Ronald.phillips

After finalizing the genre categories for the best games of 2022 and the most anticipated ones of 2023, it's time for the Wccftech community to select their favorite one out of the five nominees in each category (Shooter, Action, RPG, Horror, Adventure, Platform, Indie, Strategy & Simulation, Sports & Racing, Multiplayer, and Overall).

Go ahead and vote in the polls below, which will close on Saturday, January 28th. The following day, we'll announce the winners of the Wccftech Community and Staff Awards.

The post Wccftech’s Best Games of 2022/Most Anticipated of 2023 Polls by Alessio Palumbo appeared first on Wccftech.

I still believe in Half-Life. The retcon ending to Half-Life Alyx. The huge modding and fan-game community that brings us sequels and remakes like Black Mesa and Levitation. Half-Life is still alive, and I still expect to see the arrival of Half-Life 3 at some point between now and the day my HEV suit finally whispers “user death imminent.” In the meantime, though, following the public leak of Half-Life, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 assets from the entire Valve repository, it seems a shortened, alternate version of the original Gordon Freeman FPS game has been pieced together – an obscure, Valve-eyes only cut of Half-Life 1.

MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Whatever happened to Half-Life 3?, Best old games, Best FPS games

Being a woman can be tough sometimes, but being a woman in the "Star Wars" franchise can be really tough. In an interview with Variety at their Sundance Film Festival studio, "Star Wars" sequel star Daisy Ridley shared some advice for the next generation of fierce femmes stepping into roles in a galaxy far, far away. Ridley has plenty of experience dealing with both sides of the Force and the fanbase, as she starred in the trilogy that began with "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in 2015 and was the target of serious vitriol for her character Rey's role in the sequel, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." By the time the third film, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" hit theaters, Ridley was pretty good at handling fan fury. 

There are two pretty huge "Star Wars" series coming to Disney+, so Ridley's advice couldn't come at a better time. "Ahsoka," starring Rosario Dawson in the titular role, playing the character once more after donning her lekku on "The Mandalorian." Joining her in the "Star Wars" television world is "The Hunger Games" star Amandla Stenberg, who will headline "The Acolyte," about a Jedi acolyte during the era of the High Republic. 

"Star Wars" has always featured strong women in various roles, but the fan reaction hasn't always been kind to them, sadly. Hopefully, "The Acolyte" and "Ahsoka" both end up being fan favorites, so these talented ladies can enjoy their time at the top of the "Star Wars" world. 

Ignore The Fandom Menace

When asked what advice she would give to women entering the "Star Wars" fandom arena, Ridley didn't mince words:

"The world is a crazy place. It's important to tune out the stuff. Not just with 'Star Wars,' but with everything, you try and be in the moment and enjoy what it is because life moves quickly."

That's honestly pretty great advice for anyone who has a career in the public eye. There is a tremendous amount of noise out there as people assess your every action, especially when you're a part of as big of a pop culture property as "Star Wars." Sadly, the advice is especially applicable within the fandom itself, which has been truly heinous to members of the sequel trilogy's cast, focusing the worst of their ire on Kelly Marie Tran, who portrayed Rose Tico in "The Last Jedi." 

The hatred tends to be directed toward women, especially women of color. The stars of new "Star Wars" shows shouldn't have to publicly denounce a section of the fandom's racist attacks, but that's exactly what happened last year with "Obi-Wan Kenobi" when actor Moses Ingram was harassed on social media and her co-stars had to tell people to cut it out. Do these people not realize that they're behaving like the Sith in this situation?

Talented Performers Familiar With Backlash

Both Dawson and Stenberg have plenty of experience handling frustrated fandoms and potential backlash, though Stenberg might practically have a Ph.D. in dealing with online hate at this point, as they received plenty of it for their very first big movie role, as Rue in "The Hunger Games." (Stenberg is non-binary and prefers they/them or she/her pronouns.) Ridley doesn't seem to have any worries about whether or not Stenberg can take on the trolls, however, telling Vanity Fair that the young actor is truly capable:

"Amandla Stenberg can handle herself. She's been working for a long time. I sat next to someone at the 'Wakanda Forever' premiere, an executive, and they said ['The Acolyte'] is amazing."

We haven't seen much from "The Acolyte" yet, but the cast is incredible and I can't wait to see how the "Star Wars" TV universe approaches the High Republic era, so this is very good news indeed. Neither "Ahsoka" nor "The Acolyte" have premiere dates yet, but they will likely be premiering sometime later this year. Here's hoping the Force is strong with the show's stars because there are a lot of nerds who seem to enjoy working for the Dark Side. 

Read this next: Star Wars Characters That Are More Important Than You Knew

The post Daisy Ridley advises future women of Star Wars to tune out the stuff in a crazy world appeared first on /Film.

The Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker is a compelling look at the oddities of internet fame.

"Thousands of people who use Norton password manager began receiving emailed notices this month alerting them that an unauthorized party may have gained access to their personal information," reports CNET, "along with the passwords they have stored in their vaults. "Gen Digital, Norton's parent company, said the security incident was the result of a credential-stuffing attack rather than an actual breach of the company's internal systems." Gen's portfolio of cybersecurity services has a combined user base of 500 million users — of which about 925,000 active and inactive users, including approximately 8,000 password manager users, may have been targeted in the attack, a Gen spokesperson told CNET via email.... Norton's intrusion detection systems detected an unusual number of failed login attempts on Dec. 12, the company said in its notice. On further investigation, around Dec. 22, Norton was able to determine that the attack began around Dec. 1. "Norton promptly notified both regulators and customers as soon as the team was able to confirm that data was accessed in the attack," Gen's spokesperson said. Personal data that may have been compromised includes Norton users' full names, phone numbers and mailing addresses. Norton also said it "cannot rule out" that password manager vault data including users' usernames and passwords were compromised in the attack.... Norton is also offering access to credit monitoring services for affected users, according to its letter to customers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first three "Rocky" films saw Burgess Meredith turn the role of Rocky's trainer, Mickey, from a simple supporting player into one of the franchise's most beloved characters. A gruff manager who pushed Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) beyond his failures and limitations, Mickey was both pivotal to our favorite pugilist protagonist's successes and remains arguably the best trainer/coach we've ever seen onscreen. With memorable lines like "You're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder!" and "You know what you are? A tomato," Mickey always said what he meant with the type of streetwise pizazz that only Burgess Meredith could land so well.

Even in the casting process, Meredith's understanding of the Mickey character and his quips was so strong that he won the role in a way that might surprise franchise fans. Speaking to Philadelphia Magazine for its oral history about the making of "Rocky" (in honor of the movie's 40-year anniversary in 2016), director John G. Avildsen revealed that it was one particular perfectly-in-character moment of improvisation that ultimately landed Burgess the role, and led to him making cinematic history.

An Improvised Line That Became A Classic Mickey Barb

During Burgess Meredith's audition, he read for the scene where Rocky discovers he's lost his locker at the gym and moves to confront Mickey about it. At this point in the film, Rock isn't A Contender, and despite winning some (admittedly low-level) fights and being at that gym for six years, Mickey has his things bagged up and has given the locker to a fighter who is, in his professional opinion, more promising.

After originally performing the scene as written, Meredith elected to jazz things up a bit. John G. Avildsen explained:

"We tried it a couple of times, and then I said, 'Let's just improvise it and put the script down.' So [Burgess Meredith] and Sylvester [Stallone] went through the scene again, and when Rocky is supposed to turn and walk away, Burgess said, 'Rock, you ever think about retiring?' Sylvester never wrote that, but that's exactly what the guy would say."

The original "Rocky" script draft is exceptional, despite being written in a mere three days. The film was nominated for a slew of Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay, and it won for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. Even still, Meredith's note-perfect line was such a perfect fit for the Mickey character it not only landed him the part, but it also made it into the actual movie. For all its successes, however, the line did fail where it mattered most ... Mickey didn't convince Rocky to quit, and the duo went on to fuel a classic rags-to-riches sports franchise.

Read this next: Butkus To Punchy: Ranking All 8 'Rocky' Movies From Worst To Best

The post An Improvised Line Landed Burgess Meredith The Role Of Rocky's Mickey appeared first on /Film.

Researchers have shut down an "expansive" ad fraud scheme that spoofed more than 1,700 applications from 120 publishers and impacted roughly 11 million devices.  "VASTFLUX was a malvertising attack that injected malicious JavaScript code into digital ad creatives, allowing the fraudsters to stack numerous invisible video ad players behind one another and register ad views," fraud prevention firm

Like many people passionate about movies, particularly those who grew up in the golden age of trash-talking critics like Pauline Kael, Judith Crist, Rex Reed, Gene Siskel, and Roger Ebert, Quentin Tarantino isn't shy about throwing an elbow or twelve when discussing cinema. He doesn't vacillate, nor does he spend much time discussing films that elicit a ho-hum response. You could say he likes to play contrarian, but that would suggest he's basically the Skip Bayless of film discourse. While you may vehemently disagree with Tarantino from time to time, he is anything but a full-of-it blowhard who spouts off inflammatory opinions to get a rise out of low-information fanatics. Tarantino knows his subject inside and out. If you want to enter his arena, you better come armed with ardor and a lifetime's worth of film knowledge.

