#A Bridge Too Far 4k review

[spryfilm]

4K Blu-ray Review: “A Bridge Too Far” (1977)

[collapse-and-comfort]

Love your blog! Can I ask for a sick fic with some comfort? The whumpee ignoring symptoms and pushing on until they collapse. So the caretaker carries them to bed, and looks after the whumpee the next few days. The whumpee is weak and scared because they’ve never been that badly sick. But they don’t want to go to hospital (maybe bad experiences before).

🌡🤒🌡Thank you so much!!! Sorry this took so long. It just kind of kept going and ended up being a little over 4K words! I hope you enjoy! (I'm going to tag @lurkingwhump because I know you were interested in a story like this! I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention @i-write-whump because her prompts were constantly on my mind while I was writing this.) 🌡🤒🌡

Whumpee watched their interviewee’s retreating back. They’d been less a lead and more an aggravation. The beat of an eighties pop song made their headache (and their mood) worse and they closed their eyes and pinched the bridge of their nose.

“You good?”

“Yeah,” Whumpee said as they tapped a thumb on the table and tried to ignore the growing ache in their throat. “Let’s go.”

They walked back to Whumpee’s apartment to review information. It amounted to tirespinning and tail chasing. The longer the evening went, the more difficult it became for Whumpee to concentrate. They tossed a file onto their coffee table with the rest of the information they were pouring over. They leaned back on their couch and closed their eyes. No matter how they tried to will their headache away, it continued to compound itself. An ache and a chill were working their way into Whumpee’s body. They didn’t need to look at Caretaker to know they were watching them with questions on their tongue and concern in their eyes.

“Getting late,” Caretaker said.

“Late” was several hours ago.

“Mmhhm,” Whumpee said without opening their eyes. They weren’t taking the bait. “You’d better get going. We’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

“Right,” Caretaker said with a dubious quirk in their brow. They left, but they gave Whumpee ample time  to reconsider, to tell them they needed a break, or help. Or something.

Whumpee sat on their couch in silence as the chill in their body intensified. They refused to believe they were getting sick. Allergies, exhaustion. Had to be. They couldn’t even remember the last time they were ill. Whumpee groaned as they heaved themself up. The room spun and they closed their eyes until the dizziness passed. A string of expletives played in their head as they found their way down the hall and into the restroom.

They dry swallowed some pills that had likely exceeded their expiration date and they avoided catching sight of the flushed, hollow-eyed specter they would see if they looked in the mirror.

They didn’t bother struggling out of their clothes before curling up beneath their covers and dropping into a fitful sleep.

Whumpee woke to someone banging - no, just insistent, undemanding knocking the way their partner always did - on their door. They pawed at their nightstand in search of their phone, but it was nowhere to be found. They peeled their eyes open and wondered how long Caretaker had been knocking. They disentangled themself from their covers and slowly rolled their way off the mattress.

Too hot, they thought as they willed themself, one foot after the other, to make the distance from their room to their door.

When they opened up, Caretaker stepped in with a coffee in each hand. Their affable expression faltered when they looked at Whumpee. If Caretaker noticed Whumpee was wearing the same clothes they’d been dressed in the previous evening - and of course they did - they didn’t mention it.

“Shit,” Caretaker said as they handed Whumpee a cup. “Guess I should have brought you tea instead, huh?”

“As long as it had sugar in it,” Whumpee said before clearing their throat and grimacing at the sensation and the way their voice rasped. “Just give me a minute.”

---

“We can pass this off,” Caretaker suggested by mid-morning. They could. They knew several of their teammates were dying to sink their teeth into this case and there was no harm in letting them.

They watched as Whumpee rested their head against the passenger side window. Whumpee didn’t respond, but Caretaker knew what they would say. They couldn’t put this on hold; they had to finish it. Besides, I’m fine.

“Right,” Caretaker said. They felt as though that one, marginally passive aggressive word, was becoming their personal mantra. They couldn’t make Whumpee do something they didn’t want to do, and while they’d never seen Whumpee with so much as a sniffle, they knew Whumpee would run themself into the ground regardless of whether or not they had a job to do.

God forbid you take care of yourself, Caretaker thought.

The day wore on like that. Caretaker doubted the small measures Whumpee was taking to make themself less miserable - resting or rubbing their eyes, pulling their coat tighter around themself - were cries for help. Each time they asked Whumpee if they were okay, they were rewarded with a glare or a surly shrug.

The evening found them back in Whumpee’s apartment. Caretaker had grown genuinely worried about Whumpee. They watched as Whumpee stared at the same paper they’d been holding for the past ten minutes. They shut their eyes and slouched forward in their chair before closing their eyes. Caretaker frowned at the way Whumpee’s jaws were clenched, the way their shoulders were bunched, and the way their face was flushed. Whumpee’s clothes looked rumpled and uncomfortable. Not exactly surprising since they were the same ones they’d been wearing the previous day.

“You’re half asleep, Whumpee. Why don’t you at least change into some fresh clothing?”

They expected a brusque reply, but Whumpee put down the paper and nodded without looking at Caretaker. That set off warning bells.

Whumpee used the coffee table to steady themself as they rose and Caretaker reached out to help when they saw how badly Whumpee’s arms were shaking.

“I’m fine,” Whumpee muttered as they stood to their full height.

“Bullshit,” Caretaker said as they stood too. They’d spent the entire day watching Whumpee suffer needlessly and they’d had enough. “You can’t keep pushing yourself.”

Caretaker waited for Whumpee to tell them how they’d be better in the morning, or they’re just tired, or...

Whumpee swayed on their feet and their eyes rolled back before their knees buckled and dropped to the floor with jarring force. Caretaker swore as they quickly closed the distance between them and caught Whumpee’s upper body before they could fall the rest of the way. Whumpee let out a distant-sounding moan as their forehead rolled on Caretaker’s shoulder. As Caretaker held Whumpee’s chest against their own, they were shocked at the heat rolling off of Whumpee.

How the hell did Whumpee let themself get this bad?!

Caretaker didn’t berate Whumpee for neglecting themself. Rather, they gathered Whumpee in their arms. There was a flash of confusion, then annoyance on Whumpee’s face. Caretaker pretended they didn’t see the latter emotion.

“Just gonna get you to bed,” they said.

Then possibly to the hospital, they added in their head.

Whumpee didn’t put up a fight as Caretaker carried them back the hall and to their room. Caretaker angled themself so as not to run Whumpee’s head into a wall or door frame. They were unsurprised to find that Whumpee had left their covers a tangled mess. They set Whumpee down and helped them into a seated position while they straightened the covers as best they could. Caretaker circled back around to where Whumpee sat and all the aggravation they’d felt at Whumpee for not taking better care of themself fled them completely.

Whumpee’s arms hung at their sides, their mouth was part way open and their eyes were glassy. Without worrying about Whumpee’s sensibilities, Caretaker put their palm on Whumpee’s forehead.

“You’re burning up, Whumpee,” they said. That Whumpee was running a fever was far from surprising, but the sickly heat that was coming off of them was no less worrying to feel. “Jesus, how long have you been sick?”

“Few days,” Whumpee said. They looked up at Caretaker with wounded pride and they tried to pull away when Caretaker cupped their neck with their hands.

“Sshh,” Caretaker said as they gently pressed their fingers against Whumpee’s throat. They winced at how swollen Whumpee’s glands felt beneath their fingertips.

They frowned and idly swept a damp lock of hair from Whumpee’s forehead and decided what to do.

“Okay,” they said. “Is there anything we need to bring with us to the hospital?”

Whatever indignation and bravado were left in Whumpee disappeared. Whumpee’s eyes went a little wider and they shrank back from Caretaker as they drew in several sharp breaths as they shook their head.

“No. No hospitals.”

“Whumpee, you passed out and you’re running a high fever. I really-”

“No!”

Whumpee tried to stand, but Caretaker stopped them before they could land on the floor again. Caretaker put one hand on Whumpee’s shoulder and held onto one of Whumpee’s arms, trying to hold them as steadily and as gently as possible.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Caretaker said. They kept their voice low as Whumpee landed back on the bed and began to struggle. “Easy, Whumpee. Hey, it’s okay. Calm down. It’s okay. Hey, hey, look at me.”

Whumpee’s energy flagged and finally, their wary, fever-bright eyes found Caretaker’s.

“That’s it, Whumpee.”

Caretaker knew Whumpee had a thing about hospitals, but they never would have guessed it was this bad. Had their fever amplified that fear, or had it simply laid it bare?

“No hospitals.”

Caretaker sighed and nodded. It wasn’t going to do either of them any good to drag Whumpee, half out of their mind with a fever, into an emergency room. Maybe they could talk Whumpee into it if it came to that. Or maybe they’d call an ambulance. Caretaker let go of Whumpee’s arm and rubbed their shoulder. Their heart went out to Whumpee when they felt their breathing hitch beneath their palm.

“Okay,” Caretaker conceded. “No hospitals. But we have to get your temperature down. Where do you keep your thermometer?

“I’ve never been this sick before,” Whumpee said. Their voice was thick and apologetic as they dropped their gaze.

No thermometer, then, Caretaker concluded as they alternated between rubbing and patting Whumpee’s shoulder.

“Okay, what about some Tylenol?”

Whumpee paused and thought about it.

“Above the bathroom sink.”

Caretaker located the bottle. Empty. They sighed, discarded it, and moved to the kitchen. They rummaged through Whumpee’s fridge, but settled on taking them a glass of water. Whumpee sat where they left them.

“I want you to drink some of this,” they said as they pressed the glass into Whumpee’s hands. “I’m going to go pick up a few things, okay?”

Whumpee looked from the glass and back up to Caretaker. They nodded and took several sips of water before setting the glass on their nightstand. Caretaker took note of the way they winced each time they swallowed.

““Do you think you’d be more comfortable in different clothing?”

Whumpee gave them a tired mmhmm and tried to lift themself again.

“I got it,” Caretaker said as they put up a staying hand. “Let me help.”

Whumpee directed them to the bottom drawer of their dresser. Caretaker selected a pair of black athletic shorts and an overly large gray tee shirt. Whumpee didn’t protest when Caretaker helped them out of their old clothes and into the new ones. Whatever energy Whumpee had was depleted and they allowed themself to be helped down to the mattress without complaint. They used one arm to unevenly pull their covers back over themself. Caretaker refrained from helping them pull the covers more completely over them.

They didn’t want to leave Whumpee like this for any amount of time, but if they were going to help them, they needed to. Caretaker fetched Whumpee’s cell phone from the living room and put it on the nightstand next to the water.

“I’ll be back soon, but if you need anything, just call.”

All told, it took them about a half an hour for them to visit a drug store and a convenience store - both within walking distance - to gather what they needed and return. They organized everything on the counter, then took the immediate essentials to Whumpee’s room.

Whumpee was asleep beneath their covers and the water sat, untouched, on the nightstand. Caretaker regretted that they needed to wake them up. They put a hand on Whumpee’s forehead - still far too warm - then patted their cheek.

“Hey, Whumpee,” they said. “I need you to wake up for a minute, okay?”

“Mmm?” Whumpee mumbled as they looked up at Caretaker with bleary, half-lidded eyes.

“Just gonna get your temperature,” they said as they held up the oral thermometer they’d bought.

Whumpee frowned.

“It’s clean,” Caretaker said, though they doubted that was Whumpee’s objection. They leaned down and put the tip of the thermometer to Whumpee’s lips. “C’mon.”

Thankfully, Whumpee did as they were asked.

“Keep it under your tongue,” Caretaker told them, letting memories of their mother be their guide.

Whumpee kept their eyes closed while the thermometer worked, but they opened them again when the beepbeepbeep sounded. They reached for the offending instrument, but Caretaker halted them.

“Just leave it for a sec,” they said. Part of them didn’t want to see the reading, didn’t want the numbers to force their hand with Whumpee’s care.

They removed the thermometer and turned it so they could see the segmented, digital numbers.

“One-oh-three point nine,” Caretaker said, frowning at the thermometer as though it were to blame.

Not great, Caretaker thought, though they knew it could be worse. They tried to remember if they’d seen Whumpee eat anything the past couple of days. They picked up the new bottle of Tylenol, but paused when they saw Whumpee’s face. Whumpee’s jaw clenched as they clumsily wiped a tear away, They crouched down at Whumpee’s side - the pills rattled as they did so - and they put a hand on Whumpee’s arm.

Caretaker cursed themself for not stepping in earlier, for not seeing just how sick Whumpee was, for not making Whumpee take better care of themself. The latter was easier said than done, of course, but now it seemed the confirmation that they were sick was too much for Whumpee to bear.

“Okay,” they said, speaking more gently than they could ever remember speaking to Whumpee. Overt tenderness, or any other sort of tenderness for that matter, had never been a part of their dynamic. Whumpee let themself sniffle and that led to a coughing fit. Caretaker seated themself on the mattress next to Whumpee and patted their back as they waited for the coughing to pass. “It’s okay. I know this sucks. We’ve gotta work on getting your temp down, though, so I want you to take these pills.”

Caretaker helped them lean up and take the pills.

“You need to drink more, too,” Caretaker said, careful not to sound like they were scolding them. They wondered how much longer Whumpee would have let themself go without some sort of aid. A niggling thought worked its way into Caretaker’s mind. There was the very real possibility Whumpee had never had anyone to care for them in this way.

Caretaker gave Whumpee’s forearm a squeeze and then stood.

“Be right back,” they said.

They returned with a cool, damp washcloth. Caretaker swept Whumpee’s hair back and put the cloth on their forehead.

“Cold,” they murmured without opening their eyes.

“I know,” Caretaker said as they sat down on the edge of the bed. “Just don’t want your brain to get cooked.”

Whumpee hummed in agreement and laid still. Their breathing evened out and Caretaker removed the cloth when it had taken on as much of Whumpee’s body heat as it could. Whumpee didn’t stir while Caretaker repeated the process several times.

Once they were sure Whumpee was resting soundly enough, Caretaker went about the business turning their case over to other, equally competent hands. They didn’t look forward to telling Whumpee, but they’d cross that bridge when they had to.

When Caretaker returned to  Whumpee’s room, Whumpee was curled on their side. Their mouth was open and their breathing was deep. Caretaker risked placing the back of their hand on Whumpee’s forehead. Still warm, but it was better.

All was quiet until just after one in the morning. Whumpee stirred and Caretaker sat upright in the recliner in the corner of the room. Whumpee rolled onto their back and pawed at the covers.

“Hey,” Caretaker said as they walked over to the side of the bed. They put a hand on Whumpee’s shoulder and shook it a little bit. “You good, Whumpee?”

Whumpee’s eyes slid open and settled on Caretaker. It took a moment, but Caretaker could see the memory of the evening return to them.

“Too warm,” they rasped.

“Fever’s breaking,” Caretaker said with a nod as they helped Whumpee off with the covers. To Whumpee’s chagrin, Caretaker got their temp again, though that time it was a much more agreeable ninety-nine point eight.

“Don’t have to stay,” Whumpee mumbled as they rubbed a hand over their face.

Yes I do, Caretaker thought.

“It’s no problem,” they said with a shrug. “Besides, I know your WiFi password. Can I get you anything?”

Whumpee swallowed and grimaced as though there was a bad taste in their mouth.

“Drink?”

Caretaker brought them ginger ale, more pills and chapstick. Whumpee was quick to fall back to sleep after that.

Whumpee’s fever spiked again in the morning, though it was nowhere near as harrowing. What worried Caretaker was how pliant Whumpee had become. Just more evidence of how run down they’d let themself get.

After they took a shower, Whumpee set up camp in the living room and Caretaker took the opportunity to change the bedclothes. It was a small thing, but sometimes those provided the most comfort. Caretaker knew they were well on their way to becoming a mother hen, but they couldn’t quite bring themself to care.

Caretaker waited for the inevitable questions about work, but they never came. Caretaker wondered if Whumpee already knew what they’d done. The day wore on and Whumpee alternated between dozing and trying to watch whatever brainless actioner Caretaker opted to play. Their blanket was on. Their blanket was off.

Caretaker intermittently cleared away tissues when they began to accumulate around Whumpee. Caretaker plied them with a steady stream of drinks (Tea with honey seemed most effective.), and in the early evening, despite their declaration that they weren’t hungry, Whumpee managed to eat some soup. Caretaker extended a hand to take the dishes away when Whumpee was done. Whumpee started to say something, but their words fell off and they looked down at their lap when Caretaker took the dishes from them.

Caretaker wanted to reassure them, but they knew whatever they said in that moment would sound useless and patronizing to Whumpee. Maybe the best thing they could do was give Whumpee some alone time. At least for as long as it took Caretaker to pick up some things from their own place.

When Caretaker got back Whumpee was ready for bed. Caretaker regarded them. Their cheeks were flushed again and their eyes were glassy. Caretaker asked them the same questions they’d been asking them all day. How’s your throat? You okay? Do you need anything?

“I’m just tired,” Whumpee said as they started off with shuffling steps towards their room.

“Okay.” Caretaker calculated the time they’d remind Whumpee to take more pills like the world’s most proactive medi-minder. They chewed their lip as they watched Whumpee go. They hoped they got some rest. “Let me know if you need anything.”

That night, Caretaker dozed in the couch, but a single whimper from Whumpee’s room woke them. They crossed the room and fumbled for the lamp’s switch. The golden light revealed Whumpee, sweating and tangled in their covers. Their eyes were dazed and frightful; their mouth opened and they let out a pathetic groan as they pulled themself toward the edge of the bed.

“Whumpee,” Caretaker said as they put a hand on Whumpee’s shoulder; they were looking at them, but they weren’t seeing them.  “Hey, Whumpee.”

“Nonono,” Whumpee said. Their voice was far off, but it sounded no less distressed. “Stop Don't Please. It Hurts. N-”

Whumpee came awake and they panted as they braced themself on their elbows. They recoiled from Caretaker’s touch with a whimper and their feet worked at kicking their covers away.

