Today finally brings a brand new trailer for "Morbius," the latest Marvel Comics film adaptation from the folks at Sony. As was the case with "Venom," the studio is going deep on its collection of Spider-Man-adjacent characters in order to cook up its own big franchises.
Though the bulk of Marvel Comics characters are back in the hands of Marvel Studios, Sony owns the movie rights not only to Spidey himself but also to Marvel characters who are principally related to the web-slinger -- such as Venom, Carnage, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Woman, Spider-Ham and, well, you get the idea.
In this case, we have Oscar-winner Jared Leto starring as "The Living Vampire" in a dark origin tale. Check out the new trailer for "Morbius" below.
Morbius Trailer
This is the second trailer we've seen for "Morbius," following the rather surprising one that was released by the studio in January 2020. That trailer implied some connections between these Sony movies and the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe -- connections that were only strengthened by "Venom: Let There Be Carnage."
The reason it took so long to get a second trailer is the multiple delays this movie has faced as a result of the pandemic. But it's finally on deck for early 2022, and this gives us a much better idea of what we're in for.
The official synopsis for "Morbius" reads as follows:
One of Marvel's most compelling and conflicted characters comes to the big screen as Oscar winner Jared Leto transforms into the enigmatic antihero, Michael Morbius. Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder, and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. What at first appears to be a radical success, a darkness inside him is unleashed and transforms this healer into a hunter.
The Living Vampire Comes To Life
The character of Morbius the Living Vampire debuted in the pages of "The Amazing Spider-Man" #101 back in 1971. He was created by comic book legends Roy Thomas and Gil Kane. Because he originated in a "Spider-Man" book, Sony has the rights to use him in a movie or even an entire movie franchise. But whether or not Morbius can prove to be as much of a draw for audiences as Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock has been remains to be seen.
Sony has several other such movies in development, including "Kraven the Hunter," starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Other characters such as Nightwatch, Black Cat, Silver Sable, Spider-Woman, and Madame Web have projects in various stages of development.
Daniel Espinosa directed "Morbius," working from a script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. The cast also includes Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, and Tyrese Gibson.
"Morbius" is currently set to hit theaters on January 28, 2022.
Most of us buy things as we need them: pantry snacks, a haircut, a new mattress or laptop. Then there are certain things it behooves us to purchase before we need them, to avoid potential disaster. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most essential “buy before you need” items, inspired by this AskReddit thread.
Fedora 35 is now officially available today as the latest major release of this Linux distribution developed by Red Hat and the open-source community. Fedora 35 is another very rich feature update at the forefront of Linux innovations from servers to the desktop...
D2X-XL v1.18.76 is released. D2X is a port of Descent 2 to OpenGL. It is an open source project and has received a lot of enhancements compared to Descent 2. My work on this project would not have been possible if hadn't been for the people who initially implemented the OpenGL and SDL code in D2X, so my thanks to them: It is for them that we can still play this great game on modern hardware. My thanks also to the many people who have provided input for this project, be it in the form of bug reports, great ideas, logos, encouragement, or other....More
Modder ‘drugod’ has released the final version of Bloom, a crossover mod between Doom and Blood. This mod is compatible with most Doom wads (doom.wad, doom2.wad, plutonia.wad and tnt.wad), and the modder suggests using Gzdoom 4.6 or above. Going into more details, Bloom features more than 30 enemies from Blood and Doom. Moreover, it adds … Continue reading The final version of Bloom, crossover between Blood and Doom, is available for download →
First released as a low cost, low spec single-board computer (SBC) in 2015, the compact Raspberry Pi Zero has had a couple of minor iterations in the intervening years. But the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W marks its first major revision, giving it a specification not dissimilar to the Raspberry Pi 3.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Monday called the more than five million COVID-19 deaths "a global shame," and a reminder that much of the world is being "failed" by vaccine inequities.
What if I told you that a graphics card could be the quickest way to improve your livestream or podcast audio? It sounds counterintuitive, but think about it: A GPU often has an extreme amount of processing power sitting idle, so why not use that redundant hardware for other things?
Fortunately, NVIDIA is way ahead of us, and has already harnessed the potential of its own GPUs to do things beyond, well, graphics. For example, you might remember RTX Voice, which as the name implies, is a tool for upping your microphone game. Then, it quietly released Broadcast — a more comprehensive tool aimed squarely at streamers and content creators. Both offer great audio enhancement features, but we’ll focus on Broadcast here as that has effectively (though not entirely) replaced RTX Voice.
Right up the top, I should set some expectations. While Broadcast offers some helpful tools for all streamers, the real benefit is for those with more entry-level gear. For example, if you have something like a Blue Yeti and an older webcam you’re going to get more out of this tool than someone with a Shure SM7B and a Sony A7.
Broadcast specifically “uses Tensor Cores on NVIDIA RTX GPUs to accelerate AI calculations so you can game, livestream and run AI networks at the same time.” It’s compatible with any RTX GPU — “GeForce RTX 2060, Quadro RTX 3000, or higher” — according to a company spokesperson.
If you don’t already own a compatible GPU, now isn’t exactly the best time to be looking for one, thanks to the ongoing chip shortage, but things do seem to be slowly easing up. If you do have a supported card then you can simply download the Broadcast app and get cracking. The better news is, if you have a Logitech headset or Blue mic, as of today, Broadcast is natively supported so you won’t even need to dive into the app.
Supported models at launch are Logitech's G733, Pro X and Pro X Wireless headsets, and Blue's Yeti X, Yeti Classic and Yeti Nano microphones. While that’s only a fraction of the companies’ offerings, it still represents a lot of headsets and microphones that today have new, untapped potential.
NVIDIA / James Trew
The Logitech partnership, to date, only works with some products and only with some of the features on offer in NVIDIA Broadcast. Those looking for the full audio-visual featureset will still need to download the standalone app. Once you’re in Broadcast you’ll see three main tabs: Microphone, Speaker and Camera. We’ll focus mainly on the microphone section, but the other two are just as useful and it all combines into one hub for tweaking your stream, be it video, audio or both.
Under the Microphone tab you’ll find a drop down on the left to select your input source and a space below for adding effects. The area on the right is given over to a tool for testing these effects before you commit to them.
