Ronald.phillips

Today is a very complicated day for a generation of comedy fans. Kirstie Alley, of "Cheers," the "Look Who's Talking" trilogy, and "Veronica's Closet" fame, has died of cancer at the age of 71. With a career spanning over four decades, Alley was a seminal comedic figure and trailblazer for women in comedy. She was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1995 for her contributions to film and television, and her willingness to discuss the systemic mistreatment of fat actresses made her an inspiration to countless women ... until she became a spokesperson for quack weight loss regimes. Unfortunately, she also became one of the most problematic figures in Hollywood due to her conspiracy-theory-motivated presence on social media and absolutely abhorrent treatment of those who didn't share her alt-right political beliefs. The passing of the two-time Emmy-winning actor and "Dancing with the Stars" runner-up was announced by her children on Twitter.

pic.twitter.com/g4nAItrR5x

— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) December 6, 2022

"We are sad to inform you that our incredible, fierce, and loving mother has passed away after a battle with cancer, only recently discovered," the statement says. "She was surrounded by her closest family and fought with great strength, leaving us with a certainty of her never-ending joy of living and whatever adventures lie ahead. As iconic as she was on screen, she was an even more amazing mother and grandmother."

As Complicated As She Was Comedic

Kirstie Alley's memory is two-fold: as both a celebrated figure in comedy and a peddler of dangerous political conspiracies. She is the ultimate personification of needing to hold multiple truths at the same time, understanding her brilliant contributions to women characters in sitcoms while simultaneously not allowing her groundbreaking efforts to excuse her unacceptable treatment of others. Her performances in films like "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and "It Takes Two" are seminal for a generation of millennials, with many still using her character Diane Barrows' analogy of "can't-eat, can't-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, World Series kind of stuff," to describe the sensation of falling in love.

It was her turn as Rebecca Howe in "Cheers," however, that completely changed the game. Introduced after Shelley Long left the series to focus on films, Alley played Rebecca as the "lovable loser" with a hard exterior, putting on a façade of being tough-as-nails while in reality, being totally neurotic and ridiculously clumsy. She portrayed the character with a relatable authenticity that she'd repeat as Mollie Ubriacco in the "Look Who's Talking" trilogy, with an absolutely electric on-screen chemistry with John Travolta. And for an entire generation of science fiction fans, she will be remembered for her memorable role as a Vulcan Starfleet officer in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."

But this does not erase her history of treating people terribly on Twitter, hurling insults, and giving a platform to hateful ideologies. It's very clear that Kirstie Alley was someone looking for answers on a perpetual path of soul-searching, and I can only hope that before she left this mortal plane, she managed to find some semblance of tranquility. May her lemurs also find good, loving homes in the wake of her passing.

You had a good go at it, Kirstie. Thanks for your input.

Read this next: Every Cheers Season Ranked Worst To Best

The post Kirstie Alley, Star of Cheers, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and More Has Died at 71 appeared first on /Film.

Risky and criminal online behaviour is in danger of becoming normalized among a generation of young people across Europe, according to EU-funded research that found one in four 16- to 19-year-olds have trolled someone online and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. From a report: An EU-funded study found evidence of widespread criminal, risky and delinquent behaviour among the 16-19 age group in nine European countries including the UK. A survey of 8,000 young people found that one in four have tracked or trolled someone online, one in eight have engaged in online harassment, one in 10 have engaged in hate speech or hacking, one in five have engaged in sexting and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. It also found that four out of 10 have watched pornography. Julia Davidson, a co-author of the research and professor of criminology at the University of East London (UEL), said risky and criminal online behaviour was becoming almost normalised among a generation of European young people. "The research indicates that a large proportion of young people in the EU are engaging in some form of cybercrime, to such an extent that the conduct of low-level crimes online and online risk-taking has become almost normalised," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joe_Dragon writes: With no suspects or motive announced, the FBI is joining the investigation into power outages in a North Carolina county believed to have been caused by "intentional" and "targeted" attacks on substations that left around 40,000 customers in the dark Saturday night, prompting a curfew and emergency declaration. The mass outage in Moore County turned into a criminal investigation when responding utility crews found signs of potential vandalism of equipment at different sites -- including two substations that had been damaged by gunfire, according to the Moore County Sheriff's Office. "The person, or persons, who did this knew exactly what they were doing," Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said during a Sunday news conference. "We don't have a clue why Moore County." Fields said multiple rounds were fired at the two substations. "It was targeted, it wasn't random," he said. The sheriff would not say whether the criminal activity was domestic terrorism but noted "no group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they're the ones who [did] it." In addition to the FBI, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation has joined the investigation, officials said. More than 33,000 customers were still in the dark across the county Sunday evening, the Duke Energy outage map showed. For some, the outage may stretch into Thursday, officials said, upending life for tens of thousands. All schools in the county will be closed Monday and authorities have opened a shelter running on a generator. Traffic lights are also out, and while a few stores with generators were able to open their doors, several businesses and churches in Moore County were closed Sunday, CNN affiliate WRAL reported.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenRA is one of my absolute favourite open source projects allowing you to play the Westwood classics like Command & Conquer, Dune 2000 and Red Alert has a new Playtest up over a year after the last release.

[link] [109 comments]

What caused the zombie outbreak in "The Walking Dead"? It's a mystery almost 20 years old and neither the original comic nor the plethora of spin-off material, including the recently concluded AMC series, have been forthcoming.

For starters, what is known? The root cause is a virus that infects the brain and, after death, reanimates the body. The TV series ultimately provided more clarity on the mechanics than the comic. In "TS-19," the season 1 finale, CDC researcher Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich) compared the disease to meningitis. He also explained that the virus only infects the brain stem, which is why a dead person's personality and memories aren't restored, nor can a zombie form new ones.

The characters initially assumed the virus is transmitted through a zombie biting someone, but it turns out the virus is actually airborne. Even the living are infected. Someone who's bitten dies from the resulting infection, then the dormant virus activates. Unless you amputate a bitten limb or damage the corpse's brain, anyone who dies returns as a zombie.

Some writers would be tempted to make an active mystery of the disease: where did it come from? Can it be cured? If so, how? "Walking Dead" creator Robert Kirkman is not one of those writers. While he's occasionally offered some hints or jokes, the series itself is always focused on the micro world of the characters and how they survive — if not quite thrive — in a radically altered world.

It Came From Outer Space

It'd be hard to guess from the series itself, but outer space has cast a shadow over "The Walking Dead" since the beginning. Kirkman's pitch to Image Comics doesn't resemble the final product at all. As he recounted at San Diego Comic-Con 2018:

"I pitched 'The Walking Dead' and he said there's no successful zombie books in this industry and you need to have a hook. Your book needs to be about something ... You can't just do a book about the zombie apocalypse and people are surviving ... and I said, 'Oh, we got that, there's an alien invasion and the aliens are just using the zombies to weaken the world's infrastructure and move in ...' And he was like, 'That sounds cool!' and it got approved. I was lying."

The closest Kirkman came to implementing this "alien invasion" was a joke ending of issue #75, later followed by the non-canon mini-series "Rick Grimes 2000."

"The Walking Dead" ended in 2019 with issue #193 without ever explaining the virus' origin. Then in 2020, Kirkman seemingly answered the question with a now-deleted Tweet: "Space spore." He later backtracked, claiming this was a joke. Yet, this explanation would be strangle fitting. It would explain the logistics of how quickly the virus spread: Earth was blanketed in the spore. It would also account for the unearthly virus in a more grounded way than an outright alien invasion.

An extraterrestrial origin even has precedent in the genre. Space spores infecting humans is right out of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," especially the 1978 version which opens with the spores reaching Earth. Kirkman's pitch, aliens softening up humanity with zombies, was even cribbed from "Plan 9 From Outer Space."

Then there's George Romero, the godfather of the zombie genre and Kirkman's primary influence. His later films leaned more towards the supernatural (take "Dawn of the Dead" — "When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth"). However, in the original "Night of the Living Dead," the zombies are hinted to have been created by radiation from a crashed space probe.

The French's Fault

The TV version of "The Walking Dead" has always been a different take story than the comic. While the original series ended without the virus' source revealed, spin-off series "The World Beyond" offered a clue.

The season 2 series finale, "The Last Light," featured a post-credits scene set in France. An unnamed woman (Carey Van Driest) enters an abandoned lab named la Biomédicine DDMI. On a laptop, she watches a pre-recorded message from Jenner before a man enters holding a gun. From their conversation and some nearby graffiti, "Les morts sont nes ici," ("the dead were born here"), it's implied this lab is the source of the virus.

Did the French researchers merely stumble upon their creation or was it deliberately engineered as a bio-weapon? Likewise, was it accidentally or deliberately released? The upcoming Daryl Dixon spin-off will be set in France, so if any of the spin-offs answer these questions, it'll probably be that one.

Why Kirkman Says This Doesn't Matter

While the TV universe may be going a different route, Kirkman feels that the virus' origin simply wasn't important to the story he wanted to tell. In a 2018 Tumblr Q&A, he said that he does have the origin determined, but it wouldn't make sense to reveal it in the comic:

"It couldn't be less important to the story and the lives of these characters. It would be completely out of place in the story. Honestly, if a scientist from Washington came to the character[s] and told them what happened the characters would just shrug and say 'Oh ... okay ...' it wouldn't change their lives at all."

What's important is how the apocalypse affects the people living in it. That's true for Kirkman's comics as well as Romero's zombie films. "Night" and "Dawn" are about, respectively, how neither racism nor consumerism ends even when the world has. Even in "Day of the Dead," where the leads are scientists and military officers trying to reverse the virus, the story is about the internal breakdown of the group.

In real life and stories, people want there to be a tangible bad guy because that brings a sense of order. It's better, however, to take "The Walking Dead" as what the story is on its face: a new disease appeared, the world changed forever, and here's how people lived through that change.

Read this next: 14 Horror Movie Flops That Became Cult Classics

The post The Origin Of The Walking Dead Virus Explained And Why It Doesn't Matter appeared first on /Film.

Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to nudge laggards toward Windows 11 amid a migration pace that company executives would undoubtedly prefer is rather faster. From a report: The software giant is offering an option of upgrading to Windows 11 as an out of box experience to its Windows 10 22H2 installed base, the main aim being to smooth their path forward to the latest operating system. "On November 30, 2022, an out-of-band update was released to improve the Windows 10, version 2004, 20H2, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2 out-of-box experience (OOBE). It provides eligible devices with the option to upgrade to Windows 11 as part of the OOBE process. This update will be available only when an OOBE update is installed." The update, KB5020683, applies only to Windows 10 Home and Professional versions 2004, 20H2, 21H1, 22H2. There are some pre-requisites that Microsoft has listed here before users can make the move to Windows 11. The operating system was released on October 5 last year but shifting stubborn consumers onto this software has proved challenging for top brass at Microsoft HQ in Redmond. According to Statcounter, a web analytics service that has tracking code installed on 1.5 million websites and records a page view for each, some 16.12 percent of Windows users had installed Windows 11 in November, higher than the 15.44 percent in the prior month, but likely still not close to the figures that Microsoft was hoping for.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elden Ring director and Souls series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki has no idea why From Software's latest game has been so successful, but such fantastic reception will not influence how he creates games.

As reported by IGN, speaking during a Q&A session after receiving the Grand Award at the PlayStation Partner Awards 2022 Japan Asia a few days ago, Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed he has no idea why the studio's latest game has been so successful compared to previous games. As such, he probably wouldn't be able to replicate what made Elden Ring the success it is. Even if he could, he feels it would be a bad idea.

"Honestly, I haven't analyzed it much. It’s true that sales were higher than those of our previous games, but I have no idea what the reason was. So even if I wanted to reproduce that success, I wouldn’t be able to."

"I try not to think about it too much, because I think it would be a bad idea to analyze it deeply and to consciously try to replicate it in another game"

Even if he has no idea why Elden Ring is so successful, Hidetaka Miyazaki is happy about how the game has been doing since its release earlier this year. Even so, he tries to avoid reading players' feedback as much as possible, as it would influence his future decisions as a developer.

"I can’t possibly listen to every single comment from our players, and if I only take on selected pieces of feedback, it might affect my future decisions as a developer, which I find rather unsettling. I know that I personally could not be fully objective, so I try to avoid being directly exposed to too many opinions."

Elden Ring is now available on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and Xbox One worldwide. Learn more about the game by checking out my review.

I tried hard to find any faults in Elden Ring, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find any outside of some technical issues that the developers could fix via patches. I firmly believe that perfection doesn't exist and that it is always possible to improve, but I really couldn't think of anything that Elden Ring could have done better. As such, the game wholly deserves a perfect score, an honor I would have given only to a couple of other modern games, not only for its extremely high quality but also for what it accomplished with its open world and for how it will surely influence video games as a whole in the future.

The post Elden Ring Director Has No Idea Why the Game Was so Successful; Will Continue Making Games as He Always Did by Francesco De Meo appeared first on Wccftech.

The meatiest trailer yet for the upcoming The Last of Us HBO series has dropped, providing a new look at the game’s world, and perhaps most interestingly for hardcore fans of the game, the roles original Joel and Ellie actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson will be playing. Check it out for yourself, below.