This doesn't mean Tarantino can't be infuriating on occasion. This is, after all, the man who declared Paul W.S. Anderson's execrable "The Three Musketeers" one of the top 11 movies of 2011, while consigning Kelly Reichardt's masterful "Meek's Cutoff" to his "Worst of" list. He can be especially exasperating when discussing his favorite directors (e.g. his distaste for Brian De Palma's uber-De Palma coup de cinema "Body Double"). Tarantino has, for a long time, harbored some curious opinions about the oeuvre of Steven Spielberg -- and if you thought he might back off these smoldering takes over the years, he proudly reiterated them when he visited the Reel Blend podcast at the end of 2022 with his Cinema Archives buddy, Roger Avary. If you haven't heard these viewpoints before, get ready to gape.

Quentin Tarantino And The Contrary Take Of Doom

Ask most film critics to name Spielberg's worst five movies, and you're guaranteed to find the filmmaker's 1979 flop "1941" in the mix, if not at the very bottom. It's a wildly mean-spirited comedy that lampoons Los Angelenos' militaristic hysteria in the immediate wake of Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor. Even with the presence of "Saturday Night Live" superstars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the film has a reputation for being a mirthless, shoddily made embarrassment. While comedy is subjective, "1941" has moments of awe-inducing cinematic grandeur, most notably during the brilliantly shot-and-staged USO dance sequence (which suddenly turns into a brilliantly shot-and-staged brawl between Army and Navy enlistees).

Tarantino and Avary once again went to the mat for "1941" on Reel Blend (stating their correct preference for the shorter Theatrical Cut) before voicing what might be an even more unpopular Spielberg opinion.

Tarantino adores "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," for which Spielberg has expressed dissatisfaction (even though he did fall in love with his second-and-current wife, Kate Capshaw, while shooting the movie). In fact, Tarantino thinks the second Indy film is the director's best movie next to "Jaws." When asked to elaborate, Tarantino excitedly replied:

"Because... [Spielberg] was full of piss and gauge, alright, on the case of back-to-back 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters,' now he figures he could do no wrong, pushes the envelope, creates PG-13! The movie is so f****** badass, it created a new level in the MPAA! Something Brian De Palma's never been able to do as much as he's tried!"

Tarantino Throws Another Indy Curveball

I had no idea De Palma was hellbent on creating a new ratings classification during his 1980s heyday. I suppose Tarantino means what would eventually become "NC-17," which was meant to erase the porn stigma of the "X" rating (which, coincidentally, was introduced in 1968 via De Palma's counterculture comedy "Greetings"). De Palma managed to beat the system with "Scarface," and was forced to trim "Body Double" to avoid an "X." It was an unwelcome impediment, but this is much different than forcing the MPA to wedge in a new classification between "PG" and "R" due to violence (which "Temple of Doom" did with a significant assist from Joe Dante's "Gremlins").

As for "Temple of Doom," Tarantino's crazy to call it Spielberg's second-best movie, but it is a supremely entertaining adventure that kicks off with a dazzling musical set piece which, á la "1941," turns into a masterfully executed action sequence.

For added cognitive dissonance, Tarantino later said he, gasp, far preferred "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" to "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." "I don't like the Sean Connery one at all," he exclaimed. "That's such a boring one. It's boring! And [Connery's] not an interesting character. The joke is made immediately. It's like 'Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.'"

"Last Crusade" is definitely the most broadly comedic of the Indiana Jones movies, but worse than the autopilot Spielberg of "Crystal Skull"? Tarantino's gonna Tarantino. The only major surprise here is that he isn't a secret fan of "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot."

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

The post Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Indiana Jones Film Is The One Steven Spielberg Likes the Least appeared first on /Film.

Despite only being a couple of episodes in, The Last of Us HBO show has already proved to be a colossal success. Surpassing ten million views in two days, we now have the rest of the show and The Last of Us PC release date to look forward to, as the drama has helped see sales of the PlayStation games skyrocket, which in turn suggests a healthy launch for the PC port too.

MORE FROM PCGAMESN: The Last of Us PC release date, Best action adventure games, Naughty Dog's new fantasy game

Out of the 335 public recommendations on a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy made since 2010, 190 were not implemented by federal agencies as of December 2022, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in a new report.

read more

Freerun, Sweetheart, Freerun

Our choices are, at best, half-chance. Each and every day the luckiest among us are afforded multiple opportunities to go left, right, straight ahead, or staying right where I am, thank you very much. And with each of these choices, we walk on new paths. And while we never really truly know whether we stepped the right way at the litany of crossroads we've reached, we hope that our sixth sense at best and blind luck at worse will see us through to our goals. We're grateful to have the half-chance.

For Frey Holland, there has been no half-chance. Abandoned as a newborn beneath the Manhattan tunnel that bears her name, shuffled through a litany of foster homes, and with her teen years soundtracked by a cacophony of howling winds and blaring sirens, Frey rolled the dice at birth and it most assuredly came up snake eyes. And now, on the eve of her 21st birthday, she finds herself facing the gavel of a judge once again, taking the fall for the latest in a series of ill-advised car thefts.

But tomorrow will be different... Frey has been stashing away what little money she can beg, borrow, or steal. And tomorrow, accompanied by her faithful feline/best friend Homer, Frey is getting out of Hell's Kitchen. She has the cash, she has the cat, and she has — for the first time in her young life — a plan, a purpose, a choice. Just one more night in her bleak, miserable apartment, and Frey can get the fresh start — the first start — that she's always dreamed of.

Tomorrow will be different...

Forspoken (PS5 [reviewed], PC)
Developer: Luminous Productions
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: January 24, 2023
MSRP: $69.99

Following an extended period of development and a series of infamous and ill-judged marketing mishaps, Square Enix Forspoken is finally ready to unleash its tale of arcane worlds, mythic legends, and personal responsibility upon a tentative audience — many of whom are already viewing the title with trepidation. Forspoken depicts the odyssey of the aforementioned Frey, plucked from downtown Manhattan and thrust into the ancient kingdom of Athia, which is smothered by a destructive and all-consuming force which Frey monikers "The Break".

Athia has its own defenders: Four powerful matriarchs of love and war known as "The Tantas", but The Break has severely affected these guardians, twisting their minds and loyalties and turning Athia's own founders into its very destroyers. With the kingdom on the brink of total collapse, and what remains of the people holed up in the ramshackle city of Cipal, it turns to Frey — unaffected by The Break as an outsider — to go forth into the corrupted world and learn of its truth.

For our reluctant "hero", however, this momentous and unwanted journey is her only path back home, back to Homer, and back to what semblance of a life she has.

Aiding Frey in her quest is a mysterious vambrace, "Cuff", whom is the key to Frey's initial arrival in Athia, Cuff aids Frey in her journey by providing a litany of magical abilities, while also boosting her strength and movement. Unfortunately for Frey, Cuff has something of an acerbic and dry personality, which clashes hard with Frey's own pessimism and eternal frustrations, forming the central chemistry for the duo's journey into the unknown. It's gonna be a long trip for the original odd cuffle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l06UYJftnPc&ab_channel=SquareEnix

Frey-de Cats

As demo players will be aware, Forspoken is an open-world adventure framed almost identically in the vein of Ubisoft titles such as Assassin's Creed, Watch_Dogs, and Far Cry. While it's considered somewhat vulgar to make direct comparisons from one game to another in any review, the open-world template used by Forspoken is so snug to the veteran Ubisoft mold, that such comparison is inescapable.

Forspoken drops our protagonist into an enormous, distinctly segmented open world, before showering them with a plethora of objective markers, offering labyrinths to conquer, Belfreys (Radio Towers) to locate, treasure chests to unearth, photo opportunities to snap, fonts of wisdom to be found, and Flashbacks (challenges) to be completed. In addition to her main questline, Frey can accept side-quests, (or "Diversions"), from the people of Athia, which expand the universe's massive scope and deep sense of lore.

This design methodology in itself, hangs over Forspoken as something of an albatross, hampering its very potential by marrying it to an aging format. While Forspoken's world is undoubtedly fun to traverse, (thanks wholly to Frey's magical parkour abilities), the "Riddler Trophy" approach feels out-of-step with the possibilities provided by the title's story, characters, themes, and combat. Perhaps the one true unique activity lies in the finding and befriending of a party of magical feline familiars, that will then visit Frey at refuges dotted throughout Athia.

To be clear, this isn't to say that Forspoken's open-world template is inherently bad. Anyone looking for an open-world checklist, packed out with boxes to tick and checklists to complete, is going to have a suitably great time with Forspoken. But the elements of Luminous' title that do shine through are frustratingly juxtaposed with a model that feels anachronistic, especially given the powerful, ninth-generation technology at play and the rare "blank canvas" provided by a fresh, new IP.

Go with 'The Flow'

Frey and Cuff make quite the combative duo, both metaphorically and literally. Frey is given an initial skill tree of ranged magic, divided into Attack and Support abilities. As she progresses through Athia, this library of spells opens up, transforming Frey into an abracadabra powerhouse. Forspoken's "crowd-control" combat sees Frey synergizing her attacks and support magic with her acrobatic abilities to maintain the edge on battalions mutated enemies — earning additional rewards for style and finesse.

It has to be said that, initially, the combat is pretty boring, and the player will be hard-pushed to feel engaged in the early going. As the story progresses, however, Frey will unlock hugely different magical powers, allowing her to blend elemental attacks, sword-play, and good, old, fashioned Kung-Fucking-Fu. Once Frey has access to different magics, combat becomes a riot — an enjoyably devastating mix of melee, ranged, and environmental attacks, interchangeable on the fly and punctuated by her trademark acrobatics.