Right now, there are only two effects to choose from. But both are useful and there’s no novelty chaffe (get your robot voices elsewhere!). Broadcast is focused on shaping up your stream, not bending it into something else. And importantly, all in realtime, unlike something like iZotope RX which is incredibly good at repairing sound, but aimed at post production.
Audio tools
The first effect is Room echo removal. For anyone who has a space with less than favorable acoustics, this is going to help you dial down that dreaded “cave” sound you have probably been battling with. Reverb reduction is actually quite a science, given that you’re trying to remove elements of a sound that are… well, very very similar to the source. So you can’t just hack out the errant frequencies and be done with it, you need to leave the original signal intact.
NVIDIA kept things nice and simple. Other pro tools (like iZotope’s RX) give you an bevvy of settings and controls. Broadcast? Just two: on/off and “strength” (amount of reverb to be removed). To test this, I used a condenser microphone as those are most prone to picking up reverb. In the recording below, I start with no effect applied before dialling in about 50 percent and then finally with strength set to maximum.
As you can hear, the effect is, well, effective. The acoustics in the room I recorded the samples in aren’t terrible, but they’re definitely not optimal. But the difference between the raw recording and then with the reverb removed is stark. The effect is most obvious in the first recording with the condenser mic. The raw signal is… fine, but things are much improved with the echo removal tool set to around half way. The recording feels much more present and there’s no distracting room echo. More, isn’t always better though. Once I dial the effect up to 100 percent, reverb might be eliminated, but at the expense of the original signal. In short, play around with the settings to find the best balance for your tastes and recording space.
You’ll notice in the second recording that there’s not really all that much reverb to remove. This is thanks to the dynamic microphone which does a pretty good job of that itself. You can hear a difference once I start adding the effect, but it might not be worth the risk of degrading your source audio for such a minor benefit.
Perhaps more impressive than the echo removal is the second effect on offer: Noise reduction. While reverb tends to be a constant, outside noises are unpredictable. Things might be quiet when you sit down to record, only for a loud motorbike or barking dog to invade your stream moments later. Not with noise removal applied though.
This effect is impressively adept at removing anything but your voice from your stream. Be that a jackhammer, a crying baby next door or even a song played loudly on a speaker right by your microphone. Honestly, listen to the below.
Notice how you can’t hear the song when the effect is applied? That’s coming from a speaker barely a foot behind the microphone. When I recorded it, it’s fully audible to my ears, but almost entirely inaudible on the recording. I say almost as those with sharp ears might notice the odd fragment popping through, but you really have to listen closely. I actually asked NVIDIA about this and was given this response:
“The AI networks are trained to recognize some patterns, and as such there will be gray areas where the AI can have doubts. [...] As such we wanted to give our users flexibility to run the effects in a comfortable range, or dial things up in case they needed help in extreme situations. For example, for audio effects we recommend running them at 75-90 percent, depending on how much background noise or room echo there is.”
As mentioned, Broadcast largely replaced RTX Voice, but NVIDIA decided to patch it with support for NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs meaning you can still get the noise reduction tools even if your GPU doesn’t support Broadcast. Though, the company says, experiences will vary on older cards.
As with the reverb removal, the strength setting will ultimately impact the quality of the output so trial and error is needed to find the sweet spot. You might also want to consider time of day. If, for example, you live near a noisy road, you could dial in a second pair of settings for when you have to record around rush hour.
The noise removal filter is impressive, but it’s not without limitations. For one, the “strength” slider doesn’t seem to fade out sounds like music, instead it falls off only once you apply the maximum amount. At least in my testing. I doubt you’re intentionally streaming with music only you want to hear, so that’s a minor thing to be aware of, but if you do need to keep the strength at maximum, be aware of that degradation in signal which will get worse the more noise Broadcast is eliminating.
As a companion to the vocal effects, the middle tab in Broadcast is “Speakers.” We can sum this section in one shot: It’s the same as Microphone, just for incoming audio. That’s to say, you can go ahead and remove room echo or background noise from people you are speaking with. If you’ve ever been on a Zoom call during these pandemic times and someone’s baby starts crying or has a really loud road nearby, then you can selfishly spare your ears here.
Camera tools
Conceptually, the effects for your camera work in a similar way to the ones for your microphone. NVIDIA’s AI cores are “looking” out for noise or, depending, your entire background. Yup, with Broadcast you can achieve a green screen effect without the actual screen. You might be thinking “well, Zoom/Meet/TikTok does that” and you’d be right, but those don't do it nearly as well. Below is an example of what background removal/replacement looks like in Broadcast
James Trew / Engadget
You can definitely see where the effect isn’t perfect around my hair, but in general it works really well. I did notice that it struggled with the headrest on my chair, with the image flickering around that area as I moved around, but again, it’s leagues above what you might hope for from a free chat app.
In total, there are five effects for cameras. Three for your background: Blur, removal and replace (images or videos work!). Then there is Auto Frame, which crops in and then keeps your face in the center. Last, but not least, is Video noise removal — this is apt for recording in low light and your camera starts to go all grainy. You can see some examples in the picture below. Two were taken using a GoPro and the other pair are from an old DSLR repurposed as a webcam.
If you have good lighting, you probably won’t need the noise removal tool. But if your camera struggles with anything other than an abundance of photons, this filter can help. Again, as with the audio tools, be aware that more is not always better. I found with the effect applied at 100 percent you get the tell-tale “smoothing” that will tell your viewers that you’re papering over the cracks.
James Trew / Engadget
The background tools, on the other hand, are a little more forgiving. The blur tool does a good job at obscuring the items behind you, but there’s a very unnatural contrast between you, in focus, and literally anything else in shot. This is similar to how iPhone “portrait” mode photos often appear. The background is blurred, but the subject looks unnatural as there’s almost no transition between foreground and background.
This is, of course, a benefit when you want to remove the background completely. With this filter, NVIDIA does a surprisingly good job of isolating you and deleting everything else. If you want to stream via OBS (or similar) with a game or video on screen while you play in the corner, this is the effect you want and no green screen required.