“It’s okay, Whumpee,” Caretaker said. “Ssh. You’re safe. I promise you’re safe, Whumpee.”

They risked putting a hand back on Whumpee’s shoulder. They reminded themself to stay calm for Whumpee’s sake. A sob escaped Whumpee as they fell onto their side, breathing hard. Their feet stil moved ineffectually under the covers.

Caretaker pulled the blankets off of Whumpee and they stopped trying to escape whatever was hunting them. Caretaker grabbed the thermometer and the tissue box before sitting down next to Whumpee and began rubbing the curve of their shoulder.

“It’s okay,” they repeated. “Shshsh. Just a bad dream.”

Was it, though? How dramatically had their fever spiked?

After a bout of coughing, Caretaker offered Whumpee a tissue. Whumpee blew their nose before Caretaker tried to get them to take the thermometer in their mouth. Whumpee turned their face away and pursed their lips. Caretaker might have found humor in the sheer petulence of the gesture had Whumpee not looked so scared.

“C’mon, Whumpee. I’ve gotta see your temp.”

“No,” Whumpee said as they reached with a weak hand, trying to bat away the thermometer.

Caretaker caught Whumpee’s clammy hand and lowered it to the bed.

“I’ve gotta know how bad it is, Whumpee. It’ll just take a minute.”

“Don’t…” Whumpee said as they looked at Caretaker with unfocused eyes. “Don’t take me to the hospital. I can’t be there.”

“I’m just-”

“I can’t.”

Caretaker took a breath. They couldn’t let Whumpee work themself into a lather.

“You’re just coming out of a nightmare, Whumpee. Just give things a minute to make sense.”

“I-”

Whumpee cut themself off; Caretaker hadn’t said whatever they’d expected to hear.

“Just focus on me for a minute. Can you try to do that?”

They nodded, blinked and looked at Caretaker as though they were actually seeing them. Silence fell between them. Whumpee took a deep breath and rested their head back on their pillow and stared at the opposite wall.

“Okay,” they said finally. They allowed Caretaker to place the thermometer under their tongue. It seemed to take an eternity for the thermometer to beep. Caretaker took it back and before looking at it, they prayed to whoever or whatever might be listening that they didn't have to get Whumpee to a hospital.

“One-oh-two point six,” Caretaker said with relief. “That's not so bad. Just a bad dream that did a number on you.”

The lines of Whumpee’s face relaxed and they rested on the pillow, but some sort of melancholy had taken the place of Whumpee’s fear. It was an equally disheartening sight.

“Need anything?” Caretaker asked after they went through the routine they seemed to have established in nursing their friend.

“No.”

“Okay, ” Caretaker said. “Just let me know if you do.”

Caretaker stood and pulled a blanket back over Whumpee, who took its edge in their hand and pulled it to their chin.

“Wait,” Whumpee said when Caretaker turned.

Caretaker paused and looked back at Whumpee.

“Can you…” Whumpee looked at them, their eyes begging Caretaker to understand. “Can you stay?”

What had they dreamed that had them so rattled?

“Of course, ” they said. They settled back down next to Whumpee and swept Whumpee’s hair out of their face. “Whatever you need.”

Whumpee slept late the next morning and Caretaker took the time to tidy the apartment and ask for updates on the case. It had been solved.

When Whumpee came out into the living room, they made a beeline for their recliner. Though Caretaker was constantly present, they exchanged few words and Caretaker could tell Whumpee was putting effort into avoiding their gaze. The news that the case had been resolved seemed to do little to cheer them.

After cleaning the lunch mess, and doing dishes Caretaker sat on the side of the couch that was closest to Whumpee.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Whumpee said without taking their gaze off of the TV.

“It’s no problem.”

More silence. Whumpee dozed off and Caretaker channel surfed.

Caretaker chose a book from Whumpee’s shelf.

Caretaker read the same sentence five damn times before giving up and putting the book on the coffee table.

Whumpee jolted awake with a gasp. Their fingers dug into the armrests and their eyes darted over the room as though they’d woken up somewhere entirely foreign. They cursed and let out a harsh breath.

Caretaker guessed embarrassment, and not sickness, colored Whumpee’s cheeks.

“It’s fine,” Whumpee said before Caretaker could ask.

Whumpee stood, shakily at first, then walked to the kitchen. Caretaker knew any attempt to help them would be rebuffed, so they waited for Whumpee to stare into the refrigerator before they selected a bottle of water before moving back to their seat.

Whumpee sat and sipped.

Caretaker needed to address the elephant in the room. Or at least let Whumpee know the elephant could stay where it was.

“We don’t have to talk about it. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Caretaker said. “But I hope you know you can if you need to.”

Whumpee’s fingers worried at the armrests.

“I do. I do know. I’m just not used to...” Whumpee’s voice was low but solemn as they gestured toward all the signs of care that had been taken on their behalf. “... to any of this.”

Caretaker wanted to pull them close and tell them how sorry they were to hear that, that they never needed to hesitate to ask for help. They didn’t know what they could possibly say to make it better. Instead, they flashed the easygoing smile that had been missing from their features for the past couple days.

“Well,” they said. “Get used to it.”

[potteresque-ire]

Daenerys Stormborn, First of Her Name

Here’s my first review post on Game of Thrones! Thank you so much for asking about Daenerys, @bixgirl1, @kikibluemay and @oceaxe-ifdawn. She was fascinating and tragic, and I couldn’t really stop talking about her... as in, I ended up writing a 4k+ word essay on her character.

Due to the length, I’ve crossed-posted to AO3 for those who prefer to read it there: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119595 . As usual, never feel obliged to do anything! Fandom is a happy, carefree place for me :) .

Before I start, I’d like to say this—I’ve never expected GoT to be progressive. Its medieval aesthetics aside, the gratuitous violence and nudity really seal the deal. Therefore, this review is written decidedly without a social justice lens; I shall not argue if the showrunners were feminists, racists, imperialists etc. Also, I haven’t read the books and have read few metas and reviews; so these are my unfiltered thoughts and of course, my personal opinion. I got interested in Game of Thrones because the snippets I knew of it reminded me of ancient Chinese history, which I loved for its twists, its very blurred lines between truths and myths, its cynical record of human nature, clever strategies and bloodshed. Along this vein, I was, and still am, the most interested in how each contender of the Iron Throne got there, and as the theme of the story emerged (“the lies we spin, our fates they weave” is my way of describing it), the things they told for motivation—the lies and truths that, should they win, would become history.

Of all the contenders and their stories, Daenerys’ rise was the most…mythical and uplifting. She was easy to root for, partly because we’re conditioned to root for heroes like her. The last descendant of a dynasty. Orphan. Exiled, abused, went through her personal journey from little better than a slave to become queen. She even birthed dragons and rode them to war. I really enjoyed the part of her story as the Khaleesi. She grew into a queen in every way, and an ideal one, by the time led her small group of followers across the desert. I loved her—she was strong, resilient, intelligent, righteous. And she understood and respected a culture that was supposedly far below her (as her brother Viserys frequently reminded everyone). 

But then came Astapor, then Yunkai, then Meereen. She became a true ruler, without a Khal by her side… 

I started feeling a little uncomfortable. I was puzzled by that. Her cause was emancipation, one I believe was absolutely correct. Her stance was uncompromising. She walked the walk. Every single one of these traits was beyond admirable, and precious among rulers. Nailing 163 slave masters for 163 children might seem brutal, but the world of GoT *was* brutal. 

And yet, something felt...off.

Then I realized: after all the screen time in Meereen, I remained very much ignorant of the place, other than it practiced slavery. Slavery—and the barbaric practices surrounding it, such as the fighting pits—was presented as the only thing that defined her new constituents in her eyes. This could be by design, to show Daenerys’ “style” as a ruler. This can also be a reflection of the showrunners’ perspectives, their disquiet about tackling slavery for a larger audience.  But if I must judge the show by its own merits and ignore the hands behind it, the repeated shots of Daenerys sitting high in the Great Pyramid, she and her advisors donned in their foreign attire, telling the locals who looked nothing like them, over and over again, that they were wrong… 

She looked like a coloniser. My radars were beeping for that reason. I grew up in a colony, a well cared for one (ie, it would’ve fared far worse if it hadn’t been colonised). Colonialism is therefore an integral part of my life, and my views of it are coloured and educated by the experience. Controversial point: far from a general rule, but I recognise that colonizers can do great good. I’m a beneficiary of that myself. However, I’ve also learned that there’s an art to bringing these great goods to the colonised. One lesson: defining these people, especially when they’re foreign to the ruler, with anything that the ruler is seeking to eradicate — a habit, a tradition, a set of beliefs… —is not a recipe for success. It’s a matter of human pride—the pride of, in this case, the people who’d just suffered defeat. The former ruling class needs to feel some respect, which translates to a sense of security, for any transition of power to be smooth. One may say, the slave masters deserved neither pride nor respect nor security; this is very true, but there was a very practical consideration, one that Daenerys acknowledged: the ultimate goal of conquest is to rule. An un-governable colony won’t change for the better, because it won’t remain a colony for long. In Meereen, as in many real-world colonies, colonisers were few and their constituents were many. Revolts would favour the latter, in particular, the former ruling class who often had both financial and geographical advantages. The Sons of Harpy’s revolt did address that, albeit weakly.

No, I don’t mean Daenerys should yield on the issue of slavery. Lives were at stake and the emancipation had to be immediate. But then, merely insisting this was the right thing to do and punishing offenders with increasing severity, while reinforcing the segregation between the ruling class and the ruled (Daenerys pretty much sequestered herself in the Great Pyramid), was not a direction to take to render the emancipation permanent. Daenerys had to be out there. She had to make serious effort to find common grounds in the 3-way between herself, the former slaves and former slave owners, especially after she’d removed one of the pillars of Meereen’s sociopolitical structure. It didn't matter that the latter were despicable; she had to find a connection. And being a nation that had stood thousands of years, with its wealth and fine architecture, Meereen had got to have something benign and beautiful that Queen Daenerys could embrace, that she could use as a bridge to endear her to her constituents and at the same time, de-emphasize the role of slavery in defining what Meereen was. Wear their clothes. Visit the temples. Whether she actually believed in their gods didn’t matter. Join their festivities—if she did it enough it would matter much less if she skipped the fighting pits. Go to their Flea’s Bottom equivalent (as Margaery Tyrell did in King’s Landing; she would’ve made a good colonial governor). Talk to their craftsman and ask about their traditional crafts. Never for once did Daenerys consider these strategies. She could’ve used Tyrion as her ambassador—his stature and broken language skills, if utilized correctly, could loosen people’s defense, and the parties he’d attend would give him access to the good wines he craved and the setting for him to establish alliances with small talks. If governing foreign lands is indeed an art form, Daenerys didn’t pursue it in Meereen, even though from her time with the Dothrakis, it seemed unlikely that she was ignorant of its necessity (She did eat a horse heart for her Khal and her unborn child).

Again, assuming that the writers were merely following GRRM’s guideposts on her character arc, I had to contend with these possibilities that inform me about Daenerys the Ruler: 1) somewhere in her journey in Essos, she’d lost her ability to empathize with the cultures under her rule. This seemed unlikely. Or, 2) she no longer felt the need to do it, her power no longer derived from a Khal. Either way, with Westeros also being foreign to Daenerys, I started to wonder the kind of ruler she would end up being … 

… and it looked rather similar to the Daenerys in her final scenes, asserting that her moral compass should make the entire Westeros bent their knees. I started to wonder if the show intended this to be a good or bad thing, or something more nuanced, as it should be. My hopes weren’t high—after all, our own western world still retains much of its colonial sensibilities, which would’ve (rightly) praised Daenerys’ role as a Liberator, but would also (sub)consciously downplay her … colonising tendencies. 

Does it mean I see Daenerys as a bad person, or going mad? Not at all. Conflating character and ability to rule is, IMO, one of the major weaknesses of her ending (more on that later); it was also, perhaps ironically, Daenerys’ own fatal mistake. My question is merely one about her fitness to rule, which is itself a fluid thing. War-time rulers require different skills compared to peace-time rulers, conquerors to defenders. The serious contenders of the Iron Throne each had their own strengths, some better suited for rulership and some better for rulership at different times. Stannis was a strong general but was too easily swayed as a ruler. Daenerys was a conqueror. Jon Snow was a diplomat. 

One thing, however, is true and consistent in the world of GoT: to gain power, being morally righteous is not enough. Ned Stark’s detached head brought this point across all too well. Rulers win the hearts of their people. Not the brains, not the logic that decides what is right or wrong. Humans are inherently passionate about power, whether it’s theirs to own or not.

And this is, perhaps, Daenerys Stormborn’s greatest tragedy. She assumed her strict moral compass, along with her birthright and strong will, would be sufficient to take her to the Iron Throne. Her dragons further misguided her in that regard—punishments by Dracarys lent an extra mythical weight and poetry to her judgments, as if she had a higher power, like God, on her side. When she asked Jon Snow if she was to rule with love or fear, she asked as if the two were a dichotomy, seemingly blind to the fact that she had always treaded the line between the two. Love got her the Unsullied, the talents who came far and wide to advise her; fear got her the Dothrakis, the fragile peace in Essos. 

If you’ve read till here (thank you), you may assume I’d defend Daenerys’ decision to burn King’s Landing, or suggest it was foreshadowed. I’d say this: I find it to be within the realms of possibility, but only given my personal opinion about her rule in Meereen. I don’t see it as a botched coin-flip by the Gods, because nothing in her prior judgment suggested madness. Yes, she’d ignored advice before, but no more than, say, Robert Baratheon or Joffrey (Cersei simply killed those who gave her advice she didn’t like). Daenerys’ decision to march to King’s Landing immediately after the Battle of Winterfell—the last major decision she made before the sacking—might not be wise to some but was logically sound. I’d also venture to say this, perhaps in defence of the show’s writers: I’m also not quite sure if the show intended her decision to be a proof of madness. 

Because I’m not sure if the madness told in this show was real at all. 

Because curiously, while the coin flip had been mentioned several times, the show never offered us any concrete, visual evidence that Daenerys had suffered a loss of reason, which defines madness for us who live on Earth in the 21st century. The destruction of King’s Landing was portrayed at the ground level; we didn’t exactly see Daenerys cackling, or enjoying the carnage. Making a terrible decision does not a mad person make. She was seen to be sure of herself in her final scene with Jon Snow—but why shouldn’t she be, when she’d just emerged victorious and achieved her life’s goal, her revenge? If cockiness had been the mark of madness, half of the characters in the show would’ve been mad. 

Even more curious to me is this: people like Ramsey or Joffrey or Cersei, who’d done seriously mad things in our perspective, were never once described as “mad”. The adjective “Mad” had always been reserved for the Mad King. 

How was the Mad King mad then? This is important, because Daenerys supposedly inherited his madness. But the audience hadn’t been given much information. We know The Mad King killed his dissidents, but that seemed to fall within standard monarch behaviour. We know he and his advisors—including, notably, Varys—were at increasing odds with each other, but put a bunch of power-hungry men with immense power imbalance in the same room and that would happen more likely than not. He killed Ned Stark’s father and brother in a confrontation—so he was vengeful, distrustful, and brutal, yes, just like Joffrey or Cersei, but still, nothing that spoke particularly of madness. He was said to want King’s Landing destroyed, but the act was never realized; we only learned of his intentions via Jaimie. He set up the network of wildfires, which were terrible weapons but also … traditional in the Targaryen dynasty, if wildfires had indeed been invented as replacements of Dracarys. So how mad was actually the Mad King then, compared to his ancestors? Or was he called Mad only because he lost his game of thrones, and history was written by victors? When Varys claimed to be worried about Daenerys’ state—when he hinted at her madness and being a bad coin flip—was he merely repeating the same lies that had been told about her father, with the purpose of setting up a chain reaction that would propel Jon Snow to the Iron Throne, as the same lies had helped justify and cement Robert Baratheon’s reign? Varys might have been trying to feed Daenerys something. A “crazy potion”, maybe?  

Yes, I know. I’m probably reading too much into this. It’s my wishful thinking, perhaps, to not see Daenerys as mad (or the writers writing her as mad) because that would’ve taken away her agency. Because Daenerys’ character arc doesn’t deserve an ending equivalent to death by a falling flowerpot. Because, if her sacking of King’s Landing was meant to be the Shock of Season 8, she must retain her agency. It’s shocking because a good person did it. A good person is good only when she has the agency to make terrible mistakes.

So how am I reading Daenerys’ decision to sack King’s Landing? If I were to ignore all inputs outside the show—I don’t know if the showrunners had commented on anything—this is how I would “bridge the gap”, so to speak; how I’d imagine the thoughts running through Daenery’s mind as the bells rang, behind the few seconds the camera focused on Emilia Clark’s face in the show. I believe the series of tragedies Daenerys had suffered (losing Jorah, Missandei, a dragon son) had only made her more determined to wipe out, as Greyworm told Jon, everyone who’d served Cersei. But while this sounded like a simple task, carrying it out was much more complicated. Cersei’s armies were dispersed all over the city; they could easily remove their armour and feign innocence. Moreover, every resident in King’s Landing could be seen as an accomplice to Cersei’s reign; even the people in Flea’s Bottom, like Gendry, used to make weapons for the Lannisters. Were they to be wiped out as well? If not, where to draw the line? This order nonetheless confirmed Daenerys’ world view that the morally corrupt should perish without mercy, and Cersei was, indeed, corruption defined. Daenerys had seen Cersei’s treachery herself, and the sheer scale of it must be as foreign to her as Westeros itself. Her closest friends and followers, Greyworm and Missandei, didn’t even know how to tell a joke—the smallest, most benign form of treachery. Daenerys knew what treachery was, of course, she’d suffered greatly from it, but treachery in the game of thrones was a different beast and she wasn’t yet equipped to handle it, to make correct assessments of the kind of behaviours it’d instigate—unlike Cersei and Tyrion, who as Lannisters had been breathing it in since birth, or Varys, who’d been both an observer of multiple reigns and a ruthless Kingmaker himself. King’s Landing, the city itself, had also signified little but treachery to Daenerys—her father had been murdered there by someone who’d sworn to protect him; men had been sent from there to murder her since she’d been born. 