It's baffling that the decision was made to lock away further magical styles until a full third into the story. Forspoken's action truly comes into its own once our hero is given a range of styles to play with, but the player has to tread a fair few miles into the story before they can build a bespoke combat style that brings the battle to life. Synergizing "The Flow" with Frey's full range of abilities can be poetry in motion. In addition, a fun mechanic sees Frey learn and apply mythical nail designs in order to further boost her potential. That's never worked for me in real life, but I'm for sure going to try it out.

Tanta-stic

After a brilliant and genuinely moving opening, Frey's early hours in Athia are a little humdrum, although the inevitable fish-out-of-water humor is very welcome, recalling the fun of Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. Much like the combat, Forspoken's true motivations don't really get into gear until our girl meets the Tantas themselves. It is here that the drama, (and destruction), step up, tasking Frey and her companions to face up to their true responsibilities.

The heart of Forspoken lies in its characters. It's refreshing to play as a flawed, frustrated and understandably reluctant hero, and actor Ella Balinska gives a tremendous performance as the girl who has spent her whole life fucking up only to find herself suddenly asked to save a magic civilization. Frey's coarseness, (perhaps the most foul-mouthed game character since 50 Cent in Blood on the Sand) is utterly magnetic; her anger and strength attractive; and her heart and vulnerability warming. We understand her, even if she's yet to understand herself. She's a great protagonist.

She's also funny as fuck, her comedic self-defense nature and even 'That Line' perfectly apt when delivered in given context.

In fact, all of Forspoken's leads are uniformly on point. As Cuff, Jonathan Cake understands that his character lacks physical presence, and thus uses amazing vocal nuance to ensure that every single beat hits, whether being sardonic, or inspiring, comforting, and even on the rare occasion he dares show his bearer some actual respect. The Tantas themselves are outstanding in visual design, character, and performance — Tanta Cinta is the relatively chill one, while Tanta Sila has absolutely had enough of your shit. Tanta Olas holds mastery of the world's desires and Tanta Prav may actually give you nightmares.

Of note, the Tanta's graphics card-bothering showdowns are visually spectacular, forming undeniable highlights of the entire adventure... Better check those PC specifications, Jack.

As with almost every element of Forspoken, unfortunately, you take the rough with the smooth, and while the lead characters are magnificently portrayed, the NPCs of Athia are, frankly, terrible. You'll have Frey, her friend Auden (Monica Barbaro), and "archivist" Johandy (Keala Settle) having an expressive conversation, and then some random character model will run in like "FRESHEN YER DRINK, GUV'NOR?". As Forspoken is set in a medieval world, law dictates that the player will be bombarded with Guy Ritchie accents, children played by adults, and kippers for breakfast, Aunt Helga?

An exposition sequence recreating an Athian massacre is straight ruined by these unintentionally comedic extras, who might as well be depicting The Three Stooges as they and their families burn.

Overall, Forspoken's tale is an entertaining one, with a few interesting twists and several highly memorable conversations and encounters. The ball is fumbled toward the goal line, with an interminable chapter of exposition that goes on far too long — seriously killing the momentum as we head into our finale. Fortunately, though, the climax is suitably grand, with an epic and highly cinematic final battle that truly, genuinely, feels like the player is fighting A God.

As an old white man*, (*to be determined), it certainly may not be my place to speak on this, but it is a thought that I do want to address, as I believe it hangs over the title: There is a wish that Forspoken would have been bolder with its themes, truly embracing Frey's background, her personal challenges, and spotlighting how the dangers and ceilings that face African-American women transition throughout the ages — with both society and the state itself consistently, actively, placing high hurdles in pathways to happiness, success, even basic security.

Frey's life has started on the back foot, sure, but it feels as if she is against a system that will forever prevent her from attaining her goals, especially when compared to those of another race, gender, and/or position of privilege. In fact, the only reason she doesn't end up in jail at the outset of the story is via the leniency of an African-American judge— who likely understands the myriad challenges that the modern world will stack against Frey. But for all of Forspoken's emotional dialogue, no one is willing to openly reference or even metaphorically portray what these challenges are, or why Frey's struggle to reach the second rung of life, in almost any environment, is intrinsically linked to her status. It will tip-toe around them in the very loosest possible sense, but then swiftly back away before engagement.

To a much lesser degree, this adherence to "toeing the line" is also depicted in the character of Auden, a woman Athian resident who, as the story progresses, seems to clearly fall in love with Frey. Both the vocal and motion capture performance of Auden frequently flaunts this possibility, but just enough doubt remains sown to allow nervous PR folk the safety net of "No, no, no... They're just Gal Pals!"

Forspoken feels like a game that — from both a narrative and gameplay standpoint — plays it safe when it has the opportunity to be dangerous. And while Balinska and the splendid lead cast have the talent, ability, and nuance to give life to a potentially bold, aggressive, and genre-shattering storytelling, (to hell with the naysayers that would decry such direction). Forspoken's writing, intentionally or by request, shies away from said risk, ultimately delivering what is a solid story, but feels as if it never wants to truly engage with the core context and themes surrounding the turmoil of its brilliant hero.

Girl, Interrupted

With Forspoken, Luminous Productions has delivered a perfectly fine action RPG that will absolutely tick the boxes for those who love the hour-eating engagement of the open-world grind. There's an overwhelming sense that Frey, Cuff, The Tantas, and Athia itself deserve so much more than this aging world of checkpoints and radio towers, and the strength of the hard-working cast, on occasion, smashes through these tropes by sheer force of will. Ultimately, the battle between new-school and old-school design reaches a stalemate, resulting in an acceptable adventure that leaves promise on the table.

Given the opportunity to dare, Forspoken chooses to play it incredibly safe, with muddled pacing and strict adherence to both narrative and gameplay tropes holding it back from reaching its groundbreaking potential. Regardless, its dazzling visuals, charismatic leads, memorable boss battles, and energetic and varied combat will reward the more patient player with a solid, spellbinding adventure... And, for everybody else, there are magical cats.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Forspoken appeared first on Destructoid.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has published guidance to help the Department of Defense (DoD) and other system administrators identify and mitigate cyber risks associated with transitioning to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

read more

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT aims to offer a slightly cheaper way to get on board the RDNA 3 GPU train. It boasts similar specs to its more expensive sibling and offers significant performance improvements over its predecessor, including more powerful RT cores. Unfortunately, it feels there's little to no reason you should pick this particular pixel pusher over alternatives from within the Radeon RX 7000 series lineup and competing options.

MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Ryzen 7000 CPUs - everything we know, RDNA 3 GPUs - everything we know, Best gaming CPU

The other day I investigated a report that a C runtime library modification causes programs to hang on a classic IBM 5150 PC with no math coprocessor. The runtime originally contained two separate routines, one to detect the presence of an FPU and the other to detect the FPU type.

Someone noticed that the code in the two routines looked really similar and decided to merge them. The reworked code runs just fine on 386 and later processors, with or without FPU (I’m unsure of its status on 286 machines). But it does not work on an FPU-less 8088; it causes the system to hang.

The old code looked like this:

    push  BP                 ; save BP
    mov   BP,SP              ; get access to stack
    sub   AX,AX              ; start with a preset value
    push  AX                 ; allocate space for ctrl word
    fninit                   ; initialize math coprocessor
    fnstcw word ptr -2H[bp]  ; store cntrl word in memory
    pop   AX                 ; get control word
    mov   AL,AH              ; get upper byte
    pop   BP                 ; restore BP

If the routine returned the value 3, a math coprocessor was found, otherwise there wasn’t one.

The new code looks like this:

        push    BP                  ; save BP
        mov     BP,SP               ; get access to stack
        sub     AX,AX
        push    AX                  ; allocate space for status word
        finit                       ; use default infinity mode
        fstcw   word ptr [BP-2]     ; save control word
        fwait
        pop     AX
        mov     AL,0
        cmp     AH,3
        jnz     nox87
        ...

It’s almost the same, but hangs on an 8088 without an 8087. Why does that happen?

The reason has everything to do with how an 8087 FPU was interfaced to the 8086/8088 CPU. The FPU snooped the CPU’s bus transactions and observed all instruction fetches. The CPU used the QS0/QS1 pins to inform the 8087 about the state of its prefetch queue. The FPU essentially executed instructions in lockstep with the CPU.

When an FPU instruction was found in the instruction stream (prefixed with one of the ESC opcodes), the FPU executed the instruction. The CPU usually first executed a WAIT (aka FWAIT) instruction, which monitored the CPU’s TEST input, which was connected to the FPU’s BUSY signal. As long as the FPU reported that it was busy, the CPU would wait.

And of course, the problem is that with no FPU present, the nonexistent FPU appears to be permanently busy… and a WAIT instruction never completes.

Intel significantly changed the CPU/FPU interface for the 286/287, then again slightly for the 386 (which could use either a 287 or a 387 FPU), and yet again for the 486 when the FPU was built into the CPU chip and no external interface was involved anymore. These changes subtly altered the behavior of the FPU related instructions. One of the changes is that newer CPUs no longer hang on a WAIT instructions if no FPU is present. But back to the old IBM PC…

IBM 5150 FPU Support

I thought I’d check the original IBM Technical Reference. First I examined the BIOS to see what it does with the FPU. The answer was clear — nothing. The original PC BIOS contains no mention of 8087, FPU, math, or anything like that. The BIOS equipment word (stored in the BIOS Data Area or BDA) supposedly has bit 1 set when an FPU is present. But in the original PC BIOS, that bit is “not used”.

Newer versions of the PC and XT BIOS are only very very slightly different: Bit 1 in the equipment word is documented as “math coprocessor”. But the BIOS still doesn’t do anything with it. So how is that supposed to work?