James Trew / Engadget
As seen above, NVIDIA does a much better job of removing the background than, say, Zoom or Google Meet does. There’s almost no bleed around hair or hands meaning your background rarely pokes through and spoils the green-screen illusion. Background replacement is essentially an extension of this effect with the option of choosing your own image or video to replace whatever happens to be behind you.
The last of the video effects is Auto-Frame which, as the name suggests, keeps you locked into the center of your shot. To do this, the video crops in a little bit and it uses the extra space to gently shift the video from left to right or vice versa as you move around. The movement isn’t jarring, it looks pretty smooth, and is a good way to make sure you don’t accidentally drift off to the side if you are a fidgeter (like me) and don’t keep still.
You can also combine these effects if you want. Auto-Frame can be stacked with either noise removal or one of the background effects for example, or you could use remove background with noise removal applied. Right now you can only stack two though, but that’s probably a good thing as all three at the same time might be a bit much.
The camera suite of effects is currently in beta, and NVIDIA has been adding new features and improving performance at a rapid pace. Version 1.2 in May integrated Broadcast into popular streaming apps like OBS, while the latest 1.3 version released in September added support for many virtual camera apps and made combining video effects much more viable by reducing their VRAM usage by 40 percent.
While performance and memory usage is never going to be an issue for those using Broadcast for their chats, one-PC streamers who are using the app while gaming will be grateful for the additional frames. Perhaps, one day, we can dare to dream about many other features such as multi-mic support (with different effects) live transcribing for closed captions and even smart detection of licensed music so your streams don’t flag a DMCA violation.
Yahoo has officially exited China, shutting down all of its services in the communist country as of Monday, Nov. 1. From a report: "In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo's suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1," a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet. We thank our users for their support," the rep added. Yahoo's exit from China coincided with the enactment of the country's Personal Information Protection Law, a privacy law that went into effect Nov. 1 that imposes new data-collection restrictions on tech companies, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A 71-year-old man was out on a hike in Cumbria, England with his two dogs when he had a seizure and collapsed. And his dogs — a black Labrador and a golden retriever — somehow managed to team up and coordinate a rescue plan. — Read the rest
Wes Craven's horror hit "Scream" just turned 25, and we're still not ready to let this franchise go. The solution? Revive the story by adding a fifth movie to the saga, continuing the journey of the much-beloved characters. The long-surviving (and thoroughly exhausted) Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is back for round five, and she's more than ready to take another Ghostface down. When the first film debuted back in 1996, the thrill of a teenage slasher was enough to attract attention, but the movie's lasting impact is owed to its meta-storytelling and overall cleverness. So while we don't quite know what to expect from the fifth installment, also titled "Scream," we can expect the trademark self-awareness to continue.
Which has naturally led people to wonder — might we see the return of our favorite movie geek, Randy Meeks?
"I'm Deader Than A Doornail."
Jamie Kennedy's Randy Meeks stole the show in 1996's "Scream," when he first rattled off his famous rules for surviving a horror movie. Randy was a standout addition to an already incredible cast of characters, guiding our expectations by laying down some crucial movie knowledge. In the end, this made his tragic "exit" in "Scream 2" all the more difficult to watch. So with the fifth movie now on the way, folks are clamoring for answers. Could Randy possibly make his return?
Kennedy was asked this very question in an interview with Collider, and seemed to agree with the popular fan response — it just wouldn't make sense. He said, "It's like, what rule can you break here?" Reflecting on Randy's legacy and whether he could ever return, Kennedy added:
"You love him so much, even more because you lost him so early in his life and his career and his rants. So if he came back, does it negate what you felt? For all purposes, I know I'm dead. I'm not involved in Scream 5. I'm deader than a doornail, and I was killed in the 90s."
Turns out, being an expert on all things horror movie related doesn't mean the rules don't apply. Randy's knowledge wasn't enough to save him back in '97 and isn't enough to bring him back to life. Or is it?
Breaking Horror Rules With Randy
While Kennedy was fairly staunch about Randy's death being final, he couldn't help but consider the insane, alternate possibilities. In an interview for the 25th anniversary of "Scream," Kennedy told ScreenRant that there were definitely options to explain Randy's death, should the filmmakers decide on his return. According to Kennedy:
"[Randy] could have said, 'Listen, I got to fake my death because I didn't want to go out like that.' He had to go into hiding, but then that's really cold of him to leave his friends on the hook as he knows the rules. But, maybe he gave them ideas throughout the next couple of movies, subliminally. He did help with the videotape. He could have went to the mountain and become a bearded, crazy person or he could be involved in the murder somehow and he could be a bad guy."
Ultimately, Kennedy threw his weight behind the Randy Meeks we already know and love — horror fanatic and "love slave" to Sidney Prescott. While he could always be a bearded, crazed lunatic who faked his death two decades ago, Kennedy added, "I want to believe he's a good guy."
With or without Randy, the show must go on — and familiar faces will lead the way. Beloved final girl Sidney Prescott is returning to Woodsboro 25 years after the brutal murder streak that altered her life forever. She's joined by her reliable murder solving partners, Gale Weathers and Dewey Riley, and naturally, the Woodsboro survivors will be pushed to unmask yet another Ghostface, when a new killer dons the mask and targets a group of teenagers. The first trailer already teases the carnage.
In July, researchers from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) captured incredible images of multiple 19th century shipwrecks they discovered at the bottom of Lake Superior off the coast of Grand Marais, Michigan. The three ships—the Michigan, the Frank N. — Read the rest
Hot, wet, and muggy—truly the worst summer weather to endure. It's even worse when you turn to your air conditioner for help, only to find it isn't doing anything to alleviate the heat. Or, maybe it is, but you're worried you'll feel the pain when your energy bill arrives at the end of the month.
Did everybody have a nice Halloween? Sad to see my favorite holiday in the rear-view but I actually had a really lovely holiday week this year. Stretching from my 4th Annual Vincent Price Dinner last Tuesday (see photos here if you missed it) through getting to see one of my new favorite old movies on the big screen on Saturday night -- 1973's Messiah of Evil, thanks to the ongoing "Folk Horror" series at Anthology, which I posted about previously here -- and then up to the actual day itself, yesterday, where I had myself a little binge. I watched seven horror films I'd never seen before; there's even a Twitter thread...
