Desert rock icon Brant Bjork (KYUSS, FU MANCHU) will release a new studio album called "Jacoozzi" on April 5.
Back in 2010, Bjork has just started to record another solo record. About four days into the sessions, he essentially decided to "jam" by himself only and for the rest of his scheduled sessions. When the recording session had come to an end, Brant put eight songs on the shelf as "solo jam session" tracks.
"I was much more content with the 'jam' tracks as it was a creative release that was needed at that time," he says. "I decided to call the collective tracks 'Jacoozzi'. At the time, it reminded me of the feeling of my first solo recording sessions for my first solo release, 'Jalamanta'... only more 'free.'"
Brant initially had no formal plans to release any music from this session. Amost a decade later, Heavy Psych Sounds Records is proud to finally release "Jacoozzi" and this very special trip of a Brant Bjork jam.
"After eight years in the waiting, it's nice to finally have this recording I call 'Jacoozzi' released," Brant comments. "I feel that the fans of my work will enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed performing and recording it."
The first taste of "Jacoozzi", the funky instrumental track "Guerrilla Funk", can be streamed below.
"Jacoozzi" track listing:
01. Can't Out Run The Sun
02. Guerrilla Funk
03. Mexico City Blues
04. Five Hundred Thousand Dollars
05. Black & White Wonderland
06. Oui
07. Mixed Nuts
08. Lost In Race
09. Polarized
10. Do You Love Your World?
Photo by Karl Hahn
anything more than 100 minutes for a fucking superhero movie is an insult to its audience.
Like each passing year under the current administration, Marvel movies just keep getting longer and longer. And if you thought Avengers: Infinity War was lengthy, it looks like Endgame is going to make restless audiences nostalgic for Thanos’ two and a half hours of terror. Speaking withCollider, directors Joe and…
its an incredibly polished and stable game for a multi-player only romp that just came out by surprise with a million players on the first day and no beta testing, etc. the training mode is way too spare for such a complex game and i'm having a hard time not getting my ass handed to me, but have been having fun with it nonetheless. the price is right, too.
There is no Titanfall 3.
Respawn Entertainment producer Drew McCoy broke the news in a Eurogamer interview yesterday, extinguishing any hope that the futuristic mech-shooter could return to PCs and modern consoles. Instead, the EA-owned developer is offering a free-to-play game called Apex Legends. Is it worth your time? Yes, though for reasons you might not expect.
Apex Legends wants to disrupt. It wants to make you stop.
Titanfall games have always been about flow – smooth, circular sprints around tight maps. Wall-running while firing from the hip, lining up double jumps through second storey windows as you cock a shotgun. Respawn’s battle royale spin-off has a different pace.
There’s still some of that kineticism: You can slide down hills like you’re riding a toboggan; you can speed down ziplines; one hero has a grappling hook; you can mantle up through second floor openings; and there are rideable balloons that shoot you into the stratosphere as if you just ejected from a Titan.
It might be missing the stomping robots and the ability to circumnavigate the map without your feet touching the floor, but it still has that signature Titanfall feel, from the punchiness of the guns to the tight controls.
Apex Legends began life as a prototype battle royale mode for Titanfall back in 2015, because the team had an interest in ARMA and its popular battle royale mode that eventually spawned PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. When PUBG came out, the team decided to push this forward and make a proper battle royale Titanfall prototype – not within the universe like Apex Legends, but an honest-to-god Titanfall BR.
“[We were like], let’s try it with Titanfall: let’s try wallrunning, let’s try Titans,” design director Mackey McCandlish explains. “We had a tonne of fun. It felt in some ways like the upper level of possible Titanfall skill – a masterclass of Titanfall. You had to be supremely good at your wallrunning and map sensibility to excel in that environment, that one-life version of Titanfall. It was so fast-paced you’d be exhausted; you’d die fast.
“Battle royale has an inherent fairness that makes it work. It’s like Texas hold ’em. You all get two cards – you don’t get to come in with ten cards at the final table and roll everything. Titans and wallrunning threatened that competitive fairness in different ways. We want to make a game that you can play for thousands of hours and discover depth and mastery that you can really sink your teeth into. Part of the fun of that is you’re reacting all the time and you’re not as much anticipating a match and getting the drop.