Easy — the bit value comes straight from a DIP switch on the IBM PC system board. The BIOS does not attempt any validation, which means the FPU bit in the BIOS equipment word might not be very trustworthy on the PC and XT.

(As an aside, the PC/AT BIOS does include FPU detection and sets the bit in the BIOS equipment word. It also has a little bit of work to do because on the PC/AT, the FPU uses IRQ 13 for math error reporting; the IRQ has to be unmasked if an FPU is found.)

In any case, I searched the Technical Reference for documentation relevant to the FPU. After a while I realized that there’s nothing about the FPU in the original 1981 PC Technical Reference. Nothing at all except… on the first page of the system board schematics, there are two big chips/sockets in the middle. One is labeled ‘8088’ and the other ‘SOCKET’. There is no question that the nameless ‘SOCKET’ is in fact a socket for an 8087 chip.

Why these shenanigans? Why put a socket on the board and then pretend it doesn’t exist? When IBM started selling PCs in late 1981, the Intel 8087 was a very new chip (it was released a couple of years after the 8086) and it was only available in very limited quantities, if at all. IBM clearly didn’t think they could offer the chip when the PC was launched, and perhaps when the Technical Reference was finalized, it wasn’t even clear if and when the 8087 could be offered to customers. Therefore IBM decided to not say anything at all, even though 8087 support was designed in. It’s still all there in the board schematics, but probably only people looking for 8087 support would clearly recognize it.

Looking at the schematics I noticed one interesting detail: The 8087 is wired to use NMI and not a regular interrupt for math error reporting on the IBM PC (something that Intel explicitly did not recommend) and the DIP switch controlling FPU presence also enables the NMI line. That is, unless the DIP switch is correctly set to indicate FPU presence, the FPU won’t be able to raise interrupts.

How Does It Really Work?

But then I started wondering how the FPU detection really works on an 8088. The FPU not present case is easy enough to follow. Let’s look at the detection code again:

    push  BP                 ; save BP
    mov   BP,SP              ; get access to stack
    sub   AX,AX              ; start with a preset value
    push  AX                 ; allocate space for ctrl word
    fninit                   ; initialize math coprocessor
    fnstcw word ptr -2H[bp]  ; store cntrl word in memory
    pop   AX                 ; get control word
    mov   AL,AH              ; get upper byte
    pop   BP                 ; restore BP

With no FPU, the FNINIT and FNSTCW instructions simply do nothing. The CPU effectively skips them, and the 8087 is not there to react in any way. Therefore the word on the stack will be unmodified (zero) and a later comparison will fail.

But how does it work if the FPU is present? The FNSTCW instruction is documented to take about 15 cycles on the 8087. If the CPU does not wait for the FPU at all, how does the CPU make sure that the FPU control word value is read after the FPU wrote it, and not before? The code does not attempt to insert any delay or anything, so why does the CPU not race ahead and read from memory before the FPU wrote it? Note that “canonical” 8087 detection code from Intel likewise does not suggest that any kind of explicit waits are needed.

I am not entirely sure of the answer. But I suspect that it has something to do with another synchronization mechanism between the FPU and CPU, completely separate from the BUSY signal. This mechanism uses the RQ/GT (request/grant) pins on the CPU and FPU.

Although the 8087 tracks the CPU execution and at least partially decodes instructions, it does not mirror the 8086/8088 state. When an instruction like the FNSTCW above writes to memory, the FPU cannot figure out the address, because it doesn’t know what the value of the BP register is. Therefore the CPU actually generates the address on the local processor bus, and the FPU uses that address to read or write data.

To do this safely, the FPU needs to be able to own the bus, so that no one else tries to execute bus transactions at the same time. It is quite possible that when the FNSTCW starts executing, the 8087 almost immediately grabs the bus. The CPU would then be unable to execute the POP instruction because that has to read from memory. This would allow the FPU to to safely complete the FNSTCW instruction before the CPU can read the results (and the result must always be stored in memory).

I’m not quite sure how it works for the FNINIT instruction, which does not use memory and the CPU won’t generate any dummy memory cycles for it. The FNINIT instruction is relatively fast (5 cycles typical on the 8087). I suspect that it might also lock the bus to hold the CPU back, but could not find this documented.

Dual Sync

The 8087 clearly has two synchronization mechanisms. The BUSY signal is used for “long term” synchronization, and it is meant to allow the 8087 execute numeric instructions in parallel with the CPU.

Many numeric 8087 instructions take hundreds of cycles to execute, and Intel clearly thought it would be useful to let the CPU execute while the FPU is busy. The BUSY synchronization is visible to programmers through the WAIT instruction, and may need to be explicitly coded (e.g. if an FPU instruction stores a value that the CPU reads, the FPU has to make sure the FPU instruction was completed).

But there’s also another synchronization mechanism using the RQ/GT signals. This mechanism is not visible to the programmer and serves as immediate synchronization to prevent the FPU and CPU from stepping on each other’s toes.

I also suspect that the RQ/GT mechanism is used to synchronize the no-wait control instructions such as FNINIT and FNSTCW. Due to the nature of the 8087 interface, these instructions must not use the WAIT mechanism to avoid hangs. These hangs can happen both when there is no 8087 as well as when there is a pending FPU fault/interrupt (because a pending FPU fault causes the 8087 to be busy—as it must, because the fault needs to be handled before the next FPU instruction alters the state).

While the WAIT synchronization mechanism is well documented, given that programmers had to be aware of it, the RQ/GT mechanism is not documented in much detail because programmers had no control over it and it worked transparently.

386 Note

On the 80387 and later FPUs, a FINIT instruction won’t hang the system if no FPU is present. But there is another scenario to contend with: There may be a pending unmasked FPU exception. This is admittedly a corner case, but in environments such as DOS, it cannot be prevented.

On the 8087, math exceptions were asynchronous and were reported whenever they occurred. On the 387, that is not the case, and exceptions are only reported when WAIT is executed. It is therefore possible for the system to be in a state where the FPU has a pending exception, and the exception remains pending potentially indefinitely.

The FPU detection code using the waiting form of FINIT may therefore trigger a FPU exception; this may be harmless, but it could cause exception handling code to be run before it is fully initialized. The non-waiting form of FNINIT takes care of this problem, because it dismisses any pending math exception.

What Did Intel Say?

I could not find any hint of how software should detect an 8087 in the Intel 8086/8087/8088 documentation. The 8087 as such is well documented, but its detection is not. It is possible that the documentation was written before Intel realized that user-installable 8087 upgrades would be a thing.

In the Intel 80287 manual, there is sample code for detecting the FPU. An excerpt is below:

start:
;
;       Look for an 8087, 80287, or 80387 NPX.
;       Note that we cannot execute WAIT on 8086/88 if no 8087 is present.
;
test npx:
        fninit              ; Must use non-wait form
        mov     [si],offset dgroup:temp
        mov     word ptr [si],5A5AH ; Initialize temp to non-zero value
        fnstsw  [si]        ; Must use non-wait form of fstsw
                            ; It is not necessary to use a WAIT instruction
                            ;  after fnstsw or fnstcw.  Do not use one here.
        cmp     byte ptr [si],0 ; See if correct status with zeroes was read
        jne     no_npx      ; Jump if not a valid status word, meaning no NPX
;
;       Now see if ones can be correctly written from the control word.
;
        fnstcw  [si]        ; Look at the control word; do not use WAIT form                              
                            ; Do not use a WAIT instruction here!
        mov     ax,[si]     ; See if ones can be written by NPX
        and     ax,103fh    ; See if selected parts of control word look OK
        cmp     ax,3fh      ; Check that ones and zeroes were correctly read
        jne     no npx      ; Jump if no NPX is installed
;
;       Some numerics chip is installed.  NPX instructions and WAIT are now safe.

The comments very clearly state that WAIT must not be executed on an 8086/8088 with no 8087, and that explicit synchronization isn’t required after FNSTSW or FNSTCW.

I can only guess that in the 1980s, people already got burned by adding WAITs to FPU detection code, only to have it hang on an 8088 PC.

[link] [37 comments]

[link] [60 comments]

Thanks to Ron Gilbert and Return to Monkey Island, it feels like classic adventure games could be making a minor comeback. Grim Fandango, Broken Sword, Blade Runner – the point-and-click genre boasts some of the best games of the ‘90s. All of them owe a debt to Shadowgate, which first launched all the way back in 1987, and helped push the adventure game forward with a huge game world, seriously difficult puzzles, and the option to find multiple solutions. Rereleased for Steam and GOG back in 2014, the first Shadowgate is now getting a full sequel, some 35 years after the game initially launched.

This post contains spoilers for "Pearl."

Poor, sweet Pearl. All she ever wanted was to be a star. When the prequel film to "X" released in theaters, viewers went in knowing that Pearl's Hollywood ambitions weren't going to pan out, which is part of what fills "Pearl" with dread from beginning to end. By the time Pearl gets to her audition, she's already killed her parents and the projectionist at her local theater; nailing this audition feels like her only shot left at finding happiness. And she does nail it; at least, it seems like she does a good job from the movie's skewed perspective. But it just isn't enough.

What makes it harder for Pearl is the fact that nobody ever taught her how to handle rejection. She argues with the casting people for a while, who politely but firmly tell her that she's not what they're looking for. And then she repeatedly screams "I'm a star!" at them as she breaks down in tears. It's a moment that's turned into a bit of a meme on TikTok, as girls will film themselves jokingly overreacting to minor criticisms with Pearl's meltdown playing as the only audio.