While Tyrion had told said that Cersei’s armies were serving only out of fear, Daenerys, who’d only had the most faithful / honest armies, the Unsullies and Dothrakis, probably couldn’t truly appreciate what that meant. She had every cause to be terrified then when the bells rang, especially when they rang so early, without her or her army and allies even close to the Red Keep. Ironically, perhaps, her own moral righteousness became her blind spot; she might have assumed Cersei’s forces had something far more sinister waiting for her—because how could they abandon their duties, their queen so easily?

And if they did abandon their duties and their queen so easily, what would stop them from committing the same treachery when Daenerys becomes queen herself? How could she vet the innocent and the treacherous and if she couldn’t—and she couldn’t, not with one dragon, a small army and no geographical advantage—what could she do? What could she do, when she was Daenerys Stormborn, who would never compromise to treachery?

I can see her feeling cornered. I can see her feeling she was left with one option: take the innocents out with the treachery. Do it like removing a tumour. Cut out a ring of good flesh around the bad. 

The ring of good flesh was King’s Landing.

Plausible? Maybe? That tragically, both the rise and fall of Daenerys Targaryen could be attributed to her moral code? That she didn’t lose this game of thrones because she was evil, but because war and politics have always been amoral and she was a misfit? People in Westeros change allegiance all the time; morals are fluid and carry a price tag. Appropriately then, the man who understood and lived by these rules, whose loyalty could always be bought—Bronn—was also the biggest winner of this game of thrones.

I’d say this though:  a plot point as significant, and as close to the finale as the sacking of King’s Landing, shouldn’t require the audience twisting their minds into pretzels to make it feel plausible, and my brain feels a bit pretzly at a moment. No matter what the writers intended, there remained too many holes for the watchers to fill with their imagination. I’ve read some who said the final season was too rushed; I’m not sure that was the issue. The issue, I think, is that even if given enough screen time, the writers didn’t quite know how to drive the characters without the books’ guidance—an issue that had become apparent by Season 6. The last three seasons felt…derivative, like fanfics of the first four. This isn’t a slight (well, not a big one)—Benioff and Weiss had managed what GRRM hasn’t been able to—but I felt a sense that their visions of the world had evolved to conflict with GRRM’s over the course of the show. Meanwhile, they still needed to hit the goal posts GRRM provided, while they wanted to focus on / believe in something else. The result was the later seasons that felt …schizophrenic at times. GoT had highly implausible moments since Season 1, but the first four seasons sold them because the showrunners believed in them. S8 Ep5&6, meanwhile, offered enough for me to logically agree that the sacking of King’s Landing and Daenerys’ downfall can be canon, but not enough for me to believe emotionally because…I didn’t feel the showrunners believed in them. The events felt written to serve a purpose other than storytelling—maybe to match GRRM’s notes, or satisfy the perceived need to shock; in all cases, I felt the hearts of the writers were somewhere else, somewhere perhaps more spectacular than dissecting the motivations of a fallen queen. The shift towards visual storytelling in the later seasons, perhaps to mitigate the difficulty of writing dialogues for an ensemble of deeply complex and intertwined characters, furthered exposed the incoherence of the show’s focus. While I love the visuals, GoT had its origins as a political show and politics is 99% talk. Similarly, the increased reliance on the actors to convey their characters via facial expressions and body language might work for someone like Brienne, who was taciturn and largely consistent personality wise, but insufficient for characters who used talking as a weapon (Tyrion) or underwent major transformations (Daenerys). 

Anyway, back to Dany. If there was one thing I truly, truly dislike about the close of her story arc, it was the very end, when Jon Snow drove that dagger into her. Painfully cliche aside (I’ll leave Cersei’s baby to another day), it also unfairly cemented Daenery’s highly un-rightful place as the villain of the story, given that Jon Snow, the uncontested Good Human of the show, committed the murder. The show pitted two sympathetic characters against each other just to let one … leech the sympathy out of the other, when neither of their characters deserved the treatment (yes, I found this decision to be as unfair to Jon Snow as it was to Daenerys). As much as I had reservations about Daenery’s ability to govern, I never doubted the heart that Jon stabbed, the desire in it to do good for the people. Yes, I said it isn’t enough, and yes, I believe that too inflexible a moral code forcibly imposed upon others can do great damage, but this is very different from saying that Daenerys Stormborn was a villain. Conflating character and ability is human, but I expected this show to know enough nuance to avoid this mistake. Having the heart, the desire to rule well, is a start. A great and important start. A start seen in few others in the whole series. The early seasons of GoT were particularly strong in depicting characters in the grey but Daenerys, sadly, was robbed of that; she swung violently from white to black.

And what was so disappointing is that it needn’t be that way. Daenerys could have caused the destruction to King’s Landing and still be sympathetic. Queen Cersei was still in the Red Keep, and the Wildfires buried by the Mad King remained all over the city. Innocents die in wars, there’s never an exception to that, even if the wars are waged with the best intentions. I’m no show writer, but this is what I could come up with to spare Daenery’s fate as a villain after a few walking trips around my city, while keeping most major plot points intact. Show writers can do (much) better. 

Just for the fun of it, below is the alternative ending for Daenerys I came up with, and I will end my very, very long thesis here :) . Thank you so, so much for reading! ❤️❤️❤️

===

1) Start of the episode. Qyburn teaching his little birds a nursery rhyme about a Mad King and his Wildfires, and an Evil Queen who will set them all burning. He tells them to sing far and wide. (This is just an excuse to get another song from Ramin Djawadi)

2) Long shots of combustibles being laid in the same tunnels Lancel Lannister crawled through back in Season 6 Ep 10, before the explosion of the Sept of Baelor. That 10-minute sequence was so classic that the audience would likely remember the place. Piles of wood connect the stores of barrels that we know contain the Wildfires. Black tar flows down the sewers of the Red Keep, down the alleys in Flea Bottom, slicking everything, staining the innocents there with (Queen Cersei’s) muck. This sequence can be done entirely through visuals.

3) The Bell rings. Daenerys attacks the Red Keep with Dracarys. The tar and wood catch fire and carry the flames to the Wildfires around the city. As Wildfire is Dracarys’ substitute, the two augments each other and the city soon turns into an Inferno. Daenerys watches, horrified and unable to do a thing. The nursery rhyme becomes a prophecy: as much as a Lannister laid the grounds, the Targaryens are solely responsible for the King’s Landing destruction. Woods and tar are, after all, harmless without fire. And Daenerys Stormborn, who swore to protect and liberate the weak, ends up killing more innocents than Cersei ever had. 

4) Tyrion advises Daenerys that for now, she has no choice but to rule by fear. A reign cannot start with apologies, and what good will it do? So Daenerys gives the same speech to her armies on the steps of the ruined Red Keep, but noticeably distraught.

5) Daenerys must also restrain Drogon. She can’t afford him accidentally setting more fires in the city, while her armies scour every tunnel to make sure all Wildfires have been consumed. So the Breaker of Chains is forced to chain down her son, the symbol of her power.

6) Drogon, being intelligent but still a beast, maims Daenerys badly in his struggle to be free. Jon finds Daenerys, but she’s beyond saving. She tells Jon to keep what he saw secret, and if he can’t—she knows he can’t—to please lie for her, for once, that Drogon did it to avenge for the innocents she killed; that Drogon, and their family name he represents, knows justice above the fire and blood. When honest Jon reacts…honestly, she asks him to ask Tyrion for advice. She struggles to stand, says she wants to try the Iron Throne before she goes. She refuses Jon’s help; she walks, head high, blood trailing like a cape behind her, as she crosses the ruins. She won’t make it. Only her finger will get to touch the Iron Throne, as in her prophecy in the House of the Undying. Jon kneels behind her as she falls on her own knees. She will always be his queen. Drogon carries her away.

7) The waiting period can be a mourning period for all who have perished. Tyrion will still recommend Bran to be their King, as his proposal will be accepted as he remains the Hand. Jon would’ve asked Tyrion about the lying, and the issue can be brought up when “A Song of Ice and Fire” is presented in the small council. King Bran can then offer his wisdom as the Three-Eyed Raven, the Living History. What does he think, when he sees both the truth in history and the lies and prophecies told about it, that propel it? Does he approve of them? Disapprove? This will also wrap up the theme of the show, about the stories that make history, the history that makes us. Ser Davos can ask about the legend of Azor Ahai that cost Stannis Baratheon everything. Is it true? Does it matter? Also, how many swords actually make up the Iron Throne? Thousands, as the legends and Daenarys had believed? No more than two hundred, as Little Finger said in Season One? How many more swords have been buried for these thousands or hundreds?

[artycreative-blog]

Top Films, TV and Games 2018

Films

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (10) My one word review for this film was 'Perfection'. I've never in my life see such a perfectly crafted animation film or... film in general, really. Every single shot looked stunning. This, combined with the excellent story and characters, the incredible voice acting, the way they managed to fit seven (SEVEN!) Spider hero characters into it without it feeling crowded, and the amazing Miles Morales origin story means that it has to be my choice for number one film this year.

Mission Impossible Fallout (10) My second only 10/10 rated film this year, the sixth installment of the series was the best yet, an intense rollercoaster ride that left me barely able to breathe. Of course, the set pieces are the most important factor here; the suspense created by them has never been more thrilling. However, I loved the character moments too, particularly the slow but meaningful development between Ethan and Ilsa. I can't imagine how they're going to top this film next time.

Bohemian Rhapsody (9) Biopics are some of my favourite films and rank highly on my top films list on a regular basis (think The Theory of Everything, my top film of 2014). Bohemian Rhapsody was a powerful window into Freddie Mercury's public and private life. The Live Aid scene in particular had me in tears the whole way through, I couldn't have stopped them if I wanted to. It was the perfect culmination to the film. The cast was also amazing, but particularly Rami Malek at Freddie. The way he embodied every aspect of Freddie's personality was amazing to watch and I hope that he gets recognition past the great reviews about his performance.

A Simple Favor (9) This film was wickedly entertaining and all engrossing. I've never seen a mystery quite like it. The advertising leading up to its release was particularly important, enough to entice you without giving anything away. I wasn't surprised about the ending, hence the nine rather than a ten, but I was satisfied. Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in particular gave stand out performances, although I fully endorse the use of Henry Golding as the handsome husband/boyfriend at every opportunity -- he's great.

Crazy Rich Asians (8) Considering I don't have much time to get to the cinema these days, the fact that I saw Crazy Rich Asians three times has to say something! It is without a doubt the most fun film I saw this year. I loved the decadence of it all, from the settings to the grand romance. Of course I appreciated that it was a full Asian cast, as it showed Hollywood that making films based solely around a different culture works, even if it has a Westernized skew to it. But what I really adored was the women in this film, they took center stage, each which different personalities, stories and motives. I'd really love to see more of that in the future.

TV

Altered Carbon (9) I've watched Altered Carbon three times. In a year where I've been short on time and have struggled to watch/play things, this alone should explain why it has taken my number one spot. Science fiction is one of my favourite genres, it has been since I was a kid. I've watched a lot of different sci-fi over the years, but when something really commits to it, even if it makes it complicated, I really love that, particularly if it is based on believable science (like in the Star Trek review). Altered Carbon was an amazing blend of intelligent writing, fantastic acting and a compelling story. A must watch for anyone who enjoys this genre like I do.

Star Trek Discovery (9) Star Trek has taken many forms over the years, but this has to be one of my favourites so far. The way it embraces science makes me giddy with excitement, much like the Martian did back in 2015. They then take this science and weave it into an compelling, sometimes heart-rending story which has proven to be a stellar series of the franchise for me. I particularly love the crew and how different they all are, that diversity in terms of personality is what I strive for in my own writing and I'm so happy to see it here.

Final Space (9) Whew. I did not understand what I was getting myself into when I pressed play on this show on Netflix earlier this year. I watched pretty much the whole season in one day. It was the effed up hilarity of it all that drew me in, but it was the characters and the legitimately emotional journey behind it all that made me stay. I was really impressed with this, I can't wait for more. CHOOKITY!

One Day at a Time (9) If a show can make you cry every episode, it automatically gets high marks. The great thing about One Day at a Time is that it also backs up the powerful, emotional issues it deals with each time with some of the most hilarious jokes week in, week out. The family dynamic is brilliant, Schneider included, and the way they handle the aforementioned issues in a balanced, sensitive way is wonderful. It makes it feel like their family is real, despite the sitcom style, which is so hard to do. I really love it and I'm so looking forward to season three!

GLOW S2 (9) I've never been very good at articulating why I love this show. I mow through every episode I'm given with very little thought as to why. It's incredibly watchable; I think a large part of that is down to the characters and cast, but also the quirkiness of it all. I also find the relationship between Ruth and Sam really compelling, whatever form it takes. I'm still very much looking forward to a third season.

Games

Batman: The Enemy Within (10) I originally gave this game a nine, if memory serves, right after my first play through. However, once I played the other storyline to the game, I saw how damn freakin' good it truly is. For the first time in a Telltale game, I witnessed the devastating effects that my choices could have on the characters, particularly John. Some of the end scenes in both versions are utterly heart wrenching and it shows perfectly the twisted dynamic a hero can have with his villains. I can heartily recommend playing both this game and the first series; if you love Batman, it's so worth your time.

Detroit: Become Human (8) This game is exactly what I needed this year, totally story driven and no more than 12 hours long for a play through. It kept making me want to go back and play more whenever I had time, which a lot of games haven't been able to do the last 12 months. The graphics are incredible and the plot itself can be really engrossing, particularly when you get behind the characters. I really loved Connor, I totally understand why Bryan Dechart has such a huge following now. He had the most compelling story line for me (helped by his interaction with Hank, who was also amazing) and acted the role so well. I have played through the game a second time and was able to follow as many different paths as possible, sometimes even forsaking my own conscience, which is hard for me to do! But I have no motivation to complete all the different paths, which is where I think it falls down for me. If you like games like Telltale games, then I would say this is a good choice for you.

Spider-man (8) The thing I loved most about Spider-man was its story. If you can write something that will make grown men cry on stream, without shame, then I think you're onto something. The great thing about games is that they a) have the time to let you delve into the lives of the characters, which is something that movies struggle to do because they simply can't cover everything they want to, and b) really immerse you into the world so you feel like you're actually Peter Parker, soaring through the streets of Manhattan as you thwip your way from Harlem to the Brooklyn Bridge. The web slinging is particularly good and the fighting is fun too, so long as you remember to dodge. There were some things that niggled at me, made the game not as enjoyable to play as it was to watch, but all in all it was a brilliant game and really did Spider-man justice.

Forza Horizon 4 (8) I remember the showcase for this game at E3 and boy, did it look good. Driving games were something I loved as a kid, albeit they were the likes of Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing. So far as 'adult' racing games go, this one is pretty great. It looks spectacular on a 4K screen using the XBox One X and the racing itself is exhilarating and challenging enough to make you want to work for those wins. I wish that it covered more of Britain, being limited to the countryside and Edinburgh was a bit of a let down, but I understand why they did. This is definitely a game that has more longevity if you play it with friends, although a quick jaunt down the motorway at 200mph every now and again never hurt anyone.

Destiny 2: Forsaken (7.5) Ah, Destiny. I've been playing the game since Vanilla and I can't explain how good it felt back in the beginning. I could grind for hours by myself without a care in the world. Forsaken hasn't quite recaptured this for me, as I still find it hard to play the game by myself. With friends, though, it's a great experience now. We love picking up all the bounties and working towards long-term quests in the evenings and on the weekends, there's plenty of content now like the players wanted. Personally, I wasn't a fan of the story, but that's a personal thing as revenge has never been a thrilling plot line for me, so I lacked the drive to get behind hunting down Uldren. However, the game is still by far the best shooter I own from the point of view of the way it handles and the characters you encounter. I'm very glad I've been able to get back into it with this expansion.

[droneseco]

Minisform U850 Mini-PC Review: a NUC Killer With Outstanding Value and Flexibility

Minisforum U850

9.00 / 10

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

Read More Reviews

There's no better-priced NUC, or NUC-like computer, out there. If you love small form factor computers, or just need to economize on desk space, the U850 is worth checking out. But for those who want a more performant computer, you can get a much better deal by buying a full-sized desktop.

Key Features

Upgradeable

Quadcore CPU

USB-C power

Dual 2.5-inch drive bay

NUC form factor

Mobile processor

Integrated graphics

Specifications

Brand: Minisforum

Graphics: Intel UHD 630

CPU: Intel Core i5-10210U

Storage: 256GB SSD

Ports: HDMI, DV, 3.5mm, 4x USB 3e.1, 2x USB-C 3.1

Pros

Tool-free upgradeability

Lower power footprint

Great value

25-watt TDP

Fast for mobile CPU

Cons

DRAM-less SSD

No online driver support

Hot HDD bay

Not for gaming

CPU not upgradeable

// Bottom var galleryThumbs1 = new Swiper('.gallery-thumbs-1', { spaceBetween: 10, slidesPerView: 10, freeMode: true, watchSlidesVisibility: true, watchSlidesProgress: true, centerInsufficientSlides: true, allowTouchMove: false, preventClicks: false, breakpoints: { 1024: { slidesPerView: 6, } }, }); // Top var galleryTop1 = new Swiper('.gallery-top-1', { spaceBetween: 10, allowTouchMove: false, loop: true, preventClicks: false, breakpoints: { 1024: { allowTouchMove: true, } }, navigation: { nextEl: '.swiper-button-next', prevEl: '.swiper-button-prev', }, thumbs: { swiper: galleryThumbs1 } });

Small-form factor PCs tend to lack features, underperform, and cost a fortune. The Minisforum U850 NUC-sized mini-PC breaks all three rules, delivering a NUC-killing mini-PC for $599. The U850 suffers from a couple of Achilles Heels but its virtues make up for it.

