One upcoming release every movie fan should be excited for is Robert Eggers' "The Northman." The film is based on the Scandanavian legend of Amleth, a prince who sets out to avenge his murdered father Aurvandill by killing his treasonous uncle Fjölnir. If this story sounds familiar, it was Shakespeare's inspiration for "Hamlet."
Anya Taylor-Joy will play Olga, a character without a mythic counterpart. In an interview with Collider, Eggers described her as "a Slavic woman who's been enslaved by Vikings, but she's what you would call a cunning person or a white witch."
Taylor-Joy's first film appearance was in Eggers' debut feature "The Witch." That means working with the director again wasn't just another job for the actress. Instead, it felt like a homecoming.
Taylor-Joy's Previous Work With Eggers
Before "The Witch," Anya Taylor-Joy had only a few minor roles on British TV and a deleted role in "Vampire Academy" under her belt. After losing a role as a teenage Maleficent in the eponymous 2014 film, she auditioned for Thomasin, the eldest daughter in "The Witch" who finds her faith tested as her family suffers.
As she later told People Magazine, she was convinced she wouldn't get the part because the script described Thomasin as "plain": "Okay, there's a lot of things that I can do, but I can't really change my face that much." Taylor-Joy was wrong; indeed, her literally wide-eyed face was perfect for Thomasin.
Eggers was a film novice himself, having come up in theater production. "The Witch" was inspired by his childhood growing up in New England, particularly his memories of visiting the Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts.
As often with debut features, he had to cut corners for his passion project. For one, he had hoped to film on location in New Hampshire, but tax incentives meant he had to settle for Canada. The choice created a new problem — logging had robbed Eggers of a forested area he had envisioned for the film's setting. The crew was eventually able to find a suitable location in the unincorporated community of Kiosk, Ontario.
Director And Star Reunite
Owing to the small budget and remote filming location, the cast and crew of "The Witch" became tightly knit during filming. Anya Taylor-Joy told Indiewire in 2021:
"My first heartbreak was not a relationship. My first heartbreak was finishing my first job [on 'The Witch'], and experiencing that loss. The loss of there was a world that existed with a group of people that became my everything for a period of time, and now it's over. I had no concept as to how to deal with that."
However, that hard work and heartbreak paid off. "The Witch" became an undeniable success, grossing 10 times its budget and being hailed by some as one of the best horror movies ever made.
Both Taylor-Joy and Eggers have been on the upswing since. The former is now one of the most prolific young actresses working, racking up roles in "Split," "The Queen's Gambit," "Peaky Blinders," and more. Eggers' next film, "The Lighthouse," earned similar acclaim as "The Witch." Now, Taylor-Joy and Eggers' paths cross once more for "The Northman." They are also joined by "The Witch" director of photography Jarin Blaschke.
During the promotion tour for "The Witch," Eggers said of Taylor-Joy: "Anya has a very enigmatic quality. I can stick the lens two inches from her nose and you don't quite know what she's thinking, but you want to."
This enigmatic quality will doubtlessly serve her well in "The Northman." The film's trailers show Olga enslaved alongside Amleth and allying with him, but whether a cunning witch like her will be friend or foe to the prince remains to be seen.
"It really felt like a homecoming, and I was absolutely elated every single day. We've all maintained a family unit. But what I will say is that the scale of this film is much bigger. There were definitely moments where Rob, Jarin and I would look at each other, and we're like, 'Okay, this is different than me helping lay down the dolly track. We're moving up in the world!'"
Indeed, "The Northman" was made at a much higher budget than "The Witch" was. Originally set at $65 million, the budget of "The Northman" ballooned to $90 million — both figures dwarf the $4 million price tag to make "The Witch." Rather than the crew being confined to a remote forest, "The Northman" was filmed in multiple locations across Ireland.
"The Witch" had an unknown cast. Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie, who played Thomasin's parents, both had minor roles on "Game Of Thrones," but they were far from household names.
In contrast, "The Northman" boasts a star-studded cast. Alexander Skarsgård stars as Amleth and Ethan Hawke will play King Aurvandil. Nicole Kidman will portray Queen Gudrún (Amleth's mother/Aurvandil's wife), while Willem Dafoe (who worked with Eggers on "The Lighthouse") will play a court jester named Heimir.
The biggest change from the time of "The Witch" to "The Northman" is that Taylor-Joy and Eggers are now stars themselves. Speaking to Collider, she recounted an interaction with Eggers while filming "The Northman:"
"Something that was said a lot the first day on set was, which I loved, was, we made "The Witch" kind of thinking no one was ever going to see it. So the fact that, 'We're making a Robert Eggers' movie' is now a thing, we're both just like, 'This is amazing.'"
In short, Taylor-Joy learned the lesson that lies that every hero's journey. When you return home a changed person, your home will be just as different as you've become.
The world is full of aphorisms about the power of pairs: It takes two to tango, two heads are better than one ... Hollywood gets this. The movie industry thrives on pairing actors together, whether for romantic comedies, action films, or searing dramas. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. These duos gave us cinema history.
Given that, is it any wonder buddy comedies are so reliably successful? In numerology, "2" represents an elegant strength, focused on a collaborative effort to find peace and balance. In buddy comedies, cooperation is hard to come by; that's the tension that makes them soar. We love watching Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan bicker in "Rush Hour," right up until the moment that they must work together. It never fails.
Buddy comedies are so dependable that many have been lost to time, or have not received the credit they deserve. The buddy films on this list are more than underrated. Taken as a collective, they expand the notion of what a buddy movie is. The genre's best efforts hinge on chemistry — be it between two cops, two drunks, or one man and a farting corpse — and these titles have chemistry in spades. Here are 18 underrated buddy comedies you need to check out.
Blades Of Glory
"Blades of Glory" is a sports movie. (We cannot stress this enough.) Yes, Will Speck and Josh Gordon (Marvel's "Hit-Monkey") made a buddy comedy through and through, one of many that Will Ferrell has starred in. It's also a thrilling depiction of Olympic sport. The pairs-skating scenes between bad boy Chazz Michael Michaels (Farrell) and traditionalist Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) crackle with tension. Speck and Gordon are enamored with the ridiculousness of their subject. Accordingly, their film is both dumb and loving.
That's why "Blades of Glory" deserves a spot on this list. It never forgets the needs of its larger-than-life characters: Gold medals, raunchy sex, and a deadly skating maneuver called the "Iron Lotus." Those characters also happen to be played by Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Craig T. Nelson, and the always underrated William Fichtner, just to name a few. If you've never seen it, now's the time.
Running Scared
"Running Scared" is underrated in more than one category. Peter Hyams' buddy cop comedy, which stars the unlikely pair of Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines, is a cut above most "48 Hours" clones. Crystal and Hines' banter feels unscripted and natural. The plot is also genuinely strange to boot. Most action movies don't remove their protagonists from danger for an extended period of time, much less give them what they desire. "Running Scared" does both.
The film's set pieces are truly kinetic. Hyams would go on to make two Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, "Timecop" and "Sudden Death," and "Running Scared" is his audition for both. When Crystal and Hines chase a bad guy (Jimmy Smits) in their cars from O'Hare International Airport to Chicago's public transit Red Line, the movie is indistinguishable from action cinema.
That's the other reason "Running Scared" rules — it's a great Chicago movie. The film captures the Second City's bruised but very proud heart, and sets itself in local neighborhoods and landmarks alike. Anyone who's lived there will be thrilled by "Running Scared," as will cinema and comedy fans. It checks all the boxes.
Role Models
Few artists are more perpetually underrated than David Wain. Wain was a member of both The State and Stella, two important alt-comedy troupes. He went on to direct the cult-classic "Wet Hot American Summer," and serve as a creator and producer of its Netflix follow-up, along with Adult Swim's "Children's Hospital," and many others. Wain is a legend, but he is lesser-known than his Stella compatriots Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter. This is understandable as Black and Showalter appear on-camera far more often than Wain. But, to quote Scarlet Witch, "It doesn't seem fair."
It's equally unfair that "Role Models" is so underrated. The movie is Wain's third feature, and the first to receive a wide release. It's about two ne'er-do-well energy drink salesmen played by Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott, who must do 150 hours of community service for a litany of offenses. That's a stellar elevator pitch made all the better by Wain's script, which blends his trademark absurdism with more traditional character arcs. "Role Models" is a feel-good comedy in the tradition of "School of Rock" or "Napoleon Dynamite" — it just takes a raunchier path to its crowd-pleasing resolution.
There are riffs on KISS' genitalia and even a Jane Lynch monologue about bagel dogs. There's the reliably crude yet sweet work of Rudd and Scott, who have rarely been more appealing. And, there's the shaggy but expert direction of Wain, who stages a killer LARPing sequence.
Kind Hearts And Coronets
One could argue "Kind Hearts and Coronets" isn't a buddy comedy, and they'd be right. The Criterion-cosigned classic is darkly funny and features the incredible chemistry of Alec Guinness and Dennis Price. However, there isn't a single pairing of characters that you would call buddy-like. The film is about murder. More specifically, it's about murdering an entire line of succession to earn dukedom. It is a far cry from "Rush Hour."
That said, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" hinges on the irascible appeal of Guinness and Price acting together, and, in this way, it's more buddy comedy than not. Every film in the genre is about disparate people that find common ground. In "Kind Hearts and Coronets," that journey's meta-textual. Guinness plays every person in the line of succession Price is shortening (eight in total). His multi-faceted, multi-character performance acknowledges he and Price are in on the gag. That leads to a delirious series of comedically violent set-pieces, feeling like well-mannered predecessors to Shane Black's oeuvre and "Withnail & I." In this way, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" walked so the buddy comedy could run. It should be watched by any student of the genre.