The popularity of this scene in particular was surprising to "Pearl" lead and co-writer Mia Goth. "I didn't necessarily know how big it was going to be," she explained to Variety. "I don't really like to think through the scenes in too much detail, to be honest. I do all of my prep, but I honestly think that my body always has far better ideas than my head does."

A Performance Filled With Memeworthy Moments

Of course, it's not a huge surprise that Mia Goth's performance got turned into memes at various points in the film. Not only does Mia Goth nail her performance, but there is something depressingly relatable (and funny) about Pearl as a character. Who among us has not gotten our hopes up a little too much for something, only to have the dream come crashing down? Who hasn't tried to hide parts of themselves to people they like, only for it all to slip up to the surface? Admittedly, it wasn't great that Pearl murdered all those people, but hey, nobody's perfect.

Much like with "M3GAN" in 2023 or Dani (Florence Pugh) in "Midsommar," the internet loves to ironically rally around a female character who takes things into her own hands, who self-actualizes in her own twisted way at the expense of the people around her. Morally, none of these movies belong in the "good for her" genre of film, but it's fun to pretend like they do.

The "I'm a star!" meltdown likely blew up as much as it did because most of us do understand the impulse to react as Pearl does to a crushing rejection. But whereas we usually have the dignity and self-control to not have a public meltdown, Pearl has no such qualms. She makes zero attempts to hide how devastated and angry she is, and we respect that. As we wait for the final entry in Ti West's "X" trilogy, "MaXXXine," to release in theaters, we can only guess what sort of deeply-troubling, unforgettable moments Mia Goth will gift us next.

Read this next: The Best Horror Movie Performances Of 2022

The post Mia Goth Was Surprised By How Big Her Pearl 'I'm a Star' Meltdown Would Get appeared first on /Film.

Chip designers Intel Corporation, NVIDIA Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD) are in for a rough earnings season, according to pre-earnings coverage from a financial firm. 2022 was a challenging year for the semiconductor industry as companies all over saw their earnings decimated by a slowing global demand for personal and enterprise computing products. With the first earnings season of 2023 just about to hit the news waves, KeyBanc Capital Markets believes that guidance for the current quarter will be the key metric to watch when it comes to deciphering the current state of the semiconductor industry.

AMD, NVIDIA & Intel Are At Risk Of Sharing Weak Guidance For The Current Quarter

The results that are due later this month for Intel and AMD will showcase their performance for the fourth quarter of last year. They will follow a historic bloodbath for both firms, that saw Wall Street analysts paint Intel's results as 'inexcusable,' and AMD report a massive 40% drop in sales for its client segment but keep its growth story alive as it grew its operating and free cash flow in a quarter where spending had dried up everywhere.

With the first trading day of the week having settled in, AMD is leading the charge in the semiconductor space, with its shares up by more than 7%. Behind it is NVIDIA, whose shares are up by 5%, while Intel is following the NASDAQ 100 index with a 2% share price appreciation.

Looking at what's in store during the earnings season, Keybanc is taking a muted approach. According to the firm, slow digestion of graphics processing unit (GPU) inventory buildup, continuing weakness in the personal computing industry and a slowdown in cloud computing sales will hamper AMD's earnings for the fourth quarter of 2022 and also cast a dim picture on its guidance for the first quarter.

However, at the same time, Keybanc is also optimistic about AMD's prospects for the second half of this year. The firm believes that the personal computing sector will bottom out by the end of the second quarter, and AMD's Genoa lineup of products will prove crucial for it to steal market share away from larger rival Intel. Keybanc believes that AMD can gain a 30% market share in the data center market - a no small feat - with detailed coverage available here. Subsequently, Team Red's Q4 2022 results can align with estimates alongside lower first-quarter guidance.

Speaking of Intel, both the weaknesses in personal computing and lower cloud computing spending will bleaken its upcoming results and guidance for the first quarter. For Intel, a slowdown in spending by tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, alongside a slower Chinese cloud sector, will result in a further downturn for Team Blue and a March quarter that follows historical trends.

Finally, NVIDIA, whose RTX 4070 Ti GPU has been performing relatively well given the current inventory problems and a slowdown in consumer spending, might post slightly higher results for its January quarter. However, a Chinese slowdown, this time for gaming products, will also hurt Team Green, as its expectations for a $2.5 billion revenue from its gaming division can further be pushed out to its July quarter. NVIDIA's third quarter of 2023 results were a bloodbath which saw the firm post $1.5 billion in revenue, nearly halving over the year ago quarter. However, these results still beat analyst estimates, which saw the shares rise in aftermarket trading. NVIDIA's guidance for the next quarter will also be lower, but Keybanc believes the firm will pull through 2023 on a strong note as the RTX 40 series ramps up and channel partner inventory clears out.

The post AMD, NVIDIA & Intel Are In For A Tough Earnings Season Says Firm by Ramish Zafar appeared first on Wccftech.

If your windshield is wet, you use the wipers. If it’s dirty, you hit the button that squirts it with that blue fluid. And if it’s icy, you blast heat at it to defrost it. But what if your windshield is foggy, and the fog is on the inside? Some people say to use heat, some to use the AC—but which is correct?

Read more...

It's easy to forget that Microsoft maintains a command-line package manager for Windows... The open-source WinGet package manager is approaching three years since its announcement while it continues to not be as rich and robust of what Linux users for many years have enjoyed, but in any case it's continuing to be improved...

74.48% of developers use Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, according to one survey conducted by StackOverflow. And besides GitHub Copilot, there's over 40,000 other extensions in the VSCode Marketplace. Unfortunately, InfoWorld reports, "Researchers at Aqua Nautilus say they have found that attackers could easily impersonate popular extensions and trick unknowing developers into downloading them." It can be challenging to distinguish between malicious and benign extensions, and the lack of sandbox capabilities means that extensions could install ransomware, wipers, and other malicious code, Aqua security researcher Ilay Goldman wrote in a January 6 blog post. ["In fact, it can access and even alter all the code that you have locally and even use your SSH key to change the code in all your organization's repositories."] VS Code extensions, which provide capabilities ranging from Python language support to JSON file editing, can be downloaded from Microsoft's Visual Studio Code Marketplace. Aqua Nautilus uploaded an extension masquerading as the Prettier code formatter and saw more than 1,000 installs in less than 48 hours, from around the world. The spoof extension has been removed. Goldman noted that the Visual Studio Code Marketplace runs a virus scan for each new extension and subsequent updates, and removes malicious extensions when it finds them. Users can report suspicious-looking extensions via a Report Abuse link. "While the media is full of stories about malicious packages that have been uploaded to popular package managers such as NPM and PyPI, there is very little information about malicious VSCode extension," the blog post notes. Yet it points out that a blue checkmark on a VSCode extension "merely means that whoever the publisher is has proven the ownership of a domain. That means any domain." And even Microsoft acknowledged to InfoWorld that social engineering techniques have been used to persuade victims to download malicious extensions — though they point out that Microsoft confirms that each extension has a Marketplace certificate and verifiable signature before being installed. "To help make informed decisions, we recommend consumers review information, such as domain verification, ratings and feedback to prevent unwanted downloads."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Do you aspire to work in local government? Perhaps you dream of hearing the lively exchange of ideas at a public forum, or helping the community by trapping a rogue possum that's been terrorizing the golf course. Maybe you just want to shine shoes. 

Well if you're looking for career advice, then this week's "Saturday Night Live" is here to deliver it. The latest Weekend Update featured guest appearances from Leslie Knope, the regional director of the National Parks Service Midwest Branch, and April Ludgate, longtime employee of the Parks and Recreation department in the charming town of Pawnee, Indiana.

Host Aubrey Plaza, who was an actual intern in the "SNL" set design department before going on to play a sulky office intern in "Parks and Recreation," reprised her role from the show alongside Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope. Poehler was part of the regular "Saturday Night Live" cast during Plaza's internship and also founded the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where Plaza's comedy career began, so the two of them go way back (Poehler also popped up during Plaza's opening monologue).

So, what advice did April and Leslie have to offer about working in local government?

'Get A Job As A Garbage Man Or Something'

In an unexpected turn of events, April was actually more enthused about government work than Leslie during their appearance on the Weekend Update desk. Ms. Ludgate offered handy tips like "be a dog catcher and just say you couldn't find any" and "drive a bus, you don't have to be on time." (As a regular bus user, the accuracy of that one hurts.)

Leslie, it turns out, is a "Saturday Night Live" superfan -- so much so that Colin Jost's efforts to get her to actually talk about her job at the Parks Service didn't yield much success (though her lust for Joe Biden did make a reappearance). Poehler is no stranger to the Weekend Update desk, having been a co-anchor for several years alongside Tina Fey and Seth Meyers, but fortunately she maintains the integrity of the Parks and Recreation Cinematic Universe by emphasizing, "I used to watch this when Seth Meyers did it by himself with no one else."

"Parks and Recreation" wrapped up its seven-season run in 2015, but the cast and writers returned for "A Parks and Recreation Special" in 2020 as a charity fundraiser during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this may only have been a brief return, it's always good to see Leslie and April again.

Read this next: 12 Underrated Sitcoms That You Should Check Out

The post Leslie Knope and April Ludgate Visit Saturday Night Live To Discuss The Joys Of Government Work appeared first on /Film.