But who wants it to end there? Not me. Halloween all year long! Or at least through this afternoon, anyway? We'll go little steps. I thought instead of just letting the movies I watched yesterday evaporate into the ether like so much I watch these days I'd rank them! Give you a little idea, out of the seven what's worth your time, if any are new to you too. Well I say "seven" but I actually can't speak of the seventh film yet -- that one isn't out until December. Treated myself to a brand new screener to end the evil night with. That movie is called The Scary of Sixty-First and it will hit the Quad Cinema here in NYC on December 17th before hitting some more theaters as well as streaming platforms the following week. Here's its trailer:
I will have more to say on that one closer to its release. But that leaves six movies --Six! Wah ah ah! -- that I watched otherwise yesterday, all of them old things that I can totally share my crusty thoughts on. So let's! Ranked from worst to best...
My Halloween 2021 Watches
6. Rattlers (1976) -- Listen, this was absolutely watchable crap. But crap nonetheless. It was the perfect first film for my fest though -- nothing better than watching some garbage as you wake up on Halloween morning. And this was one hundred percent worth it for the scene where a camping couple's tent suddenly fills with the titular snakes when even more suddenly out of nowhere a soldier with a machine gun bursts into said same tent and starts firing the gun everywhere. Absolute nonsense.
5. 13 Ghosts (1960) -- I was tempted to do a double-feature of this with its 2001 remake because I've never actually seen that one either, but more than that impulse I wanted to veer wildly from genre to genre and that instinct won out. I'll save the 2001 film for next year (I am definitely doing this again). Anyway this is one of the William Castle movies I've somehow never seen and it's totally fun -- I enjoyed every movie I chose -- but it probably lost something not seeing it with an audience, and not having the red-blue Ghost-finder glasses that Castle created as a go-along gimmick.
4. Pledge Night (1990) -- A jaw-droppingly sleazy frat-boy possession slasher that I can't believe I hadn't seen before - so so gay, this thing. There's a long hazing sequence involving frat boys in jockstraps carrying cherries from one side of the room to the other clenched between their butt-cheeks, for god's sake -- talk about appealing to my interests! It's also outrageously nasty in its violence -- I don't know where this movie came from or where it's been all these years but I can sense it becoming a standard in my house.
3. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972) -- I needed a giallo at this point in the night and this beauty's about as giallo as they come. There's a half-dozen indistinguishable blonde women, a sleazy dude in a robe that's way way way too short, an extended fashion shoot sequence, a red-caped man-woman-killer with a gigantic golden dagger (James Wan had to have been referencing this with his murder weapon in Malignant, I think). Everything to scratch your giallo itch! There's also a flooded castle at the end, and god I love a flooded castle.
2. Black Moon (1975) -- I reviewed this movie called Mayday earlier this year at Tribeca that stars Grace Van Patton, Mia Goth, Juliette Lewis, and Theodore Pellerin (see the trailer here) that's about this girl (Van Patten) who, shades of Alice, falls into a strange world where Men and Women are literally at war with one another, and I wish I'd seen Louis Malle's Black Moon beforehand because talk about some similar riffs. Black Moon's a better film -- it is made by Louis Malle -- but the similarities are striking. Anyway I love a weird dreamy Alice in Wonderland riff always, literally always, and Malle's movie has Joe Dallesandro wearing golden jewelry while fighting an eagle with a sword, so winner.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1978) -- As soon as I saw and fell in love with Czech director Juraj Herz's film The Creamator on Criterion Channel a few months back -- see it! -- I wanted to see more of (read: all of) Herz's films, but no more than his 1978 riff on Beauty and the Beast, because if there's one thing I love more than weird riffs on Alice in Wonderland it's weird riffs on Beauty and the Beast. And this one did not disappoint. Nightmarish, baroque, surreal, beautiful, this was so very up my alley. It's not the greatest Beauty and the Beast film ever made -- nothing will ever top Jean Cocteau's 1946 film -- but it's probably second best for sure. And come on...
Okay we should probably take a moment to recognize what the Beast looks like in human form in this movie, cuz goddamn pic.twitter.com/oeroc2HSUv
Refurb.me tracks and predicts the availability of refurbished Apple gadgets. Based on its past data for laptops (including M1 MacBooks), the new MacBook Pro is likely to turn up in the refurb aisle a couple of weeks into January. Why refurb? — Read the rest
Spooky season might be behind us now, but man, it’s still pretty scary out there. My inbox sits at 576 unread emails, and in another tab I’m browsing heated clothes airers; things that I now realise are frighteningly expensive. But it’s not just mundane things in real life that give me goosebumps, it now extends to virtual white goods as well.
Right, so, there’s this fridge in Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy and no matter how many times I close it, it won’t stay shut. At first it was funny, but it’s since morphed from a sly chuckle to a howl of agony. My relationship with the game is like that thing Yoda from Star Wars says, “Fear leads to the Dark Side”. Well, I’m almost there, let me tell you.
A man dressed like blackpill hero "The Joker" injured 17 people on a Tokyo subway train on Sunday, reports the BBC. Some were stabbed, according to eyewitnesses, and others hurt when he threw acid or accellerant around the carriage and then set it on fire. — Read the rest
A Massachusetts school board meeting went the ugly way they typically seem to these days. A courageous young woman was explaining that while CIS white students may not experience discrimination, gay students sure do.
Angry adults started to shout.
A gay Franklin High School student bravely shared her experiences during a public meeting.
Brian Hsu (20) of Irvine, California was formally charged with criminal interference with a flight crew and assault for allegedly breaking the face bones of an American Airlines flight attendant.
Hsu, sitting in first class, allegedly became enraged when a flight attendant bumped into him. — Read the rest
Microsoft has finalized the next and final version of Windows 10, with the public release of Windows 10 November 2021 Update expected in the coming days. The November 2021 Update or version 21H2 brings performance and security improvements along with bug fixes.
Similar to the last few feature updates delivered to Windows 10, version 21H2 will also share a common core operating system and an identical set of system files with versions 2004, 20H2, and 21H1. As a result, the upcoming version 21H2 be an easier and faster update to deal with for those who are running Windows 10 versions 2004, 20H2, or the latest 21H1.