Overall, it looks like the producers of The Last of Us have done a good job of turning Alberta, Canada into a post-apocalyptic nightmare, with some impressive one-to-one shots from the game. I have to say, this trailer also gave me more confidence about Bella Ramsay as Ellie – she seems to be hitting the right balance between wise-beyond-her-years seriousness and the occasional bit of youthful irreverence.

As for those cameos, we see a wrung-out looking Ashley Johnson holding up a newborn baby, which seems to heavily imply Johnson will be playing Ellie’s previously-unseen mother Anna.

Baker doesn’t get quite such a poetic role, as he’s glimpsed as part of the villainous David’s posse. Per IMDB, Baker is only in one episode of the show, while Johnson is in three. So, expect Baker to eat it fairly quickly, while Johnson will likely appear in several flashbacks.

Haven’t been keeping up with The Last of Us HBO series? The show is being headed up by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsay as Ellie. Here’s the series’ official description…

“The Last of Us series takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.

Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian, Wonder Woman 1984) and Bella Ramsey (HBO’s His Dark Materials and Game of Thrones) will star as Joel and Ellie. Also joining the cast are Gabriel Luna (True Detective) as Joel’s younger brother Tommy, Merle Dandridge (The Last of Us video games, The Flight Attendant) as resistance leader Marlene; and Anna Torv (Fringe) as Tess, a smuggler and fellow hardened survivor.

The series will guest star Nico Parker (The Third Day) as Sarah, Joel’s 14-year old daughter; Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus) and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) as Frank and Bill, two post-pandemic survivalists living alone in their own isolated town; Storm Reid (Euphoria) as Riley, an orphan in Boston; and Jeffrey Pierce (The Last of Us video games) as Perry, a rebel in a quarantine zone. Lamar Johnson guest stars as Henry and Keivonn Woodard as Sam, brothers in Kansas City hiding from a revolutionary movement seeking vengeance. Graham Greene guest stars as Marlon and Elaine Miles as Florence, a married couple surviving alone in the wilderness of post-apocalyptic Wyoming.”

The Last of Us series will be available via HBO and HBO Max on January 15, 2023.

The post The Last of Us HBO Trailer Shows More of the World, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson’s Roles by Nathan Birch appeared first on Wccftech.

NVIDIA GeForce GPUs continue to dominate the Linux gaming benchmarks against AMD's Radeon & Intel's Arc offerings as revealed by Phoronix.

NVIDIA GeForce Leads Gaming Benchmarks In Linux, AMD Radeon & Intel Arc GPUs Fall Behind

It's been some time since we talked about Linx benchmarks, especially in gaming. Michale Larabel posted his latest performance benchmarks in Linux 6.1 (MESA 23.0-dev build) using the brand-new RADV 'Radeon Vulkan' & NVIDIA R525 drivers which are available at the moment. The tech outlet is using the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series, AMD Radeon RX 6000 series, and Intel Arc graphics cards & also plans to put RTX 40 and RX 7000 series cards in the test suite later on.

Several games were tested at 4K and 2K resolutions. In almost all games, the NVIDIA GeForce GPUs came on top of the charts, securing a dominating position against their AMD & Intel counterparts. It looks like the only exception was in games such as Hitman III and CSGO where AMD Radeon GPUs secured a win over the GeForce cards. There were also a few cases where AMD Radeon & Intel Arc graphics cards totally didn't work or ran into some issues so they were omitted from the charts.

You can see some of the benchmarks results below (Image Credits: Phoronix):

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Intel had previously stated that they would prioritize modern APIs for the Arc graphics cards so we are only going to see a decent performance in titles that support DX12 or Vulkan. Most games here are running on OpenCL libraries so performance is expected to be slower than the competition.

The RADV ray-tracing performance continues maturing but at least as of testing in late November was still showing the RDNA2 performance a ways behind the RTX 30 series graphics cards.

That's the quick look at where the performance currently stands when using Mesa 23.0-devel Git and the Linux 6.1 kernel compared to the NVIDIA 525 series Linux driver. Of course, this month will also be interesting on the open-source Linux driver front given the retail availability for the Radeon RX 7900 series, the Linux 6.2 merge window coming upon us, and Mesa Git continuing to see interesting Vulkan/OpenGL driver developments still on a daily basis.

Michael Larabel via Phoronix

We have seen several improvements through the  RADV 'Radeon Vulkan' Drivers over the past few months which add improved rasterization and ray tracing performance. The RADV drivers sit ahead of the official AMDVLK 'Vulkan' drivers. Same is the case with Intel's Arc GPUs which are continuing to get proper hardware support but NVIDIA just leads the bunch with its strong software suite that can be seen here. We recommend you read the full Phoronix review which is very detailed, here.

The post NVIDIA GeForce GPUs Continue To Dominate Linux Gaming Benchmarks, AMD Radeon & Intel Arc Left Catching The Dust by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

Microsoft has confirmed it will increase the prices of some of its first-party Xbox games to $70 starting in 2023. Specifically, major games built for Xbox Series X/S will cost $10 more in the US, including Starfield, Redfall and Forza Motorsport. Regional price increases may vary.

"This price reflects the content, scale, and technical complexity of these titles," a Microsoft spokesperson told IGN, which first reported the news. "As with all games developed by our teams at Xbox, they will also be available with Game Pass the same day they launch.”

Other major publishers, including Sony, EA and Take-Two Interactive, have been charging $70 for select current-gen games. Microsoft was able to hold off on increasing prices, likely because the company doesn't rely on games as its primary revenue driver.

In August, Sony increased the price of the PlayStation 5 in most countries, but not the US. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in October his company wouldn't raise Xbox prices ahead of the holiday season (the Xbox Series S actually went on sale in November), but noted that "I do think at some point we'll have to raise the prices on certain things." We're starting to see that play out now.

One possible outcome of Xbox raising prices on first-party games is that more people may be willing to try out Game Pass. Starfield, Redfall and Forza Motorsport will all be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass on day one. That could make Game Pass more attractive and an even better value proposition — at least until Xbox inevitably raises the price of its subscription services too.

Furthermore, this seems to mark the beginning of a shift away from releasing major new games on previous-generation consoles. With the exception of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft has made native Xbox One versions of its Series X/S games.

Warning: this post contains discussions of suicide.

"Unsolved Mysteries" recently resumed its official podcast after Netflix's streaming revival of the popular TV show concluded its third volume in November. Our "Unsolved Mysteries" season 3 review calls it "a well-polished addictive piece of TV," and having watched every episode of the Netflix reboot and listened to every episode of the podcast, narrated by Steve French, I would agree that it is very much that. Yet the show has undergone an evolution since the pre-internet days when Robert Stack was hosting it. Rather than multiple segments, each "Unsolved Mysteries" episode now tackles a single case.

If you've seen enough of them, you might begin to notice a pattern with certain episodes. Consider the synopsis of the season 3 premiere, "Mystery at Mile Marker 45." It reads, "Tiffany Valiante, a promising young athlete, is struck by a train four miles from home. But was her death a suicide or something more sinister?"

This is a typical setup for an episode where a death the authorities have labeled suicide is framed in mysterious terms, per the series title. In "Mystery at Mile Marker 45," we see smiling photos and home videos of Valiante, and hear, first and foremost, from her grief-stricken parents, who refuse to believe she died by suicide. That image runs counter to the 18-year-old they thought they knew and still remember as happy, full of life, and volleyball scholarship plans. They've kept their daughter's room just the way she left it, and we see another wall memorial and cabinet shrine to her in their house.

Over the course of the episode, however, other details emerge — and are quickly glossed over — suggesting Valiante could have struggled with mental health, something "Unsolved Mysteries" seems hesitant to meaningfully address.

Tiffany Valiante And Mystery At Mile Marker 45

"Mystery at Mile Marker 45" establishes that, before Valiante was last seen on camera, walking away from her house to somehow be hit by a train, she had a confrontation with a friend who accused her of using her credit card without permission. Valiante denies doing it but then confesses to her mother that it's true, whereupon she's threatened with further exposure to her father. Her mother goes into the house, and when she comes back out, Valiante is gone.

The confrontation with Valiante's friend becomes the basis for one enduring theory that she was kidnapped and killed. Late in the episode, we learn Valiante broke up with her girlfriend right before she died (she reportedly came out six months earlier, another seeming upheaval that's left out), but this event is minimized. "Unsolved Mysteries" doesn't explore its timing as anything more than coincidence.

Without rehashing them all here, the circumstances of Valiante's death could be regarded as suspicious and do merit thorough, open-minded consideration, but what's bothersome about "Mystery at Mile Marker 45" is that it doesn't provide enough of a counterbalance to the murder theory. You could argue that's not the case it's trying to submit in the court of public opinion, but the episode stages reenactments of events that may have never happened and neglects the possibility of concealed emotional turbulence leading to teen suicide, in favor of the assertion that unidentified assailants laid Valiante's body on the train tracks.

"Unsolved Mysteries" can and has led to some breaks in real-life cases, but it's also part of a true-crime ecosystem that thrives partially on stories involving the inexplicable death of a beloved person. The problem arises when it misleads viewers by omitting important details that don't necessarily match the homicide narrative.

Details The Episode Leaves Out

In the 2020s, podcasters, Redditors, and news sites can sometimes crowd-source information in ways that offer a more comprehensive view than what you might see in a TV episode where the talking heads belong mostly to family members, people with a vested interest in preserving the memory of a lost loved one. With "Mystery at Mile Marker at 45," it's only when the viewer researches the case more afterward that a less rose-colored image of Tiffany Valiante comes together.

As The Daily Beast reports, Valiante had been having problems at home before her death, and it was serious enough that child protective services got involved after a physical altercation where Valiante's mother punched her and left her arm bruised. She had also previously removed money from her mother's bank account without consent, which suggests the unauthorized use of her friend's credit card wasn't an isolated incident. Some of Valiante's classmates furthermore indicate that she felt "lonely" and had a history of self-harm, having cut herself on more than one occasion.

With the show being made in cooperation with Valiante's parents, it's understandable that "Unsolved Mysteries" wouldn't want to betray their trust or air a bunch of dirty laundry they wouldn't sign off on. At the same time, it feels disingenuous not to divulge information that could be pertinent to a psychological autopsy of Valiante. This is not to suggest anyone bears responsibility for her death, but it does move past the portrait of a picture-perfect teen and allow for the possibility that Valiante was someone who could have entered a distraught suicide victim's frame of mind.

It's only toward the end that "Mystery at Mile Marker 45" briefly entertains testimony that Valiante was "sad" or even "depressed" and "felt like she could never fit in."

Other Unexplained Deaths

In "Mystery at Mile Marker 45," we hear the family lawyer's private investigator say, "If you assume that it's a suicide right at the beginning, and then tailor the facts to fit your assumption, everything else after that is suspect." Yet confirmation bias cuts both ways, and the same quote holds true if you assume prima facie that someone's death is a homicide. "Unsolved Mysteries" does this often as it sticks to the point-of-view of shocked and traumatized loved ones who may be in denial about cases that are already solved as much as humanly possible.

"Mystery at Mile Marker 45" is just one recent "Unsolved Mysteries" episode that caters to conspiracy theories without showing serious consideration of mental health issues that could have been at play in a person's death. Two other episodes with similar alliterative titles, "Body in the Bay" and "Lady in the Lake," follow the same template of a missing person found dead in the water. Law enforcement officials deem the deaths a suicide, but the family suspects foul play. It's a familiar refrain that, in the latter case, overshadows admissions that the victim had been "acting very troubled, not herself." There's no mention of a court record detailing "paranoid" behavior and the coroner's presumption of "psychosis."

The podcast two-parter, "The Sudden Departure of Granger Taylor," strategically withholds the reveal that an "eccentric mechanical genius" who claimed to be leaving on an alien space voyage had dynamite access, and the police found a blast site where they identified parts of his truck and human remains. In that episode, it's the victim's mentee/best friend who can't accept his apparent death at face value. Had "Unsolved Mysteries" disclosed the dynamite blast sooner, listeners might have dismissed his interstellar journey as an open-and-shut case.

Rey Rivera And Mystery On The Rooftop

Homicide theories require suspects, and like the "Serial" podcast, "Unsolved Mysteries" isn't above casting suspicion on named individuals, which sometimes mobilizes a gang of armchair sleuths against other friends and relatives of the deceased. Needless to say, the online world isn't a place where people always enjoy the presumption of "innocent until proven guilty."

Looking back on the new "Unsolved Mysteries," an obsession with cases where the manner of death (homicide or suicide) was "undetermined" has been hardwired into its DNA right from the start. The very first episode of the reboot, "Mystery on the Rooftop," serves as a fascinating bookend, in that respect, to "Mystery at Mile Marker 45."

Like Tiffany Valiante, who supposedly walked through the dark despite having a fear of it, Rey Rivera someone with a reported fear of heights whose death was attributed to a precipitous fall from a hotel roof, consistent with a running jump. On top of Rivera's fear of heights, much is made of how difficult it would be to access the roof. What we're not told is that Rivera and his wife (who remains convinced "There's something bigger, there's something more going on") had already visited that roof to watch the sunset.

