of "The Wild Bunch." It was banned outright in Sweden, and the notoriously fusty censors in Britain refused it a certificate due to the "excessive and nauseating violence." It didn't receive a certificate in the UK until 1993, when a new examiner took a different view (via BBFC):

Although two decades ago the feature may have seemed mindless violence, in the age of "Terminator 2" and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the feature has an almost naive and innocent quality to it. The mass shoot-outs where one bullet can descend a score of cowboys, what is remarkable is the absence of impact shots, blood spurts, and splatter. One could say the feature is almost entirely bloodless.

Well ... maybe. Artistically, there is enough about Corbucci's vision to separate it from the scores of other violent movies that fell foul of the British censors, especially during the era of the video nasty, but I think the guy was missing the tone entirely. Sure, for the amount of people who die in the movie there is relatively little gore, but the film's sheer gung-ho nature makes it feel even more violent than it actually is, even over half a century later. There is an irreverent glee to the bloodshed, which may explain why Tarantino, himself never shy of depicting a bit of OTT violence, loved it so much in the first place.

Despite — or perhaps thanks to — its violent reputation, "Django" was a big hit and spawned over thirty unofficial sequels. The stoic, blue-eyed Franco Nero only starred in one more official Django sequel, "Django Strikes Again" in 1987.

Django Unchained Wasn't The Only Tarantino Movie That Borrowed From Django

Compared to some of his other movies, Tarantino's borrowing from "Django" for "Django Unchained" is quite light. There is the title and the theme song, a sort-of torch passing cameo from Franco Nero, and parallels found in the whipping scene and the comedic moment when the KKK can't get their pillowcase masks right. Otherwise, the connection between the movies is more thematic, with the ex-Union soldier taking the racist ex-Confederate bad guys down. As Tarantino makes clear in the recent Netflix documentary "Django & Django," his film is more a celebration of Corbucci's work as a whole, rather than just the one film.

This is reflected in the other Corbucci homages in "Django Unchained." Firstly, Django's savior and partner Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz) is a German bounty hunter, echoing Klaus Kinski's character in "The Great Silence," which is often regarded as Corbucci's best film. That film's wintry backdrop, set after a great blizzard, is referenced in the montage where Schultz tutors Django in the ways of bounty hunting in a similarly snowy environment. Another little nod comes in the scene when the pair visit a saloon named Minnesota Clay, which is also the title of an earlier Corbucci movie.

"Django Unchained" may not be the only Tarantino movie that quotes "Django." While some sources cite the torture scene in "The Big Combo" as the ear-slicing scene in "Reservoir Dogs," that is very much to do with how the guy is tied to a chair and writhes around as he is abused. For the actual act of cutting itself, we have a very similar moment here when Rodriguez slices off a poor victim's ear and feeds it to him, before shooting him in the back. Knowing how Tarantino loves mashing his favorite scenes together, it was probably a bit of both. 

Sergio Corbucci, Making Leone Look Like A Pacifist

According to All Outta Bubblegum, a site that catalogues the body count of various violent movies, "Django" clocks in with 180 kills. Our hero accounts for over half that total. That figure comes as some surprise, because it's so gratuitous that it feels like a lot more. On top of that, we have four scenes that feel especially sadistic: Maria's torture and near-burning; the ear-cutting scene; Jackson and his cronies gunning down some scared Mexican peasants; and, Rodriguez's men mangling Django's hands to a bloody pulp. If Sergio Leone's revered "Dollars Trilogy" upped the stakes for violence in westerns, "Django" goes all-in, combining elements of Leone's films and heightening the spaghetti western to an almost surreal plane. Beyond the flying bullets and bodies, you have bizarre moments like Django breaking into a house through a chimney to steal some gold while still lugging his coffin, and the spooky beauty of the final showdown in a cemetery.

Some critics felt that "Django" was a substandard ripoff of Leone's films, but what really separates it is the nihilistic tone. A lot of people die in Leone's movies and there are some very cruel moments — not much beats the scene in "For a Few Dollars More'" when the villain has a snitch's wife and kid shot before offering him a rigged opportunity to gain revenge — but they still have their own clear moral compass. By contrast, the ethics of Corbucci's movies are hellish. As Tarantino, a big fan of the director, wrote (via New York Times):

"Sam Peckinpah had his own West; so did Sergio Leone. Sergio Corbucci did, too — but his West was the most violent, surreal and pitiless landscape of any director in the history of the genre. His characters roam a brutal, sadistic West ... Corbucci's heroes can't really be called heroes. In another director's western, they would be the bad guys."

Well, I can't really argue with that. Django is a stone-cold killer torn between the very bad guys and the even worse bad guys, and makes vulture fodder of them all.

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

The post The Controversial Spaghetti Western That Inspired Tarantino's Django Unchained appeared first on /Film.

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"While Valve has yet to actually release a proper ISO for SteamOS 3 used on the Steam Deck, others have been taking it into their own hands to provide," reports GamingOnLinux, "like with the new HoloISO. "This is possible, since 99% of what SteamOS uses is open source (not the Steam client though)..." So people can easily hack away at it to do whatever they want. [HoloISO] is not exactly the same as SteamOS 3 but it's probably the closest I've seen yet, with the main packages coming direct from Valve with "zero possible edits" the developer says. It's described as a "first beta release." Neowin supplies some context: Back in early March, Valve released the Steam Deck recovery image for Deck users who need to get back to a factory state. When it was released, many of us over at the Steam OS subreddit did the first thing any reasonable enthusiast would do and tried installing it on a standard PC. The results of this approach were mixed, and only partial successes were achieved. Then HoloISO happened.... The first release, called 'Ground Zero', was released today and allows users to install Steam OS on any machine. But there are some things you need to know before installing this for yourself.... There's a bunch of caveats, but the article still concludes that "If you're team red and you want to give this a shot, head over to the project's Github page to read more and download." Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for sharing the story!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.