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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a multi-platform cloud-based endpoint protection product that comprises multiple capabilities and features. There are many moving parts that make up Defender for Endpoint, and many of these parts require network connectivity. Disconnected and air-gapped environments can pose a challenge to deploying and configuring Defender for Endpoint. When proxies are added into the mix, interesting things can happen.  This article is a part of a series of articles discussing Defender for Endpoint and disconnected environments. The other articles can be found here and here.

 

Recipe for a successful deployment 

To deploy Defender for Endpoint in a disconnected environment, you’ll need to keep in mind the following items: 

 

1. Involve the correct parties. You’ll need representatives from your networking team, security team and infrastructure teams as well as leadership decision making power to implement changes in the disconnected environment. 
2. Choose the appropriate Defender for Endpoint proxy configuration for your environment.  
   • WinHTTP 
     • Due to the system level nature of the WinHTTP configuration no additional configuration should be required. All outbound network traffic will continue through the proxy as expected if the proxy accepts unauthenticated network traffic. 
   • WinINET 
     • If your devices use user based WinINET there are some additional items to consider. This configuration is not ideal as Defender for Endpoint should always communicate with the URLs outlined here, regardless of whether a user is logged in or not. WinINET configuration often requires an authenticated proxy, which is not compatible with Defender for Endpoint in a proxy scenario. 
   • Static Proxy Configuration 
     • Using a registry-based static proxy (either configured through Group Policy or Registry directly). This is often the preferred choice in disconnected environments as EDR and Microsoft Defender Antivirus can be configured to use different proxies and/or be configured standalone from the user configuration. For more information, see Configure the proxy server manually using a registry-based static proxy | Microsoft Learn. 
3. All of the regional URLs listed in the mde-urls-commercial.xlsx (live.com) must be added to your allow list in your proxy and should not have TLS inspection on the network traffic. Microsoft does certificate pinning to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. If TLS inspection is enabled this will break the connectivity between the endpoint and the cloud service.  
4. For the URLs listed in the spreadsheet, the proxy must accept unauthenticated traffic. The Defender for Endpoint services run as LocalSystem and LocalService. If a user is logged in, Defender for Endpoint traffic will be authenticated with the user (in the case of WinINET). 
5. Simplify the communications between the endpoint and the proxy server. Avoid double-NAT and multiple hops. Testing connectivity can be accomplished in step 6. 
   • Make sure your disconnected environment is successfully receiving updates. This includes Certification Revocation Lists and Root Certificate Authority changes, which are often an afterthought. For more information, see Configure Trusted Roots and Disallowed Certificates | Microsoft Learn 
6. Use the Defender for Endpoint client analyzer. This will help diagnose connectivity issues. For more information, see Download the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint client analyzer | Microsoft Learn 

 

Scenarios: Defender for Endpoint behind proxies 

Here are some scenarios to consider when deploying Defender for Endpoint in a disconnected environment. These scenarios will help you prepare and understand how Defender for Endpoint will behave depending on the proxy configuration used in your environment. 

 

Workstation with Defender for Endpoint and a logged in user 

 

Authenticated Proxy 

• Defender for Endpoint will function as expected provided: 
  • A user remains in a logged in state; effectively establishing an authentication flow through the proxy. 
  • The proxy is not performing TLS inspection on the Defender for Endpoint URLs listed in the mde-urls-commercial.xlsx (live.com). 
  • The proxy has bypassed URLs in the URL list to allow unauthenticated traffic. 

 

Unauthenticated Proxy 

• Defender for Endpoint will function as expected if you follow the guidance in “Recipe for successful deployment”. 

 

Workstation with Defender for Endpoint and no logged in user 

 

Authenticated Proxy 

• Defender for Endpoint will not function as expected because: 
  • There is no authentication context provided to the proxy. Once a user logs in, the local cache will update the URL endpoints, however this may cause delays in awareness of potential issues. 
  • Live Response, Network Scanner, cloud-delivered protection, Endpoint Detection and Response data, Command and Control functionalities, Automated Investigation and Response will not function as expected. 
  • Security/Product Updates won’t work unless there is an offline update solution available, such as WSUS. 
  • Microsoft Defender Antivirus will continue to work as expected, though it will only report centrally once network connection is re-established.  
  • Because an authenticated proxy requires user authentication, many of the connected services in Defender for Endpoint won't work as expected until the user on a device is able to authenticate to the proxy. 

 

Unauthenticated Proxy 

• Defender for Endpoint will function as expected if you follow the guidance in “Recipe for successful deployment”. 

 

Server with Defender for Endpoint 

 

Authenticated Proxy 

• Defender for Endpoint will not function as expected because: 
  • There is no authentication context provided to the proxy. Once a user logs in, the local cache will update the URL endpoints, however this may cause delays in the timeline updating with endpoint detection and response information in the security.microsoft.com portal. It will also prevent Live Response sessions from initializing and have a potentially negative impact on the Network Scanner, cloud-delivered protection, command and control, auto-investigation and response, and product update features of the product. 
  • This scenario will cause an inconsistent Defender for Endpoint onboarding experience: 
    • The server being onboarded may never appear as onboarded in the portal. 
    • The server may be onboarded because:  
      • A WinINET proxy configuration was applied to the user performing the onboarding. 
      • This often occurs during proof-of-concept testing as user profile will be providing the authentication context to the proxy. This often leads to confusion as the proof-of-concept deployment is successful but deployment to production is not. 
      • The server will lose access to the URLs once the user context is no longer applied to perform proxy authentication. 

 

Unauthenticated Proxy 

• Defender for Endpoint will work as expected but may have some issues. It should be noted that these issues are typical of disconnected or air gapped environments: 
  • Multiple gateways between subnets or double-NAT. The more complex a networking environment is the more difficult it will be to diagnose connectivity issues. Keep it simple and provide the most direct path to the URL list as possible. 
  • Proxies blocking external access from those disconnected or air gapped environments. You will need to add URLs to your proxy allow list. 
  • TLS inspection breaking the connection – don’t do this for the URLs in the list. 
  • Disconnected environment not receiving Windows Updates correctly. Defender for Endpoint is a cloud endpoint protection solution, and your endpoints need to be up to date to work properly. The disconnected environment should have an update strategy in place. 
  • Check step 6 of the “Recipe for a successful deployment,” this step calls out additional update configurations required in disconnected environments. 

 

These scenarios should provide you an overview of the different configurations required when you are deploying Microsoft Defender for Endpoint in a disconnected environment using a proxy to access the internet. 

 

References 

• Configure device proxy and Internet connection settings | Microsoft Learn 
• Dynamic Defender for Endpoint URLs list for commercial tenants.xlsx | Office Live 
• Download the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint client analyzer | Microsoft Learn 
• Configure the proxy server manually using a registry-based static proxy | Microsoft Learn 

After months of hype and memes, "M3GAN" has officially danced and slashed her way into theaters. Despite her debut being given a PG-13 rating, the film shows just how brutal of a killer this advanced A.I. doll can be. Seriously, you need to see what she does to a school bully in this film. It's pretty intense!

Of course, "M3GAN" is far from the only killer doll that has graced the silver screen over the years. She isn't even the first to be equipped with terrifyingly sentient artificial intelligence. While I watched her bombastic debut in the theater, I couldn't help but wonder how she would stack up against the plethora of other deadly dolls in horror. After careful consideration and some surprisingly difficult decision-making (sorry, "Annabelle" fans), I've created a series of hypothetical opponents our beloved M3GAN could be the best suited to face in a fight to the death. Some of them wouldn't stand a chance against her might, while others could actually hold their own. The question now is simple — which fate could your favorite killer doll face in a battle against M3GAN?

Talky Tina - The Twilight Zone

It probably isn't a stretch to call Talky Tina the first mainstream killer doll. Debuting in 1963 on the "Twilight Zone" episode "Living Doll," the mystery surrounding whether she truly was conscious hung over the story until its final moments. We never get to see the doll move around on her own accord, but the last-minute reveal that she truly was alive the whole time is still pretty well-constructed. All of the killer dolls owe their existence to Talky Tina. M3GAN may be the moment, but Tina is the grandmother of them all.

Unfortunately, Talky Tina is, well, all talk and no action. This was likely due to the fact that "The Twilight Zone" was airing on broadcast television in the early 1960s, but the worst she could do is lay herself on the ground for someone to trip over. It's no contest whether M3GAN could beat her in a fight or not — Talky Tina would absolutely get the cord ripped out of her if she crossed paths with the killer A.I.

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: HIGH

The Hartwickes' Collection - Dolls

Predating a specific famous franchise on this list by one year, Stuart Gordon's "Dolls" arguably helped bring the killer doll trope into the public consciousness. These titular toys, in particular, are interesting in the sense that they don't really exist without their makers, toymakers Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke (Guy Rolfe and Hilary Mason). Although they contain the "living" souls of criminals and other naughty people, they do not act on their own free will — rather, they are commanded to become alive when the Hartwickes want them to be.

This technicality is why M3GAN has a pretty decent chance of defeating these pint-sized killers. She'll probably be able to take out the Hartwickes fairly quickly, and even if they use their doll army against her, they're probably too fragile compared to her freakishly brute strength. Once the Hartwickes are disposed of, though, their dolls become pretty useless.

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: MEDIUM TO HIGH

Blade - Puppet Master

When you think of the "Puppet Master" franchise, there's no way you don't think about Blade. By far the most recognizable of Andre Toulon's infamous creations, he may have proven himself to be a formidable force throughout the franchise's 15 (15!!) entries. Not only were his hands replaced with sharp weaponry, but he's also pretty damn smart when it comes to planning out his attacks. It just so happens, unfortunately, that this particular doll is possessed by a cold-blooded Nazi.

And if M3GAN is as advanced and knowledgeable as she says she is, she'll know that Nazis deserve some pretty brutal treatment. Thankfully for her, Blade's stature makes him the perfect easy target. Sure, he might be pretty damn smart and sneaky when killing humans, but M3GAN is no human. Even with his skill, she'll always be two steps in front of him, making for a swift and merciless dispatch.

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: HIGH

Dolly Dearest - Dolly Dearest

Some killer dolls are possessed by evil spirits, but few of them actually extend their influence onto their owners. That's not the case with the vengeful spirit of Sanzia, which has taken up residence in a doll named Dolly Dearest. The doll by itself is pretty standard for killer doll movies, but the potent supernatural element and ability to corrupt minds are what make it so memorable.

Perhaps that is why, out of all the spirit-possessed dolls on this list, Dolly Dearest stands the best chance against M3GAN. It's not clear whether Sanzia is able to control technology, but it's fair to assume its influence could cause a fair amount of damage. At the same time, however, Dolly Dearest itself isn't exactly the most agile of assailants, so she could be able to overpower the porcelain doll just on strength. Unfortunately, she's still got that whole devil child possession thing to overcome, and that might be too much for her to handle.

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: LOW

Baby Oopsy Daisy - Demonic Toys

Baby Oopsy Daisy is usually considered a clone of a particular doll we'll discuss towards the end of this investigation, and if I'm being honest, I can kind of see why. As part of Full Moon's gaggle of "Demonic Toys," this baby doll is foul-mouthed and has murder on the brain. After all, he's got to serve his master, The Kid, in his quest for ... world domination, I think? He's got the whole antichrist thing going, but he's not actually that clear on what he wants. Well, anyways, the point is that Baby Oopsy Daisy has become a favorite villain among Full Moon fans.

Unfortunately, he also kind of sucks. If his main purpose is to kill, he does a pretty terrible job at it, which is why M3GAN would have no problem disposing of him. If I'm being realistic, she can probably get him to shut up in one swift punch, shove, or stab. Honestly? Good for her. That baby is annoying.

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: HIGH

Buddi - Child's Play (2019)

If you saw this entry on the list, you probably know how I'm capping off this investigation. However, let's focus on Buddi for the moment. While he might not be as fondly remembered as his original counterpart, we can't deny that this doll can do some serious damage. He's able to hack into pretty much anything, including vehicles and other dangerous equipment, and can even set off an entire army of robotic toys to kill civilians.

No matter your opinions on the 2019 "Child's Play," you can't deny that he'd be a formidable foe against M3GAN. The two of them essentially have the same abilities, which could prove both beneficial and problematic if they were to ever cross paths. If there was one thing that M3GAN has that Buddi doesn't, however, it's better mobility. Her ability to move around her arms and legs in a human-like way will give her an advantage in hand-to-hand combat, but Buddi's equivalence in technological prowess might make this a difficult fight to judge.

