If you’re a Star Wars toy fan you probably already heard about Hasbro’s latest announcement. It’s going to release a mega, super, duper version of The Ghost from Star Wars Rebels and Ahsoka though its Haslab program. If 8,000 people pledge $500 to buy the ship before September 7, it’ll be made. And considering as of…
After debuting in 1999, multiple Emmy winner Futurama had an on-and-off existence across Fox, the direct-to-DVD realm, and Comedy Central, with its apparent finale in 2013—until news came last year that Hulu had ordered 20 new episodes. The first 10 arrive July 24, and fans will be glad to know they were worth the…
“There’s no way you’re taking life serious if you think I’m going to pick this vape up and vape with you,” the Canadian rapper said.
AMC’s The Walking Dead went through plenty of characters during its 11-season run, but the departure of Andrew Lincoln’s leading man Rick Grimes was a momentous shakeup. Next to him, one of the biggest characters to leave the show alive was Danai Gurira’s Michonne, and the pair eventually fell in love before Rick was…
AMC’s The Walking Dead went through plenty of characters during its 11-season run, but the departure of Andrew Lincoln’s leading man Rick Grimes was a momentous shakeup. Next to him, one of the biggest characters to leave the show alive was Danai Gurira’s Michonne, and the pair eventually fell in love before Rick was…
At one point Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb dons his iconic uniform — a fedora cap, a smoking pipe, a slightly over-sized suit — like Batman wearing his cape and cowl for the first time. It’s a look that serves as a sort of armor against mere mortals, who he woos with a peculiar charisma, as well as the military and political bureaucracy he battles while leading the Manhattan Project. It’s also a way for Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) to ground himself as he wrestles with the major conflict around his work: Building an atomic bomb could help to the war, but at what cost to humanity?
Oppenheimer may seem like a curious project for Nolan: Since wrapping up his Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises, he’s thrown himself into increasingly complex projects (perhaps to atone for that disappointment). Interstellar was ostensibly a story about a man exploring the cosmos to find a new planet for humanity, but it also wrestled with personal sacrifices as his children aged beyond him.
Dunkirk was a purely cinematic, almost dialog-free depiction of a famous wartime evacuation. And Tenet was a bold attempt at mixing another heady sci-fi concept (what if you could go backwards through time?!) with bombastic James Bond-esque set pieces. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, is a mostly talky film set in a variety of meeting rooms, save for one explosive sequence.
Take a step back, though, and a film about an intelligent and very capable man wrestling with huge moral issues is very much in the Nolan wheelhouse. Oppenheimer’s swaggering genius fits right alongside Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne/Batman, the dedicated magicians in The Prestige or the expert dream divers/super spies in Inception.
The film, which is based on the biography American Prometheus by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird, follows Oppenheimer from his time in Germany as a doctoral student, to his professorship at UC Berkeley. He mingles with notable scientists, including Albert Einstein himself, and makes a name for himself as a quantum physics researcher. We see Oppenheimer as more than just a bookish geek: He sends money to anti-fascists fighting in the Spanish Civil War, he pushes for unionization among lab workers and professors, and he supports local Communists. (Something that will come back to haunt him later.)
It’s not too long before he’s recruited to the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, and the myth-making truly begins. Like a Nolan heist film, he assembles a team of the brightest scientific minds in America and beyond, and he pushes the government to establish a town doubling as a secret research base in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The film is strongest when it focuses on the specificities of the Manhattan Project: the rush to build a bomb before Nazi Germany, the pushback from scientists terrified about the damage “the gadget” could do.
The movie firmly focuses on Oppenheimer’s point of view, so much so that we mainly see him as a heroic tortured genius. Only he can put the right scientists together and motivate them to work; only he can solve the riddles of quantum physics to keep America safe. Some colleagues criticize his cavalier attitude about building an atomic bomb — they think it can lead to untold disaster, while he naively thinks it may be so powerful it may end all war. But, for the most part, we’re left feeling that he was a great man who was ultimately betrayed by a country that didn’t care for his post-war anti-nuclear activism.
I wasn’t able to see Oppenheimer on an IMAX screen, unfortunately, but sitting front row in a local theater still managed to be a thoroughly immersive experience. That was particularly surp—rising since it’s really a movie featuring people (mostly men) talking to each other in a series of unremarkable rooms. Save for one virtuoso set piece — the build-up and aftermath of a successful atomic bomb test is Nolan at his best — what’s most impressive is how cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema makes those conversations utterly engaging. We’ve never seen Cillian Murphy’s piercing blue eyes do so much work in close-up.