Last week, Microsoft confirmed that Build 19044.1288 is expected to be the final build of Windows 10 version 21H2, which means this Windows 10 feature update is now as bug-free as it could get before the public release. The Windows maker will continue to deliver cumulative updates to deal with any last-minute bugs.
If you don't want to wait for the public release, here is how to install Windows 10 v21H2 (November 2021 Update) right away
You can now install Windows 10 November 2021 Update by signing up with the Windows Insider program. Don't worry, the feature update is largely bug-free now since the company has been testing version 21H2 for quite some time now and has also released its final build. However, early adoption isn't recommended for non-pro users, who we continue to advise shouldn't install a new Windows 10 feature update for at least three months after its public release.
To get Windows 10 November 2021 Update, you need to sign up for the Windows Insider Program. Here is the complete process:
Step 1: Click on the Start menu icon.
Step 2: Open the Settings app.
Step 3: Click on the Update & Security menu.
Step 4: Open the Windows Insider Program tab and click on the "Get started" button. You need to register for the Windows Insider Program by linking your Microsoft or Azure Active Directory account email.
Step 5: In the next screen, choose "Release Preview Channel" to join the slowest and most stable channel of the Insider Program. Make sure you select the right channel if you don't want to get into testing new things and just want to install Windows 10 21H2.
Step 6: Click the "Confirm" button and then the "Restart Now" button to begin the process.
Step 7: After your device is up again, go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program to ensure you are on the "Release Preview Channel."
Step 8: Just like getting any other regular update:
Head over to Settings.
Click on Update & Security > Windows Update.
Click on the Check for updates button.
If your device is eligible for Windows 11 upgrade, choose the Stay on Windows 10 for now option.
Click the Download and install button under the "Feature update to Windows 10, version 21H2" section.
Click on the Restart Now button to complete the process.
After upgrading to this upcoming Windows 10 feature update, you can opt out of the Insider program to stop receiving previews.
Follow these steps:
Open Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program.
Toggle off the switch under Stop getting preview builds.
Hello /Film readers. I'm Anya Stanley, and I like movies -- the darker, the better. In the past five years, I've fooled an outlet or two into paying me to talk movies, and /Film is the latest mark to take my film opinions seriously. When the invite came down to round up my top 15 movies, I was a little daunted. I've actively avoided this for said five years, because I knew my list would refuse to pick a lane, and would defy any attempts to corral and rank them in any way that makes sense. How do you weigh "Mouse Hunt," which has a rodent taking a dump on Christopher Walken's forehead, against Paul Thomas Anderson's ruthless take on an Upton Sinclair epic? I'll tell you how.
You write up each favorite as it comes to you, take a deep breath, and number each entry in the exact sequential order you wrote it. F*** it, we'll do it live.
Before the hate mail comes rolling in because my top 15 doesn't match the AFI Top 100's, let it be known that these are my personal favorite movies ever made, the ones I've watched so many times I can discern them from another room, from hearing just two seconds of the score. I'm not saying "The Honeymoon Killers" is better than "Annie Hall" -- actually, yeah, I'll commit to that one. The list is not definitive but for the uninitiated, there exist some fine additions to your watchlist.
15. Don't Look Now
This movie, originally, was spoiled for me. That's right, the shocking ending (that I won't give away here) of Nicolas Roeg's non-giallo giallo (it's not Italian, and it breaks a few "rules" of the genre but captures the vibe, regardless) was divulged to me in "Bravo's Scariest Movie Moments" miniseries back in 2004; "Don't Look Now" was number 22, just behind the head-shaking PTSD nightmares of "Jacob's Ladder." Even knowing the fate of grieving father John Baxter as he processes his daughter's death, I couldn't pull myself away from its surreal, beautifully composed imagery and the quiet menace that sits in the edges of each scene. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie each get an assist for their disciplined performances, tethering the night terrors with emotional weight and making that infamous ending that much more powerful when it hits.
14. I Shot Andy Warhol
When I'm asked who my favorite actor is, I wouldn't get nearly as many confused faces when I say Lili Taylor if people would just watch "I Shot Andy Warhol." It makes sense on some level -- Mary Harron's depiction of both radical feminist Valerie Solanas and pop artist Andy Warhol is anything but marketable. Warhol, in this film, isn't especially venomous, and Solanas -- visionary as she is -- isn't prodigious enough for the art world she rubbed up against. Harron penetrates the sensationalist aspects of the story (that make up the title) to make a feature-length study of its main players, and Lili Taylor as well as Jared Harris as Warhol are more than up to the task. I keep coming back to this movie for Taylor and for Harron's magnificent showcase of a time and culture that had its warts as well as its beauty marks.
13. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times
Are the bodies stacking the result of a family curse or a blade-wielding maniac? Barbara Bouchet knows, and she knows it won't stop until seven lives are claimed. "The Red Queen Kills Seven Times" enjoys several carved-out places in my heart: in addition to being a favorite movie of all time for me, Emilio Miraglia's 1972 murder mystery is also my favorite Italian giallo of all time and features my most-beloved giallo score, by the great Bruno Nicolai. The movie's fashion-forward costumes (and, of course, the Red Queen's magnificent cape) would be at the top of a corresponding list were it not for Mario Bava's "Blood and Black Lace," but if there's one thing you'll get in a Miraglia picture, it's a hip aesthetic (for further viewing, see the director's prior effort "The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave." Shot like the film print was going directly to The Louvre with Alberto Spagnoli's stunning photography, I think I watch this one so much because it seems comfortable with its hysteria, measuring it out in bonkers sequences, and making for a controlled descent into a woman's madness.
12. The Honeymoon Killers
"The Honeymoon Killers" was Leonard Kastle's only foray into feature film directing, so the tale takes on even more of a lightning-in-a-bottle insistence than it did previously. Based loosely on the story of the Lonely-Hearts Killers Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, the movie's power lies in its stripped-down presentation of its unempathetic subjects gliding through innocent lives like sharks through water. Production was so threadbare (made on less than $200K) that its stars, Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco (themselves fledgling stage actors), did their own hair and makeup. Shot in a documentary-like black and white, nothing is glorified in "The Honeymoon Killers" -- not its killers, not the deaths, not even the victims whose vulnerability is just as exploitable to Kastle as to the con artists. It's mean and it's plain, and most of the time, that's all I need for a story that I can connect with.
