Buffy the Vampire Slayer has staked its way to its 20th anniversary, and io9 has been celebrating by sharing some of our favorite moments from the series. Of course, those only scratch the surface of how incredible “The One Show in All the World” was. So tell us: What do you love about Buffy?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer first debuted in 1997, and helped redefine modern television. On the surface, it sounded like your typical 90s dramedy, but it ended up being so much more than that. Buffy proved you could have a TV show about a teenage vampire hunter that was deep, thoughtful, and groundbreaking. It’s since inspired several fantasy movies and shows like Charmed, which is getting a reboot (something creator Joss Whedon recently said he’s not a fan of, as a whole).
So let’s chat about the legend that is Buffy... the vampire slayer! What are your go-to episodes, which villain is your favorite, and which moments simply break your heart (it’s Whedon, so there are plenty of those)? And, furthermore, what shows would you recommend for Buffy fans looking for something new? I’m going to personally give a shout-out to Syfy’s The Magicians, which tends to be hell of a lot darker than Buffy, but shares some of its humor and unique character development.
Kong has bigger problems than Skull Island in his future. Image: Warner Bros.
If you see Kong: Skull Island this weekend (and you should), stay through the credits. There’s a sweet tease for the next film in this universe, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. And now, work has started on the film coming after that one—the biggest daddy of them all.
The Hollywood Reporter says that a team of writers have just been assembled to come up with a story for Godzilla vs. Kong, the massive showdown film that tentatively has a release date of May 29, 2020. The film will follow the events of 2014's Godzilla, the current Kong: Skull Island, and the forthcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which is due out March 22, 2019.
Terry Rossio, who penned a number of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, is the team leader. He’s joined by Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne (Star Trek 4), Lindsey Beer (The Kingkiller Chronicles), Cat Vasko (Queen of the Air), T.S. Nowlin (Maze Runner, Pacific Rim 2), and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, Sense8). Those are some bona fide credentials, but you have to wonder why seven writers are needed to pull together a script that’s really only about one thing: a smackdown between two big-ass monsters.
Whether or not a Godzilla vs. Kong film ends up working, the way Legendary and Warner Bros. have handled this franchise has been smart. Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla stood alone, as does Kong: Skull Island. Presumably, Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla sequel will as well. But there have been just enough hints to remind audiences that there’s a shared universe being built here. For example, besides the credits scene in Kong: Skull Island, there are a few lines of dialogue, almost throwaways, that made me sit up in my seat and think, “Oh, so that’s how they’re going to explain that.” But most people won’t even think about that until 2020 when they go back and see how all the pieces were laid out for them. These days, watching a shared universe film that you don’t know is one is a treasure. It’s just too bad it’s unlikely Pacific Rim could cross over at some point anymore.
Much like George Clooney in Gravity, sometimes, spacecrafts meet unfortunate fates—they get lost in space, and are almost always victims of the final frontier. But over the last few years, NASA has been having some real success locating wayward spacecraft, including its STEREO-B solar observer. The agency has now done it again, locating an Indian spacecraft that lost contact with the Earth nearly eight years ago.
Using a ground-based radar technique, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California were able to locate NASA’s still-active Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009, as well as the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1, which blasted off Earth in 2008. The latter, which was much more difficult to find due to its small size (about 5 feet on each side), had been considered lost.
“Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission’s navigators and had precise orbit data where it was located,” Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at JPL said in a statement. “Finding India’s Chandrayaan-1 required a bit more detective work because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August of 2009.”
India’s Chandrayaan-1. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
First, the team at JPL used orbital estimates to make an educated guess at where Chandrayaan-1 might be, some 124 miles above the Moon and in a polar orbit. Then, NASA sent microwave beams toward the Moon’s north pole using the 230-foot antenna at its Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex to see if the spacecraft would cross paths with the radar. An object with the radar signature of a small spacecraft did, twice.
Over the next three months, the group listened to the radar “echoes” bounced back by the spacecraft, which were received by NASA’s 330-foot Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, along with the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Because this ground-based method effectively re-discovered the tiny spacecraft, it could be enormously helpful for future lunar missions—even crewed ones.
Chandrayaan-1 was India’s first mission to the Moon. In its 10 months of activity between October 2008 and August 2009, the satellite completed all of its mission objectives, which included chemical and geological mapping. While the ultimate fate of the orbiters remains unknown, we hope it feels a little less alone in the vacuum of space. It’s cold out there.
Can you believe we are less than three months from a freaking WONDER WOMAN movie opening in theaters? It seems too good to be true. Saturday, that means a new trailer—but to hold us over, here’s a tease of some intense action from the film.
No delay, here it is.
That’s Robin Wright as General Antiope, obviously tasked with making Diana Prince (played by Gal Gadot) into the warrior she becomes. And that moment with the bracelets? Hell. Yes.
In addition to the trailer tease, Gadot also released a beautiful new poster for the film.
We’ll have more on Wonder Woman tomorrow, when the trailer debuts. The film opens June 2.
Kong: Skull Island is premiering around the world this week, and it appears poised to be number one at the box office this weekend. That’s an explosive debut—and one premiere took that literally.
There were a number of worldwide premieres for the movie, which has among its ensemble of stars Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, and John C. Reilly.
In Vietnam, the premiere included dancers with batons set on fire, pyrotechnics, and a 16-foot replica of King Kong. After the dancers left the stage, as you can see in this video, the host came out and said, “You know what? I was standing there and I was actually scared myself,” just as Kong’s arm started to burn.
Via The Hollywood Reporter, we have a statement from a Vietnamese representative for Warner Bros., which says, “There was a small fire at an outdoor atrium at CGV Cinema in Ho Chi Minh City during a Kong: Skull Island opening event. We are very grateful that no one was hurt.”
Oh well, some premieres go off without a hitch. Some include a gorilla blazing merrily in the background after large groups of people run away from it.