Last year, I interviewed the director of "Mystery on the Rooftop," Marcus A. Clarke, though he was promoting another new documentary project and we never got around to talking about "Unsolved Mysteries." Part of what renders his season 1 premiere compelling, though, is that it makes room for other credible voices outside the victim's immediate family, like a local reporter, a retired detective, and an investigative journalist.

Evidence in the victim's own voice, giving a window into their mind, works even better. With Rey Rivera, we have that.

Rivera's Note

"Mystery on the Rooftop" devotes about three minutes of its 52-minute runtime to an unusual note Rivera left taped to the back of his computer. It's not a traditional suicide note, but rather what appears to be a letter to the members of an unnamed council, which holds secrets he's privy to, and the power to make people five years younger.

Since Rivera was an aspiring screenwriter, the suggestion has been floated that this note was simply a fragment of writing for some story he envisioned. Yet it addresses specific people, or "players," in his life, or "game." And it reads very much like someone speaking in code of death, for which they expect to be rewarded with houses across the world. There are lines like, "Life is a test," and, "That was a well-played game. [...] But, it was time to wake up."

The note ends with a list of movies, including "The Matrix" and "The Game," two films where the main character jumps off a roof but survives the fall because they're caught up in a simulated reality of some sort. Other movies on the list relate to Freemasonry and secret societies, such as "National Treasure," "The Da Vinci Code," and "Eyes Wide Shut." The latter film notably features Tom Cruise as a doctor who believes he's at the center of a conspiracy to cover up a woman's death, only for a rich patient to come in at the end and burst his bubble with a more mundane explanation for what's really going on.

"Unsolved Mysteries" goes the opposite route with its season 2 premiere, "Washington Insider Murder," simultaneously undercutting its own title and downplaying the possibility that a simple, tragic accident or random act of violence could have resulted in a bipolar man's death.

An FBI Counterpoint

Rivera's note was sent to the FBI, and you can read its redacted analysis online via the true-crime podcast The Prosecutors. In "Mystery on the Rooftop," a retired detective — the only one in the homicide department who didn't believe Rivera's death was suicide — gives a secondhand summary of the note's content, essentially shrugging off the FBI's determination as "just an unusual note, but not suicide intent."

There's a lot more to it than that. The FBI's analysis states outright that "the overall themes and specific language in [Rivera's] letter are consistent with someone who suffers from a delusional disorder or bipolar disorder," one "featuring a persistent belief contrary to reality." It then goes on to observe, "Persons with delusional disorder can be highly functional in many areas of their life. In this particular case, the mental illness suffered by the author of the letter may go virtually undetected by family, friends and coworkers."

This is a key detail "Unsolved Mysteries" overlooks, not just in "Mystery on the Rooftop," but in other episodes, like "Mystery at Mile Marker at 45," where loved ones struggle to understand what possible motive an alleged suicide victim could have had. Maybe part of the reason some deaths defy logic is that the person who died wasn't thinking logically and had kept that part of themselves compartmentalized.

The FBI's analysis further notes that Rivera's letter contains "a flight of ideas that could have been written by someone experiencing an untreated manic episode." It recommends that Rivera's family members "be re-interviewed regarding his health." Yet the interviews we see on "Unsolved Mysteries" don't usually probe much deeper than family assertions that a person was happy before they died (as if there might not be some part of their psyche that was inaccessible to family).

Demystifying Mental Health

Other Netflix docuseries like "Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel" have been accused of exploiting mental health tragedies for circus theorizing. "Unsolved Mysteries" has developed an M.O. more like the attorney in "Mystery at Mile Marker 45" who says, "Most of my cases have involved representing victims."

The question is, which victims is it representing: the people who died, or family members left to deal with the fallout of a misunderstood tragedy? Having the testimony of loved ones form the backbone of an episode might appeal to the viewer's sympathies, but if they really want to solve these cases and be respectful of the deceased (not to mention living people who may struggle with the same psychological patterns), the show needs to normalize mental health discussion and be more forthcoming with all the available facts, even ones that are incongruous with a "foul play" hypothesis.

Another source not mentioned in "Mystery on the Rooftop" — but one that's often cited in talk of the Rivera case — is Mikita Brottman's digression-filled book, "An Unexplained Death: A True Story of a Body at the Belvedere." After "Mystery on the Rooftop" aired, Brottman revealed that the makers of "Unsolved Mysteries" learned about the Rivera case through her book, contacted her early on, and interviewed her at length. In the end, they elected not to use any of the footage, which, according to Brottman, "would have closed down a lot of speculation" and "didn't fit with the 'grieving widow' / emotional plotline that the show emphasized."

After thoroughly researching Rivera's death for her book, Brottman, too, reached the conclusion that he had most likely died by unintentional suicide while in the grips of paranoid delusion. 

Uncharted Headspace

In "An Unexplained Death," Brottman writes, "Rey's friends and family say he never displayed any outward sign of mental illness, but this does not mean he was not mentally ill, just that he had none of the most familiar symptoms." Schizophrenia, she observes, can develop "gradually and then suddenly," with a "slow increase in symptoms," giving way to a "sudden psychotic episode."

We learn from the book, also, that Rivera had been foregoing sleep and exhibiting telltale signs of paranoia. He was under a tight video deadline, "feeling guilty" over his role in a failed financial newsletter, and had amassed $90,000 in debt, which his wife spent ten years paying off. Again, "Unsolved Mysteries" avoids sharing some of this info, though it would establish possible stress factors that could have aggravated his mental state.

The non-Hollywood ending and answer to lingering questions in Rivera's case and others might be a thought too unfortunate for some to bear: namely, that the victim had a dark side and was alone in some uncharted headspace in their final moments. Which is more realistic: that scenario, or one that entails Granger Taylor flying off aboard a spaceship?

One last case study from the "Unsolved Mysteries" archives, "Missing on the Bridge," is the podcast equivalent of "Washington Insider Murder": a rare episode that lightly interrogates mental health, presumably because the victim's family (which has since received closure through an update) had already noticed "concerning changes in her personality and mental state." Fifty-seven-year-old Kim Flint had survived one suicide attempt and may have been off her medication when her SUV hit a guardrail without braking. Though one interviewee prefers the idea of "opportunistic thieves" to a suicide theory, another acknowledges the lurking probability of a "mental health episode." More moments like that are needed.

The Mystery Of Inner Lives

In its current incarnation, "Unsolved Mysteries" almost functions more as a form of victim advocacy in some episodes than it does a full and honest documenting of the facts of each case. The show builds trust with the loved ones of people who have lost their lives and gives them a platform to talk about what happened on international streaming TV. Maybe hearing their subjective rationalizations of irrational events is just intended as a starting point.

"Unsolved Mysteries" makes no claims to impartiality and is under no obligation to fully re-litigate the cold cases it exhumes. Nor would it always be possible to do so in a one-hour format. Plenty of documentarians oversimplify or cherry-pick the facts they're going to include to suit their agenda or the narrative they've settled on in the editing room.

By involving the viewer as a potential crime solver, however, "Unsolved Mysteries" puts the audience in the position where it's searching for plausible explanations and deliberating as a jury of sorts. And when the audience realizes that it has been consistently misled, a different kind of trust between show and viewer or jury and advocate breaks down.

There's much to be said for advocacy, but there may also be cases where offering up the one-sided perspective of surviving family members presents a conflict of interest, such that the show does a disservice to actual suicide victims by further sensationalizing their deaths and/or stigmatizing mental illness. When we know the how and it's just a question of why someone died, the real unsolved mystery may just be the inner life that a person kept hidden.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ by dialing 988 or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Read this next: The 15 Best Anthology TV Series Ranked

The post Unsolved Mysteries Needs to Talk More About Mental Health appeared first on /Film.

Samus has returned a lot

I suspect that there's a pretty sizable chunk of people who would gladly call the Metroidvania their favorite video game genre, but who have never played a Metroid game. That's a problem. Sometimes, when a classic is too classical, it can become a bit of a headache. Revisiting a really beloved game can become a chore when you've seen its best ideas executed better by games that came later.

Not so with Metroid. Nearly every 2D Metroid game is still a very good time, even when placed next to the wave of wonderful indie Metroidvanias we've seen recently. Unfortunately, "nearly" is the operative word in that sentence. There are definitely downright bad 2D Metroid games, just as there are great ones. So allow me to walk you through every 2D Metroid game, from the clunky to the clever.

Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991)

The original Game Boy was an incredible piece of hardware. It was the first handheld gaming console to truly demonstrate the types of games people wanted to play on the go. It was home to some incredible third-party offerings and some even better first-party Nintendo games.

It was not the right place for Metroid II.

Metroid II: Return of Samus simply doesn't play very well on the Game Boy. Exploring an uncharted planet without any semblance of guidance or direction was already a bit difficult in the original Metroid, but at least areas were visually distinct. Metroid II is beholden to the Game Boy's monochromatic screen, which means it's incredibly difficult to tell where you are most of the time. Metroid II also suffers from clunky controls and enemy design that makes Samus feel less like a mighty bounty hunter searching for deadly Metroids and more like a random lady who is stumbling on aliens at random. It's a game with good ideas that simply couldn't have worked on the original Game Boy.

Metroid (1986)

Metroid is the rare series where even die-hard fans can mostly acknowledge that the first game isn't all that playable. The original Metroid lays some really solid foundations, but a lot of the series' biggest problems are at their absolute worst here.

The biggest problem with Metroid is a pretty simple one: there's no map. Some franchise purists are surely already readying their explanations ("It's not supposed to have a map," "You should make your own map," and so on), but the simple fact of the matter is, Metroid feels really bad without a map. Exploration doesn't feel at all meaningful when you don't know where you've been or where you're going. It doesn't help that Metroid has a pretty shoddy control scheme and fairly uninteresting traversal. Maybe I'm just too pampered by modern design philosophy, but this one is not very fun to go back to.

Metroid Zero Mission (2004)

Metroid Zero Mission is a remake of the original Metroid, and hey, we've got a map now! We've also got... map markers. Oh boy. Yes, Zero Mission is a bit of an over-correction. It's more readable than the original Metroid thanks to its map, and it's certainly more playable thanks to some necessary gameplay overhauls, but it's also just a little too hand-holdy.

Every time you can access a new area in Zero Mission, the game loudly announces that fact with a bright flashing indicator on your map. It doesn't ruin the game by any means (the original Metroid's map is full of off-the-beaten-path things to do) but it does hamper the experience of exploration. If the original game was too vague, this one is just a touch too specific. It's still a very good time, but one that would benefit from a bit less guidance.

Metroid Fusion (2002)

I actually like Metroid Fusion a lot, but it's not a Metroid game. It's a really good 2D platform shooter, and a really smart riff on Alien, but... it's not a Metroid game!

Fusion has almost no exploration to speak of. At its most basic, Metroid is about finding your way around an uncharted place and discovering what lies at its center. It's about coming up with new and interesting ways to use the tools at your disposal to reach previously inaccessible places. If Metroid Zero Mission didn't have enough of that, then Metroid Fusion has absolutely none of it. There is a robot named Adam who constantly tells you where to go and how to get there, and he sucks.

Fusion is very good. It's one of my favorite Game Boy Advance games. Every time I decide to replay the Metroid series, though, I usually elect to skip Fusion. In my mind, it's its own (very good!) game with no relation to Samus' continued adventures.

Super Metroid (1994)

Super Metroid was a pretty incredible leap forward. Three years after Metroid II found itself hampered by underpowered hardware, this undeniable classic took full advantage of the jump to the Super Nintendo. Even now, nearly thirty years later, it's still a little hard to believe just how big this game is.

Super Metroid brings Samus back to Zebes, the setting of the original game. This time, Zebes is infested by space pirates (the best kind of pirates) who want to use the power of the Metroids for themselves. Zebes is a lot more exciting to explore this time - Samus' toolkit has gotten larger, and every weapon at her disposal feels like a piece in a massive puzzle. Solving that puzzle is the crux of Super Metroid. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Metroid is about exploration, and Super Metroid makes exploring feel great.

Metroid: Samus Returns (2017)

After a decently long time away from the spotlight, in 2017, Samus returned to Nintendo handhelds with Metroid: Samus Returns, a 3DS remake of Metroid II courtesy of developer Mercury Steam. In a lot of ways, Samus Returns is like Metroid II, but it differs in one key area: it's really good!

Samus Returns is the first 2D Metroid game where Samus actually feels like a bounty hunter. The majority of the game is spent hunting down Metroids by tracking their DNA. In the original Metroid II, "hunting" the aliens wasn't really possible because there was no way to see where you were. You either walked in on them or you didn't. Here, you can clearly see where the Metroids are hiding, and you can prepare to bring them down. When you catch them, the tools you have for exterminating them are pretty excellent. Samus Returns is one of the only Metroid games with truly great combat, and it makes Samus feel incredibly strong. Samus Returns lacks a bit in exploration, but the issue isn't as bad as it is in Fusion or Zero Mission, and the game makes up for it with incredibly smooth and fun moment-to-moment gameplay.

Metroid Dread (2021)

Recency bias be damned, Metroid Dread really is that good. The first mainline Metroid game in nearly two decades and the first home-console 2D Metroid game since 1994, against all odds, lives up to the hype. Mercury Steam returns here and gives Samus an even heftier arsenal of powerful weapons that make this game feel absolutely incredible.