Withnail & I
"Withnail & I" is really only underrated in America. Bruce Robinson's alcohol-soaked comedy classic is a beloved cult film in the U.K. and kick-started Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann's careers. The legendary artist Ralph Steadman (best known for his collaborations with Hunter S. Thompson) created the film's theatrical release poster, which was then repurposed for the film's Criterion release. Those plaudits should indicate how celebrated "Withnail & I" is. Why, then, is it underrated? Simple: It's sad.
Buddy comedies are rarely tragedies in the States: We buy tickets to watch the stars come together, assuming they will have happy endings. When "Withnail & I" begins, its misanthropic, alcoholic leads are already bonded, and not just to each other. They are lost in a haze of pills, booze, and lighter fluid. Their lives are low-key horrific and become more so as the film progresses. This allows Robinson to take biting shots at English countryside manners, bid farewell to the hippie era, and explore what radical honesty looks like. "Withnail & I" is profane and profoundly truthful, suggesting one must be both. It's the least watered-down buddy comedy in cinema history, and one that everyone should see, British or not.
Shanghai Noon
"Shanghai Noon" is less watered-down than you remember. Jackie Chan's follow-up to his wildly successful film "Rush Hour" has nearly been lost to time. It was once a cable TV staple, now buried on Disney+. "Shanghai Noon" is a better movie than all three "Rush Hours," boasting a strong action choreography, a shockingly rich ensemble (Lucy Liu, Xander Berkeley, Walton Goggins), and an all-time turn from Owen Wilson. Wilson is one of our most unlikely movie stars, but in "Shanghai Noon," he figured out how to shine.
Wilson's secret weapon is misdirection. If the story wants to zig, Wilson must zag. Hollywood tried to transform him into a bumbling clown, which was a shallow read on his gifts. Wilson is chaotic good on the Dungeons & Dragons alignment system, a constant disruptor of the status quo who often improves it. In "Shanghai Noon," Wilson's Roy O'Bannon is a dreamer; he's also Wyatt Earp. He almost breaks the film's fourth wall on more than one occasion, and flits between being badass and useless. Wilson makes this all makes sense, though, when he stops making sense. He plugs into his ephemeral instincts and lets them rip alongside Chan's technical mastery. They aren't oil and water; they're gasoline and an intake stroke. Both Chan and Wilson would make other buddy comedies (one of which is on this list), but none better than this.
Starsky & Hutch
"Starsky & Hutch" is remembered for reuniting Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller. It features the impeccable casting of Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear and one genuinely timeless gag. Some might think calling this movie underrated is a reach, but it's time to admit that "Starsky & Hutch" is both better than it's given credit for and the best movie Todd Phillips has made or will ever make.
Over the course of two-plus decades, Phillips has shown us who he is — a facsimile artist who excels at pastiche. "Joker" is effective when it approaches the work of Scorsese and fails when it can't channel it. "Old School" takes all its cues from classic college comedies. Meanwhile, "Starsky & Hutch" isn't trying to be anything more than a hodgepodge homage. There are more winking nods to the original show and its dated elements than you can shake a stick at. Phillips revels in the picture's window dressing, shooting '70s muscle cars with almost fetishistic glee. That's right for the source material. He isn't reaching; he's perfectly in his lane. "Starsky& Hutch" scorches comedic tarmac. If you haven't seen it, do it. Do it.
The Nice Guys
It's a stretch to include "The Nice Guys" on this list. It's an eminently rewatchable work that announces Russell Crowe's character actor phase, and features Ryan Gosling giving one of the century's best comedic performances. Every scene in "The Nice Guys" is on-point, so it's hard to argue that the movie is underrated. And yet, it is.
There have been three "Rush Hour" films. There are two "Ted" movies. We got two "Jump Street" installments, and a "Men In Black" reboot. There is room for a second "Nice Guys," and there's an audience for it. It's the audience that has followed filmmaker Shane Black from "Predator" to Marvel, and made "The Nice Guys" a quarantine staple. It's the audience that likes popcorn films with indie sensibilities (think "Kimi," or "Everything Everywhere All At Once"). The fans are out there, and the fact that a follow-up film isn't in the pipeline when sequels, reboots, and prequels are Hollywood currency feels nuts. That's why "The Nice Guys" is underrated.
Swiss Army Man
No one said both buddies in a buddy comedy had to be alive. That's one of many ways "Swiss Army Man" subverts audience expectations. No one expects to see a movie that opens on a man attempting suicide (Paul Dano) after ages spent lost on an island. Less people expect that movie to dovetail into a flatulent corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) that washes ashore and can be manipulated like a Swiss Army knife. This describes the first 20 minutes of the film, and things only get wilder from there.
Simply put, "Swiss Army Man" is excellent. It features iconic work from Dano and Radcliffe, the former of whom gives an exceedingly vulnerable performance. Radcliffe, meanwhile, used the role of Manny to leave Harry Potter behind forever. (The actor's idiosyncratic, post-Potter choices can't be praised enough, but "Swiss Army Man" is the feather in that cap.) Most importantly, it's a buddy comedy about self-love. We have to be our own best buddies to live fruitful lives. We can only find others if we know ourselves first. These are age-old tenets, but "Swiss Army Man" makes them feel funny and fresh. It's much more than the farting corpse movie.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The Hard Way
"The Hard Way" features Michael J. Fox, James Woods, and a surprisingly sharp script. That makes the action-comedy sound unremarkable, and it sort of is. In the film, an action star (Fox), who's hoping to raise his credibility, gets paired with an actual police officer (Woods). Mayhem ensues, but you've seen tons of movies like it. Again, unremarkable.
So why is "The Hard Way" listed here? Madcap energy. John Badham's film offers Fox and Woods at their comedic peaks. At this point, neither had settled into their movie stardom yet, and both bring their A-game. (Woods, in particular, seems to relish being the anti-Doc Brown.) As a result, "The Hard Way" feels like a '40s screwball comedy. The film's cast also features a deep bench of talent, including Stephen Lang pre-"Avatar," Annabella Sciorra, and the always underrated Luis Guzmán. "The Hard Way" won't change your life, but not all movies should. Some are fun and breezy. "The Hard Way" makes moviemaking feel simple; maybe it's sort of remarkable after all.
Keanu
"Keanu" is underrated because of Jordan Peele, and that feels impossible. The 43-year old writer-director has made two classic horror films with a third on the way. Before becoming an auteur, Peele co-created the game-changing TV comedy "Key and Peele" with Keegan-Michael Key. How could his work be underrated?
In the case of "Keanu," it's because the film gets conflated with Peele's directorial efforts, but he only co-wrote it. "Keanu" was helmed by Peter Atencio, a frequent collaborator on "Key and Peele," helping to contribute to the film's sketch-but-make-it-full-length aesthetic. "Keanu" is about a man whose kitten gets stolen by a thief and the cousin that helps him retrieve it, but it's an excuse to unleash mass comic absurdity. There's an excellent sequence where a gang gets to know each other before riding out to war. They share two things about themselves, two of which are: "I got stabbed by my mother ... and my grandmother," and "I had tickets to a super-advanced screening of 'The Blair Witch Project.'"
There's a chance you just laughed out loud. That's what "Keanu" is — a hilarious buddy comedy with energy to spare.
Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil
"Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" is a classic. Eli Craig's debut feature is more than a wonderful buddy comedy; it's one of the all-time great horror comedies. It has inventive scares and sharp, comedic set-pieces. The setup is ingenious: Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are two best friends who have bought the backwoods vacation home of their dreams. That home happens to be a cabin straight out of Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" or, yes, Drew Goddard's "The Cabin in the Woods." When a group of bumbling college students show up and mistake Tucker and Dale for "redneck murderers," hijinks ensue. Those hijinks turn sinister when the kids start dying. Is it all a comedy of errors? Or is something more ominous afoot?
"Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" provides smart answers to those questions. At its core, the film is about misperception, identity, and how one can inform the other. Tucker and Dale are remarkably self-actualized, but the students' shallow judgment of them clouds that clarity. Conversely, Tucker and Dale underestimate Allison (a never better Katrina Bowden), who is much more than your typical "final girl."
The Guard
Almost every Martin McDonagh movie is a buddy movie. The keyword there is "almost." "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" certainly isn't, but "In Bruges" definitely is. And "Seven Psychopaths" is almost several different buddy movies in one, each hinging on separate pairings. The buddy movie looks good on McDonagh. His roots are in the theater, a medium that favors watching characters speak to one another.
The buddy movie is an especially good fit for McDonagh's brother, John Michael McDonagh. His debut feature, "The Guard," is absolutely a buddy comedy. It inexplicably pairs "In Bruges" star Brendan Gleeson with world-beater Don Cheadle. That's an inspired decision. Gleeson is all caustic edges, and Cheadle is mischievous smoothness. Their dynamic is closer to Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird than co-collaborators, and McDonagh milks it for all its worth. The story, which concerns a vulgar cop (Gleeson) and FBI agent (Cheadle) taking down a drug ring, is secondary to the sterling banter. That's the point; watching Gleeson and Cheadle bicker is cinematic enough.
The Last Boy Scout
"The Last Boy Scout" is utterly unhinged. That's no hyperbole. Shane Black and Tony Scott's sleazy buddy cop comedy opens with a kickoff return mid-football game. As the player ducks and weaves through his opponents, the opposing team's end zone comes into sight. There's one man between him and a touchdown. The returner pulls out a gun and empties a clip into that man and, no, you didn't misread that.