Yesterday, we saw her doing techno-sorcery on cars in the Fate of the Furious trailer. Today, Charlize Theron is making quick work of Cold War antagonists in Atomic Blonde.
Directed by David Leitch (John Wick, Deadpool 2) and written by Antony Johnston, Atomic Blonde is adapted from the Oni Press graphic novel The Coldest City, also written by Johnston and drawn by Sam Hart. Theron plays an elite British spy tasked with getting sensitive information out of a hostile metropolis. The red-band trailer for the upcoming movie sports some gnarly fight choreography and James McAvoy in excellent retro fashion. Atomic Blonde will be out this summer.
Laptop bags that protect your computer during transport are usually all function and no form. And rightfully so. But this 15" Lifewit bag is actually incredibly attractive and functional, with durable genuine leather, a padded interior, and five pockets for things like your phone, chargers, and more. Use the code 3RGMI8QN and pick it up for $49.
There are lots of aluminum laptop stands out there, but this is the only one I’ve seen that can fold completely flat to fit in a backpack, and prop up your laptop at two different angles. Plus, at $22 (with code VX2CXZFX), its also cheaper than most alternatives. Win-win.
While mesh routers have broken through in 2016, the Wirecutter-recommendedTP-Link Archer C7 though is one of the best “traditional” routers you can get, and it’ll only cost you $72 today with promo code 15TPLC7. It was down to $70 around Black Friday, but this is the best deal we’ve seen since the holidays.
Bluetooth headphones are cheap enough now that it makes sense to keep a few pairs handy, just like you used to with wired earbuds. At $11, these are perfect for tossing into a gym bag or luggage, just in case you ever need them.
We’re no strangers to USB hub deals, but this one is only $7, made of aluminum, and about as thin as physically possible, making it great for travel. That’s a winning combination.
We all know that Anker’s PowerCores are far and away our readers’ favorite USB battery packs. But the 10400 model in particular, at least in my opinion, is the best choice for most people. It holds at least two full phone charges, includes two ports for sharing, and is small enough to fit in just about any pocket. Unless you’re going off the grid for multiple days at a time, that’s right in the Goldilocks zone for most people.
Right now, you can save $5 on RAVPower’s Filehub, which is actually two travel-friendly devices in one: A 3,000mAh USB battery pack, and a media streamer that can let you access files on USB flash drives and SD cards wirelessly from your phone or tablet. That’s perfect for, say, watching movies on a plane when your tablet is low on space.
We’ve seen plenty of deals on “premium” Google Cardboard-compatible VR headsets, but this is one of the only ones we’ve seen that includes a magnetic button on the side, which means you won’t have to pair an external Bluetooth remote to navigate within VR apps. Seriously, if you haven’t played with Google Cardboard yet, you’ll have so much fun.
The SoundBuds Slim are, as you might have gleaned from the name, far smaller than the originals. Heck, they look like a small set of wired earbuds; you might never guess there were batteries and Bluetooth radios in there. Despite the size, these buds are still rated for seven hours of battery life, and recharge fully in just 90 minutes.
There was a $6 launch day discount on these a few weeks ago that dropped them to $24, but if you missed out on that sale, they’re slashed to $22 today, no code required.
Half the time you spend vacuuming is spent plugging in, tripping over, or rolling up the power cord, but it’s 2017, and you don’t have to put up with it anymore. Today only, Amazon’s discounting four different cordless Black & Decker vacuums that will make cleaning time that much easier.
Redo your home for a lot less than you’d think while Target is marking down all their furniture up to 40%. Everything from living room accent chairs to a new headboard is discounted, which means you can replace those IKEA pieces with something at least a little sturdier.
Or, get ready for the spring with discounts on outdoor and patio furniture. It’ll help you get past the fact that for the second time this year, it was 65 degrees in NYC yesterday and it’s now snowing.
At that price, you’re obviously getting particle board rather than hardwood, but it looks really nice, and can hold TVs up to 55" and 60 pounds, in addition to all of your miscellaneous home theater equipment.
Buying headlight bulbs for your car before you need them will save you an inconvenient (and if it’s at night or raining, potentially illegal) trip to the auto parts store, and with this 15% Amazon coupon, you might as well stock up.
Philips Vision bulbs have great customer reviews, and come in tons of different sizes to fit most vehicles. Just note that you won’t see the 15% discount until checkout, and don’t forget to do a little Googling to make sure you’re getting the right set.
This stick-anywhere LED light seems pretty basic—it doesn’t have a motion sensor or rechargeable battery—but for $5, it’s pretty impressive that you can customize the brightness level and turn it on by tapping almost anywhere on the body. If you have any closets or cabinets without sufficient light, I can think of worse solutions.
Magnetic smartphone vent mounts are the sleekest and easiest way to prop up your phone in the car, and you can get two mounts from Aukey for $9 today with code AUKPACK2. Even if you already have one in your own car (a pretty safe bet!), it’s worth tossing an extra into your luggage to use in rental cars whenever you travel.
This battery-operated LED work light puts out as much light as a 100W halogen, and its removable battery pack can even charge your phone over USB. It’s one of those things you might not have an immediate need for, but it’s not a bad idea to keep one handy in your garage, just in case.
We love reusable tumblers here, as do all of you. So does Starbucks, and right now they’re marking down select drinkware 30% so you can get your own branded reusable tumbler. Put your Starbucks coffee in some Starbucks mugs and call it a day.
Lysol wipes are one of the easiest ways to wipe down cabinets, and they’re a gift sent from the heavens whenever someone in your house has a cold. Assuming you’ve got some extra cabinet space, you should definitely pick up 320 wipes for $9 up with this clippable Amazon coupon.
We see deals on WeMo switches and TP-Link Smart Plugs on a pretty regular basis, but this similar product from Koogeek is Apple HomeKit certified, and only $24 today, the best price we’ve seen.