What Is Minisforum?

Minisforum designs a range of small-form-factor computers. Their products get as small as stick-PCs and scale up to NUC-sized computers. They use processors from both AMD and Intel. Most of their computers include the option to upgrade individual components. For example, the U850's RAM can scale up to 64GB and its SSD can go up to 500GB.

Hardware Analysis

To the extent of my knowledge of small, NUC-sized computers, no similarly-sized mini-PC offers the same level of features as the U850. For example, it's common among mini-PCs to cripple integrated graphics with a single SO-DIMM RAM slot. And, at best, you might find a single 2.5-drive bay. Worst of all, the processors usually use a 15-watt wattage limitation and perform like laptops.

The hardware on the Minisforum U850 beats down its NUC-class competition. The U850 may use laptop-class components, but the processor has been configured to run at 25 watts, instead of the lower 15 watts. As far as low-wattage, quadcore, eight-thread processors go, it's performant, snappy, and can handle pretty much any home computing scenario thrown at it.

Specifications and Hardware for Base Model U850

CPU: Intel Comet Lake 14nm 10210U cTDP: 25-watts

GPU: Intel UHD 630

RAM: 16GB DDR4

Storage: 256GB Kingston Design-In NVMe SSD

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro

Dimensions: 127 x 127 x 53.1mm

Wattage consumption: 35-watts maximum; 0.5-watts idle; 13.5-watts average

Power adapter: 65-watt USB-C power adapter

Cost: $599

Video: DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0

Ports: 4x USB-A 3.1, 1GB LAN, 2.5GB LAN, USB-C 3.1, 3.5mm

Security: Kensington lock port

Wireless: Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)

Other: VESA mounting bracket, 100 x 100mm

Weight: 500 grams

Who Is the Minisforum U850 Mini-PC for?

The Minisforum U850 is for Small Form Factor (SFF) enthusiasts who feel dissatisfied with the lack of flexibility in NUC-sized computers. Anyone interested in an Intel NUC needs to take a close look at the U850 because chances are, the U850 will meet your needs for less money.

I don't see any reason to spend more money on a NUC when the U850 is better in every way I could conceive of, except one: the U850 cannot refresh a 4K panel on its HDMI port at 60Hz.

RAID1 and Dual LAN in a Mini-PC

If you want to squeeze the most utility out of the U850's hardware, the two features that jump out are the dual LAN and the dual SATA ports. The dual LAN ports allow it to bridge two network connections, function as a repeater while hooked up to a NAS, and a lot more (the vast majority of PC users will never touch a dual LAN port, by the way).

The dual SATA slots let you use a feature known as Redundant Array of Independent Disks. There are several types of RAID configurations; RAID1 allows for any single drive to fail, without it destroying any data.

Related: What is RAID, and can I use it on my PC?

The U850's ideal usage scenario is probably in an enterprise role, where it would allow two different networks access to a RAID1 network drive. However, it has a lot of other uses aside from enterprise and someone with greater IT experience than I could probably write a book on it.

It's NUC-Sized and VESA Mountable

The U850 is for folks who want a tiny computer. The 127 x 127 x 53.1mm dimensions make it's less than half the size of an ITX PC. As an added bonus, Minisforum includes a VESA-mounting bracket, which lets you screw it onto the back on a television or monitor. Overall, the U850 is designed for keeping your desk clear of a bulky computer and wires.

Good, But Loud Cooling

But with an extra 10-watts of power to dissipate, something had to give. Fortunately, Minisforum chose to beef up the cooling, as well. The fan inside of the U850 is significantly larger than cooling solutions you'd find in a laptop, although still tiny compared to large-sized ATX coolers used in tower PCs.

To test cooling, I disabled all power-saving features using the excellent Throttlestop software. Then I hit the processor with a variety of CPU loads. I'm happy to say that stress testing didn't lead to any CPU overheats. However, even with BD PROCHOT disabled, I could not stop the processor from throttling down to 2GHz.

On the downside, under full load, the cooler can hit 48 decibels, which is moderately loud.

Easy Disassembly

The U850's chassis is designed for disassembly. It's the easiest computer that I've ever torn down. Accessing the inner components just requires pressing down on the lower-left and right sides of the plastic top cover. Removing the top exposes all of the modular components, with the exception of the CPU, which isn't modular.

All of the parts use standard mounting mechanisms and can be swapped out or replaced as easily as with any ATX-sized component. However, Minisforum chose to hot glue the SMA connectors on the Wi-Fi card, which required a little effort to remove.

Energy Efficiency

An advantage of using laptop components is that you get laptop-like efficiency. The overall power footprint of the U850 (with a RAID1 setup) comes in at 35-watts at maximum loads, 13.5-watts at average loads, and 0.5-watts while in suspension.

Benchmarks and Performance

Synthetic benchmarks aren't very accurate and exist for making loose comparisons between processors. More or less, the Comet Lake Core i5-10210U inside offers a significant performance improvement over Intel's older Kaby Lake-R chips, but it's not quite on par with the latest AMD Ryzen mobile processors, even it's still competitive with them.

On the other hand, the Intel UHD 630 is by no means a solid integrated GPU. At best it can play older games at 1080p, with playable frame rates. As mentioned earlier, the U850's design focuses on low-power consumption and not performance. Definitely not gaming performance.

Kingston Design-In SSD: Benchmark and Performance

The 256GB Kingston Design-In SSD (model #OM8PDP3256B-A01) inside of the U850 includes NVMe 1.3, an SLC cache, 3D TLC NAND, and a Phison controller (model# PHA-PS5013-E13-31). In other words, it's a budget-class, DRAM-less drive. While not as performant as Samsung's high-end segment, it's a solid drive.

Kingston's Design-In product line tailors to manufacturers, not customers. As a result, they don't hand out very many firmware updates. So if any bugs show up down the line, it's up to Minisforum to push out the firmware update, not Kingston.

Kingston does provide a three-year warranty on its drives, which is unusual for OEM-supplied components. Unfortunately, like most SSD warranties, the warranty expires if you write too much data to the drive or three years elapse, whichever comes first.

I wish that Minisforum would sell a barebones version of their U850, which would allow you to throw in a DRAM-equipped SSD. But even with a lower-tier drive, the U850 still offers better value compared to NUCs.

Performance CPU and GPU

I used PassMark's bench-test software to test the Intel Core i5-10210U processor. PassMark isn't the most accurate of tests, but it does a good job of determining the relative performance of a processor.

PassMark gave the CPU a score of 7005.6 putting it roughly 20% ahead of the Kaby Lake-R mobile processor inside of my laptop. Despite Intel using the same basic 14nm technology node, the Core i5-10210U is still competitive with other mobile processors, possibly because the U850 increases its TDP to 25-watts.

Again, PassMark's scoring system doesn't mean that the U850 offers 20% greater speed. It's just 20% faster on a synthetic benchmark. The Jetstream 2 benchmark shows a similar performance difference.

Minisform U850 RAID1 With 2x 2.5-Inch HDDs

I can confirm that RAID1 works and performs as it should with two 2.5-inch hard disc drives (HDD) attached. The U850 doesn't include any special RAID levels. You must choose between using the drives as just a bunch of disks (JBOD) or as a mirrored array, in which you get half the storage capacity in exchange for redundancy.

The bottom drive usually hovered around 33-34C with the top drive hitting 32-33C. Running a sustained transfer, the real-world file-transfer speeds for writes hit 85MB/s and reads at 50MB/s. The drives reached 53 and 55C respectively after 30 minutes and both were at 60C after 1 hour of sustained transfer, which is far outside of a platter-based HDD's operating temperatures.

Most HDDs have a maximum operating temperature of 50C. Given that operating a computer component well over its design threshold is a disaster waiting to happen, I'd recommend using SSDs instead of HDDs, which can safely run at up to 70C.

RAID1 Benchmark

The synthetic benchmark speeds are approximately equal to the maximum speeds offered by 5400RPM HDD drives. In other words, there doesn't appear to be any significant bottleneck in the U850 for managing two SATA drives in a RAID1 array.

CPU Temperatures

SFF computers pack a lot of hardware into as tiny a space as possible. Unfortunately, that oftentimes means higher temperatures for internal components. Higher component temperatures can spell an early doom for the most sensitive components of a computer by prematurely aging silicon.

The U850, however, throttles its CPU frequency at around 85C. You shouldn't experience any issues with CPU temperature, even with heavy workloads.

Drive Temperatures Under CPU Load

The U850 does not use direct cooling on its drive bay. That means sustained writes to the drives will result in overheating. However, a question you might have is whether or not a high-CPU load will overheat the 2.5-inch drives. In short, heavy CPU loads won't overheat the 2.5-inch drives.

I ran the HDD drives up to 50C and 47C respectively and then blasted the processor with a sustained Prime95 torture test, which generates a lot of heat. As you can see from the graph above, as the CPU fan increased in speed, the 2.5-inch drives decreased in temperature. While the air circulation from the heat-sink fan assembly does not touch the drive bay, it does somehow manage to reduce the temperatures.

Drive temperatures did slowly creep up over time, but they eventually leveled off well below their maximum operating temperature.

Linux Compatibility

While its mainboard is compatible with Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS, the U850's Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 network card won't work out-the-box with either version.

However, even though the BIOS/UEFI settings aren't accessible, Intel's VT-d setting is turned on by default (although not accessible) so running Linux virtual machines isn't a problem.

The Minisforum U850 Problems

The U850 isn't perfect.

HDD Drives May Overheat

As mentioned earlier, long file transfers cause the 2.5-inch drives to overheat, hitting 60C after an hour of sustained transfer; this means you either need two SSDs in a RAID1 configuration or you should avoid using HDD drives for sustained transfers.

Windows 10 Recovery Partition Does Work

A big potential issue is that the recovery partition doesn't work. I'm not sure whether this is a problem with the unit I tested or whether something went wrong at the manufacturing facility. But if you need to boot from the recovery partition, it might not work. However, you can always create your own bootable Windows 10 recovery drive.

Intel AX200 Wireless Adapter Doesn't Automatically Work With Linux

The Intel AX200 Wi-Fi adapter is not, out-of-the-box compatible with Linux (of any kind that I could find) and requires a lot of additional work to get functional.

Custom Drivers Not Available Online

Because of the dysfunctional recovery partition, if you ever reset the computer, you'll need to acquire the drives somehow. And, unfortunately, the firmware and drivers were not made available online at the time of review.

You can email Minisforum's customer support, though. They respond to inquiries, usually, within 24-hours. But they have yet to respond to my last request for support.

Can't Change BIOS/UEFI Settings

The BIOS settings available are limited to setting an administrator password or changing the boot medium. It's not possible to change very many settings, including configurable TDP.

No 60Hz at 4K Resolutions on HDMI Port

The U850's Intel UHD 630 does not do 4K at 60Hz over HDMI. It can do 4K over DisplayPort at 60Hz, however.

No Thunderbolt 3

The USB Type-C (USB-C) port doesn't offer Thunderbolt 3 compatibility, which limits its transfer speed to 2.5GB/second. Thunderbolt 3 would have doubled the transfer speeds.

Should You Buy the Minisforum U850 Mini-PC?

The Minisforum U850 offers a similar size as a NUC but with a much wider range of uses and much higher value. While it's expensive, particularly compared to a laptop or desktop computer, it's also versatile and packed to the heat vents with features.

To my knowledge, there's no better-priced NUC, or NUC-like computer, out there. If you love small form factor computers, or just need to economize on desk space, the U850 is worth checking out. But for those who want a more performant computer, you can get a much better deal by buying a full-sized desktop.

Minisform U850 Mini-PC Review: a NUC Killer With Outstanding Value and Flexibility published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

[officialotakudome]

New Post has been published on Otaku Dome | The Latest News In Anime, Manga, Gaming, And More

New Post has been published on https://otakudome.com/reviews/marvels-spider-man-miles-morales-review/

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Review

The follow-up to 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man arrives with a new lead in Harlem Spider-Man Miles Morales. Taking place a year and a half following the events of the first game, Miles is still struggling to come into his own as The Friendly Neighborhood Spider. Peter is trying to train him while protecting his own backyard in New York City. After dealing with a disastrous encounter with Rhino, Peter entrusts Miles as the sole Spider-Man of New York as he and MJ go out of country on business. Miles must now find his path as Spider-Man without his mentor and a little help from best friend Ganke Lee.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a 2020 action-adventure game, it is developed by Insomniac and published by Playstation Studios. It is available exclusively on Playstation 4 and Playstation 5.

Editor’s Note: This review contains near complete to complete spoilers for the story of Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Our review of the original Marvel’s Spider-Man and its DLC can be viewed at these links 1, 2, 3.

Playstation’s Spider-Man returns with a new entry that bridges the first game and eventual Spider-Man 2 starring 2011’s Miles Morales.

Two years since the initial launch of universally acclaimed Marvel’s Spider-Man comes Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. As the name suggests the game picks up where the initial left us with Miles Morales having his own run in with a power giving spider bite. Though Miles and Peter have mostly similar spider based powers, Miles has his own original Spidey flair to help him stand out such as having the ability to create an electromagnetic field to get the jump on multiple enemies, his own unique tech and gear compared to Peter’s, and even the ability to turn invisible for a short period of time.

Miles is (mostly) on his own in Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

THE GOOD: 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man was a surprise in such a multitude of ways. For one, it was a video game title taking on the form of a beloved fictional character, it was based on a comic book/superhero, and it was a licensed video game. Granted licensed gaming had made a bit of a quality comeback thanks to titles like the Batman: Arkham series, and even some Transformers titles released by Activision just to name a couple. But there was always room for worry in the back of fans’ minds that some kind of controversy was just around the corner of what looked like “a sure thing, and Square Enix dealing with their own troubles following the release of The Avengers this distant worry will always have an unfortunate place in licensed gaming. However Marvel’s Spider-Man ended up being a fantastic game thanks to the renown track record of developer Insomniac. Having tackled several genre from dozens of IP the studio has shown time and time again that they just know how to build good games. Though that’s the core issue with taking on something like a licensed game for the first time or anything for the first time; there’s always room for error. Thankfully, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is not that at least as far as the story. character development, and most of the gameplay is concerned.

Miles Morales grows as a human, man, and hero in Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales opens up with Peter Parker and Miles preparing to protect a prison cargo hosting those responsible for the final events of the original game. After struggling to defeat Rhino and Peter having been beaten Miles raises his courage to fight him lone unlocking a new power in the process aiding in Rhino’s defeat impressing Roxxon R&D Director Simon Krieger. Peter informs Miles that he and Mary Jane will be overseas away on business for several weeks leaving the safety of New York mostly on him. Lacking confidence Peter tells Miles to believe in himself and if he truly needs him he’s there. As Peter departs Miles contests with a new tech savvy gang known as The Underground which seems to be involved in a power struggle against Roxxon’s military grade forces. Roxxon is in the middle of releasing a brand new energy source known as Nuform, but the concoction is dangerous to humans causing them terminal illness. After an initial run in with The Underground, Miles returns home with whom best friend Ganke is currently residing as his parents go on vacation. Miles’ old childhood friend Phin makes a surprise visit to Harlem. Miles asks about her brother Rick who they both looked up to, but she unexpectedly dodges the question. During a rally for Miles’ mother Rio who’s campaigning for Mayor of Harlem The Underground attacks a Roxxon convoy carrying a literal truckload of Nuform on a bridge. During a fight with members of the gang that leads to a battle with The Underground’s head of command The Tinkerer, Miles accidentally learns that it’s Phin when his electric powers causes her armor to malfunction which was shielding her face. Phin retaliates as Miles’ electric powers go out of control sending him into the truck containing Nuform ensuing an enormous explosion that destroys a large portion of the bridge. Roxxon reinforcements arrive and they threaten Miles after he saves citizens from the bridge shocking bystanders. As they’re about to kill a cooperating Miles he accidentally unlocks a new ability that allows him momentary invisibility giving him an opening to escape.

Tweaked gameplay mechanics and it’s story idea give us a potential glimpse in what’s to come for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

While internally battling with what to do in regards to Phin and her connection to The Underground, Miles begins to reconnect with his recently estranged Uncle Aaron who had been emotionally abandoned by the family for unknown reasons. This inadvertently reveals his identity as the Harlem Spider-Man to Aaron and Miles through searching his late father Jefferson’s old police files discovers that Aaron is the Prowler a legendary super enhanced criminal. Revealing the reason behind the family abandoning him, after this discovery Miles has resolve to try to convince Phin to stop what she’s doing with The Underground having earlier learned of Krieger being responsible for the death of her brother Rick who worked with him on Nuform. The energy source making him and his team terminally ill killing the latter, though Rick died trying to protect Phin from an incident at Krieger’s lab. After successfully infiltrating The Underground as himself, Miles learns that Phin plans to blow up Roxxon HQ, but is unaware of the severity of the impact which will destroy New York and much of the surrounding area. Miles reveals his identity to Phin after a pursuit and she reluctantly works with him only for the two to be captured by Krieger. After their escape following a battle with a Roxon tech enhanced Rhino, Phin now consumed with rage sees Miles as her enemy like Krieger and Roxxon & continues forward with her plan threatening his life if he tries to stop her again. Having bonded from a prior Roxxon infiltration, Miles learns that Aaron has returned as the Prowler and is captured by him. The two fight after Aaron fails to convince him to stop worrying about New York and to only focus on himself. Miles beats him and continues his chase of Phin while evacuating the city with Ganke and his mom once he tells them both everything that happened. A war breaks out between The Underground & Roxxon in Harlem, but Miles and a reformed Prowler stops them. Miles finds Phin at the science museum that held their award winning project which she plans to use to aide the explosion plan as an emotional blow to Miles. The two fight as Miles tries to explain the issue surrounding her plan but she refuses to listen. As the explosion begins Phin finally realizes that Miles was right. but he’s injured from some of the impact. Phin helps him absorb the Nuform. but Miles can’t contain it for long which endangers Harlem from the blast release. Phin uses Underground tech to fly Miles into the sky so he can release the blast safely. but at the cost of her own life. Miles’ identity is revealed to the citizens of Harlem, but they shield him from being shown on TV as a news crew shows. He places his and Phin’s award on their favorite church as a tribute. Now brimming with confidence as a hero a returned Peter is proud of all that Miles has accomplished while he was away. Norman Osborn demands that his son Harry be “awoken” despite warnings from Curt Connors in an end credits scene.