On-field murder is hardly the craziest thing that happens in "The Last Boy Scout." There are poorly-timed jigs and scenery-chewing villains. There's the uber '90s chemistry of Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans, who spend the movie flexing muscles and comedic chops. More than anything, there's a gonzo approach to action that's almost transgressive. Everyone involved was at the peak of their game. "The Last Boy Scout" is what they got away with. It's a blank check cashed, burnt, and tossed onto the big-screen.
The Heat
Many flagged "The Heat" as predictable, and it is. But, the movie is predictable by design. Paul Feig and writer Katie Dippold relish the opportunity to take the cliches of the buddy comedy and buddy cop genres and unleash Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy upon them. It plays like gangbusters. The film careens from memorable set piece to memorable set piece, clicking like a well-oiled machine that almost goes off the rails.
More than anything, "The Heat" cements Bullock and McCarthy as an all-time paring. McCarthy has always needed a foil, and in Bullock, she finds her ideal match. Bullock is a comic dynamo in her own right, and she channels those abilities into her character's uptight, exacerbated frustration. When that anger collides with McCarthy's gung-ho, manic energy, sparks fly gloriously. (The scene where both actors attempt to enter an interrogation room first is a master class in slapstick, and should be studied in clown colleges everywhere.) "The Heat" is proof that the male-dominated buddy cop genre is not just great with women at the helm — it's even better.
Outrageous Fortune
Speaking of women who make the buddy comedy better, there's an alternative universe in which we get several Shelley Long and Bette Midler movies. Both women are supernovas in their own right: Long is an Emmy and Golden Globe winner for her work on "Cheers," and Midler is an institution. Her canon is legendary and earned her diva status decades ago. Whether you love her in "Hocus Pocus," "Beaches," or for her myriad of live albums, there's no denying her impact.
That's one reason "Outrageous Fortune" is so revelatory. It pairs two talents capable of standing alone and reveals new facets of their gifts in the process. Half theater scene parody and half action-comedy, Arthur Hiller's film concerns two acting students (Long and Midler) whose legendary professor (Robert Prosky) dies under mysterious circumstances. When they come to believe he faked his death, incredulous plot twists start piling up. Long and Midler are irresistible together, and Hiller infuses the proceedings with maverick energy. "Outrageous Fortune" scores high buddy comedy marks. It was underappreciated in its time and still is.
The Spy Who Dumped Me
Kate McKinnon is an ideal buddy comedy actor. The "Saturday Night Live" superstar has a singular on-screen presence. Even at her most naturalistic, McKinnon feels larger than life — she vibrates at a different frequency than most humans, let alone performers. (This was evident in Jay Roach's "Bombshell," which paired McKinnon with Margot Robbie, an equally colossal and idiosyncratic talent.) Finding a foil for McKinnon offers delicious possibilities.
For director Susanna Fogel, the most thrilling was Mila Kunis. Kunis and McKinnon play opposite each other in Fogel's "The Spy Who Dumped Me," a movie that marries the genre riffs of "The Heat" with the elevated banter of "Booksmart." This combo of influences makes sense: Fogel co-wrote "Booksmart," and it's a wonder more fans of that film haven't seen her sophomore feature. Fogel is a breezy but technically precise director. Take the scene with the gymnast assassin: Fogel leaves room for McKinnon and Kunis to riff even as she choreographs a tight shootout amongst dusty Olympic equipment. It's exciting for both action and comedy fans.
That's why "The Spy Who Dumped Me" is underrated; Hollywood gets how good it is, even if the public doesn't. Fogel parlayed this film into helming "The Flight Attendant" pilot (a smash for HBO Max), and McKinnon has done almost anything she's wanted to since it was released in 2018.
Silver Streak
Are Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor the greatest buddy comedy duo ever? They have stiff competition to be sure. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are the modern gold standard. If Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill get a third great film under their belts, they'd be heirs to the title. But Wilder and Pryor set the standard. Their oil-and-water energy, and equal comedic gifts, were a gift to the cinema then and now. While Sidney Poitier's "Stir Crazy" is the film they are best remembered for, "Silver Streak" deserves credit, too. It's a Hitchcock riff and side-splitting comedy rolled into one.
On a cross-country train ride, book editor George Caldwell (Wilder) enters a whirlwind romance with Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh). Things quickly go south when Caldwell witnesses a murder and Hilly is kidnapped, leaving Caldwell to team up with Pryor's Grover Muldoon, a car thief and a thorn in Caldwell's side. The film is just as silly as it sounds, but its ridiculousness comes via bona fide talent. Directed by Arthur Hiller, the movie's energy is bolstered by Henry Mancini's lush score, along with sharp, supporting turns from character actor all-stars Ned Beatty and Richard Kiel.
Originally created as a rust-prevention solvent for use in the aerospace industry, WD-40 has become the go-to product for your home’s squeaky door hinges and stuck bike chains (Which can be counter productive as it then traps dirt and dust inside.) There’s some debate about what the product actually is, however—and…
How did Jimmy McGill become Saul Goodman? That's the question "Better Call Saul" has been asking from the get-go: how did a bumbling, morally grey, but seemingly well-meaning guy become the full-blown criminal attorney (emphasis on the criminal) we first met in "Breaking Bad"? For five seasons now, the prequel series has deliberately paced out the answers, like a tight valve being slowly turned, releasing pressure along the way. The result: one of the best shows on TV. A series choked with impeccable style and unbearable tension. And the tension is at its highest going into the show's sixth, and final, season.
It is to the credit of all involved in "Better Call Saul" that the show can have us consistently on edge even though we already know how things end. Kind of. We know that certain characters will survive; they have to — they were alive during "Breaking Bad." And yet, there remains a palpable dread layered into the series. Because there are those characters, like the wonderful, complex Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn, who continues to give a remarkable performance that certain awards bodies continue to bizarrely overlook), whose fate is a mystery. And then there's Jimmy himself. He's already operating as Saul Goodman, but he's not quite there yet. He's not quite the same low-life crook with no moral compass we met in "Breaking Bad." As season 6 begins, Jimmy's doom is at hand. But he's still clinging on to some semblance of righteousness. And yet, in the cruelest twist of fate, it might be Kim who finally pushes him over the edge.
For the majority of the show, Kim has been a kind of conscience for Jimmy. She's been aware of his less-than-admirable traits, but she's remained committed to him. Hell, she even married Jimmy — although the marriage is more about stopping Kim from ever testifying than it is for romance. That's not to say Kim doesn't love Jimmy, though. She clearly does. And as the show has revealed time and time again, it's not easy to be close to Jimmy. All this time, there's been a considerable worry that Jimmy would finally bring Kim down to his level. And perhaps he finally has. But, interestingly enough, the show has thrown a wrench into our assumptions by revealing that Kim might actually like being on Jimmy's level. She's enticed by his scheming lifestyle. And now she wants in on that action. She wants to ruin their old boss, Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), and she even has a plot cooked up — a plot she mentioned last season. Jimmy seems ready to let any talk of "getting" Howard go. But not Kim. Kim wants blood. And she's not the only one courting danger. There's the whole criminal underworld side of the show, as drug lord and fast-food chain owner Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) attempts a power-play against the Salamancas.
Great TV
Season 5 concluded with Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) working with Fring to help remove the odious, creepy, and suspicious Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton, still stealing scenes while making us all uneasy) by letting a team of mercenaries into Lalo's compound. But Lalo proved exceedingly difficult to kill — and Nacho is now in an incredibly dire spot. He needs help, but can't find it — not even from the usually helpful Mike (Jonathan Banks). The series continues to have some difficulty tying the drug-running elements with Jimmy, and in the first two episodes given to critics, they remain fairly far removed. But the seeds have been planted. Jimmy is connected to all of these people, and nothing good can come of that. We're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And that's true of the series as a whole. These first two episodes are almost unbearably tense. Every scene is loaded with double, or sometimes triple meaning. We watch on edge, biting our nails, bouncing our legs, concerned about practically everyone and everything. This is no small feat — to hook an audience on a foregone conclusion and pull us along the way, helpless to resist. It is the power of the show's impeccable writing, masterful direction, and cavalcade of brilliant performances that keeps us addicted. Bob Odenkirk remains at the center of it all, and it really cannot be overstated how great Odenkirk is on this series; how he evolved from a supporting comic relief player into a full-blown dramatic leading man. Jimmy is still scheming, but there's a sadness present now. Perhaps it's the realization that the end is near; that the days of Jimmy McGill are all but over, and Saul Goodman will soon be in complete command.
The fact that the show continues to be so well crafted only heightens the power. Every frame of "Saul" remains a masterclass in composition. Here is a TV series that can make a shot of a pitcher of lemonade on a kitchen table resemble fine art. The story remains awash in orange-tinted shadows; in hot desert days and neon-drenched nights. There's a weight to the visuals here; every shot, even glance, every close-up, feels loaded. Ominous. Threatening. And slow, subtle moments are violently punctured by blasts of violence, staged in sequences that put most modern action movies to shame. It will be sad to let the brilliance of "Better Call Saul" go, but it's already abundantly clear that the series is going to stick the landing, and conclude in a manner that will firmly ensconce "Better Call Saul" in the pantheon of all-time-great TV.
"Better Call Saul" season 6 premieres with two back-to-back episodes on Monday, April 18, 2022, on AMC and AMC+.
While the crypto mining craze is at an all-time low, shop owners in Vietnam are still building rigs based on NVIDIA's RTX workstation graphics cards.