Like those other smart switches, the Koogeek Wi-Fi Smart Plug includes an app for turning your electronics on and off, and putting them on a schedule. The key difference here is that you can also control it with Siri from your phone, or from Control Center in iOS 10. That’s a big deal if you’re an iPhone owner, and with promo code TQHF38XS, you’re not even paying a premium for it.
Vantrue’s popular dash cams are back on sale, and this time around, you get to choose from a whopping four different models.
Even the $50 N1 has essential features like 1080p recording, motion-detecting parking mode, and a G-sensor to save your data after a collision, but each step up the line gets you improved optics (wider viewing angles, lower f-stops, higher resolution), and the top-of-the-line N2 actually has a second rear-facing lens as well. Just be sure to note the promo codes below.
Strip lights can add dramatic accents to the undersides of cabinets and furniture, and this 16' strip from OxyLED can also glow in 20 different colors to fit your mood or decor, all for just $15.
If 16' is too long, you can cut this strip after every third light without damaging it, and if it isn’t long enough, you can even daisy chain multiple strips together with these inexpensive connectors.
Cooking eggs isn’t exactly rocket science, but I’d say the ability to make soft, medium, and hard boiled eggs, plus omlettes and poached eggs at the touch of a button is worth $16. The Dash Go is Amazon’s top-selling egg cooker, and carries a truly stellar 4.6 star review average from nearly 3,000 customers, so get it while it’s on sale.
There are few things more irritating than noticing your tires are low on air, and then having to find a bunch of quarters, driving to the gas station, and cursing the heavens when the compressor shuts off before you’ve finished filling all four.
Instead, just buy this tiny $30 compressor, and fill up your own tires from anywhere. You can thank me later.
You should definitely not be thinking about work on a weekend (unless you work on weekends) but thinking about workwearis totally kosher. ModCloth wants to make sure your mornings are better by giving you 30% off all workwear. And their idea of “workwear” is...a little different. I’m lookin’ at you, wig dress.
Ready to give your mane the attention it deserves? Remington’s The Crafter comes with 10 trimming length settings, a 3 hour lithium-ion battery, and multiple detachable trimming heads for managing your stubble, and Amazon’s taking $8 off with a clippable coupon, for a limited time.
I’m not saying you could row this boat across the border to sneak into Canada, but I’m also not not saying it. If you’re a little less ambitious, it’ll also work fine in a pool or calm lake.
Amazon’s back at it again with the sample box deals, and this time, $10 gets you six sample-sized men’s grooming items, plus a $10 credit towards dozens of full-sized items from this list. Assuming you use the credit, that’s like getting all of the samples for free.
These Modern Motif socks prove that men’s dress socks don’t need to be drab and colorless, and today on Amazon, you can save $6 on a box of five pairs. There are several collections to choose from, but personally, I’m a fan of the Blue Steel collection.
It may be basically Spring already, but that doesn’t mean you should pass up a good outerwear deal. Nordstrom Rack is marking down a bunch of The North Face jackets and coats for 30-40% off. Pick up a great coat and save it for next winter. Men’s, women’s and kids’ styles are all marked down.
This neck massager may look like a torture device, but trust me when I say it’s the opposite. The weird arm things help you regular the pressure of the massager and it also heats up. Hell, it even comes with a car charger to use it during your commute. It’s like the best straight jacket you’ve ever worn.
Kubo and the Two Stringshas everything a perfect family movie could need: beautiful animation, anthropomorphic animals, and a feisty, young main character that has to save the day. And for $10, it’s something that should be on your Blu-ray shelf.
iTunes gift card discounts are noticeably less common than they used to be, and while we do see 20% discounts from time to time, a $50 iTunes gift card for $42.50 is still a solid deal if you pay for apps, movies, Apple Music, or iCloud storage.
Warning - board games spread disease. You are all deadly plagues - can you infect the world? Starting with patient zero, infect cities across the globe, collect DNA points and evolve unique symptoms to customize your pathogen as you compete against each other to be the first to wipe out humanity. Plague the board game is a strategic game of infection, evolution and extinction based on the smash hit video game Plague with over 85 million players. Clear and intuitive game mechanics allow players to rapidly start the outbreak whilst the constantly changing world, advanced genetic tactics and contagious gameplay ensures repeat infections for years to come.
Earlier Civilization games feature prominently in just about every PC gaming sale under the sun, but the price tag for Civ VI has been remarkably stubborn. Today though, Amazon’s taking $12 off the base game (unlocks via Steam), or $20 off the Digital Deluxe version, which includes a soundtrack and four post-release DLC packs. Hint: Get that one.
Pandemic Legacy is a co-op board game that raises the stakes by adding permanent (like, actually permanent) changes to the board as you play, and it’s amazing. It also happens to be marked down to $39 on Amazon today, matching the best price we’ve ever seen.
Featuring six programmable buttons, on-the-fly DPI switching, and buttons tested to 20 million clicks, the Logitech G302 Daedalus Prime is about as good as it gets in a $25 gaming mouse.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is scary as hell (and I’m not just talking about the scary-realistic teeth), and you can pick up a copy for $40 on Amazon, matching a one-day Gold Box deal from last week. Just don’t play it right before you go to bed.
When Sony rolled out the new PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro, they also quietly tweaked the DualShock 4 controller, and here’s another chance to get it for $40, with no sales tax for most buyers.
This is basically the same gamepad you know and love, but with a futuristic looking light bar at the top of the touchpad, and the ability to communicate over USB when plugged into your console for lag-free input.
After years of hanging around almost exclusively in post-credit teasers, Thanos is stepping into the limelight for Avengers: Infinity War. But apparently, he’s bringing friends. Who could they be? A new tidbit of information gives us the most fleeting of hints.