“What we realised was: This was a young genre, there’s a chance to change up the genre, to disrupt the existing games. So we looked at the conventions of the genre and we challenged them from first principles. Is this a load-bearing wall or can we change this?”
This simple question resulted in some of the things that make Apex Legends stand out. First off, it doesn’t have a staging ground. PUBG kicked off this tradition by plonking players into a hellscape of racial slurs, squealing children, and gunshots as the next match loads in. Fortnite followed it up by letting players have a dance-off before embarking on the Battle Bus. Here, you’re just thrown straight into a game. It’s much better.
Next up, there are no duos or solo modes – it’s three-person squads and the heroes are balanced in such a way that this feels optimal. It’s a battle royale with teamwork at its very core. Speaking of which, even the initial drop into the large map that supports up to 60 players has its own twist – one player in your squad is marked as the Jumpmaster, and you drop alongside them, all three of you falling in unison. You can break away at any time, but it removes the need for voice comms to synchronise your landing.
In fact, voice comms are entirely optional here. A context sensitive shoutout button allows you to effectively communicate without voice chat. Hit the button while looking at a building and your character will say something along the lines of “Let’s explore over here”. It puts a marker on yours and your allies’ HUDs, while also placing a blip on the map. If they look at the marker and press a button, they can bark an acknowledgement. This same function can also be used to call out general locations of enemies, to say a place looks like it’s been raided, to say you’re defending a position, or to mark specific items for your friends. They can respond to all of this, calling dibs on an assault rifle attachment, for example.
The idea is to do to battle royale what Titanfall did for shooters, and that means retaining the entertaining components while adding some new crinkles. Part of the appeal of battle royale is that it delivers a different cadence to traditional shooters. You might go five minutes without seeing another player, and that tension heightens the excitement of the shootouts that punctuate the quiet.
Even the map design caters to this new mindset. In Titanfall, almost all the windows are open. Titanfall is about circling the map like a Nascar racer, hopping through buildings as you go. Here, many windows are blocked.
Respawn has put a lot of thought into limiting entry points into interiors so cowardly players can hunker down. But there are also counters to this style of play. One of the characters you can choose, called Bloodhound, can track players and has an ability that briefly lights up enemies through walls. Then there’s Mirage, who can send a holographic decoy into one doorway as another teammate breaches another entrance. You’re never left without at least one tool for any situation, and those Overwatch-style characters really lend themselves to this genre for that reason.
“It’s harder in Titanfall to play with your teammates and to coordinate with them,” McCandlish says. “It’s a game that’s played more like: ‘play alone, together’, hit from different angles. We were looking for social opportunities. That’s manifested in this game’s three-man squads, pinging a smart comms system that helps squads coordinate, and respawn chambers keep squads playing. In the same way that we didn’t consider any of the conventions of battle royale to be sacred, we didn’t consider any one part of the Titanfall universe to be sacred. We are using the parts that work to achieve our goals.”
Those respawn chambers are yet another game-changer. If one of your allies gets downed, they can be revived like in other team-based battle royale modes. If they get finished while downed, you have a limited time to get to their corpse and scan their data. Respawn chambers are peppered throughout the map – take that data to one of them and your ally can drop back into battle, though they’ll have no gear and the ship’s arrival could draw a rival squad to your location.
On the surface, it appears that Apex Legends has no ideas of its own. The characters are clearly inspired by Overwatch – though they at least have mostly different abilities – the armour and helmet system is straight out of PUBG, the battle pass is taken from Fortnite, and the guns are all from Respawn’s previous game. It appears to be a cynical cash-grab, but it’s hard to call it that when you’ve spent any amount of time playing it. All those little innovations add up to a lot, and it helps that this is the best-feeling battle royale shooter around, too. Respawn says it wants to disrupt the industry and this highly polished, triple-A take on battle royale might just have what it takes to stop you in your tracks.
maybe they'll actually make the damn thing this time.
After putting together a pilot episode last year, we’ve learned today that FX is now officially adapting the acclaimed post-apocalyptic science fiction DC comic book series “Y: The Last Man” as a TV series titled “Y,“ with Deadline reporting that the project has been ordered to series.
The series, from FX Productions, is slated to premiere in 2020.