Note: For those with iron stomachs, Fatih Akin's 2019 German horror drama "The Golden Glove" brings a similar stark sensibility to serial killer Fritz Honka.
11. Manhunter
I was once called a gatekeeper for saying that "The Silence of the Lambs" is not a horror movie, though it is another runner-up in this list of favorites, behind its fellow crime thriller, Michael Mann's arresting, high-style "Manhunter," both films partially concerning one Dr. Hannibal Lecktor. Lecktor, behind bars, assists FBI profiler William Graham (William Petersen) in identifying and locating the Tooth Fairy Killer, played by a gently menacing Tom Noonan (for a similar yet more peripheral turn from Noonan, see Ti West's "The House of the Devil"). Psst -- don't tell the horror fans I said this, but Brian Cox is the more interesting Lecktor than Anthony Hopkins of "Lambs."
10. Eraserhead
I argued with no less than four friends about which David Lynch movie is my personal favorite, such is the enigmatic nature of Lynch's works -- can't make heads or tails of them at times, but boy is it transfixing. Ultimately, I went with the movie in his filmography that has since become considered one of the early "midnight movies," and because any movie list of mine feels naked without something of his. Set in a world that defies explanation, with characters set adrift in their own misery, framed like a series of cough syrup-induced hallucinations, "Eraserhead" is the most formally presented nightmare I've ever watched.
9. Spider Baby
"Spider Baby," or "The Maddest Story Ever Told," is hard to hype to people. It's a family movie, really, but a Jack Hill family movie. And a Jack Hill family movie will have just as much dysfunction as any Texas Chain Saw Massacre clan. This is the story of the Merrye family, who suffer from a condition that mentally regresses them back to infancy once they reach age 12 or so. So the story is filled with adults who act childish, and the adults caught in their webs as the childishness progresses to savagery. I borrowed the DVD from my boyfriend years ago and if we ever break up then he'll just have to cut his losses with this one and make peace with the empty slot on his shelf where "Spider Baby" once sat.
8. There Will Be Blood
Most of the analyses and praises written of Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" make much of Daniel Day Lewis' powerhouse performance as the insatiable oilman Daniel Plainview, the immaculately shadowed cinematography of Robert Elswit (probably the same reason why I'm so transfixed by the stark visuals of Dan Gilroy's "Nightcrawler," an honorable mention behind this list), or Johnny Greenwood's ominous orchestral score that sits at unsettling odds with the period setting. But the reason "Blood" sits on my list is because of its final monologue, in which Lewis unleashes one of the finest trash-talking thrashings ever committed to film. First telling poor, pathetic Eli Sunday that his land is worthless, then revealing that Eli was usurped by his own brother, and then dancing a verbal jig about his nemesis before taking his God complex to the highest (lowest) level. You'll never devastate someone as soundly as Plainview does here:
Stop crying, you sniveling ass. Stop your nonsense. You're just the afterbirth, Eli...that slithered out on your mother's filth. They should have put you in a glass jar on the mantelpiece. Where were you when Paul was suckling at his mother's teat? Where were you? Who was nursing you, poor Eli? One of Bandy's sows? That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It's gone. It's had. You lose....
7. The Shining
"The Shining" is one of those movies that finds fans even in people who don't consider themselves horror fans. It's also one of the more accessible Stanley Kubrick films, tapping into a universal set of fears that you don't need a degree in film studies to connect with. The unsettling tale of a family's consumption by a snowbound lodge is based on the bestselling Stephen King novel of the same name, which I read at age 14 after seeing the movie and I still got spooked enough to sleep with a light on -- so it's never too late to catch up on the horror lit classics. The Room 237 scene, in which young Danny Torrance ventures into a forbidden room in the haunted Overlook Hotel, gave me nightmares for weeks, but the movie transfixes me as much as it repulses. Anyway, I got over the nightmares -- now I have an Overlook pattern rug and regularly play the movie in the background while I work.
That bear costume is still creepy, though.
6. The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter
Written and directed by Lau Kar-leung, "The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter" begins with a gorgeously staged opening battle sequence between general Yueng Yip, his seven sons, and an army of men under general Pun Mei. One by one, the general and his bloodline are wiped out in a treacherous, bloody ambush that takes all but two of Yeung's sons. The sixth son returns home a shell of himself, too traumatized and unstable to take the lead and avenge the family. The fifth son takes shelter in a remote monastery and eventually convinces the monk leadership to allow him to train as a monk, soon developing the eight diagram pole fighting technique. When the chance comes for revenge, will he break his nonviolent, noninterventionist Buddhist vows? The whole bloody affair stars Gordon Liu in yet another collaboration with Lau; the dynamic duo had previously made martial arts movie magic with "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin" and "Executioners of Shaolin," among others. Do you dig the scene in Tarantino's "Kill Bill" where Uma Thurman's yellow-clad Bride single-handedly fends off the Crazy 88s? Then this movie's got something special for you: a nine-minute finale at a set piece featuring seven stacked coffins, skin avulsion, ripped-out teeth and, in the spirit of Joe Bob Briggs' Drive-In Totals, "Piggyback Fu."
5. The Taking Of Pelham 123
Adapted by Peter Stone from Morton Freedberg's '73 novel of the same name, "The Taking of Pelham 123" is one of my all-time favorite thrillers for two reasons: its grit, and its cast. A basic story of the armed hijacking of a train and the negotiations that follow, "Pelham 123" is a perfect picture of the '70s Big Apple under Mayors John Lindsay and Abe Beame. Four years after David Serpico would blow the whistle on NYPD corruption and knowing David Berkowitz's killing spree would begin just two years later, "Pelham 123" stands alongside the more celebrated films of the era -- the Coppola pictures, the Scorsese pictures, the Altman pictures -- but with an added layer of grime and authenticity that the prestige of New Hollywood simply couldn't give outside of the odd John G. Avildsen movie. Plus it features one of the greatest "gotcha" endings of all time.