Quantic Dream has announced that its action-adventure game, Detroit: Become Human, has sold 2.5 million copies on PC. Detroit: Become Human came out in 2019, meaning that it took three years in order to hit this milestone. What’s also interesting here is that the team achieved a significant increase in sales of its three historical … Continue reading Detroit: Become Human has sold 2.5 million copies on PC →

The post Detroit: Become Human has sold 2.5 million copies on PC appeared first on DSOGaming.

David Cronenberg is anything but conventional, so when an unprecedented global pandemic struck, he knew it would take an inventive approach to overcome these new obstacles. COVID-19 changed the way we approach everything, from school to the legal system to entertainment. Every industry had its own new set of protocols, and film and TV productions were no exception. Cronenberg wanted to know how difficult it would be to make a film in the shadow of the pandemic, so he decided to do his own research in the field.

"Crimes of the Future" was shot in August of 2021, Variety reported. About a year and a half into the pandemic, filmmaking was back in action, but protocols were still very strict. Cronenberg knew it would be difficult to navigate this brand-new landscape of production, but this project was a long time in the making. It actually got greenlit by Serendipity Point Films back in 2003 but struggled to get off the ground for decades.

Nothing was going to stand in Cronenberg's way of making "Crimes of the Future," not even a pandemic. Still, he had to make sure he would be able to make the film while safely complying with new public health laws. Prior to launching into production, the director decided to take matters into his own hands. He figured that the best way to learn how sets were functioning in the new world was to work on one of them — so that's exactly what he did.

It Taught Him What To Expect In A Post-COVID Landscape

Before Cronenberg shot "Crimes of the Future" in 2021, he wanted to know what type of COVID restrictions and regulations he would be working with. To research his new role as a director, he took on some other roles in television acting. The Canadian filmmaker joined the cast of "Star Trek: Discovery" as the recurring character Kovich, a doctor and teacher at Starfleet Academy. He also took a role in the fourth season of the Shudder series "Slasher" as Spencer Galloway.

"I wanted to see if it was possible to make a movie with those protocols," Cronenberg explained to IndieWire:

"How awkward does it make things, how much more expensive does it make things, does it affect your acting, your directing, your acting? I saw that it was perfectly possible to do. It was more expensive, it was more awkward, but it was very doable and you got used to it. You got used to wearing the mask."

These acting gigs left Cronenberg extra prepared to face the challenges that the virus presented during production. Luckily, he handled everything efficiently and effectively. "[A]mong our crew of 150, nobody got COVID," the director claimed, "so it worked."

Don't Expect A COVID Film Out Of Cronenberg, Though

Cronenberg ran a COVID-safe set, but it's natural to wonder whether such a powerful virus sparked inspiration for a director that specializes in the corruption of the human body. In fact, some other filmmakers hope that Cronenberg will tackle the subject in the future.

"I'm looking forward to the first COVID exploitation movie," transgressive filmmaker John Waters admitted to Indiewire. "COVID-sploition! The virus comes back or somebody purposely spreads it, David Cronenberg should do it." Cronenberg himself isn't so sure that the virus would make for a rich metaphor.

"I don't find inspiration in it at all, but I do find it fascinating," the "Crimes of the Future" director told Pique News Magazine. "In my 77 years, I haven't experienced anything quite like it." It's possible that Cronenberg just thought that it was too soon to mine a major global tragedy for film ideas, but only time will tell. Cronenberg likes to invent his own fictional dystopias, not recreate the one we already live in.

Read this next: The Best Horror Movies Of 2022, Ranked

The post How Taking TV Acting Gigs Prepared David Cronenberg For Crimes Of The Future appeared first on /Film.

Teen dramas aren't just for teens anymore. In 2022, "Euphoria" became HBO's second most-watched series ever, and season 3 of Mindy Kaling's comedy-drama "Never Have I Ever" continued to attract a massive audience of viewers of all ages. The genre simply continues to expand, to the delight of its many fans.

Perhaps teen dramas persist because becoming an adult is a universally complex stage of life. In her book "Teen TV," Dr. Stefania Marghitu writes, "Certain narrative elements present themselves in nearly every teen series: the protagonist feels alienated from the adolescent world she is on the threshold of entering. This conflict is intertwined with a passionate story of first love and new discoveries during the transition from child to adult." Even for viewers who are no longer teens, the thrills, pains, and misunderstandings of youth aren't too difficult to remember. 

Some of the best teen dramas on TV are the ones that haven't received enough fanfare. The shows listed here depict a broad range of maturity levels, settings, and family structures for their teen characters, and span time periods from the early '90s to the present day. If you've already seen all the well-known hits, make sure to check them out.

In A Heartbeat (2000-2001)

"In a Heartbeat" is one of the most dramatic shows that has ever aired on the Disney Channel. The half-hour drama begins with an hour-long pilot directed by Shawn Levy, and focuses on four teen EMTs: cheerleader Val Lanier (Reagan Pasternak), football players Hank Beecham (Danso Gordon) and Tyler Connell (Shawn Ashmore), and recovering troublemaker Jamie Waite (Christopher Ralph). "Degrassi" fans will also spot Lauren Collins as Val's sister, Brooke. 

Though "In a Heartbeat" only lasted for one season, it is entirely worth watching for the way it balances high school emotions with suspenseful emergency scenarios. As the teens spend their afternoons rescuing community members in danger, they also become closer as a unit of friends. The best part of the whole show is the slow-burn romance between Tyler and Val, who confide in each other about their respective family struggles. Tyler finds his stepfather overbearing, and Val's dad has a heart condition that puts him out of work and requires the family to downsize. 

"In a Heartbeat" keeps the stakes high and prioritizes its characters' medical duties. One of the most elaborate rescues involves extracting a girl from a flooded basement. In another episode, Hank (who is typically the group's leader) tries to help a boy recover from the trauma of a previous emergency. If you can handle the stress of the squad's lives, "In a Heartbeat" is not to be missed.

So Weird (1999-2001)

I was a bit too young for the paranormal adventure series "So Weird" when it originally aired, but it's now one of my favorite Disney Channel shows. Fiona Phillips (Cara DeLizia) has a love for everything in life that can't be explained — or can it? Fi opens each episode of "So Weird" with a bit of commentary about whichever supernatural phenomenon will be explored in this installment, whether that's astral projection, ghosts, angels, or trolls who turn their guests into veggies. It's perfectly perplexing and suspenseful every time.

"So Weird" has some of the best (and underappreciated) music in the Disney Channel's history, which is another huge reason to tune in. Fi's mom Molly (Mackenzie Phillips) is a traveling musician who takes Fi and her brother, Jack (Patrick Levis), with her on the road. Phillips sings the show's theme song, "In the Darkness" (lyrics by executive producer Jon Cooksey and music by Annmarie Montade), which has a way of reaching into the viewer's soul: "This girl's walked on fire and ice, but I come out on the other side of paradise."

Consistently ahead of her time, Fi has her own website — remember, this debuted in the late '90s! — where she documents the strange occurrences she runs across and asks friends for advice. The Phillips are joined on their escapades by their family friends the Bells, including sons Clu (Erik von Detten) and Carey (Erik Lively). As "So Weird" progresses, Fi's arc is increasingly devoted to her connection with her deceased father, amplifying the show's spiritual layer before DeLizia's departure at the end of season 2. The third and final season features a new lead, Annie Thelen (Alexz Johnson), who lives with the Phillips family and develops her musical talent while her parents are abroad for work.

Joan Of Arcadia (2003-2005)

"Joan of Arcadia" is another teen drama with big spiritual themes, but it's scarcely remembered two decades after its debut. A play on the story of Joan of Arc, the show centers on teen Joan Girardi (Amber Tamblyn), who begins to communicate with a God who speaks via human forms. Joan's older brother, Kevin (Jason Ritter), is adjusting to work and life in a wheelchair, as he is unable to move his legs after a car accident. Younger brother Luke (Michael Welch) is the studious one, though he is soon joined by Joan in AP chemistry. Their father (Joe Mantegna) is police chief, and their mother (Mary Steenburgen) works at the high school. The tasks God asks Joan to complete end up helping others, and her missions sometimes intersect with her dad's work at the police station. 

You don't need to be religious to gain anything from this show, although it may raise some existential questions. The series does show its age at times, particularly when characters take too long to understand that homophobic jokes are bad. However, there's a lot here that's timeless, like the ways that Joan's outsider friends Grace (Becky Wahlstrom) and Adam (Chris Marquette) influence her approach to social groups. After God tells Joan to try out for the cheerleading team -- much to her dismay -- Adam surprises her with a handmade gift to show his support. He likes her for who she is, not for the clubs or activities she's involved in.

Andi Mack (2017-2019)

"Andi Mack," from "Lizzie McGuire" creator Terri Minsky, provides a refreshing contrast to the comedy programming that has become part of Disney's TV legacy. Andi (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a tween who discovers that the people who have been raising her are her grandparents, not her parents, and that the woman who she thought was her sister is actually her mother. Andi's personal life is turned upside down as she gets to know Bex (Lilan Bowden) as a parent instead of a sibling. Through this process, Bex becomes closer to her own mother (Lauren Tom), too. 

The surprises continue when Andi meets her dad, Bowie Quinn (Trent Garrett), a touring musician who never stopped loving Bex. The young parents' relationship is just as fulfilling to watch as Andi's daily life with her best friends, Cyrus Goodman (Joshua Rush) and Buffy Driscoll (Sofia Wylie). Andi, Cyrus, and Buffy call themselves "The Good Hair Crew," which reveals their optimistic approach to life. All three characters explore their developing talents, ideas, and romantic interests. Andi also has a complicated relationship with the adorable Jonah Beck (Asher Angel), who deals with anxiety and panic attacks later in the series. 