Diane Lane (Unfaithful, Under the Tuscan Sun), Amber Tamblyn (“Two and a Half Men”), Barry Keoghan (The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Dunkirk), Imogen Poots (Green Room, Frank & Lola), Lashana Lynch (Captain Marvel, Bulletproof), Juliana Canfield (Succession) and Marin Ireland (Sneaky Pete, Hell or High Water) round out the ensemble cast.
Based on the DC Comics series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, “Y” traverses a post-apocalyptic world in which a cataclysmic event has decimated every male mammal save for one lone human. The new world order of women will explore gender, race, class and survival.
Michael Green (American Gods, Blade Runner 2049, Logan) and Aïda Mashaka Croal (Luke Cage, Turn) serve as Showrunners and Executive Producers. Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force (American Crime Story, Pose, The Hunger Games) and Brian K. Vaughan are Executive Producers and developed the series. Melina Matsoukas (Insecure, Master of None, Beyonce: Formation) directed the pilot episode and also serves as Executive Producer. Y is produced by FX Productions.
“Y: The Last Man” is a 60-issue science fiction comic book series published beginning in 2002. It received three Eisner Awards, and received the first Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story for Y: The Last Man, Volume 10.
Our seamless level transitions for @DreamscaperGame required a crazy amount of work and coordination between the three of us. Paul authored all materials to support the environment tearaway, Ian hand-crafted a series of animations and I implemented the level streaming tech. pic.twitter.com/LF6uib6Uiy
There’s been a lot of talk online that Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts are going to reveal a new battle royale version of Titanfall this week. Originally the thought was that they were working on Titanfall 3, but the reality has come out that the project is a little simpler than just a sequel, and that led to people fishing for information. One of those being Rod Breslau, who has been leaking information out as he gets it, claiming that he has the inside track on what the game will be. By the sounds of the tweets below, you’re getting a mix of Fortnite and Overwatch.
Apex Legends will feature classes/heroes with unique abilities, maximum of 60 players per server, maximum of 3 players per team (trios) to compliment each other. No titans. Just as Titanfall and Titanfall 2, Apex Legends will run on a modified version of Valve's Source engine.
Micro-transactions and lootboxes for cosmetic items and in-game content are said to be in Apex Legends with a very similar approach to that in Overwatch.
The idea right now is that a big reveal is coming on February 4th, and there’s even speculation on Reddit that we’re going to see a Super Bowl commercial, even if its just 10 seconds. Regardless of what’s being said, everything is just rumor and speculation at this point until we see a confirmed announcement by either company. So take all Titanfall news until Monday with a grain of salt.
Horror fans especially remember the Satanic panic of the ‘80s and ‘90s. We got hassled for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Innocent goths like the West Memphis Three (and many more less publicized cases) got wrongfully convicted in the Satanic panic. Geraldo Rivera even did an “expose” on secret Satanic cult rituals. It’s part of the backstory of Penny Lane’s Sundance documentary Hail Satan?, about The Satanic Temple’s recent fights for separation of church and state and religious pluralism. Lane has faith that The Satanic Temple’s efforts will not bring about a new Satanic panic, but rather have the opposite effect.
“I think the opposite actually because I think the more they’re out there getting their message across, the less likely we are to be able to say, ‘Oh, there’s this secret Satanic network,’” Lane told us at Sundance. “No, they’re not secret. They’re out in the open. It’s harder to ascribe these evildoings to them because they’re there doing highway cleanups. It’s difficult to say, ‘Look at this horrible group. Look how evil they are.’”
In addition to proposing to erect a Baphomet statue to counter the State of Arkansas’s Ten Commandments monument, The Satanic Temple does community service like roadside cleanup. They use pitchforks to pick up trash. You can’t deny they’ve got showmanship. As pointed out in Hail Satan?, while everyone was scared of Satanists, the Catholic Church was covering up and continuing sexual abuse.
“It was never the Satanists,” Lane explained. “I think that’s such a huge misconception that again, it goes into the list of 10 deeply held misconceptions that my film is begging people to at least reconsider. Most people that I know, Satanic panic was part of our childhood. Those people that I know take it absolutely for granted that there were, in fact, Satanic cults all around the country who were doing these horrible evil things in the ‘80s and ‘90s and everyone knows that’s true. I’m like, ‘But how do you not know that there weren’t?’ No one knows that because we’ve never, as a culture, taken the time to stop and think what was that all about? It was just this embarrassing, humiliating thing that we’ve shoved down the memory hole because it’s so embarrassing.”