We know that Thanos will have a right-hand man in the movie thanks to a new interview with Terry Notary, the actor behind the motion-capture performance of King Kong in Kong: Skull Island—who confirmed that his next project is bringing another mo-cap character life in the next Avengers movie:
I’m working on four characters right now. I’m working with Josh Brolin and three other actors [in Marvel’s Avengers: InfinityWar], and I’m playing Josh Brolin’s right hand bad guy in the film. I can’t say the name of the character or I think Marvel will sever my head, but I apply those same principals of what it means to drop bullshit and just play a character truly evil. And it’s working. [Laughs] It’s truly working.
Honestly, we here at io9 are pretty stumped as to who Notary could be playing. The way that Notary describes his role being heavily involved with Brolin and three other actors makes us think of the Black Order, a group of Thanos’ lackeys introduced in New Avengers lead by Corvus Glaive, as a series of henchman the Mad Titan could use in his endless crusade to raze the cosmos. The first incarnation of the group featured Glaive alongside the violent warrior Black Dwarf, strategist Ebony Maw, and telepathic parasite Supergiant. So Notary potentially playing Glaive could make a lot of sense.
But is there anyone else who it could be? We’ve got a while before Infinity War hits theaters on May 4, 2018, so you’ve got plenty of time to speculate in the comments below.
If you want to see a superhero movie, go see Captain America. If you want to see a Western, go see The Magnificent Seven. If you want to see a road movie, go see Mad Max: Fury Road. If you want to see a superhero Western road movie that’s also set in the future, go see Logan. The cars themselves are worth it, and their designers told Jalopnik just how much thought and work went into making them feel real.
Warning: this post contains some spoilers.
Directed by James Mangold (The Wolverine, Girl, Interrupted), the latest film in the X-Men series follows an aged Wolverine in the year 2029. He’s living off the grid with Charles Xavier as a limousine driver. After a mysterious young mutant named Laura appears in their lives, they attempt to escape from and ultimately kill the shit out of a group of scientists and a band of cyborg mercenaries intent on capturing them. It was fucking fantastic.
Recently, I was able to speak with artist and designer Nick Pugh, who headed up the film’s automotive creative team and worked closely with the production designer, François Audouy. We chatted about each of the film’s cars and how had they had been crafted to fit the style and feel of Logan.
Chrysler Limo
Image credit: Logan
The limousine had been in the story since the beginning as a standalone character, as opposed to a simple vessel or prop. Pugh and his team envisioned something like a Lincoln Continental limo—simple lines, a bold shape and masculine-looking. Something big and grandiose. In the end, the Chrysler 300 fit the mold.
Fully running 2015 or 2016 model year Chrysler 300 limos were used in the film. Challenges arose when the design team was trying to figure out how to give the car their desired body shape while simultaneously not compromising its unibody structure.
Rendering courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century Fox Rendering courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century Fox
Ultimately, they had to wrap the Chrysler’s body in a bigger skin that went over most parts of it. The resulting car was much larger and fatter, so the wheels and tires had to be enlarged accordingly.
The reason for the skin, aside from aesthetic purposes, was that it worked just like a layer of makeup for the car. There were different body panels that had been distressed or shot up or dirtied that the crew could just attach to the car to make it look like it just went through hell. There was no need to smash up anything for real in case a scene needed to be reshot.
Image courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century FoxImage courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century FoxStunt limo. Image courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century Fox
The “hero” limos, as Pugh called them, didn’t participate in the heavier and more extreme stunts—like crashing through a fence and jumping over stuff. That was a job for the 500-horsepower, fully custom-built stunt car. “It has nothing to do with the Chrysler 300,” Pugh said, “it just has the same body panels as the limo.”
But because the shots that the stunt car appeared in were so kinetic, it could get away with looking like a type of “rough draft” of the other limos. It had no interior, only one seat, a full tube frame and about 18 inches of suspension travel on the front and rear. Underneath the Chrysler body panels, it looked like a Baja truck, Pugh told me.
Image courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century FoxImage courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century Fox
Pugh also explained that the actual look of the limo grappled with a few requirements. Because Logan was so character-driven, Logan himself was the primary focus. Other aspects of the film weren’t really supposed to steal his thunder and reduce the overall grittiness of the film’s sentiment.
“The imperative... was not to draw attention to itself,” said Pugh. “The challenge was, ‘How do you make something different that doesn’t look familiar, that looks sort of a little ahead, but doesn’t take away from the idea and sort of character of the story or the essence of the story?’”
The resulting design grew from what the team supposed an eventual evolution of current automotive trends and architecture would look like. A conservative look, specifically. In the movie, Logan’s car was at least five years old, so it couldn’t look brand-spanking new. He was trying to lay low, staying below the radar, working as an anonymous limo driver. A flashy, futuristic and super advanced car wouldn’t fit that narrative.
“The choices we made,” Pugh continued, “were sort of a struggle between our desire to go very far out and futuristic and then the need for the story to actually downplay the sort of key aspects of what we could present.”
In the comics, the Reavers were humans who had “bionic implants to enhance various aspects of their physiology.” Half human and half robot. As the primary antagonists in Logan, it was only fitting that they’d have their own vehicles to reflect that.
The Reaver cars and trucks were skeletal and actual stunt cars in real life, built on giant 4x4 chassis. The hero car was a Ram 1500. Others included a Jeep Cherokee.
Image courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century FoxReaver truck concept. Rendering courtesy of Nick Pugh/20th Century Fox
Pugh was adamant that the look of these vehicles remain unmilitarized. The Reavers were not part of the military, they were a private group of paid mercenaries being hired by a corporation.
Image credit: Logan
In particular, the command center truck that held Caliban, an albino mutant, captive began its life as a yard goat truck, where its only function was transporting shipping containers from the crane off the ship and onto a waiting truck.
Pugh said that it was a particularly good find from art director Luke Freeborn because the yard goat both fit the film’s requirements and provided a fiscally beneficial option.