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: MEDIUM

Young-Hee - Squid Game

Okay, look. I know what you're thinking — is Young-hee even technically a doll? After all, she towers over every player on the show and doesn't exactly move around as other killer dolls do. Believe me, I've debated on whether or not to include her. Based on her porcelain-like appearance and overall design, I believe that yes, she should be considered a doll in this investigation.

And if I'm being honest, her inclusion in this piece helps make the odds fairer. M3GAN is a very smart and powerful doll, but she can't be invincible. She can't let the relative ease of this investigation get to her, so she needs an opponent that has a strong chance of taking her down. Young-hee's precise recording and aiming technology could strike M3GAN down before the smaller doll has the opportunity to fight. We saw that Young-hee's controls were able to shoot players at just the right place on their heads for an instant kill, so who's to say they can't do the same for M3GAN's circuits?

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: LOW

Chucky - Child's Play Franchise

Yes, I have been teasing this for the entire investigation, but we've finally arrived at the doll you've probably all been waiting for. Chucky really needs no introduction — after all, we all know the sort of demented things he's capable of in his doll form. Throughout the three decades we've followed that little rascal, he always figures out a way to surprise us.

It really is no surprise, then, that he'd be the most formidable foe against our new favorite A.I. doll. Their beef has already been well-documented online, so if a real fight between these two were to be had, it would probably be the most anticipated out of all of these in this investigation. It would be a true battle of the generations — old school versus new school — but who would actually win between them? That's difficult to predict, as both Chucky and M3GAN can be brutal, skilled, and smart killers.

All of this is to say that, in order for us to truly know who would win, Universal and Blumhouse need to make a crossover film. Come on, they could have their own "Freddy vs. Jason," wise-cracking and all! Jason Blum, if you're reading this, hit me up if you want to hear my ideas for a Chucky vs. M3GAN smackdown. I'm not giving them away for free here!

Likelihood of M3GAN winning: INCONCLUSIVE

Read this next: Horror Movies That Make Us Root For The Villain

The post How M3GAN Stacks Up Against Horror's Favorite Killer Dolls: An Investigation appeared first on /Film.

An airheaded anchorman, a perpetually upbeat elf, an evil Lego minifigure — Will Ferrell has found a variety of colorful outlets for his comedy over the years. Ever since he first graced the stage of "Saturday Night Live's" iconic studio 8H back in 1995, Ferrell's distinctly fluid, improv-heavy, and hilariously infectious brand of humor has helped him successfully make the jump from small-screen funnyman to one of the biggest and most bankable movie stars working today.

It's a bit more than that, though. Ferrell's comedic talents have attracted some unlikely comrades over the years — people like John C. Reilly and Mark Wahlberg —  and in turn, they have helped create a new comedy sub-genre that's unafraid to keep things fast and loose when it comes to off-script gags and adlibs. With riskier, more thoughtful entries scattered through his résumé, he's not one to rest on his laurels either. 

All this, we know. But which Will Ferrell film is the best? While everyone will undoubtedly have their favorite, we've done our best to compile a list of the finest Ferrell offerings spanning roughly the past two decades. So whip up a bowl of Buddy the Elf's signature spaghetti and maple syrup, pour yourself a Ron Burgundy-sized glass of scotch, and enjoy our ranking of the 12 best Will Ferrell movies of all time.

Honorable Mention: Saturday Night Live

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention Will Ferrell's larger-than-life tenure on "Saturday Night Live." Joining the long-running live comedy sketch show in 1995, Ferrell went on to spend the next seven years appearing in a variety of sketches, many of which pushed the boundaries of what mainstream comedy could be, regardless of the consequences. A few of these odder skits played to near silence as bemused audiences struggled to catch up with Ferrell's dry and silly style. Still, others have become bonafide hall of fame classics that will forever pop up in anniversary shows and celebratory "Saturday Night Live" retrospectives.

From Harry Caray asking Jeff Goldblum if he'd "eat the moon if it were made of ribs" and the gloriously manic nature of the Evil Boss to the furious yelling of "Get off the shed," a bumbling George W. Bush, and of course, a little more cowbell, Ferrell packed his "SNL" years with enough memorable moments to fill multiple "best of" DVDs. Often with the help of "Saturday Night Live" head writer and future collaborator and filmmaker Adam McKay, Ferrell used his time on the show to plant the seeds of a career and a distinct style of comedy that we all know and love today.

Spirited

What do you do when you've already tried your hand at most avenues of comedy? A Christmas movie, of course. Although Will Ferrell had already ticked this one off of his list with 2003's "Elf" (and done such a good job at it, it's since become an annual holiday favorite), a pairing with another quippy comedy star proved to be too alluring to pass up.

Released on Apple TV+ in 2022, "Spirited" matches Ferrell with Ryan Reynolds, surprisingly, for the first time in a live-action movie. Together, they put an all-singing, all-dancing new spin on Charles Dickens' familiar festive story "A Christmas Carol," that never-fail seasonal tale that crops up more frequently than those unwanted pairs of socks in your stocking on Christmas morning.

In the spirit world, we meet Present (Ferrell), who is the Ghost of Christmas Present, a kind-hearted specter who works with his fellow spooks, Past (Sunita Mani) and Future (Tracy Morgan), to help redeem one unfortunate soul every holiday season. Cue Clint Briggs (Reynolds), a particularly cynical and extremely sarcastic media guy who's deemed by the ghosts upstairs to be "irredeemable." One job away from retirement and spurred on by the challenge, Present sets his sights on proving that Clint can be saved via the familiar "Christmas Carol" method with a few sing-a-long moments thrown in for good measure. It's no "Elf," but it's a fun jaunt packed with earworms.

Everything Must Go

Just when we thought we had Will Ferrell pegged, he switches things up with "Everything Must Go," a film that tries its best to deliver everything you wouldn't expect from a Ferrell vehicle. Based on the Raymond Carver short story "Why Don't You Dance?" this quiet and unexpectedly affecting tale follows a man whose life has hit rock bottom and chronicles his attempts at realigning his narrative, quelling his demons, and setting things back on track.

Ferrell stars as Nick, a man with alcoholism who suffers a relapse and subsequently loses his job. Unfortunately, that's not all he's lost, either. After returning home, he finds all of his personal belongings placed on his front lawn by his estranged wife, who has since recovered from her own alcohol abuse disorder. Unable to endure her partner's return to the bottle and its spiraling consequences, this unseen character moves out of the family home, leaving Nick locked out and forced to re-evaluate his life choices as his quiet suburban neighborhood sees all of his dirty laundry (and sofa, records, and pretty much everything else he owns) laid out in public.

It's a stark and unforgiving portrayal of a guy who has let his vices overtake the important things in his life. While it contains the occasional gag, Ferrell seems dedicated to delivering something that actively plays against the persona he's spent years building. Rarely smiling, this may not be the Ferrell we all know, but the risks he takes are worth admiring.

The Lego Movie

"The Lego Movie" has no right to be as fun and downright funny as it is. Before its release, it's arguably fair to say that nobody had particularly high expectations. After all, toys and board games adapted for film are rarely worthwhile. Thankfully (and rather surprisingly), this 2014 release is the exception to the rule, serving up an entertaining and genuinely funny take on a world familiar to most people, thanks to childhood days spent building everything and nothing from colorful little bricks.

Written and directed by "21 Jump Street" duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller, "The Lego Movie" stars Chris Pratt as just another piece living in the Lego city of Bricksburg. However, he soon discovers that he's destined for big things and is whisked away on a high-flying adventure to stop a maniacal overlord from stopping creativity in its tracks by gluing this Lego world together with a mysterious weapon known only as the "Kragle." Spoilers: It's Krazy Glue.

Packing their Lego ensemble with an all-star cast that sees Elizabeth Banks, Charlie Day, Will Arnett, Morgan Freeman, and Alison Brie join Pratt on his brick-shaped journey, Will Ferrell as the film's villainous Lord Business is the cherry on the top. Utilizing his best over-the-top bad guy chops, he delivers a performance that's as necessarily silly as this film's concept. Perfect.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

It's a catch-22. A film defies lackluster box office receipts to become an unlikely cult hit that's quoted by fans worldwide. Pretty soon, demand grows for a sequel. But how do you recapture the spontaneous magic of something that wasn't properly understood, appreciated, or expected in the first place? That was the case with "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues," Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay's much-called-for follow-up to their 2004 sleeper hit, "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy."

However, while the former benefited from a lack of expectation, flying under the radar while its audience discovered it instead of the other way around, this 2013 sequel had plenty of eyes on it and a lot to live up to. As a result, McKay and Ferrell, along with a cast including Steve Carrell as grinning weatherman Brick Tamlan, David Koechner's crass sports guy Champ Kind, and Paul Rudd as sleazy/suave reporter Brian Fantana, throw everything at the wall in a movie that provides plenty of laughs despite an all over the place plot.

Honestly, it was never going to beat the original. Now that pretty much all of its stars are far more well known, there's a distinct "cat's out of the bag" feel to this cult comedy classic redux. Still, it has its moments, even if it does leave a little "be careful what you wish for" aftertaste.

Zoolander

If we were going to fit "Zoolander" into a subgenre of comedy, it likely wouldn't be "Will Ferrell movies." This superb send-up of the fashion world is very much a Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson outing and may even be the pinnacle of the pair's multiple big-screen jaunts. That said, the fact that "Zoolander" has made it onto our list of the greatest Will Ferrell movies makes it a testament to the power and presence of the character he created for this gloriously silly and quotable feature.

Taking aim at the fashion industry, the film stars Stiller as Derek Zoolander, a male model who's unwittingly drawn into an overly complex plot to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Meanwhile, he's preoccupied with staying at the top of his game and besting golden-haired newcomer Hansel, played by Wilson. Behind the chaos is crazy-eyed fashion mogul Mugatu (Ferrell), who comes complete with platinum white poodle hair and a demanding diva demeanor that would give any cold-hearted fashionista a run for their money.

Stiller originally wanted comedian Andy Dick to play the film's big bad, but the "NewsRadio" actor was unavailable at the time of "Zoolander"'s shoot. Thankfully, Ferrell, fresh from "SNL," was ready and able to step into the role, and as Stiller later told Esquire, "Now it's impossible for me to picture anybody but Will doing it." Us, too.

Old School

Released in 2003, "Old School" is one of the key moments in Will Ferrell's still-thriving career. Made back-to-back with mega hits "Elf" and "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," this film helped lay the groundwork that allowed him to continue making comedy movies as a bankable star.

Directed by Todd Phillips, the film capitalized on the resurgence of college and high school comedies, subgenres that began with "Animal House" in 1978 and returned in the wake of the 1999 gross-out hit "American Pie." In "Old School," we follow a trio of down-and-out 30-somethings led by Luke Wilson's Mitch and Vince Vaughn's Bernard who, fed up with their mundane and directionless lives, decide to relive their youth by starting their own college fraternity. Completing the trio is Ferrell as Frank "The Tank" Ricard, a beer-bong-loving, frequently naked party fanatic who goes all-in on the plan. 

Despite receiving mediocre reviews on its initial release (film critic Roger Ebert gave it just one star, describing the movie as "slapped together by director Todd Phillips." Ouch!), "Old School" has since defied its tepid critical reception to become a fan favorite.

Blades Of Glory

There was a brief moment in the late noughties when Hollywood had a winning formula on their hands. "What if Will Ferrell was a rally car driver?" or "What if Will Ferrell was a figure skater" or maybe "What if Will Ferrell was a wannabe basketball player?" While this "What if Will Ferrell was (insert bizarre career choice here)?" tactic capitalized on his surge in popularity, not all of these concepts stood the test of time. (We're looking at you, "Semi-Pro.") 2007's "Blades of Glory" may have been the final time this formula showed a return on investment as far as audiences were concerned.

Paired with a fresh from "Napoleon Dynamite" Jon Heder, Ferrell plays a loud, washed-up professional figure skater forced to join forces with his timid enemy to take advantage of a loophole that'll allow both to compete in the big leagues once more. In addition to giving us some solid quotable lines ("Nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative!" explains Ferrell's character, Chazz Michael Michaels, dissecting the Black Eyed Peas track "My Humps"), it's also one of the first movies post "Talladega Nights" that cashed in on the success that came with pairing Ferrell with unlikely co-stars. 