Cyrus was the first Disney Channel character to come out on-screen, and the show won a GLAAD Media Award in 2018. Lee is perfectly earnest in the role of Andi and makes the character's feelings accessible, confirming that it's hard to grow up amid changing family structures and friendships.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Jane By Design (2012)

ABC Family was a hot destination for teen dramas like "Pretty Little Liars," "Switched at Birth," "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," and "Make It or Break It." But it was "Jane by Design" that made me tune in as a senior in high school. Jane Quimby (Erica Dasher) has her eyes set on an internship with New York fashion house Donovan Decker. She accidentally interviews for a job as executive assistant to top designer Gray Chandler Murray (Andie MacDowell), and Jane gets the gig. As a teenager with a salary, Jane can help her brother and guardian Ben (David Clayton Rogers) make ends meet, but she doesn't want him to find out she's rubbing elbows with Betsey Johnson and Christian Siriano.

Secretly working a full-time job while in high school is no easy feat. Gray is one demanding boss, and co-worker India Jordain (India de Beaufort) might just be worse than the mean girl at school. Though Jane's workplace romances with older men are entirely inappropriate, she does have some flirtations with guys her own age, despite not being too popular among her peers. When asked about sparks between Jane and her best friend Billy (Nick Roux), series creator April Blair told the New York Post, "...I know in my heart that they're meant to be together -- he's the one. ... I always say, 'They're like Sam and Diane!'"

Unfortunately, "Jane by Design" didn't have much time for "Cheers" references, as it only lasted for one season. But true fans won't forget Quimby's portrayal of quirky Jane, a girl who cut the tension of the teen drama with her fun, fluttery style.

All American (2018-Present)

Another April Blair creation, "All American," premiered in 2018 and, at the time of this writing, is still going strong. Though it led The CW in the 18-49 demographic by late 2022, that wasn't always the case. In 2020, Adweek noted that "All American" had low ratings for its first two seasons, but benefitted from streaming on Netflix. This certainly is a binge-worthy show, and an important one. 

In the drama, which is based on the true story of champion NFL linebacker Spencer Paysinger, Spencer James (Daniel Ezra) leaves his local high school in South Los Angeles to play football in Beverly Hills. Per ESPN, the show's creative team focused on Spencer as "an outsider in two worlds." He feels a responsibility towards those in his own neighborhood, but his future depends on his performance on a field miles away. Spencer lives with Coach Billy Baker (Taye Diggs) during the school week, and returns to his home in Crenshaw on weekends. The show covers sexuality, racism, violence, and class differences, and has serious edges right out of the gate, as Spencer's best friend Coop (Bre-Z) becomes enmeshed in local gangs. 

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, "All American" showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll said of adolescence, "When you're that age, everything feels like life and death. ... The hormones and the emotions and high stake-ness of teen years, that's gold. You can't manufacture that stuff." Unsurprisingly for a CW show, many of the teenagers are portrayed by actors in their 20s (and, now, 30s). The high schoolers eventually graduate and go to college, and the series has a spin-off called "All American: Homecoming," also run by Carroll.

Fifteen (1991-1993)

Looking for a soapy teen series with rad '90s sweaters? "Fifteen" is a good option that flew under the radar. The series aired in Canada as "Hillside" but was known to Nickelodeon viewers in the U.S. as "Fifteen." As Decider's Brett White noted, "Compared to its popular American-made contemporaries 'Clarissa Explains It All' and the short-lived 'Salute Your Shorts,' shows that also debuted on Nick in 1991, 'Fifteen' is a lost artifact of a very definitive era." The show draws viewers into the rather serious romantic relationships of its characters, who deal with issues like underage alcoholism and parents who get divorced. Though most of the scenes are set at school, these kids never seem to be in class. 

No, the acting isn't great, but seeing superstar Ryan Reynolds in his first role is worth the melodramatic moments and over-exaggerated, scheming mean girls (that Brooke is insufferable). Reynolds had to tell Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan about playing Billy when they ran a clip of "Fifteen" in 2016. After mouthing "Oh my God" twice, Reynolds revealed that he didn't like acting back then, and that he co-starred in "Fifteen" for $150 per episode while also working as a paperboy. 

With all those heart-to-hearts at the soda shop and the well-placed cliffhangers, you might find yourself wanting to know what'll happen "next time, on 'Fifteen!'"

Flight 29 Down (2005-2007)

Upon its release, The New York Times noted that "Flight 29 Down" was akin to "Lost" and "Lord of the Flies," given that the show's teen characters are stranded on an island, trying to stay alive until they are rescued. As a kid, I didn't realize that the writers and producers behind well-known Disney and Nickelodeon shows were also working with Discovery Kids. "Flight 29 Down" was created by Stan Rogow, executive producer of "Lizzie McGuire," and D.J. MacHale, bestselling author and "Are You Afraid of the Dark" co-creator. MacHale even won a Writers Guild Award for the "Flight 29 Down" season 2 premiere, "Look Who's Not Talking." 

In addition to these accomplished creators, the cast features Disney Channel Original Movie stars Johnny Pacar, Hallee Hirsch, and "High School Musical"-era Corbin Bleu. These actors and their co-stars blend dramatic portrayals with mockumentary-like moments that capture their characters' daily struggles. Bleu and Hirsch's characters, Nathan and Daley, start off clashing over leadership, but soon begin to soften toward one another.  

Speaking about the characters from his successful shows, Stan Rogow told The New York Times, "Depending on the day, you're a teenager who wants to be an adult, but also you want to be a kid. I try to speak to these moments of transition." Imagine going through such a change while stuck on a beach with limited resources and no way home. If survivor stories aren't your favorite, this probably isn't for you, but if teens finding food and water and creating a temporary island home together sounds appealing, then "Flight 29 Down" is a good choice for your next watch.

The Famous Jett Jackson (1998-2001)

On "The Famous Jett Jackson," the late Lee Thompson Young played the title character, a charismatic actor who relocates from Los Angeles back to Wilsted, North Carolina. Jett's parents are divorced, so he lives with his father, Sheriff Wood Jackson (Gordon Greene), and his grandmother, Miz Coretta (Montrose Hagins). His show-within-a-show, "Silverstone," is filmed right in Jett's hometown, so he can keep up with his studies and hang out with his best friends, J.B. (Ryan Sommers Baum) and Kayla (Kerry Duff). Early episodes are sometimes light on the drama, focused on everyday problems or mysteries in Jett's "normal" life. Jett and his friends uncover a couple of crooks who steal and resell tractors; they catch a classmate who is selling tabloid photos of Jett; Jett gives Shakespeare a try; and he fends off a fan who wins a contest to spend a day with him. 

As Broadway performer Patrick Clanton notes in his excellent history of the series on YouTube, later stories wove in important issues, including racism, ageism, and eating disorders. Rising stars of the time appeared throughout the show's run, including Andy Lawrence, Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Destiny's Child, Rachel McAdams, and Usher. 

"The Famous Jett Jackson" is currently owned by WildBrain and does not stream on Disney+, to the sadness and frustration of the show's fans. Young's sister said in a statement to What's on Disney Plus that the actor's loved ones are "fine with the show being streamed," and the Lee Thompson Young Foundation has looked into the matter. Here's hoping that the Disney Channel classic can reach a wider audience soon.

Party Of Five (1994-2000)

For such a fantastic teen drama, "Party of Five" doesn't get nearly enough attention. A 2020 reboot with a new cast came and went. Even in the '90s, the original show wasn't quite like its contemporaries. "At the time, Fox was known for attractive people doing salacious things, that kind of vibe. And here came this weepy family drama," Scott Wolf, who played Bailey Salinger, remarked to Vulture. 

It's a teen drama that is also a family drama, simply because most of the family is made up of teens and young adults. Bailey and his younger siblings, Julia (Neve Campbell), Claudia (Lacey Chabert), and baby Owen (played by several kids) are in the care of their eldest brother, Charlie (Matthew Fox), after their parents' tragic death in an automobile accident. The series had a rocky start and teetered on the edge of cancellation more than once, but ultimately won a Golden Globe in 1996. TV Guide called it "The Best Show You're Not Watching," 

For me, Lacey Chabert quickly steals the show with her violin, her living room tent, and her winning smile. If anyone could get the Salingers together again in San Francisco, it'd be this Hallmark movie queen. In a January 2023 appearance on "Good Day DC," Chabert responded to the idea of a reunion: "I don't know if there ever will be, but I would love that. ... Sign me up, I want to know what Claudia is doing." About the rest of the cast, she sweetly added, "They're family to me."

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

The post Underrated Teen Drama Shows That Are Worth Watching appeared first on /Film.

Everyone knows the sweet-turned-horrifying climax of Stephen King's "Carrie." The title character, a teenage, telekinetic outcast tormented by her fanatical mother, finally has the night of her life at senior prom. She's even elected Prom Queen, but only thanks to a stuffed ballot box setting up a cruel prank. After Carrie is coronated onstage, she has a bucket full of pig's blood dropped on her, a callback to one of Carrie's earlier humiliations: she thought she was bleeding to death when she got her first period. Carrie is finally broken by this and uses her mind-over-matter powers to slaughter the entire senior class. The terror of the scene is supernatural but it has a realistic root: bullying and the pent-up resentment of those who are victimized by it.

