A second officer has been shot at. This time, a drive-by on the interstate. The officer was off-duty and has minor injuries resulting from broken glass. To be clear, the two shootings tonight are completely unrelated.
According to Deadline, former renegade android Rutger Hauer has joined Galavant, ABC’s musical fairytale comedy. Hauer will play the “older, bigger, and more badass brother” of Timothy Omundson’s evil King Richard. The series was created by Dan Fogelman, the guy behind The Neighbors, and it stars Joshua Sasse as a heroic knight taking on the aforementioned evil king after he evilly steals the hero’s girlfriend. Also, John Stamos will play “a goateed knight,” Hugh Bonneville will play a pirate, “Weird Al” will be a “singing monk”—which seems like an unnecessary description for a character in a musical—and, of course, Ricky Gervais will play a wizard named Xanax. Can’t forget that one!
Deadline notes that Hauer’s casting is a nod to a deep cut from the Hauer catalog called Floris, a Dutch series from 1969 about a heroic knight fighting against some jerks who ...
by James Whitbrook on Toybox, shared by Robbie Gonzalez to io9
It's been a weird week for Asian hamburgers that have been dyedblack - but now Batman's joining in on the fun in Hong Kong. But wait, what!? His burger's not black! I feel disappointed, Batman.
by James Whitbrook on Toybox, shared by Robbie Gonzalez to io9
Former companion Katy Manning visited filming for Doctor Who's upcoming Christmas Special recently, and shared her encounter with Peter Capaldi on Twitter - and it might just be the most adorable thing to happen this weekend. D'aaw!
Japanese telecommunications and internet powerhouse SoftBank is making a run to acquire DreamWorks Animation, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and The Hollywood Reporter. It's not clear how close the two are to a deal, but reports from sources close to the matter say SoftBank has offered $32 per share compared to DreamWorks Animation's current $22 price.
DreamWorks Animation, the tiny Hollywood studio behind films such as Shrek, Madagascar, and more recently, How to Train Your Dragon, could provide a unique way for SoftBank to bolster its wireless offerings. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company — and its outspoken billionaire CEO Masayoshi Son — could use content from the animation studio to make Sprint more competitive in the US. SoftBank completed its acquisition of Sprint last year, and has looked for ways to take on AT&T and Verizon.
Just months ago, the company sought to purchase fourth-place US carrier T-Mobile and merge it with Sprint to make a stronger, more competitive network. Regulators were wary of such a deal, and now it appears Masayoshi Son is taking a different approach to growing Sprint. Content from the studio could also be used in SoftBank's home of Japan, where it operates one of the country's big three wireless carriers.
DreamWorks Animation has struggled in recent years — particularly in the stock market — with its fortunes tied to the box office performance of the two to three films it releases a year. Its spotted track record in the past year includes misses such as Turbo, Rise of the Guardians, and Mr. Peabody & Sherman. How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Croods were more successful. The company was spun off from DreamWorks in 2004.
Welcome to 1999, friends! Everyone, buy Apple stock, trust me.
Andrew Cunningham
jonathan: perhaps AndrewC should have to use OS 9 for a day or two ;)
LeeH: omg
LeeH: that's actually a great idea
The above is a lightly edited conversation between Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson and Automotive Editor Jonathan Gitlin in the Ars staff IRC channel on July 22. Using Mac OS 9 did not initially seem like such a "great idea" to me, however.
I'm not one for misplaced nostalgia; I have fond memories of installing MS-DOS 6.2.2 on some old hand-me-down PC with a 20MB hard drive at the tender age of 11 or 12, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in trying to do it again. I roll with whatever new software companies push out, even if it requires small changes to my workflow. In the long run it's just easier to do that than it is to declare you won't ever upgrade again because someone changed something in a way you didn't like. What's that adage—something about being flexible enough to bend when the wind blows, because being rigid means you'll just break? That's my approach to computing.
I have fuzzy, vaguely fond memories of running the Mac version of Oregon Trail, playing with After Dark screensavers, and using SimpleText to make the computer swear, but that was never a world I truly lived in. I only began using Macs seriously after the Intel transition, when the Mac stopped being a byword for Micro$oft-hating zealotry and started to be just, you know, a computer.
Spider-Gwen - some fan art of the amazing character from Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi. Done on my Cintiq Companion on a very rare day of R&R , lakeside, listening to Deathfix.
Renderings from the Boston Society of Architects Beacon Yards Urban Design Workshop
Last week, two teams organized by the Boston Society of Architects proposed that the $260M reconstruction of the Mass Pike in Allston should include a great new public place and civic amenity along the Charles River.
When the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck! hackathon, a collection of roughly a hundred and fifty engineers, designers, midwives, and parents, began on Saturday morning at M.I.T., the atmosphere was part revival meeting, part product launch. Women and men clapped and whooped; babies yowled. (“This hackathon is great. There’s like forty percent women, forty percent men, and twenty percent babies,” one participant tweeted.) Participants were eager to reinvent the breast pump, one of the most loathed trappings of modern motherhood, and their initial ideas ranged from a bra with a hidden compression-pumping system to an app that would monitor milk production and offer customized pumping tips.
A police officer from the strife-hit Missouri city of Ferguson was shot on Saturday night and authorities are still searching for the shooter, law enforcement officials said.
St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told reporters the shooting did not seem connected to peaceful protests occurring elsewhere in Ferguson.
'Clara standing up to the Doctor more, and serving as a check to some of his worse impulses. ... The lack of flirty banter between the two leads, along with a serious outside relationship, have actually helped Clara come into her own as a character.'
io9's reviews keep thrashing about as though to say "Look! Clara's _slightly less anti-feminist_ this season! Whew, now we can forgive Moffat and get back to watching Doctor Who uncritically"
"The Caretaker" is my favorite episode of the Peter Capaldi era of Doctor Who thus far. And it's also probably going to turn out to be the episode where this season really "clicks" for me. Really great stuff, that puts the Doctor on the spot in a way we've never seen before. Spoilers ahead...
'The big, not-uncontroversial changeover, with Colin Jost staying, Cecily Strong heading back to sketch-work full time, and Michale Che returning from his brief Daily Show foray to become the first black Weekend Update anchor was cluttered and underwhelming. Anyone hoping for some resultant edge saw, instead, more of the mushy, bite-averse jokes typical of Jost’s tenure. Much gets made of SNL’s desire to “satirize both sides,” but, unlike The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, or Last Week Tonight With John Oliver—which are left-wing but sink gleeful fangs into hypocrisy and incompetence wherever they occur—Weekend Update remains complacently toothless. Jokes about Apple, U2’s unwanted free album—there’s a lot going on in the world, and this inaugural outing of the Jost/Che era did precious little with any of it. (Jost’s blank, sluggish delivery continues to enervate already limp punchlines.)'
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [movie/TV] star!”
Chris Pratt took time off from his victory lap as America’s goofy brother to host SNL’s 40th season premiere, and he was unobtrusively fun. Lost in the inevitable Internet backlash (“I hate him—He’s so nice and effortlessly funny!”) is the fact that (as seen in the Parks And Recreation outtakes, for one), Pratt’s a nimble comic actor and improviser. And while Lorne’s kingdom brooks no improvisation, Pratt, starting in his Andy Dwyer-esque acoustic monologue song, exhibited the sort of genial, loose charisma he’s known for, gamely throwing himself into sketches with amiable charm. Maybe too amiable, as it turns out—Pratt ended up receding into the pack, even when donning a He-Man costume or an array of funny facial hair and wigs in the NFL introductions sketch. (Plus, his inappropriate raps were ...
Super Opinionated.