4. Mouse Hunt
In my Letterboxd review, I call this "A masterpiece of grim slapstick from the minds of unstable men," and I meant it. Ostensibly a family movie but truly a turf battle to the death betwixt man and mouse, "Mouse Hunt" doesn't seem like an outlier in Gore Verbinski's career -- this is the man who made both "A Cure for Wellness," "The Ring" remake, and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, after all. But alongside a firing-on-all-cylinders Adam Rifkin, who would go on to write "Small Soldiers" a year later and raunchy comedy "Detroit Rock City" a year after that, Verbinski crafts a timeless comedy with a host of memorable characters and a cheeky streak of adult humor mixed in with the classic Hollywood slapstick.
3. Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
At once a women-in-prison film and a rape-revenge picture, the only sequel on my top 15 favorites list hails from '70s Japan. "Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41" is the second film in the visually phenomenal Female Prisoner Scorpion series from the Toei company. Under the continued direction of Shunya Ito, the straightforward storytelling of "Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion" gives way to something more fantastic in its follow-up, as the steely-eyed Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji) finds herself in confinement once again after dispatching with the assailants responsible for the death of her family in the first film. Here, Nami has ascended to icon status among her fellow prisoners, and so Inspector Goda (Fumio Watanabe) orders her gang rape by the guards. Matsushima escapes custody along with several other women convicts, and now it's a girl gang movie. The vengeance they take upon the guards, upon sexually aggressive men, and Goda himself make up the rest of the runtime, which includes an armed standoff between the convicts and the lawmen. A favorite moment has a guard taking a shovel to the back of the head, spraying absurd amounts of bright red blood; Ito holds the scene in suspension for a good five seconds, similar to the tableaus presented in 2019 Swedish horror "Koko-Di, Koko-Da." A beautiful film with a top-shelf lead in Meiko Kaji.
2. The Night Child
I was gifted "The Night Child" (AKA "Together Forever," AKA "The Cursed Medallion") from the Amazon Prime algorithm gods, who saw me puttering around their giallo section for a few months and recommended this feverish gem. There's a lot going on (too much, I'm sure some contemporary critics argued) in this Italian horror picture, but within it is demonic possession, a dead mom, an absent dad, an obsession with a painting, a bewitching score by Stelvio Cipriani, and a hauntingly poetic ending. If you're wondering whether the movie is pretty, you should know that director Massimo Dallamano fiddled around with a camera lens or two as cinematographer (under the name Jack Dalmas) for two Sergio Leone works -- whether in life or death, every player on Dallamano's stage is photographed intimately, finding art in the nooks and crannies around death and darkness. When I realized that I had watched "The Night Child" at least 10 times and that it wouldn't stick around the streaming service forever, I panic-bought a cheap DVD release of the film for the cost of a cup of coffee. I have never, before or since, seen such a bleached-out, truncated transfer of a movie, which is a shame because this movie should have had a few boutique restoration releases by now.
I hope you're listening, Arrow Video.
1. The Night Of The Hunter
It's a hard world for little things. Directed by Charles Laughton (the actor's only feature director credit) and starring a barrel-chested Robert Mitchum at his most terrifying until "Cape Fear" would come along in 1962, "The Night of the Hunter" is one of the closest homegrown iterations we'll get of a Guillermo del Toro fable precisely because of one shared premise, seen through every frame: the world is a terrifying place for children, full of dangers that escape the radar of adults. Laughton adapts Davis Grubb's novel of the same name, based loosely upon the true story of family-murdering con man Harry Powers. In the film, Powers (Mitchum), both traveling minister and serial killer, marries the widow of a former cellmate of his to find a hidden cache of robbery money. Her two children know where it is, but they're rightfully suspicious. One of my most beloved shots ever has Harry Powell chasing the fleeing children up a cellar staircase, his arms outstretched like Frankenstein's monster. Both expressionistic and pastoral, the film kicks into high gear when Lillian Gish squares off with Mitchum in a third-act waltz of career-high performances.
If you look up the word "ambitious" in the dictionary, you might see a picture of Chloé Zhao next to it. After winning the 2021 Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for her film "Nomadland," she helmed one of the biggest Marvel movies yet with "Eternals." Now, the director wants to take on Dracula, one of the most repeatedly adapted, well-known characters in the Western canon, and she wants to turn his story into a sci-fi western.
A Sci-Fi Bloodsucker With A Cowboy Twist?
In an interview promoting "Eternals" with /Film's Hoai-Tran Bui, Zhao revealed that she's keen to stick to the supernatural.
"Let's just say I am not leaving the immortality sandbox anytime soon," the director said, though she was mum on any further details. That leaves us to guess what kind of movie she could possibly make. When the news broke that Zhao was onboard with Universal to direct an adaptation of "Dracula," she revealed she was fascinated by characters who lived on "society's fringes":
"I've always been fascinated by vampires and the concept of the Other they embody. I'm very excited to work with Donna, Peter, and the team at Universal to reimagine such a beloved character."
When I hear "vampire" and "western" in the same sentence, the first thing to pop into my head is Ana Lily Amirpour's 2014 film "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night," about a skateboarding female vampire in "Bad City," a fictionalized ghost town in Iran. There are some sillier cowboy vampires, like the 2011 Karl Urban movie "Priest" or the strip-club monstrosities in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's "From Dusk Till Dawn," but Amirpour's vision feels more in line with both "Dracula" and Zhao's themes.
A Double Dose Of Dracula
Zhao will write, direct, and produce the "Dracula" movie for Universal Pictures through her Highwayman production company. While making "Dracula" into a western doesn't seem too far-fetched, the sci-fi element is really a unique twist. Maybe instead of vampirism being a curse or a mysterious illness, it's some kind of manufactured thing. Maybe vampires are androids, similar to the replicants in "Blade Runner," but with a little genuine bloodthirst. The TV series "Westworld" nailed the whole "science fiction western" thing, so throwing vampires in the mix is doable.
Dracula was created by author Bram Stoker in 1897 in a novel of the same name. It's been adapted for both television and film countless times, but Zhao clearly wants to make this version her own. Universal has been trying to reinvigorate the Universal Monsters franchise after the colossal failure of the Tom Cruise "Mummy" movie in 2017, and have had some luck with Leigh Whannell's "The Invisible Man." There are a ton of projects in the works, including a Ryan Gosling Wolfman movie, Paul Feig's "Dark Army," "The Monster Mash," an untitled project from "Malignant" director James Wan, and an untitled monster movie from Lord & Miller starring Channing Tatum.