Carrie's torment was already disturbing in the novel but it's even worse in the 1976 film adaptation; it's a scene that relies on a key visual and so benefits from unfolding in a visual medium. Taking pointers from Hitchcock in what wouldn't be the last time, De Palma cuts between a joyous Carrie onstage and the bucket in the rafters above her — when it drops, so does all your hope. You can't even enjoy Carrie's new happiness with her because you can see what's about to happen.

There is one person who enjoyed the scene though: Sissy Spacek.

A Nerve-Wracking Blast

When Spacek spoke with ComingSoon.net about "Carrie" in 2017, she recounted the shooting of the pig blood prom. As Spacek tells it, most of Carrie's emotions that you see onscreen were real. While the overall experience was "a little nerve-wracking," she enjoyed the first half for the same reasons Carrie did: "I was having my beautiful prom queen moment and that was so lovely. Carrie was having the time of her life, and those were real tears of joy and happiness."

Then the blood spilled. Spacek said that it felt like a "warm blanket," of all things: "It was heavy, thick and it was shocking." When the soaked Carrie looks out into the crowd, she sees people laughing. The movie suggests that this is just how she thinks they're reacting, but obviously, the actors in the crowd had to actually laugh. This meant Spacek had to endure a facsimile of the humiliation Carrie felt.

And it wasn't over yet. The scene was shot over two takes, so after the first, Spacek had to get cleaned up only so she could get blood dropped on her again. Even though it wasn't anything new, Spacek said the second take still felt, "just as intensely real" as the first.

From the way she describes it, Spacek's experience sounds like a rollercoaster of emotion. Yet, she capped off her recollection by declaring: "I loved shooting that scene, it was really great." Carrie is a very withdrawn character for most of the story, which meant Spacek had a limited range of emotions to display in her scenes, mostly just shyness and submissiveness. The prom scene must have felt thrilling in comparison. Spacek's experience is proof that a scene can be traumatizing for a character — and the audience too — but fun for an actor.

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

The post Sissy Spacek Had A Blast Filming Carrie's Bloody Finale appeared first on /Film.

Like his father before him, Brandon Cronenberg makes uncomfortable movies about characters descending into flesh-soaked circles of hell. But I'm not here to say that the two Cronenbergs make the same kinds of films. There are distinctions that separate their movies and prove that the younger Cronenberg is a filmmaker working on his own terms. Unlike father David, there's a distinct cosmic coldness to Brandon's work — the sense that everyone, and I mean everyone, is completely doomed. Sex and even romance play a part in David Cronenberg's films, but romance doesn't seem to be a concept that even exists in Brandon Cronenberg's worlds, and the sex on display is detached and sickly. It feels less about pleasure — something the older Cronenberg's films revel in — and more about distraction. It's as if there's no trace of humanity to be found anywhere in the younger Cronenberg's worlds.

Brandon Cronenberg made his feature debut with the icky 2008 flick "Antiviral," but it was his 2020 gorefest "Possessor" that truly signaled Cronenberg as a filmmaker working in a whole other league. I saw "Possessor" at the Sundance Film Festival, and it was one of the most affecting film-going experiences of my life. I was tired right before the screening, and feeling run down. So run down that I even considered skipping the film entirely to get some sleep.

Instead, I stayed, and by the time the film ended, I stumbled out into the cold night air of Park City in a kind of daze. The extreme gore and brutality made me dizzy, feeling almost stoned when coupled with the thing mountain air. It felt like I had just witnessed something I had never seen before, and that's the type of giddy high I'm always chasing, even if the end result is a film soaked in blood and guts.

Hollow, Violent Shells

Cronenberg recaptures those lurid, grisly, ghastly highs with "Infinity Pool," his latest tale of characters engulfed in a kind of perpetual coldness. Everyone is detached and distant. You get the sense that they've all witnessed something that blasted away a part of their minds, leaving behind hollow, violent shells that revel in the depraved. You don't watch a Brandon Cronenberg movie to be entertained, you watch it to leave the theater feeling just a little more deranged than when you went in.

Author James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wealthy wife Em (​​Cleopatra Coleman) are on vacation at a luxury resort located in Li Tolqa (a fictional place, in case you were wondering). James penned a book a while ago and hasn't done anything since. He hopes that maybe the vacation will rekindle his creative energy, but he mostly just sits around, lounging in the sun and sleeping in.

During the stay, James encounters Gabi — played by newly minted horror queen Mia Goth, who really gets to go big here; bigger even than her fantastic turn in "Pearl." Gabi professes to be a fan of James' book, which immediately gets his attention. Gabi and her husband Al (Jalil Lespert) invite the Fosters on an excursion to a private beach — something they're not really supposed to do, since there are strict rules about never leaving the gates of the resort. But James, who is clearly lusting after Gabi, his number one fan, thinks it's a good idea.

Who Dares Stop You?

Of course, it's not a good idea. After a tragic accident, James ends up in deep trouble with the law. In fact, he's facing execution. But ah, there's a twist! Because on Li Tolqa, the authorities have worked out a way to clone human beings, fully formed, identical to the person being cloned. The clone will then be put to death while the original person gets to walk free — for a very hefty fee. Cronenberg doesn't even bother to explain how all this works, and he doesn't have to — we buy into it because he sells it with the off-kilter strangeness of this world.

A place where advanced cloning is not just possible but a frequent occurrence leaves the door open for endless possibilities, and soon James finds himself descending into a hellish nightmare of debauchery and sick fantasy. Gabi and Al have a whole gaggle of friends who pull James into their twisted little world, while Em is alienated and horrified at the perverted changes in her husband. And oh yeah, there are some extremely creepy masks that I would like someone to start selling in the real world immediately.

What makes a person a person? Where do the clones end and the originals begin? And how far would you go if it felt like there were absolutely no rules? It's clear that everyone at the resort is obscenely wealthy, and as fantastical as the film can be, it's not a stretch to say that for the super-rich there really are no rules. When you're swimming in wealth you can do anything you want. Who dares stop you?

Take A Dip In The Infinity Pool

Cronenberg creates an atmosphere of nauseating dread through it all as things grow increasingly deranged. No fooling: this is not an easy movie to watch. It gets under your skin and makes your flesh crawl. It infects you. You'll probably want to take a shower after the credits roll, and then take another shower just to be sure you're extra clean.

This may have you begging the question: why would I even want to watch this? Because it is a fantastic execution of style and form; of depravity and lunacy. On top of it all, there's a darkly comedic tone lurking beneath all the madness, bordering on satire.

No one is making movies quite like Brandon Cronenberg right now, and as off-putting as his work may be, it should be embraced for its boldness. We need filmmakers willing to take risky chances like this. It's what makes movies special. Take a dip into the "Infinity Pool." I dare you.

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Read this next: The 95 Best Horror Movies Ever

The post Infinity Pool Review: Brandon Cronenberg's Latest is a Depraved, Debauched Nightmare Vacation Into Hell [Sundance] appeared first on /Film.

There are a lot of stories about television characters whose roles grew because of the performance of the actor, the needs of the overall story, or both. Steve Harrington, Joe Keery's character on "Stranger Things," for example, was originally supposed to die in season 1. Aaron Paul's award-winning portrayal of Jesse Pinkman on "Breaking Bad" was initially intended to receive a similar fate. And Walton Goggins' Boyd Crowder, the scenery-chewing frenemy of Raylan Givens on "Justified," wasn't even supposed to make it past the pilot, where Timothy Olyphant's U.S. Marshal was initially supposed to shoot him down for good.

The "Justified" pilot does culminate with Raylan shooting his old friend (they dug coal together!), but Boyd's ultimate fate is left up in the air. But like Keery with Steve, and Paul with Jesse, Goggins was just so good and charismatic in the role that the show's creators decided maybe their initial plan wasn't the best idea.

For those who haven't seen the FX series "Justified," the show is about a trigger-happy marshal (don't worry —  most of his shootings are ... ahem ... justified) returning to his home state of Kentucky, where his old friend Boyd Crowder has become something of a backwoods criminal kingpin. The show, and in particular the pilot, is based on a story by legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard. The pilot initially ended with Raylan definitively killing Boyd by shooting him in the chest across a dining room table, but showrunner Graham Yost learned something very valuable when he rewatched the footage: Walton Goggins is just way too good to throw away after a measly hour of television.

'We Had All Just Fallen In Love With Walton'

It was actually a struggle to get Walton Goggins to take on the role of Boyd, however, because as a Southerner, he didn't like the way Crowder might conceivably become nothing more than a stereotype. Because of that, Goggins initially passed on the role. Once Graham Yost assured him he'd be able to portray Boyd as a highly intelligent man who is much more than he appears to be, however, he changed his tune.

It was Goggins' performance, however, that kept his character alive past the first episode, as Yost explained to NPR in a 2015 interview:

"When we decided to keep Boyd alive, that was a big decision. When we shot the pilot, Boyd was dead at the end of [it]. And then we tested the show and we had all just fallen in love with Walton [Goggins] and the chemistry between Walton and Tim [Olyphant], so we decided to keep him alive.

That decision ended up being one of the best ones Yost and his crew could have made, as the show evolved from being just the story about a U.S. Marshal to a complex two-hander between characters that are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. Goggins earned an Emmy nomination for his performance, and many of the best scenes were just pages of dialogue with Raylan and Boyd going back and forth. With the limited series "Justified: City Primeval" coming to our screens soon, we're going to hold out hope we get at least one more of those scenes before the show is all said and done.

Read this next: The 18 Best Crime Dramas In TV History

The post Justified's Pilot Almost Ended A Lot Worse For Boyd appeared first on /Film.

If you don't own a Kindle yet, we heartily recommend you buy one.