The Other Guys

Continuing the trend of placing Ferrell alongside an unlikely counterpart, 2010's "The Other Guys" stuck him opposite Mark Wahlberg, a star who, up until this point, was predominately known for serious roles. The pairing proved to be a hit, with Ferrell's innocently ridiculous office cop, Allen Gamble, forced to face the action head-on alongside Wahlberg's action-lover, Terry Hoitz. Together, they have a whale of a time sending up the buddy cop genre as they work to stop a white-collar criminal played by Steve Coogan.

While Ferrell has been paired with many actors throughout his career, "The Other Guys" has the added benefit of director Adam McKay, a filmmaker whose presence, control, and influence shouldn't go unnoticed. In the wake of adlib-heavy hits like "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," it seemed Hollywood thought it could cast Ferrell in anything and strike comedy gold. Unfortunately, 2018's "Holmes & Watson" proved there was more to the formula than that — particularly the need for someone like McKay to structure the chaos.

"The Other Guys" also marks McKay's first steps into more sociopolitical storytelling, using a broad Will Ferrell-fronted comedy to shine a light on the crimes of the elite. McKay's next movie was "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues," but since then, he hasn't felt the need to return to his goofy roots.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby

Remember when we referenced the magic formula for Will Ferrell movies? Well, maybe this is where it started. According to multiple sources (including ESPN), the pitch for "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" consisted of just six words: "Will Ferrell as a NASCAR driver." Brief, yes, but it was enough to get the film a green light. Combine this with Ferrell's first pairing with a left-field partner with a similarly deranged sense of humor (in this case, the primarily serious actor John C. Reilly), and you have one of the brightest and funniest offerings in Ferrell's oeuvre so far.

Ferrell plays the titular Ricky Bobby, a big, bold, and pretty dumb NASCAR driver, whose life is turned upside down when a new European rival (Sacha Baron Cohen) lands on the scene, and his partner and best pal, Cal Naughton Jr. (Reilly), speeds ahead of him in the popularity race. That's the general plot, but you'd be forgiven for letting it go largely unnoticed. This big silly comedy is full of so many quotable (and often improvised) lines and moments that you forget that you're watching something with an actual script. Its success probably led others to feel they could achieve the same results with a similar looseness, but that didn't pan out for all who tried.

Elf

It's hard to imagine now, but during the production of "Elf in late 2002 and early 2003, Will Ferrell thought that his decision to do the holiday film might end his career. "There were moments where I was running around in an elf suit in New York City thinking, 'Oh boy. Well, it was fun while it lasted,'" he told The Dan Patrick Show in 2018, adding, "This will either be a Christmas classic or one of my last movies." Thankfully, "Elf" turned out to be the former — a sold hit that went on to earn over $220 million against its $33 million budget and emerge as a seasonal classic.

If you've gotten this far, we're sure that you already know the plot of "Elf," but if you're one of the few Scrooges that hasn't seen it, it follows Buddy (Ferrell), a human baby who accidentally makes his way to the North Pole and is subsequently raised as an elf in Santa's workshop. Realizing he's not quite the same as his pals (and considerably taller and worse at making toys), Buddy takes it upon himself to head to Manhattan to track down his real father, played by a grumpy James Caan. All in all, it's more fun than a sugar rush.

Step Brothers

Considering the childish nature of Will Ferrell's comedy, which was emphasized during his collaboration with John C. Reilly in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," it was only a matter of time before he went the whole hog and played a fully-fledged man-child. That's exactly what audiences got with 2008's wholly stupid and hugely enjoyable "Step Brothers," a film in which Ferrell and Reilly revel in playing Brennan and Dale, feuding siblings that accidentally become best friends while trying to ruin each other's lives.

With their chemistry evident in "Talladega Nights," Adam McKay and Ferrell knew they wanted to work with Reilly again. McKay later explained, "The idea of two 40-year-olds still living at home and refusing to grow up felt hilarious and also disturbing." Also returning was their reliance on improv-heavy humor and adlibbed lines, with McKay frequently yelling alternate dialogue for his stars to try.

While Ferrell and Reilly are skilled in this style, it took time for their co-stars, Mary Steenburgen, who plays Brennan's (Ferrell) mother, and Richard Jenkins, who plays Dale's (Reilly) father, to get into the swing of things. "Richard and I looked at each other like, 'Holy crap, how does one do this?'" Steenburgen later admitted. "I love comedy and improvising, but we're talking about savants. Adam loved to scream off-camera obscenities for me to say. The filthier the things that came out of my mouth, the more Adam loved it."

Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy

When it comes to Will Ferrell's characters, there's no presence bigger than Ron Burgundy. Lover of scotch, owner of many leatherbound books, slave to the teleprompter (for better or for worse), and loyal friend to Baxter the dog, this master of the newsroom is one of Ferrell's few cinematic creations that has enjoyed a second life off the movie screen, appearing on podcasts, live events, and even talk shows. As America's answer to Alan Partridge, this crass, uncouth, and larger-than-life fictional media personality has a life and backstory of his own.

Character aside, the sleeper hit success of 2004's "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" is largely to blame for introducing Ferrell to many as a movie star instead of a bit player or "Saturday Night Live" cast member. Developing a huge second life in its home video release, audiences found the movie on their terms, adopting its quotable dialogue and quickly falling in love with Ron and his weirdly fun world. "Without exaggeration, we were laughing every single day on set," admitted director Adam McKay, speaking to movie magazine Total Film during the film's 15th birthday. "The nice thing about Burgundy is he can age. We could do a third 'Anchorman' when Ferrell's 60 if there's a demand for it." Ron Burgundy as an old geezer? Here's hoping McKay makes good on that promise.

Read this next: Adam Sandler's 14 Best Roles Ranked

The post The 12 Best Will Ferrell Movies, Ranked appeared first on /Film.

Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out how ancient Romans were able to make concrete that's survived for two millennia. "Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities," reports MIT News. From the report: For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete's durability was based on one ingredient: pozzolanic material such as volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples. This specific kind of ash was even shipped all across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time. Under closer examination, these ancient samples also contain small, distinctive, millimeter-scale bright white mineral features, which have been long recognized as a ubiquitous component of Roman concretes. These white chunks, often referred to as "lime clasts," originate from lime, another key component of the ancient concrete mix. Previously disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials, the new study suggests that these tiny lime clasts gave the concrete a previously unrecognized self-healing capability. [...] Upon further characterization of these lime clasts, using high-resolution multiscale imaging and chemical mapping techniques [...], the researchers gained new insights into the potential functionality of these lime clasts. Historically, it had been assumed that when lime was incorporated into Roman concrete, it was first combined with water to form a highly reactive paste-like material, in a process known as slaking. But this process alone could not account for the presence of the lime clasts. [MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering, Adam Masic] wondered: "Was it possible that the Romans might have actually directly used lime in its more reactive form, known as quicklime?" Studying samples of this ancient concrete, he and his team determined that the white inclusions were, indeed, made out of various forms of calcium carbonate. And spectroscopic examination provided clues that these had been formed at extreme temperatures, as would be expected from the exothermic reaction produced by using quicklime instead of, or in addition to, the slaked lime in the mixture. Hot mixing, the team has now concluded, was actually the key to the super-durable nature. "The benefits of hot mixing are twofold," Masic says. "First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction." During the hot mixing process, the lime clasts develop a characteristically brittle nanoparticulate architecture, creating an easily fractured and reactive calcium source, which, as the team proposed, could provide a critical self-healing functionality. As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread. Previous support for this hypothesis was found through the examination of other Roman concrete samples that exhibited calcite-filled cracks. According to MIT, the team is working to commercialize their modified cement material. The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bela Lugosi never sought to be a horror actor, but Hollywood in the 1930s wasn't kind. Lugosi began acting professionally at the age of 20, appearing in several traveling operetta productions in his native Hungary. After a stint in the army, Lugosi began a career in film acting in the 1910s under the stage name Arisztid Olt, one of the cooler stage names one might encounter, and most assuredly the name of a Goth band somewhere in the world. Lugosi eventually fled Hungary, acted in Germany for a spell, then wound up taking a ship to the United States where he would land the role of a lifetime, playing Count Dracula in a celebrated stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous novel. 

While touring with "Dracula," he caught the attention of Universal talent scouts, and he was to be cast in Tod Browning's 1931 film adaptation of the play/novel (it's sort of a mix). The rest is history. Bela Lugosi officially taught the world how vampires look and behave. No one has played a more impressive Dracula since. 

Lugosi's Hungarian accent, however, and association with horror movies left him typecast as creatures and mad scientists. Part of him did enjoy the role of Dracula, but part of him resented it. This arc of Lugosi's career is detailed in the 2010 biography "The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi" by Arthur Lenning. The same book also featured a 1935 interview with the legendary actor as to his ethos when it came to acting. He didn't believe in vampires or monsters himself, but when playing Dracula, well, he had to believe in himself. 

Practicing In The Mirror

In "The Immortal Count," Lenning wanted to explode a popular misrepresentation of Lugosi's habit of getting into character. Certain journalists at the time describe Lugosi's practice of standing in front of a mirror in full costume, repeating the phrase "I am Dracula" with different intonations. The myth was that Lugosi shouted that line as if to insist to himself that he was indeed Dracula. This gave rise to rumors that Lugosi had taken his Stanislavski reading too seriously, and that he was "one of those" method adherents that were a pain to work with. 

In truth, Lugosi did not shout the line but was merely rehearsing it. 

In 1935, Lugosi expanded on the practice. He was indeed using the "I am Dracula" ritual to get into character, but it was more to put himself in the headspace of a vampire. The actor knew that Count Dracula was a wild, broad fantasy creature, but Dracula himself certainly didn't think so. Lugosi said:

"Whether one thinks of films like 'Dracula' as 'hokum' or not does not alter the fact; the horror actor must believe in his part. [...] I am not saying that I personally take seriously these vampires and monsters as such. I am saying that one must take them seriously when one is portraying. In playing Dracula, I have to work myself up into believing that he is real, to ascribe to myself the motives and emotions that such a character would feel. For a time I become Dracula -- not merely an actor playing at being a vampire."

Bringing Dignity

With that statement, Lugosi was attempting a very ambitious task: to bring a great deal of dignity to horror. 

Horror actors, it seems, were getting a bum rap in Hollywood, and Lugosi wanted to state explicitly that playing Dracula was a "proper" acting job. Horror actors aren't mere ghouls with an easy gig, but real professionals who take their characters -- fantastical or not -- as seriously as any dramatic actor. Lugosi didn't want to take a role that didn't challenge him. Indeed, the legend goes that, after the success of "Dracula," Universal head Carl Laemmle, Jr. approached Lugosi about the possibility of playing the undead monster in an adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Lugosi refused, feeling that Frankenstein's monster, in having no speaking lines, could have been played by just about anyone. 

The role ended up going to British actor Boris Karloff, and the two have been associated with horror ever since. Although he resented being typecast as Dracula in other monster roles, Lugosi's face, or a rendition of it, still graces lunchboxes and Halloween costumes to this day. Almost every screen vampire, and certainly every screen Dracula, could be seen as a derivation of Lugosi's performance. Lugosi could have been known for much more, had Hollywood given him the chance, but his most famous role is certainly one of the most memorable in cinema history. 

Lugosi continued to act until his death in 1956. Many studios refused to hire him after he became addicted to doctor-prescribed pain medicine for his sciatica. His final film roles were dramatized in Tim Burton's 1994 film "Ed Wood," the eponymous director of "Plan 9 from Outer Space." Martin Landau won an Academy Award for playing Lugosi. It seems that his legacy lives on.

Read this next: The 20 Greatest Human Villains In Movie History

The post Bela Lugosi Thought This Was The Key To Successful Horror Acting appeared first on /Film.

Sergio Leone might be most famous for his Man With No Name trilogy, but (arguably) his best Western didn't star Clint Eastwood. "Once Upon A Time In The West" was a landmark late-era Western for cinephiles. It's rougher and crueler than his previous Spaghetti Westerns and features two extremely intimidating adversaries who spend the whole runtime trying to prove which one is the sweatiest, baddest gunslinger in the West. 

On one side is the black hat, the bad guy of the picture, named Frank and played by Henry Fonda who, up to this point, was known as a good guy charmer in Hollywood. He eschews that image right up front when he guns down a kid in cold blood. Imagine Tom Hanks showing up in a Western today where he straight up wastes a child in his introduction. 