Miles Morales has moments where he can be playable as a citizen of Harlem.

If you were one of the lucky few that managed to come into possession of a Playstation 5 and an even luckier few who as of yet have not experienced the 2018 Spider-Man entry, first I commend & envy you, second I highly suggest playing ‘Miles Morales’ after a playthrough of the remaster. The unique perspectives of both titles combined in a single sitting make the $70 price tag more than worth it (not that I’m all too thrilled about a price hike for games). And ya know the 4K, ray tracing, whatever I guess that too. Anyways, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is from a basics standpoint a lot like the original. You’ve got the Arkham like combat, the fantastic swinging, and the finishers. Just like in the last game there’s a skill tree which you use to upgrade Miles with skill points. These range from attack, tech, and support skills such as increased invisibility meters and finisher storage counts. Miles’s electric venom powers add solid combo chains for a higher score and opportunity to gain finishers for tougher enemies. Eventually you can unlock an explosive form of the attack which is great for dispersing large groups of enemies. You’ll use tech for support and to get the jump in enemies like before, but Miles has unique tech like electric bombs which can stick to electric panels and if you know how to use them they can act as great distractions that lead to a large deal of damage to several enemies.

The Tinkerer threatens all of New York in her quest to end Roxxon.

Side quests return with most of it being randomized events spread throughout the world map and some minimal story based events. The “defeat enemy base here” side quests return just skinned with The Underground and Roxxon. New to the game are the scavenger hunt and time capsule quests which have you finding mementos left behind by Miles’ late father Jefferson and his friend Phin. Also new are the audio tunes which Miles’ Uncle Aaron tasks him with finding to complete a track he and his father were working on together using the sounds of New York for the song. Some quests will unlock Miles unique skills or costumes in the game to dress the Harlem Spider-Man as you see fit.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales continues the growth of two young superheroes sharing the same title.

THE BAD: An unfortunate setback to Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is that it often times feels a little too close to Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse story wise. It’s the curse of origin stories, odds are the origin has already been told and there isn’t much you can do to differentiate it from it’s core. There’s a handful of glitches present at least on the PS4 version. One I experienced in particular was during the mission where Miles had to restore power to his apartment complex. A bug prevented me from completing the mission and I was stuck there wondering what the hell was happening for over an hour. So far it’s the only major bug I’ve experienced, though others have reported more.

Like Peter before him Miles struggles with balancing his hero/citizen life in Harlem, New York.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a excellent appetizer to the upcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Keeping what made the original special all while giving itself a way to standout is always the way to go with sequels such as these and ‘Miles Morales’ more than delivers on that end. While shorter than the original game the quality isn’t effected by the bit sized entertainment. I played on the second hardest difficulty of the game Spectacular and was able to clock in about fifteen to twenty hours of play which is slightly more than similar title Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. The sheer jump in a quality gaming experience from the spin-off even with it’s limited time left me craving for more of Insomniac’s Peter Parker and Miles Morales.

[davidraudalesuk]

Panasonic FZ1000 TRY IT OUT

It's not often that a camera comes along and totally shakes things up. We're not referring to the Panasonic FZ1000, though. It was the Sony RX10 that broke the mould for bridge cameras. Its large 1in sensor has over four times the surface area of the 1/2.3in sensors used in most bridge cameras, with an equivalent boost to image quality. Its constant f/2.8 aperture lens raised quality in low light even further. With breathtaking performance and luxurious design, it fully justified its £949 launch price.

Sensor sizes and apertures aren't the first things most people check when shopping for a camera, though. The RX10's 8.3x zoom range gives a fair amount of flexibility but it isn't what people expect from a bridge camera.

Panasonic Lumix Bridge Camera Expert DMC-FZ1000EF (Large 1 Inch 20 MP Sensor, 16x Zoom LEICA F2.8-4.0, OLED Viewfinder, Swivel Screen, 4K Video, Stabilised) Black - French Version

£510.65

Buy now

The Panasonic FZ1000 is very similar to the RX10 but arrives with an immediate advantage with its 16x (25-400mm) zoom range. That's still modest compared to the 50x and 60x zooms doing the rounds these days. We find focal lengths beyond 600mm quite unwieldy, though, as it becomes tricky to frame subjects. 25-400mm is a versatile, highly practical zoom range.

The FZ1000's sensor has the same 1in size and 20-megapixel resolution as the Sony RX10's – most likely it's the same sensor. However, unlike the RX10's constant f/2.8 aperture, the FZ1000 manages f/2.8 for wide-angle but closes down to f/4 by 170mm and stays there all the way to 400mm. f/4 is still bright for a bridge camera, but it captures half as much light as f/2.8

Both cameras are substantial, weighty affairs, but the plastic FZ1000 can't match the luxury of the magnesium alloy RX10. It lacks the RX10's top-mounted screen for relaying settings and its dedicated exposure compensation dial. It includes a drive mode dial, though, giving quick access to continuous shooting, the self-timer, exposure bracketing and time-lapse capture. There's no headphone socket and no neutral-density (ND) filter, but the lens has a 62mm thread to attach filters. Both cameras have Wi-Fi with NFC, but the FZ1000's accompanying iOS and Android apps provide far more comprehensive remote control facilities than Sony's apps.

Samsung's New Galaxy Folds Are Getting Negative Reviews

video playing

Samsung's New Galaxy Folds Are Getting...

Michael Kors Access Runway Smartwatch...

Despite Bad Reviews, Millions Are Playing...

IPad Pro Reviews Are Rolling In

Privacy Expert Resigns, Calls Alphabet-Backed...

Video Smart Player

invented by

Digiteka

A lens ring alternates between focus and zoom duties via a switch on the lens barrel. However, this switch and another for optical stabilisation are too easy to knock by accident. Otherwise, the controls are nicely laid out, with labelled buttons for the most commonly used functions and various customisable Fn buttons. There's a manual focus switch on the back of the camera, plus a command dial that is pushed inwards to cycle through exposure-related controls.

Buy now from John Lewis & Partners

Both cameras use the same 2.4-million dot electronic viewfinder, which compares well for size and detail with a full-frame SLR's optical viewfinder. They both have high-resolution 3in LCD screens, too. The FZ1000's screen is hinged at the side, which allows for a greater range of angles than the RX10's tilting screen. Neither camera's screen is touch-sensitive, but that's particularly disappointing in the FZ1000 considering how effectively various other Panasonic cameras use their touchscreens.

The RX10 was astonishingly quick in our tests. The FZ1000 is even quicker. It powered up and captured a photo in under a second, and took just 0.3 seconds between shots – one of the fastest we've ever seen. This was thanks in part to spectacular autofocus performance, typically taking a tenth of a second between pressing the shutter button and capturing a shot. Continuous performance didn't hit the claimed 12fps speed in our tests, but 9.5fps for 43 frames, slowing to around 1.2fps, is nevertheless an outstanding result. Even more impressive was its ability to shoot at 7.3fps with continuous autofocus. This is a massive improvement on the RX10's 1.4fps performance in the same test. RAW shooting was at 9fps, slowing to 1.4fps after 12 frames.

Autofocus is also extremely sophisticated. The face detection mode zones in on the eyes to ensure they're pin sharp when there's a shallow depth of field. A Custom Multi mode lets the focus area be defined as a horizontal or vertical line or even a freely assignable array on a 7x7 grid. The 1-Area mode can place the autofocus area anywhere in the frame, with a freely adjustable size ranging from a tiny square to virtually the full height of the frame.

[wingedashley]

Falling for you

(Notes: This fic is 4K words long. Shoutout to @myrastuff for helping with editing, and for creating this superhero AU in the first place.)

Alice Song woke to the soft beeping of her watch’s alarm.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She’d fallen asleep resting her head against the window by her seat, and on any other day the view would’ve taken her breath away. Cruising 85 kilometers above the ground, the shuttle just barely skimmed the edges of outer space. So close to the Kármán line, the upper half of the sky was black as night despite the harsh glare of the sun. She could see the curvature of the Earth dipping into every horizon.

But today wasn’t about sightseeing. She had a job to do.

She shifted in her seat, straightening her back as she stretched her arms and legs. The shuttle’s interior was dark and quiet, sparse but still surprisingly cosy. Her mid-flight nap hadn’t left her cramped and sore like on a regular airplane, where the upholstered seats weren’t designer-made for style and comfort. The soft hum of the shuttle’s engines reverberated through the small space, its automated lights still calibrated for broad daylight. She smiled. That’s what you got for flying without a human pilot, she supposed.

As she stretched, a holographic window opened up a few feet from her face, projected from the shuttle’s ceiling. The plane’s soft spoken AI chimed through the speakers.

“Incoming call from-”

“Put her through.”

It would take a few seconds for the call to connect, enough time to freshen up. After all, it wouldn’t help to give Juliet the wrong impression. With practiced ease, she detached her brain’s chronology from the rest of her body and compressed it, accelerating her mind’s eye in tandem to gloss over the span. She blinked, and blinked again.

By the time Juliet’s office sprang into view before her, she’d been awake for hours.

By the time Dr. Juliet Godsmith extricated herself from the ongoing soiree, the sun had started to set on the horizon. She breathed a sigh of relief as she stalked through the labyrinthine halls of the company office towards her private lab, the click-clack of her cane slowly drowning out the sounds of laughter and music from somewhere behind her.

Of all the times for a crisis like this to happen, it had to happen now. She should have been handling this herself; her mistake, her neck on the line to fix it. But that would put the whole company on the line in the process, and probably end up getting her killed as the icing on that cake. It had to be Song, fighting her battles and saving the day. A proper superhero, for all she seemed set on denying it. Her plan was ludicrous, but it was the best one that either of them had.

By the time she made it to her office she was already breathing heavily, exhaling sharply as the door slid closed with deceptive softness. “Security level to maximum, Aurora,” she spoke to the AI as she settled herself in, resting her cane against the desk as a dozen holographic displays opened in a panoramic array before her. “Run this operation on the burner rig, I want all records wiped as clean as we can get them.”

“Yes, doctor Godsmith.” The AI affirmed it had completed the action with a short, mechanical chirp.

The overhead lights came on gradually, replacing the dimming daylight from the floor-to-ceiling one-way windows with her own perfectly replicated blend of artificial sun. The tender reds and oranges of twilight mixed with the artificial afternoon to cast her office in a riot of warm colours. All of which stood in remarkable contrast to the shadowy shuttle camera feed projected onto the central display before her.

Song was brooding in the passenger seat. Piercing blue eyes glared out at the sky below, her pitch black hair blending into the darkness behind her. Gone was her cocksure grin, the happy spark behind a perennial smile. For all her too-young-to-die posturing, she looked very… mortal. Juliet sighed.

“Aurora, add reminder for tomorrow, 9 am. Review personal privacy filters on camera AI, update recognition algorithm.”

“Yes, doctor Godsmith.”

She closed the feed with a wave of her hand, leaning back into the oversized office chair. Song did this every few weeks, there was no need to feel this nervous.

If she had any more time… well, it didn’t matter. There wasn’t any time left at all.

She opened a call to the shuttle, clasping her hands before her and leaning forward on her elbows. She smiled, and it didn’t feel all that fake at all.

Juliet’s face popped onto the stream, all prim and cunning and perfect. She was wearing a full-length sequined gown, and a smug little half-smile that told Alice she’d invented something that would disrupt another million-dollar industry… or impressed another supermodel.

Let’s not think about that.

“Party went well, I take it?” said Alice.

“Is going well, I hope. We’d better make this fast, or they’ll be fresh out of hors d’oeuvres before I get back.” Juliet’s smile widened into a grin as she leaned back in her throne-like chair, tapping on a keyboard off screen. “Are you ready?”

“Born ready.” Alice grinned. She stood from her seat, stepping closer to the open space by the bay doors to begin her warm up routine. The holographic window followed her… not that she minded. It wasn’t every day that she got to do calisthenics in a skin-tight plugsuit, let alone in front of little miss Stark herself.

Juliet, for her part, seemed far more interested in some readouts floating in her side screens. Poo. “On an unrelated note, I took your request for swim goggles and whipped up something a bit more… fashionable.”

Alice could hear the clack of manicured nails on a keyboard as a hidden compartment opened in the wall with a pneumatic hiss. It was a visor, a single ear-to-ear screen designed to fit across the bridge of her nose, between two large over-the-ear headphone pieces held together by a strap. Same colour and size as the one Juliet wore, except for the ear covers. Fashionable, indeed. She lifted it from the compartment, pulling it over her head to adjust it in place on her face. She smiled, it still had that heady newly-replicated smell.

Whipped up indeed.

Juliet piped up, directly in her ears this time. “If you do find a way to break this one, could you try to bring it back in one piece? I could use the test data. It’s hard enough building a sensor suite that can survive the G forces you put out, let alone one that can wirelessly communicate through all your… temporal folding.”

Alice had to laugh. Juliet always made it sound so frightfully gauche. The visor’s insides lit up after a quick boot sequence, mapping an augmented reality display into the shuttle around her. Her eyes flicked across the visual keyboard as she filled in her login details.

“And what about my… other request?”

With the clack of a keyboard through the visor comm, a second compartment (how many did this damn shuttle have?) opened behind her. Alice turned to look at it, and stopped. She stepped up to it with more than a little trepidation, before pulling out a device she’d only seen on TV. Modelled in museums.

“Really, I should be making you something custom-fitted, but it’s been years since I played with this sort of tech and I was having difficulty with the…” Juliet cut herself off ahead of the technical explanation, conscious of the time. “Anyways, it was easier to convince a few world governments and one admiral that they owed me a favour. I hope you don’t mind something secondhand.”

It was a smooth disc of chrome, with a series of glowing blue rings embedded inside. Like a comic-book arc reactor. Leather straps hung from its sides, a surprisingly oldschool harness for such an incredible piece of technology. Courtesy of its last user, she supposed.

The visor mistook her hesitance for confusion, and layered diagnostic data over the machine:

97% MATCH CERTAINTY: Prototype Soltech egomorphic field reservoir. Last seen…

She dismissed the window. Impulse’s field projector, custom built by Dr. Godsmith herself. She squelched the automatic pang of jealousy.

The device was synonymous with the late superhero, and ever since she’d inherited his powers she’d always wondered when she’d get her hands on something like it. Even now, held at arm’s length, she could feel her field slipping and sinking into the device. Filling and feeling it out like it was meeting an old friend.

She shivered.

“It’s… thank you, Juliet,” she muttered, before slipping it onto her back and tightening the straps around her chest. Impulse always wore the damn thing on his chest, and it certainly made for a pretty striking heroic silhouette. But for the next 30 minutes, the less blinking lights she had pointing forward, the better.

Besides, it clearly wasn’t designed to fit across breasts.

It normally took a bit of effort to stretch her field to something new and foreign on her person. It was still licking at her visor, assimilating the device over long minutes. But the ring pulled at her, drawing her aura into it like a black hole, twisting and coiling it around its core. She stepped up to the starboard bay doors, stretching her face in a mock yawn as she tested the airtight seal around the visor’s screen.

“Song…” The inventor’s voice wavered for a moment, until she restarted with more conviction. “Alice. You know you don’t have to do this alone. It’s the best plan we have now, but that doesn’t mean it’s the optimal solution. We can figure something else out, I’ll handle any fallout. I’ve dealt with worse.”

Alice looked down at her feet, and saw the Earth projected below the shuttle’s floor on her aug display. Drexler’s lab was marked on the ground below, to her left, along with the curving ballistic trajectory of her projected route onto the site.

“Me going in alone gives you the highest plausible deniability, and I can improvise a high speed exit strategy without worrying about anyone else slowing me down. Going now means we can solve this before it becomes an international crisis.”

Alice looked forward, staring through the doors at the void beyond. She grimaced.

“And of course you’ve dealt with worse. We wouldn’t have powers if we hadn’t dealt with worse…” Her voice faltered. “… It doesn’t change a damn thing.”

I couldn’t be there for you then. But I sure as hell can be there for you now.

She could practically hear Juliet smile.

“Fine.” said Juliet. “Though I have to ask, when did you become an expert in breaking into secure military facilities?”

“Since when did you start building tech that could end the world if it fell into the wrong hands?”

“Mmm, touché.”

They faded into a companionable silence, the visor’s clock ticking down the final few seconds before the shuttle arrived at the drop window. She briefly considered leaving her now-obsolete watch behind, but decided against it. As much as she’d fought to not do the jump in a bloody space suit to keep her weight down, a few grams wouldn’t kill her.

And, well… she ran a thumb over its screen nervously. The thought of being without a working timepiece was too difficult to bear. Never again.

“Alright,” Juliet’s voice through the visor broke the silence, “it’s showtime.”

The bay doors flashed green as they waited for Alice’s signal. She checked her harness, flexed her fingers in her suit. Her visor was comfortably saturated in her field at this point, and it had completed the software handshake with the projector on her back. Which, in turn, had finished absorbing as much of her field as it was able. Ideally, optimally, she’d want to hyperventilate before this next bit… but it really wasn’t all that necessary.

Besides, in the off chance that she actually died, she really didn’t want that to be Juliet’s final memories of her. She smirked.

Taking a few deep breaths, she hit the bay door controls. She made sure to exhale sharply as the shuttle’s interior explosively decompressed. As much as she’d have loved to hold her breath, the vacuum would’ve ripped it right out of her chest anyway. She felt her saliva bubble away as the insides of her mouth froze.