Even films that debunk false accusations only focus on debunking one particular case at a time. And maybe Hail Satan? can’t free everyone falsely accused of Satanic crimes, but at least through this film and through the rise of the Satanic Temple, more awareness can be brought to a multitude of injustices.
Lane explains, “The Paradise Lost films and also Capturing the Friedmans… not to dis those films, they’re great films, part of the canon. [But] they don’t do the kind of work of situating those individual cases as being simply one out of 100s of similar cases that happened constantly, all around the country for more than a decade, right? So you can watch those films and feel the outrage of those individual cases, but these were just isolated events that were happening everywhere. There are still people rotting in prison unjustly for these fake Satanic crimes.”
The Satanic Temple has spread to include worldwide chapters. What began as a way to troll Christians by endorsing Rick Scott became a place where real social outcasts could find each other. That is how Satanism will become an accepted religion, Lane feels – when people see that Satanists are really just like everyone else.
“In their own words, they tend to be kind of loser, weirdo, outcasts who never fit in,” Lane noted. “I found it so moving to think about how those people could be collected together into something. To see them find each other and find communion and to remember how deeply important that is for us as humans, to find people who understand us and love us and understand and can be part of the same world. It’s just really meaningful. I wasn’t expecting to end the project with this newfound respect for and appreciation for religion and what it does and how it functions for human beings in society. That’s what I learned. It was a very surprising outcome, because starting where we start with this troll and satire, to land in a place of feeling so much love and warmth and that kind of stuff was a big deal for me.”
“The movie is about the birth of a new religion,” Lane continued. “That’s one way you can frame it. You can look at any, and I mean any religion that now exists, that we now take for granted as being normal, and look at its origin story and tell me it’s not insane. Tell me the miracles of Jesus are not publicity stunts and scams or jokes or hoaxes. Look at Joseph Smith finding those golden tablets and having this crazy story that’s actually bonkers if you hear it. If you look at Scientology, whatever, this only looks weird to us because it is new. If you get a time machine and you flash forward 100 years, my prediction is Satanism will be just another one of these weirdo American religions that we will just take for granted.”
Hail Satan? opens this April from Magnolia Pictures.
If it’s not miserable enough to remind you that Silent Hill is 20 today and yet has no signs of life as a franchise, I may as well throw a reminder that Dead Space is also looking like a goner. It seems the only way these games are coming back is through the works of others inspired by those franchises.
In the case of Dead Space‘s influence, look no further than the indie horror game project Negative Atmosphere, a promising concept on the horizon that looks to capture the essence of the space-faring survival horror (and even a bit of System Shock for good measure).
In development for only a matter of months, Negative Atmosphere has shown great potential. Its creator Calvin Parsons had initially started the project alone, but now has a small team and with the help of backers, hopes to create an hour-long vertical slice to release for free in order to drum up interest for a Kickstarter fund for a full game.
Have a gander at some brief clips and screens of how it’s looking so far.
You can clearly see its influences, and that’s no bad thing. If EA isn’t going to do something with what it has, then someone else might as well do so.
If you fancy contributing to the project, you can head to the project’s Patreon fund and donate there. Otherwise, there’s a Reddit and a Discord channel to keep up to date with the project.
After being a PlayStation-exclusive developer for 12 years, Heavy Rain studio Quantic Dream will go multi-platform.
Quantic Dream is working on a new, cross-platform game engine which will allow it to release multi-platform games in the future.
Speaking with VentureBeat, the studio said it will continue to work on PlayStation, but will also consider other platforms. The goal is to make its games “accessible to as many gamers as possible worldwide, regardless of the platform.”
“This is definitely a shift for us after 12 years developing exclusively for PlayStation,” said studio co-founder Guillaume de Fondaumiere.
“But at the same time we have developed engines on PC, Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS4 Pro. Thus, we are confident we can make a smooth transition while keeping the high level of quality that we target for our games.
“We learned a lot working with PlayStation for so long, and we now want to bring these learning to other platforms.”