On the other side is Harmonica, played by Charles Bronson. He's soft-spoken and lets his guns do the talking for him. There's an air of a man you do not want to mess with to Bronson in this picture and it turns out that very leading man tone is what Nicolas Cage had in his mind when approaching his newest project "The Old Way." 

'Bronson Don't Give A S***'

Talking with our own Jeremy Smith, Cage was asked about his influences for the character of Colton Briggs, and Cage responded instantly with the name "Charles Bronson." In fact, he repeated it two more times to send the message home.

"Charles Bronson, Charles Bronson, and Charles Bronson. I think 'Once Upon a Time in the West' might even be my favorite movie. I think his performance as Harmonica is arguably one of my top five favorite performances ever because he was able to, with [director Sergio] Leone, convey so much and do so little, and it looked like he meant it. He's acting opposite Henry Fonda, who is a hugely lauded film actor, with 'Young Mr. Lincoln' and 'The Grapes of Wrath' and all that -– even 'The Oxbow Incident.' But Bronson don't give a s***. I mean, just like, 'Well, you've got a Purple Heart, and you almost got shot down in a B-52. You're on set. You're looking in his eyes, and you mean it.' I grew up watching that. When I got invited to do Colton Briggs, yeah, he was always on my mind. I don't know if I got close to that, but that's certainly what I was aspiring to."

Cage is a big pop culture fan and has been very vocal about his love of comic books (he not only notoriously nearly played Superman once, he even named his son Kal-El) and movies, so it shouldn't be a surprise that he'd sail right past Clint Eastwood and go for the meatier performance from Bronson. 

Read this next: The 20 Best Westerns Of All Time

The post How Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West Influenced Nicolas Cage [Exclusive] appeared first on /Film.

"This movie could never be made today" is an increasingly familiar refrain in our fractious times. As our society grows more diverse, and we reckon with the racism and sexism of less enlightened eras, some crotchety members of the old guard have a tendency to throw up their hands and lament that an assortment of classic films with perceived problematic content would never make it past development in modern Hollywood.

In certain, screamingly obvious cases, this is a very good thing. D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation," a virulently racist movie that celebrates the Ku Klux Klan's heroic lynching of a freed slave would be a one-way ticket to infamy (or a three-picture deal with The Daily Wire). The mere notion of Walt Disney's "Song of the South" would probably result in the creator being ousted from his own company (and maybe offered a gig as the chief of animation at The Daily Wire). John Hughes' "Sixteen Candles," with its creepy date-rape jokes and wantonly racist depiction of foreign exchange student Long Duk Dong, would've ended the writer-director's studio career (resulting in The Daily Wire's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" starring Rob Schneider and Robert Davi).

Movies aggressively trafficking in hateful stereotypes do not, thankfully, fare well in today's discourse. Satire, however, is a different matter altogether. It depends on who's telling the joke, but there is still room for a sharply observed comedy about cultural differences and skewed attitudes. Which brings us to the elephant that's refused to leave the room for several decades: could Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles" be made today?

Quentin Tarantino has thoughts.

Where Is The Line In 2023?

In an interview with Deadline timed to the release of his hugely entertaining and plenty infuriating "Cinema Speculation," Tarantino balked at the assertion that certain movies would never make it before cameras now that media has become more culturally diverse, and thus resistant to insensitive portrayals of people less white than Pat Boone. After discussing his reaction to "Blazing Saddles," which he saw during its 1974 theatrical release with his mother and her Black boyfriend (they all thought it was hilarious), and being asked if the culture could bear its take-no-prisoners racial and ethnic humor today, Tarantino told Deadline:

"Well, by asking questions like 'Could that movie be made today,' that's like you're — I don't believe that stuff. Because by putting out that hypothetical, you're kind of suggesting that it couldn't be, and then people just kind of assume that they can't be and then that's what happens."

Tarantino has been a lightning rod in the past due to his repeated use of the n-word in films like "Pulp Fiction," "Jackie Brown," and "Django Unchained." He's been taken to task for this by Spike Lee and defended by Samuel L. Jackson (who's worked with both directors multiple times). He is, to quote the late, great Charlie Murphy, a habitual line-stepper. But a good-faith reading of his work reveals him to be a moral, socially conscious softie at heart. Aside from "Reservoir Dogs" and "The Hateful Eight," he digs happy endings (yes, "Jackie Brown" closes on a melancholy note, but at least our heroes get away clean).

And yet I can't help but feel, in terms of what he can get away with content-wise, he's been grandfathered into the 21st century. If he made "Pulp Fiction" today, as a white man with that screenplay, no matter how brilliant, he'd better be prepared to cast Gina Carano as Mia Wallace. So I'm not sure he's a reliable authority on what can pass cultural muster in 2022.

Maybe we should ask the guy who directed "Blazing Saddles" if "Blazing Saddles" could be made today.

The Camptown Ladies?

In a 2017 interview with the BBC, Mel Brooks sounded a downbeat, if oddly contradictory note about the modern state of comedy:

"It's OK not to hurt the feelings of various tribes and groups," he said. "However, it's not good for comedy. Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks. It's the lecherous little elf whispering in the king's ear, telling the truth about human behavior."

Brooks goes on to say that he would never make light of the Holocaust, but what of slavery? Early in the film, Clevon Little's Bart is forced by the n-bomb-spouting Taggart (Slim Pickens) to propel a handcart down newly laid train rails to find out if there's quicksand ahead. I've watched the film with a racially mixed audience, and everyone howls when Taggert, outraged that his underling wants to use horses to test the firmness of the soil, brusquely tells him to "send over a couple of n******." This line arrives after the Black workers outclass their uncultured overseers by crooning a delectably urbane interpretation of Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" as a work song. The white cowboys respond by clownishly belting out "The Camptown Races."

The quicksand scene grows more egregious (and, let's face it, funnier) when Taggert and his men opt to save the handcart instead of Bart and his partner. 

We'll Work Up A Number Six On 'Em!

Brooks and his team of writers, which included Richard Pryor, are lampooning the galling inhumanity of the slave-owner mentality. But what's funny in this context is an accurate representation of how these men and women were treated upon reaching America's shores. They were property, and more disposable than a functioning handcart. There is zero difference between this and the Nazis' view of Jewish people. Then again, perhaps it's not so odd to hear Brooks voice this opinion given that he remade Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be," and 40 years later, completely defanged one of the most provocatively funny films to come out of World War II.

In the realm of satire, "Blazing Saddles" is a unicorn. It's clearly on Bart's side, but Brooks can't help but spend a good deal of time with Harvey Korman's Hedley Lamarr because Korman is unparalleled at portraying a conniving, cold-hearted bastard. Still, we're laughing at the villains and the white townspeople, and we're laughing with Bart. Most importantly, everyone involved is in on the joke, including the audience. That's why the film has endured, while the aforementioned movies are now frowned upon (if not outright shunned, though I do think they should be readily available for educational purposes).

But could it be made today? By a Jewish director with a mostly white writing staff and Richard Pryor? With its incessant use of the n-word? I'd like to think so.

The Unifying Power Of Comedy

Film critic Drew McWeeny interviewed Brooks nine years ago for the 40th anniversary of "Blazing Saddles," and told the director that he attended a screening of the film in Westwood on the eve of the second Rodney King verdict. The previous decision incited the 1992 Los Angeles riots, so the fact that this audience was split 50-50 between white people and people of color held the potential to be a powder keg of racial resentment. According to McWeeny, 10 minutes into the movie, every single person in the theater was howling. The pressure dissipated, and everyone reveled in a comedy that sent up the stupidity of racism while, as Brooks once said of his movies, rising below vulgarity. Unbeknownst to McWeeny, Brooks was there that evening, and said this:

"It was like Columbus seeing the New World. It was like this movie audience saw the New World of cinema for the first time, and they really celebrated the s*** out of it. They went nuts. It was probably, as far as watching one of my movies, you know, on screen, it was probably the greatest night of my life."

Firstly, don't get worked up over the problematic Columbus comment because we know Brooks is an educated man and a humanitarian; the New World is a cliched reference that was de rigueur throughout the 96-year-old filmmaker's childhood. Secondly, white people and their fear of Black people is the entire basis of Brooks' satire, and a racially mixed group of moviegoers roared in unison at the stupidity of this notion.

Could "Blazing Saddles" be made today? No. It already exists. Thank god. And it's as brilliant and essential today as it's ever been.

Read this next: Every Mel Brooks Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The post Quentin Tarantino Disagrees With The Idea That Certain Movies Couldn't Be Made Today appeared first on /Film.

One of the most underrated masterstrokes of James Cameron's "The Terminator," and this is a film stuffed with masterstrokes, was his decision to have Dr. Peter Silberman exit that Los Angeles police station prior to the title cyborg's murderous rampage. It's not that we wanted the high-handed criminal psychologist -- who wrongfully shrugs off Kyle Reese's (Michael Biehn) claim that he was sent back in time from a post-apocalyptic future to protect Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from a robotic assassin -- to survive the carnage. We just didn't know at the time that he would wind up being one of the series' most delectably despicable characters.

Silberman was portrayed by the incredibly prolific character actor Earl Boen, who passed away yesterday from lung cancer at the age of 81. He was very much a "that guy," i.e. an unforgettable face who turned up in countless films and television shows, often as a sneer-worthy jerk. Look at the man's filmography, and you might flash on some of his recurring characters from old sitcoms. I distinctly remember him playing Dr. Kramer on Chris Elliott's criminally short-lived '90s sitcom "Get a Life."

But he was unforgettable as Dr. Silberman, a man who had two cracks at staving off nuclear armageddon, and, despite remarkable evidence to support Connor's claims, used her to advance his own career.

Good Morning, Dr. Silberman. How's The Knee?

In Silberman's meager defense, he would've been perforated by bullets with the rest of the cops in that squad house had he ministered to the distraught Connor. And yet, the fact that he thought little of that wanton massacre, turning the legitimately alarmed Connor into a case study instead of buying her side of the story, did as much to hasten the finale of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" than perhaps any other action throughout the first three movies.

I probably wouldn't be writing this appreciation of Boen's portrayal of Silberman without his slithery turn in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." That's where we learned to despise this craven agent of medical bureaucracy. He was hobbled by Conner in the past (via his own pen), and nearly gets a syringe full of drain cleaner injected into his neck. Then he bears witness to one of the pivotal moments in the "Terminator" series -- and filmmaking itself. Robert Patrick's liquid-metal T-1000 passes through a solid steel cell door. This scene has since been immortalized by a silly dog meme, but in 1991, Boen's slack-jawed awe spoke for us all. We'd never seen anything like this before.

We all want to believe we would've implicitly trusted Sarah Connor, but put yourself in Silberman's shoes and ask yourself if you would've risked your professional reputation on her version of events. Cast, say, Joe Morton as Silberman, and this plays differently. He projects intelligence. Boen, on the other hand, emitted smarm. We hate smarm. But we loved hating Boen as a man who had good reason to doubt his patient's seeming delusion.

Boen had a front-row seat to the future of cinema, and he reacted accordingly. Godspeed, sir.

Read this next: The 16 Best '80s Action Movies Ranked

The post The Late Earl Boen Played One of Cinema's Greatest Weasels in the Terminator Films appeared first on /Film.

And we're back. After canceling our CES plans in 2022 (and not even having the option of attending in person in 2021), the Engadget team sent a dozen staffers to CES 2023 this week, including reporters, editors and videographers. It's too soon to say how many stories and videos we've published — in fact, we have more good stuff coming — but suffice to say, it was a lot. Though our team swears the show still wasn't as busy as pre-pandemic years, they were kept busy enough that it felt like a true return to form, not just for us, but for the tech industry at large.

One thing that never stopped was Engadget's annual Best of CES Awards program, although this year marks the first time in three years we've been able to base our judgments off of a full slate of in-person hands-on experiences. All told, we're handing out a dozen awards this year, including the most prestigious: Best of the Best. As always, our awards attempt to capture what we think people will still be talking about weeks, or even months, after the show concludes, from wireless TVs to an electric Ram concept truck to a $1,000 stand mixer that should make dough blending almost foolproof.