Pugh revealed what I thought was perhaps the most interesting part of devising cars for Logan. Because the film was set in 2029, the conversation about autonomy had to be addressed. But exactly how autonomous would Logan’s setting look? Where would it be most noticeable?
To answer these questions, the team had to answer an even more basic question: what industry would most likely be fully autonomous by the time 2029 rolled around? The answer lay in trucks and tractor trailers.
They toyed with the idea of driverless cars but ultimately decided that, from a designer’s standpoint, the look of a self-driving truck would be far more dramatic than that of a self-driving car. Today, the cabin of the truck looks the way it does because there needs to be a driver. But once you remove the human element, the design of the truck could really be whatever you imagine it to be.
“They’re supposed to be very impersonal,” Pugh explained. “They’re supposed to represent this conglomerate mega corporate entity that doesn’t care about humans or their health. They have to be very menacing.”
The ensuing autonomous truck was just a container with two little robot bottom parts that had wheels with motors on them. They could link up and trail 20 containers at a time or just tow one.
The scene with the autonomous trucks is short, but it’s poignant—giving us a taste of the highly efficient future in store for American roads. But man, does it look lonely.
If you haven’t seen Logan yet, I highly recommend it. Just don’t bring your kids, unless you’re okay with them seeing guys getting their heads ripped off.
Life comes at you fast. One second there’s a monster bursting out of your chest. The next, it’s doing a dance past your dinner. So why not spend some time with the gif party?
Let’s raise a glass to television show titles that accurately describe the characters and what situation they’re in! That’s right, Matt Nix’s X-Men series about mutant teenagers and their normie parents has its first official cast photo and what looks to be the show’s official name: Gifted.
X-Men franchise producer Lauren Shuler Donner shared a behind-the-scenes look at a script reading for Fox’s new superhero show, which she called “Gifted.” This most likely means it’s the show’s name... although technically it could be a working title, or the name of the pilot episode. We’ve reached out to Donner and Nix for confirmation.
The photo also confirms the arrival of Joseph Morgan (The Originals) in an unspecified role. He joins True Blood’s Stephen Moyer and Angel’s Amy Acker, who play human parents who protect their teenage kids from the government after they come into their powers. Most of the mutant characters look to be original creations, except for Polaris (Jamie Chung) and Blink (Emma Dumont), who have been confirmed. We can also expect some Sentinels (the robots who raged war on mutants in X-Men: Days of Future Past), but Donner said they’ll look “different from what we’ve seen before.”
The pilot’s set to start filming this month, directed by Brian Singer. Fox has already ordered it to series... meaning, unless it sucks big time, we’re all-but-guaranteed to see it eventually.
South by Southwest, the Austin-based tech and entertainment expo, is known for hosting some experimental TV promos. This year, American Gods has a giant buffalo, The Man in the High Castle is opening a Resistance Radio station, Better Call Saul and Twin Peaksopened restaurants for Los Pollos Hermanos and Double R Diner. But none of those compare to the uncanny valley insanity that is whatever’s going on for The Handmaid’s Tale.
Attendees have been pointing out on Twitter that a large group of women dressed as Handmaids from Hulu’s upcoming show The Handmaid’s Tale have been popping up randomly around Austin. They don’t say or do anything, most likely because their character counterparts wouldn’t be allowed to, but according to the official Twitter account... you can ask them, “Should we walk by the river?” If someone there asks them, please, let me know what they said. I haven’t read the book yet and I’m dying with curiosity.
People have already pointed out how Margaret Atwood’s novel, despite being over 30 years old at this point, is especially relevant in 2017's sociopolitical climate, but this definitely makes it seem a little too real. Either that makes it insanely clever marketing, or it’s yet another sign that we’re way behind on our women-only bunkers. The Handmaid’s Tale comes out April 26.
The History Channel, a.k.a that place where you watch Pawn Stars, Vikings, and that weird-haired guy who talks about aliens, is actually getting back into the history business... thanks to TheHarlem Hellfighters, a graphic novel. The comic book industry says, “You’re welcome.”
Harlem Hellfighters, an amazing graphic novel about the U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, is getting a six-hour limited series from History Channel. It’s being produced by Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and James Lassiter’s company Overlook. Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio, the writers behind the Dwayne Johnson disaster flick San Andreas, will pen the script.
The graphic novel, penned by World War Z author Max Brooks, is about the first-ever African American regiment. They were assigned to the French forces during World War I as an insult, largely because many white American soldiers refused to serve with them. They were nicknamed the “Harlem Hellfighters” by the Germans because none of their soldiers were captured, and they never lost a trench or a foot of ground to the enemy. They returned to the U.S. as one of the most successful regiments of World War I, including receiving America’s first Croix de Guerre from the French government, but they still faced decades of discrimination and hatred.
Harlem Hellfighters was originally optioned as a movie, but given how powerful, nuanced, and necessary their story is, I’m glad it’s getting a longer series. Apart from the graphic novel, there are some excellent documentaries about the Harlem Hellfighters, including one from the History Channel, if you want an extra lesson on a true group of heroes.
Recently, a game called Necrobarista caught my eye. It’s about a cafe the dead return to for one last cup of coffee, and it’s got an art style that screams Persona. That’s no coincidence. Necrobarista’s developers told me the game arose from their “love-hate relationship” with anime and visual novels.
“Back in the ‘90s, you had a bunch of very experimental shows,” lead developer Kevin Chen told me during an interview at GDC. “I’m not saying there aren’t any right now, but the industry at the time was still trying to find its place. That has slowed down in the past five years. Big companies have said, ‘OK, this is the best way to generate good, steady revenue.’ That’s led to a stagnation, I feel. Hayao Miyazaki commented on this. He talked about how it’s become a very circular, almost inbred kind of industry.”