To her pleasant surprise, her ears didn’t so much as pop. Thank you, Juliet.

She stepped forward, to the lip of the void. She felt her lungs and heart slow, her power deftly scaling back the speed of her metabolic processes in tandem with her mammalian diving reflex. Her eyes drooped, arms spread wide by her side, as she fell forward into the cold sky beyond.

Juliet tapped her fingers against the desk in nervous anticipation. Now began the wait.

At Song’s altitude, she’d take almost 10 minutes to reach the lab. Her desk’s holographics were dominated by a volumetric display of the atmosphere between the shuttle and the landing zone, Song just a blip on a parabolic track. A side screen showed a camera feed of her receding further and further away from the shuttle.

Juliet clenched her teeth. Any lower, and the spaceplane would drop out of the ionosphere and risk detection. Song was plummeting into this absurd, half-formed plan at terminal velocity, completely alone.

She glanced at another side screen, the internal feed from Song’s visor. It depicted a sharp cross section of the girl’s face: her unfocused blue eyes. Her fingers tapped harder, she bit her lip.

Sod it.

“Aurora, hook me into the company satellite mainframe.” It barely took her a minute to coordinate every Solnet satellite in the hemisphere to train their sensors on the girl. Her windows shifted as a new volumetric display took center stage, a perfectly triangulated 3D reconstruction of Song in free fall. She’d have to scrub a lot of mainframes after this whole mess was over.

She looked… angelic.

Without an atmosphere in the way, the sun burned bright on her skin. Her hair floated in a soft wave behind her, utterly ethereal. And oh god, her in that suit… Juliet tore her eyes away, flushed. Form fitting, ideal for speed, of course Song would insist on it. Impulse always had, and Juliet was starting to realize what his legions of fans had seen in the damned thing. Thank you, aerodynamics.

Wait.

She snapped her focus back to the visor’s screen. Song’s eyes weren’t unfocused anymore. They were tracking something on the ground below with the focus of a hawk.

“What do you see?”

Juliet’s voice felt tinny and distant in Alice’s ears. She scanned the ground again, straining her eyes through her torpor.

Shit.

In lieu of trying to type out a text message with her eyes, she fragmented a new timestream for her visor and carefully decelerated it. Show, don’t tell: the slower anything moved in relation to normal time, the faster the subjective frequency of any waves. All she had to do was pull the visor’s cameras down the EM spectrum juust far enough to-

“Oh,” said the voice in her ear.

Song’s eyes were incredible, even by metahuman standards. They were one of the many adaptations her body had been pushed through to adopt Impulse’s powers. She could see radiation ranging from gamma rays all the way down to, say, radio waves.

There were three radar installations below her, ringing Drexler’s lab. Scratch that, four. She could maybe risk falling past one. But with that many triangulating together, probably on high alert, she didn’t stand a chance. And that wasn’t even the worst part.

“They’re SAM sites. Surface to air missiles. You could probably take one direct hit with that projector online, but you can’t take four.” A pause, an intake of breath, “I’m pulling the plug. We’re aborting the mission.”

Juliet sounded panicked. Which made sense, there wasn’t really an exit strategy for this leg of the mission. If Alice had to guess, Juliet would force the shuttle out of its thermosphere cover and probably risk the world’s most one-sided dogfight to buy her a few minutes.

Alice grimaced. Not if she had something to say about it.

She splayed her arms and legs out in a spread eagle, before reaching out to the field enveloping her body to clock it down.

Time slowed. Every nerve, every atom throttling to a crawl. The world around her exploded into blinding blues and purples as high frequency light overloaded her sluggish retinas. She felt warm, the air spiking in subjective heat and pressure to her slowed skin. She felt her stomach sink as her drop to Earth suddenly accelerated. A kinematic illusion, her brain playing catch up with her subjectively faster trajectory.

But for all the things that sped up around her, gravity did not.

The earth spun beneath her, far faster than it ever should. But she still fell with the force, and speed, of a single G, relative to her own pocket of time. Her visor struggled for a long second to recalculate her new trajectory… one that plateaued over the lab to land in the ocean well beyond it. Her face broke into a smug grin with the sharp intake of breath from the other end of the com.

“Well then. That’s a neat trick. Didn’t realize you could slow your fall like that.” Alice listened in a happy daze; Juliet’s voice was wonderfully, gloriously, legible. No speed up at all. Somehow, the inventor had built a machine that could package her voice perfectly across compressed time. She always hated having to keep her auditory nerves running at a different rate than the rest of her, it was such a debilitating experience.

With the boosted atmospheric pressure, she decided to finally open her mouth and inhale a few, deep breaths. Some of that daze was feeling a bit too literal.

Juliet was speaking again. Blinking the fog away from her mind, she tried to pick up the thread of the conversation she’d lost. Audio compensation or not, there was no fixing the fact that Juliet was literally in a faster timestream than her. Her messages came thick and fast. Something about the view being spectacular?

“- will bring the shuttle around and pick you up from your new landing zone. I trust that you can swim.”

She almost rolled her eyes, until Juliet paused, left her hanging on her words like she hung in the air. Even with her mind running a bit faster than the rest of her body, a second of silence was a worryingly long gap in realtime.

“…Don’t worry about Drexler, or the transponder. Don’t worry about diplomatic incidents. Just come back safe, Song.”

Practically a whisper, it almost felt like an admission. To what, she didn’t dare guess. She had to focus on what came next. Slowing down was always the easy part.

She’d been tracking the sweeps of the radar beams, putting together a map of how they intersected, the transient gaps and windows. But everything moved so dizzyingly fast, her crawling nerves struggling to keep up with the shifting sensor net.

She felt her mind fragment, executive functions slowing further and further as her planning functions endlessly accelerated. Her vision narrowed. Blood rushed to her head. Tinnitus keened in her ears. A dull pain settled between her eyes-

There.

Like a bolt of lightning down her cortical stack, she felt the raw certainty of a route found, a plan committed. Her mind telescoped back in on itself as she heard her lungs draw a deep, shuddering breath. She was drifting right above the installation, the SAM sites forming a perfect ring of interlocking death.

What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?

“… Song?” Juliet was talking to her. “Song? The visor doesn’t have much of a biometric suite, but your-”

Tyger Tyger, Juliet.

For a single dizzying moment, everything clicked into place. Alice reached the laboratory’s zenith. The radar beams finished sweeping directly over the installation, to return to scanning their surroundings.

She let go of her power.

Her body snapped back to real time, the world dropping back to chilly normality as every particle in her body sprung back into action. And then she kept on pushing, driving her temporal momentum forward as she clocked her entire self up.

The world was dark, redshifting into a red and black hellscape. The world was cold, chilling to near absolute zero.

The world was still.

She couldn’t breath, the air frozen in time around her. She couldn’t see the SAMs, her eyes shifting frantically to adapt to the grim red sun. She hung in the sky, frozen for a gut wrenching moment, her momentum reduced to negligibility.

And then she fell.

She pulled her arms and legs tight against her sides as she picked up speed, dropping like a javelin through the frozen sky. Her power was red lightning in her veins. The world was a shrinking cage of radio waves, flanked on all sides by the invisible eyes of an angry god. She felt herself break the sound barrier, stabbing out of the stratosphere like an orbital strike.

A dozen seconds into her breakneck descent, she heard Juliet’s delayed gasp in her ears. She laughed with aching lungs.

Welcome to my wonderland.

The laboratory grew in her vision as she felt the shockwave of compressed air stretching against her finally ignite. Fire scorched her sight, seared the caked frost from her visor. Countless warning windows exploded across the edges of her vision, which she ignored for the only readout that mattered: altitude.

500 meters from the ground and dropping, she decided to prime the projector, slid her eyes across the ring’s controls, and-

ERROR: RADIO BLACKOUT. Potential causes: active jamming, spacecraft re-entry, ionospheric anomalies…

No. No no no.

The emergency release. She’d seen it in the museum, briefly noted it when she picked the thing up on the shuttle. Teeth clenched, she whipped her left arm behind her back to grab for the switch.

Her arm had only extended from her profile for a microsecond, but a microsecond was all that the angry sky needed. The sudden asymmetry to her profile whipped her into a tailspin. The burning, freezing night spun her end-on-end as she flailed for the release.

So that’s why Impulse always wore this thing on his chest.

The altimeter kept draining.

In a handful of terrifying moments, she found the latch, grabbing and holding on to it for dear life. With a silent scream, she clocked up as hard as she could with every iota of power she had left, and clocked her mind further still.

5 meters

The world collapsed into darkness, her eyes failing her completely, her breakneck fall suddenly slowing to a lethargic sink. She couldn’t tell up from down. It felt familiar… like diving.

Like drowning.

3 meters

She screwed her eyes shut and pulsed her senses through her field. It caressed the edges of her temporal bubble, tracing a thousand soft fingers against walls of frozen sky.

With a slow spin she righted herself, orienting against her wake. She extended her feet to help cushion the landing. She splayed her right hand before her, fingers outstretched.

(1 meter)

Her fingers and feet touched the roof of the laboratory. They sank into the concrete like it was dust in the wind.

Two knuckles deep, she flicked the switch.

The field stored in the projector blasted through her body like a shockwave, pumping down her legs and arms to dig deep into the concrete. She felt her power stretch across the rooftop, licking down at the load bearing supports. The effect was immediate, the concrete hardening and absorbing the shock of her descent. Dust became rubber as her momentum scattered into her field.

And like a wire snapping, she whipped back to realtime.

The world gasped back into light and warmth as she slammed into the flexing rooftop. Her fragmented mind was still a step ahead of her body, watching with dispassionate curiosity as the shockwave rippled away through the ground beneath her.

It rippled up her body too, her bones and limbs twisting and warping far beyond their breaking points, held together by the aftershocks of her field. The wave rippled through her skull and she struggled to hold onto consciousness, shivering as it passed up through her hair.

And then, finally, it was over.

Her brain crashed back into realtime all at once, following the rest of her. For the first time in far too long, she was all in one piece; even the minor instinctive temporal eddies that wormed their way through her metabolism had all collapsed in sheer exhaustion.

It was a surprisingly nice day out. The sun was high in the sky, and all she could hear was birdsong from the nearby forest. No surface to air missiles, no foxy geniuses, nothing. Only the soft chime of her visor rebooting broke her from her reverie. She laughed, gasping for breath, and rose from her three-point landing.

Cheeks flushed, flakes of cement scattering from the grooves she’d dug into the ground, Alice stood tall, turning back to look up at the sky and straight into the eyes of her audience.

She winked.

[mrhotmaster]

Prime Video: Best Movie Series In India (March 2020)

Best All-Time Amazon Prime Video Movie Series In India Of March 2020

With the brand new profiles function introduced in March, Amazon Prime Video is all of sudden a far higher streaming provider for buddies and households. More so in India, wherein a Prime club runs at just Rs. 999 per yr. Unlike Netflix, Amazon additionally does not make you pay more for HD or 4K. Yes, we admit Prime Video's collection catalog isn't any match for Netflix — it's less than a third of its overall — however there is nevertheless a whole lot of proper TV to be determined right here. It would not assist that Amazon does not do an awesome activity of surfacing hidden gems, however, hello, that is in which we come in. Below, you'll discover a bunch of big names (The Big Bang Theory), Amazon originals (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and stuff you've probable by no means heard of (Spaced).

To choose the satisfactory TV suggests on Amazon Prime Video, we started with Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb scores to draw up a shortlist. Considering the shortcomings of review aggregators in that department, the last of them is needed for non-English programming. Also, we used or rejected our editorial judgment. This listing can be up to date once every few months if there are any worthy additions or if a few TV shows are eliminated from the service, so bookmark this web page and preserve checking in. Here is the pleasant collection currently to be had on Amazon Prime Video in India, sorted alphabetically.

➔4 Blocks (2017 – Present)

Set inside the Berlin borough of Neukölln, this German-language crime drama follows the leader of a Lebanese drug cartel who desires to leave in the back of the violent manner of life for a non-violent life along with his wife and their daughter, however, is reluctantly pulled in after a police operation threatens the entirety. Set for a third and final season in 2019.

➔The Adventures of Tintin (1991 – 1992)

A co-manufacturing between three nations — Belgium, Canada, and France — this animated variation of cartoonist Georges Prosper Remi's maximum famous work ran for 39 1/2-hour episodes across three seasons, handing over nearly dozen adventures that had been praised for his or her faithfulness, every so often lifting comic panels to the screen precisely as they seemed.

➔The Affair (2014 – Present)

A schoolteacher and budding novelist (Dominic West) begins an extramarital affair with a younger waitress (Ruth Wilson) seeking to piece collectively her life in this somber drama, which brought two robust seasons of the deep and psychological statement earlier than a slight dip added by using plot struggles in the 0.33 season.

➔The Big Bang Theory (2007 – 2019)

This long-lasting sitcom, loved and hated in the same degree, is ready for the physicists and their neighbor pretending to act and nerd friends: the aerospace engineer and the astrophysicist. It brought two women — a neuroscientist and a microbiologist — because it went on. Seasons two through six have been the best years.

➔Bosch (2014 – Present)

Adapted from the novels he wrote, writer and writer Michael Connelly offers us Los Angeles Police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch (Titus Welliver), a Gulf War and Afghanistan veteran who solves inscrutable instances — the murder of a boy many years in the past to a high-quality civil rights lawyer — whilst handling non-public struggles. The slow first season, however it soon delicate itself.

➔The Boys (2019 – Present)

Far from perfect, this gory superhero-obsessed-tradition antidote, based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comedian collection, follows a bunch of nobodies (Karl Urban amongst them) seeking to take down a corrupt group of superheroes who've chosen capitalism over charity. In short, the superheroes are the supervillains.

➔Casual (2015 – 2018)

A newly-divorced female and successful therapist — and her teenage daughter — movements again in along with her more youthful brother and relationship site co-founder in this candy li'l comedy-drama. The two educate each other through the pains and tribulations of the dating global, even as together raising the girl.

➔Deutschland 86 (2018)

This sequel to the hit authentic — Deutschland 83, which is regrettably no longer on Amazon — is ready within the titular 12 months either aspect of the Iron Curtain, because it explores existence in each West and East Germany thru the standpoint of an undercover secret agent, who navigates love, own family, and secrets and techniques. Renewed for a 3rd season, titled Deutschland 89.

➔Doctor Who (2005 – Present)

David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, and — the first-ever girl Doctor — Jodie Whittaker provide their take at the time-traveling, galaxy-hopping alien in the modern-day revival of the long-lasting British sci-fi show. Seasons 1 – eleven are to be had. Seasons two, three, four, and five are usually considered the high-quality of the lot, with the closing of them generally highlighted.

➔Dororo (2019)

Born without any frame components because of his strength-hungry father, a younger guy — blind, deaf, and more — made from prosthetics units out to reclaim what's his from 12 demons on this anime. Along the way, he befriends the titular orphan boy.

➔Downton Abbey (2010 – 2015)

A post-Edwardian generation period drama set within the English countryside, managing the aristocratic Crawley circle of relatives and their domestic servants, and the way the terrific activities of the 1910s and Twenties affected their lives and the British social hierarchy. I went through a dip in excellent inside the center to past due years however recovered for the final season. The follow-up 2019 movie is on iTunes.

➔The Expanse (2015 – Present)

Hundreds of years in the future, mankind that has colonized the Solar System is at the threshold of warfare and it's up to a crew of various origins — Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt — to show the best conspiracy of all.

➔Fleabag (2016 – Present)

Phoebe-Waller Bridge created and starred on this comedy-drama out of her one-female play, approximately a young, sexually-liberated, dry-witted irritable woman who navigates contemporary lifestyles in London at the same time as coming to phrases with a recent tragedy.

➔Forever (2018)

Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen megastar in and govt produced this comedy-drama approximately a married couple who've lived the identical lifestyles — the same conversations, the equal meals, and the identical lake-residence vacation — for 12 years. But after the spouse proposes to shake matters up, the two locate themselves in a whole new global.

➔Fringe (2008 �� 2013)

This sci-fi collection counts J.J. Abrams as a co-creator and follows an FBI agent (Anna Torv) who is forced to paintings with an institutionalized scientist taken into consideration this era's Einstein and his estranged son to make the experience of unexplained phenomena, which ties into parallel universes and trade timelines.

➔The Good Fight (2017 – Present)

A spin-off sequel to the severely-acclaimed The Good Wife follows Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) after she's forced out of the law organization wherein she becomes an accomplice, and has to enroll in a high-profile regulation corporation in Chicago. The criminal/political drama has greater than held its own unlike most spin-offs and has been praised for its examination of topical social issues.

➔Good Omens (2019)

Michael Sheen and David Tennant megastar as an angel and demon with an unlikely century-spanning friendship on this Neil Gaiman-led version this is responsible for sticking too close to the book he co-wrote (among some different faults). Having grown content with existence on Earth, the two attempt to save you a drawing close Armageddon.

➔The Good Wife (2009 – 2016)

After a humiliating sex and corruption scandal puts her husband behind bars, his spouse — a former kingdom's attorney — must go back to work to offer for her own family, at the same time as battling the undesirable highlight. Known for its unique criminal cases, top-notch performances, and turning in always on all fronts at some stage in its lengthy seven-season cable run.

➔The Grand Tour (2016 – Present)

The former Top Gear trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May persevered to do what they did at BBC — overview supercars, excursion the arena, however mostly make amusing of every other — for three seasons, before switching to specials-only with the fourth season.

➔The Handmaid's Tale (2017 – Present)

Elisabeth Moss stars in the lead of this prescient and unflinching version of Margaret Atwood's dystopian traditional novel, set in a global where a totalitarian army dictatorship has overthrown America authorities and subjugates ladies inside the call of declining fertility quotes. Two high-quality seasons followed by using a dip in the 1/3.