Quantic also plans to hire more staff to bring the total to 300 up from 200, which it will be able to do thanks in part to a new deal struck with Netease.
It was announced in a press release today Netease had purchased a minority stake in the studio. This will ensure Quantic Dream is able to become a “global, multi-franchise entertainment company,” reads the press release.
Monetary terms will not provided in the announcement, but Quantic Dream will continue to operate independently.
These bugs have been a particular point of contention because earlier patches claimed to have addressed them, yet they remained in the game. So having them resurface just a couple of weeks after they were actually resolved has gone down like a lead balloon tied to a concrete block and tossed into a river.
Bethesda’s associate community manager (Ladydevann on Reddit) has assured players that the devs are looking into the problem, but that’s done little to quell the negative reactions.
“We’re digging into this to understand the scope of the issue. If you or anyone else have more information you can provide, we will be actively looking at comments related to this,” she said.
There have also been complaints about the increased price of Plans and Recipes, which wasn’t mentioned in the original patch notes. They have since been updated to reflect the bump in price along with the reasoning behind the hike:
(Added Jan 29) Since many Plans and Recipes can now be sourced reliably from Vendors, we’ve also increased their Cap costs accordingly.
(Added Jan 29) Dev Note: Recipe and Plan prices were originally based on the rarity of showing up in a Vendor’s inventory. Guaranteeing their appearance significantly increased the availability of most plans and recipes and we’ve increased their cap prices as a result. Cap prices have been set relatively high to allow for a market to still exist where players can mod others’ equipment for a cheaper price.
This isn’t the first time that changes have been omitted from patch notes, resulting in Bethesda promising more transparency last month.
The lack of additional content was also raised, with players taking aim at the slew of patches and updates that have just rolled out nerfs and bug fixes.
“I understand it can be frustrating when you are thirsting for content, we do have a lot of things planned to release and are working on finalizing a visual roadmap for you for future content drops,” Ladydevann replied on a Reddit thread on the subject, and referred back to a post from earlier this week that confirmed the eventual addition of PvE content, but made it clear that fixing bugs is a priority right now.
“We hear you and we’re laying out what’s coming for Fallout 76 in our 2019 roadmap, including new PvE content. But to provide full transparency, our #1 priority remains taking care of known issues and new user reports that you have been sharing since launch, and we’ve delayed locking in the timing for upcoming content while we stabilize and improve the core game,” it reads.
“While we’ve made progress across many of the issues you’ve been experiencing and will continue working on those, as well as the new issues that come up, our dev cycle will soon shift towards the new content you’ve been asking for, including Vault Raids, new Quests, new Events, new PvP content, and much more.”
greg rucka is a shit writer and i don't know who the fuck matthew southworth is, but his art is embarrassingly bad, based on these few pages. how does garbage like this get picked up for tv when there are so many amazingly worthy, yet untouched series out there?
ABC has ordered a pilot to be filmed, adapting the Oni Press comic Stumptown by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth, for their Tuesday evening slot.
The Eisner-nominated series was published in 2009 and saw three volumes published over five years. The modern-day detective story is set in Portland, Oregon, featuring Dex Parios, a private investigator who solves other people’s messes with a blind eye toward her own, a gambling problem.
The first series begins with her attempted murder, as she attempts to track down the granddaughter of a casino owner, who has promised to forgive Dex’s heavy debt to the casino in exchange for the girl’s safe return.
Jason Richman of Detroit 1-8-7 will write the adaptation.
The comic takes place in the same shared universe as Rucka’s novel Fistful of Rain and Atticus Kodiak novels.
by Dan Neilan on News, shared by Dan Neilan to The A.V. Club
Ancestry tests are all the rage these days and, honestly, we can understand why. There’s something oddly thrilling about finding out you’re one-tenth Ashkenazi or that your racist uncle’s totally lying when he says he bleeds “red, white, and blue.” But, according to a new episode of CBC’s Marketplace, the accuracy of…
Felissimo Nekobu , the "cat club" section of a Japanese online retailer, asked followers on Twitter to help prove that cats are liquid. SLTwitter thread.
Sean Gleeson, who coordinated a Princeton offense that set an Ivy League record with 470 points this past season, has been hired as Oklahoma State's new offensive coordinator.