“We’re big anime nerds, but we have this kind of love-hate relationship with anime,” he added. “We love stuff from the ‘90s and early ‘00s. Cowboy Bebob, FLCL, Gurren Lagann. We wanted to do something that was different—both a throwback to old stuff we love, but also with its own direction.”
Necrobarista is, at its core, a narrative game that owes a lot to anime and Japanese visual novels. Its main story takes place over the course of one night, beginning with a bit I got to play where three main characters bicker over the power in the cafe going out. Unlike many visual novels, however, the game is fully 3D, allowing for a dynamic camera, animated characters, and a general sense of style you don’t usually get from this sort of game. The scene I played was brief, but it was full of clever dialogue and intrigue.
It goes deeper than technical bells and whistles, though. The Necrobarista team wants to tell stories that are human first and foremost, with the fantastical element as more of a conduit for interesting, authentic moments.
“There are lots of series about power fantasies or fan service [in anime],” said Chen. “Those can be done well and executed well, but they’ve become over-saturated.”
“Our cast has a very diverse age range,” he continued. “Ashley’s a little girl in primary school. Mattie, our main character, is 23. We have other characters who are quite old, and others who are quite young. This is a setting that helps facilitate that. You get a lot of stuff you wouldn’t normally see in anime. We wanted to tell very human stories about real people in semi-fantastical backdrop.”
Oh, and about that setting: while Necrobarista is heavily inspired by Japanese media, it’s set in Melbourne, Australia, where the game’s development team is based. It might seem odd to set a game like this there, but Chen and co want the game to be rooted in a sense of time and place, ala Japanese games like Persona and Western games like Kentucky Route Zero.
“From the architecture to the way people dress and talk, even to the food they serve in the cafe—all of that is important,” said Chen. “When you play Kentucky Route Zero, you really feel like the creators of the game knew that region. You get narrative segments where you, like, walk into a fishing shop, and they talk about a little aquarium with a dead fish inside. There’s so much detail. That’s the kind of stuff we want to put into our game.”
The Necrobarista team is drawing on a pretty wide range of influences, but there’s no denying the promise of what they’ve put together so far. They hope that, when the game comes out later this year, it’ll strike a cord.
“I won’t be so presumptive to say that we’ll change [anime and visual novels], but as fans, we want to create content for other fans who want something different,” said Chen. “And we think there are anime fans out there with this same love-hate relationship.”
Logan might stand out as its own film, not needing or wanting to include parts of the X-Men franchise that didn’t serve the story, but it turns out we were pretty close to getting a rather depressing ode to the Phoenix herself.
In an interview with Empire, director James Mangold chatted about drawing up early versions of the Munson house dinner scene. Mangold said it originally had a moment where Logan somberly discussing his dead “wife,” by which he means Jean Grey. Mangold said the scene was well-acted, but they ultimately decided to cut it so the lone bright light in an otherwise dark film wouldn’t be dimmed. After all, that scene is a chance for the characters (and the audience) to stop and take a breath.
“I sketched out different conversations for that dinner scene and one of them went to a much darker place. Mrs Munson asks Logan if he’s married, and Charles says he was – but he killed her. Of course, he wasn’t really married, but what that then spawns is Charles waxing poetic about Jean Grey, and it’s a really cool moment. Both Hugh and Patrick were amazing. The problem was, it created an incredibly powerful lead brick in the middle of the only moment in the movie where there was a breather. Even I, with my taste for the dark, felt that it was one too many.”
Mangold said the scene will likely end up on the Blu-Ray, which might also include a black and white version of the movie. And we’ll definitely get to see Sophie Turner’s take on the character again, as she confirmed last month that the next X-Men film will start filming soon.
Having very messed-up things happen is a key ingredient in the recipe for the Alien film franchise. While audiences have come to expect gory explosions and the like, there’s a chance that this May’s Alien: Covenant might still hold the power to shock fans.
Last night in Austin, before the showing of several new clips from Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott greeted the crowd by saying that while his goals have changed over his movie-making career, his mantra has always stayed the same: “to scare the living shit out of you.”
The first clip began on the spaceship Covenant, showing the crew as they prepared to send a lander down to the surface of a newly discovered planet. The scene highlighted the different personalities of the crew members, with bawdy banter and clipped snippiness meant to communicate camaraderie and tension. For example, one character grumbled “I hate space,” prompting another to quip “This is why you need yoga.” As mentioned in the most recent trailer, the crew on the mission is made up of couples and flirty jokes across different pairings drove home the closeness of the Covenant explorers. After the launch sequence for the lander finished, momentary panic set in when the mothership lost contact with the lander crew during descent to the planet. Radio contact was re-established, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the smaller craft touched down in a rough landing.
That relative calm was completely evaporated by the second scene, which began with two crew members hobbling back to the lander after being wounded. They were hurried into medical by a panicked colleague, who was tearfully looking for any kind of help from Tennessee or Billy Crudup’s Captain Christopher Oram. But, back on the mothership, Tennessee could only hear what was happening on the surface and Oram, leading another contingent back after their own unseen yet bloody encounter, was still too far away.
The two members—one of who is played by Carmen Ejogo—got sealed in the med-bay. Things escalated quickly with lots of frantic screaming, some of which has been seen in already released footage, and blood sprayed out of the wounded man’s back. As Ejogo pounded on the door demanding to be let out, her male colleague’s back started to crack open and a crimson, viscous sac flopped out. A pale, baby xenomorph—about the size of a kitten—clawed out of that sac and hissed at Ejogo. She freaked out, backed up onto a counter, and grabbed a blade to brandish at the lifeform.
It pounced at her face and clawed her to death, scrabbling to the door where the frightened crew member outside continued to lose her shit. The baby xeno bashed its head at the door’s glass window, breaking it open and going after the remaining human woman. She grabbed a gun but missed repeatedly in her attempts to blast it into oblivion. Her wild shots landed into a stack of flammable tanks, starting a fire that quickly caused the ship to explode, just in time for Captain Oram and his party to see that they have no way off the planet. Amidst the chaos, the baby xenon escaped into the night.