Vietnamese Shop Repurposes Hundreds of NVIDIA's RTX A4000 Workstation Cards Into Crypto Mining Machines
With the Ethereum proof of stake on the horizon, crypto mining isn't as lucrative as it used to be however, there are other options or alternatives that miners are investing in right now such as Raven, CHR, etc. And since Vietnam has been a very popular crypto mining market, tech retailers are now investing in NVIDIA RTX workstation graphics cards for mining purposes.
One such shop, NC PC, has resorted to selling fully-assembled crypto mining machines with up to 8 NVIDIA RTX A4000 16 GB graphics cards. These graphics cards are purely designed for workstation and content creation purposes but these shop owners know they can sell them to miners for a bigger profit. The shop owners state that one machine is equipped with up to 8 of these cards and offers a 36-month warranty. The hashing power of the machine is rated at around 500 MH/s and it is also stated that it offers higher hashing power than the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti while being cheaper.
The NVIDIA RTX A4000 comes with a blower-styled single-fan design and is meant for longer usage hence it doesn't feature the higher clocks or power ratings as the gaming variants. As such, it will offer lower power consumption and run cooler. Each graphics card produces around 60-63 MH/s while consuming 120-125W power and running at 60C.
The main supplier of these RTX A4000 units seems to be Gigabyte and we can't say if NVIDIA or Gigabyte was aware of their graphics cards being used for such use cases. In the end, we don't expect anyone to take action against such activities if they were bought through legal channels in which case, they can be used for whatever purpose the shop owner or customers deem. There were also cases where certain retailers and shop owners were selling stolen graphics cards at scalped rates.
A fire pit is a welcoming addition to any backyard. It can become a central gathering point and can extend the warm season by keeping you cozy from spring through fall. Building a fire pit yourself is a tempting project, but there are some things you should consider before taking this on—for your safety and your…
Igor Wallossek recently reported that the AMD Adrenalin graphics card software (version 22.3.1) changed users' CPU settings without their knowledge, raising questions about transparency with AMD. Igor Wallossek of Igor's Lab examined the possible irregularity of the AMD GPU software. The rumor surrounding the software is that the AMD Ryzen Master module allows the program to change the CPU PBO and the Precision Boost settings without user consent.
AMD Adrenalin software changes CPU settings unbeknownst to the user, raising questions about consumer trust in the company
Users on Reddit have commented about the posted investigation by Wallossek, and it appears that the problem arises when the AMD CPU and GPU are combined due to the hardware supporting the company's Ryzen Master SDK. However, if a user were to combine one company's processor, such as an Intel CPU, and an AMD graphics card, or vice versa, the issue does not happen. When an AMD CPU and GPU are placed together in a system, the Adrenalin driver activates the PBO, or processor overclocking settings, when assigning a GPU profile. This issue also occurs with the default profile, which initiates itself immediately.
The question remains why this is an issue for users. The adjustments made by the software could be fatal if the processor manufacturer sets CPU overclocking and under-volting configurations in the BIOS before the changes made by AMD Adrenalin. The effect can cause detrimental issues with the processor if the application changes the settings to something that it corrects for the user, even if it is wrong.
Wallossek noticed that the power limitations and boost frequencies of the AMD Ryzen processor were adjusting within the PBO stages. However, the effect of the CPU is unknown as to whether it is by the default states or if it is by users making manual adjustments to their processor.
Reddit user Electrical-Bobcat435 has discovered a fix to the current software management:
I hate this too, but found a way to avoid it. Dont load older profiles, just create a new tuning profile for the gpu. Its a small headache, reproducing clocks and fan curves, but once done, it wont reboot/change bios PBO settings. Absurd that AMD did this but theres the workaround.
AMD has not officially commented on the current software manipulation. If users need to place their processor back to its original state, there are a few fixes. First, you can use the Radeon Software Slimmer to allow the software to delete the Ryzen Master SDK from Adrenalin, which would halt any module from making adjustments on its own. The other option is to enter the BIOS on the system and manually re-enter the CPU settings or stop the PBO from running if you use the default settings on your system. AMD does not control the Radeon Slimmer software, as it is a third-party application, so there are risks in using the software on your system.
It's not an April Fool's joke - the 'real' Monkey Island 3 is coming from the adventure game series' original creators, and the Return to Monkey Island release date is down for this year. It's a collaboration between Lucasfilm Games and Devolver Digital and is set after the events of Monkey Island 2.
On April Fool's day, Monkey Island series creator Ron Gilbert posted a joke on his Grumpy Gamer blog that he's "decided to make another Monkey Island", which no one took seriously. Today, Return to Monkey Island is announced, with Gilbert confessing that he "felt bad about the April Fools' joke, so over the weekend I whipped up the game so no one was disappointed".
Return to Monkey Island is the sixth game in the long-running pirate game series, however, it'll be canonically set as an alternate Monkey Island 3. Ron Gilbert has stated many times that LucasArts' own Curse of Monkey Island - which was made after he left the company - took the series in a very different direction from how he envisioned it, so his third game will pick up after Guybrush is trapped as a little kid in the Big Whoop carnival at the end of Monkey Island 2.
When it comes to "Saw" traps, it's hard to judge exactly how favorable one is over the other. How can anyone really compare and contrast the benefits of being ensnared in a reverse bear trap as opposed to a bottomless pit of used syringes? Yet, in the most recent installment, "Spiral: From the Book of Saw," veteran actor Samuel L. Jackson had to endure the very real agony of being strapped into a complicated suspension rig. He played retired police chief Marcus Banks, the father of Zeke (Chris Rock), a hardened detective who finds himself increasingly incapable of saving fellow cops from the wrath of the Spiral killer.
While the trap isn't as gory as some of Jigsaw's aforementioned creations, it proved to be a real challenge for Jackson -- it would test the endurance of any actor, let alone a living legend in his 70s. The stunt is the perfect climax for the film, but capturing it was nearly too much for everyone on set to bear, including director Darren Lynn Bousman.
Let's unpack exactly what went into filming this integral scene with some incredible insight from Bousman and Jackson.
A High-Profile Victim
Let's be honest, the "Saw" franchise hasn't exactly boasted high-profile star power. While the inaugural 2004 film featured performances from Cary Elwes and Danny Glover, this is about as A-list as the franchise's cast has ever gotten. This doesn't mean that "Saw" films have never featured great performances, though. Shawnee Smith's recurring role as Amanda, a survivor-turned-accomplice to Jigsaw, is certainly one of the best in the franchise. However, the grim, grisly kills inherent to this particular horror series have never been a huge selling point for established actors. To be fair, many "Saw" characters have little else going on for them besides having various human vices and then waking up in some rusty Jigsaw-patented contraption.
What makes "Spiral" so different is that star Chris Rock himself was integral to the conception of the film, as he was personally interested in exploring the horror genre as an actor. Rock's involvement made it eons easier to attract fellow celebrities' interest, and it turns out that Samuel L. Jackson was totally on-board to play the comedian's on-screen father. According to Bousman, a veteran "Saw" director with three sequels under his belt, Jackson's presence on the set was particularly "surreal." Apparently, it felt truly special to have a beloved actor of Jackson's "caliber" eager to work on such a violent horror spectacle. The film's dark premise never dampened the veteran actor's spirits, though, taking the time to chat with the cast and crew about his experience filming "Pulp Fiction" in-between shooting scenes on set.
Suspended In Mid-Air
Not only was Jackson on set, he was ensnared in the Spiral killer's mechanical clutches. Even if you haven't watched "Spiral" in its entirety, the film's trailer details the gist of Marcus' trap, which essentially transforms him into a human marionette. He's suspended mid-air via taught wires, though they're actually revealed to be IV tubes that are slowly draining him of blood. If Zeke doesn't make a split-second decision — requiring him to compromise his police code of conduct — Marcus will die of massive blood loss.
While the fictional trap sounds horrible enough on its face, the real-life mechanics of hoisting Jackson into the air proved to be its own kind of torture. Bousman was aware that this process would be "intense" from the get-go, particularly due to the bodily pressure of mid-air suspension. Sure, the actor may have a tough guy legacy, but even the most spry of 70-year-olds would have a tough time with this process. It took a grueling 40 minutes to get the actor strapped into the rig and suspended, leaving Bousman with only a finite amount of time to get the shots he needed. In the director's own words, filming this scene in particular was a "f***ing nightmare." The director has even joked that the behind-the-scenes mayhem of executing this specific trap merits its own featurette. For now, Bousman's expletive-laced recounts will simply have to do.
Samuel L. Jackson's Enduring Interest In The Macabre
Let's not kid ourselves, though: Samuel L. Jackson is no newbie to onscreen violence. As such, the actor has had ample experience enduring what's necessary for his blood-spattered art. This simple fact didn't stop Bousman from asking Jackson just what drew him to "Spiral," questioning the actor during a lull while he floated in the rig above him. Even in clear discomfort, Jackson responded with succinct poise, stating that he'll tackle any project that incorporates "interesting death or violence." For a man who'd spent the better part of an hour being harnessed, that's a more than suitable response — and one that also makes total sense.
In fact, Jackson's response was so compelling that Bouchman concluded that this scene in particular is probably what sold the actor on the "Spiral" script in the first place. The film's fatal final three minutes juxtapose a serial killer's twisted game with the senseless real-world violence of policing, a juicy conclusion that ultimately leaves an ambiguous message about what constitutes "justice." Considering Marcus' horrible fate in "Spiral," it's hard to say if Jackson will be on-board for the expected sequel, which would be the tenth installment in the "Saw" franchise (sure, his character seemed to die, but that hasn't stopped the "Saw" franchise before). It's unclear if any other big-name celebrities would be interested in entering any of Jigsaw's (or one of his various copy-cat's) ill-fated traps — that is, at least willingly.