Beyond that, Dread absolutely nails exploration. The game strikes a very impressive balance in that it's very difficult to get lost but it also constantly feels like you're finding something new. It feels like Metroid, but without the headaches people often associate with Metroid. It's the kind of game that I'd recommend to almost everyone - it's a great action game for people who love action games, a great exploration game for people who love exploring, and a great Metroid game for people who love Metroid.

The post Every 2D Metroid Game, Ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

Rebellion has rolled out another free gift in celebration of its 30th anniversary (thanks Ant). According to the Rebellion Shop, everyone is now entitled to a free copy of Aliens versus Predator...

2022 saw the return of deep magic. George R. R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" universe made its way back to the small screen with "House of the Dragon" while J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth was re-imagined for the series "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power." Never to be outdone, Lucasfilm drew George Lucas' high fantasy (no, not that one) "Willow" out of memory for a sequel series. Sure, these projects are wholly unrelated, but it's kind of funny that all three dropped within a few months of each other, right?

Of these fantastical tales, "Willow" fosters the most singular intrigue, if only on the merit that it mustn't shoulder the strenuous weight of expectation that comes tied with ongoing blockbuster productions. Or, perhaps a better way of saying that is this: The "Willow" sequel series get a little more breathing room than its fellow fantasies, something larger fandoms are loathe to provide.

And that means cast members like Warwick Davis, who returned to his titular role as the Nelwyn magician with a kind heart and a quicker temper, were able to adapt their characters in a way befitting all the life experience they accrued in the intervening decades since the original 1988 cinematic release. Among those life experiences which inspired his latest performance, Davis specifically cited another prominent actor's return to a Lucasfilm franchise. Here's the ironic (or appropriate, for those who actually clicked that last hyperlink) story.

Davis Played His Age, Just Like Hamill

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Warwick Davis shared that his return to "Willow" as Willow was inspired by Mark Hamill's return to "Star Wars" as Luke Skywalker in "The Last Jedi," the legendary Jedi who spent his younger years saving the galaxy and his elderly years living that sweet, sweet hermit life. Davis explained:

"The one thing I took note of in particular was Mark Hamill returning to Luke Skywalker [in 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'] and how he went about the approach for that ... it wasn't the expected approach, certainly. He came at it from quite a different angle, and I also did the same ... Mark didn't try to play the character younger. He just leaned into his more mature years, and that's really what I did as Willow ... the first time I played the character, I was only 17. So I thought, 'Well, let's not deny the fact that [I'm] 52. Let's use that to make this character more interesting, more grounded and more well-rounded as well' ... the world that we find Willow in is a different one than we last saw ... he's had a lot of dark experiences in his own life ... and, as an actor, I have to add all of that knowledge into the character's situation and use that to reflect out in my performance."

Careful with skimming that quote because it could easily be misinterpreted as Davis claiming the "Willow" series is a dark, gritty reboot (it's very much not). All Davis is saying is that he's comfortable being himself in his age, and that Hamill's performance bolstered his confidence to be so. By all accounts, Davis' resolution worked for the show's creative team.

"Willow" is streaming on Disney+.

Read this next: The 14 Best Moments In Willow, Ranked

The post Warwick Davis's Approach To Returning As Willow Was Inspired By Luke Skywalker's The Last Jedi Arc appeared first on /Film.

Wednesday Addams has always been a walking rain cloud. The Addams family's only daughter was prone to strange and macabre humor long before Jenna Ortega took on the role of the raven-haired goth teen in Netflix's new series "Wednesday." Back in 1944, when Charles Addams' original "The Addams Family" cartoons appeared in "The New Yorker," one featured a punchline in which mother Morticia encouraged her daughter to commit attempted murder. "Well don't come whining to me," she tells her presumably bullied daughter. "Go tell him you'll poison him right back."

When she first made the leap from the funny pages to the TV screen, Wednesday was just as morbid as ever, albeit also adorable as embodied by child actor Lisa Loring. In the 1960s "Addams Family" series, pint-sized Wednesday plays with explosives and a guillotine, while in the '90s, Christina Ricci's version of the character straps her brother to an electric chair just for kicks. Dark comedy has always been a through-line for the lovably sadistic character, but when it comes to the latest iteration of the franchise, Wednesday's macabre one-liners almost got the axe.

Series writer-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar spoke to Geek Vibes Nation ahead of the show's release, and revealed that executives weren't initially on board with the character's signature dark humor. "One executive wanted to cut all the jokes out," Millar revealed. The pair wrote four of the season's eight episodes. "All the black humor, all her references to murder and suicide and death. [We were] constantly getting notes to just eliminate all the jokes." 

The first season of the teen mystery sees Wednesday kicked out of her public school for throwing piranhas in the boys' pool, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the girl's penchant for darkness.

Wednesday Is Nothing Without Her Dark Humor

But as Millar says, "That's the essence of Wednesday," and the pair tells the outlet that they ignored all the notes about cutting the show's dark humor. The version of the show viewers ended up with isn't afraid to make light of the bleaker side of life, like when Wednesday reminisces about the time the carousel brakes stalled at her eighth birthday, or says that her visions "come on without warning, and feel like electroshock therapy, only without the satisfying afterburn." It's clear that Millar and Gough's take on Wednesday and her pitch-black humor comes through in the final product.

The pair also credit Tim Burton, who executive produced the series and directed several episodes, for keeping that integral balance between humor and horror intact. "It's interesting, and obviously it takes someone like Tim Burton to be able to pull off that tone," Millar says. Gough, meanwhile, says the pair kept that marriage between horror and comedy in mind while writing the script, telling Geek Vibes Nation that "the thing with comedy and horror is about timing and rhythm. They're actually very similar." He points out that he and Millar, who have also worked together as writers and co-creators on "The Shannara Chronicles" and "Into the Badlands," have "always kind of mixed tones in everything we've done."

A Proud Outcast

Ignoring those studio notes apparently paid off, as Netflix claims that "Wednesday" turned out to have the biggest premiere week of any English-language Netflix original. By those metrics, which are admittedly not made public by the streamer but are instead self-reported, "Wednesday" had an even bigger debut than "Stranger Things 4." The show's first season follows Wednesday as she attends Nevermore Academy, a school for "outcasts" including sirens, werewolves, and in her case, burgeoning psychics. Soon after she enrolls at Nevermore, strange and violent occurances begin, and it's up to Wednesday to figure out who's responsible for the attacks on her fellow students.

While "Wednesday" is more of a young adult drama or a mystery series than a comedy, the show is still shot through with the dark humor Millar and Gough maintained from the script they initially handed in to Netflix. Admittedly, "Wednesday" would be lost without it. Ortega imbues the character's most disturbing lines with a perfect deadpan delivery, and makes her a protagonist worth rooting for, even if her favorite past-times are the sort that would make God-fearing normies (as the show calls non-superpowered people) run for the hills.

As for that balance between humor and horror, Gough says it came naturally, like Wednesday's knack for bloodshed and mayhem. "For executives it was scary, but for us it wasn't," he tells Geek Vibes Nation. "Wednesday" season 1 is now streaming on Netflix in its entirety.

Read this next: 14 Remakes That Are Better Than The Original

The post The Decision That Saved Jenna Ortega's Character In Wednesday appeared first on /Film.

I love anime opening credits. The best of them distill the strongest qualities of their source material into beautiful, ninety-second chunks of music and animation. Even the worst of them churn up love in my heart. I remember almost nothing about "Nobunagun," but I have a special place in my heart for its outrageous hard-rock theme song "Respect for the Dead Man." The opening guitar riff of "Rewrite," Asian Kung-Fu Generation's theme for "Fullmetal Alchemist," brings back vivid memories of my teenage years. I know that I'm not alone on that, either. "A Cruel Angel's Thesis," the theme song to "Neon Genesis Evangelion," topped JOYSOUND's karaoke rankings for the Heisei period (1992-2019.) "Gurenge," the theme song to "Demon Slayer," has been downloaded over a million times and was even featured in Japan's recent Olympics Closing Ceremonies. The right Anisong can make a lot of money.

Anime opening credits are frequently over the top, just like the medium itself. Their often upbeat vocals, repeated visual motifs, and cost-cutting measures are ripe for parody, and the anime industry isn't above mining these excesses for laughs. But most shows made today follow the formula to the letter in hopes of hitting it big. Exceptions tend to slip through the cracks, even if they're great. But a few of those exceptions become legends. The opening credits theme for "Cowboy Bebop" is one such legend.

Beginnings

Before we talk about how "Cowboy Bebop" bends the rules of anime openings, it's worth discussing what those rules are. First and foremost, there must be a song, although the nature of the song changes as the tastes of the public change. The first popular television anime, 1963's "Astro Boy," had an orchestral theme. When its adaptation for American television included English lyrics, the Japanese staff quickly added Japanese lyrics sung by a children's choir to their version. A decade later in 1974, the creators of "Space Battleship Yamato" greatly invested in its theme, and it paid off. In a podcast "Anisongs and the History of Anime Music," produced by the Japan Society, Laurence Green says that the theme of "Yamato" "showed the scale at which anime could operate." "Yamato" and its successors proved that anime music could be an excellent-money making opportunity.

The theme songs of both "Yamato" and "Astro Boy" prominently feature the name of the show in the lyrics. This practice still has its place, particularly in rock acts like JAM Project. But over the years, anime music has evolved to become increasingly indistinguishable from regular pop music. A great example is Kenshi Yonezu's "KICKBACK," the opening theme to the currently airing "Chainsaw Man." The lyrics of "KICKBACK" tie directly into the themes of the show, and the unexpected sonic twists and turns in the full track evoke the unpredictability of Denji's story. But it also works perfectly fine as another hit by musical superstar Kenshi Yonezu, who frankly doesn't need "Chainsaw Man" to burnish his stellar reputation.

TANK!

The first big departure taken by "TANK!," the theme of "Cowboy Bebop," is that it barely has lyrics at all. It's a big, jazzy number driven by rocking instrumentation courtesy of composer Yoko Kanno's personal band, Seatbelts. The only words are those of Tim Jensen, who provides a brief introduction backed by bongo drums and a killer upright bass. "I think it's time we blow this scene," he says. "Get everybody and the stuff together. OK, three, two, one, let's jam." Cue the brass, and a musical sequence still capable of melting an audience's face off. "TANK!" is not the only great song in "Cowboy Bebop," and it may not even be the best. But it is a holy writ, and Netflix's 2021 adaptation could only leave it as is.

What the Netflix series couldn't match, despite its valiant efforts, were the visuals to the opening credits. Broken down to its component parts, the credits are comparable to others from the studio Sunrise at the time. Per Anime News Network, director Shinichiro Watanabe claimed in a 2013 panel at Otakon that "Cowboy Bebop" was greenlit to promote spaceship toys. Those spaceships are put front and center in the opening credits, in the same way that the Gundam takes the spotlight in the original "Mobile Suit Gundam" opening credits. In effect, though, the credits to the original "Cowboy Bebop" could not be more different. The characters' silhouettes smoke cigarettes as they dash through multi-colored split screens, resulting in a sequence that is sophisticatedly desperate, and intriguingly modern.

Cat Burglars

It would be tempting to say that the opening credits of "Cowboy Bebop" were the first of their kind. But any anime fan worth their salt knows this is a lie. In 1995, three years before "Cowboy Bebop" aired, came the OVA (original video animation) "Gunsmith Cats." Its opening credits feature a big band soundtrack, strong pop art influence, and copious use of multi-colored split-screen. "Gunsmith Cats" lacks the same texture as "Bebop," since original creator Kenichi Sonoda was less interested in intangibles and more interested in showing the audience a good time. "Bebop" staff writer Keiko Nobumoto and composer Yoko Kanno gave "Bebop" a sense of humanity that took it beyond simple pastiche. But the opening credits of "Gunsmith Cats" are still impressive, even more so for beating "Bebop" to the punch.

At the root of "Cowboy Bebop" and "Gunsmith Cats" is "Lupin the 3rd." The opening credits for the series have changed over the course of its many seasons, but bear multiple similarities to the credits of "Bebop." The first sequence features familiar two-tone silhouettes in blue, red, and green. Later credits sequences introduce the famous "Lupin" theme, which is (with exceptions) a jazz-inflected instrumental piece. Shinichiro Watanabe is a big "Lupin the 3rd" fan, and Spike, Jet, and Faye in "Bebop" parallel rascally thief Lupin, his associate Jigen, and Fujiko the femme fatale. It makes perfect sense that the opening credits for "Bebop" would borrow from his favorite anime.

Cops And Robbers

Like "Cowboy Bebop," "Lupin the 3rd" borrowed its best visual iconography from elsewhere. Just look at the opening credits for "It Takes a Thief," which aired from 1968 to 1970. Prolific title designer Wayne Fitzgerald utilizes two-tone colors, silhouettes, and, yes, split-screen, to sell the audience on the show's sophistication. Fitzgerald owes a debt to Maurice Binder's famous opening credits for the "James Bond" films, beginning with "Dr. No" in 1962. But just as important is Pablo Ferro, who pioneered the use of multi-screen in a video advertising the 1964 World's Fair in New York. Ferro would adapt this device for use in his opening credits for "The Thomas Crown Affair," with a truly decadent assembly of multi-colored split screens. "I was lucky that the costumes and the cinematography had the look of ... a bizarre magazine," he said in an interview with Art of the Title. In a sense, his credits for the film were a form of collage that remixed the source into something both familiar and unfamiliar.