➔Homecoming (2018 – Present)

In her first collection of ordinary positions, Julia Roberts performs a caseworker who enables US veterans to transition again to civilian existence, and a waitress returned in her fatherland who has trouble remembering her earlier existence throughout periods. As an auditor digs into her past, she realizes she changed into being misled. A mental thriller directed by way of Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail.

➔House (2004 – 2012)

For 8 long years, Hugh Laurie played the misanthropic and unconventional titular doctor who regardless of reliance on pain remedy and a cane — it simply introduced to his acerbic character — led a team at a fictional New Jersey health center, and made notable use of his out-of-the-field wondering and instincts to diagnose sufferers.

➔Laakhon Mein Ek (2017 – Present)

Biswa Kalyan Rath's anthology collection offers a have a look at unlucky souls — a teen caught at an engineering coaching institute, or a young health practitioner published to a rural cataract camp — preventing in opposition to prejudices, the gadget, and extra. And generally failing.

➔Lodge forty-nine (2018 – 2019)

Overlooked using most, which led to its cancellation after seasons, this splendidly weird comedy-drama follows a disarmingly optimistic former surfer who by hook or by crook arrives at a rundown fraternal hotel after the demise of his father and disintegrate of the family enterprise, hoping to find his manner again to the life he had.

➔The Looming Tower (2018)

Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-prevailing ebook of the same name is adapted into a ten-element miniseries, exploring how the clash and contention between the FBI and CIA inside the early 2000s may additionally have inadvertently brought about America's biggest tragedy, September 11. Powerfully written and strengthened through exceptional acting, which includes Jeff Daniels, with a directing tone set by way of Alex Gibney.

➔Luther (2010 – Present)

Idris Elba stars as a committed and tremendous British detective who attempts to preserve a grip on his private existence while managing the mental fallouts of the crimes he is tasked to remedy.

➔Mad Men (2007 – 2015)

Set in New York in the 1960s, a slow-burn theory that provides an insight into a fictionally produced advertising agency, specializing in one of all its exceptionally talented managers (Jon Hamm). It offered brilliantly crafted characters and a subversive, sensible have a look at the American workplace, while in no way losing in fine throughout seven seasons.

➔Made in Heaven (2019 – Present)

From the minds of Gully Boy duo Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, a drama approximately the excesses, hypocrisies, and darkness hiding in the corners of huge, fat Indian weddings, instructed thru the eyes of two wedding planners looking to stability their personal and professional lives. It has many faults, no longer as excellent as others in this listing, however, it is the high-quality of what Amazon has produced in India.

➔Malgudi Days (1987 – 1988)

R.K. Narayanan's collection of quick stories approximately unique faces of existence in a fictional South India metropolis are selectively tailored for the display screen, thanks to his cartoonist brother R.K. Laxman, actor-director Shankar Nag, and manufacturer T.S. Narasimhan.

➔The Man within the High Castle (2015 – 2019)

Philip K. Dick's famous change history novel of the identical name, in which the Axis powers won World War II and divided the USA to be ruled by using Germany and Japan, opened in engrossing style and multiplied itself in powerful methods in its 2d year, however, changed into in the end permit down by using its unwieldy plot.

➔The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 – Present)

Arguably Amazon's high-quality authenticity so far, the ideal existence of a Jewish housewife (Rachel Brosnahan) in overdue 1950s New York City crumbles after her husband confesses he's having an affair, which leads her to a surprising discovery: she has a knack for stand-up comedy.

➔The Mindy Project (2012 – 2017)

Fresh off her success with The Office, Mindy Kaling created and starred in her show, a rom-com about an OB/GYN (Kaling) seeking to balance her professional and private existence. After three appreciated seasons with a few faults, it moved to stream in which it similarly delicate itself and ended with the 117th episode and six seasons.

➔The Missing (2014 – 2016) This two-season anthology thriller is about lacking youngsters — a five-yr-old boy in France, and a woman who turns up eleven years later in Germany — and the way it impacts their families as they undergo the disaster. Always uses dual timelines shifting in parallel to construct suspense. Tchéky Karyo's lead detective is the simplest common detail. ➔Mozart within the Jungle (2014 – 2018) Inspired by oboist Blair Tindall's 2005 memoir, this 4-season long comedy-drama concentrated on a formidable oboist (Lola Kirke) who develops a robust bond with the new conductor (Gael García Bernal) of a fictional New York symphony orchestra, with escapades in Mexico and Italy across seasons. ➔Mr. Bean (1990 – 1995) Rowan Atkinson's famous character, whom he defined as a toddler in a grown man's frame, has appeared anywhere from the London Olympics establishing ceremony to an interview on Japanese television, always pronouncing little. He was given his start with this iconic collection that produced a paltry 14 episodes over 5 years but gave us enough laughs to closing an entire life.                        ➔The Night Manager (2016) Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman lead the way with robust performances in this six-episode miniseries model of the 1993 John le Carré novel, approximately a former British soldier and luxury motel manager (Hiddleston) who turns into an undercover operative to infiltrate the internal circle of a worldwide arms supplier (Laurie). ➔The Office (2005 – 2013) This American remake of Ricky Gervais' BBC sitcom mockumentary lasted some distance longer — 201 episodes over 9 seasons — as it observed the pretty-often beside the point and awkwardly-hilarious lives of the employees of a suburban Pennsylvania paper employer. Suffered in later seasons but returned to form in the very last season after the return of creator Greg Daniels. ➔One Mississippi (2016 – 2017) In this shifting -season comedy, a girl (Tig Notaro) returns home after the sudden death of her mom and struggles to adjust to life as she battles her fitness issues, and her dysfunctional circle of relatives and discovers extra about her mom's beyond. Notaro is also a co-author. ➔Parks and Recreation (2009 – 2015) Amy Poehler starred as an always-constructive public authentic in an Indiana city's parks department for seven seasons, surrounded via an ensemble cast as eccentric as the following one. Co-created by way of Daniels (The Office) and Michael Schur, the show made adjustments after a poorly-received debut season and by no means appeared again, as it blossomed into one of the best sitcoms of this century. ➔Penny Dreadful (2014 – 2016) An explorer, a gunslinger, a scientist, an immigrant, and a mysterious and powerful girl (Eva Green) team up to combat supernatural threats that draw upon nineteenth-century Gothic fiction — assume Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll — London in Victoria. Green's entity and its overall success were praised. ➔Person of Interest (2011 – 2016) Before Westworld, Jonathan Nolan explored AI as a supercomputer that profits sentience, which enables its reclusive billionaire programmer and a presumed-dead ex-CIA agent to keep lives by giving them the identities of those involved in imminent crimes. A process that became an invasive serial account and mediation of the ethics of artificial intelligence regulation. ➔Planet Earth II (2016) Yes, it's a documentary, but it is also the top of BBC's potential to craft storylines out of the lives of animals that proportion the planet with us, and the dangers we gift to them. And to top off its wonderful pics that span islands, mountains, jungles, deserts, grasslands, and towns, David Attenborough's voice courses us through all of it. ➔Preacher (2016 – 2019) After a supernatural occasion imbues him with a present, a preacher teams up with his trigger-happy ex-girlfriend and a hard-ingesting Irish vampire searching for answers and God. Based on the comedian series of the identical call, the show has gore and offensive amusing aplenty, however, it can lack in narrative recognition. Ran out of steam inside the final season. ➔Psych (2006 – 2014) After conning the law enforcement officials into believing he has psychic abilities, a hyper-observant guy with eidetic reminiscence turns into a contract consultant for the nearby police branch, launching a faux psychic enterprise with his formative years' satisfactory pal. Improved after a no longer-so-correct first 12 months and has caused TV movies because its 8-season run ended. ➔Queen Sugar (2016 – Present) Ava DuVernay and Oprah got here together to create this drama based totally on Natalie Baszile's 2014 novel, approximately the lives of the estranged Bordelon siblings who move back to Louisiana after their father's loss of life to run the family's struggling sugarcane farm. ➔Seinfeld (1989 – 1998) Scores and important success for the duration of its run, this sitcom about a stand-up comic (Jerry Seinfeld) and his neurotic New York friends (Julia Louis-Dreyfus amongst them) butting heads over trivial questions remains a hallmark in television history, albeit some episodes and characters have not aged properly in any respect. Seinfeld and David are co-creators. ➔Shameless (2011 – Present) Based on the lengthy-jogging hit UK collection also from writer Paul Abbott, the American remake — now in its 9th season itself — is about inside the south side of Chicago and centers on a perpetually-drunk single father of six with the children mastering to attend to themselves. Several stumbles in the latest seasons. ➔Shaun the Sheep (2007 – Present) Before it spawned a feature movie that earned Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations and where the titular clever, assured and mischievous sheep talked, this forestall-movement lively youngsters collection was recognized for its bite-sized episodes, with Shaun leading the crowd on adventures and walking jewelry across the sheepdog. Four seasons are to be had.

➔Sneaky Pete (2015 – 2019) Bryan Cranston co-created this crime drama wherein a con man (Giovanni Ribisi) assumes the identity of his cellmate to keep away from a dangerous gangster whom he once robbed. But residing with the fake-family — which has no motive to suspect who he is, due to the fact he changed into long lost — presents challenges of its personal. ➔Spaced (1999 – 2001) Before they gave us the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg directed and co-created, respectively, this sitcom approximately the misadventures of twenty-something London strangers (Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, fellow co-writer) who pose as a married couple to get a flat in the English capital. ➔Star Trek: Picard (2019 – Present) Patrick Stewart returns as Jean-Luc Picard on this follow-as much as the lengthy-walking Star Trek: The Next Generation — available on Netflix — nearly a decade and a half of after he retired, after a young girl with feasible connections to his beyond seeks his assist. It is probably too sluggish for a few and it would not attempt hard enough to take on new fans. ➔Supernatural (2005 – Present) Over two and a half of many years when they lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force, two brothers — introduced up with the aid of their father as soldiers with knowledge of the mystical — roam throughout the again-alleys of the united states and hunt down each evil they stumble upon. Eric Kripke ran the show for five seasons, and the darkish myth series is about to finish with its upcoming fifteenth. ➔The Terror (2018 – Present) This supernatural horror anthology takes actual-life events — British Royal Navy Captain Sir John Franklin's lost day trip to the Arctic in the mid-nineteenth century, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II — and spins terrifying tales, presenting ghosts, cannibalism, demonic polar bears, and Japanese folklore. ➔This Is Us (2016 – Present) This heartstrings-tugging circle of relatives drama jumps via time to depict the lives of three siblings (Sterling K. Brown among them) and their dad and mom, who appear to be mysteriously related to each other in methods beyond their shared birthday. ➔Transparent (2014 – 2019) A dysfunctional Los Angeles family unearths their past and destiny unraveling following an admission from the elderly father (Jeffrey Tambor) that he identifies as a girl. Winner of numerous awards which includes the Golden Globe for the first-class collection for its poignancy and empathy. Finale turned into middling though. Tambor turned into fired over sexual harassment allegations.

                        ➔Undone (2019 – Present) From the makers of BoJack Horseman, a more lifestyles-like lively series about a 28-year-vintage woman (Rosa Salazar) who discovers she has a brand new relationship with time after moving into a vehicle coincidence, after which makes use of that to solve the mystery of her father's (Bob Odenkirk) loss of life. But her exploits positioned her relationships and fitness in critical jeopardy. ➔A Very English Scandal (2018) Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw lead this three-component miniseries based totally on a real story and John Preston's book of the same name, following the upward thrust of British Member of Parliament Jeremy Thorpe (Grant) and the scandal that could cease his lifestyles, concerning the tried murder of his ex-homosexual lover (Whishaw). ➔Vinland Saga (2019) Set in large part in Danish-managed 11th-century England, this anime follows Thorfinn, a young man introduced up by Vikings who murdered his own family and invariably desires vengeance. They are soon stuck in a conflict of succession between  Danish princes, at the same time as Thorfinn desires of a non-violent land that his father pointed out. Adapted by way of Hiroshi Seko (Ajin, Attack on Titan). ➔Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi (1984) Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro director Kundan Shah and satirist Sharad Joshi came collectively to deliver this sitcom that deftly poked fun on the Indian center magnificence, specializing in a poker-confronted husband, his vivacious office-going spouse, and her unmarried brother. It benefited from the chemistry of its 3 leads (Shafi Inamdar, Swaroop Sampat, and Rakesh Bedi) and the sheer versatility of Satish Shah. ➔Yes Minister (1980 – 1984) Together with its 1986-88 sequel — Yes, Prime Minister — the two short-lived British series are reigning kings of the political satire, following a newly-appointed branch minister suffering to carry out reforms and later, his surprising elevation to the best workplace inside the land.

 For Regular & Fastest Tech News and Reviews, Take After TECHNOXMART on Twitter, Facebook, and Subscribe Here Now. By Subscribing You Will Get Our Daily Digest Headlines Every Morning Directly In Your Email Inbox.             【Join Our Whatsapp Group Here】

from https://ift.tt/2QRwT3c

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior  Movie Preview November 27, 2019 – KNIVES OUT, QUEEN AND SLIM, THE TWO POPES, 63 UP

You might notice that this column is no longer called “What to Watch This Weekend.” There are reasons for that I will not go into in much detail right at this time. I’ve always considered myself an original and when I recently learned the title had already been used long before “I came up with it,” I had to change gears and go back to a more familiar title. I have a feeling that few people read this column each week to even notice the difference.

Of course, Disney’s Frozen 2 will win the weekend, but the big new release has to be Rian Johnson’s KNIVES OUT (Lionsgate), which has such a to-die-for cast, including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield and many more. You can read my review of that here, and obviously I’m very bullish on recommending this to people since it’s such a fun whodunit, much better than last year’s Murder on the Orient Express. I really hope this does well since it will allow Johnson to keep making cool and original movies like this.

The other movie opening this weekend is Lena Waithe’s QUEEN AND SLIM (Universal), directed by Melina Matsoukas (who directed that long-form Beyoncé music video), and starring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. 

I wasn’t going to review this, but I might as well use this space to talk about the problems I had with the movie. I feel I might be mainly on my own with this one, but it reminded me so much of Moonlight, a movie I was pretty non-plussed by, yet that not only went to the Oscars but won Best Picture that year. Huh. 

I feel like Queen and Slim is another example of a movie that will be pushed for its SJW message even if the story has so many issues that I’m shocked so many people are overlooking them. The essential premise has Kaluuya and Turner-Smith as a couple who meet on a Tinder date, she a defense lawyer whose client has just been sentenced to death. After an awkward meet-cute at a diner, they drive off but are stopped by a police officer. One thing leads to another, the officer ends up dead, and the defense lawyer decides, “We should make a run for it,” and that’s exactly what they do.

That’s one of the big problems I had with the movie and it continued throughout, which is why I think this movie should have been called “Bad Decisions: The Movie,” because these are clearly two smart individuals, yet they are constantly doing really stupid things, which makes it really hard to root for them. On top of that, I wasn’t too impressed by Matsoukas/Waithe as a filmmaking team, as the movie had a lot of beautiful shots but really didn’t have much of a flow, making Matsoukas’ music video background far too obvious. It’s very typical of a new filmmaker wanting to create this beautiful-looking movie and losing sight of the actual narrative storytelling, which isn’t great. And then there’s the message Waithe is trying to drive home, clearly inspired by #BlackLivesMatter, but it just goes completely overboard at times, and no one in this movie acts like normal people might act in order to resolve their issues. 

In other words, Queen and Slim is trying to be an arty film in what is a business where movies that cost a lot of money need to make that money back, and I see this as a pretty big risk on Universal’s part for a movie that just isn’t that great.

You can read about how the above movies might fare at the Thanksgiving box office over at The Beat.

LIMITED RELEASES

There are, thankfully, a fewer number of limited releases this weekend, the big one being Netflix’s THE TWO POPES, starring Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, which is absolutely fantastic. Directed by Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles from a screenplay from Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour). Basically, it’s about the relationship between Popes Francis (Pryce) and Benedict (Hopkins) as the latter is being criticized for allowing Catholic priests to get away with repeated sexual abuses against young parishioners. I saw this movie quite some time ago, and I really need to see it again before writing any sort of review, but it will probably be in my top 25 mainly for the amazing script and the performances by the two leads. This will open in select cities on Wednesday and be on Netflix December 20, and maybe I’ll have a chance to rewatch so I can write more about it at that point. Regardless, it’s another movie opening this weekend I recommend seeking out.

Opening at the Film Forum on Wednesday is Michael Apted’s excellent doc 63 Up (Britbox), the culmination of the 56 years he has spent following the lives of a number of British kids from different classes over the course of their lives. I’ve loved this series since I first discovered it, probably around the 21-Upyears, but it’s amazing how every seven years, you can revisit these people and learn more about them. There are a few of the subjects that you’ve begun to really care about, but at a time when class struggles play such an important part in the conversation and films like Parasite and Knives Out (see above) and M. Night Shyamalan’s new series Servant, it’s amazing to watch this venerable doc series in that context. I’m not sure if Apted will make it seven more years to make 70 Up, but if not, this is a fine conclusion to his masterful masters thesis. 63 Up will open at the Landmark Nuart in Los Angeles on Dec. 6 before hitting Britbox.

Getting a week-long run in New York and Los Angeles starting Friday is Ladj Ly’s intense police thriller LES MISERABLES (Amazon), which is France’s selection for the Oscar’s “International Film” category, and it’s an amazing film that follows a group of cops trying to cover up the shooting of a kid from the projects. Like many police dramas, it involves a rookie who is thrust into this world of crime, and I’ll definitely have more to say about this before its official theatrical release in January.  

Also getting a qualifying run in New York and L.A. this week is Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman’s documentary After Parkland (ABC Documentaries/Kino Lorber), which I somehow have missed so far, but I’ll probably have a chance to see it in 2020 when it’s getting its official release. As one can gather from the title, it’s about a number of families from the Marjory Stoneman Dougle High School trying to get through the Parkland shootings that left 17 dead.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Before we get to this section, I want to give a quick shout-out to VitalThrills.com who have an absolutely amazing Streaming section that you should be using as a resource, since it’s quite complete, maybe the best one on the internet?