NetworkMiner now extracts meterpreter payloads from reverse shells and performs offline lookups of JA3 hashes and TLS certificates.
Our commercial tool, NetworkMiner Professional, additionally comes with a packet carver that extracts network packets from memory dumps.
Extraction of Meterpreter Payloads
NetworkMiner 2.7.3 supports extraction of meterpreter DLL payloads from
reverse shell TCP sessions deployed with Metasploit.
The free version of NetworkMiner will try to extract the meterpreter DLL from TCP sessions going to "poker-hand ports" commonly used for meterpreter sessions, such as
3333, 4444, 5555, etc.
The port-independent protocol detection feature available in NetworkMiner Professional additionally enables extraction of meterpreter DLLs regardless which LPORT the attacker specifies when deploying the reverse shell.
If you try to open anything other than a PCAP, PcapNG or
ETL file in NetworkMiner Professional,
then you'll be presented with an option to carve packets from the opened file as of this release.
The packet carver can extract packets from any structured or unstructured data,
such as memory dumps and proprietary packet capture formats.
NetworkMiner Pro's carver is a simplified version of the
packet carving feature in CapLoader.
Loading the 1GB "memdump.mem" from Ali Hadi's
Challenge #1 - Web Server Case
into NetworkMiner Professional takes roughly five seconds, during which 612 packets get extracted.
Image: Information about network hosts carved from memory dump
In this scenario the memory was dumped on the 192.168.56.101 host, which NetworkMiner identifies as "WIN-L0ZZQ76PMUF".
The carved packets also indicate that this computer had an outgoing TCP connection to 192.168.56.102,
which appears to be a Linux machine called "kali".
As you can see in the screenshot, the packets carved from the memory dump also reveal a great deal about
other hosts on the network, such as the 192.168.56.1 host, which seems to be a Windows 7 machine called "IT104-00".
Offline Matching of JA3 and X.509 hashes
NetworkMiner 2.7.3 comes with a local copy of the SSL Certificate and JA3 Fingerprint Blacklists from the awesome
abuse.ch project.
JA3 hashes and extracted X.509 certificates are matched against these lists in order to see if they are associated with any piece of malware or botnet.
The port-independent protocol detection feature in NetworkMiner Professional additionally enables X.509 certificates
to be extracted even from non-standard TLS ports, such as this certificate,
which is identified as "BitRAT" with help of the abuse.ch certificate block-list.
The client's JA3 hash 8515076cbbca9dce33151b798f782456 is also associated with BitRAT according to
abuse.ch.
DBSBL Lookup Detection
DNSBL services are used by servers handling incoming email to verify that the sender's IP address isn't
a known SPAM sender and that it isn't from a network that shouldn't be sending emails.
But DNSBL services can also be used by malware and botnets, such as TrickBot and Emotet,
to verify that the public IP of a victim is allowed to send emails and that it hasn't already been blacklisted for sending SPAM.
We have therefore decided to add DNSBL lookups to the Host Details section in NetworkMiner 2.7.3.
We'd also like to mention some additional new features, bug fixes and improvements that have been included in this new release.
Support for HTTP CONNECT request method to extract artifacts like X.509 certificates and JA3 hashes from HTTPS traffic passing through a web proxy.
Traffic to TCP ports 3000 and 8000 are now configured to be parsed as HTTP by default in order to handle
WEBrick traffic.
Improved extraction of SMTP credentials.
JA3 hashes were previously incorrect for clients that supported more than one EC point format (RFC 8422). This has now been fixed.
Support for SLL2 (Linux cooked capture v2) frames.
Improved handling of concurrent GUI events, for example when poking around in the "Hosts" tab while loading a PCAP file or doing live sniffing.
NetworkMiner's GUI no longer reloads between each PCAP file when multiple files are loaded at once.
New Features in NetworkMiner Professional
We have also added a few new features exclusively to NetworkMiner Professional, which is the commercial version of NetworkMiner.
Apart from the packet carver feature, mentioned earlier in this blog post, we've also updated the collection of OSINT lookup services available in the GUI. One of the newly added services is Ryan Benson's unfurl,
which picks apart URLs to reveal data that might have been encoded into a complex URL.
The unfurl lookup can be found by right-clicking an URL in NetworkMiner Professional's "Browsers" tab and selecting the "Lookup URL" sub menu.
Other OSINT services that we've added are FileScan.IO and JoeSandbox lookups of extracted files.
These lookups can be performed by right clicking a file in the "Files" tab and opening the sub-menu called "Lookup Hash".
Image: OSINT lookup of an EXE file extracted from network traffic
The command-line version of NetworkMiner Professional, NetworkMinerCLI,
has also been updated to allow extracted information to be printed directly on standard output instead of logging everything to files.
Here is an example showing this feature while running NetworkMinerCLI
in Linux (with help of Mono):
The command above extracts files from a
PCAP file, which contains traffic from a Windows PC infected with Qbot.
The "-w" switch specifies the output directory for the files extracted from network traffic, and the "-X FileInfos" specifies that metadata for these files should be sent to STDOUT instead of being written to log files.
The cut utility was used to show only the filename (column 5) and MD5 hash (column 9) of the file info output.
The MD5 hashes of the extracted files confirm that this is indeed a Qbot infection:
NetworkMinerCLI previously printed some information about the parsing process to STDOUT.
That output has now been moved to STDERR in order to provide the "-X [type]" output with exclusive access to STDOUT.
Credits
We'd like to thank Michael Taggart for noticing that NetworkMiner previously failed to parse HTTP traffic to ports 3000 and 8000.
Upgrading to Version 2.7.3
Users who have purchased NetworkMiner Professional can download a free update to version 2.7.3 from our
customer portal,
or use the “Help > Check for Updates” feature.
Those who instead prefer to use the free and open source version can grab the latest version of NetworkMiner from the
official NetworkMiner page.
While everyone has been pestering "Squid Game" writer, director, and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk about his plans for a second season, he's been off prepping a new way to both fascinate and traumatize the masses: His newest feature film, "Killing Old People Club," which has the working title "K.O. Club." Fortunately, this is a work of fiction, not a terrifying group of heathens banding together to commit crimes. Planned as his next movie, the title is adapted from the book by Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco.
During a session with MipTV (via Variety), Dong-hyuk shared that he has already written a 25-page treatment and described the project as "another controversial film" and "more violent than 'Squid Game.'" It might be difficult to picture something more violent than a series that twisted harmless childhood memories into the gamified murder of hundreds, but whatever imagination we lack, Dong-hyuk can surely fill in. The South Korean filmmaker has a track record for existentially bleak subject matter, and it's not difficult to envision things getting dark when the phrase "killing old people" is featured in the title. In fact, Dong-hyuk followed up his description by joking that he may have to "hide from the elderly" following the film's release. No specific plot points were revealed, but that title sure does paint a vivid picture. (Is anyone else having war flashbacks to "Midsommar?")
Hwang Dong-Hyuk Strikes Again
On the bright side, Dong-hyuk will be safe from the elderly for at least another few years. While no timeline has been announced for either "The K.O Club" or the next season of "Squid Game," Dong-hyuk expressed his hope that the second season would be streaming on Netflix by 2024. There was a bit of a wait for official confirmation, but the show's continuation was no big surprise given its massive popularity. Following an eventful awards season, the series creator is now set to return home to South Korea to begin writing the season. This likely means that his feature follow-up will come after that, months or years further down the line.
Dong-hyuk and the other masterful minds behind "Squid Game" have been on the receiving end of praise since the series first launched, which has only been amplified by a gilded awards season. "Squid Game" has claimed 3 SAG Awards, a Golden Globe, and a special AFI award, to name a few. During the same chat with MipTV, Dong-hyuk said that the highest praise of all didn't come from a statue, but from one of his heroes:
"Steven Spielberg told me 'I watched your whole show in three days and now I want to steal your brain!' It was like the biggest compliment I ever got in my life because he's my film hero. I grew up watching his movies."
One can't help but wonder if Spielberg might turn against him once "The K.O. Club" hits screens — though once the horrors subside, it'll just be another opportunity to marvel at Dong-hyuk's mind.
The Microsoft Compromise Recover Security Practice (CRSP) is a worldwide team of cybersecurity experts operating in most countries, across all organizations (public and private), with deep expertise to secure an environment post-security breach and to help you prevent a breach in the first place. As a specialist team within the wider Microsoft cybersecurity functions, we predominantly focus on reactive security projects for our customers. The main types of projects we undertake are:
Compromise recovery: Giving customers back control of their environment after a compromise.
Rapid ransomware recovery: Restore business-critical applications and limit ransomware impact.
Advanced threat hunting: Proactively hunt for the presence of advanced threat actors within an environment.
Many articles around compromise recovery rightly focus on the technical aspects of what steps to take in the event of the control being lost in an environment. However, these are but one aspect of regaining control. As the CRSP, we would like to share the importance of assessing and supporting the human aspect of recovery based on our experiences in recovering organizations that are often in a very precarious, demanding, and stressful situations.
User behaviors during compromise
We constantly have the opportunity to see how cyberattacks affect people, and we notice a whole range of emotions—from fear to panic, anxiety, rejection, lack of responsibility, sometimes even denial of relevant facts—that inevitably leads to a failed recovery process.