There is also another Dracula movie in the works over at Blumhouse, helmed by "Destroyer" director Karyn Kusama. We get to live in a world where two incredible talented filmmakers are getting to make their own versions of one of the greatest vampire stories of all time, which is pretty fantastic. Here's hoping that studios continue to see the merit in hiring unique voices to give their twist on old formulas, because it's about time for some the Dracula story to get some fresh blood.
In the wake of the tragic accident on the set of the independent western film "Rust" which resulted in cinematographer Halyna Hutchins' death, producer/star Alec Baldwin says he has "doubt" that production on the movie will resume.
Someone from TMZ was among a group of paparazzi that followed Baldwin and his family this past weekend and questioned the actor about the project's future, and Baldwin, who has become the public face of this incident after unwittingly firing the shot that killed Hutchins and injured the movie's director, said he did not think it would be getting underway again. "No, I doubt it," Baldwin answered, "I sincerely doubt it."
There's still an investigation in progress as to exactly how the chain of safety could have been so thoroughly eroded on the set of "Rust," and questions of criminal and civil liability still loom large.
Baldwin Supports Limiting Firearms On Sets
Baldwin told TMZ he is "extremely interested" in "an ongoing effort to limit firearms" during productions of filmed entertainment. "Some new measures have to take place," he said. "Rubber guns, plastic guns, no real armaments on the set. That's not for me to decide ... I'm not an expert in this field. So whatever other people decide is the best way to go, in terms of protecting people's safety on film sets, I'm all in favor of – I will cooperate with that in any way that I can."
Meanwhile, the shockwaves of the fatal incident continue to reverberate throughout Hollywood and beyond. Los Angeles city councilman Paul Koretz had already introduced a resolution to support legislation that bans live guns and ammunition on film sets, and it now looks as if that type of legislation is moving forward. According to Deadline, California Senator Dave Cortese has received input from the state's lawyer's office on a draft of a bill that would help concretize the reforms that people have been calling for in the wake of Hutchins' death.
Cortese, who is the chair of the Senate Labor Committee, said the planned legislation would ban firearms capable of shooting live ammunition of any kind – although there could be exceptions for things like on-set security and/or actual law enforcement who have a presence on the sets. Cortese knows there are plenty of safety regulations currently in place to prevent the type of accident that occurred on the set of "Rust," but obviously those safeguards fell apart and this new legislation aims to make sure that doesn't happen again. The goal, Cortese said, is to make sure "that everybody uniformly is complying to the same rules and knows that there are legal consequences if they don't." If this bill passes, those consequences would be civil in nature – i.e. monetary fines – instead of criminal. The plan, according to the Senator, is to "take the industry's best practices and put them into law."
PC pioneer Michael Dell is set to cap his climb back to the top of the computing world on Monday with one of the largest corporate spin-offs. Dell Technologies will shed its 81 percent stake in publicly traded VMware, creating an independent software company with a stock market value of nearly $64 billion. Dell's remaining hardware operations have an implied value of $33 billion, based on its latest share price. From a report: The transaction, first disclosed in April, completes an eight-year saga in which the Texan entrepreneur turned his $3.8 billion interest in an out-of-favor PC maker into a personal stake in a broader data center hardware and software empire worth $40 billion. Beginning with the buyout of his PC company, Dell went on to devour server and storage company EMC for $67 billion before taking the group public again in 2018. Along the way, he fought heated battles with dissident shareholders over claims that he bought Dell on the cheap and used complex financial engineering in the EMC deal to short-change investors. Silver Lake, the Silicon Valley private equity group that helped mastermind the dealmaking, will be left with stakes in Dell and VMware worth $11 billion.
It's been over 10 long years since star Danny Trejo -- best known for his appearances in "From Dusk Till Dawn" and the "Machete" movies -- made a brief but memorable impression in "Breaking Bad." For those who may be unfamiliar with the show, the classic crime drama series dealt with Bryan Cranston's Walter White getting into the drug business in New Mexico and expanding his reach all the way to the Mexican cartels, to dire consequences. Trejo appears a couple of times in the second and third seasons as a cartel drug runner, and the new movie "American Sicario" certainly appears to serve as a return to similarly potent territory for the Mexican-American actor. This time, however, Trejo will be portraying the father of a partner of the film's main drug lord.
/Film can exclusively show you a new trailer for the upcoming crime thriller, which you can check out below.
American Sicario Trailer
"Nothing more important than family," the trailer intones in its opening seconds. This, as it happens, sums up the defining aspect of Erik Vasquez's moral code as a formidable drug lord in Mexico, who never killed women and children and became known as "the American Sicario."
"American Sicario" is based on the true story of how Vasquez (aka La Munequita, which translates to "Little Doll") rose to prominence from modest beginnings in Dallas, Texas to become an integral member of the infamous Feliz Cartel in Mexico who would lead them into an extended and costly drug war.
The film is directed by RJ Collins, who will be making his directorial debut, and written by Rich Ronat ("The Rising Hawk," the Nicolas Cage-starring "Grand Isle," "While We Sleep"). Rated R for violence, pervasive language, drug use, and some sexual material, the footage teases a bloody and violent fight for power that embroils the entire cast. Speaking of which, "American Sicario" stars Philippe A. Haddad as the notorious Erik Vasquez and also includes Maurice Compte, Maya Stojan, Jalen Moore, Johnny Rey Diaz, and Danny Trejo. The film will be made available in theaters, on demand, and digital on December 10, 2021. Check out the synopsis and the poster below.
The story of the rise and fall of the first American-born drug lord in Mexico, this tale of power, money, greed and betrayal amongst rival members of the drug cartels finds American gangster Erik Vasquez (Philippe A. Haddad) scheming to become the top dog in the Mexican underworld, only to find himself making enemies out of both the powerful cartels and his own allies.
Thanksgiving’s coming around again, and this year, we have no excuses. For many, one of the (very) few upsides of the pandemic was that it provided a solid excuse to avoid toxic family holiday gatherings—and if a reluctance to spend time with your relatives is entirely alien to you, congratulations.