Eventually, the techniques practiced by Binder and Ferro were repurposed by the cop dramas of the 1970s. For instance, the opening credits to the detective series "Barnaby Jones" begin by assembling the title logo via red and blue squares, reminiscent of Binder as well as legend Saul Bass. The opening credits of "Longstreet" borrow Ferro's multi-screen technique to arrange a nexus of surveillance around a single, all-seeing-eye that's stained blue. (Plus, the bass line goes as hard as "TANK!") My personal favorite is the opening title of "Ironside," a TV drama about a wheelchair-bound detective that aired from 1967 to 1975. The two-tone red and black silhouettes sell the charisma of the titular character, whose body fills the screen.

The New Thieves

Not just "Lupin," but "Cowboy Bebop" and even "Gunsmith Cats" steal liberally from the designs of these credits. In the case of "Lupin," it was a matter of repurposing the style of contemporary spy and heist films for its own purposes. "Gunsmith Cats" borrowed the language of pop art and cop dramas to match the single-minded interests of its original creator, Kenichi Sonada. As for "Cowboy Bebop," the series was founded on pastiche. Shinichiro Watanabe and his crew were happy to borrow from "Lupin," so I wouldn't be surprised if they went back and repurposed the predecessors of the "Lupin" aesthetic as well.

That isn't to say that the "Cowboy Bebop" opening titles are unoriginal. If anything, the originality of the "Bebop" title sequence can be traced to its willingness to borrow from sources outside of traditional anime. The success of "Bebop" inspired other anime titles to experiment with their own credit sequences. The credits to "Lupin III: The Woman Named Fujiko Mine" set a montage of stylish charcoal nudity to spoken word poetry. The titles of "The Great Pretender" take clear influence from the title sequence for "Catch Me If You Can," which itself was a homage to the work of Saul Bass. The creators of these two sequences, "Fujiko" director Sayo Yamamoto and director Kotomi Deai, are both Watanabe proteges. The baton is passed to the next generation, and anime continues to evolve.

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The post How Cowboy Bebop Broke The Anime Opening Mold appeared first on /Film.

The Boston Globe reports that U.S. Senator Ed. Markey just sent a letter to more than 20 car manufacturers asking them to continue including AM radios in future car models — including electric vehicles: Some EV manufacturers have raised concerns even as far back as 2016 about how the battery power of an EV can interfere with AM radio signals. However, Markey addressed these concerns saying, "car manufacturers appear to have developed innovative solutions to this problem." "The last time I listened to AM radio was in the late 1970s," writes long-time Slashdot reader non-e-moose. "And then it was mostly because there were either no FM stations in reception range, or I was riding my bicycle and only had a transistor radio." But the Senator sees it differently: AM radio has long been an important source of information for consumers. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 12 and older — totaling hundreds of millions of people — listened to AM or FM radio each week, higher than the percentage that watch television (56 percent) or own a computer (77 percent).... Moreover, 33 percent of new car buyers say that AM radio is a very important feature in a vehicle — higher than dedicated Wi-Fi (31 percent), SiriusXM satellite radio (27 percent), and personal assistants such as Google Assistant (12 percent) and Amazon Alexa (9 percent). In other words, broadcast AM and FM radio remain an essential vehicle feature for consumers. Moreover, broadcast AM radio, in particular, is a critical mechanism for government authorities to communicate with the public during natural disasters, extreme weather events, and other emergencies. AM radio operates at lower frequencies and has longer wavelengths than FM radio, so AM radio waves more easily pass through solid objects. As a result, AM radio signals can travel long distances, making them well-suited for broadcasting emergency alerts.... Despite innovations such as the smartphone and social media, AM/FM broadcast radio remains the most dependable, cost-free, and accessible communication mechanism for public officials to communicate with the public during times of emergency. As a result, any phase-out of broadcast AM radio could pose a significant communication problem during emergencies.... Given AM radio's importance for emergency communications and continued consumer demand, I urge your company to maintain the feature in its new vehicles...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As convenient as buying furniture online can be, there are still some advantages to shopping at brick-and-mortar retailers. First and foremost, going to stores in person means you get to try it out before making a purchase. And then, there’s the delivery situation.

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Channing Tatum is our pre-eminent cinematic goofball. The always likable actor is pretty much down for anything, no matter how silly. He's as likely to turn up cross-dressing in a P!nk music video as he is to perform "Frozen" songs on "Lip Sync Battle" ... again while cross-dressing, come to think of it. In his films he's been an action star, a rom-com lead, a teen-movie hunk, and a grown-up male stripper, and while Oscar-bait turns in films like "Foxcatcher" have fallen flat, there's always another comedy or pleasantly weird action film around the corner. He's even collaborated five times with Steven Soderbergh, with a sixth — a third "Magic Mike" movie — on the horizon.

In other words: there's more to Tatum than initially meets the eye. He often plays jocks who turn out to have big hearts, and he's excellent at portraying lovable lunkheads concealing softer sides. While he may not be the most technically-accomplished actor in the business, he's never less than watchable and usually even downright compelling. With that in mind, these are the 12 best Channing Tatum movies, ranked.

The Eagle (2011)

In "The Eagle," Channing Tatum plays Marcus Flavius Aquila, commander of a Roman regiment stationed along Hadrian's Wall. His father commanded Rome's Ninth Legion, which disappeared along with its standard, a golden eagle. Marcus wants to restore honor to his father's name by holding the line against the tribes that destroyed the Ninth. After he's wounded in combat, Marcus' uncle (Donald Sutherland) buys him a slave named Esca (Jamie Bell). Together, they head north of the wall to follow rumors that the eagle has been spotted.

Queer and queer-possible readings have always been an important part of the Channing Tatum oeuvre, and "The Eagle" is no different. Marcus first sees Esca fighting a gladiator, touched by his refusal to beg for his life. His reaction to the other man is conveyed through a series of glances which can be read as respect or something like longing. Marcus turns the crowd against the gladiator, voting for Esca's survival. "I meant nothing by it," he later says sheepishly. Their master/slave relationship eventually softens into something like genuine affection, if not more. It's interesting to see Tatum in a sword-and-sandal epic, with Marcus a far cry from his usual lovable doofuses. Tatum can't do much of an accent, bless him, so all the Romans sound American. Still, there are some beautiful shots of a verdant Britain, and it's enjoyable to watch Tatum try something new even though, to paraphrase the meme, his face looks like it knows what a phone is. 

White House Down (2013)

The year 2013 brought us two separate movies about a security guy saving the President from terrorists attacking the White House. First to the theater was "Olympus Has Fallen," starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman. It's a self-serious, gritty action movie directed by Antoine Fuqua. A few months later came "White House Down," starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx. It's far sillier — after all, it's directed by Roland Emmerich — and therefore, it's more fun.

Tatum stars as John Cale, a Capitol Police Officer who takes his daughter (Joey King) on a tour of the White House. Cale wants to be part of the Secret Service, but even though he's old college friends with the woman in charge of hiring (Maggie Gyllenhaal), she tells him he doesn't have what it takes. When terrorists blow up the Capitol building and take hostages in the White House, Cale goes on a mission to rescue his daughter and the President, proving himself in the process. "White House Down" isn't Emmerich's best movie. Some sequences look shockingly cheap, as if they were filmed in front of greenscreens with none of the actors in the same location, but that adds to the charm. Tatum is in typical likable lunkhead goofball mode, and by the time the Presidential limousine stars doing donuts on the White House lawn, it's easy to give in to the movie's escalating ridiculousness and just enjoy the ride.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Quentin Tarantino's wintry Western "The Hateful Eight" takes place shortly after the end of the Civil War, and it's about a group of outcasts, outlaws, bounty hunters, and gang members who find themselves trapped in a building called Minnie's Haberdashery during a blizzard. Everyone has secret motivations and evil backstories, and as tensions boil over and bodies start to fall, we learn that not all is as it seems. There's another player in this deadly game, a man called Jody Domergue, and he's hiding in the basement. Oh, and he's played by Channing Tatum.

This is a relatively small role for the "Fighting" star, but it's a pivotal one. While he looked relatively out of place in "The Eagle" (to enjoyably campy results), Tatum fits in well with the greasy, grimy gang members of "The Hateful Eight." His Jody is deliciously devilish, a man with a plan who doesn't care how many people he has to hurt along the way. He turns on the typical Tatum charm, but he's spewing Tarantino's idiosyncratic dialogue, and the result is that he walks away with several of the most memorable moments in "The Hateful Eight." The film's ranking on this list comes down to a question of screen time, as Tatum is far from a lead, but "The Hateful Eight" is one of the strongest movies he's been in.

Step Up (2006)

Before "Step Up" launched a franchise that continues to this day, it kickstarted Channing Tatum's career. In the first film, he plays Tyler Gage, a troubled youth who is sentenced to community service as a janitor at a local performing arts academy. He dances too, but he does it for fun and his style is more hip-hop as opposed to the refined ballets being performed by students like Nora Clark (Jenna Dewan). When Nora's partner is injured, she looks to Tyler to help her out, and as their dance styles meet somewhere in the middle the two, of course, fall in love.

The film probably wouldn't be made the same way today, since Tatum plays a hip-hop-dancing white boy who comes from the streets, and even though his style of dance is inspired by people of color, they mostly exist as supporting characters. That being said, Tatum is entirely winsome in the part, appearing sweet and charming even as he's trying to act tough. He's a himbo, a characterization that would continue to follow him throughout his career. Tatum and Dewan got along so well that they married in real life, and their chemistry bleeds over on screen, too. They're thrilling to watch, as aughts dance movies go. As an important step in Tatum's career as well as a pretty solid movie on its own, "Step Up" more than earns a place on this list.

Stop-Loss (2008)

In "Stop-Loss," Channing Tatum plays Sgt. Steve Shriver, an Iraq War soldier who returns to Texas with his best friends PFC Tommy Burgess (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Staff Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe). They're excited to be getting out, tired of putting their lives on the line and watching their friends get blown to pieces in front of them. When Brandon is given a stop-loss order, requiring him to report for another tour of duty, he goes on the run with Steve left behind.

Francois Truffaut reportedly said, "There is no such thing as an anti-war film." Combat shown on screen, the thinking goes, will always glamorize the horrors of war, making it seem thrilling and action-packed rather than harrowing. "Stop-Loss," though, is as anti-war as we were going to get in 2008. It seems at first that Brandon, Steve, and Tommy are good ol' Army boys, but faced with going back Brandon can't handle it. "F*** the President," he tells his Lieutenant Colonel (Timothy Olyphant) before going AWOL. Tatum gets a difficult, perhaps less-sympathetic role as the one tasked with holding the line. Steve is suffering too, and Tatum does an excellent job letting us see not just the compliant Army boy but the quietly-terrified man underneath. He's hurt that his friend has walked out on the oath they took together, but he's grappling with PTSD himself. As a document of where we were in 2008 and as a showcase for Tatum's emerging talent, "Stop-Loss" is worthwhile.

She's The Man (2006)

As we said earlier, 2006 was a breakout year for Channing Tatum. In addition to "Step Up," he played hunky soccer player Duke Orsino in "She's the Man," a modernization of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." Duke is the boarding-school roommate of fellow soccer player Sebastian, whom he doesn't realize is actually his twin sister Viola (Amanda Bynes). As Viola finds herself falling for her roommate — who, again, thinks she's a guy — Duke also finds himself opening up to the quirky "Sebastian."

It's a refreshingly un-self-conscious performance from an actor just starting out. Especially in the mid-2000s, a lot of heartthrobs may have tried to avoid roles with queer subtext, but Tatum dives in headfirst. While Viola is undercover as a man, the two share an almost-kiss, and the moment is played with a sweetness that's not so much "no homo" as it is simply "well, this is awkward." Tatum has a fantastic scene partner in Bynes, who has rarely been better. "She's the Man" is a reminder of what a gifted physical comedian Bynes is, and Tatum's straight man — in the comedy sense, that is — matches her almost beat for beat. The film signaled several important aspects of Tatum's persona that would come to define his career. He's got an impressive physicality, but secretly he plays softies. He's not the most technical actor, but he's got incredible comedic timing. Although he identifies as straight, many of his films invite queer audiences along for the ride.

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

In another lifetime, Channing Tatum would have been a Fred Astaire type. The multi-talented actor can sing and dance — as he's always eager to remind his fans — and in a world where we still made big-budget studio musicals, Tatum would have been a solid leading man in many of them. The Coen Brothers' "Hail, Caesar!" makes perfect use of this aspect of Tatum's star image, casting him as Burt Gurney. His character is a Classic Hollywood musical star, a charismatic tap-dancing actor who might just be wrapped up in a seditious conspiracy being investigated by studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin).

Though the character becomes more important in the film's final act — giving Tatum some heightened, melodramatic material to chew with relish — the centerpiece of his performance is "No Dames!" The musical number is part of a film within the film with Burt Gurney dressed as a sailor, singing and dancing about facing eight months at sea without any women. As with many Channing Tatum performances, this one is full of innuendo that's there if you want it. "Here's how it will be / I'm gonna dance with you, pal / You're gonna dance with me!" the sailors sing, winking. "The only guarantee / Is I'll see a lot of you / And you'll see a lot of me!" It's a standout performance in his filmography, and it's a blast to watch him doing classic choreography, as opposed to the stripper routines of "Magic Mike."