It is also entirely common that the users don’t even realize that a compromise has occurred and that it is currently being remediated. Often users expecting standard IT service can put a strain on even the most hardworking IT team.
We tend to deal with these behaviors by:
Appreciating that everyone has a job to do, and prioritizing (where we can) the ability for people to do their jobs and therefore do what the organization is there to do.
Asking for a small cadre of customer staff to work on the remediation while their colleagues keep the business running.
Often there are other people in the organization who can help (for instance, helpdesks or IT champions), and asking these people to take on temporary extra responsibilities can reduce the load on the rest of the teams.
Guiding and educating stakeholders
Unfortunately, many of our customers still believe that cyberattacks happen to someone else. Some customers don’t understand the importance of their own ICT (Information & Communication Technology) resources, or the possibility of misuse of infrastructure for illegal purposes by third parties, and therefore don’t pay attention to security aspects.
Given the complexities within any environment and the amount of spend on preventative information and communications technologies (ICTs), there is sometimes the denial that a situation is as bad as it is. Gently guiding and educating stakeholders is important and providing clear yet sensible planning steps helps stakeholders understand the risks and mitigations.
We notice these emotions not only with our clients themselves but also within subcontracted specialized companies that have taken over the responsibility of administration and management of the respective infrastructure. A cybersecurity incident is an emotional situation for all those involved and where possible we work with all stakeholders.
The mission of the compromise recovery team is to establish a friendly and collaborative environment to jointly prioritize all necessary activities to mitigate the consequences of hacker attacks. Together we mitigate risks—not only financial but also operational and reputational. This mission is usually sufficient to bring together all stakeholders to a consolidated plan of what needs doing.
Team cooperation and communication
We cannot generalize about everyone and everything. We are all just people with different thoughts, levels of responsibility, reactions, and emotions. It is natural to sometimes feel lost and bewildered when experiencing a cyberattack.
We always try to approach the problem logically and understand the facts without ever blaming anyone, but we appreciate that when faced with these challenges, stress levels are often very high.
Adding to this stress, it is often a customer’s own team that has hands-on work to do to clean an environment. This is often a substantial amount of work to complete in a relatively short timeframe.
No one is perfect, and no one can deal with high stress and high emotions for prolonged periods of time. We work hard to share work among people who can do it, not overload individuals, find the time to celebrate successes (even if small), and, most importantly, have downtime planned for everyone.
Of course, the ultimate goals are to expel the attacker, regain control of the systems, and secure the environment after the breach. To achieve this, the cooperation of everyone involved in the process is needed—not only technical resources, but also the strong support of leadership teams, both by the client and by CRSP.
Even though we work hard to not blame people for cyberattacks, it can be difficult for those who have a responsibility for maintaining those systems to sometimes work with us on a collaborative process. We understand that people are sometimes afraid of their career prospects in such cases. They tend to blame others, they don’t want to take responsibility, they constantly reject well-meaning suggestions and recommendations, and we have to deal with such situations appropriately. Therefore, we pay special attention to:
Active listening.
Understanding the circumstances.
Understanding the facts.
Understanding the time sequences.
Empathy for and understanding of cultural differences.
Respect for each person involved in the process.
Transparent and open communication.
Clear and unambiguous counseling and definition of recovery tasks.
Taking responsibility for appropriate actions.
Availability of all relevant members of the compromise recovery team so that we can answer any doubts and questions as soon as possible.
The ability to create greater damage through uncontrolled and unstructured actions by inexperienced people can be high, usually due to stress, panic, and the need to be seen doing something. It’s comparable to an emergency scenario like a fire: people sometimes feel paralyzed and unable to determine what they should do next to ensure their own safety.
Understand the human aspect of compromise
If you are among those who are compromised or there is a suspicion of compromise, call the experts who have the experience and knowledge to assist you. Leave emotions aside, don’t place blame, and approach the problem in a reasonable, logical, and structured way. Never act without first analyzing the impact on your environment, critical business systems, and communication systems. If you are not 100 percent sure if your actions are the correct ones, hire experts.
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.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, Microsoft published a study that offers an eerie reflection of my working life. Traditionally, the researchers said, white-collar workers -- or "knowledge workers," in the modern parlance -- have had two productivity peaks in their workday: just before lunch and just after lunch. But since the pandemic, a third and smaller bump of work has emerged in the late evening. Microsoft's researchers refer to this phenomenon as the "triple peak day."
For the new study, workers allowed Microsoft to track their "keyboard events" -- a funny euphemism for sending emails or engaging with productivity applications on a work computer. While most people didn't show a third mountain of work in the evening, 30 percent did. They were working almost as much at 10 p.m. as they were at 8 a.m. Several underlying phenomena are pushing up this third mountain of work. One is the flexibility of at-home work. For example, parents of young kids might interrupt their workday or cut it off early for school pickup, dinnertime, bedtime, and other child care. This leaves a rump of work that they finish up later. Other workers are night owls who get their second wind -- or even their primary gust of creativity -- just before bed.
When a file (attached to an email, or downloaded from the Internet) is saved to disk on a Windows system, Microsoft applications will mark this file as coming from the Internet. This is done with a ZoneIdentifier Alternate Data Stream (like a “mark-of-web”).
When a Microsoft Office application, like Word, opens a document with a ZoneIdentifier ADS, the document is opened in Protected View (e.g., sandboxed).
But when an Office document is stored inside an ISO file, and that ISO has a ZoneIdentifier ADS, then Word will not open the document in Protected View. That is something I observed 5 years ago.
But this has changed recently. When exactly, I don’t know (update: August 2021).
But when I open an Office document stored inside an ISO file marked with a ZoneIdentifier ADS, Office 2021 will open the document in protected view:
With an unpatched version of Office 2019, that I installed a year ago, that same file is not opened in Protected View:
After updating Office:
Word’s behavior has changed:
The file is now opened in Protected View.
If you want to test this yourself, you can use my ZoneIdentifier tool to easily settings a “mark-of-web” without having to download your test file from the Internet:
I did the same test with Office 2016, I updated an old version and: the document is not opened in Protected View.
I don’t know exactly when Microsoft Office 2019 was updated so that it would open documents in Protected View when they are inside an ISO file marked as originating from the Internet. But if you do know, please post a comment.
Update: this change happened in August 2021. See comments below. Thanks Philippe.
In 1984, Joel Gould of IBM Cambridge (that is Cambridge, Massachusetts rather than Cambridge, UK) Scientific Center wrote a demo program named FantasyLand. This demo was meant to show off the capabilities of IBM’s brand new Enhanced Graphics Adapter, or EGA.
The demo was strictly a demo and was never sold. A few years ago, the demo resurfaced and perhaps the best way to experience it is PCjs, because PCjs faithfully emulates an EGA card. That last bit is important.
The FantasyLand EGA demo
I’ve attempted to run the FantasyLand demo on a number of VGA cards and in the end concluded that it cannot run properly. Even though the VGA is in general highly backwards compatible with the EGA, the FantasyLand demo exposes a couple of minor points where that’s not the case.
Font Size
The first problem with the FantasyLand demo is actually something that affects EGA systems as well. The FantasyLand demo assumes that the system is using 200-line text modes with 8×8 pixel character box. That is no doubt an accident of history—FantasyLand was written in 1984, before the 350-line capable EGA monitors became available. To use color with an EGA, the only option was a 200-line CGA monitor at the time when FantasyLand was written.
On EGA systems equipped with an Enhanced (i.e. EGA) monitor, it is necessary to flip the switches on the back of the EGA card to the “compatible” setting.
On VGA systems it’s actually easier: The video BIOS function INT 10h/12h with BL=30h can be called to request text modes with 200 lines. The next mode set will establish a CGA compatible text mode with 8×8 characters.
That is enough to get FantasyLand looking mostly right on a VGA system. But only mostly.
Split Screen
The FantasyLand demo makes heavy use of split screen, a new feature IBM introduced with the EGA. But when run on a VGA… there is no split screen at all. The reason for that is interesting.
On the EGA, the line compare field which controls split screen is a 9-bit value. The low 8 bits (i.e. bits 7:0) are in CRTC register CR18 and bit 8 is stored in bit 4 of CR7, the overflow register. That allows the line compare field to represent values in the 0 to 511 range (a necessity since some EGA modes use 350 scan lines).
On the VGA, IBM extended the line compare field; bit 9 is stored in bit 6 of register CR9, which primarily controls the character cell height. Thus the line compare field on the VGA can represent values in the 0 to 1,023 range. Yet software written for the EGA knows nothing about the additional bit.
When the VGA BIOS sets a text mode, the line compare field is set to 1,023 (the maximum value). That is a problem for EGA software, because it will never clear the high bit it doesn’t know about. Even if software written for the EGA tries to set the line compare field to zero, it will in reality still be 512, and no split screen will be in effect.
It’s possible to work around this issue by modifying the mode parameters. All it takes is creating a copy of the mode parameter table plus the video save pointer table, and modifying the BDA to reference the customized pointer table. The parameter table for mode 3 needs just one bit changed; the new-on-VGA bit 6 of register CR9 has to be zeroed so that EGA software can effectively manipulate the line compare field.
And with that change… FantasyLand still does not look right.
Irreconcilable Differences
As it turns out, FantasyLand exposes a subtle hardware incompatibility between EGA and VGA related to split screens.
The line compare field determines the scan line after which the image will be displayed from the start of video memory. That sounds simple enough… except it’s not in those 200-line CGA compatible modes. The thing is that an EGA card attached to either CGA or EGA monitor actually displays 200 scan lines. But the VGA does not; it instead displays 400 scan lines and sets bit 7 of register CR9 to “double scan”, i.e. display each scan line twice.
