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"The Umbrella Academy" has its fair share of unusual characters, but Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), a 58-year-old man trapped in the body of a 13-year-old, is especially strange. In an interview with ScreenRant, the co-creator of the source material comic, My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, shared the inspiration behind the youngest and oldest Hargreeves sibling. Apparently, Number Five was inspired by a Terry Gilliam sci-fi cult classic that planted a small seed of an idea into Way's head. And thank goodness, because Number Five is a purely demented delight. 

From 12 Monkeys To The Umbrella Academy

The movie that inspired Way was "12 Monkeys," a time-traveling dystopian thriller about a world where everyone must live underground in order to avoid a deadly plague that was released by an eco-terrorist (Brad Pitt). Bruce Willis plays a prisoner who is chosen for a special mission to go back in time to stop the terrorist from releasing the virus. Willis is eventually killed in front of his younger self, which is pretty wild when you consider the actor went on to travel through time to kill his younger self in "Looper." 

Anyway, the idea of an old man inside of the mind of a child was all it took to get Way's mind going:

"Well, I was really inspired by Terry Gilliam and '12 Monkeys.' And I was also-- At the time, I don't think we had ever seen a character like that. We had not seen a 58-year-old man trapped in the body of child. So, that really appealed to me. I didn't want a character that we could play with time, I wanted a character that we could play with violence. There's a real juxtaposition there. You have a child and he's committing some serious violence. So, I felt like there was something to be said in that and a juxtaposition to be shown."

Number Five is definitely a character who can play with violence. He's a nearly 60-year-old man who has seen some things, but he's trapped in his much younger body. He's a foul-mouthed, brutally violent guy who just so happens to look like he should be playing "Fortnite," not mourning the loss of his lover and trying to protect his siblings from the impending apocalypse. The character is fascinating in the comic series, but Gallagher really brings him to life in a way that belies his age. 

"The Umbrella Academy" should return for a third season on Netflix sometime in 2022. 

Read this next: The Horror Movies We Can't Wait To See In 2022

The post The Sci-Fi Cult Classic That Inspired The Umbrella Academy's Number 5 appeared first on /Film.

Christopher Nolan's earliest films, "Following" and "Memento," are often considered neo-noir, or at the very least, noir-ish. Even as Nolan crossed over from independent features to mid-budget thrillers and eventually superhero blockbusters, his movies have retained certain noir inflections. Of crouse, that immediately opens up the question of, "What is noir?" Different people might define it different ways.

In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine around the time of "The Dark Knight," Nolan laid out his personal definition of noir as follows:

"For me, film noir is one of the only genres where the concept of point of view is accepted as a fairly important notion in the storytelling, and where it's totally accepted that you can flashback and flashforward and change points of view. The best film noir always involves a continuous reassessment of things, especially in terms of 'Who's the good guy?' and 'Who's the bad guy?' You want the double cross, you want the surprise, and you want to keep the audience mindful of the fact that they don't know the full story, and that they can't trust all the characters."

These elements — the flashes forward and back, the changing points of view, the double crosses — are all present to some degree in "Memento," which leverages its unique reverse-chronological-narrative concept to tell a story about the innate human tendency to live in denial. In this case, the protagonist, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), can't even trust himself, let alone other people, because of his short-term memory loss.

The operative question in "Memento" is, "Do I lie to myself to be happy?" Leonard, like anyone, is liable forget the lessons he's learned and keep making the same mistakes, particularly when confronting the truth about himself and his situation is too uncomfortable or painful.

"Maybe You Should Start Investigating Yourself"

Non-linear storytelling and a fascination with time have become staples of Nolan's filmography, but with "Memento," they weren't just gimmicks. They were an attempt to situate the audience in Leonard's perspective so that we could feel as he feels and maybe, by the end, see ourselves in him. Nolan elaborated further on this and on how his definition of noir applies to "Memento," which is based on the short story, "Memento Mori," by his brother Jonathan Nolan. He said:

"When Jonah told me the story he had for Memento, the idea of relating the condition this guy has – his inability to keep memories fixed in his head – in terms of a revenge scenario, it seemed like the most interesting thing to do would be to take the film-noir approach, and to tell the story almost entirely from that character's point of view. His psychological condition and his point of view are crucial to why the structure is there: it's an attempt to put the audience inside his head, and to make them think about the characters around him and the situations he's in in the same way that he does."

This approach helped Nolan find a fresh entry point into noir, or noir-adjacent territory, and refresh tropes of the genre that had become stale. The puzzle-box aspect of the movie kept viewers on their toes so that they were not just trying to solve a crime; they were trying to solve the nature of what was even happening onscreen. Nolan concluded:

"I really wanted to use the structure of the movie as a way of reawakening some of the things that used to be so valued in the genre: the paranoia and exaggeration in our everyday insecurities. But the genre's been used so many times, you have to try very hard to find new ways to energize it. If the audience goes into Memento expecting just another film noir, I think they're going to be kind of disappointed, because it's about more than that."

Next time you watch "Memento," just remember, we're all Leonard Shelby, this person with a selective memory and a tendency toward self-deception. As Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) observes to Leonard: "Maybe you should start investigating yourself."

Read this next: The 14 Best Noir Movies Ranked

The post How Christopher Nolan Tried To Breathe New Life Into Film Noir appeared first on /Film.