As ever, too, we endeavored to weed out the vaporware, not to mention the things that got attention solely for being dumb. (Hello, multiplesmart pee gadgets and a $3,800 "self-driving" stroller that only works when the baby isn't on board!) If you're curious about all the frivolity anyway — and who can blame you? — you'll find all of our coverage, serious and irreverent, right here. But for just the good stuff, you're in the right place. – Dana Wollman, Editor-in-Chief

Best Accessibility Tech: L’Oréal Hapta

L'oreal

Rather than showing up to CES with a viral beauty gadget, L’Oréal debuted an assistive lipstick applicator that will be useful to millions. The cosmetics company worked with utensil maker Verily, which produces stabilizing and leveling cutlery for people with limited hand and arm mobility, to create Hapta. The result is a sturdy grip-and-gimbal system that lets those with limited finger dexterity or strength more independently apply lipstick. Though there are some quirks the company needs to iron out before releasing the Hapta in December, it’s impressive that this is both a finished product and has a relatively affordable suggested retail price of $150 to $200. It’s also a device that caters to an often overlooked segment of consumers, and can be expanded to work with more makeup applications. Of all the accessibility-related products we saw this CES, the Hapta is the most unique, while being actually helpful. — Cherlynn Low, Deputy Editor, Reviews

Best Gaming Product: Sony Project Leonardo

Sony

Project Leonardo is Sony’s first piece of gaming hardware designed specifically for people with limited motor control, and it happens to look pretty neat at the same time. Project Leonardo is a controller kit that’ll work out of the box with the PlayStation 5, offering two circular gamepads lined with swappable buttons, third-party accessory ports and other customizable inputs. The controllers lie flat on a table or they can be mounted on a standard tripod, and they can be paired with a DualSense to turn all three devices into a single gamepad, offering plenty of flexibility for players.

To build its new PS5 accessory, Sony partnered with advocacy organizations including AbleGamers and SpecialEffect, just like Microsoft did with the (wildly successful) Xbox Adaptive Controller. Project Leonardo represents another positive step for accessibility tech in video games, a market that’s filled with surprises and primed for growth in 2023. — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter

Best Health & Fitness Product: Valencell blood pressure monitoring prototype 

Valencell

Valencell has been making optical heart-rate sensors for years, but at CES 2023 it unveiled a new fingertip monitor that offers “cuffless” blood pressure monitoring. Instead of an unwieldy inflating sleeve, this fingertip clip uses photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors to measure blood flow patterns. This information is combined with algorithms and the user’s age, weight, gender and height to create a blood pressure measurement, without the need for calibration. We might have seen similar technology in earlier stages of development, but Valencell’s technique of combining data makes for the most compelling device yet. Valencell plans to eventually offer the blood pressure monitor to clinics and hospitals, alongside an over-the-counter version for personal use, pending FDA approval. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief

Best Home Theater Tech: LG Signature OLED M3

Engadget

LG unveiled several new OLED TVs at CES this year, but the standout was the Signature OLED M3, a 97-inch 4K giant. What’s most interesting about the M3, however, isn’t its screen – it’s the tech inside of it. More specifically, the M3 is designed to receive video and audio wirelessly, through a separate box that LG says you can place up to 30 feet away from the TV. Outside of a power cord, the M3 itself is cable-free; instead you plug your media streamers, cable box or game consoles into the breakout box, and all of it is beamed over a wireless link.

The company dubs this wireless transmission tech “Zero Connect” and claims this proprietary standard can provide three times the speed of WiFi 6. Among other connections, the Zero Connect box includes three HDMI ports that can play in 4K at 120Hz, including one eARC port. While it does require line-of-sight to work – there’s a rotatable antenna built into the box – in our brief experience with the set, we found the signal quality remained steady even in a crowded room. If Zero Connect can eventually make its way down to LG’s more reasonably priced TVs, it could provide an exciting new level of versatility. — Jeff Dunn, Senior Commerce Writer

Best Laptop: Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

Lenovo

By axing the traditional, physical keyboard and putting two 13.3-inch OLED screens on the Yoga Book 9i, Lenovo could potentially shake up modern laptop design in a way we haven’t seen since the original Surface Pro a decade ago. And while there are some issues that will need to be ironed out, the potential this new design offers is undeniable. When you prop up the Yoga Book on its kickstand, it becomes much more than a standard clamshell. You can have two screens stacked on top of each other or side-by-side depending on your needs. Meanwhile in standard laptop mode, you have the freedom to choose between a virtual or detachable Bluetooth keyboard – both with customizable widgets, not to mention built-in stylus support. It’s a level of flexibility and adaptability that traditional laptops simply can’t match. And unlike overly ambitious concepts in the past, this dual-screen notebook is actually coming out (sometime this spring for around $2,000) so we can see how it will truly fare in the real world. — Sam Rutherford, Senior Writer

Best Mobile or Tablet Tech: WPC Qi2 charging standard

Engadget

When Apple added MagSafe charging to the iPhone back in 2020, it created an incredibly simple and convenient way of juicing up its phones. And now, at CES 2023, the WPC (Wireless Power Consortium) has released details on the Qi2 charging standard that will finally bring similar functionality to the rest of the handset market. Not only does the new spec include support for Magnetic Power Profiles which will pave the way for handy charging disks that can snap onto the back of your phone, it will also allow for important features such as foreign object detection and up to 15-watt charging with the potential to raise power output even further in the future. And perhaps most importantly, because Apple is a member of the WPC, Qi2 shouldn’t be a weak MagSafe knock-off when it arrives on retail devices later this year in Q4 2023. — Sam Rutherford, Senior Writer

Best Robot or Drone: KEYi Loona

Loona

Historically, robot pets tend to be lacking in the cutesy department. Loona, the futuristic companion from KEYi, with its big puppy dog eyes and wiggling ears has the adorable thing locked down. Loona is smart enough to scurry around your living space without running into walls or off of countertops, but the real magic is in its expressiveness. It’s impressive what you can do with a small display, four wheels and two “ears.”

Beyond her charms, Loona also comes loaded with sensors for responding to your voice, gestures and touch and a collection of games that turn the virtual pet into quite the clever companion. These same sensors also make her a capable home security bot and something of a STEM tool for kids via a graphical programming option to teach Loona new “interactions.”

Put all this together and you have a capable home robot that just happens to love having its ears tickled. What’s not to love about that? — James Trew, Editor-at-Large

Best Smart Home Product: GE Profile Smart Mixer

GE

Baking requires precision and, depending on the recipe, can often feel like a juggling act. So it impressed us to see GE Profile's Smart Mixer, which has a built-in scale to accurately weigh ingredients, plus voice control so you don’t have to push buttons when your hands are otherwise occupied. The Smart Mixer is a high-end stand mixer in its own right, with a motor that’s speedy enough to whip up emulsions. But it gets its smart home edge from that integrated scale, app connectivity and voice control.

Indeed, the app component will probably be particularly useful for novice bakers, offering over a dozen step-by-step recipes. App guidance for cooking is nothing new, but here, the mixer knows what you’re making and will adjust mixing speeds as needed to ensure nothing is over- or under-worked.

For experienced bakers, the scale, timer and voice control are likely to have greater appeal. Scale and timer readouts appear on the front-facing digital display, which also shows you the mixer’s current speed setting. Changing that setting is as easy as asking Alexa or the Google Assistant to do it for you, provided you have a smart speaker linked. With a starting price of $999, it’s by no means a cheap appliance, but the suite of innovative smart features made this one of the more memorable smart home gadgets we saw at the show this year. — Amy Skorheim, Commerce Writer

Best Transportation Tech: Ram 1500 BEV Concept

Stellantis

The Ram 1500, one of America’s most iconic trucks, is charging into the 21st century with a “revolutionary” battery electric pickup concept. The eponymously named Ram 1500 Revolution BEV Concept shown off at Stellantis’ CES 2023 keynote packs high tech everything into a sleek and aggressive body design. The BEV concept features dual-motor AWD, four-wheel steering, animated grille emblems, taillights and badging. Additionally, it has an integrated movie projector, AI assistants that respond to voice commands from both inside and outside the vehicle, as well as a Shadow Mode that trains the truck to follow along behind its dismounted driver from a safe distance.

Ram envisions this feature being used on job sites where workers would otherwise have to repeatedly get in and out of the truck between short drives. The BEV Concept itself won’t be entering production — ditto for most concept vehicles — but it will directly inform the design decisions going into the 2024 Ram 1500 EV, which will launch next year alongside Stellantis’ fully electric Jeep. — Andrew Tarantola, Senior Reporter

Best TV Tech: Samsung Micro LED

Samsung

CES has long been a show where tier-one manufacturers show off the latest and greatest in TV technology, giving us a preview of how normal people will be able to deck out their home theater setups once the tech goes mainstream. This year was no exception, even though Sony surprisingly didn't show off any new televisions. What felt most significant in 2023 was Samsung's continued advancements in its MicroLED TVs. The technology first debuted in 2018 with the company's gigantic 146-inch TV dubbed "The Wall" that cost as much as a house, but now we're seeing Samsung bring it to 50- and 63-inch TVs that will actually fit in people's living rooms. Sure, the cost will likely still be prohibitive for all but the wealthy, but hopefully in a few years we'll see these stunning screens available at a price more households can afford. — Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor, News

Best Wearable: German Bionic Apogee

German Bionic

Our favorite wearable this year takes technology beyond the wrist-bound devices we’re used to seeing and puts it on your hips and over your shoulders. German Bionic’s new Apogee exosuit builds upon the company’s Cray X exoskeleton that it showed off at CES last year, resulting in a lighter, smarter wearable. Designed for commercial use, the Apogee exosuit helps workers complete physical tasks without inflicting as much strain on their bodies. The suit can offset up to 66 pounds of load to the lower back per lifting motion, plus it helps reduce fatigue overall with walking assistance.

The Apogee is German Bionic’s lightest exosuit to date and it’s designed to be worn for long periods of time, assisting workers without getting in the way. Plus, the company’s IO architecture constantly collects and analyzes data about workers’ activity while they’re wearing the suit, so it can then provide feedback via the onboard display or audio alerts when unsafe movements are detected. We’re almost disappointed that the Apogee will only be available in warehouses and other commercial settings – various Engadget staffers suffering from chronic back pain are eager to give it a go. — Valentina Palladino, Senior Commerce Editor

Best in Show: Sony Project Leonardo

Sony

Project Leonardo is Sony’s first piece of gaming hardware designed specifically for people with disabilities, and it represents another positive step in the world of accessibility tech. Project Leonardo is a controller kit that will be plug-and-play with the PlayStation 5, working in conjunction with existing Sony hardware and popular third-party accessibility accessories. The controller kit includes two circular gamepads lined with swappable buttons, four 3.5mm AUX accessory ports and other customizable inputs. 

The controllers were designed so that they don't need to be held – instead, they lie flat on a table, or they can be mounted on a tripod or stand. Both controllers can be paired with a DualSense to turn all three devices into a single gamepad, offering plenty of flexibility for players. 

To build its new PS5 accessory, Sony partnered with advocacy organizations including AbleGamers, SpecialEffect and Stack Up, much like Microsoft did with the revolutionary Xbox Adaptive Controller. Though there's no release date or price for Project Leonardo quite yet, Sony is seizing on an opportunity to expand the PS5 playerbase while making its hardware more inclusive, and we're likely to hear much more about the controller kit in the coming months. 

The market for accessibility tech in video games is filled with surprises and primed for growth in 2023, and Project Leonardo is at the forefront this year. — Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter

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The trifecta

Konami is responsible for my top three games on the Sega Genesis console. I’ve covered Rocket Knight Adventures and Castlevania: Bloodlines already, but the third is Contra: Hard Corps. The thing is, while the former two titles are difficult trials in their own right, Contra: Hard Corps is one that I’ve never been able to fully consummate with. It’s hard. It’s right there in the title.

The biggest reason why these three titles are even difficult is that Konami had this strange insistence on using limited continues at the time. Contra has always limited how many continues you get on the console games, but Castlevania? That’s just dirty. But even then, Contra: Hard Corps is difficult beyond what I’ve experienced in previous games, and I’ll delve deeper into the reason. The biggest difference here is that it wasn’t designed to be.

[caption id="attachment_356983" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Yes, I know what a Probotector is. Stop asking

Contra is a series of games about playing as Sylvestor Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as they work to kill joggers and football dudes until aliens show up. Things kept getting weird and weirder in the games until we hit the Sega Genesis, at which point the developers were like, “This isn’t cool enough for this console, it needs more ‘90s. Someone get me a werewolf and graft a chaingun to his arm.”

For this entry, there are four selectable characters. A dude, a gal, a dog, and a robot. As much as Fang the half-wolf is awesome, he’s probably the most difficult to use. Ray stands in for Bill and Lance, so if you can’t fathom a Contra without the spread gun, he’ll fit you like a jockstrap. I stuck with Sheena, the lady, as I have difficulty believing aliens could be defeated by anyone incapable of live birth.

