TwinIon

I love the source material, but I'm pretty skeptical of another adaptation.

I mostly agree with you, but I imagine it depends greatly on the deal they have with Disney. Far From Home will end up grossing maybe $200M more than Venom, which was terrible and didn't have the advantage of being in the MCU, and Far From Home cost $60M more to make. I have no clue what kind of profit share deal they have, if any, but it's not that hard to imagine Sony looking at that and thinking "it can't be that hard to make another live action Spider-man movie." Then again, with Venom making money, Spider-Verse likely kicking off a franchise of its own (though to relatively poor world wide numbers), and an MCU live action Spider-man, it does seem like Sony is currently getting all they can from this license.

That's what the deadline article called it. I have no knowledge of the property.

That really sucks. I don't know cannon as well as other brands, but if you give me a price range I can make some recommendations. If you don't have any lenses and are open to a new system, that also really changes things. Something like the Fuji X series is a great place to start. A slightly older X-T20 is a great camera for $700.

My baseless and arbitrary thoughts on the potential for these shows to actually get a Game of Thrones like audience: The Real Contenders Lord of the Rings - Bezos is throwing unlimited money at this, the films where huge and remain culturally relevant. Even the mediocre Hobbit films did nearly $1B at the box office. Very real potential here. The Witcher - As successful as the games are, I don't think the general public will think of this as a video game show. The trailer has potential, obviously they have lots of money, and importantly they have Henry Cavill. The Wheel of Time - I've heard good things about the material. GoT proved that complexity isn't necessarily a death sentence if done right. The Untamed - Deadline says it's the closest thing to GoT in setting and tone. It's on HBO. Probably has a shot. The Shows Confined to Networks that Can't Get HBO Ratings Halo - The fanbase for the game isn't near enough to get a GoT audience, and the association with the game will probably make sure some people just don't watch. Plus, it's on Showtime. Dune - I expect Villeneuve's movie to be good, but I don't expect it to be a hit. The show will be a spin-off focused on the Bene Gesserit and will be confined to Warner's new streaming service. With Villeneuve's help it might be good, but I doubt it'll be a ratings sensation. Foundation - The book series seems too odd to find a big audience, and hard sci-fi is rarely a hit. It's unlikely to even be Apple's biggest show (they're putting more money behind See, the blind aquaman movie) The Kingkiller Chronicle - Futuristic Fantasy could be a nice change of pace, but who knows. Also on Showtime. The Watch - It sounds like they're adapting a spinoff of Discworld, and they're doing it for BBC America? Seems daunting. The Audience Is Wrong Chronicles of Narnia - The movies weren't particularly popular, and even if the show is better, I don't think the material has a shot at getting a GoT audience. His Dark Materials - Trailer looks good, but a child lead is a problem. The movie made very little, which makes me skeptical of it being a breakout hit. Watchmen - The trailer looks very Leftovers, but maybe with a slightly broader appeal. My guess is that viewership comes in under Westworld. The Sandman - The word I hear most associated with this one is unfilmable, which makes me think that if it's done well, maybe it finds an American Gods level audience. Seems Unlikely Conan the Barbarian - I don't know the character outside of Arnold, but I have a hard time imagining this gaining a huge following. Cursed - I don't know anything about this, but Arthurian legend has potential Book of Joan - Joan of Arc in a dystopian sci-fi novel? You have my attention, but who knows.

The basic iPad is basically impossible to beat unless you get a more expensive iPad. I suppose the fire tablets are worth a look if you only want to stream stuff, but if you want a tablet and not just a portable video player, iPad is basically the only game in town.

How can this not be hilarious? Also worth pointing out that as a Fox Searchlight film, this is now also a Disney movie. What a world.

I think the trailer looks great. They're expanding on the mythology of the novel in interesting ways. I'll certainly give it a shot.

I know nothing about this series, but the trailer was interesting. It certainly made it seem like there is a lot of world building being done. It makes me nervous whenever something has to rely on child actors, but overall I'd say I'm intrigued.

My god they did it. The mad men actually did it. This was always going to be insane, but they cranked it up to freaking 11.

This is the first thing I thought of. There's no cause good enough to justify spending, yet no justification necessary to reduce income. Lowering the corporate income tax reduced tax income by more than $100B in one quarter. This bill is expected to cost ~$10B over a decade. If he wants to find some cash, there's a good place to start.

Around here there are already a couple places that cater specifically to that market, and have for a long time. It's kind of hard to imagine that the need for that kind of thing is significantly higher than the supply (around me at last), or that Gamestop could successfully grab much of that market. There's also the issue of tabletop games and local tournaments taking up a lot of physical space. The local game shops around me that do host events are much larger than any Gamestop I've ever been in.