21 & 22 Jump Street (2012 & 2014)

In the early 2010s, more than a decade after he played a bartender in Ricky Martin's music video for "She Bangs," someone somewhere finally realized that Channing Tatum can be funny. Really funny. Though there have been others in the years that followed, his best studio comedy is still 2012's "21 Jump Street" (and its strong sequel "22 Jump Street"). In the first film, he plays opposite Jonah Hill as a cop tasked with going undercover at a high school to sniff out a drug ring. The idea of the tall, muscular Tatum as a high schooler is already a promising sight gag, but the series' snappy dialogue and ever more absurdist sequences make for movies that are just nonstop silly fun.

See, for example, the scene where Jenko and Schmidt accidentally take the drug they're supposed to be investigating. Drug trip sequences are a dime a dozen, but this one knows how to use the concept sparingly, as every shot of Tatum contorting his face or giggling uncontrollably offers a new laugh, and the capstone punchline — that the drug might have made him incredibly good at science — is immediately revealed as a farce. Then there's his instantly-quotable attempt at a Spanish accent in "22 Jump Street," Schmidt digging into the offensive stereotype gleefully as an uncomfortable Jenko manages something closer to a Swedish accent as he whines, "My name's Jeff..." Tatum pitches the performance perfectly, finding exactly the right line between underplaying and absurdity. He's a delight.

Magic Mike (2012)

When "Magic Mike" was announced, many fans assumed the movie would be a campy romp that played on Channing Tatum's past as a male stripper. (Think "Showgirls," but men.) That's not what the movie turned out to be. Instead, "Magic Mike" is a meditation on the Great Recession, a film about a group of guys who are using their bodies to stay financially afloat in deeply uncertain times. Steven Soderbergh's desaturated, yellow-tinted outdoor scenes contrast wonderfully with the deep purples and blues of the nightclub performances, signaling the stage as a fantasy space where outside concerns are forgotten in favor of rippling abs, thrusting pelvises, and cheeky grins. It's enchanting, but it's also dark.

Tatum plays the titular Mike, but the story is just as much about the young man he takes under his wing. Alex Pettyfer is Adam (stage name "The Kid"), an aimless youngster who realizes he might be able to make a buck taking off his clothes in the male revue. There are excellent supporting turns from stars like Matthew McConaughey, Joe Manganiello, and Matt Bomer, but even though it's also The Kid's story this is Tatum's movie. His Mike has been around the block, but he's not exactly jaded. He enjoys what he does, and his easy confidence and warmth carry over to his life outside the club. Even though the movie's subject matter is unexpected, Tatum is just as exciting to watch as one could hope.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

The best Channing Tatum is goofball Channing Tatum, and the second-best Channing Tatum takes himself seriously. The Wachowskis' "Jupiter Ascending" may be the best of both worlds: an incredibly silly movie, but Tatum plays the ridiculous character straight and makes the movie work. Tatum stars as Caine Wise, a Lycantant-splice skyjacker who skates through the air on anti-gravity boots, which he needs because his wings were taken away. Got that? Basically, he's half-man/half-dog, which means he sports a blond goatee, pointy ears, and bulging arm muscles that catch the eye of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis). She's just a humble house cleaner whose DNA happens to be an exact match for the queen of the universe, and now this handsome dogman from space wants to protect her.

"Jupiter Ascending" got a lot of flak when it came out thanks to its storyline, but it's hardly much less silly than any given Chosen One narrative ... the protagonist this time just happens to be a woman. The whole film is basically wish-fulfillment, a chance to go on an intergalactic adventure with a sensitive beefcake by your side, and Tatum is fully committed to his action-hero alien. It's refreshing to spend time with an original, grandly-envisioned space opera like this, a mega-budget sci-fi spectacle not bogged down by easter eggs and interconnected cinematic universes. Perhaps its biggest crime is that it's too earnest, but we could all use a little more earnest cheese in our lives.

Logan Lucky (2017)

Before Daniel Craig developed Benoit Blanc's syrupy Southern accent for "Knives Out," he experimented with something a bit more Appalachian in Steven Soderbergh's "Logan Lucky." The 2017 heist film centers on recently-fired father Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) and his one-armed bartender brother Clyde (Adam Driver). The Logans are said to be an unlucky bunch, but when Jimmy cooks up a scheme to rob a nearby NASCAR track, things are looking up. To pull it off, they enlist the help of a number of local yokels, including incarcerated demolitions expert Joe Bangs (Craig).

Soderbergh, of course, directed "Ocean's Eleven" through "Thirteen," so the man knows his way around a heist film. "Logan Lucky" eschews most of the genre's regular beats, and it's not really a spoiler to say that the heist mostly goes off without a hitch. The film is getting at something a bit deeper, a bit more class-conscious: its West Virginia setting is full of modest homes and rundown bars off of lonely highways, contrasted with a veritable orgy of capitalistic branding at the speedway the Logans set their sights on. What emerges is mostly a portrait of a father — Jimmy — just trying to do right by his little girl. Tatum's accent is hit-or-miss, but his sense of comedic timing is as strong as ever, and he makes Jimmy Logan into a sympathetic criminal. He radiates love whenever he's around his daughter, all softness and fond smiles, and he's a grounding force for the film's zany energy.

Magic Mike XXL (2015)

While the original "Magic Mike" turned out to be dark and depressing, the sequel jettisons all that in favor of pure cinematic joy. In "Magic Mike XXL," Channing Tatum's stripper Mike is invited by his old crew to compete in one last big show. Though he's hesitant at first, he can't resist the throbbing bass line of Ginuwine's "Pony," and soon he's dancing around his workshop, thrusting, sliding, thinking about the good old days. Mike signs up for the competition after all and the gang is off, hitting a number of stripper-starved locations along the way. That's right: it's a road trip movie.

Whereas the first time around Steven Soderbergh had something to say, "Magic Mike XXL" is all about delivering the goods. From Joe Manganiello's filthy convenience store performance of "I Want it That Way" to Michael Strahan's seductive stripping at Jada Pinkett Smith's Club Domina, a sexually-repressed Andie McDowell's house to the fireworks and tourist bacchanalia of Myrtle Beach, "Magic Mike XXL" just wants to make you happy. After all, everyone the strippers love up on in the movie can't help but feel attended to and pleased, and the camera lingers on the satisfied smiles of the women watching the men dance. It's basically a hangout movie, a film that reunites us with Tatum's iconic character and just lets him have fun. This is Tatum at his absolute best, showing off that particular alchemy of beefcake goofiness. There's no one else quite like him.

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The post The 12 Best Channing Tatum Movies, Ranked appeared first on /Film.

ICY DOCK has unveiled their next-gen conceptual adapter cards that feature support for PCIe Gen5 M.2 & E1.S SSDs in an active-cooled design.

ICY DOCK Shows Off Its Next-Gen PCIe Gen5 M.2 & E1.S SSD Adapter Cards With Active-Cooling Tech

Both adapter cards that ICY DOCK has showcased are currently a concept only. The docks include the CP125 and the CP073. Starting off with the CP125, we have a standard FHFL expansion card & make use of a single-slot design. The card features a PCIe5 x8 interface and can support up to two E1.S SSDs.

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The E1.S is the new ruler standard that was recently introduced and you can mount two of these within the SSD Mobile Rack that features a tool-less design & connects to the adapter with ease. The adapter features a 50mm blower fan that should keep both SSDs running cool. There's also an LED indicator on the I/O and two HDD LED ports that can be connected to the motherboard can showcase HDD activity through the front panel LEDs. Specs for the ICY DOCK CP125 Gen5 adapter card are listed below:

The second adapter on the concept panel is the ICY DOCK CP073-1 which features a similar design as the CP125 but instead of featuring E1.S SSDs, it supports two standard PCIe Gen5 M.2 SSDs. The SSDs are mounted through the sides of the shroud and once again, feature a tool-less design with support for up to 2280/2580 form factors. The design includes a 50mm blower fan with exhaust vents on the front and an aluminum heatsink which is the shroud itself. There are also LED indicators on the front.

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Both ICY DOCK Gen5 SSD adapter cards come with up to 32 GB/s and require a single PCIe power input to boot. The company hasn't specified if its a 6-pin or an 8-pin connector is required for the card. There's no word on when these products will launch in the retail segment or if they will launch at all but these will definitely be interesting products for storage enthusiasts who are looking forward to the new PCIe Gen5 SSD standard which hits store shelves next year.

The post ICY DOCK Unveils Concept PCIe Gen5 M.2 & E1.S SSD Adapter Cards With Active-Cooling Tech by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

Christina Ricci played Wednesday Addams with a biting edge, making the character her own in a definitive way. Wednesday's refusal to fit in strikes a chord with those who relates to her outcast status, and her borderline-sociopathic, deadpan demeanor is, dare I say, iconic for many reasons. Ricci's performance is a clear standout in the 1990s "Addams Family" films, even when stacked up against the movies' solid cast of eccentric characters. There's something curiously creepy about Wednesday, a young girl who rejects socially-expected norms and holds a deep fascination for all things morbid. How did 11-year-old Ricci navigate this layered role?

Ricci made her acting debut in the 1990 family comedy-drama "Mermaids," in which she played the role of Kate Flax while starring alongside a young Winona Ryder. The following year, Ricci assumed the mantle of Wednesday. In an interview with The New Yorker conducted at the top of 2022, Ricci explained how playing the child "homicidal maniac" was never a chore for her. She was naturally able to embody the role, as it did not entail putting on a cheerful persona just to please the adults in the room.

Channeling Wednesday Was Natural For Ricci

Because of her connection to the "Addams Family" character, Christina Ricci has never bothered by the idea that people still primarily associate her with her performances as Wednesday:

"I'm glad it's not a more annoying character because that would be difficult, but she's kind of great. Wednesday to me felt like who I could be when I didn't have to put it on for other people ... I was very much used to performing for people even before I was an actor. I knew when I had to be charming and happy, and when other people needed to be cheered up. With Wednesday, there was no emotion, no nothing, and for me, that was great, because it felt like I could just relax and not do any work at all."

Being a child actor in a burgeoning industry can be difficult, especially when they're expected to take on mature, layered roles that are directed by adults. Ricci explained that she always had to put on a front to cheer other people up, and her role as Wednesday was a welcome departure from this routine. As Wednesday's personality was naturally deadpan and affectless, Ricci had the freedom to hold on to those traits and channel her emotions directly into her performance. 

Ricci went on to note that Wednesday is "not just a child that performs for adults." Instead, the role demanded a considerable amount of personal autonomy, which helped her to deliver a better performance. Interestingly, according to the oral history of "The Addams Family" by The Hollywood Reporter, Ricci even got the film's ending changed after the cast was unhappy with it. She was also the go-to for dealing with any on-set clashes, being "the most articulate, intellectually gifted of any cast member."

Continuing The Legacy In A Different Manner

Spoilers for "Wednesday" ahead.

Netflix's "Wednesday" takes a rebranded, modern-ish approach to the titular character while paying homage to Christina Ricci's rendition, preversing several elements from the "Addams Family" movies she starred in. Moreover, Ricci co-stars as Marilyn Thornhill, a botany teacher at Nevermore Academy who ends up playing a crucial role in the series' plot. Jenna Ortega, who assumes the role of Wednesday on the show, succeeds in making the character her own while still paying homage to Ricci's rendition in a respectful manner.

Ricci's role in "Wednesday" allows the actor to revisit the "Addams Family" world on very different terms. In time Thornhill is actually revealed to be the show's Big Bad, with plans to eradicate the Outcasts at Nevermore, Wednesday included. It is interesting to see Ricci play an antagonist who is directly opposed to Wednesday's values and motivations in this fictional gothic universe she herself is so familiar with. Although Ricci's Wednesday casts a long shadow, it is great to see Ortega's unique version being realized on-screen, with Ricci giving it her stamp of approval.

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The post Playing Wednesday Addams Was Never 'Work' For Christina Ricci appeared first on /Film.

If the wait to watch HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us wasn't long enough already, the network has shared a new trailer for the upcoming series ahead of its January 15th release date. Clocking in at almost two-and-a-half minutes long, the clip offers our best look yet at the Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) production. And for those who may have worried that the series would hew too closely to Naughty Dog's source material, it shows the adaptation's creators weren't afraid to bring something new to the franchise. 

That's on display early on when there's a short scene of Ellie pretending to be a clicker. The exchange that follows is one of the few light-hearted moments in the trailer. Later in the clip, eagle-eyed fans will spot Ashley Johnson, the actor who voiced Ellie in the video games.  

If you're unfamiliar with The Last of Us, the trailer serves as a decent overview of the first game's story. At the center of the narrative are Joel and Ellie, played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in the upcoming HBO series. Joel must escort Ellie across a post-apocalyptic version of the US in the hopes that she may be the key to protecting what's left of the world's population from a fungal infection that turns its victims into aggressive, zombie-like creatures known as the Infected.    

From all the marketing material HBO has shared to promote The Last of Us, it's clear the network has high hopes for the series. Footage from the show capped off a sizzle reel HBO uploaded earlier this year to hype its 2023 slate. 