"The script was great, we rewrote the whole thing while we were shooting it."
those two things... do not go together.
ZazieBeetz, who played Domino in Deadpool 2, has another superhero film due out in theaters this year. She’ll be appearing in Todd Phillip‘s Joker film, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Clown Prince of Crime.
Zazie Beetz Photo by Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com
In a recent interview with MTVNews, Beetz revealed some…interesting information about the production on Phillips’ film- including the apparent massive rewrites that were happening during filming.
I can’t say anything. It’s gritty and dark. I mean, I haven’t seen a cut or anything. Gotham. [laughs] The script was great, we rewrote the whole thing while we were shooting it. Literally, we would go into [director/co-writer Todd Phillips’] trailer and write the scene for the night and then do it. … During hair and makeup we’d memorize those lines and then do them, and then we’d reshoot that three weeks later. We had to do everything then because Joaquin [Phoenix] had lost so much weight. We couldn’t do reshoots later on, so we were figuring it out.
It’s interesting she mentions completing everything with Phoenix then, as his character’s weight (which was noticeably thinner than Phoenix’s normal physique) was a factor in the decision.
We’re still not sure who Beetz is playing in Joker, but we’re certainly interested to see the character and Phillips’ vision for one of the most notorious of Batman’s rogues gallery of villains.
You can see the entire chat with Zazie Beetz and Armie Hammer during Sundance 2019 from MTV News’s Josh Horowitz below:
someone really needs to fix peer-reviewed scientific journalism. there's too much "all the fish in the ocean will be dead by 2022" and "genetically modified foods will make your children have inside out genitalia" type of bullshit. REAL peer-reviewed science comes in dense, hard-to-understand white papers, and only a LONG time after the initial science has been done, if it is in fact properly peer-reviewed. how do you get good info to people in a way they will want to read it?
The Edmonton Journal reports:
Recently, researchers asked more than 2,000 American and European adults their thoughts about genetically modified foods. They also asked them how much they thought they understood about GM foods, and a series of 15 true-false questions to test how much they actually knew about genetics and science in general. The researchers were interested in studying a perverse human phenomenon: People tend to be lousy judges of how much they know. Across four studies conducted in three countries -- the U.S., France and Germany -- the researchers found that extreme opponents of genetically modified foods "display a lack of insight into how much they know." They know the least, but think they know the most. "The less people know," the authors conclude, "the more opposed they are to the scientific consensus."
Science communicators have made concerted efforts to educate the public with an eye to bringing their attitudes in line with the experts," they write in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. But people with an inflated sense of what they actually know -- and most in need of education -- are also the ones least likely to be open to new information.... Extreme views often come along with not appreciating the complexity of the subject -- "not realizing how much there is to know," said Philip Fernbach, lead author of the new study and a professor of marketing at the University of Colorado Boulder. "People who don't know very much think they know a lot, and that is the basis for their extreme views."
Slashdot reader Layzej links to Rational Wiki's article on "The Backfire Effect," to illustrate Fernbach's observation that "People double down on their 'counter-scientific consensus attitudes'.
"Epecially when people feel threatened or if they are being treated as if they are stupid."
i actually still love my SE, but it's dying a not-so-slow, slightly painful death. it has a hard time charging (like, the connectors don't get good contact or something) and the battery is providing fewer returns by the day. at this point, i'm not sure what to go for next. i had a 6 that suffered from bendgate before i went to the SE and i didn't love the huge form factor at the time. now, i think all the phones the make are bigger than the 6 even, so the jump for me in size will be HUGE. i wouldn't mind that big, pretty screen, but a phone that big just isn't comfortable for most common everyday uses, imo.
With Apple offering a clearance sale on the iPhone SE earlier this week, The Verge's Nick Statt decided that it was "the appropriate moment to hop on the backup phone bandwagon" and pick one up. He writes: I've always appreciated the classic 5S design, with its overtly rounded corners and its sturdy, not-so-delicate dimensions. It never felt like it really required a case, and its smaller screen and more comfortable, one-handed use is something I've thought far too much about as I've ferried around an iPhone X and now an XS over the past year and a half. Plus, it's got a headphone jack. Would you agree that the iPhone SE is "the best minimalist phone right now," or do you think that title belongs to a different device? Why or why not?