A lot of people say Gunstar Heroes is the best run-and-gun on the console, and it’s pretty great. But people probably only say that because getting past the first level in Contra: Hard Corps is a challenge. That’s because not only does your character bite it when someone bumps into them, but the gameplay changes rapidly. It’s like a police chase involving bumper cars.

Contra: Hard Corps a situation rush-style game where one minute, your feet are planted on solid ground, and the next, you’re riding an ostrich at breakneck speeds. It’s like Battletoads, and limited continues weren’t a good idea for that game, and they’re not a good idea here.

[caption id="attachment_356984" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

It's pronounced "core"

And like Battletoads, things were different in Japan. Did you know that Contra: Hard Corps doesn’t have limited continues in Japan? You can continue as often as you want. It gets better, though, because your character can take three hits before they die.

It’s a completely different game. To be fair, the one-hit death thing has been pretty standard in Contra games, so having more rugged protagonists is actually a departure. I also only learned this recently, so I’ve taken multiple runs at it while playing as our porcelain protagonists. I completed Contra dealing with the limitation, so I just thought that was an expectation of me. However, I never quite had the patience to play and replay until I attained perfection.

Playing the Japanese Mega Drive version was a cakewalk in comparison. The extra health was enough to get me through many of the stages before I even realized that I could continue as often as I wanted. My concept of challenge is so warped by my prior experiences that I can’t even speak of the difficulty of the Japanese version. I feel like I plowed through it without faltering, but I could say the same thing about something like Super Castlevania IV. And when I was already cleansed in the crucible of the North American version, I suppose it would make sense that the Japanese difficulty wouldn’t have me breaking a sweat. I feel like I’ve been living a lie. I can’t even say which version I prefer.

[caption id="attachment_356985" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The aural dream team

Is it easy mode, or is North America, like, hard or expert? It would have been nice if playing with the Japanese settings was an option. The fact that it was changed and even omitted is no doubt due to the rental market. While renting games was normal in North America, it was illegal in Japan. Publishers over here worried that someone would rent a game, complete it in a weekend, then wind up not buying a copy. The solution wasn’t to make the game longer, but rather more difficult, and the easiest way to do that is to just send players back to the beginning when they inevitably fail. The same thing was done to Dynamite Headdy, and I’m similarly upset about that.

For a lot of players, especially younger ones, this means not seeing a lot of what Contra: Hard Corps has to offer. It’s constantly pulling new situations out of its butthole to shove at you. It’s so rapid-fire and fast-paced that you have no time to get comfortable or even get a handle on its controls. It also presents multiple paths and hidden endings while all the characters have their own weapons and abilities, which means that it really isn’t short for content.

Its soundtrack is particularly outstanding. The list of sound design contributors consists of six people, and it’s a veritable dream team. Two of my favorite composers, Akira Yamaoka and Hirofumi Taniguchi, are on that list, alongside Michiru Amane. It’s hard to tell how much each composer contributed, and Hiroshi Kobayashi is usually named as the lead. Nonetheless, it’s a jampacked soundtrack with wall-to-wall quality. Better yet, its manic quality fits the gameplay perfectly.

[caption id="attachment_356986" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

What even is correct anymore?

Some people like to point at Contra 3: The Alien Wars as the pinnacle of the Contra series, but give me the absolutely batshit Contra: Hard Corps any day. I’d be saying that even if I hadn’t discovered the much more agreeable difficulty of the Japanese Mega Drive version. It's just complete madness, and I respect that.

Contra: Hard Corps also feels extremely Sega Genesis, pushing everything that made the console unique. It’s a little ball of energy, ready to snap at your hand if you reach to touch it. It’s a congealed effort, and it’s so happy to be here it doesn’t care if it’s making a spectacle of itself. Be that spectacle, Contra: Hard Corps. Grab that blast processor by the tail and swing it around. Let’s rock!

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Contra: Hard Corps is a victim of the regional difficulty differential appeared first on Destructoid.

UPDATE: Shortly after publication, "Face/Off 2" writer Simon Barrett confirmed via Twitter that the plot Nicolas Cage alluded to in this article was in fact, the plan for the sequel. The article continues as originally published below the Tweet.

He did, it's super cool, and we're both honored he seems to like our idea. https://t.co/Mbeo6dmCHg

— Simon Barrett (@Simon_Barrett) January 7, 2023

John Woo's 1997 action flick "Face/Off" is one of the wildest, highest-concept action flicks in all of existence, and that's what makes it so great. Criminal mastermind Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) kidnaps his nemesis, a federal agent named Sean Archer (John Travolta), and switches their faces through plastic surgery. It's a totally ludicrous premise that works because of Woo's over-the-top action sensibilities and Travolta and Cage's willingness to fully commit to their gonzo roles. After all, they each had to play both roles, but with the confusing added layer of knowing they had switched faces. 

In an interview with Collider promoting his upcoming western, "The Old Way," Cage updated fans on the "Face/Off" sequel in the works from "The Guest" and "Godzilla vs. Kong" director Adam Wingard, promising that it would be "unpredictable." Given just how wild the original film is, predictability seemed off the table from the start, but it's good to know that Cage has faith in the project. Wingard is great at mixing dark humor with action (just look at "The Guest"), so it's honestly hard to not be a little excited. 

Double The Face-Swapping?

According to Nicolas Cage, early discussions for the film centered around the children of Castor Troy and Sean Archer, who grow up to face off against one another in the exact same way that their fathers had. He and John Travolta would also return for this version, which could potentially make for a ridiculous mess of face-swapping to keep up with: 

"I think 'Face/Off' is a sequel that lends itself to a lot of twists and turns and unpredictability. It's almost like if you factor in the idea of offspring and Castor and Sean having children and these children grow up, then it becomes like three-dimensional chess, and then it's not just the two, John Travolta and myself, it's four of us ping-ponging and going at different levels, and it becomes even more complex. I think there's a lot of fertile ground there. I had maybe one meeting in an office, but I haven't heard anything since, so I don't know."

Castor Troy had a son in the original "Face/Off," and that son was adopted by Archer and his wife (Joan Allen) because of a promise Archer made to the kid's mom (Gina Gershon), so there's an extra layer of drama there, too. If Castor Troy is somehow alive, despite looking very dead at the end of "Face/Off," he might be pretty furious that his enemy raised his son. Archer's own son was killed by Troy, but he does have a daughter in the first film who could maybe face off against her adopted sibling. It's not exactly clear who's switching faces here, either, which means the kids and dads could get switched in a "Freaky Friday" meets "Face/Off" nightmare. 

We Heard You Like Face/Off So We Put Some Face/Off In Your Face/Off 2

"Face/Off" isn't just one of the most ridiculously fun action movies of the 1990s, it's one of the most fun action flicks of all time. With Adam Wingard's action-comedy skills and a plot this potentially bonkers, "Face/Off 2" sounds like cinematic heaven. Whether Cage and Travolta switch faces again, their kids switch faces, or some combination of both, it's guaranteed to be a blast. Cage seems like he would pretty much always be game to revisit the franchise, so it would just be a matter of getting Travolta onboard, but a person can hope.

Honestly, even though Wingard's writing partner Simon Barrett confirmed that the film will be a "direct sequel" to the 1997 film, there's potential to make a soft reboot within the sequel using the kids. (Especially if Cage and Travolta switch faces with the kids, allowing them to carry on the movie madness into additional sequels.) There are franchises for just about everything these days, so why not "Face/Off"? It's a total blast with lots of weird possibilities, and nostalgia is king, so let's go! I'm ready for the "Face/Off" Extended Universe!

Read this next: The 18 Best Action Movie Actors Ranked

The post Nicolas Cage Teases the 'Unpredictability' of the Face/Off Sequel [Update] appeared first on /Film.

The Immortal Darkness: Curse of The Pale King Website now offers giveaways of this action/adventure from indie developer Giant Space Monster (thanks WannaLogAlready). Word is: "No spyware, no crypto...

Who among us hasn't wished to be a cool hacker from the movies, like Hugh Jackman in Swordfish (a classic)? In real life hacking things is apparently quite dangerous and hard, but in video games we can crack the system and mutter "I'm in" under our breath as often as we want. Naturally, there have been some fabulous hacking games on PC over the years, and we've collected what we think are the cream of the crop of the best hacking games to play on PC right now.

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More than 200 government, education, and healthcare organizations in the United States fell victim to ransomware in 2022, data gathered by cybersecurity firm Emsisoft shows.

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It’s the new year and everybody’s on a diet—I mean, a wellness journey. Whether you want to lose weight or not is none of my business, but I do beg you to please, please let all the following silly weight loss “hacks” die. Many of them verge on disordered eating behaviors, while others are just ways to make yourself…

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The Biden administration is set to unveil a national strategy that for the first time calls for comprehensive cybersecurity regulation of the nation's critical infrastructure, explicitly recognizing that years of a voluntary approach have failed to secure the nation against cyberattacks, according to senior administration officials. From a report: The strategy builds on the first-ever oil and gas pipeline regulations imposed last year by the administration after a hack of one of the country's largest pipelines led to a temporary shutdown, causing long lines at gas stations and fears of a fuel shortage. The attack on Colonial Pipeline by Russian-speaking criminals elevated ransomware to an issue of national security. The strategy, drawn up by the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), is moving through the final stages of interagency approval -- involving more than 20 departments and agencies -- and is expected to be signed by President Biden in the coming weeks, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the document is not yet public. "It's a break from the previous strategies, which focused on information sharing and public-private partnership as the solution," said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "This goes well beyond that. It says things that others have been afraid to say." For instance, according to a draft copy of the strategy, one of the stated goals is: "Use Regulation to support National Security and Public Safety." Under that, it says that regulation "can level the playing field" to meet the needs of national security, according to two individuals familiar with the draft. It also states that "while voluntary approaches to critical infrastructure cybersecurity have produced meaningful improvements, the lack of mandatory requirements has too often resulted in inconsistent and, in many cases inadequate, outcomes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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This article contains major spoilers for "M3GAN."

On his commentary track for "Re-Animator," director Stuart Gordon refers to a Freudian-style interpretation of the "Frankenstein" myth as "a masturbation fantasy [...] it has to do with the idea of creating life without a woman." Taken in this way, Mary Shelley's tale of a man attempting to subvert nature demonstrates man's arrogance and envy of the biological abilities of cisgender women.

When a cis woman is the one driving the story of creating artificial life, however, there's less envy involved but much more perceived arrogance, with the character denying her "so-called natural purpose" and subverting it. In other words, a female Frankenstein can be seen as a character shirking her responsibility, creating life from her mind rather than her body.

It's that tension and those themes that "M3GAN," the new film from writer Akela Cooper and director Gerard Johnstone, ingeniously tackles. An impressively clever film, "M3GAN" combines several sci-fi/horror tropes — the "killer doll," the "lethal protector," the "A.I. gone murderously haywire" — and blends them into a sly satire that comments on current issues regarding parenting, technology and our foolishly blind and unsafe willingness to give up control.

You've Got A Friend In Me(gan)

As "M3GAN" opens, 9-year-old Cady (Violent McGraw) loses both her parents and nearly her own life in a brutal car accident on a snowy mountain road. Her mother's sister, Gemma (Allison Williams) is swayed by her grief, her status as a somewhat absentee aunt (Gemma's presents to Cady are fairly lazy, being products from the company she works for) and a promise to her deceased sister to take care of Cady that she legally adopts the child. This choice isn't particularly well thought-out: an employee of the tech/toy company Funki who's responsible for a successful interactive A.I.-based toy line called "Purrpetual Pets," Gemma is a workaholic, lightly antisocial woman who hasn't the first idea about parenting.

Already working on a new toy that would be so technologically advanced that no other company could compete with it, Gemma decides to finish developing the prototype named M3GAN (short for Model 3 Generative Android) and program it to be a friend and guardian to Cady. Giving M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) all sorts of fluid, algorithmic programs with which she can learn, absorb data and extrapolate her basic guardian mandate proves to be a mistake on several levels, as the "doll" not only becomes the lonely Cady's best friend but a surrogate mother who turns manipulative and murderous.

From Dummies To Chucky

"M3GAN" belongs to a long line of "killer doll" movies and TV shows, a trope that's existed for decades thanks to the perpetually unsettling nature of the "uncanny valley" concept. Even the most benign stories about inanimate objects suddenly coming to life (such as "Toy Story" or even "Pinocchio") have a spooky element to them thanks to the cognitive dissonance of something that should not be alive gaining sentience.