When FantasyLand initially sets the line compare field to 199, there will be no split screen on an EGA, since 199 is the last displayed scan line. But on a VGA, the screen will be split right in the middle when it shouldn’t be, because the image is in reality composed of 400 scan lines!
ATI Graphics Vantage in VGA mode
In theory, the double scan bit could have influenced the line compare functionality on the VGA. But all the VGA cards I’ve tried agree that it does not.
Do Not Interrupt
There is yet another problem with many VGA cards. FantasyLand uses vertical retrace interrupts to achieve smooth animation, with the split screen nicely sliding up and down. On many VGA cards, vertical retrace interrupts do not work.
I’m not sure of the exact history there. What I know is that for example my Cirrus Logic CL-GD5442 based ISA card could support vertical retrace interrupts, since the Cirrus Logic chip implements them. But the card does not even have the corresponding pin on the ISA slot populated.
Some ISA VGA cards have a jumper that can be used to enable interrupts. This is often disabled by default.
On PCI based VGA cards, it’s extremely unlikely that interrupts would be routed to IRQ9/IRQ2, even if the card did generate interrupts (enough of them do).
The reality is that many if not most VGA cards do not support interrupts—either not at all or not in a manner compatible with IBM EGA/VGA.
Compatibility Fun
I did find one card in my junk pile that can display FantasyLand very well: An ATI Graphics Vantage, an ISA VGA card with a Mach8 accelerator.
In the default VGA mode, the Graphics Vantage has the same problem as other VGA cards—the screen is split in the middle when it shouldn’t be. But the card can be switched to an EGA emulation mode, and then FantasyLand works properly, with interrupts (and hence smooth animation) and all.
ATI Graphics Vantage in EGA emulation mode
My experience is that EGA emulation modes are rare on VGA cards and only found on older models if at all.
At any rate… FantasyLand is a very interesting piece of software, obscure enough that even though it was written at IBM, it’s too much even for IBM’s own VGA and exposes minor incompatibilities with the EGA.
Neowin notes growing support for the "very efficient, potent, royalty-free video codec" AV1, including Microsoft's adding of support for hardware acceleration of AV1 on Windows.
But AV1 even turned up in Intel's announcement this week of the Arc A-series, a new line of discrete GPUs, Neowin reports:
Intel has been quick to respond and the company has become the first such GPU hardware vendor to have full AV1 support on its newly launched Arc GPUs. While AMD and Nvidia both offer AV1 decoding with their newest GPUs, neither have support for AV1 encoding.
Intel says that hardware encoding of AV1 on its new Arc GPUs is 50 times faster than those based on software-only solutions. It also adds that the efficiency of AV1 encode with Arc is 20% better compared to HEVC. With this feature, Intel hopes to potentially capture at least some of the streaming and video editing market that's based on users who are looking for a more robust AV1 encoding solution compared to CPU-based software approaches.
From Intel's announcement:
Intel Arc A-Series GPUs are the first in the industry to offer full AV1 hardware acceleration, including both encode and decode, delivering faster video encode and higher quality streaming while consuming the same internet bandwidth. We've worked with industry partners to ensure that AV1 support is available today in many of the most popular media applications, with broader adoption expected this year. The AV1 codec will be a game changer for the future of video encoding and streaming.
"Google is taking aim at Microsoft's dominance in government technology and security," reports NBC News:
Jeanette Manfra, director of risk and compliance for Google's cloud services and a former top U.S. cybersecurity official, said Thursday that the government's reliance on Microsoft — one of Google's top business rivals — is an ongoing security threat.
Manfra also said in a blog post published Thursday that a survey commissioned by Google found that a majority of federal employees believe that the government's reliance on Microsoft products is a cybersecurity vulnerability. "Overreliance on any single vendor is usually not a great idea," Manfra said in a phone interview. "You have an attack on one product that the majority of the government is depending on to do their job, you have a significant risk in how the government can continue to function."
Microsoft pushed back strongly against the claim, calling it "unhelpful." The study comes as Google is positioning itself to challenge Microsoft's dominance in federal government offices, where Windows and Office programs are commonly used....
The blog post comes as hackers continue to discover critical software vulnerabilities at an increasing pace across major tech products, but especially in Microsoft programs. Last year, researchers discovered 21 "zero-days" — an industry term for a critical vulnerability that a company doesn't have a ready solution for — actively in use against Microsoft products, compared to 16 against Google and 12 against Apple. he most prominent zero-day was used against Microsoft's Exchange email program, which cybersecurity experts say was first employed by Chinese cyberspies and then quickly adopted by criminal hackers, leading to hundreds of companies becoming compromised.
The Paramount+ streaming service already has five ongoing Star Trek series (including Discovery and Picard).
But they've just released a trailer for another one — and it's now derived directly from the original 1960s TV show, even including some of its original characters. The upcoming show's title?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Ars Technica reports:
As we've reported previously, one of the highlights of Star Trek: Discovery's second season was the appearance of classic original series (TOS) characters Capt. Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and Spock (Ethan Peck). All three reprise their roles for Strange New Worlds....
"If you want to seek out new life, go where the aliens are," Pike tells us. But that alien life might not be receptive to first contact, as Pike and the Enterprise find themselves under fire by aliens who consider their presence to be "blasphemy." And romance blooms for both Pike and Spock (separately, not with each other).
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuts on Paramount+ on May 5, 2022. The streaming platform has already greenlighted a second season, with Paul Wesley (Vampire Diaries ) joining the cast as future Enterprise Capt. James T. Kirk.
Ars Technica reports the cast as:
Babs Olusanmokun playing Dr. M'BengaCelia Rose Gooding filling Nichelle Nichols' shoes as Cadet Nyota UhuraJess Bush playing Nurse Christine ChapelMelissa Navai playing Lt. Erica OrtegasBruce Orak playing an Aenar named Hemmer.Christina Chong playing La'An Noonien-Singh (a relation of the classic revenge-obsessed Star Trek villain Khan).
And on an unrelated note...
One of the best parts about spring is finally getting back outside to enjoy nature. Or, at least that’s the case until you run into some sort of obstacle, like an especially muddy trail, seasonal allergies, or ending up with a red, itchy rash after coming in contact with poison ivy, or a similarly irritating plant.
This week we're back from our travels and talking about the hottest new releases and ... also board games? Like Dead Reckoning, Awkward Guests, Reckoners and more, along with, you know, video games like Weird West, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and plenty more. This week's music: Foo Fighters - Times Like These
The looter-shooter Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has been released on Epic Games:
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
Embark on an epic adventure full of whimsy, wonder, and high-powered weaponry! Bullets, magic, and broadswords collide across this chaotic fantasy world brought to life by the unpredictable Tiny Tina....
Now that Weird West, WolfEye Studios' debut project, is available for purchase, you might be interested in checking out some reviews for this isometric immersive sim that combines cowboys with supernatural elements. If that's the case, you can find a number of them below:
Weird West more than lives up to its name in all the right ways. Playing through its five stories and reaching their collective conclusion produces a wagonload of bizarre encounters, twists, and reveals, and its stealth and chaotic combat are challenging but come with the built-in safety nets of unlimited slow-motion and an old-school quickload system. It comes with its fair share of limitations, managing a lot of mostly dull loot, and typical bugs, but exploring these wide-open spaces feels like striking gold a lot more often than not.
Weird West is a game of loose ends. As regards its unscripted narrative and world elements, that's to its advantage. Take that woman in the basement - on sneaking closer I realised that she was, in fact, a named character with a backstory. A few hours before, I'd helped reunite her with a lost friend, after stumbling on the latter's kidnapper in another town, way across the map. There's something poignant and invigorating about how the pieces of this game come back to haunt you - given a decent interval, anyway. Other elements, however, feel like they're still searching for their place in the puzzle, their potential fizzling out like dynamite in the rain. I suspect that, above all, what this eldritch vision of North America's settlement could have done with is a bit more time.
Weird West’s best assets are its well-developed characters and deep gameplay systems, but its overall production value is underwhelming. The game’s cell-shading looks good enough on higher settings and large screens, but the composition quickly becomes muddy on less-powerful machines like my Steam Deck. Additionally, a minor bug prevented me from saving my game occasionally, leading to several frustrating deaths.
With its gripping story, wacky characters, solid action role-playing game mechanics, and masterfully crafted immersive simulation features, Weird West is one of the very few role-playing games on the market where players truly shape the world with their choices and actions. Some balancing and technical issues damage the experience, but if you're looking for a truly immersive RPG to play, you won't find anything better than Weird West.
Is the struggle worth it, though? Rather emphatically, the answer is still yes. The writing, the story, the characters, and the ways in which your actions have an effect on the world are all enthralling. I wanted answers to the mysteries presented, since the heroes and villains of these tales are captivating, and the payoffs, by and large, are worthwhile. There are a lot of excellent old-school isometric adventure games in Weird West's DNA, but not enough new-school polish for it to be something great.
Wolfeye’s attempt to bring the immersive sim genre to an isometric game works well overall, albeit with a few hiccups in handling combat and looting. Fans itching for a game that allows freedom of choice in both story and gameplay at every turn should look no further than Weird West.
If not for the grating gameplay and clunky controls, Weird West would be another Devolver classic. I love Devolver’s games, and I was excited for this one. Weird West would be fantastic as a novella, actually–I loved the writing, atmosphere, and unique narrative. Chef’s kiss stuff right here. I’m sure some folks out there will find the gameplay good enough, but even knowing how fascinating the story is, I wouldn’t have put over twenty hours into this game if I knew at the outset what I know now.