Whenever a film, especially a film that's part of a franchise, makes the decision to add cutesy characters into its story, there is always the risk that the new additions will be seen as gimmicky, or worse — annoying. Many films have done this successfully — the dreaded minions of the "Despicable Me" series truly have a particular staying power that has even gone on to garner them their own spin-off films — but other times, things don't exactly go according to plan.

Take Jar Jar Binks for example. He is a hotly debated (and often deeply loathed) addition to the "Star Wars" universe that did not go over as planned, which is why when the porgs were first previewed as being a new part of the "Star Wars" universe in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi", some people felt uneasy. Would these fluffy, egg-like creatures be the next Jar Jar? Fortunately for the franchise, porgs were pretty much accepted almost immediately. They were cute, puffin-like creatures that befriend Chewbacca, originating on the planet Ahch-To and covering its rocky cliffs in their characteristically plump, beakless bodies. Ultimately, they were nearly impossible hard to hate — and to be perfectly honest, I could always do with some more porg action in my "Star Wars." 

But just how did these adorable little creatures come to be?  

Birth Of The Porg

In an interview, Jake Lunt Davies, the main man behind creating the porgs, talks a bit about how these beakless bird-like beings came to be for their debut in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." It turns out that the initial inspiration came from director Rian Johnson's trip to Skellig Michael, an island west of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland that became the actual shooting location for the scenes filmed on Luke Skywalker's new home of Ahch-To. 

Johnson returned from his trip inspired by the island's vast amount of puffins, and he felt "The Last Jedi" needed some similar wildlife. "From what I gathered, Rian, in a positive spin on this, was looking at how can he work with this. You can't remove them. You physically can't get rid of them. And digitally removing them is an issue and a lot of work, so let's just roll with it, play with it," says Davies. And thus the birth of the porg began!

Davies says that the plan had always been to make the porg as cute as possible, and in the end, its final form ended up being a combination of "a seal and a pug dog and the puffin." Lots of sketching and brainstorming went into the creation of the porg, and eventually, Johnson and the rest of the team settled on the design audiences are familiar with today. 

For Davies' part, he never expected the porgs to end up being as sensational as they were. "I was surprised when, suddenly, the Internet goes crazy for it and it turned into a meme-fest," he says, which just goes to show that inspiration can come from the unlikeliest of places — even pesky puffins that are impossible to remove from the background of a major motion picture, giving credence to the age-old adage, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Read this next: The 13 Best Animated Star Wars Moments

The post The Surprising Reason Porgs Were Created For Star Wars: The Last Jedi appeared first on /Film.

COVID-19 pandemic restrictions could end "soon," even as early as this year, NIAID director Anthony Fauci told the Financial Times in an interview published Tuesday. From a report: Fauci explained that he does not believe "we are going to eradicate this virus," but said that it will instead reach an "equilibrium." He said, "I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the COVID restrictions will soon be a thing of the past." Fauci added that he hoped restrictions would end "soon," agreeing with a suggestion that they could largely end this year. Fauci also said that as the U.S. is "certainly heading out" of a particularly difficult phase of the pandemic driven largely by Omicron, local health departments will be the ones to make virus-related decisions instead of the Biden administration.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft executives are warming up regulators to their proposed acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard in Washington by pledging a future that includes an open, "universal" app store. From a report: On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a set of "Open App Store Principles" the company says will apply to the Microsoft Store on Windows and the next generation of its marketplaces for games. [...] Seven of those principles center around security, privacy, quality, safety, accountability, fairness and transparency, and the company says it is committing to those principles starting today. The four remaining principles would change how developers use app stores by not requiring developers to use Microsoft's payment system, not giving its app store more favorable terms, not disadvantaging developers who use a different payment system and not preventing developers from communicating directly with customers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sergio Leone's "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" is a landmark Western film, and like any classic piece of cinema with a meticulous director, the quintessential spaghetti Western had its fair share of on-set issues (see: "Apocalypse Now"). Eli Wallach, who played the titular "Ugly" character Tuco Ramirez, shared some of the most dramatic stories from the shoot in his 2005 autobiography "The Good, The Bad, and Me." Namely, the celebrated actor recalls his near-death experiences during his performance.

Tuco has noticeably more backstory and dialogue than his mysterious and brusque supporting co-stars, his impulsivity and motormouth creating a foil for both Clint Eastwood's Blondie ("The Good") and Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes ("The Bad"). The buffoonish yet cunning Mexican bandit often found himself in embarrassing and difficult predicaments, while Wallach was at the mercy of his character's follies and almost died not once, not twice, but three times over the course of the shoot.

The Almost-Death-By-Horse

We first meet Tuco and Blondie in the midst of an ingenious con they seem to have cooked up. Blondie delivers the wanted Tuco to a sheriff and collects the bounty, then uses his supernaturally accurate gunslinging skills to shoot the noose off Tuco right before the execution. They then share the bounty money and repeat the process in another town, perfectly establishing the questionable morals of our two main characters.

Tuco, of course, doesn't enjoy this game as much as Blondie does, since he's subjected to the possibility of death and a wild horseback ride. Likewise, Eli Wallach was subjected to the same treatment since his hands were actually tied behind his back. A special effects artist detonated a small explosive in the noose so that the rope would drop, but Clint Eastwood's rifle firing spooked the horse, and Wallach was sent helplessly galloping off. In his autobiography, Wallach gives a sense of how trying to control his steed was impossible while he was bound and tied up:

"...the horse took off like a bat out of a hell while my hands were tied behind me. I kept yelling at the horse to stop, using my knees to try to control him, but it was no use. It took about a mile before the horse stopped."

The Almost-Death-By-Acid

Wallach almost met a painful end when, ironically, Tuco joyfully uncovers the gold he's been searching for the entire time at the very end of the film. The crew had sprinkled an acidic compound on one of the money bags so that when Wallach smacked it with his shovel, it would split open upon first contact. However, a prop technician had stored the acid in the same bottle of lemon soda that Wallach enjoyed drinking in between takes. Wallach picked up the poisonous liquid, took a sip, and, able to tell the difference between a corrosive liquid and a delicious carbonated beverage, immediately spit it out. The actor chugged milk in an effort to neutralize the acid, but he still walked away with sores on the inside of his mouth. Wallach tells of Leone's reaction to the incident in "The Good, the Bad, and Me:"

"Leone was shaken but philosophical about it. 'We didn't know,' he said apologetically. 'He [the prop man] never should have left it there, but accidents happen...'"

The Almost-Death-By-Train

Tuco shows off his resourcefulness in a scene when he outsmarts his Union army captors and escapes from a train bound for a prison camp. He manages to kill the soldier he's handcuffed to, but he has to wait for the next train to come by before he can use the moving vehicle to cut off the chain tying them together. The fact that Wallach was so close to a moving train was daring enough, but the train cars also had attached metal steps that jutted out. Leone asked Wallach to turn around and look at the camera in order to emphasize that it was Wallach himself and not a stunt double that was laying right next to the railway tracks. Those steps, however, posed a serious threat of decapitation, and Wallach almost lost his head. The actor attempted the scene two times before refusing to go on any longer (it wasn't the only time a delicately set up scene had to be shot twice). He recounts in his autobiography:

"Leone said that the cameraman couldn't see my face because I was too far down in the hole.

'Did you see that goddamn step on the train?' I asked. 'Do you want me to finish the movie without a head?' Leone stopped and stared as the train disappeared in the distance.

'All right,' he said. 'We'll use the first take.'"

Despite his brushes with death, Eli Wallach respected Sergio Leone and got along with him well during production. In fact, it wasn't the acid, the horse, or the train that killed the relationship between the two, but a contract dispute. Due to studio politics, Wallach never ended up returning for Leone's film "Duck, You Sucker," a phrase the actor was probably repeating to himself as sharp, metal steps flew over him.

Read this next: The Best Movies Of 2021

The post How The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Nearly Killed One of Its Stars appeared first on /Film.

Film fans from around the world woke up this morning (extremely early for some time zones) for the announcement of the nominees for the 94th Academy Awards. As is tradition, there were equally as many surprises as there were snubs, historic reigns continued, and long overdue celebrations of performers from marginalized identities. Today may be all about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences dishing out accolades, but I'd like to personally deliver the Academy an award of their own today. 

Congratulations to the Academy for nominating Kirsten Dunst for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "The Power of the Dog," finally joining the rest of us at the "Kirsten Dunst is One of the Greatest Actresses Of Her Generation" party. We've been waiting for you for a long time ...I regret to inform you that the cake we purchased back in 1994 for "Interview with the Vampire" has gone bad. To be fair, it was your choice to be so offensively late.

At 39 years old, Kirsten Dunst has been professionally acting for the last 33 years, and she's only now being recognized by the Academy for her remarkable talents. Her first nomination comes alongside the first nomination of her partner Jesse Plemons, who nabbed a Best Supporting Actor nomination for "The Power of the Dog." It's an unbelievably cute coincidence that will hopefully sweeten the historic moment, especially considering how unforgivably long it has taken the Academy to honor an exceptional performer.

She's Been Oscar-Worthy Since Day One

Dunst's first role came in the Woody Allen (gross) anthology film "New York Stories," when she was only 7 years old. While we obviously know better now about that deplorable excuse for a director, it was an incredible achievement to debut in a Woody Allen film back then, especially for such a young actor. Five years later, Dunst made her breakthrough as Claudia in "Interview With The Vampire," earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but she was snubbed by The Academy because they suck eggs at recognizing the brilliance of horror cinema.

The same year, Dunst starred as the younger Amy March in Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of "Little Women," a property that the Academy loves to spotlight. But where Florence Pugh was given a nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 2019, Dunst was left out in 1994, likely because she split the role with Samantha Mathis. Dunst delivered two separate remarkable performances worthy of Oscar contention, and she was barely old enough to attend high school. It takes a lot for the Academy to prioritize a young actor over a seasoned professional, but if anyone deserved it, it was Kirsten Dunst in 1994.

She's More Than A Teen Queen

As Dunst got older, her acting opportunities shifted to teen fare, a genre that the Academy and most film critics, in general, unnecessarily devalue because we culturally hate anything marketed toward teen girls. There was no way the Academy was going to honor something like "Drop Dead Gorgeous," but Dunst's reign of teen fare turned her into a cultural icon. Films like "Dick," "Bring it On," "Get Over It," and "Crazy/Beautiful" allowed Dunst to be the guiding force for teen girls trying to find themselves, and in the middle of it all, she starred in Sofia Coppola's directorial debut, "The Virgin Suicides." It's genuinely criminal that Coppola wasn't nominated at the Oscars in 1999, and even more so that Dunst's heartbreaking work as Lux Lisbon went ignored.

In 2002, she nabbed the role of Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man," and if there's something the Academy hates more than horror movies and teen girl cinema, it's a superhero film. Between "Spider-Man 2" and "Spider-Man 3," Dunst starred in Coppola's "Marie Antoinette," a film the Academy awarded for costume design (as it should have) but it was clear that, just like how Adam Sandler and Nicolas Cage were rumored to be snubbed for "Uncut Gems" and "PIG" because of their reputation for acting in less-than-Academy-standard films, Dunst was still just a teen queen in their eyes, and her performance was again unappreciated.

Dunst Deserves Her Shrimps

In 2011, Dunst successfully crossed over from teen star to "legitimate" (eye roll) adult performer, with her performance in Lars Von Trier's "Melancholia" earning her the Best Actress Award at the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Yet when it was time for the Academy Award nominations, Dunst was left out of the equation, likely because the Academy doesn't know what to do with Lars Von Trier's brand of filmmaking. Now, after over three decades of being an absolute superstar, Dunst is finally getting her flowers, or shrimps, as she'd call them. While we can argue until we're blue in the face over whether or not the Academy Awards actually matter anymore, this nomination clearly means a lot to Dunst, and she deserves to celebrate. 

With Jessie Buckley in "The Lost Daughter," Ariana DeBose in "West Side Story," Aunjanue Ellis in "King Richard," and Dame Judi Dench in "Belfast" in contention, it'll be a tough win for Dunst to pull off. Then again, the Academy loves to award people years after they should have, so by that logic, she's well overdue. This nomination isn't just for her role as Rose Gordon, it's for Claudia, Amy March, Kiki, Amber Atkins, Lux Lisbon, Torrance Shipman, Marie Antoinette, Justine, Edwina Dabney, and every other character Dunst has brought to life.

Read this next: The Best Movies Of 2021

The post Congratulations to the Academy For Finally Realizing Kirsten Dunst Is One of the Greatest Actresses of Her Generation appeared first on /Film.

Meta has “absolutely no desire to withdraw from Europe.” The company issued the statement in a blog post it published on Tuesday after some media outlets published reports claiming it had “threatened” to pull Facebook and Instagram from the continent amid uncertainty over whether the US and European Union would agree to replace a scrapped transatlantic privacy agreement.

The “threat” Meta made came in the form of a disclosure the company made in its latest earnings report. Published last week, the document said the company would “likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe” if the US and European Union failed to ratify a new data transfer agreement and the company couldn’t depend on other existing mechanisms. Meta has issued similar warnings in the past, but it did so without naming Facebook and Instagram specifically.

At the center of Meta’s fears over its future on the European continent are the Safe Harbour Agreement and Privacy Shield, both of which were struck down by the European Court of Justice in recent years over fears of what happens to the data of EU citizens once it’s on servers in the US. As the company points out, it’s not the only business facing uncertainty over whether officials can agree to a substitute. It notes at least 70 other companies have voiced similar concerns.

"We want to see the fundamental rights of EU users protected, and we want the internet to continue to operate as it was intended: without friction, in compliance with applicable laws — but not confined by national borders,” the company said.

For the most part, European lawmakers seemed to welcome the prospect of Meta leaving the EU market. “I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook,” said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire when asked to comment on the possibility of Meta pulling Facebook and Instagram. “Digital giants must understand that the European continent will resist and affirm its sovereignty.”

Douglas Trumbull might not be a household name like so many of the filmmakers he collaborated with, but he contributed to the visual effects for some of the most technically ground-breaking sci-fi movies of all time, including "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and "Blade Runner." His experience directing the 1983 sci-fi flop "Brainstorm" — which served as Natalie Wood's final film after she tragically died during a production break — led Trumbull to step away from Hollywood, yet he continued to innovate in the 1990s by working on projects like the "Back to the Future: The Ride" theme park attraction and helping to popularize IMAX as a Vice Chairman of the IMAX Corporation.

Trumbull made his grand return to the big screen in 2011, when he served as a visual effects consultant on director Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" and helped design the film's dazzling sequence depicting the creation of the universe. In the years that came after, he remained vocal in calling upon the film industry to continue pushing the art of visual storytelling forward and not become overly reliant on digital imagery and trickery. Even with all the well-deserved honors he accumulated, Trumball was an unsung hero of cinema in the eyes of the public up until his death at 79. This is also what makes the last movie he worked on, 2018's "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot," such a fitting capstone to his career.

The Man Behind The Legend

Written and directed by Robert D. Krzykowski in his feature debut, "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot" stars Sam Elliott as Calvin Barr, an elderly veteran who, circa 1987, spends his days keeping a low profile in a small New England town. However, as we come to learn, the younger Calvin (Aidan Turner) secretly killed Adolf Hitler during WWII as part of a mission that was later classified by the U.S. and German governments. Stranger yet, in the film's present-day, he's called upon by the CIA and Canadian authorities to save the world again, this time by slaying Bigfoot (yes, Bigfoot) and stopping the legendary creature from spreading a terrible virus that Calvin just happens to be one of the few people immune to.

With a setup and title like that, you might assume "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot" is just a silly low-budget action-adventure ... and yet, you would be quite mistaken. Instead, much of the film is a ruminative look at growing old, dealing with regret, and what it means to be a true hero — that is, someone who makes great sacrifices (like, in Calvin's case, giving up the love of his life) in order to do the right thing without needing to be fully recognized or celebrated for their actions. It's not just a strong vehicle for Elliott (who imbues the aging Calvin with an authentic sense of world-weariness), but also doubles as a showcase for Trumbull, who was credited as an executive producer and contributed to the film's excellent special effects. 

Indeed, "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot" uses some top-notch practical effects to bring the action and scenery to striking life when it flashes back to Calvin's covert WWII operation. It even conjures up memories of the fiery alien vessels emerging from cloudy skies in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" when the older Calvin hunts Bigfoot against the backdrop of the burning wilderness. (Needless to say, there's a reason the film's marketing made such heavy use of this imagery.) This also gives what was surely a low-budget venture a greater sense of scale befitting its noble, long-suffering hero, all while using so many of the techniques that Trumbull pioneered. Combined with its story and themes, the movie makes for a properly meta ode to an artist who, like Calvin, never seemed to have much need for personal glory.

"The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot" is available to stream on multiple platforms.

Read this next: Actors Who Died In 2021

The post Douglas Trumbull's Last Movie is a Fitting Capstone To His Career appeared first on /Film.

Michael Keaton is and has always been my Batman. Don't get me wrong. I love all the actors who have played him over the years — both live-action and animated. It's just that Michael Keaton was the first Batman I saw taken seriously. I'd only watched the Adam West TV reruns before that, and as much fun as they were, they just didn't give me the same thrill the comics did. Then one day, I saw the poster with the logo, and it just sparked something. I was too little at the time to really know about the casting controversy Keaton sparked. I just knew that we were getting a Batman movie, and I was happy.

No one else was, it seems. We think about casting controversies today, and there are more of them every day. Sometimes it's for good reasons, and sometimes it's because Jennifer Lawrence doesn't have the same hair color as Katniss Everdeen did in the books (And oh my God! What is the world coming to because wigs and hair dye don't exist or something?). 

For Michael Keaton's casting though, it was because he was a comedy actor known for movies like "Mr. Mom" and "Night Shift." I knew him from those films as well, but as a kid, you don't understand typecasting. Believe it or not, even back in the late 1980s, fans were ripping up publicity info about his casting and writing letters to say how terrible it all was. Just think about that for a moment. Can you imagine a world where the Tim Burton "Batman" and "Batman Returns" Batman was played by Bill Murray, Mel Gibson, or Pierce Brosnan? We could have lived in the darkest timeline, friends. 

(Kidding. Gibson would have been the darkest timeline. The other two would have been great, but very, very different.)

I'm Batman

I spoke to "Batman" producer Michael E. Uslan about the casting. He told me:

"It was Tim Burton who realized that if we were going to do the revolutionary first feature film of a comic book superhero that was dark and serious, then the audience needed to believe in Bruce Wayne, and the actor had to be able to convince them that Bruce Wayne was someone they believed was so driven and so obsessed to the point of being psychotic, and that they would therefore say, 'Yes! That's a guy who would get dressed up as a bat!' Michael Keaton delivered on that and more! For people around the world who had never read a comic book, he led them into suspending their disbelief and journeying into Gotham City."

Burton was right, and fans certainly ended up believing in his version of Batman. In the book "Burton on Burton," Burton said:

"In my mind I kept reading reviews that said, 'Jack's terrific, but the unknown as Batman is nothing special.' So I saw a zillion people and the thing that kept going through my mind when I saw these action-adventure hero types come into the office was, 'I just can't see them putting on a bat-suit. I can't see it.' I was seeing these big macho guys, and then thinking of them with pointy ears, and it was, 'Why would this big macho, Arnold Schwarzenegger-type person dress up as a bat for God's sake?'"

Have You Ever Danced With The Devil?

It makes sense. There has to be a darkness to Batman for a film like this, but Burton's "Batman" films had something else. They had a level of surreality and a dark circus atmosphere. You can't put an actor like Pierce Brosnan in there and make him fit (love him though I do). You need a comedian. You need someone who can balance the knowledge of what he's doing (he's dressing up like the cutest flying mouse) with the understanding that this is an odd thing to do — all while being haunted enough to actually do it. In Keaton, you also have an actor who can stand nose to nose with Jack Nicholson's Joker and not back down.

Burton also spoke in "Burton on Burton" about how Keaton's work in "Beetlejuice" makes him perfect for this:

"A bat is this wild thing. I'd worked with Michael before and so I thought he would be perfect, because he's got that look in his eye. It's there in Beetlejuice. It's like that guy you could see putting on a bat-suit; he does it because he needs to, because he's not this gigantic, strapping macho man. It's all about transformation. Then it started to make sense to me. All of a sudden the whole thing clicked, I could see the pointy ears; the image and the psychology all made sense. Taking Michael and making him Batman just underscored the whole split personality thing which is really what I think the movie's about."

An Unhinged Charm

There has always been room for different interpretations of Batman, no matter what fans say every time another Batman is cast. Remember Ben Affleck and the backlash there? He was great, whatever your opinion of the films. Remember Robert Pattinson? Everyone calmed down as soon as they started thinking about the incredible acting work that Pattinson has done, but the first reaction was, "A guy from the 'Twilight' films?"

There is something about Keaton's smile that is just ... unhinged, I guess. It makes it all work. He's that guy at a bar that is super charming, yet you just know you shouldn't date him. Something is just off, and while you love his crazy stories, long-term that might be an issue. Perhaps it's an odd comparison, but you know immediately what I'm talking about, don't you? Well, Vicki Vale doesn't, but that's on her. (I'm not worried about Catwoman. She can handle herself.)

There is a reason Keaton's Batman is coming back. It's because he's great. And it doesn't hurt that he still fits in the Batsuit after 30 years.

Read this next: Joker's Wild: Ranking The Cinematic Versions Of The Clown Prince Of Crime

The post The Batman Controversy That Had Tim Burton Fighting For Michael Keaton appeared first on /Film.

Ozark's last episodes are now live, here's a recap before you dig in...

The wide-ranging adoption of cloud facilities and the subsequent mushrooming of organizations' networks, combined with the recent migration to remote work, had the direct consequence of a massive expansion of organizations' attack surface and led to a growing number of blind spots in connected architectures. The unforeseen results of this expanded and attack surface with fragmented monitoring

A Bluetooth keyboard offers a winning combination of portability and cross-device compatibility—but they're not perfect for everyone. While there are Bluetooth keyboards out there worth buying, you should be aware that they come with trade-offs. For one, you'll need a Bluetooth adapter if your computer doesn't have Bluetooth built-in.

A detailed examination of a Pay-per-install (PPI) malware service called PrivateLoader has revealed its crucial role in the delivery of a variety of malware such as SmokeLoader, RedLine Stealer, Vidar, Raccoon, and GCleaner since at least May 2021. Loaders are malicious programs used for loading additional executables onto the infected machine. With PPI malware services such as PrivateLoader,

Troubled release ‘exceeded’ sales expectations Jaws were left agape when Rockstar Games released its much anticipated Grand Theft Auto: The...

The post Despite everything, Grand Theft Auto Trilogy remaster was a massive sales success appeared first on Destructoid.

A multimeter is a must-have gadget for every DIYer, technician, and engineer. When you opt to buy a multimeter, you will have to consider different factors related to its features, quality, safety, and performance to choose the right product.

Remember that person who had a crush on you for years—who hung out right there, by your side, close but not stalking, quietly waiting to be noticed while you messed around with flashier, trendier versions of the real deal? Who, once wizened by adulthood, did you look back on and think, “Huh. They were pretty great,…

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Every healthy relationship is built on compromise. Which is why there probably isn’t room in my boyfriend’s apartment for both my slow cooker and Instant Pot. Before we met, I had been living in my studio for almost eight years – plenty of time to accumulate all manner of cooking gadgets, tools and appliances. I purchased the slow cooker first, with a clear sense of what I wanted to make: soups, chili, maybe some bolognese. 

The Instant Pot, on the other hand, was an impulse buy. I didn’t actually know what I would do with this multipurpose cooker, marketed as a “7-in-1” device. But seemingly everyone else was buying one. And it was on sale for Black Friday, as it always is. I paid $67.99 for the six-quart Duo 60 and, according to my Amazon order history, threw in a 9-inch springform pan and reversible cast iron grill/griddle pan. I somehow doubt those will make the journey over to my boyfriend’s either.

So, of the Duo 60’s seven functions (pressure cooking, slow cooking, rice, yogurt, steaming, sautéing and warming), slow cooking was clearly my comfort zone. The problem is, the Instant Pot is not very good at that, at least not out of the box. The same sealed lid that makes the IP so adept at pressure cooking rice, beans and meat is poorly suited to the task of slow cooking, which requires a meaningful amount of evaporation to be successful. While there’s a steam tray latched to the back of the Instant Pot, a traditional slow cooker would have a glass lid with at least one hole for steam to escape. What’s more, the sealed design rules out the possibility of inserting a probe thermometer, something all conventional slow cookers offer.

Read any number of articles or Reddit threads and you’ll see two pieces of advice repeat themselves: adjust the amount of liquid, or increase the cooking time. My issue with that approach is that I’m not much of an improvisational cook to begin with, and I’d rather not learn after three-plus hours of cooking that my meal is a bust.

Eventually in my research I found this $18 tempered glass lid, made by Instant Pot itself. The company isn’t so cheeky as to acknowledge the lid improves a flawed slow cooking experience, but needless to say, it does recommend the accessory for that purpose, not to mention sautéing, serving and keeping food warm. Though I purchased the Duo 60 in 2017, Instant Pot claims the six-quart lid should fit, well, any six-quart Instant Pot model. As a bonus, it's dishwasher safe, though I definitely hesitated after seeing at least two Amazon reviewers report their wash cycles ended in glass shards. (Mine survived just fine.)

My first test of the new setup was my favorite slow-cooker chili recipe. (As a tip, if you’re new to slow cooking in the Instant Pot, treat the “Normal” setting as the equivalent of low, and “More” when the recipe calls for high. Like any slow cooker, the Instant Pot defaults to a warming mode after the cooking time is up.) After four hours of cooking on low, the chili tasted the way I remembered it: sweet, spicy and certainly not too soupy. And I was grateful to not have had to reduce the liquid by 15 to 20 percent, especially with so many different kinds of fluids required for this particular recipe. Another day, I cooked a vegetable-tortellini soup on high for five hours. (This recipe also gave me an excuse to try some sautéing too.)

Over the long hours each recipe was cooking, I noticed more and more condensation clinging to the underside of the lid. Though the Instant Pot itself got quite warm on low (and close to hot on high), the handle remained more tepid to the touch, which I was able to grab with bare hands without burning myself. As a tip, if you want to remove the lid without dripping all the condensation back into the dish, flip it toward you when removing it instead of lifting it straight up.

Another tip: the lid is also excellent for covering leftovers in the Instant Pot’s inner pot. Just stick the covered stainless steel bowl in the fridge and worry about cleaning it another day. (Yes, my “tip” here is really just punting on doing the dishes.)

In the end, I’m still not sure what will become of my standalone slow cooker. Will I sell it on the cheap? Donate it? Gift it to my mom, who has never used a crock pot? TBD. But now that my Instant Pot is actually the multipurpose cooker I originally wanted, I suspect I won’t be bringing that second appliance to the new apartment.

Microsoft 365's compliance center currently reports bad messages in the space of 24 hours, but it's about to get a lot faster. The tech giant has announced that it's cutting the reporting time down to one hour, thus getting reports to your boss' desk faster than ever before.

Crytek has released the third patch for the PC version of Crysis Remastered. According to the team, this update brings significant GPU & CPU performance improvements, as well as some DLSS fixes. Additionally, this patch packs various art & rendering fixes. Moreover, it features AI navmesh issue fixes, improves stability, and fixes an issue with … Continue reading Crysis Remastered PC Patch 3 released, bringing significant GPU & CPU performance improvements →

The post Crysis Remastered PC Patch 3 released, bringing significant GPU & CPU performance improvements appeared first on DSOGaming.

Officially, you can't install Windows 11 on ineligible hardware because of Secure Boot and TPM hardware requirements. However, there are two easy workarounds that allow you to upgrade your old Windows 10 PC to Windows 11. I'll share them below.

submitted by /u/Gullible_Adeptness64 [link] [comments]

"Joe Rogan is an interesting and popular guy, but he's got to stop apologizing to the Fake News and Radical Left maniacs and lunatics," Donald Trump said in a statement last night. "How many ways can you say you're sorry. Joe, just go about what you do so well and don't let them make you look weak and frightened." — Read the rest

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition was anything but, arriving in a borderline embarrassing state for such an iconic collection of games. That said, while the collection was a critical flop, it seems like it’s done more than alright financially. As part of their most recent earnings report, Take Two Interactive announced the GTA franchise had sold an additional 15 million units during the previous quarter. 5 million of those sales were generated by GTA V, so that means almost all of the other 10 million must have come from GTA Trilogy. Of course, there was plenty of pent-up GTA Trilogy demand, so a lot of people automatically bought the Definitive Edition at launch. It would be interesting to know how many folks are continuing to purchase the collection despite the reviews.

The shoddy quality of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy cast a bit of a pall over future GTA releases, including the next-gen versions of Grand Theft Auto V, but during Take Two’s earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick insisted there’s nothing to worry about on that front (thanks to Video Games Chronicle for the transcription).

Yes, we are totally focused on quality here and we always want to deliver the best possible experience. Very occasionally we fall short, and I think the trilogy was an example of that, and the title was launched with some issues. We’ve addressed many of them, there are more fixes to come. Going forward, we remain highly focused on quality, and we are exceedingly confident in all of our upcoming [GTA] releases.

Returning to GTA Trilogy, during an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Zelnick promised more fixes and improvements are on the way…

 We have some quality issues [with GTA Trilogy]. We’ve attempted to address those. We have more coming, and we feel very good about how the title has performed commercially. I think we were all a bit disappointed about the quality initially. We’re very grateful that most of those issues have been addressed. There’s more work to be done.

Hopefully we can trust Zelnick’s words and future GTA releases won’t be as messy as GTA Trilogy’s. Given the importance of the franchise, you have to believe Rockstar is going to do what needs to be done to get GTA V next-gen and GTA VI properly polished.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is available now on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Switch. The “next-gen” version of GTA V arrives on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 on March 15.

The post GTA Trilogy Remaster Sells 10 Million, T2 Promises Higher Quality for Future GTA Releases by Nathan Birch appeared first on Wccftech.

Speaking to the French Canadian website Le Devoir, renowned game creator Jade Raymond discussed the upcoming project in development at Haven Studios, founded in early 2021 thanks to a partnership with Sony.

Jade Raymond, known mainly as one of the creatives behind Assassin's Creed, said the untitled game will strive to push the technical capabilities of Sony's latest console, the PlayStation 5.

Our ambition will be to push the technical capabilities of the console further. We will have the opportunity to work with people at Sony who are among the best in the world in their field. This will allow us to create the best quality games.

We have an ambitious vision, but we will adapt. But it's the content that's most important. We want to stay focused on the gaming experience and what attracts players.

That said, the article also reveals that the title, a 'persistent and evolving online game', will also be available on PC. This is not surprising given Sony's renewed focus on multiplatform expansion and it makes even more sense if Haven's project is one of the ten live service games supposed to be released by Sony in the next four years. Online titles can only benefit from a wider userbase, especially with crossplay now enabled almost by default.

By the way, the Montréal-based developer recently shared some news in a studio update provided on LinkedIn. Former Haven Studios founder Sébastien Puel has departed the company, seemingly for personal reasons, and his role is now being filled by co-founder Pierre-Francois Sapinski as the new Chief Operating Officer. Additionally, another co-founder (Paola Jouyaux) is stepping into the role of Executive Producer.

The studio update message also says that Jade Raymond's Haven Studios counts over 65 employees. Work on a prototype is already being done and the game itself is reportedly already fun to play. We'll keep you posted on any noteworthy updates, of course.

The post Jade Raymond’s Next Game Pushes PS5’s Technical Capabilities But It’ll Also Be on PC by Alessio Palumbo appeared first on Wccftech.

There’s nothing wrong with food that is fried or that is dripping with cheese, but there’s no reason a Super Bowl party has to have just that. What if there could be a few extra vegetables beside those sad little celery sticks? What if you could expand your dip horizons beyond queso and guacamole? What if you modified…

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When you’re exhausted, it can feel almost impossible to pay attention to nutrition. As hard as it can be, though, the foods we eat play an important role in helping maintain our energy levels.

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Watch enough movies directed by Guillermo del Toro, and you will quickly notice two things: 1) The "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Nightmare Alley" filmmaker loves monsters, ghosts, and other fantastical beings, no matter how threatening they are, and 2) There's nothing scarier to him than the living.

Fittingly, these tenets also hold true for del Toro's personal top five horror movies, which he revealed in an interview with Wired in 2015. The first two titles he listed — Robert Wise's 1963 film "The Haunting" and Jack Clayton's 1961 film "The Innocents" — are both psychological horror movies which, like the books that inspired them ("The Haunting of Hill House" and "The Turn of the Screw"), unfold from the point of view of people residing in spooky old manors that may or may not be haunted. Because it's never clear how much of the supernatural activity in these movies is real and how much is being imagined by their protagonists, it's hard to say tell which poses the greater danger: The alleged ghosts or the main characters themselves.

However, as with del Toro's supernatural horror film "The Devil's Backbone" and especially his gothic horror-romance "Crimson Peak" (which "The Innocents" heavily influenced), these aren't simply movies about how living people suck and ghosts are Okay, Actually. Instead, "The Haunted" and "The Innocents" invite you to deeply empathize with their unreliable "narrators," much in the same way del Toro always takes the time to flesh out the characters in his own films — be they noble heroes, despicable villains, or misunderstood creatures of the night.

Monsters, Chainsaws, And Human Greed

The next two horror films on del Toro's list — 1979's "Alien" and 1975's "Jaws" — combine B-movie plots with perhaps del Toro's favorite themes as a storyteller: The value of disobedience and the ways people suffer at the hands of those with power over their lives. "Alien," of course, features one of the all-time great movie monsters (the Xenomorph), but it's also a film about a group of futuristic blue-collar workers who fight back after being unknowingly tasked with a mission that their bosses are aware will likely get some (if not all) of them killed. As terrifying as the Xenomorph is, it's got nothing on human greed in Ridley Scott's sci-fi nightmare.

Greed is also at the heart of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws," a movie in which the story's hero comes to see the error of their ways (but at a terrible cost to others) and tries to make things right after kowtowing to the interests of a mayor more worried about his town's economy than the safety of the people who elected him. Like del Toro, Spielberg treats the non-human monsters in his films with a mix of awe and fear, and "Jaws" is no exception. Even during the famous underwater cage scene, the movie's shark is often shot in a way that makes it seems as majestic as it is terrifying.

This brings up to the fifth and final title that del Toro listed: Tobe Hooper's 1974 horror classic "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." It's not only the most stylistically realistic of the five horror films he mentioned but also the most grounded in terms of its plot, with not even a hint of the supernatural. After all, as Hooper (like del Toro) knew all too well, you don't need non-human monsters to scare moviegoers when you have people capable of committing terrible acts of violence at your disposal.

What Scares Del Toro Has Changed Over Time

Interestingly, del Toro also gave an honorable mention to one other title: William Friedkin's landmark 1973 horror film "The Exorcist." As del Toro explained to Wired:

"I would say 'The Exorcist,' but 'The Exorcist,' when I was a kid, didn't do anything for me ... But then I became a parent, and it became incredibly scary."

You can see where del Toro's coming from. As someone who (it seems) has always loved supernatural creatures, a horror movie where the Big Bad is a demon probably didn't unnerve the filmmaker earlier in his life — not even when he was a young adult with a firmer grasp on its themes about faith and its disillusioned outlook on the state of the world. But as someone with kids? A film like "The Exorcist," where a parent is left helpless to protect their child from being attacked from within by some unknown force, is just about your worst nightmare.

Even then, up to a certain point in its first act, "The Exorcist" leaves room for doubt as to whether a demonic entity is truly responsible for the mysterious events in its story. Or, as del Toro said to close out his list:

"The truth in [our] world and what we need to understand is the horror is all too human. You have to fear the living more than the dead."

Read this next: 14 Awesome Horror Movies That Never Got Sequels

The post These Are Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Horror Films of All Time appeared first on /Film.

Markus Reinisch, Vice President of Public Policy Europe at Meta, writing on company's blog: There has been reporting in the press that we are "threatening" to leave Europe because of the uncertainty over EU-US data transfers mechanisms. This is not true. Like all publicly-traded companies, we are legally required to disclose material risks to our investors. Last week, as we have done in our previous four financial quarters, we disclosed that continuing uncertainty over EU-US data transfers mechanisms poses a threat to our ability to serve European consumers and operate our business in Europe. We have absolutely no desire to withdraw from Europe; of course we don't. But the simple reality is that Meta, like many other businesses, organisations and services, relies on data transfers between the EU and the US in order to operate our global services. Further reading: We're Fine Without Facebook, German and French Ministers Say.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.