The works that have leaned more heavily into the horrific nature of such a concept tend to be fantasy-based, yet nonetheless keep their animated dolls tied to human agency. "The Ventriloquist's Dummy" story in 1945's "Dead of Night," along with subsequent "evil dummies" seen in the likes of 1978's "Magic" (an avowed influence on Akela Cooper) and even the "Goosebumps" series make sure to invoke the notion that, at one time, human masters were making these inanimate dolls talk, only for them to develop their own voices.

Then there are the many evil dolls that were manufactured as toys that were expressly intended to act as simulacra for living beings, from 1987's "Dolls" (directed by the aforementioned Stuart Gordon) to 1991's "Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker" to the movie "M3GAN" will likely be compared to the most, 1988's "Child's Play." That movie, which sees a serial killer transfer his soul into a toy doll by way of voodoo, certainly has resonance in "M3GAN" (an early scene of Gemma and her coworkers applying faulty skin to M3GAN's chassis recalls the opening of "Child's Play 2"), but the 2019 remake of "Child's Play" is far more applicable, as that film's Chucky is instead an A.I. that goes awry. Both that movie and "M3GAN" are having the same conversation about how our daily lives are becoming saturated by technology, with more and more trust and control being given to faulty — and potentially deadly — companies and devices.

Talky Tina Finds Motherhood

In the season 5 episode of "The Twilight Zone" entitled "Living Doll," a talking doll named "Talky Tina" is given to a young girl in order to comfort her, and it's soon revealed that the doll may not only be alive but is very attached to the girl. "M3GAN" is an expansion of this idea, moving past the "it's alive!" aspect thanks to M3GAN's A.I. status. The film further explores the theme of children forming emotional attachments to artificial humans, something baby doll toys seem to implicitly encourage — it doesn't take a media studies degree to see how such toys appear to be socializing young girls for future motherhood.

In a sly twist, "M3GAN" makes the "baby doll" the new mother figure, causing Cady to be the robot's daughter rather than the other way around. Gemma's own millennial upbringing, being part of the "there's an app for that" generation, at first doesn't see a problem with M3GAN taking over her responsibility for parenting Cady.

Gemma's transgressive choice speaks directly to the movie's theme of responsibility in a tech-heavy age. As writer Akela Cooper explains in an official press kit for the film, "I used to babysit my niece and nephew, and I realized how scared I would be if I suddenly had to take care of a young child full time." Director Gerard Johnstone elaborated further:

"We fool ourselves into thinking we'll be able to spend time with our kids once we take care of everything else — our careers, finances, etc. But by then they're not kids anymore. I can attest to the fact that parenting is difficult. There is a certain fantasy wish-fulfillment aspect of M3GAN, that she can do all the tedious things you don't want to do. But the flip side is that if you give your child over to a machine like M3GAN, good luck getting them back."

'Have No Fear Little One ... I Am Here To Protect Thee'

There's a good deal of subversion happening in "M3GAN," so much so that the primary concept of the movie (re: a murderous doll) is the most straightforward aspect of it, and even then is pretty sly. After all, this is a movie in which the victims include such moral no-nos as children and dogs, even if the kills themselves are largely offscreen.

There's also the uncanny valley of M3GAN herself, on top of being a "living doll." Throughout the movie, costume designer Daniel Cruden dresses M3GAN not in typical children's clothes, but in outfits that tend to resemble an adult woman's that border on diva-esque. These outfits speak to the other trope M3GAN inhabits, that of the usurping mother/nanny figure. During the film, M3GAN doesn't just seek to be the best companion to Cady she can be, but to actively compete with and discredit Gemma from her role as guardian. This harkens back to many a "killer nanny" movie, from 1976's "The Omen" to 1990's "The Guardian" to 1992's "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle."

M3GAN's most insidious kill — stabbing Gemma's boss David (Ronny Chieng) and framing his assistant Kurt (Stephane Garneau-Monten) before killing him, too — is reminiscent of manipulative-killer-women movies like 2014's "Gone Girl." That the kill comes directly after a moment where M3GAN dances down a hallway is a perfect example of how Gerard Johnstone blurs the lines between an adult woman, little girl, and toy robot, connecting "M3GAN" to other horror films that do the same blurring like 2016's "The Boy" (which shares similarities to Johnstone's "Housebound") and 2009's "Orphan."

Sugar And Spice And Michael Crichton's Fears

Of course, the sci-fi side of "M3GAN" belongs to the well-worn "deadly A.I." strand of the genre, and while there's a bit of "2001: A Space Odyssey's" HAL 9000 in the way M3GAN refuses to obey Gemma's commands, the closest analog is to the works of Michael Crichton. The Funki (as in "funky," close to "Funko," get it?) corporation is eager to do for the toy industry what Delos was eager to do for the adult leisure industry in Crichton's 1973's "Westworld." Funki's hilariously odd commercials and marketing materials reflect both "Westworld" and 1981's "Looker" in how they examine the ways media tends to sugarcoat potentially dangerous new technologies.

Unlike most "A.I. gone rogue" narratives, M3GAN isn't particularly fighting for her sentience or even independence — she is following her primary directive to the bitter end, to become the ultimate companion for Cady, even to the point of threatening to hold her and Gemma hostage. Yet growing beyond her safety parameters, combined with Funki's clueless greed in hoping that M3GANs will become the world's most popular and exclusive toy, seems highly reminiscent of Crichton's technophobia, from "Westworld" to "Jurassic Park."

Hey Alexa, Don't Murder Me

Despite its numerous warnings about putting too much arrogant and apathetic trust in technology, "M3GAN" is not necessarily a technophobic movie. Rather, it's a story about responsibility; in parenting, motherhood, science, and taking control of one's own life.

That's the lesson both Gemma and Cady learn as M3GAN grows so out of control. Gemma chooses Cady over her career, making sure to protect her over botching a product launch and losing her job. Cady, in turn, comes to Gemma's rescue as M3GAN attacks, overpowering the android with the more primitive but far stronger robot that Gemma made earlier named Bruce. Crucially, Bruce is a robot who cannot operate independently — Cady must wear special gloves to counterattack M3GAN, meaning that the defeat of the android has to be her and Gemma's responsibility, working together, instead of being entrusted to simply another device or program.

With M3GAN permanently offline, the now-official family unit of Gemma and Cady is greeted by the sound of police sirens. Certainly, the film skirts over what's to become of them legally: after all, though M3GAN is responsible for all the murder and mayhem, Gemma and her team did build her. Jail time and lawsuits may be the least of their worries, however, as Gemma's digital home assistant, Elsie, watches Gemma and Cady leave to face the police. Given that M3GAN hacked into Elsie earlier in the film, and the fact that Kurt illicitly stole the plans for M3GAN's design whose whereabouts are unknown, it's entirely possible that M3GAN may come back from the Cloud very soon.Speaking of responsibility, remember that it's your responsibility to check those terms and conditions before agreeing, folks!

Read this next: Horror Movies That Make Us Root For The Villain

The post M3GAN Ending Explained: Mother, Mother, Are You Listening? appeared first on /Film.

A variant of the infamous Dridex banking malware has set its sights on Apple's macOS operating system using a previously undocumented infection method, according to latest research. It has "adopted a new technique to deliver documents embedded with malicious macros to users without having to pretend to be invoices or other business-related files," Trend Micro researcher Armando Nathaniel

Microsoft has shed light on four different ransomware families – KeRanger, FileCoder, MacRansom, and EvilQuest – that are known to impact Apple macOS systems. "While these malware families are old, they exemplify the range of capabilities and malicious behavior possible on the platform," the tech giant's Security Threat Intelligence team said in a Thursday report. The initial vector for these

One of the biggest running gags on social media and Reddit is how hot and power hungry CPUs have become over the years. Whereas at one time flagship x86 CPUs didn't even require a heatsink, they can now saturate whole radiators. Thankfully, it's not quite to the levels of a nuclear reactor, as the memes go – but as the kids say these days, it's also not a nothingburger. Designing for higher TDPs and greater power consumption has allowed chipmakers to keep pushing the envelope in terms of performance – something that's no easy feat in a post-Dennard world – but it's certainly created some new headaches regarding power consumption and heat in the process. Something that, for better or worse, the latest flagship chips from both AMD and Intel exemplify.

But despite these general trends, this doesn't mean that a high performance desktop CPU also needs to be a power hog. In our review of AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X, our testing showed that even capped at a these days pedestrian 65 Watts, the 7950X could deliver a significant amount of performance at less than half its normal power consumption.

If you'll pardon the pun, power efficiency has become a hot talking point these days, as enthusiasts look to save on their energy bills (especially in Europe) while still enjoying fast CPU performance, looking for other ways to take advantage of the full silicon capabilities of AMD's Raphael and Intel's Raptor Lake-S platforms besides stuffing the chips with as many joules as possible. All the while, the small form factor market remains a steadfast outpost for high efficiency chips, where cooler chips are critical for building smaller and more compact systems that can forego the need for large cooling systems.

All of this is to say that while it's great to see the envelope pushed in terms of peak performance, the typical focus on how an unlocked chip scales when overclocking (pushing CPU frequency and CPU VCore voltages) is just one way to look at overall CPU performance. So today we are going to go the other way, and to take a look at overall energy efficiency for users – to see what happens when we aim for the sweet spot on the voltage/frequency curve. To that end, today we're investigating how the Intel Core i9-13900K and AMD Ryzen 9 7950X perform at different power levels, and to see what kind of benefits power scaling can provide compared to stock settings.

As Google hover over the nuke from orbit button on Stadia, they're at least releasing some of it as open source like CDC File Transfer.

Winter weather increasingly includes high-speed windstorms as well as precipitation in many parts of the U.S. Wind can wreck things in a hurry, causing damage to housing, roofs, and vehicles. But there are some steps you can take now, before the next one hits, to help minimize the damage, save on costly repairs, and…

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A security vulnerability report arrived that went like this:

A user can gain access to arbitrary objects on the domain as follows:

1. Gain administrator access to the domain.
2. Modify the access control lists (ACLs) on objects of choice so that they grant permission to a security identifier (SID) that has not been assigned.
3. Go to a machine on the domain and generate SIDs (say, by adding new machine accounts) until one of them matches the SID that you planted in step 2.
4. Use that maching account to regain access to the objects.

The system should not allow ACLs to contain SIDs that do not correspond to valid identities.

Okay, just to get it out of the way: If the first step of your attack is “Gain administrator access to the domain”, you not only on the other side of the airtight hatchway, you’ve escaped the ship entirely and made it to the flagship vessel and gained control of its command center! There’s no elevation of privilege: Once you are the domain administrator, you have control over all the computers in the domain.

No, what this is really reporting is that once someone compromises your domain, they can create backdoors that will let them back in. But that is also not interesting. Once somebody compromises your domain, you’ve already lost.

But let’s look at the finder’s concern about ACLs which contain SIDs that do not correspond to valid identities. This is actually a feature, not a bug.

Imagine you are setting up a card reader to control access to a secure building, and you program the card reader so that it recognizes employee ID cards, and you set a list of ID numbers for the employees who are allowed in. There’s nothing to stop you from putting a fictitious employee ID number on the list, a number that does not correspond to any employee that has yet been hired. Of course, it also means that if that employee ID number gets assigned to a new employee, and they try to enter the building, they will get through, because their employee ID number is on the list. (Pro tip: Do not reuse employee ID numbers.)

The card reader’s job is to check the employee ID number, and if the number is on the list, it unlocks the door. If you didn’t want to take the chance of a random employee being assigned your fictitious employee ID number, you shouldn’t have put it on the list. But the card reader doesn’t care that some of the numbers don’t correspond to any known employee. The card reader doesn’t even know which employee ID numbers are valid!

Okay, so let’s go back to SIDs.

First of all, it would be a terrible performance penalty to have to validate every SID in every ACL and reject invalid ones. Determining whether a SID is valid might require a network call to the domain controller. If the machine doesn’t have network connectivity, would you just reject all ACL changes?

Furthermore, even with network access, it may not even be possible to validate a SID. Suppose you get a SID for S-1-5-21-1004336348-1177238915-682003330-1001. Is that valid? To find out, you need to contact the domain controller for S-1-5-21-1004336348-1177238915-682003330. Do you even know who that is?