If you’ve been putting off seeing Martin Scorsese’s 3-1/2 hour THE IRISHMAN, because you feel that’s too long to be sitting in a movie theater, it’s now on Netflix so you can watch it over and over, stopping and starting whenever you want. Happy?

While I’ve mostly been using this section for Netflix stuff (because it’s the only streaming/cable company that sends me regular PR), I’m excited that M. Night Shyamalan’s SERVANT will be debuting on Apple TV+ on Wednesday (today!), and that will be another darkly funny thing to watch with the family after Knives Out. You can watch the first three episodes, but I wrote a review of the first half of the season, which you can read here.

French filmmaker’s animated I Lost My Body will hit Netflix this Friday with its amazing story of the romance between a pizza delivery guy and a librarian, based on Guillaume Laurant’s novel “Happy Hand.” Also, Mati Diop’s Cannes-winning film Atlantics, which I STILL HAVEN’T WATCHED!!! Will hit the streaming network on the same day, so I’ll stop having excuses for not having seen it. Also hitting Netflix Thursday is the holiday comedy HOLIDAY RUSH, starring Romany Malco, La La Anthony, Sonequa Martin-Green and the legendary Darlene Love.

Also, Disney+ will be adding The Wonderful World of Disney Presents the Little Mermaid Live! to its library on Wednesday as well as Pixar’s Cocoon Friday, along with the fourth chapter of its ongoing series including one you might have heard of called The Mandalorian.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

The Metrograph once again wins the Repertory Wars this weekend. Its Noah Baumbach Residency continues this weekend with the filmmaker’s 2010 film Greenberg and 2017’s The Meyerowitz Stories, both starring Ben Stiller, as well as screenings of Working Girl (1988), Pauline at the Beach (1983) and Five Easy Pieces (1970). (I don’t think Baumbach will be at any of these.) The annual Holidays at Metrograph series begins this week with 1934’s The Thin Man, Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and the 1940 film Remember the Night this Friday and Saturday. Filmmaker Whit Stilman will be back at the Metrograph, once again showing his 1990 film Metropolitan (another Metrograph holiday mainstay) on Sunday, and he’ll also introduce a screening of 1998′s The Last Days of Disco. Welcome To Metrograph: Redux will screen George Cukor’s 1950 film Born Yesterday, Clint Eastwood’s 1995 film The Bridges of Madison County (with screenwriter Richard LaGravanese  introducing the screening Saturday night) and David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter. Late Nites at Metrograph  screens Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 film Ghost World, starring a VERY young Scarlett Johansson, while Playtime: Family Matinees  will screen the appropriate Miracle on 34thStreet, the one from 1947.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Next week’s Terror Tuesday is Charles B Pierce’s The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) in a new 4k restoration with a QnA with Pierce’s daughter moderated by Mohawk director Ted Geoghegan, then the Weird Wednesday is Liam Neeson in Sam Raimi’s Darkman (1990) in 35mm. (The latter is a fantastic film if you haven’t seen it yet.)

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Today’s Weds. Afternoon Classics matinee is Samuel Fuller’s 1959 film The Crimson Kimono and Friday’s “Freaky Fridays” offering is David Cronenberg’s Existenz (1999). The weekend’s “Kiddee Matinee” is Jon Favreau’s Elf(2003), starring Will Ferrell, and Saturday’s midnight is a repeat of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. Otherwise, it’s mostly screenings of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywoodthis weekend.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Opening this week is a 70thAnniversary 4k restoration of Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, starring the great Sir Alec Guinness in 8 roles! Also this week, you can see a 4k restoration of the 1951 comedy The Man in the White Suit (on Weds and Sunday), as well as the 1955 film The Ladykillers, both directed by Alexander Mackendrick and also starring Guinness. Another repertory film getting a few screenings this weekend is the 1951 film The Lavender Hill Mob (another Guinness film!) and Carol Reed’s The Third Man from 1949 will get a full-week 70th anniversary presentation. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is To Kill a Mockinbird… ookay. On Sunday, you can see the 1975 Hal Ashby classic Shampoo in a single screening, and then on Monday night, there’s a single 35mm screening of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 film Kwaidan, based on four ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn, introduced by Monique Truong, who has written a book about Hearn. Oh, it’s also over 3 hours long.

AERO  (LA):

The AERO’s “Happy Thanksgiving 2019” movies include Planes, Trains and Automobiles on Wednesday, Singin’ in the Rain on Friday, and Saturday is a triple feature of “Satirical Cinema: Using Comedy to Underminte Hate” of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), Mel Brooks’ The Producers(1968) and Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit… yeah, one of these movies doesn’t match up to the others, and also isn’t really repertory. Sunday is a Charlie Chaplin double feature of City Lights(1931) and The Circus (1928). Tuesday’s “Christmas Noir: A Hardboiled Holiday” matinee is Blast of Silence from 1961.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Friday is a “Black Friday Double Feature” of mall-related horror films with Chopping Mall (1986) and Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1989), and then Saturday is an all-day The Lord of the Rings trilogy starting at 1pm.

MOMA  (NYC):

The newly renovated museum continues it’s “The Contenders 2019” series, but Modern Matinees: Iris Barry’s History of Filmwill continue through the week, as well. Vision Statement: Early Directorial Workswill return on Monday with Julie Dash’s 1991 film Daughters of the Dust, then Darren Aronofskiy’s Pi(1998) and Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali(1955) on Tuesday.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

If you want to find me this weekend, I’ll be spending a lot of time up on the Upper West Side (MTA-permitting) for the continuing “Relentless Invention: New Korean Cinema 1996-2003” for a bunch of movies, including Bong Joon Ho’s 2000 debut Barking Dogs Never Bite. You should also check out Varda by Agnès while you’re up there.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

“The Collected Terrence Malick” continues this weekend with screenings of some of Malick’s more recent films: Voyage of Time: Ultra Widescreen Version, The New World: Theatrical Version (Friday) andLimited Release Version (Sat.), as well as Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey on Saturday, and then the “Brad Pitt version” of Voyage of Time on Sunday. Also, Malick’s classic The Tree of Life will screen Friday and Sunday.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: May All Your Christmases be Noirwill screen The Night of the Hunter (1955), Waverly Midnights: Spy Games screens Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) in a 4k restoration, while Late Night Favorites: Autumn 2019 will screen… I can’t even. It’s movies they’ve shown a dozen times or more… Matt Zoller Seitz’s “Movies with MZS” continues next Tuesday with a screening of Moonstruck with screenwriter John Patrick Shanley.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Thursday/Thanksgiving is your last chance to see Buster Keaton’s Battling Butler (1926) and The Navigator (1924) from out of the Cohen Films vault.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

Continuing its Nicolas Cage series by screening 1989’s Vampire’s Kiss in 35mm on Weds, Friday and Saturday nights, plus another screening of Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) on Sunday.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This week’s Friday midnight is the uncut version of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1990 film Santa Sangre.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

On Sunday, you can take the family to a matinee of Muppet Christmas Carol.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be taking a week off from the Box Office Preview over at The Beat, but the Weekend Warrior (sigh) will be back here with all the limited releases kicking off December.

[davidegbert]

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition Review

Even when the powerhouse GeForce GTX 1080 was released in the middle of 2016, we knew there would be a "Ti" version halfway into its lifecycle. That's how Nvidia has operated for at least its past three product generations. This strategy allows it to hedge against any surprises AMD might pull out of its hat, and also keep things fresh for those who have the money to spend.

The top-end "Ti" cards are usually slightly cut-down versions of the insanely powerful Titan products that are based on physically larger and more powerful GPUs. Those cards are aimed more at professionals in the content creation and data visualisation than at gamers, and are therefore absurdly expensive. That doesn't stop them from being absolute beasts at gaming, though, and so it isn't hard to see the appeal of a "Ti" model that offers almost all the performance of its equivalent Titan model at a greatly reduced price.

With this current generation of graphics cards, Nvidia has no competition at the top, and therefore no real reason to launch a new flagship (let alone cut the price of its previous one). AMD won't be launching its next-gen Vega-based cards for a few months, so maybe this is Nvidia's way of intimidating its only competitor. Either way, we as buyers get more for our money, so we aren't complaining.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti architecture and specifications Nvidia's product names don't necessarily tell you what's going on behind the scenes. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti might seem like just a variant or even a higher clocked version of the GeForce GTX 1080, but in reality, the piece of silicone at its heart is completely different. The GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 are siblings, based on a chip codenamed GP104 - the lower priced model just has a few sections disabled and runs slightly slower for a proportionate reduction in power. The GTX 1080 Ti is a similarly cut-down version of the beefier GP102 GPU, which we first saw in last year's Nvidia Titan X.

The Titan X's GP102 has 3,584 execution units called CUDA cores grouped into 12 clusters called Streaming Multiprocessors. and 12GB of high-speed GDDR5X RAM. Surprisingly, GTX 1080 Ti has the same number - none have been disabled. The difference lies in how these clusters connect to the GPU's cache. While the Titan X has 96 ROPs (Raster Operation Pipelines) and 3MB of L2 cache, the GTX 1080 Ti loses one-twelfth of that capacity, going down to 88 ROPs and 2.8MB L2 cache. That's also why the new card has 11GB of GDDR5X RAM on a 352-bit bus instead of the 12GB of its bigger sibling on a 384-bit bus.

Reducing one-twelfth of one subsystem's functionality really doesn't seem like enough to differentiate two products, especially if one is priced at $1200 and the other at $699. Making things more peculiar is the fact that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti actually runs a little faster than the Titan X: the GPU base and boost speeds are 1480MHz/1582MHz vs 1417MHz/1531MHz, and the memory is clocked at 11Gbps vs 10Gbps resulting in memory bandwidth of 484GBps compared to 480GBps.

Speaking of memory, Nvidia says that the GTX 1080 Ti uses the fastest ever GDDR5X RAM, thanks to manufacturing process improvements made since the first card to use it, the GTX 1080, was released last year. Unfortunately, we don't have a Titan X card to test alongside the GTX 1080 Ti, but we'd be surprised if there really was that much of a difference between the two when it comes to gaming - the difference between 11GB and 12GB is purely academic. Nvidia's own published materials show that very few of today's games can use more than 8GB of VRAM, and that too only if running at 5K resolution or beyond.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition The graphics card that we see here is pretty much identical to the Founders' Edition models that Nvidia has released before. It has a faceted matte silver aluminium shroud and a single blower-style fan. The GeForce GTX logo on the top lights up in green when the card is powered up. There's a simple black backplate for stability, but you can take off a part of it if airflow is a problem.

Beneath the shroud is a copper vapour chamber. Nvidia says that this is a new design that covers twice as much surface area as before, thanks to the removal of the legacy DVI port on the rear panel. This should improve heat dissipation and prevent the fan spinning up as often or as much. We've never had a problem with noise when using previous Founders' Edition cards, but improvements are always welcome.

There are SLI fins on the top, and you'll need Nvidia's High-Bandwidth SLI bridge to link up to two cards. You'll find one HDMI 2.0b and three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs on the rear panel. DVI didn't have the bandwidth to carry 4K signals at high refresh rates anyway, but there's a DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter in the box for those who need to connect an older monitor for whatever reason. Those who use VR headsets might have to swap cables because there's only one HDMI port.

The GTX 1080 Ti's rated TDP is 250W, and you'll need one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCIe power connector. Nvidia has also redesigned its power circuitry, and the new GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition features 7-phase FETs. Unlike with the Titan X, partners such as Asus, MSI, and Zotac will be able to release their own cards with custom coolers, clock speeds, and other tweaks, so don't be surprised to see overclocked cards with more robust power specifications.

Nvidia seems to have realised that its Founders' Edition cards are perceived as vanilla options, just as stock cooler models were before the idea of branding them came about. The company has wisely decided not to charge a premium anymore, and so this card carries the same Rs. 63,000 ($699) price tag as custom cards will start at.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition usage and performance We tested the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti on our brand new AMD Ryzen test rig. While gaming was one of the Ryzen's very few weak points, we're testing exclusively at 4K and AMD says that potential CPU bottlenecks even out, allowing any GPU to show what it can do. Nvidia provided us with driver version 378.78 for testing prior to its public release. When comparing scores with those of the GeForce GTX 1080 we tested last year, please note that the test bench used was quite different. The specifications are as follows:

 ComponentCPUAMD Ryzen 7 1800XMotherboardMSI X370 Xpower Gaming TitaniumRAM2x8 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000Graphics cardNvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders' EditionSSD250GB WD Blue SSDCPU coolerNoctua NH-U12S SE -AM4PSUCorsair RM650MonitorAsus PB287QOSWindows 10

Starting with the ever-faithful 3DMark, we see the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti simply slicing through all test runs. While the GTX 1080 Founders' Edition scored 5,075 and Asus' Strix GeForce GTX 1080 scored 5,200 in the Fire Strike Ultra run, our brand new GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition posted a massive 6,814. In the new DirectX 12 Time Spy test, we got a score of 8,829. For the sake of comparison, AMD's Radeon RX 480 posted 2,637 in Fire Strike Ultra and 4,067 in Time Spy.

Things continued in much the same vein with the rest of our tests. We saw the GTX 1080 Ti casually stomping all over its predecessor as well as the competition. Unigine Valley gave us an average of 83.3fps running at its maximum resolution of 2560x1440 at Ultra quality - however, it's worth noting that there was a huge variance between the minimum of 20.2fps and the maximum of 144.8fps. Star Swarm, an intense space battle simulation, managed 78.96fps.

We ran through a number of games that have built-in benchmarks. These scores are generated over a consistent run, so they can be compared between GPUs and test platforms. Starting with GTA V, we logged 100.085fps on average, with very few noticeable glitches and a solid average frame time of 9.99ms.

Metro: Last Light Redux can really push a system to its knees, and we recorded only 30.33fps with noticeable tearing at 4K with the Very High preset and all independent quality settings pushed up to their max (except for antialiasing at 4X). Needless to say, this game can scale better with its settings turned down.

Ashes of the Singularity is a modern DirectX 12 title, and we got an average of 53.3fps when running at its Crazy quality preset at 4K. Going down to the High preset increased our score to 63.4fps. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided gave us 47.9fps with a minimum of 39.4fps and a maximum of 60.2fps at its Very High preset when using DX12. We also ran Rise of the Tomb Raider in DX12 mode and got an average of 62.89fps witih a minimum of 37.32fps and a maximum of 96.70 using the Very High preset

We then sat down and played through a few games manually, logging frame rates and times using FRAPS whenever possible. This allows us to see how much each title stresses the test bench, and how high the settings can be pushed before the overall experience begins to get compromised. With a GPU like the GTX 1080 Ti at our disposal, we decided to max out every possible option and then work our way down from there, if needed.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of today's most beautiful and demanding games. We used the Ultra graphics preset and High post-processing preset with no FPS cap. We ran, swam, and rode a horse around a village and logged an average of 51fps but noticed quite a few torn frames. The average frame time was 19.8ms and that went down to 24.3ms (lower is better) at the 99th percentile. We would need to tweak the settings just a tiny bit to smooth this over, but gameplay was still enjoyable.

We expected the older Far Cry 4 to play as smooth as butter, but it did put up a tiny bit of resistance at 4K using its Ultra preset. We averaged 69fps with slightly uneven frame pacing in a few spots. We stayed below the 16.7ms mark with an average of 16.6ms, which only dropped to 19.4ms at the 99th percentile.

Doom (2016) is one of the lightest games in our portfolio, and makes even low-end cards look great. We wanted to see how it would do so we took it for a spin at 4K using the Ultra preset and Vulkan renderer. The game's built-in reporting tool showed 85-100fps on average in the Foundry level, and play was perfectly smooth.

Throughout our test period, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition card ran cool and quiet. There was a slight fluttering sound when the fan spun up or down, but otherwise nothing more than a distant hum. If even that much sound is too much, you might want to consider third-party cards with more elaborate multi-fan cooling solutions.

Verdict We're more than happy with the performance we've seen from the Founders' Edition card, and if past trends continue, we'll see partners including Asus, Zotac, and MSI squeeze even more juice out of the same GPU with their custom coolers. Nvidia doesn't sell its own branded graphics cards in India but the reference models from all third parties will be identical to the one we've tested. Sources in the industry tell us that only reference cards will be available at launch time, with custom SKUs coming in only after a few weeks or months, but on the bright side, at least some of them will sell at Nvidia's recommended price of Rs. 63,000.

That price is probably the best part of this launch. Nvidia doesn't have any competition at this level right now and could easily have priced the GTX 1080 Ti a step higher than the GTX 1080, or even rested on its laurels till such time as it really needed to whip out a competitor. However, Nvidia chose to launch the new GTX 1080 Ti at the same price as the GTX 1080, when it launched in late May last year. In India, the Rupee price is actually Rs. 250 less.

AMD now has a higher bar to reach if it wants to be competitive with its Vega products this year - and we're looking forward to covering this battle as it unfolds. Till then, this is a great time pick up that top-end graphics card you've been itching for. You'll get more for your money with a GTX 1080 Ti, or alternatively, you'll save quite a bit by picking up a GTX 1080 Founders' Edition card for somewhere near its new recommended price of Rs. 45,000.

Don't even bother with the Nvidia Titan X, which sells for well over a lakh - whatever marginal improvement there might be just isn't worth it, even if you need compute power for jobs other than gaming. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is more than enough for pushing 4K at around 60fps, and that carries over to smaller high-refresh-rate monitors and even VR headsets.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders' Edition Price: Rs. 63,000

Pros Excellent performance for 4K gaming No price increase compared to the GTX 1080 Runs cool and quiet

Cons None

Ratings (Out of 5) Performance: 5 Value for Money: 5 Overall: 5

Source link