Ever since the earliest days of cinema, Hollywood has loved celebrating the romantic genre. Rom-coms are a quintessential part of film history; the "Golden Age of Hollywood" featured the sly, romantic classics "It Happened One Night," "Roman Holiday," and "The Apartment."

While it's fun to see an idealized couple enjoying each other's company on screen, movie fans have to recognize that what they're seeing doesn't reflect reality. There's a sense of escapism that we're looking for when we're seeing a romantic film. You shouldn't have to worry about romantic movies making you feel insecure if you are single; in fact, there are many great films, both dramatic and comedic, that celebrate independence.

While these films are often comedies, living a single life is also the subject of many dramas and coming-of-age stories. It's a versatile subject, and being single is different depending on what age you are. Here are the 20 best movies about being single, ranked.

Birds Of Prey (2020)

Thankfully, Hollywood has finally realized that the number of female-centric comic book movies is severely lacking. Outside of the poor representation on the part of the Marvel and DC franchises, these popular superhero movies often depict toxic relationships. Take 2016's "Suicide Squad," which made it clear that Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) was in an unhealthy relationship with the Joker (Jared Leto). Thankfully, the 2020 spinoff "Birds of Prey" gave Harley the chance to burn her last relationship to the ground.

If "Suicide Squad" inadvertently celebrated toxic masculinity, "Birds of Prey" celebrates a woman's choice. Harley realizes that the Joker was leading her along, and thankfully they split at the very beginning of the movie. If you weren't a fan of Leto's interpretation of the Joker, don't worry! "Birds of Prey" seems to despise him as much as you do. Harley finds newfound confidence by being single, and the film shows that she doesn't need a romantic partner to be happy.

"Birds of Prey" celebrates female friendship. Harley ultimately joins forces with The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett), Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), and young thief Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). These women understand that they don't need a relationship to be happy, and they find much more success when they team up. It's a unique entry that warrants inclusion on the list, even at a lower spot. 

Superbad (2007)

Although "Superbad" is often thought of as a "gross-out" comedy, it's a sincere look at male friendship. The film was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who loosely based the story on their own experiences growing up together. Yes, it's a film with a lot of crass humor, but it's a tribute to the types of relationships that actually last. Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) realize that any sort of romantic connection that they briefly have in high school is unlikely to stay with them for the rest of their life. The one thing that they will remember about their adolescent experience is all the time that they shared together.

"Superbad" is a favorite among millennials because it shows the stigma over being single in high school. Both Evan and Seth feel that because they do not have girlfriends, they are somehow "missing out" on the best years of their lives. In order to redeem their adolescent years before it's too late, Seth and Evan decide to get into some shenanigans before graduation. It's not until the end that they realize they never needed a relationship to make their high school experience "worth it." They struggle to acknowledge that the thing they're really worried about is not getting to see each other again when they go to different colleges. It's a strangely touching message, which warrants its inclusion toward the end of the list.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

"Promising Young Woman" was designed to start conversations. Although it deals with very serious topics, the film is presented in the style of a romantic comedy and features many soundtrack cues lifted from early 21st-century pop music. While at first it seems like these two qualities are inherently contradictory, the dissonance was intentional. If pop music and romantic comedies promote these sorts of idealized relationships, then what lesson does that teach young girls? "Promising Young Woman" shows that women should be proud of being single, and they should not settle for men who claim to have "redeemed" themselves.

"Promising Young Woman" follows former medical student Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan), who still lives with her parents, Stanley (Clancy Brown) and Susan (Jennifer Coolidge). While Cassie was once thought of as a potentially extraordinary student, she is struggling after her best friend, Nina Fisher, was sexually assaulted. Cassie begins to investigate the crime, and slowly realizes that the men she once believed in are culpable. The film shows how some men prey on innocent women and then cover up their crimes. Even the somewhat charming pediatric surgeon Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham) proves that he has a dark side.

"Promising Young Woman" deserves to be on this list because of its inherent messiness; the film shows that being single can sometimes be an advantage. While the film's conclusion is somewhat abrupt, it still earns a place near the end of the list.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Clueless (1995)

What happens when the self-professed "matchmaker" actually begins to fall in love? This is the premise of Jane Austen's classic novel "Emma." However, there were not a lot of high school students in the 1990s that were interested in reading any of Austen's work, so they might have learned the same lessons from "Clueless." Amy Heckerling's hilarious teen comedy essentially takes the premise of "Emma" and places it within the context of a modern California high school.

Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) and her best friend, Dionne Davenport (Stacey Dash), pride themselves on keeping up with their school's gossip. They enjoy getting to pair different people together; they even find a romantic partner for their teacher, Mr. Wendell Hall (Wallace Shawn). However, there's a fundamental difference between the two of them: Dionne has a boyfriend, and Cher claims that she's staying single. While this independence is empowering, we also see how Cher is denying herself happiness out of insecurity. She's crafted the idealized version of a perfect relationship, but she doesn't realize that she's chasing a fantasy that will never actually exist in reality.

"Clueless" doesn't force Cher to give up her life as a single woman, but it allows her to steadily experience happiness. She realizes that her true crush was really in front of her the whole time. "Clueless" ultimately ranks lower because it ends with a relationship, but there's so much fun revolving around Cher's independence that it had to make the list.

Heathers (1989)

The success of the films of the John Hughes era in the 1980s was important in the development of teen comedies. While Hollywood had often struggled to understand adolescent anxieties, Hughes' films offered more relatable stories. However, these movies also had an idealistic version of romantic relationships that didn't reflect everyone's experience. This is why "Heathers" felt like such a breath of fresh air; it's a film that highlights the role that outsiders and supposed "freaks" play within the high school ecosystem.

"Heathers" follows two characters that, for different reasons, have chosen to remain single for the time being. Both Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) and J.D. Dean (Christian Slater) recognize that their classmates are only pretending to be responsible adults with real relationships. Veronica refuses to settle because of the toxic environment in her school; the film does a great job of showing how rude her male classmates are. However, it's probably a good thing that J.D. isn't in a romantic relationship as he quickly proves to be dangerous.

"Heathers" shows why being single and making your own decisions is important for young people. Veronica realizes how easily the school's population is influenced when they sign petitions and are swayed to become more radical. "Heathers" was an incendiary satire of other teen films, and it became a cult favorite that inspired a musical of the same name. However, some of the sexism has not aged well, so it ranks a little lower.

Spring Breakers (2012)

"Spring Breakers" certainly has an interesting perspective on being single, hypothesizing that nothing is going to change someone's inherent nature. "Spring Breakers" satirizes the nature of the college "party movie" by going in a completely different direction than what audiences might have expected. Instead of pairing each of its female protagonists off with a new partner, the film places them in the middle of a chaotic heist gone awry.

College friends Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Faith (Selena Gomez), and Cotty (Rachel Korine) are sad because they cannot afford to go on an expensive vacation during their spring break holiday week. They're desperate to go to the same wild parties that their classmates are attending, and it's implied that they're looking to this potential trip as a chance to find boyfriends. This leads them to a life of crime and introduces them to the ridiculous rapper Alien (James Franco). Thankfully, the film doesn't force Alien into a relationship with the girls. His brief encounters with Brit and Candy are sexual, but not romantic. These characters are celebrating their independence, for better or worse.

"Spring Breakers" earns a spot in front of some of the more traditional romantic comedies because it's just so ambitious. It's impressive that the film was able to intertwine so many elements of satire at once.

500 Days Of Summer (2009)

Is "500 Days of Summer" a romantic comedy? Well, no, not really. In fact, it's a film where the central protagonist spends the majority of the story on his own, trying to learn from his past mistakes. It's fascinating to see how the interpretations of "500 Days of Summer" have changed in the decade since its initial release at the Sundance Film Festival. While audiences initially may have related to Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), subsequent rewatches have proved that Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) is the real hero of the story.

"500 Days of Summer" features a brilliant screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. The film uses a nonlinear structure to explore how Tom and Summers' relationship evolves, changes, and ultimately falls apart. It's a film that highlights why certain people want to be single, and why stressing over relationships isn't a good thing. Tom spends the majority of the film trying to understand what he did wrong, and why Summer chose to leave him. However, he ultimately realizes that she simply chose a different path and that he should have learned to respect her choices. It's a refreshingly modern take on romantic archetypes that allows the male character to come to this conclusion.

"500 Days of Summer" is so unique that it earns a high enough spot. However, it can easily be misinterpreted, so it doesn't quite reach the top 10.

Sixteen Candles (1984)

While a film like "Heathers" might have satirized the teen comedies of John Hughes, there's a reason that these films were iconic in the first place. Hughes didn't stigmatize what teens were struggling with, and he didn't make them the butt of a joke. While "The Breakfast Club" spoke to universal high school experiences, "Sixteen Candles" identified the loneliness of a female high school student who feels like she has been taken for granted.

There truly are not very many actresses as universally relatable and charismatic as Molly Ringwald; many young women were able to see themselves in the awkward, sensitive, and ultimately sincere high school student Sam Baker. Being single is just one thing in Sam's life that stresses her out. She also has to deal with the wedding of her sister, her parents' ignorance, and the obnoxious underclassman Ted Farmer (Anthony Michael Hall). There's an elegance in Sam's fantasies about her crush, Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling). It's not that Sam needs someone to be in a relationship with, but that she just wants to be seen.

"Sixteen Candles" deserves to be ranked highly within Hughes' filmography, as it's one of the most positive depictions of female sexuality. However, some of the racial humor has not aged well, so it does not reach any higher.

Swingers (1996)

"Swingers" might just be one of the most influential films of the 1990s. How many independent comedies about dating in Hollywood do we see now? It's the film that launched the career of Jon Favreau, who would go on to be one of the most influential storytellers in the industry. Favreau proved with "Swingers" that he could tell realistic stories about the realities of being a single guy.

While many comedies about masculine anxiety have not aged well, the characters in "Swingers" aren't toxic. It's actually a rather sensitive depiction of loneliness, and the stigma surrounding being single in a town that is so energetic. Despite some of these more serious themes, "Swingers" isn't a film that's going to depress you. The shenanigans that the struggling stand-up comedian Mike Peters (Favreau) and the aspiring actor Trent Walker (Vince Vaughn) get into are absolutely hilarious. However, it's the type of comedy that is so realistic that you might cringe a little bit.

"Swingers" shows that while relationships are one route to happiness, it's not an option for everyone. Its influence and legacy earn it a high spot on the list, but the upper slots belong to films that are classics in any genre.

Risky Business (1983)

What sort of mischief can single teenage boys get into when they're left to their own devices? That's the premise of "Risky Business," the film that essentially launched the career of one of Hollywood's most beloved movie stars. While we now think of Tom Cruise as an action hero, he took on a much different sort of challenge in "Risky Business." Cruise had to play an overconfident but deeply immature young man who makes the mistake of falling in love. Cruise showed the torment of being a single teenager. The film is an interesting examination of the pressures that teenagers are subjected to during the most stressful period of their life.

While Joel Goodsen (Cruise) is clearly brilliant and has a promising future ahead of him, he's also known to get into mischief. Joel may enjoy making crass jokes with his buddies, but he's thrown out of his element when he falls in love with sex worker Lana (Rebecca De Mornay). It's a film that uses Joel's ignorance for both comedic and dramatic effect; while it's funny to see him misinterpret their intimate moments, it's sad to see how deprived he is of affection. Joel's parents treat him like something that they can celebrate, but not someone that they know personally. Joel's heartbreak over being single is surprisingly moving.

"Risky Business" ranks just outside the top 10 because of how it blends genres. However, the movies above it simply deal with more mature issues.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

We've all taken our turn laughing at Nicolas Cage. He's easily the Internet's favorite actor, and thankfully, Cage seems to be in on the joke for the most part; he reflected on his reputation as an Internet meme in the self-referential comedy "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," where he played himself. However, there's a reason that Cage is held in such high regard by his contemporaries. Cage gave one of the greatest performances of all time as the lonely, depressed, single screenwriter Ben Sanderson in the 1995 masterpiece "Leaving Las Vegas."

Based on the 1990 novel of the same name, "Leaving Las Vegas" is a heartbreaking study of loneliness and alcoholism. Between breakups and career setbacks, a once-promising screenwriter like Ben spirals into a self-destructive trip. The film generously examines his failed relationships; while he has kindness within him, Ben is clearly too dangerous at this moment to commit himself to anyone. The relationship he develops with sex worker Sera (Elizabeth Shue) is treated with respect. Both characters are outsiders who society has seemingly cast aside.

"Leaving Las Vegas" is such a powerful, overwhelming emotional experience that it needed to be in the top 10. However, it ranks below films that are slightly more rewatchable.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

The Way, Way Back (2013)

There are few movie genres that are as universally relatable as coming-of-age dramedies. Even if a film isn't able to capture the exact experience that you had growing up, there is something about being young, insecure, and concerned about the future that is shared among audiences of different backgrounds. The 2013 independent film "The Way, Way Back" shows how a young man can evolve and find a route to happiness. It's more important for teenagers to respect themselves than it is to be in a relationship.