Still, it’s an overall disjointed experience. The few featured women — Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as the Communist activist Jean Tatlock — are sketched thin, even by Nolan standards. And the movie would have benefitted from more insight into Oppenheimer’s thinking. It’s a surprisingly standard biopic, even though it’s three hours long and far more technical than any studio film this year.
At the very least, it would have been interesting to see Oppenheimer reckon more directly with the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We see him confront President Harry Truman (Gary Oldman) in a vain attempt to stop building nuclear weapons, and the film points to his very public stance against future bombs. But even those scenes feel self-serving.
At the end of the film, Oppenheimer finally comes to understand something many of his colleagues have been saying from the beginning. Nothing will be the same because of him. There is no peace now, only the undying specter of nuclear annihilation.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/oppenheimer-review-sympathy-for-the-destroyer-of-worlds-130052032.html?src=rss
“I went through something that I thought I would never go through,” the Oscar winner said.
As competition finally starts to figure out foldables, Samsung’s ready to prove it can still deliver them best. Its next Unpacked event is teasing a new generation of foldable phones, flanked by smartwatches and tablets. Here’s what we’re expecting.
While it hasn’t named the new hardware, the company is expected to reveal the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5. This year, though, the priorities are inverted. Where the book-style Fold is usually the main attraction, this year the Flip clamshell might get the most attention, with a substantially expanded front screen to go up against competition like Motorola’s Razr+. Both the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5 may adopt a “waterdrop” hinge, which narrows the gap while closed. Why should we care? It’ll be a slimmer foldable and have a smaller gap when the device is closed.
Wearable-wise, the company has not-so-subtly hinted the Galaxy Watch 6 will appear at Unpacked, and reports even hint at a Classic or Pro version to bring back the physical rotating bezel. (Some people are obsessed with smartwatches with a rotating bezel.)
Rounding out predictions, expect to see Samsung’s latest premium Android, the Galaxy Tab S9. We’re expecting to see base, plus and ultra versions of the laptop with upgraded screens and maybe even IP67 dust and water protection.
Samsung is streaming the event on its YouTube channel, starting at 7 AM ET on the 26th. Don’t worry if you’d rather sleep in — we’ll be liveblogging along and will hopefully get some hands-ons with the new devices. Stay tuned.
– Mat Smith
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Once the world’s most wanted computer hacker, Kevin Mitnick, passed away at 59 on July 16th. The first time Mitnick infiltrated a computer system was way back in 1979, but he wasn’t convicted until 1988 when he was sentenced to 12 months in prison for copying a company’s software. He broke into Pacific Bell’s voicemail computers when he was under supervised release and continued to hack into cell networks, as well as company and government websites, as a fugitive in the ‘90s.
Mitnick was also involved in the theft of thousands of files and credit card numbers, but his obituary says he “never took one dime from any of his ‘victims.’ Mitnick eventually ended up spending five years in prison, which he described as a “vacation” by the time he was freed. From there, he changed the course of his career and became a White Hat hacker and cybersecurity consultant.
I hinted at this yesterday, but here are the finer details. YouTube Premium has jumped by a significant $2 from $12 to $14, while the annual price went from $120 to $140 per month, a savings of about $28 over paying month by month. Last year, Google hiked the family Premium plan to $23 per month and charged existing month-by-month subscribers the new fee.
According to The New York Times, Google is testing a new AI technology, codenamed Genesis, which can generate news articles. The tech giant has reportedly demonstrated the tool to The Times and executives at The Washington Post and News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal. Based on reports from people who witnessed the pitch, Genesis can whip up copy from the data fed to it, whether it’s current events or other types of information. Google believes journalists could use it as an assistant to automate tasks and free them up for other things. Some journalists fear it could well free them up from their jobs.
But the bots aren’t quite there yet: CNEThad to issue corrections after being made aware of substantial errors in most of the 77 machine-written articles it published under the CNET Money byline. And just earlier this month, Gizmodo’s io9published a Star Wars piece full of errors attributed to the Gizmodo Bot.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-what-to-expect-at-samsungs-unpacked-2023-event-next-week-111516314.html?src=rss
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