So far, the clips all showed beats familiar to fans of the long-running scifi horror series, however, the third one harbored the most morbid twist. In it, we saw Captain Oram talking to an android played by Michael Fassbender. However, this wasn’t the newly revealed Walter model. It’s David, the android last seen in Prometheus, who explained to Oram that he’s become something of an amateur zoologist. As the camera lingered on dissected specimens, David revealed he’s been studying the xenomorph. He explained that he’s mapped how insectoid carriers burst from spores to infect hosts and create hybrid lifeforms. Davis spoke admirably about the adaptive qualities of the xenon as he led Oram to a subterranean chamber filled with the iconic Alien egg sacs. Oram asked about the status of these sacs and David replied that they’re “waiting for mother” and assuring the human they’re “perfectly safe, I assure you.” The flaps of one sac opened, showing motion behind a cloudy membrane. Oram leaned over the opening to peer inside and a face-hugger leapt onto his head. David watched impassively as Oram struggled and died.
Based on the footage shown, it seems like Covenant will shade the AI characters in this Alien movie more complexly than in previous entries. In this instance, David appears to be the living link between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, becoming the vector through which the xenomorphs move from one place to another. It remains to be seen what the interaction will be, if any, between Walter and David. If the plot point teased by the third clip is what it seems, one version of the artificial lifeforms created to help mankind will become instrumental in the propagation of the galaxy’s greatest threat.
After those three new clips, Scott returned for brief comments, followed by a showing of the Walter and red-band trailers. The Covenant portion of the evening ended with a Q&A session with Scott and cast members Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, and Danny McBride. I’ll upload snippets from that when I get back to a better internet connection.
Do you remember your first time? You were probably mostly grown up by then, old enough to know who you were but not who you wanted to be. Leaving basketball practice at dusk, looking past the horizon and wondering what was next. And then, a day later, it was sunshine.
Few of us remember the first time we realized that daylight saving time was bullshit. The idea originated centuries ago when men like Benjamin Franklin thought it made economic sense to fuck with our waking hours in the wintertime. In reality, the tradition of turning back the clocks at the end of autumn came from the Germans during World War I, when conserving lamp fuel was a priority. It’s not a very complex idea. In the spring, everyone agrees to turn their clocks forward an hour, providing a little more time for natural light and ostensibly saving some energy in the process. At the beginning of winter, you’d revert to standard time and turn the clocks back. The practice is now commonplace in some 70 countries around the world, and for the most part, it sucks.
But then there’s that one day in March, the day we move from standard time to daylight saving time. This is the day that we get that extra hour of sunshine in the afternoon. (Nobody notices losing an hour of sun in the morning because proper people are asleep.) You walk out at the end of the workday, and it’s still bright. Blue sky beckons you to happy hour on a patio or a refreshing run in the park—or ideally both. This changes everything, yet we wonder why we every changed things to begin with.
There are a lot of scientific reasons why daylight saving time doesn’t make sense. Some studies claim shifting our clocks only saves a negligible amount of energy. Others say the time difference contributes to a significant jump in heart attack rates. Although it was once believed that more daylight help reduce crime rates, more recent research shows that this isn’t true at all.
But can’t we all agree that when the ordeal is over and the sun is suddenly around much more often in our waking hours that life is amazing? That’s perhaps the only bright side of daylight saving time, and since there’s no reason to believe we’ll ditch the practice any time soon, we might as well embrace it.
Senseless as it may seem, the welcome gift of a little extra sunlight in the springtime is a sweet one. It’s as if you step outside one day—mostly like all of the other days—but something feels different, more profound. You’re a small flower, blossoming in the golden light of a different day. Things will only get better from here. You’ll spend this early summer hours discovering new parts of yourself, unlocked after a long and chilling darkness. You’ll grow and change. But you’ll always remember that moment, when your soul flipped over, eyes closed, gasping in the oxygen you never knew felt so good.
Welcome to springtime, bitches. And who cares about Daylight Saving Time? If we’re allow this fleeting moment of bliss, why not just embrace it?
The latest Wonder Woman trailer is finally here, and it takes us into Diana’s past to show how it shaped her amazing future.
It’s still hard to believe we’re just three months away from a Wonder Woman solo film. Gal Gadot charmed audiences by being the break-out star in Batman v Superman, and fans have been eager to see the heroine take center stage.
This latest trailer introduces us to the younger version of Diana, watching her grow in her strength and abilities over the years. The trailer’s definitely more focused on her personal journey, showing how she overcame the doubt imposed by others and learned to embrace her true destiny. Looks like one exciting ride. Wonder Woman opens June 2.
The Surface Pro 3 is a few years old at this point, but it’s still a complete Windows PC in tablet form, which is kind of amazing. If you’ve been on the fence about trying one out, you can get one for just $430, while supplies last.
This Logitech K480 Bluetooth keyboard is compatible with iOS, Android, Windows, and OS X, and can switch between three of your devices with the flick of a switch, and even prop up your phone and tablet for easy viewing. $23 also happens to be the best price we’ve seen.
Bluetooth headphones are cheap enough now that it makes sense to keep a few pairs handy, just like you used to with wired earbuds. At $11, these are perfect for tossing into a gym bag or luggage, just in case you ever need them.
We’ve seen plenty of deals on “premium” Google Cardboard-compatible VR headsets, but this is one of the only ones we’ve seen that includes a magnetic button on the side, which means you won’t have to pair an external Bluetooth remote to navigate within VR apps. Seriously, if you haven’t played with Google Cardboard yet, you’ll have so much fun.
The SoundBuds Slim are, as you might have gleaned from the name, far smaller than the originals. Heck, they look like a small set of wired earbuds; you might never guess there were batteries and Bluetooth radios in there. Despite the size, these buds are still rated for seven hours of battery life, and recharge fully in just 90 minutes.