The film takes place over the course of a summer, where teenager Duncan (Liam James) spends a vacation with his mother, Pam (Toni Collette), and her wealthy new boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell). The movie does a great job of showing how being single causes Duncan to feel like a failure. Trent constantly criticizes him and offers him tips on how to improve his social status. While Pam is much more warm and sensitive, she subtly encourages Duncan to go out and meet people so that he can be "normal." Ironically, the best advice that Duncan gets are the tips he receives from the local park owner, Owen (Sam Rockwell). Owen encourages him to have fun, not stress about dating, and enjoy his freedom.

"The Way, Way Back" is often hilarious, but it's more mature than some of the other teen comedies that rank below it. It stands to age very well in the next few years. 

The Apartment (1960)

Without making any superfluous hyperboles, "The Apartment" is one of the greatest films ever made. Billy Wilder was a highly influential filmmaker, who understood how to attack social norms and make quintessential genres feel fresh again. "The Apartment" is a hilarious comedy of errors that looks at all the wrong ways that relationships can turn out; with this sort of chaos going on, you'd be lucky to stay single!

The great Jack Lemmon gives one of his funniest performances ever as the insurance clerk Bud Baxter, who works out a scheme in his apartment in order to attain a higher position at work. Although Baxter is more interested in his career than anything, he begins to fall in love with the elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). It's a hilarious coincidence because Fran just so happens to be in a secret relationship with Bud's boss, Jeff D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray). Wilder hilariously plays upon the tension that results from being a single guy who falls in love with a woman that's already in a relationship.

"The Apartment" is so rewatchable that it deserves a place near the top. While it's slightly too idealized to get any higher, it's a classic that still holds up today.

Thelma & Louise (1991)

As evidenced in its iconic final shot, "Thelma & Louise" shows that sacrifice may be the solution if you don't want to conform to society's mandates. Ridley Scott's feminist classic is empowering in all the darkest and funniest ways. It's about women who stand up to the toxic masculinity around them and choose a life of being single. They're clearly beyond stooping down to the level of the film's male characters, and the film celebrates female friendship.

Despite the dark humor and frequent violent scenarios, the relationship between Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) and Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) is very honest about the realities of being a woman. Thelma is almost sexually assaulted and realizes that there is no way that the police will convict her attackers. Instead of forcing these women to run back to their ignorant husbands, "Thelma & Louise" allows them to live single lives as they go on the most chaotic road trip imaginable. While the film can be quite disturbing at times, its sensitivity earns it a place near the top.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Anyone that's ever experienced a breakup can probably relate to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Even though it's a hilarious movie, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is surprisingly realistic as a representation of being newly single. Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) is completely blindsided when his girlfriend, the actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), breaks up with him suddenly. It's a film that shows how difficult this can be, as Peter is constantly reminded of the love he once felt. He finds that it's literally impossible to purge Sarah from his mind when she ends up staying at the same vacation destination with her new boyfriend, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand).

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" shows the challenges of healing, and how this period of adjustment works. Although Peter is in mourning for the majority of his vacation, he ultimately learns to reconnect with his passions and begins developing a new musical show. While he's not pressured into immediately finding a relationship, he settles on a healthy one when he charms the receptionist Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis). This shows that relationships take time, and you can be comfortable being single if you don't immediately find the right person.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is equally hilarious, heartbreaking, and uplifting; it deserves a place near the top of the list for its versatility.

Submarine (2010)

Of all the high school comedies about the stress of being single, "Submarine" is probably the most gleefully awkward. Everyone is figuring themselves out at a young age, and Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) has definitely set unrealistic expectations for his romantic prospects. He gives himself a list of tasks to complete, which hilariously go awry. It's a surprisingly profound look at how the pressure to be in a relationship forces young men to fit into a certain mold of masculinity.

"Submarine" is bleakly funny in the way that it shows isolation. Oliver is constantly reminded of his loneliness as his mother, Jill (Sally Hawkins), begins a relationship with the wacky musician Graham (Paddy Considine). Similarly, he sees a mirror of what he could become by watching his depressed father, Lloyd (Noah Taylor). This was a fun way to show why Oliver keeps comparing himself to adults and hasn't experienced the joys of childhood. "Submarine" is among the funniest movies about being single, but the profound direction it takes during its last act earns it a place within the top five.

A Single Man (2009)

It can be challenging for films to wrestle with the ramifications of loss. No one's experience with the death of a loved one is the same, and it can be easy to watch movies that either stigmatize grieving or turn it into a melodrama. However, Tom Ford's quietly riveting drama "A Single Man" uses subtlety to its advantage; it's more powerful if some things are left unsaid. Colin Firth gives the best performance of his career as English professor George Falconer, who is grieving the loss of his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode).

The film shows how George approaches the dating world once more with caution. He attempts to begin seeing other men, but the images of Jim become impossible to erase from his mind. Ford does a great job of showing how George becomes reclusive as a result of his sadness, and how he's unable to approach his profession with the same vigor. It's heartbreaking to watch how Ford intertwines flashbacks to show happy moments from George and Jim's early relationship. "A Single Man" is a film that is unafraid to show intimate moments between same-sex couples, which makes it worthy of a very high spot on the list.

Ghost World (2001)

"Ghost World" does a great job of looking at how female friendship evolves as girls graduate to adulthood. While lifelong best friends Enid Coleslaw (Thora Birch) and Rebecca Doppelmeyer (Scarlett Johansson) were comfortable making snide comments and staying single, they both realize that they're going to need to grow up if they want to move past their high school years.

The film beautifully shows how being single doesn't need to be an act of defiance. Although Enid initially plays a cruel prank on lonely man Seymour (Steve Buscemi), she learns from Rebecca that this won't offer her any satisfaction. The relationship between Seymour and Enid is very sincere and well-handled; they're both single outsiders, who have struggled with being mocked.

We similarly see how Rebecca decides to leave her friend not because she's pursuing a relationship, but because she's tired of hearing her cynical comments. The film's mature, balanced perspective on growing up earns it a spot above other teen comedies that were lower on the list.

Frances Ha (2012)

"Frances Ha" is a film that celebrates being joyously free. While the movie shows that being single and independent isn't the path for everyone, it features a titular character who is so delightfully joyful that it's impossible to not yearn for her happiness. Noah Baumbach has always done a good job of looking at interpersonal relationships, but "Frances Ha" benefited from the assistance of his co-writer and star, Greta Gerwig. If you loved what Gerwig brought to her directorial features, you can see the origin of her winning nature in "Frances Ha."

The titular young woman (Gerwig) doesn't want to be pinned down with any responsibilities that she can't handle. While her roommates and friends often find themselves in relationships, Frances knows that she's at a stage in her life where she's not ready to face that level of commitment. There isn't a better expression of her upbeat nature than the wonderful scene where she dances down the street to the tune of David Bowie's "Modern Love." "Frances Ha" is so rewatchable that it nearly earned the top spot.

The Graduate (1967)

"The Graduate" looks at a universal question that many young people find themselves dealing with: After you graduate college, how are you expected to immediately adjust to being an adult? While education may grant you skills and knowledge, it doesn't automatically mean you are mature enough to understand adult responsibilities and relationships. This is hilariously shown through the misadventures of the young, single student Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), who finds himself caught between two very different women.

As he luxuriates with no real ambitions, Benjamin begins having an affair with an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). While director Mike Nichols uses the difference in their age for comedic effect, the film understands why they're both drawn to each other. These are two single people who aren't sure what their futures will look like. The film shows Benjamin's maturation as he falls in love with Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). Perhaps the world of relationships is too complex for Benjamin to deal with.

"The Graduate" earns a spot at the top of the list because of its perfect ending. As Benjamin and Elaine escape together, a look of contemplation strikes their faces. Is this a storybook romance, or are they destined to both be single again very soon?

Read this next: The 20 Best '90s Romantic Comedies Ranked

The post The 20 Best Movies About Being Single, Ranked appeared first on /Film.

Modder ‘TheBawb’ has released a fully voiced DLC-sized mod for Skyrim Special Edition that is heavily inspired by the mechanics of Mass Effect and Dragon Age, called Warden of the Coast. In this mod, players will travel to an isolated island, earn the loyalty of your 9 companions, stop a daedric lord from returning to … Continue reading The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim gets a fully voiced DLC-sized mod, heavily inspired by the mechanics of Mass Effect and Dragon Age →

The post The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim gets a fully voiced DLC-sized mod, heavily inspired by the mechanics of Mass Effect and Dragon Age appeared first on DSOGaming.

The fourth season of "Titans" is finally upon us, and we think it's off to a very solid start. The titular team is back at it again, facing yet another iconic DC Comics villain in a season chock-full of horror and supernatural elements. A shift in location has the Titans conducting their superhero business in the city of Metropolis, home to Superman, Lex Luthor (Titus Welliver), and everyone in between. The series is not new to introducing big names from the comics, including Bruce Wayne himself, played by "Game of Thrones" alum Ian Glen. However, despite a certain character's connections to the hero, the Man of Steel himself has yet to make an appearance.

Superboy, aka Conner Kent (Joshua Orpin), has been a staple member of the series since his debut in the second season. A product of an experiment by the megalomaniac genius, Superboy is the clone-son of Superman and Lex Luthor. He meets Luthor at the start of the season (before the villain's untimely demise), but is ghosted by the more heroic parent, who is busy saving a planet across the universe. The lack of Superman is an issue when it comes to Superboy's development, however, it's not for lack of desire. Showrunner Greg Walker has publicly expressed interest in bringing the Kryptonian on the show.

'We Would Love It'

In an interview with Screenrant, Walker made it clear that outside of a few hints, we won't be seeing Superman anytime soon. However, Walker explained that introducing him would reinforce the major themes of the series thus far:

"Well, we would love it, and I think that's a story, that our show often that deals with [which is] fathers and sons. It feels like it would be a huge get to be able to do, and we could really do a lot with it if we got it. For now, we're letting the DC Universe settle the way that it's settling. We have hints of Superman, and there'll be more; this is not the only one. So stay tuned. But it's something that we would love, and hopefully, one day, we'll come to realize on Titans."

It's hard to imagine that Superman will be making his way to "Titans" as the DCU gets mapped out, but the show should pounce on the chance to more than just allude to the hero. The first season struggled to tell Dick Grayson's personal journey without Bruce Wayne in the picture, and making subtle references to him was not that helpful. Superboy has been fine without Superman up until this point, but Conner needs him now more than ever.

Double Daddy Issues

In the fourth season of "Titans," Superboy arrives at an existential crossroads. Arguably the most powerful member of the Titans, he seems eager to prove he can solve all the group's problems. Both sides of his genetic makeup should make up for the best of both worlds, however, daddy issues have never been an easy fix on "Titans." His relationship with the titular superhero team was cemented up until this point, but the over-confident side of Superboy is starting to become worrisome. Of course, "Titans" alludes to his Luthor DNA being the culprit.

Even if it's the Luthor in him that is causing a change in behavior, the series should address the identity crisis of Superboy head-on. And not just by alluding to his parents, either. Introducing Clark Kent after Luthor could provide a change in attitude for Superboy, a boost in morale that lets him know that he can be whoever he wants to be. The abilities bestowed upon him are simply a part of his genetics, but should not define him. Even though the Titans could be the ones to bring him back down to earth, it just makes too much sense to see Superman in the flesh.

Due to the fact "Titans" is the last of its kind, I'm not sure a fifth season of the series is exactly in the cards. However, if the show has to bow out sooner than later, introducing Superman (or just Clark Kent) would be a nice way to close the book on the series.

New episodes of "Titans" air on Thursdays on HBO Max.

Read this next: What These DC Villains Really Look Like Under The Makeup

The post Showrunner Greg Walker Would 'Love' To Have Superman Show Up In Titans appeared first on /Film.

Apple's iPhone 14 Emergency SOS via Satellite Feature was put to the test in Alaska yesterday, when a man became stranded in a rural area. MacRumors reports: In the early hours of the morning on December 1, Alaska State Troopers received an alert that a man traveling by snow machine from Noorvik to Kotzebue had become stranded. The man was in a cold, remote location with no connectivity, and he activated the Emergency SOS via satellite feature on his iPhone 14 to alert authorities to his predicament. Apple's Emergency Response Center worked with local search and rescue teams and the Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue Coordinator to send out volunteer searchers directly to the GPS coordinates that were relayed to Apple using the emergency function. The man was rescued successfully and there were no injuries. The area where he was located is remote and on the fringes of where satellite connectivity is available. Apple says that satellite connectivity might not work in places above 62 degrees latitude, such as northern parts of Canada and Alaska, and Noorvik and Kotzebue are close to 69 degrees latitude. Troopers who helped with the rescue were "impressed with the accuracy and completeness of information included in the initial alert," with the Emergency SOS via Satellite feature designed to ask several questions ahead of when an alert is sent out to expedite rescue missions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California’s Department of Justice mistakenly posted the names, addresses and birthdays of nearly 200,000 gun owners on the internet because officials didn’t follow policies or understand how to operate their website, according to an investigation released Wednesday.

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IBM has fixed a high-severity security vulnerability affecting its Cloud Databases (ICD) for PostgreSQL product that could be potentially exploited to tamper with internal repositories and run unauthorized code. The privilege escalation flaw (CVSS score: 8.8), dubbed "Hell's Keychain" by cloud security firm Wiz, has been described as a "first-of-its-kind supply-chain attack vector impacting a