The Times has a great piece up walking through the process of fighting the fire. Crucial to the story is the miscommunication that lead to the fire not being identified for 30 minutes. Something not long remarked on is that some firefighters refused to go up the tower. Not that I'd blame them, but I think their refusal exemplifies just how bad the situation was. It really was an extraordinary effort and terrible risk the firefighters took that saved the building. Something else that wasn't talked about at length is that they had drilled at Notre Dame. This piece seems to show that Corporal Chudzinski (among others), knew the structure and were able to identify what to do pretty quickly as soon as the attic was lost.

Or so says Matt Singer at Screen Crush. The trailer will debut on Friday, until then all we have is this odd behind the scenes video: Enormous sets, built to give you the "cat's perspective," talk of "digital fur technology," Taylor Swift and Idris Elba and Judi Dench and Ian McKellan, Cats will have it all. This movie is going to be crazy, I haven't any idea what everyone is going to look like.

That's because it is a liability. How much have motion controls really improved? Any gyro-based motion control that doesn't have additional tracking just doesn't work as consistently and accurately as it needs to in order to be a good experience. I've used the Joy-cons, Oculus Go, and Daydream, and none have very impressive capabilities. If there's some system or game that does, I'd be happy to give it a go, but I think it's a fundamental limit of the technology. Tracked motion control however, is freaking great. I've only ever used them in VR, but I can imagine they could still be fun in screen based games.

This isn't particularly surprising. Thor 4 seemed like it was happening, and with the direction that they've taken the character, it makes sense for Waititi to continue the arc. I do wonder if Thor 4 comes before or after Guardians 3. I love Waititi, but he never really did feel like a good fit for Akira, and Akira never really did feel like a good fit for live action. If it does get around to it, I'll watch it and hope for it to be good, but it feels like one of those doomed projects that will never happen.

Stuber - 2/5 - Short, light, and occasionally funny, Stuber never really lives up to the comedic potential of either of its stars.

The action in that mission looked a bit rough. Maybe it feels better to play, but I didn't get a clear sense of how effective the weapons are vs your powers. Also, a times it was really dark and hard to tell what was happening, or where the enemies were.

Surprised that Mayor Pete has raised so much money.

The Joycons can't track themselves in 3D space though, so any motion first control schemes are going to be pretty poor. It's good enough for Mario Party mini games, but that's about the limit. You couldn't do something like beat saber or Until You Fall with the switch controls, so I'm happy to see bad waggle games get disincentivized.

I was thinking a little bit about how the existence of the Switch Lite could impact game development, and I think it's probably a good thing for someone that primarily plays with the Switch docked. Most games will target the largest player base, which will have an increasing percent of people unable to pull-off a joycon and waggle it at their devices. Those games weren't exactly overrunning the platform to begin with, but going forward you're going to really need to justify any kind of odd motion control and provide an alternative. For myself, that seems like a win.

You're right about when people first started talking about him as a possibility. I feel like there were suggestions as far back as when Luther was on the air, but at that point Craig was already firmly in the role. By the time Skyfall came around, and it seemed like Craig might leave the role, Elba had been in Thor and Prometheus and Pacific Rim. They certainly could have gotten him for less than they were paying Craig, but probably not for as little as they started paying Craig. It's possible conversations were happening long before that, but if they were, I likely missed out on them.

I can't say that Golden Circle made me want to know anything about the Kingsmen origins, but I'm actually a bit intrigued by the trailer.

007, of all characters, has shown to be pretty flexible. Yes, all his iterations so far have been white and male, but they haven't even all been british. I feel like there is some kind of Bond idealism that people want to protect, but it doesn't exist uniformly in the films. Bond is often debonair and slick, but he's also been oafish and camp. We've seen great movies featuring the character where he's been deadly serious, and we've seen good movies where he's been completely over the top. We've seen various actors play the role in completely contradictory ways across films that have almost nothing in common beyond the moniker, and somehow, the name lives on and we still occasionally manage to get good films out of the series. Assuming that this rumor is true and that we will soon get a 007 film featuring a woman, I'm all for it. The character is perfectly malleable, and if they're going to keep making these movies forever, finding someone they can build great movies around is my biggest concern. That said, I think it was never going to be Idris, if only because he's too expensive. He's too well known, and he'd never sign a cheap enough contract that locks him in for a bunch of movies, which I'm sure was a pre-condition. He'd have been a great Bond, and here's to hoping that Lynch will as well.

In its most recent quarterly earnings report, ... $3 billion represented about 6 percent of the cash and marketable securities Facebook had on hand. I just hope congress doesn't decide that this is enough, and we can start to put some decent privacy legislation in place, rather than just fining Facebook or Google whenever they do get caught doing something bad.