It’s legal to add SIDs that don’t exist, because they might exist in the future. For example, you might be on a Window Vista machine and set the ACLs on a file to grant access to S-1-5-32-578, which is the group of Hyper-V administrators. However, Windows Vista doesn’t know about that group, which wasn’t added until Windows 7. You are granting access in anticipation of the group existing: Once the system upgrades to Windows 7, that SID will magically begin to exist, and the file becomes accessible to Hyper-V administrators.

It’s legal to add SIDs that don’t exist, because they might exist in a place you haven’t learned about yet. For example, you can grant access to the SID S-1-5-2-x1-x2-x3-x4-x5-x6-x7, which we learned earlier is an app package SID. The app may not be installed right now, but the user might install the app later, and you want the file to be accessible to that app. Or you can grant access to a SID that corresponds to a Windows Live ID¹ so that when that user adds an account to your computer, they get access to the file that you want to share with them.

If you connect to a network file server, you may want to update the access control list for a file on the server to grant access to a SID that you know about, but the server doesn’t.

And what if a user gets deleted? Do all the existing ACLs suddenly become invalid? Does the system crawl every ACL on every hard drive (oh no, what about removable hard drives?) and forcibly delete SID entries for that user?

The security system doesn’t try to validate the SIDs that you put in your access control list. If they don’t correspond to any valid user, then no valid user will ever present that SID, and the entry is just junk DNA, sitting around taking up space but not doing anything. But once a user with that SID shows up, access will be granted. Because you told it to let them in.

¹ The Windows Live ID Sign-In Assistant allows you to generate SIDs from Windows Live accounts, so you can add them to access control lists (such as for files), so that when that account signs into the computer in the future, they will have access to the files that you shared with them. Somehow, Slashdot got the idea that this meant that Windows was gaining some sort of computer-to-computer file sharing. It’s just a SID provider, so that you can set the security attributes on a file to say “Let billg@contoso.com access this file” (should he ever log onto this computer). It doesn’t transmit the file anywhere.

The post Dubious security vulnerability: Granting access to SIDs that don’t exist yet appeared first on The Old New Thing.

XDR's fully loaded value to threat detection, investigation and response will only be realized when it is viewed as an architecture

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This post contains spoilers for "The Visit."

M. Night Shyamalan's "The Visit" was initially titled "Sundowning," although it could've just as easily been called, "How M. Night Got His Groove Back." The 2015 film saw the "Sixth Sense" and "Signs" director return to his moody thriller roots after helming a pair of critically-panned big-budget misfires in the forms of "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth." By funding the movie on his own, Shyamalan gave himself the creative freedom to make what remains one of the weirdest and wildest creations of his career so far (which is quite the accomplishment, coming from the director of "Lady in the Water").

Framed as an amateur documentary made by 13-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) and his 15-year-old sister Becca (Olivia DeJonge), "The Visit" follows Tyler and Becca on a week-long trip to meet their estranged grandparents for the first time. Upon accompanying "Nana" (Deanna Dunagan) and "Pop Pop" (Peter McRobbie) to their remote farmhouse, Tyler and Becca are quick to realize there's something ... off about their hosts. Like so much of Shyamalan's work, "The Visit" plays out as a twisted fairy tale from there, as Tyler and Becca slowly uncover the horrifying truth: Nana and Pop Pop are actually a pair of imposters who escaped from the psychiatric hospital where their real grandparents worked and murdered them in order to take their place.

While there's no overlooking the ageism inherent to the film's premise, "The Visit" benefits from having a dark sense of humor and succeeds in keeping you wondering if there might be a supernatural explanation for Nana and Pop Pop's behavior, right up until the big twist. Ultimately, however, the movie seems to take place in a grounded universe much like our own -- although, it turns out, Shyamalan very nearly retconned that years later with 2019's "Glass."

Superheroes Exist... And So Do Evil Grandparents

M. Night Shyamalan's Eastrail 177 trilogy, which gets its name from the train line that connects his 2000 film "Unbreakable" with 2017's "Split" and "Glass," resembles "The Visit" in that it starts out taking place in what appears to be the real world. Except, in that case, it turns out the trilogy's universe is home to people with super-human abilities right out of a comic book, like near-physical invulnerability and heightened intelligence. Another thing they share in common? They all take place in or near M. Night's old stomping grounds in Philadelphia, just like the vast majority of his oeuvre.

Has Shyamalan ever toyed with the idea of having all his movies exist in the same version of Philly? He was, after all, the filmmaker who recognized that superhero comic books are the modern-day equivalent of ancient mythology with "Unbreakable," a whole eight years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe took over Hollywood. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, M. Night admitted he wasn't ahead of the curve when it came to the shared universe trend. Still, that didn't stop him from considering making the events of "The Visit" canon to the Eastrail 177 trilogy:

"If I was smart enough to have thought about it 20-some years ago, I would've done it, but I wasn't smart enough to think about it. There was one tie-in that I almost did. It was in 'Glass' when they all got to the mental institution. I was going to tell a story about 'The Visit' and how two people escaped from that same hospital."

'I Chickened Out'

"Glass," as M. Night Shyamalan noted, has "Unbreakable" leads David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) being taken to the same psychiatric hospital, Raven Hill Memorial, as "Split" character Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), on the grounds that their "superpowers" are really just delusions brought about by unresolved trauma and mental illness. According to Shyamalan, he came precariously close to including a direct reference to the plot of "The Visit" in his script. "I was going to do it, but I chickened out. So I didn't do it," he confessed.

Directors peppering their films with nods or direct links to their other movies is nothing unusual, mind you. Quentin Tarantino has been doing it his entire career and we don't have time to dive down the rabbit hole that is the Pixar Shared Universe theory. It's mostly just good fun, and its sounds as though Shyamalan wasn't really thinking much deeper than that with his abandoned shout-out to "The Visit" in "Glass." But might it have benefitted the movies from a creative perspective all the same?

My inclination is to say it wouldn't. "The Visit" continues Shyamalan's examination of aging, mortality, and death in his work, which extends to films like "The Sixth Sense" and "Old" but also goes back as far as his first-ever theatrical release, 1998's "Wide Awake." The movie, which was notoriously mangled by producer Harvey Weinstein in post-production, centers on Joshua (Joseph Cross), a 10-year-old boy who's thrown into a spiritual crisis by the death of his grandfather. "Wide Awake" might be a far cry from the sadistic and comedic tone of "The Visit," but so far as thematic parallels go, the pair are arguably more alike than the latter and "Glass." So maybe it's best M. Night "chickened out."

Read this next: The 15 Best Horror Movie Directors Of All Time

The post The Visit Was Almost Connected to M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable Trilogy appeared first on /Film.

If there's one thing that author Anne Rice loved writing about, it was toxic, messy relationships. Her novels were soapy, supernatural southern gothics that luxuriated in dark sensuality. Her most famous series of novels was The Vampire Chronicles, which primarily followed the vampire Lestat, the Brat Prince of the undead, as he wreaks havoc on every person he meets — vampire, human, or otherwise. Her other major series was "Lives of the Mayfair Witches," which followed a family of witches in New Orleans who were forever entwined with an evil spirit named Lasher. Eventually, the two series crossed over when the witches appeared in the later Vampire Chronicles novels, setting up a whole Anne Rice universe. 

Fans of Rice's novels are fervent, and AMC seems to be banking on setting up a television universe based on her world. "Interview with the Vampire," based on the first novel in the Vampire Chronicles, has done very well for the network, earning critical praise for its bloody, biting portrayal of Rice's most famous bloodsuckers, Louis and Lestat. Adapting "Interview" seemed like a real challenge, but the series ended up being excellent, bringing joy to Rice fans and newcomers to the franchise alike. Now it's just a matter of seeing if "Mayfair Witches," whose central romance makes Lestat and Louis look well-adjusted, can follow in its footsteps.

Unfortunately, based on the first five episodes of "Mayfair Witches" that I was given, this adaptation just doesn't have any bite.

Getting Lost In Rice's Most Complicated Work

The main draw of Rice's "Mayfair Witches" books is the salacious family drama that's one part V.C. Andrews and one part "Days of Our Lives," all filtered through Rice's gory gothic lens. Dr. Rowan Mayfair (Alexandria Daddario) is a brilliant young neurosurgeon who discovers that she's the chosen one in a line of witches who are bound to the spirit Lasher (Jack Huston). Deidre, her adoptive mother, a Mayfair cousin, dies and Rowan finds herself drawn to New Orleans, leaving behind her neat, tidy world for a supernatural nightmare. The Mayfairs are a sprawling dynasty with Haitian and Dutch branches, but they're all witches, bound to Lasher's magic in some way or another. Deidre was kept drugged in order to prevent her from communicating with Lasher, but she eventually manages to avoid taking her medication and retrieves the necklace, summoning him back to the Mayfair house once more. After she dies, it's only a matter of time before Lasher sets his sights on Rowan. 

"Mayfair Witches" operates as a kind of mystery, as Rowan tries to uncover the secrets of her heritage, learn to control the witch power within herself, and figure out who or what the heck Lasher is, but the mysteries are so interwoven and vague that it's ultimately frustrating. There are some fun, shocking moments early on where Rowan accidentally kills people by seeing into their brain and popping arteries like bubble gum, but her reaction to these events (or lack thereof) sets a depressing precedent where moments that should matter just fall flat. 

Hints Of Potential

The handful of things that do work about "Mayfair Witches" are enough to make me want to finish the season when it's out, because there are hints that the series is just taking its time to really find its way. Rowan only finally becomes compelling toward the end of the fifth episode, doing something other than looking like a deer in headlights. There's also at last a reference to the Talamasca, the secret organization that exists in Rice's world to keep tabs on all of the supernatural beings. The most interesting character, Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa), is a Talamasca agent with psychic powers who is tasked with following Rowan and reporting on the Mayfairs, and if there's much more of him later in the season, it would be to the show's benefit. Ciprien can see the past of any object (or person) he touches, making him a very effective agent against the supernatural. Chirisa is also giving a great, layered performance that makes him easier to empathize with than anyone else. The rest of the characters feel like pastiches of genteel Southern families from other, wackier shows.

Therein lies the biggest problem with "Mayfair Witches": it refuses to embrace the camp elements of the source material at all, rendering it joyless. "Interview," its television sibling, takes itself deadly serious when it matters, but also leans into the campy, soapy fun baked into the genre. Every time that "Mayfair" feels like it's heading in an interesting direction, it pulls itself back. There's too much restraint and not enough wackiness, especially given just how weird some of the ideas presented really are. 

Let It Be As Weird As It Warrants!

There are some ridiculous ideas presented in "Mayfair Witches," with the family's long line of incest, rape via ghost, and more, but these elements seem to be tampered down in order to try to make the series feel more contemporary, or realistic, and it just takes all of the fun out of things. This is a series where Deidre has freaky ghost sex with Lasher and it makes Rowan get all hot and flustered despite being thousands of miles away, in the sky, on an airplane, but it happens so fast that you're almost left wondering why they included it at all. Lasher himself also feels less threatening and sexy than he should, and his powers are so vague that he's just a confusing menace with a snazzy fashion sense. Maybe Lasher and Rowan will become more interesting once they start interacting more in the back half of the season, but I'm doubtful.

"Mayfair Witches" had me longing for the lush sensuality of "Interview," or even the creepy camp of "American Horror Story: Coven." A series about a family of witches in New Orleans should be as gloriously over-the-top as the city itself, but instead of a spicy jambalaya, the series is about as flavorful as a bowl of plain steamed rice. "Interview with the Vampire" had me prepared to potentially fall in love with the world of the Mayfair witches, but the first five episodes are a real disappointment. 

"Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches" premieres on AMC and AMC+ on January 8, 2023 at 9:00 EST. 

Read this next: The 15 Best Horror TV Shows Of All Time

The post Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches Review: This Sterile Southern Gothic Lacks Bite appeared first on /Film.

The PS5 looks to have a design fault that can take months to appear and only seems to happen if you use the console while it's in a vertical orientation. From a report: As Wololo reports, hardware repair specialists working on PS5 consoles that fail to boot are finding the problem is caused by the liquid metal thermal interface Sony used on the custom AMD Zen 2 CPU. When the PS5 is oriented in a vertical position, over time the liquid metal is moving and spilling out on to the components surrounding the CPU. This also means the liquid metal is no longer evenly spread across the chip it's meant to help cool.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cloud company Rackspace has completed its investigation into the recent ransomware attack and found that the hackers did access some customer resources.

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