There was a $6 launch day discount on these a few weeks ago that dropped them to $24, but if you missed out on that sale, they’re slashed to $22 today, no code required.
You probably want your own mattress to be thicker than 5", but for just $68-$145 depending on the size, LUCID’s gel memory foam mattresses should be perfectly fine for guest room duty.
The Bonavita BV1800 is your favorite coffee maker, and you can snag one with a stainless steel carafe for $110 today, which is just $3 shy of the best price we’ve seen.
Our readers praised the Bonavita’s shower head system for saturating the beans to extract the most flavor, and added that its carafe can keep keep the finished product hot for hours on end. Sounds like a winner to me.
The well-reviewed Hoover Sprint bagless upright vacuum is only $43 today, and includes more features than you might expect, including an accessory hose, adjustable brush height, and a true HEPA filter, not to mention the fact that it’s an Amazon top seller. It’s not the smallest or most maneuverable vacuum around, but it’s probably the best sub-$50 vacuum you can buy.
Sitting is killing you, but if a standing desk isn’t an option, this discounted foam cushion can at least take some of the strain off your lower back whether you’re at your desk, on a plane, or driving your car.
Cymas’ orthopedic cushion is designed to take pressure of your tailbone while seated, easing lower back pain and numbness. And while this is a new product without a lot of reviews, you can check out this nearly identical listing from Aylio, which features a 4.4 star average from over 10,000 customers.
These dryer balls have an astounding 12,000 Amazon reviews at a 4.6 star average, and are unsurprisingly Amazon’s top-selling item in the fabric softener category. Like, good for them, but how does such a boring product get that much attention?
Sorry if this is indelicate, but we’re all pooping incorrectly. Originally popularized by Squatty Potty, a toilet stool can lift your legs into ideal bowel movement positioning, and you can get one from easyGopro for $18 today, or a few bucks less than the Squatty Potty.
Magnetic smartphone vent mounts are the sleekest and easiest way to prop up your phone in the car, and you can get two mounts from Aukey for $9 today with code AUKPACK2. Even if you already have one in your own car (a pretty safe bet!), it’s worth tossing an extra into your luggage to use in rental cars whenever you travel.
Lysol wipes are one of the easiest ways to wipe down cabinets, and they’re a gift sent from the heavens whenever someone in your house has a cold. Assuming you’ve got some extra cabinet space, you should definitely pick up 320 wipes for $9 up with this clippable Amazon coupon.
Strip lights can add dramatic accents to the undersides of cabinets and furniture, and this 16' strip from OxyLED can also glow in 20 different colors to fit your mood or decor, all for just $15.
If 16' is too long, you can cut this strip after every third light without damaging it, and if it isn’t long enough, you can even daisy chain multiple strips together with these inexpensive connectors.
Cooking eggs isn’t exactly rocket science, but I’d say the ability to make soft, medium, and hard boiled eggs, plus omlettes and poached eggs at the touch of a button is worth $16. The Dash Go is Amazon’s top-selling egg cooker, and carries a truly stellar 4.6 star review average from nearly 3,000 customers, so get it while it’s on sale.
Joe’s New Balance is the premiere online outlet for...New Balance shoes, obviously, and they’re offering a rare 30% sitewide discount, plus free shipping on orders over $65 today. That excludes 990 and 993 styles, but everything else should be fair game. Run, don’t walk, before the best styles sell out.
Whether you’re helping your kid improve at Little League, or training to dominate your corporate softball league (in which case, you should reconsider your priorities), this discounted SKLZ gear is designed to improve your fundamentals.
Ready to give your mane the attention it deserves? Remington’s The Crafter comes with 10 trimming length settings, a 3 hour lithium-ion battery, and multiple detachable trimming heads for managing your stubble, and Amazon’s taking $8 off with a clippable coupon, for a limited time.
I’m not sure what any of the Kindle ebooks in Amazon’s Spring Forward sale have to do with daylight saving time, or spring, for that matter. But I do know that they’re cheap, and many of them are quite popular, so go stock your digital shelves.
I’ll admit, this morning was the first time I’d ever heard of finger flashlights, but apparently they’re quite popular at parties and concerts, and you can get 100 of them for $13 today. You get 25 of each color, and they all have a 24 hour (non-replaceable) battery built right in.
Pandemic Legacy is a co-op board game that raises the stakes by adding permanent (like, actually permanent) changes to the board as you play, and it’s amazing. It also happens to be marked down to $39 on Amazon today, matching the best price we’ve ever seen.
Saturday Night Live opened its latest episode with an Independence Day-style alien invasion story, imagining the President of the United States as the inspiring voice of a country in dire need of hope and guidance. Unfortunately, Bill Pullman was busy, so they got Donald Trump.
When NASA announced last month that they’d discovered Earth-like planets around TRAPPIST-1, a relatively nearby star system, a lot of people first thought, “Wow, does that mean First Contact?” But, it was soon followed by, “Oh shit, now’s really not a good time for First Contact.” And now we can see why. The sketch is about American troops struggling to defeat alien invaders from Zorblatt 9, but their fearless leader can’t seem to grasp the severity of the situation. Also, he might have financial ties to the aliens. You can watch the sketch below.
I will admit the sketch, as a whole, wasn’t very good. The jokes felt like copy-paste versions of Trump puns we’ve already heard SNL do, and Alec Baldwin’s clearly ambivalent about continuing his role as Trump. Plus, and this might be a science geek nitpick, but why not feature TRAPPIST-1 as the source of the aliens? Come on, writers, it would’ve been perfect! Trump pretty much ignored the announcement last month, instead bitching about FBI leaks and “fake news.” Meanwhile, people were joking about how NASA lovingly gave the rest of us an escape plan. It was practically gift-wrapped for you.
Long story short, a good effort but a subpar execution. Also, I miss President Pullman.