A month before Christmas, I decided to create an all-ages comic that was designed to be a youngsters first comic book. Comics can be a tricky thing to read out loud, they are more often than not, something you read to yourself. I wanted to tackle that, strip the idea back to basics and create a fun and engaging story, told in comic book form. The first thing I decided was that each page, which then soon led to each spread) would be a single panel. When you opened the comic, you’d be hit with a wonderfully bold and bright image, with large balloons and lively lettering. Part of the idea came from visiting my daughters School for story time, which wouldn’t usually involve comics. I’m always out to fly the flag for the medium so, armed with the concept, I approached her teacher and we arranged a visit from me just before Christmas where I’d read my new comic. The date was set, I just needed to make it and Hotdog and Mustard were born! It’s the simple tale (tail) of two dogs, a robot, a carpet, a fire, an aeroplane and Don Johnson! I wanted to inject the spirit of Ren & Stimpy with a nod to the Cat in the Hat all at the same time, whilst injecting my own trademark approach to comic making for children. I knuckled down created the comic within the month and did just what I set out to do and more. First up, a visit to School which was great fun and as always, very inspiring, then two live reads at my local libraries in both Macclesfield and Bollington in Cheshire. Children could also pick up a copy at the end and it was great to see them engaging and looking forward to reading it again later with their parents. I plan to do more live reads both locally (Sunday 27th at Macclesfield’s Treacle Market) and in Kendal in association with The Lakes international comic art festival in the next few months.
So with the way we see things here at Bleeding Cool – as we peer into our “Great Magic 8 Ball of Doom” to see what’s coming down the pop culture highway – we figure by the time you read this, 2 out of every 3 people will have their own streaming service as we slide down the slippery slope that leads to “Cable Horror v2.0”: too many options to wade through to get to the stuff you want.
Thankfully, we’re here to give a look at the television shows either premiering or returning in the month of February – shows you will definitely want to have on your radar.
in related news: Eric Adamant He Wants Anne Hathaway to Die Painfully and Never Appear in a Film Ever Again.
While Oscar winner Anne Hathaway prepares to take on the role of The Grand High Witch in Robert Zemeckis’ reboot of The Witches, she’s still talking about the possibility of another film- The Princess Diaries 3.
On a recent top by Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, Hathaway spoke a bit about the possible return of Princess Mia of Genovia in a third installment of the film franchise:
“There is a script for the third movie. There is a script. I want to do it. Julie [Andrews] wants to do it. Debra Martin Chase, our producer, wants to do it. We all really want it to happen.
It’s just we don’t want to unless it’s perfect because we love it just as much as you guys love it. It’s as important to us as it is to you, and we don’t want to deliver anything until it’s ready, but we’re working on it.”
Gary Marshall, who directed the first two films, passed away in 2016, putting most plans for a third film on the backburner.
We’ll let you know what else we hear about a possible third installment, but things sound promising that’ll happen eventually.
now the race is on to read the series before the show airs.
Netflix‘s 10-episode series adaptation of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez‘s comic book series Locke & Key has added two more citizens to the television town of Lovecraft, Massachusetts. American Vandal‘s Griffin Gluck is set to join the cast as a series regular, while veteran genre actor Steven Williams (The Chi, The X-Files) will take on a recurring role in the series, stemming from Hill, Carlton Cuse and IDW Entertainment.
Netflix/Showtime
Netflix’s adaptation of the horror/fantasy comic book series focuses on the Locke siblings – Kinsey (Utopia‘s Emilia Jones), Tyler (American Crime‘s Connor Jessup), and Bode (It‘s Jackson Robert Scott) – who move to their ancestral home in Massachusetts after the gruesome murder of their father – only to find the house has magical keys that give them a vast array of powers and abilities. Standing in their way is a devious demon who also wants the keys – and will stop at nothing to attain them.
Gluck’s Gabe is a new boarding student at Matheson Academy who befriends Kinsey Locke. Williams will recur as Joe Ridgeway, an esteemed teacher at Matheson Academy who connects with the newly arrived Locke family – and who might be in for much more than he was expecting.