Today is April 2nd. There's a good reason I skipped blogging on April 1st: the actual news right now is both sufficiently ghastly and surreal that any attempt at satire either falls flat or runs victim to Poe's Law.
(I did hatch a relatively harmless idea for a non-depressing April Fool's jape—an announcement that I'd decided my fiction was too depressing, so I was going to pivot to writing Squeecore (albeit with Lovecraftian features), but then I described it to a friend and he pointed out that Dead Lies Dreaming was already Squeecore with Lovecraftian features, so the joke's on me.)
I have real difficulty writing fiction during periods when the Wrong Sort of History is Happening. The Ukraine invasion completely threw me off my stride, so the novella I was attempting to write the second half of is still unfinished and I'm behind schedule on the final draft of Season of Skulls.
But when life hands you lemons you might as well make lemonade, so here's what I learned from my most recent month of doomscrolling.
Some of the news this year puts me in mind of a novel I never got round to writing. Back in March of 2012 I wrote about something that worried me: the intersection of social media apps, geolocation, smartphones, and murder:
In the worst case, it's possible to envisage geolocation and data aggregation apps being designed to facilitate the identification and elimination of some ethnic or class enemy
There's even an app people can use to report the movements of Russian troops, sending location-tagged videos directly to Ukrainian intelligence. The country's minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, told The Washington Post they're getting tens of thousands of reports a day.
It's a lot less morally questionable than my grim speculation about geolocation/social media apps mediating intra-community genocide, but it's still appalling by implication. The Ukrainians are justified in doing this, but sooner or later someone is going to turn this into a tool for genocide.
What is funny, in the sense of funny-peculiar, not funny-humorous, is the war of the cellular networks. It turns out the Russian field units are using 1980s analog radios and cellphones to communicate. A lot of them got lost because after commanders confiscated all the troops' smartphones, they issued paper maps which nobody knows how to use any more. Meanwhile the Russian commanders were using an end-to-end encrypted secure messaging app ... that required cellphone service, and by shelling the Ukrainian cellphone base stations they were disrupting their own secure comms. It's an absolute clusterfuck, and if it wasn't combined with atrocities and war crimes it would be hilarious.
This is without even touching on the self-inflicted Russian casualties in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. You may wonder why the Russian soldiers were stupid enough to dig trenches in the Red Forest, possibly the most radioactive pollution zone on the planet. (Hint: it takes more radiation to kill a conifer than a human being—which is why the Red Forest, where almost all the trees died, is a really bad place to go bivouacking.) It becomes clearer once you know that the Russian armies are being directed from the top down, receiving exact orders from Moscow and allowed no scope for deviation. Someone who was 16 years old in 1986 (the year of the Chernobyl Disaster—about the youngest age to fully understand the scale and implications of the event) would be 52 by now, probably too old to be in the field: to the kids fighting the war, the Chernobyl disaster probably happened before their parents were born. It's ancient history about an accident in a foreign country.
Back in the mists of time on this blog (DDG search isn't terribly helpful in locating it) I prognosticated about the first generation who would never have experienced getting lost, because smartphones with GPS would be ubiquitous. But when Generation Location runs into a military-historical Cold War LARP/nostalgia trip—which seems to be what the Ukraine war is turning into, from the Russian point of view—things get messy. Ditto for no access to wikipedia or other online information resources. It seems humans have short memories (especially 18-20 year old conscripts from the decrepit, poverty-stricken Russian heartland), and the elderly and rigid Russian leadership (Putin is only 5 years younger than Leonid Brezhnev was when he died) is locked in an information bubble of their own creation, uncritically consuming reports their subordinates prepare in hope of not attracting their ire.
I could go on endlessly about this ongoing war, but right now I just want to clutch my head and hide. Anyway, I speak/read neither Russian nor Ukrainian, so I'm at best a second-hand information source. A lot of the stuff circulating on twitter (I don't do Facebook) is of dubious quality, although I find the twitter-streams of @kamilkazani and @drleostrauss (note: it's an alias, the real Leo Strauss died in 1973: this one is a pseudonymous Washington DC foreign policy wonk) both compelling and mostly persuasive.
What I can safely say is that this war isn't going the way any of us might have expected. That Ukraine wouldn't roll over and surrender instantly, but would instead fight back furiously, could have been predicted. (This is the sort of war that nation-building myths are later based on, like the Battle of Britain, or the Winter War, or the Israeli War of Independence.) It's at least as revolutionary as the Second Boer War in terms of brutally exposing the obsolete military doctrines of an imperial invader: in this case the obsolescence of traditional Soviet/Russian tank doctrine in the face of drones, loitering munitions, and infantry-portable ATGMs, not to mention the bizarre failure of military comms to keep up with the smartphone revolution.
The true impact of the cyberwar hasn't become clear yet, but the Rosaviation hack alone—the entire licensing/registration database of Rosaviation, the Russian Civil Aviation Registrar, has been erased, all 65Tb of it, apparently without leaving them with a backup—could be the most expensive hacking attack this century.
And that's before we come to the way the war is amplifying the ongoing energy crisis.
I think the war can best be contextualized as the flailing reaction of an ossifying, increasingly centralized and aggressively authoritarian oil/gas extraction regime to the growing threat of its own irrelevance. While crude Russian nationalism and revanchist empire-building is the obvious superficial cause of the war, the real structural issues underlying it are the failure of Russia to diversify its economy and to establish a modern framework of government that doesn't degrade into Tsarist rule-by-decree: eventually the Tsar loses touch with reality (whether by going nuts or due to being fed misinformation from below) and bad stuff happens. Oil and gas are economic heroin to the exporting countries: only a handful have moved to effectively avoid the withdrawal side-effects (I'm thinking of Norway in particular), and for most withdrawal is disastrous. Russia is particularly vulnerable, and can't afford to let the rest of the world wean itself off fossil carbon abuse. And Ukraine is now paying the price. (It should be noted that Donbass has the second largest gas reserves in Europe: this is economically as much an oil/gas war as was the Iraq war before it.)
Anyway, as Lenin remarked, "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."
We had a couple of decades of Francis Fukuyama's The end of history and now we're paying the price in catch-up weeks.
PS: I have chosen to ignore the question of Russian interference in Western politics, and especially Donald Trump and Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, because this war is not about the west: it's about long-term Russian ethnonationalist revanchism, an attempt to rebuild their Empire. Centering western political concerns is dangerous and misleading and will lead us into error, so don't do that in the comments.
AMC's "The Walking Dead" may be wrapping up its 11-season run this year, but Samantha Morton's character, Alpha, will live to fight zombies (and perhaps wear their skin?) another day. The upcoming anthology series, "Tales of the Walking Dead," will feature characters new and old, and Morton has signed on to reprise her role as Alpha, the leader of the Whisperers in seasons 9 and 10 of the original flagship "Walking Dead" series.
"Tales of the Walking Dead" is set to run six episodes, and Variety reports that Morton will star in one of them. While the specifics of that episode's plot "are being kept under wraps" for now, we can make an educated guess about when it will be set given how things played out on "The Walking Dead."
Morton was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work as Hattie in "Sweet and Lowdown," but she gained more mainstream notoriety for her work as a "precog" opposite Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report." "Tales of the Walking Dead" has been lining up some interesting guest stars in addition to her, including Cruise's "Top Gun" co-star Anthony Edwards, Terry Crews, and Parker Posey, among others.
AMC executives have referred to the show as a "test kitchen" for future potential spin-offs, but the anthology nature of it also might make it more accessible to casual viewers who just want to check in for one or more standalone episodes, without getting swept up in a big zombie herd of them again. Seasons 10 and 11 of "The Walking Dead," for instance, have both been extended to over 20 episodes, in contrast to previous 16-episode seasons.
Spoilers for "The Walking Dead" season 10 below.
We Probably Know The Time Setting Of Alpha's Episode
Alpha's grisly fate in "The Walking Dead" would, of course, make it necessary for her episode of "Tales of the Walking Dead" to be some sort of prequel, set before the events of her final appearance. In season 10, episode 12 of "The Walking Dead," Jeffrey Morgan's character, Negan, slit Alpha's throat and decapitated her before toting her zombified head back to Carol (Melissa McBride).
Speaking of Negan and Carol, their adventures will continue beyond the main "Walking Dead" series, as well. Negan will appear in "Isle of the Dead" with Maggie (Lauren Cohen), whose husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun), he famously killed with his signature spiked bat. Carol, meanwhile, will appear in an as-yet-untitled spin-off with Daryl (Norman Reedus.)
On TV, "The Walking Dead" franchise now encompasses those three shows, along with the ongoing spin-off, "Fear the Walking Dead," the comparatively short-lived "The Walking Dead: The World Beyond," and "Tales of the Walking Dead."
"Tales of the Walking Dead" is coming to AMC and AMC+ this summer.
Without announcing a date that formal cooperation will end between Russia and the other ISS project participants, Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin has vowed the end is near. Unless the international community offers a "complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions" Russia is going to show everyone. — Read the rest
Modder ‘Truceacred’ has released a high-polygon mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition that replaces the headpart of every single humanoid NPC. Thus, and alongside this mod, we’ve decided to share some additional mods that will greatly improve the appearance of NPCs. As said, the High Poly Vanilla NPC Overhaul improves only the … Continue reading These mods bring Next-Gen NPCs to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim →
