Ronald.phillips

IMDB Rating: 4.3/10
Genre: Horror
Size: 728.33 MB
Runtime: 12hr 0 min

The newcomer Dr. Garondet is summoned by professor Orloff but people in his village is afraid to go to his castle. The insistent Dr. Garondet reaches the castle and the servants send him to talk to Cécile Orloff, who is the daughter of the professor and is worried about the mental health of her father. Dr. Garondet meets professor Orloff and he tells what happened to Cécile sometime ago and his experiment with an invisible man, and he explains that his daughter is deranged due to the reported incident. Dr. Garondet has to spend the night in the castle and soon he learns who is the insane.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Penelope Spheeris' 1992 comedy "Wayne's World" argues that metalheads, often depicted in movies as violent, death-obsessed Satan worshipers, are actually just really kind, goofy guys. Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) are funny, approachable dudes who like hosting their own public access talk show, going to metal shows, and going to get donuts while listening to Queen cassettes. They speak their own lingo and dream of bigger things, just like everyone. Are they a little weird? You'd be surprised how normal they are. 

Indeed, one of the recurring elements of "Wayne's World" is that Wayne has recently broken up with his girlfriend Stacy (Lara Flynn Boyle). Although two months have gone by and Wayne has made it very clear that they are no longer dating, Stacy still behaves like they're together. Stacy seems a little clueless, so the audience has to take Garth's word for it when she is described as a "psycho hose beast." In Stacy's introductory scene, she presents Wayne with an anniversary present, even though they have broken up. Wayne reluctantly opens it to discover a gun rack. 

"I don't even own a gun," he argues, "let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack. What am I gonna do with a gun rack?"

Rick Marin, a columnist, reporter, and author, revealed that the gun rack incident was in fact based on a real-life incident. Marin, you see, grew up in the Scarborough district of Toronto, which was Myers' old stamping grounds. Evidently, he knew the real-life woman who attempted to give Myers a gun rack as a gift. According to a 1999 column in the New York Times, Marin not only knew the woman in question, but even had a little insight into the gun rack incident.

The Real Stacy

Evidently, the real Stacy — her name was wisely kept unrevealed — gave a gun rack to Myers as a joke; she was not the "psycho hose beast" as depicted in "Wayne's World." Marin, being a Toronto local, also recognized several local references that Myers snuck into his script. While "Wayne's World" takes place in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, a lot of the language and iconography was straight out of Canada. 

In "Wayne's World," for instance, Wayne, Garth, and all their friends congregate at a heavy metal bar called The Gasworks. Evidently, this was a real biker/metal bar in Marin and Myers' neighborhood. Sadly, it seems that the real Gasworks shuttered its doors back in 1993. Additionally, Wayne and Garth are seen frequenting the large-scale (fictional) donut shop Stan Mikita's Donuts. Stan Mikita was a Canadian hockey player for the Chicago Blackhawks. His donut shop was a clear reference to the Canadian donut chain Tim Hortons, founded by the celebrated hockey player who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Horton also played for several American teams, but American hockey teams don't count. 

Marin also points out that most of Myers' comedic works have personal Canadian references subtly embedded inside of them. "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," he noticed, had a subtle music cue to the Canadian game show "Definition" which ran from 1974 to 1989. Its theme was written by Quincy Jones. It also seems that Myers' Dieter character from the Sprockets sketches on "Saturday Night Live" was based on a German waiter at a diner on Queen Street in Toronto, a waiter that Marin had also encountered.

A deep dive may reveal even more Torontonian details, and locals will likely be able to spot them all.

Read this next: The 15 Best '90s Comedies Ranked

The post Wayne's World's Gun Rack Gift Exchange Actually Happened To Mike Myers' In Real Life appeared first on /Film.

(Welcome to Best Actor Ever, an ongoing series where we explore the careers and performances of the greatest performers to ever grace the screen.)

There is not an actor in the history of moving pictures who has been more egregiously taken for granted by her industry than Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Critics have always had her back. The New York Times' Janet Maslin got it from the jump when she singled Leigh out as "the only thing worth seeing" in her film debut "Eyes of a Stranger." The better-than-average 1981 slasher film set the tone for Leigh's career in that she plays a victim. Her character is a blind-deaf mute whose condition was brought on by being kidnapped and raped at an early age. The 19-year-old Leigh projects sweetness and innocence, but this young woman is all serrated edges. Because she isn't just a victim. She's a survivor.

Roger Ebert was also an early admirer of Leigh, to the extent that he turned his one-star review of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" into a wildly indignant scolding of Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe. He was outraged that they would subject this guileless creature to the virginity-shredding cruelties of a U.S. high school. Ebert's ire was unwarranted, but I understand this defensive impulse on behalf of Ms. Leigh. Her Stacy Hamilton is a meekly curious high-schooler who's surprised to discover she's become desirable, and it's only natural that she wants to take this newfound attractiveness out for a spin. That it all goes horribly wrong isn't Heckerling and Crowe's fault. It's society's. "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" signaled a shake-up in studio filmmaking, and Leigh is a huge reason why.

Leigh's 42-year career is a harrowing road map of mistakes and mistreatment. She's played characters who have it all together, but those feel like exhales, a break from her dogged exploration of miserables. She's good in everything, but she's vital for her dissonance. People like to call this bravery, but it's really an act of unvarnished honesty.

The Breakout

We're just getting to know Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy Hamilton in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" when she's hit on by an older man while waiting tables at Perry's Pizza. She's flattered and nervous. He asks her out, and she shyly acquiesces. Stacy seeks the counsel of her more experienced coworker Linda (Phoebe Cates), who encourages her to follow through and, if it comes to this, lose her virginity. Of course it comes to this, in hideously unglamorous fashion at "The Point," a baseball field dugout; as Stacy's date thrusts away, she grimaces and stares at the random graffiti scrawled on the ceiling. "Surf Nazis." "Disco F**s." Stacy will never unsee these spray-painted missives.

This is the cheapness of innocence writ painfully small, and Leigh gets the worst of it at every turn. She's receptive to the puppy-dog crush of Brian Backer's Mark Ratner, but he lacks confidence. Stacy's made her move; when is he going to make his? An impatient Stacy settles for clumsy sex with Mark's ticket-scalping friend Damone (Robert Romanus) and winds up pregnant. He bails on her abortion, but she follows through with unintended assistance from her brother Brad (Judge Reinhold).

Roger Ebert viewed this as gross mistreatment of a fine actor, but outside of Sidney Flanigan's performance in Eliza Hittman's 2020 masterpiece "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," I can't think of a more piercing portrayal of young womanhood in the U.S. It hurts because it's Leigh. Stacy's navigating the choppy waters of her sexual awakening, and receiving advanced advice from a more worldly friend. Leigh's Stacy is adrift in a world that views her as a good girl or a trophy. She can't grasp this, and we're aggrieved on her behalf. It's a bravura coming-of-age portrayal and an indictment of how we raise our kids. Boys will be boys, and girls will be prey.

The Career

Jennifer Jason Leigh was a critical darling coming off "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," but she still had to scrap for roles. She brought uncommon nuance to her portrayals of victims in Paul Verhoeven's "Flesh + Blood," Robert Harmon's "The Hitcher," and Peter Medak's "The Men's Club," but where were the leads? She's superb in Matthew Chapman's little-seen S&M thriller "Heart of Midnight," and adorable as Kevin Bacon's experimental filmmaker buddy in Christopher Guest's "The Big Picture," but we didn't get to see Leigh cut loose until Uli Edel's scathing adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s "Last Exit to Brooklyn." As love-lorn sex worker Tralala, Leigh apotheosized the tragic sexuality of her previous roles. She drives men wild, and this drives her more than a little wild too.

She downshifted to object of psychotic desire in George Armitage's "Miami Blues" as a sex worker who buys into the threadbare lie of Alec Baldwin's straight-up killer because he was the only man who was ever kind to her. Leigh finally got a meaty lead role in Lili Fini Zanuck's "Rush," where she circles the drain as an undercover narcotics officer opposite an equally intense Jason Patric. This became the norm for Leigh. If you wanted her in your movie, you better have a seriously f***ed up character for her to inhabit.

There's been some lightness between now and the present. I love her Rosalind Russell tribute in the Coen Brothers' "The Hudsucker Proxy," but that wound up being a dress rehearsal for her dour take on Dorothy Parker in Alan Parker's "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle." If Leigh's having fun, there's a downer payoff coming down the pike. It's hardly surprising a miserablist like Charlie Kaufman hooked up with her for two deeply depressing films ("Synecdoche, New York" and "Anomalisa").

The Career Part II

It's also not shocking, sadly, that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences didn't get around to nominating her for an Oscar until Quentin Tarantino's 2015 thriller "The Hateful Eight." As condemned woman Daisy Domergue, Jennifer Jason Leigh is a snarling, tooth-spitting force of misanthropic nature. The more violence that's visited on Daisy (and her already rough visage gets pulverized into hamburger by the film's conclusion), the more vicious she becomes. Daisy is the defiant, spiritual entanglement of every character she's ever played. She's been wronged in so many despicable ways that her only recourse is to return the pain tenfold. "Crazy" Daisy has a right to be hostile, and these men deserve to die.

Leigh has turned in superb supporting performances in high-wire cinematic acts like the Safdie's "Good Time" and Alex Garland's "Annihilation," but, like many of her contemporaries, she's found greater challenges on television. She was splendid as a hitwoman opposite Tim Roth in David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: The Return," and formed a refreshingly funny husband-wife duo with Michael Rappaport on Robia Rashid's "Atypical." She's been cast as a lead in the fifth season of "Fargo," and there's every reason to believe she'll dazzle in that deliciously macabre universe.

But Leigh's bedazzlement comes at a high emotional cost. Leigh means to hurt us. She scars our conscience. And she never cut us open like she did in Ulu Grosbard's 1995 triumph "Georgia."

The Defining Performance

Jennifer Jason Leigh had to make "Georgia." Her mother, Barbara Turner, wrote the screenplay, and the role of Sadie Flood was a mess of raw nerves. The title of the movie is a taunt. Georgia is the name of Sadie's sister (Mare Winningham), a successful folk-country singer whose talent is, for Leigh's character, unassailable and unattainable. Sadie is a punk musician who can't hold down a job. She drinks, she uses drugs, but every time she spins out she can find solace at Georgia's house. In the formulaic version of this movie, Sadie would possess unlocked ability; the key to her salvation would be sobriety. Turner's screenplay has no truck for the sentimental. Sadie isn't a good singer. In fact, she's awful. All she has is fleeting conviction. At her core, she is a failure coasting on the name of her sister.

Leigh's Sadie isn't trying to get better. She's out to injure. This is where she evinces true talent. She is a drag on Georgia's family. Sadie believes she is a victim, but she is the author of her pain. Georgia finally throws her a lifeline, which results in an excruciatingly long live performance of Van Morrison's "Take Me Back." It's over seven minutes in length, and it's the kind of rendition that would send most people sprinting for the exits. But having spent time with Sadie, we see this for what it is: a confessional. Ulu Grosbard keeps his distance. He cuts to Winningham once or twice, but favors the master. Leigh speak-sings Sadie's truth, and it's a scouring howl of rage.

You don't walk out of "Georgia" feeling comforted. You ache. You bleed out. Jennifer Jason Leigh is the champion of the unheard, and she roars with a fury that can no longer be ignored.

Read this next: 13 Tarantino Projects We Never Saw But Wish We Could've

The post Jennifer Jason Leigh Is the Best Actor Ever appeared first on /Film.

A great deal of the aliens in the "Star Trek" franchise are humanoid for pretty practical reasons (they have human actors!), but that doesn't mean that they have the exact same anatomy. We know that Vulcans are much stronger than your basic Earth humans, for example, and Cardassians really can't handle freezing temperatures because they're thought to be cold-blooded, like reptiles on our own world. One of the most notorious bits of trivia about alien anatomy on "Star Trek" revolves around the Klingons, however, and their unusual "anatomical redundancy." 

The idea was introduced into the canon in a 1992 episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," when Klingon Starfleet officer Worf needed to undergo serious surgery and it was revealed that Klingons have extras of many of their organs in case the first ones are injured or fail. They have two hearts, three lungs, and various other redundancies, but the one that fans fixated on was, well, their genitals. That's right, Klingons have two sets of reproductive organs, which means two vaginas and two penises! 

The whole double-dong thing was mostly just fan conjecture for years until the writers of "Star Trek: Discovery" decided to make it canon, putting pretty clear evidence of dual dingalings in the season 1 finale. While guesting on the Alpha Quadrant Podcast (via TrekMovie.com), writer Yeon Kim revealed the full story behind this bizarre bit of alien biology, and it's honestly kind of comical. 

Whizzin' On A Wall

Apparently the writers' room of "Star Trek: Discovery" is just like any group of "Star Trek" fans, and the conversation eventually turned to some of the sillier sexy theories in the franchise. ("Star Trek" has always been horny, and that rules.) Apparently the series executive producer and director Akiva Goldsman thought the idea of Klingons having dual sex organs was kind of amusing, and it made its way onto the show:

"That was an ongoing writers' room debate. According to canon, Klingons have two organs, they have two of everything, right? So ... we had this debate, when we say two of everything, does that include the penis? ... I think this was something that Akiva really liked the notion of. He just kept joking, 'Klingons have two dicks, Klingons have two dicks.' And then finally showed it on television."

As someone who's argued about the anatomy of "Star Trek" aliens and various comic book characters for decades now, having it confirmed in such a big and bold way was pretty freaking fun. It's a bit juvenile, of course, but part of what makes "Star Trek" so great is that it can combine high-minded ideas and very serious allegory with some much sillier stuff as well. "Star Trek: Discovery" will be ending with its fifth season, but that doesn't mean we've seen or heard the last about Klingon genitalia. After all, "Star Trek: Lower Decks" has no fear of crude humor, so paired penises are sure to make some kind of appearance, right?

Read this next: 11 Reasons Why The Next Generation Is The Best Star Trek Show

The post Yes, It's True: Star Trek Klingons Have Two of, Uh, Every Organ appeared first on /Film.

One of the central complaints about Fallout 4, and perhaps Bethesda RPG games generally, is how it partially forces you to play a certain type of character. Your backstory is given to you. Your objective - rescue Shaun - is pretty rigid, and makes freeform exploration feel like a guilty pleasure. If the goal of Fallout 4 mods is to expand, overhaul, and transform the 2015 original, this new one might be one of the best - and throws in some of that classic Fallout New Vegas story building to boot.

MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Fallout 4 console commands, Fallout 4 mods, Fallout 4 System Requirements

The U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency ships a new tool to help network defenders hunt for signs of compromise in Microsoft’s Azure and M365 cloud deployments.

The post CISA Ships ‘Untitled Goose Tool’ to Hunt for Microsoft Azure Cloud Infections appeared first on SecurityWeek.

As temperatures begin to rise, it’s time to prepare your outdoor space for some seasonal relaxation. That, of course, includes showing off your culinary skills on the porch, patio or in the backyard for guests. During the winter, your grill has probably been hibernating, so you’ll need to give it a tune-up before it’s ready for heavy use from spring to fall. Even if you kept the grill going in the cold, now is a great time for a thorough cleaning before the official outdoor cooking season begins. Here are a few tips and tricks that will hopefully make things easier.

Disassemble, scrub, reassemble

Billy Steele/Engadget

A good rule of thumb when it comes to cleaning anything you haven’t used in a while is to take it apart as much as you feel comfortable and give it a thorough wipe down. For grills, this means removing the grates and any bars or burner covers – basically, anything you can take out that’s not the heating element. This gives you a chance to inspect the burners of your gas grill or the fire pot of a pellet model for any unsightly wear and tear. If those components are worn out or overly rusted, most companies offer replacements that you can easily swap out with a few basic tools.

Once all the pieces are out, start by scraping excess debris off all sides of the interior – with the help of some cleaner if needed. For a gas grill, this likely means pushing everything out through the grease trap. On a pellet grill, you’ll want to scrape the grease chute clear and out into the catch can, but you’ll also need to vacuum the interior with a shop vac – just like you would after every few hours of use. And while you’re at it, go ahead and empty the hopper of any old pellets that have been sitting since Labor Day. Fuel that’s been sitting in the grill for months won’t give you the best results when it comes time to cook so you might as well start fresh.

Thankfully, pellet grill companies have made easy cleaning a key part of their designs. Weber’s SmokeFire has a set of metal bars on the inside that can be removed quickly to open up the bottom of the chamber. This is also a design feature of the company’s gas grills. Simply vacuum or push the debris out the grease chute. The catch pan where all of the garbage ends up is also easy to access from the front of the grill, and you can remove the aluminum liner and replace it with a new one in seconds.

Traeger’s most recent pellet grills were also redesigned to improve cleaning. Most notably, grease and ash end up in the same “keg” that’s easy to detach from the front of the grill. The company also allows you to quickly remove all of the interior components, though they’re larger than what you find on the SmokeFire. Lastly, Traeger moved the pellet chute to the front of the new Timberline and Ironwood, making it a lot more convenient to swap out wood varieties or empty an old supply.

You’ll want to get as much of the food leftovers out of your grill as possible for a few reasons. First, that stuff is old and lots of build-up over time can hinder cooking performance and might impact flavor. The last thing you want is old food or grease burning off right under an expensive ribeye. Second, in the case of pellet grills, not properly clearing out grease and dust can be dangerous. It’s easy for grease fires to start at searing temperatures and if there’s enough pellet dust in the bottom of your grill, it can actually ignite or explode. That’s why companies tell you to vacuum it out after every few hours of use.

Billy Steele/Engadget

To actually clean the surfaces, you’ll want to get an all-natural grill cleaner. There are tons of options here, and it may take some time to find one you like. I typically use Traeger’s formula since it’s readily available at the places I buy pellets and I’ve found it works well cutting through stuck-on muck. You want an all-natural grill cleaner over a regular household product as it’s safe to use on surfaces that will touch your food. They’re also safe to use on the exterior of your grill without doing any damage to chrome, stainless steel or any other materials.

Spray down the inside and give things a few minutes to work. Wipe it all clean and go back over any super dirty spots as needed. Ditto for the grates, bars and any other pieces you removed. I like to lay these out on a yard waste trash bag (they’re bigger than kitchen bags) so all the stuff I scrape or clean off doesn’t get all over my deck. You can use shop towels if you want to recycle or paper towels if not, but just know whatever you choose will be covered in nasty black grime so you won’t want to just toss them in the clothes washer when you’re done. A pre-wash in a bucket or sink is needed to make sure you don’t transfer gunk from your grill to your business casuals.

In terms of tools, you don’t need much. I’ve tried that grill robot that claims to do the job for you, but I’ve found sticking to the basics is more efficient. And honestly, when you get the hang of it, it doesn’t take all that long. It’s a good idea to have a wire brush specifically for the grates that you don’t use to clean anything else. After all, this will be touching the same surfaces you put food on. I recommend another, smaller wire brush – the ones that look like big toothbrushes – for cleaning the burners on a gas grill. If you notice the flame isn’t firing through one of the holes, you can use this to clean the pathway. Lastly, plastic is the way to go for a scraper, anything else and you risk scratching the surfaces of your grill. Sure, any damage done would be on the inside, but it’s still not a great feeling to knick up your previous investment.

Check for updates before your first cook

Traeger

If you have a smart grill from the likes of Traeger, Weber or another company, you’ll want to plug it in and check for software updates well in advance of your first grilling session. Chances are you haven’t cooked much since last fall, which means companies have had months to push updates to their devices. Trust me, there’s nothing worse than spending an hour trimming and seasoning a brisket only to walk outside to start the grill and it immediately launches into the update process. This could extend the whole cooking time significantly depending on the extent of the firmware additions and strength of your WiFi.

Thankfully, checking for updates is quick and easy. All you need to do is turn on your grill and open up the company’s app on your phone. If there’s a download ready for your model, the mobile software will let you know and it’s usually quite prominent. If there’s not a pop-up alert that displays immediately, you can check the settings menu just to make sure. Sometimes for smaller updates, a company might not beat you over the head to refresh. However, starting a fresh slate of firmware is always a safe bet and will ensure your grill is running at its best when it comes time to cook.

For a good time every time, clean after each use

Billy Steele/Engadget

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t adhere to my own advice here, but it’s nice to have goals. I will also be the first to tell you every single time I smoke a Boston Butt or some other super fatty cut of meat that I wish I would’ve done at least a quick cleaning right after the meal. Grease buildup is not only highly flammable but it’s much harder to clean once it cools and solidifies. Ditto for stuck-on sauce or cheese that’s left on your grates after chicken or burgers. It’s best to attack these things while the grill is still warm, but cooled down from the cook.

You don’t necessarily have to break out the shop vac each time for your pellet grill or empty the grease bin. But you’ll want to make sure that stuff is away from the main cooking area for safety and so any burn off won’t impact the flavor of your food. A few cups of hot water can cleanse the grease run-off while that wire brush I mentioned is best for the grates. It also doesn’t hurt to do a light wipe down with an all-natural cleaner so everything is ready to go when you want to cook again.

New grills coming soon

A number of grill companies have already announced their 2024 product lineups. If you’re looking for new gear for the summer, some of them are already available while others will be arriving over the next few weeks. Recteq announced a robust group of grills in October, all of which are Wi-Fi-connected pellet models. The company also updated its family of “regular” pellet grills while taking the wraps off the SmokeStone 600 griddle and the dual-chamber DualFire 1000.

Weber has also tipped its hand for 2024. Back at CES, the company revealed a redesigned pellet grill, the Searwood, that will replace the SmokeFire in North America. Part of Searwood’s feature set is a special mode that allows you to use the grill while the lid is open for things like searing and flat-top griddling. Weber also debuted a new gas griddle, the Slate, that has a specially designed cooking surface that the company promises won’t rust and a digital temperature gauge. What’s more, there’s a new premium Summit smart gas grill with a massive touchscreen color display and top-mounted infrared broiler. Smart features here help with everything from gas flow to individual burners to monitoring fuel supply and dialing in the cooking process. All of the new Weber grills are scheduled to arrive this spring.

We haven’t heard much from Traeger this year and there’s a good chance the company won’t have new grills in 2024. It overhauled the Timberline in 2022 and brought some of the latest features, including the touchscreen display, to the Ironwood in 2023. Never say never, but if you’re looking for another all-new Traeger grill, you might be waiting several months.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-to-clean-your-grill-for-summer-outdoor-season-spring-cleaning-140040826.html?src=rss

International assassin John Wick is one of the fiercest fighters in all of cinema, and that means he needs equally powerful enemies to challenge him. In the latest installment in the franchise, "John Wick: Chapter 4," in theaters now, the titular assassin, played by Keanu Reeves, will face off against his most fearsome foe yet: the Marquis, a vicious bureaucrat who wields red tape like Wick wields his fists.

The Marquis is like the world's most menacing middle manager, a part of the powerful hierarchy of the High Table that control the world of assassins and maintain order in the franchise. Wick hasn't been on good terms with the High Table since "John Wick: Chapter 2," so that means that he and the Marquis have a serious conflict of interest.

Who better to play this corporate creep than one of the freakiest thespians to hit the silver screen in years: Bill Skarsgård. The actor's biggest claim to fame is playing Pennywise the dancing clown in Andy Muschietti's "It" films, where he notoriously terrified co-star Bill Hader with his ability to move his pupils in opposite directions.

That's not the first (or only) time that the Swedish actor has freaked out his co-stars, however, which makes his turn as the malevolent Marquis that much more fun. Skarsgård's various villainous characters over the years have all been pretty wildly different, but the fabulously dressed, French-accented Marquis might truly be the most terrifying of them all.

The Malicious Marquis

If anyone knows villains, it's veteran actor Ian McShane, who stars in the "John Wick" franchise as Winston, the manager of the New York Continental Hotel, a neutral territory where assassins can rest and receive their next assignments. In an interview with Screenrant and fellow co-star, the late Lance Reddick, McShane joked about how some of the Marquis' menace came directly from the man who plays him:

"He's six foot five, he [wears] appalling suits, he's Swedish, and he speaks nineteen languages. And he's one Skarsgård and he's got 1,000 brothers. No, I love Bill. I think Bill is great in the [movie], crazy as a loon."

Easy jokes about the sheer number of Skarsgårds aside, having McShane call your performance "crazy as a loon" is a pretty serious compliment. McShane seems pretty nonplussed about the whole thing, but maybe the star of the action sequel has had enough experience playing pretend in the world of international assassins to not bat an eye at the actor's ability to be seriously scary. Other co-stars who have acted alongside Bill Skarsgård haven't been quite as hardened to his spooky skills, however, because he's managed to freak out more than a few of them.

A Set Full Of Spooked Stars

Pennywise from "It" is one of horror's most frightening villains, and Bill Skarsgård portrayed him perfectly in Andy Muschietti's film adaptations of the novel by Stephen King. He's a shapeshifting extraterrestrial entity who takes the form of people's nightmares, most specifically in the shape of a creepy killer clown. While the actor seems perfectly pleasant in interviews, many of his co-stars in the two films were unsettled just by sharing a set.

On "Good Morning America" (via BloodyDisgusting), "It Chapter Two" co-star James McAvoy shared just how much the actor managed to freak out his fellow thespians:

"He's amazing. [Skarsgård] is terrifying. He's a lovely guy, and yet he really freaked me out. I remember standing there with the rest of the cast, all these adults, and we'd all done weird, freaky stuff. And we are all looking at each other going, 'I don't like being here. I don't like being an actor today.'"

McAvoy went on to admit that he doesn't really like clowns much anyway, but that Skarsgård really freaked him out beyond his old childhood fears. The fact that Hader and McAvoy have starred in all kinds of horrific stuff before, like HBO's "Barry" and the M. Night Shyamalan film "Split," and still found Skarsgård unnerving is genuinely impressive. The Swedish actor's adult co-stars weren't the only ones who found him fearsome, however, as he also terrified the child stars of "It Chapter One."

Making Child Co-Stars Cry

In an interview with his older brother (and fellow actor) Alexander Skarsgård for Interview magazine, Bill Skarsgård revealed that he really upset at least one of his kiddie co-stars on the set of "It Chapter One" when he first appeared on-set to perform with them:

"At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet. Their parents have brought them in, these little extras, right? And then I come out as Pennywise, and these kids — young, normal kids — I saw the reaction that they had. Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn't look at me, and some were shaking. This one kid started crying. He started to cry and the director yelled, "Action!" And when they say "action," I am completely in character. So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, "Holy s***. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible."

That sounds like a bit from a Nathan Fielder show, but it really happened, and both the actor and children were scarred a bit by the experience. Thankfully, not all of the child actors in the film were bothered by his performance. For example, Jack Dylan Grazer, who plays Loser's Club member Eddie and ends up trapped beneath a screaming, drooling Pennywise, would just compliment Skarsgård on his acting as soon as he heard "cut!"

Playing Pennywise helped launch Skarsgård to serious stardom, but it also had a lingering legacy when he took on other roles, and that meant scaring yet more co-stars.

Terrifying Another Tot

Playing Pennywise has stuck with Bill Skarsgård even though the movies themselves are over. There are subtle indicators, like casting him as a fairly non-threatening guy in a very threatening position in the horror film "Barbarian," and then there are the co-stars who lose their minds when they learn that they're performing with Pennywise.

In an interview with Rian Johnson for Interview Magazine, "The Devil All the Time" director Antonio Campos revealed that young actor Michael Banks Repeta reacted pretty strongly to finding out his co-star had played the dancing clown. Apparently, Campos went over a scary scene with Repeta and his mother when he learned that the only thing Banks was afraid of was — you guessed it — Pennywise. Shocked, Campos told Skarsgård not to say anything to the young actor, who hadn't pieced together the fact without the white clown makeup and creepy grin. Campos explained:

"And Bill is like, 'Oh my god. I'm totally going to tell him.' So the day that we were shooting that scene, Bill was like, 'They don't think you can know this, but I know you're a smart kid. I'm the clown in 'It.'' And Banks was like, 'Whoa, that's crazy. I didn't know that. Alright.' And I don't know if this is connected, but in the middle of that scene Banks just burst into tears way before he was supposed to. I think that somehow really got to him."

Whether he's making children cry or scaring the living daylights out of his adult co-stars, Bill Skarsgård is great at being truly terrifying. Here's hoping the Marquis doesn't end up invading our nightmares too!

Read this next: 23 Movies Like John Wick That Will Get Your Adrenaline Pumping

The post Bill Skarsgård Has Given Co-Stars More Than A Few Nightmares appeared first on /Film.

Great news, Toxie fans — the upcoming "The Toxic Avenger" remake/reboot is apparently going to deliver exactly what we sickos want! There hasn't been too much news about the film (which is written and helmed by "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore" director Macon Blair) since it finished filming in August of 2021, but thankfully we've gotten confirmation that the film totally maintains the spirit of the original 1984 horror-comedy ... albeit, from a slightly unexpected source.

/Film's Ryan Scott spoke with the sound team behind the fierce action flick "John Wick: Chapter 4," and the conversation eventually turned to "The Toxic Avenger." Sound editor Casey Genton worked on both films and revealed that it's not only going to make fans of the original Troma film very happy, but that even people who have never seen the original will find something to love. The original "Toxic Avenger" is a seriously strange B-movie that intends to offend but manages to still have a soft squishy center, and if anyone can nail that vibe, it's massive movie fan Blair. Throw in a cast that includes Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon as a villain, and it absolutely has the makings of must-see cinema.

Let's Get Gross

The original film followed a shrimpy geek named Winston who gets chucked into toxic waste and becomes a horrifying-looking superhero. Winston and Toxie will be played by Peter Dinklage, which should be a fascinating treat given the actor's dramatic chops, but most Troma fans won't be there for the actors; they'll be there for the gross-outs. Troma is the stuff of blood, guts, puke, and slime, and Casey Genton promised no one will be disappointed on that front:

"It's a really funny movie. Macon Blair, the director, I think did a really good job with it. Everybody was a dream on the film. I'm so surprised -- for me personally, I had not seen the original 'Toxic Avenger' until I had done this film. And it's a huge cult classic, and I know people are really excited about it. When they have tested it, fans of the film have been over the moon with the film. [...] It's pretty out there. I think it's a different crack. They're giving the fans what they want, for sure. There's no lack of -- I know everybody references the little kid's head getting run over and stuff. I think that there was an iteration of the film that didn't have enough of that, so they made a very -- I don't want to ruin it. But it has, it's been nicknamed the 'butt guts' scene, and it's probably the best way to match that 'head getting run over' energy that everybody's looking for. So it's in line with the fan base, and I think it's hilarious."

The scene in which a child gets his head popped like a melon (because they actually used a melon for the effect) is legendary among Toxie fans, but "butt guts" sounds even more amazing.

Excited About Butt Guts

The "Toxic Avenger" movies are notoriously disgusting, so simple reading the words "butt guts" brings me immense joy. Long before I ever became an entertainment writer, I was a weirdo obsessed with Troma founder and director Lloyd Kaufman's book "Make Your Own Damn Movie!," which featured instructions on how to re-create many of the gory effects from "The Toxic Avenger." Kaufman's weird, wild approach to filmmaking not only inspired teens with camcorders to crush produce in their parents' basements, but it also kickstarted the career of co-chairman of DC Studios, James Gunn. It's true: Gunn began his now-illustrious career by writing "Tromeo and Juliet" and now he's one of the most powerful men in moviemaking. And to think it all started with a mutant nerd named Melvin.

There's no word yet on when Macon Blair's "The Toxic Avenger" reboot will hit theaters, but with this positive update, I can't freakin' wait.

Read this next: The 95 Best Comedy Movies Ever

The post The Toxic Avenger Remake Will Include A 'Butt Guts' Scene, Is 'Giving The Fans What They Want' [Exclusive] appeared first on /Film.

President Joe Biden made clear in his State of the Union address last month that as the US spends billions of dollars on new broadband connections, "we're going to buy American." But that aspiration is easier said than done. From a report: While there seems to be enough domestic fiber optic cable to connect communities, the electronic components such as routers that transform glass strands into data highways are made mainly in other countries. Cable providers, chip makers and wireless carriers are pleading for relief from the requirement to "buy American," saying they can't build new networks without foreign electronics. Otherwise the broadband buildup that Biden has set as a priority will be delayed by years as domestic sources are developed. "Everybody's sorting this out," said Michael Romano, executive vice president of NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, a trade group. "It's not clear there's much, if any, American equipment that would satisfy Build America Buy America as it stands today." The Build America Buy America Act was enacted as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, and requires any infrastructure projects to use domestically sourced materials in order to receive federal assistance. That applies to the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program (BEAD), the flagship Biden initiative for building new networks to connect the 30 million Americans the administration estimates are without fast internet service.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This guide provides steps organizations can take to assess whether users have been targeted or compromised by threat actors exploiting CVE-2023-23397.

The post Guidance for investigating attacks using CVE-2023-23397 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

[link] [16 comments]

A recent campaign undertaken by Earth Preta indicates that nation-state groups aligned with China are getting increasingly proficient at bypassing security solutions. The threat actor, active since at least 2012, is tracked by the broader cybersecurity community under Bronze President, HoneyMyte, Mustang Panda, RedDelta, and Red Lich. Attack chains mounted by the group commence with a

To celebrate Deep Rock Galactic’s fifth anniversary, developer Ghost Ship took us back in time to the mystical land of 2018 and let us play Deep Rock Galactic Legacy, a version of the co-op shooter as it was back in 2018, before all of the updates. It was a fun, nostalgic way to let fans reminisce on the game’s infantile days. Ghost Ship had planned to remove Legacy today - March 23rd - but after fan feedback, they’ve decided to keep Legacy edition around indefinitely.

Read more

After the entire John Wick franchise began with the death of a dog, a canine is front and center once again in the latest chapter and we answer: does the dog die in John Wick: Chapter 4, alongside confirming everyone who dies in this installment.

Donnie Yen plays a blind assassin in Chapter 4 and some fans wanted to know if the actor was blind in real life, after playing another visually impaired fighter in the Star Wars franchise.

Directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, the neo-noir action movie, John Wick: Chapter 4, is a direct sequel to Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and the fourth in the franchise, following Keanu Reeves’ titular hitman and starring Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Laurence Fishburne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, and more.

**Warning – Major spoilers ahead for John Wick: Chapter 4**

• MORE MOVIES: Ant-Man theory suggests the Infinity Stones are in the Quantum Realm

Does the dog die in John Wick: Chapter 4?

No, the dog does not die in John Wick: Chapter 4, so canine lovers can breathe a sigh of relief.

That’s not to say the dog doesn’t have any close calls, on the contrary, the pup does have a brush with death that requires John to come to his aid.

The Belgian Malinois is nameless in the installment but serves as a loyal sidekick to Shamier Anderson’s The Tracker, or Mr. Nobody.

• MORE MOVIES: Shazam 2 sparks Mandela effect debate over a mysterious 90s movie that never existed

Everyone who dies in John Wick: Chapter 4

**Major spoilers ahead**

Starting from the beginning, The Elder’s guards on horseback are picked off pretty quickly by Wick as he goes to get back the wedding ring, followed by the death of the Elder whom John shoots in the head.

Chapter 4’s beginning also sees the death of Lance Reddick’s character, Charon, as the New York Continental concierge is shot and killed by High Table leader, Marquis Vincent de Gramont.

The assassins from the Osaka Continental are next on the chopping block while John is in Japan, followed by the death of the manager, Shimazu Koji, who is stabbed by Caine.

A number of adversaries in Berlin are the next ones to be thwarted by the hitman, as well as German High Table leader, Killa, who died after extensive injuries that we’ll leave a secret and a fall from a nightclub.

Next up is a bunch of Paris henchmen who all meet a grisly end, as well as Gramont’s right-hand man, Chidi, who is shot by The Tracker.

Marquis Vincent de Gramont is a major antagonist to be killed towards the end of the chapter, who is shot in the head by John.

Lastly, and the one that hurts the most, is the death of John Wick, who passes away on the church steps after suffering from major blood loss and exhaustion.

Going by the post-credit scene, it is implied that Caine is killed by Akira when he’s going to visit his daughter.

By Jo Craig – jo.craig@grv.media

John Wick: Chapter 4 is now in cinemas worldwide.

The post John Wick began with a dog's death and fans want to know if the latest canine survives appeared first on ForeverGeek.

A malicious Python package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository has been found to use Unicode as a trick to evade detection and deploy an info-stealing malware. The package in question, named onyxproxy, was uploaded to PyPI on March 15, 2023, and comes with capabilities to harvest and exfiltrate credentials and other valuable data. It has since been taken down, but not before attracting

CISA has sent notifications to more than 60 organizations as part of a new initiative to alert entities of early-stage ransomware attacks.

The post CISA Gets Proactive With New Pre-Ransomware Alerts appeared first on SecurityWeek.

This piece contains spoilers for the first episode of "Yellowjackets" season 2.

In "Yellowjackets," no character proved how wrong first impressions can be like Jeff Sadecki (Warren Kole) did. During the first season, he was set up to be a philandering scumbag who didn't love his wife Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) anymore — hence why Shauna felt comfortable cheating on him with the enigmatic artist Adam (Peter Gadiot). When it turned out he was blackmailing Shaun and her friends with the truth of what they did those 19 months in the wilderness, suspicions seemed confirmed.

Then Shauna confronted Jeff, and the truth came out: he wasn't cheating on her, just indebted to loan sharks after trying to keep his business afloat. His dorky dad/milquetoast wife guy persona isn't cover for a dark side -- it's just who he is. While he's charmingly oblivious ("there's no book club?!"), he's also dependable — he volunteered to fall on the sword for Shauna and take the wrap for Adam's murder. It doesn't come to that, however, thanks to some fast crime scene clean-up (courtesy Christina Ricci's strangely relatable character, Misty.).

However, in the angrier, more unhinged season 2 premiere, Shauna discovers Adam had an art studio. She and Jeff go there to destroy any evidence of Shauna's relationship with the deceased; there's a lot of it in the form of portraits. Jeff isn't happy about coming face-to-face with proof of his wife's adultery, but Shauna flips his feelings with some dirty talk — crime and honesty have put the passion back into their relationship — and they do the deed right there.

Still, the following scene indicates Jeff isn't totally over his sadness. Still alone in his car and remembering what just happened, he starts rocking out to Papa Roach's "Last Resort." I burst out laughing at how perfect a needle drop this was.

The Yellowjackets Soundtrack

It'd be a mistake to call "Yellowjackets" a nostalgic story, but the shadow of the 1990s does loom over it. The flashback storylines take place in 1996, meaning the pop culture references are tied to that era. This is also why the series cast '90s starlets Juliette Lewis (Natalie) and Christina Ricci in the present-day segments. The show's soundtrack reflects this era too. The pilot featured "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins, and the season carried on with more '90s top 40 hits, from "Dreams" by The Cranberries to "Kiss From A Rose" by Seal.

Papa Roach formed in 1993 as part of the nascent nu-metal movement. "Last Resort" was part of their second studio album, "Infest," released in 2000. It has become their signature song (and most listened to on Spotify) and a hallmark of musical angst. "Cut my life into pieces," the song opens, "this is my last resort." The opening is the only part we see Jeff listen to, but from there, the song trudges into darker territory.

Why 'Last Resort'?

"Would it be wrong would it be right, if I took my life tonight, chances are that I might," "Last Resort" continues. And then there's the chorus:

"'Cause I'm losing my sight, losing my mindWish somebody would tell me I'm fineLosing my sight, losing my mindWish somebody would tell me I'm fine'"

By now, the meaning of the title is clear; suicide will be the "last resort" for the song's main character in dealing with their pain. Lead vocalist Jacoby Shaddix has said the song was inspired by struggles with suicidal thoughts, both ones he'd suffered and those his friends suffered from (thankfully, none of them acted on them).

The sad lyrics of the song don't quite match Shaddix's aggressive vocals, which has contributed to the song's reputation: it's perfect both for getting yourself psyched up and wallowing in your misery. That's what Jeff was using it for, listening to it alone and slamming his hands on the car steering wheel. Based on the show's timeline, "Last Resort" would've come out when Jeff was in college (or at least college-aged), so it makes sense he still turns to it. At the same time, a middle-aged man rocking out to a teenage angst anthem is pretty hilarious. He's also shown scrolling a playlist just before, so we know that "Last Resort" was his conscious choice and not a random selection.

"Last Resort" may have been a silly music choice on Jeff's part, but it was a perfect one by the "Yellowjackets" creative team.

Read this next: The Best And Worst TV Couples Of 2022

The post Breaking Down That Papa Roach Needle Drop On Yellowjackets appeared first on /Film.

This piece contains spoilers for the second season of "Yellowjackets."

So, remember back in the first season of "Yellowjackets" where it seemed like queen bee Jackie (Ella Purnell) was going to survive the 19 months the soccer team spent in the woods? One of the seemingly-damning pieces of evidence was her diary, which her former bestie Shauna (Sophie Nélisse and Melanie Lynskey) reads during a visit to her house. As an adult, Shauna sees that the pages of Jackie's notebook are covered in writings about things that couldn't have happened when they were stranded in the Canadian wilderness, like referencing movies that had yet to come out. For a while, it was pretty plausible that Jackie did survive and avoided being eaten by her teammates, but as the final moments of the season finale rolled around, we realized that was far from the case.

However, despite Jackie becoming a sleeping popsicle, one question was likely on everyone's minds. If she is dead, then why was her notebook full of references to the then-future? Well, we don't have to wait long for that answer, because the season two premiere of "Yellowjackets" has got us covered. As it turns out, Shauna was writing in the notebook the entire time in a bizarre but strangely understandable coping mechanism.

Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House

As Smashing Pumpkins' "Drown" plays in the background, we see a sight nobody probably expected in the flashbacks: a clearly alive Jackie playing a game of MASH with Shauna. She gives her a startlingly-accurate reading of her former best friend's future, saying that she will live in a house married to the school's quarterback, Jeff (Jack DePew and Warren Kole). Shauna doesn't believe it at first, so she grabs the notebook from Jackie's hands, only to reveal that Jackie is a hallucination. It's been two months since she froze to death outside of the cabin the survivors are living in, and Shauna has kept her frozen body in the cabin's shack to keep conversation with. The rest of the team thinks it's weird, but at least she has a supporter in Coach Ben (Steven Krueger), who defends her by saying that these "meetings" bring her comfort in an otherwise horrific situation.

That doesn't make it any less weird, though, especially when hallucination-Jackie begins grilling Shauna on what happened between her and Jeff that eventually got her pregnant. When her inner monologue gets to be too much, Shauna pushes Jackie's body against the cabin wall, the force tearing off one of the corpse's ears. Take a wild guess what Shauna decides to do with that ear.

An Effective And Emotional Twist

The "dead friend becomes the main character's conscience" trope can be a bit tiresome. Pardon the pun, but it's been done to death in several movies and television shows by this point. However, Jackie becoming the manifestation of Shauna's guilt makes all the sense in the world. The two were the closest of friends before the accident, growing more distrustful of each other until Shauna kicked Jackie out of the team's cabin out of anger. She knows that she is responsible for her friend's death, and as Ben tells the rest of the Yellowjackets, Shauna needs to pretend to make peace with Jackie lest she not lose her mind.

Her writing in Jackie's diary as she pretends to have conversations with her only solidifies this, especially the pages that reference the supposed "future." This coping mechanism of hers wouldn't just stop after their rescue in 1998. She likely continued this for a long time afterward, wanting to imagine a world where Jackie survived and came home with the rest of the survivors. In order to avoid the real situations she finds herself in, she wants to imagine a reality where she has total control. Even though she eventually stopped writing in the notebook, Shauna's desires to maintain that perfect fantasy manifest in other ways, such as overprotecting her daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) and killing her side lover Adam (Peter Gadiot) at the first hint of betrayal. In both the flashbacks and the modern portions of the show, it's only a matter of time before she snaps for good.

Read this next: The 20 Best Female Friendships In TV History, Ranked

The post Yellowjackets Season 2 Solves the Mystery of Jackie's Notebook appeared first on /Film.

This post contains spoilers for the first episode of "Yellowjackets" season 2.

Comparisons between "Yellowjackets" and "Lost" were always going to be inevitable. Even before "Yellowjackets" proved itself a character-driven thriller capable of doling out mysteries and WTF moments at an impressive pace, the two clearly shared significant narrative DNA. With multiple timelines, a plane crash, and a possibly sentient setting that's at once magical and spooky, "Yellowjackets" is a fantastic heir apparent to the hit 2004 series — one that arrived about a decade after everyone quit looking for its successor.

In its season premiere, though, "Yellowjackets" sets itself apart from "Lost" and most other mystery box shows like it in an intriguing, major way. The contrast comes in the episode's cold open, a tremendous montage set to Sharon Van Etten's "Seventeen." The scene gets viewers up to speed after a time jump, showing us what the stranded teammates' typical winter mornings look like inside the abandoned cabin they now call home.

The Premiere Introduces A Strange Morning Ritual

As the snow falls, the girls sleep by a well-tended fireplace, bundled in their thickest clothes. They've clearly developed some efficient systems since we last saw them; Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) sleeps tied to Van (Liv Hewson) to prevent sleepwalking, the team catches drops of water in a bucket for later use, and when Travis (Kevin Alves) and Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) bundle up to go search for help (and Javi) they cram papers into the lining of their clothes for added warmth. This group is clearly clever and capable. But the explorers also do something else before they head out: stop to receive a blessing from Lottie (Courtney Eaton), the possibly prophetic or possibly mentally ill girl who managed to inexplicably kill a bear in the first season finale.

Lottie greets the pair with a complex ritual, involving putting ashes on their palms, waving a smokey branch in their faces, and having them drink from a mug of water that includes a drop of her blood. She also draws the mysterious symbol we've seen before on the window after they leave. "It's not like this wicca bulls**t is doing us any good," Natalie says, but she takes the mug anyway. Lottie isn't phased by the comment. "Well, you keep coming back alive, don't you?" she points out.

Mystery Shows Love A Good Faith-Science Dichotomy

The opening sequence sets up a unique dichotomy between the explainable and the inexplicable, one that sets "Yellowjackets" apart from other mystery-driven shows of the past two decades. While series like "Lost," "Dark," "Under the Dome," "From," "Manifest," and so many others hinge their central plots on questions about whether a phenomenon is scientific or supernatural, the "Yellowjackets" premiere finds a surprising middle ground. It's an unexpected albeit enjoyable change-up for the series, which ended its first season by positioning Lottie's occult-like practices as sinister but powerful. Now, they've become a part of everyday life, a superstition equivalent to not stepping on a crack or throwing salt over your shoulder. Unlike its genre contemporaries, there's no need for a big explanation involving a chalkboard or an upside-down game board here.

There's something refreshing about the show's embrace of its spookier elements, especially when they're utilized in conjunction with practical measures and, in the case of some members of the group, a healthy dose of skepticism. Mystery box shows are rife with characters who love to loudly deny whatever is going on around them, whether it's Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox) refusing to give in to Locke's (Terry O'Quinn) island-based spirituality in "Lost," Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) rolling her eyes at countless inexplicable situations in "The X-Files," or Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) crying his way through a world that makes no sense in "The Leftovers." While some mystery box shows end up with a clear-cut "answer" to their own central question about faith and science, others are ultimately able to reckon with the two options and land in a beautiful place of ambiguity. Very few, though, go the "Yellowjackets" route, interweaving both the impossible and the explainable into the fabric of the series.

In Yellowackets, Practicality And Superstition Coexist

Despite the relative lack of precedent for a show like this, it feels right for Lottie's woo-woo nonsense to coexist with the girls' practical, everyday activities. After all, "Yellowjackets" is a story about girlhood and womanhood in a way that few of the aforementioned mysteries are, and women have long since been associated with earth-based magic across cultures. History books are full of references to women witches, healers, goddesses, and mystics. When civilizations build in spaces for the mysteries of the world to flourish, they are, in many cases, women's spaces. 

The survivors' casual incorporation of Lottie's magic will likely be viewed as a non-twist in an episode that has plenty of other elements worth talking about (that ear!), but it deserves to be highlighted as a particularly clever writing choice in a show that's always been smart about its character dynamics. By side-stepping, the fraught, prolonged conversations about what is and isn't possible, and allowing Lottie skeptics and Lottie believers to live together under one roof, "Yellowjackets" poses a much more interesting question than "What part of this is actually real?" Instead, the show asks us to think about what it takes to survive; not just strength and smarts, but also intuition and openness. What's more, it asks us to consider the power and necessity of finding something to believe in when enduring the unbelievable.

New episodes of "Yellowjackets" air Sundays on Showtime. The season premiere is available on the Showtime app now.

Read this next: The Best TV Shows Of 2022, Ranked

The post Yellowjackets Reinvents the 'Puzzle Box' Show By Throwing Away the Usual Playbook appeared first on /Film.

Intel has published a new video talking about its recent XeSS 1.1 SDK update along with a demo of iGPU performance using the AI-based upscaler.

Intel's XeSS 1.1 SDK Gets A Host of Performance & Visual Updates, iGPU Performance Demo Showcased

The new Intel XeSS 1.1 SDK brings two major updates to improve visual quality & temporal stability through a new XeSS Upscaling model for cross-vendor and integrated GPUs and an advanced XeSS Upscaling model for Arc GPUs that improves temporal stability (flicker/moire).

The new model also integrates new Kernels that include Faster XMX kernels (Arc Alchemist), Faster DP4a Kernels (TGL / ADL / RPL iGPU), and Faster Cross-Vendor kernels (SM 6.4 GPUs).

XeSS is an AI-based super-sampling technique which reconstructs a low-resolution non-antialiased frame into a high-resolution fully-antialiased frame. And it does that at a fraction of the cost of high-resolution native rendering.

During this talk, we introduce XeSS and cover some of the challenges that upscalers have to deal with. Then we follow that by going through updates that XeSS 1.1 brings and watch demos on Intel integrated and discrete GPUs. We will also talk about best practices and guidelines on how to integrate XeSS into a game title. Last topic is the upcoming XeSS Dataset Toolkit that makes it easy to collect and assemble a custom XeSS model training dataset for a particular game title.

via Game.Intel

In terms of performance, what this means is that gamers will notice a small performance boost as the XeSS Kernel runtimes are reduced across all visual fidelity and upscaling modes. For example, if you are targeting your game to run at 60 FPS, you have half the millisecond's worth of extra time off each frame for your rendering budget.

A game demo of Shadow of The Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics is showcased which gives us a comparison between XeSS 1.0 and XeSS 1.1 with the latest version cleaning up almost all artifacts that were encountered in the previous version such as Moire and flickering. Intel is also sharing the scaling factors of its XeSS upscaling technology which are listed in the chart below:

Lastly, Intel talks about building XeSS for iGPUs and Cross-Vendor chips (AMD / Intel / etc) too. The iGPUs mostly target lower input resolution for 1080p gaming using XeSS and don't have the higher throughput matrix engines such as XMX on Alchemist GPUs. The Lower-through memory is shared with the CPU and the budget between frame rendering is less than 5ms to target 30-60 FPS at FHD. DP4a acceleration is used for the acceleration in Xe-based iGPUs.

For the first time, Intel has shown the Intel Core i7-1370P with Integrated Iris Xe graphics running XeSS across several games at 1080p (Medium Quality) in XeSS Balanced and Performance modes:

Overall, it's great to see Intel continue to work on XeSS and further improve it which bodes well for their existing and future dGPU and iGPU lineup. As we talk about the XeSS 1.1 SDK update,

2 of 9

Intel Game On Driver support on Intel Arc A-series Graphics for:

• Resident Evil 4 Remake

Performance optimizations on Intel Arc A-series Graphics for:

• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
• D5 Render
• Blender in Material Preview viewport mode
• Counter Strike Global Offensive on Intel Arc Graphics for Laptops

Fixed Issues

Intel Arc Graphics Products:

• Conqueror’s Blade (DX11) may exhibit corruption in benchmark mode.
• Portal with RTX (Vulkan) may experience application crash when loading to gameplay.

Intel Core Processor Products:

• Overwatch 2 (DX12) may see lag or freeze while launching the game.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (DX12) may experience application crash during gameplay

INTEL ARC CONTROL FIXED ISSUES:

• Using Arc Control Studio capture with AVC codec selected may incorrectly use the HEVC codec.
• Modifying performance sliders may fail to apply back to their default values. A workaround is to use the “Reset to Defaults” button.

Intel is also releasing its latest 31.0.101.4255 WHQL driver today which adds support for Resident Evil IV: Remake and also improves performance across variants games and issues several bug fixes. The driver can be downloaded here.

The post Intel XeSS 1.1 SDK Update Brings Better Performance & Visual Updates, iGPU Performance Demoed by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

Bob Odenkirk played the character of Saul Goodman for 13 years, first appearing in the second season of "Breaking Bad" to guide Walter White into the depths of the criminal underworld. Future appearances marked him as a key player within the show's supporting cast, able to function as a comic archetype as well as a moral barometer for just how far White had fallen in his quest for power. Two years after "Breaking Bad" ended, Odenkirk returned to lead "Better Call Saul," a spin-off that arguably surpassed its parent series by the final episodes. Odenkirk received five Golden Globe nominations, five Emmy nominations for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series," and another six Emmy nominations for "Outstanding Drama Series" in his capacity as a producer for "Better Call Saul." Taken separately, Odenkirk's performances in "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" are impressive. Together, they represent a process of long-form character excavation that no longer exists on television in the United States.

In an interview with "The Tonight Show," though, Odenkirk acknowledges that he never expected to play Saul for such a long time. "I was supposed to do 3 to 4 episodes [of Breaking Bad,]" he told host Jimmy Fallon. "Then it turned into my whole life." Odenkirk isn't the only "Breaking Bad" side character to see his role radically expand over the course of the series. But he's the only one whose character attained such a life of his own that he kept the "Breaking Bad" engine humming for a 63-episode spinoff starring himself. As he said earlier to Fallon, "They keep calling me back!"

13 Wonderful Years

A lot can happen in 13 years. The distance between showrunner Bryan Fuller's "Dead Like Me" in 2003 and his 2013 network barnburner "Hannibal" is just 12 years. "The Sopranos," "The Wire" and "Deadwood" all finished airing on HBO within 10 years, from 1999 to 2008, and "Lost" wrapped up three years later in 2011. Netflix has been releasing original programming for just a decade, starting in 2013 with "House of Cards." These are all paradigm shifts that changed the way that people watch television today. Yet it's easy to forget that these transformations happened in a relatively short period of time. The beauty and malevolence of "Breaking Bad" changed the way that TV was made in the late 2000s; by the time "Better Call Saul" wrapped up in 2022, the fracturing of streaming had changed TV yet again.

Odenkirk's career did not begin with "Breaking Bad." The only two Emmys that he's won in his career so far were for "Saturday Night Live" in 1989, and then "The Ben Stiller Show" in 1993. After toiling for years as a writer and actor, he co-starred in the groundbreaking HBO sketch comedy series "Mr. Show" with David Cross ("Arrested Development") from 1995 to 1998. Their work inspired Tim and Eric (of "Awesome Show, Great Job!" fame) as well as Key and Peele. Had this been Odenkirk's legacy, it would have been enough. Yet Vince Gilligan was impressed enough by Odenkirk's performance on "Mr. Show" to hire him years later for "Breaking Bad." Who better to play a two-dimensional sleazeball like Saul Goodman than a sketch comedy master? But then the role grew, and grew, and a job that was meant to be a guest spot changed Odenkirk's life.

The Way Stalactites Grow

This was not out of the ordinary for "Breaking Bad," a series that thrived on chaos. Jesse Pinkman was famously meant to be written out in the first season, only for the staff to keep him once they realized what actor Aaron Paul brought to the series. The 2007-2008 writers' strike gave the staff the chance to retool their plans for future seasons, saving Gilligan from his "self-destructive impulses," per Alan Sepinwall's "The Revolution Was Televised." Odenkirk isn't even the only "Breaking Bad" cast member to transform a bit part into a supporting character role through sheer ability. Jonathan Banks, who played the popular character Mike Ehrmantraut, was himself brought on board to substitute for Odenkirk. Banks stuck around to become not just a highlight of "Breaking Bad," but a key player in "Better Call Saul." "I thought, 'I'll go in here, I'll guest star and I'll be gone,'" Banks told Sepinwall. "It didn't turn out that way."

In "The Revolution Was Televised," Gilligan refers to "Breaking Bad" as "an epic crime drama driven by process." His goal as showrunner was not just to capture the rise and fall of a bad man, but to "show the stuff that nobody else bothers to show." It seems absurd on the surface that a series beloved for its sense of escalation was built to emulate "the way stalactites grow." Yet many of the show's best-loved episodes, like Rian Johnson's bottle episode "The Fly," were just that. The process was also the heart and soul of "Better Call Saul," a series that per critic Sonia Saraiya "knows how to make emptiness staggeringly dramatic."

The Role Of A Lifetime

In an interview between Saraiya and Sepinwall for Salon, the two critics discuss the power of time. "You spend years of your lives watching them," Sepinwall says. "So you want to see them end right." The alternative is to suffer the fate of "Lost" showrunner Damon Lindelof, punished for dropping the ball after six sporadically great years of television produced by his team. As for Saraiya, she writes for Vanity Fair that "television keeps going, year in and year out, pacing its story to match the show unspooling of our lives." Speaking personally, I've caught myself marking time not by my home address or job, but by what TV program was airing at the time. To be an actor on that same TV series, sharing a life with millions of viewers over more than a decade, must be something else entirely.

Bob Odenkirk's career might have gone in a totally different direction had he moved on from "Breaking Bad" as was intended. Instead, he will forever be known as Saul Goodman, a role that snowballed over the course of 13 years into a career-defining performance. Some might be intimidated by the weight of that accomplishment, but Odenkirk doesn't mind. "I'll always be thankful for that role," he told "The Tonight Show." "The role of a lifetime." Saul Goodman became a great character thanks to Odenkirk's talent as an actor, as well as the hard work of the team behind "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul." Yet Goodman is also "the role of a lifetime" because today, TV series are lucky to last a handful of seasons. There may not be another opportunity like Saul Goodman for a lifetime — or at least, a lifetime on television.

Read this next: The Best TV Shows Of 2022, Ranked

The post Bob Odenkirk's Saul Goodman Was Only Supposed To Last 4 Episodes, Not 13 Years appeared first on /Film.

The interrogation of CEO Shou Zi Chew highlighted US lawmakers’ own failure to pass privacy legislation.

It's fairly common for directors to spend years in-between projects, and one would think that finishing Stanley Kubrick's vision for 2001's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" would call for a much-needed vacation. But in 2002, Steven Spielberg was on a roll. In the same year, he released two distinct films featuring two different, massive A-list stars. In June, Tom Cruise played the leading man in Spielberg's sci-fi blockbuster, "Minority Report." And in December, Leonardo DiCaprio took on the role of Frank Abagnale, Jr. in "Catch Me If You Can," an ambitious semi-biographical drama where DiCaprio played opposite Tom Hanks. Both films were critical and financial successes, becoming the 10th and 11th highest-grossing films of 2002 respectively.

Perhaps most impressively, in 2001, Spielberg was able to accomplish production on these films while writing term papers to earn his Bachelor's Degree from Cal State Long Beach, something he committed himself to doing to honor his parents and set an example for his own children. Despite his accolades and his huge box office successes, Spielberg's children, as it turns out, would be his toughest critics.

In an interview with the late Roger Ebert in 2002, titled "Catching Up With Spielberg," Ebert praised his second theatrical viewing of "Minority Report," to which Spielberg answered:

"l haven't seen it again since it was released. I rarely look back at the movies I've made except when my kids see them for the first time. So I get a chance to see all my own movies again through my kids' eyes, which is always fun, you know, because they tell me whether they like 'em or not right away. Or they walk out. I've had my kids walk out of my pictures."

So, which Spielberg movie left his kids too bored to finish?

'They Were Bored By The Legal Stuff'

There are two kinds of Steven Spielberg films: The genre movies that put him on the map, and the political/historical pieces that Spielberg became passionate about even after his well-earned Academy Awards for "Schindler's List."

Though Spielberg's political/historical dramas are just as valuable to his artistic identity as the more celebrated genre films of his career, it isn't exactly a mystery which side of his filmography would better entertain young children, including his own. "They walked out of 'Amistad,'" Spielberg told Roger Ebert back in 2002. "I lost my whole family. All my young kids, you know. I wouldn't ever show them the middle passage and I didn't let them see the very beginning and they were bored by the legal stuff. They left."

Based on a true story of a 1839 Spanish slave ship, "Amistad" came out in 1997, the same year as "Jurassic Park: The Lost World." Though it received an initial warm critical response and boasts great performances from Morgan Freeman as Theodore Joadson and Anthony Hopkins as John Quincey Adams, with time it has been one of the more mixed historical drama efforts by Spielberg — often criticized for its white savior narrative. Especially since he skipped over some uncomfortable key scenes, leaving behind mostly the political interludes, it's hard to imagine what a kid would gain from that viewing experience.

Ironically, one of Spielberg's best traits as a director is how he approaches each of his films with a genuine sentimentality and child-like wonder that he hasn't lost touch with. His willingness to engage with his movies from the lens of his own children is not only sweet, but is fitting with his artist persona.

Read this next: 12 Best Performances In Steven Spielberg Movies

The post The Steven Spielberg Movie That Left His Kids Too Bored To Finish appeared first on /Film.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Framework has delivered on the promise of its original 13-inch laptop. Three product generations in, the company has made a respectable competitor for the Dell XPS 13 or MacBook Air that can be repaired, modified, and upgraded, and owners of the original laptop can easily give themselves a significant performance boost by upgrading to the new 13th-generation Intel or AMD Ryzen-based boards the company announced today. Framework is now looking to build on that track record with an all-new Framework Laptop 16. It's a larger-screened model that can fit more powerful processors, dedicated GPUs, and a range of different keyboard modules, all with the same commitment to repairability and upgradeability seen in the original Framework Laptop (now retroactively dubbed the Framework Laptop 13). Framework isn't discussing many details yet; preorders won't open until "this spring," and shipments won't begin until "late 2023." Today, the company provided a preview of the laptop's features, along with developer documentation to encourage the creation of new Input Modules -- components that allow for keyboard customization much like the current Expansion Card system allows for port customization.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Telecommunication providers in the Middle East are the subject of new cyber attacks that commenced in the first quarter of 2023. The intrusion set has been attributed to a Chinese cyber espionage actor associated with a long-running campaign dubbed Operation Soft Cell based on tooling overlaps. "The initial attack phase involves infiltrating Internet-facing Microsoft Exchange servers to deploy

The following article discusses Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode Six, “The Bounty.”

When the Original Series cast made their swansong, they left Star Trek in the rudest health it had ever been in. The Next Generation had reached its creative peak, Deep Space Nine was a year away from starting, and the movie series was making good money. The Undiscovered Country gave fans one last adventure with Kirk and co. that gently highlighted why it was time to move on. By comparison, Nemesis’ soft box office meant there would be no grand finale for the TNG crew. DS9 and Voyager were done, and it wouldn’t be long before pre-Kirk prequel-series Enterprise would leave our screens. There was quite literally nobody to pick up from where Picard and co. left off as “current day” Trek went into enforced stasis. Now, it feels like 2002 all over again, with the only “current” Trek series, Discovery, canceled and the only other live-action Trek show yet again being a pre-Kirk era prequel. They say that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

This sense of unease about the future permeates “The Bounty,” as Star Trek: Picard hints that the next (next) generation aren’t up to scratch. Picard, Riker and LaForge are all fathers struggling to deal with the gifts and curses they handed down to their children. The show keeps implying that there’s less hope in these kids because they’ve spent so long in their parents’ shadow. Sidney LaForge isn’t speaking to her father, who grouses to Picard how hard it was to raise her. The show has already hamfistedly tried to cover Riker’s grief over Thaddeus, while Picard has given his son a terminal case of Irumodic Syndrome. When Jack gets the idea of stealing the Bounty’s cloaking device, he and Sydney can’t get it working without Geordie’s resentful help. Come on kids, get out of the way while dad, once again, picks up your mess and fixes the things you can’t cope with. The subtext is one of disappointment, of darn kids with their avocado lattes and oat milk toast who can’t do anything as well as their baby boomer forebears.

It’s an interesting perspective from a franchise that has always worried about its own coolness, fretting that it’s too thoughtful, too middle-aged. Chekov joined The Original Series cast because producers wanted to woo a younger crowd with a Davy Jones-type mop-topped pretty boy. This anxiety is most visible in the Next Generation movies, which are constantly battling each other in attitudes around age, aging and relevance. Generations leaves Picard at peace with his own age, but everything that follows repudiates that position, mostly as Patrick Stewart’s behind the scenes power grew, so did his desire to remake the character in his own image. The vest-clad man of action in First Contact, the romantic lead of Insurrection and the off-roading petrolhead in Nemesis all stem from this desire. Rather than a desire to become the wise, elder statesman of the Star Trek universe, Picard raged against the dying of his own light. And rather than lay the table for his successors, he judged them all and found them unworthy.

This mistrust of youth goes hand-in-hand with a fetishization of the past that goes beyond nostalgia and into paraphilia. “The Bounty” has not one, but two trips to space museums so that the fans can gawk at objects of desire, stripped of their context, there for nothing but fan service. Riker, Worf and Raffi beam onto Daystrom Station, home of Starfleet’s “most off the books tech, experimental weapons, alien contraband,” which when you think about it is really daft. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think the US Navy stores secret chemical weapons at MIT, which is, or was, the best point of comparison for a civilian robotics research institute. Along the corridor, there’s the Genesis Device! (Why? It was blown up when the Reliant combusted and turned into the Genesis Planet, its existence makes no sense) A Tribble! And James Kirk’s Corpse!... Wait, that seems weird, why do that? That seems weirdly perverse, why would you store a decorated officer’s dead body in a site for military weapons when there’s nothing special about his physiology in this timeline? Oh, that’s why, because our heroes don’t get to gracefully die in Star Trek any more, they just become objects of fetishization.

We get a brief cameo from Daniel Davis’ Moriarty as part of Daystrom’s not-quite security system before we hit the big reveal of the episode: Data!. Or, something else, a Soong-type android with the brains of Soong, Lore, B-4 and Data all mashed up in one body. (Why B-4 and Lore? Why would you put the unworkable prototype and the psychotic brains in there with the two functional ones? Because we’ll need an inevitable betrayal two or three episodes down the line, not because it makes sense.) And then we’re off to the fleet museum for a brief interlude of spaceship porn and, wouldn’t you know, the ships deemed worthy of preserving are almost all hero vessels from the Star Trek franchise. I mean, look, I’m a starship porn type of guy, and any loving shot of Andrew Probert and Richard Taylor’s Enterprise model will always have my heart soaring. But it just feels all so soulless, like the characters in Star Trek are now behaving like Star Trek fans.

The conclusion of the episode reveals the changelings stole Picard’s corpse from Daystrom Station for reasons as-yet unknown. Meanwhile, Riker has been captured by Vadic and taken to the Shrike, where he’s shown that the baddies have also captured Deanna. But not before the 70-year-old Riker is given a dose of good old 24-style face punching, to match the rest of the series’ Bush-era politics.

The biggest problem with this sort of all-the-characters-grew-up-watching-Star Trek nostalgia, of course, is that it collapses the size of your narrative universe. Star Trek is big and broad enough to sustain a massive trans-media ecosystem covering every corner of its fictional universe. But Star Trek: Picard makes out that Starfleet is made up of five ships not called Enterprise, none of which are worth remarking upon. The notion that the Enterprise is just one of hundreds, or thousands, of starships having wild and crazy adventures on the frontiers of space is beyond comprehension. In a way, I’m glad nobody in TV-land is familiar with Star Trek: New Frontier, lest it turned out that someone at Daystrom has collected Mackenzie Calhoun’s eyeballs on a shelf for the lolz.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-picard-3-6-the-bounty-review-130030243.html?src=rss

The post Furies – Netflix Review (3/5) appeared first on Heaven of Horror.

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Happy Thursday! As usual, Friday Eve includes the opportunity to get your snag on with the Epic Games Store. This week's two giveaways are now available, which are Chess Ultra and World of Warships —...