Joe Hill/Gabriel Rodriguez
Hill and Cuse are joined on the creative team by Aron Eli Coleite and Meredith Averill. The first episode will be written by Hill and Coleite, and Cuse and Averill will serve as showrunners. Netflix is not moving forward with the existing pilot – which was unexpectedly passed on by Hulu in March 2018 – and instead chose to redevelop the scripts and re-cast most of the major roles, save Scott’s Bode Locke.
It‘s Andy Muschietti directed Hulu’s pilot, but work on It: Chapter Two will keep him from directing the Netflix version. Muschietti and Cuse will serve as executive producers, along with Barbara Muschietti, Cuse, Hill, Averill and Coleite. Genre Arts’ Lindsey Springer, IDW Entertainment’s Ted Adams, and David Alpert and Rick Jacobs via Circle of Confusion will also executive produce.
ugh. i've been tentatively excited for this game (even if mostly because it looks like it might scratch that mass effect itch that andromeda so terribly fucked up). but now, i'm just exhausted. there's only been a barely-working beta for a couple of days so far and there are already videos on "how the gear and weapon crafting work"? replete with in-line links on workarounds for common connectivity issues in the beta. shit like this makes me feel like i need to do a week's worth of youtube research before i even play this game. which isn't even out for another month or so. when did new, exciting games start to feel like homework?
You can craft weapons, gear, and components in Anthem to make them more powerful. Here’s how it works.
Loot in Anthem ranges from common, uncommon, rare, epic, masterwork and legendary. Once you move up to a higher level of rarity, loot will feature inscriptions. These are bonuses or stat boosts for components, gear, and weapons.
They will also come in numbers depending on the rarity of your gear, but these are randomly rolled when you obtain the weapons.
Should you like the weapon but aren’t too keen on the stats, you have two choices. One is to farm for it out in the game world. The other is to craft it again and again using Blueprints until you get the inscriptions you want.
This is because you can’t re-roll weapons in Anthem, but you can re-craft them multiple times. Basically, instead of re-rolling, you’re re-crafting.
Materials used to craft gear and weapons can be found while out in the game world. The materials come from nodes which can be destroyed, and other means such as chests. Dismantling weapons, components and gear will also yield crafting materials – or specific parts for your weapon or javelin.
Once you’ve acquired the blueprint and materials needed to craft a specific item, head to the forge. Select the item you wish to craft, use the blueprint and materials to create your item. Providing it’s a high enough rarity, it will give you a new inscription.
In the video Arekkz notes blueprints are available in all rarities up to masterwork. At present, he’s unsure whether Legendary blueprints are out there. Once the game is released, we’ll let you know whether legendary blueprints exist or not.
What’s interesting about blueprints, is the more you use a particular weapon, the better blueprints you’ll find. How this works, is once you have obtained a weapon, it will come with a set of challenges. Using the weapon and completing the set challenges will unlock higher blueprints all the way up to masterwork.
Challenges range from killing a set number of enemies, sometimes types, or performing a certain type of kill with the weapon.
If you’re considering giving Anthem a try, give this video a quick watch as it explains things in a concise manner.
A VIP demo is currently live, and hopefully you were able to play despite connectivity issues. Here’s some workarounds for the more common issues. It goes offline on January 27 at 6pm PT, 9pm ET, 2am UK (January 28).
Next week, the Anthem free demo goes live for everyone on February 1 and remain available until Sunday, February 3.
Anthem releases February 22 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The game’s EA and Origin Access trials kick off February 15. Head over to our main Anthem page for everything else we know.
A few different people caught onto the fact that Blizzard, seemingly out of the blue, decided to permanently discount Overwatch this week. If you take a trip to their shop, you’ll see that the company slashed the price of the game by 50%, making the regular version of Overwatch a mere $20. Meanwhile, the Legendary Edition will run you a whole $40, down only 33% from its original price tag.
credit//Blizzard
Blizzard didn’t really give any major notice or reasoning for the price reduction, but best guess would be that the game has been out for nearly three years and the time to mark it down and get anyone else who was sitting on the fence because of the price a chance to join in. It is a Blizzard title, so the chances of the company making an Overwatch 2 probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon, as the company loves to upgrade stuff that works. So honestly, you’re getting a good deal right now until the day comes they slash it down to $10.
